On Friday, I shaved my head in support of kids with cancer. Was a bit scary, but loads of fun!

My hair is being donated to a charity that makes wigs for kids with cancer, and I’m hoping some of you guys are inspired to make a small donation to Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH).

Donate here.

It’s a world-class operational hospital and research institution – so it does a lot of good for individual kids and families, and for paediatric medicine as a whole. They’re fund-raising for a new building, and Morgan Stanley is match funding donations. So they’ll put in a pound for every pound that you put in.

I support institutions like GOSH because they attract the best and the brightest, so donations are well-spent and allocated to the greatest need. (This is as opposed to single-issue charities which can sometimes be limited by their original mandates.) It is the only specialist biomedical research center for pediatrics, the largest center in the UK for children with heart or brain problems and the largest center in Europe for children with cancer. GOSH has been growing for 150 years now, so I have confidence that this is an investment in an asset that will keep providing benefits for a long time.

I’ve done this without trying to raise “sponsorship” in advance, simply because I believe in it and I think people will donate for the right reasons if they want to. If you’ve thought of giving money to a charity but haven’t gotten around to it, or are still looking for a suitable charity, you can trust me that your money will be put to very good use here.

Thanks guys.
Sal

There’s a dangerous myth about market positioning that can keep you from seeing true customer needs. It comes from looking at the wrong side of the market. In this post, I’ll help you steer you away from being blind-sided by market realities when it’s too late, avoid poor marketing channels, and give you freedom from reacting to your competition.

Michael Schell, author of Buyer-Approved Selling and Winning Sales Advice, developed sales techniques by researching and collaborating with hundreds of professional buyers at Fortune 500 companies.

Following up from my post in part 1 of this series,  Mike gives Lean Startups a few tips for introductions with customer research cold calls.

I share a cold-calling technique that helps with getting customer interviews, and invite Michael Schell, the author of Buyer-Approved Selling to share more customer research tips with us.

Disclaimer: Facts about Kevin Costner may be exaggerated.