Start-ups – Page 2

Why aren’t there more women in high tech sales?

February 8, 2017

A collaborative post from Shann McGrail and Pete Smith Last August, I published a post called, “Why do we hate (our own) sales people?”. Since then it has been viewed almost 150,000 times and received over 15,000 likes, comments, and shares. I have enjoyed reading the comments that my post generated. Many have been thought provoking, but none ...

Why Do We Hate (our own) Sales People (Part III)

January 10, 2017

I received the following comment from David Field about my last post: “Another good article, but with so much feedback on part 1 in relation to ‘some of it is deserved’ it would be great to see some pointers on why the top ten things that make delivery hate sales have to be done, or how ...

Why do we hate (our own) sales people – Part II

December 13, 2016

In the four months since I posted the article “Why do we hate (our own) sales people?”, I have been overwhelmed by response of the number of people who have read it, liked it, added their comments to the conversation and shared it with their networks. To each and every one of you: Thank you, I ...

Where is the line? – the ethics of social media content creation.

September 7, 2016

I was approached by a young intern for some advice. He had been asked by a manager in his company to research a topic and write a blog for the manager so that the manager could post it to their LinkedIn profile as their own work, with no accreditation to the intern as the author. ...

Why do we hate (our own) sales people?

August 18, 2016

Last week, the Globe and Mail featured an article “Companies struggle with shortage of sales talent” which I believe was suppose to feature a new program at Wilfrid Laurier University. This new program has been created to teach sales training, something not traditionally taught by universities. Unfortunately, the article got derailed and took on a ...

Do Job Titles Matter?

August 1, 2016

After 37 years in the tech industry, I have become cynical of job titles and companies who have an abundance of lofty job titles and minimal revenue. I often meet early stage software companies with a few dozen employees, yet their executive ranks are filled with a CEO, COO, EVP of Sales, CMO and CTO. ...

Why I think I am a 61-year-old Millennial

May 2, 2016

While driving this morning, I listened to a radio interview focused on the news headline that Millennials now outnumber Boomers and the impact that is having and will have on the workplace. The speaker was espousing that like their Boomer parents, Millennials have the same goals of getting married, having a family and owning a ...

How do you know if your recruiting strategy is about to fail?

February 1, 2016

A collaborative blog post with Kim Benedict. Before the holidays, we were talking to a manager who was bemoaning their workload. On top of everything else, they were conducting candidate screening interviews because they had four open positions and their internal HR team was too busy to get the screening interviews done. Kudos to the ...

Do product features really matter?

May 29, 2015

An on-going discussion in most software companies is the value of the next release of software. In some companies, these discussions often take on the dimensions of a holy war and can be quite disruptive and distracting. On one hand, a number of sales deals will be relying on the features planned for the next ...

Five Lessons learned from starting a consulting business

April 18, 2015

Somehow in the past few years, I have become a go-to-person for people looking for advice on starting their own consulting business. This became obvious to me when I realized that my advice now rolls off my tongue as effortlessly as a rehearsed presentation. My advice isn’t rocket science, in fact some of it is ...

Category: Start-ups