Category: Uncategorized

I try to stay on-topic with this blog. And politics isn’t something I discuss with much of anyone, as I am mostly ambivalent. But I need to pick on John Kerry. Bush can sound arrogant, but Kerry sounded like he was circling another planet yesterday in an interview on NPR.

An interview is supposed to be a conversation. The interviewee needs to sound like he is being thoughtful. The message should fit the audience. The questions should get answered, not diverted. Specifics should given. John did none of these things and instead talked like he was giving a stump-speech. He got his message out, but what message was he really sending?

It completely ruined any interest I had in him. If he can’t listen to Bob Siegel, or realize that he isn’t being heard by millions who would never go hear him in person, how can I trust him as a leader?

Is the lesson clear enough, marketers? You need to match your message for the situation and the audience. Copy from your print catalog isn’t going to work on your website. The words your advertisement says are not the ones your salesperson should say. And most importantly: most decisions are not driven by logic.

I’m going back into CRM mode. Our project launch looks like its finally going to happen! So my radar is up to find messages that will resonate with our implementation team, who will need to be my first converts to customer-centric thinking.

Here is a simple but power concept I found in my inbox this morning from crmguru.com. An article called Harness “What Our Customers Are Saying”, written by a former Amazon customer support leader, Bill Price.

Whenever I start a new project, I want to get as close to the customer as possible, trying to discover “what our customers are saying” (WOCAS). Even though our clients can share reams of data on customer contacts, usually via hundreds of reason or contact codes, most of that data is worthless because agents often pick the first-listed code or contacts are multi-issue.

He goes on to share how by sitting in with support people, he was able to see things from the customer’s view, and then get things done to improve their business. He also encouraged regular WOCAS reports from the support department.

For me, I hope that stories like this can help remind my team that what we are doing is ultimately for the customers and how we implement CRM needs to focus on their expectations.

I love to use Paul Prudhomme’s Magic Seasonings to cook with. One of the great things about the web is how easy it has made it for me to keep stocked up on such a specialty product. Like Chef Paul’s personal style, the site somehow makes me feel connected to the business.

So this morning I get an email from his website entitled “We need your help”. Thinking its a customer survey or opportunity to spead the word about his products, I open the email. Its actually a missing person appeal!

The email states that James Cockman is a personal friend of Chef Paul’s and was apparently abducted 9/14/04 when trying to complete the sale of a Suburban in Greenville, SC. The email honestly states its purpose is to get enough publicity that the case can reach national news, insofar as listing phone and email contacts at major news outlets.

An interesting and bold use of a marketing voice/tool, huh? For whom would you do this? Do you have enough of a relationship with your customers to do so?

Sorry to the lack of posts, but we’ve been busy with a sales meeting at work. You know, expensive dinners and nice golf courses.

Meanwhile I’ve collected a bunch of comments on my post about the new ThomasNet.com site. Take a look to see what others have to say. I’ll be back blogging full speed next week.

I like Firefox, a lot. It’s a subtle, but noticable change from IE6. I’ve very rarely had any problems with websites, or so I thought.

I found a problem with my OWN website. Which makes me think that this same problem would occur on a lot of other HTML sites.

I have a guestbook form to collect leads. The form calls an ASP script in a separate file to send an email to our sales@ account. When I tested the form this morning (for other reasons), I never got the email. After trying a few times, I switched to IE and the form worked.

Now I’m in the process of trying to find a solution. But this is a simple sendmail script, probably used over and over on the web. I can think of one site I tried registering for that the same thing happened. Perhaps I need to switch to a cgi-bin method.

Not sure how I came across it, but I found out that an open source CRM program has been recently introduced, called SugarCRM. A quick look at the SourceForge website tells me it runs on mySQL/PHP backend. Cool!

So I start checking out their demo, which has all the basics there. The only thing obviously missing (and it is important to me) is a product database for proposal generation. Maybe I can get it to talk to QuoteWerks. Hmmm.

Then I start digging a little farther and find out that the software is open-source code, but not necessarily a free ride. It is actually a product of a start-up company who looks to make money on it as “commercial open source”, which seems like an oxymoron:

“There will be a production support contract, a yearly per-user subscription to product updates, patches, technical support, training, and documentation.” (Line56.com: SugarCRM Comes Out of Stealth Mode at line56.com)

Their website isn’t that specific, but it is honest: “Download it, install it, run it for free or upgrade to a commercial license ? your choice… We only want to be paid once we have proven we have generated value for your company, not one minute sooner.”

Would you use SugarCRM? Should I? At least its got to be a better deal than Saleforce.com!

Because our company was creating proposals in Word back in the 90s, transitioning to email was pretty easy. Now it is much less likely that a prospect will get (or get in time) a copy of our glossy catalog, as email plus a website is seen as sufficient by our salespeople for most situations.

While our proposal has been tuned to provide the most pertinent details on our equipment in a brief, bullet-driven format, it doesn’t do much to engage or ‘sell’ the prospect. Spartan, you might call it, although a jpg of the quoted product does jazz it up a bit.

I’ve wanted to create a sales-tool to accompany emailed proposals, and was tempted to create a PDF file on each product which would be a distillation of the quote, web, and catalog information. The PDF could be used on the website for people to print-out, too. But such documents still don’t seem to hit hard enough to engage and sell.

Instead, I’ve thought that a ‘top ten list’ of reasons to select our chamber would be a digestible and engaging way to present the benefits of our equipment. The most logical format would be a PowerPoint, which would integrate images and text effectively, allowing one full page per benefit. This would allow us to put a more competitive pitch than we would want to publish on the web, too.

(As I have the standard-issue PC here with XP Office Small Business, sans PowerPoint, I started development of the ppt file on a portable. Just recently I downloaded OpenOffice and installed their presentation program, rather than spend $200 on a copy of Microsoft’s. It’s got less bells and whistles, but seems more usable. I was concerned after editing my ppt file and OpenOffice offered to save in its ‘own’ format, as some of my changes weren’t compatible with PowerPoint.)

The cool thing with electronic collateral, like the web, is that you can tune it as you go. Today I feel ready to start testing it. While I am excited about the format and the message, I’m a little less sure about the file type to send out. While it’s obvious that I should make sure the file is PowerPoint compatible, and not in OpenOffice’s own format, perhaps I should just use a PDF file instead.

The PowerPoint is more engaging, I think, requiring a simple tap of the keyboard to change slides, but is less likely to be installed on the recipient’s PC. I could make sure a link to Microsoft’s free viewer software was available, but would prospects bother? On the other hand, a PDF file implies boilerplate copy that requires being in ‘reading’ mode, which may be more likely to be ignored by prospects. Like the new website, changethis, the format becomes as much an issue as the content. So which do I go with– PDF or PPT?

Excuse me…they are ThomasNet now, abbreviated TNI. They have used the old adage about the more failures, the more likely a success. They’ve improved a lot, but some core issues still hobble their service. See their press release about why this site is so great (it reads like a VerticalNet promo from 1999).

ThomasNet.com emulates Yahoo in that there is a search block, but also categories. At their seminar, it was explained that the categories are there to help people who aren’t sure what to call what they are searching for. Also ala Yahoo, their is an animated ad overlay for a Orange County Choppers giveaway.

The giveaway is an interesting idea in that you need to roll over six hot-spots and read about the motorcycle and how it metaphorically relates to ThomasNet. The hot-spots include a link to a demo page to show how that feature works. An interesting idea in getting a visitor to learn how to use their site.

The site’s search is supposed to integrate both their Register and Regional databases, although it isn’t apparent to the user. You do get a list of states and the number of suppliers along the left side of your SERP (search engine results page). You can use this list to drill down, as well as categories like: manufacturer, distributor, or service companies.

Lets cut to the chase–how are the search results? Mediocre. Why? For all the work on the website, they haven’t invested time in improving their database. Problems include:

• Rankings are driven by money paid, lowering accuracy of the results.
• Results to your search are different than using their categories.
• You have to spend more time reading descriptions of companies as submitted to TNI, rather than edited results from their website like real search engines.
  
• There are too many similar categories and not enough of the right ones to drill-down.

(Another symptom is that their contact info for my company listed our address from about three years ago.)

At the top of the page, just before the results, is a list of ‘related directory categories’. I clicked on these to try to get better results, which was somewhat effective. Compare a search for temperature controller versus a category result for controls: temperature. Just for fun, try the same search on Google.

Google gives the best information scent, and that’s why ThomasNet is not going to win on specialized search with this iteration of their website. My prediction is that engineers will continue to rely on Google. Anyone feel differently?

We’ve all seen the Nigerian 419 scams by now, right? Someone needs to secure a large amount of money outside their country, etc. Apparently they are trying to be more creative.

This weekend I found two requests from our website from Nigeria. Both are just disjointed enough to be obvious that they are phishing for suckers.

Hello dear,

May i know if you ship internationaly? And if you accept credit card?

If you do, i want you to give me the price of this product (TESTING EQUIPMENT AND INSTRUMENT)including the shiping price via UPS to LAGOS NIGERIA I will be waiting for your reply ASAP. Thank

Second request:

My name is paul daveis the manager of kayroid shopping mall. in my store here we sell different kinds of products ranging from gift items,apparael,electronics and other accessories as long as it moves in the market and is appreciated by our customers.

and do you ship to nigeria.

Will these scams never end? This ‘complaint‘ details the process of how such a directory scam works. What it doesn’t say is exactly what actions are being made to shut them down, as they are in Canada and the complaint is from the FTC here in the states.

And the Commutel directory scam continues to go on, as I see people finding this blog searching on that name (I originally posted the spelling Comutel). One reader who they got ‘authorization’ from, says that they shipped via UPS using their account #, with a return address of a Mailboxes Etc. in Midland, MI, a couple-hour drive for a Canadian.