What is Sales? Recommended Readings

This is a modified version of a post from the current Leanlaunch Pad session. It’s intention is to provide a set of “Introduction to Sales” readings.

Let’s talks Sales.
I cover the positioning of a Sales department in a company by Steve Blank. The “Spirit of Sales” by Malcolm Gladwell on Ronco founder Ron Popeil. Sales books for Managers and for Sales people. I also add in Geoffrey Moore’s discussion of “innovation styles” available to companies.
enjoy.

Positioning of Sales vs Marketing, Engineering, Finance, Legal, etc

The Sharp End of the Stick « Steve Blank

In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development. Later on in this same company’s life, sales will become the pointy end and product development moves to a supporting role. In other companies it may be that manufacturing or finance is the sharp end of the stick. In an IP licensing business, legal and finance are the sharp end of the stick. It varies by company and changes over time. There’s no magic formula but there are always “leading” departments. And all “leading” departments have some type of “consequence-based” feedback loops that make success or failure obvious.

The “Spirit of Selling” — Gladwell covers Ronco

This story is magic. Malcolm Gladwell’s coverage of Ronco founder Ron Popeil in The Pitchman captures the essence of selling products you love. Every product developer, marketer, or sales person needs to read this. In the end you can’t fake product love and knowledge. Ron Popeil knows his products because he lives with his products.

The “shocking point” is that this story is relevant to us all and yet Ronco is the “sleazy” television sales world. Many people simple will not read this and get upset with me for recommending it to them.

Sales Books

I asked two extremely knowledgeable Sales people to recommend a sales book for me. From the VP of Sales I got Customer Centric Selling. I liked this recommendation because I had already read and liked Solution Selling by Bosworth. From the best sales person I’ve ever worked with I got ProActive Sales Management by Skip Miller

Customer Centric Selling « Bosworth

I like both books, they’ll both make a difference in your work. It was very interesting the choice that each person made since each book has very similar themes. In the details each book services a different audience. So if you’re a sales guy looking for direct tips and a means for understanding corporate sales management go for ProActive. It’s feet are firmly on the ground of a sales guy. If you are a management type looking to understand sales systems go for CustomerCentric.

Personal Perspective – ProActive Sales Managment

ProActive Selling: Control the Process – Win the Sale: Amazon.ca: William “Skip” Miller: Books

Managing Perspective – Customer Centric Selling

Customer Centric Selling « Bosworth

Innovation Techniques — “Dealing With Darwin”

Geoffrey Moore’s – Dealing With Darwin does an amazing job discussing Innovation Techniques available to companies as they age. This book is recommended for “Intrapreneurial Teams”. For the rest of you it is nice to know. It provides a detailed discussion on why Product Innovation is the innovation style necessary for “young” startups.

Summary Points

• The book is about managing innovation and overcoming inertia in established enterprises.
• It’s major thesis is that most companies love to innovate but hate to take risk, the net result being lots of me-too innovations that lack economic impact because they do not have the force to distinctively differentiate their offers.
• Its primary prescription is to pick a single vector of innovation and march so far down it that your competition either cannot or will not follow.
• The book describes fourteen innovation vectors all told. Different types are privileged at different points in the category maturity life cycle, so that innovation strategy must adapt to life-cycle dynamics. The overall model is used to help management teams winnow down innovation vector choices to one or two and align the bulk of their investment behind that choice.

Apply for a spot in my Lean LaunchPad Workshop at UBC in Jan 2013

The first “mixer” for entrepreneurship@UBC’s 2013 Lean Launch Pad Accelerator Program is Monday, November 26, 12–2pm @ Wayne and William White Engineering Design Centre, 2345 East Mall (Design Studio), UBC
RSVP Here

The second Mixer is

• Date: Wednesday, December 5,
• Time: 5-7pm
• Place: Gastown — 131 Water Kitchen and Bar, 131 Water St, Vancouver
• RSVP: here

Some Background.

In January and February 2013 I’m doing my second Lean LaunchPad workshop in conjunction with e@UBC. This year Paul Cubbon from UBC’s Sauder entrepreneurship program is joining us. It should be much better. Last year my LLP workshop was low-key, but it was very apparent that that LLP is a much better way to teach, and learn, about entrepreneurship than the classroom approach I’ve been using in my customer development classes ( UBC MBA BAEN 502. ) My First Attempt At Teaching Lean Launch Pad « Iain’s Chips & Tech

Volunteers / Mentors

I will be donating my time and would love some more help and support.

Lean LaunchPad Materials

• The Lean LaunchPad Online « Steve Blank
• Lean LaunchPad « Steve Blank This link displays all the blog post’s tagged “lean-launchpad” on “SteveBlank.com”

Link | OECD updates broadband portal with December 2007 data

http://www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband An update of a very interesting site there is also a new report issued.

OECD updates broadband portal with December 2007 data

May 18, 2008 22:00:00 GMT
Broadband subscriptions reached 235 million in December 2008, equivalent to 20 subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Denmark, the Netherlands and Iceland continue to lead the OECD in broadband penetration.

New Broadband report as well.

The OECD is also releasing a new Broadband report (Main findings / Full report) which examines the evolution of broadband since 2004 and the national broadband plans of all OECD member countries. The report highlights the significant progress that has been made in the development of broadband across the OECD countries, notably and the progress that has been made in extending broadband to rural and remote areas as well as in connecting schools, libraries and other public institutions. The report also examines areas of weakness and examples of innovative policies from countries.

Google’s Stance on Network Neutrality

“Network neutrality” is an overused term whose meaning is very difficult to nail down. There is the telco side and the Internet side. This week the Google Policy Blog posted their postion. ( tip to Doc Searl’s blog )

Google Public Policy Blog: What Do We Mean By “Net Neutrality”?

Blogs Wiki’s – What’s Your Market?

In the past few weeks I’ve noticed a lot of posts on “blogging” or “the blogging experience”. It is interesting that big and small bloggers are all writing about this. They want to know who their readers are and how to serve them better. ( I’ve got a list at the end of this post.)

Friends/Colleagues – It has been my experience that my readership largely consists of close friends/colleagues ( 1-degree-of-separation ) and the people I meet via blogging are 2-degrees-of-separation away. For example, I met Andrew@Nyquist via blogging and it turns out that I’ve worked with many of his colleagues. It is rare for anyone outside of 1-degree to contact me. This experience similar here and inside of my office (where I edit a research blog/wiki with much more content than out here). Getting readers beyond friends is difficult.

? Executives don’t read blogs ? - I particularly like WRKoss’s comment “that people responsible for the development of leadership talent in companies, do not read blogs.” I think this has a lot to do with the fact that executives have long been in a group that subscribes to “news aggregator” services. They did not lose them during the cutbacks of the early ’00′s. I find that this group often comments that blogs & wiki’s are “too noisy” and/or “I already get all that stuff”. In general, they ascribe very little value to them and do very little to support them. Most blog/wiki software inside corporate walls are “rogue” installations kept far away from IT staff. It is a rare Exec who supports them publicly. Luckily for me a few do exist. Given all these obstacles I chose to ignore this group. They are well served by the existing media. That said — many execs do read my blogs & wikis.

Non-executives – I’ve been focussing on serving this group for over a year now. To them blogs are a “gift from heaven”. They can get regular updates on their markets and have a way to build a quick database of this information (with wikis). Many in this group have responsibility to track news & markets in a detailed way. There is huge benefit to them. They tell me this on a weekly basis.

Unfortunately, this is “good news / bad news” for most bloggers. Good news is that there are loads of under-served people in this segment and Bad News is that these guys don’t cut checks.

Conclusions/Actions – (If my experience is commonplace) This is a big challenge for bloggers looking to monetize their content ( ie the Om Malik’s of the world ). I think he’s got the attention of the non-executive reader to the tune of 10k’s of readers, but will he be able to keep it up if execs are not reading? For guys like Fred Wilson who’s first circle is great and really know how to make friends on-line – the blog world was made for them. For the rest of us, there are lots of readers out there who are very under-served. Extracting value from them, in corporate status and in $$$ is difficult, but I don’t think that is why we’re blogging.

Links

• T&G Blog Update – WRKoss
  

  What I thought would surely happen is that PE people (VCs and buyout) and executive leaders in technology companies would read my blog and tell someone to contact me to arrange an interview. I can state that this has happened, but I can also state that more often then not this is a false assumption. I think the people responsible for the development of leadership talent in companies, do not read blogs.

• Blogging Well 101 – Mark Evans
• If no one reads your post, does it exist? – Seth Godin
• How To Widget? – Fred Wilson
• Reader Feedback Required: new topics – GigaOm
• I was given Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything over Christmas. Being very into Blogs & Wiki’s I enjoyed it, but “Changes Everything” is a little over the top. I have a hard time believing the corporate world can really let go.

Telcos Target Google in ‘Neutrality’ Fight (GigaOm)

I’m slowly catching up on all my blog reading. This GigaOm post has a lot of good discussion, and links, on the latest in Net Neutrality. For those who don’t already know, “It’s about cash … Google has it and the others don’t”. — Iain

Telcos Target Google in ‘Neutrality’ Fight: ”

The latest round in the battle over net neutrality has started, and as usual the telcos have their game plan sussed out and in widespread, synchronized action. The message? Google is bad, and wants to control the Internet to keep its cash pile growing. Telcos, meanwhile, just want to innovate, so please don’t write laws keeping them from doing so. [...] (Via GigaOM.)

France’s Free Innovates on Multiple Play, Wi-Fi Mesh, HDTV, unbundled FTTH and WiMax (ITU)

France’s Free Innovates on Multiple Play, Wi-Fi Mesh, HDTV, unbundled FTTH and WiMax: ”

Om Malik points to
an article in French
that discuss how Free.fr, the world’s
leading multiple play provider based in France is now quickly moving into wireless
mesh networks with its new Freebox HD set-top box/wiifi offering. To understand the
quantitative advantages of wireless mesh networks, see this presentation from
Dave Beyer from 2002 that explains how mesh coverage has the interesting property
of increasing coverage and capacity as the more subscribers are added (since the subscribers
are part of the routing infrastructure).

Free recently announced the
delivery of their 300,000 Freebox HD, which they say creates a wi-fi mesh network
that allowing their new wi-fi based phones to roam.

Olivier Gutknecht reported
on some of this in English back in April 2006.

Free is also going to do a rollout
of FTTH to every home in Pariswhich they say they will unbundleto
competitors.

They also now
have a national WiMax license acquired through the acquisition by their parent
company, Iliad, of Altitude
Telecom.

This recent presentation on
Iliad’s mid-2006 results provides a good overview of their strategic direction and
their financials. What is next?

“

via (ITU RSS)

Chambers: Video is the ‘killer app’ (GigaOM)

Chambers: Video is the ‘killer app’: ”

SAN JOSE, Calif. — 8:50 a.m. PST — Cisco CEO John Chambers just said that ‘if there is a killer app, it is video,’ as part of his keynote speech kicking off the Cisco C-Scape analysts conference here.

‘Things like YouTube are just the baby steps of the impact video will have on networks,’ said Chambers, who has already introduced the company’s new big-vision theme (’The Human Network’) and the technology vision that supports it (’Network as the Platform.’)

Live-blogging this, so quotes may not be word for word… Chambers opened talking about how Cisco differentiates by combining vision, strategy and execution… said it took 6-7 years to change the company internally (’changing the reward system, who got promoted or not’) to get buy-in on the current track.

Singapore to get 1 Gbps to the home: Getting to some good stuff now about India, focus on globalization… ‘moving 10 of our top execs into our globalization center in India. Use our own technologies… (videoconferencing) to change support… Drive all four elements of our strategy from India. This is a huge investment for the future.’

Says Singapore is planning for 1 Gbps to the home… ‘not that much more expensive to do a gig.’

now transition into service provider market

why did US stop innovating? Stopped investing

SPs going to be experience providers, not plumbers.

‘we define service providers today by their access technologies. Who cares! Want to define them by the experience [they deliver].’

More as we catch up!

8:50 a.m. — Showing off now… it is impressive though how Cisco strategy slides from the past are pretty good at predicting the future, especially the gradual improvements in networks.

Next level: Quad play

9:07 a.m. — Jim Grubb demo now, showing a Cisco media player — small box with Ethernet jack and video input/output to make any display a smart device on the network.

Waiting for the inevitable Grubb salary/budget joke… there it is, Chambers says Grubb’s staff doesn’t need to be that big… ha ha ha

Before demo, Chambers said about video: ‘I really do not want to store all the ‘Desperate Housewives’ and Duke basketball games on the DVRs in my house.’ Content should be in the network, he says.

Applications are going to drive the service provider business… and video is going to be a large part of that. Telepresence (Cisco expensive teleconferencing). The data center will be virtualized first, and then it will go all the way out to the end…

9:12 — We are now hearing about Cisco plans with Oakland (Fremont!) Athletics to build a new baseball stadium.

(Will reserve my arguments against this stuff)… he is talking about watching multiple replays, multiple cameras (because of how wired/networked the stadium is)… use cell phones as credit cards… ‘we’re learning how to push experiences.’

End to end SP quad play. Consumer iHome end to end play. New services.

Telepresence? ‘It’s my favorite new technology.’

save $140 million? ‘it will change the way we collaborate’ play texas hold em, see pupils dilate.

Thought this year was all about execution… wrong. Need to keep innovating as well.

9:20 a.m. — Big close, puts up the slide that shows how Cisco market cap dwarfs that of closest 10 competitors combined.. says the opportunity ‘to be the major company in IT and communications is in front of us.’

Whew! Watch this space for more from the conference today and tomorrow. (As long as the Cisco folks don’t kick me out of my ‘reserved Cisco’ seat up front, heh)

(Via GigaOM.)

My IPO Resurgence Thesis Looks Like a Lock (Kedrosky)

My IPO Resurgence Thesis Looks Like a Lock: “As I have written here many times, we are in the middle of a a largely unremarked IPO resurgence, and 2007 will be the best tech IPO market since the bubble burst. You can really see the IPO market kicking into gear in the latest figures comparing pre- and post-Labor Day IPO performance:

‘	Pre-Labor Day	”	Post-Labor Day
Up IPOs	50	”	57
Down IPOs	33	”	14
Average Gain	4.32%	”	29.3%
Nasdaq Composite	0.55%	”	11.1%

Remarkable stuff. [via IPO Scoop]

As an aside, I’m curious what the correlation is between the Nasdaq Composite and the IPO market. If, say, the index is up 5% in the preceding quarter, should you be an IPO buyer until the gains subside?

And one more thing. The hottest recent IPO has been Heely’s, the roller shoe thingie. Here’s a fascinating chart from Hitwise on searchers’ interest in the thing:

(Via Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed.)

What A Return :-(

I got back from last week’s awesome meditation retreat to a snow storm hell zone

Today I woke up to trees down all over our yard. Snow bending everything in bizarre directions, of course this cool landscape included ripped out cable and phone lines. Luckily the power was on. Then oops it went out and now we’re entrenced at a friends house.

From Bliss to hell.

I should be back sometime this week.