Signs we are in an economic downturn

Here is a short and sweet Top 5 list, in lieu of 10 questions.

5.  Every magazine/website I have registered for, ever, is adding me to their daily mailing list and the recpients of 3rd party offer lists, even though I did not opt-in

4.  $2 drinks are available at Starbucks, in the afternoon.   (Is it just me, orare two trips to Starbucks, in one day, a bit excessive.)

3.  Whole Paycheck is pitching bargain priced groceries.  (But honestly the bulk section and the 365 products are well-priced.)

2.  Web meetings, not in-person meetings (live meetings) are the norm.

1.  P. Diddy is retiring his private jet for coach to save $$ on gas.

10 Questions: Crime Edition

10. What’s the deal with the Oakland restaurant takeover robberies? How much cash can you really get, doesn’t everyone use a card in one form or another?

9. Is you can use your Kindle for your textbooks, how will students get extra cash from selling their textbooks?

8. Is it a crime to get paid to quit?

7. Since Obama texted his VP choice out to his fans, do you think other politicians will start texting? Will political organizers start setting up group chat rooms and IMers as part of their staffs?

6. Isn’t is totally obvious that kicking the referee is a bad career move?

5. Why did Hollywood not believe in the Women movie? Haven’t there been a million so-called women-centric movies that have done well at the box office? (Sex and the City, Titanic, all 4 million romantic comedies where girl is in love with her mail best friend, J-Lo movies…..)

4. Does Seth Goodin’s post on rewarding your content creators make sense, is he off-base, or is it a mix of both?

3. Are you a twitter addict? Do you have time for twitter? Why didn’t master texter Obama send us a message? In case you are curious, here is twitter etiquette.

2. Are you looking forward to new macbooks as much as I am?

1. Will the takeover robberies stop, once the kids go back to school?

(More questions, if you are interested!)

Where’s your voice?

So a few months ago, I noticed I was losing my voice.  Comments about my writing typically said something along the lines of:

• “You write how you talk”
• “This sounds just like you”
• “I can just hear you saying this”

But as many of you know, being a technology marketer, you can get caught up in marketingspeak…with acronymns and embellishments.  The more white papers, newsletters and articles you read from your peers and competitors, the more you start to sound like them.

And it hit me, I lost my voice.  So I am blogging to get it back on track.  And write the way I do, not how the industry does.  And keep practicing so I can work on my short story that I hope to turn into a novel.

So do you use your voice?  Does your prose, whether in a newsletter, white paper or an email sound like you?  Does your company website give off your corporate personality?

Right now I am trying to improve my organization’s online presence to reflect the company culture.  And this is hard to do in a staid industry like storage.  Where the giants came up during the time of conventional corporate culture, and where people don’t get fired for going with Big Blue.  Wish me luck. 

Don’t forget who you are representing

A couple weeks ago I was in Las Vegas.  Jose Canseco was signing autographs in my hotel.  I know he has been trying really hard to drum up publicity for his book and overcome his mortgage crisis.  When I was in elementary school, he was the most popular player around, so I thought I’d grab an autograph for nostalgia’s sake.  Here is what happened:

The autograph session had started a few minutes before, and Canseco was busy pre-signing a few items and chatting with his “entourage.”  There were ZERO people in line.  I grabbed two pictures, one for me and one for my sister.  As I headed over to the table with my two images, the organizer said:  “Sorry only one picture per person.”

So maybe that was the rule, but with the empty line I thought they could make an exception.  When I walked up to Canseco, he didn’t look in my direction, smile or say hello.  He quickly signed with the photo and actually just looked irritated I interrupted him.

Wow!  Isn’t the point of an autograph session to connect with your fans.  I guess I am confused, because apparently the goal is to leave a bad impression.

Later that afternoon I was walking by with my sister.  This was approximately 5-10 minutes after the session was supposed to be over.  Canseco was still sitting at the table, and the paraphernalia was still on the table, so my sister grabbed a photo and walked up to the table.  She was at the table, and Canseco was busy chatting.  The organizer walked up and said, “this event is over, no more autographs.”

Wow a 2nd rude encounter.  Obviously Jose Canseco couldn’t be bothered to loook up during this encounter as well.

The moral here:  if you are supposed to be dealing with public, at least pretend to be happy about it.  And of course, you are always representing Brand YOU, so leave a good impression.

Tradeshows, tradeshows, tradeshows

Last week I was at a tradeshow. Technology tradeshows are interesting, especially for younger women working the booth. Here are a couple of things I have witnessed or experienced:

• Overhead at lunch: I went to ABC’s booth, great technology. Did you see brunette there? She was really cute and she really knew what she was talking about!
• Typical behavior: The challenger, the attendees sole purpose is to stump the booth worker with a difficult technical question. Typically has side bets with friends on whether or not the boothworker knows what they are talking about.
• “Thanks for your help honey, sweetie…..”
• “So what do you do at your company? Marketing, wow! You are really knowledgeable, I am impressed.”
• “I’ll wait to talk to that guy over there, thank you.”

Apparently it is hard for some people to believe that:

1. Not all women are for eye candy only
2. Some women are very technical
3. It is not acceptable to call women, in a professional environment, a term like honey (but I’ll make an exception for people with Southern accents…begrudgingly)

Hopefully, people will catch on soon enough, that this isn’t acceptable behavior. Until then I’ll try to be civil to these people with condescending attitudes.

Falling in love with the deal…

My first job, after I finished college was a short lived sales job. (A bad fit, and bad atmosphere.) I picked up one critical tip from the VP of Sales during my short stint with the company:

Don’t fall in love with the deal.

This sounds completely obvious, but i see it all the time: with sales people, with job seekers, home buyers, or even when bargain hunting.

I know all of you have talked to one of your sales managers who are really excited about some opportunity: it has a huge dollar amount, with a big name client, or would represent the best case study ever! I get excited too. You know marketers can never have too many case studies. A few weeks later, you ask about it. The deal was placed on hold, shrank or died. Suddenly everyone was really optimistic about the sure thing, and it wasn’t.

I just finished reading dot.bomb, an account of the rise and fall of Value America — an e-tailer that died earlier this decade. I saw a lot of great lessons in the book to take to heart. And a ton of evidence that the senior leadership kept falling in love with a deal, to their detriment.

There were numerous ocassions where the CEO boasted of an upcoming agreement with a huge Fortune 500 company. Either this huge company would be using Value America’s technology exclusively, represent billions in revenue or add credibility to the organization. Unfortunately these agreements were trapped in the pitching phase, or just wrapped up the first talks with VA. And the CEO would have told his employees, the investors, the analysts and the media. When something finally happened, and an agreement was reached it was a) smaller than expected, b) never happened, c) no longer news since everyone aready knew it was coming. As a result, VA disappointed the investment bankers, Wall Street and their investors … and lost countless opportunities for a big story.

The moral: wait till the deal is really sure…PO in hand, offer letter in hand, contract in hand, something concrete before bragging about your news with everyone. Anything before that is solidly in the realm of possibility, and it is better to have infinite possibilities than to put all your hopes into one. Success requires optimism, but spreading your hopes into many projects makes the blow from one loss less devastating. And devastation kills optimism.

10 questions for the Week of August 11th

This installment of 10 questions, is brought to you by the Beijing Olympics

10.  Why is it that people are already sick of the Olympics and it just barely started?

9.  Aren’t you happy to see that Olympic gymnast, Shawn Johnston, has a healthy BMI. (Unlike lots of other gymnasts)

8.  Have you calculated your neighborhoods WalkScore?  (mine is 85)

7.  Did you know that luck comes in @ 8?  Lucky babies for minor celebrities.  Twins turn 8.  Iowa and Minnesota enjoy time in the spotlight. New Mexico is in on the eight craze too.  Don’t forget the newlyweds!

6.  Did you know that even online marketing has an Olympic theme?

5.  Why don’t they just call Sead Dizdarevic a high-end ticket scalper?

4.  Wasn’t the season finale of So You think You Can Dance a nice lead in to the Olympics.

3. Olympics on demand, why didn’t I think of that?

2.  Wanna know why you should keep your own calendar (and that even at the lowest of lows, there is a light at the end of the tunnel)?

1.  Is it just me, or is the Opening Ceremony too much spectacle, not enough sport?

Is SaaS no longer Sassy?

So I came across the following post, and Businessweek article, BW is criticizing SaaS (software as a service) as being a trend that is over. Or maybe a bit outdated, like SUVs. I completely disagree. There are a few valid points here: SaaS is not necessarily cheaper, when you think about licensing. Or easy to set up, if your organization is complex. But the benefits are clear: you save by reducing headaches: you don’t need to maintain, you don’t need to support it and you spread your costs out over time. In my organization, our IT team is really busy. Using SaaS has given us an alternative resource to leverage for our critical apps — freeing up IT time and saving our resources for more important endeavors….selling more stuff.

This might be an important consideration for you as well.

A response from the ITToolBox Team

Based on my rants yesterday and before, I got the following response from someone on the ITToolBox PR team.

I read your blog entries this morning and  apologize for the frustration you’ve been feeling over unwanted e-mails.  I’d like to help resolve the situation for you.  I checked your account and your currently set up to only receive e-mail notifications from us in the following situations:

• when you receive a personal message from another community member
• when you receive a comment on your profile
• when another member wants to connect with you

If any of these situations don’t match your preferences, please let me know and I’ll change them. Also, you’re correct, that last e-mail you received was from a partner. I’ve asked the person who manages that list to remove you.

I was grateful for the response, but I hope they can get to the bottom of the underlying issue.  When I signed up for the IT community, I was careful to limit the communications to just the community ones.  I get a ton of email (like everyone else) and get the marketing messages from I.T.T.B in my work email accounts.  When these messages started showing up, I was shocked and appalled.  I really want to know, who has been selling my name!

A few years ago I remember dealing with a really anygry prospect who received a mailing from us.  He asked me how we got his name, and why we were mailing him.  The source was from a list we had purchased.  This person was extremely anal and created a new email address or alias for every vendor and prospective vendor he communicated with.  So we found out his address has been sold by another big tech company, and that was the source.   I apologized to him for the inconvenience, and I completely understand why he was frustrated.

So I have a few tips for email marketers to keep people like me from ranting (or getting evil phone calls)

• Make it easy for people to contact or reply to a real person with complaints/concerns
• Make sure your opt-out process really works
• Set up a regular schedule for communicating to your partners the opt-out information so they don’t get hit with an angry customer
• Take each individual concern seriously and review your process on a regular basis when complaints show up
• Keep meticulous records on the source of your names

ITToolbox: Stop Spamming Me. Now!

So I have already complained about this here and here.  Over the weekend, I got another message.  I think from one of their partners.  But I really don’t care.  I just don’t want their messages.

So I marked it as spam.  And I don’t do that to fellow B2B marketers.  We struggle just to get our messages delivered.  I always look.  Really hard.  For the unsubscribe button.

But for ITToolbox, I had done that twice.  And I didn’t give them permission to write me.  So there you have it.  They are spammers.  And I won’t be purchasing any services from them.  If they annoy me, they’ll surely annoy my prospects.