Topics of business

Sales and marketing strategy
Making a Good Second Impression
It's all about what customers expect from a product to begin with, and helping customers understand how a product can help them, requires that salespeople help set those expectations.
Grow Sales by Reducing Administration
In our restructuring work with clients, we often find that more than 50 percent of a sales professional’s time isspent on non-customer-facing work, including account maintenance, issues resolution, and reporting. Since the top mandate (and natural talent) of sales professionals is to generate revenue, excessive administrative work—be it paper or automated—represents a significant loss of revenue.
How to Convince Anyone to Buy a Product or Service
Did the title shocks you, or provokes a response from you inany way? While I agree that modern selling is about providing an environment where people buy, I am not quite sure that the word "convince" deserves the negative press it's getting.
Giving Yourself Access: You Deserve to Speak with the Power Buyer!
Josiane is a global thought leader and recognized as one of the world's leading experts on inside sales teams and management talent. This excerpt isfeatured in Chapter 6 of her book, "Smart Selling on the Phone and Online."
Closing the Gaps: New Selling Strategies For a New Reality
How can these gaps be closed? Sales forces need to think differently and understand how to uncover the pain, leverage social media, and incorporate comedy…yes, comedy!

Financing Strategy
Why Raise Outside Capital?
Most new businesses are built without raisingsubstantial amounts of outside capital. They are founded with small infusions of cash from the founders, perhaps augmented by support from relatives or wealthy individuals. In doing so, the founders avoid the effort and dilution of raising capital from institutional investors. The vast majority of small businesses remain small, and their founders are happy maintaining family control and pursuingmodest growth
 
In high-technology, however, two factors confound this common pattern: 1) founders tend to be very ambitious about growth and liquidity, and 2) the rapid pace of technological progress makes slow growth unsustainable. Because some technology companies use capital as a competitive weapon to progress more rapidly, all their competitors are compelled to do so as well.
 
Recognizingthe necessity to develop and grow rapidly, and the resulting need to raise large amounts of outside capital, technology entrepreneurs are faced with a range of options, each appropriate to a different stage of growth. Early in the company's development wealthy individuals and founders can provide the relatively modest amounts of capital (less than $1 million) to get the business plan written, thecore management team assembled, and a prototype developed. At that point, the CEO turns to professional venture investors for larger amounts of capital ($5 million to $20 million), and for the expertise essential to building a company. Finally, the successful start-up turns to major corporations or the public markets for access to even larger blocks of capital (beyond $20 million) and for liquidityfor the founders, investors, and employees.

How Much Capital Should You Raise?
Since a company grows in value as it progresses, the founders can minimize their dilution by raising only as much money as necessary at each stage of growth. Ideally, you would raise money just as you need it, but that would require constant fundraising and preoccupy management with selling stock as opposed tobuilding and selling product. Because investors tie the growth in the value of the business to the achievement of demonstrable milestones, increases in valuation can only be realized in a stepwise fashion.
 
So the answer to the question, "How much capital should we raise?", becomes apparent. You should raise as much capital as is necessary to get to the next major milestone that will justify a...