On the flight home from a recent work trip to Boston I read Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler. Ross who was Director of Corporate Sales at Salesforce.com shares the B2B sales lessons which helped build a predictable sales machine at the customer relationship management (CRM) giant.

There’s been lots of discussion about the recent downturn in the valuation of technology businesses and while it’s more helpful to focus on creating value, rather than fixating on valuations, how do you understand the health of software as a service (SaaS) company? It all starts with understanding the SaaS business model.

At the start of the year my wife and I moved from the heart of the Silicon Docks area of Dublin to Sandycove, a sleepy seaside village in which the first scene of James Joyce’s seminal novel, Ulysses is set.

I love figuring out new ways to become more productive, organised and better at my work. There’s a finite number of hours in the working week, so the challenge is to optimise my time so that I produce my best work, but also have clarity on what’s going to have the biggest impact.