Category: Uncategorized

My current website is simple, stable HTML. The only server-side scripts on the site are for the web forms, using ASP. Our quote-request form being the most important, of course.

Well, turns out the forms stopped working early on Monday. I didn’t figure that out until one of our salespeople told me he was getting a ‘corruption error’ when submitting an internal form via the website on Tuesday afternoon.

I guess I should have figured out that I hadn’t received any web-leads in over 24 hours, and there might be a problem. Or when one of the sales people faxed a printout of the internal form. Or when one of the reps indirectly suggested they were having problems.

Lessons learned:

• Customers don’t call and say ‘your website isn’t working’.
• Salespeople tend to think they did something wrong.
• The ISP didn’t know there was something wrong with their server.
• And I was too distracted to notice the drop in activity.

The really big lesson here is this, however:
You’d think we’d at least have seen a pick-up in calls since the web form wasn’t working. And one of these prospects would have complained.

NOPE.

Incoming calls weren’t any higher than normal. No one complained.

I can only assume that the normal web prospect got the error and moved on. Potential sales lost! Crap!

Kinda scary isn’t it? The prospect on your website who wants to fill out the request form, doesn’t want to call instead. It wasn’t that important after all. Or perhaps they didn’t want to break their ‘flow’ of web surfing. Either way, there’s not much I can do about it.

But for those marketers out there who just assume that ‘the customer will call’ if they have questions or problems on their website, the answer from this small debacle is no!

I hear about this one every day. Check it out (be aware audio involved):

My sales nightmare

Compelling stuff, in nice British accents. Don’t be afraid to click thru at the end.

I’m totally impressed in the quality, the product (online training for you hurried chickens, afraid to click the link), and the value.

I got my first B2B email offering a ‘free iPhone’ if I complete an insertion order for a directory listing of a major pub.

This promotion comes from MediaBrains, who say the offer is for IO’s worth $4,800 by June 30th. You can get a $500 gift card instead.

Dunno what else to really say, except that it is a very expensive premium to offer. But attention getting. Hope it doesn’t get the attention of anyone’s boss after they sign up for a listing just to get the phone.

A couple articles analyzing recent Enquiro research on B2B buyer behavior. The great thing about this research is that it looks at the different phases of purchase and how buyer behavior shifts.

Here is the juiciest bit of data:

Navigation to a Vendor vs. Industry Site via Search

Life Cycle Phase	Vendor Site	Industry Site
Awareness	12%	55%
Research	30%	34%
Negotiation	15%	31%
Purchase	17%	19%

I think the article by Jessica Bowman gives a pretty in-depth analysis of the results. No real surprises here: Google rules, but don’t ignore the B2B sites.

The Business Case for Expanding B2B SEM by Jessica Bowman
“B2B Vertical search engines ‘definitely have a place in the purchase process’ as well, according to the study. While general search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) are used initially, buyers increase their use of B2B search as they move from basic awareness into the research, negotiation, and purchase phases.”

How do B2B Buyers Search? by Kevin Newcomb
“In the awareness phase, 65 percent of users said they would start their research with a general search engine. That number dropped to 52 percent in the research phase, 42 percent in the negotiation phase, and 42 percent in the purchase phase.

The study found that in the researching phase, a purchaser is five times more likely to turn to a generic search engine for information than a B2B search engine. As purchasers enter the later research phase and start compiling information to begin the actual negotiation, many rely on B2B vertical search engines, such as Business.com, KnowledgeStorm, or Thomasnet, to help gather the detailed information they require. B2B search engines were the first choice of 22.1 percent of respondents in the negotiation phase, and 18 percent of respondents in the purchase phase.”

Found in my ThomasNet “Link” email newsletter:

The Aerospace Industry Resource: “This resource provides supplier, part, product and other information pertaining to the aerospace industry. Find discussions on news and trends within the aerospace industry as well as tap into our collection of online tools including CAD drawings, standards, part specs and more.”

So, Thomas has decided to narrow up their content by industry. A brilliant step, however obvious it seems to be. But, as you know I’m going to point out, only as brilliant as the execution.

So what is on/in this aerospace portal?

• NASA picture of the day
• Search box, of course
• Browse by category (looks like handpicked categories for aerospace)
• Headlines from their ‘launch pad’ discussion forums in the left column
• Aerospace headlines in the right column
• Two featured vendors in the center column

All the basic vertical portal site stuff is there. What concerns me is that the search and vendor information is all the same TN content. It isn’t specialized in any way. I did test out the ‘browse by category’, and all the sub-categories are aerospace-related, which is good. But the search box doesn’t do this or offer an pull-down menu option to search just aerospace.

A decent start and a great idea, but I don’t see a lot to get aerospace engineers to bookmark this vertical site or return to it.

Found this email in my email this morning:

“With Our Ideal Lead Generation Program, Leads Are Cheaper, More Sales Happen Faster!

We are the only lead generation company in the world that can generate ideal leads. When you have ideal leads, you make lots of sales, faster and cheaper. When you make lots of sales faster, you grow. When you grow, you profit. When you profit, you win.

We have a program that gets news articles and feature stories published about your products. The articles generate many new leads.

Our ideal lead generation program: Your powerful marketing message, designed to attract interest, delivered by credible sources, as third-party endorsements, to qualified prospects, in volume, at low unit cost, with repetition, impingement, penetration and duplication, causing understanding of your message that results in two-way communication between you and your prospect about your product.

There is no lead generation more powerful. We are the only ones that do this. Your competitive advantage will be huge. We work for one company in each market niche. No competitors.

Ideal leads have a much smaller unit cost than advertising. There are more leads because your response rate is higher. Ideal leads are higher quality leads so you sell more of them and you sell them faster. Let us show you how it works.”

Is there one reason I should find this bluster credible? They describe the holy-grail of PR marketing and assume that I should believe them. Of course in the middle of all this, they assume that they can use “your power marketing message”. Really, if I had a powerful message to start with, I probably wouldn’t need them to get it out, would I?

I guess they are working their own program well, because they are going to get their ‘ideal leads’ with this email: gullible, desperate marketing managers or business owners.

Blogs vs. Books
Blogs come in all shapes and sizes. For different purposes, with different perspectives. Most, like mine, are not that exceptional, and stand lightly in their place. Others try to pontificate and stand firmly. Books vary is similar ways.

The difference is that books have conclusions, and they have arcs or themes played out and resolved. Or at least illuminated. At the end of the book, you can look back and see what the author was trying to communicate.

One of my favorite authors is Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn was a masterpiece because he knew the power of a story to elicit an emotional response to a lesson of the truths of life. No one at the time would have stood to read a non-fiction book denouncing slavery and raising negros to the status of human. The story did what no speech or pontificating could do because it could attract an audience, and then trick them into learning a lesson.

Integrity?
All this to explain my reaction and realizations when encountering the final regular post at BigPictureSmallOffice.com. The final post is a version of Big Picture Guy’s (BPG’s) retirement speech, where he gives up the theme of his blog since February 2005: integrity.

Who would subscribe to a blog about integrity, especially how it relates to business? Not many. But a blog that anonymously dishes out the dirt from a corporate office and its cartoonish, yet human, denizens? That’s fun and interesting, great reading and worth subscribing.

So all this time, I’ve been reading BPG’s posts only partly understanding this. He’s shown the humanity of big business, and the big and small decisions required by those who lead (and those who stand in the way). Things not often seen or held up for inspection. Often the problems he uncovered were not black or white, but a very middle shade of gray. In those cases he never gave the solution, but only his thoughts and emotions.

One of the best
BPSO is written like a book, with characters, themes, and now, a conclusion. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his skillful writing and keen eye. Easily the best written blog I’ve subscribed to, and I mourn its conclusion.

More than that, I’ve found BPG a mentor. He’s made me realize that my ability as a manager will not necessarily be measured by my productivity, but by my decision-making skills. The comments he’s left here for me at B2Blog are treasured encouragements.

Speaking of encouragement, here is a bit of his final post, With All Due Respect:

“…Erich Fromm, the renowned social psychologist and humanist, wrote: Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity. That goes for companies as well as for people.

…Be who you are. Respect what you are. Invest continuously in what you wish to be.

Open your eyes. Open your hearts. Understand these few things.”

Please read
BPG boldly suggests re-reading his blog from the beginning. He is right, though. It is worth re-reading, just like Huckleberry Finn. Even those few words quoted here are worth re-reading. Go ahead and read a few chapters…maybe I should entice you with this post about a situation his marketing manager was in, titled Running the Gauntlet.

Again, thank you, and congratulations, Big Picture Guy. Well done!

This classic came up on my iGoogle home page today, where I have the Quote of the Day widget turned on:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.
John Wanamaker
US department store merchant (1838 – 1922)”

Have we all gravitated toward the half of advertising that we can measure, thinking we have finally won the battle of not knowing what we are wasting? It certainly seems to be going that way. B2B and B2C certainly is gravitating to PPC advertising, tracking website traffic, calculating ROI.

Unfortunately, after a little pondering, I think we are still stuck with the same essential problem Mr. Wanamaker stated. The closer we get to thinking we’ve solved the problem, the more acutely aware we are that we have a long way to go. A corollary is in order:

“Half the money I spend on measured advertising is wasted, and is best spent elsewhere. I just don’t which half, dang-it!”
David Jung
www.b2blog.com (1967 – )”

What do you think? What corollary would you make?

You know I say ‘the devil is in the details’. All the best marketing can be screwed by salespeople or service/support staff who do or say the wrong things.

I was sent a copy of the book, How to Talk to Customers to review. It was written by customer-service consultants Diane Berenbaum & Tom Larkin, distilling all their basic knowledge. It was written for the front-line staff, as if they were getting a seminar.

It really is a great book. Basic, straight-forward, with lots of fun stories of good and bad service. In summation, it really encourages the reader to engage the people they talk to. Jim Berkowitz also received a copy and had a similar reaction to the book.

I liked their ‘four levels of listening’:

1. Transactional dialogue (think supermarket checkout)
2. Rapport building (start asking questions)
3. Focusing on empathy (listening without judging)
4. Personal and patient understanding (more like a friend)

So, if you feel your front-line staff is blowing your best-laid plans, you may want to consider passing around a couple copies of this book.

InfoCommerce has cranked up their blog with news, not just their weekly newsletter. This morning I found them with this news from GlobalSpec, introducing a new tool called PartFinder that “can assist those users in re-ordering parts, placing new orders, ordering replacement parts or finding a second source for their desired parts. Users can search for parts through a variety of criteria.”

Sounded interesting for component shoppers, which is the life-blood of GlobalSpec. A database of parts by part number certainly sounds handy.

A trip over to GlobalSpec.com (after trying ‘partfinder.com’ with no luck) showed no sign of the service. Turns out it is just one of the categories in their ‘engineering search’ tool. If you’ve got a specific part number, a handy little ‘best matches’ category shows up at the top, kind of like some Google searches. Or do the search on the PartFinder tab and you get detail such as manufacturer, source, and product category. Not bad.

For the above examples, looking to buy these parts from onlinecomponents.com is not so simple. You have to register to click-thru to their info. Unlike most distributors, these guys are smart enough to have a URL as their company name.

And some cases, they dump you to the source website for the information, if it is another directory. The one in the above results puts you to mectronic.com which also requires registration.

Okay, why all the testing?
Just because info-marketers can collect data and publish it, doesn’t mean we b2b-marketers have to trust that it will be of value to our target audience. The data has to be accessible, usable, and useful. If the engineers won’t use it, we should be smart enough to figure that out.

(And while I said it sounds ‘handy’, I haven’t discussed the question of what situations engineers would really need such a tool.)

Since GlobalSpec is just repurposing the existing data they have and embedding it in their existing search tool, there is little harm in this feature. But how much value will it add to their service?