A present for my readers

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! As a blogger, here is my present to my readers: suggestions for making your new year better. These are personal suggestions, not business ones.

• Get healthier: subscribe to Men's Health Magazine. Its for regular guys, not health geeks.


• Learn more: subscribet to Wired Magazine. How technology connects with the world is something you should be thinking about...a lot!


• Relax: Get a harmonica and learn to play, even just a few simple songs. Or a different instrument. It clears your mind and sounds nice, too.


• Have an adventure: I recently subscribed to eMusic.com. It's a lot of fun because it is not major market music that you can download. But some searching comes up with some great finds. Check out "Viagra in the Water" for example. Free trial, too.

Any of the above will cost you less than $15. Try one and see.

I'm trapped! How's your lead time?

I haven't posted much because of our recent factory move. And our T-1 line isn't installed yet, so we are sharing a single modem line--which means no surfing. Actually, it has probably been good to keep the distraction of the web away when we should be focusing on getting our business up and running again.

What sucks is I am the one who ordered the T-1. Too late apparently. Our business manager should have, but he was weighing his options. So the salesman blew it in not warning us about how long the service takes to get installed. Maybe he doesn't really know. But that's the beginning of the story.

We ordered from SBC, who we also ordered phone service from. Turns out that even though our phone service was active on December 5th, we still haven't had our toll-free lines transferred. Our old provider is forwarding our primary line, but I didn't expect it to take this long. I was told last week that they should have been transferred by today.

As far as the T-1 line is concerned, it took almost three weeks from the time I signed the contract till the order for the line was actually placed with the phone company. Then I was told it would be installed 'by' December 22. It was actually installed on Monday. But no one has contacted me about test and turn-on, even though the installer said it should happen the following day.

Things are early, things are late, and I, the customer, am left wondering and waiting. Part of the complaint is the lapses of time, but more important would be keeping me properly informed of the lapses of time.

Google observations and info

1. What I called the 'Google Slam Dance' at the end of last month I have since learned is called 'Florida'. The name must be related to the controversial election results from that state, as the results of Google these days are very controversial. While numbers are down, I'm comfortable that people can still find my company, it will just take a bit longer.

2. So I went to see if my AdWords campaign is starting to look more expensive and found that my ads are now getting rated differently. They were called either 'strong' or 'moderate'. Here is Google's definition:
What do the labels in the status column mean? (Note: These values are determined by your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google search pages only.)
Strong - This is the ideal situation for your keyword and its associated ad(s), which are showing at full delivery.
Moderate - The ad(s) for this keyword are showing at full delivery, but there's still room to improve the CTR on Google search pages if you'd like.
At risk - The ad(s) for this keyword are showing at full delivery, but may stop showing soon.
Slowed - The ad(s) for this keyword are showing less frequently than usual.
Disabled - The ad(s) for this keyword aren't showing any longer.

3. I found that one recent term I had added was doing very well. 87 'views' and 4 'clicks'. Yea, its only 4 leads, but it cost a quarter of the other key words and I helped 4 people find my site quicker. Seems that whereever I got the idea that people might search for my products with this term was accurate.

4. Google adwords singular/plural fix is apparently not working. I need to relist my plural terms again. Plural search: two ads; singular search: eight. Obviously I'm not the only one who thought that AdWords new system would take care of plurals for us.

5. My competitor with an obvious spam page is still getting serious rankings, despite the Florida algorithm.

Another reader question

A reader asked my experience with Globalspec last week. I haven't paid to be listed there because I feel it wouldn't be effective for my products (capital equipment). I did refer the person to my previous post dissecting multiple issues with Globalspec.

But I think this person's own email shows a different side I hadn't considered to closely:

So many of the Globalspec leads are, well, useless. By that I mean when the sales forces called, the response was: a) they don't have a clue why they received this call b) they are not in the market for equipment c) no such phone number d) no such street address... yada, yada.

And the person goes on to say "?" and "n/a" are not words when used for a last name or city.

So, for Globalspec salespeople who ask us marketers if we know who is visiting our websites, we should be confident in saying "I don't know", because they don't either.

My advice to this person? My strategy is to give the 'suspect' enough information to decide that they are comfortable asking us for more information. What makes them comfortable enough to identify themselves as a prospect?

From my recent experiences in capital spending, I've found that becoming a prospect is an emotional risk, almost like asking someone out on a date, because you know that later you might have to tell this salesperson that you won't be buying from them. I'm a salesperson and I feel this way...imagine how an engineer feels.

A question about web-inars

Last week a reader asked my opinion about web-inars. The quick reply is "how many have you felt compelled to 'attend'?"

Let me tell you a story about my experience with a webinar.

On short notice, I flew to California to fill in for our ill sales manager at a webinar (this was done in conjunction with a trade-show). He was to appear as an expert with a company we had a loose 'partner' relationship with, along with another partner rep. We had two sessions of meetings and rehearsals. The host company had four people at the first meeting, in addition to their expert.

Then we all drove to a small film studio in LA somewhere. We used someone's office as a set. The three of us took turns recording our speeches. We spent a good amount of time discussing how we would make it sound like this was a live event and not recorded. We had lunch with the film company president (who, to the midwesteners who were there, came across as a pompous jerk). After lunch we watched while a technician edited the piece. We looked like news reporters without the benefit of a teleprompter. I was happy when we left.

A couple weeks later the web-inar actually broadcast. 400-something people had signed up, 100-something actually watched that day. The webinar allowed the viewers to ask questions...to make it interactive. We got quite a few questions, but their quality varied quite a bit. I suspect a competitor was peppering us with questions about competing methodologies. In the end, the questions were such a pain to answer that we didn't answer them.

In summary: If you are going to use multi-media, have a compelling reason and use the strengths of the medium. I think that in-person teaching simply cannot be matched.

What is broken?

One of my daily blog-stops is This is Broken for the same reason I like Web Pages That Suck...they feature train wrecks that I can rubber-neck at.

This one I found exceptional. Just because I think we've all been there. You can probably figure out what it says just by the title. Essay question for my readers: If this was your organization, how would you fix it?

I ask this of myself, because as I look forward to lots of new sales processes in when we implement CRM, I still won't have final control of the customer experience. I'm stuck with the people and their style of behavior. How much can I really control them?

Good Experience: This Is Broken - Thrifty rental, O'Hare