HR
I love to create reductionist mission statements for various departments in a software company. These are designed to be ultra-compact and potentially provocative. My two favorite examples thus far: * Marketing exists to make sales easier. * HR exists to help managers manage. I like to make them based on real-
Marketing
I can't tell you the number of times I've seen market research that suffers from one key problem. It goes something like this: * What do you think of the user interface for <product>? * Do you think <product> should be part of suite
IPO
I was talking with my friend Tracy Eiler, author of Aligned to Achieve, the other day and she showed me a chart that they were using at InsideView to segment customers. The chart was a quadrant that mapped customers on two dimensions: renewal rate and retention rate. The idea was
Marketing
I was wondering the other day why Southwest would spend millions of dollars to remind people that Bags Fly Free. I’d argue there are two reasons: * It generally supports their friendly and transparent, low fees brand strategy * It reminds customers that a $500 fare on United might actually cost
Management
I think great learning can come from studying what cost your predecessor his/her job (on the assumption they weren't promoted out of it onto greener pastures). While such matters are invariably complex ("oh, there were a lot of factors, boss relationship, objectives attainment, sales confidence, ..."
Marketing
I'll borrow the title of one of my favorite books (Thinking, Fast and Slow) to make a few important points about lead nurturing in this post. While there is a strong argument that buyers should be nurtured before, during, and after the initial sale, I'm going
Management
It was HP co-founder, David Packard, of all people, who came up with one of my favorite quotes on marketing, specifically that "marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department." This quote is often mentioned in the same breath as these famous Peter Drucker
BI
There are two sayings I like when it comes to the unicorn bubble: * "Too much money makes you stupid" * "Any idea's a good one when you've got $100M burning a hole in your pocket." Startups are supposed to be focused. Startups are
Management
This post reviews Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin’s new book, From Impossible to Inevitable, which is being launched at the SaaStr Conference this week. The book is a sequel of sorts to Ross’s first book, Predictable Revenue, published in 2011, and which was loaded with great ideas about
Communications
Ever hear this story? VP of Marketing: "OK, well, you know, pretty good." VP of Sales: "Why are you hemming and hawing?" VP of Marketing: "Well, I could tell they didn't love it." VP of Sales: "Do you know why? I
AR
Say you’re considering going out to dinner in a city you’ve never visited before and there are two different surveys of local restaurants that you can use to help choose a place to eat: * Survey 1, which is taken by randomly asking customers leaving restaurants about their experience.
Marketing
I think in today's world that we need to ask PR people to be not just literate, but numerate. What does that mean? * They need to do basic math correctly. Most PR people think that going from size $100K to size $700K is 700% growth. It's