For those of you who follow the TV series Start-up Junkies, the Seattle Times had this great update on Earth Class Mail.<< MORE >>

I want to introduce you to a strong predictor of your company's growth: It's called the Net Promoter Score, or NPS. The reason it's so powerful is that it provides an objective measure of customer loyalty, and research has shown that companies with extremely loyal customers tend to grow faster and at a lower cost than competitors, because their customers continue to refer business. The part I love about the Net Promoter Score is that while it's so effective, its also incredibly simple and cheap to put into place - You just ask your customers to answer this question:<< MORE >>

Thanks to those that let me know that all of the Start-up Junkies episodes are available free on Hulu.com.  Here is the link to the episodes. 

        

I admit I have a real issue about how people throw the term "lead" around, as many in sales and marketing use the term incorrectly. Using the right definition is critical because its the only way you can protect yourself from using faulty data in determining the quality of your sales and marketing programs. I have a very simple definition that has served me extremely well: << MORE >>

While working on my 500+ Sales and Marketing Questions document, a debate has occurred regarding roles, responsibilities and accountability for website sales. The debate was made even more interesting when the TV sitcom "The Office" showed the character Ryan, the boss at corporate, nudging the sales people in the field office to remember to enter their sales into the website. It is only on the season finale that we learn that Ryan has been intentionally double-counting sales because the website, which he heavily promoted internally, wasn't doing well versus the sales people, and we watch him being carted off to jail for fraud. OK, omitting the fraud plot twist, historically website sales have indeed caused friction<< MORE >>

I'm really pleased that 70% of the readership of this blog is male - that I could earn such praise as a professional and as a woman is a huge achievement. I love working with men and have had GREAT colleagues and mentors of the male persuasion. That puts me in a unique position to comment on Obama's recent outrageous-unbelievable- slanderous comment -- He called a professional woman "sweetie". I'm kidding of course - it was certainly wrong, but the number of comments and blog posts on news sites on Sweetiegate (read ABC news post here) and especially the comments, make it clear that what happened is extremely misunderstood. As a professional woman who has made it to the executive suite (where I've often been told I have the biggest balls in the room), << MORE >>

I'd be interested in your opinion of female bosses - do you believe there is a difference in how men and women manage?  Which do you prefer and why?  Please comment, I'm very curious! 

Thanks for commenting!

        

With Episode 4 airing on MOJO again I thought I'd address the pricing argument that occurs in that episode of the show.  What was my beef? 

The issue was around the number of people that would be needed to manage the Cheetah account and whether enough headcount and additional operational expenses were factored in before we gave Cheetah a pricing proposal.  When I first got to the company, no account manager was in the headcount plan.  Once Cheetah came on board, which has over 70 offices and 60,000+ employees, I was concerned we'd need not just 1 account manager but ...<< MORE >>

The best part of my day is when I have one-on-one lunches with members of front line of a company, and I try to do this multiple times a week. Each single hour provides me a reality check on what's really going on, makes the employee feel listened to, and helps me substantiate issues by noting which ones keep boiling to the top. To me, these are the ultimate power lunches! Whereas most execs spend their lunches either working, with their peers, or with their direct subordinates, my lunches give me an inside view to what is working and not working within a company - the unblemished view. When lunching with a front-line employee, it is difficult to get past the politeness to the real meat as their first instinct is<< MORE >>

FYI, the Startup Junkies episodes are now available on iTunes.   The entire season can be downloaded for $10.99 for all 8 episodes, so for those of you who have written about missing episodes or wanting to show the season to your team or class you can now get ahold of them.  (I don't receive any royalties, this is purely FYI.)
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