Nearly every instance of e-commerce falling to its knees in 2020 and 2021 had little or nothing to do with a broken shopping cart or an unresponsive online catalog. Rather it had everything to do with a broken supply chain – be that shrinking inventory, choking logistics, tremendous burdens on returns management as purchases moved offline, and […]
In the midst of my self-imposed sabbatical, some of my ex-investors have kept me reasonably busy with some of their portfolio companies that want a fresh eye on all sorts of scaling topics. The single most common recruiting-related topic I’ve spent time on is how to hire a COO. This applies just as well to […]
One of the many things that stuck with me from the excellent annual Sequoia Capital Founder/ CEO summits was an astute comment about scaling growth stage companies by Sequoia partner and early President/ COO of VMWare Carl Eschenbach that went something like this: Think very carefully about whether you want to hire someone who grows […]
The need for customer engagement is clear. They buy more: “Fully engaged customers represent an average 23% premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue and relationship growth.” (Gallup) They expect it: “70-90% of the buyers journey is complete prior to engaging a vendor.” (Forrester Research) And they need it: “45% of buyers require person-to-person contact […]
When the news of Facebook buying WhatsApp broke, the first thought that crossed my mind was: How much would it matter if Facebook went away in favor of a light wt Instagram + tweaked WhatsApp. That’s 90% of the native behavior. Seriously. WhatsApp can keep 450 million daily active users highly engaged with 35 employees. Instagram now has over a 150 […]
I recently had the chance to dig into challenges faced by Sales Executives with Rawn Shah, a prominent practitioner on line of business collaboration and columnist at Forbes. It’s tough out there for the VP of Sales: Depending on the size of her organization, she has 10 or 100 or even 500 reps to onboard. […]
With respect to why “Social Business” is a natural fit for the world of work, I said on Twitter: @sameerpatel: Often heard #socbiz argument: “humans are social by nature”. Then why is it that #socbiz s/w adoption has been so hard historically? Contradicting this is another popular statement about Social Business: “Its not about the technology, its about […]