Author: Dave J.

Have you noticed how I don’t tell you what my company does in this blog? Unlike Scoble et. al., I choose not to. I could add the Feature of knowing about my company to the blog, but it would only serve to clutter up your User (reader) Experience. And then I wouldn’t be able to be so candid, further ruining your experience. I make this simile to help illustrate the link I am about to provide, and my own commentary.

This is Broken links to a rant at Creating Passionate Users called: Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak:

“Fear of being perceived as having fewer features than your competitors. Fear that you won’t be viewed as complete. Fear that people are making purchase decisions off of a checklist, and that he who has the most features wins (or at the least, that he who has the fewest features definitely loses). Fear of losing key clients who say, ‘If you don’t add THIS… I’ll have to go elsewhere.'”

This is exactly what my secret employer is currently facing. A couple competitors have added certain bells and whistles that our prospects are increasingly asking for. In a B2B world, comparing features on a spreadsheet is common. Our salespeople get frustrated every time it happens. Kathy Sierra’s advice?

“Screw ’em. We believe that those providing the products and services that give the most ‘I Rule’ experiences, without tipping too far over the Happy User Peak, will be the most successful. (Obviously there are a ton of exceptions, and yes of course I’m overgeneralizing.)”

Her rant is a good reality check on feature-itis…but how does a marketer (or a salesperson) get ‘happy user’ in the spreadsheet? When the customer is ready to buy, they are dreaming of all the different ways they could use the product and feel more secure when it has a lot of extra features. I’ve got a dishwasher at home with seven different modes, but I only ever use one. Would I have bought a dishwasher with just one setting? No.

Unfortunately, the most effective way to sell against feature-itis is to negative sell, I think. “Have you seen how complicated that is?” “Are you ready to support those features?” “What if it has problems?” I hate negative selling, but do I have much choice? In the long run, I’ll have a happier customer, if they buy from us.

The clients we serve here are increasingly working on projects in, by, or with China. On top of that, we are also part of a global company that is selling our USA-made equipment in China. As a result, we will make a dozen trips to China this year, which has to be a lot for a company our size (under 100).

Not making the extra effort (and trips) is risky, as this article from McKinsey Quarterly (registration required) says:

“By the time these companies act to overcome such barriers, it may be too late: their multinational customers, which are rapidly expanding in China, may already have created networks of local Chinese suppliers. What’s more, as these suppliers hone their skills by serving demanding multinationals, they will be even better placed to compete both in China and overseas.”

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends (who posted the link to the McKinsey article) is pessimistic about the chances of the SMB working in China:

“Precious few small businesses would be in a position to chase customers in China, even by pooling resources. Most small businesses have a tough enough time increasing their footprint in their own local markets. To attempt to go after markets half way around the world, with deep cultural and language differences, is a challenge most small businesses simply cannot overcome.”

She is right that it is hard to do, but bypassing China may only be cause of a slow death, as their local market is also going to be drying up and going to China (as we have seen here in West Michigan’s tool-and-die industry). We’ve been lucky to have clients and a parent company to give us a push. But for a lot of business, small or large, to grow, China has to be a part of the strategic vision so that they can push themselves. And plan on a lot of airline miles!

Anita does point out that sourcing in China may be more important (and do-able) for the SMB. This may be an easier way to gain experience there, so that you can then look at selling back to China.

We already know that the customer doesn’t want to be ‘bugged’ by salespeople, so why let your salespeople do it. John Jantsch suggests a controlled flood of targeted information to differentiate and gain the trust of the prospect. (Adding to my to-do list for use with Goldmine’s Automated Processes.)

Duct Tape Marketing Weblog: Systematically Flood Your Leads With An Education:

“Here’s the key to this storm. Don’t ask for the order, don’t try to get and appointment, don’t call. Just keep sending them this perfectly scripted, useful information and watch what happens. I can hear sales trainers all over the world moaning about the subtleness of this approach but there is something very appealing about simply being there, giving great information and waiting, Oh, and there’s something very referable about someone who sells this way!”

I’ve got a product that was named by engineering–not wonderful, but not worth wasting energy on, according to Chris Gloede. Just like naming a baby, when its yours, the name is so important, but no one else really cares too much (except maybe your mother).

Rants on Modern Marketing: Product: Naming Really Isn’t That Important:

“But I’ve come to the conclusion that for small and mid-sized businesses, the secret to a good name is…having a good product supported with good marketing. Really, if you’ve got a good product and good marketing then lets just slap on a mediocre name and get along with it, OK?”

The Real Direction of U.S. Manufacturing : Industrial Market Trends: “since 1980, manufacturing construction — that is the building of new plants and the expansion of existing plants — has fallen from 10% of total nonresidential construction to 2%.”

After two years, we still remain the only manufacturer in our new industrial development. In the next couple years in nearby Grand Rapids, Steelcase will be basically be leaving a whole block vacant. This is major stuff!

Our tired, vacationing family once walked out of a Wendy’s because they were filling that must have been huge (there were three x-large sacks on the counter already). As we left, my wife doing all the fuming and me wondering exactly what Big Picture Guy was in his post The Wendy’s Queuing Conundrum–was this a profitable customer, or high cost in lost sales? BPG and his CFO, General Ledger, debated the issue:

“General suggested that the man in the short line had a large order and, while this slowed things down, he was likely a most profitable customer. I countered that his order might simply be the most complex, most difficult to fill and, as such, possibly the least profitable.”

We recently had this problem in our business. One of our major clients very suddenly ordered a huge amount (1/3 of our annual production, I think) of our entry-level model. While they were accomodating in the delivery schedule, we still had to extend our lead time for other clients. Now we are potentially losing sales to a number of small clients for whom this product is targeted due. But they got to the head of the line and ordered as many hamburgers as they wanted, with the toppings they like.

Read the BigPictureSmallOffice.com: The Wendy’s Queuing Conundrum

I needed to get a car-charger for my iPod or I was going to prematurely kill the non-replaceable batteries. The charger I bought uses the FireWire cable I got with the iPod. Or is it a Fine-Wine cable?We’ve all seen poorly written instructions in Chinese-made goods, but I thought this faux pas was too good to keep to myself, especially on the front of the package.

Marketing commentary: I bought the product despite the obvious error.

Now that I (almost) can do full-time marketing, I’ve got a list of a million things that we’ve put up with that need to be done properly. But I need to start with the basics, which Jay Lipe’s post at Smart Marketing can help with:

“The concept of brand marketing is often lost on the small business person. That’s because they ignore the most important of all brand concepts – consistency.

Next time you have a minute, spread across a table all of these basic marketing tools for your business:

* Business cards
* Letterhead
* Envelopes
* Thank you notes
* Brochures
* Flyers

Now, take a look at how consistent (or inconsistent) your brand is across these elements. Are the logos the same? Typestyles? Colors? Key messages?”

Trivial? Yes? Worthwhile? Definitely! Just like the soldier who makes sure his uniform is ‘squared away’, so should my marketing tools be. It’s also humbling to see how far I really have to go.

Read: Brand marketing at its very basic

Is the web killing every form of communication, even the brochure?

Jakob Nielsen provides a guest column in the latest BtoB Magazine, where he continues to rail on B2B websites lagging behind B2C usability, content, and hints at the death of the brochure.

“When we test users on b-to-b sites, they tell us that they expect the same level of simplicity and polish as they are accustomed to in their personal shopping; after all, when you are spending $10,000 on a business purchase, you expect to get service that is at least as good as when you are buying a $6 paperback on Amazon.”

He goes on, alluding to points made in his article last year (my review here) that B2B sites need content that supports the purchasing cycle, specifically suggesting an ‘advocate toolkit’. Then he makes a more dramatic statement:

“Suppliers must change their communication strategy and develop content for the Web first, and print second-if at all. The days of repurposing printed brochures as lumpy and unpleasant PDF files must come to an end.”

I agree that print comes second, but lets not kill it altogether. I develop content for the web first because this gets the new product information out the quickest, and is most flexible for doing so. This also has the benefit of editing/experience so the brochure becomes easier to do. And all the content in the brochure should also be available (usually in pieces) somewhere in the website.

However, I think the brochure (print or PDF) still is a needed tool, especially for capital equipment. Less useful, and less used, but obligatory (much like trade shows). It frames the product in a complete, total message that can be hard to do on the web. And it somehow gives substance to a product that most of the time the customer isn’t going to see or touch before buying. And this makes it indispensable as part of the ‘advocate toolkit’ that Nielsen says is needed.

What year is this? I’m not sure because when I got an (unsolicited) email at work announcing the new website of a company I’d never heard of before, I felt like I was in a time-warp. While the HTML email is good alright, if irrelevant, it does date itself with this statement: “Visit and bookmark our website for future reference. Arris International Corp. constantly evolves to meet the needs of a changing marketplace.” This belongs in the same paragraph?

I started looking closer at the email and then the website, and found a number of technical errors that just shouldn’t happen in 2005–especially with a ‘new’ website. Not to mention marketing copy and visuals that look so 1999. But let me just pick on the technical errors, as copy and visuals are much more subjective.

• First off the email is spam, sent to our sales@ email address.
• The subject line is pretty lame: “Arris Int’l Corp.: New Website”. (You may say this is a subjective opinion, but I think this actually a technical error…subject lines need to be useful.)
• The email has javascript in it (to create a pop-up of all things), which Outlook doesn’t like and I imagine might get blocked by some mail servers.
• The email promotes www.arrisinternational.com, which is actually just framing the content from www.arris-intl.com. Why? Are they trying track response to the email? There are more professional ways of doing this.
• Why start to use the longer URL when the -intl URL has a Google PageRank of 5? But as you will see, they don’t care about search engines.
• They use graphics for major content, including their name and address. Their name is used in text only five times in the whole site.
• Their major keywords of what they do are also in the graphic header of each page, where search engines can’t find them.
• All pages have the same title-tag, which is just the company name.
• On the right-side of the home page is their worst crime against the user: A vertical-scrolling marque containing seven paragraphs and 150 words. How does one read this moving block of text?
• The graphic on the left of the page is a 1.6M animated GIF.
• Besides the navigation, there is only one link on the home page. Home pages are supposed to be about providing info-scent and navigation.

There is enough technical skill in this site to say that webmaster knows what he is doing, but enough errors to say that he needs to learn more. If they want more traffic for their site, they need to make it search-engine friendly, not send out spam.