Category Archives: Management

Observations on managing of technology companies

Ballmer Bye-Bye?

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Is it time for Steve Ballmer to bail? I don’t pick on Steve for the fun of it — not entirely at least.  I bring up the dreaded discussion of putting a new captain at the helm because after a decade with Ballmer as skipper, the good ship Microsoft is foundering, leaking between nearly every plank.  In an era where everything changed, Microsoft did not change fast enough and has failed to catch the rising tides. Apple has not capitalized on everything and yet Apple now has a market cap larger than Microsoft (which we can take with a few drops of sea water since Apple’s forward P/E ratio is more than 50% higher than Microsoft’s, showing that navigators see better odds with Jobs on the investment horizon). Drucker wisely noted that “Business has only two basic functions – marketing and innovation.”  High tech is uniquely a product of both.  … Continue reading →

Branding Support

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By “branding support” I am not suggesting that one apply a red-hot iron with rancher’s logo to the flesh of a technical support representative.  However, having worked ranch when I was a kid, and having recently experienced tech support, the thought has a certain appeal. Your brand is created with every buyer interaction.  Some interactions occur in advertising. Others occur between buyers and cut you out of the interaction loop. The rest occur whenever your buyers visits your company, be it your web site, your sales office, or your support department. The letter can destroy you. Not long ago, Dell was flagging. Part of this was a change in the market which they failed to anticipate and were also slow in responding. Yet a good part of their fall from prominence was due to ill-advised shifting of technical support (something that had been a glowing aspect of Dell’s brand) to … Continue reading →

Anti-Oracle

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I’m starting an Internet wide office pool — pick the date and place a dollar ante on when antitrust will be filed against Oracle. Seriously, Larry is all but begging for it. With the integration of Sun into Oracle, many executives — including Ellison — said that Oracle was the IBM of the new millennia.  They waxed techno-poetically about how Oracle, and only Oracle, could provide complete iron-to-apps IT, that they owned the middle of the datacenter.  They claimed their ability to cross-integrate every element of the stack provided Oracle power that no other vendor could offer. Those statements were followed by amused FTC lawyers grunting. IBM was the original and last computing monolith.  As Ellison’s Archangels echoed, the IBM of the 1960’s provided everything a customer could want and that IBM’s floor-to-ceiling solution sets created impenetrable barriers to competition.  That is precisely why the federal government sued IBM, and … Continue reading →

Start-up Strategy

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BMW and Enzyte may have too much in common. While reviewing course materials for the CEO Marketing Boot Camp, I got a case of giggles. In the class we mention how BMW does branding. BMW has a legendary brand that was anything but accidental. In fact most readers can recite the BMW slogan from memory and yet never question it. That is how good BMW is at defining and communicating their brand — they have us all educated and convinced. The BMW slogan is interesting to marketing experts because it never mentions automobiles or technology (and BMWs are technology products). BMW claims to provide the “ultimate driving experience.” Ultimate means the best. Driving is a largely male oriented passion. Experiences are what we live for. So BMW offers a greatly enhanced male life, just like Enzyte claims. I’m sure the people at BMW are not happy about this comparison because … Continue reading →

Plateau Predicaments

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Many clients have come to me complaining that they hit a plateau – that sales and profits had quit growing. We have helped many of our clients identify the barriers they faced and navigate to new levels of success. Others remained stuck, mainly because they were too stubborn to listen. It is common for start-ups to hit seemingly invisible plateaus. Like a rock climber on a virgin cliff, they cannot see their way around outcroppings and boulders, and they aren’t agile enough to dodge eagle droppings hurtling in their direction. In nearly every case, these plateaus are artificial and solvable, though the very genius that launched the company is often the plateau itself. I offer as example one client we initially engaged six years ago. Silicon Strategies Marketing performed some primary (and I dare say groundbreaking) research into the psychology of their targeted buyers. Throughout the research, one variable was … Continue reading →

Miserably Misaligned

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Legendary are the disturbances between marketing and sales. Within the narrow geography of Silicon Valley, such interoffice disputes between the two camps have crippled businesses, caused collateral causalities and brought down small third-world governments. And for no good reason. I recently saw such a conflict up-close. With all my years in the game, this occurrence was nothing new and I could see the waters boiling long before other people did. The actors and stage setting were different, but the plot was the same as always. Groundhog Day with different dialogue. To understand sales/marketing skirmishes, one has to understand the attitudes, perspectives and psychoses of either camp. Nobody is without sin, but there ain’t no saints either. Perspective of importance Though not unique, the sales director in the latest episode proclaimed in a mass inter-company email “Marketing exists to support sales.” Ignoring the utter arrogance of the individual, we can say … Continue reading →

Slippery Slump

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Financial forecasters foretell that the technology sector leads the economy out of recessions. Which means we are in for a long one this time. I decline to scare my fellow technophiles into believing the end is nigh. It might be … I just lack any specific evidence indicating eminent doom. North Korea and Iran are persistent wild cards but they have nothing to do with technology marketing. They are strictly consumers of high tech products like rockets and reactors. Yet as recessions go, this one will be worse than average. Today the Federal Reserve – co-progenitor of the current recession, thank you Mister Greenspan – downgraded their economic forecast. Far from being Depression 2.0, the outlook is still glum with unemployment rates and GDP shrinkage rivaling the late 1970s. The Fed’s dower description of the economy echoes what Computer Economics predicts – that the recession will not bottom out until … Continue reading →