Russell McGuire

It used to be that almost all sales involved interpersonal interactions. A salesperson approached a potential customer and offered products or services, or a customer walked into a retail store and made a purchase. Today, many business-to-business transactions still involve a traditional salesperson-client interaction, but both consumer and business transactions are increasingly moving online with little or no human-to-human interaction. 

In the article linked below, I look at sales under two different models – relational and transactional. For each, I discuss tools commonly used to effectively manage through different phases of the sales process and, along the way, identify 42 different specific steps you can take to increase sales. Bottom line, “selling more” does not require “more selling”, but rather often involves better listening. If you better understand your customers and their needs, better meet those needs, and act in a way that builds their trust in you, you will sell more.

Read the full article here and see the 42 ways to increase sales.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about category making. In it, I suggested that there are three distinct challenges that must be tackled when creating a new category. In the article linked below I look back in history at a few of the more iconic category creators that have not only defined new product categories, but in the process, changed our lives. Understanding the decisions they made and the actions they took related to each of those challenges, and how their efforts paid off could be helpful as you consider your own category making journey.

Intel created the microprocessor category in 1971 that, in time, powered the microprocessor revolution. Google created the ranked web search category in 1996 which helped all of us discover the Internet revolution. In 1992 ARM created the mobile processor sub-category that enabled the mobility revolution. In 2010 Uber built upon the power of those three revolutions to create the mobility-as-a-service category.

Read each of these company’s stories through a category making lens and to see what lessons today’s category-makers can learn from them.

Play Bigger, by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, and Kevin Maney, is probably the best book on the market teaching innovators how to create new product categories and become the category king. It’s not a perfect book, and I don’t agree with everything the authors say, but if you are wondering whether or not you should be creating a new category, I’d recommend you read this book so that you understand what it would take, and then make your decision.

If you do decide to go for it, Play Bigger does a good job of explaining how to go about creating a new category and what to do after you’ve successfully done so.

The biggest issue I have with Play Bigger is that it seems to present the whole process as simply a matter of following each step contained in each chapter. They don’t hide the fact that some of those steps are really hard (which is good), but I honestly don’t think that’s how it works. I get the sense that the Play Bigger team never walks into a company and says “okay, here’s the project plan. We’re going to make sure you follow all these steps and, at the end, you’ll be king of a new category.” I think that every company and every situation is unique. What you do when and how varies dramatically from case to case. The reason the Play Bigger team is so good at what they do is because they sense and respond to each unique situation, and they work with their clients to do what’s needed to be successful. It’s not “paint by numbers” but the book makes it feel like it is.

Bottom line, Play Bigger provides an excellent guide to what is involved in creating a new category and owning it. While I seriously doubt that any company could simply follow the steps outlined in the book and be successful, laying it out in this structured way makes it easy to get a sense for the level of commitment required to be successful. Most companies will need to work with someone who can help them navigate the still uncharted waters of their new category. The stories throughout the book help the reader sense both the excitement of what is possible and the complexity of achieving it. I heartily recommend Play Bigger to anyone considering creating their own product category.

Read my full review here.

If you need help with your category strategy, I’d be happy to talk.

The concept of category making is popular amongst tech innovators, and for good reason. So, it’s not unusual for startup leaders to be asked whether or not they are going to create a new category. It may be tempting to quickly answer “of course”, but I’ve written the article linked below to help you understand what that even means and what’s involved in category making.

Read the full article or watch me present the content as a video tutorial here.

HYPERGROWTH by David Cancel teaches the Responsive Development (RD) methodology the author pioneered at Performable, scaled at HubSpot, and now has built into products at Drift. 

The book provides an unexpected answer to a common question. Leaders want to know — how do we grow our business. Cancel’s answer, at least for SaaS companies, is to let (or perhaps force) the engineers building your product to regularly talk to customers, and then trust them to do what is right for the customer. Responsive Development is an approach to software product development that challenges the traditional Waterfall and newer Agile approaches. 

The book is short, with large font, so you can easily read it in a couple of hours. If you are responsible for software product development, especially at a SaaS startup, it’s worth a read. 

Read the full review here.

According to Fierce Wireless, T-Mobile has agreed to sell the wireline business the company gained as part of its acquisition of Sprint to Cogent Communications for $1. In 2004, when I was director of strategic planning for the division of Sprint that managed the wireless business, we first seriously looked at selling this asset. Over the next 10 years in that role and as vice president of corporate strategy, we considered the possibility of selling Wireline several more times, even going so far as holding exploratory conversations with potential buyers.

Each time we backed away, ostensibly because the business and the underlying assets were too essential to Sprint’s overall business. However, I think we simply suffered from some of the most common cognitive biases that lead many businesses to make bad decisions. Over the past 18 years several things have changed that enabled T-Mobile to finally make the right decision. 

For starters, the wireline industry has continued to decline, and Sprint/T-Mobile’s wireline business with it. So, the wireline business, which once had been the largest and most profitable part of Sprint, had become a tiny and unprofitable part of T-Mobile. Second, the powerful individuals who strongly identified with the wireline business and challenged any attempts to divest it have moved on. Finally, and probably most importantly, I’m guessing T-Mobile’s leadership brought an outsider’s perspective that was able to cut through cognitive biases and make the right decision.

Read the full story here.

Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II passed away after a historic reign. The world mourns. The news brought me back to my one brief close encounter with Her Majesty and caused me to reflect on three different snapshots of leadership that have stuck with me throughout my life and impacted my own leadership style.

Read the full story here.

Many entrepreneurs have great product and business ideas but have never really had to learn what it takes to make people aware of what they’re building. They know that the strategy of “build it and they will come” is flawed, and they’ve heard of marketing, but they don’t really know what it is or how to approach it. If that describes you, then I think the article liked below will be especially helpful for you. I can’t magically turn you into a marketing expert, but I hope to at least help you understand what’s involved and help you work intelligently with marketing professionals.

My definition of Marketing is “everything you do to make potential customers (and existing customers) aware of, and desiring what you have to offer.” The article covers the buyer’s journey, brand, and the marketing mix (product, price, distribution, promotion, and positioning) to flesh out the “everything you do” and “aware of and desiring” elements of that definition. I hope the it’s helpful to you.

Read the full article here.

Most businesses hope to achieve two key financial goals — consistent profitability and steady revenue growth. Many startup founders are great at building a product, but have never had the opportunity to learn what it takes to grow a business. In the article linked below I introduce a general framework for understanding revenue growth and the three key disciplines to achieve profitable revenue growth.

Every month there are generally only three sources of revenue for your business. The easiest category of revenue to grow, if you have it, is “Continuing Revenue from Existing Customers.” The second easiest category of revenue to grow should be “New Sales to Existing Customers.” “New Sales to New Customers” is the hardest category, but is still essential. Without this category, you never get to having “Existing Customers.”

To grow revenue from these three sources requires three key disciplines. Marketing is everything you do to make potential customers (and existing customers) aware of, and desiring what you have to offer. Sales is everything you do to enable the completion of the transaction of a customer purchasing what you have to offer. Operations is everything you do to successfully deliver the value proposition of what you offer to customers. To successfully grow your business you need scaling operations – the ability to do so well, even as the number of customers and transactions are rapidly increasing.

Read the full article here.

Touraj Parang’s new book Exit Path teaches entrepreneurs how to prepare for the sale of their company.

I’ve been founder or co-founder of multiple startups. One ended in a successful sale to a large corporation. Everything went smoothly. Having now read Exit Path, I understand why. In that case, I was blessed with a co-founder who, by his nature, did all the right things to position us for a successful exit. For another of my startups, we realized that it wasn’t going to reach a scale that was self-supporting and we started pursuing potential acquirers. We spent time in serious discussions with one potential acquirer, but in the end failed to close a deal. Having now read Exit Path, I understand why. Thankfully, we still had plenty of runway to shut down gracefully, providing plenty of time for customers and team members to transition. 

Touraj Parang has had similar experiences. His first startup ran out of cash and exited poorly. His second exited well. Since then he’s been involved in many more deals, both on the buying and selling side, and he’s learned what factors are within the founder’s control that can significantly influence whether a successful sale happens or not. Exit Path is his attempt to turn the lessons he has learned into a manual to set entrepreneurs on a path to exit as well as possible. 

When he gets into describing the execution of an exit strategy, the book does its job exceptionally well. Parang describes what entrepreneurs need to do, when they need to do it, and why. He also educates founders on aspects of the transactional process that most of us will rarely (if ever) have encountered, pointing out areas requiring particular attention, and when it’s critical to get specialist advisors involved. That being said, the book gets off to a slow and somewhat muddled start. Don’t give up. Work through these opening sections and you’ll soon discover the wealth of invaluable information in the back half of the book.

Bottom line, Exit Path provides a guide for entrepreneurs in how to successfully sell their startup. While the last section of the book is absolutely essential reading for anyone in the midst of selling their business, the preceding three sections explain what every startup should do well in advance of that event to dramatically increase their chances for success. If you’re an entrepreneur, or dream of becoming one some day, I strongly recommend that you read Exit Path by Touraj Parang.

Read the full review here.