Why Becoming a Thought Leader Can Make You Indispensable

Featuring Dorie Clark No Responses

Want to make yourself hireable no matter the economic environment? Author and personal branding expert Dorie Clark explains how becoming a thought leader can help transform your career.

The economy might be improving, but the job market in most industries has yet to totally stabilize – and it may never return to what it once was.

The truth, says branding consultant Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, is that we’re entering an age in which employees are increasingly commoditized. And the only way to fight back against that shift is to be perceived as a thought leader — the go-to expert in your field.

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Expired: Your SaaS Company Doesn’t Need Sales Reps Focused on Renewals

Featuring Jason Lemkin 6 Responses

Jason Lemkin, author of the popular SaaS blog, saastr.com, explains why the idea of having separate renewal sales reps is an outdated concept, and how SaaS companies can reduce their churn rate by linking compensation plans to renewal goals the right way.

How to Reduce Churn Rate: Why You Don't Need Renewal Sales Reps

In the early days of SaaS, most companies’ sales and renewal structures looked something like this: Salesperson closes a customer; account manager onboards the customer; renewal sales rep attempts to retain (and, in a perfect world, upsell) the customer before the customer’s contract expires.

Today, that model is old and inefficient, says SaaS expert Jason Lemkin.

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photo by: Jeff Kubina

What is Scrum and Who Should Use It? 5 Infographics that Bring Clarity to Going Agile

By No Responses

When most people hear the word “Scrum,” they probably envision a mashing of heads and limbs on a rugby pitch. In the software world, however, Scrum means something very different.

What is Scrum and Who Should Use It? 5 Infographics that Bring Clarity to Going Agile

Most often associated with product management and development, Scrum is an agile development framework for creating high-performing teams and vastly improved organizational productivity. And it’s not just for programmers and product developers anymore.

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CMS Cage Match: Choosing the Right Content Management System

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All that content your company produces is only as effective as the platform it’s delivered on. Learn how to choose the right content management system that balances your company’s needs with essential elements like promotion, price, and practicality.

Choosing a Content Management System (CMS)

Like CRM software for sales and marketing organizations, a content management system (CMS) is the heart of a functioning content factory. It takes much of the coding legwork out of publishing and distributing the content you create and allows you to manage the myriad content related activities in a single, flexible interface.

Of course, there isn’t just one universally lauded CMS for your company to choose from.

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Professional Services: Your Key to Happier, More Successful Customers

Featuring Chuck Linn 2 Responses

For many expansion-stage software companies, professional services are an afterthought. Former Oracle VP Chuck Linn explains why that’s a big mistake for businesses that rely on customer references.

Professional Services: Your Key to Customer References, Satisfaction, and Success

It’s no secret that rapidly growing software businesses love — and thrive on — good customer references. After all, those references are organic, pre-qualified, and, maybe most importantly, inexpensive leads that are very often easier to close. What’s not to love?

So why then, asks OpenView Senior Advisor Chuck Linn, do so many of those businesses approach professional services — their key to higher customer success and satisfaction — ad-hoc?

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Is Thought Leadership Ruining Your Ability to Close Sales?

Featuring Jim Keenan 2 Responses

Producing thought leadership has quickly become an effective way for salespeople to acquire and nurture prospects. But does it present a significant sales problem, too?

Lead Nurturing: When to Switch from Thought Leadership to Closing

In the old days, it used be that perhaps what salespeople knew wasn’t quite as important than who they knew. Networks trumped domain expertise and product knowledge, and a beefy Rolodex full of string-pullers often proved more fruitful than being the salesperson who knew the most about a particular market, solution, or customer pain point.

Today, however, sales strategist Jim Keenan argues that formula has reversed.

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Startup Growth Isn’t Rocket Science: The Key to Understanding & Boosting Your Growth Rate

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You don’t have to be an experienced CFO to understand and improve your company’s economic performance. In fact, with this high-level guide you can dive right in by learning how to discover, develop, and optimize your economic model.

Startup Growth Isn't Rocket Science: What Is an Economic Model

When most software companies are founded, they follow a similar developmental path.

First, company founders work hard to build a solution with a great product-market fit. Next, as the business gains traction, its team begins to focus on growing the company’s user and customer base. Finally (and often concurrent with the previous step), the business continually pushes its people to establish a clear competitive advantage in its market.

But as most entrepreneurs know, there’s much more to building a great, big software company than those three things.

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Labcast: Practical Content Marketing: Working Lessons and Real World Tips

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Sure, content marketing is great in theory, but how do you develop a program that actually works in the real world?

Practical Content Marketing: Working Lessons and Tips

In this week’s Labcast, OpenView Managing Editor Jonathan Crowe takes listeners inside OpenView’s content factory to explain what it really takes to get a content marketing strategy up and running smoothly.

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3 Keys to Develop a Faster, More Intuitive User Experience

Featuring Kyrie Robinson 1 Response

Kyrie Robinson, User Experience Design Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, outlines the keys to developing a streamlined user experience that your customers will love.

3 Keys to Develop a Faster, More Intuitive User Experience

After being buried in code for months, developers can sometimes lose sight of how someone unfamiliar with the product will view and understand it. That’s where Kyrie Robinson, a user experience design expert and partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, comes in. She recently stopped by OpenView Labs to discuss why it is so important to design websites and software with the user in mind, and how impactful an intuitive user experience can be on customer satisfaction.

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How to Guarantee You Are Properly Prepared for a Board Meeting

Featuring Bill Conroy No Responses

Bill Conroy, serial entrepreneur and director at Kareo, Prognosis, and AtTask shares why having a control book is one key to bringing greater speed and productivity to board meetings.

How to Run a Board Meeting Preparation and Protocol

Board meetings too often turn into a slog through status reports and numbers. Even if you’re on track to power through on time, all it takes is one board member asking for a number to be reflected in a different way to derail the train. Those small requests set off a chain reaction of reporting changes that is felt down the ranks and distracts too much of the company.

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