Category: Uncategorized

Like most people, I’ve found using RSS feeds to keep track of blogs and newsy sites. But how about the weather? I’ve found it really handy. You can’t get it from weather.com…but you can from the alternative Weather Underground (wunderground.com). Find your city and get your feed. A very cool drop-down menu to add to your feed tool, too.

One of the biggest hassles with going to a trade show is getting rooms booked. The show wants you to book rooms through them…but why? In a pre-internet world, this may have made sense, but today I doubt it. I found this explanation when looking for rooms to the OFC show in Anaheim:

“Avoid future registration and exhibit pricing increases, read below to better understand why booking within the OFC/NFOEC Housing Service is so important!…It has been the customary practice of the events industry in the United States to secure a block of hotels rooms for the use of attendees to their events….” Hotel Reservations

The above statement (prepared by convention trade group) goes on to blame online services for eroding room bookings through the show. Well, duh. Things that were “customary” ten years ago may not pass muster anymore.

I checked available hotels and they offered top-tier hotels near the convention center from $144 to 175 a night. I’ve booked at the Days Inn a block away for $59 on my own. It appears they have reduced the number of hotels they contract with, as I think the Days Inn used to be a choice. And it looks like they have also eliminated shuttle busses to the show, which will be a surprise to a lot of folks. (Personally, I don’t mind a little walk in the beautiful California weather.)

We’ve got four trade shows coming up in the next two months, which is nearly all our shows for the year. These are big shows at big venues like Cobo Hall and Anaheim Convention Center. We’ve got 10′ and 20′ inline booths, nothing fancy.

But boy do we get solicitations for services like: plasma screen rental, shipping, and booth rental. Clogs up the fax and email. I guess there is a certain percentage that needs these things and they are clueless enough to need to be bugged. Besides, everyone knows that you are supposed to buy the Plasma screen with a company credit card, then take it home after the show 😉

A story: Last week I got a call from the senior VP of one show’s Daily News–you know, the kind you find outside your hotel door every day of the show. Gotta close the books, he says, $1,500 gets full page ad in three issues plus 500 word article. Wow, almost too good to be true, send me some more info, I ask.

He calls back to discuss the offer with me and I put him off for a day. I miss his call back and actually feel compelled to call back–to tell him no thanks. I call back (pull up his email with his phone #, not the # on the voice-mail) and get a receptionist who says he is almost never at this number. Really, I think, why would he list it on his email? She said she would have him call me back.

Ten minutes later I get a call from different guy from a similarly sounding Daily News saying “A little bird told me you might be in the market for advertising at the show”. He’s asking for 3,500 for a half page ad. When I ask, he says he is different than the other publication. Sorry, no thanks, I bail. No call back from my buddy the VP, either.

While neither is the ‘official’ daily, hearing there are two certainly makes me question the validity of both. Of course, the shady dealings themselves are enough of a red flag. Glad my instinct was to say no to these clowns.

Here are the stats for January at my company’s website (using FastStats):

Internet Explorer 6: 81%

Internet Explorer 5: 8%

Firefox: 7.7%

If you haven’t checked your site in Firefox yet…you better. The borders of the tables in mine look different and the font-size is smaller, but everything else seems to work. (A couple months ago, you may recall, I had to fix the guestbook form to work in Firefox.)

We’ve all learned that first impressions are important, but its not all its cracked up to be. Jim Berkowitz’s CRM Mastery E-Journal links to a report on a scientific study that distills the following truths (my summary):

1. Finish strong–the last impression is strongest.
2. Get the bad experiences out of the way early–See #1.
3. Combine the pain, segment the pleasure–the number of experiences is more memorable than the size/importance of a single interaction.
4. Build commitment through choice–Let them feel in control.
5. Give people rituals and stick to them–Be predictable.

This is supposed to apply to customer service, but you could apply these rules to any number of relationship scenarios…even blogging.

For those of you still watching Thomas Register/Net, they have been able to get top listings for a lot of industrial terms, including my keywords. But are people using the site? Well, in the last week, we’ve received two bonifide ‘hot’ leads from their site. The prospects used TN’s ability to send out an RFQ to multiple vendors.

One of my favorite finds last year was a post at Origins of Brands Blog that told how being the number-two in a market means positioning different from the leader. This article I found at the Max Blumberg’s Positioning Game Blog is an example of HP doing just that, and looking for higher profitability as a result.



HP: How being second can be more profitable

Recent evidence, however, suggests that market share is not necesarily good for profits. In general you are better off meeting many needs in a smaller market than meeting only a few needs in a larger market.

I complained a couple months ago about Business.com hammering me with click-fraud. I called them to complain (to deaf ears), but clicks did drop dramatically, so I decided to let things ride.

When I was looking at my site stats for December, I was ready to hit the roof. Business.com was the top referring domain, even over Google! One product page in particular jumped dramatically in traffic. Seething, I hit my account on their website to find me billed for only about 6% of those click-thrus.

It is good to see them filtering the click-fraud, but the activity is throwing off my tracking. The heavy traffic shows they have a big problem to deal with. But, busy guy that I am, I will let my account continue to be active.

As we’ve been using Goldmine CRM for a month, I’ve been able to observe how different people interface with the software, and technology in general. Here’s a summation:

• Power-user: One who wants to make the most of the tool they’ve been given and are willing to explore its capabilities. Symptom: “I think I screwed something up.” Thankfully, I’m not the only one.
• Power-ignorant: Those who use the software, but aren’t aware how the software is there to benefit them and make their lives earlier. Symptom: “I didn’t know you could do that.”
• Power-less: Those who simply don’t understand what to do. Most likely these are field salespeople somehow. Symptom: “Can you show me that again?”
• Power-trip: One who understands the software and its capability but takes short-cuts or does it the old way. Symptom: “I’ll figure that out later.”

I had a new customer order a couple of our units just before New Years. The equipment needed an option installed, and because of the holiday and subsequent year-end inventory, we couldn’t ship it last week as he desired. I had been trying to keep him informed but getting the equipment out was out of my hands. Friday our shipping manager sent the customer an email telling him his units would ship on Tuesday. We received emails in response after 5pm on Friday asking for expedited delivery.

Monday morning at 9am, unannounced, his lab manager showed up in our lobby asking for his equipment! He had rented a pick-up and drove up from Maryland to Michigan over the weekend. He inferred from the email that the equipment was ready, and we were just waiting for a regular pick-up on Tuesday, when in fact we still had to prep for shipment. The shipping manager and I were both talking to him, and we knew that we couldn’t commit to getting the equipment ready. We also both knew that it wouldn’t be smart to get the person who could commit in front of him (and there were no other authority figures available for him or us to appeal to).

He said he would just wait for his equipment. So, we asked him to have a seat in a conference room while we investigated our options. “While your waiting, can I get you a cup of coffee or something?” I asked. “No, I just want my equipment,” he replied, thin-lipped. Is this guy going to sit in this room all day, I wondered.

Once I was able to tell him the equipment would be ready later, I was able to break the ice. We sent him off in search of loading straps while he waited. After lunch, we had his equipment on his pick-up truck. By the time he pulled away, he was all smiles and very thankful for all our help.