Month: April 2011

Mind the GAP

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Last night I got to visit with a dear friend.  Poet Georgia Popoff – lo these many years ago a fellow office drudge – has become not just a published author (she’s been that for quite a while), but a recognized educator.  Her Syracuse release party for the book that she and fellow educator, poet and co-author Quraysh Ali Lansana recently had published was a resounding success – at least by CNY terms.

Our Difficult Sunlight is a book about poetry appreciation, true.  But more importantly, it’s a book about helping others reach that appreciation, either as a reader/listener or as someone who yearns to express themselves.  These two people share their passion for passion, as it were, in the form of helping others to listen to others, listen to themselves, and express themselves through all forms of poetry.

Let me me the one to break my own terrible secret: I suck at poetry.  I have no ear for it, no tongue for it.  I don’t understand it and, like most things we don’t understand, I’m just a little bit scared of it.

Let me tell you something else: I’m extremely happy for Georgia, and a tiny bit envious – as well as having a totally unjustified feeling of pride.  I did nothing to help her with this book, unless you count staying out of her life for 8 years as “help.”  But when we met, she was stuck in what for her heart and soul was a dead end job.  I stayed around long enough to see the genesis of her first book, to see her struggling to bring to life something she’d dreamed of.  I envy her passion, her drive, and her love for poetry.

My wife, I think, envies her choice of writing partners!  Quraysh is smart, educated, funny, personable – and looks damn fine in a suit and tie.  Hey, I ain’t blind!  Plus, he’s living in Chicago, one of my wife’s favorite cities, so at least if she runs off, I’ll know where to start looking.

Anyway, I’m adding their book to my “recommended” section.  Even marketers need a soul.

Kudos to AT&T

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I recently changed cell phone services.  I’d been with AT&T for years – since I got my first cell phone over 10 years ago.  I’m loyal, but I’m not blind, so I went looking for better rates.

It turns out that Sprint could give me the exact same service that AT&T had been supplying, for just a hair over half of what I’d been paying.  I’m not someone who buys strictly on price – I evaluate a lot of factors before making a significant purchase.  So I called AT&T’s customer service department and asked for a lower rate.  They wanted to know why I was considering switching.

“Sprint is going to charge me half of what you do for the same service.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.  I hope our service has been satisfactory, and if there’s anything we can do to help with the transition please let us know.”

No begging me not to go, no attempt to lower their pricing to match what someone else was going to charge me.  No offers of extra goodies to entice me to stay.  While switching over to another carrier was going to be a pain (easier than I imagined, truth be told), I simply say this –

Learn from AT&T’s lesson, and don’t give in to the price shoppers!  I recommend all my clients keep their prices higher than their competitors’.  Why?  So you can afford to give better service, and so that – should the occasion arise where you want to give low-cost or no-cost services – you can afford to do it without going out of business.

Price shoppers will always be out there, looking to snag a deal.  You cannot remove them from the business environment, but you can remove them from your equation.  They simply are not worth your time.  Literally.  You will never be able to stay in business if you cater to price shoppers.  If you offer them a low-ball price, they’ll want a discount on top of that.  If they find a lower price elsewhere, they’ll leave you and go there instead.  I also find that people who insist on the lowest price also want the most personal service.

So, am I disappointed that AT&T didn’t try to bribe me into staying?  Honestly, yes.  On a personal level, you’d think they’d want me to stay.  But they knew from past experience, and a serious attention to profit margins, that a half-price customer just isn’t worth it.  From a business standpoint, I applaud them for knowing the kind of clients they want, and the price point that type of client is willing to pay.  That’s their pool of prospects, and everyone else isn’t.

Bypass the cheapskates – sell to the right people at the right price.

Starting to use Twitter

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In addition to making blog posts here, I’ve begun posting on my long-dormant Twitter account, AhZhillAy.  What’s nice about Twitter is that it forces me to shut the hell up after just a few characters.  “If you have nothing nice to say. . .”  Well, I’d modify that to, “If you have nothing of value to impart, don’t tweet anything at all.”

I also use TweetDeck – which allows me to cheat.  I take abt 15 minutes and pound out tweets for the rest of the week.  Then, TweetDeck posts them for me, regardless of whether I’m even on-line or not.  Granted I can do the same thing with WordPress, but since the form factor is so much longer, it would take me a whole workday to sit down and get a week’s worth of posts ready.  And by the time the 3rd or 4th one was ready to go, I’d probably want to change it anyway.

I’m not a fan of taking time away from the other projects I’m writing to post blogs (or even microblogs), but I firmly believe in putting yourself someplace you’ll be tripped over by potential clients.  The more often they say, “Every time I turn around I see your name,” the better chance you have of getting them to engage with you.

What are you doing to get tripped over?

Info member sites

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For the last 5 days – well, nights actually – I’ve been working on putting together paid membership sites for a couple of the books I have coming out.  I’ll be doing them as WordPress sites, so that each lesson can consist of blog posts and replies (questions, comments, requests for clarifications, etc.), plus the vids, PDFs or both that make up the lesson.

I’m also putting together the accompanying Facebook Pages for the sites (“Get the book for free when you sign up for the course!”), as well as the autoresponder e-mails (I use MailChimp).  How come it seems like more work when I’m doing it for myself than when I’m doing it for a client?

Don’t worry – when the books & the courses are ready, I’ll offer them to my clients and readers at a significant discount.

What kind of on-line marketing are you doing?

Ratcheting up

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I had a job in retail a long time ago, working at a now-defunct chain called Software Etc.  Over the years, I’d run into some of the people I worked with.  One guy, Steve, went on to start a couple of businesses.  He was doing well enough that he’d hired a junior partner – slash – office manager, and a part-time phone sales person.

Steve and his manager decided that they were leaving a lot of money on the table, and wanted a way to scoop it back up.  Just a cursory glance over their lack of process told me they could easily be making at least 3 times what they were currently pulling in, just by creating a sales process and following it.

In the few minutes that I was allowed to sit in the main office, I saw their “sales person” polishing her nails, reading a book, and brushing her hair.  I was told she was there strictly to take orders and try to upsell, since she really wasn’t comfortable with making outbound calls.  I didn’t hear the phone ring once in all the time I was at their offices.

My initial suggestions were met with outright hostility.  Why would they make her do anything she didn’t want to?  How dare I suggest that people who’d been filling out postage-paid interest cards actually get a phone call from her?  If they took my suggestion and had her practice a follow-up process with current customers, didn’t I realize that would be taking time away from her phone duties?  I delivered my recommendations and was shooed out.  My follow-up calls and e-mails were never answered.

It was a case of, “I want the extra money, but I don’t want to change the way we’re doing things around here.”

I find I’m currently in the same situation.  Do I want to make some major changes and shove a rocket up the tail of Agile’ Marketing?  Or am I content with the way things are?  Should I be forced at gunpoint to drink my own medicine?

Stick around – I have a feeling we’ll both be surprised by developments in the near future.

Poor support is worse than none

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A few days back, I wrote to the support dept for one of the places I work with.  I told them, quite politely and in detail, that a browser plug-in they supply was only working correctly in FireFox.  I supplied them with pictures showing how the widget was failing to work.  I did everything but actually re-write the code for them.

Their reply?  “We don’t support browsers, but if you have problems with your account, contact us again.”

Granted, this was a 1st-level support person, someone who follows scripts and sends back canned answers.  This answer will satisfy some people, and tick off others just enough so they don’t ask for more help.  And then there’s me.

But this is exactly why I teach my staff and interns to READ and THINK.  If they don’t know an answer, they should admit it, and tell the person that real help will be coming soon – and then make sure it does.  Because one person providing poor support makes your entire organization look stupid.  It does more damage than not providing support at all.

Most poor e-mail support comes from not reading the incoming e-mail.  A lot of high-end support ticket software pre-screens incoming support requests and suggests the “best” reply.  In other words, real people aren’t doing their jobs.  They assume (ASS-U-ME) that a platitude and a pat on the head works for everyone.  And it doesn’t.

Support is a keystone of marketing, people! It’s not the 99 orders you sell and fill correctly, it’s how you handle the one that gets messed up.  What’s important to people is how you address their questions and concerns.  Frankly, a seemless transaction that satisfies (there’s that word again!) their needs or desires goes right out of their head.

The original Tylenol poisoning scandal was handled so amazingly well, their actions were held up as a paragon of crisis management across multiple industries for over 25 years.  This time, Johnson & Johnson screwed the pooch with the Tylenol (and other) recalls.  From now on, which will they be remembered for?

Am I equating failed code support with a bungled cover-up?  Absolutely not.  But look what poor support choices have done for J&J this time.  What can it do to your business?