Small Business

Companies too often hinder their own success by focusing too narrowly on selling products and not on what their customers actually need, says Dev Patnaik, a business strategist. Businesses could be more successful — and see competitive opportunities faster than their rivals — if they looked differently at what they were doing.

Mr. Patnaik, founder and chief executive of Jump Associates, a firm in San Mateo, Calif., that advises companies on growth strategies, and a part-time professor at Stanford, has written a book, Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, scheduled for release this month.

Saturday Interview – Companies From Mars, Customers From Venus – NYTimes.com. Flickr photo credit: Melork

StartupNation talks to Mari Anne Vanella about how to improve your cold calling techniques and how to get better results. Her company, The Vanella Group, is an outsourcing telesales firm serving the high-tech industry based in Silicon Valley. She’s compiled and analyzed data from 10s of thousands of cold calls and has come up with “42 Rules of Cold Calling Executives,” which she’s distilled into a simple little book by the same name. …more from Startup Nation. Flickr photo credit: Smithcam