The Folly of Swapping Equity for Services
Emily Maltby and Sarah E. Needleman wrote an interesting piece in the WSJ last week capturing a worrying trend – the swapping of a start-up’s equity for services. For example I need legal services, web design services, accounting services but I don’t...
The Philosophy of a Budget
People get confused with budgets. Some people think it’s a crazy spreadsheet invented by accountants to make everyone else look useless. Some people think it’s a set of rules to be gamed. Some people think it’s a column of figures which is 5% bigger...
The Interview Checklist
We all need an interview checklist to to make sure we don’t miss anything. Here is a quick list I use: Pull together a brief online profile of the candidate covering all the usual places they are likely to hang out including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and their...
Acquisitions – Finding Targets
One of the key elements of an acquisition strategy – Buy what you want to buy not what’s up for sale. The question is: where do you look? Here are 10 places to look: Private Equity portfolio company lists (often on their web site). Trade show attendee...
What I know about Management Dashboards
As we struggle to manage our businesses in these challenging times, it’s so important to cut through the clutter and measure the right stuff. Then relentlessly follow through with actions on stuff that deserves your attention. So here are a few ideas – Things I...
CEOs – 3 Questions to Ask Your Sales Director
Does your sales team really understand our products and services at every level of detail? Does your sales team really understand our customers and their markets and the real issues they are facing? Does your sales team operate a world class sales process that is...
Sales & Marketing – Are They Connected?
We all see the need for a marketing department. We all see the need for a sales team. And of course we see the need for sales targets. Then we fail to do something really simple. We fail to align and connect all 3 together thus producing disappointing results. The...
The Boilerplate
It’s such an important paragraph to get right. It goes on every press release. It appears on every web site. Its the elevator pitch to prospective candidates. It tells the world who you are, in around 100 words. Here is the latest we did for ADMET: ADMET is a...
Why Did My Business Not Sell?
It can be a devastating blow to put your 20 year old business up for sale and receive no offers or at best low ball, bargain basement offers. There were probably some really good reasons for that and other than asking the buyers to tell you why, let me share 15...Operational Excellence For Exits
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