I see it time and time again - companies with great ideas not getting off the ground and just burning through cash without revenue.  More often than not, at the very bottom of the problem is an inability to sell.  But how do you know you need help?  And what can you do?

I've spent the better part of the past 20 years selling.  Selling is just plain h-a-r-d.  But it is also a LOT of fun... I love selling!  In my mind, there is almost nothing that you can do as an entrepreneur that gets you to the heart of capitalism better than selling what you have created and satisfying customers. 

As a service to our readers, here’s a good compendium of solid and legitimate organizations you can go to for a variety of marketing-related information, including articles, white papers, terminology, etc.

These organizations vary from pure marketing to functions and specialties such as research, advertising or public relations; from US-based to internationally-based; from brick and mortar to web-only; from open-to-all to level-specific such as executives; from well-known to specialized and less well-known; and from all industries to industry-specific organizatons. You’ll also notice some Washington, DC-centric organizations among these.

A lot of entrepreneurs are coached (or required) to bring in some "seasoned management" in order to make their company successful.  Is this really necessary? Can an entrepreneur somehow maintain the CEO title?

Many VCs and other investors encourage (or sometimes force) entrepreneurs to bring on seasoned executives to run their companies.  Does this make sense?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and the wise entrepreneur would do well to think this through before taking outside money.

A number of months ago I wrote about the US technology economy and the outlook for 2008.  I made a number of observations about the “credit crunch” and the likelihood of a recession.  The posting is here .  Since then many people have asked me what I think is going on now, and whether my outlook has varied.

For those of you who didn’t read my earlier post, I posited that the credit crunch was being addressed by the Federal Reserve Board and that an overall recession was not going to happen.  I did feel that the state of the economy was going to result in individuals suffering and that start ups would find it more difficult to find initial capital.  The prevailing environment is pretty much as I anticipated, with some major, albeit unanticipated, differences.  The largest difference being the explosive acceleration in price increases for commodities, particularly food and energy. So, where are we now, and what does it mean for technology start ups?

How many software or Internet business plans have you seen recently that rely on advertising as a business model?  Investor beware!

I've been in the Internet full time since early 1996, and in advertising-based businesses on the Internet since 1997.  I've seen plenty of hype and plenty of failures, and I personally lived the rapid rise of the Internet, followed by the crash, followed by the second rapid rise of the Internet.  And now in this second rise (even more so than the first rise) advertising is being touted as the future of the Internet by many content, software, and Web-based service companies -- and the concept is being bought into by many Venture Capitalists.  But is this real?  Can it work?  Based on my experience (and I have sold Internet advertising for many years now), the answer is a simple NO.

Why is it that business schools as a rule have no classes in "How to Sell", or better yet, "How to Manage Sales"?  In a startup, and yes, any company, sales are where the rubber meets the road.

You can take classes in business school on Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, and even Technology Management.  You can take second-year classes on Options Pricing and Derivatives.  Heck, you can even take classes on Business Law.  But very, very few MBA programs have classes on Sales.  How should one sell?  What systems, techniques, processes and tools work best?  And even if teaching how to sell is somehow not important, perhaps they could teach future managers how to manage sales?