As a prominent HBS entrepreneur-in-residence put it so eloquently, “Sales is sex, marketing is masturbation.” Marketing is being alone in a room, staring a computer with the door closed. Sales is interaction—meeting people, going door-to-door, pressing the flesh so to speak. Though both sales and marketing have [...]
“The reason why ETFs are a phenomenal success is that they solved a lot of problems clients faced with mutual funds, namely surrounding transparency, liquidity, costs and tax-efficiency. Remember, we have been working on developing the ETFs for 15 years before it finally caught on and became popular. This alignment of securities features with client [...]
Sectionmate Brian San’s bluntness is always appreciated. “Now is not the time to get fat,” he said on the second floor of Spangler. The comment came while I was finishing off my second cupcake. “It’s getting warm outside and you know what that means.” Sadly, I did know what the warm weather brought – the [...]
Twelve years into my ownership of the company, it became obvious to me that growing it to the next stage would not be as interesting or challenging to me as my early years of fixing things and turning the business around. After a first aborted attempt to sell the company in 1999, the final private [...]
Those of you who know me know I love chocolate. White, dark, semi-sweet – it makes no difference to me. Chocolate is chocolate, and I don’t care what wrapper it comes in. I’m a sucker for Godiva as well as for Hershey’s. On a recent excursion to Harvard Square with my sister, I stopped by [...]
View Larger Map A) Boston B) Wrentham C) Sears D) Best Buy E) Target F) Walmart G) Emerald Square H) Staples I) Lowe’s To me, Thanksgiving has never really been about thanks or giving. I tend to associate those more noble actions with Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Indeed, the less admirable pastimes of food, family [...]
Yes, there is a difference – a difference that I didn’t realize until I left my cushy life on Wall Street and became a graduate student. I am not cheap, but as a graduate student I learned to become frugal so I can use the incremental value I gain to do other things. I asked [...]
Learning the Lesson that I was the most effective “face” to our customers took me a long time and was critical to our ultimate growth and profitability. In my Product Manager positions at GE and later as President of small Machinery Divisions I was often “trotted” out by the sales force to meet customers. Sales [...]
In the businesses I operated, I was always deeply involved in setting prices because I found it to be the most immediate way to impact margins and cash flow. “Cost based pricing” establishes prices based on costs of purchases, manufacturing labor and overhead with a markup to attain profit targets.ÿ Many businesses, such as software, [...]
This summer, Brent interned at IGNIA Partners, a Monterrey, Mexico based venture capital fund that invests in businesses that serve or employ people at the Base of the Pyramid (“BoP”).ÿ The BoP is defined as the four billion people globally who survive on $2 per day or less.ÿ By providing capital and counsel, IGNIA can [...]
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