Eight Leadership Principles The Military Can Teach Business Development Folks

I've just posted a new article on the website.

In this article we discuss some concepts that are missing in many technology companies, and because of this lack, the business development folks end up competing with each other, while blissfully ignoring the marketplace.

And then we discuss how the military manages to avoid internal competition, have soldiers work together collaboratively, and use 100% of their competitive power to fight the enemy.

Now I don't say that you go and kill the competition. Here we're discussing the mindset behind competition vs. collaboration.

Eight Leadership Principles The Military Can Teach Business Development Folks...

I hope you find the article valuable.

If Your Work Sucks Then Bill By The Hour...

One of my VeraSage colleagues, Ed Kless has just done a brilliant workshop on value pricing, and generously made the recording available to learn from it.

He discusses many evil aspects of hourly pricing, including the fact that substandard companies can hide their incompetencies behind their time sheets, knowing they get paid anyway, regardless of how much value they deliver to their clients.

Ed also discusses that hourly pricing was invented by, based upon and made mainstream by an idea that believes that making a profit is evil. Yes, it comes from the notorious Karl Marx and his "masterpiece" the Communist Manifesto.

It turns out that hourly pricing is the ultimate price gouging because you get paid regardless of the value clients get from your help and support.

I encourage you to download the podcast and listen to it several times. You may have to listen to it a few times, but then you'll get that forehead-slapping "holy shit!" moment, and then you'll never go back to hourly pricing.

Now go and get the podcast.

The Power of Research-Based Copywriting

The Heath brothers, the authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, have posted a brilliant message on their blog on the importance giving the market valuable details about what we're selling. In their message they use an example from the legendary copywriter, Claude Hopkins, the author of Scientific Advertising.

I suggest you read it because you'll find a huge lesson there, and you can instantly translate it to your business.

The Most Dangerous Job in Business

There is an interesting article in leading B2B marketing expert, Mac MacIntosh's blog. In Fast Company there is a great article about the tenure of marketing managers in organisation. it seems that while CEO's have a typical tenure of 54 months, Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) have only 23 months. This number in the technology industry is only 15 months.

It seems to me that the CMO has become a scapegoat position. When something goes wrong and CEOs should accept responsibility, they often pass the buck to the next person. And who is the next person?

You can't lay of the CFO because it draws the attention of both Wall Street and the marketplace. You can't lay of the CIO (CTO) because you need technology. You can't mess with the COO because the whole company comes to a standstill. But someone must be blamed fro the CEO's crime. Well, then get rid of the CMO.
Since this offers a quick Band-Aid solution of patching up the symptoms more and more companies use this approach. It's too painful to address the real problem, so let's piss around with the symptoms, find a scapegoat and sacrifice him/her.

Next to this article, there is another one, Ambushed about some of the successful, nevertheless laid off marketing top dogs.

Luckily the situation is a bit better at privately held companies but just about. Getting the bloody nose from public company CEOs, more and more private company CEOs demand "instant" and "significant" results from their new CMOs.

Demanding to double sales within only 4-6 months are fairly typical demands of CEOs. Especially from CEOs who have never done any marketing only forced selling. And when any ethical CMO tell the CEO that a good marketing programme takes about 18 months to kick into full throttle, then most CEO s throw these CMO candidates out of their offices and hire more peddlers to do cold calling and door knocking because the silly bugger CEO believes that this will create instant sales.

Anyway, read the articles. You'll love them.

Hiring Good Sales Folks

Hiring good technology salespeople is a rather daunting task. Some have these skills and some others have those skills. You hardly ever find the right skill combination.

So, what then?

Seth Godin has a great perspective in his blog.

His suggestion is that first and foremost find people who can be coached, thus have the ability to grow. It's not about merely learning new skills. The whole idea of coaching is that the person grows as a human being and becomes a better person in all dimensions, that is, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Yes, salespeople have to learn the relevant sales and technical skills to successfully sell technology solutions, but even more importantly, they must become better people, so they can attract better clients.

So, go and read Seth's blog entry on Being coachable, and see how you can shape and shake up your hiring process for sales folks.