Hugh explains the thinking behind The Stormhoek Guide to Wine Blogging (released last week):

[W]hen one of the sales team cold-calls a potential customer in the trade, trying to set up a meeting, he no longer has to explain to the customer who he is. The guy on the other end of the phone line has already heard of him.
Does that make the sales process easier? Does that lead to an increase in sales?
Watch this space.

I see too many small companies in my neck of the woods doing too little to make life easier for their salespeople. I hope creative folks like Hugh can show us new ways to shorten sales cycles and increase closed deals.

Mike Neiss climbed the GM corporate ladder with guys who are now, as he says, “running the place.” His take on GM’s current troubles is worthwhile reading for any organization driven by “bigger is better” thinking:

I have seen great talent at GM . . . [yet] even with [several] smart [leaders], they created their own problem.

I am a huge supporter of being a responsible steward for the business when it comes to managing costs, but it ain’t the whole enchilada. As a matter of fact lean and operational excellence are part of their problem. Can you really reduce design to numbers? Well, sure you can, it is called market share. But you can’t reduce it to numbers short term.

[GM] forgot design, they forgot the customer, they forgot R&D, they forgot they are a car company. Their demise was clearly a choice. Not a symptom of our economy, but a choice made in the boardroom…

My one hope is that they will be a case study for all those organizations hoping to become as big as GM. The big just crash harder.

In Don’t forget that vision thing, Ed Sims of Dawntreader Ventures explains the commoditizing effect of a product-focused sales presentation . . .

If you get too locked into talking about a product, then your partner or customer gets stuck into thinking about who else does this and why are you different.

. . . and the elevating effect of his alternative:

If you start with a vision first and clearly talk about your view of the market in the future and how your product evolves from where it is today to a roadmap of the future, then it is easier to differentiate your company and bring the discussion to a higher level.

He thinks that post-bubble entrepreneurs have focused a lot on the top & bottom line, at the expense of a compelling vision:

If I look at the world on a spectrum from focus on all revenue and profits on the one hand and all technology and vision on the other hand, I would like a mix tilted much towards the technology spectrum in the early stages of a company’s growth. Pre-2000, I would argue that the mix was all tech and vision with no focus on building a business. Post-2000, many companies were much more on the business spectrum and less on the tech side. Today, I am asking that entrepreneurs bring back that vision thing and show us the big picture because showing me a point product doesn’t cut it.

Ed’s advice to “show ‘em the product” CEOs:

If you can’t explain what you do, its context, and the opportunity in a few sentences and have to give a demo for someone to get it, I would suggest going back to the drawing board and thinking long and hard about how you make sense of what you do verbally.