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By definition, you read blogs. But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about. This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about.
I guess let’s file this under sales & marketing advice. I recently wrote a piece for Mashable on how to create a company blog. Since it’s already written (and since I promised not to republish on my blog other than a summary) if you’re interested please have a read over there. What should you blog about?
I’ll finish writing around 1am and that’s a dumb time to Tweet because few people in the US are online. I wanted to see two things: Would the second (or sometimes even third Tweet) convert enough people to my blog to make it worth potentially annoying some people on Twitter? My conclusions. So, whaddaya think?
Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual. I boil it down to this: sales people are sales people.
If you haven’t already followed me on Twitter, that’s the fastest way to get blog updates. In my first enterprise software company we developed a methodology for sales that we called PUCCKA. I call these people crocodile sales people – small ears and a big mouth. The best sales meetings are discussions.
My 1,000th Post on This Blog - Tim Berry's Blog - Planning Startups Stories , July 21, 2010 HTML5 video markup, compatibility and playback - Niall Kennedy's Weblog , February 8, 2010 Your Product Needs a Soul - ArcticStartup , February 12, 2010 Product Friday: Monetizing Content is a Product Problem - This is going to be BIG.
I was thinking about all of this as I looked at the logs from my WordPress blog this evening. I started blogging 2 years ago. I started by writing 3-4 times / week. I started by writing 3-4 times / week. Just like a sales person at the end of a quarter. Less than 100 people read that original post 2 years ago.
Jeff (also an HBS alum) co-teaches the LTV course with Professor Eisenmann about a student of theirs who had written a blog post about sales taking on some of my previous assertions. That student is Erin McCann who formerly worked in sales at Google, so she has some ground to stand on in her assertions. Specifically, 1.
We talked about a lot of great stuff in the video including how to do sales calls and a how a new “culture of writing&# is emerging as a critical skill set in business today. I’ll write a post on how to give feedback to employees and then I’ll get emails from people telling me they forwarded it to their whole team.
I write a bit more about how entrepreneurs can protect their ideas here: Spilling The Beans. Analogy – As readers of this blog know, I enjoy drawing connections between seemingly disparate people, historical events and pop culture minutia because it is entertaining and can facilitate learning. Timing and luck also play a role.
As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. I divided success into the phases of venture capital and 18 months into writing my first check here was my view (details on each in the link above). 5 years ago. Sourcing high-quality leads : 9/10. The monkey on my back.
So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A It’s why I always work hard to find images for my blog posts & why all of my keynote presentations are visual rather than bullet points with words. When I write a blog post I often see the words before I write them.
I said, ''Hey, listen were going to start writing this newsletter and it''s going to highlight our trials and tribulations, our failures and our successes. The opening paragraphs of that first newsletter are indicative of the captivating and accessible writing style, which eventually cultivated a huge audience. blogging, in a sense.
Recently I wrote a blog post about how I hated losing, but I embrace it. Fred Wilson wrote on his blog this week about learning from failures here and quoted Obama’s speech from tonight: you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. In every sales campaign of any substance (e.g.
Marketing futures can be really good for enterprise software companies where the information is passed between sales rep and potential customer in terms of near-term roadmap. Market to Your Target Audience – I’ve seen a lot of startups who like to writeblog posts on life as an entrepreneur. Read their articles.
You need to be great at something: technology back-end, front-end design, usability, sales, marketing, quantitative analysis, leadership –> whatever. There has been all sorts of discussions about marketing on blogs lately. The media eats it up as they always need something to write about. He knew this.
Sales people (and website customer acquisition folks) all think in terms of funnels and yet non-sales professionals seldom do. It doesn’t matter if it’s recruiting, business development, shipping product, writingblog posts, networking … it’s all the same. Lots of people start, very few finish.
We’re expected to be at conferences, events, sales meetings and be publicly visible. People expect blog posts, Tweets, panels, speeches. Recruiting, business development, shipping product, writingblog posts, networking … it’s all the same. And then there are investors who want updates, calls, reports, check-ins.
On this blog I’m often trying to combine lessons for entrepreneurs and market commentary. I have long wanted to write about FNAC (feature, not a company) because it’s part of my normal lexicon to push teams that present to me to think harder about where the economics in their industry is coming from.
It has also influenced my thoughts, as evidenced by the six infoChachkie blog entries which reference Art. I read Enchantment anticipating that it might augment my Entrepernurial Selling class, which focuses on influence and persuasion, rather than sales tactics. Like King, his writing style is breezy and engaging.
Equally important, if someone does find your site, your content must stand out above all similar sites, to keep visitors engaged, close a sale, and get customers to return. I have found that publishing a regular blog can give you an edge in making all this happen. Your blog followers will be your best customers.
Write things down. It’s one of my favorite blog posts. I had planned to blog about it at the time but I waited 2 days and the whole world blogged about it so I didn’t pile on. We helped the write out their requirements for a system. I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales.
Vince: I’m an author, speaker and management consultant with a special expertise in online media sales. I started out as screenwriter, went into local television, ran ad sales in the west for AOL and joined Facebook in the companies very early days. What are some of the top things you've published online, e.g., blog posts?
Write things down. It’s one of my favorite blog posts. I had planned to blog about it at the time but I waited 2 days and the whole world blogged about it so I didn’t pile on. We helped the write out their requirements for a system. I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales.
Obviously you should have somebody that helps you research journalists, gets you meetings, pitches stories, helps prep you for interviews & helps make sure your writing is cogent. The reality is that a journalist who’s writing a story about you – a relatively unknown entity – wants to hear directly from the founders and/or the CEO.
Since I answer this all the time anyway I thought it might make an interesting blog post. I have no quarterly sales targets for the first time in a decade – For anybody who’s ever been in a company with sales targets you can attest to what a fire drill the ends of March, June, September and December can be.
Phil Becker writes: On Wednesday, September 24, I had the opportunity to moderate a truly interesting and educational dinner meeting of that Tech Council's Marketing SIG.
I recently read a book I’d highly recommend to every reader of this blog called “ Yes, 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive &# by Robert B. Angels are writing smaller checks so they typically don’t want the overhead of complex analysis in order to make their decision.
You’re writing a freaking blog post! Plus, he’s a loyal reader of this blog. I never get grumpy that people write. If you do randomly write me I have advice. I know many people think I blog all day long. “But WAIT !!! How the hell can you tell us you don’t have time for email?”
The number of times I’ve had people come to me and say they want to blog more. I’ve written about these sales mavericks before. Three years ago during Thanksgiving I told Nivi I would write down what I look for in an entrepreneur for a series of posts for VentureHacks. They think it would be good for them.
Sometime around 2003/04 my technology team turned me on to “Spolsky on Software&# a periodic newsletter served up blog style from Joel Spolsky of FogCreek Software, a maker of bug-tracking software. Blogs weren’t popularized yet so it was an oddity for me to read the founder of a software company spewing out advice.
” Part of the beauty of blogging that in two sittings Fred was able to influence what was built over the next 12 months. I’ve wanted to write a blog post called “Mobile Second” for a long time to make this point more forcefully. Try writing long reviews of a restaurant. They do both well.
I remember the same disdain from people when I started blogging or using Twitter. A bit like a blog that is put out regularly but not overly edited or self-conscious about word choices or typos. I LOVE writing. But writing takes more time and some days I don’t have that. Why would a VC do that? I do these, too.
I wrote this conundrum and the need to take charge of how the market define your skills in my much-read blog post on “ personal branding.” So it could be that a sale would yield you seven figures and you could move on to your next role but the CEO wants to “go big or go home” and sometimes go home is the outcome.
In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. So what are Rob’s secret hacks that he didn’t spill in his blog post? . He is very pleasant when he calls and writes. Rob does it.
But for the rest of us, those of us lucky/unlucky enough to know we need high-performance, or are uncertain whether performance is a concern, and for whom I write the remainder of this article, performance should be on our minds early. Meanwhile, Amazon famously claimed 1% fewer sales for each additional 100ms of latency.
Because my wife is a superstar she published them all on a blog here along with much other wonderful type-A mom advice. He had just written another one of his way-over-the-top blog posts. I think Dave has blogging Tourettes Syndrome when he hears the word VC. We then started talking about Dave McClure.
The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. Somehow many first-time founders equate “sales” with something that is beneath them. In sales there are also three rules: Qualify, qualify, qualify.
When I started blogging I had an idea. I would take all of the one-on-one conversations that I have with entrepreneurs from the things I’ve learned and just write them up for anybody to read. It might be a VP of Sales, Marketing or Technology. Or it may just be a junior programmer, sales rep or accountant.
Cliff Allen is someone I've known for quite a few years and he's a go to person for me when I'm thinking about issues around marketing, sales, technology, startups and networking. I moved into writing software to analyze audience data, and wrote a lot of computer graphics software. I've been following both of your blogs for a while.
Experiences way beyond any hack-a-thon, startup blog or your current company engagement can enrich your thinking and challenge you to think more broadly about the solutions you offer in the market. But poly sci taught me critical thinking and writing skills that I didn’t get in my econ classes. Don’t get me wrong – I loved economics.
For much of 2013 I watched the press write articles about how the YouTube “MCNs” (multi-channel networks) were doomed and tried to square that with the data I was watching at the one I invested in, Maker Studios, who has had one hell of a year. I agree with YouTube (that they provide more (hosting, ad sales, etc.)
I said, ''Hey, listen were going to start writing this newsletter and it''s going to highlight our trials and tribulations, our failures and our successes. The opening paragraphs of that first newsletter are indicative of the captivating and accessible writing style, which eventually cultivated a huge audience. blogging, in a sense.
In many ways I think general purpose writing & thinking skills are as valuable as math skills. ” But I pointed out a professor at HBS ( Tom Eisenmann ) who teaches a course where blogs are a part of the classroom reading material. The numerator (return) encourages more sales, which is fine.
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