One Tough (But Rewarding) Job: Being the First Sales Rep at a SaaS Startup
Ah, the first sales rep. Being the first salesperson into a start-up in a rewarding — but very tough job: Your Founder Boss likely will never have managed a salesperson before. She likely won’t know what you are supposed to do 40+ hours a week. Your Founder Boss may have strong views on what you […]
Is your current job the end of the line?
A new trend is developing in the tech and business world and the speed at which it is happening is alarming. The need for people is waning as companies seek to scale themselves profitably on a digital backbone – and it’s having a serious impact on our career paths. When companies historically did layoffs, […]
How To Get Your Startup a Halo
How would you like your startup to win deals not only when you win a customer evaluation, but when you tie — and even sometimes when you lose? That sounds great. But is it even possible? Amazing, yes — but you need have a halo effect working to your advantage. What is a halo effect? Per […]
Oracle Media Day: another view into the hurricane
Oracle does a good job keeping us informed on the growing breadth of its SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and DaaS offerings throughout the year – see my post on Hurricane Oracle in January. So, I wondered if I would learn much new on its Media Day on Thursday. Quite a bit actually given the interesting format […]
MINDBODY on stage at MAU sharing how they achieved a whopping 43.7% goal conversion. #MAU2017
Real, meaningful case studies are hard to come by in Enterprise Tech. Real stories about the use of Artificial Intelligence are even harder. We were lucky to have our customer Scondoo profiled on Diginomica. This time, we’re privileged again to join MINDBODY on stage at MAU as they share another real story about they use AI to achieve […]
Opinion: My Quick Take on Jive’s Acquisition
Monday Jive Software (see disclaimer below, we have history) announced it entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by ESW Capital, LLC – a private equity firm. Details for the deal can be found here (I link to a couple of interesting writeups throughout, people I like and ask the right questions). There are three things […]
Today’s customer experience mandate: Avoid “50 first dates”
These days, digital channel proliferation is making it more complex than ever to connect with and satisfy customers, whose own expectations of service are growing rapidly. Maintaining a coherent digital experience appears to be an essential element of the solution.
Parsing the IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein deal
When IBM and Salesforce announced their major partnership around Cognitive, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning many commentators, myself included, were surprised and maybe even a little confused. Even after IBM’s Interconnect conference keynote, where the warmth between IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Salesforce Founder was palpable, warm and genuine it wasn’t clear how the […]
NetSuite under Oracle: More, Better, Forever?
Jim McGeever, former President of NetSuite, now EVP of that global business unit at Oracle joked things had changed significantly after it invested over $ 9 billion to acquire NetSuite. “SuiteWorld has moved to Las Vegas, our safe harbor statement is much shorter…”. Actually, the message at this week’s SuiteWorld event was things will remain […]
Belated Comments On Workday’s 2-27-2017 Earnings Call
Workday’s latest earnings call, on 2-27-2017, caught my attention primarily because of what the financial analysts didn’t ask.
