Month: September 2005

I’ve had a couple salespeople call me twice recently…without their realizing it. If you are doing outbound calling, don’t you keep track of stuff like that? And another guy trying to sell me an expensive ad package without qualifying me (or he would learn he is wasting his time). More salespeople lost in the MAZE.

Semirelated: I want to praise the guy who I bought my car from via eBay. His first email to me promised “you will not be dissappointed.” He may not be a salesperson, but he understands the issue of buyer’s remorse I was facing buying a car unseen. The book Pardox of Choice made a big issue of buyer’s remorse as an impediment to sales–this guy gets it.

Oh, and yes, he delivered. I am not dissappointed with the car.

The Semicon trade show in San Francisco last July gets a harsh critique for not executing its new combined ‘front-end’ and ‘back-end’ shows into one site, as published in Chip Scale Review Magazine:

“And some of this year’s exhibitors, especially those who were exiled to the third floor of Moscone West-where you could fire off a cannon between rows without fear of hitting any visitors-will undoubtedly make their displeasure known to SEMI by not returning next year.”

While I was bold enough to call Semicon nitwits earlier this year for their bulky ‘free’ mailer, publisher Gene Selven doesn’t go quite so far. But he does point out all the shortcomings he saw himself, or heard from exhibitors (and we agree). In summation, there were two problems:

• Little effort to distinguish the two different types of show that were now combined
• And just as little effort to drive traffic to the different rooms/floors

My best experience with a two-floor show was at OFC in Anaheim where they put registration in the basement so that everyone had to filter through the basement at least once. At other shows, I’ve seen contests and refreshments offered at less traveled sections.

Certainly Semicon should have known that they were going to have these two problems. This, on top of the problem of moving the back-end show out of San Jose, where most of their show traffic comes from. According to Selven, a defection of exhibitors means they won’t have to worry about driving traffic to the third floor next year!

I found this approach interesting:

“There is one way to beat the Chinese threat to US manufacturing…

There is a way to beat the negative impact China has been having on manufacturing in the US. Don’t learn to speak Chinese. Instead, communicate more effectively about your product in English. That will increase the “perceived value” of your product. Notice, I didn’t say improve your product. I said, improve the prospect’s perception of the value of your product. In today’s marketplace there is only one way to effectively increase the “perceived value” of your product. The way is by getting a large number of news articles and feature stories published about your product.

…Check here so we can tell you all about our powerful marketing program and how it will help you beat the negative impact China is having on your business. Begin the process of defeating China’s negative influences on manufacturing in the US by taking care of #1. “

Well, it seemed like forever till I was able to be full-time marketing manager. And for my next dream, a marketing assistant. And that person’s first assignment will be to deal with promotional item sales reps (logo-encrusted tschotchkes). Geez, I’ve probably had half a dozen contact me in the last week…including the relentless guy from Myron Manufacturing.

“No, don’t need any pens right now.” ‘No, no calendars.” “Don’t need anything until next year.” “Call me next year.”

The thing is, putting them off is the easiest strategy. If you give any objections, then they think you are live prospect and will try to engage you. Most are just cold calling and never follow-up. They are caught in the MAZE (maximum activity, zero effect) per Tim McMahon’s recent podcast.

I found a couple more posts to share. These intersect somehow:

What makes an idea viral? by Seth Godin
Seth says that ideas are only shared if they are understood:

“No one “gets” an idea unless:
a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time”

Myths and facts from Reveries
Tim at Reveries quotes Dr. Skurnik:

“Unless people have some countervailing context or information to grab hold of, they tend to regard information that seems familiar as true.”
“It’s not enough to ensure that people get good information from credible sources … You also have to make sure that they’ll be able to recall whether it’s true or false later on.”

All of which explains why I must have got the AOL/Intel merger/Bill Gates is going to send you money chain email today. Seriously though, the lesson I am getting is that a marketing message has to fit the knowledge, preconceived notions, or prejudices that the prospect has, or they aren’t going to get anything out of it.

To what Seth said, until the message fits client in the way he described, he’s not going to ready to go to his boss and tell him why your product is better. And Dr. Skurnik may predict that his boss may cling to familiar facts that he regards as true and reject the proposal anyway. Ouch!

It has been two weeks since my last post. Maybe a record for a non vacation period in the 3+ years of this blog. With our annual sales meeting and congested internet service here at work, its been tough to get posts up. Hope you haven’t been wasting away waiting 😉

To get things going again, here are three links I had lingering in my Bloglines account.

1. Father Flanders points to a great tool for testing and creating CSS style sheets called TypeTester. (Okay, Mike, I know you blogged it, too.)
2. Lab Reports riffs on being genuine and honest in your marketing and PR. This post may show its age by talking about Katrina, but ends praising the Menard’s Guy approach (those in the Midwest know who he is talking about).
3. Jeremey Porter provides a good summation from the B2B Conference on email deliverability. I’m not doing direct-email, but I found it informative to know what hurdles I should be prepared to jump.

Its fun to go to the mall and wonder around…unless you want shop for shoes. Now you have to figure out where all the shoe stores are, which can sometimes be frustrating, even with a mall map.

And so it goes with trade shows. Despite show guides that contain our 50 carefully crafted words about our companies, most attendees are happy to wander around, as actually trying to figure out which booths to go to beforehand is hard.

I just got a email from the Semicon Show saying they would use ‘matchmaking’ software to recommend booths for attendees to visit. And they would also reverse the process and give vendors targeted attendees lists.

The company that makes this software has a very sparse website, but it does provide a good summary of what they do and the value it offers:

BDMetrics: “We grow attendance at conferences and events by identifying the unique people, companies, products, and knowledge that each individual registrant needs to see. We help exhibitors make money by identifying attendees who are the best leads and marketing to them. And we grow revenues for show owners by boosting attendance, increasing exhibit sales, and adding new revenue streams. BDMetrics is radically increasing the business value that attendees and exhibitors get from attending events. “

In other words, if a potential attendee can easily show his boss all the companies relevant to his job, he is more likely to get approved to go. And he will also be more likely to visit your booth when he gets there. I’m looking forward to seeing it in action.

Next week is our annual sales meeting. I always prepare a ‘technology’ presentation to help our reps take advantage of their computers and the internet. This year I am going to present web content that can help them be better salespeople. Four distinct categories quickly emerged: blogs, podcasts, newsletters, and ‘tools’.

Podcasts may be the ultimate ‘on the go’ tool for the salesperson of the 21st century, but I’ve only found two so far.

Can you help add to my list? I’ve created a del.icio.us account to track my selections and tag them by category.

I’ve spent more time shopping for lesser things. It was a great price, its a Honda, and it suits my needs. Yea, its not exactly what I wanted, but at several thousand less, I’m willing to compromise. Part of the the compromise, too, is that I need to share it with my wife, who now has a long commute to grad school 2x a week.

Making major purchases is always a lesson to me about salesmanship, marketing, and the customer experience. The honesty in the auction listing was certainly a confidence builder. Part of the reason for the good price was that the car had been rebuilt after an accident. They explained what they checked and fixed. The low price makes the decision easier, because if I don’t like it, I can resell it and not be short a bunch.

Now gotta plan a train-ride to Chicago to pick it up.

Honest, I’m not getting lazy, I really like what Kathy has to say at Creating Passionate Users blog. Can I assume all my readers are reading her blog, too? No, so that allows me to make what looks like a fresh post to some of you. Three good posts I didn’t want to slip by:

The Smackdown Learning Model talks about how to have a smackdown fight between alternatives to help the user learn about their choices. I thought this was a great lesson in writing competitive material, especially when one of my new goals is to make the user’s choice clear (ref: Paradox of Choice)

Reference vs. Learning: Pick One allows Kathy to get on her high-horse about the advantage of conversation writing to improve user learning. But to a marketer (and we all are marketers), its a good lesson in limiting or separating your messages depending on the task: reference or learning. I’ve seen too many pieces with reference content written in a learning/conversation style that is awkward and unreadable.

You can out-spend or out-teach is today’s lengthy rant that contained this gem about creating passionate users/customers:

But passion requires real learning. Nobody is passionate about skiing on their first day. Nobody is passionate about programming in Java on their first day. Or week. It’s virtually impossible to become passionate about something until you’re somewhere up the skill/knowledge curve, where there are challenges that you believe are worth it, and that you perceive you can do.

There, I think she drove the point about why her learning mantra is so compelling, so spot-on. Learn what doesn’t work (like using a paddle-boat for fishing), and insist on the right gear next time.