Boards
I remember how silly the board looked that day. Reviewing the slide with performance by salesrep, an alpha board member impatiently shouted the seemingly obvious conclusion: "Look, only one rep -- Joe Schmedley -- is performing. Everyone else is struggling. The solution to our problem is quite simple: we need more
Demandgen
My marketing professor once said, The answer to every marketing question is, "It depends." Thus, the important part is knowing on what. So, how do you calculate the cost/opportunity? Well, it depends! On what? On the specific question you're trying to answer. When people ask
AI
This is a quick post to announce my latest appearance on Dan Turchin's AI and The Future of Work podcast. Dan, the founder/CEO of PeopleReign, has been doing AI since long before it was cool and, to give you an idea of how long he's
Demandgen
Why is it that when we want to add an account executive (AE) to the plan, we always think about some ratios but not others? For example, most people think: Boom! Then we're going to need: * 2/3rds of an sales consultant (SC) * 1/3rd of a sales
Marketing
Years ago, I was in a board meeting and a VC dropped the expression: "you can't eat IRR." I'd never heard it before. It sounded catchy. But, honestly, I didn't know what it meant. At first, I thought it was VC-ism.
Boards
So, you're on the executive staff of a startup and you've been asked to present at an upcoming board meeting. That's great news. Board exposure is a key benefit of working on the e-staff. You’re getting the chance to build relationships with
Branding
I’m late with this year’s predictions post because I’ve discovered that writing while recovering from knee surgery, zonked on painkillers, is a surprisingly difficult endeavor. Onward, through the fog. And apologies for the delay. I’m always humbled by the act of making predictions. A few months
HR
Just a quick post to highlight a recent podcast appearance with Leah Tharin on ProducTea, a European podcast focused on bringing together product, revenue, and growth. In addition to her podcasts and blog content, Leah produces a number of guides that are quite useful for startups as well. In this,
Boards
A critical part of the CEO's job is realizing when it's time to sell the company. I'm not talking about the easy cases, like when you're in year five of running a PE-backed company, and the numbers suggest an exit that
Career
It's always fun to go back and look at my stats, and my best-of page (which amazingly came in at #11) is getting sufficiently long that I need to find additional summarization mechanisms. So this year, I thought I'd share the top-ten Kellblog posts
Competition
Of all the dime-store clichés that pass for business strategy, the one I hate the most is, "run your own race." Why? * As a quote from the winner, it's almost always survivor bias. "How'd I win? Well, I ran my own race.
Boards
Since many of you are in the midst of presenting your annual marketing budgets to your CEO, CFO, and board, I thought I'd write a quick post to remind people what board members actually care about when it comes to the marketing budget. I understand that, in the