Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Blog recommendations for sales people

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Since PR is apparently passe (link found on Burningbird) and marketing is a dirty word, I figured I go for broke today and write about the third topic area of this blog, sales. Because, hey, sales  is probably the only corporate function that gets dumped on more than PR and marketing 🙂 As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Right now, I am working on the first issue of a newsletter of sales/marketing tips for my client GuideMark. GuideMark specializes in CRM for banks. Central to the value proposition for CRM is that it will help the bank improve its sales process. The newsletter is an additional tool in the toolkit (or weapon in the arsenal if you prefer the Art of War metaphor). It will be distributed to our clients’ sales people as well as prospects and anyone else who chooses to sign up on the Website.

The newsletter is written for the line of business sales person. It must be short, so they’ll read  the first issue, and value laden, so they’ll read the second.  Sales people are busy folks — on the road,  meeting prospects, solving customer problems, closing business. They don’t have a lot of time to spare for business reading unless it directly helps them get the job done.

It also looks like they don’t spend too much time writing blogs either. A Technorati search on the tag ‘sales’ delivers mostly marketing and PR blogs, including this one in 8th place. Now, I’m barely a Technorati blip in my main business areas of marketing and PR. There are lots and lots of marketing and PR bloggers, and since I don’t worry too much about my ranking, I don’t expect to be terribly high.**

The fact that this blog ranks that highly for ‘sales’  is a clear indication (to me) that there are not too many folks blogging about sales issues. Lots of Websites selling sales training and professional development but not many blogs. Combining this little bit of data with what I already know about the sales process, I will guess that there aren’t too many sales folks reading business blogs either.  But there is a lot of information in blogs that really could help our mortgage account executive and small business banker clients. So we are going to have a regular feature that covers valuable free online resources. And rather than just a list of resources, or a blog description, we are going to link the reader directly to a specific post or page that will provide immediate value.

Here’s the first article:

Online Resources that Help You Sell

Let’s face it. There is a lot of sales “stuff” online, and much of it isn’t worth the time it takes to read it. Or it is just trying to sell you something, and you don’t have time for that. You need to be on the phone, on the road, talking to customers, closing business.

So we’ll help you cut through the clutter. Every issue, we will introduce you to some online resources worth your time. And if you have a site or a blog that you find useful, please send it our way.

This issue, we have two blogs to tell you about:

Guy Kawasaki’s Bona tempura volvantur. One of the original Apple evangelists, Kawasaki is now a venture capitalist and author of a number of well known business books. His blog is fairly new, and chock full of advice, some taken from his previously published works, some new. All useful. One recent post worth checking out: The Art of Sucking Down.  How to get people on your side, for the reservation, the upgrade, the access to your prospect. Follow his advice and your life will get easier.

Selling to Big Companies blog, by Jill Konrath. Even though Konrath’s focus is on the high ticket sale, her advice is good for most B2B sales situations. One of her most useful posts, from last December is Why this voicemail failed. She gives some great tips on how to leave a voice mail that just might get a call back.

And on the topic of voicemail, if there is a decent chance that the person you are calling might actually remember you, leave your phone number in the very beginning part of the message. “Hi, this is Susan Getgood from GuideMark 978-555-1212…” and then proceed with the rest of the message. That way, if the person is busy and doesn’t have time to listen to your whole message, she quickly has your callback number and can delete the message.

I’d love your feedback on this feature as well as any recommendations for blogs we should cover.

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** Special note to my readers and commenters: I may not have quantity in my readership, but you guys are definitely quality. Thanks!

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Les blogs francais (French blogs)

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This morning, I received the most delightful email from new PR blogger Philippe Cherel announcing his blog, PR.ojet Z, and thanking a number of PR bloggers (myself included, merci Philippe) for inspiring him in his blog endeavor.

He also mentions the same list in his inaugural public post today. Lucky for us though, he has been blogging away for about three months and has a nice collection of posts for us to dig into!

Inspired by a student in my recent blog workshop who asked if most blogs were in English, I had recently decided that it was time to expand my blog horizons beyond English language blogs.  Since the only other language I speak (relatively) fluently is French, PR.ojet Z  fits nicely into my daily reading and hopefully will help me brush up on my business vocabulary. Last time I lived in France for any length of time was the early 80s, well before the "PC revolution." And I was a student, so my day-to-day vocabulary is (was) decent but I really don’t have a great grasp on professional and tech terms.

The other French language blog I am reading regularly  is "De Quoi Je Me M.E.L." the blog of Michel Edouard Leclerc, the head of French supermarket/hypermarket group E. Leclerc. The name of his blog is great — both his initials and a play on words. The verb "meler"  in the form above roughly translates to: "What I meddle with." In English, we’d probably say, what I stick my nose into. And Leclerc definitely pulls no punches in his opinions. For candor, his US counterpart is probably Mark Cuban, although they talk about very different things. Leclerc also doesn’t strike me (at least so far) as a ranter, which Cuban can be from time to time.

UPDATE 4/2: I am getting slammed with porno trackbacks to this post, so both trackbacks and comments have been closed. Sorry. Send me an email if you have a comment or a link and I will add it manually.

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Great blogging advice from Stowe Boyd

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You don’t need to be following the Dave Winer-Rogers Cadenhead RSS scrap to get tremendous value from Stowe Boyd’s advice about Personality, Persona, and the Personal and Private in this post.

His advice is spot-on for new and A-Z list bloggers alike, especially the part about personal and private information. If it is personal and private, don’t blog it. Once you blog it, it is public information, and the public can use it any way they please. Even if you don’t like it.

In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t start a blog years ago. I messed around with Blogger a bit when it first came out, but I had absolutely no interest in blogging about my personal life, which is what most blogs seemed to be in the early days. We already had a Web site where we posted family pictures (pre Flickr and other photo sharing sites, folks). Going into detail about my life had ZERO interest for me.

It wasn’t until I started my consulting business in 2004, and was looking for an outlet for my thoughts on sales, marketing and PR, that I turned back to blogging and started the Roadmap. Now, I occasionally share personal nuggets here about my son, my dogs, my interests and my family, but these bits of info are just atmosphere. They perhaps give you a better sense of who I am, but the blog is still about marketing, PR and blogging. Not about me.

So think before you post: am I revealing something here that goes beyond my comfort zone? Will I regret it in the morning? This is particularly important (as reported in this week’s BusinessWeek  You Are What You Post) when you are writing something that doesn’t put you in the best possible light.  You, your friends, potential employers or clients, possible dates and mates, and your Mum and Dad will be seeing that post for years to come.

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Grab Bag: Business Blogging in Wisconsin, World Water Day and Dr. Who

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Last week was my trip to the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee to present my Business Blogging 101 Workshop (full day format) at  the UWM School of Business Center for Technology Innovation. The hospitality of the faculty hosts was superb, the room was terrific and the audience totally engaged. I enjoyed most of my trip. Especially dinner at Mader’s German restaurant the evening before the seminar. YUM.

The only bad part? And the reason why this blog has been silent all weekend, a time I normally post? Around two in the afternoon on Friday, I got really sick. Flu sick. The kind of sick where you want to curl up and die sick. I toughed it out and finished the seminar (a bit early) and dragged myself to the airport to wait for the flight home. But I was not a pretty sight, trust me. I didn’t get home until midnight, and it took most of the weekend to get my equilibrium back. So I went ‘net-less until I checked email late yesterday afternoon.

What did I do instead? Besides sleep you mean? I read an absolutely terrific book, Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. It’s the legend of the Grail, but told from a female perspective, with dual storylines, one modern, one medieval. I highly recommend it. Think about it — it was so good, I didn’t miss my blog reading….

It must be a Grail period for me — tomorrow we are going to see Spamalot. From the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous!

To a more serious matter: World Water Day, March 22, 2006. Brought to my attention by blog buddy Yvonne DiVita. Yvonne has always helped me get the word out about charities I have been involved with, and I am more than pleased to be able to return the favor, and for such a worthy cause to boot!

Some facts from  WaterPartners International, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping fight unsafe and inadequate water supplies.

  • In 1992, the UN General Assembly designated March 22 as “World Water Day” to draw international attention to the critical lack of clean, safe drinking water worldwide.
  • The Global water crisis is the leading cause of death and disease in the world, taking the lives of more than 14,000 people each day, 11,000 of whom are children under age 5.
  • The average distance that women in Africa and Asia walk to collect water is 6 kilometers. More than 200 million hours are spent every day by women and girls walking to collect water from distant, often polluted sources—time that could be better spent on more productive endeavors such as work and school.

Why hasn’t this problem been solved? Mostly because people just aren’t aware of the crisis. Those with the money to help aren’t touched by it.  In the developed world, the biggest water shortage we typically face is whether we can water our lawns in the summer. We buy water at the store, to which we drive in our cars….

And with my most cynical hat on, it’s about water, women and children, not oil and WMDs…. It just doesn’t get the play, in our politics or our policy, that the more macho issues do. 

So we need to make people aware. I urge you to check out the WaterPartners Web site. Their common-sense approach seems to be making a difference. Make a donation if you can. Blog about World Water Day. Help spread the word however you can. Even if you just tell one other person.

Because we can do without a lot of things in this world. Safe drinking water is NOT one of them.

And after you do a good thing, treat yourself to the new Dr. Who!!! Yes, the good doctor is back, in his 9th incarnation. The new series debuted last year on the BBC and now US viewers can see the episodes on Sci-Fi channel. Premiere was last Friday, with 2 episodes, Rose and The End of the World,  but it’s Sci-Fi — if you (or your TIVO) missed it, the shows will repeat two or three times before the next new episode this Friday.

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