05.06.08
Posted in Sales at 1:16 pm by sharilee
Don’t shoot the messenger, but here’s a must-read article from Computerworld on why IT execs avoid salespeople!
Unfortunately, although technology has made quantum leaps over the years, salespeople haven’t changed much. And today, as ever, too few of them act as honest advisers and problem-solvers. Too many are dime-a-dozen drones who stick to marketing scripts and are more concerned with selling what they want to sell than they are with selling what you need to buy.
We spoke with seasoned IT executives to uncover the sales archetypes that drive them crazy. So bar the door, unplug the phone, and read on.
The article discusses:
- The Yes Man
- The Armageddon Evangelist
- The Stalker
- Mr. Know-it-All
- Cousin Clueless
- The Entourage
Technology may change, but human nature is constant. In dealing with all these archetypes, our IT pros say there’s no substitute for due diligence — and experience. “Salespeople have remained pretty much the same over the years,” says Koppel. “But every time I see a new trick, I file it away.”
The key for IT buyers is to be prepared, know exactly what you need now, recognize what you will need in the short and medium terms, and understand how the new systems will interact with your existing systems. It also helps to have your baloney meter on high alert and to know how to say no.
Ultimately, if you’re not getting any satisfaction from your tech provider, the solution is often straightforward: Vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere.
It’s time for change, folks!
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Posted in Economy at 11:40 am by sharilee
Manufacturers are generally upbeat about the economy over the next six months. We’re hearing that all over and here in Massachusetts. Could the “credit crisis” be over before it really started? This in the Worcester Business Journal:
Increased confidence among manufacturers brought the Associated Industries of Massachusetts Business Confidence Index to 50.1 in April.
The “neutral” score is 2.7 points above the 47.4 reported for March. AIM said confidence among manufacturers surged by 5.6 points to 53.9. Manufacturers generally characterized the state’s business conditions as “good” and 61 percent said they expect the good conditions to continue for the next six months.
AIM said strong export growth spurred by the weak U.S. dollar is helping the state’s manufacturers.
The confidence index among non-manufacturers fell by 1.3 points to 44.8 in April. Respondents to AIM’s business confidence survey “continue to be very pessimistic about general economic conditions in the state and the nation,” AIM said.
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05.02.08
Posted in Communications, Web 2.0 at 9:28 am by sharilee
eWeek has a roundup of the six hottest collaboration and social media tools that were shown in San Francisco last week at the Web 2.0 Expo.
No. 6 Vyew
No. 5 IdeaSpigit
No. 4 OpenACircle
No. 3 Octopz
No. 2 Zude SocialMix
No. 1 Microsoft Live Mesh
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05.01.08
Posted in Communications, Web 2.0 at 2:13 pm by sharilee
Yes, I know it sounds silly. But that comes with our job — staying on the bleeding edge of the technology curve, focusing on tools that are useful for us marketing and sales types. Last year, we started Facebook and MySpace pages. This year, the experiment is Twitter. For those of you unfamiliar with this new Web 2.0 service (an alternative to Facebook’s status update), this from c|net news:
Twitter is an early adopter service (see Kara Swisher’s post) and hasn’t yet caught on with mainstream Web users. The Twitter population is a rounding error compared with Web mail or Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN Messenger.
But Twitter adds a new dimension to instant messaging beyond its SMS-like 140-character constraint with the concepts of following and followers, enabling a kind of broadcast model.
In July 2007, Dave Winer described Twitter as “a network of users, with one kind of relationship: following.” He also called it a micro-blogging system with a “relatively open identity system.”
Steve Gillmor describes Twitter as creating a social graph of who you follow that intersects with the social graph of who follows you.
“The asynchronous nature of follows creates both a star system and an equal opportunity for anyone to get involved,” Gillmor said. “You can build your own sphere of influence. You can create a microcommunity that links up with other microcommunities that forms an expanding circle of influence. If I say something and Scoble replies, his complete orbit doesn’t follow but they see we are talking [Tweeting], so I get a bunch more follows. The net result is my sphere is increased by the addition of more strong followers.” The APIs have made Twitter more extensible and viral, such as flowing Twitter into Facebook status pages or FriendFeed.
You can find me on Twitter at sharilee.
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04.28.08
Posted in Communications at 1:15 pm by sharilee
Newspapers reported lower circulation, again, pretty much across the board. In most cases, this is because of the wealth of information available through online resources. In some cases, the press is taking a beating for no longer reporting “just the facts” (credit to Dragnet).
When I was a kid, newspapers did a good job of keeping personal opinion out of news articles. Today, journalists seem to see no reason to separate data and their interpretation of that data. If I’m reading a professional newsletter from an industry expert, then I certainly want to know their opinion. If I’m reading a newspaper or magazine and the writer has no particular expertise in an area, then I just want the facts.
This from The Wall Street Journal:
Circulation fell sharply at most top U.S. newspapers in the latest reporting period, an industry group said Monday, with the exception of the two largest national dailies, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.
Those papers eked out gains of under 1%, while The New York Times, the No. 3 paper, fell 3.9% in the six months ending in March, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Newspaper circulation has been on a declining trend since the 1980s but the pace of declines has picked up in recent years as reader habits change and more people go online for news, information and entertainment.
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04.22.08
Posted in Advertising, Search, Web at 11:34 pm by sharilee
Google recently made an important change to the way your PPC ads must be structured. You used to be able to use vanity URLs in the visible portion of the ad that did not match the redirect behind the scenes (the URL of the landing page). That is no longer the case. The domains now need to match.
For example, the following is acceptable:
Display URL: www.telesian.com
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/telesian123
Landing Page URL: www.telesian.com/adwords
The following is no longer allowed:
Display URL: www.telesian.com
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/telesian123
Landing Page URL: www.trackingurl.com/adwords
The display domain and the landing page domain must be the same. The redirect doesn’t have to match.
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04.13.08
Posted in B2B Marketing, Communications, Sales, Search, Web, Web 2.0 at 2:39 pm by sharilee
ISA has issued a Call for Presentations in preparation for the 3rd Annual Marketing & Sales Summit, hosted in Cleveland, Ohio, 17-19 September 2008.
Sponsored by the ISA Management Division, ISA’s Marketing and Sales Summit will help marketing and sales executives in the automation markets meet the strategic and tactical challenges of the 21st century.
This unique event is designed exclusively for senior sales and marketing professionals in the automation markets. The event will be held at the Wyndham Cleveland at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio.
Conference sessions will focus on topics such as market-driven product development, business development and engineering, product marketing management vs. product management, sales vs.marketing, branding in the Web 2.0 era, redefining advertising in the digital age, and more. In addition to the informative sessions and paper presentations, pre-conference workshops and roundtable discussions will be held, as well as networking opportunities during exhibits and cocktails.
In order to be considered for the 2008 program, please submit your abstract of 50-100 words no later than 30 April 2008 via e-mail to Program Chair Shari Worthington. More information about the event is located at http://www.isa.org/mktsales.
Exhibits and sponsorship opportunities are also available. Contact Rodney Jones, ISA Senior Administrator, Technical Division & Symposia at (919) 990-9418.
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04.03.08
Posted in B2B Marketing, Buy Cycle, Communications, Sales at 2:34 pm by sharilee
A few rules of thumb as you create your marketing and sales budgets. Not only do you have to take into account what you’re selling, you also have to consider the stage of the prospect/customer.
Customer Acquisition
Marketing generates inquiries & qualifies, passes leads to sales for conversion
- Budget: 60% direct marketing, 40% sales
Customer Growth & Acquisition
Here’s where you up-sell, cross-sell, and secure customer relationships
- Budget: 30% direct marketing, 70% sales
Customer Loyalty
Sales now moves on to new opportunities; it’s mostly in the hands of marketing and customer service. Did you know the typical customer base decays by 10% per year
- Budget: 60% direct marketing, 40% sales
Customer Reactivation
Contacts change at customer accounts, but it’s still easier to sell to existing customers than find and sell to new ones.
- Budget: 90% direct marketing, 10% sales
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04.01.08
Posted in Communications, Psychology of Marketing at 2:20 pm by sharilee
This is music to my ears (and something I definitely need to show my own teen). Apparently today’s kids are rebelling by not rebelling. Instead, they want more time with the family. This just in from eMarketer:
Connor Davis, 14, has a $4000 Alienware PC, a $600 PS3 and a $500 iPhone. He hasn’t used any of them in months.
Like a growing number of teens across the US, he has abandoned his technological toys to grab more time with his parents. Connor’s favorite activities now are family dinners and sedate card games.
“Mom goes bright red when she gets stuck with the Old Maid.”
American teens are turning their backs not only on gadgets and Web sites, but on sullen expressions and I’m-terrified-you-won’t-notice-me fashion. Instead, they are rebelling against their parents by not rebelling.
Those who want to be part of the trend don’t always find it easy. Young Mr. Davis said he tried sit-down lectures and leaving notes around the house to get his parents’ attention, but nothing seemed to work. He even tried friending them on MySpace.
However, in-demand parents may prove a tough “get” for traditional promoters.
Nearly all teens surveyed in February 2008 by WTRW said they would respond to a promotion involving “A Long Bus Ride With Your Parents.” Quality time with Mom and Dad was viewed as better than a new iPhone, car or a date with pop idols.
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03.24.08
Posted in PR at 8:12 am by sharilee
We had an interesting experience in this area. When our child was in the hospital on an automatic IV drip, we discovered that using her cell phone to text friends caused the regulator to periodically misfire.
Here’s an even scarier look at wireless medical devices from Electronic Design magazine,
It’s a terrifying thought—hackers using wireless technology to access your cardiac defibrillator or pacemaker. Would they steal your medical data? Change your settings?
Tell it to kill you?
“We hope our research is a wakeup call for the industry,” said Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. He is a member of a team of researchers from the University of Washington, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School investigating the risks inherent in the greater use of wireless technologies in medical implants.
Based on their studies, hackers can extract private information from these devices and reprogram them without the patients’ authorization and knowledge. Granted, such attacks require a high level of technical expertise, and there has never been a reported case of a patient with an implantable cardiac defibrillator or pacemaker targeted by hackers. Current devices also only provide short-range wireless access, though that could change as technology improves. But the researchers still say that medical device manufacturers need to take better care in their designs.
Millions of cardiac defibrillators with wireless technology have been implanted worldwide. Doctors use these capabilities to diagnose patients, read and write private medical information, and adjust the device’s therapy settings all without resorting to invasive or exploratory surgery. The researchers selected a popular model and then used an inexpensive software radio to intercept and capture signals from the device. For example, they grabbed data about a hypothetical patient, including name, diagnosis, date of birth, and medical ID number.
Next, they were able to determine the defibrillator’s make and model, access real-time electrocardiogram results, and uncover data about heart rate and cardiac activity. The researchers followed with several attacks on the device, turning off its therapy settings and rendering it incapable of responding to cardiac events. They then told the device to deliver a shock that could have induced ventricular fibrillation, which could be lethal.
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