Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Are You Feeling Guilty or Depressed?

What kind of a year have you had?

Better Than Ever?

In which case you are possibly feeling guilty that you have so much and others have so little.

Worse Than You Ever Could Have Imagined?

In that case you need a little thought-tonic to perk you up.

And I Have Just the Thing for You

Yes, this is a one-of-my-favorite-projects item.

If you feel inclined, visit Youth Without Shelter and scroll down to the bottom; the heading reads “What is for dinner on December 25th?”.

You may not feel up to catering a full meal for lots of folks, but a small financial or other (“Our greatest needs this holiday season…”) contribution will be appreciated.

And you will feel all the better for it!

I promise.

Talk to Me !

P.S. Judy Leroux, YWS's Development Manager, hasn’t yet been to The Montreal Deli ; I’ve offered to take her there within the month!

P.P.S. You already tip the waitress, right? from now until December 20th, Put $5 aside each meal to send to your favorite charity

Monday, November 29, 2010

Can a Stealth Salesman Be that Far Away?

This was published Saturday, November 27, 2010 on an ITWorld blog at http://www.itworldcanada.com/blogs/insights/2010/11/27/can-a-stealth-salesman-be-that-far-away/55934/

The Fox news story Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran's Nuclear Weapons Ambitions ( http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/?test=latestnews ) makes for good reading. I am not qualified to determine how much of it is factual and how much of it is Fox news hyperbole.

Cliff Stoll’s book “The Cuckoo’s Egg” (Pocket Books 1989, 1990) makes for good reading, as does every John Grisham story, but especially “The Broker” (2005)

Myself I prefer to read Richard Dawkins and his account of why anti-malware producers should launch a benign yet subtle worm/trojan/virus to “infect” the machines of those who don’t know or don’t care about security, to wit, all my friends and about 50% of my colleagues.

For my part I am fed up with Rogers Internet Speed test page telling me that my copy of Internet Explorer (version 6) ought to be replaced, as if that would raise my internet speed above 0.055 kbps when I’m paying for 3 Mbps, and FireFox is a better product anyway.

And then ComputerWorld Canada (November 16 2010 page 12) comes out with a story about an Internet Explorer zero-day attack.

I cogitate.

Consider if you will products with a limited lifespan (anything purchased from a retail store) and foods stamped with a Best Use date which prompts the population to add perfectly edible food to the garbage crisis.

And I conclude that the day has probably arrived, if not passed, when a major software supplier will happily hand out a few thousand dollars with pizza and coke secretly and via an “air gap” to have written and launched a plague that will corrupt out-of-date (from the suppliers point of view) software so effectively that consumers will be forced to ante up for version 7 or version 8 or …

One major supplier of operating system and desktop software does that quite openly. We all fork out about $500 per annum per staff member to purchase, install, train and familiarize ourselves with the latest fins mounted above the rear wheels.

But suppose that you wanted to really boost sales, and not leave it to the doubts of the consumer.

Can a stealth salesman be that far away?

Talk to Me !

Saturday, November 27, 2010

I Love Binary!

A binary (two-way) choice is a yes/no, on/off, above/below choice.

I have 226 records in my contact database.

  • Of these 226 some are people I’ve met face-to-face, the rest are not.
  • Of these 226 some are people I’ve chatted with by telephone, the rest are not.
  • Of these 226 some are people for whom I’ve delivered a service and been paid for it, the rest are not.
  • Of these 226 some are people I’ve trained in something or other, the rest are not.

And so on.

Of these 226, one hundred and fifty three of them, as of today are due for a follow-up call. I am WAY behind in my schedule.

It follows that the 153 dues for a follow-up can also be split into “I have met” and “I have NOT met”; “I have spoken with”, and “I have NOT spoken with”. And so on.

And from THIS it follows that I might be able to work through my backlog of 153 entries by separating them into those who can receive a mailed postal letter, those who can receive an email, and those I really must contact by telephone to arrange a face-to-face meeting.

The concept of binary can reduce my overwhelming backlog quite quickly.

I love Binary!

Talk to Me !

Friday, November 26, 2010

How My Service Affects My Service

I am a little Boy Scout doing Good Deeds. Last Saturday I helped an older man lift a crate of fruit from the pavement to waist-high. A foreigner, he thanked me with his eyes. Yesterday I picked up a fallen pen for a younger rider on the subway. He thanked me with his eyes, and thanked me again seven stops later when he rose to get off the train.

I felt good.

I felt in harmony with the world of people around me.

Neither act was a ostentatious as standing and giving my seat to a little old lady. Neither act required more than a flash of the eyes in acknowledgement, both directions.

Neither act changed the world or the course we are on.

In both cases my day improved beyond measure. You’d need Steven Pinker or Richard Dawkins to explain why, but I suspect that small acts of kindness elevate my image of myself, so that by the time I meet the CFO for the first time some thirty minutes later, I have a feeling of confidence that might have been missing. An attitude not far removed from “This planet belongs to ME!”, or at the least “I belong on this planet; I have as much right as you to be here”..

It’s not about whether my revenue comes from Service or from Application Development. It’s not about Sales or Marketing.

It seems to be about using a little bit of social lubricant to make my own path smoother.

I daresay if I practice it often enough that from one of these events business might flow, but I doubt it.

I think that the small acts of kindness are me being kind to myself.

Talk to Me !

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Consistency

I have been carrying on a running battle with Rogers over Internet Speeds. I am signed up for 3 Mbps, and over the past 12 days have recorded speeds as low as 0.066 Mbps and as high as 8.53 Mbps. (The average of my readings is a meaningless figure, but since you are curious: 2.66 Mbps over 43 tests).

Varying the browser (iexplore/FireFox), the router configuration and the test site (Rogers/Speakeasy) shows no change in status.

That is, it doesn’t matter whether I use Rogers preferred method (Microsoft iexplore.exe, the Rogers speedtest site, no router in the line, no programs loaded) or (from their point of view) the worst possible configuration (Mozilla FireFox, Speakeasy.com, DLink router in the line and half a dozen applications loaded (bit not running).

The day of the week and the time of the day seems to make no difference.

Now paying for 3 Mbps and getting 8 Mbps is a Good Thing, and I’d like to tell you that Rogers is great. (The nice waitress at Zellers brought me an extra coffee yesterday; I’ll eat there again, I know).

The real problem is inconsistency: When I decide to download an update to an application, or if a client sends me an attachment by email, I can’t be sure that I’ll be able to receive it in conversational time. My daily job that ought to run (used to run) in 3 minutes takes up to 2½ hours – some days. If I wake at 2 a.m. I am not sure whether to reboot the system to start that run, and then go back to bed, or just to stay in bed.

It seems to me that the same thing applies in the services I provide.

I ought to be consistent in the levels available to my clients. I ought always to perform above average, of course, but I ought to be consistent in delivering above-average results.

Let’s not confuse “consistency” with “average”. They are different and we need both.

If Rogers was consistent at 2.66 Mbps I’d probably just mail in a cheque with a snide remark and put them on notice. But the inconsistency has me going public. For example here .

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

How to Stay Sane

I know, I know, …

Part of my early-morning sequence is to scan the newspapers and then scan the blogs. To this end I have sub-menus in FireFox labeled “Daily Dose” (of newspapers and ‘Daily Blogs”. On click and ten newspapers open up for my perusal.

Amongst the ten is Alex Cartoon , and here is the issue which prompted this blog entry .

Here’s my take (apart from Alex being a very smart guy). Cartoons are based in reality. You already know that. Most jokes are funny because they take a real situation and then put a wicked (as in “wise”) twist at the end.

Alex’s cartoons do just that for me. They remind me that the joke is based in a true situation, and yes, there really are business people out there who think like Alex’s characters.

So you might not be in Finance or Big Banking.

Read Alex for one week then tell me that you don’t have clients like his.

Talk to Me !

P.S. My “other cartoonist” is Matt , but you might find him funny only if you follow the U.K. news and/or have roots in the U.K. When Matt (or Alex( go on holiday, my mood changes.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Marketing and Sales for Techies Who Hate Marketing and Sales

This article was originally published in my “Clear thinking” blog on Friday, May 29, 2009. It popped up today and seems (to me) to be too good to ignore.

"Marketing and Sales ? I don’t have time for that."

But I do. Here’s how.

My skills can be sold at $1,000 per day. I’m good at what I do best, and I know I’m worth $1,000 per day in the right contract.

The trick lies in getting the right contract; getting the right fit between clients who can make best use of my abilities and myself.

If I could get five days work per month at $1,000 per day, I’d have money left over for my savings and retirement.

There are twenty working days in each month (four weeks of five days each, with a day off for medical maintenance).

That leaves fifteen days for Marketing and Sales.

I have fifteen days EACH MONTH to read up, study, and begin practicing what I need to do to make those $1,000/day sales.

Right.

Get to it!

Talk to Me !

Monday, November 22, 2010

Call Screening

The bane of our lives.

Until about 18 months ago I had a no-show number, dating back from 1990, the days of dial-up modems. I had a little scam whereby I would track down the phone number of telemarketers and load those numbers into a little DOS-batch job that would attack the list of numbers whenever I felt malicious, usually after a telemarketing call. It got to be so good/bad that I would issue 20 annoying calls for each one I received.

Times Change

Gone is the dial-up modem and with it the ability to attack-dial my enemies.

So about 18 months ago I removed the blocking.

Which meant my name began to appear on my prospect’s/clients phones instead of “Private Caller” or “Unknown Name”.

Four months ago I switched providers and the call-display arrived with the bundle.

I find myself looking at the name, and if I don’t recognize it (or the displayed number) I don’t pick up the phone.

I figure if it is someone I know, they’ll leave a message, and if it is someone trolling for a live voice they won’t.

Which Raises My Question to You

Do you know how you appear to the people you are trying to call?

Could your low-response to telephoning prospects be because you show up as “Private caller” or similar?

How Could You Find Out?

There’s no 100% guarantee, since every organization has a different carrier and/or a different system.

But you could try calling me and ask me how you appear on my phone.

It’s a start.

Talk to Me !

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Lunch vs. a Sales Call

I stress (to ANYONE who asks) that I’m asking for a chance to eat lunch together. I stress that it is NOT a sales call. It is a get-to-know-you, a put-a-face-to-a-name and just have great conversation.

If anything I shy away from talking about What I Do at the first meeting, because I am afraid that my words will pigeon-hole me and from that point on any problem that doesn’t fit the pigeon-hole will not be passed my way.

“I write macros in Excel VBA” is a sure-fire way to be branded as an Excel-macro guru (Note: not an Excel guru, not a macro guru, but a very specialized guru who we’ll probably never need).

So I was pleased to read in The 59 Commandments of Business Networking “Somewhere down the road sales people were given the idea that business networking meant pitching and selling. Eek! Nothing could be further from the truth.”

If you are thinking of trying my approach, and treating the cost of a $40 meal for two as the equivalent of a finders-fee (or your weekly entertainment if, like me, you aren’t into the movies/clubs scene), then read the article.

It might give you courage.

P.S. For free.

Talk to Me !

Friday, November 19, 2010

Bad Prospect!

On the surface it looked good. A phone call came in asking if I “knew of any software”. I wrote my own application to solve a similar problem.

We had a meeting downtown and a demonstration. I sent an email.

There followed two short emails and two long (up to 5 minute) voice-mails, which I dutifully transcribed to a document so that I had a permanent text record of what was said.

Then this morning a 70-minute phone call from the prospect dithering about whether they should do it themselves, and whether the project warranted one, possibly two meetings to establish a few facts and lay out some specifications.

To date I have spent 8.20 hours on this project, with no sign of any revenue being promised.

I quoted a low rate for the two meetings, and assuming they go ahead and I spend two hours writing up both meetings, my billing rate drops to $30 per hour.

This for a project that will reduce their estimated costs from about $80,000 p.a. to about $8,000 p.a. (I will reduce a 60-minute job to a 1-minute job).

I am glad that I track my time, phone calls, travel, writing, because it lets me see this prospect as a not-very-serious about values prospect.

If they feel OK about burning my time thus far, they aren’t going to care about my time in the future, and they certainly don’t value it at this stage.

Talk to Me !

Thursday, November 18, 2010

A Lunch Offer No-One can Refuse

In Coffee or Lunch? I suggest that a lunch date is a sure-bet, but a coffee date is tricky to arrange.

Here is how to secure a lunch date:

  • “Let’s meet for lunch”.

And yes, it’s that simple.

In Business Communications I stress the value of Quantifiers, and that Management Measures , but in this case that’s not going to work.

Consider these alternatives:

  • Alternative 1: “Let’s meet for lunch on Thursday”.
  • Alternative 2: “Let’s meet for lunch at 11:50 on Thursday”.
  • Alternative 3: “Let’s meet for lunch at Grisanti’s on Bloor Street at 11:50 on Thursday”.

Each of the alternatives gives your prospect a hook on which to hang an objection. (Not free that day, at that time; Can’t stand the service at Grisanti’s …)

But “Lunch”? Who doesn’t need to eat.

And since there is no place, date or time specified, what could be the objection?

It’d have to be something pretty personal (You are bald; you are over 60; you have a Western Australian accent) in which case you don’t want to meet with that kind of person anyway, and certainly not if you’re paying for lunch.

Valid objections are:

  • “I’m busy all this month”. OK. Pick a day next month.
  • “I organize the lunch’n’learn for my company”. Great! I’d like to sit in on one.
  • “I don’t drive”. That’s OK, I don’t have a car, but I’ll get the TTC to your neck of the woods.

Try it.

“Let’s meet for lunch”.

You’ll find that it works.

(Thanks, Promod!)

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

He Didn’t Bite My Head Off!

One of the most common reactions when I’ve pushed a reluctant entrepreneur into phoning someone is the amazed phrase “He Didn’t Bite My Head Off!”.

I know.

I felt that way too.

I feel that way too.

I’ve just called the Presdent and said “I read yesterday’s press release on CNW and I’m calling you to invite you out to lunch”.

I don’t get my head bitten off.

Of course I don’t.

The President doesn’t have a clue who I am.

“Are you an investor?” they sometimes ask. No, I say, I’m not.

Sometimes they say “ It’s Not a Good Time ”, and that’s OK too. I ask if next month might be better, or even ask them to suggest a time. After all “It’s Not a Good Time” means that It’s a Good Idea, but that It’s Not a Good Time, so if it’s a good idea, let’s do it at another time. You pick a time.

I was going to let you pick a time anyway.

By the time The President has asked me who I am, what I do (I read the CNW press releases, that’s what I do, and that’s why I’m inviting him out to lunch) we have begun to be curious about each other.

What kind of a consultant just calls and ask for a lunch date, just for the sake of meeting, anyway/

Someone kind of special.

Sure! Let’s do lunch.

Sounds like fun.

Talk to Me !

Monday, November 15, 2010

Money or People?

Another day, another list.

I’m sitting in a train heading up-country, and it is a great pastime to start a new page and make a list of all the things I must do on my return.

Some of the tasks are directly related to revenue – start work on the hospital data base project; get the specifications and proposal out to the new client.

If I don’t do those tomorrow, the cash stream may dry up.

Some of the tasks are related to my role as marketing and sales manager – write some thank-you notes and advance the CEO newsletter.

Then there are the other tasks.

Categorizing my tasks as “dollar”, “people”, and “other” helps me to focus on staying afloat while paddling to the shore.

Talk to Me !

Saturday, November 13, 2010

The Acid Test

A couple of months ago I ran a mail-merge and mailed out to 150 contacts a hand-signed letter and a glossy brochure. All up my costs were about $200 plus ten hours.

Coaches tell us to offload our non-creative work; coaches like Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach tell us to offload a task to someone who is passionate about that specific task.

How do you find the person who is passionate about, say, mail-merge?

I had to examine my fears, and my fear with mail-merge is offsetting the customized hand-signed letters by one or more spots. Absent-mindedly stuffing envelopes and reaching the end with a letter (or an envelope) left over means that somewhere in the set you have double-stuffed or zero-stuffed an envelope.

If I do it, I know that I’ve done it, and take steps to fix it.

How do I know that my mail-stuffer hasn’t done it?

I posed the question to a dozen colleagues before I came up with the answer.

Chatting to Kim Leitch at the East Gwilliambury Chamber of Commerce gala, I posed the question, and her response was along the lines of “I’d go back and fix it”.

But what if you have already licked and sealed the envelopes as you went along?

“I haven’t”, she smiled. “That’s the LAST step”.

Now maybe the previous eleven colleagues all work that way too, but Kim was the one who heard my fear and managed to convey to me that such a mistake was, indeed fixable by the Virtual Assistant.

Talk to Me !

Friday, November 12, 2010

Marketing 101 – Again

Another Staples Blog reads in part:

Marketing 101 clearly sets out:

• The purpose of marketing is to develop a product or service; identify and qualify markets and customers; map the road to market; and define and create effective communications.

• The purpose of sales is to develop customer relations; deliver the force behind “closing sales”; provide important market feedback; and directly impact the top-line (and middle-line) gross margins.

Many solo entrepreneurs fall into the trap of thinking that you need a special person to “do” marketing, a special person to “do” sales.

I fell into that trap.

Until I realized that I didn’t need a special person to “do” software installation, and I didn’t need a special person to “do” book-keeping.

In Expected Values I wrote that in my organization we have Chris Greaves the Prospector and Chris Greaves the Salesman. (We also have Chris Greaves the Trainer and Chris Greaves the Programmer).

I have training skills

I have programming skills

I have sales skills

I have marketing skills.

Each skill-set might be qualified to a different degree (novice, expert) but there’s no escaping the fact that I have those skills.

The Staples article goes on to say “The key is in the integrated thinking that connects sales and marketing.”

And here’s where we get lucky: Our sales, marketing, training and programming staff are EXCELLENT COMMUNICATORS.

Because they live in the same head.

That’s why when we (Sales) are sitting with a prospect it is so easy for us to determine what’s on-the-shelf and can be installed quickly, and what might take a bit more time.

Talk to Me !

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Leadership vs. Managament

From the November 8, 2010 issue of Canadian Business :
  • Leadership is having the vision to build a railway; Management is making the trains run on time.

Another confusion of roles cleared up.

For solo-entrepreneurs, we are both leaders and managers.

The trick, then, is identifying the task and making sure that we set aside the time to be a leader (might be sitting on a park bench thinking deeply) and staying on top of things (might be recording phone calls and meetings set up).

They ALSO say, elsewhere on their web site “Send me 22 issues of Canadian Business - Canada's Best Selling Business magazine for just $19.95!”.

Sounds like good value to me.

Question: Who makes the decision to subscribe, The Leader or The Manager?

If you’d like to preview a copy before subscribing, pray that your local doctor is late for your appointment; there’s a copy in his waiting room.

Talk to Me !

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

How to Write a Daily Blog - Effortlessly

Thinking of cranking your blog frequency from Monthly to daily?

Here’s an easy way:

Don’t do it.

Huh?

You know I blog daily, some of it rubbish (to your eyes) but enough of it good to warrant you eye-balling each issue.

How did I get here?

Well, after 18 months daily blogging comes easy – a conversation with a colleague yesterday yielded FIVE topics, and once I got off the phone I clickety-clacked nearly a week’s worth of material into the pipeline.

Ah! The Pipeline.

Try this:

Maintain a word processing document with a table of hyperlinks to articles you have written.

When the urge comes on you, fire up the document, add an article, and get back to what you were doing.

Each WEEK pick what you think is the best of your pipeline and publish it.

You have upped your frequency from monthly to weekly AND you are building a lovely stockpile of articles.

As time goes by you’ll find that the mood comes on you more and more frequently; you’ll start spotting topics where you didn’t before. That’s because your mind is now thinking of topics, whereas before it was wondering which flavor of ice-cream to pick up on the way home.

Once you find you are adding to your stockpile about once a day, crank up the frequency to twice-a-week, or just leap right into daily.

It’s that easy.

And unless someone is paying you to publish an article every day, don’t sweat it if you run dry.

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Coffee or Lunch?

I am often tackled about my tactics of picking up the phone and asking a President out to lunch.

“But you don’t even know the guy!”.

All the more reason to meet.

I don’t believe I’m that special. A little extraordinary, maybe, but think this through:

How often does a President get a straight-forward call "Let’s do lunch, just for the sake of meeting each other”.

I don’t know what your pain/problem is so I can’t be selling you a solution; it can’t be a sales call.

That’s not true; I AM selling something – the idea that we might meet for lunch and just chat. When the Pres says yes, I pump my fist in the air, occasionally dropping the mobile phone, and do a few spiral Trudeau-like pirouettes.

But why not ask someone out for coffee?

Answer: Meeting someone for coffee between 9am and noon, or between 2pm and 5pm represents a half-hour slice out of their busy working day.

But everyone takes an hour off in the middle of the day to go to lunch.

Lunch does not represent a drain on the working day schedule.

Coffee does.

Talk to Me !

Monday, November 8, 2010

Double-Dating

If there’s one thing better than taking a CFO out to lunch, it’s taking a CFO AND the Vice- President, Investor Relations & Corporate Governance out to lunch.

Why not?

Lunch typically costs me $40 for two.

For three it would be $60.

For the extra 50% I get to impress (we hope!) twice as many people.

My travel costs are the same.

My dry-cleaning and laundry costs are the same.

Plus, my theory is, the two of them will feel more relaxed when dealing with me.

It is, after all, a two-to-one issue; not that anyone is fighting.

Let’s see how it works.

Talk to Me !

Saturday, November 6, 2010

When to Quote?

I know that I’ll be asked to quote a financial figure at the first meeting; this will be at a time when I haven’t had time to think about the full scope of the project and the divisions into scheduled phases.

The client is being reasonable in asking for a ballpark figure; you and I do that within three minutes of walking into a store. Even less if the prices tags are pinned to the coat sleeves.

There are only two kinds of questions at these “First Meetings”: (a) Financial and (b) Non-financial.

There!

Wasn’t that easy!

Unless the client broaches the subject by asking a question loaded with dollars, I don’t need to mention anything at all financial, especially likely-costs.

But when the client draws a breath, leans back and says “And how much is the likely to cost – Give me a ball-park figure”, I can either make a guess about the resale value of the stadium used by the New York Mets, or I can counter with a question or two of my own, in no particular order:

(1) Do you want the work done off-site, on-site, or a combination of the two?

(2) Do you want a figure for me doing the work by myself or getting an outside programmer to do the coding?

(3) Do you want me to include cost of delivering training to your staff?

(4) Should I include the cost of preparing user documentation?

(5) Should I include the cost of preparing system documentation?

(6) Shall we assume a two-weekly billing cycle?

(7) What length is your payment cycle (I am not a bank)

(8) What level and duration of technical support might you require.

And so on.

These questions are effective, for just as I need to consider what options I might take in preparing the system, so too does the client need time to think about the various methods of working.

Now is the time for the client to state whether or not they want documentation (in this phase). Now is the time for the client to decide how tight a rein they want to keep on me. Now is the time for the client to state whether or not they use me as a bank (“We pay invoices in 60 days” means that I am lending them the money).

Note that the client will find it difficult to specify a “level and duration of technical support” if the specifications of the process are not yet formalized; for the same reason I find it difficult to quote costs, so perhaps “The first step is to get the specifications written”!

In short, any discussion of finance is a two-way discussion.

Make it so.

But be gentle.

Talk to Me !


Friday, November 5, 2010

So, Don’t Go - and Say So

It’s the old sage advice about dealing with a piece of paper the minute it lands on your desk.

This morning’s email run produced an email inviting me to a function a week from now. The email is from someone I met at a function last night. THAT function I attended because the presenter is a friend and colleague of mine, but the audience is not my type of entrepreneur.

So the invitation seminar is not likely to appeal to me.

At 4 a.m. I read the email and moved on to the next one.

At 8:30 a.m. I read it again and pushed it to the back; I really hate saying “No”!

At 9:45 a.m. I plucked up the courage/strength to reply “Sorry, I can’t”.

But look you. At 4 a.m. I knew I wasn’t going to go. I could have replied then and we would have been done.

Instead I have re-read the email twice, and had an agonizing nag on my shoulder for five hours.

To what gain?

None at all for me, and none for my correspondent.

At the first reading and should have said so straight away.

Talk to Me !

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Why Social Networking Fails

I’m not on LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter etc and you are.

You think LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter are the best thing since sliced bread. I think “toast”.

My informal survey reveals that everyone who things SN is great is wrapped up and immersed in it.

And everyone who thinks SN isn’t great isn’t using it.

Because they/I don’t use it because it doesn’t work for them/me.

You use it because it works for you.

Or you believe it does, which amounts to the same thing.

In yesterday’s Toronto Star there is a story of a (regular) breakdown of the subway system. Thousands of commuters inconvenienced.

The TTC says it is mostly happy with the way it warned commuters about the major disruption to subway service along the Bloor-Danforth line during Wednesday’s morning rush. “Everything we did was as we planned for,” said TTC spokesman Brad Ross. “The technology fell nicely into place.”

Note that the TTC is happy. Everything worked the way they planned, especially in terms of getting the emails and tweets out on time.

Here’s the problem: Very few TTC commuters are on Twitter, or read their twitter before they are in gear, and being in gear means out of bed, showered, dressed, and running to catch the bus with a coffee in one hand.

We don’t have time to tweet when we are racing to catch the 6:56 a.m. bus.

There are 700,000 subway riders daily but only 30,000 people subscribe to the alerts which provide immediate status updates. The alerts are also posted to the TTC website. The TTC also sent out Twitter alerts, but the account (“TTCnotices”) has only 7,000 followers.

Let’s be generous and assume that the 30,000 alert subscribers are different from the 7,000 twits. That means 37,000 out of 700,000 commuters, or about 5% have a HOPE of learning about it. And that’s assuming that they are so keen to twit that they do it before they get out of bed, shower etc.

Which they don’t.

The TTC of course thinks that the solution is to get everyone to be on Twitter.

A service provider would recognize that currently only 5% (and I’m being generous here) have a chance of hearing about it in time, and would address the solid 95% who are out there.

Grabbing some 5-second air time might be a good idea, on radio and TV.

However, the face-to-face component wasn’t as strong as it could be, Ross admitted.

Let me translate that for you: The TTC doesn’t have signs that can be propped up outside the subway stations saying “CLOSED” or similar. That would take the booth collector all of twenty seconds to place, and would save some commuters from paying their fare and only then discovering that there’s no subway. And, of course, hubby has by now driven off to HIS job.

The bottom line is this: Social networking only works when the bulk, think 95% of your target market, is engaged in it at the time you emit your message.

Which is why people like me ignore SN without a qualm.

Talk to Me!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Add an Adjective!

I was struck tonight by an adjective.

Sitting at a seminar, “Who needs a pen?”.

From behind me I hear “I have a pen” (implicitly “That I can lend to someone”).

No takers.

A pause.

From behind me I hear “I have a PINK pen”.

Suddenly the pen sounds more attractive.

Why should adding an adjective make it more attractive?

Because it is now more rare.

A pen is a pen is a pen.

But a PINK pen is a special pen, to be coveted.

Add an Adjective!

Talk to Me !

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

The Inverse Square Law of Attraction

My marketing efforts are geared towards one-on-one face-to-face meetings.

Not for me the mass-marketing appeal through social networking, FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn. My corporate contacts don’t do email, almost; they hide behind their executive assistants.

So I call them (the presidents) up and invite them to lunch.

That’s a bond.

The Inverse Square Law says that the (gravitational) attraction is inversely proportional to the SQUARE of the distance between the objects, and I think that way about my contacts.

Close up and personal, one-on-one, face-to-face is a real impact.

Hiding behind a printed monthly newsletter is ineffective.

Relying on a social networking tool is totally meaningless.

Talk to Me !

Monday, November 1, 2010

Strong on Goals

I am Strong on measurable Goals. I urge every project member to retain a sheet of paper on which is headed the GOAL of the project, and under that the six to ten OBJECTIVES that are the steps to reaching that goal.

I look back, and every failed project I can remember did not have a measurable goal. Or those that did did not have the goal broken down into a amanageble number of objectives.

So I read this recent Small Biz blog entry with interest.

The blog’s summary reads:

So here are my lessons learned:

1. Make sure both you and your clients understand and agree on what 100% is. It is so important to set expectations properly

2. If you make a mistake admit it, be humble and ask the client how you can remedy the situation

3. Do not let an unhappy client walk away, it will only end up costing you business in the future

To heighten my interest, a friend recently moved into a condominium and had the floors stained.

Same outcome!

Talk to Me !