There are more and more stories lately of talent acquisitions rather than solely technology purchases. Although they are both purchases, the former is buying based on what they can do, and the later is buying on what they do… do.   A wise developer once told me you make your money on the buy, not on the sale.

The same is true for talent acquisitions. Much like the Google’s purchase of Australian Where 2 Technologies for the Rasmussen brother’s who are responsible for Google Maps & Google Wave (Lars is now at Facebook) or as seen with the majority of Facebook’s latest acquisitions are all seen as talent plays.

The “WIN” happens at the buy, not implementation. Facebook and Google, among many other’s are struggling to find talent right now. As a result, they are buying companies for the founders who have talent and giving them a contractual obligation to stay. It is much like a signing bonus, where the purchase of the company (investors included) are part of the bonus.

“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, or so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere through which we look – to affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.”

Thinking of the big picture is an essential mindset while creating a start-up or implementing a new business plan. If the core idea is clean and simple, you are giving someone a tool that is meaningful and lasting, not a short term solution. Groupon’s decline proves the point that you can “only fish so long”.

“Give someone a fish and they will eat for a day, teach them to fish and they will eat for life”

The winner is the one who enables users to fish without being taught. If Groupon is currently giving fish, then in the simplest form allowing users to reuse the Groupon purchased would be  a good example of providing an ongoing utility, rather than a one time use.  That of course would not work in Groupon’s financial model, so they would need to add in a per use charge, but that is neither here nor there. The idea is to create ideas that are self sustainable.

Connecting the dots can only be done by sustaining consistency.

Knowing your product is very important and the more you know the better you can sell.  You did great in sales because you were passionate about the product and you knew the latest in fashion and you knew what looked good.  Didn’t matter who that person is because you know styles, patterns and colors… you just know what works.

Example: Think if you were to buy gas a giant gas super mall and prices were no more than 10% of each other. If the attendant explained to you how XYZ Gas was so much better than ABC Gas and it would give you more miles, but it cost a “bit” more, you would not really care, because you are sold on the advantages.

#2 Knowledge of the Audience

If you know your audience, you don’t need to know the product. Know who you are selling to and you will know what they need and know their pain points. If you can find the pain, price is not a problem, finding a solution for the pain is all the buyer cares about.

Example: Think if you ran out of gas, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the desert. How much would you pay a gallon?

Both simple examples, but which one do you think is better to master?

Where Guy counts up (10/20/30), I feel it is more important to look at it the other way and I count down; hence 30/20/10.  No font smaller than 30 point, nothing longer than 20 minutes and no more than 10 slides. I do not give many presentations to groups, but I use this rule as my first step if I should take the idea from my head to production.  Until I am able to my thoughts in to this format, it stays as an idea.

In the big picture, consumers want instant results and if the idea/venture/start-up involves too many steps in order to be adobpted, my experience has proven it is not yet full baked.  Unlike Guy’s 10/20/30, my presentation is a start-up test, so I do not include anything about the team, finances or milestones, but those slides are not pertinent in idea creation.  Here are the page titles I use:

1. Title Page with 1 “Twitter Description”
2. Pain: What is the problem/void in the market
3. Your solution: What is your unique Advantage
4. Positioning: Who are the current players & Where do you fit in the current ecosystem
5. Secret Sauce: Underlying Methodology/Technology
6. Time to Market: What’s it take to develop
7. Go to Market: Marketing and sales
8. Costs: Costs to Market & Launch
9. Summary and call to action
10. Thoughts?

As soon as I put that together, I send it by a handful of people and if they like the idea, I take the next step… implementation!

Imagine that you are 45 and are looking back on your last 15-20 years. Is your work, and life, full of meaning?

This is along the same lines as the famous Braveheart quote (or Moment 4 Life with Nicki Minaj ft Drake @4:20)

Everyone dies but not everyone lives

In your work, and life, live each day full of meaning!

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

I have talked with some friends who have their MBA from top universities and they disagree, but at the same time, they went to the top B schools.  So if you take the MBA market as a whole and consider the easiest online MBA program out there still gives you MBA after your name on your resume. How valuable is that to someone without context?

Much like Yelp, you do not know the context of the reviewer, but yet it is posted.  With that in mind, MBA at the end of someone’s name does not mean as much today as it did 10 years ago. At the same time, MBA at the end of someone’s name that comes from HBS or a Warton opens doors. On AVERAGE, I agree with Thiel.  I do not think it is true for the top B schools, but for the most part MBA does not automatically mean brilliance (I may be a bit biased considering I do not have MBA). Going to the top B school would mean you are surrounded by other smart people, so of course B schools are valuable, but I would argue it is more who you meet and collaborate with that incubates brilliant ideas.

The truest qualifier is not talked about often, but widely and some irrationally accepted, that is

“where have you worked?”

In the late ’90s early ’00s you would hear more and more about start-ups from exMicrosofties, then it moved to exGoogler.  You are starting to hear a bit more of exTwitter, exFacebookers, but exAmazon seems to be the big name.

Because start-up stories do not include a detailed resume, even if you were a short term employee. Where you were last employed carries more weight than where you went to school. Consider if you are starting up a fashion company, saying you have an MBA does not necessarily carry any weight. On the other hand saying you worked at Nordstrom does.

Food For Fodder

Does it not make sense then, instead of going after the MBA, start from the ground up at the hottest company. In tech, that means take a job at Amazon, Facebook or Zynga. Go find where the smartest minds work and surround yourself with them.  The cream ALWAYS rises to the top in the hottest companies, after all, they are an incubator of great minds!

On average no one in these spaces has been able to create that stickiness to get people to keep coming back. Much like Twitter’s Oprah Effect where the day Oprah first tweeted there was a 43% pop in Twitter traffic.  Twitter’s Josh Elman explained that nearly none of those users ended up staying around. After that, Elman said Twitter stopped going after big user sets and instead focused on a smaller set and creating active users.

In the same way, Facebook’s success is due in large part to the curiosity of each of us, bringing users back daily (if not hourly). Groupon’s torrid growth started out of curiosity and has recently slowed because many customers are getting bored of daily deals they have already seen and many merchants do not see a ROI.

The next killer business plan will mimic the daily deal and check in business model, but build stickiness in to it; a daily deal check in service that keeps people coming back.

Before you spend the time and or money on the creation of the idea, create a presentation.  As a rule, if I cannot create a presentation that describes the idea with enough clarity to give the audience a clear vision of where we are going, I cannot spend the time or money to create the product.

The products are different, but the reasons behind success of ANYTHING that can be purchased all stems from the same root; execution. In this case, Apple’s execution was brilliant while Microsoft’s was betting an old technology would not die.

Microsoft lost the sale and therefore lost their product because they failed in many ways, but they forgot to answer each step along the way in the Buyer (consumer) Seller (Microsoft) Dance(the final Sale).

Build Rapport

Microsoft failed to build rapport with their target audience and instead inferred what was wanted. Apple has millions and millions of diehard fans because they create products that are filling a need.  There are 4 easy stages within Step I that must be addressed in order for any sale to be successful.

Stage One:

Always join them at their level. If prospect asks a question showing interest, make sure you understand their demographic. If they say they love BBM because you can send longer than 140 characters per text, relate to them, even if that just means “makes sense” or “I completely agree”. In the same way, if they express a pain point make sure you can relate, you can even use the same lines as before.  For instance you could say “Not being able to send long texts is a pain isn’t it?”

Stage Two:

Secure an Up-Front Contract (avoid unpaid consulting).  This is very important because no one lines to waste time, especially when that could mean months or in Microsoft’s case, millions spent.  Once you have joined at their level, before you even know their exact needs or wants, assuming you know you can help, always secure your position with them by securing an upfront contract.  Make sure the prospect(s) knows that if you are able to solve their need you will win the business.  For instance, using the BBM situation you could say, “I could show you how an easy way to send more than 140 characters, but honestly one feature probably isn’t enough to change a phone, would it make sense if we took some time and I walked you the other incredible features of our product?”

If they are not willing to set the time aside, their need (their pain) is not great enough and you can disqualify that feature as a big game changing advantage of the product.  There is no reason it still will not be a killer feature, but may not be a game changer.

Stage Three:

Finding Pain is the most important (and easiest) stage. My favorite way to find this out is by using one of these; “if you could paint a picture”, “in a perfect world” or “if you could waive a wand” what would that perfect product/service look like.  From there, 9.999 times out of 10, your prospect will bleed from the pain and tell you everything you need to know.

Perfecting these three stages in the sales cycle will help you turn sales and development in to a process with a much higher success rate.