There will be an Open Angel Forum on Nov 10th and a TechStars Investor Day on Nov 11th! If you are in Seattle and doing a startup, you should definitely check them out.

More at ….




As a kid growing up, I idolized Rock Stars and was a fan of a bunch of old rock bands.  I’m still a fan of Kansas, Boston, Yes, U2, Jefferson Starship, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, GNR, etc.  I dreamed about becoming a rock star and played in several bands, I even owned a really cool red “key-tar” (a guitar looking keyboard for those of you who don’t remember).  We would practice for hours, play gigs, and try to hit it big by sending in demos to the record lables.  We would dream about getting that elusive record deal and become rock stars.  Although it never happened, I found that some of my fondest memories and happiest times were when we were “in the zone” practicing or playing in front of small crowds.  Have you ever felt like you were “in the zone”?  For me, that meant everyone in the band was on the same page, feeding off of the energy of each other, and making great music – it was raw and pure joy!  The same can be said for a business that is “in the zone”.
How do you get your business “in the zone” and really working on all cylinders?  I can honestly say that it doesn’t happen often and you absolutely know it when it happens, the team is all on the same page focused and energized on the vision, customers are happy, investors are excited, and you are absolutely on a mission.  Here are my thoughts on the three ways to get “in the zone”:

1) It takes a spark.  Someone in the band has a creative moment and starts a simple chord progression with a rocking tempo and the band starts jamming.  That’s all it takes is someone with initiative to start it off.  That of course, should be you.  It’s your inspiration, your creativity, your energy that everyone will feed off of.  However, you’ve got to get off your butt – and execute against your idea and inspire a team around you.  Get the ball rolling, stop listening to music and make your own.

2) Move until you Groove.  A lot of times, a drummer or a guitar player will start a jam session with a simple beat or a guitar lick and the band just starts feeding on it until everyone is in a groove.  However, most times, people just aren’t feeling it or just don’t get it and you’ve got to start over and take another direction.  Recognizing when something just isn’t working and moving on is a great skill, move on too quickly and you just might miss a great opportunity, move too slowly and you lose valuable time.  The underlying lesson is always be moving because you will hit a groove – too many entrepreneurs just plain give up when things aren’t going right.  Things mostly don’t go right, you’ve got to keep trying.  It’s worth the ride to get the groove on – several of my companies took at least 2-3 years before we got it right.

3) Build energy or momentum.  Once you’re in a groove, don’t let up.  Hit the gas pedal.  It’s just getting fun, everyone has got energy, executing on all cylinders.  You’re moving downhill, take advantage of it.  People feed off your energy and you feed off theirs, so keep your energy level high.  For example, the best time to sell a deal is right after you close a deal – you’re on a high, you’re confident, and you’re on a roll!  When we were in a groove jamming away, we would try to keep it going as long as we could.

4) It takes the right band members.  It’s impossible for me to get a tone deaf person to be the lead singer just like it would be impossible for me to teach a drummer how to keep a beat.  If you have those people in your company, let them go.  Once you have them though, trust that they can do their jobs and provide the right environment for them to thrive and to get into a groove.  When we were jamming in a band, we had to trust each other especially when we’re performing – focusing on our own role.

5) It’s all about rhythm.  Music wouldn’t be music without rhythm.  As human beings we have rhythm as well, a pulse, a heartbeat – without it, we are dead.  Business without rhythm is undisciplined, likely to be dead quickly.  What do I mean by business rhythm?  Do you have critical processes that help keep everyone aligned and accountable (board meetings, huddles, etc)?  How do you keep a rhythm of high energy (celebrations, parties)?  How about a communicative rhythm (investor updates, company updates) to keep key folks thinking about your business?  Keeping a regular rhythm helps you stay disciplined and accountable.

When a business is totally cranking, energized, and everyone is aligned – it is a real joy for everyone involved. One of my favorite rock stars, Bono once said “Joy is a subject I go on and on about. It’s one of the only emotions you can’t contrive. It’s impossible. Despair and anger are easier to convey. Great rock ‘n’ roll, the raw stuff, is pure joy. It’s that sense of being alive, of being grateful for your pulse.” I love rock ‘n’ roll, and like music I think great businesses can also bring real joy and fun for not only you, but everyone you come in contact with.




Do you remember the last time you were inspired to do something great? Something that you didn’t think you were capable of doing? When I think about inspirational leadership, I think of people in my life that pushed me beyond what I imagined and I was extremely thankful for it. It was a math teacher in 6th grade, a basketball coach in 8th grade, a business professor/mentor in college, a manager at AT&T, an early investor in my first startup, a board member today. All of whom I wanted to work beyond what was expected and excel at a higher level for. They always believed you were capable of more. They always believed you could be excellent. On the other hand, I’ve worked for and worked with people that were plain “managers” – people who dictated work, didn’t expect excellence, didn’t provide challenges/authority/responsibility, and didn’t care. As I’ve reflected on my own leadership experiences, here are some thoughts I have on becoming an inspirational leader – and to be honest, these are just thoughts as I’m striving to become a better inspirational leader:

1. Inspirational leaders do not sell you short. I recently met an entrepreneur that’s hiring senior team members and is having a difficult time. I asked him if there were any up and comers in the company that he could see becoming a senior manager and he said there are some strong performers, but they just don’t have the skills to do it. I’d argue that an inspirational leader might take a risk and put the title of “interim Senior Manager” title on one of the star performers and see if they can step up and do the job. An inspirational leader in my mind provides opportunities beyond what the individual or the leader thinks the individual is capable of. I’d argue that the results might just surprise you! Don’t sell people short, invest in your stars and give them enough responsibility where they might fail. Push and coach, as Pete Carroll likes to say “Always Compete” – make sure they have an opportunity to win or lose and learn from it. If all they do is win, you just might not be using them enough! Another analogy, if they are kicking butt in Triple A ball in baseball send them up to the Majors and see what they can do. You just might have an Albert Pujols on your hands!

2. Inspirational leaders gets rid of people quickly. I don’t know how many times I’ve mentioned this in my blog. Bad employees, bad leaders not only don’t produce, they also have a huge negative impact on your team. Your leadership becomes undermined and confidence in your philosophies start getting eroded – and, this is on your payroll! I’m definitely not arguing that you should get rid of people who disagree with you, but people who are always negative, never sees solutions, doesn’t care, never accountable, cannot be on your team. No matter how inspirational you might be to the majority of your team, they will always wonder why you’ve kept the non-performer on as long as you have. I hate to say this, but I’ve worked with these people in my for-profit and non-profit businesses, and they are so easy to spot – they’re difficult, they wear you down, they take up your time, and you can’t focus on what’s important. I’m tired being around those people. It’s time to be a real leader and let them go quickly and with dignity. They may even thank you for it later.

3. Inspirational leaders do not lead through fear. They lead through confidence and shared vision. Think about the managers you’ve worked for that you were always worried about getting fired, angry outbursts, or caused undue unhealthy emotional and physical stress. Although it does motivate some, it becomes a quick spiral to burnout for star performers. Fear can be a reasonable short-term strategy, but rarely sustainable. Inspirational leaders instill confidence and purpose into the workplace. There is a clear vision amongst the team and confidence in the leader. I like the analogy that the leader sets out on which mountain to scale or war to fight, but relies on the team to own the strategy and execution to scale the mountain or win the war. The inspirational leader is the cheerleader that instills confidence into each person that the mountain is worth scaling and the war is worth winning. Do your employees and team members know what the vision is? Do they confidence in you to lead or are they fearful of you? Or neither?

4. Inspirational leaders know how to live it out. Ghandi’s famous quote – “Be the change you wish to see” – rings true for me. He is an inspirational leader that lived it out – there was a real genuine quality to his leadership. We saw it in Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others. Are you fired up about the shared vision? Are you living it out? Is there a positive ethos, momentum, and determination that people can sense when they are around you? This is hard to measure, but do you feel inspired each day you wake up and interact with people? Ask those around you – do they get more energy after spending time with you or less energy? If you live it out, people will feed off of your energy.

We can all be inspirational leaders that are making a difference and helping others achieve their goals and dreams – we just have to be intentional about it. I love the video from Al Pacino above (especially with the NFL season upon us), he sets the stage as the coach the war the team will have to fight and the players need to execute to win. What do you think?

How do you manage your sales pipeline? Wait - do you have a sales pipeline? Before we go crazy and talk about PipelineDeals product, let’s back it up a little bit and talk about how when, how, and why you start a sales pipeline. Too often startups get past the point where it would be nice to have a pipeline of deals to work on and revenue is left on the table. If there are a lot of projects in the pipeline, how do you manage them and prioritize them?

Come down to Pioneer Square to meet the team from PipelineDeals, fresh from Philadelphia (even if there wasn’t a big hoopla about the office opening like facebook or hulu). JP Werlin will provide insight into the sales cycle and what they have learned from working with thousands of customers on building a sales pipeline and what that means to the growth of their businesses.

If you are a trying to figure out what to do about sales either to start or to get the ball rolling again – this is definitely the TechCafe to attend.

Of course the usual great crowd, food, and drinks will help round out the conversation.

Register: http://www.npost.com/techcafe/upcoming-events/
When: 9/24/2010 – 4:30pm
Where: 100 S. King Street Suite 425 Seattle, WA 98104

The TechCafe Team
(Sponsored By Fenwick & West, LLP)

IDC recently reported that salespeople spend about a third of their time on direct customer interactions, 16 percent on prospect interactions, 18 percent on preparing for sales calls, and 9 percent on territory and lead development, but more than 25 percent of their time on administrative tasks. Both inside and field salespeople spend about three hours per week acting as “pioneers” by mining for customer and industry data when preparing for sales calls. Once they get the information they need, they spend more than six hours per week creating presentations. They also spend more than two hours per week looking for marketing collateral. Unfortunately, about 50 to 90 percent of what marketing creates is never even seen by salespeople. IDC calculated that if a company can save one sales rep about 10 minutes per week on administrative or sales prep work and reapply that time to selling activities, it could potentially gain about $57,000 per rep per year as a result.  This is the idea behind sales enablement, that is what can companies do to minimize the time salespeople spend on administrative tasks, optimize preparation time, and prioritize selling time? Below are five best practices every company can adopt.

1. Aligned Marketing and Sales Performance Targets: Study after study reveals the downside of poor marketing and sales alignment: longer sales cycles, eroding margins, failed launches of new product, fewer qualified opportunities, missed quotas, redundant and ineffective marketing and sales materials, inconsistent messaging to the market, and ultimately diminished shareholder value. While it takes some efforts and lots of communication, the performance targets for these two organizations needs to be in sync, this start with common planning against common business outcomes.
2. Map sales and marketing assets to their use cases.  This is the domain of Marketing Asset Management and Digital Asset Management solutions.   Organizations typically invest a lot of money in creating the right tools needed by the sales force to move prospects forward in a sales cycle and close them. Even so, research suggests that salespeople still spend an average of 40% of their time preparing client-facing deliverables, while leveraging less than 50% of the materials (assets) created by marketing. As a result, many companies have created home grown approaches (intranets, file servers, etc) where the marketing organization can upload an asset for the sales person to access. Often a sales person spends too much time trying to find the right materials for their particular instance. And over time, the intranet or shared file directory begins to contain hundreds of marketing documents such as brochures, data sheets, sales tools, email templates, customer success stories etc. The names of the files may not be descriptive enough – as a result one cannot clearly discern the content from its file name.  As a result of these issues and more, the ROI on sales and marketing tools tends to be lower than expected and the two organizations are disappointed in each other.  By mapping assets to use case many of the issues of which assets to use can be overcome. By using an MAM platform both teams will be able to improve and control access to assets.
3. Define and document the marketing and sales process before adding any supporting technologies – such as CRM or Marketing or Sales Automation solutions.  If the process isn’t defined prior to the implementation, configurations may end having to be reworked causing deployment delays, lack of usage, and cost overruns.  Before implementing any technology conducting a marketing and sales process working session and then take 60-90 days to validate the process to make sure what the team believes is the process is truly the way the process works.  Make changes as necessary and update the process map. The process map can then be used to create the business rules for the technology.
4. Identify key improvement drivers.  This seems rather obvious but if you don’t know what it will take to improve performance then people will do whatever they think will work.  By identifying the improvement drivers, an organization can take a systematic approach to improving sales performance and create repeatable processes that can be applied to new sales people in order to accelerate ramp up time and productivity.
5. Establish shared performance metrics in advance.  When Marketing and Sales are working from different performance metrics they can potentially be working at cross purposes. Or even more importantly one team may be achieving their metric at the expense of the other.  It’s easy to see how sales and marketing can get sideways when you examine the lack of alignment between commonly used metrics.  For example sales metrics often include, revenue per salesperson, Average sale cycle, Average deal size, Sales representative turnover rate, New rep ramp-up time, Average administrative time per rep, Percent of representatives that achieve quota , Average time to close, Average price discount, Percent of accurate forecasted opportunities, Average number of calls to close the deal, Average number of presentations necessary to close the deal, Average number of proposals needed to close the deal, and Average win rate. We’ve seen marketing performance metrics such as these Marketing dollars as a percent of revenue, Average return on marketing, Total leads generated, Average response rate, Lead qualification rate, Lead close rate, Percent of marketing collateral used by sales representatives , Change in market penetration, Improvement in time-to-market , Number of feedback points, Marketing execution time, Message close rate execution time, and Message close rate. All of the metrics are very internally focused.  One of the best ways to create shared metrics for sales and marketing is to take a customer-centric approach and create customer related metrics. We’d recommend agreeing on the joint metrics at the start of each year and reviewing performance against these metrics together.

I recently ran into someone in the Seattle startup scene and began chatting about the doers and the DOERS. This person was chatting about all the people that are coming to networking events and that it was a great sign for the startup community. To which I agreed, but stated that there is a very real demarcation between the networkers (doers) and the entrepreneurs (DOERS). My point was that the conversion rate from doers to DOERS is probably less than 1%…

Start with:

3MM people in the Seattle region
5% are interested in startups (15,000)
2.9% actually start a company
= 410 of Startups (tech – from the Seattle 2.0 list)

This means that 0.01% of people go on to start a tech company in any given year… This number is even lower if you take out the number that were started in a given year.

So, what is the best way to spur more entrepreneurship? Grow your home grown talent? Bring other entrepreneurs to Seattle (or where ever it is that you live)? Don’t even try?

In my conversation, I said that less than 1% of people that come to events will ever start a company. I stand by that claim.

Caveats:

1. Yea, these numbers are rough
2. Many, many more companies are started that are non-tech
3. I am focusing on tech related startups as those have the potential to scale more quickly than other businesses