Following the TAG/ATDC presentation from yesterday, I had several requests for the slides. I just finished uploading them to SlideShare and have embeded it below:
Thanks again to everyone that attended.
Month: February 2010
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Public Speaking Thoughts
This morning I had the opportunity to talk at the TAG/ATDC Entrepreneurs group using the material from my Iterate or Die articles. I wanted to say thanks to TAG and ATDC for inviting me to speak as well as say thanks for everyone who attended. As for public speaking, I always enjoy the opportunity to speak in front of an audience and talk through something I feel strongly about, like the need to pivot and change directions in a startup. Here are a few things I try to do when given the opportunity to speak publicly:
- Develop slides that tell a story with simple pictures and as few words as possible (see Beyond Bullet Points)
- Respect the time of the event and leave a few minutes at the end for questions
- Thank the people that invited me as well as the audience for attending
- Emphasize a theme and takeaway message from the talk (ideally most people will take away one or two items from the talk)
- Make my email address available for people to ask questions after the event has finished
Of course, there’s nothing revolutionary here but I find that following these simple tactics results in a good outcome.
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Idea Exchanges for Employee Feedback
One of my favorite things we do each month is honor an internal hero and choose the most pressing hassle/best idea. The hero and hassle of the month is chosen by everyone through directly voting with an idea exchange. For us, we use UserVoice.com and just close the ideas out each month. The winner of the hero of the month and the provider of the most pressing hassle/best idea each get a $100 bill at our monthly all hands meeting. Here are some key benefits:
- Employee recognition is done in a consistent and company-wide fashion
- More pressing hassles and good ideas are generated, and documented, using this methodology
- Departments and team members talk about the recognition and ideas on a daily basis at our morning check-ins
- Each winner gets a fun lawn ornament (think little sumo wrestler and big foot character) to keep at their desk for the month to highlight that they won
I’d recommend looking for ways to recognize employees and capture good ideas in a systematic fashion. Idea exchanges provide just the medium for us.
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Sales Rep as Consultant
One of the core values for our sales approach is to follow a consultative model (solution selling) whereby we work to understand the needs of our prospect in a non-pushy fashion. Unfortunately, we have a couple competitors that follow the pushy approach and spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about our product and company. Naturally, the immediate reaction is to belittle the competitor and talk about their inferiorities. Instead of taking a fight-negative-with-negative approach we strive to address any incorrect assertions as well as to emphasize what we do well and why we’re a good fit.
I recommend making an explicit decision as to your approach to the market, brand value, and what your company will do when situations like this arise. It is important to maintain a consistent position, whichever direction you choose.
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TAG/ATDC Talk: Iterate or Die
This Thursday morning I’m giving a talk in Midtown Atlanta for the TAG/ATDC Entrepreneurs Series on my Iterate or Die articles on TechDrawl.com. Here are some of the items I cover:
- How I funded development of our first product
- How September 11, 2001 proved beneficial for us
- Why I shelved our first product and found funding for our second product
- What I learned that didn’t work in sales and marketing
- What I learned that did work to develop a leadership position in a vertical
Please join me for the event this Thursday morning at 7:30 by signing up online for the talk.
David Cummings on Startups 