Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 23, 2021

Yet, as a business consultant, I often find minimal focus on improving employee engagement and assessing their customer-facing performance. For example, I commonly see metrics to keep track of revenue per employee, overtime, and absenteeism, but I don’t often see measures of overall customer satisfaction with individual employees.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2022

Most businesses spend big money testing their brand logo, catchy marketing phrases, and demographics, but spend little time training and validating that their employees can and do deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. Keep your team happy to create engaged customers. Build relationships and stop surveying customers.

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socalTECH

APRIL 25, 2018

Los Angeles-based TaskUs , which provides outsourced customer support and other back-end support for technology companies, said today that it has named Jarrod Johnson as Chief Customer Officer. Johnson was previously SVP of Sales at TaskUs, and will be based in the company's Dallas offices.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2022

As a business consultant and angel investor, I often ask for your own assessment of marketing ROI , or customer acquisition cost (CAC). Mr. Everhart distills his leadership insights from many decades in one of the largest business-to-business marketing agencies, working with companies across the country.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 22, 2021

As I talk to many of you in my role as business advisor, I still often hear the concern for maximum return to the business and stakeholders, more than a passion for sustainably enriching the lives of your customers and team. This applies to your own team, as well as customers. Make every customer experience memorable.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. From these meetings you can really tell the leaders that care deeply about their customers and those the look down on them. You’d be very wrong. You can’t.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 5, 2019

Too many business owners still think of “ customer support ” as an after-sale process to rectify customer problems with completed transactions. With the advent of instant communication and social media, customer service starts at the first hint of interest by you, and never ends for repeat customers.

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TechCrunch LA

MAY 3, 2022

The company Winters was working for sponsored her MBA to Harvard Business School, and it was there that she came up with the idea for Upgrade. “I The company, which raised $1.7 The company makes money on the wig and hair sales and saw revenue triple over the past year. Upgrade founder and CEO Britney Winters.

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socalTECH

MARCH 14, 2018

As part of our sponsor relationship with the conference, we're running a series of interviews with speakers from the conference about their experience in the area of recurring revenues, customer service, and similar topics. What's the biggest lesson you've learned about retaining and keeping your customers using the subscription model?

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2020

They forget that adapting their company and themselves as their customers evolve is the key to long-term survival. Think of Blockbuster and Toys ‘R’ Us , both of whom missed customer changes and the move to online. Create an overt strategy to react to emerging customer trends. Remember when you were a startup?

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TechEmpower

MARCH 4, 2024

Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.

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Berkonomics

JANUARY 9, 2020

One of your employees is approached by an employee of a customer or of a supplier, stating that “It sure would be great to work in your company.” The rule should be one that includes only one “out”: if a person resigns from the position with the stake-holding company, then you will be happy to talk about a position.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 22, 2020

Entrepreneurs have always believed that their product or service must show real value to customers, but today the smart ones are even able to make their marketing valuable. Now customers seek out people who are willing and able to add value, with expertise and insight, even before they have a product. The key is consistency.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2013

This is final part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too. We developed this at our first company and called it PUCCKA – the overall methodology is described here. Well think of it this way – you have your sales process.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2020

Attracting the right customers is the key to success in business, whether you have a new startup or a mature enterprise. For example, Xerox tried to broaden the use of "xerox" as the standard term for "photocopying" to extend their existing customer segment into office automation and all kinds of computing.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 27, 2019

Especially in your growing company, you are drawn into daily process issues by all of your direct reports, often responding to questions and problems, leaving little time for strategic thought. And that behavior results in leaving little time for outreach to the most critical component in your chain – your key customers. Find the pain.

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socalTECH

MAY 23, 2018

Playa Vista-based Appetize , which develops modern, tablet- and handheld-based point of sale (POS) systems, has added a number of high profile customers, and says it has seen record growth this year. The company's point-of-sale terminals and software are a significant upgrade from legacy point-of-sale terminals.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Yet in this age when customers have a thousand alternatives, and are overwhelmed by a multitude of messages, sales efforts can make or break a business. In fact, I believe modern entrepreneurs need to be super sales people, in the most positive sense, to their team as well as customers. No pain usually means no sales.

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Berkonomics

JANUARY 12, 2023

Some types of businesses generate more and more recurring revenues over time, often growing to a size where recurring revenues pay all of the overhead of the company – an enviable position. There is a phenomenon I have observed time after time with mature companies receiving over 75% of their revenues from recurring sources.

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socalTECH

MAY 28, 2014

Los Angeles-based online and mobile advertising technology provider OpenX announced this morning that it has named Tish Whitcraft as the company''s new Chief Customer Officer. OpenX said that Whitcraft will head up OpenX''s partner services team, which includes support, sales engineering, and customer operations.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2020

Contrary to popular opinion, viral marketing has not eliminated the need for old-fashioned lead generation to bring customers to a startup. His professional background includes having held marketing-executive roles at big companies as well as startups. Display advertising. Email marketing.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2013

Like most startup entrepreneurs, when I began my first company in 1999 I had no formal sales experience. I did have the wherewithal to visit potential customers and try to understand the pain points that I thought could be solved with our solution. This is a very important to do when you first start a company.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. Nor do they exist in the investors of early-stage companies. 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.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 14, 2022

I know companies who collect sensitive data from consumers all the time, and still seem to keep a trusted image (Amazon.com, Ebay). Make your company visible, reachable and responsive through social networks. The bad news for startups is that your company can lose big if it’s caught in the middle. Don’t take shortcuts on these.

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Customer Custom Technical Review Symantec 137

socalTECH

MARCH 1, 2018

As part of the lead in to the conference, and as a part of our sponsor relationship with the conference, we're running a series of interviews with speakers from the conference about their experience in the area of recurring revenues, customer service, and similar topics. We respond very quickly to all of our customers. Kevin Anderson.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 16, 2019

Most businesses spend big money testing their brand logo, catchy marketing phrases, and demographics, but spend little time training and validating that their employees can and do deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. Keep your team happy to create engaged customers. Build relationships and stop surveying customers.

Customer 84

Customer Custom Training Satisfaction 84

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

However, what if you could take advantage of those ubiquitous smart devices, and turn that into a huge asset for your company? Daniel Tawfik: Vonjour is a cloud-based phone system for enhanced, customer support service. It''s really a service to orchestrate all of a company''s customer support and inbound inquiries.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

In fact, only 100 of the 10,000 multimillion-dollar consumer companies around the world can claim to be an “apostle brand” – one that inspires enduring trust, loyalty, and endorsement. The challenge of every startup is finding that balance between solving a real problem today, and giving customers the courage to make a leap forward.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 23, 2013

Every sales organization with more than a handful of reps or that is across multiple offices or time zones would benefit from having a sales methodology. I’ve been writing a series on a simple methodology that we used at my first enterprise software company. This solves the customer question, “Why Buy Anything?”.

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socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2016

San Diego-based MindTouch , a developer of software-as-a-service tools to help companies create self-service, customer support sites, has raised $12M in a Series A funding. MindTouch's software provides customer support search tools, product information, and more to end users. READ MORE>>.

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socalTECH

JULY 18, 2019

Santa Monica-based Cornerstone OnDemand , which provides cloud-based learning and talent management tools, has linked up with a sales training company, Sandler Training, on a new sales training subscription, the two said today. Financial details of the partnership were not announced. READ MORE>>.

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TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 27, 2020

Postmates is now rolling out what could be the biggest update to the company’s service in a long time — adding a retail option for users to shop local stores and for local merchants to set up a virtual on-demand storefront in the app. That could have an impact on retail sales that were already projected to be dismal.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 27, 2017

Customer service has traditionally been a support function to respond to customer initiated requests, meaning someone waits for the phone to ring or for a website support request form. The old days of routing a customer to a single phone queue for any request will quickly kill any brand loyalty or advocate referral.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 10, 2011

The remainder of this article will deal with this decision but it comes down to the different economics of DVD rentals due to “ the first sale doctrine ” which gives Netflix a complete library of films and the fact that the first-sale doctrine doesn’t apply to digital downloads. A blog post! to be synchronized.

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socalTECH

MAY 16, 2016

ChowNow said the support will be a standard feature, and will not cost additional for its current restaurant customers. The company said about 4,000 independent restaurants will add Android Pay support as a result of the deal. ChowNow is led by Christopher Webb. READ MORE>>.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2013

In my first enterprise software company we developed a methodology for sales that we called PUCCKA. Having a methodology instead of just going on random sales visits helped force a bit of rigor and honesty amongst team members about how well or not we thought we were doing. ” It’s a reason a company would buy.

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