down the avenue

On Organizational Growth & Use of Sales at Reboot Britain

Jeff Saperstein spoke today at Reboot Britain in London on opening up organizations for growth. He walked the audience through various case studies, which included how sales is currently being used in these organizations. Here's a quick overview on two of them in a short video clip.

Rashtchy on Boomer Trends: Simplicity is Key

I took some video footage of Safa Rashtchy's talk at the Boomer Venture Summit's dinner sponsored by client Gilbert Guide in Santa Clara this week. Note that the quality isn't as clean as I had hoped since it was taken on a flip but you'll get the jist of his message.

He addressed the boomer and senior market and trends around investing, designing and marketing to this segment moving forward. He says we're moving into the "revolution of simplicity." He points out that while he feels the generation gap is in fact shrinking, part of this trend is because of improvements in design and productivity online. The simplicity factor, i.e, the iPhone.

It's easier than it was to navigate a mobile phone today. "Why would you do something on a mobile device or even on the web in 15 steps if you can do it in two?"

It's much more sensible to get from A to B today, hence the closing the gap between the generations. The video is in three parts: Part I, II and III (Q&A).

Part I

Part II

Part III (Q&A)

Social Networks Popular Even if Not Tied to Bottom Line

NewCommForum is in motion at the San Francisco Marriott this week and several industry pals and social media gurus are speaking on the latest industry trends around social media innovation, online community management and development, social media program management, metrics and a growing issue for companies and individuals alike: online reputation management.

And of course you can't seem to go anywhere in social media circles lately without the topic of crowdsourcing being discussed.

Why People Love Social Networks from Paul Gillin (also a speaker) this week ties into why social networks are so popular regardless of whether they make sense or not for their business.

He writes about content related to an individual's personal data within a social network and why how the value extends into something much greater. Over time, "activities and relationships are captured in their profiles and the more they contribute, the more valuable they are to the community and the more their personal status grows."

He also points to the utility component, which was one of the things Spock was demonstrating early on when they launched their people search engine. While primarily a people search engine, you could actually build a community around your profile which could in fact replace your contact manager or database over time. I can imagine numerous other online solutions where communities could not only form but could turn into contact managers as well.

Some social networks make it easier to track people's news or their relationships with others than others. LinkedIn, Classmates, MySpace and Facebook are great examples as are sites like FriendFeed that pull all your means for communicating to those networks together in one central place. I now see short glimpses of people's lives from several schools I attended over the years when keeping in touch directly would simply take too much time.

Features are evolving in real time everywhere a community is evolving. What I'd love to see is the ability to tag what becomes more important to you so you can continue to follow and track someone's progress, but pull your VIP/close friends and family list to the top so you're faced with much less white noise, particularly useful for people you follow on Twitter and Facebook.

Talk Show Tips

Out this week, TalkShowTips uncovers 72 Secret Master Host Techniques.

More than a book, Susan Bratton has compiled a culmination of learning from five years of podcasting, hundreds of interviews and more than a dozen years of public speaking, emceeing and moderating panels. Anyone who does interviews would be interested in learning more about this new system: bloggers, vidcasters, podcasters, radio and TV hosts or interviewers.

It contains a eBook with all the techniques and teachings, a worksheet for sending a guest invitation, a script for talking to a publicist or assistant to book a guest, a Mad-Lib's style worksheet to cement the format and flow of your show, ton's of in interview tricks and techniques, a strategy called, The Grid, that helps you get ready for a show efficiently.

Reflection & Strategic Innovation During Tough Times

I recently attended an advanced business strategy seminar that brought together roughly 400 CEOs and entrepreneurs of small to mid-sized businesses. The revenues ranged from zero if you were launching a start-up to $1.2 billion on the high-end. The majority were in the $2-10 million range.

For the most part, the companies were small and many had unconventional support systems in place to maximize efficiency, whether that be outsourcing projects to India or to stay-at-home moms who have become miracle virtual assistants.

Living in Silicon Valley, we often forget that the world isn't just about technology, Web 2.0, social media, widgets and plug-ins we hope a big boy will acquire within six months of launch.

There wasn't any Silicon Valley presence or energy inside the walls of this event. People flew to the middle of the country from around the world for five days of intensive coaching on how to get your business to the next level.

We ploughed through sales and partner strategies, funding, operations and yeah, social media was in the mix too as were founder do's and don'ts. Key was getting the founder ego out of the way before that ego sabotages the first few years of success. We see it time and time again.

Think about it. Take 500,000 new businesses in the U.S. Half are gone within a year and within five years, 80% of those remaining businesses fail. Within ten years, 96% are gone. Only 4% or 20,000 businesses survive and that’s in good economic times.

So, while the energy wasn't as intense as I'm accustomed to in northern California (translation: workaholic and innovation side-by-side), the passion and drive to succeed was there. This group of caring entrepreneurs had a clear vision and for the most part seemed to be embarking on a journey that was aligned with their true nature.

I often see entrepreneurs who are in it for the quick flip - adventure and kill more than heart and soul. Many want recognition more than creating something to make the world a better place. Sometimes 'cause and passion' move up the priority list after profits start soaring. Yet, the real successful entrepreneurs are often the ones who were driven by a passion to change a status quo from the onslaught.

Consciousness and attitude is changing. One of the things I'm seeing in this down economy is reflection and a lot of it. The shift is not just because people are out of work or bringing in less revenue than a year ago. People are turning to their passions in a way I didn't see in 2000 and during other tough times over the years. Bush to Obama has something to do with this shift although there are other factors at play.

Employees and entrepreneurs alike are spending time and money getting trained, re-trained, honing old skills and developing new ones, as well as building relationships in new industries. It's a great time to do all of the above.

In addition to learning new strategies all week, I decided to use the immersion time to ask lots of questions to as many CEOs across as many industries I could find. And man, did they range.....

On the consulting side, it was all over the place, i.e., financial, insurance, law, holistic healing, coaching, medical, marketing, bill collecting and sales to name a few.

Services and retail: construction, financial consulting, speaking, training, real estate investors and brokers, insurance, furniture making, SEO, movie theater owners, writers, designers, bakers, and widget creators and I don't mean online ones.

There was a founder of one of the top limousine companies in the U.S. as well as a guy who sold specialty paints, markers and pens but is planning to start a new business that brings personal development coaching into elementary schools.

As for products, very few were high tech. I talked to creators and CEOs of beauty products, jewelery, furniture, robotics, graduation gowns and gaps, pens, t-shirts, beds and tables for hospitals, specialty lamps, shoes, clothing, specialty footware, lingerie, green drinks, pottery, utensils, components that connect to other components inside airplanes, plastics, paper, mousepads, t-shirts, dolls, bowls, carpets, custom cabinets, bicycle accessories, and bags.

And it doesn't stop there. Just when I thought I had exhausted all industries, I ran into another niche-play just around the next corner.

I even found a few founders of nursing homes across four different states, an owner of a well known fish shop and a woman from Greece who came out of the fashion industry and is starting an in-person equivalent of What Not to Wear. Or something to that effect.

Fascinating. The list went on and on.

A frequent repeat throughout the week was this: innovate and market effectively or die. Not precisely in those words, but essentially the mantra was to ensure those two ingredients are in place and make sure they're strategically timed. This of course is alongside making sure you hire the right people, have a great product or service that fulfills a need or desire at the right time and money to move things forward when money is the only thing that will work. This was one key takeaway for me, so its my words, not theirs.

It's remarkable to me how many companies don't really know who their customer is or more importantly, who their customer should be. Strategic innovation is about deciding who you want your customer to be. To do that, you need to be ahead of the curve, ahead of that latest trend and when you get there, be first to brand yourself.

Here, you have the opportunity to create a new category and decide 'who you want to be,' i.e., the sweetest, cheapest, smartest, fastest and so on in that new category. Change the rules and you change the game. YouTube and craigslist are great examples of companies that strategically changed the rules and with it, the game. We're now watching major industries and companies go under or if they haven't yet, they're about to.....

Remember when Nike went from shoes to clothes and lifestyle? In your mind, is Starbucks really just a coffee bar? Is the Virgin brand just about airplanes? Richard Branson didn't just want to launch an inexpensive airline.....the man has passion and it's intoxicating. "Wouldn't it be great to get a massage and a haircut while you are traveling?" Oh yes yes yes and yes. It's not surprising that so many consumers agree.

There are many ways to find out what your customer or prospective customer wants so you can innovate early and keep them with you for the long haul.

Zappos listens. Employees are encouraged to have a personality and share it with customers. The result: customers feel heard and customer service is outstanding.

Twitter spends no effort on customer service based on my experience, yet they're providing a unique service that no one else is offering in quite the same fun and addictive way and as a result, can't hire fast enough.

Nokia used proximity as a way to learn more about customer needs. Based in Finland, it's not as if they're close to customer chatter on the street. They sent a few people to three countries to find out what people wanted. What were their customers talking about and asking for? That exercise turned into new colors and ring tones. Simple baby but it worked.

Want to get strategically innovative in your business? Think big. Do you think Bill Gates asked "how am I going to write all this code to create software to run on the PC?" No, he asked a smarter more strategic question: "How can I become the intelligence that runs all computers?"

When you break it down and think about your outcome rather than all the things you need to do to get from x to y, your options open up and so do those creative innovative ideas.

Zappos on Core Values

This week I heard Tony Hsieh of Zappos speak about their corporate culture to a group of 450 small to mid-sized business owners.

In tech circles, Zappos has been a sterling example of a consumer-facing company that has used social media right early on and attracted an ongoing passionate fan-base. While some still think of them as a "shoe company," most now know that they have moved into clothing, handbags, eyeware, watches and other products. Their mission became "providing the best service." The Zappos brand today is about the best service and customer experience.

Tony looks to Virgin for inspiration. He says, "the Virgin brand is more about being hip and cool, but we just want to be about the best customer service and great corporate culture." Instead of putting money into advertising, they put it into customer service above and beyond, such as a 24/7 call center and free shipping for returns.

One of my pet peeves: most websites make it really hard to find a phone number to call. How many people experience the same frustration? Zappos' actually wants to talk to their customers.

Advertising and brand people ask Tony all the time, “how do you build your brand amidst all the noise?” "The telephone is one of the best device out there," says Tony. "If you get the interaction right, they’re going to remember it for a long time."

Each customer contacts them at least one time by their phone and their goal is to make it a very memorable experience instead of simply cutting costs on the call center level. After pushing the buy button is where they really differentiate themselves. Tony explains how.

They offer fast accurate fulfillment and most of their customers get aha 'surprise' moments throughout the buying process, such as a free upgrade to overnight shipping. Suddenly there's a WOW moment they didn't expect.

If they don't have the product in stock, they direct customers to competitors websites. They look at three other competitors websites and then redirect them so the customer can buy instantly.

The result: immediate satisfation and who created that satisfaction for them? You betcha: Zappos. They may lose that transaction but their win is customer loyalty. They are trying to build a long term relationship with that customer........over a lifetime.

“We encourage reps to use their personality to really shine and connect with their customers," says Tony. "We want them to develop personal emotional connections one at a time." Because of that philosophy, they don’t upsell or have caller time restrictions.

Tony believes that if they have the right corporate culture in place, everything else will follow. This starts with their initial interview with a candidate. Interviews and performance reviews are 50% based on core values and cultural fit. Twitter also helps build company culture and every employee goes through their call center ritual, which involves taking calls from customers for two weeks.

Says Tony, “if we’re serious about our brand being about customer service, then every employee needs to have that training. At the end of the first week, we make everyone an offer. We will pay you for the time you’ve worked with us up until four weeks and then $2K if you leave right now."

This weans out the people who are not serious about working with them. If you think about it, $2K is a lot of money when compared to a call center salary which can be around $11 an hour. If they give up that $2K, then they’re that much more committed to the company long-term.

He asks the 450 in the room who is on Twitter and roughly a dozen of us raise our hands. It's a non-tech crowd and most are selling their products and services in an offline world.

Their Core Values:

1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and a little weirdness (on a scale of 1-10, how weird are you?)
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communications
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do More with Less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be Humble

Step one he suggests is to decide whether you're about short term or long term - do you want to build a long term sustainable brand? It's an important question and one of the first things I ask clients. It's better to figure that out as early as possible in the game.

It requires more patience to lay that foundation. Secondly, says Tony, "figure out your values and culture and your personal core values. It doesn't matter what the values are as long as they are in alignment. And then, LIVE the brand."

They don’t restrict press when they come to their offices. "When everyone’s values are aligned," says Tony, "why worry about the press?" It's one thing you can do to commit to transparency. They have a newsletter called Ask Anything encouraging employees to send in what's on their mind.

Tony encourages companies to think bigger. Regarding vision he says: "whatever you’re thinking, think bigger. Does the vision have meaning? Chase the vision, not the money. What is the larger vision beyond profits? There’s a bit difference between motivation and inspiration – tie core values to something that employees believe in. This is much more compelling than incentives."

And then the core....build relationships. This is key for companies who really want to build a sustainable brand that is around for a long time. This is for people who don't want to flip their company; they want to build it.

Some of these core values are tied to what the best customer service and sales reps have been doing for years, such as being interested rather than being interesting.

Hear hear Tony. Every time I walk into a room, I have this thought: if I dig deep enough and look hard enough, there’s something interesting about everyone I will meet here.

In trying to recruit partners, I find that the creators more often than not want to go it alone. I love this quote which is a great reminder to focus on the long-term.

“If you want to go quickly, go alone” “If you want to go further, go together” Al Gore quoting an African proverb at the Inaugeration

I love the fact that Tony really honed in on executives personal motivation in life first and foremost. It's amazing how few people know what their goal is in life.

When you keep pushing for more clarity, very often get it. "Why do you want that?" Once you have the answer, ask again, "why do you want that and what will that give you?"

If you think about it, people are very bad at predicting what will bring them sustained happiness. "There's a science behind many aspects of business," reminds Tony, "there's also a science behind happiness." Imagine if we spent more time focusing on that science than all the other clutter in our lives.

"Happiness is about four key things," suggests Tony.

• Perceived Control
• Perceived Progress
• Connectedness
• Vision / Meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself)

Bottom line: apply all of them to your business, your customers and partners.

Strategic Project Management Made Simple

Terry Schmidt from Management Pro just came out with a new book called Strategic Project Management Made Simple. Buy it and take note.

His Approach:

• He helps you tackle issues from a systems thinking perspective.
• He uses Logical Frameworks and other practical tools as force multipliers which leverage the talents and skills on your staff.
• He works collaboratively and builds committed teams that are prepared to deliver results.
• To get results,he focuses on specific outcomes that product major, long-lasting benefits for your organization.
• He helps to increase staff capacity to achieve stretch goals and pay-offs continue to unfold after his work ends.

Click here to browse or buy and here for Terry's blog.

Latest Mobile Internet Stats

While this piece came out last week as a result of a recent ComScore study, it has a ton of great Mobile Internet stats, some of which should have advertisers and marketing execs perking up and digging for more.

Quoting the study, here are a few numbers:

--The number of U.S. cell phone users who accessed the mobile Internet daily doubled this year, reaching 22 million in January

--The number of people using the mobile Web to access a social networking site quadrupled to 9 million

--The number of people who used the mobile Web to trade stocks or access a financial account nearly tripled to 3 million

--The number of people with smartphones in the US increased 81% over the past year, to 24.8 million from 13.7 million

Breaking the Rules of Social Media

David Spark on Mashable today giving us stories of five people who broke the rules of social media and succeeded.

Conversation Marketing: Five Points

Five things about conversation marketing. Summary below, but head to Tendo for an expanded read.

1. Interruption marketing is dead.
2. Your customers are talking to each other about you.
3. Talk authentically and offer value.
4. Lose control to get a grip.
5. Marketing is not a numbers game anymore.