Jim Collins: 13 Questions to Take You from Good to Great (Part I). Jim Collins is the author of both: Good to Great and Built to Last. In this article Collins asks, “What makes a company great?”

He also descants on a concept called Level 5 Leader, which is “someone who embodies a “paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will.””

Collins mostly writes about leadership, which he breaks down into different strategies like culture, vision, hedge hog and clock building.

“The Hedgehog Concept: Three overlapping circles [see image here]: What lights your fire (“passion”)? What could you be best in the world at (“best at”)? What makes you money (“driving resource”)?”

The following paragraph is from an article on building companies:

“Make the company itself the ultimate product — be a clock builder, not a time teller.”

“I then told him how David Packard, when asked to name the most important product decisions contributing to Hewlett-Packard’s remarkable growth rate, answered entirely in terms of the attributes of the Hewlett-Packard organization—the importance of granting immense operating freedom within well-defined objectives, the pay-as-you-go policy that enforces entrepreneurial discipline, the critical decision to enable all employees to share in the company’s financial success. David Packard was clearly a clock-building leader.”

“By making the shift from time telling (being a great product visionary) to clock building (creating a great organization), he has taken perhaps the single most important step in transforming his hot-growth company into a visionary company that’s built to last.”

“In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever.”

A couple of interesting reads for the week. Enjoy.

Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends 2014 Presentation on slideshare is 164 slides of graphs. Businessweek didn’t like the format so they re-did it HERE. [thx to @rtehrani for the link]

From Meeker’s talk, Fred Wilson posted about the Healthcare Inflection point. I found slide 32 to be good on healthcare apps. I think wearable tech will be implemented by insurance companies to check on people with chronic disease and maybe on the obese.

Speaker notes on a talk about the Internet, privacy, surveillance and advertising: HERE

Be careful what you call something: you might give it attitude. Or not. Calling them your ‘Number 1 Competitor’ really makes them frightening. Especially as they are not: they are merely something else to consider on the check-list.

Observations of an Internet Middleman by Level3 VP about Peering and Connectivity.

An idea from me about content supplied by ISPs on my TMC blog.

Notes from Metaswitch Forum.

Toshiba is now offering Virtual Desktop. [channelvision]

What is the telecom indirect Channel Selling? Look here.

And Intuitive Cloud UC Business Phone System launched at $9.99

5 Foundational Principles of Productivity

8×8 stock has been on a decline. According to one analyst, “They’re getting clobbered by the street, down 8% today continuing a pretty brutal decline this quarter. RNG is also down again. It’s hard to figure: investors seem to mutually dislike the hyper growth (>60%) at a loss play as well the modest (20-25%) growth, minimal EBITDA play. YTD both are down nearly identical 30%.”

8×8’s GAAP net loss for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 was $1.9 million, which might be why the stock is down. (Personally, I can’t figure out the market.)

8×8 4th Quarter Fiscal 2014 Financial Results:

• Total revenue for the quarter increased 29% year-over-year to a record $35.8 million.
• Channel and mid-market sales comprised a record 39% of new monthly recurring revenue sold in the quarter, a 47% increase compared with the same period last year.
• Revenue from business customers increased 31% year-over-year to a record $35.4 million and represented 99% of total revenue.
• Average monthly service revenue per business customer was a record $287, compared with $256 in the same period last year.
• Number of new services sold during the fourth quarter was a record 64,312 vs. 50,670 in the same period last year.
• Average number of subscribed services per new business customer added during the quarter grew to 19.6 from 18.1 in the same period last year.

8×8 Full Year Fiscal 2014 Financial Results

• Total revenue for fiscal 2014 was $128.6 million, a 24% increase over last year.
• Gross margin for fiscal 2014 was 71%, compared with 69% for fiscal 2013.
• Fiscal 2014 revenue churn of 1.3%, compared with 1.7% in fiscal 2013

• Revenue increased 36% year-over-year to $48.3 million.
• Total annualized exit monthly recurring subscriptions were up 39% year-over-year to $187.7 million.
• RingCentral Office annualized exit monthly recurring subscriptions were up 64% year-over-year to $125.8 million.
• Net monthly subscription dollar retention was 99%.
• RC did a secondary offering, which was completed in March 2014, with net proceeds of $57M. RC is operating at a loss, despite $48M in quarterly revenue costing just $18M.

Like 8×8, RC is looking globally: “99% of our total revenues were generated in the U.S. and
Canada, although we expect the percentage of our total revenues derived outside of the U.S. and Canada to grow as we expand internationally in the United Kingdom and beyond.”

J2 Global, which owns eFax, other communications services and Ziff-Davis, had a revenue dip as well this quarter. It is $134M down from $138M. The cost of revenue is just $23.4 Mill for $134M – nice margin.

Seems some of the VoIP players are seeing a decline in revenue in the US and are heading overseas where the market looks better. (That’s funny because UK VoIP companies keep calling to open up in the US.)  Some of it could be that the PPC price for the VoIP key words is up to $60 per click, which results in a customer acquisition cost of over $600. On ARPU of $39 (RC) or $287 (8×8), that is a hefty price to pay. [Add in free phones, turn-up support and other costs and the customer would have to stay a long time to recoup the upfront expenses — but you would be operating at a loss for at least a year per customer.]

Many people come to me to do marketing. What they really want is a magic bullet. I don’t have a magic bullet. And as far as I know, neither does any other consultant — but I am at least honest about that. (Some might convince you they have the Magic Bullet).

Seth Godin wrote a blog about the 3 types of Advertising. Advertising is a subset of Marketing. (So is PR, email, event and 49 other types of marketing.)

Take heed: “Budget appropriately, because the very worst thing you can do with an ad is spend too little–it will get you the same results as spending nothing.”

One issue I face with prospects is that they have little budget but have Pepsi sized goals or ideas. Or they have a friend or Fivver that will do it on the cheap. All of that is fine, but you get the results of marketing based on a game plan. Would you just add a component to a computer or a network without knowing its function and how it fits in the whole LAN? Unlikely. All the types of marketing you do should have a goal, a message, a call to action and should all contribute to your brand.

“In order for businesses to win market share and stay relevant they need to consider many types of marketing strategies. Each marketing strategy can communicate to a target market the benefits and features of a product.” I disagree with the features part. No one cares about features. They care about the benefit of them, or more significantly the Outcome or Impact of those features. For example, do we care about a 333 horsepower engine or that it means that the SUV (Porsche Cayenne) will be fast?

Marketing can take months to work. Unless you are looking to burn a list or just for a small, one time bump in noise (that may or may not lead to sales.)

Companies need to realize that marketing is about the value proposition but it is dependent on deployment, order processing, billing, etc. (unless you are a monopoly or household name).

When a sales call comes in or a web lead emails in, there needs to be a process to track and handle it – all the way through to billing. You don’t have to. Obviously, you can swivel chair it and not track it, but if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it (or improve it).

I was a panelist on a TCA webinar today about customer retention. I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to but I have a slide deck about some of the points here.

How to retain clients:

1. Thank you notes; 
2. Give them referrals or bring them a customer!
3. Deliver Value (first and always)
4. Have hooks into the company (what if your one contact leaves?)
5. Have more than a billing relationship (be more than a monthly credit card charge!)