December 13, 2005

Our second meeting with our company’s lead investor, who I call Mr. Investor, is in the office today. Yesterday was spent preparing for his visit in two different in management team sessions. The first meeting identified the agenda and flow of the presentation. In the second session, we reviewed our individual slides, reworked changes as a group, and then sent the PowerPoint to our CEO, so he could add his own slides. Apparently, Mr. Investor is selling another company that he’s invested in and will be in town, giving us the change to give him a progress report since his last visit in September.

Marketing Update for Investor

I created the sales and marketing slides for the presentation, reflecting our marketing accomplishments since our last meeting with the investor:

• User interface (UI) redesign for sales demo, handed off new design to Luke’s department to implement.
• UI redesign for next major release of the product, handed off to Luke’s department for development.
• Tradeshow strategy for 2006 based on changes with partner (value-added reseller or VAR).
• Webinars for November
• Corporate Website planning and requirements

Marketing has the following its plate for the next 30-60 days:

1. Next major product release packaging and messaging
2. January direct sales training with updated sales tools and materials for the next major product release
3. New tradeshow booth and signage
4. Corporate Website redesign
5. Updated UI design for sales demo
6. Flash demo for VAR
7. Q1 tradeshow
8. Maintain direct Webinars, holding on VAR Webinars

Sales Operations Update

As this process was going on, I finalized the Board and Management Team report for November. Our sales team is doing well, but its efforts have been delayed due to the poor VAR performance in closing deals in the legal review stage. I also added the following into the presentation:

• Q4 2005 sales pipeline: There were 9 opportunities in the Q4 sales pipeline with 33% are direct deals while 67% are VAR deals.
• Q1 2006 sales pipeline: There were 13 opportunities in the Q1 2006 sales pipeline with 46% are Direct deals while 54% are VAR deals.
• Goal is to have a minimum of 50% sales opportunities reflecting our direct sales efforts.

I also included my proposed 90-day plan for my CEO when he realized he needed help with his VP of Sales function. I wanted to reflect that my CEO’s making progress in managing the sales team. At the time, my CEO only reviewed my recommendations, but we hadn’t formalized them. Yesterday, he wanted me to include his Sales 90-day Plan and present it as my own with the my sales and marketing slides. Here’s what that plan looks like:

• Sales management: Sales quotas/goals per sales director and Sales contracts in place with each sales director.
• Refine VAR Sales process and standards for: When to engage our sales directors for a WebEx, when to use a ROI, when to have a sales director travel for in-person demo, when to have VP of Engineering and CEO travel, Proposals and pricing, and contracts.
• Direct, internal sales process - Completed: Tightened Sales director as quarter communication, identified process, and created repository of all sales cycle documents.
• Monthly Sales & Marketing priorities: Identify during last week of each month and communicate to Sales & Marketing so they can adjust their time prioritization between VARs and activities.
• ROI Process: Roll-out all return-on-investment templates to sales directors, create any new ROI FAQs, etc for roll-out, ROI Sales training, and create standards: which option to use and when not to use ROI.
• WebEx lead generation follow-up as a measure for each sales director - Completed
• Sales standards - Completed: How the sales team will use Saleforce.com and how frequently.

We don’t have any bad news for Mr. Investor. Ideally, it would have been best to have some deals close in November, but they didn’t so they rolled over to December. We will also go into details about the Microsoft solutions provider that wants to buy our service offering, our core brand offering under our name, so they can have an “just-add-water service offering” that allows them to get into our vertical market. We’re waiting until February to ask for more funding from Mr. Investor, so we can see what happens over the next two months with our sales pipeline. If only one of our really, big VAR deals would close.

The Smart Lemming Diary is a series that chronicles a journey of laid-off worker, who becomes a Vice President of Sales Operations & Marketing for a small entrepreneurial healthcare technology company. For previous entries in this series, click here. For the first diary entry, click here. For the highlighted Smart Lemming Diary entries, click here.

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