PBX as SaaS: RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis (Part 5)

SM: What year did you finally become profitable after you made the transition from consulting to applications?

VS: I believe it was 1997. We had the answering machine and fax. That was the core business in 1997. We were shipping worldwide and we had a good reputation. >>>

Anneke Seley on Sales 2.0 (Part 2)

From Chapter 2 of ‘Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology’ by guest authors Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway.

WHY IS SALES 2.0 IMPERATIVE FOR YOUR BUSINESS? Continued 

Marketing and sales professionals in every industry need to reexamine their markets, potential new customers, and how new and current customers evaluate and select products. They need to adapt their marketing strategies and sales processes to match the way that all their customers want to buy, while maintaining the flexibility to allow different customers to buy in different ways. For many companies with complex, business-to-business (B2B) sales models—where competition has increased and technology advances have changed customer preferences—the traditional sales approaches that have yielded success in the past will not work for much longer.   >>>

Designs of the Week: Political Campaign Posters

Although the US presidential election has come and gone, after seeing graphic artist and illustrator Shepard Fairey’s recent Obama “Hope” posters, we became curious about how past presidents portrayed themselves through the graphic design of their posters. >>>

PBX as SaaS: RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis (Part 4)

SM: What was the application that you were developing at the time?

VS: It was an answering machine on the PC. We developed the application, and it would not work. We had a meeting with HP up in Boston, and we were getting worried. My chief engineer and I had a sleepless night and found the bug at 5 a.m. >>>

Redesign That: Online Personal Finance (Part 1)

By guest authors Charles W. Bush and Kathy Hwang of 3Strand Innovation, a brand, design and business consultancy.

Redesign That: Personal Finance 3.0

Seeing as how many of us are trying to put a lockdown on our spending this year, we decided to take a broad look across personal money management websites, evaluate their pros and cons, and take a stab at redesigning a money management website ourselves.

But before doing all of this, the first question is: What is the core value proposition of money? Companies may trade currency like numbers on a spreadsheet, but the average customer has a far more intimate, and possibly intimidating, relationship with money. >>>

Anneke Seley on Sales 2.0 (Part 1)

For the next two weekends I will feature excerpts from ‘Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology’ by Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway.

Anneke and Brent begin by defining Sales 2.0 and discussing the innovations necessary for its implementation.

WHAT IS SALES 2.0?

Sales 2.0 is the use of innovative sales practices, focused on creating value for both buyer and seller and enabled by Web 2.0 and next-generation technology. >>>

PBX as SaaS: RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis (Part 3)

SM: Did you build your business yourself, or did you take outside funding?

VS: We were not funded. We were always self-sustained. Eventually we figured out that we could reuse code we had, which let us focus on specific types of projects. >>>

Just Curious

How many of you twitter, by the way? Do you find it useful?

Here’s my twitter page: https://twitter.com/sramana …