I had the good fortune to attend the SVASE CXO Forum Dec-6-06 where Peter Bakonyvari, Vice President of Sales at JPMorgan SymPro, explored some of the practical realities in building a sales team. In particular what is involved in hiring and firing a sales person. First 90 days Is Critical Bakonyvari’s made the point that the first 90 days […]
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Michael Sippey’s original title for his August 2, 2006 talk at SVPMA was “Iterating Towards Bethlehem” was changed to a less cryptic Making the Shift From Being a Packaged Software Person to Being a Hosted Services Person. The original title was a riff on Yeats’ Slouching Towards Bethlehem (not the Joan Didion book or the
Iterating Towards Bethlehem: Michael Sippey at SVPMA 8/2/2006 Read More »
Gone are the days of annual release cycle. For many companies, weekly releases are the new standard. Picking the best software release cycle impacts your customers, team, and management. At this roundtable discussion we will exchange tips and gotchas. Provide a look at the impact on business models, teams and product development. Tuesday October 30
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Finding More Customers Every business owner asks “How do I Find More Customers? How can I get the phone to ring?” Is your New Year’s Resolution to develop a plan to grow your business? Now is the time to get started. SKMurphy offers a three hour Getting More Customers workshop where you develop a one-page
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I was interviewed in June 2006 by Barbara Cass, Volunteer Director for the SDForum, the final text appeared in the July/August 2006 newsletter (see page 15 of the PDF version). I have updated it here to add links for many of the referenced works and the quotes. KV Rao and I did a one year
June 2006 SDForum Interview Read More »
Theresa heard a radio interview with Barry Moltz in 2003 and suggested that I get his book. In December 2003 I purchased a copy of You Need to Be a Little Crazy and when it arrived from Amazon I put it on my to-be-read pile where it languished until early this morning when I read
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“Plus Minus People” make a strong initial impression but once you start working with them (or you hire them) you realize that they have a negative impact on the team.
I had lunch today at El Cerrito with an old friend from college who has done a number of successful startups. We talked of old classmates, children, the energy we had in our twenties, his new son, and my new granddaughter. And we talked about what it was like to do a startup. He left
Two Images of Startups Read More »
Venk Shukla, CEO of Nusym, commented on Nusym De-cloaks 3 on Dec 4 We had met a long time ago but lost touch afterward. The points you make about website credibility are valid. We will measure the information we put out against this criteria once we decide to emerge from the shadows. Thanks for paying
I got Guidelines to Creativity by K. Bradford Brown as a gift and was impressed by these ten quotes. Some are clever re-statements of more famous observations but all have a certain poetry. Creativity will take me as far as my imagined limits. The building blocks of our creativity are quarried from the space between
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12 Books For the Busy CEO – Feedback Last night’s talk was well received. We had a good crowd, with folks filling the seats and a few having to stand up along the back wall. Here’s the feedback from the talk: I was surprised that it was more than 12 capsule reviews back to back,
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12 Books For the Busy CEO: spend an hour and leave with a summary of key marketing insights and some rules of thumb for successful innovation in Silicon Valley. You might even identify one or two books that you haven’t read that will be worth your time over the Christmas holidays. I will cover twelve
12 Books For the Busy CEO Tonight (Mon Dec-11-2006) @ SDForum Read More »
Just For Today I Will Feel Grateful For My Customers. I Worked Hard To Get Them. Without Them I Would Not Have A Business. I Will Be as Friendly as Can Be to Everyone That I Work With; I Will Treat Them as If They Are Responsible For Keeping Me in Business. If I Have
Just For Today by Ben Stein Read More »
Map out a calendar of subjects to cover. Just planning one or two a week for the next 2 months will help you avoid writer’s block. This still leaves room for “inspired” work but can give you some structure. Pick a focus or related set of subjects for your writing. Inject your perspective and where
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Going pro means learning how to deliver the results required. Some key points to remember as you ask folks in larger firms to take a risk with your new offering or service. They are from a March 1993 column entitled “Going Pro” by Asa Baber.
I will be offering practical advice to startup entrepreneurs in this blog. I am a hardware engineer and a mom, so I like lists with a do-it/done methodology. My post are short and to the point. Hopefully you will find them useful. “It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only
Welcome from Theresa Shafer Read More »
Coffee Break with Gary Smith It’s a strange thing to know someone who’s making the front page of the paper for losing his job. I have known Gary Smith for almost 20 years: we met when he was a methodologist at LSI Logic and their salesman for 3Com dragged him in to encourage us to
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Early software sales are typically a mix of service and product, and in fact can look a lot like consulting deals. Here are a three tips to help plan your next sales call. Focus on the prospect’s business needs, issues and concerns more than your smarts, methods, or credentials. Promised results (benefits) matter more than
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Larry Sonsini Profiled in Fortune Nov-27-06 I have been catching up on my reading and came across a profile of Larry Sonsini in Fortune’s Nov-27-06 print edition. The article in the print edition is titled “The Man To See In The Valley” but “Scandals rock Silicon Valley’s top legal ace” in the on-line version. It’s part
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A collection of quotes on perseverance, staying true to your character, and keeping your promises.
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