Predictable Revenue Quotes

If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.

Three Keys To Predictable Revenue Building a Sales Machine that creates ongoing, predictable revenue takes: Predictable Lead Generation, the most important thing for creating predictable revenue. A Sales Development Team that bridges the chasm between marketing and sales. Consistent Sales Systems, because without consistency you have no predictability.

Do you have a sales process? If you don’t—get one. ANYTHING is better than no process.

Without further adieu, this is the best question ever to use to open calls: “Did I catch you at a bad time?” Conversationally, it might

Lack of money is a common excuse for not being creative.

Shifting from organic growth to proactive growth requires new habits, practices and systems, causing a lot of delays and frustrations.

I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.

There is ALWAYS a way to move forward, even without money.

Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself. ~Thomas J. Watson

Killer Salespeople Uncover True Problems Behind Desired Solutions

Customers don't care at all whether you close the deal or not. They care about improving their business. It’s easy to forget this in the heat of a sales cycle.

Of course you want more revenue, but what good is it if it isn’t predictable?

One-time revenue spikes that aren’t repeatable won’t help you achieve consistent year-after-year growth.

Prospecting doesn’t bring in revenue—closing brings in revenue.

To get just an inkling of the fire we're playing with, consider how content-selection algorithms function on social media. They aren't particularly intelligent, but they are in a position to affect the entire world because they directly influence billions of people. Typically, such algorithms are designed to maximize click-through, that is, the probability that the user clicks on presented items. The solution is simply to present items that the user likes to click on, right? Wrong. The solution is to change the user's preferences so that they become more predictable. A more predictable user can be fed items that they are likely to click on, thereby generating more revenue. People with more extreme political views tend to be more predictable in which items they will click on. (Possibly there is a category of articles that die-hard centrists are likely to click on, but it’s not easy to imagine what this category consists of.) Like any rational entity, the algorithm learns how to modify its environment —in this case, the user’s mind—in order to maximize its own reward.

like out there.” Solution: Talk to customers to get clear on what you do for them, rather than how you do it. Put this into a simple, clear one-page document you can share with the entire company. Regularly connect with customers by phone or in person.

You are allowed to send “unsolicited” emails to businesses. Here are the three core guidelines: The subject and header must not be misleading. You must have a valid physical address in your email. You must include a way to opt-out from future communications.

People, when under pressure or stress, tend to retreat to the safe place of what they know rather than taking the risk of trying new things. People tend to do more of what is not working rather than stepping back, taking a breather, and trying to figure out a new approach.

For those who need data to be convinced, in global surveys of values in which every variable that social scientists like to measure is thrown into the pot (including income, education, and dependence on oil revenues), Islam itself predicts an extra dose of patriarchal and other illiberal values across countries and individuals.

According to Business Insider, VR headsets alone will grow from a $37 million dollar industry in 2015 to $2.8 billion in 2020—growing by a factor of 75. Goldman Sachs predicts revenue from all categories of VR including software will reach $110 billion by 2020, making the category bigger than the TV industry in its first five years. We

What works to generate flows of new leads: Trial-and-error in lead generation (requires patience, experimentation, money). “Marketing through teaching” via regular webinars, white papers, email newsletters and live events, to establish yourself as the trusted expert in your space (takes lots of time to build predictable momentum). Patience in building great word-of-mouth (the highest value lead generation source, but hardest to influence). Cold Calling 2.0: By far the most predictable and controllable source of creating new pipeline, but it takes focus and expertise to do it well. Luckily, you are holding the guide to the process in your hands right now. Building an excited partner ecosystem (very high value, very long time-to-results). PR: It’s great when, once in awhile, it generates actual results!

Interruption Marketing was easy. Build a few ads, run them everywhere. Interruption Marketing was scalable. If you need more sales, buy more ads. Interruption Marketing was predictable. With experience, a mass marketer could tell how many dollars in revenue one more dollar in ad spending would generate. Interruption Marketing fit the command and control bias of big companies. It was totally controlled by the advertiser, with no weird side effects.

If You Only Track Five Metrics… Track as many of these as you can in your sales force automation system’s dashboards: New leads created per month (also, from what source). Conversion rate of leads to opportunities. Number of, and pipeline dollar value of, qualified opportunities created per month. This is the most important leading indicator of revenue! Conversion rates of opportunities to closed deals. Booked revenues in three categories: New Business, Add-On Business, Renewal Business.

Demographics 30 points based on manual Prospect review 0-8 points based on title Source and Offer Website leads source: +7 Thought leadership offer: -5 Behavioral Engagement: Visit any webpage or open any email: +1 Watch demos: +5 each Register for webinar: +5 Attend webinar: +5 Download thought leadership: +5 Download Marketo reviews: +12 More than 8 pages in one visit: +7 Visit website 2x in one week: +8 Search for “Marketo”: +15 Visit pricing pages: +5 Visit careers pages: -10 (I especially love this one!) No Activity in One Month: Score >30: -15 points Score 0 to 30: -5 points

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” - Goethe

Red Flags And Deal Breakers What signals or signs can you look for, as early in the sales process as possible, to warn you (and the client) that working together is a waste of time? Here are some examples of red flags: They just installed a _______ kind of system. They already have an agency/service provider in place, or a full-time in-house person dedicated to ___. They churn-and-burn the consultants or agencies they hire to do _____________. Know-it-alls / “We know what we’re doing.” Geography. Their monthly budget for ________ is only ________. These industries never seem to work: _____, _____, _____. This area of work is totally new to them, and they don’t understand it yet. (That is, you would have to do a lot of education of the client before they would even understand the value of your service.)

What works to generate flows of new leads: Trial-and-error in lead generation (requires patience, experimentation, money). “Marketing through teaching” via regular webinars, white papers, email newsletters and live events, to establish yourself as the trusted expert in your space (takes lots of time to build predictable momentum). Patience in building great word-of-mouth (the highest value lead generation source, but hardest to influence). Outbound Prospecting (aka "Cold Calling 2.0"):: By far the most predictable and controllable source of creating new pipeline, but it takes focus and expertise to do it well. Luckily, you are holding the guide to the process in your hands right now. Building an excited partner ecosystem (very high value, very long time-to-results). PR: It’s great when, once in a while, it generates actual results!

If you haven’t sent them an email yet, send an email as soon as you leave them the voicemail—give them more than one way to get back to you. Example 1: “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross from Salesforce.com. My number is 555-555-5555. John, I sent you an email a couple of days ago and hadn’t heard back, and I was hoping you could give me a quick courtesy response. I’ll resend it here in a minute. Again, Aaron Ross, 555-555-5555. Thank you and have a great day.” Example 2: “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross from Salesforce.com. My number is 555-555-5555. John, I’m calling to follow up on the email I sent you, I’d love to hear either way if you can please help me out or not. Again, Aaron Ross, 555-555-5555. Thank you and have a great day.” Example 3: (the mysterious version): “Hi John, this is Aaron Ross following up. My number is 555-555-5555. I’m free after 3pm today. Again, Aaron Ross, from Salesforce.com, 555-555-5555. Thanks and have a great day.

Making the field salespeople do cold calls means having your highest-cost (per hour) sales resource perform the lowest-value (per hour) activity.

Customers don't care at all whether you close the deal or not. They care about improving their business.

As Winston Churchill said, “Never, never, never, never give up!” (with ideal prospects).

Scalable, predictable revenue growth.

Its February 1, 2018, earnings call was almost exclusively dedicated to highlighting its service revenue, which was $31.15 billion in 2017 and could constitute a Fortune 100 company itself. That revenue is growing at 27 percent a year and represents more than half of Apple’s growth. And while its hardware business is seasonal and subject to wide peaks and troughs, its service business shows consistent, predictable growth quarter over quarter. But guess what? Some people still don’t get it! The Q&A session of that last earnings call was dominated by analyst questions around iPhone supply and demand. It’s enough to make you slam your forehead on your desk.

What works to generate flows of new leads:

Include a SIMPLE “Success Plan” step before you close.

Free” has an incredible power that no other pricing does. The Duke behavioral economist Dan Ariely wrote about the power of free in his excellent book Predictably Irrational, describing an experiment in which he offered research subjects the choice of a Lindt chocolate truffle for 15 cents or a Hershey’s Kiss for a mere penny. Nearly three-fourths of the subjects chose the premium truffle rather than the humble Kiss. But when Ariely changed the pricing so that the truffle cost 14 cents and the Kiss was free—the same price differential—more than two-thirds of the subjects chose the inferior (but free) Kisses. The incredible power of free makes it a valuable tool for distribution and virality. It also plays an important role in jump-starting network effects by helping a product achieve the critical mass of users that is required for those effects to kick in. At LinkedIn, we knew that our basic accounts had to be free if we wanted to get to the million users we theorized represented critical mass. Sometimes you can offer a product for free and still be profitable; in the advertising-driven business model, a large enough mass of free users can be valuable even if they never pay for your service. Facebook, for example, doesn’t charge its users a dime, but it is able to generate large amounts of high-gross-margin revenue by selling targeted advertising. But sometimes a product doesn’t lend itself to the advertising model, as is the case with many services used by students and educators. Without third-party revenue, the problem with offering your product to users for free is that you can’t offset your lack of sales by “making it up in volume.

Try out these tips, and keep track of your own "few, best practices and questions" that work in your market. Put them into a cheat sheet that you can use in training new

Ask yourself, “If I could only get three things done today, what would they be?

Pay special attention to “batons” that cross functions. Whenever a process crosses teams (Marketing handing

Five of the most important

If You Only Track Five Metrics…

In the recent article “The Secret of Scale” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Peter Murray looked at how advocacy organizations achieved true scale and predictable revenue.6 He found that organizations like AARP and the National Rifle Association (NRA) have expanded to provide lifestyle benefits, like group insurance, product discounts, and access to special events—going well beyond traditional advocacy.

The only thing that we know about financial predictions of startups is that 100 percent of them are wrong. If you can predict the future accurately, we have a few suggestions for other things you could be doing besides starting a risky early stage company. Furthermore, the earlier stage the startup, the less accurate any predications will be. While we know you can't predict your revenue with any degree of accuracy (although we are always very pleased in that rare case where revenue starts earlier and grows faster than expected), the expense side of your financial plan is very instructive as to how you think about the business. You can't predict your revenue with any level of precision, but you should be able to manage your expenses exactly to plan. Your financials will mean different things to different investors. In our case, we focus on two things: (1) the assumptions underlying the revenue forecast (which we don't need a spreadsheet for—we'd rather just talk about them) and (2) the monthly burn rate or cash consumption of the business. Since your revenue forecast will be wrong, your cash flow forecast will be wrong. However, if you are an effective manager, you'll know how to budget for this by focusing on lagging your increase in cash spend behind your expected growth in revenue.

But Google’s learning algorithms are much better than Yahoo’s. This is not the only reason for the difference in their market caps, of course, but it’s a big one. Every predicted click that doesn’t happen is a wasted opportunity for the advertiser and lost revenue for the website. With Google’s annual revenue of $50 billion, every 1 percent improvement in click prediction potentially means another half billion dollars in the bank, every year, for the company. No wonder Google is a big fan of machine learning, and Yahoo and others are trying hard to catch up.

The New York Times ran a story recently about Gregg Rapp, a restaurant consultant, who gets paid to work out the pricing for menus. He knows, for instance, how lamb sold this year as opposed to last year; whether lamb did better paired with squash or with risotto; and whether orders decreased when the price of the main course was hiked from $39 to $41. One thing Rapp has learned is that high-priced entrées on the menu boost revenue for the restaurant—even if no one buys them. Why? Because even though people generally won't buy the most expensive dish on the menu, they will order the second most expensive dish. Thus, by creating an expensive dish, a restaurateur can lure customers into ordering the second most expensive choice (which can be cleverly engineered to deliver a higher profit margin).1

The big-ticket hardware folks invest the capital, take all the risks—which are huge—suffer the losses and the write-downs, and then let somebody else capture the business that has predictability, lower price sensitivity, higher margins, recurring revenue, and the opportunity to create an ongoing customer relationship, because the frequency of purchase is ten times greater than the frequency of the initial transaction. “So

For A Sales Team I encourage clients to generally set up their dashboards in a three column format, including: Left: Current month activity (amount of stuff going on). Center: current month results/deals. Right: Long-term results (year-to-date). Example screenshot, blurred for privacy: Example Sales Development Rep Dashboard Every sales rep should set up their own personal dashboard, so they can see the state of their own business at a glance (and it makes it easier for their manager to coach/help them). Below, I have laid out a three-column dashboard

Typically, such algorithms are designed to maximize click-through, that is, the probability that the user clicks on presented items. The solution is simply to present items that the user likes to click on, right? Wrong. The solution is to change the user’s preferences so that they become more predictable. A more predictable user can be fed items that they are likely to click on, thereby generating more revenue. People with more extreme political views tend to be more

The former head of this operation, Gary Wendt, who is credited with much of the enormous success of GEFS, used his personal agenda as a simple but inordinately powerful tool for growing the business into ever new entrepreneurial arenas. Over the years, he used his personal agenda to make it unequivocally clear that he expected entrepreneurial business growth from every member of management. At every major meeting, the topic of business development was on the agenda (usually in the number one spot). In every annual review, managers were asked to demonstrate the revenues they had created from businesses that did not exist five years before. From division heads to newly hired analysts, everyone was held accountable for some set of activities having to do with creating entrepreneurial revenue and profit streams. In short, no one who worked in the organization could avoid the unremitting focus on new business development. You need to make sure that you are similarly consistent, predictable, and focused, and that you sustain this emphasis over a long period. Pressure applied only once is soon forgotten, and alternating pressure (as in flavor-of-the-month management) will cause people to be confused, disillusioned, or angry. Wendt’s consistent, visible, and predictable attention to business development created a pressure in GEFS for entrepreneurial business growth that took it from the $300 million installment loan portfolio we looked at in chapter 6 to a financial services behemoth with $250 billion in assets under management when he left in 1998. Examples of Wendt’s single-minded determination to drive growth through entrepreneurial transformation at GEFS are numerous. Years ago, for instance, he was asked whether his agenda would change if someone rushed in and told him that the computer room was on fire (implying that his business could be completely destroyed). Wendt replied that he employed firefighters to handle such emergencies. As the leader, his most important job was to keep people focused on business development. Since business development is an uncomfortable and unpredictable process, Wendt knew that if he allowed it to appear to be a low priority for him, all those working for him would heave a sigh of relief and go back to business as usual, with new businesses struggling to find a place on the priority list. In fact, as he remarked, even if he did try to get involved in putting out the fire, he would probably only interfere with the efforts of the highly competent people employed to do so.

Failure” is just your judgment of an experience, because there are no failures – just learning opportunities.

Selling taught me that revenue is a numbers game. If you can find a formula that gives predictable results, you can focus on the inputs you control to get the output you want.

What Customer Success Isn't Customer Success is not free help. It isn't glorified customer support. And, like sales, it should be a revenue driver, not a cost center. As with sales, you should make money, or avoid losing it, by investing in this role.

A wildly successful business is a business where: Customers chase you, and not the other way around. Predictability and consistency generate new leads, clients, and revenue. You speak only to highly-qualified prospects you can actually help. You have an automated lead-generation system that delivers new customers on demand with minimal human effort. You focus only on the Highly Leveraged Activities that produce revenue.

In fact, if you’re making cold calls, you are doing everything wrong.

The tipping point of the Cold Calling 2.0 process was born: sending mass emails to high level executives to ask for referrals to the best person in their organization for a first conversation.

Just like Creation author Steve Grand had predicted, the creatures were evolving in ways that Bezos could not have imagined. It was the combination of EC2 and S3—storage and compute, two primitives linked together—that transformed both AWS and the technology world. Startups no longer needed to spend their venture capital on buying servers and hiring specialized engineers to run them. Infrastructure costs were variable instead of fixed, and they could grow in direct proportion to revenues. It freed companies to experiment, to change their business models with a minimum of pain, and to keep up with the rapidly growing audiences of erupting social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Consider a forecast Steve Ballmer made in 2007, when he was CEO of Microsoft: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” Ballmer’s forecast is infamous. Google “Ballmer” and “worst tech predictions”—or “Bing” it, as Ballmer would prefer—and you will see it enshrined in the forecasting hall of shame, along with such classics as the president of Digital Equipment Corporation declaring in 1977 that “there is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” And that seems fitting because Ballmer’s forecast looks spectacularly wrong. As the author of “The Ten Worst Tech Predictions of All Time” noted in 2013, “the iPhone commands 42% of US smartphone market share and 13.1% worldwide.”1 That’s pretty “significant.” As another journalist wrote, when Ballmer announced his departure from Microsoft in 2013, “The iPhone alone now generates more revenue than all of Microsoft.”2

The Sales Development role is often treated within a sales organization as a low-level job. If you treat it that way, you’ll get low-level results.

The iPhone alone now generates more revenue than all of Microsoft.

Scheduling via email is a huge time waster. Always work to schedule your next step while you’re on the phone.

Busy salespeople tend not to ask enough (or bold enough) questions of prospects around how the prospect’s internal processes work.

If you’re a sales executive: If you sat down with your team and had them talk about their own top deals, how clear are they, not just on the current status of the deal or the next step, but also the prospect’s actual internal process to get to a decision?

The quality of your people means everything to you and your team’s success.

The root assumption that gets Sales VPs fired (although the Board and CEO are equally responsible) is the false assumption that salespeople will find new business on their own from past Rolodexes or lots of cold calls, with a minimum of help or investment from the company.

However, Account Executive closers shouldn’t spend their time making cold calls. They should focus on higher-potential sources of business: a small list of targeted accounts at which they can build relationships, current clients, or their own past dead opportunities.

Studies conducted have shown that less-educated people tend to click on pay-per-click ads, while more-educated people click on organic search results.

Turn your revenue funnel into an hourglass by tracking how Customer Success affects revenue.

When people felt that they didn't have enough money (revenue), they couldn't focus on anything else. It was money first, second, and third—then freedom or purpose after that. It's hard to think about much else when you're struggling to pay the bills.

When trust goes down, speed goes down and costs go up. Distrust slows everything. Sales decelerate, customers grow cold, and team members get discouraged or drop out entirely. Distrust has hard costs. If you’re distrusted, people will actively refuse to do business with you, your pipeline of revenue freezes, and in extreme cases you shut down.

6. Depending On Activity Metrics Rather Than A Proven Process “Dials per day” isn’t nearly as useful as tracking “call conversations per day” or “appointments per week”. What’s your step-by-step process and waterfall? Measure results that are proven to lead to revenue rather than throwing lots of activity at a goal.

Tom Batchelder’s book titled Barking Up A Dead Horse

In high-productivity sales organizations, salespeople do not cause customer acquisition growth, they fulfill it.

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Cold Calling 2.0: By far the most predictable and controllable source of creating new pipeline, but it takes focus and expertise to do it well. Luckily, you are holding the guide to the process in your hands right now.

One thing Rapp has learned is that high-priced entrees on the menu boost revenue for the restaurant-even if no one buys them. Why? Because even though people generally won't buy the most expensive dish on the menu, they will order the second most expensive dish. Thus, by creating an expensive dish, a restaurant can lure customers into ordering the second most expensive choice (which can be cleverly engineered to deliver a higher profit margin).

Happy Employees Develop Happy Customers

done business-to-business sales in my life before I joined Salesforce.com,

You shouldn't confuse “stock trading” with “stock investing.” The former requires the stockholder to purchase, hold, or sell stocks to earn profits. The latter, on the other hand, allows the stockholder to get a regular stream of income just by acquiring stocks.   Trading stocks can help you reap large profits on a daily basis. If you will purchase or sell the right stocks, you can secure huge revenues every day. Here, you won't have to study corporations deeply. You just have to observe the trends in the stock market, make some predictions, and purchase or sell stocks according to your predictions.

It is impossible to make predictions—to say if the Islamic Republic will collapse or if it will survive in its current form. Certainly its current form isn’t the one it took in the immediate wake of the revolution. Although Khamenei has been committed to safeguarding the revolution, he has also created a new theocracy—one that relies on the greed of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij instead of the loyalty of its founding fathers. Khamenei has banished nearly all the clerics who held power when Ayatollah Khomeini was alive. Despite falling oil prices and economic sanctions, Khamenei had enough petro-dollar to satisfy his military base of support: the Guards and the Basij. The oil revenue has been the biggest deterrent to democracy in Iran, even though the windfall has transformed the fabric of Iranian society. The Iranian middle class, more than two-thirds of the population, relies on the revenue instead of contributing to economic growth, and thus has been less likely to fulfill a historic mission to create institutional reform. It has been incapable of placing “demands on Iranian leadership for political reform because of its small role in producing wealth, as in other developing countries. The regime is still an autocracy, to be sure, but democracy has been spreading at the grassroots level, even among members of the Basij and the children of Iran’s rulers. The desire for moderation goes beyond a special class. As I am writing these lines, Khamenei’s followers are shifting alliances and building new coalitions. Civil society, despite the repression it has long endured, has turned into a dynamic force. Khamenei still has the final word in Iranian politics, but the country’s political culture is not monolithic. Like Ayatollah Khomeini, who claimed he had to drink the cup of poison in order to end the war with Iraq, Khamenei has been forced to compromise. The fact that he signed off on Rohani’s historic effort to improve ties with the United States signals that the regime is moving in a different direction, and that further compromises are possible.

New leads created per month (also, from what source). Conversion rate of leads to opportunities. Number of, and pipeline dollar value of, qualified opportunities created per month. This is the most important leading indicator of revenue! Conversion rates of opportunities to closed deals. Booked revenues in three categories: New Business, Add-On Business, Renewal Business.

It's easy and fun to dream about success. Making it happen—and keeping it going—is a lot tougher. And far more rewarding.

There's no better way to pull yourself forward in life or business than to publicly commit to doing something specific by a deadline, even before you know how you're going to do it.

The company's job is to create a supportive environment. Extra vacation days and ping pong tables can create temporary happiness, but being supportive also means challenging you, pushing you to improve yourself as a person, to better build enduring happiness. In that way, actually, the company should be like a parent.

Your primary goal should not be to close a deal, but to help your “customers” solve problems and realize success.

successful entrepreneurs care more about the brutal truth than about being right or looking good. They take responsibility for results, not intentions. It

Use crises to motivate you to embrace the change, as painful as it may be, rather than avoid it. And

Are you making excuses (which may sound like extremely logical reasons) for not finding ways to get around your challenges?

A no-nonsense management model: Choose people carefully Set expectations and vision Remove obstacles Inspire your people Work for your people Improve it next time

Before the invention of the GDP, economists were rarely quoted by the press, but in the years after World War II they became a fixture in the papers. They had mastered a trick no one else could do: managing reality and predicting the future. Increasingly, the economy was regarded as a machine with levers that politicians could pull to promote “growth.” In 1949, the inventor and economist Bill Phillips even constructed a real machine from plastic containers and pipes to represent the economy, with water pumping around to represent federal revenue flows. As one historian explains, “The first thing you do in 1950s and ’60s if you’re a new nation is you open a national airline, you create a national army, and you start measuring GDP.

To be fair to President Bush, however, his approach to revenue was not a new one. In 1980, the year when Planet Ponzi started to turn, the average effective federal tax rate on the median American household was 11.4%. By 2010, that rate had plummeted to just 4.7%.10 That is not a reasonable amount for the average family to pay in exchange for defense, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, homeland security, the Department of Education, environmental protection, and various other services besides. The results are all too predictable. If you want to understand why we have a deficit in the US, look at figure 3.2. The graph is unusual in that it aggregates all sources of government revenues: not just taxation but other fees, charges, utility revenues, rents‌—‌any money that leaves your pocket and ends up in the government’s.11

Your company is likely to be set up to deliver repeatable certainty. There is a range of well-known products and services, an established business model to protect and a well-understood customer base to serve. That context is perfect for incremental innovation; there are plenty of known cause-and-effect relationships where investment risks are low and tolerance for failure is scant. And so it should be if we're doing a good job in a well-understood context. But try dropping an idea for a brand new proposition into that climate. This fledgling idea kind of makes sense on paper but it uses emerging technology that we don't really understand, serves a category of customer that we're not too familiar with, would require some support capabilities that we don't have, and would be driven by a business model that is hard to predict. That idea, 99 times out of 100, will die fast or drown by death of a thousand watering-down committees. And yet it might have been an important new revenue stream.

Merck maintained it had not tested either vaccine against an inert placebo in pre-approval trials, so no one could scientifically predict if the vaccines would avert more injuries or cancers than they would cause. Nevertheless, the sister FDA panel, VRBPAC, approved Gardasil—to prevent cervical cancer—without requiring proof that the vaccine prevented any sort of cancer, and despite strong evidence from Merck’s clinical trial that Gardasil could dramatically raise risks of cancer and autoimmunity in some girls.82 ACIP, nevertheless, effectively mandated both jabs. Gardasil would be the most expensive vaccine in history, costing patients $420 for the three-jab series and generating revenues of over $1 billion annually for Merck.83 That year, nine of the thirteen ACIP panel members and their institutions collectively received over $1.6 billion of grant money from NIH and NIAID. Systemic Conflicts of Interest Pharma and Dr. Fauci similarly rig virtually all the critical drug approval panels using this strategy of populating them with PIs who, bound by financial fealty to Pharma and NIAID funders, reliably approve virtually every new drug upon which they deliberate—with or without safety studies. From 1999 to 2000, Government Oversight Committee (GOC) Chairman Republican Congressman Dan Burton investigated the systemic corruption of these panels during two years of intense investigations and hearings. According to Burton, “CDC routinely allows scientists with blatant

Entrepreneurship is management. And yet, imagine a modern manager who is tasked with building a new product in the context of an established company. Imagine that she goes back to her company’s chief financial officer (CFO) a year later and says, “We have failed to meet the growth targets we predicted. In fact, we have almost no new customers and no new revenue. However, we have learned an incredible amount and are on the cusp of a breakthrough new line of business. All we need is another year.” Most of the time, this would be the last report this intrapreneur would give her employer. The reason is that in general management, a failure to deliver results is due to either a failure to plan adequately or a failure to execute properly. Both are significant lapses, yet new product development in our modern economy routinely requires exactly this kind of failure on the way to greatness. In the Lean Startup movement, we have come to realize that these internal innovators are actually entrepreneurs, too, and that entrepreneurial management can help them succeed;

AI enables marketers to: •​Accelerate revenue growth •​Create personalized consumer experiences at scale •​Drive costs down •​Generate greater return on investment (ROI) •​Get more actionable insights from marketing data •​Predict consumer needs and behaviors with greater accuracy •​Reduce time spent on repetitive, data-driven tasks •​Shorten the sales cycle •​Unlock greater value from marketing technologies

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a marketing strategy that focuses on managing interactions and relationships with customers. CRM enables businesses to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention by providing personalized experiences that meet their needs. CRM is an essential aspect of modern marketing as it enables businesses to understand their customers' behavior, preferences, and needs and develop targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with them. In Go High Level, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a core component of the platform. The CRM functionality in Go High Level enables businesses to manage their customer interactions and relationships more effectively, improving customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. The CRM functionality in Go High Level includes a range of features and tools designed to help businesses automate and streamline their customer-facing processes, as well as provide them with insights into their customers' behavior, preferences, and needs. In essence, CRM is a set of practices, technologies, and strategies that businesses use to manage their customer interactions and relationships. The goal of CRM is to build stronger, more meaningful relationships with customers by providing them with personalized experiences and tailored solutions. CRM in marketing can be divided into three main categories: operational CRM, analytical CRM, and collaborative CRM. Operational CRM focuses on automating and streamlining customer-facing processes, such as sales, marketing, and customer service. This type of CRM is designed to improve efficiency and productivity by automating repetitive tasks and providing a centralized database of customer information. Operational CRM includes features such as sales pipeline management, lead nurturing, and customer service management. Analytical CRM focuses on analyzing customer data to gain insights into their behavior, preferences, and needs. This type of CRM enables businesses to make data-driven decisions by providing them with a better understanding of their customers' needs and preferences. Analytical CRM includes features such as customer segmentation, data mining, and predictive analytics. Collaborative CRM focuses on enabling businesses to collaborate and share customer information across different departments and functions. This type of CRM helps to break down silos within organizations and improve communication and collaboration between different teams. Collaborative CRM includes features such as customer feedback management, social media monitoring, and knowledge management. CRM is important for marketing because it enables businesses to build stronger, more meaningful relationships with customers. By understanding their customers' behavior, preferences, and needs, businesses can develop targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with them. This results in higher customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. CRM can also help businesses to improve their sales and marketing processes by providing them with better visibility into their sales pipeline and enabling them to track and analyze their marketing campaigns' effectiveness. This enables businesses to make data-driven decisions to improve their sales and marketing strategies, resulting in increased revenue and growth. Another benefit of CRM in marketing is that it enables businesses to personalize their marketing campaigns. Personalization is essential in modern marketing as it enables businesses to tailor their marketing messages and solutions to meet their customers' specific needs and preferences. This results in higher engagement and conversion rates, as customers are more likely to respond to marketing messages that resonate with them. Lead Generation: Go High Level provides businesses with a range of tools to generate leads, including customizable landing pages, web forms, and social media integrations.

We, as human beings, don't make purchasing decisions when we're convinced. Or if we do, we're typically not very happy about it. We make decisions when we can predict. We are prediction machines.

A going concern is a business that is self-sustaining with predictable revenue streams, reasonable expenses, and adequate cash levels to pay its bills.

Put new reps through some kind of training program that has them working in other parts of your company first, talking to customers, before they go on active sale duty. This will make them much more effective salespeople and actually ramp them faster. Slow down to speed up!

This question marks a critical turning point in the trial-and-error elaboration of surveillance capitalism. It crystallizes a second economic imperative—the prediction imperative—and reveals the intense pressure that it exerts on surveillance capitalist revenues.

Solution: The CEO takes full responsibility for educating themselves, whether indirectly through coaching, or directly by getting involved in actual projects. Fatal Mistake 2: Thinking Account Executives Should Prospect (Making Account Executives Jacks-Of-All Trades)