Downscaling

Startups often spend scarce time and resources trying to attract funding to upscale operations.

Recently, a veteran business builder pointed out that organizations that take money for operations usually end up losing the companies to their funders within three years. The funders have no clue how to operate their new company.

Rationalizing income to expense can go the other way. What if you planned your projects to match resources?

Perhaps prototypes with fewer features, or development delivered in fewer weeks?

Innovation is a sprint and even I get seriously winded in the second hundred yards. (sarcasm font)
Sroc famously said, “I’m as fast as I ever was...between two telephone poles.”

There are incredible bargains in newer technology resources. Just because you haven’t used them doesn’t justify wasting money.

Open source leadership greases a whole new speed of play.

If you haven’t got something customers want, how do you justify your salary?

It’s a different economy. Figuring out how to succeed requires hard study.

What can you deliver by Wednesday?

The Sales Model – Where To Focus

The Secret To A Successful Startup

Start with a customer.

Choke That Temptation

I was presiding over a science fair last week, when suddenly, a new class came in and no judges were noticing! I hurried to notify the judges, but was stopped by the press of happy students, happy judges, real learning just busting out all over.

Then I thought to myself, these judges are Ph. Ds, who have been working science fairs as long as I have, and they could all see the same situation I could. They knew the drill.

I subsided before I did something stupid.

The judges flowed over to the new projects, on their own, without a hitch. Just a low key action keeping the focus totally on the student-stars of our show.

Have you ever seen a manager who thinks he was appointed sheriff, and can’t stand to sit and watch?

I’m starting to think there is a lot to be learned from rolling a bowling ball. All the work is done before you let go and before you have any idea how it is going. Any improvement after you let go is just supplying comedic value.

Comments are always nice...

Evaluating Event Contacts

Ever go to an event?

Meet a lot of people?

See some people at event after event?

How can you tell who you should be meeting and who is a waste of your effort?

Here’s the way I’ve come to prioritize my activities at an event.

Most important, I am looking to acknowledge my existing clients and partners.

Then I enjoy seeing people I have worked with on a successful project. Completed commercial, civic, and social projects, and successful events are evidence of our ability accomplish something together. I particularly like projects that can be completed and also celebrated in one afternoon.

I want to meet the people who routinely put up and then take down the decorations at the dance. People who hold office and drive the check-in table are important to me.

Then I enjoy meeting people who say they are interested in working with me.

After that, I am flattered to meet anyone who has commented and added to my writing.

I am thrilled when I meet a writer or speaker I follow.

I like to hear an entertaining story, or some information I can use. Tell me about an event or website that interests me.

I’m never busy as there aren’t many people like that.

I am bored with people bent on unloading business cards, and uncomfortable with purveyors of that limited special opportunity, or their pressing immediate need that I should fund.

Have you met them?

After you fine tune your own rating system, how might that change your actions during and after events?

April 10 is the next Capital Technology Management Hub featuring Sales Lab’s Rainmaker 13 - Are You Making The Most of Your Opportunity? 300 seconds of pure profit. The main speaker will be Tom Cooper of Bright Hill Group, presenting How to Deliver On a Project - When Your Team Doesn't Report To You.

Rainmaker 13 - Are You Making The Most of Your Opportunity?

Technology isn’t about electronics. Technology is about how we work. Moving forward is usually a random walk.

The first few versions of an improvement are often hilarious...after we’ve recovered.

Databases are capturing and holding a lot of information about our customers. That is supposed to give a great benefit for selling.

To err is human. To really mess up requires a computer.

So what’s the best way to use all this data about our customers and prospects?

I find the key to the sale is to be present when the customer figures out something new. People like to learn something new and if I’m associated with it, I’m welcome in the future, sometimes even desired.

The purpose of data is not to tell someone what they already know, or even to make a recommendation of how they should act. The purpose of learning about your customers is to put yourself in the position where they learn something new in your presence.

Definition: A Rainmaker creates a significant amount of new business for a company. The Sales Lab Rainmaker Series is one rainmaker technique for technologists during the first 300 seconds (five minutes) of the monthly Capital Technology Management Hub Meeting.

Here's the growing collection:

#12 - Makers - The Future is NOW (3-11-12)

#11 - What Have I Done For You Lately? (2-8-12)

#10 - Tune Your Work for the Internet (1-2-12)

# 9 - Convey your Business Personality - Easy, Simple, and Free (12-24-11)

# 8 - Google + Your Personal Website (9-15-11)

# 7 - Mark Your Territory (8-22-11)

# 6 - Networking - Are You Being Served? (5-25-11)

# 5 - Start With an Offer (4-27-11)

# 4 - Time, Talent, and Treasure - The Winner's Lemonade (4-10-11)

# 3 - Process to Purchase - How to Sell Your Skills (3-1-11)

# 2 - The Name Tag (1-5-11)

# 1 - Gifts (11-5-10)

The Beginning - Rainmakers (11-3-10)

April 10 is the next Capital Technology Management Hub featuring Rainmaker 13 - Are You Making The Most of Your Opportunity? The featured speaker is Tom Cooper of Bright Hill Group, presenting How to Deliver On a Project - When Your Team Doesn't Report To You.

Sales Culture

The discipline of sales does more than provide the funds that power the organization. The skills developed in the practice of sales have a far-reaching effect on the organization.

Sales as Change Agent

The fastest way to change an organization’s culture is to change what customers buy.

Communication

The skill to enlarge influence is communication. Selling is about communication. The next new thing is that every effective salesman will have their own web presence, that they design and maintain as a business asset.

Leadership

If you think leading a group on a mission is difficult, try leading before consensus is developed. Oh, that’s the definition of selling.

Square Deal

Every salesman I know has a healthy respect of the power of the disappointed client. Most weren’t disappointed by design, which doesn’t lessen the pain, and it is better to learn that respect earlier rather than later.

Developing Others

I don’t develop people because it’s some right thing to do, I develop people’s skills to make my life easier and more productive. Training time is way too important to spend on trivial pursuits.

What benefits of the sales culture do you use?

The High Cost of Maintaining

I was participating in a market entry strategy session and reached a conclusion that unless you already have a commanding lead in a category, it’s better to build your strategy around disruptive innovation.

Look for:

• Fewer features,
• Much less cost,
• Taking advantage of newer technology, and
• Scaling to many more customers.

Sometimes “maintenance” is code for following what is comfortable for management, not satisfying customers.

Your thoughts?

And How Would You Like Me To Proceed?

One of my buds got a referral from a client. She got all excited, wanted to learn more, called and offered to take the referrer to lunch, coffee, whatever.

The response was like she passed gas in church.

The referrer just wanted her to call up the new person and sell her something. The fix was in.

Later she called me, concerned she hadn’t handled it as well as she wanted, wanted to know how to respond better.

I said, “And how would you like me to proceed?”

She said she wanted me to tell her what she should say, she was concerned about a referral fees, and didn’t want to upset her existing client.

I said, “And how would you like me to proceed?”

She said she wanted to behave better, but she didn’t have that much experience with this kind of referral, and...

I said, “What you want to say next time is, ‘And how would you like me to proceed?’ That should bring out more of the conditions for satisfaction. What you don’t want to do is make assumptions when you don’t know what is going on.”

Now, how do I get your comments defining the value of this post for you?

One True Expert

David Weinberger is one of my heroes. He was one of the four who wrote The Cluetrain Manifesto, which laid out the “why” of social media. He has a hot blog The Journal of Heuristic Organizations (JOHO), and he has a new book, Too Big To Know, one of several recent books defining how information, education, learning, and society are being changed by the hyperlink.

I really like David because he writes about important ideas and makes them useful in many ways. As you can see from that hyperlink hyperlink, he can be a bit of a smartass, meaning he finds shareable humor everywhere he goes. What would you expect from a guy who was a writer for Woody Allen?

Over the weekend, I enjoyed a 58 minute video, Authors @ Google: David Weinberger (Thanks Google!) where David explains parts of his new book. It was a two pages of notes presentation, which means I got a lot of value per minute. This is new thinking, not sit back entertainment, so I wrote the ideas, so I could think about them later.

I think a lot about models, (Reality is too complex to parse in real time, models are simplified versions of reality. Don’t confuse the model with the reality), so one of the best bits in the video was the platypus. 

After we noticed animal-vegetable-mineral, scientists set up an organizing system, or taxonomy, so they would know where things fit in relation to each other, and why a tomato is a fruit.

The platypus didn't fit the classification requirements of the taxonomy, so the most common solution was the platypus couldn't exist. Wonder who told the platypus' mother? 

Taxonomies are a way to put everything in their one right place. That is important if you're filing your data in libraries and books. The one right place no longer matters in a hyperlinked world. Louie, Louie shows up on every rock playlist without being diminished.

Building on how hyperlinks change single point filing methodologies, Weinberger then notes the value of having one true expert. 

Since knowledge is so hard to find, let’s certify specialists in specific disciplines, so we can ask them the hard questions and get a quick answer. What we notice next is one expert is an authority, two experts is a disagreement. The hyperlinked world allows anyone who cares to look at the original data, and I find the experts usually recommend a suboptimal solution for my need.

Now that hyperlinks let each of us look at the original material, finding and understanding what we need is different than relying on the one true expert. And that is why hyperlinks have changed our world.

Your thoughts?

Please join us 6 pm, March 13^th, at the Capital Technology Management Hub, where Sales Lab’s Jack Gates presents Rainmaker 12, Lessons from Makers, followed by the featured CTMH Presentation, Sales Lab’s Dick Davies speaking about The Direct Economy, How to Profit from The Most Lucrative Market in the History of the World!

The Accident of Your Experience

I was talking with a pretty smart business observer, who said, “I don’t think the lives of many people in this town have turned out the way they expected.”

At first I thought he was referring to overwhelming smart-phone addiction, but thinking further my life sure hasn’t been what I was planning in high school, college, the early years.

It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just very different. That unexpected sense of differentness makes some people unhappy, makes some people feel rootless. Of course it makes some people feel like they have won the lottery and are living in a fantasy world.

Same world.

My observation is that seldom do we end up doing what we had originally planned, that our external circumstances are the sum of our choices and to a lesser extent what has been done for and to us. We have more control over our internal equilibrium.

Pressure comes from outside, stress from the inside.

Seems to me that a lot the success of Americans comes from following the words of the famous Yogi, who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

How have your choices changed your outcomes?

Please join us 6 pm, March 13^th, at the Capital Technology Management Hub, where Sales Lab’s Jack Gates presents Rainmaker 12, Lessons from Makers, followed by the featured CTMH Presentation, Sales Lab’s Dick Davies speaking about The Direct Economy, How to Profit from The Most Lucrative Market in the History of the World!

The When of Sales

The Sales Model still shows the best way for the salesman to spend her time.

Let’s try a model describing how prospects come to a decision for considered purchases, as opposed to impulse purchases...and what Sales should do.

I am seeing three movements to the performance.

First Movement

Due to internet and social media, prospects learn about me before I know they are looking. They know about my history, process, customers, and results before they talk to me. They have a good idea how we fit culturally. Early adopters have been finding better ways of making their story available for a couple of years. The prospects have their list of needs and features defined before we ever meet.

Do you know what your prospects are learning before you get a chance to exert yourself?

Second Movement

I am learning that when I finally get face-to-face, my story isn’t important. They already know my story. They want to make sure I know their story...and like it! I’m taking good notes, as this is the official version for our continuing relationship.

I am also alert for one way to upgrade their understanding of what they want. I figure that if I can change their understanding of what they want, all those who have gone before me are disqualified, and it would be a major job of work to track them all down for comparison.

A great example of that happened last week.

The woman I love decided she needed new golf clubs. She does that every decade or so, So two weeks ago we went to the Washington golf show where she tried all the new ladies’ clubs, and started to make up her mind. Her next available day we went to a couple of golf stores to buy some clubs. At the last one, the salesman cautioned not to buy anything that day. Her chosen brand was coming out with a new, improved model in five days. Game, Set, and Match to Kevin at Golfdom. It’s on the calendar.

The Third Movement is after our meeting, what I call, “Gotta ask the wife.” My wife does it, too, so it’s not about the wife. It’s about getting out of the room to decompress and make sure we are making the right decision. I would hate to make a foolish decision, just because I enjoyed the performance.

I’ve noticed that the good salesmen have figured out how to set up a winning presentation even when they know they will not be present.

Winning that third movement requires providing more than was available during the initial selection stage. You need something to push all the stakeholders into agreement to take the desired action.

Yesterday, I was working with a 25 year customer, still doing the same business, still running a high margin shop, in a field that collapses every eight years. It’s been five years since he upgraded his business cards, and nothing was broken, but he wanted to see what he could improve.

In 12 words, we got his tool for the Third Movement, how to bring fresh energy to the relationship. I would have thought after 25 years there wasn’t much fresh to do. Whew, I was wrong!

February 22nd Sales Lab’s Rainmaker 12 is WhatHave I Done for You Lately? at the Capital Technology Management Hub on Wednesday, February 22^nd. The featured CTMH speaker will be Sean Crowley on the topic of The Open Source Web Content Management Platform, Drupal, and its Momentum.

LinkWithin Creates Reads and Comments

Last week I got a valid comment on a two year old post. The same commenter also posted under a current post.

LinkedWithin is a widget that shows a changing choice of three stories at the bottom of each blog post.

I first saw it on A Suitable Wardrobe, and even though I feel tremendous pressure to get off the  internet, I would read three or four previous posts, both those that were new to me and some I had forgotten I had seen.

Recalling that R&D means Research and Duplicate, I installed it on Through The Browser and Sales Lab Posts. Occasionally I get lost in past posts on my own blogs.

LinkWithin Creates more Reads and Comments

How are you increasing flow?

February 22nd Sales Lab’s Rainmaker 12 is WhatHave I Done for You Lately? at the Capital Technology Management Hub on Wednesday, February 22^nd. The featured CTMH speaker will be Sean Crowley on the topic of The Open Source Web Content Management Platform, Drupal, and its Momentum.

Life Boat Rule

One of the saddest things in management is the gold star looming on the project plan that says, “Breakthrough required HERE!”

Next time you are faced with a thorny problem, consider using the Life Boat Rule.

The Life Boat Rule is You have to make it with your current crew, no substitutions.

When I remember the Life Boat Rule, I save a lot of time, not mooning for some random waterwalker.

Our solution is based on existing skills and our best technologies. We know what we’ve got, and spend less time reading directions and hacking our way out of failed prototypes.

When I am recruiting, remembering the Life Boat Rule has SOMETIMES stopped a dumb selection.

After my crew understands the Life Boat Rule, people are faster to step up for what is required. As my good friend John Wayne used to say between movies, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

Of course when we’re all fully committed to using our existing talent and resources and nicely making way, we look a lot better to some random water walker if one happens by.

Your Comment?

February 22nd Sales Lab’s Rainmaker 12 is WhatHave I Done for You Lately? at the Capital Technology Management Hub on Wednesday, February 22^nd. The featured CTMH speaker will be Sean Crowley on the topic of The Open Source Web Content Management Platform, Drupal, and its Momentum.

Observations and Opinions

I notice people who don’t know much have opinions. 

People who have been there have observations. 

Observations mean everything, opinions mean nothing.

Notebook Or Pad?

I’m really low tech. I take notes when I talk with someone because I’m trying to figure out and remember what they mean. Also, I’ve noticed if I take notes, people lie less. I use paper, usually graph ruled, because the placement of the notes is an important part of the meaning.

I tried to use a laptop computer, but the customers thought I wasn’t listening to them, and objected.

I use a black and white composition book, center stitched heavy quadrille paper, in a leather or fabric cover. The inside covers have pockets for my name badge, some business cards and three by five cards.

Every month I print a single page calendar of this month with next month on the back, fold it, and put it in the notebook.

The center stitching allows me to put handouts in the book without breaking the binding, so it functions as a small portfolio.

When I get to the office, I type any notes I plan to share on a stationary template in Word or LibreOffice. The file name is the meeting name and the date. The time spent transcribing and reconstructing the notes allows me to check facts and addresses in Google to make sure I understand what happened, and then file by project in my computer.

Often I’ll send the finished notes to the other person in the meeting to make sure I got the facts right.

An investor once said that my notes were not what happened, but what should have happened.

I have recalled and used those notes two years after writing them. If the computer remembers, I don’t have to.

The composition book lasts about eighteen months, so I have all my recent notes with me in the field.

Sometimes I don’t want my notes with me, as when I am meeting with competing bidders, or dealing with a confidential subject or an issue that will end up in a personnel file. Then I use a Circa notebook, junior or letter size, and separate the notes from the notebook as soon as I get back to the office. The Circa also carries a standard load of name tag, business cards, and handouts.

I would really like to carry the Circa book all the time, but it’s not as good with long term information. Some jobs are project based and favor individual piece of paper, and some jobs favor carrying many months worth of data.

Finally, I carry a three by five quadrille notebook, with business cards and note cards, in my jacket. I staple a card inside the back cover, or staple to reinforce an existing back flap. That’s especially handy when I get a minute in a train, plane, coffee shop, or bookstore and get an idea I want to explore.

How do you stay organized?

A Salesman’s Integrity

A salesman’s integrity gets battered and worn...from use.

A salesman’s integrity becomes bright and shiny...from use.

Integrity is making and keeping promises. There are three stages to that.

The first stage is realizing that perfect integrity means making no promises. Most rest here.

The second stage of integrity is experiencing the joy of making a promise and making it come true.

Finally, the third stage is realizing that since life is a rodeo, integrity is making improbable promises and delivering. That realization takes you to a whole new level of play.

I find it easier to keep my promises when I can deliver by myself.

I make more important promises by working with others.

In the Direct Economy, the salesman is the customer sensor, which often makes me the change agent for the organization.

I try to exercise my integrity every day. I don’t want it getting tarnished and stiff in some trophy case. Or worse, used to measure against others.

How do you define your integrity?

Get The Right Model

“It’s okay to talk to yourself. Just don’t tell yourself any lies.” Danny Evans, Carpenter

Reality is complex. To understand and predict reality we build models, simplified versions of reality.

Managers often confuse their model with reality. The model doesn’t care. When your model no longer works, build a new model.

Since New Year’s, I’ve been hearing several senior executives invoking the holy management pyramid to justify their contributions and absolve them of some ugly behavior.

Observing their organizations, I couldn’t find no stinkin’ pyramid. However, like phantom pain after a limb is amputated, these guys can still imagine their pyramids.

I rarely find a whole operation executed in one organization. That was where the pyramid came from. Now we have outsourcing, socioeconomic goals, and increasingly narrow areas of expertise.

It’s been years since a boss could fulfill their end of the pyramid bargain, “You do what I tell you to do, I’ll cover you,” hasn’t been true for a while now.

Last year one CEO told me, “I have a 60 day event horizon at best. My board would fire me in a heartbeat if they could find someone who could do my job.”

And they say two year old kids are crude irritable!

I have two other management models, which I think are more accurate.

Looking at my own organization, I see a hub and spoke model. I am currently involved in over ten projects, some I am leading, some I am supporting. For the past ten years, I have been building a network of trusted co-workers, people who are better than average at some set of work. That’s my first replacement for the pyramid.

The second is the Pony Express model.

You know how the Pony Express got the mail delivered so fast? They swapped out the horses when they tired. They had horses for the flats, horses for the hills, always with the emphasis on speed to finish.

A good model should help you predict reality. What are the management models you are seeing?

If you would like to learn more, come to the AITP 2012 Kickoff:

How You Can Benefit From The Strongest Economic Opportunity
In The History Of The World!

Association Of Information Technology Professionals (AITP)

Thursday, January 12, 6 – 9 pm

Alfio's La Trattoria,

4515 Willard Ave, Chevy Chase MD 20815

Rainmaker 10 - Tune Your Work For The Internet

Definition - A Rainmaker creates a significant amount of new business.

Anybody here ever seen or used this Internet thingie?

How long have you had access to the internet?

In the last 15 years, how have you adapted your work to take advantage of the internet?

Why?

Name a company that has really taken advantage of the internet?

How did they do that?

How did it work out?

What should you be doing to make better use of the internet?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

So, Resolved – This Year I will ________________________to take advantage of the internet in my work.

To get the answers, join us at

How To Tune Your Work For The Internet

Capital Technology Management Hub

Tuesday, January 10, 6:30 – 6:35 pm

Arlington GMU Campus
Founders Hall, Room 126

3351 Fairfax Drive Arlington, VA 22226

AND/OR

How you can benefit from the strongest economic opportunity
in the history of the world!

Association Of Information Technology Professionals (AITP)

Thursday, January 12, 6 – 9 pm

Alfio's La Trattoria,

4515 Willard Ave, Chevy Chase MD 20815

It’s 2012! Exercise your resolution and leave a comment! You’ll get extra points!

What I Remembered In 2011

Most of these year-end posts are about what was learned. Increasingly, I find old ideas come back with more meaning.

No matter how hard you do the wrong thing, it never quite works. Ted Long

The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. William Gibson

If we can't beat a copycat at our own game, we suck. Ben Huh

The middle class is disappearing. Media hysteria

For many years I read how businesses were buying personal computers, yet productivity wasn’t increasing. Turns out we were just learning how to use them.

What took ten professionals in 1970 now takes two.

In the commercial sector we’ve seen a 40% reduction in employees for the same sales volume, probably well over 50% when you count the businesses that have gone away.

During the last five years government employee count has risen ten percent, and government pay rates have held steady as commercial pay rates have plummeted.

I expect a massive equalization in the next 18 months. The equalization has started, not from legislators but from employees who see the end coming.

It is our expectation of constantly reducing cost and constantly improving quality which will overturn our “Because I SAID so” bureaucracy.

82.5% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

There are two things that force decisions. Lack of time and lack of money. John Sanders

If you’re not embarrassed when you ship the first prototype, you’ve waited too long. Brett Battjer, Product Manager, Living Social

People keep trying schemes to corral and divvy up the Internet. The value from the Internet is its breadth. So far all the attempts at walled gardens and apps have failed based on their lack of breadth.

Most work can be redesigned to use the Internet, cutting cost and increasing accuracy. We are in a period of learning how to do that in industry after industry.

I can counted ten different independent Internet business models for books. Publishers complain about slipping sales and new technology, but the two, slipping sales and new technology, are the two ends of the continuum. You can have one or the other.

Everything new is an improvement on something else. Merlin Mann wrote, “Innovation is starting where the last person stopped.” 

What was the best thing you learned in 2011? 

Come join us for The Direct Economy - How Can You Benefit From The Strongest Economy In The History Of The World? At The Association for Information Technology Professionals (AITP) January 12, 6 pm, Chevy Chase RSVP Here

Badges

I was in a meeting yesterday where I heard, “Well you’re the only one with skills to do that. The rest of us came up in corporate environments.”

Lesson: The skills we develop are appropriate for our current environment.

In Reamde, I remember two telling realizations.

Zula, the refugee niece, understood that looking good by keeping the suits communicated was more important than solving the problem. And the way to get the time to solve the problem.

Her Uncle Richard, the founder, was wondering just what his job was, until discovering a core threat, when he found that the suits didn’t have a frame of reference to even address how to solve the game ending problem.

When your environment changes, how do you change behavior for a group?

Well, let me back up. The game you are playing has changed in the last few years, right?

Proceed.

How do you motivate people you seldom see?

One of our best practices this year has been awarding badges. We got the idea from game designers and social networks, where awards are given for beneficial activities. Alex George  of The Federal Contractor Network called his "The Wall of Ego." I paid attention to that wall.

Ours is a little different. In every case the award doesn’t actually exist, it is just described. And it is made up the first time awarded.

We have awarded for first blog post, first public presentation, first sale, first completed project, first LinkedIn recommendation, first referral, first website, first software architecture of a new product, first Google Plus page, first Corporate Google Plus page, and so on. Notification of mastering necessary skills.

After someone gets an award, there is a flurry of activity as others pile on to get it.

We talked about the badges as they were awarded throughout the year, recalled them when embarking into a new area, like the Vikings meading up around the fire the night before a pillage.

Now it’s December, and I had three conversations yesterday going over the achievement of the past year. I’m seeing a hardened cadre of professionals able to get results in a new area in less than a day.

When we started, we have documented instances of over a year to get a first badge. They are part of our “I wish I knew then what I know now” culture. Humor greasing progress.

Badges. Who knew?

January 12^th! Join us for The Direct Economy at AITP!

Consider: The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.

Did you ever notice, no matter how hard you do the wrong thing, it never quite works?

The Direct Economy will give you a better understanding of what is changing and how you can win at the new game. RSVP Here!