Why I'm joining Conversica

I grew up reading a lot of SciFi.  I was fascinated with sentient machines.  Do you remember “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (aka Blade Runner) or “I, Robot”?  As a kid, I hid under a blanket with a flashlight after my bedtime reading Lem and Clark until 4AM.  And then Star Trek and Matrix.  Ohhh… Matrix (and I, of course, mean 1 - not 2 and especially not 3).  And then later in life Moravec, Kurzweil…

That’s the romantic in me.  Will it happen?  Perhaps.  How soon?  Depends on whom you believe.  The entrepreneur in me thinks about time when a technology leaves the realm of sci fi writers, futurists and academia and firmly enters the business world.  For AI this time is right now.  In a recent interview, Mark Cuban said that the world’s first trillionaire will be an AI entrepreneur.  My favorite quote from this interview is this one "We are going through the process where software will automate software, automation will automate automation.”  So let’s get pragmatic for a minute or two…. 

I love getting involved in companies that apply revolutionary approaches to huge and well-established problems.  At RingCentral, we took business communications ($140+B market) and radically changed the cost structure and accessibility by taking it to the cloud.  At OpenSesame, we used the marketplace model to reinvent enterprise learning ($100+B market).  My responsibility in both companies was to grow indirect revenue through partnerships, alliances and channels.  In both cases, we started nearly from zero and today partnerships are responsible for a significant percentage of revenues for both companies.  In my role, I spend most of my time buried neck deep in the “funnel”.  How do we get more leads, more opportunities, more wins...  We became successful using good partnership methodology and powerful automation tools like Salesforce, Marketo, Pardot.  

From the very first time Conversica approached me, I kept thinking about that quote from Cuban “automation will automate automation”.  I know a bit about marketing automation - and not only from living inside the sales and marketing funnel.  Few years ago, I invested in a company called Influitive founded by my dear friend Mark Organ.  Mark was the original founder of Eloqua - the company that coined the term “Marketing Automation”. So I know that all of these tools require strong (and expensive) talent in sales ops, marketing, data analysis.  And what struck me in talking to Conversica is how much of that work can be automated.

Now, let’s take a step back for a second.  Tell me if this sounds familiar.  You go to a trade show or run a webinar and get hundreds of leads.  You put them into the funnel.  Your sales people immediately jump on them and cherry pick the best one (by whatever criteria they use).  20% of leads get a follow up call.  And half of those drop off after a couple of attempts.  So 10% of your leads get into the active funnel and the other 90% get dropped into your marketing automation tool.  Every few weeks they get an email from a drip campaign (manually set up by your marketing automation specialist).  How am I doing so far?  Does this resonate?  Now, this is a much better approach than what we had 10 years ago.  But can it be made better?

And here’s the funny part.  We (guys in funnel management) - set up rules of engagement for our sales people that include the minimum number of touches each lead is supposed to get (my favorite used to be 6 - 3 phone + 3 email).  I say “used to be” because this approach is wrong.  The number of human touches per lead should be 2 or perhaps even 1.  Turns out that sales people intuitively understand something that was confirmed only fairly recently - that around 50% of all leads that will eventually convert respond on the 1st attempt and another 20% on the second.  Conversion % gets close to 0 after about 10 attempts.  So there’s a gap between 2 and 10 attempts which is not cost-effective for human follow up. But what about AI?

Let me summarize the 3 issues above:

1. Current state of marketing automation requires expensive specialists to run it.
2. Human follow up is too expensive / inefficient for the long tail of leads.
3. Highly personalized communication with prospects is much more powerful than the “broadcast” method of communications inherent in marketing campaigns.

Enter Conversica.  Inside your company, Conversica is just another team member.  Let’s call her Connie.  Connie is always polite and always persistent.  Connie has no problem sending hundreds of emails a day to all of the folks who stopped by your booth.  She doesn’t get tired or frustrated.   She's happy to set up a demo or a call with one of her colleagues in the sales department when the prospect is ready.  Connie's only goal in life is to help two humans connect at the right time.  How good is Connie?  Let me put it to you this way, one of the most frequent questions Connie gets is whether she can be recruited.

I have not met a sales or marketing executive who’s not facing this problem.  Not a one.  But sales and marketing aren’t unique this way.  Similar things are happening in customer service, scheduling, recruiting, accounts receivable... We are so used to the idea that automation is much more scalable but not as effective as a human.  Not as personal.  Well, Connie is.  And if this isn’t a billion dollar opportunity, I don’t know what is.  

Convesica is on a on a stellar trajectory and I for one cannot wait to make my contribution to its success.

Building Informal Relationships

This is primarily for the folks in sales and marketing but “sales” isn’t confined to our professional lives.   The truth of the matter is that whether you are working on a 7 figure deal with a F100 company or getting your co-worker Kevin to help you with a project, you are selling. ("Sales" here is defined as getting someone to do what you want when you don’t have any authority over them, or even when you do but don’t want to use it).

We like to believe that decisions like this in our personal lives and especially in deals between companies are done strictly on merit. But that is simply not true. If it were, golf courses would be empty during the day and the word "schmooze" would lose its place in our vocabulary.

Successful salespeople have an uncanny ability to establish informal relationships with people.

This is critically important. People do not buy from companies. People buy from people.  And all things being equal (and often unequal), they prefer to do business with people they like.  

So how do you do that?  There’s no question that some people have a natural talent.  But this is a trainable skill.  It is a misconception that you need to be a life-of-the-party extravert.  Some of the best relationship builders I’ve met are quiet introverts.  The reason for this is that real relationships are based on depth.  You will not build them by mingling and talking about weather.

And speaking of weather...  In the US, it seems to be in poor taste to get right down to business.  Parties prefer to engage in some small talk first.  More often than not, conversation turns to weather.  This is completely fine on a conference call with multiple participants, but my advise is to avoid this topic like the plague in any 1-1 conversations.  There are two reasons for this:

1. Relationships are personal and you are squandering an opportunity to get personal.
2. Talking about the weather signals that you aren’t interested in the other person.

Luckily, there’s a myriad of other topics that are every bit as acceptable but get you so much closer to your target.  

So how do you break the ice? How do take the conversation into the informal realm? How do you get them to show you their personality? You show them yours first!  You proactively think about offering them something to like about you.  You want them to say "Wow, what a great guy / gal" to themselves at the end of that conversation.  

Lots of topics easily lend themselves to this type of conversation: sports, families, shared work experiences, where you / they are from, travel, vacations, hobbies.  Reveal something about yourself and they will reveal something about themselves.  "Hey how you doing?" "I'm good, working from home today, though.  Just adopted a shelter puppy and helping her adjust to her new home".  BOOM!  You are an awesome person who rescues dogs from shelters and perhaps your interlocutor likes dogs too.  Or perhaps you took your kids to their rugby camp over the weekend, or spent the weekend building a train track. If it's something a bit uncomfortable or a tiny bit embarrassing - even better. Showing vulnerability is a great way to get personal. Perhaps you spent Sunday in bed binge watching House of Cards? … And then ask them about their lives.  And if they reveal something, remember it.  Write it down. Ask them about it next time you talk.  Show sincere interest and feel sincere interest. We care about people who care about us.  But don't expect things to move overnight. Be patient. Different people build relationships at different paces, so you need to have sufficient EQ to move at their pace, but we all do it.  

Ownership - Just one step to a great career

Below is the ultimate secret to professional success.  If you do one thing at work - do this. I'm dead serious.

But before we jump in head first, let's take a step back and look inside your manager's mind.

Whether your manager is effective or not, hardworking or lazy; her most precious resource is not time (although time is of course very important too) - it is mindshare.  

We all have a limited capacity to keep proverbial balls in the air.  This is why a manager should not have more than a handful of direct reports.  This is why we have a limit to the number of relationships we can maintain. And there's a limit to the number of projects we can manage.  Projects are like classroom sizes - a good teacher can probably manage 35 kids, but 12 is a lot better for everybody.

So the most valuable thing you can do for your manager is to reduce the number of "floating" balls.  Give your boss complete confidence that she does not need to worry, that things are under control.  And the way you do it is by taking full ownership over every project you take on.  Act as if a project is a small business and you are its owner, and your manager is your customer.  If the product isn't delivered, you do not get paid.  

What does that mean in practical terms...?

1.  It is YOUR responsibility to understand precise requirements and the desired outcome.  Don't be afraid to ask questions, to challenge, to offer better ways, but once agreed YOU need to make sure that you fully get it.
2. It is YOUR responsibility to drive the project forward.  it doesn't matter that your computer crashed, that IT screwed up your access to systems, that a colleague promised to deliver a product update and the deadline came and went.  It is YOUR responsibility to find another computer, borrow a colleagues credentials or find another workaround.  It is YOUR responsibility to hold your colleagues responsible to their commitments.  
3. It is YOUR responsibility to give your boss updates.  Often, the frequency of updates goes down the longer you work together but it is YOUR responsibility to give your boss full confidence that things are under control.  This is called "managing up".
4. It is YOUR responsibility to deliver the highest possible quality of work.  There's a famous story about Henry Kissinger and one of his staffers.  The young man brought Kissinger a report.  After a few days, Kissinger asked the staffer whether this is the best work he's capable of.  The young man took the report and came back with an update a few days later.  Kissinger asked him the same question and the young man answered "Yes.  This is the best work I'm capable of."  Then Kissinger replied "Good.  Now I will read it."
5. It is YOUR responsibility to recognize when you are over your head and when the best you can do is not good enough.  It is your responsibility to seek help from your colleagues or from your boss.  I doubt that you will lose points for admitting that you cant do something and I guarantee that you will gain points for self-awareness.  Nothing will give your boss as much confidence in your ability to handle projects as asking for help at the right time.
6. And if you do come to your boss for help with a problem, it is YOUR responsibility to present a couple of solution ideas.  If you run into a brick wall, go to your colleagues, look on the internet, ask your Linkedin connections but do not come to your boss empty-handed.  The reason you got that project is because your manager trusts your judgment.  So offer your ideas and your solutions.  You can read up more on this concept here.

Do this, and you will see nearly immediate results.  And if you haven't been doing this, go to your manager and tell her how you plan to change things and take greater ownership.  It'll be like music to her ears.

New dynamics of disruption in the Silicon Valley

In this TechCrunch article, I talk about accelerating pace of disruption in the tech industry and what to do about it.

https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/19/every-company-is-up-for-disruption-so-keep-your-products-simple/

How today's Startups land Enterprise customers

No matter how innovative, it used to be nearly impossible for a startup to land a F500 customer.  Not anymore... Here's how little guys can become game-changers for giants.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/03/the-things-any-startup-could-be-doing-to-get-fortune-500-customers/

Startup Partnership Checklist

Another article from my Forbes series on Scaling up by Partnering with Giants.
Vast majority of strategic partnerships never amount to anything.  In these articles, I attempt to point out why and how to make them more successful.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2016/10/12/the-checklist-every-small-business-owner-must-read-before-partnering-with-a-big-company/#198c239a2714

How to Make the Love Last

This is another article in the Scaling Your Startup by Partnering with Giants series which I've been writing for Forbes.
This one is focuses on critical components of a successful partnership.

• Proper incentives
• Shared organizational values
• Executive sponsorship
• Vision for the future
• Expectations