If your firm is more than ten years old, there is a good chance your organic revenue growth rate has hit a wall. Unless your company is a dominant player in the market, it is difficult to sustain 20%+ organic revenue growth rates. This post will cover four strategies mature companies have successfully used to sustain organic revenue growth
The Great Debate In 1998 Ben Horowitz, of Opsware and Andreessen Horowitz fame, penned a piece entitled “Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager” where he asserted: “A good product manager is the CEO of the product. A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product. They are […]
Accounting Goodwill has to be one of the more boring and esoteric financial topics. There are situations where product managers can benefit from having a basic working knowledge of it. Goodwill could impact their future bonuses and level of funding for their product lines. Goodwill Basics Investopedia defines goodwill as: “Goodwill is an intangible asset […]
As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto, I have become more interested in pieces that talk about the state of Agile in today’s environment. I am a historian by training and firmly believe in the adage that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Product Managers can benefit […]
“I believe that marketing is what you do when your product or service suck” Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures AVC Blog When Fred Wilson posted this quote on his blog in 2011 I was taken back a bit. I had been in enterprise software marketing for almost 15 years at the time having served as […]
Charles Lambdin recently published a piece on Medium titled “Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending”. In the post Charles talks about his frustrations with the current state of Agile practice.
The story of the infamous Shed at Dulwich is a great example of how Internet marketing techniques can scam the unsuspecting public. The Shed at Dulwich was a fake restaurant created by Oobah Butler to prove the gullibility of today’s Internet user. I have been involved in technology marketing and sales for almost 20 years. […]
I am launching a new side gig today vendorbumper.com. We provide research reports on software companies for buyers looking to build a basic profile of a firm or for marketers looking to update their competitive analysis. Gartner notes that buyers complete 70% of their buying journey before contacting sales. Unfortunately buyers often need to provide […]
The objective of this post is to talk about a new strategy for filling the top of the sales funnel with valuable opportunities. The harsh reality is that only a fraction of the mid-market and enterprise scale companies in today’s market will purchase and implement a major new software solution. As Gartner has noted, buyers are completing 70% of their buying journey before contacting a sales rep. Research shows the odds of winning the sale are 74% when you reach decision makers at the right time and help set their buying vision. This post talks about the types of triggers that lead to customers starting a process to identify and evaluate new solutions.
Acquiring customers is the biggest challenge any B2B software company has. Unless you are lucky enough to have an award winning solution that sells itself like the mythical product led growth companies (Slack, Dropbox, and Expensify), you have to grind it out like everyone else. Display advertising, landing pages, sales development reps, content marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM systems are the basic table stakes in today’s B2B software sales game. This post explores the reality of demand generation and makes a surprising recommendation to significantly improve sales funnel conversion rates and closed sales.