As always, I want to thank all the clients who have paid me for my services and allowed me to encounter a multitude of experiences, and particularly those strong personalities whose experiences I could draw from.

    I want to thank Les Goldberg for editing my hundreds of pages of material, and I want to thank my daughter-in-law Cathy and my daughter Susan for taking my notes and putting them into legible form.

    And thanks to Alyn Warren for the final editing, the layout and designing the cover.

    I have crossed paths with scores of marketing and sales personnel in my career. So many I have even lost track of names, but two still stand out, one from the past and one from the present.

    Ed Farris was without a doubt the best salesman I ever knew. His focus was to get a sale, and he went to whatever means he had available to get that sale. He indirectly has contributed to many of the experiences I mention in the book. He worked directly for me for several years, and I may have screwed him up by bringing him into general management. Anyway, he made the transition and became quite successful in many business ventures.

    Gordon Watson and I have been working together in recent years. Much of what he believes and preaches is very close and consistent to what I believe is still needed in the world of sales and marketing. He has indirectly verified much of the message I have tried to get across in this book.

Busting $10 Million -- Crossing the Great Divide

    To cross the mythical $10 million revenue barrier in today’s evolving markets, start-ups and emerging-growth companies alike face enormous challenges that inevitably require an overhaul of the company organization and culture. Success depends upon management’s ability first to separate the operating disciplines-engineering, finance, manufacturing, marketing, et al -- and then to build a team with them in which each member understands and maintains a perspective of the others’ role in the company’s mission. Only then will the company have a chance to reach the Promised Land.

    In this, my latest book to help owners, presidents and managers gain a better understanding and perspective about the various operating disciplines, I offer my own experienced views on marketing. If you play a non-marketing role in a small, growing company (entrepreneurial start-ups to pre-IPO) where cultural changes are fast, furious and inevitable, this book is for you.

    Despite all the changes occurring in business and industry, there are several basic elements that remain constant. Your understanding of these basics, along with the skills to be able to cope with changing cultures, will allow you to juggle the difficult task of leading while learning. One of these basics is accepting the fact that marketing must become an integral and formal part of your organization’s culture from day one. The mature company requires marketing at the helm, but there are many new and painful experiences that must be encountered before the ship can steer a steady course. In fact I call this book “Marketeer or Pied Piper” because there is a transition period where marketing can create as much havoc in a company as contribute to growth. Hopefully, by reading on you will help your company reach maturity sooner and avoid some of the growing pains.

    I hope the information provided in this book can make your dream come true. It is designed to give you a better understanding of sales and marketing so you can work more effectively with the personalities charged with those functions in your company. Set your objective on getting a greater insight into marketing so you can better understand and challenge marketing people and their decisions.

    Since I am not presenting myself as an expert on marketing but more of an observer who understands what does and doesn’t work, I also would like to restate what I call the Dadamo Creed:

“I do not profess to be an expert, but I do profess to be an observer, and since I am not retired, I have an obligation to friends and clients to keep observing situations and to keep learning so I may pass that new experience and knowledge on to others. After years of experience, I know there is more than one way to do things. In fact, listen to how I have done things wrong as well as right, if only so you can avoid the same mistakes. Then, if I have challenged your mind set and encouraged you to consider alternatives, I have accomplished my task.”

If you want to learn more about contemporary marketing, I also recommend the following:

• Selling the Invisible, by Harry Beckwith,

• Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey A. Moore,

• Real Time, by Regis McKennamy.

• and anything by Jack Trout on positioning in the marketplace.