2nd Slide Customers; AI Canvas; Mulally’s 4 Decisions; Italy July 13

"…insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Inaugural Workshop Italy – July 13th Bologna — with Scaling Up recently published in Italian, Gazelles coaching partner Ed Capaldi is hosting our first one-day workshop in Italy (taught in English).

Click Here to register and download the Scaling Up Workshop Agenda
Time: 9AM-5PM
Where: Bologna, Just Bologna, Corte Isolani 4/C

AI Canvas Example — Avi Goldfarb, co-author of Prediction Machines, walked our ScaleUp Summit attendees last week through their AI Canvas – a one-page tool for thinking through how to practically use machine learning in your business. This HBR article takes you through their AI Canvas using a real-world example. Please take 2 minutes to read then set aside 90 minutes with your team to think through your next AI application (next planning session?). PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY! If you don't some 20-year-old will, and put you out of business. In fact, find a 20-year old and have them lead this initiative inside your firm.

Artificial Intelligence: An Executive Primer — or you can travel to Toronto and attend a 1.5-day executive course (no technical background required) hosted by Avi Goldfarb and his colleagues. They will help you discern the specific place in your business where better prediction, using machine learning, will give you the biggest bang for your buck. For Gazelles it's better predicting which firms in our database are more likely to engage with us more deeply. Then once you know what you need predicted, you then Google for a firm that has a solution. The dates:

Course description and registration is here.

Find Only "2nd Slide" Customers — Jeff Hoffman (Priceline.com, uBid, etc.) was our closing keynote at the ScaleUp Summit last week (to a roaring standing ovation). Later he shared an insightful sales story. He went out on some calls with his sales person. The first potential client took diligent notes during the sales person's 20 slide presentation. At the end the client shared that he found the solution promising and would get back to them, which the sales person thought was a positive response (but no sale!). During the second sales call, the prospect stopped the sales person on slide #2 and exclaimed "where have you been all my life, we need this!" and a sale was made. Jeff's point with his team – "let's identify more 2nd slide prospects" and not waste our time with other prospects.

2nd Slide Part 2 — to identify these prospects, Jeff's team then asks a lot of questions of these 2nd slide prospects to determine if there are any patterns of issues, interests, etc. that might give them a clue i.e. help them predict who is more likely to buy or not. Adele Revella's book Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insight into your Customer's Expectations, Align your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business gives you a precise process and set of questions to help you discern the specific traits of these 2nd slide customers. Then it's up to marketing to use this data (and possibly machine learning) to identify the best prospects for your sales people to pursue.

How Alan Mulally Saved Ford with Four Simple Decisions — Gazelles coach Bill Flynn wrote an insightful and short blog aligning CEO Alan Mulally's four key decisions in driving success at Boeing and Ford with our 4 Decisions – People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. Note's Bill:

That's how it's done. Short and simple – then make it happen. Please take 1 minute to read the details in Bill's article.

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://scalingup.com/coaches.html.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities – alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.aligntoday.com – on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

Better Book Club — What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.