Article: Why Startups Should Pay Attention to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9

Hi was reading this article by Mark Suster:

But here’s the magic. With Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul all in the race nobody should even be talking about Herman Cain. You have the fringe candidate in Ron Paul. You have the red meat social candidate in Michelle Bachman. You have the groomed and polished candidates like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. You have the “anybody but Mitt” candidate Rick Perry. You even have the old guard Newt Gingrich.

But we’re all talking about Herman Cain.

He makes the point that software companies have a hard time articulating their value proposition to potential customers in a clear and understandable way. That's an issue I'm faced with daily as a software sales guy: how do you convey both the breadth and depth of your offering while at the same time keeping your prospects interested and engaged in the conversation? You have to walk a fine line between oversimplifying and showing the value for your potential customer's specific use case.

The key takeover from Mark's article, though, is that if you want to get to stage 2 ("here's why my product is great for you") you have to start by a simple message that you'll repeat over and over again. It might sound boring or inefficient to you, but you have to keep in mind that your prospects are coming from an different perspective entirely. They do not have your experience nor your domain knowledge - that's why they're coming to see you in the first place!

I have a tendency to forget this again and again and the post was a nice reminder to keep it simple.

Article: THE TWEAKER - The real genius of Steve Jobs.

Great article. The geist of it: "It's not over until it's been done right."

(THE TWEAKER - The real genius of Steve Jobs. (Malcolm Gladwell/New Yorker))
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

This guy badgered me about how Microsoft was going to completely change the world with this tablet PC software and eliminate all notebook computers, and Apple ought to license his Microsoft software. But he was doing the device all wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead. This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, “Fuck this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be.”

(via Instapaper)

My New (Experimental) Setup

After reading an article recently on a developer using his iPad as his only machine for a full week, I felt tempted to revive my old Apple Bluetooth Keyboard.

After a trip to the local convenience store to pick-up new batteries and some fiddling with pairing and keyboard locale, I'm all set!

First impressions:
* Being able to type on a keyboard is a real plus for longer-form posts such as this one
* The screen interaction feels a bit weird - having to touch the screen to perform actions such as sending a message is an unnecessary distraction, but I couldn't find a keyboard shortcut yet
* I'm missing tabbed navigation between apps - cmd-tab refuses to do anything :-)

Although this is a nice add-on to the iPad experience, it also makes me understand why Apple is unlikely to release a touch-enabled iMac until it figures out how best to combine the keyboard/mouse and touch-based modes of interaction with the machine.

Now off to selecting a great iPad editor!

Don't be afraid

I was reading this post from Conrey is for closers :

I was asked a great question by a salesperson I was consulting with recently:

Chris, how do you deliver an estimate when you know that it is going to be significantly higher than what they expect or can afford?

I used to (and, in some ways, still do) face this issue. You're being asked something by a potential client and you know that the answer you're going to give them will be above the budget they are claiming. Another way to look at this is through expectations. When you feel that your quote price's is too high, it's usually because there's a misalignment between your potential client's expectation and their budget:
  1. Either the budget is fixed and their expectations are too high
  2. Or the budget is not the key factor and they will find a way to increase it in order to make their expectations come true
Once you realize this, you can narrow your course of action:
  1. You can discuss with the client in order to reach a compromise with a reduced scope
  2. You can build the value of your offering in the proposal (in his post, Chris goes on to explain that the key is to build value in your proposal)
Worst case scenario, the deal doesn't go through and you stay out of an unfulfilling contract for both sides. It's reverse win-win!