Communications Lessons from Mayor Pete
Whenever I have the chance to watch a big league politician at work, I always try to study their communications skills in an effort to learn from the best. In a previous post, I presented what I learned watching Congresswoman Jackie Speier work a room, a pretty amazing sight, in The Introvert’s Guide to Glad-Handing. […]
The Market Leader Play: How to Run It, How to Respond
Business-to-business (B2B) high technology markets are all about the market and only less so about the technology. This is primarily driven by corporate buyer conservatism — corporate buyers hate to make mistakes in purchasing technology and, if you’re going to make one, it’s far better to be in the herd with everyone else, collectively fooled, […]
The Three Marketing Books All Founder/CEOs Should Read
Few founder/CEOs come from a marketing background; most come from product, many from engineering, and some from sales, service, or consulting. But few — ironically even in martech companies — grew up in the marketing department and consider marketing home. When you combine this lack of experience with the the tendency that some marketing leaders […]
Should Your Startup Have a Quota Club? (And How Much to Spend on It.)
December is when most SaaS startups are closing out the year, trying to finalize next year’s operating plan (hint: I know a software company that can help with that), starting to get a clear view on which salespeople are going to make their number, and thus beginning the process of figuring out who to invite […]
10 Secrets to Putting on a Great Event
So we’ve been putting on events for a while at SaaStr. It started off by accident — we did a meet-up in 2013 as an experiment, with no content. And almost 400 folks came! Then we did a second meet-up in 2014 with a little content, and it went well. Then 2015 was the first […]
The Two Archetypal Marketing Messages: “Bags Fly Free” and “Soup is Good Food.”
There are only two archetypal marketing messages, exemplified by: Bags Fly Free, a current advertising slogan used by Southwest airlines. Soup is Good Food, a 1970s campaign slogan used by Campbell’s soup [1]. Quick, what’s the difference between these two messages? Soup is Good Food answers the question “why buy one (at all)?” while Bags […]
The Domo S-1: Does the Emperor Have Clothes?
I preferred Silicon Valley [1] back in the day when companies raised modest amounts of capital (e.g., $30M) prior to an IPO that took 4-6 years from inception, where burn rates of $10M/year looked high, and where $100M raise was the IPO, not one or more rounds prior to it. When cap tables had 1x, […]
Talking Competition: Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much.
From time to time marketers and executives need to talk about the competition with those outside the company, including analysts, partners, and prospective investors. In this post, we’ll cover my 4 rules for this type of communication. Be Consistent. The biggest mistake people make is inconsistency, often because they’re trying to downplay a certain competitor. […]
10 Ways Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Marketing
84% of marketing organizations are implementing or expanding AI and machine learning in 2018. 75% of enterprises using AI and machine learning enhance customer satisfaction by more than 10%. 3 in 4 organizations implementing AI and machine learning increase sales of new products and services by more than 10% according to Capgemini. Measuring marketing’s many contributions […]
How to Walk From a Deal
Like it or not, once in a while it’s appropriate for a vendor to walk away from a prospective deal. Why might you want to do that? You think your product is a poor fit with the customer’s needs. You believe there is insufficient budget to achieve success on the project. You feel like the […]
