I get calls from SaaS companies all the time offering to “partner” with us. I already know their pitch. They have a great solution that customers are clamoring to buy, and if I just sign up with them my sales force will have additional solutions to offer to our customers and we will all make […]
I learned a productivity trick for my e-mail inbox the other day that is so amazing I just have to share it. When I implemented the change it immediately reduce the amount of actionable e-mail in my inbox by 50%. I’ve had my e-mail address for many years and even though I have been diligently […]
So you have a big IT project coming up next year that can make a big difference to your company’s operations as well as your career. What can you do to make sure it goes right? Having been on the IT Solution Provider side of the business for many years, I have seen many different […]
In many role playing games there is the ability to have your character level up. After a certain amount of experience, study, or achievement, the character advances a level. This level advancement confers new abilities such as improved strength, increased dexterity, more wisdom, or a higher level of intelligence. As these games are supposed to […]
In the first year of our business while we were still a startup company I hired a sales rep. He was our first sales guy. He said, “Can I be the VP of Sales?” I said, “Sure!” That was just one of the many dumb things I’ve done in my life, and later when I […]
The Information Technology solution sale is a tricky business. It is definitely a complex sale, with many different decision makers, multiple competitors, and a continuously changing mix of capabilities, cost, and value. Throw in disruptive technology change on a regular basis that can entirely upend business models, and it all leads to one of the […]
The metric system, on the face of it, seems sensible. When you want to go to the next bigger unit of measurement, just increase things by a factor of 10. It is apparently so sensible, students always ask the question, why does America not convert to metric? The teachers and professors shake their heads at […]
Social Media is very powerful, and has the ability to hurt a business quickly. It has the ability to help a business as well, and that takes a longer time. A Social media presence is that people trust recommendations and reviews by others more than they trust advertising. So there is an upside to participating […]
This last weekend I almost lost all the pictures. We have four kids, and have tons of pictures. I had set up the user accounts on our Mac on an external mirrored drive, connected by Firewire. This was mostly good, but this weekend all the applications just refused to connect because of some kind of […]
I’ve got an activity and interest curve for learning something new. I go through it all the time. First I find out something that is really neat. I voraciously learn about it, experiment, find out through trial and error what works and what doesn’t. Then I evaluate to see whether this is something that I […]
