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Social Media Intelligence: Monitoring vs. Measurement

Are we all ready to talk about the Elephant in the room now? Hell Yeah ! 

We all know how important word of mouth is, and social networking is like word of mouth on steroids. As a business, it’s vital to tap into and join online conversations not only about your brand, but also those about your competitors, your industry and your areas of expertise.

2011 seems like a year of awakening for companies with increase in social media spending. It's becoming ever important to track the performance of key marketing initiatives. Depending on the social media platform and specific activity being tracked, you might have the option to take one or two approaches: monitor or measure. Nope, those 2 words aren't the same! Let's take a look at how they are different when it comes to tracking social media efforts.

Let's look at difference between monitoring (listening) and measuring (tagging) social media initiatives, by taking a simple analogy based on listening to music.

Monitoring is like tuning into a radio station on your car stereo.

You could choose your favorite type of radio station (i.e., pop, jazz, country, etc.), but you’re still at the mercy of the radio station to actually play the music you want to hear. 

Measuring is like creating a custom playlist from your personal music collection for an MP3 player. Every song is a favorite because it’s from your music library, and the playlist fits the particular activity or mood you’re in.

Keys of Social Media Optimization

In terms of tracking and optimizing social media initiatives, there are three keys: monitoring, measurement, and management. All three of these areas are different but complementary. Organizations may only have one option such as monitoring and in other cases all three options come together to complement each other. 

 

MONITORING Social Media (Listen)

Most social media tracking is currently done with monitoring solutions, which leverage the APIs of each platform (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) to pull predefined metrics and dimensions into web analytics reporting. In most cases, any data at all is fantastic ! Kind of like picking up a clear frequency in the middle of nowhere. Data such as demographics are invaluable to organizations.Various tools such as Radian6, ThoughtBuzz, Buzzmetrics, Sysomos help companies with regards to Social Media monitoring. A careful study of the organization's needs in alignment with it's business and social media strategy has to be done to make the right choice. ThoughtBuzz does a fantastic job in gauging demographics with a proprietary algorithm.

Some limitations of monitoring/listening approach are that companies can’t tie any of the social data to actual visitors on their other web properties, and they also can’t obtain any additional custom metrics beyond what’s already provided by the social media platforms. It’s a “take it or leave it” scenario. Because we can’t actually tag a Facebook fan page or Twitter profile page, most companies just leverage the data that these social networks provide. While we can’t tie monitoring data directly to website activity, we can use predictive modeling to understand the correlation between various types of social activity and the website’s KPIs.

Post globalization, business have started becoming more regionalized and localised targeting the niche market segment. It is ever more crucial for companies to gather social media insights on a local level. This is one critical area where most social media monitoring tools fail miserably. Accuracy in terms of providing regional content is critical. The trouble is most content is US centric. ThoughtBuzz, a SM Intelligence solution solves this problem by providing country specific indexes. It's by far one of the best value for money solutions that gives a comprehensive coverage and detailed insights.

 

MEASURING Social Media (Analyze)

 

 

There are 2 kinds of analytics - social media analytics and web analytics.

SM analytics provides insights such as tonality, discussion themes, influencers, source analysis etc. The accuracy, relevancy and comprehensiveness depends solely on the effectiveness of the Social Media Monitoring solution.

Even if you haven’t launched an outbound social media strategy, you have to keep a pulse on what people are saying — good or bad — about your company, competitors and major trends. And, by representing your company in a positive, authentic way, you can build credibility for your expertise and business and link to customers and prospects quickly.

 

SM analytics can help you better understand prospective and current customer needs, increase visibility and generate leads. But it takes a lot of time and energy to stay on top of all of this in a manual, piecemeal fashion. 

Web Analytics related to social media activities can actually be measured in some cases, meaning that companies can tag them just like they would any normal website, application, or campaign. In essence, companies can instrument or tag certain social media activities in any manner they like - choosing the level of reporting, dimensions, and metrics they need rather than having them prescribed to them by the various social media platforms.

For example, a marketing team might want to know how visitors are specifically interacting with a particular social application on their Facebook fan page. Armed with pathing and conversion funnel reports, they can better understand the user experience and fix potential fall-out points in the application. In addition, another advantage of the measurement approach is that the social media initiatives can be viewed in the context of a company’s larger online presence (i.e., treating social media initiatives as an extension of your company’s online world), and organizations can gain deeper insights into cross-domain pathing behaviors and conversion.

Currently, there are four main social media activities/areas that can be measured, not just monitored, across the leading social media platforms:

1. Social media campaigns: Any URL or shortened URL (bit.ly) can have a tracking code appended to it so that traditional campaign tracking can occur.
2. Facebook apps: Unlike Facebook fan pages (monitoring only), the applications and custom tabs can actually be measured and optimized.
3. YouTube branded channels: In some cases, companies are given control over a widget area at the top of their brand channel, which can be customized to include a custom player, other content, and SiteCatalyst tags.
4. Facebook Connect/social plugins: Any embedded Facebook features on an external website can be measured in SiteCatalyst to understand their effectiveness and overall impact.

Although the measurement options are fairly limited right now, social networks are constantly evolving and will allow more tagging opportunities in the future. It has been challenging for small and large organizations to keep pace with all of the changes happening in the social media space - let alone understand how their social media initiatives are performing. Fortunately, ThoughtBuzz has strong relationships with the leading social networks and partners which can help companies to more effectively optimize their social media investments.

 

MANAGING Social Media (Engage)

As the volume of social media venues and conversations rises, it quickly becomes a time- and labor-intense process to effectively track, converse, monitor and manage them.

Social media management solutions help manage outbound and incoming online interactions — along with other small business marketing activities — in a more efficient manner. They streamline and consolidate how you listen to and participate in relevant conversations on various platforms they’re taking place — blogs, social networks like Twitter or Facebook, and other public and private Web communities and sites.

Social media management tools can also help you to integrate social networking activities with your other marketing programs. These can include other online activities, such as Web sites, search engine marketing campaigns, contact management systems, and email marketing, as well as offline marketing, such as events or white papers.They also help you to more easily monitor what people are saying about your business, and by automating the process of delivering your outgoing messages through multiple social media outlets simultaneously, help you to amplify your social media presence across several social networking sites.

 

You can also help mitigate damage should negative conversations about your company emerge by quickly responding to complaints. Social media can also steer people to your other marketing programs, where it’s easier to individually track and manage individual customer and prospect interactions. 

Some social media engagment/ management activities include:

• Creating content on multiple places, such as a blog, Twitter, a Facebook page, etc.; monitor and scan the views, decide what comments to approve, and respond to replies on these sites
• Scanning Twitter followers for conversations you may want to join, or checking your RSS reader subscriptions for relevant articles and new ideas
• Checking the Social Media Monitoring dashboard to see when and where your business is mentioned on the Web
• Creating and monitoring a community and topics on a site such as Facebook or LinkedIn

Let's face it, social media isn't a one way traffic and neither is it a simple task. It's a lot to handle and it's difficult to measure short-term payback on social media efforts. While taking care of brand advocates, preferences and awareness, you simply cannot ignore other marketing activities such as SEO, email marketing, contact and sales management etc. 

ThoughtBuzz helps organizations achieve communication lines with an organization's fans and users interacting or conversing online through its engagement console and action center. Other tools and dashboards can be used to complement the toolkit. Check out Mashable for the 5 superior social media management tools to complement the toolkit.

Internet Restricted in Bahrain as Protests Escalate

As protests continue in Bahrain, access to many websites has been restricted there.

Arbor Networks, a security research company that tracks Internet traffic, told The NY Times on Friday that traffic into and out of Bahrain has dropped between 10% and 20% below expected levels. Traffic normally only drops that low during natural disasters or global sporting events.

The graph below shows Bahrain’s Internet traffic levels this week compared to average traffic levels during the previous three weeks. The traffic this week has been significantly lower than usual. Arbor Networks told The Times that it couldn’t absolutely rule out technical difficulties as a cause for the drop, though the most likely cause was blocked websites.

A Harvard University website that crowdsources reports of inaccessible webpages shows that many sites, including bahrainonline.org and bahrainrights.org, have been reported to be inaccessible. But almost all of the reports were made before the protests in Bahrain started.

Last month, Egypt blocked websites like Twitter and Facebook in response to unrest before blocking the Internet altogether. The success that Egyptian protesters had in ousting former president Hosni Mubarak despite these drastic digital measures is often cited as enhancing the confidence of protesters in Bahrain, Algeriaand elsewhere in the Middle East.

While data suggests that Bahrain is restricting the Internet in response to unrest in the same way Egypt did, Arbor Network’s Internet traffic data shows nothing out of the ordinary in Algeria’s Internet traffic (at least between February 10 and 13).

What Responsible Business Leaders Should Do

Perhaps the slowdown already has made an impact on your company. Or maybe you can see it coming but aren’t sure exactly when and how it will hit. In either case, the most important thing is to keep your wits about you and not succumb to five common mistakes companies often make when times get tough.

1. Be smart and thrifty, but don’t panic. This, too, shall pass.
Economies go through cycles of expansion and contraction. It’s what we all learned in college economics courses (back then, of course, we weren’t really paying attention). The trouble is, while academics can pontificate on the cyclical economy, real business people have to live through difficult economic events. We love the expansionary times, but the contractions can be painful. If you’re smart, you’ve managed your balance sheet well and can ride out a period of slow or no growth. If not, you may have to make some cuts. Just be careful to trim fat and avoid cutting muscle as much as possible.

2. Marketing is muscle, not fat. Be careful about cutting it.
Just as the savviest investors view down markets as a time to buy when everybody else is selling, the savviest marketers know recessions are a great time to pick up market share. They understand that by maintaining their budgets (or even increasing them) they may not come out ahead during the down times, but they can pick up market share that will pay off in the long run. Marketing dollars in a recession are like oxygen on Mt. Everest—the less there is in the surrounding environment, the more valuable the amount you possess becomes. Cutting your marketing spending is a sure way to give ground to competitors who may be more aggressive during the downturn.

3. Don’t lose focus by chasing business you wouldn’t normally want.
When clients and customers get nervous about the economy, they cut back their spending. For you that could mean fewer transactions, smaller purchases, or possibly both. But if you try to broaden your core product or service appeal to please a wider audience, chances are you’ll make your best customers even less satisfied, giving them one more reason to stay home or spend less. There’s a reason you don’t pursue certain types of customers when times are good, and that reason probably hasn’t changed. Do your best to stick to your knitting and enhance the value you provide to your best customers. They may decide to make their cutbacks in areas other than yours.

4. Don’t discount.
It’s easy to rationalize discounting during a downturn, for your company’s sake (“it helps to drive business”) as well as for the sake of your customers (“they’re struggling and need the help”). But whether times are good or bad, discounting your price discounts your product (BusinessWeek.com, 4/14/08) in the eyes of your customers. There was a time in the 1990s when McDonald’s (MCD) and Burger King (BKC) put their Big Macs and Whoppers on sale so often that they trained their customers never to pay full price. That created a margin problem from which it took them years to recover. If you need to make your products more affordable (to generate volume, goodwill, or both), do so carefully and deliberately. But lower the price instead of offering a discount.

5. Don’t neglect the elephant in the room.
We live in a 24-hour information cycle. When news breaks, people know it, and economic news breaks every day. You don’t have to be an economist to know the business environment isn’t in the best shape right now, and the point is brought home to your people in a personal way every time they go to the grocery store or fill up their gas tanks. Even if your company’s revenues have held up, your employees know there’s trouble afoot and they’re nervous. Make sure they know you’re on top of things and have a plan.

There’s no telling what lies ahead over the next several months. We may pull out of our economic rut more quickly than anticipated, or we may be in for a prolonged rough ride. But clients and customers will still need to eat. They still need transportation. They still seek entertainment, clothing, vacations, chain saws, pet food, perfume, office supplies, computer servers, tractors, and machinery. As the market tightens up, the best positioned players will survive and thrive. Avoid the mistakes above and you’re more likely to be one of them.

Ten Great Excuses for Avoiding Business Development

1. I’m booked for at least six weeks. I couldn’t handle another deal if it landed on my desk.

2. My business development discussions, if I get into a good one, take an hour. I only have 45 minutes to make calls now so I should wait until I have more time.

3. This isn’t a good use of my time. Somebody else should source leads and I should deliver work.

4. I’m not good at it so what’s the use? (And I sure can’t tell anyone this, so I’ll make up another reason.)

5. In my business, leads only come through referrals. Proactive outbound business development, even networking, doesn’t work. Why bother?

6. I’m deathly afraid of selling.

7. If I reach out to prospects, I will sound like a used car salesperson. Since I’m a professional, I can’t set up that dynamic.

8. I know how to talk about what I do (I think). Yet, for some strange reason, the words never come out right.

9. I don’t even know who to contact. I have the time and the will, but what do I do?

10. I hate selling.

Pick your poison: You’re too young or too old. You’re better in the mornings and it’s late in the day. If you get into a conversation, you will need to get your boss on the phone, and she’s not around. Dog ate your Rolodex.

Regardless of your reason, the end result is the same; another day goes by and you don’t work on business development.

#1 Reason Professionals Fail at Business Development

Full-time sales people spend all day selling. They show up to work, grab their Starbucks (or, if you live in New England, Dunkin Donuts), and start contacting customers. Maybe they start at the break of dawn and sell till midnight. Maybe they wait until the crack of noon and only sell until tea time. Regardless of the time commitment they put in, if they’re working, they’re explicitly selling.

Most CPAs (or technology consultants, or lawyers, or management consultants) show up in the morning and start doing accounting. They crunch numbers, manage teams, and take client meetings. Maybe there’s an hour and a half window in their schedule in the late afternoon. Here’s what most of them won’t do with that time: business development.

That’s right, 9 out of 10 professionals agree that engaging anything but business development in their open time slot is best to whiten teeth and freshen breath. The number one reason that professionals fail at business development: finding something else to do, or doing nothing, when they could be developing business.

Nancy Reagan Says

You will not grow your practice or be as successful as you can be until you stop avoiding business development.

Fortunately, the answer is simple: Start selling now.

Unfortunately, it is not that easy to take a deeply imbedded behavior (not selling), flip a switch, and be able to do today what you did not or could not do yesterday.

Nancy Reagan’s solution to drug addiction was, “Just say no.” For a few people, this might have been enough, but for the majority a greater effort was clearly needed in order to effect change. It was probably no easier for an addict to just-say-no as it might have been for a homeless person to just-buy-a-house. It doesn’t work like that.

And it doesn’t work like that for professionals who want to develop business.

You can’t “Just Say Go!” and magically develop a hankering for dialing the phone. For the most part, it takes a robust personal change effort to make the transition from business-development-avoider to focused-client-developer.

Breaking the Business Development Avoidance Rut

If, indeed, you want to stop avoiding business development, remember:

• Respect the effort. Realize that it takes significant time, effort, energy, and sometimes resources to develop business and stick with it. If you do not have a healthy understanding and respect for the serious work of systematically developing business, you risk false starts. (This is akin to what Mark Twain said about quitting smoking: it’s easy to do and he’s done it a thousand times.)
• Leverage your team. Seek help if you are stuck in a sales avoidance rut. Breaking out of a rut alone is extremely difficult. You will find help in the form of a peer, coach, boss, or someone else. Whoever it is, involving the right people increases your chance of success.
• Develop an ongoing strategy. Before you engage ongoing business development, know what tactics you are going to employ and why. If you have a clear end goal, and know how each tactic you undertake helps to get you there, you will have the best chance of success. Business development is a mission. Make sure you know where you are headed before you set out.
• Just Say Go! Resolve to start developing business. Until you have a personal sense of urgency around business development, you will not start doing it. While just-saying-go is necessary in order to get you started, it is definitely not sufficient for success. Still, you need to first get going in order to have any chance of success. As Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

We make light of excuses for avoiding business development in order to raise the issue. Breaking the cycle of excuses and starting to develop business is never as easy as it sounds. But you can do it. Do what you need to do to prepare for success, know what you are going after, and then “Just Say Go!”

Ways to insanely motivate yourself

• Condition your mind. Train yourself to think positive thoughts.
• Condition your body. It takes physical energy to take action.
• Avoid negative people. Don’t take anything that they say seriously.
• Always remain flexible. No plan should be cast in concrete.
• Act with a higher purpose. If it doesn’t serve your goal, it’s wasted effort.
• Take responsibility for your own results. Don’t credit luck, good or bad.
• Stretch past your limits on a daily basis. That’s how you grow and evolve.
• Don’t wait for perfection; do it now! Perfection’s the enemy of good enough.
• Be careful of what you eat. It takes physical energy to succeed.
• Hang around motivated people. The positive energy will rub off on you.

“I’m interested” is not a synonym for a sales opportunity

When you hear the words “I need” and a description of what’s “needed” do you immediately start to design and quote or sell? If you do, at the end of the sales process, you often hear “Great Idea but It?s too expensive”, don’t you!

Can you really afford to waste time selling with the outcome being “sorry, not enough budget”?

Up front and immediate qualification of things like cost vs. budget is a must for any sales process. It’s the reality check that can get you a sale or let you scale down the expectations of your prospect so they can get a solution at their budgetary level.

Yes, I did say “up front” as in way before you even start to sell, as in the first call! – Up front qualification for budget availability, how to get cash obligated and available, the evaluation and buying process, how things get bought and who needs to be involved to get to yes.

It’s all done in about 1 minute on the very first sales approach call and its results tell you if you have a prospect, have money available to buy and even if you should continue with the selling process because there is a reasonable chance for a sale if you do.

Here are some steps for doing this:

1. First off, do some research and understand the target company, especially how and why your product or solution can help.

2. Next, make a short 30 second commercial based on your findings that can quickly and succinctly say what you do, relate pertinent issues, benefits and problems solved and let you ask if it’s something that the prospect needs or would adopt.

That’s not “ABC”, that’s up front qualification.

3. Next find and define who would be right to hear that commercial at the highest level of responsibility and authority, relate to it and give you a true assessment of need/value on the spot.

4. Then make the phone call to that person and use the 30 second commercial.

After the commercial, ask for and qualify the possibility of need or value for what you have explained from the person you are speaking with. Ask it this way “Is this an idea that can benefit you and your company?”

5. If yes – ask how, why, reason, problems solved, impact.

This creates a link between you and the person that you have called for the sales process to begin that, if persued properly, you have the basis of selling value/ROI and not cost and you know it has possibilities to yield a sale based on those criterion.

Actually, that’s the basis of a solid sale- Perceived value and or ROI, not cost!

6. If no, or you get a weak maybe, stop selling, say thanks and move on to the next prospect.

Don’t waste sales time on this one. Yes it’s OK to say “Thanks for your time and your honesty. I can see that our solution isn’t applicable to you” and then ask “Do you know of a colleague that could use my solution” and you might get a great prospect to call. Even an introduction.

7. If yes, ask about and learn the process for moving forward and facilitating the outcome being a funded PO.

Ask “If we do have a worthwhile solution for you, who along with you would need to be involved in evaluating, adopting and purchasing your concept”?

That teaches you who to approach beyond your initial contact and does not insult the person you are speaking to. Even more important, since your idea or solution has already been acknowledged as worthwhile by the prospect. using this question also lets you ask them for help in moving forward.

You will get that inside help or as we call them in sales the inside CHAMPION who can sponsor you and your idea/solution up the ladder, a very valuable inside ally in any sales process.

Remember, don’t say “who is the decision maker”. It?s an insulting question because it says to your suspect “you are a peon so tell me who to go to.” WRONG!! The “peon” is the gate keeper and can help move you forward or kill a sale because they are usually the resident expert that the decision maker consults for value.

8. Get Budget qualification up front – Get it qualified immediately in this first call. After the 30 second commercial gets receptivity or the caller has finished telling you what they want to buy, in either the proactive or reactive situation, state a rough cost right then to your suspect for the solution and ask if there is a budget for implementing the concept if it?s a worthwhile idea.

Yes, I did say bring up budget and possible cost right away and yes it violates every sales rule that you have learned.

Don’t even think of continuing the sales process without knowing the answer to this budget and budget process in call # 1 because the answer you get reveals the time and process needed to get the sale and your prospects perception of “how much” they think your solution should cost. It lets you measure if it?s worth your time v the ultimate sales value as well.

Don’t be afraid of this question so early in the process. It tells you if you can proceed with your idea.

It also lets you ask and understand what the company’s usual process for evaluating and ultimately purchasing your idea is.

That’s a clear road map to a financial yes, the key to the PO so get it and work it. That’s also true when you get a call from a “potential” customer telling you that they are going to by a specific solution just like yours.

End users rarely have a handle on real costs nor have they correctly obligated enough budget so do not spin your wheels without qualifying need v probable cost and available budget.

Incidentally, doing so lets you advise them re their budget inadequacy and it?s an opportunity to sell a starter system using the available budget.

Remember, people do things for their reasons, not yours. So instead of deciding that you know a prospect needs your service and trying to ram it through, follow the steps above, use the 30 second commercial up front and you will avoid chasing rainbows that do not become sales.

Tangible Results for you:
Because you are working with solidly qualified prospects who have or will spend the $ for your solution, you will up you close rate and reduce the time it takes to get the sale. More income faster from more sales—That’s a great equation for business development types isn’t it!

6 easy steps to closing a sale

I came across a very interesting article by Geoffery James on closing a sale in which he breaks down the process or in fact gives structure to the mystery of closing a sale.

Here are the six steps, as described in the post above.

• STEP #1: Ignore the ABC Strategy

More often than not, the ABC (Always Be Closing) strategy has been adopted as if from the Sales Bible. Very rarely do sales people understand how put off their clients would be by being pressurized to take the deal. The last thing you’d want is to make the client avoid doing business with you.

Its important to modify and use ABC so that so you do “always remember to close” – close for the next step, close for how long the evaluation will take, close for who along with you needs to be involved, close for budget info, process, availability, close for mutually agreed to exploration points, analysis points, specific basis for evaluation, specific basis for deciding to purchase.

• STEP #2: Cultivate the Right Mindset

I believe that to be truly successful in any role that you are in, you have just got to be proactive and think out of the box. This is one of my favorites. Geoffery quoted “The clock has only one time – right now!”,which is so true when you want to win a deal.You have to be persistent.

Simple things such as remembering to send a tailored follow up letter or email to the customer within one day of the meeting would make it a deal or no deal. But to be a good closer, you have to back off when you have to. For example, when you realize that by going through with this deal, you would be alienating the client or damaging the relationship or company reputation, it’s best not to go for closure.

• STEP #3: Set an Objective for Every Meeting

We’ve all read and heard about setting SMART objectives. Yes that’s it Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. But in the world of business development, its shouldn’t be simply achievable but “Aggressively Achievable”. But you can’t be overly aggressive either. You can’t simply set an objective such as “I will close the deal today” when its a multi million dollar deal with multiple decision makers involved!

• STEP #4: Constantly Check If You’re On Target

At all times during the sales cycle and during the meeting, you have to constantly keep track of where you are headed. The basic selling process is identifying the customer’s objectives, strategy, decision process, time frames etc. You should understand these aspects well to customize and tailor your product/ solution to satisfy those needs.

The ‘checking process’ : always ask open ended and non-leading questions which will help you get a feedback from the client on what you’ve just said and also to gauge the client’s response.

Bad Qn: Do you agree? / Does that make sense to you?

Good Qn: What do you think? / How does that sound to you?

Unlike leading questions, checking questions encourage the customer to provide you with frank, vital information. Example:

BAD:
You: “We have a first rate delivery capability in all key markets.” (The salesperson did not check after expressing this view.”)
Prospect: “How do you handle invoicing?”

Note that in the example above, the conversation has moved on and you have no idea whether the customer agrees or disagrees with the “first rate delivery” assertion.

BETTER:
You: “We have a first rate delivery capability in all key markets. Do you think that might be useful?”
Prospect: “I’m concerned you can’t meet our global needs.”
You: “I understand that you have global needs. Why do you feel we may not be able to meet them?”
Prospect: “We want feet on the street and you don’t have international offices.”
You: “It is important to have people deployed internationally. For that reason, we have partnerships with the top companies in regions where we don’t have our own offices. Would that address your concern?”
Prospect: “It might, providing you can invoice centrally.”

Note that in the example above, you are now learning what the prospect thinks and repositioning your company’s capability in order to build toward the eventual close.

Geoffery suggests that if you do the “checking” process right, the client will preemptively close the sale by saying something like “When do we start ?”.

• STEP #5: Summarize, Then Make a Final Check

After all the product/ solution awareness and checking process, comes the closure. If the client hasn’t preemptively closed it, you’ve got to make the move. Here’s the mechanics of the close:

First, give the customer a concise, powerful summary that reiterates the benefits of your products or services. Once you’ve done this, make one final check – not for understanding but for agreement. Example:

You: “Our worldwide service capability will allow your employees access anywhere they travel, at a cost that’s significantly less than you’re spending today. How does that meet your objective?”

Now you’ll either get a green / red light. If there are any objections, it will come up. Handle it and then go for the closure again.

• STEP #6: Ask for the Business

The most important of all steps – ask for what you are there for – the business!

You: “We are ready to start. Will you give us the go-ahead?”

If the customer declines, acknowledge that fact to the customer and then find out why. As appropriate, make a second effort. Regardless of whether you actually closed, end the meeting with confidence, energy, and rapport to make a positive last impression.

Thank the client for the business or reinforce the desire to work with the client.

Nevertheless, DO NOT FORGET to follow up with the client immediately.

Have Breakfast or Be Breakfast

Interesting Read….

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?
Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.

Reason being cameras bundled with cell phones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cell phone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sony’s and Canons are taking note.

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).

Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel’s parent) are breathing easy you can’t be farther from truth.

Nokia confessed that they all but missed the Smartphone bus. They admit that Apple’s I phone and Google’s Android can make life difficult in future. But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you? If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails?

The “Mahabharat” (the great Indian epic battle) is about “what is tomorrow’s personal digital device”? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – “who is my competitor?”

Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a question at them. It says “What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?” The smart ones get the answer almost immediately. Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won’t compete on pure audio? “Elementary Watson”. So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as “digital.”

In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question “who is my competitor for tomorrow?” The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared “internet is a fad!” and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today’s competitor. Today’s competitor is obvious. Tomorrow’s is not.

In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. (India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton’s law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India. PC’s price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!

India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 over’s. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film’s competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour “tamasha” (entertainment). Cricket season might push films out of the market.

Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is “I don’t remember!” For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is “alarm clock.” The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called “alarms.” What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cell phone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!

On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for authors? Joke spewing machines? (Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to the mirth of Silicon Valley). Or will the competition be story telling robots? Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said “Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast”! That sums it up rather neatly.

Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. He is an M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a post graduate in management from IIM, Bangalore

Only the Employed Need Apply

With unemployment at 9.4% and rising, it’s a buyer’s market for employers that are hiring. But many employers are bypassing the jobless to target those still working, reasoning that these survivors are the top performers.

“If they’re employed in today’s economy, they have to be first string,” says Ryan Ross, a partner with Kaye/Bassman International Corp., an executive recruiting firm in Dallas. Mr. Ross says more clients recently have indicated that they would prefer to fill positions with “passive candidates” who are working elsewhere and not actively seeking a job.

The bias extends from front-line workers to senior managers. Charlie Wilgus, managing partner of executive search for Lucas Group, based in Atlanta, says a manufacturing client looking for a division president recently refused to consider a former divisional president at Newell Rubbermaid Inc. whose department had been eliminated. The client doesn’t want candidates who have been laid off, Mr. Wilgus says.

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White Chocolate GrillBobby Fitzgerald prefers to hire the already employed even though he gets two dozen or more unsolicited résumés each day at his White Chocolate Grill.Employers’ preference for the employed adds another hurdle for those who have been laid off. Job seekers frequently are competing with dozens of other applicants for the few available positions.

Bobby Fitzgerald, a partner in five restaurants in three states, says these days he gets two dozen or more unsolicited résumés each day at one of his Phoenix restaurants, the White Chocolate Grill. But Mr. Fitzgerald says his top candidates, for jobs ranging from servers to management, usually are people who are employed elsewhere. He currently has 50 openings across his five restaurants and has told recruiters to bring in only people who are working.

Mr. Fitzgerald has long practiced “guerrilla recruiting.” Even with so many applicants available, he still sends managers to other restaurants with instructions to approach staffers who seem to be strong performers.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s preference for the employed can be time-consuming and expensive. He recently spent three weeks courting a restaurant manager in Birmingham, Ala., for a management post. Mr. Fitzgerald flew the candidate to Phoenix for an interview and a “realistic job preview,” but the candidate chose not to relocate and declined the job offer. “There are a lot of applicants between Phoenix and Birmingham who would have gladly taken the job,” says Mr. Fitzgerald.

While the tactic doesn’t work very often, Mr. Fitzgerald says it lets people know he is hiring. “We are always looking for the very best of the industry, which happens to be people who are still employed,” he says. “The overflow of applicants hasn’t made it easier to hire at all.”

Even when employers are successful, recruiting the employed can cost money. Tim Donohue, senior account manager of Infinity Consulting Solutions, an executive-search firm specializing in finance-related industries, based in New York, says candidates who are wooed away from other jobs typically demand a higher salary than the unemployed, who tend to be more open to negotiation.

Nonetheless, many employers consider the employed more valuable and worth the extra effort. Health-care management-consulting firm Beacon Partners Inc., Weymouth, Mass., has openings for 10 technology-consulting and senior project-management positions. Chief Executive Ralph Fargnoli is looking first for people who are still working. “If they’re still employed that means they have some significant value,” Mr. Fargnoli says.

Beacon, with about 145 employees, targets candidates at conferences, presentations and other gatherings. “We attend industry events and approach the speaker or attendees to see if they’re happy at their job and whether they see a career path at their current employer,” says Mr. Fargnoli. Recently, Mr. Fargnoli successfully recruited a chief information officer of a hospital health system for a vice president role at Beacon after meeting the person at conferences.

The targets aren’t always eager to jump ship. “We’re seeing candidates afraid to move because they don’t want to be the last one in, first one out,” says Jaimie Lynn Craig, an executive recruiter with Premier Staffing in San Francisco. She says many executive-level candidates are seeking guarantees and severance provisions in case their new jobs fall through. Messrs. Fargnoli and Fitzgerald say the employees they approach are more risk-averse, given the shaky economy.

When employers post jobs, they often are flooded with applicants, many of whom aren’t good matches for the position. Kristi Robinson, vice president of talent acquisition at Express Scripts Inc., says applications at the St. Louis pharmacy-benefit manager are up 80% from last year, but many candidates are either over- or underqualified. By targeting people who are currently employed in comparable positions, the firm can bypass candidates who aren’t perfect matches.

Ms. Robinson is looking to fill more than 100 positions, from operations and sales to finance. She says Express Scripts is targeting passive candidates through networking and referrals, and expects them to account for about half of new hires this year, similar to last year.

Job seekers sense the trend. A recent online survey conducted by Infinity Consulting Solutions of 417 job hunters in the New York area found that 59% agreed or strongly agreed that employers gave preference to candidates that are currently employed.

However, there are still jobs to be had if you can calm an employer’s biggest worry about out-of-work applicants: that your termination was the result of poor performance.

Arming yourself with strong letters of recommendation from your previous employer, stating that you were laid off for economic reasons and that you are “eligible for rehire,” can help your case, says Mr. Ross of Kaye/Bassman. If you can’t obtain formal letters, get references from senior-level employees at your prior company, he says.

Being flexible on your salary or title also goes a long way, says Mr. Donohue of Infinity Consulting.

And if you lost your job when your department was eliminated, make sure to tell prospective employers; that will be considered more benign than selective layoffs, says Mr. Donohue. “If they got rid of half the team and you’re on the losing half, their antennas are up,” he says.

Michael Jackson’s Death shocking everyone including Search Engines

June 25, 2009 was a pretty extra ordinary day that shocked everyone worldwide. Search engine’s Google, Yahoo and Bing assured people of their accuracy and scalability in providing current news. Wikipedia grappled with the unexpected surge of interest in the day’s breaking news.

Google witnessed a surge of searches about Jackson ranging from “michael jackson died” to “michael jackson hoax”. Google must’ve thought it was under attack seeing the rush of such severe traffic. The spikes in searches provoked Google news to show an interstitial error page for about 25 minutes

Google reported that they saw the largest ever mobile search spike ever. The hotness of the news was termed “Volcanic” by Google Trends.

Yahoo also had a record breaker with 16.5 million hits topping the previous record of 15.1 million set last election day.

Social networks and community websites such as Wikipedia took precautionary measures in the event that the news turned out to be a hoax. The page was protected from editing to prevent the article from going back and forth until the story was verified.

Twitter was a hotbed of Jackson related searching and conversation. Co-founder Biz Stone reported that there were nearly 5,000 Jackson related tweets per minute on Thursday afteroon. “We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the story broke. This particular news about the passing of such a global icon is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election.”

Interestingly, the new kid on the block, Bing had a rather disappointing show put up. The results showed Michael Jackson photos while news links were at the bottom of the search results page.

Any marketing gigs in the midst of all this? Damn right yeah! And its none other than the very same new kid, Bing!

A joint effort from Bing and NBC surrounding the service launch got them putting up advertisements on top of taxis of a goodbye message. Done by Show Media, specializing in this form of advertising, the text-with a picture from Jackson’s “Thriller” album reads: “We will miss you Michael”.

The idea behind it would have been to get the fans to Bing him up! Well they certainly weren’t ready for the surge of searches!

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June 29, 2009 / 10:00 pm

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Lessons from the Great Depression of 1929

When we talk about today’s financial crisis, we unanimously agree that the root cause is “greed”. But the take aways from such situations are the very lessons that have come our way in previous recessions such as the Great Depression of 1929 which all started with the stock market crash.

So what are the Lessons ?

The 20s were fuelled by an unprecedented number of Americans gambling on WallStreet – not bankers and traders, but everyday Americans. Why? Because of something known as “Margin”. You could buy stock on credit, purchasing a $1000 worth of shares with just $100 down. Once the stock went up which it usually did upto 1929, you could sell it at a huge profit and pay off the credit. So money was made as long as the market kept going.

Eventually, stocks went down. There was a mass “magin call” – time to pay up for the stock you bought for 10% down. But no one had the cash to pay up for such a huge loss. Thus the margin call accelerated the collapse of the market and the banks that funded all that buying. When the banks began tightening under the weight of all the unpaid debt, people anxiously started bucking out their money.I’m sure this is something we’ve been witnessing even to this day. Eventually banks began falling and left millions of people broke. What arose out of the crisis was the FDIC, insuring individual deposits up to $100,000 in all commercial banks.

Whats all this got to do with today’s financial crisis?

Houses became investments instead of places to live and were bought on margin. People bought a house or two or three or more for 10% down or less. Now that rings a bell! You could buy a million dollar house with just $100,000 and guess what, they’d even let you borrow that money! What came out of all this was that people turned out to be enormously rich by buying pre-construction assets and sold them even before completion. The profit of course didn’t go waste, it was further used to buy larger properties. The “greed” kept going on.

At some point which was inevitable, the prices of homes sky rocketed, which although seemed like a good thing at first because of the easy availability of money, backfired. The banks started offering “exotic” loans with little or no money which meant you could buy anything by just paying the interest. Talk about having free lunches! In fact, people were opting for Adjustable Rate Mortgages even when the rates where on an all time low of less than 5% for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. The “greed” kept going on.

Now, everyone wanted his share of the pie, so eventually the banks decided to go easy on the loan approval rules. Behold the ‘sub primers’! If you don’t have enough income or have got many defaults on your card, no fear the banks are here! You’ll probably just have to pay higher interest rate 5 years down the line.The incentive for these banks were that the sub prime market seemed profitable because of these higher rates. Again the “greed” kept going on.

When the average American started reaping profits and started smoking their Cuban cigars, the investment bankers (the not so fortunate people of today) wanted a piece of this action and so started dismantling their mortgages and repackaging them into De..wait for it.. wait for it.. “Derivatives”.(I’ve been watching a bit too many ‘How I met your mother’ episodes). Investors felt they could rely on this tried and tested, brick and mortar based housing domain. The “greed” just keeps adding up.

And just like that everything came to a standstill; the prices jst stood still, it didn’t drop nor rise.People started getting worried! No, not about losing their houses, but their profits, the ones they earned over a couple of years. As a result, plenty of homes were out on the market, enough to disrupt the demand supply with more buyer power. Yes, the “greed” kept adding up.

Of course, it would be foolish to think that anything would be in an equilibrium when external factors play a high hand and that too factors such as greed. The home prices dropped like an anchor. It was a mayhem. More “For Sale” signs started sprouting up than the greenery as home owners tried to sell the roof over their heads before prices hit the basement. What’s more interesting is that the timing could not be worse. Yes, it was time for those Adjustable Rate Mortgages to have a peak in interest rates because most of them reached their 5 year point. Neither could the property be bought at the new rates nor could it be sold. A perfect deadlock. And we all know what caused it; “greed“.

So there we have it, our economic downturn.

Banks gave ultimatums to pay up or face foreclosure time. Many lost their only homes, the ones they could only afford. But you know the saying, there’s always some good that comes out of anything. Yes there was an innovation, the innovative “jingle mail” . People just dropped their keys into the mailbox and walked off!

Suddenly those derivates didn’t seem so great. Our great Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac (hence referred to as the BROs) and other banks couldn’t sell & raise enough money from those mortgages to cover the inflated loan and huge home equity lines. 3/5 top investment banks either shut shop or were bought over.

This is where the BROs came into the frame of things; to create liquidity. Banks gave loans on mortgages which were fixed assets which inturn was sold to the BROs to infuse fresh capital to generate more loans.

But when the BROs gave up buying those mortgages, it disrupted the cycle and reduced liquidity in the market causing a credit crunch; the financial equivalent of visiting starbucks only to realize that they are out of coffee!

The lesson: Don’t mess with things you can’t afford to lose especially if its your home!

6 reasons to start a company during recession

With the recession hanging over our heads, the questions popping in our heads are what are the job prospects available and how much of a job security do we really have? Well if you haven’t heard yet, the situation is bound to loom around for another quarter or so. So what are the numerous number of people out in the job market going to do. The hard bound ruling on H1B visa’s which may seem as a curse actually turns out to be a blessing for India, because the crux of intelligence who were the key drivers behind major organizations and responsible for over 33% of all patents filed are thinking of heading back home and joining large corporates back in India or starting up their own ventures.

Now the next question is whether this is the right time to start a new venture. Well here are my 5 cents on it.. well actually, my 6 reasons on why this is the right time to start your dream company or something close .

Well first off, its a really difficult time for companies trying to woo venture capitalists to provide fund during such a crisis. But wait, this just means that it is not an ideal time to start a firm requiring lot of start-up capital to launch itself. But, small Internet and technology-based companies are a whole different story. In fact, a recession is just the right time to incubate a small company ! So here’s those 6 wonderful reasons :

1. Recession forces the founders to be prudent: When an entrepreneur starts a company without much initial funding, it’s an excellent discipline for such an early-stage company. By being frugal, entrepreneurs tend to be more creative and adopt healthy deliberation on expenditures. And the obvious outcome; founders pay more close attention to cash flow, budgets and balance sheets.

2. Recessions make businesses and businessmen tougher: Although an economic crisis or recession may be the right time to start a venture, it definitely isn’t the easiest. Facing such challenges, brings out such traits and qualities which make a true entrepreneur, namely guts, problem-solving, strength and perseverance.

3. Startups get a prime mover advantage: If you have a great idea, it’s only business sense to start right away because it give you the competitive advantage over others and any hardships in the way will surely pay off. The reasoning is pretty simple; by the time the economy is back on its feet, your venture will be that much into its life and that much closer to being ready to raise capital (VCs will surely fund at that time when they’ve been sitting on their cash for quite some time owing to the recession).

4. Recessions are a cause for entrepreneurs to introspect their ideas: During a recession, entrepreneurs will definitely be posed with very valid questions on the worthiness of their idea. A great team or a lot of money could lend the appearance of success, but if it is not built on quality ideas, it will backfire in the long run. The various questions that entrepreneurs will ponder over are the product/service value creation to customers during the current recession and later boom, the market sustainability during the recession owing to cost cutting and the ability to finance operations without VC funding. Eventually, what’s left is a rock solid, fool-proof B-plan.

5. The timing couldn’t be more perfect: If you plan your business right, you could emerge out of the recession during the growth phase of your business. Thereby you would save a lot of money on advertising and marketing because of the reduced market rates during the recessionary period.

6. True entrepreneurs sprout of a recession: True entrepreneurs are creative thought leaders who are willing to take risks to make a legendary mark in business. During a recession, jobs are in jeopardy, everyone is anxious about job security and wouldn’t want to quit their jobs to join a start up. But the ones who do will be truly committed. Thus the founder will have a truly committed team who truly loves their job and are willing to go with the added risks.

Keynes - The best way to think of the Financial Crisis

3 take Aways

1. We should not take the pretensions of financiers seriously. “A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.” Not for him, then, was the notion of “efficient markets”.

2. The economy cannot be analyzed in the same way as an individual business. For an individual company, it makes sense to cut costs. If the world tries to do so, it will merely shrink demand. An individual may not spend all his income. But the world must do so.

3. One should not treat the economy as a morality tale. In the 1930s, two opposing ideological visions were on offer: the Austrian; and the socialist. The Austrians – Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek – argued that a purging of the excesses of the 1920s was required. Socialists argued that socialism needed to replace failed capitalism, outright. These views were grounded in alternative secular religions: the former in the view that individual self-seeking behavior guaranteed a stable economic order; the latter in the idea that the identical motivation could lead only to exploitation, instability and crisis.

Markets are neither infallible or dispensable. They are indeed the underpinnings of a productive economy and individual freedom. But of course, they can also go seriously awry and so must be managed with care. The election of Mr Obama surely reflects a desire for just such pragmatism. Neither Ron Paul, the libertarian, nor Ralph Nader, on the left, got anywhere. So the task for this new administration is to lead the US and the world towards a pragmatic resolution of the global economic crisis we all now confront.

The urgent task is to return the world economy to health.

The immediate shorter term challenge is to retain aggregate demand, as Keynes would have recommended. This will put more pressure on the bankers for loans. It’s evident that most of the pressure will be on the US as the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert. Although the decreased spending of households is expected to last for a few more years, a big effort must be made to purge the balance sheet of households and the financial system.

The long term challenge is get the global demand rebounding to a proper balance. It’s foolish to expect deficit countries to spend away into bankrupty, while well to do countries condemn as profligacy the spending from which their exporters benefit so much.

It is also essential to construct a new system of global financial regulation and an approach to monetary policy that curbs credit booms and asset bubbles. There seems to be no clear answer to this problem, but recognition of the frailness of the system would be a fair start.

We are faced with a dichotomy of choices: to deal with the challenges co-operatively and pragmatically or let ideological blinkers and selfishness blind us. The focus should be on preserving an open and reasonably stable world economy that offers opportunity to much of humanity as possible. It’s not that we haven’t done this so far, but we must do better.

The biggest lesson of crisis would be as Oscar Wilde would have it ‘In Economics, The truth is rarely pure and never simple’.

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December 24, 2008 / 6:03 am

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Heights of Enforecement. Am I lovin it ?

How fast does it take for you to eat fast food? Well stop thinking, because McDonald’s has found the answer ! Burger giant McDonald’s, is making customers finish their food within 45 minutes or face a charge of £125!! Talk about enforcement.

Motorists who care to linger over their McMeals for any longer at some drive-throughs are receiving demands from a private company that manages car parks for the burger chain.

If they do not pay, the fee rises steadily and customers are threatened with court action and approached by bailiffs. A spokeswoman for McDonald’s said the 45-minute restrictions had been introduced at about 40 restaurants because car parks were being abused. She said signs explaining the policy were displayed and leaflets given out. So bottom line is get fat fast !!