My Driving Principles at Work

Copyright Ken Pulverman @SageCMO All rights reserved.
MY DRIVING
PRINCIPLES AT WORK

Personal User Manuals are all the rage
in business.
I did a quick flip guide of some of my most
closely held beliefs on Strategy Marketing,
Startups, Management & Business using
quotes, principles, & personal statements
to get to know me quickly in 3 mins or less.
<FLIP FAST!>

4
On Leadership
“Culture is everything.” - Lou Gerstner
If we don’t define the key pillars of our culture, people
don’t know where to direct their energy when the rules
aren’t clear. They may treat the customer poorly or
mistakenly attack each other or the company instead of
the problem or the competition.

5
On Leadership
From the Table Group:
The leadership team of a startup needs to be
their own team Number 1.
We need to help each other ensure all of our
teams are successful. The overall company
priority list must optimize for this.

6
On Leadership
I look for talent that has a burning desire to re-
invent their profession every day.
This enables us to find the innovations that allow
a David <startup> with little resource to slay a
Goliath <incumbent> brimming with riches.

7
On Leadership
John Doer got it right. OKRs need to be the
permission to stretch ourselves.
They are not intended to drive all work actions or
business as usual.
They help us focus on achieving our most
important goals.

8
On Leadership
What gets measured and resourced gets done.
Let’s not speak lovingly about wish list items we
won’t fund or spend time reviewing the progress
of as there are 100’s of these in any company.
It’s a distraction from the great things we are
doing & measuring.

10
On Strategy
From Play Bigger:
To win big, the category, company, and product
must be designed at the same time.
Company
Product
Category
Company-Market Fit
Company-Category Fit
Product-Market Fit

11
On Strategy
Simon Sinek is right.
Companies buy WHY companies do things first.
We win by doubling down on realizing our
mission and vision in a way that directly impacts
what our customers are trying to achieve.

12
On Strategy
In the era of product-led growth and
transparency, we no longer convince people to
buy something. We are a concierge for their
buying process. They will buy when they
understand the value, they have evangelized it
internally, and they are ready. We CAN give them
tools, information, and support to make this
happen faster.

13
On Strategy
Sales, Marketing, and Engineering sometimes
have to play the role of the skeptic because they
have to go collect money for our solution or build it.
We should all relish in discussions about whether
our baby is good enough and smart enough.
They make us better.
CLICK
UNDERLINED FOR
RELATED BLOG

14
Stages of a Startup and the Goal as well as the Role of Marketing at each Stage
4 Scale It – Structure
in pods to tackle
new products &
verticals. Divide
sales & marketing
with very efficient
lead handling to
demonstrate
growth potential.
1
Get Out of the
Blocks Fast - the
best tech rarely
wins. Show growth
in accounts first.
Prove Value.
2 Tune Product-Led
Model – Hunt
amongst only self-
qualified leads.
Enable with in-app
marketing &
analytics.
3
Make It a Machine
– Massive growth
requires that you
can repeat
success. Optimize
digital acquisition,
in-account demand
signaling, and site/
company
conversion to be
ready for
hyperscale.
5 Monetize It –
Capture public or
institutional
attention by being
larger than life and
showing how far
you can go.

15
4 Scale It – Structure
in pods to tackle
new products &
verticals. Divide
sales & marketing
with very efficient
lead handling to
demonstrate
growth potential.
1
Get Out of the
Blocks Fast - the
best tech rarely
wins. Show growth
in accounts first.
Prove Value.
2 Tune Product-Led
Model – Hunt
amongst only self-
qualified leads.
Enable with in-app
marketing &
analytics.
3
Make It a Machine
– Massive growth
requires that you
can repeat
success. Optimize
digital acquisition,
in-account demand
signaling, and site/
company
conversion to be
ready for
hyperscale.
5 Monetize It –
Capture public or
institutional
attention by being
larger than life and
showing how far
you can go.
Seed
A
B
C
Stages of a Startup and the Goal as well as the Role of Marketing at each Stage

16
Seed Series A Series B Series C Series D/ Public
Buyers
are risk
takers.
Buyers
need to
show
value.
Buyers
want
proven
value.
Buyers
want
virtually
no risk.
Funding Rounds & the Chasm Technology Adoption Model
CLICK
UNDERLINED FOR
RELATED BLOG
If you are not familiar
with Crossing the
Chasm, I consider it
the bible of the
software industry. It is
well worth a read or a
listen.

18
On Management
When coming into a new situation, you first role
is to seek to understand.
Doing your homework, listening intently,
synthesizing what you hear, and testing new
ideas need to come well before a grand vision.

19
On Management
Inspired by Patrick Lencioni:
Hungry, Humble, and Smart is the most
elegant way to describe who I strive to be
and who I want to work with.

20
On Management
People generally all come to work to do a good job.
They can freeze up when they don’t know how to
do what they are being asked to do, or they think
they are not good at it, or don’t believe in it.
Management needs to constantly be trying to hear
people & match desires and skills to their jobs.

21
On Management
One of the greatest formats ever to give tough
feedback is: “What I most want to tell you. What I
least want to tell you. What I most want to hear.
What I least want to hear.”

22
On Management
“There is no try, only do.” - Yoda
Today, anything is possible. If you put your
will & your mind to it, you can execute just
about anything.

24
On Marketing
A great marketing plan comes after
and supports a great business plan.
Creating a strategy for how we will
win and our ability to execute against
that plan is the crucial & often
overlooked first step.
CLICK
UNDERLINED FOR
RELATED BLOG

25
On Marketing
Marketing is like your best hair day.
What we convey is not true of the
company every single day, but what
we say is true of us on our best days
and it is what we are capable of.

26
On Marketing
Marketing’s overarching role is to help pick a
category to be a part of, bolster that category to
be seen as vital, uniquely differentiate from the
category, attract buyers….
…and establish an unfair advantage through
brand preference that makes it easier to win &
become a leader of that category.
CLICK
UNDERLINED FOR
RELATED BLOG

27
On Marketing
Opinions matter very little in marketing or
software and they only provide testable
ideas.
Winners measure, read, and react to how
their customers respond.

28
On Marketing
Design is often more important than we think.
Great design stirs emotion.
Emotion, not logic, is what people use to make
decisions.
Our own team will convey more of our message
if we wrap what we want to convey in beautiful
design.

Copyright © Parsable, Inc. All rights reserved.
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What you are Looking At: Sophisticated Workflow Based Infographic Applied to Sales Pitch Decks
Why It is Interesting: Shows engaging design & high end reuse of market assets as sales enablement assets.
EXAMPLE

30
On Product Marketing
The ability for a company to truly hear the voice
of the customer and operationalize it by living &
loving their pain, and create solutions that
elegantly solve that pain is what separate nice to
have “vitamins” from a must have “medicines.”
CLICK
UNDERLINED FOR
RELATED BLOG

31
On Product Marketing
Good enough always wins. – Clay
Christensen was right. We can neutralize
competitors with elegant, light features in
less differentiated areas of our offerings.
We just have to be methodical about it.

33
On Startups
Product-Market fit is everything for a time
and resource starved startup.
If we haven’t thoroughly done the
homework, we shouldn’t build it, because
we are are unlikely to be able to sell it to
enough people to matter.
CLICK
UNDERLINED FOR
RELATED BLOG

34
On Startups
You must truly love the problem to be
successful.
If you are unwilling to swim in the pain your
customers feel & truly love eliminating it, you will
pull your punches, hobble your dedication, and
you’ll be unlikely to succeed.

35
On Startups
To think that larger companies are not lurking in
the wings is naïve.
Most of them want to do what we do, but their
big, lumbering machines can’t move as fast as
we can. That is the core advantage of startups.

36
On Startups
No matter what they say, our investors &
stakeholders are inherently impatient and we
should be too.
We should ask ourselves what progress we
made towards our goal every day.

37
On Startups
Looking much bigger than we are is vitally
important in a startup. You have to always look
at your company through the lens of much larger
& way more conservative companies. You have
to ensure you look like a safe choice to convince
them to place some of their career chips on you.

38
On Startups
Everybody sells in a startup. You help sales, you
sell your ideas, you sell people on joining your
cause. Everyone is capable of embracing this
philosophy – introvert or extrovert.

39
On Startups
Agile is the best and the worst thing that
has happened to software startups.
We no longer get it wrong by producing big
bangs of functionality they may not want,
but we are slower and less in tune with our
customers.
CLICK
UNDERLINED FOR
RELATED BLOG

40
On Startups
It is human nature to want to find your own
way by making your own mistakes and
finding your own truth. In a startup, this
needs to happen quickly as we don’t have
the luxuries of time, resource, or money.
Facilitating this is the delicate dance of
management and leadership.

41
On Startups
Nothing else in software startup matters until
someone is willing to pay you for your software
and they get value from it.

Thank You
SageCMO, San Francisco, CA
415-425-3003
ken@SageCMO.com
Ken Pulverman

My Driving Principles at Work

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