A little entertainment: Daily Sucker

Submitted by yours-truly:

"Submitter's comments: Saw this post at Wired that referenced 'the most useless site ever'. Had to check it out. And it is useless. First it was the musicians with the sucky sites, now it's the equipment they use. BTW: Loved the 2006 worst-in-review list. Holy crapola!"

Click over to see what I found:
Web Pages That Suck -- Examples of Bad Web Design

And yes, that Worst Webpages of 2006 is a hoot. Check em out!

ThomasNet Forums...more to talk about

Since I posted about ThomasNet's new forums, I've got a few comments and wanted to update a few things:

• I posted a thread about pricing-on-websites in the marketing section (yes, I will get back to this subject soon).
• One user said his post linking from ThomasNet forums to GlobalSpec got deleted. I'm not dissing TN for doing so, that's a pragmatic business decision. A quick search confirms no posts referencing GS.
  
• That same user pointed out that GlobalSpec has their own forums called CR4, which I didn't know about. The home page is a little crowded, but it's got good posts.
• In fairness, I searched CR4 and found only one reference to ThomasNet.

Change or Die: The book

I was offered a comp-copy of Change or Die by Alan Deutschman because I had posted about the original Fast Company article previously. I found the article profound, and jumped at the opportunity to get the book.

Here is the quick summary of what the book is all about:

Old School motivation: Change or Die, based on:

• Find —Find the source problem first, before trying to change
• Facts —The facts should be compelling to motivate change
• Fear —Authorities dictate change based on fear
• Denial — why motivation fails

New School internalization: Change and Thrive:

• Relate —connect with others to understand the change process
• Repeat —keep working on the change (with support from your connections)
• Reframe —until you can internalize the change
• Bonus: small victories get you through the ‘repeat’ process.

The stories that Alan tells are great, much like you would expect from a magazine writer. To me, I reframed the points of the book by comparing them to my boot camp experience:

• Relate —You are in this together with your squad and platoon
• Repeat —You keep saying ‘weapon’ everywhere you go, not ‘gun’.
• Reframe —The surprising thing is that at the end of boot camp, you have internalized the military culture.

Review:

The stories are great, as well as the pop psychology. Alan does give some advice about applying the three Rs, but it isn’t a how-to book. The greatest benefit to me is learning that the old school motivation doesn’t work, and why. This is profound and alone makes the book worth reading, because fear and facts are so commonly used with the same pathetic results.

The greatest challenge of his new school is the ‘relate’ part. Finding a leader, partner, or group that can provide support, training, and leadership is critical to the success of this methodology.

Fun:

Now that I am done with the book, I’m going to give it away. Send an email to change-at-b2blog.com to enter. Drawing to be held on January 27th.

ThomasNet Forums launched

Everyone is talking web 2.0 these days, so it was inevitable:

"ThomasNet.com has rolled out the ThomasNet Forums, providing an integral component to building an active community amongst not only Industrial Market Trends readers or all ThomasNet.com users — but to anyone online."

Read the release here: In Your Own Words

There are a number of posts there already, but no focus yet. Most seem to be general-interest engineering items under a number of different categories. There is one for marketers, but no discussion of Thomas (yet). We'll have to watch these forums and see where they go.

Pricing on your Website (Part 3): Case study: Equipment

First: I've had some great comments on this series of posts. I encourage you to go back and read them (links: Part 2, Part 3).

I figured before we make any more conclusions, we should look at some examples of how pricing is being handled by some companies.

The Case of the Network Analyzer

Suppose you wanted a cool new network analyzer, who wouldn't? Agilent would seem to be a safe brand I like, so here is what I found:

1. No price here...
At Agilent's website, their new E5071C model is highlighted, driving me to this page which does NOT have pricing. It does have a lead time and links titled "how to buy" and "request a quote". A little further down it offers "Get a formal question with full pricing and options: Get a Quick Quote in 2 min." linking to the same quote form.

2. I found the price!
Not content to fill out a form, I next find myself at TestEquity.com, which also highlights this latest model, too. Their page does have "TestEquity Price" for what looks like every variation of the model. Below the price is an "add to quote" button. Surprisingly, there are no caveats about the price shown. (It might be noted that my behavior in looking for the fine-print that goes with the pricing may reflect the same diligence that other shoppers may have.)

3. GSA pricing? Cool!
Well, now that I have a price, who else might have a better deal? I search for this new model and land here at Testmart.com which prominently displays a link titled "Get GSA Price". (GSA is the US government price.) I click on the link, then 'yes' to the question of whether I am qualified for this price, whether I am or not, and voila, I now have the price for the rack-bracket set for the E5071C. Pricing...great, bracket...not so great.

The pricing is shown along with three sentences defining the GSA terms (and a GSA logo), plus enough other information to nearly be considered a firm quote. The pricing does show the MSRP, which is more than the manufacturer will display. A little more digging and I find Testmart does have prices for the network analyzers prominently displayed when you do a search.

B2Blog comments:
While Agilent is willing to address pricing, it doesn't actually publish their prices, even though major online resellers do. It is interesting to find the GSA prices so publicly displayed, as it acts as a signal to the shoppers of how much discount they could ask for. And I was surprised that TestEquity's website didn't have any qualifiers for their listed price. That may be a subtle hint (along with the quote button) that getting a written quote would be advisable.

At least for this type of product, handled by distributors, pricing on the web is not an issue. Next, hopefully I can find time to do research on a B2B product that doesn't have online pricing.

Progress is Precarious

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem." --Martin Luther King Jr.

(More quotations worth pondering here: Quotation Search - Martin Luther King Jr.)

I am heartened by the blogging of Martin Luther King Jr. today. Despite those who think that his birthday/holiday (and thus, his person/message) is not respected by *not* taking the day off, these personal riffs show that a more personal, valued interest in him on this day than almost any other holiday of remembrance during the year.

Yes, it is progress. Perhaps blogging will change the way we honor the past. It is precarious, though...will we remember next year...or the year after that? When will MLK Jr. be irrelevant?

A couple blog mentions just from my regular reads:

• Reveries posts about how his speeches built on the familiar.
• Seth also ponders the enomity of it all.
• Yellow Pages Commandos tells a personal-history story about a cross burning
• Even Wired posted a special message in their RSS feed (that interestingly enough doesn't link to a story)

Pricing on your website (Part 3): Why you should

Why should you try to publish pricing on your website? Do we really have to have this discussion? It is pretty obvious, isn't it?

• Price is one of the most important features of your product. Site visitors want to know!

• Price is a reality check that what they are looking at is appropriate for what they need and can afford.

• In the B2B world, pricing drives budgets ala the Dilbert cartoon I posted earlier this week. During the budget process, the prospect is really just a 'suspect', and knows it. He wants to avoid being treated like a prospect by an overeager salesperson.

• Corollary: Your eager salespeople don't waste their time with 'suspects'.

• Getting your price in the budget keeps you 'top of mind' when the budget is approved. It's yours to lose now.

• The visitor will be able to spend more time evaluating your products and drilling down to the one with the best value for their needs...instead of flipping back to Google.

• If you don't do it, someone else in your industry will.
  

• Someone else already has pricing on their website and visitors are flocking to their products.

Published pricing is definitely going against established sales conventions, so perhaps there are other answers about 'why you should' based on improvement in your sales cycle. For example, publishing a 'suggested retail price' may solve a problem with distributors who excessively mark-up or discount your products.

Will any of these win over your management or sales force to agree to put pricing on your website? That is probably the greater question here. The need is obvious, but convincing others to do it takes a compelling argument. Any suggestions?

No pricing = a sucky website?

I love finding timely posts from others for what I want to write about. Vincent Flander's Web Pages That Suck to the rescue!

In today's Daily Sucker 1/11/07

"Submitter's comments: 'Contact us for a quote.'

What? You mean you don't know what the price is? I can think of few more effective ways to drive away potential customers.

Vincent's comments: Absolutely right. It's even harder to understand why we can't get a quote for a scale to weigh babies when it's no trouble to get the price of a scale to weigh light aircraft ($2,495 to $6,995 USD)."

Saying 'Contact us for a quote' means that your website is sucky? Vincent has never taken up this issue before. In this case the inconstancy only highlights 'the problem'. Is there perhaps one of my reasons from yesterday why they can't list the price for this specific scale?

And of course this webpage is sucky in general. Go over to WPTS and check it out.

Pricing on your website (Part 2): Why we don't

Why don't we B2B marketers put prices on our websites? There are three basic reasons I'll explore here.

1. We are lazy.
The general lack of useful content on our websites is testament to our laziness. Our prospects have gotten more sophisticated and expect more content, including pricing information. This laziness also extends to not overcoming the other two reasons why prices aren't on our websites.

2. We like to keep our prices a secret.
Yes, we'd rather that our competition didn't know our prices. But this alone is NOT the reason why we don't list prices on our websites.

A bigger benefit is that without published pricing information, we force the 'website visitor' to raise their hand and become a 'prospect'.

Further, 'visitors' tend to lack any sophistication about what a price does or doesn't include. Requesting a quotation gives the vendor the opportunity to fully explain what their price includes and what options there are.

And, of course, if your prices are highly negotiated, having published prices may cause all sorts of problems.

3. We can't easily show prices.
This is the mother-lode of reasons why not. Since these reasons are internal to a business, they may not be that obvious.

• Channel conflict:
  If we don't sell our products directly, we aren't in control of our prices, our dealers are. And different dealers may sell at different prices. You may just piss them off, too, thinking that you want to take the business in-house.
  
  
• Geographical:
  The web is 'world-wide', yet trade regulations, local safety codes, and freight costs vary significantly. Warranty support in other countries can be more expensive. Or you may not want to sell to certain regions all-together.
  
  
• Assumptions:
  Further to the 'visitor' being unsophisticated is the fact that they may quickly assume that your price does or doesn't include things. It drives me crazy seeing ads for iPod accessories that include this statement: "Does not include iPod". As stupid as this looks, how long would the text need to be next to your product price if it was in a Sunday circular?
  
  
• Commoditization:
  We hate commoditization...if prospects could just shop online, how much would they focus on making price comparisons? How would that change what we sell and how we price things?
  

Ending thoughts:
Please don't think I am just making excuses or trying to justify why prices *shouldn't* be on our websites, I am just trying to show what the roadblocks are. It seems that too many people just assume that #1 or #2 are the primary reasons why we don't put our prices on our websites. Hopefully, I've painted a fuller picture of the issues involved.

We'll explore 'why we should' in our next installment.

Pricing on your website (Part 1): Dilbert

I've gotten some comments and discussions on last month's post 'Use it' says 'Price it' regarding putting pricing on B2B websites. Thank you to those who have been involved. I'd like to study this subject in depth, so I'm going to start a series of posts.

Why put pricing on your website? How about a recent Dilbert cartoon to explain:





The cartoon is funnier because of how true it is. I've been chewed out by purchasing agents for sending pricing quotes to engineers: "All pricing goes through me!" Or had new prospects saying that our quoted system is "more than we put in the budget." And of course if you're just doing a budget fire-drill, who wants to call a salesperson for pricing and be subjected to a barrage of follow-up calls.

So if Dilbert were able to go to the vendors website, and it had pricing (or pricing guidelines), he might have a chance to work under his pointy-haired boss's rules. And if the project moves forward, the vendor would have a good chance of being the selected vendor.

And that's what we want to consider: Knowing that the customer and the vendor would benefit from pricing information being available online, how can we make it happen?

We'll look at the reasons why not in Part 2.