I’m confident and capable in customer meetings, but not conferences. In bars, but not clubs. In cafes, but not markets. Expertise, and thus confidence, develops in silos. The most shy person you’ve ever met can explode into life and become the king of the room when the topic of conversation shifts toward his area of [...]
23 Dec
The first few times you’re selling something expensive[1], it’s really more exploratory. You don’t know if it’s something they care enough about to pay for, or how they budget for it, or what they value it at. Even if you get a “yes”, it’s probably a suboptimal yes, in that you could have charged more. [...]
08 Dec
So what does your [hypothetical] startup do? We send managers a text message as soon as their employees make unusual use of the company card. Over time you realise you’ve been touting features, so you follow the classic 1940s sales advice and switch to articulating benefits. We keep managers in-the-know about misuse of the company [...]
28 Nov
How often have you been told to negotiate “like you don’t need it”? Frequently, I would wager. But how does one go about developing this crucial (and somewhat mythical) skill? The “advice” puts the focus on your in-meeting tactics, whereas–for most of us–strong negotiation arises naturally from the groundwork you did outside the meeting. It’s [...]
04 Nov
While I would admittedly be uncomfortable asking a colleague how much cash is sitting in their bank account, directly re-applying personal etiquette to a business discussion is generally a mistake. You’re a startup. It’s okay. There exists some critical, make-or-break information that you’ll find impossible to tease out in any other way. As long as [...]
27 Oct
19 Sep
I needed about 18 months after the end of my first company to learn how to effectively pitch our failure: “We were betting on the social advertising ecosystem trending toward openness, which it didn’t. On the enterprise side, Buzz and Beacon set bad legal precedents which spooked the big brands, slashed our price point, and [...]
08 Sep
03 Sep
I watched & graded roughly seven hours’ worth of startup pitches yesterday. A couple thoughts on effectively presenting your business to big groups (most of this also applies to board-room pitches). On presentation content Ground it in reality. There are only two ways to do this: traction and customer understanding. The best slide I saw [...]
30 Aug
You are about to found (or join) a new company. A handful of people are involved to varying degrees, and you need to offer or ask for an equity chunk. (Disclaimer: These are Opinion numbers, not Truth numbers) Founders are going to get 75-90% of the company. Employees and advisors are going to have 10-25%. [...]
21 Jan