As featured in TEQ Magazine:

The best sales people don’t work at your company. Fighting words? Read on and decide for yourself.

The Internet recently marked its fortieth birthday. For the first, say, thirty-eight years, it brought us an exponentially increasing tsunami of information with one big caveat. The source of much of that information was unknown, suspect, or worse.

I recently learned that 63.2% of statistics are made up. That stipulated, it turns out that only 14% of us trust the advertising and marketing being trumpeted by businesses. Shocked that people aren’t buying as soon as they discover your website?

On the other hand, 78% of us trust peer recommendations. Some of us probably have lying, cheating friends, but on balance, apparently they’re a good lot. Read the rest of this entry »

As featured in TEQ Magazine:

I have seen the future of advertising! It’s interesting and interactive, and at least for the moment it’s free. Welcome to the rapidly evolving world of social media for business.

Two excellent examples of such “ads” are by Blendtec, a commercial blender manufacturer (B2B), and by T-Mobile, a cell service provider (B2C). You might not even recognize these as ads and that’s the point; they’re part product demo, part entertainment.

Possibly borrowing the idea from Saturday Night Live (recall the Super Bass-O-Matic ’76), George Write, Blendtec’s Director of Marketing, created a kitschy video series, “Will It Blend”. He convinced his CEO, Tom Dickson, to wear a white lab coat while blending a variety of wacky items on camera. We’re talking about glowsticks, Bic lighters, golf balls (can you say “slice”), and lots more.

Soon, YouTube viewers were watching, laughing, sharing with friends, and making their own suggestions about items to blend. Read the rest of this entry »

As featured in TEQ Magazine:

Facebook… Business… Facebook… Business… These words don’t go together, do they?

In the early days (so many weeks ago), Facebook was just about connecting with “friends”. Let’s face it; your business does not have friends. Ideally, it has satisfied or maybe even delighted customers given that you fulfill their needs more effectively than do your competitors. In Facebook lingo, these people are “fans”.

That brings us to one of the BIG ideas behind social networking for business. Much of yesterday’s business communications was monologue. Brochures, press releases, direct mail, and advertisements only go one-way: out!

What if you and your team could actually engage in a dialog with your customers and prospects? Yes, it could be a little messier but wow, it would dramatically accelerate organizational learning (important note: only if it is an open and honest conversation).

The faster your company learns, the better it can serve customers. That’s one of the key benefits of engaging in social networking for business. Facebook can be your platform to do this, especially if you’re in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space. For internal communications among a geographically distributed team or in the business-to-business (B2B) space, there are better platforms including Ning to name one. Read the rest of this entry »