The Little Guy: winner of tomorrow? Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 21:20, in Labels: business development, customer overdrive, problem solving, seth godin, startups

Seth Godin happened to post yesterday about understanding business development, a topic I too brushed in my last post about Solving outside the box. I brainstormed some key questions for a sales & marketing manager who would like to develop her business with the help of proactive, eyes-wide-open sales people.

Seth offers a great definition for the term:

Good business development allows businesses to profit by doing something that is tangential to their core mission. Sometimes the profit is so good, it becomes part of their core mission, other times it supports the brand and sometimes it just makes money. And often it's a little guy who can be flexible enough to make things happen.

I love his last sentence. It made me wonder: How much should today's startups, "little guys", rely on detailed business plans, and how much should be left open for flexible business development?

Consider how networked the business world is currently, and how networking further increases. Due to this, startups (and established businesses!) who keep their eyes and ears open are constantly and increasingly bombarded with new openings, ideas and possibilities. (To assess these, Seth offers in his post a great checklist of issues to go through.) For a businessperson who is not just sociable but competent and efficient as well these are an abundant goldmine of profit and fun.

So, are the winner startups of tomorrow the Great Networkers, who have the ability to surf in their general field of business, adjust their core mission and constantly absorb great new openings and possibilities, and thus are hugely profitable? I think so. Firstly I believe Great Networkers are also Great Personal Sellers, due to their ability to solve outside their box. Because of all the people in the world, the customers are most competent to tell the Great Networker how to better her business. And secondly their ability to surf in their business area also deters fatal customer overdrive, being too customer-oriented, that threatens all little guys serving the bigger and/or older boys.

Does your business plan enable you to be a Great Networker? Are you a little guy at the core of your business?

When does being human mean bad business? Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 19:59, in Labels: account management, customer service, seth godin, tomi heikkinen

Seth Godin delivers a delicious line of wisdom while he gives lessons from very tiny businesses. In his ending statement regarding customer service, he reminds that don't pretend you have a policy. Just be human.

In a world of big company customer service processes and irritating service policies, this statement is a breeze of welcomed air. Dissappointed customers want personal, understanding, friendly service. Customer service processes deliver impersonal, bureaucratic, cold service. But these "inhumane" processes haven't been created out of spite. They've been created to manage costs and to upkeep sound business.

Regarding both the obvious benefits of humane service and the reality of cost management, I wondered: Is there a tipping point where being too human leads to closing up the shop in the longer run?

I worked in a business sales organization where different account managers treated their customers differently. Our unofficial policy was be human - to a point. Some account managers were critized for how they overcared for their customers - execs felt resources were overspent on micromanaging and worrying about the whims of some customers. I'd like to point out that we never received feedback about bad service though. The execs couldn't however statistically prove that overcaring was unprofitable, as this type of account managers were among the better salespersons. Micromanagement was evident, but the management simply lacked the metrics for proving its negative impact. But clearly our organization wasn't close to the tipping point as business was good nevermind some overzealous account managers.

Customer service is about sales too. It's about managing the expectations of the customer. When the customer is unsatisfied, it is the customer service person's task to "sell" the customer a reimbursement or another reassuring action that returns the customer to a satisfied level, and hopefully even increases overall satisfaction to your brand. If the service person is successful, he customer modifies her expectations and "buys" the reassuring action.

Measuring customer service as a sales operation, could we measure the tipping point of when being too human is no longer good business? I think this is especially important to companies which have grown to a point where managing a single customer relationship requires the effort of more than two employees. At this stage, when one person, e.g. the account manager, is "being human" to the customer it no longer concerns the account manager only but will affect the workload of another employee. For example serving the extra demands of a certain customer might seem inconsequential to the account manager but put excessive pressure to a sales engineer who has to realize the (unprofitable) demands of the customer.

In the future, I'd love to hear actual experiences from businessmen about when being human meant bad business. Is there a tipping point? Or is there a best practice how being human can always or often enough be good business?

Godfather marketing Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 18:39, in Labels: godfather marketing, marketing, mindset, seth godin, tomi heikkinen

Seth Godin does what he does best, makes the light bulb go on in his readers' heads that is, by writing about operating and marketing under the circumstances. Mark Pocock then writes about avoiding pushy sales person syndrome, brushing Godin's issue. Reading these followed by some thinking brought forth a painful realization. You know, those realizations you didn't want to have - when you realize what you had been thinking and doing for the past years was awfully dumb. Like finding out your fly had been open for the whole day (or worse!) and recollecting the smirks and funny looks of people who had been around you. Worst is that the thing you realized is bloody obvious.

My realization concerned my marketing mindset. Godin tells us as marketers we can change the circumstances of our customers in order to help them realize our offering is the best for them (and it is!). He uses an analogy from a famous scene in the Godfather, which I think is fantastic. Maybe because I simply love the first two Godfather movies. Pocock uses the words demonstration and showing not telling and urges the marketer to let the customer make her own conclusions before reaching a decision. Which the customer does, according to her circumstances. You don't win over the customer by pressuring her, you win her over by adjusting her perception and helping her think by herself. Pocock reminds us that everyone as a customer wants to feel in control during the sales process, and he's right.

I might just call my marketing mindset Godfather marketing henceforth. Respect your customers, adjust their perception by your communication. Is not the best marketing something that time and time again makes the customer herself realize matters that are important or relevant to her and that demonstrates that the best way to move forward is with the help of the marketer? Isn't this what pull is really about?

Why is a mindset important then? It helps to have consistent thinking, action and communication. On my office wall, next to my business mantra, I'm sticking Godfather marketing. Also what Godin and Pocock are telling fits perfectly with Kevin "Lovemarks" Roberts' ideas of Mystery in succesful marketing - don't tell everything, leave room for imagination and realizations.. or in Godfather's case, pure fear!

Fax marketing aka Fax-a-spam Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 15:48, in Labels: fax marketing, seth godin, sustainability

In the hustle and bustle of the office, the fax machine beeps and whirrs. A fax has arrived. And also, it seems, a full-fledged marketing effort. Are you kidding me?

My office receives a couple of feebly targeted faxed marketing messages every quarter. Unsurprisingly, they mainly come from companies promoting their own fax marketing service. The latest I noticed on the trash bin was from yesterday. I was baffled. Fax marketing, it’s not an urban legend?

Similar to email marketing, fax marketers praise their low cost (only 3.5 eurocents per sent fax!), huge reach (fax numb.. *cough* contact details of over 100 000 companies!) and ability to target specific segments. Give me a break.

In the era of email.. ah nevermind, since the era of dinosaurs only few decision-makers have had their own fax numbers. Most companies, my clients for example, easily survive with one faceless company fax number which is monitored by an assistant/lobby clerk/other non-decision maker. With this in mind, how can these firms claim to have any ability to reach anyone their customers seek? In essence their business could be sending emails to companies’ info@company.com mail address. Granted, someone could actually read their fax, but if I was contemplating fax marketing I wouldn’t risk irritating my customer.

And talk about wasting resources. First of all, printing consumes electricity and paper and wears the machine. And a fax marketer isn’t consuming anyone’s paper (without permission!) He’s consuming his customer’s paper (1.5 eurocents a piece thankyouverymuch). Seth Godin would have a stroke. I’m having a stroke, between laughs. Fax marketing really isn’t 21st Century and it sure isn’t a part of any aspiration to sustainability.

So next time you receive a faxed, undesired marketing message, please remember to recycle the paper.

Facebook, steal this idea! Posted by Tomi Heikkinen , Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 17:25, in Labels: amazon, facebook, ideas, seth godin, web marketing

Amazon has the great recommendation feature that they have developed over the years. As their customer, I've found it very useful and helpful as it makes it easier for me to find new interesting music and books while browsing their site, based on my previous purchases and browsing history.

Now Facebook is a free web service and I sincerely hope they continue it that way. However, Facebook needs a steady cash-flow to support its business, so naturally web marketing is their key source of income.

What I'm suggesting is that Facebook offers service providers like Amazon a possibility to extend the helpful information over to its own website - for example, while browsing Facebook, I would be seeing reminders of upcoming books and music and some recommendations provided by Amazon. Naturally, I'd been approached by either Amazon or Facebook (the latter perhaps) previously and asked, whether I would be kind enough to allow Amazon and Facebook to exchange my user data (some "Seth Godinian" permission marketing there), so that Facebook is able publish marketing information drawn from the correct Amazon user's database.

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16th of July 2009 update:

Paul Dunay innovates similar Facebook/Amazon co-operation in MarketingProfs Daily Fix, check it out!