Entrepreneurs often have well-laid plans for global domination. They have charts, projections and sales plans showing who they are going to sell products and services to and how much they are going to gross once their company has become a household name. What they typically don’t have is a tactical plan to get to the [...]

A few years ago, just after the Sprint/Nextel merger, I dropped into my local Sprint store because my cell phone contract was about to expire. The companies had already merged brands, but the products in the store were positioned as if they were still two competing companies. The cell plans on offer were confusing and [...]

About five years ago, I was involved in a new consumer services business that was the talk of the town. Friends and colleagues, seeing the flood of customers and press, often commented that “you guys must be making money hand over fist.” Truth was, we weren’t. Providing our services was expensive, and we were struggling [...]

If you have ever talked with Acceleration Partners about your new online business idea, you are sure to have heard us say “get to revenue fast.” This was tough advice to give when the market seemed to reward top-line user growth over revenue and profitability, but now things are changing in a hurry.
It’s one thing [...]

If you run a small services business, you spend a lot of time thinking about where your next customer will come from. Given the time you invest in building a sales pipeline, you might be surprised to learn that almost everything you have been told about the sales process is wrong. Traditional sales thinking puts [...]

Which is better, the business plan or the executive summary? Academic institutions and the marketplace appear to be moving in opposite directions on this question. While many business students are required to develop 30- to 50-page business plans, we’ve found that these lengthy documents are used less and less in the real world, with [...]

One of the great things about starting a business today is the number of smaller consulting firms that can help you. These outsourced partners can serve as an integral resource for your team at an early stage but there is a catch.
You can’t do it all so that’s why you hire the experts. This is [...]

So I am reading the lead Wall Street Journal article this morning about the failed performance of the Sprint/Nextel merger. The author goes into all the ways that Sprint has botched the integration, from diluting the Nextel brand to failing to integrate the two networks. He also talks about how the company has had massive [...]