I'm stuck, now what

I'm starting to feel like this is the year that 'wasn't'. I thought by now I would have implemented a new CRM system for our sales department. Instead, I am stuck in limbo waiting for a green light to spend the (budgeted) money. I atribute the delay to a fear, by executives, of spending money in a tight business climate, something blogger Justin Hitt has mentioned before.

I've felt compelled to start seeing how I can make the decision to go ahead obvious. I'm a straight shooter, but maybe I need to get my message more crafted. The following article helped remind me of how I got a twinkle in my manager's eye when we first looked at this...by involving him in the creative ways we could use CRM. Need to find that opportunity, again, and make him think it was his idea!
Pitching Ideas

New permission fax rules

I'm not a fax-marketer, but the new rules requiring permission don't sound to friendly to senders. Who's going to send back a permission form anyway? And why aren't the senders using email instead? I bet they will now!

One thoughtful request for my 'permission' just came in offering a drawing for a MP3 player or PDA. Smart idea...but they really should also tell me in more detail what their company does, as I haven't a clue.

How much can I pick on TR?

I've been slowly reading the book given to me by my TR rep called Marketing on the Internet for Industrial Companies (see post below, too). Overall, I've found it to be an honest, readable book with solid advise and very little bias towards Thomas Register.

That said, I found an interesting table in the book that I'm sure my readers are interested in. The table (click here to see it) refers to a 'survey of Internet users' showing popularity of search engines used on a regular basis:
1. Google 67%
2. Yahoo 52%
3. ThomasRegister 43%
5. GlobalSpec 4%
9. Industrial Quick Search 1.7%

I was instantly suspicious of this information just because of the very industrial bent, while the caption doesn't distinguish that the 'Internet users' are engineers, which they must be. And then other questions abound...searching for what?...how were the surveyed users found?...what industries are they from?...etc. The second chart at least identifies the search to be for 'industrial product information'. Perhaps TR is keeping the valuable demographics that go along with this chart to themselves.

Okay, I was also very suspicious of 43% saying they regularly use TR website and found their results to be the most useful.

More Thomas Register bashing

Now that I'm aware of how TR handles linking to their client's sites, I've found another problem. Perusing their Internet marketing book they gave me at lunch, I found this call-out-box :
Internet Users Bookmark Suppliers
57.3% surveyed said: "After finding a supplier at ThomasRegister.com, I often bookmark the site."
But if the TR is framing the supplier site, the user isn't actually bookmarking the site they found, but the TR frame page. Of course, as a user, I hate framed pages for this exact problem. How do I escape the frame so I can bookmark the found site?

And as a side note, I nearly had a heart attack when I used the number one search term (according to my stats) for my product line when I searched on thomasregister.com. The major category for my products use a different term in TR, so it didn't come up. I thought...what happened, is the TR database screwed up? TR, of course, has many redundant category names, so one that sounded appropriate with just two listings showed up in my results. Now the IQS postcard makes even more sense.

More about the Register's EZ sites...Triple doh!

It was suggested I take an even closer look at the way the EZ sites link to the listed sites. They do have a direct link to the supplier's website on the main page (I just assumed the name of the company would do that for me...I didn't notice the link "website" under each listing).

If you click on "website", the supplier's website pops up in a new window...so why don't I get any referrers from the EZ site in my log files? The pop-up is executed via a javascript command like this:

<A HREF="#" onClick="window.open('http://www.anysite.com')"><B>Website</B></A>

And the javascript, from what I can learn, doesn't register a referrer page when calling up the new window. Not to mention search engines supposedly ignore java, at the very least costing the supplier PageRank.

Did you (TR) really think visitors wanted to keep your EZ site open, or did you think that if you did this, they would continue to use your site because it is still open? I think pop-ups are dumb, plus your clients don't even see that you are gaining referrals from this website. Really, really dumb Thomas Register.

Six things you should know about marketing to engineers

This is a great summation of current marketing thinking about selling to engineers. I will be using it to justify adding more technical content to our proposals.
BusinessOL: Six things you should know about marketing to engineers

To summarize:

1. Engineers look down on advertising and advertising people, for the most part.
   
   "Engineers want to believe they are not influenced by ad copy"


2. Engineers do not like a "consumer approach."
   
   "Engineers respond well to communications that address them as knowledgeable technical professionals"


3. The engineer's purchase decision is more logical than emotional.
   
   however: "preference for one vendor over another is often based more on gut feeling that actual fact"


4. Engineers want to know the features and specifications, not just the benefits.
   
   "engineers need to know the features of your product...in order to make an intelligent buying decision" i.e. there is no benefit to your equipment being 460V, but the engineer needs to know this detail.


5. Engineers are not turned off by jargon - in fact, they like it.
   
   "Why is jargon effective? Because it shows the reader that you speak his language."


6. Engineers have their own visual language.
   
   "visuals immediately say to the engineer, 'This is solid technical information, not sales talk'."

More about TR smart (or dumb?)

After the previous post, a reader emailed me to point out that my website is actually being 'framed' by Thomas Register. I was going to check out how they actually link to me, before posting, but ran out of time.

What I dislike about the process is that after clicking on a listing on an EZ-search site, you go to that company's basic TR contact info page. You have to really study the page to figure out to click the tab on the left that takes you to the listed company's website. An extra click required, and its hard to find. Double doh!

Thomas Register is being smart (or sneaky?)

I was just reviewing my website's stats for July. Hits from TR were way up from normal. Cool I thought, their new programs are paying off. Then I thought to search out hits from their new 'EZ' site for my product category, environmentalchambers-ez.com. No hits! So I can only assume that they have figured out how to make the EZ hits look like hits from thomasregister.com.

Now to my headline...is this smart or sneaky? I am paying just one price to them to generate leads. Should I be concerned about the tools they use? In my stats, I normally rank thomasregister.com as a 'search engine', but not environmentalchambers-ez.com because the user is has already searched once to find that site (same goes for IQS). But what am I measuring now, and does it make a difference?

What does your proposal look like?

I was recently involved in getting bids from local contractors for phone/IT wiring of our company's new building. For this type of custom-tailored application, I didn't need to search the web or even look at the vendor's websites for information. (One that I did look at screamed 1997, and this was from a classy company).

I sent out a two page 'statement of work' to four companies outlining our needs. I identified our needs clearly and made items I was unsure of as 'options' so that we could compare apple-to-apples on the basic wiring need. Its interesting to see what I got in return. I am listing in reverse order of my preference:

One page quote typed on a standard contract form, dropped off in a manilla envelope. Multiple items I asked for were not addressed. The final total price was calculated wrong by $4k.

Three page quote which described their solution and then listed a bottom-line price. Much of the bid was well above what I needed. I needed two-zone paging system, but he quoted two separate paging systems instead. Price was almost double everyone elses. This was the contractor for the electrical for the building.

Four page quote which clearly outlined the work and items to be installed. Not a lot of detail was offered. Paging and phone system integration were not addressed well. The salesperson was also trying to sell us the 'whole package' of new phones and carriers, which has its own issues.

The winner's quote was only four pages, but he put it in a binder along with 'cut sheets' on the different products he would provide. He was the only one to offer up front to move our existing phone system. And his paging system included everything we needed (and his documents backed it up).

Perhaps I am being too cynical about the proposals. The real issue at hand is that the winner listened to my needs and responded with a proposal that shows he understands and cares about my needs. He earned my trust, and therefor, my business.

So I ask again, 'what does your proposal look like?'