The Y-AXIS LIVE!

Should your sales funnel have 100:1 ratio or 5:1? Should you aim only for the CXO connect or even reach out to the Managers and Application Owners?

Inside CRM argues that generating more leads does not necessary lead to more sales, it is the quality of leads really matter. Essential truth about a well differentiated offering chasing dollars based on good understanding of buying behavior in a well segmented market. Blind lead chasing results in tower fabrication company brochure reaching a broker’s mailbox. Don’t compound by following up with a call and seeking a meeting. Stop!

‘Reach the decision-maker’- Am sure anyone in sales selling a high value product or service would have heard this sermon from his boss. CustomerThink poses the question, “Is "Call on the CXO" a Winning Strategy for Salespeople? ” I am not sure I agree with the premise in this article. At least, completely.

The long and short of any complex sale is that there are a set of influencers, a set of buyers and a set of decision makers.Sometimes these roles overlap as well so, it is not A vs B, but A and B.

I am reading (once again) a book by Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey titled Cold Steel which actually covers the Mittal pursuit of Arcelor few years back. The coming together of Arcelor and Mittal resulted in formation of world’s largest steel making company, ArcelorMittal.

The Mittals (Lakshmi and Aditya) were chasing an M&A target that did not see a point in the merger. The CEO was Guy Dolle, who was actually pursuing Dofosco, to gain a scale and not become an Mittal target.

Some very interesting facts. The two parties were advised by two top shot M&A advisors. One worked for Goldman Sachs and went by as Yoel and advised the Mittals, and his counterpart in Arcelor camp was Michael, who worked for Morgan Stanley. Michael Zaoui and Yoel Zaoui were real brothers!

The book is very well researched and written like a story. You feel like you are watching things on the screen. Only one complaint – periodically you come back to real life! A must read!!

This guy was riding atop watermelons. Correction, he was actually asleep atop the watermelons. Supply chain agility, or supply chain adaptability?!

Long back, I remember calling one of my friends around dinner time. I did remember he was out of town but wasn’t sure where he told me was going. Those were early days of the mobile phone so I thought what the heck. His number rang for a slightly longish period and then he growled – I am in Sydney and it is 1 AM. What’s it that I wanted? (Later authorities in India mandated that when in international roaming, the caller should be notified).

At workplace many times, not knowing where a colleague is. More so in a multi-time-zone company. A Google Latitude like application, implemented within a corporation could be a great help. Tracking a sales team could be quite a nightmare ( When I say tracking, I don’t mean snooping on their planned vs actual travel, but merely knowing the time-zone for a call appropriateness. It is another matter that many organizations would like to see their guys on a screen just for that, usually fruitlessly).

Google already has this technology where your location can be shared with friends automatically depending on mobile phone connection. Large organizations buy big number phone connection from one or two vendors.

Maybe the blocks of technology of what I am proposing is already there. Imagine, on your personalized screen in the intranet/extranet, you cannot just look up a person’s contact details, but his current location. You would be wise enough to call a Tampa based colleague an hour beyond his normal time, when you know he/she is in Chicago on business.

Can I expect a reply to an urgent mail? I think that would be cool.

On the flip side, I do agree there are privacy issues. But then technology has to be used meaningfully deployed.. If an organization wants to snoop on the location of its employees, they can always do through other means. This is a cultural dimension and not a technology dimension. Imagine a positive deployment and its potential.

Since the term Cloud Computing and SaaS gain currency, there has been tremendous excitement in the technology watcher community. The same level of excitement has not seen in the business adoption of these technologies. 

If one were to see the different IT applications, any application with regard to a financial transaction is considered a high risk, compared to one, let’s say, document management. That’s why it is long time since terms such as CC and SaaS are a few years away from online retail, financial services and so on. In comparison, Slideshare, a presentation sharing site and Twitter are hosted on Amazon web services. Risk perception = Difficult to answer the question – Is it a proven and safe?

It is not that SaaS is completely a no-no in the enterprise scene. Salesforce offers  CRM application as SaaS. Salesforce.com had a revenue of little under 250 MN in 2007-08 which is not small pennies. It surely hosts a great amount of valuable data. Google Apps has found great favour with academic institutions across the world resulting in some extremely large implementations. There are quite a few ERP applications on the SaaS mode. At this stage, it is not really a proven to say that data in a cloud of on a SaaS application is any less secure. One the other hand bulk storage is becoming cheaper, thanks to companies such as NetApp.

It is more of a perception thing. Which boils down to the same old point of consumer behavior- Does your product promise hold credibility to generate sales?

Trevor at Kinaxis blog has an interesting argument. He says one of the big issues in Cloud Computing is if the company hosting the CC goes bust, how do you get the data secured? He argues that the on-premise applications are no more secure than those based on the cloud. He also argues that data can be lost by way of a simple printout, which can happen either way. I go with Trevor. Every year we read about sensitive data lost via misplaced or stolen laptops or disks lost in transit, including credit card data. Why, a senior British law enforcement official recently lost his job because he carried a printout of a plan the cover page of which was visible to the media, thereby compromising on the operation.

In short, it is not A vs B when it comes to on-premise application vs SaaS or CC. Both these solutions will probably continue to evolve in parallel, and address different needs.

It is only yesterday that the new brand identity Mahindra Satyam was announced but it seems Cyber Squatters have been on the job for a while now.

 After ICANN developed a mechanism to resolve such squatting, one would be tempted to believe that it is sunset for squatters of corporate brand assets, but clearly not everyone believes so. For instance the domain SatyamMahindra.com has been registered the same day the new identity announced. Clearly, the expectation is that the natural traffic arriving would get them some revenues on the parked page and also to possibly make some quick buck in case the company gets interested in acquiring this squatted domain.

If the above domain was booked on June 21, 2009, the domain MahindraSatyam.com was booked by a Gulf based cyber-squatter on May 08 itself. 

This was even before the announcement of Tech Mahindra becoming coming out the eventual winner was made. Clearly, someone was just taking chance in the hope of making good money.

What is common to the both the cases that both the registrants have not chosen the privacy protection option usually provided by domain registrars, normally, at a small fee. Clearly, both want to be reachable in case someone gets interested.

Mahindra Satyam should move internet governing body ICANN and dispute the ownership of these two domains for reclaiming these two domains. With appropriate documentation, reclaiming should not be so tough.

Updated: Very pertinent Computerworld article on cybersquatting and how to deal with them.