About
“You can have everything you want out of life by helping enough other people get what they want” – Zig Ziglar
I read this quote early on in my career and it has been one of the foundations of how I approach many aspects of my life. As you may know, Zig is one of the leading motivational speakers and many of his talks focus on the topic of sales. This is how I first came across this quote, as other than doing a small stint as a dishwasher at the beginning of my work life, my whole career has been in sales and business development roles. I have spent most of my 18 years in the technology industry, and have held sales and sales management roles with companies like Corel Corporation, Rational Software (acquired by IBM), and Trigence.
In 2003, I made the decision to resign from my comfortable position at IBM and start my own company. Since then, the company has morphed through a couple of iterations, and even a merger with another services company of which I sold my shares in 2006. Since this event I have spent a large portion of the last few years working as a virtual sales, business development, and alliances executive with a number of early to mid-stage technology companies. In these roles, I have had a number of great sales successes as well as some really challenging moments. However, the knowledge and experience gained while assisting these early stage companies combined with my previous experience seemed to come together to help me write and publish my first book entitled “Building Sales Momentum Through Client Driven Development“.
Originally, this book was to be focused on a similar topic, but at a much higher level. Rather than wait until every little detail was available to publish, I decided to “Just Do It” and focus in on writing about one specific area. The “Building Sales Momentum Through Client Driven Development” book is the first in a series which are being produced and published over the next few years. This first book is a culmination of all the experience, knowledge and lessons gained while assisting the early stage companies to land their first customers, all the way through to increasing revenues at the more mature and established companies. The book is targeted for anyone that is looking to start a company or to build a product or service that truly meets the needs of real-life customers. In short, it is focused on helping the reader build a product or service that customers truly need and are willing to pay for. Most entrepreneurs and companies realize the importance of customers within their business, however very few know how to truly engage with customers in order to have them as vested partners in their success. There are many reasons for this including that people still believe the saying “”Build it and they will come”, or simply due to that they just do not know where to start. My book is a proven step by step process and methodology to help the reader with all of these areas.
Over the last few years as an entrepreneur, I have continued to build (www.ideas2revenue.com) which is focused on helping companies of all stages to building longer lasting, and more beneficial relationships with their greatest resource – Their customers and prospects. In order to help some of the concept and very early stage companies who require some basic market validation for their product or service, but do not have all of the resources required for a full engagement, I have created “Is the Technology Hot or Not?” (www. techhotornot.com). This site is where a new technology (product or service) is showcased and visitors to the site answer some basic questions and provide input on the product or services pricing, usage, etc. The companies benefit as they get some validation from “real-world” potential customers, and the visitors get the opportunity to vote and rate on a new technology to decide if it is Hot…or Not.
Hopefully you can see from everything that I have done, that customers are extremely important to me. I am passionate not only about helping our customers to be successful, but also on topics like customer service, customer experience, and customer support in all aspects of my life. I realize the importance of customers not only to business but also to me as an individual. I am fortunate enough and thankful to have had the opportunity to work with and build relationships with customers from all over the world. I value every single one of my customers and many have become some of my closest friends and business contacts. On the flip side, I am also equally passionate about poor customer service, and experiences. I have become more vocal and opinionated about the lack of service, caring, understanding, and true appreciation of the customer within many of the businesses and services today.
So, that is me, and this site is set up just to give you a bit more insight into me as a person and what I am doing. I would like to know more about you, and your experiences as a customer. Nothing is really off limits here, and I welcome your comments, involvement and feedback. So, please take a look around, send me a note, and lets connect through one of the various social media environments. You will be able to find all of the different ways to connect with me on this site. In the meantime, please let me know what I can do to be of assistance to you…..
…Randy
