A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 21, 2009

What one thing is most responsible for preventing sales? people not knowing you exist, pricing, not enough product features, unorganized sales strategy, look-and-feel of website, haven't identified pain points,). What's one thing you could do to get more feedback from customers, potential customers, or sales you've lost?

Startup 315

Startup Revenue Cofounder Sales 315

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 18, 2010

I would orchestrate purchases, but should I be handling large sums of money with no knowledge of accounting, cash-flow, invoicing, purchase orders, or "enterprise sales" process? Don't I need an MBA or at least some sales training? And sales isn't as mystical and unknowable as I feared. Aren't I too young?

Software Review 335

Software Review Reputation Software Sales 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

It’s relatively easy for a technical founder to agree that she isn’t the best person to build a global sales organization, but is she ready to agree that even where she is excellent , it’s still her job to find people who are even more excellent, not just at individual tasks but at building entire teams?

Warrant 120

Warrant Founder Engineer Matching 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 12, 2011

Remember, tech support is sales ! How do you manage that, especially when you’re small? You’re not hiring a Systems Engineer III for IBM or a Senior Regional Sales Manager for Dell. Be funny, reflect your personality, reflect the uniqueness of your company. Attend local meet-ups and user groups.

Hiring 282

Hiring Employee Ruby Java 282

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

He has an idea for a new software package for managing an expensive, time-consuming aspect of practice-management. Use that rolodex to set up meetings and sales calls, but don’t assume you know what they’re going to say. Use that experience to come up with plausible theories, not to make decisions.

Lean 269

Lean Software Software Developers Software Development 269

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 22, 2013

A great manager who develops the careers of their folks versus several average ones who are glorified project managers. A product manager driving consistent, brilliant output driven by salability instead of under-the-hood technical gymnastics. A great writer (content marketing, social media) versus 100 average bloggers.

Engineer 257

Engineer Social Media Acquisition Sales 257

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 23, 2013

of revenue, force-feeding sales pipelines with an unprofitable product. I know the argument: The pay-back period on sales, marketing, and up-start costs is long, but there’s a profitable result at the end of the tunnel. Marketing, sales, legal, account management, on-boarding, technical guidance, training.

Business Model 335

Business Model .Net Revenue IPO 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 22, 2011

I can lecture you about how blogging success is about content and time rather than looks and plugins , but I still wrote my own plugin to manage exactly how the “retweet&# link behaves in the RSS feed. It’s why I couldn’t just be retired after the sale of Smart Bear , writing blog posts and talking to entrepreneurs.

Software Review 250

Software Review RSS Differentiation .Net 250

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

I was working on my first true “enterprise sale.&# (If you aren’t familiar with the professional mosh-pit that is enterprise sales, here’s a primer.). But mostly it’s because of the traditional enterprise sales dance, reminiscent of the lumbering mating dance of the great blue whale.

Bootstrapping 312

Bootstrapping Sales Texas Salary 312

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

Your company spends money on sales and marketing to acquire new customers (aka – new logos). CAC – Generally defined as sales and marketing costs divided by the number of new customers acquired over the same period of time (sales + marketing / new customers). Now let’s cover those nuances I mentioned.

Churn Rate 288

Churn Rate .Net Metrics Hosting 288

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 12, 2010

It's hard to explain" should not be a standard part of your sales pitch. There are ways to elucidate the utility of Twitter, but even the good ones are lengthy and require listeners with patience and open minds — two attributes in short supply. You just need to try it" and "trust me" don't cut it.

Technical Review 243

Technical Review Software Review Engineer Search 243

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 10, 2010

These companies typically make money either by charging sellers for listing (akin to the yellow pages) or by charging a sales commission (akin to a "finder's fee"). These are distinct operations — different clients, different technology, different sales process — almost like two separate companies. So what's the problem?

Business Model 310

Business Model Finder SEO Bootstrapping 310

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 28, 2014

Large company should send a few emails to the customer base, generating easy sales at no cost, and the revenues are split. To see exactly how this works, let’s use an example from my own company, the largest managed WordPress hosting platform. Free money for all, thus good deal for all. But now let’s look at the economics.

Startup 293

Startup Hosting Distribution Revenue 293

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

Examples: A popular app drops to zero downloads after Apple builds it into iOS; A Microsoft Office add-on drops to zero sales after Microsoft builds that feature into Office; A Twitter utility breaks when Twitter removes functionality from their public API. The product was built on a platform , and the platform changed.

Software Review 294

Software Review Channel Revenue Non-Compete 294

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

And when you look at the tools that we use, I mean we’ve made so many technological advances, but really to manage a meeting there’s not a practical tool available. We use email; we use Word; we use task manager; we use a file sharing tool. They are so happy that they finally have a tool to manage their business.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

So, no project can have fewer than, say, three people dedicated to it, plus people management and possibly some form of Product or Project Management. Marketing isn’t scheduling a launch and recruiting isn’t timing the start-dates of the next 50 hires in customer service and sales. Predictability means going slower.

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 28, 2011

I came back with these three ideas: 1) Manager behind desk to applicant – “Your resume says you’re distractible, you like to gossip, and you sometimes oversleep? ” 5) Management type in meeting to employees – “Honesty is big right now. Can I combine ideas? Where can I exaggerate? How about animals?

Customer 228

Customer Audience Web Hiring 228

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 8, 2010

This is a guest post by Jarie Bolander, author of Frustration Free Technical Management and a moderator at Answers OnStartups. Awkwardness in asking for something: Asking for the sale or clarification produces a lot of anxiety. Tags: Guest Posts customers feedback marketing relationships sales. That way, it builds up gradually.

Harvest 227

Harvest Email Lean Customer 227

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 15, 2014

My daily life consists of (a) setting the strategy and rationale of the Engineering & Innovation department, based on a mixture of vision, data, and the needs of the rest of the company, (b) participate in doing the same for the whole company, (c) hire, (d) manage the managers whose teams execute the real work.

CTO Hire 266

CTO Hire RSS Cofounder Algorithm 266

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

But we managed to grow a few customers, so that’s good, in spite of the name. Noel: So we been looking on enterprise power management tool. We been managing the field by plan more than 75 enterprise customers and channel partners. We been managing the field by plan more than 75 enterprise customers and channel partners.

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

Turns out that for big-business project management it's more valuable to be a sensible thinker and counselor than to be an expert in debugging legacy C++ code.). Traditional practice-management software for psychiatrists totally sucks; she knows both the pain points and the existing software first-hand. I can see the sales pitch now.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JANUARY 11, 2010

And depending on your startup’s market, traditional marketing (paper spam, email spam, sales visits, shows, conferences, display ads, etc.) It happens to be a very happy circumstance that we can now translate time via social marketing (blogs, Twitter, Facebook and all the rest) into sales. may still have some residual value.

Entrepreneur 225

Entrepreneur Social Media Software Web 225

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 30, 2010

Customers make it necessary to put processes in place for marketing, sales, support, and back-end admin tasks. If your VA is self-managing, you can lay out tasks a month at a time. I've had exceptional luck with them, and their project management tools are helpful in making sure your VA is working on your tasks. and Canada.

Software Review 284

Software Review Startup Technical Review Hosting 284

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 28, 2011

She’s in business for over 10 years and she’s been able to pursue this hobby of her’s and it’s a huge part of her life while growing a very successful business that is very manageable and has kept her very satisfied and happy. ’ On top of that, she actually needed to be flexible with her spouse.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder New York Conversion Entrepreneur 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

And if you worked just 20 hours/week (on average) at that rate you’d clear $150,000 annually without the hassle of hiring and managing an employee. It gives us an advantage in consulting because it accelerates our development and enhances our sales pitch. Isn’t that better? What to do? So how do you mitigate these issues?

America 330

America Employee Hiring HTML 330

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 20, 2011

I recently helped a friend broker the sale of his small, bootstrapped company. This is a smart guy with experience and a logical approach to such things, but the way he was initially trying to value his company was not only wrong, but the wrong way to think about the entire sale. To stoke an existing sales channel. Actually, no.

Sales 260

Sales Channel Cofounder Valuation 260

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

DECEMBER 5, 2010

These might seem obvious, but look at most blog posts (from unsuccessful blogs) and you'll notice how almost none fo the posts manages to be one of these three things. Overt marketing messages (when is the last time you passed on a banner ad to friends or some kind of sales crap?). It's rarer than it should be.

Community 261

Community Audience Video Social Media 261

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 14, 2013

Should you cut off the affiliate program since it’s a waste of time, or redouble your efforts in affiliate management? That implies it’s wise to optimize — there’s more sales for you there, and it’s easier and cheaper to optimize an existing campaign than to start up a new one. We believe less than 2x.

Affiliate 282

Affiliate Marketing Campaign Channel 282

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

Never mind managing consultants or employees! You can’t just “decide” to avoid working on sales and marketing and still have a business that you can rightly claim is more stable than a job. But yes, in the words of Ben Horowitz , “Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions.”

Cofounder 312

Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312