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Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful." - Warren Buffet Every board meeting I’ve attended in the last several months has been dominated by discussions about preserving cash, getting to break-even and how crappy business will be in 2009. I struggle with such discussions. It’s not that I don’t believe that there’s [...] I’ve discussed how critical accurately forecasting sales is to a company’s success before. In short, I think that companies that have the skill to accurately predict how much they will sell and from where those sales will come have a substantial advantage over those that don’t – they can grow faster and often without consuming [...] Sure, it’s theoretically possible to create bug-free high-tech products. That is, products that seem “bug-free” to the user when they: are used exactly as intended by their creator Incentives differ from rewards in that they are known up front. While a reward is granted to recognize an action or achievement that has already taken place, the goal of an incentive is to induce behavior that results in such an action or achievement. In this way, an incentive works like a carrot, motivating an individual or [...] One of the greatest challenges in direct sales is having your customer commit time to listening to your pitch. Good direct sales people work hard to eliminate any and all barriers to such a commitment because even the most compelling pitch won’t get you anywhere if it’s not heard. One tool for getting an audience to [...] One of the problems that many young companies and new CEOs encounter is dealing with the cultural differences between a company’s various functional groups as the organization grows. Different roles require different philosophies, attitudes and methods. Sometimes, a person in one group has a difficult time understanding the actions of a person in another. Left unexplained, this [...] A friend and cohort at Carbon Design Systems, Scott Seaton, made the following comment on my post Selling – How to Make the Best Out of a Second Place Finish. I think it’s important enough to warrant its own post: “The interesting point is that there is a bigger picture to the positioning yourself as a [...] Dharmesh Shah, fellow member of Feedburner’s My Way network, has a terrific post titled Selling Software: Why Free Trials Aren’t on his OnStartups blog. In the post, Dharmesh makes excellent points about how free trials are far from a zero-cost decision from the customer’s standpoint. He also points out that the success of a free trial [...] If you sell something – a product, a service, yourself, whatever – there are inevitably going to be times when you lose to a competitor, your customer finds an alternative solution to his/her problem or he/she simply decides to do nothing. When your selling process doesn’t involve much direct contact with your customer (selling indirectly through [...] Any reasonable direct selling process involves establishing a specific set of milestones to help track how far along a prospect is on the path to making a purchase. These usually include one or more of the following steps: Lead found/created |
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Copyright © 2010 William Herman - All Rights Reserved |
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January 31st, 2009 | 
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