A few months ago,I wrote about a client who I helped to create a sales methodology to speed up their sales cycle by developing and selling front end services that substitute consulting revenue for free pilots. Their product was too complex for a simple download and free trial so they were being forced to offer free pilots which were extending the sales cycle and draining their cash. Instead, my client created a few packaged services each at a low fixed price. They limited the scope to reduce…

My last blog was a cautionary tale warning senior people not to become their own worst enemy when looking for their next job. Many describe themselves by the emphasizing the breadth of their experience and their flexible qualifications across many roles, company types and industries in order not to miss out on an opportunity. My advice was to get very specific about who they are, what they are good at, what they are passionate about and where they add differentiated value and do so, by creating…

I love working with Robin Hopper, my co-EIR at the Innovation Factory, for the simple fact that the guy has more catchy cool acronyms and phrases that make me sound so smart when I repeat them. "Nail it before you Scale it" is one of his latest.

Put simply, too many start-ups try to scale their marketing and sales organization before they have nailed their value proposition and the sales story that goes along with it. The consequences can be disastrous.  Over a beer, ask Robin about the story…

A former colleague recently reached out to me with the following question:

"I'm interested in getting board experience but am not sure where to start. I've served on a local non-profit board but wondered if you have suggestions for finding opportunities to serve on company/corporate boards?"

Like many, this person is senior with many years of experience and is likely planning their exit into semi-retirement. For people in this position, Boards can be an attractive way to ratchet back from a…

Happy New Year 2012. Before last year fades into our collective memories, I want to recap some lessons that I learned (or re-learned) in 2011.

Over the holidays I was performing some admin on my website. The task was to implement a Blog feature to allow anyone to add comments without having the hassle of joining my website. While I was doing this task, I also looked back over the past eighteen months at the recurring themes about which I had written.

Not coincidentally, these themes mapped to…

This topic has come up repeatedly with clients over the past few weeks. Many companies, especially start-ups, suffer from longer sales cycles than they plan for or can afford. There are many reasons that can often be bucketed into categories as follows:

• Immature or unproven value proposition
• Immature or unproven vendor
• Lack of references and proof points for the solution
• Lack of customer understanding of the solution's capabilities and impact
• Solutions that are new or paradigm shifting…

I met last week with a friend who is the CEO of a billion plus dollar software company. We were discussing the challenges of finding great talent which lead to discussion on how to recruit this scarce resource when you do find it. We were primarily talking about recruiting people to fill mid to senior leadership roles and he was sharing stories of the great people that he has hired in the past year. This was a counterpoint to many CEO's that I have met who bemoan the lack of available talent…

There is a lot of noise made about Silicon Valley and why it is such a successful place for incubating and growing start-ups. Many attribute that region's success to availability of investment capital, role models, mentoring resources, the critical mass of talent and its entrepreneurial culture.  Conversely, many point to Ontario's fledging tech start-up community and bemoan the lack of the above as excuse why our start-ups struggle. While I agree that many of the above factors make it tougher…

This week, I had the privilege of attending a Director's Dinner event organized by Howard Gwin and Derek Smyth of OMERS Ventures, Chris Chapman and Dan Wilson of KPMG's National Technology Practice and Digital Puck.ca . As I sat in this event with 40 other  CEO's and Director's  representing many of the tech stars in the Canadian high tech ecosystem, I reflected on a comment that Howard often makes, that "senior people only go to events where other senior people are".  The room was an all-star…