In my case (this is Tom Hogan writing), the company I was late to the dance in appreciating was Salesforce. My last two bosses at Oracle were Tom Siebel and Marc Benioff, each of whom left to develop a company in the emerging field that was later called Customer Relationship Management (CRM). At the time I thought Siebel was just a productization of OASIS, the Oracle sales fulfillment program. And when Salesforce came out, I thought it was a low-level knockoff of Siebel.

I knew Marc and I knew his advertising agency, so when they went with the ‘Software is Dead’ slogan, I put it down as the same kind of hubris that we adopted at Oracle.  It was only years later that this unique approach got its own name:  Cloud Computing.

We have a number of Israeli clients, and when we’re over in Israel and talking to clients and VCs alike, to a person they say the leader they most admire—and would most like to meet—is Marc. Not Zuckerberg, not the Google guys, not Larry. Benioff. Deservedly so.

Having worked at sales-oriented giants such as Oracle and Sun, as well as with over 25 startups, we’ve seen a number of different sales and compensation models. The one that we recommend to our clients, if they buy into it from Day One, is to focus on customer satisfaction as one of the key company (and thus sales) metrics.  In the early days of a company, the walls between Sales and the rest of the company—if they exist at all—are low. Sales reports on their activities in weekly company meetings and can call across the room to the Product team with their questions and customer issues.

So if the startup makes customer satisfaction not only a visible but a measurable tool, and reviews it regularly with the company, it sets up a different kind of comp plan, one that still focuses on revenue but includes customer satisfaction (determined eventually by an objective third party) as well.  In short, you don’t make Sales Club (the trip to Maui) even if you’re at 150% of plan if your customers aren’t happy.

This is a dramatic departure in culture for many sales reps, but if practiced right it not only is a key differentiator (a PR agency can sell stories based on this model alone) in the sales process, but happy customers who know the company’s dedication to customer satisfaction are more willing to buy again, be references for other prospects, and to talk the company up in their professional circles

Another retro tactic that we wonder about – direct mail. In the sea of email and e-newsletters, could a “low tech” tactic like direct mail drive a higher response rate (and marketing ROI)?

One tech startup used postcards and email as part of their recruitment strategy aimed at hard-to-find engineering talent. Of those candidates that responded, the vast majority had received the postcard.  And, they were the better educated, or “higher quality” candidates.

If a lowly postcard can motivate a higher response rate than email, maybe your startup should consider it?

But when it comes to building and motivating teams of innovators, can startups really do away with traditions like job titles, performance reviews and business cards?

We read about this company that has eliminated job titles and adopted verbs for their people. Leadership team members are known as “shapes.” Below that are “drives,” “solves” and “creates.”

While that system may work once a candidate is inside the company, it most likely restricts finding and recruiting that person. Say you’ve got an opening for an “experienced online marketing director.”  When do you tell that ideal candidate that they’re going to be a verb? How do you describe your role on LinkedIn?  (“You’re an ‘engage’?”)

In our experience, young organizations need enough structure and process to foster an environment of collaboration and accountability. Who owns what—and by when—is still the critical component to success. And anything that distracts from that—including your job title and responsibilities—should go in that pile of ‘good ideas that failed’.

Part of the problem is that the CMO position is being defined as cross-discipline, perhaps the only senior management position that requires a variety of talents. In baseball, the rarest of players is the five-tool talent: hit for average; hit for power; field; throw; and steal bases. In a tech startup, a CMO has to be a three-tool talent:

1) product management (drive the product roadmap and hold his/her own with the founding engineers down the hall);

2) product marketing (develop and price competitive products, counter the competition, create powerful sales tools; and

3) corporate marketing (everything from PR to lead gen to data-driven sales/marketing systems).

Our advice to our startup clients –and to their headhunters—is to start with the toughest discipline, which in our opinion is Product Management (deep technology knowledge required) and then hire a Director of Product Marketing in the early going. Outsource your Corporate Marketing (it’s the broadest set of disciplines in terms of finding good talent—SEO, lead gen, etc.—and it’s the easiest to learn) until you’ve gotten past launch and the initial sales cycle. Then, once you’ve gotten the necessary sales traction and revenue growth, start building out that last part of your internal marketing team with a Chief Marketing Officer.

Fast-forward to today and we’re seeing our clients once again budgeting for physical events, from DreamForce and Oracle World to small, industry-specific events. As noted in previous blogs, we don’t advise our clients to attend trade shows in the traditional manner:  invest in a booth, bring your company to a halt in prep for the show as well as during the show, not to mention the image that a 10×10 booth projects to prospects. It’s poor ROI, from our vantage point. What we do counsel them to do is to consider attending these shows and conducting their business ‘off-floor’, in suites where they can control the environment and look bigger than they are. And we have channel-focused clients that we encourage to participate in critical shows and conferences via their partner’s booth rather than their own.

Where does that leave virtual events?  Still trying to prove themselves, in our opinion.  We’ll keep an eye on them, to be certain, but we still think webinars and off-floor event participation is a better ROI for our

As we say over and over again to our startup clients, a marketing plan is the right balance of programs (PR, content, SEO, lead gen, lead nurturing, etc.) sequenced carefully to maximize the resources (people and dollars) for the maximum return (in lead generation.)

And each marketing program must have 3 elements: deliverables, deadlines and metrics.  If your marketing owner can’t translate their ideas into concrete programs with measurable outcomes, then there’s really no plan.  We wrote about this in an earlier blog post.

That’s why probably our favorite saying in startup marketing is:  what gets measured gets funded. 

Numbers can be deceiving. LinkedIn has more than 200 million profiles and Facebook has more than a billion pages or users. But LinkedIn is clearly the network for business professionals and it is the word-of-mouth engine that can reach a highly qualified audience.  Here are 3 reasons your startup team should invest in LinkedIn:

1. LinkedIn is the home of business professionals and professional groups.  According to Wired, LinkedIn makes over half of its revenue from the tools and solutions it provides to recruiters. More than 16,000 companies pay for LinkedIn’s recruiter service. If talent is key to scaling your startup, then your recruiter is going to be using LinkedIn because it’s the number one resource for finding the best people. Remember that the talent you want to attract who are already on LinkedIn are also going to be vetting your company and leaders on LinkedIn.  So be there

2. Think of LinkedIn as a free word-of-mouth network to promote the progress of your startup. Consider the “update” field available on each individual’s profile.  Your employees can feature your startup’s Twitter handle in their own profile.  They can also connect the company blog to their profile.  (While it may run counter to your startup’s culture to ask employees to do this.  It’s reasonable to show them that it can be done.)  In other words, employees can use their own profile to promote the unique value proposition of your startup. By posting updates to their own profiles, employees can help promote news that drives visibility and customer interest. That’s information like new product, services, case studies, and job openings. In addition, there’s the company page on LinkedIn that every startup should keep up to date with the latest news.

3. Groups on LinkedIn are another free option that startups often overlook. Think of them as SIGs (special interest groups) that your company can tap. Depending upon the technical level of your target, consider naming an individual on your startup team to own building and engaging a community via a LinkedIn Group with timely postings of content. That community can be a source of future customers, partners or employees.

According to a recent study, the value of fans on LinkedIn, compared to Facebook, is greater for higher price point products. This is yet another reason that LinkedIn trumps Facebook as a social network that delivers access to critical stakeholders.  With limited resources and time, focus is paramount for every startup and that’s why we vote for LinkedIn over Facebook.

The key to long-term success, however, for these CEOs, is to temper their stubbornness—or in some cases, lose it altogether—once the company is up and running. Why? Two reasons, really. The first is self-preservation: VCs are now invested in the company, and they expect their counsel to be, if not immediately heeded, at least considered. They may respect some initial stubbornness, but over the long run a stubborn startup CEO often becomes a deposed startup CEO.

The second reason is that, at some point in running a company, a CEO has to defer to people who know more than he/she does.  In the early days, where they have to do everything for themselves—and it’s all about the technology and the market—there aren’t too many people who fit this description. But when it comes to Marketing, for example, we have to explain to them that, while we’ll never know as much about their technology as they do, they’ll never know as much about Corporate Marketing as we do. It’s a tough conversation to have, especially since they pay our bills, but it’s a necessary one if the company—and the CEO—are to have long-term success.

Hamburger buttons – in UI design, app developers have developed three overlaying fat lines – representing buns and filling – that are pressed by the use to release a sliding pane from the side of the screen.  This, and other UI innovations are helping drive mobile usage.

Zombie startups – startups that have just enough capital to keep going, but not enough to invest to scale or grow fast enough to secure another round of financing or to exit by being acquired or going IPO are called zombies.

Wallet apps – the digital wallet wars involve the ecosystem of merchants, payment providers (Visa, American Express, etc. Mastercard), and third-parties (Paypal, Square and Google) that are racing to win the hearts of consumers.  Watch for more action in this hot space.

Non-practicing entities (NTEs) — also known as “patent trolls,” NTEs make money off of patents while doing little to innovate or build product themselves. New organizations like Unified Patents are rising up against the NTEs and are being cheered by Silicon Valley.