I recently finished a call with a company that chose a competitor over my company’s solution in order to solicit their feedback. I try to proactively reach out to clients and prospective clients when we don’t earn their business.   In this case, we did very well but ultimately lost on a couple of factors.  Yet what most interested me was not so much the reason why we lost, but the difficulty she had in selling the concept of ...

I’ve witnessed a number of not invented here (NIH) situations but none stands out more than one I participated in while working at A.T. Kearney.    It was the early 2000’s and we were introducing reverse auction internet technology into the F500.  There was tremendous resistance to our solution because it severed the cozy relationship between the purchasing officer and their vendor/golf buddy.       ...

Image by Jeff Kubina via Flickr SaaS providers like to brag that they are eliminating the need for IT because they provide technology without the IT headache.   Like most SaaS providers, they don’t boast about having an integrated solution. They are more interested in creating a pleasant experience, being easy to use or solving a specific business need.  Updates are a snap, one click help desk chat, and no need to deal with Jim the ...

Image by niallkennedy via Flickr   Yesterday I participated in a Google Wave Committee.  It was clear immediately that we all came in to the meeting with different priorities and objectives.  It happens all the time in the corporate world.   Sales believes Marketing should do more and Sales and Marketing both think development is building the wrong product.  In our case, we were a group of eight that each had ...