5 Cornerstones of a Powerfully Successful Business Development Pitch

by

Post image for 5 Cornerstones of a Powerfully Successful Business Development Pitch

photo:  Aladair Mid­dle­ton via Flickr

You live and die by the pitch in business.
 
Pitch­ing is not a sci­ence nor an art & sci­ence it’s pure art. You have mere min­utes to impress your audi­ence and with suc­cess or fail­ure hang­ing in the bal­ance a tight rel­e­vant pre­sen­ta­tion is key. 
 
There are tons of arti­cles, blog posts, and exam­ples of pitches (mainly VC pitches) on the Inter­net. They all have value but your first course of action is to get into the right mind­set. It’s for this rea­son that I thought it would be wise to sum­ma­rize the essence of some of the best advice I’ve been given, come across, and learned the hard way. Insights that work for those going after fund­ing or strate­gic part­ner­ships; because real­is­ti­cally it’s all about secur­ing out­side assets to help grow the concern. 
 
Build on exist­ing yeses. [click to continue…]

{ 3 comments }

Sharpen Your Reception with Valuable Content

by

Post image for Sharpen Your Reception with Valuable Content

Here is why two scary insights for wire­less / mobile net­work ser­vice providers are a golden path for you and I.  First the setup.

  1. Arieso, one the of world’s lead­ing providers of mobile net­work man­age­ment soft­ware solu­tions, just released the results of a new study, “Recent Smart­phone Trends & the Extreme Data Use”, that showed on aver­age an iPhone 4S owner devours twice as much data as those who own the iPhone 4 or iPad.
  2. If you’re a car­rier that doesn’t have a heavy iPhone pres­ence the pic­ture isn’t any less scary. There seems to be no slow down in the “extreme” user con­sump­tion rate, just 1% of all smart­phone users con­sume half of all down­loaded data.

Bad news for some; Good for others

[click to continue…]

{ 2 comments }

Warning: This will get you and your boss’ head nodding

by

Post image for Warning: This will get you and your boss’ head nodding

“Who are these guys? They’re my theme music. Every hero’s got to have some.” — Jack Spade, ‘I’m Gonna Git You Sucka’

This has to be one of my favorite quotes from a movie. I’m pretty cer­tain no one is going to call me a hero. But, I do have a theme… check that a soundtrack.
 
In fact, I believe that we all put together sound­tracks that are reflec­tive of our lives. Here’s the core of mine:
  • ‘Strictly Busi­ness’ — EPMD
  • ‘Let Me Clear My Throat’ — DJ Kool
  • ‘It’s Your Thing’ — Isley Brothers
  • ‘Thank You’ — Sly & the Fam­ily Stone
  • ‘Me and Baby Brother’ — WAR
  • ‘Vivant Thing’ — Q-tip
  • ‘The Big Pay­back’ — James Brown
What I find most inter­est­ing is not that it is com­posed of music from var­i­ous peri­ods, but that it truly does reflect to a large extent how I oper­ate as a per­son. While I’m not sure which came first the music or the char­ac­ter­is­tic what does hold is my behav­ior ver­sus how I inter­pret the songs.
 
Here is how I cor­re­late my playlist with my busi­ness behav­ior. [click to continue…]

{ 1 comment }

New Product Launch; Why Some Businesses Almost Always Nail It

by Donald McMichael
Thumbnail image for New Product Launch; Why Some Businesses Almost Always Nail It

The secret is that they don’t…  It just seems that way because they have assim­i­lated the art of exper­i­men­ta­tion into their DNA. And why have they adopted this men­tal­ity? To val­i­date learn­ing because what often seems like a no-brainer really isn’t. Intrigued?   Mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion strate­gies; from my point of view — hav­ing been charged with […]

read more →

The Truth About Starting a New Business Successfully

by Donald McMichael
Thumbnail image for The Truth About Starting a New Business Successfully

Okay, it’s that time of year again where lists of how to close out the year right, get a jump on the next year, and how to lever­age the hol­i­day social scene pop-up like… well they are every­where. So much so that it forces your brain to tune out and every­thing starts to sound like […]

read more →

Cord Cutting is a Myth — But Will it be in 10 Years?

by Donald McMichael
Thumbnail image for Cord Cutting is a Myth — But Will it be in 10 Years?

Mon­e­tiz­ing con­tent in a multi-platform world is com­ing of age… or is it they are com­ing of age? Dou­nia Tur­rill, SVP Client Insights at Nielsen pro­vides some infor­ma­tion for us to pon­der. Most impor­tant is that we need to under­stand that those most likely to jump from deliv­ery frame­work to deliv­ery frame­work are young, educated, […]

read more →

Same as it Ever Was… But Worse

by Donald McMichael
Thumbnail image for Same as it Ever Was… But Worse

We’re not going to nail it. Noth­ing could be truer in this day and age when it come to busi­ness plan­ning. Under­tak­ing exer­cises in long-range plan­ning and fore­cast­ing assumes that the busi­ness’ con­tex­tual envi­ron­ment has a level of sta­bil­ity and cer­tainty… well at least enough to make us feel com­fort­able that we can range the […]

read more →

← Previous Entries