Subscribe to the Workpump newsletters
Workpump Resources Archive
Articles Archive
- Selling to Business Part 1
- Five tips to make it easier to sell to business. Reprint from AeA Techline,
Fall 2005.
- Selling to Business Part 2
- Five more tips on how to sell to business. Reprinted from AeA Techline, Winter 2006.
- Demand Generation for Dummies
- Many years ago I raised a small furor back at The Big M. Sitting through division presentation by our
ad agency (a national agency that you've no doubt heard of), I asked a heretical question.
- Field of Dreams
- Ever see the movie “Field of Dreams?” Kevin Costner gets a spiritual message to build
a ball field in the middle of nowhere. The ghost of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson tells him,
“If you build it, they will come.” And they do.
- How Much Is Enough?
- I'm surprised at the number of sales people I run into who give up too soon. I've seen this for
years, and it continues to amaze me.
- The Magic Bus
- Best book I've read recently: “Good to Great,” by Jim Collins (author of “Built
to Last”). Collins assembled a research team to investigate why some unglamorous companies
beat the market—and the competition—so amazingly well.
- On Venture Capital
- Recently I sat through a presentation by five notable venture capital partners who discussed
the forecast for 2002 and beyond. While they were focused primarily on the Northwest, most of what
they said applies to everywhere.
- Surviving the Downturn
- Wow. Will things ever improve in tech? Everybody I talk to tells me sales are down, companies are
going out of business, customers are postponing purchases, things are really bad.
- What About the Web?
- IT managers are like bank customers. They are
buying something basically intangible (technology) with a promise of a reward (some return on
that investment, whether increased productivity or reduced costs). If you're trying to sell your
product to that IT manager, you have a fundamental problem unless your name is Oracle, Cisco,
Microsoft, IBM.
- Action Based Collateral
- Put this test to all your collateral: web pages, data sheets, demos, sales aids. What action do
you want the prospect to take when she is finished with the collateral?
- Demo Death
- Last month I gave you some tips about demos, but one large company here in Redmond didn't
pay attention. Yes, I'm talking about Bill and Steve's excellent adventure,
AKA Microsoft. Recently some of the Workpump gang sat in on a
truly painful demo by a 'softie on their new CRM
product.
- Focus and Execution
- I've been thinking a lot about these two success factors lately, and frankly I can't think of any
that top them. Way too many years ago I had a job fixing cars and Bob—a guy I worked
with—used to say, “A bad idea that works is better than a good idea that doesn't.”
- Are you Invested?
- For some reason otherwise sane people just go nutty when it comes to investing in their
businesses. They either invest too much, not enough, or in the wrong places.
- To Market, To Market, To Sell a Fat Pig
- If you stay in the game long enough, you'll get market validation—well, feedback,
anyway—but it may not be what you want to hear. The paranoid and deeply stupid will create a
product in complete isolation and then roll it out expecting customers to beat down the doors in
a buying frenzy.
- Peel Me a Tomato
- I was slicing a tomato for a salad the other day when I suddenly remembered my Grandmother,
standing with her cane in the kitchen peeling tomatoes. She always peeled tomatoes if they weren't going
to be cooked. As she saw it, the peel was an unpleasant part of the tomato which should be removed.
What makes this interesting…
- A Thousand Here, A Thousand There; Pretty Soon It All Adds Up
- Spending wrong is just as fruitless as not spending at all. Throwing all your money at
product development, without reserving budget for demand generation, PR,
administration, etc, won't get you to success.
- Anchoring
- If you're not familiar with the concept of anchoring you should be. Psychologists have
demonstrated this phenomenon repeatedly, basically proving your mother was right when she told
you how important first impressions are. The first impression becomes an anchor which later colors
all future impressions, regardless of subsequent facts.
- Don't Overdo It
- The tendency of software entrepreneurs is to write code. Even if they themselves aren't
developers, they want to get something working fast. An admirable sentiment, but not always a smart one.
- Getting Money, Making Money
- Venture Capital firms are doing deals, but no one seems to want to invest in early stage
companies anymore.
- Learning from BMW
- BMW has always been a company I admire. I've owned their cars, I've taken their cars apart, and
I've raced their cars. Great cars. Until recently…
- What Are Your Marketing Goals?
- Think of sales as a process, beginning with first contact and ending with a sale. In between those
two ends are steps…
- The Selling of the Presidency
- If there's any common thread I see in tech startups that don't make it, it's this: they lose sight
of the fact that ultimately they have to have something that sells. So someone has to do the selling.
- Do's and Don'ts of Trade Shows
- It’s trade show season again. Shows can be a great opportunity to do some serious selling or
just an expensive trip out of town. It’s up to you to make it the one and not the other. So here’s
how to maximize these important marketing events
- How Good Are Your Anchors?
- Software is about the most abstract product in the universe. After all, it's just 1s and 0s
organized into a unique pattern that—when translated correctly by the right
system—does something interesting.
- Execute or Die
- One of the things that separates the truly great companies from the rest is the ability to
really execute. We've all seen them, those companies that seem to sweat every detail, that leave
nothing to chance, that do everything right.
- Has BillG Lost It?
- All in the course of a single morning I had three negative Microsoft-related encounters. Loyal
readers who secretly or not-so secretly believe that Chairman Bill is the Antichrist and the spawn
of Satan rolled up into one might not raise an eyebrow at such a statement, but since my involvement
with the company goes back to the week OS/2 was announced (April 20, 1987) I have a different
set of expectations.
- Longhorn: No Bull
- Longhorn, aka the next version of Windows, won't ship until
late 2006 (if then), but it has ramifications that begin today. Recently we spent a day at
Microsoft learning more about this new OS, and I'm convinced
that this is going to be a tsunami-size wave. Smart companies need to fit Longhorn into their
product roadmap…
- Newton, Darwin, ISP's, and Software
- It's Friday night when I'm writing this and the power's been out due to a big windstorm for more
than 12 hours. I live in the country and get my water from a community well, so no electricity =
no water, which is a significant problem after a while. The infrastructure out here is old and above
ground and coupled with lots of trees it means that power outages are common in winter.
- Building a Strong Message
- Powerful messages go directly to important benefits for your customer. Top two? Either you're
going to save them money or increase their sales.
- Why Not? Understanding Lost Sales
- Nobody bats a thousand, so what happens when you get a “No, thanks”? Sometimes you
can learn more from the sales you don't make then the ones you do.
