Business Insight Zone

Yes, we’re rolling in IPOs these days. My short-form opinion comes in this BusinessWeek article, which quotes me:

IPOs: Investors Test the Waters, Warily

The long-form opinion is this piece, which I just wrote for The Deal Magazine:

Better weather ahead for IPOs?

Don’t worry, it’s not that long — just 1,300 words — but if you want a teaser before diving in, here’s a key excerpt:

A stocked pipeline of filings and healthy equity markets are indicators of something bigger that’s prized throughout the IPO arena: predictability. That’s precisely what has been lacking over the past several quarters. It was bad enough that the economy turned sour in 2008; it was worse, in terms of predictability, that it happened during a hotly contested U.S. election season that promised very different paths for corporate regulation and financial oversight depending on who got elected. And then came a series of highly unpredictable — even unthinkable — events like the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the selloff of Merrill Lynch & Co. and Washington’s bailout of major banks and carmakers. It was hardly a ripe environment for bringing a fledgling company to the public equity markets, as the IPO of Rackspace so painfully demonstrated, and it’s no wonder that investors rushed for the exits.

By now, the processes of economic recovery are under way. For better or worse, depending on your viewpoint, we have much more clarity on Washington’s likely actions. Major banks no longer teeter on the edge of collapse. And investors have bid up the Standard & Poor’s 500 by more than 25% in the past six months.

These conditions favor a steady cadence of IPOs — something dear to the hearts of investors, underwriters, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs alike. Beyond that, they enable an occasional IPO splash by a company with less-than-stellar financials but strong promise for the future.

Please do give the Deal article a read — and give me an earful of what you think about it in the comments.

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Actually, you have to go all the way back to May 2008 to match the seven IPOs that debuted last Thursday and Friday.

Details on the IPO Performance page of IPO Central.

Expect the final quarter of 2009 to be much busier than any of the past two years on the IPO front . . .

Who knows what eldritch algorithms at Hubspot’s Twitter Grader allowed this to happen, but for at least one brief, shining moment this morning, the two Twitter accounts I run (personal and corporate) were ranked #1 and #2 among all the tweeters in Austin. Take that, @lancearmstrong!

As of this writing, my two accounts are ranked 5th and 7th for Austin. We seem to be trending back to normalcy.

First things first: gratuitious self-promotion. I’m quoted in these two articles from today’s papers on the health and doings of the IPO market:

• USA Today: Investors’ reactions mixed as IPOs make a comeback
• Wall Street Journal: IPO Market Snaps Back as Taste for Risk Returns (subscription required)

The upshot of my commentary is that the current busy, busy week for IPOs counts as big news not because any one market debut is so important — though A123 Systems is sitting pretty this morning — but because it marks such a departure from the drought-like conditions through which investors, underwriters, and aspiring IPO debutants have been suffering.

On tap: a much fuller pipeline of IPOs . . . and possibly more commentary from yours truly appearing in the national press. Meanwhile . . .

Do you think the IPO markets have really turned?

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Photo via Bob Bobster.

Next Wednesday, September 30th, our own VP of Business Development, Heidi Tucker, will be one of the experts speaking at this event:

Heidi will be joined by Michael Hammons of Infinity Info Systems and David Myron of CRM Magazine. The three of them will help you understand how you can use the data in your CRM system to build revenue, reduce costs, and create greater loyalty among your customers.

I can tell you from working with her that Heidi is Grade-A sharp, and the session should provide an interesting mix of perspectives, given Hoover’s expertise in business information and Infinity Info’s command of analytics.

Hope you can join us! Follow this link to register.

‘Cause I seem to have one.

Me.

I asked this question on Twitter. These were the answers I got:

• Coffee (three votes) or Red Bull (which I’ve never had).
• Music — “a rollicking song” or “Eye of the Tiger.” (Solid idea, but I’ll skip the Survivor in favor of the White Stripes or the Black Keys.)
• If coffee fails, “I clean my desk.“
• “Just start with baby steps: tackle the small tasks that don’t take too long — boosts confidence at least.“
• “The slows don’t happen to me often, so [I] indulge them when they come.“
• “I imagine someone else getting to my goal before me.“

What would you add? How do you work your way out of doldrums?

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Photo by Craig ONeal, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

Recently a Twitter acquaintance pointed me to this article:

BabyAge.com Learns to Listen to its Customers

Her emphasis in citing the story was on the radical design — black cribs — that BabyAge came up with as a result of its new focus on listening better to customers. And why not? Black cribs are certainly counterintuitive, and I figure it’s always a good thing when any company listens to its customers / users / audience more closely.

But the pet topic that jumped out at me from this story was . . . MARGIN.

The other day I talked about the ways that smart companies are growing their profits even when they can’t grow the top line. And past reporting I’ve done suggests to me that many companies — especially in their sales and marketing departments — have wide-open opportunities for growth that arise from the pursuit of higher margins rather than higher revenues above all.

Here’s a key section from the story on BabyAge:

Keifer said he’s seen some softness in his company’s high-end brands since the current recession hit — something that did not happen after 9/11 or when the dot-com bubble burst.

This helped Keifer realize that while top-line sales are great, a company cannot survive without margins. Especially in a time when consumers are on the Web looking for the best deals.

. . .

“We’ve gone overboard to make sure everyone in our company understands what margin is, and in the last two months, our margin has gone up 10%,” Keifer said. “It really took this recession for us to get everyone from the warehouse down to the call center to understand that we’re not in the business for top-line, but for margin.”

Hey, I love me some revenues. But margins are what make or break most businesses, in good times and bad.

Now over to you: What are you doing to improve your company’s margins?

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Photo by westerndave.

No, that’s not an error in the title — I’m asking for your help. In the spirit of my last blog experiment (which drew some interesting responses), I’d like to propose another venture in blog crowdsourcing.

This time, I’d like you to propose business topics to go with each of these three pictures.

First up, a skateboarding pic (CC-Share Alike license) from Daniel Catt:

Next, a turtle from SuperFantastic:

Finally, a great surfing photo (Share Alike license) from rappensuncle:

Please offer your suggested topics for any or all of these pictures in the comments.

Thanks — I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

That’s the point of this slide deck from Bob Felsenthal, the publisher of BtoB magazine, which interested me not only because I’m quoted near the end of the deck (I do have my vanity), but because it captures some important trends in business communication and marketing online.

Felsenthal presented the deck this week at the Business Development Institute’s B2B Social Communications conference in New York. Give it a look:

(If the embedded deck doesn’t work, you can see it at this link.)

The thrust of the presentation, which agrees with everything I’ve seen lately, is that more and more business-to-business companies are getting involved with social media and finding new ways to handle business there.

What do you think — does social media have a solid future among B-to-B companies?

(Thanks to Mike Mostransky for pointing out this deck to me.)

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Related post:

• Gratuitous self-promotion, BtoB edition.

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“Flat is the new up.”

In this economy, I’ve been hearing plenty of statements like that — acknowledgements that during the recession (and in the possibly jobless recovery that could follow it), we’re facing a longish while of no-growth or slow-growth markets. In that context, keeping your revenues flat could be seen as a victory, however hollow it might feel to those of us used to growing the top line year after year.

But one thing I’m also hearing from the ambitious businesspeople I know is that they’re committed to growing somehow, even if growing top-line revenue isn’t an option. They’re just looking to other metrics like these:

• gross margin
• net margin
• average selling price
• number of customers
• revenue per employee
• profit per employee
• . . .

Top-line growth is a good thing. In many cases, it might be the best thing. But it’s not the only thing. And if top-line growth is out of reach — heck, even when it shrinks — there are still lots of ways you can grow your business.

If you’ll pursue these alternate avenues for growth while your competition struggles or hunkers down, you’ll be primed and ready to grow every which way, revenue included, as we find our way back to greener economic pastures.

What are you doing to grow YOUR business in ways besides top-line revenue?

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Photo by Ginny, used under a CC-Share Alike license.