As an expansion stage venture capitalist who strongly believes in companies developing great user experiences, I spend a lot of time designing and redesigning experiences in my head every day.  For example,

- When I use a website, I redesign the experience in my head, mostly redesigning the UI to its simplest form.

- As venture capital advisors to our portfolio companies, we both use the products that our portfolio companies create and we give them feedback on the user experience.

- When I stand in lines with multiple cash registers and multiple queues, I redesign the lines in my head to create a single line (so that the customers are not frustrated when they get in a slow line). 

- When I get stuck in a line at a toll booth, I think through what the state needs to do to have transponders as part of vehicle registration and how we should not have toll booths any longer.

In general, I have a really strong belief that a differentiated and valuable user experience is the single most important factor driving business growth strategies.  Because of this belief, when I get a great experience, I notice (and sometimes even blog about it) and when I get bad experiences, I tend to redesign them in my head and then complain about them a lot.

This series of blog posts comes from a really bad series of user experiences and one really nice TSA agent at Logan Airport.  The net result from my experiences is that I renewed my driver's license after spending a lot of time being frustrated, redesigning (in my head) the experience offered by a number of organizations, and wondering why any of a number of organizations didn't address a seemingly common issue...any of them could have improved my user experience, but none of them did.

I am writing about the experience not to complain about the RMV, but rather to point out how bad experiences effect people and to encourage you to really push your product and development teams, sales support and marketing teams, and customer service teams to really understand how their touch points with the users, buyers, and other market participants are perceived and, even better, how they could redesign the touch points and experiences to drive a much more positive perception!

Mark Peter Davis has an interesting set of survey results on his blog comparing the Valley, Boston, and New York regions from the perspective of his readers.  I get asked the question about regional differences periodically (since OpenView has and will invest in any region globally where there is a great expansion stage software/internet company) and the question has been raised more frequently recently.  I don't really have a strong regional bias since I have found positives and negatives in every region, but take a look at Marks conclusions from the survey answers here, including that entrepreneurs love their hood!

As an expansion stage venture capital financing firm, we are constantly searching for the next big thing.  The WSJ has been kind enough to furnish The Next Big Thing List, which is actually pretty interesting to take a look at and dissect.  As I reviewed the list, I could not help but think of how crappy the list is for several reasons:

1. Many of the companies on the list cannot possibly be the next big thing, mostly because their product markets are too small, their differentiation is too weak, their long term competitive advantage is too weak, or the competitive intensity of their markets is too strong to allow them to become "big things." (btw, none of these are criteria...wtfwsj?)

2. Some of the companies on the list are already hot and probably should be on a "Currently Hot" list rather than The Next Big Thing List.  For example, Zynga and the Huffington Post are both hot and strong at this point.

3. The criteria for determining the ranking of The Next Big Thing List is horrible.  The Market Potential has got to be the number one factor in determining potential, doesn't it?  What happened to differentiation and market competitiveness?  If this criteria was submitted for a grade to a college course at a community college, I suspect it would get a failing grade.

I am not sure that the list could be worse and wonder what the probability that the next big thing actually is on this list, particularly if the currently hot companies are screened out.  Perhaps the WSJ will be kind enough to keep the list for 5 years and then review their list at that point?

What do you think about The Next Big Thing List?

As you develop and execute your business growth strategies, the economy is probably the biggest unknown and has been since Q408.  My sense from February results for the software/internet economy is that business is better than Q1 of last year, but not as good as Q4 of last year.  The March results will be telling and the quarter will help predict the results for the year better, but my overarching sense is that the economy continues to improve at a relatively slow pace.

Some data points that I am hearing/seeing:

- Recruiting support firms, particularly executive search, that I have spoken to have very good backlogs.

- I have never experienced such full airplanes in my travels.  I assume that this is coming from reduced capacity in the airlines, but at least some of it must be from economic growth and increased sales activity.

- Lead generation services and sales support and marketing firms seem to have mixed results, with many reporting really positive results and others working hard to find work (not sure what to make of this).

- The news from the Venture Capitalist also seems mixed when I normalize for the positive bias of most Venture Capital Advisors.

I suspect that the net of all of this will be reasonable economic growth for the quarter, but not the knock-out quarter that the software economy had in Q4.

As part of describing OpenView's management system rhythm, last month I posted on our approach for checking on, reflecting on, and reviewing January results against the quarterly plan. 

The idea of the plan is to maximize the probability of success of your business development strategies and you business growth strategies by creating goal clarity. 

The idea of the monthly meeting is to check/reflect/review as a management team each month to optimize the adjustments to the plan at the senior management level (as well as other appropriate levels depending on the number of layers of management in your organization).  The approach for the monthly meeting is to color code each quarterly initiative (green if the initiative will get done on time, yellow if it will get done on time but there are some issues, and red if the initiative will not get done without some major help) and then to review only the initiatives that are color coded red each month.

The January end (beginning of February) review point for the quarterly goals gave managers the opportunities to review progress once January was over.  If you did something like this last month, you probably had very few red items to discuss, as one month into the quarter everyone was still looking at the initiatives through rose colored glasses (or are they green colored glasses?).

Now that February is over, it is time to review the quarterly initiatives again.  This time I suspect the review will be more real and you will have more "red" initiatives.  Your team only has 4 weeks left in the quarter to get its initiatives completed and, if you are like most teams that hold themselves accountable, you probably also have some people stressing out about their progress.

Again, the agenda is to go through the list of red items and to try to figure out how to make adjustments that put your company in the best shape possible by the end of the month and quarter.  This might involve eliminating some goals, adjusting other goals, or adjusting resources so that you can get more accomplished (all are valid and depend on your company's specific situation). 

You should be able to manage this agenda without much operational support, but asking your CFO or other operational support owner to run the process will probably make the process better.

The key is that February is over and it is time to get real on what you are really going to accomplish this quarter!

Want to create the most thrilled customers and stimulate the greatest customer-initiated word of mouth marketing leading to greater numbers of inbound prospects?  All you need to do is make your customers feel the same way that Virgin America's customers feel from the incredible customer experience that Virgin America delivers to its customers. 

My previous favorite airline was Jet Blue, which came to the table with a great unique user experience and for the most part still does.  Jet Blue set the bar high with plenty of really easy to use check-in kiosks, leather seats, TVs at every seat, and friendly young flight attendants.  Jet Blue was head and shoulders above almost every U.S. airline (the exception, perhaps, is SouthWest) until Virgin America came along.

Now Virgin America has taken the experience to the next level, including everything that Jet Blue offers plus even friendlier (and seemingly better trained) flight attendants, more options on the TV, WiFi and electric outlets on each plane, and the ability to order food and drinks from the TV monitor and have it arrive a few minutes later (and the food is pretty good too).  This combined with the newer planes and hard-to-describe but better design aesthetic makes Virgin America's customers smile (customers get on the planes and get settled are really interesting to watch as they discover the experience). 

I believe that others get off the Virgin plane and do what I do, which is to tell everyone about my experience, which must be better for Virgin than any lead generation system or marketing strategies, even influence marketing or content management marketing strategies.  This is the best of customer-experience-led sales and marketing.  That is, product and development create unbelievable experiences that lead to customer-led marketing, probably one of the best business growth strategies.

How do your customers feel about the experience that you deliver?  Deliver a similarly incredible experience and your customers will feel like Virgin's!

When we talk to our expansion stage portfolio companies about goal setting, we use the term S.M.A.R.T. to help ensure that there is extreme clarity around what the goal actually is and how to attack it.  S.M.A.R.T. is a bit long in the tooth and not perfect, but it is a really good way to help everyone get clarity around what the company is trying to achieve and helps to frame the initiatives that will help to get the results. 

The basic point is that clarity around what the company really wants to achieve will help everyone in the organization to communicate the goal and then develop, prioritize, and execute the best ideas for achieving the goal.

Here is an example of possible different goals with respect to business growth strategies for the year.  The point is that each of the goals is going to lead your team toward different initiatives to achieve the goal (and just to be clear, you might have multiple business growth strategy goals):

- Increase sales by 50% (Lots of possible initiatives to meet this less specific goal)

- Increase sales to new customers by 50% (more specific goal that will lead the team to initiatives that focus on new customers)

- Increase Average Selling Price (ASP) by 50% (even more specific goal that will lead the team to figure out ways of increasing ASP)

- Increase renewal rates from 50% to 80% (will lead the team to work on customer success and customer relationship)

- Increase opportunity to close rate by 50% (will lead the team to focus on the reasons behind lost deals and won deals which could affect messaging, the lead funnel process, the sales process, and/or product)

Each of the example goals above could lead to the same financial result (increasing sales by 50%), but hopefully it is clear that the different goals allow for more clarity around what specifically the company is trying to achieve which helps the team choose the best initiatives to meet the goal.

Periodically, we get some push back on either the term SMART or the use of specific goals in general.  Sometimes people point out that having result-based goals is not as good as having process-based or project-based goals, as you don't know what the results of the process-based or project-based goals are actually going to be.  While it would be possible to have a long conversation weighing off the pros and cons for each, my answer to that is "Great, have process-based or project-based goals if you feel strongly about that".  Other people point out another finely tuned argument against one or more of the terms making up S.M.A.R.T.  My answer to that is "Great, don't use the term". 

Overall, I find the arguments a bit silly and in general coming from people that just want a good debate or really want to do the hard work of getting goal clarity.  My objective is to simply get management teams to goal clarity, as it is really difficult to execute at a high velocity without it.

One question that I get periodically that I have a lot of time for is "how do I make this goal SMART?"  I generally answer the question by asking the person how they will know at the end of the period that the goal was achieved.  The more clarity around this answer the better and the more objective the measurement of success the better as the clarity will help the communication of the goal.

The fact of the matter is that your team and company will be better off if everyone is committed to the clear direction that you are trying to head and has a clear sense of what they might be able to achieve in a certain period of time so that people can stay coordinated and so that cross-team strategies can be executed (for example new product introductions cut across product and development, sales, marketing, and customer support functions and the coordination is really important if you want to be successful).  The more clarity, the better. 

The clearer that you can be on what you think you can accomplish and the easier it is to have an objective understanding of whether the goal was met or not, the easier it will be to have a retrospective at the end of the period to learn from the experience and determine what adjustments to make during the next iteration (including, perhaps, the form of the goals that achieve the best results).  This retrospective process is key to continuous improvement and very difficult to do without having goal clarity.

As Lewis Caroll said, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there".  While that does not mean that if you do know where you are going then you will get there, at least the team will know where it is trying to go and will be able to measure progress and make ongoing adjustments, which should raise the probability of getting to the ultimate "there" (which may also change over time)!

The bottom line is that if you don't like the term SMART, don't use it.  But you still need Goal Clarity!

Some good coaching for impediments coming from a sales team:

1. I got beat on price (again). That would be your fault. The customer perceived no difference between you and the competition, and no value beyond the product; therefore, “price” was all that mattered.
 
2. The prospect went with someone else at a higher price. Proof that lowest price doesn’t matter. Value and relationship will win the order AND the profit.
 
3. I had to bid through a purchasing agent. You were too chicken, or unprepared, to meet with the boss (who, by-the-way, tells the purchasing agent what to do).
 
4. The buyer won’t decide. You have not created enough of a value proposition to interest the customer enough to act TODAY.
 
5. I can’t create a sense of urgency. Whose fault is that? Talk to the customer about lost profit and greater productivity INSTEAD of offering to cut your price (like a fool).
 
6. My product is becoming a commodity. What are you selling? Pigs? Oil? Corn? Those are commodities, Sparky. Your product has value, and it’s up to you to prove it. Besides, your customer didn’t tell you that your product was a commodity, you told yourself so many times that you actually believe it.
 
7. The competition is beating us by lowering their price. Whenever you get beat on price, it means you were perceived as the same and price was all that mattered.
 
8. The competition stole one of our big accounts. That’s because they can. Whenever you lose a customer to a lower price, it means you were vulnerable to lose them. Find the REAL REASON before you start losing more of them.
 
9. The prospect won’t give me an appointment. No, you haven’t established enough rapport or interest to earn one. You’re begging or selling; try engaging and gaining interest with questions about them.
 
10. The customer lied to me. Usually the lie is about money, or it’s pitting you against a competitor, or both. If you are CERTAIN you know it to be true, confront them with a question, NOT an accusation.
 
11. I can’t get to the decision maker. That’s because you started your encounter too low. If you find out the decision maker is NOT the person you’re talking to, immediately request a meeting with all three parties and learn the lesson for the next prospect you want to sell.
 
12. The customer or prospect wouldn’t return my call. Why? Because you gave them no reason to, that’s why. You were just calling to see if the money was ready, and disguised it as a courtesy call. Give them a solid reason and they’ll call you.
 
13. Our sales cycle is too long. That’s because you’re dealing with influencers, not decision makers. CEO’s decide in two minutes. There’s a clue.
 
14. My company doesn’t support my sales effort. Meet with your CEO and ask his or her assistance. If you don’t get the meeting or the assistance, find another job.
 
15. Company policies fight the sales effort. Just make more sales, don’t worry about policies or politics. If the situation is unbearable or untenable, find another job.
 
16. My company can’t deliver on time. Meet with the CEO and resolve it, NOT production or shipping.
 
17. My company won’t buy me the tools I need. You have your own money now, buy them yourself.
 
18. Our training sucks. Meet with the training department. They really want to help, but are sometimes unaware of your day-to-day needs. Make sure they have customized sales training, not generic. And make sure that there are courses on presentation skills, positive attitude, and customer loyalty.
 
19. Our service sucks. Work in the service department for a few days. Write down all the reasons customers call then, and only then, can you get to best practices.
 
20. I hate my job. Find out why. Become the BEST salesperson in the company. Then quit. Leave on TOP. If you quit too soon, you’ll go to the next place blaming, instead of bragging.
 
21. I hate my boss. Previous answer applies.
 
22.  No one in the company likes the sales team. Switch jobs for a day or two. Walk in each other’s shoes, sit in each other’s chairs. Mutual respect will follow.
 
23. My sales plan (quota, goal) is not realistic. Goals and quotas are set for the “mediocre” level of salesperson.
 
24. I don’t have time to... Yes you do, you’re just not prioritizing it. Substitute television for pre-call planning.
 
25. They don’t pay me enough to... Yes they do. You just didn’t understand that YOU have to do things to better yourself.
 
26. I need balance. If you’re not working out of balance, your checkbook will be. Take a weekend and relax. Then get back to (hard) work.
 
27. Quit your whining. I just gave you the real-world answers to 27 whines. They basically boil down to this strategy: If you spent as much time selling as you do whining, you’d be a millionaire.
 

Note: I received this list via e-mail from a senior manager in one of my portfolio companies.  It resonated to me, as I have spent a lot of time with sales teams over the years and I have heard each of these many many times over the years.  It has been bouncing around e-mail, so I am not sure who to attribute it to.  If you know, point it out and I will update this post.

As an expansion stage venture capital firm with strategic consulting services, our number one opportunity to help our portfolio companies is helping them build strong senior management teams and boards through recruiting support.  The most important ingredients for building great companies are the right great people and teams doing the right things right, so getting hiring right is extremely important.

Over the years, we have identified lots of ways to make hiring mistakes...here are my top 11:

1. Don't set up the company to attract the best people.  If you don't have well articulated aspirations (mission, vision, values) woven throughout your company, a high market clarity (solid understanding of your market and competitors and a strategy for winning in your target segment), and you aren't in a position to win in your market, you have not set up the company to attract the best people.  The best people understand that much of their compensation will come from growing the company into a large dominant player in your market and increase the value of their stock options.  In order to win the best people, you will also want to make certain that you have set up and can describe why your open position is a great one for an "A" caliber person who wants to have impact, develop professionally, and be part of something great.

2. Don't prioritize and focus on the positions that are organizational leverage points.  There are specific positions in a company that, when filled, can have the most significant impact on company development (for example, hiring a key manager or perhaps hiring an "A" caliber internal recruiter to help with recruiting support rather than three individual salespeople will help you get both more easily).  The best candidates in these positions will also build an esprit de corps on the team, will be a good role model for others, and will follow up by hiring further great people and build their units well (like pushing the first domino in a long line of dominoes).  If you want to screw up hiring, don't identify and focus on these positions.

3. Don't define the goals or the job description for the role.  Creating goals and job descriptions is hard work and you are really busy (If you just get started with the search, you might get lucky and the candidate you choose will figure this out).  On the other hand, really being clear on what is expected in this position will help you better determine the ideal candidate and will help the candidate get integrated into your company more quickly.

4. Don't define the "right" ideal characteristics for the candidate or where you might find a candidate with these characteristics.  Again, thinking and talking through these characteristics with the right people is hard work and you want to get on with the search and feel like you are making progress.  On the other hand, doing the work up front will save you a lot of time talking with the wrong candidates (or worse, hiring the wrong candidate).

5. Don't do a complete search and truly find 2-3 candidates that are the best match with the current needs of the company.  The best candidates will have 3 times the impact of good candidates and there will be huge returns to putting the time into doing this right.  It will take longer to get the best candidate, but the wait is worth it.

6. Don't do a proper job of truly understanding "fit" between the candidate and the position/company.  Don't properly understand the candidates in detail.  More specifically, don't ask the right questions to the interviewee (btw, here is a great source for questions) and don't ask the right questions to a broad enough set of references and blind references.  Also, don't encourage the candidate to ask questions and when they do, be vague rather than completely transparent.  On the other hand, determining the key "fit" points in advance and the questions to ask the candidates and references could help you to really nail the fit issue and encouraging the candidate to do the same will help with the fit issue from their perspective (both perspectives are important).  The best search processes will have additional means, beyond interviews, to determine if the fit is right (examples include assessments and candidates to put together 90 day plans to see how they think and how their plans match to the company's ideas).

7. Don't learn and adjust goals, job description, and ideal characteristics based on the learning through the search and don't use the knowledge that you gain in your search to make your business better.  On the other hand, using the early interviews to help refine the goals, job description and ideal characteristics will really help you iterate to both the best candidate and to a better role description.  Separately, talking to a lot of good people should generate many new ideas that could be useful to your business...(I learn at least one or two things from each interview that I do).

8. Don't bring in experts who understand the function, stage of company development, or important goals for the company to help.  Each functional area has a level of expertise and sophistication that only people that are experienced in that function will be able to decipher from candidates (great product managers can better evaluate product managers than they can evaluate inside salespeople, for example).  Also, functional areas have different needs at different stages of company development and experts that understand exactly what is necessary at your current stage of development will be particularly helpful with interviewing candidates.  (As an example, a newer channel sales effort requires a candidate who is skilled in channel development and channel methodology development while a more developed channel program may require an individual who is more skilled in people management, two very different skills.)

9. Don't prepare and coordinate the interviewers.  Many times, interviews are prepped with "here is the resume, can you talk to this person".  This is a pretty poor use of time as it leads to a low impact interview.  A better way:  Each interviewer should know exactly what is expected during the interview, be prepared with the full set of material on the role and the major criteria for the role, know the key issues at this point in the process, know exactly what they are supposed to be probing for during the interview, and write up their evaluation post the interview so that future interviews and the overall evaluation team can make the best use of the interview.

10. Post-hire, give the new manager the keys to something important and walk away assuming that the candidate is magical, fully aligned with the company's culture, Aspirations (mission, vision, values), goals, and management systems (alternatively, walk away assuming that you don't want to be considered a micromanager and that the person needs to be left alone to do what he/she thinks is best).  On the other hand, spend time with the new hire, make sure that the hire understands the culture and aspirations, help him/her get established, and then back away at the right pace while making sure that the new hire is executing effectively with committed S.M.A.R.T. Goals.  This will maximize your chances for success in the short term.

11. Don't learn from past hiring mistakes.  Everyone has flaws in their hiring and even the best managers make many mistakes as they grow their organization.  The key is to do a real retrospective and understand the reasons for the mistakes after you identify that you have made a mistake.  Then, determine the possible adjustments that you can make and diligently make those adjustments in the future.  You will still make mistakes, but the key is to not make the same mistake twice!

If you try to eliminate the 11 best ways to screw up your hiring list above, you will still screw up, but you will screw up less frequently and you will maximize your chance of building a successful business!

The OpenView Operating Committee completed its monthly review of quarterly goals on Monday (see my prior post on the process that we recommend for all companies, particularly expansion stage companies that are trying to manage a significant amount of change). 

The agenda item took 5 minutes to go through during the meeting.  It was short because the updates on our initiatives had no “red” items (goals that were not going to be completed by the end of the quarter according to each person owning the goals). 

Of course, the work to prepare for the meeting took more time, as each team needed to review their quarterly goals, review where each stands, consider what is left to do and the resources available to get the work done, and color code each of the goals (green if it is going to get done as planned, yellow if it is going to get done but there are some issues, and red if it is not going to get done without some outside help). 

While our process yielded no real conversation or adjustments at the Operating Committee level this time, it helped to get us comfortable that we are on track for the quarter with two months left and the process helped to remind everyone in the firm about their committed focal points for the quarter.

Have You Reviewed Your January Progress Against Your Quarterly Goals?

We work on marketing optimization a lot, particularly as it relates to lead generation systems. 

Optimizing your marketing is a process that takes some level of research, some good ideas for what might work, and then a lot of experimentation to find out what really works and what doesn't work.  Then, turn off what doesn't work and keep evolving and adding to what does work. 

In my view, it is better to do this work internally than to use one of the lead generation services, as your knowledge of what works and what doesn't work will build over time.  A GREAT resource for finding some starting points is Marketing Experiments, which publishes a lot of great research and its newsletter is a must read for any marketer who is serious about optimizing their marketing activities and appreciates that it will take a lot of experiments!  Use the ideas that apply to you as starting points for some of your marketing activities and make adjustments from there.  You should get at least a 50% increase in your leads with no added expenses or you are not doing it right!

I can't help but point out that the Colts were supposed to win the Superbowl, just as <fill in the blank> is supposed to win in your product market.  But results are not always what they are supposed to be, particularly in fast moving technology markets.

How did the Saints win?

- They played to win.  They came with the passion, drive, and enthusiasm to win.  They would not have won without this, as they were competing with a GREAT team.

- They came to play.  They had a good gameplan and very solid execution from all of their teams; offense, defense, and special teams.

- They took some calculated risks.  They tried for a 4th down touchdown instead of going for the field goal.  They did not get the touchdown, but they did get a three-and-out from the Colts and then got the field goal.  They also started the second half with a really unexpected and successful on-side kick.  They were not going to win without taking the risks, so they took some risks.

- They had some luck.  They had several plays that went in their direction, including their successful on-side kick and an interception late in the game that they returned for a touchdown.

I am reminded every day that good strategy and execution from good teams can win many markets away from the Goliaths during the expansion stage, and the Superbowl is another great reminder...

One of the great things about developers is that they never stop experimenting with new practices.  I have heard more about development teams using Kanban recently and just came across an e-book on the topic that you can get from InfoQ here.  The simple principle is to limit work in process and it can be used in combination with any other development or management practice...it is a great principle, as it helps to enforce focus on the few things that matter at any point in time. 

The e-book has a good demonstration on how you can use Kanban without using Scrum or how you could combine Kanban into Scrum.  It has some great ideas and is worth a read if you are into experimenting with new techniques to improve your product lifecycle management solutions (I hope you are).

While the book is aimed at development processes, the ideas in the book also apply really nicely to other processes, such as sales (might be useful to consider before you do a salesforce implementation), customer service, financial processes, and recruiting support, as Kanban is an area of lean, which was first used for manufacturing processes and has been spreading over the last decade into service processes.

InfoQ also has an older, but just as relevant e-book on Scrum and XP, that is a really useful read if you are just getting started with Agile principles and practices.  It helps give you a step-by-step real world guide to the practices of Scrum and XP.

Btw, to get both books, you do have to go through a heavyweight sign-in process, but the minute or two that it takes are well worth the value of the books.

At OpenView, we have our monthly review on Monday using a pretty straightforward system for checking how we are doing and making adjustments.  We also recommend this approach to our portfolio companies.  Here is the basic approach written more from the perspective of offering advice to expansion stage CEOs:

If you are locked and loaded for the year (or even if you just are working toward quarterly goals), it is now time to check how you are doing against your planned goals for the quarter at the senior management level; reflect on the activities, results, and market changes that have taken place over the last month; and make appropriate adjustments for the plans going forward.

The simplest way to do this is to have each manager mark his/her quarterly goals with a Red, Yellow, Green color code in preparation for the senior management meeting:

Green- My unit will hit this goal
Yellow- We are having some difficulties, but my unit will hit this goal
Red- We are going to miss this goal unless we get some assistance from others

The easiest way to work through the conversation is to put an agenda item at the end of your weekly meeting.  You could have a separate meeting for this, but it is a lot easier to incorporate it into your weekly meeting and see how it works.  (You can always add a separate meeting if it doesn't work well as part of your weekly meeting.)

The way to get through the meeting efficiently is to focus on the Red items (since the green and yellow items are going to be met).  This is easier to write than to execute, as the tendency of most people is to want praise and they are going to want to talk about all of their activities and accomplishments.  To overcome this distraction, quickly congratulate the managers for being on plan for the items that are on plan and to remind them that you have a separate venue periodically that congratulates the team on its accomplishments (of course, you need to make sure that you have that venue if you are going to use this approach).

For the Red items, some discussion will be necessary.  For example:

• What is the key reason for not hitting the goal? (lack of focus?, lack of skill?, dependencies?, too many goals?, distractions? the goal is no longer relevant?)

• (if the goal is still important) What are the options for hitting the goal? (can resources be rearranged to better meet the overall goals for the company?  Can you get some outside assistance?  Can a different person/department take on the goal?)

• What is the best option?

• What adjustments are we committing to?

Your goal for the meeting should be to get through the red items at the meeting with a clear and committed set of adjustments for the rest of the quarter that will allow you to nail as many of your most important goals as possible.

A well run agenda item with all the goals green/yellow should take 10 minutes to get through.  Since this is probably an unlikely event, each item needs to be worked through and the time it takes will depend on the team and their capabilities (it will definitely take a lot more time the first few times you do this, but after several months of this teams generally get into a rhythm and the process runs pretty smoothly).

Going into the senior management meeting, you may find that it is good practice for each of the senior managers to run the same process with their teams (and so on for each level of management if you are a large company with multiple layers).

Give it a try if you are not already doing something like this...it really helps senior management teams execute business growth strategies and any company that is managing through significant change.

As a Venture Capitalist who has been on the Microsoft Venture Capital Partner Advisory Committee for several years, I am a bit sad to see the recent press on innovation issues at Microsoft.

That said, I wrote a blog series several years ago on How David can Beat Goliath, as my view has always been that smaller companies are better positioned to win many markets.  One post in particular, relating to exploiting the innovation issues at large companies seems to apply particularly well to the issues that the writers are pointing out.

I wrote the How David can Beat Goliath series to help expansion stage companies realize that they have some unique advantages against the large companies that can be exploited if Goliath's weaknesses are turned into David's strategic goals, driven through David's management system, and well executed.  The points and ideas are timeless and the current Microsoft example is a good one. 

As a venture capital investor in expansion stage companies, I love the opportunity to help companies take on certain existing product markets that are currently owned by large companies, as the price points are generally healthy, products are generally dated, and business development strategies can be developed and executed to take market share from the Goliaths.  Take a look at the series, as it might spark some good ideas.

Goliath has weaknesses- Exploit them!

Content management marketing is more and more a hot topic for marketers.  The basic idea is to become THE publishing company for your target audience by being the source of information for them.  As we help our portfolio companies with their content marketing strategies, the first obvious missing ingredient is a content creation engine. 

Our first recommendation is to start content management marketing efforts by getting your ideas out of your heads and onto your website through blogging.  Blogging is a great vehicle for getting your ideas onto the table and the readers don't expect perfectly edited copy or perfect graphics as they do with whitepapers or other forms of content packaging.  Also, if you use Compendium as your blogging platform, they nicely package your content in a way that search engines can find you more easily.  Finally, after you blog for a while, you will have a great source of ideas and inspiration for more structured articles, whitepapers, e-books, videos, and other forms of content management marketing.

What do you do next?  Junta42 recently completed a survey of what others are expecting to do.  My read of the favored forms of content is that they are in line with what seems to be working for other companies.  The key, of course is to have a sharp focus on your target customers, find out what they find useful to them, and then to create content about it (btw, it is probably NOT your product marketing material).  The packaging of the content, the topics of the content, and all other aspects will become clear if you experiment and measure the results of your work....

A recent Pew study found that teens are abandoning blogs for social networks.  They also found that teens don't use twitter.  This jibes with my experience with my teens, who are using Facebook and SMS mostly at this point and don't even seem to know what twitter is and don't seem to care about blogging.  If the target audience for your expansion stage company is teens, you clearly need to figure out how to develop your lead generation system toward the social sites, probably using a content management marketing program.  Interesting study...

Dan Zarella has put a lot of research and thought against how to create, package, and distribute ideas so that the ideas spread.  He packaged them into a really nice post on the topic here.  I also liked the ease with which a person can sign up for his newsletter (click the link and you will see the mechanism). 

Perhaps using these ideas as part of your content management marketing will help you to get more penetration into your target audience with the same level of effort to help your expansion stage company expand faster?  Perhaps it could result in more leads and less expense to your paid lead generation services?



Note: thanks to the Junta42 newsletter for pointing out Dan's post.

When ERP moves to the cloud, you know that SAAS is a megatrend.  Check out this podcast with Mark Symonds, CEO of Plex Systems.  Phil Wainewright asks some excellent questions (the common objections to SAAS) and Mark has some great insights.  One of the great business growth strategies for software companies over the last decade has been to redevelop their software as a SAAS platform.  If it can be done well with ERP, it should be able to be done well with every application.

There is an interesting report out of IDC suggestion Business Intelligence delivered via SAAS is going to grow at 22.4% CAGR through 2013.  We have been looking forward to the "intelligence" to be built into BI software for years (rather than just reporting and dashboards)...perhaps the cloud-based delivery model will help push this along as well and some great new companies will get to the expansion stage and be looking for investors?