sale

HP keeps social tools behind closed doors

I sat in on a group breakfast with HP Labs' Bernardo Huberman last week. He's the director of the Social Computing Lab. The press function was called so HP could tell us how the company is using modern social-networking tools to enhance its business.

Modern tools, that is, for 2005.

While Huberman has done innovative research showing how novelty and popularity interact on social sites (PDF) such as Digg and Facebook, the impact of this research on HP is notably old-fashioned.

First, we learned, HP uses algorithms derived from its research to juggle the product offerings presented to buyers … Read more

Study uncovers best practices for SaaS (and open-source) sales operations

I'm in the middle of a fascinating study by Robert Breza of RBC Capital Markets entitled "On Demand Evolution, Volume II: Insights and Best Practices at Leading On Demand (SaaS) Providers." The research details the characteristics and best practices of successful sales operations and R&D at SaaS companies. I share some of its central findings because many of the same principles apply to open source, as both leverage subscription-based business models.

Just as barriers to open-source adoption continue to go down, so, too, do barriers to SaaS adoption. Indeed, some of the same factors may be driving increased acceptance of subscription-based software purchases. Forty-four percent of RBC's survey respondents indicated "no major concerns with SaaS adoption," which is up from 35 percent in a similar survey from Q1 2008.

But someone still needs to sell these products/services. One suggestion from the report is that subscription-based vendors should segment "hunters" (new license salespeople that are paid a higher commission) and "farmers" (renewals and upsell salespeople, generally paid a lower commission) early in the company's growth. Such vendors should also focus more on the long-term value of a customer, not the short-term initial contract payout:

The company is more concerned with farming the customer than they are with negotiating that initial contract. An effective and "sticky" product coupled with an efficient sales model should be able to drive customer retention above 90% while revenue retention is at or above 100%. (10)

Many of these companies (Omniture is a prime example) opted to start with "mid-grade" salespeople early on (Think: inside sales), later moving to "high-grade" sales people once the market opportunity was better defined. The idea is to start with more junior, hungry salespeople to prove out the market, and then bring in more expensive headcount to "reap" in the market once it has been established.… Read more

Gateway ends direct PC sales

Gateway.com no longer sells Gateway PCs.

The company announced Friday that channel partners and retail outlets, both online and brick-and-mortar, are the only way to get the Gateway brand now. In a statement, company officials said it was to fit Gateway into parent company Acer's model, which has always been heavily dependent on indirect sales.

Gateway was one of the original success stories when it came to selling PCs directly to consumers, though its business model underwent several significant makeovers before it was eventually acquired by Acer in August.

Heavy reliance on direct PC sales has fallen out … Read more

The 404 137: Where Justin will not be censored

Big Daddy Wilson can't make it on the show today, so we scoured the office and found his lovechild with MTI, CNET Account Coordinator Eddie Nguyen. He joins us for another wild show- this time, we address the not-so-recent trend of DVD piracy, the George Dubya Bush Sewage Plant (GDBSP), and Google's plan to redirect socially inept nerds. Most importantly, we expose a CON ARTIST within The 404 family. Seriously, we're fuming. EPISODE 137 Download today's podcast

Founder makes largest Dell insider purchase

Dell shares rose as high as 4.5 percent Wednesday, following reports that founder Michael Dell acquired nearly $100 million in shares in the computer maker.

Dell climbed as high as $23.18 a share in intraday trading, before closing out the session at $22.70 a share, up 2.34 percent.

Dell's founder, according to a report in MarketWatch, purchased 4.5 million shares between June 27 and July 1 at an average price of $22.14 a share.

Dell's buying spree comes after the company reported respectable first-quarter results, which came off a challenging 2007 when … Read more

Apple's iTunes hits 5 billion mark

The path to world domination is paved in round numbers, especially big ones like this: 5 billion.

That's the number of songs that have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store, Apple said Thursday. (Actually, for the record, the press release says "over 5 billion.")

That shouldn't be surprising, of course. Apple's iTunes store has long overshadowed the rest of the music download scene. Rivals have launched many an assault, but even e-commerce competitors as savvy as Amazon.com still face quite an uphill battle--sales of songs at 9-month-old AmazonMP3, the No. 2 … Read more

eBay ends online ads sales system

eBay has pulled the plug on Media Marketplace, a controversial pilot program designed to buy and sell radio and TV advertising on the Internet. The Internet auction house confirmed the closure of the program after one year with the brief message: "We have ended our pilot program in this market."

The system got off to a rocky start, receiving little support from the cable network industry and none at all from the broadcast networks, according to a report in AdWeek. The Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau refused to endorse the system, and only a few of its members--notably Oxygen and … Read more

HP names chief sales officer

Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that it has chosen a new chief sales officer.

Don Grantham has been chosen to fill the role immediately, and will report to HP's executive vice president of the Technology Solutions Group, Ann Livermore. Enterprise accounts, public sector customers, as well as communications, media and entertainment, financial services, and manufacturing and distribution sales will fall under his purview.

Grantham is a tech industry veteran. He was previously the executive vice president for global sales and service at Sun Microsystems, and before that, held various sales positions at IBM.

He will replace Andy Mattes, who was moved … Read more

Will 11 million paid Zimbra mailboxes add up to $66 million?

I was on Zimbra's site today looking for the latest update to its excellent Desktop product, and came across the news that open-source Zimbra now has 11 million paid mailboxes. This might still be small potatoes compared to IBM's Domino and Microsoft's Exchange, but it signals tremendous growth from Zimbra, as a quick Google search confirmed.

Back in October 2006, Techcrunch reported 4 million paid mailboxes for Zimbra. By January 2007, the number had jumped 2 million to 6 million paid mailboxes.

In the space of a year, then, Zimbra has roughly doubled its customer base. Let's correlate this to sales.

The company expected to hit $20 million in 2007 (and was on track to do just that as of September 2007, when Yahoo! acquired Zimbra), the year that it probably bumped up against 9 million paid mailboxes ($2.22 per mailbox). It did $6 million in 2006, the year that it had 4 million paid mailboxes ($1.50 per mailbox). … Read more

Overstock sues New York over Net sales tax law

Overstock.com has filed a lawsuit challenging a New York law that expands the state's requirements for online retailers to collect sales taxes.

The Utah-based company announced Friday that it is asking the court to issue an injunction and declare the law unconstitutional.

In April, Gov. David Paterson signed a new law requiring companies that pay New York-based entities for "directly or indirectly referring customers" to their retail business to collect sales taxes from New York-based customers. The new law goes into effect Sunday. It's an attempt to get around a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court … Read more