To learn more about the framework, go to this site where both his whitepaper and a presentation he gave to a group of startup CEO’s are posted. http://www.altusalliance.com/ceoInfo.html. Expect to see a version of this paper in a major business publication in the Fall given how well received it has been when Mark has previewed it.

I wrote an article introducing the concepts for an interactive marketing focused website. [see excerpt below]

Part 1: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/5791.asp
Part 2: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/5796.asp

[Gratuitous self promotion warning] You mentioned in your post “the correlation between the sales plan and reality is completely random.” We have been working with Mark to make the process to reach the revenue inflection point less random by developing an assessment tool that can help guide decisions on when to scale up spending on sales, marketing, etc. (which is usually significantly later than anticipated). That tool is still in “beta” but it’s proving to be valuable thus far.

Excerpt from article above: “When moving from beta release to first release, Leslie and Holloway argue that only a few technically versant sales reps should be hired. These sales reps should serve as a conduit between the initial customers and the engineering team, and should be compensated not on revenue targets but on the “organizational learnings” that are achieved. Only after enough of these learnings have been incorporated into subsequent releases of the product, and only after the entire organization knows how to sell the product (defined as the point at which each sales rep’s contribution margin is twice their fully burdened cost), does it make sense to hire additional sales reps aggressively.”