I’m not a fan of using Trade Shows and / or lures at trade shows for marketing purposes. So I was hugely impressed by CPC, an industrial coffee kitchen catering company, when they appeared at LegalTech.

Why? On the face of it, their presence made no sense. The trade show was about technology for law firms – servers, software, storage. It was attended by IT professionals. Why should a bunch of coffee-stockers attend?

The answer was of course brilliant, which was that for the majority of small law firms, their entire infrastructure (including facilities, eg the purchasers of coffee-stocking services) reports to the same decision-maker.

Who was at this show, because tech decisions are expensive.

So CPC had just positioned themselves to meet directly with the decision-makers, all at once, in a venue where CPC faced no competition.

Additionally, CPC’s execution was flawless. They set up at the entrance / exit to the main floor, and their booth looked like an actual coffee vendor… but with a big price-board declaring the price of each item listed to be “one business card”.

So picture yourself as a tired executive. You want coffee. It’s there in front of you, it’s free, and all you need to do is trade a business card. And chat with the nice servers, who are also salespeople.

You rest a moment, the coffee is great, the people are nice, and the cost of their service seems quite reasonable in comparison to the technology you’ve just seen.

I believe that CPC sold more at that show than most other vendors there. Brilliant marketing… and not a bad cup of hot chocolate, either.

A patent may not be the appropriate type of protection to seek for your invention for multiple reasons. First, not everything invented qualifies as patentable subject matter– thus a patent may not even be available. Second, there are other types of protection available that may better suit your business goals or may be less costly than a patent.

One alternative type of protection to consider is copyright protection. Copyright protection is available for original works of art, software code, books, fabric patterns and the like. Copyright protection is automatic, registration is inexpensive, and copyright protection lasts much, much longer than patent protection. So if your invention is something like a new doll with an original appearance, a copyright may be a viable alternative. Similarly, if your invention is implemented with software, a copyright on the software code may provide adequate protection. Although the copyright in software does not protect the method implemented by the code, no one can copy the protected code.

Another type of protection that’s available is trade secret protection. Maybe you can keep your invention secret. How many decades has the formula for Coca Cola been maintained as a trade secret? Trade secret protection is only useful if you can maintain your invention secret. If your product can be reverse engineered once it’s on the market, trade secret protection is not effective since there’s no “secret.”

Don’t consider using a trademark for protecting an invention. All that a trademark protects is the name or logo under which you market your product. It provides no protection for how the product works or appears. Thus any trademark you have will keep others from selling your product under the same name; it won’t keep others from selling the same product under a different name.

Another type of protection to consider is trade dress protection. If the appearance of non-functional features of your product becomes recognized by consumers as distinctive, i.e. they come only from a single source, trade dress protection is available. The problem with this type of protection is that it takes many years in the marketplace and high sales volume to accomplish. It doesn’t keep someone from copying your product right after it is introduced to the marketplace. Also, it doesn’t protect how your product works; it only protects what it looks like.

Also consider whether multiple types of protection can be used. Maybe you can use a combination of patent protection, copyright protection, and trade secret protection. There may be aspects of your invention that are suitable for all types of protection. As an example, a computer implemented invention might have copyrightable code, copyrightable screen shots, and the invention as a whole may also be patentable.

Why is it that so many marketers apparently can’t calculate the time value of money?

The math involved is fairly simple.

Take, for example, an executive earning $500 per hour.

If you want them to fill out a six-minute survey, that’s $50 of their time.

Do they receive something that’s worth at least $50 (in their eyes) for that six-question survey? If not, why would you expect any significant number of people to take that survey?

As Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time”. So sometimes you can trade time for golf balls (for example, at trade shows, where people get caught up in the hype and alcohol) – but most of the time you need quid pro quo.

[Consider: the type of person whose time value of money is low enough to make your survey-for-golf-balls worthwhile is probably not your target customer.]

My favorite recent example of this sort of situation was Infoworld magazine, a favorite of mine since their gossip column published my comment on Dell’s customer service hotline (“Please hold, we are currently servicing other customers”. Yikes!).

Infoworld will happily send you a free subscription if you’re a “qualified” professional – eg, if they can lease you as part of their advertising mailing list.

To obtain the free subscription, however, you had to fill out a multi-page survey, which ended up taking me about thirty minutes.

I didn’t know it was going to take 30 minutes. In fact, it was 15 minutes into the survey, as I was starting to get frustrated at how much time it was taking, that I calculated the time value of that survey.

I was shocked to realize how much I was “paying” for my subscription. And of course, by the end of the survey, I was filling in random answers just to finish quickly, so Infoworld was actually doing themselves a dis-service with such a long survey, reducing the specificity and value of their list…

So the good news is that they seem to have wised up. Infoworld’s latest renewal survey was just seven questions long. I have to suspect that as a result of their changes, their lists are cleaner, and their volume of subscribers higher as well.

So check for yourself. How much are you worth per hour, and how much are your customers worth? Do you really need to give ‘em the third degree up front? Or can you lure them in a bit first?

My thinking: be patient. Wait for the second date, ok?

Every startup faces the question of who to hire for their first sales position. Do you look for that fantastic VP of sales who is not only a great closer, but also a master strategist? Do you hire that friend of the founder who is young but promising? How do you decide?

Start by considering what you really need. Most startups have several specific needs that your first sales hire must fulfill. Hiring a salesperson is no different than building a piece of technology. Your management team should agree on a specification for the position, and then hire to that spec. Otherwise, you risk “falling in love” with candidates that may or may not bring the skills your company needs.

The likely list of needs:

1. Sales Momentum
Every startup simply needs to begin making sales. Look for someone who has sold a similar product successfully in your space, and who has some small company/unit experience. Dropping a successful corporate salesman into a startup can be a disaster. You need someone who shows evidence of self-sufficiency, not a prima donna. Have they pioneered a new geographic market or launched a new product? Started a new department? Look for the clues. Ask your candidates to cite examples of creating momentum in their past jobs.

2. Raw Sales Talent
Don’t trust resumes—make the candidate demonstrate their sales technique. The best interview “test” I was ever given was being asked to formally present my tentative sales strategy to the entire management team of a startup. I stood up with my PowerPoint presentation, pitched it to the management team, and then took questions on why I choose that approach. That management team got a thorough demonstration of my abilities to make enterprise sales.

Ask your candidate to give you a sales pitch—either for their current product or a rough version of the pitch they’d use for your product.

3. Market Intelligence
Your first sales hire is going to bring back critical market feedback on your product as he sells. The right salesperson will be a very important member of your product development team.

Check their abilities by talking to past or current clients. Does he/she listen well? Can the client describe a situation where the salesperson went “above and beyond” to make their product really work for the client? Talk to at least 2 clients and find out.

4. Process Building
Your first sales hire is going to build version 1.0 of your sales process. They will develop the sales message, build pipeline tracking and forecasting, and lay the foundation for scaling up the sales team as you grow.

The right candidate will be able to show you examples of how they have done each of these tasks in the past. Can they give you a crisp “elevator pitch” for their current product? How accurate has their pipeline reporting been in the past? Look for examples.

The overarching message is this—hiring a sales candidate is no different than building your product. Build a spec, and hire to that spec. Don’t be afraid to test your candidates—have them do presentations, talk to clients, find out why they win and lose accounts. Don’t become obsessed with finding the (probably mythical) perfect VP that you will keep on the team for all time. Just find someone who can get the job done right now.

Parting thought—“Hiring with Your Head” by Lou Adler will help you formulate your thoughts. You can find it at Amazon.