HOW TO RUN A POST-SHOW TRAINING SESSION.
As travel costs escalate, getting users to attend training sessions
has become tougher than ever. Granite Bear Software's Mark Riffey
says he's found a simple answer: He hosts training events . . .
THE JOEL TEST.
As a "pipsqueak" junior programmer at Microsoft, Joel
Spolsky saw a few death-march projects and occasionally locked horns
with control-freak bosses. But most of the time, Spolsky says, . . .
THE INTUIT WEB MAKEOVER.
This month, Intuit will formally relaunch its Quicken.com Web site,
a key part of the company's strategy to generate "portal"
revenue from personal finance information and services. The site, . . .
NOTES ON THE BENCHMARK CHARTS.
Data for this survey is compiled from annual reports, 10-Ks, and
other financial data supplied by public companies that meet the basic
eligibility requirements for our annual Soft-letter 100 . . .
2001 ANNUAL FINANCIAL RATIOS.
[CHARTS OMITTED]
In theory, financial benchmarks are a good way to measure how well
a company takes common "raw materials"--the pool of available
employees, basic technology, shared marketing . . .
DATA POINTS: MARKETING SALARIES.
[CHART OMITTED]
The Internet has transformed almost every aspect of marketing, but
a new salary survey suggests that the fattest paychecks still go to
traditional product and brand managers. . . .
THE PROFIT SHORTFALL.
Okay, let's stop picking on foolish dot-com entrepreneurs who
"forgot" they were supposed to earn a profit. The folks who
started and funded Web businesses screwed up in a lot of interesting
ways, . . .
CHECKLIST: OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT.
Pavan Muzumdar's company is based in a small town in Michigan.
But much of the company's development work these days takes place
halfway around the world, in Jaipur, India. "There's a small
cost . . .
"EXCEPTIONAL GUARANTEES".
"Everybody offers some kind of vaguely-worded guarantee these
days," says pricing expert Eric Mitchell. "But only a few
companies offer exceptional guarantees--promises that really stand out.
All . . .
DATA POINTS: DOT-COM FAILURE RATES.
[CHART OMITTED]
In the past few months, cash-starved dot-coms have been going dark
at a typically Internet-like pace. According to Webmergers, an M&A
firm that specializes in Web properties, more . . .
HOW TO WRITE BETTER WHITE PAPERS.
This may come as a shock, but customers actually read those leaden,
indigestible "white papers" that software companies use as
ballast for press kits and sales handouts. A recent study found that . . .
CHECKLIST: CHANNEL AND WEB PROMOTIONS.
Over the past two decades, software marketing consultant Rick
Chapman has tracked literally hundreds of promotional campaigns. Some
produced dramatic gains in sales and market share; others . . .
MANAGEMENT: "RIGOROUS, STRUCTURED, CARING".
In a world where espresso bars and ping-pong tables have become
icons of enlightened management, Dick Cook is almost a throwback. An
old- fashioned boss who spent 25 years rising through the ranks . . .
SERVICE MARKETING: THE RELATIONSHIP FACTOR.
Geoff Moore, one of our favorite marketing gurus, many years ago
wrote a wise and now-famous book about the "chasms" that exist
in marketplace behavior. Moore was most concerned with the gap . . .
E-MAIL NEWSLETTERS: "DON'T FORGET WE'RE
HERE".
"Newsletters are tough," says Trellix's Paul
Simpson. "Some of them are just painful to read." But
Simpson's own twice-monthly newsletter is a clear exception.
Written for an audience of amateur . . .
TROUBLE ON THE RETAIL FRONT.
December is ordinarily a blowout month for retail PC sales. But
this year something went wrong: According to PC Data, the leading
channel research firm, retail and mail-order PC sales in . . .
HOW TO SCREW UP A SURVEY.
When one of our most ambitious survey projects crashed and burned
last month (only 25 responses, half with unusable data) we decided it
was time to get advice from an expert. So we tracked down Dr. . . .
2001 TECH SUPPORT SALARY SURVEY.
Support salaries are often a remarkably sensitive indicator of the
software industry's health. When times are tough, companies tend to
freeze support costs and headcount, even though the result is . . .
DATA POINTS: SEARCH ENGINE REFERRALS.
[CHART OMITTED]
Don't count on well-chosen keywords to generate site traffic
from search engines. That's the conclusion of a recent Web traffic
analysis study from StatMarket, which found that . . .
INFORMAL MARKET RESEARCH SOURCES.
Like most analysts, we get a steady stream of calls from people who
need instant market research. ("Instant" here means "not
like Starbucks, but hot and thick enough to serve to investors.").
We . . .
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