Sales Person or Tattletale?
Tim Berry just posted about annoying trade show tactics on his blog. Beyond the annoying sales person at trade shows Tim mentions, how about those annoying vendors who cold call you or employees at your company, and then get annoyed when you don’t call back? Or even worse, someone at your company does call back,...
By Sabrina Parsons |
What does Success Mean?
This morning I read two different blog posts about defining success. One was on Inc.com’s Great Entrepreneurial Minds written by a woman who had just attended the Inc 500 conference in Chicago. She was surprised to find out that in a group of fellow successful entrepreneurs, none of them thought they had “made it” yet....
By Sabrina Parsons |
Listen to the people who actually do the work
I just read a fascinating article on pbs.org about the sad demise of Business 2.0 magazine. I think the most interesting thing about the failure of the magazine is Time Inc.’s complete lack of understanding of what made Business 2.0 work. Time apparently implemented a new strategy that lumped all the “business” magazines together, and...
By Sabrina Parsons |
Address your target customer!
I just read about MINT, an online money management application, winning the TechCrunch 40 conference. I read TechCrunch, and I immediately wanted to see more about the chosen winner. I also happen to be the person who deals with tracking my household’s finances — from paying bills to budgeting our income. So when I heard...
By Sabrina Parsons |
How Can You Possibly Manage Without Planning?
The past month I have been responsible for the forecast for Palo Alto Software’s next fiscal year. This is the first year where I am truly solely responsible, as I am now the CEO. As I have massaged numbers, asked for collaboration on budgets from managers of different departments, and discussed the sales forecast with...
By Sabrina Parsons |
Warning: Watch Your Assumptions
Always make your assumptions explicit and make sure to go back and review the assumptions as you track progress and manage your plan.
By Tim Berry |
Ideas are Easy, Doing Stuff is Hard
I posted here last week about the example of Mark Zuckerberg and the controversy around Facebook. Three different people claim he stole their idea. This morning Seth Godin answered an email asking why he gives ideas away in his blog: “I responded that ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard.” This comes up here frequently because...
By Tim Berry |
But mommy, the cupcake was so good!
I had an interesting interaction with my 3-year old over the weekend that reminded me that most of us are faced with whether to be naughty or nice throughout our entire lives. Sometimes its just worth being naughty — even considering the consequences. Sunday my youngest turned 1, and we had a birthday party for...
