By Leo Valiquette
This is a story about a dining room set and organically grown frozen meat products, but it could just as easily be a story about a B2B technology product or service.
A couple of months ago, Francis wrote that customer service must be a deliberate strategy. How you approach customer service ought to be a strategic decision that is carefully and deliberately made. Retaining good customers, after all, is far less costly than acquiring new ones.
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By David French
In our previous posting, we addressed the issue of getting to the point in drafting a patent application. I suggested that inventors would be well-served if they did make the attempt to draft their own patent disclosure document. I strongly recommended against proceeding without the support of a patent professional. But at the same time, I emphasized the advantages of understanding the patenting process by trying to do part of the work yourself.
The challenge in patenting is to identify a feature that is different from what has been done before and to focus a patent disclosure document on that feature. This requires understanding what is patentable and exercising the discipline to stay focused. Too many inventors trying to write their own patent applications think that the more words they use, the better. They respond to the impulse to show off how much they know. They think that longer makes a patent disclosure document better. This could not be further from the truth.
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By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Techvibes, MarketingProfs, Co.Create and GigaOM.
Which accelerator, if any, should you join?
Ian MacKinnon talks about the pros and cons of joining an accelerator and whether or not it’s right for your company.
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By Bob Bailly
Artists, poets, writers, revolutionaries, magicians, explorers, musicians and creative innovators of all kinds are among us today. Their muses, oracles and inspiration are available to us all if we want to understand their secrets.
And one of those secrets is that they are all great storytellers.
Why are stories so powerful for humans? Why are the best orators also great storytellers? What can we learn from our desire to tell, listen and interpret stories that can be applied to what we do in our business lives?
To the best of our knowledge, humans are the only animals that have the ability to remember the past beyond their own lifetimes. This feature likely arose and continued as an essential aspect of human evolution for two reasons: the advent of language, and the need and requirement to seek a narrative for the events and interactions that shape our lives.
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By Jeff Campbell
I had an interesting call with a long time colleague and friend today. He is a well known and respected leader in his field. His expertise and notoriety has been developed over years of innovating and perfecting processes that are measurable, repeatable and produce consistently high-quality results. This guy is and has to be a great salesperson in order to sell his ideas and grow his business. Currently he is managing a software business, developing and offering software that provides automation and process management in his area of discipline.
He explained that, while his company has marquee customers internationally, the majority of its business is confined to one region. Expansion to new territories is critical, he explained, for strategic reasons; expanding global implementations will mitigate risk of competition coming into the region from elsewhere and increase value for stakeholders.
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From courting Hollywood’s A-list to navigating the Chinese New Year
March 05, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
Growing a startup is all about establishing and managing relationships. There are the relationships that open doors and create opportunity. And then there are the more pedestrian ones involved with the day-to-day processes that get product to customers. Relationships in both categories gave the Screach team plenty of reason to lose sleep […]
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February roundup: What does it take to get technology to market?
March 04, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
It may have been a short month, by we still pulled together in February a rich lineup of content for marketers, entrepreneurs and investors alike. Hot topics included how not to do customer service, what’s to love and hate about technology marketing, what’s really going on with the so-called Series A crunch, and the risks of “mentor whiplash” […]
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Case Study: MapSherpa
March 04, 2013 by Francis Moran
What we did: MapSherpa engaged Francis Moran and Associates in September, 2011. The company had successfully brought to market a direct-to-consumer version of its online map-making application as well as a custom version for a large outdoor recreation association. MapSherpa was now contemplating building its second-generation product, but was uncertain which market segments it ought […]
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Great articles roundup: Women in tech, traction, content marketing, Canadian startups & failure
March 01, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Forbes, Startup Professional Musings, MarketingSherpa, Financial Post and ventureburn […]
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Why I hate tech marketing
February 28, 2013 by Francis Moran
Two weeks ago, with more than a deliberate nod to Valentine’s Day, I wrote about why I love working in technology marketing. I have spent most of my 25-year career in this exciting, dynamic and challenging sector, and with good reason, so the benefits obviously outweigh the detractions. But every coin has a flip side […]
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You just never know where a story is going to stick
February 27, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
Last week, I spoke about how many PR practitioners fear to pick up the phone or otherwise attempt to engage with media beyond simply hitting “send” on a media release. I want to follow up by emphasizing that, for a PR program to be effective, it must be consistent, persistent and applied […]
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App development today demands a three-in-one approach
February 26, 2013 by Peter Hanschke
Welcome to the third installment of my blog on product managing myself. Today we’ll get into a meatier topic. Something that is fundamental to being a product manager – managing the intersection of product requirements, user experience and implementation AND remaining within a reasonable release window […]
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Ego capital and the ‘Series A Crunch’
February 25, 2013 by Ron Weissman
The meme of the month is “The Series A Crunch.” According to Crunch Theory, many worthy seed-funded startups lack follow-on capital because VCs now have smaller funds or have moved later stage. CB Insights estimates $1 billion in seed financing will be “incinerated” and at least 1,000 companies will be orphaned […]
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The Future of A&R – Walabe : [...] http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/top-10-questions-every-strategic-communicator-should-ask... [...]
Traditional Marketing is Dead – Long Live Bikini Waxer Marketing | Scalexl : [...] pointed out by Alexandra Reid on the Francis Moran website content marketing is becoming more and more like journalism. So, it is not just about the content, [...]
It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]