Most small technology companies are run by technologists. They almost universally lack management and people skills expertise. They also don't understand sales and marketing. They have so much ego, they think their technology will and should sell itself.

As a result, sales and marketing is largely ignored or at the best of times gets a lip service. When numbers start to tank and cash flow gets threatened, a sudden attention to this necessary evil takes a form of crisis management with interesting consequences.

One consequence just happened to us is we got a new Senior VP of Sales. This guy is a complete idiot and comes from old school of "sales is a numbers game". You know the drill; make so many calls which will convert to so many appointments and close ratio of such and such etc.

These dinosaurs who don't have a clue of marketing in the 21st century get great endorsements from "techy" CEO and/or owner because they don't know much about these things and they want to know even less.

So you end up with a frustrated sales force shaking their heads and looking for yet another move.

When are these small business owners going to learn?

A lot to be said about consistency in business. Changing direction in the middle of a journey without taking into account the probable consequences, can be deadly for a smal business. For starters, by the virtue of its status as a small business, it does not have standing power to wildly experiment with new business models ad hoc.

Part of the problem is the owner's insatiable hunger for fast growth. Combine that with a massive ego, you have a fatal recipe for disaster. Currently we are going through one of those periods where a sudden change in business model a few months ago and accompanying layoffs of part of the sales force, brought the company to its knees in terms of cash flow.

Obviously, the new model is not working. Many of us could have told them that it was a mistake to change the direction so abruptly before seeing some of the indicators of success or otherwise.

You'd say pretty simple stuff... Then, why does it keep happening over and over again?

Blows me away!