Entrepreneurship

June 28th was Gold Systems’ Anniversary, and today is my 15th anniversary at Gold Systems.  My first day as a full-time employee was Independence Day, 1991.  I couldn’t even spell entrepreneur back then!  We made our first sale in the first month, but didn’t recognize revenue or take in cash until the 4th quarter of 1991 if I remember right.  I also don’t remember when I took my first paycheck but it was much later in the year and it was either take a paycheck or go back to work at a real job.

Thanks again to everyone who helped make this all possible!

Happy Anniversary Gold Systems!  Last week was Gold Systems’ fifteenth anniversary and I want to thank everyone who helped make it possible.  There are many, many people who contributed to the success of the company.  Past and present employees, partners, customers (lots of customers!), investors, friends and family.

I have to name two people because if not for them I know Gold Systems would not exist today.  My good friend and co-founder Jim Fudge uttered the words "Why don’t we start a company" and then put all is energy and money into making it a reality.  If not for him, we never would have started.  My good friend and spouse, who prefers to remain nameless in my blog, kept me going when I wanted to quit, put more than one $20 bill in my pocket when I was broke and generally has been a good sport about going along for the roller-coaster ride.

There are many other people who deserve thanks and who have been critical to our success.  Thank you!

Terry

One of my investors just said, just keep doing what you’re doing.  It was so nice to hear that, I started fantasizing about other things I’d like to hear this week.

From a customer:  We need your help figuring out how to spend more of our budget with you.

From a partner:  Both my marketing and product development budgets were unexpectedly increased, and we want to direct it all your way.

From my IT department:  Your new Motorola Q phone arrived today and we already have it syncing with your new Vista laptop, and we didn’t spend any budget because we finally ebayed the old equipment we had in storage.

I’ll stop there and get back to doing what I was doing . . . feel free to add to the list.

I’m excited to again announce that with the latest growth and changes happening at Gold Systems, we have recently posted new job opportunities on our website.  Please see our website for a more detailed description of these career opportunities and to learn more about Gold Systems.

Terry

This weekend I was without an Internet connection, so I caught up on some blogs that I read when I can.  Tom Asacker comments on an article in Forbes about 10 things for a CEO to do to combat stress.  (Get a massage, sleep more, etc.)  Tom points out that the list treats the symptoms and then lists 10 CAUSES of stress and how to fix the root cause.  (Be passionate, be kind, take risks . . .)  Take a minute and have a look at it.  And if you want a laugh, click back to the previous post of a Mitch Hedberg quote.

I’ve been asked by an entrepreneur friend to talk about hiring sales people. My friend, like a lot of high-tech entrepreneurs, is a technical person who also has the role of CEO and Sole Salesperson, and they feel it is time for them to "bring in a professional" to "take the company to the next level."

Here’s where I think a lot of entrepreneurs, particularly those that are bootstrapping, make a big mistake. They hire a VP of Sales and Marketing, capable of growing a large sales force. Maybe. The New VP spends a lot of time thinking about Positioning. They talk about Executive Selling, Leadership Alignment and Developing Value Propositions. What they probably won’t talk about during the interview or after being hired is how many phone calls they are going to make to new prospects every day. When the sales don’t happen, it’s a product or market problem. (They say)

If you are leading a Rocket-fueled, VC-Backed Start-Up, maybe it makes sense to go right for the leadership who will then build out a real sales force. But if you are just hoping to get some sales help so that you can focus on the job of building your business, then you need someone who can first and foremost, SELL STUFF.

I’m not an expert at hiring sales people, but I can tell you what doesn’t work from experience and I can pass on some things I’ve observed about the people who can sell.

The best sales people jumped right in soon after they arrived.  My company sells a complicated product so new people do have a lot to learn, but the best people were on the phone and planning visits pretty quickly.  If they are too afraid to make the calls then they may not have what it takes.  The biggest failures obsessed over learning every last detail of the product and industry at the expense of just getting out there and working with customers.  The successful people were quick to admit that they weren’t experts yet and they were good at getting other people (engineers, sales support, the CEO) to help them fill in the gaps.  And the successful sales people don’t try to fake it with customers.  We sell to smart, technical people and they can smell a fake a mile away.

Great sales people know how to establish relationships, and it starts before they even walk in the door for the interview.  They try to get introductions from people we know and respect.  They research our company and even if they are from outside the industry, they walk in with a decent knowledge of what we do.  They try to connect with everyone that they meet here, starting with the person who greets them at the front door.  (As a sales person, you need to understand that EVERYONE you talk to at a company has the potential to kill your sale.  If you act like a jerk in the lobby, you’ll never get to the board room.)

I have said that one of our best sales people walks the line between persistence and annoyance.  I’ve never had a complaint from a customer saying he was pushing too hard, but I know that he is not afraid to tell a customer that it is time to sign.

The hard part about hiring sales people is that if they are any good at all, they will generally interview well.  If they can’t sell themselves well, how are they going to sell your product?  If they don’t do a good job preparing for the interview, if they haven’t researched your company and if they haven’t cared enough to find an introduction (and this is their career they are pitching) then they probably aren’t going to do a good job selling your product.

Someone said "Past performance is the best indicator of future success".  If a sales person is unemployed then they need to have a really good reason for it, like they made so much money in their last job that they quit to travel the world.  Companies don’t usually fire or lay off great sales people so you have to be skeptical when a sales person is not employed I think.  I know, everyone experiences set backs and may find themselves in tough positions, I’m just saying you need to be very thoughtful about this.  (One of our best sales people was unemployed when we hired them, so there are exceptions to the rule.)

My entrepreneur friend is at a critical point and I see a lot of companies get stuck here.  It’s easy to hire someone with a great resume who is more interested in managing than doing.  In a small company you just can’t afford that.  The one nice thing about sales people is that there is an objective measure of their success.  They sell stuff.  It may take a while for them to get started, but at some point they have to sell.

I welcome any comments about hiring sales people.  Please share your thoughts if you have figured it out, or if you just want to share some of your mistakes. 

And now for a short comercial break . . .

Gold Systems is off to a great start this year, and we’re hiring again.  If you know of someone who would be a great Sales Engineer for us, I’d appreciate it if you would refer them to us.  They can read more about the company here, and open job postings are here.

Thanks,

Terry

The press seems to be in love with writing stories about jack-ass entrepreneurs and CEOs who abuse their positions to try to make the world cater to their own needs.  It’s hard enough as it is without the bad guys giving the entire capitalistic system a bad name.

Here is a counter-example – an entrepreneur who is making the world a better place.  Donna Auguste has started a blog to try to shine a light on projects that are making a difference.  Mind you, she isn’t just writing about it, she’s traveling around the world, getting her hands dirty and doing the hard work.  I first met Donna when she was CEO of Freshwater Software.  Even then she was involved in a lot of great works while creating an awesome company.  (I can hear her now – SHE didn’t create it, her team created it.  Even after selling the company she remains a humble person.)

Donna is also leading a discussion about how to get more kids interesting in science and engineering.  Again, she isn’t just talking about it.  For example, if you like robots, look at this and tell me that you wouldn’t have been more interested in school with people like Donna dropping by.

Check it out, and the next time someone says "Aren’t blogs just a bunch of drivel?", point them to Donna’s blog.

This year a lot of people had inflatable snowmen, santas, grinches and what not in their yard.  Am I the only one who finds it a little strange to see so many that look like this during the day?  I hope everyone feels better than this guy on the first official workday of 2006.

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Bill Payne called me up a few months ago and asked me to write an article for the Kauffman Foundation website on attracting angel investments.  My answer was that "I just got lucky" but since he WAS one of my angel investors, and I admire the Kauffman Foundation so, I wrote an article for their Pitching Angels section of their new eVenturing website.  Check out what other, more experienced entrepreneurs have to say about it if you are curious about raising angel money.

I’ve been meaning to write this story for a couple of
months. Mostly because I’m so grateful
to Ben Watson for restoring my phone. This phone was an antique when my parents had it. It hung on the wall in our kitchen for as
long as I remember when I was growing up. I mentioned to Ben’s daughter Angela, who works at Gold Systems, that I
had the phone and was thinking about hanging it in my office. Angela also grew up with these phones as her
dad restores them. She “volunteered” him
to make my phone work again and he graciously agreed to give it life again.

A week later it was back and hanging on my wall. I think it might be the one and only
speech-recognition-enabled crank style phone in the world. We hooked it up to our PBX so that when you
pick up the receiver, the phone automatically connects to our V-Dialer
product. You can then say the name of
anyone at Gold Systems and be connected to them without annoying touch-tone menus. We haven’t programmed V-Dialer to understand “Hello
Central” or “Mr. Watson–come here–I want to see you.”, but we could.

This week I was playing with the phone to see how many
technologies I could span with it. This
phone doesn’t represent the very first phone, but it goes back almost to the beginning
of telephony history. Now it is
connected to a modern PBX and speech recognition. If I pick up the receiver and say “Herb
Morreale”, the call is routed to Herb’s desk phone where it forwards via VoIP
to his Skype phone running on his laptop. If I pick up and say “Terry Gold on his mobile phone”, V-Dialer routes
the call to my cell phone. If I don’t
answer, the call then forwards to my laptop via Vonage and then from there to a
network voice mail server via VoIP. A
few seconds later, the voice mail shows up in my Outlook email inbox on my
laptop. If I knew someone with a
satellite phone, I think we could touch all of the existing telephone technologies
with this great old wooden wall phone.

All of this is possible because Ben gets a kick out of making
old things new again. (You should see
his T-Bird and Model-T hot rod!) Thanks
Ben. I’m really enjoying my “new”
telephone!