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Intimacy and Business

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Don't Chain Me Down
Image by …-Wink-… via Flickr

In today’s culture many are comfortable with simply “hooking up.” A hook up bypasses the niceties that build intimacy over time and instead fast tracks to the end result without a commitment for a repeat performance. The motto seems to be “try, no need to buy.” Willing participants consent to mutual sampling and seemingly avoid the risk of effort without reward that comes from the pursuit of commitment. Hook-ups however are not without their own risks and messy complications.

Old fashioned relationships have a different rhythm and pacing. Seduction is slow and deliberate like a smooth jazz tune on a hot summer night. Romance ignites the embers of desire that are gently stoked until they become a rousing fire whose hot flames lick at the boundaries of reason. But unlike a hook up commitment quenches the flame while carefully preserving the fire. It is the dance of just enough until you have weaved a cord of trust that pulls you into an embrace.

In business the hook up is the drive by marketing attempt – a message that is sprayed upon thousands, an open invitation for anyone with interest. There is no first date, barely an introduction as your pursuer leads you from “hello” to the Garden of Eden. The pursuer has an itch – to make money – and will get it scratched by any willing participant. There is no small talk and no attempt to create even the façade of a relationship.

The business that is interested in commitment is willing to romance you. They want to get to know you because they are as picky as you are about giving away their intimacy. In this pursuit you are the object of interest. The committed business will engage you in conversation and will share details so that you get to know them too. They understand that building a relationship takes effort, and that effort is worth it to win customers that will be more than a one night stand.

In your business marketing are you hooking up or pursuing commitment? Hook-ups can be costly as you will constantly have to pursue new customers. While the effort of commitment can appear daunting in the end it is not only more effective but cost efficient. There is overwhelming quantifiable validation that it costs far less to keep an existing customer than to win a new one.

Hook-ups may win you some business but commitment will help you to build a sustainable business with long term customers. What choice are you making in your own business?

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5 Fatal Social Media Selling Mistakes

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I spent several years in Sales Management roles in Corporate Healthcare and the lessons I learned have helped me in my professional and personal life. Yet, let’s face it the mere mention of sales makes many people cringe. Even the dictionary defines it in ways that leave you feeling in need of a hot soapy shower.

to deliver or give up in violation of duty, trust, or loyalty and especially for personal gain : betray; to deliver into slavery for money  to give into the power of another <sold his soul to the devil>

However it also offers these definitions:

to develop a belief in the truth, value, or desirability of: gain acceptance for <trying to sell a program to the Congress> ; to persuade or influence to a course of action or to the acceptance of something <sell children on reading>

While the goal of sales is to influence a course of action the process of getting there does not require you to check good manners and ethics at the door.  It is what happens in that space between lead and sale that sets the tone for any future relationship.

When I was in Sales,  before I ever met with a prospective client, a great deal of work went into understanding their business, challenges, competitors, weaknesses and opportunities. Today, technology has facilitated the sales process but it has not eliminated the need to do the work.  Below are 5 fatal mistakes that are made when selling via social media:

Mistake #1: All talk no listening

Contrary to the myth, in sales you learn to listen twice as much as you talk. You ask open ended questions to engage. You want your prospective client to talk so that you can let them tell you their problems in their own words. In social media, you can listen by reading updates or blog posts BEFORE launching into a pitch.

Mistake #2: Failure to establish a connection

I learned to be attentive to details and my prospect’s surroundings. I would search for an “anchor” that could break the ice and allow us to connect. That anchor could be a photo, a book on their desk, or even a pen. In social media, tune in to the other person’s interests and use that to establish a point of discussion. Read profiles, updates and visit blogs to give you an authentic entry point for conversation.Mistake #3: Dear What’s Your Name

I developed a proposal template that was adopted company wide. The template made it easier to gather information that was commonly used – menu of services, company history, etc – but was always customized to fit the prospect. Do not send a Dear {blank name, wrong name, wrong gender} letter or email. Automated DMs on Twitter and copy and paste Facebook wall posts are other examples of this mistake.

Mistake #4: Rushing the Sale

Hi my name is Karen buy my junk. Would you do this in real life? Yet, somehow people believe that technology has eliminated the need for common courtesy. Here too the ugly automated DM rears its head. Your first tweet to a mutual follower should not be “Hey thanks for following, here’s my link buy my stuff.” Build a foundation, find out their needs and then offer solutions.

Mistake #5: Tuning into the wrong station

In sales we talked about station WIIFM (what’s in it for me) The acronym was a reminder that your prospect could care less about what you needed to sell to make your quota, they always want to know what’s in it for them. Forget about what you want to sell and focus on what people need from their perspective.

All of these mistakes can be quickly eliminated by putting the focus on your prospect and not yourself. Make sure that your web copy, and your social media communications focus on them and not you. Ditch the spammy wall posts and automated DMs and instead focus on participating in your community and listening for needs. Selling when done with integrity and a focus on the other person will leave you and your prospect like winners and that is the true beauty of the process.

What has been your experience online? Any other mistakes or recommendations to add to the list?

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Why Professionals Hate You

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Angry mob attacking Charles Darwin
Image by Colin Purrington via Flickr

Every industry has its own criteria for determining distinction. These criteria may include education, type and level of difficulty of work performed, and years in profession. Popularity does not necessarily gain you peer recognition and insider standards are vastly different than popular opinion. Industries create their own rules for admission and long held traditions and beliefs are slow to change. Traditions are received as snide arrogance by the “outside” group and factions occur among those who are in reality on the same side working for the same goal.

In my own career I have witnessed:

  • Orthopedists versus Chiropractors
  • MDs versus Alternative Practitioners
  • Sales versus Marketing
  • Bloggers versus Journalists
  • Graphic designers versus Web Designers
  • Writers versus “Real Writers” (these fractions may be self published vs published, print vs web, academia vs fiction)
  • Marketers versus online marketers

And this is only a partial list! Some lines are drawn based on false assumptions about the level of expertise and quality, and others appear arbitrary markers decided erected as a ritualistic rite of passage. Still others will blur over time as factions come to respect and adopt best practices from the other side, and/or innovation changes the game for everyone.

There are also lines that are drawn because of a passionate commitment to preserving high standards in your industry.  There is no doubt that there is a difference between the trained and untrained. It is these differences that can lead to misinformation that casts a negative light on the entire profession. In this digital age, platforms are easy to gain and self-defined labels do little to illuminate true expertise.

The ease of entry definitely has its advantages such as an even playing field and the opportunity to break through barriers and create your own success. I personally applaud those advantages because they allowed me to create a business. But there are disadvantages of it being too easy.  Training and experience can immunize you against the risks of certain tactics. Without knowledge of the professional code you risk conduct that diminishes the integrity of the profession and the experience of the end user.

Off-topic pitches, form letters with missing or wrong names, sales pitches as an intro and automated direct messages are all tactics that diminish the professional brand of those in marketing and PR.

Enthusiasm and change are good for any profession. By all means challenge traditions, and innovate the way things are done but do not sacrifice excellence in your pursuit to get the end result. Doing so can not only hinder what you are trying to achieve but bring on the wrath of those who could actually help you.

What are your experiences? Do you have your own criteria for determining “true professionals?”

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Hit and Run Marketing

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Dramatic Auto Collision - Don't Drink and Drive
Image by Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton via Flickr

You know that you must promote your business to succeed. After all if no one knows you exist, you kind of don’t. You read in a forum post that Facebook has millions of users and that every business should have a presence. You create a fan page and write updates for a week. Five people like your site.

The next week you see an article that talks about the value of article marketing. The author shares her success with article marketing and how it drove traffic to her site. You write and upload ten articles to article directories.

You receive an email from a well known marketer that shares the value of press releases. You hire a freelancer to write a press release and upload it to press release distribution sites.

Later that day, you read a forum posting touting the value of twitter for small business marketing. Eager to succeed you immediately sign up for twitter and write your first update – “Trying out twitter.”

At the end of three months, your traffic is stagnant, and you have signed up for so many sites you have lost track of where you’ve been. Yet, the only business you have is the result of old fashioned networking and meeting. You go back to one of the online forums and declare that online marketing and social media do not work. You join the ranks of those who profess that this “social media thing” is nothing more than hype that will soon be exposed for a lack of results.

I tried Twitter but it did not work.

I sent a press release but they didn’t respond.

Social media is nothing more than a time suck.

If you have ever uttered any of the above phrases you may be among the hit and run drivers. None of the above tactics are bad but the only results you will get from a hit and run strategy is a pile of bodies in your wake so deep that you will not even remember the roads you traveled.

The best marketing tactic is the one that you do consistently. You do the work in advance to develop a strategy. Where is your target audience? What is the best distribution channel to reach them? What are you goals? What will you measure? How will you measure it?

You plan, implement, monitor, test, tweak  and repeat. You refine your approach but you do not give up.

Social media and digital marketing strategies are not a replacement for all other strategies but another tactic for your marketing toolbox. Decide how and where it fits into your business and then choose a tactic that you can sustain.

When you commit to a marketing tactic, give it your best. Do it well and do it consistently. A self promotional update on Twitter every 5 days is not a strategy. Think a self promotional piece of drivel labeled a press release uploaded to a free site is going to land you on the pages of the Wall Street Journal? Think again.

You can market your business successfully using the telephone. If that’s your thing and you commit time to do it consistently, it will work.

If you are looking for a magic bullet that will cost you neither time nor money, then you should pack up your marbles and go back to the ranks of the employed. There is always a cost to marketing even when it’s free. However, if you do the work, you will get the results and with more business you can enhance your marketing even more.

How about you? Have you tried and abandoned techniques believing that they did not work? What marketing do you do consistently?



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Facebook, the Illusion of Privacy and Loud Mouth Quitters

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Facebook logo
Image via Wikipedia

Sigh. I was not planning on writing a post on Facebook although I have been sharing extensively on the issue. Still, I was not going to step out on my own and say a word until Brad Shorr and Joanna Paterson double teamed me. Okay, they did not intentionally double team me. Unbeknownst to one another both published posts yesterday on Facebook. Both, in their typical style, examined the issue and offered honest, balanced opinions. That however is not what prompted me to write, no it was a comment by Brad on Joanna’s post that reminded me of my social responsibility to educate others on a key issue that is in fact in my area of expertise. Sigh.

So, is Facebook evil? I cannot pretend to know the hearts and minds of the Facebook team but in a word “no.” Like Joanna and Brad, I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. To be fair, I also love-hate email, twitter and coupons. Welcome to my world. Yes, Facebook has convoluted, unbelievably complicated privacy controls, and I take my stand with others seeking a change, but evil is pushing it in my opinion.

Privacy online is a myth. I learned this years ago when we had nothing more than email and bulletin boards. I sent a “private” email to a recently fired colleague. My “private” email ended up as “evidence” in my friend’s lawsuit against the company. A simple gesture of kindness, and solidarity sent “privately” was in fact discoverable. The lesson stuck and 9/11 pushed it deeper.

If you want private, don’t share it. I am not excusing Facebook’s privacy policy but we should be clear that our words and actions are rarely private. Do you use reward cards, credit cards or buy any products or services? Do you have a driver’s license, social security card or insurance? Do you live in a place that has public cameras (street lights, security cameras)? Information is collected about us all the time and used in various ways to monitor and/or predict our behavior.

Yet, the platforms we use also have a responsibility in making it easy for us to manage the flow of information. This is the “hate” part of my relationship with Facebook.

There are those that will diligently plow through the information, read the policy carefully and take precautions. Others will ignore or tune out the hubbub and continue to play Farmville, chat with friends and post funny pictures. Still others will protest loudly and lead an army of people to quit altogether.

The people who will ignore the warnings are largely the “real people” that brought many of us to Facebook in the first place. You know the people who don’t live in the social media echo chamber, are not opted in to a million lists and simply take the web and its content at face value. Yea, the people we marketers salaciously went after once we discovered they were on Facebook.

I find it hypocritical that “we” descended upon Facebook in droves and happily took advantage of the freedom to grow our networks and market our careers, products and services yet we now spit venom at the “evil ones” for daring to actually collect and use that information.

Again, this is no defense of Facebook’s policy but perhaps we should take the plank out of our own eyes before we remove the speck in our brother’s eye. We created this with our sharing and connecting. Did we really believe that a free tool would not see an opportunity to monetize our actions?

I am all for protesting to make things better and safer for everyone. I am joining the one day Facebook black out and I will continue to loudly add my voice to others urging for change but I will not cry foul and leave entirely. We have a responsibility to protect ourselves and I believe our communities. So, I will continue to love-hate Facebook but I will not blame them for a monster we collectively created.

How about you? What precautions do you take online? What are your feelings about online privacy?

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Age of Conversation 3 – Available Now

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Age of Conversation 3, published by new digital publishing company Channel V Books is now available through all major online retailers, as a Kindle e-book and will soon be available as an ePub for other digital readers. The book features 171 authors (including yours truly) discussing social media practice with bite sized lessons that instruct in the new art of conversation. All proceeds from the book will be donated to an international children’s charity.

Age of Conversation itself demonstrates the value of social media and the power inherent in collective conversations. Age of Conversation emerged from an online conversation between two marketing pros in two countries. American Drew McLellan and Australian Gavin Heaton took their conversation and turned it into a collaborative writing effort by more than 100 bloggers from nine countries.

The third volume comes at a time when social media is no longer the shiny new outlier but an essential component of integrated marketing. The book covers more than social media although the topic is omnipresent among the ten sections that include: Getting to Work, Friends and Trusted Strangers, At the Coalface and In the Boardroom.

Please join the conversation by picking up a copy today. With 171 authors from 15 countries it promises to be a fascinating read. Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy!

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