S&MM SoundOff

Marketing Guru Scott Hornstein Sounds Off: The Purpose-Driven Blog

I understand the derivation of the term “blog”, and I am actively engaged in postings, but I’m here to tell you it’s a horrible word.

It is absolutely inelegant. It sounds like an intestinal virus or perhaps an act of criminal mischief (“they blogged him from behind and took his wallet”). A blogger sounds like Cockney for “creep”, or a curse that Malfoy might hurl at Harry Potter during a heated quarter of Quidditch (“Blog you, Harry Potter”). B-log might be the handle for an interactive rapper (a new angle, like the Hasidic ska guy). Or, short for a blithering ogre.

What variations occur to you?

But whatever the name, its potential to deliver meaningful ideas and be a conduit for dialog, whether with peers, prospects or customers, is virtually untapped.

Blogs have an important future contributing to the maintenance of brand and competitive differentiation. Their immediacy and interactivity will become a powerful lever in establishing trust and respect in customer communications. And trust and respect answer to a higher calling than simple satisfaction. As a wise man once said, I am satisfied with my laptop. Do I trust it? No way.

Read the S&MM article "Express Yourself" about how managers are using blogs.

Training or the Whale

A new survey last week reported that despite high unemployment, 40 percent of companies are having trouble finding qualified candidates. And which division is struggling the most to find capable applicants? Sales.

In the survey employers said applicants lacked experience and knowledge of specific industries. This trend is especially interesting when you consider that college attendance has never been higher: Applicants are educated, but not necessarily qualified.

I loved college, but unless whale imagery in Moby-Dick becomes office fodder, my English degree is totally useless. I learned the most for my job from my previous internships, not from the classroom.

Are colleges failing to groom their students for the sales environment? Is higher education ignoring sales when it comes to preparing students for the real professional world? Or are university sales programs stepping up to fill that void?

What do you think? Is the dearth of competent candidates due to what they learn in school? How can schools impart real world knowledge in the classroom? Or are sales skills something that needs to be learned on the job and not in a classroom?

Do you know how to hire and retain top salespeople? Take our quiz.

It's All About Community

Recently, I came across a blog post referring to marketing expert Guy Kawasaki’s top ten list of ways to build community around a product or service.  

He’s a self-proclaimed user-group junkie. A user group is a type of club focused on the use of a particular technology, usually (but not always) computer-related, according to Wikipedia. Kawasaki’s tips are based on the creation of these online communities.

I can relate to his post because I am addicted to online communities. They’re a great way to connect with people, including customers. I use online communities for everything from career networking to arranging playdates for my mini Schnauzer (pictured above).

Sales and marketing professionals would benefit from building a community on the Web. It’s an easy way to reach out to customers. Online forums can help you learn what works or doesn’t. You can make improvements on your product based on real customers' reactions.

For more details, check out Kawasaki’s top ten list. Plus, learn how to generate sales through the use of community service events.

A tip of the hat goes to Misoapbox.com for their informative post on free-forming communities.

Sink or Swim?

Dreading your travel plans to the next company business meeting?  Your opinion might change if your boss has caught the new wave in meeting planning—corporate cruises. 

Up until now, corporate cruises have almost exclusively been reserved for incentive programs.  However, executives are finding more benefits to meetings on the high seas, such as unique venues for product introductions and demonstrations, cost-effectiveness, relationship-building programs, and an enclosed environment with upfront costs. 

Although a meeting aboard a cruise ship sounds almost as good as, well, a vacation, is there potential that your employees might check out mentality, and lower productivity or focus?  Or can you argue the opposite, that a relaxed venue will boost effectiveness and motivation?  Will this trend sink or swim?

Sales Maven Dave Stein Sounds Off: Has Imitation Replaced Innovation?

I really do know the answer to that question is no, but I am dismayed. Not naïve-just dismayed, and you'll see that I'm sounding off.

Among the people I spoke with on the phone last week were CEOs of two major sales training providers. During a long discussion with the first executive, I mentioned that I was surprised I hadn't seen anything new on his company's Web site recently. He told me he has stopped listing his new offerings on the site because he “wants to stop educating his competitors.” I have first-hand knowledge of his company's intellectual property being, in his words, “repackaged” by his competitors and used to compete against him. Is that CEO paranoid? No. But he's got to find another way to compete. His competitor's willingness to imitate on the product side is forcing this CEO to innovate on the marketing side.

The second CEO and I had a discussion about the client companies listed on his site. I knew for a fact that some of the companies listed were no longer his clients. “You're right,” he said. “I will just not spend my time and money keeping that list updated when all it does is provide a list for all my competitors to call. My clients get annoyed. I'm seriously considering just not having a list of our clients on the site at all.” Is telemarketing to the clients listed on your competitors' Web sites wrong? Does it show a lack of innovation? Or did this CEO show a lack of understanding of what really goes on today in business by having had his clients listed on his site for all to see and poach in the first place?

Here is a personal experience-a different kind of identity theft. I've written dozens of articles. Every once in a while I'd find someone republishing my copyrighted material without attribution. In every case, except one, they would relent and either remove the article or provide proper attribution. The one is a well-connected and respected sales and marketing management consultant who has a Web site with dozens of articles that he represents as his own. How does he do that? He strips off the authors' bylines and copyright notices.

I've contacted him a number of times and he simply stonewalls me. “We're redoing our site next quarter and I'll fix it then.” This has been going on for two years. What's worse, business Web sites pick up articles (including mine) from his site providing much wider distribution, and they are being attributed to him. I would expect that he is delighted. But what about us on the innovating end of things that are stamped “Original.”

Should we stop writing articles? Should we rather spend our time and money taking legal action when our copyrights are infringed upon? Should we take innovation to a new level by figuring out a creative way to expose someone like this in front of their clients and peers? Or should we just move on and accept the fact that behaviors like these bring everyone down a few notches and try to be innovative to bring things to at least where they were, if not making them a bit better?

The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat

Salespeople always like to compare themselves to athletes when describing their profession, and nowhere does the analogy apply more than in the Winter Olympics. Here’s a few business—and life—lessons I’ve taken from watching the Olympic games thus far:

It’s not over until it’s over. U.S. women’s boardercross competitor Lindsey Jacobellis lost a huge lead and the gold medal when an unnecessary trick caused her to crash and burn in sight of the finish line. Jacobellis initially said the midair maneuver was necessary to stabilize herself during the jump, but later conceded there may have been some grandstanding going on. Likewise, in business, it’s not over until the client has signed on the bottom line. Don’t get too confident that all those promises of business will fill your pipeline—your competitors are always right behind you, regardless of how far ahead you think you are.

Always be ready to seize an opportunity. When Michelle Kwan suddenly pulled herself out of the competition due to a groin injury, backup skater Emily Hughes was called in as her replacement. Though at a disadvantage because she only had about a week to prepare, Hughes was happy and seems ready to go (she skates today in the ladies' short program). Sales pros also need to be prepared to take on any opportunity that presents itself—you just never know when the right prospect will come calling.

Be ready to recover from defeat. The Chinese pairs figure skaters didn’t expect to crash so badly only seconds into their routine, but they bounced back to win the silver. When female figure skater Zhang Dan limped off the ice, only to return with her partner and complete the routine flawlessly, they showed true mettle. More than anyone else in the business world, salespeople have to deal with rejection on a continuous basis. But the A players are the ones who can shake it off and are always looking ahead to their next victory.

Recognition matters. I’m sure there will be tons more lessons to learn as the Winter games progress, but perhaps the biggest one managers can take from the competition is the power of recognition—the Olympics has always been a good model for employee recognition programs. Most of the athletes don’t do it for the cash, they do it to show the world they are the best of the best—an experience that money can’t buy.

Dale Carnegie: Guru of the Middle East?

I just finished reading Thomas Friedman’s column from February 15 about democracy in the Middle East and the fallout from the recent Hamas victory (“The Weapon of Democracy,” available to NYTimes.com subscribers only).

One focus of the column was what he believed was Hamas’ tough task ahead: managing the West Bank.

While he continued to discuss the politics in the region, there was one particular part of the article that struck me. It wasn’t about the political climate, but the power of the personal development book: “Hisham Abdullah, the West Bank A.F.P. reporter, told me that when he went into Ramallah's main bookstore the other day and asked what was selling, the owner said he'd noticed Hamas people buying Dale Carnegie books on management. ...” Friedman writes.

Apparently when in doubt about management, the new ruling party in Palestine is hitting the books.

Millions of personal business development books are sold every year—Dale Carnegie’s bestseller from 1937 How to Win Friends and Influence People, is ranked 59th in overall sales on Amazon.com.

What is your favorite personal/business development book and why?

Visit S&MM’s Book page: http://www.salesandmarketing.com/smm/resources/books.jsp

On Your Face Marketing

In previous blog posts, we've mentioned some of the quirky ways B2B advertisers and marketers get their branded message out to the masses, such as tattooing a logo on the back of a guy's noggin and giving out toy outhouses or fake cockroaches as corporate gifts during the holidays.

And now, HNT Brands has picked up on the trend towards in-your-face marketing to deliver a product that just might stick with a few of us: face decals. Wearers of the colorful peel-and-stick designs can sport a company's logo or branded message to add an interesting twist to promotion campaigns.

While sticking a logo on my face isn't very appealing to me, I bet it would grab some attention at an expo or convention. I think unusual marketing tactics work best when you've found the right audience, time, and place. Otherwise, it's just another crazy attempt that's out of left field. What's your opinion?

Plus, check out this S&MM article where Avaya's chief marketing officer Jocelyne Attal gives her take on marketing to businesses and how to gain customer insight.

Lobbying for Business Travelers

Good news for business travelers: Several major hotel chains are making their lobbies more conducive to meetings and last minute work.

In 2006, the US hotel industry will spend $5 billion on improvements this year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. USA Today reported this week that chains like Marriot, Embassy Suites, and Sheraton are adding amenities like workspaces, European style cafes, and wireless access in their lobbies.

Do you prefer to work in the lobby or your private room? The lobby amenties would appeal to me because I'm much more productive in an open space than cooped up in a room. But would upgraded lobbies make road warriors reconsider their hotel choices? Or do other factors like price, in-room services and brand loyalty still rule?

Need some travel advice? Check out our expert travel tips from our 2005 business travel guide.

Marketing Guru Scott Hornstein Sounds Off: The Cognitive Dissonance of Spam

A cognition is an element of knowledge or belief.

Cognitive dissonance, as proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger—and loosely defined by me—is when your knowledge, as evidenced by your day-to-day life, is directly at odds with what is otherwise reported to be reality. This dissonance caused by the contradicting cognitions initially stuns, then pushes us to process the data some more.

I’m a-swamp with cognitive dissonance. Specifically, I just don’t understand why spam still exists. I suspect greed.

On January 28, 2004, Bill Gates predicted that spam would be a “thing of the past” within two years—I hope you weren’t holding your breath. Judging from my inbox, it’s very much alive.

JupiterResearch reports recently predicted that “the volume of spam messages per customer will steadily decrease by 13 percent a year from 2005 to 2010.”

Is this your experience? It’s not mine.

Let’s face it, there’s only two entities that could squash spam, I mean really step on it hard, once and for all: The federal government and the computer/software giants. Personally, I take any federal intervention or oversight as unabashed bad news for industry.

So that leaves those with the clout to deliver the k-o, like the IBMs, Microsoft’s, Intel’s, Dell’s, etc.

In processing my cognitive dissonance, I think the reason that Bill Gates’ prediction hasn’t come true is that the industry giants have simply determined that there isn’t enough money to be made in eliminating spam. Would it deliver lots of happy loyal customers? Yes. Immediate profits? Probably not.

What do you think?