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Here's the picture that shocked the world…
http://www.foragreatercause.org/thepicture.html
Please read the post below entitled: Do YourSelf A Favor - Help A Friend In Need …
I wrote in a previous post: "don't panic", but I had a panic attack last fall… it came creeping up on me - I thought I was stung by a wasp… I felt a sting, and I saw a wasp and I connected the two in my mind later on. Anything but take responsibility for what was happening to me… what I let happen to me… the situation I created … I felt faint and had to sit down… and then lie down… and I felt strange sensations going up my right leg and into my right arm and then down my left leg… and I was so weak… and my tongue "grew" in my mouth and tingled and my lips were numb and my hands shook… I called a doctor and they wanted me to take an ambulance into the hospital because they thought I was having an allergic shock! I was weak for hours after that, but I didn't want to take an ambulance.. so dramatic! I was in chock, but I must have known somewhere inside of my disenfranchised self that this was only the fear inside of me screaming to get out… to be taken care of and released. More
This is the question I posed to my contacts in LinkedIn. The question was as follows:
"Do you think marketers should stop treating their customers like wallets and instead treat them more like the people they would like to be their dearest friends, or even a desired lover?"
I received a few interesting responses, and have decided to post them here:
Lucas Allmon wrote:
While I agree with Benny to a certain extent, business IS relationships. You are more likely to do business with someone that you like than someone you can't stand.
Companies need to start treating people more like humans than just policy numbers or walking products.
While you may get a sale by being a hardass, you aren't going to retain those clients as lifers.
Hamish Taylor wrote:
Only if you're married to them as otherwise invoicing becomes really difficult!!! 
Ray Miller wrote:
There is the old expression……….you catch more flies with honey than…..
Benny Greenberg wrote:
Actually befriending your customer is a poor approach to closing a sale. I have given a few e-courses on the proper methodology involved in this strategy. You need to be the expert, the person your customer looks to as the one-and-only person to buy from. Not the person to go bar hopping with. Think people - it is much easier to say NO to a friend than to a stranger. The same way you would not present in jeans and a t-shirt, or show up with your cell phone in hand, a bic pen and torn post it notes, you do not turn your customer into your friend. If you want to know more - drop me a note
Eugene Rembor, MBA wrote:
OK, had some time to look at the viedo, but honestly - I don't understand a thing. What's your point??
Eve Morris BSc(hons), Cert DigM wrote:
I think the FSA stance on treating customer fairly gives some valuable guidance on how UK financial services businesses should treat their customers. This guidance can also apply to non-financial services businesses. We should all treat our customers fairly & with respect - not with a veneer of false friendship which could potentially be perceived as shallow & insincere.
Outcome 1: Consumers can be confident that they are dealing with firms where the fair treatment of customers is central to the corporate culture;
Outcome 2: Products and services marketed and sold in the retail market are designed to meet the needs of identified consumer groups and are targeted accordingly;
Outcome 3: Consumers are provided with clear information and are kept appropriately informed before, during and after the point of sale;
Outcome 4: Where consumers receive advice, the advice is suitable and takes account of their circumstances;
Outcome 5: Consumers are provided with products that perform as firms have led them to expect, and the associated service is both of an acceptable standard and as they have been led to expect;
Outcome 6: consumers do not face unreasonable post-sale barriers imposed by firms to change product, switch provider, submit a claim or make a complaint.
These 6 outcomes should be the foundations upon which all products are marketed & sold to customers.
As regards your love metaphor.. to take it literally - to smile at a customer can be to engage initial interest in your product, to cuddle them can be to comfort & reassure with credibility & brand reinforcement, to make them feel special is to target & personalize the relevance of your communications to them individually, and to love is to value them as an individual who interacts with your brand time & again.
I hope this is helpful - I am open to connect
Kind regards
Eve
Pieter Dorsman wrote:
No that would be too much…
I do hope some of my suppliers say "yes" but preferably just the female representatives…
Hjörtur Smárason wrote:
Depends on what you are selling, Angela
But in general, the answer is no. You should not.
I like it when brands approach me personally and appear relaxed, secure and sincere, (the same goes for people). But if you start stroking my thigh, I'm off. So don't over do it.
Cheers
Hjörtur
Geri Rockstein wrote:
Hi Angela,
I believe that a business relationship should be a professional one where each party meets or exceeds the expectations of the other. I don't believe that is treating someone like a wallet. Being treated or treating a business relationship like a potential friend or lover does not enter into the equation for me.
Best regards,
Geri
Teemu Korpi wrote:
If there can be a person more reserved than a brit then he/she must come from Finland like myself. Like John W. I would find it very troublesome if someone in the position of a salesperson came too "close".
I would rather have that relationship in the right framework that being a customer one. Then again there are certain facts that make a good customer relationship.
One vital part of marketing communication mix is personal selling. That's the contact point where the promises are kept or not. That's the critical point where the basis of returning customer relationship are laid.
So, I would keep my pants on and hands in my pockets.
Tim Chattaway [LION] wrote:
In the industry I work In It pays to be nice, even through gritted teeth sometimes.
However I work with clients/people I get along with, I know this is not always possible, but if you find clients you enjoy talking to the desire to go that extra mile for them is there. Willing to take phone calls from Clients in various time zones at 3am in the morning for example.
We all work to get paid, thats life, but whats to say we can't be nice and treat people with a bit of respect whilst they are also lining are pockets?
John Welford wrote:
I'm not so sure! If a marketer treats me in this way, I will immediately know that they are only pretending to be my dearest friend. If someone said that they wanted to be my lover, I'd get really worried!
The point is that when the marketer is clearly acting out a falsehood, how can I trust anything they say about what they are trying to sell?
This may have something to do with cultural differences. I understand that Americans have a different attitude in these respects from Europeans. As a "reserved" Brit I do not want to be grabbed by the elbow when I meet someone for the first time, and I want people to earn the right to use my first name, not to assume it. In marketing terms, I am deeply suspicious of advertisements voiced in American accents, simply because they sound, to my British ears, less sincere than those that use British accents.
(What I find even odder is the public prudery in America that goes alongside the personal chumminess. Look at the absurd shock and horror generated by Janet Jackson's costume malfunction!)
No - in the same way that I will not jump into bed with you after only one date, don't expect me to buy your product simply because you "come on strong" with your first marketing contact!
Eugene Rembor, MBA wrote:
I don't need to watch the video to yell from the bottom of my heart "YES, they should!".
Thanks so much for all of your responses. I will be contacting you all tomorrow with your downloads.
The question will be live for 7 days, but from the looks of things, very few people are watching the video. The question in itself is enough to evoke a passionate answer. And viewing my video without first reading the Attention Age paper is confusing, as one reader, Eugene mentioned in his second post above after watching the video. However, when I took a look at my YouTube statistics before writing the post, there were 72 views of the video, so SOMEONE is watching out there!!! Yeah!!!
Apparently, a lot of people do not like the idea of becoming your customer's best friend. Opinions are also divided. Many of the interpretations are far from what my intention was. Eve hit the nail on the head with her analysis and explanation, and I think we can all learn a thing or two from her answer.
For those of you who have not yet seen the video, here it is again:
http://www.strategicprofits.com/66-seconds-compelling/angela-wickenberg/
Talk soon,
Angela Wickenberg
At least once each day I get a call from someone trying to sell me outsourced development services. It's difficult to not be frustrated with these calls and it is increasingly hard to be polite, because they come so frequently. Yet, more than frustrated, I am just puzzled. Does this tactic still work? Who in this day and age would give business based on a cold call? These companies could definitely use a dose of business development 2.0.
Because of these calls, for a while I have been thinking about the impact of the modern age on business development. In the good old days, it all boiled down to the salesmen with the big rolodexes who could close the deal. But clearly, the rules have changed. How does business development work this days? What makes sense and what does not? In this post we take a look.
The reason we all hate cold calls so much is because they are very intrusive. A stranger interrupts our flow, and takes precious seconds away from our lives. But maybe even as recently as 10 years ago we did not feel it so acutely. Why? A few reasons. First, the pace of our lives was not as fast, the minutes did not feel as precious. But more importantly, today we have a much less intrusive form of solicitation - email. True we all hate spam, but an unwanted email doesn't feel like as sharp an interruption as an unsolicited phone call.
Besides being annoying, cold calling is no longer effective. People are smarter these days, and have learned to ignore upsells. A targeted email which avoids the spam box has a higher chance of getting a response than a call. With a call, the default allergic reaction is now "no." But with a brief and sincere email it could be, "hmmm, this might be interesting…" However, even cold emails do not work. To have a chance at making a sale, you need to get a warm introduction. It used to be that the business web was hidden inside of people's heads and rolodexes. Today, however, a lot of it is out there in the open - inside a digital business network called LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a business network that has emerged as a substitute to the rolodex. Because it is online and self-managed, LinkedIn offers a much more robust way of maintaining your business connections and seeing what they are up to. But beyond that, LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool for business introductions.
Say you're interested in talking to Acme Co. about your new product. You log into LinkedIn and search for people who work for Acme. Then you see how you might be connected to them. Ideally connection is just one degree away, or in other words, you know someone who knows the person you are looking to connect with directly. And then you ask for an introduction.
An introduction received via LinkedIn is much warmer than a cold call, because it comes with a bit of trust. You are no longer a stranger trying to upsell things that no one needs, instead you come with a recommendation, however light, from a person that the receiver is connected to. And even if you can't find a path to connect to someone, sending a direct message via LinkedIn is better than sending a cold email. The reason is that LinkedIn implies business context, and so the person you're trying to reach likely is not going to be as surprised or angry about the unsolicited ping.
Beyond connecting on LinkedIn there are other modern means of connecting with people. Facebook message, Twitter @response, a comment on a photo or blog post, etc. These are ways of getting someone's attention that are creative, but you need to be careful when employing them because they can be unwelcome. People do not use Twitter to get unsolicited business pings, nor do they post pictures for strangers to comment on. Facebook is probably somewhat acceptable because a lot of people are mixing business contacts with friends there. But the most solid way of connecting with someone outside of LinkedIn is via their blog.
People who blog generally want to have a conversation. If you engage with someone around their blog and participate in a conversation on a topic that they are interested in, you will naturally connect with them. Particularly if your business engagement is relevant to the topic they are discussing, blog comments are likely the best way to engage. However, if you try to push the conversation off topic, the person will perceive you as disingenuous and there will be no business.
Let's suppose you've found the right way to connect and you've got your meeting. Now you're looking at the whole sales cycle. Particularly, if you are small startup aiming to sell your product to a big company, has anything changed? Not really. You still have two fundamental hurdles - the time and the risk. Between startups and big companies expectations of how quickly the deal can get done are completely misaligned. Big companies are scared of the startup speed. Startups are frustrated with big companies' turtle pace.
Beyond the length of the sales cycle the issue that kills most transactions between startups and large firms is risk. Will this 5 person company be around tomorrow? That's a question that large companies are likely to answer with a "no" and that becomes a big problem. For this reason it doesn't make sense to buy from startups - it is too risky. However the mitigating factor is often cost - startup products are often cheaper or even free. Yet even if the technology is free and easy to remove if things don't work out, big companies are wary. They do not understand free, it scares them and perhaps rightly so.
The worst part about having a startup that sells to big firms is actually scale. The famous crossing of the chasm necessary to get big is really complicated. In the enterprise world, it means signing up many clients, keeping the pipes open, and sending out more and more products. This model is so costly and risky that venture capitalists are reluctant to shell out the money to fund it. Because of the complexity of building the enterprise business that knocks on doors a new model is emerging - web services and APIs.
How can a small start up that has no capacity to knock on doors sell to big companies? A possible answer can be via a web service or an API. The model is applicable to a whole range of services - from data plays like del.icio.us to messaging systems like Twitter to infrastructure like Amazon Web Services and semantic web services like Open Calais from Reuters. The basic model is to have a web service which is accessible via API (application programming interface). Clients sign up to use the service and have to agree to the terms in order to obtain a key. Using those keys, clients can use the service programmatically to send and get data from it.
Some examples: the del.icio.us API, allows clients to access information about specific users (if the user permits that). The Twitter API allows sending and receiving messages without using the Twitter web site. The Calais API is an example of a web service which encapsulates an algorithm. In this particular case, the algorithm takes a document and extracts semantic information from it. Unlike del.icio.us, which offers an interface to consumer data, Calais is a one shot deal algorithm. And perhaps the most important example of a web service play comes from Amazon. Taken collectively, the offered Amazon services is powerful infrastructure for building web-scale applications.
What is common between all these web services is the simple monetization strategy - pay per API call. For each call into the web service, the callee has to pay based on the amount of the resources consumed by the call. For example, Amazon has been charging for bandwidth, storage, and CPU time. The exact model does not matter as long as a fraction of a cent is charged for each call. Remarkably, this is a business that has a huge potential to scale. Each individual client is paying an affordable price, because each call into the web service is very cheap. However, collectively clients might amount to big revenue for the service provider.
What is the most attractive about this business model is that it is completely forecastable. By estimating the cost of scaling the business (mostly hardware, support and maintenance) and setting the price per web service call and the number of clients, you can determine if the business will work or not. Of course to be fair, we need to mention that just like in traditional sales, there is number of clients hidden in every equation. Two fundamental risks exist in this model - clients will not want to use the service and clients might not be able to figure out how to use it.
Still, the risks and costs of a web services based business are much less than the traditional enterprise approach. There is no need for an expensive sales force and an army of consultants to implement the solution. We are yet to see this model succeed in a major way, but because of their simplicity and straight revenue model the API based businesses are looking attractive.
Nothing stays constant in this world. The technology, the web and the society always evolve. Business development evolves along with everything else and lead generation has been changing along with methods of communication. Business networks like LinkedIn have replaced old rolodexes and email have made cold calling look ridiculous. Yet, there are no fundamental changes in the sales cycles and risks for startups that choose to go the traditional route of knocking on the doors of large companies.
The markets are iterating to come up with a new form of business development called web services. This new form is both cheaper and simpler - no enterprise sales force is needed to scale the business. However the question, "If we build it, will they come?" still remains unanswered. If any company can make this model work really well it is likely to be replicated and become widespread. Will web services succeed? Time will tell.
For now, please share your favorite examples and stories of business development 2.0 in the comments.
In that spirit, Business 2.0 magazine sent senior writer Paul Kaihla and a team of reporters on a quest to find some of the best "best practices" in business today. The companies they interviewed have stumbled upon their own unique methods for doing everything from running meetings and generating product ideas to troubleshooting M&A deals and keeping board directors on their toes.
Following are 25 ideas that are truly gems, broken down into five categories: finance, HR, management, marketing, and R&D.
They're methods that help keep some of the best-run companies, like Procter & Gamble (Research), Google (Research), Southwest Airlines (Research), Microsoft (Research), Intel (Research), and Coke (Research), at the top of their game. You've probably never heard of most of these practices — but you might want to start implementing them tomorrow.
HEWLETT-PACKARD CEO Mark Hurd loves numbers–and insists that his managers learn to love them too. Since Hurd came onboard last March, one of the key tools he's used to keep pace with rivals is his extreme form of industry benchmarking. Instead of comparing HP's sales and profits with Dell's or IBM's, the company now tracks itself against rivals by every conceivable measure. "We want to make sure we break down every unit and business function," explains Marius Haas, senior strategy officer at HP, "so we can become best in class in each one."
Here's how it works: Imagine a matrix with various business units running down the side (printing, servers, storage, IT services, etc.) and business functions across the top (finance, HR, marketing, R&D, etc.). Now create benchmarks for each of the 72 resulting cells and you have a good idea of how Hurd is managing the $87 billion company. The benchmarks are the best guess of where HP's rivals are going to be in 2007, based on more than a dozen variables, from real estate cost per square foot to operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin.
Before Hurd took over, HP measured itself primarily against IBM, using one very blunt tool: costs as a percentage of revenues. That ignored IBM's higher gross margins and the fact that it has more gross profit to spread around. Hurd's new benchmarking method formed the basis of HP's reorganization effort announced last July, through which HP has promised to save $3 billion by 2008. Already there is key evidence of success: Operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin dropped 2 percent in 2005, helping to fatten profits by $385 million. — E.S.
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Jing is free to download, http://www.jingproject.com, available for Mac and Windows computers, and (if you register to share your Jing screencasts) comes with a free account on Screencast.com. I was impressed to see that the free account did not expire in 60 days (as it would if you just went to Screencast.com and registered for a free account) but did not expire until 2015). The free account comes with 200MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth, which seemed generous enough.
If users find they are using Jing to the degree it exceeds the monthly limits, offering up increases in account storage and bandwidth for a fee are necessary to offer this free to everyone. Offers to upgrade my bandwidth, for a fee - $21.95 for 100GB. If you choose not to pay, the screencast is just no longer available until the next month’s cycle starts.
I do not blame Techsmith for needing to fund the service, but this should be a caution for anyone hoping to use Jing as a completely free screencast option. If your screencast is large and/or even moderately well viewed, you are likely to need pay the price for the appropriate level of hosting. Do remember that Jing is in beta and Techsmith may well change the terms or provide other alternatives. At this point, if you want to use Jing, another option is to plan on hosting the screencast on your own Web site.
Unfortunately, the ease of using Jing to produce and share a screencast gets lost if you want to try this approach. It is still easy to record and save, but Jing just saves a single .swf Flash file. While you can just upload the .swf and point to it with a link, it gets more difficult to embed it on a page with a site’s navigation features, branding, commentary, and other content. One solution, which may not work in all browsers, was to build a page and then use the following code to embed the .swf:
<object classid=“clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000? width=“627? height=“391?>
<param name=“movie” value=“FILENAME.swf”>
<param name=“quality” value=“high”>
<param name=“bgcolor” value=“#FFFFFF”>
<embed src=“FILENAME.swf” quality=“high” bgcolor=“#FFFFFF”
width=“627? height=“391? type=“application/x-shockwave-flash”></embed></object>
Note that the width and height elements need to be set in two places, and you need to know what those dimensions are. You can see this backup version hosted on this site, but producing a page like this took much more time than using Camtasia Studio, Captive, Wink, or other screencasting software that produces both an .swf and the HTML page container.
Screencast.com is the ideal hosting solution for Jing because it’s designed specifically for high-fidelity screen content and won’t distort your media when being viewed. That being said, we also have learned that sharing has a broader definition. We have started work on extending our sharing options outside of just Screencast.com. With those additional sharing options, you’ll be able to get the URL or embed code returned as well - making everything you described above dead simple to do with Jing.
How To Use Jing:
“Think of Jing as a supplement to all your chat discussions, email threads, forum posts and blog entries. It sits nicely on your desktop, ready to capture and share your stuff at a moment’s notice. Simply select an area of your screen, capture it as an image or record it as a video, and then click Share. Jing conveniently places a URL to your content on your clipboard ready for you to paste the URL into any of your conversations.”
“Your content is hosted on Screencast.com, for which we are providing a complimentary account to all participants during this project. Users have 200MB of space for storing screenshots and screencasts and 1 GB of bandwidth that renews monthly. The Screencast.com account will remain available to you for the duration of the project.”
Screencast.com? What is that?
Screencast.com is a web hosting service from TechSmith Corporation. It’s a premier hosting service specifically made for screen video content. It does not change or diminish the resolution of your content. It provides detailed permissions that you can administer so you control who can access your media and you retain ownership of the media you upload. Screencast.com serves as the web hosting backend to the Jing Project, enabling TechSmith to provide you with instant hosting and sharing of your content.
Who can participate?
Anyone may use Jing.
And It’s free for now!
Here’s the deal; Jing isn’t a product right now—it’s a project to figure out whether it fills a need or provides a useful service. They're asking for both your participation and feedback on this concept. As they learn what you want from this, they’ll have a better idea what the pricing and business model might look like in the future.
Uses of Jing
Jing on Flickr
Jing on Skype
Jing for Tech Support and Forums
Jing and Product Demos
I think many schools would have a good use of Jing to write instructions, explanations and tutorials. Many students might be able to use Jing to enhance their reports.
Here's the link to Jing again: http://www.jingproject.com
Angela Wickenberg
Dear Friends,
I once heard someone say: Make it a regular practice to offer to help people out without expecting immediate compensation. If you do this every week, you'll soon find yourself wealthy with appreciative genuine friends that want to help you.
One of the best ways you can not only make yourself feel good, but benefit yourself in the future is to offer to help other people out with no immediate expectation of compensation.
Every human society has a value system that includes reciprocity. That is, a system where one party does something for another and then the favor is returned at a future date.
Reciprocity is one of the critical elements that has allowed humans to prosper. So, it's a very powerful ingrained force in people. Think about it. When someone does something to help you out, don't you feel a strong urge to return the favor?
And this goes the other way. Because in today's cut-throat world there seems to be less and less people willing to help others out without immediate compensation, when you do offer to help someone out, it's highly appreciated.
So, you not only get to do a good deed where you can feel a glow inside because you did something nice, but it's quite likely that someday that favor will be returned. Quite often, it's returned with much more interest than you ever expected the favor deposit to earn.
Naturally, you need to use common sense. You don't loan someone you hardly know your life savings since they had a tough day. But, you might offer to give someone a ride when their car is in the shop, or help your elderly neighbor fix something in their house. Other ideas are to be a father to the fatherless child, bring along a less fortunate child to the movies or to your weekly family dinner at the restaurant, help someone without a car and sufficient funds buy groceries, sit and watch tv with a lonely old person. One day you will be old too.
Remember however, it may not always be the person you gave the favor to that will return the favor. I believe that somehow "the universe" returns the favor or favors in big and/or small ways, but not from the exact same kind of situation or person.
Last night, I received three emails with the same content. Stephen Pierce has taken the initiative to raise enough money to feed one million children. Armand Morin and John Reese were the other two to send messages, as well.
Here's the message. It's about feeding 1,000,000 starving children in the world.
Please read this IMPORTANT MESSAGE.
http://www.ForAGreaterCause.org
Feeling hungry?
My guess is yes. Chances are, you'll be running to the
snack machine to grab a candy bar soon. Or hitting the
drive through for a combo meal. Or possibly sitting
down to a nice dinner at home with the family.
Whatever it is, you have the capacity to quiet your
hunger pains with very little effort, correct?
Great. Now hang on to that thought for a moment…
Because right now, there's more than 850 million people
hungry in the world. Right now. This very second.
850 million That's 100 times the population of New York
City, folks.
And I don't mean "Boy I sure got the munchies" hungry.
This is "I haven't eaten one bite of food in days"
hungry. The type you and I have never, ever
experienced.
Not even CLOSE.
Think that's shocking? What 'til you hear this…
Before morning, 16,000 kids around the world will drop
dead from starvation.
Newborns. Babies. Toddlers. Grade schoolers. Teenagers.
All fresh, young faces looking for a chance to make
their mark in the world.
But they won't. Because after weeks of pain, weakness,
and suffering, they'll finally succumb to the slow,
horrible death of starvation.
And here's the worst part–that's just TODAY.
Tomorrow, there will be another 16,000 dead children to
take their place.
And the next day.
And the next day.
And the next.
Am I getting through to you yet?
http://www.ForAGreaterCause.org
From now until Tuesday, May 29, my goal is to put food
in the bellies of 1,000,000 children around the world.
Don't worry–I'm not going to go all Sally Struthers on
you here. I'm not asking for anything except a few
seconds of your time.
In fact, I'm going to give YOU something fre, just for
helping out. Here's how it works:
Step 1: Go to http://www.ForAGreaterCause.org
Step 2: Download my fre success report called The
Power Of The Third Influence
Step 3: I'll donate a plate of food to Feed The
Children on your behalf.
That's it. You download. I donate. Simple as that.
And with your few seconds of effort, a little child
will go to bed with a full stomach.
How can you pass that up?
http://www.ForAGreaterCause.org
Inside this success report you'll discover…
* How Stephen went from having 2-cents to my name to
earning millions of dollars online.
* How to turn around your life with a simple shift
of association.
* How to double your productivity and get more of
the right things done.
And much more.
It's all yours–fr*e for the taking. Just go to the
website, download it, and I put another plate of food
in front of a hungry little face.
All because of you.
http://www.ForAGreaterCause.org
4 days. 1 million kids fed. We can do it–but you gotta
help me.
This is your chance to really make a difference. As a
parent…a grandparent…a brother…a sister…a
friend.
All I'm asking is for one simple download, and I'll do
the rest. In fact, I don't even care if you read my
report.
Will The Power Of The Third Influence inspire you?
Sure.
Will it make you think? Absolutely.
Will you be closer to achieving personal success after
reading it? I believe so.
But the real power behind this report is not in what it
wi