What are these? Time email sent - time reply received. Same founder. Showing speed. Urgency. Bias for action. @_surgeahead hadn’t made the investment yet, but this was already a very good sign.
2/5 Reminded me of my first week at @AWS. I was spending a week in Silicon Valley with my colleague doing many meetings every day. After each meeting, he was frantically typing on this phone. “What are you doing so urgently?” I asked. His answer? “TNT"
3/5 He explained: “TNT. Today Not Tomorrow. Everything I can do instantly, I will. Make an intro. Update CRM. Fix an issue. Kick-off a project. I can all do it TNT”. And he did. Every day. After each and every meeting.
4/5 TNT sounds logical & easy. It is not. Requires lots of discipline & bias for action. Not easy at all. I've tried ever since I heard about it. But often failed. Glad that the super fast response time of this one founder reminded me of the importance and impact of TNT.
5/5 And guess what? @_surgeahead ended up investing in this founder. She is off to a very strong strong start. Consistently demonstrates strong execution. Speed. TNT. You should try it too. Today, not tomorrow! 👊
1/6 Me: “Hey man, that startup you just met…what do they do?”
Colleague: “eh…they…eh…” Silence. No answer. Ten minutes after the meeting, and he couldn’t explain.
His fault? Or was it because the company failed what I call 'The Gossip Test'?
2/6 The Gossip Test is simple. Can you make it easy for others to gossip about you? So THEY share YOUR story with others. In simple terms. With clarity. Can you be memorable?
3/6 Why is that so important?
Customers. Candidates. Investors. They all meet many companies. Many will look like yours. Sound like yours - at least at the surface. How can you stand out? The only way to do it: tell a great story!
1/5 “We lost! Too expensive...We missed this one feature...Our security was below par.”
I was having lunch with a founder. She was quoting what an underperformer in her Sales team kept saying. I had seen this behaviour everywhere. I call it “blaming the arrow”. Let me explain
2/5 @SURGE, my colleague @carl_eschenbach explains how Sales is not just the responsibility of the Sales team, but the whole organization. He knows. He has lived it. A legend in the world of Enterprise Sales.
3/5 He then shows an arrow. The arrow starts with the fletching at the tail-end of the arrow.That’s where it starts - with vision, engineering, product management. Then product marketing and demand generation. Sales is only the tip of the arrow. #Enterprise#Sales