paul@paulmisner.com

I am a big fan of Vital Smarts books, training, and CD’s. Their first book, Crucial Conversations, contains essential skills needed for success working with other people. It was only later in my studies that I realized that Vital Smarts borrowed liberally from the world of non-violent communications studies.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/mH3Z4ME6TBUY2/ref=ent_fb_link

I wasn’t as enthused about the second book, (Crucial Confrontations), but felt it was worthwhile nontheless. I view it as a supplement to Crucial Conversations, which focuses mostly on the having conversations when there is a confrontation at stake.

Well, I’m extremely happy to say that Vital Smarts new book, Influencer – The Power to Change Anything, is not an example of the law of diminishing returns. This book is arguably the best thing coming out of Vital Smarts.

This book is a study of what works in the field of Influence, and borrows from social and positive psychology, management, sociology, and non-violent communications. The folks from Vital Smarts borrow from everybody, but come up with something that is cohesive, unique, and effective.

Mixed in with the data, are numerous examples and case studies that serve not only clarify the content, but make the book an easy read as well.

This book is a must read, (or a must listen to), if you want to understand the tools to make change in your life, your company, and your world. Whether you’re trying to lose weight or reduce disease progression in an impoverished country, Influencer has something for you.

www.vitalsmarts.com

Communications, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Sales

I went to the book store to get my latest basketful of business CD’s. Almost as a joke, I picked up Robert Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule.  I’ve worked with difficult people in the past, and hear stories from friends of mine inside and outside the industry about difficult people, including staff, coworkers, spouses, and others.  I thought that this would be fun, and as Fat Albert says, “If I wasn’t careful, I might learn something, too”.

I did have fun, and I did learn something too.  Sutton gives an overview of how assholes affect business, from a human relations, legal liability, operational cost, and in terms of loss sales and employee turnover. He does this using examples that are sickening, amazing, and (with the passage of time and no personal involvement) humorous as well.

These examples are also educational. Sutton gives a number of good tactics towards eliminating and disempowering the asshole. Sutton provides a number of good ways for companies and groups to avoid even hiring a difficult person.

Finally, Sutton steps into what is arguably dangerous territory. He talks about the positive side of the asshole, and turning on the inner asshole inside you.

The audio book is not without flaws. I didn’t think that the reader’s vocal temperment and pacing were in line with what Sutton was teaching. It just sounded a little bombastic to me.  I felt that Sutton should have addressed more the dilemma of dealing with an asshole you have no power to get rid of, asshole management, I guess.

Finally, it might not be an appropriate book to listen to when traveling with passengers occupying booster seats in your car.  So buy it, and put on those headphones.

How To, Leadership, Management

It was getting bad; the competition was kicking my ass. Not in terms of closing business, but in getting to my customers before me. Their product truly is a piece of crap compared to mine.
Then I lost one. My first loss ever to this competitor in head to head competition.  Damn, what a slap in the face, even though they came in $150K less than me.
It was time to change my game. I realized that I was partially distracted by a string of interviews with a Fortune 5 company. I wasn’t crazy about the job, but thought that the management was great, and the company fantastic. But I really think that the company I work at now is in the midst of an exciting and challenging time.  That’s more important to me than the money, and I’m happy to say that the money has always come with me.
So, the first thing to change was the mindset. I may have a shitload of people over me, that have more power than me, and more access to resources than me, and it made sense to ask them for help. But that wasn’t enough; I had to respond to my competition in a way that was scalable, focused and fast.
First, I cancelled my interviews with the other company. I needed to focus on this mission and this mission solely.
Then I developed a philosophy. Many of you have read that book, “The Four Hour Work Week”. Sounds great to have your little businesses going “ca ching ca ching” all in chorus while you’re in Fiji contemplating your navel.   Yeah, dream on.

What the book did teach was a philosophy. Get rid of worthless stuff. Set up processes, automate, and/or outsource the disagreeable or less profitable tasks to others.  Do what makes money, and what I like to do.
So instead of a 4 hour workweek, I’m working a 400 hour work week. I’m leveraging a number of different resources to speed up my impact including:

• PHPList- an open source email tool.
• Jblast- Fax broadcast service.
• Callfire – automated dialing service.
• A Web developer and virtual assistant I picked up from getafreelancer.com

The Internet has made these power tools very inexpensive.  PHPList is a free email  tool that I use from a $6.95/month web site hosted at siteground.com. The program is literally installed with a mouse click.Jblast charges between 6 and 12 cents per page faxed, and Callfire charges 3.9 cents a minute.
I can play like the big guys, and still get it under the radar on my expense account. Stay tuned. Over the next few days, I’ll give you my experience with each of these products and services.

How To, Sales, Time Management

What do great businesses in common? What do bad businesses forget to do? In their book, What Really Works- the 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success, the authors Joyce, Nohria, and Roberson analyzed data from hundreds of different companies. Using total return to shareholders as a results, the “Evergreen” project as it was called identified 8 factors of successful businesses.

In order for a business to have sustained success they needed to exhibit all of the first four, and two of the last four, hence the 4+2 formula in the subtitle.

The four mandatory factors are:

1) Strategy- Devise and maintain a clearly focused strategy

2) Execution- Develop and maintain flawless operational executution

3) Culture- Develop and maintain a performance-oriented culture

4) Structure- Build and maintain a fast, flexible, flat organization

The four optional (remember, you only need two) catagories are.

1) Talent: hold on to talented employees and find more

2) Leadership: keep leaders and directors committed to the business

3) Innovation: Make innovations tha tare industry transforming

4) Mergers and Partnerships: Make growth happen with mergers and partnerships.

One of the problems that I have with some of these management books is that they shoot their wad after the second chapter, the one that outlines the book. The value of this book after the second chapter is arguably less that the outline, but the case studies of both good and bad companies are interesting, well written, and reinforce the premise of the book.

I think one could argue about total value returned to shareholders being the paramount sign of a good company, especially when one looks short term. The authors had to pick something, and I think it was a good enough factor, that was easy to define.

I also know that this book isn’t a panacea. Like every other business book, this one will chaffe with age. I do think it reinforces some basics, and I think it merits reading.

If you’re in Columbia,MD, get a copy cheap. Daedalus Books in Columbia had it in stock for $4.98

Customer Service, Sales

I’ve been interested in CRM since my days as a Police Officer/Student at the University of Pennsylvania Police Department. While in school, I worked in development of a members database for the Musician’s Union Local in Phila, and for my independent study at school, developed a client management system for the Victim Support Unit at the Police Department.

My career in sales furthered this interest. I became an avid Act! user, and was such a good beta tester for the company, that I usually didn’t have to pay for the software.

Act had a substantial change in 2005, moving to a relational database structure. What I thought would be a great change turned out to actually make the program unusable. Using the .NET framework made the new Act! slower than ever before.

I felt like an orphan, and didn’t know what to do. The lack of a good CRM really was hurting my productivity.

I tried a number of different options, including Prophet (too slow with a large number of users), and Microsoft Business Contact Manager 1.0 (pretty much the same quality as any 1.0 MS product). I was still at a loss to find something that worked for me.

A friend of mine, Haroon Khalid, told me about an opensource product called SugarCRM. I took a look at it, and it showed promise. It was a blatant Salesforce.com rip, which I considered a plus, having worked with the product in the past.

In order to install SugarCRM, I figured that I had to install MySQL, PHP, Apache, and the Sugar code on my laptop myself. Ok, it would take a couple of hours, but I have experience, and I knew I could do it. WRONG! It was much, much easier. There is a project called SugarSPIKE which installs Sugar and all the additional programs in less that 10 minutes. I was up and running.

The product is fantastic, very, very, stable, and bugs are minimal after the first patch. (Warning about point releases, wait until the first patch comes out.)  There is an additional software product, available for a fee, that connects with MS Outlook.

The OpenSource version of the product lacks the reporting and quoting functions that I would need to give this a full OK. They are available in the full version, some third party products, or you can do as I did, and hook the database up to access with an ODBC driver. I’d gladly shell out the money for the full version of the product, but the folks at Sugar will only take a 5 license purchase.

Sales

If the US auto industry wants to save themselves, they might want to take lessons from Soutwest Airlines. That’s right, SWA. Why, because much of the things that GM does is exactly the opposite of what Southwest does, and that’s why we don’t have any loyalty.

So what could a car company do to make themselves “the Southwest of Cars”.

Trim a product line down to 2 cars: A sedan and a station wagon. Keep everything else the same. A simple engine with a decent amount of power, a decent radio (put a headphone input jack in), and a nice quality inside. Don’t offer options on mechanics, and offer options on trim that are fairly priced.

The Internet changed the way that the buying process worked for the auto industry. The average buyer is aware of how much the car should cost them. But we’re still in the dark on repairs. That’s wrong. Let’s make the diagnostic and repair pricing process open, affordable, and transparant.

I know that what I want is not what everybody wants. Some folks like to fly First Class rather than to deal with Southwest’s fair and democratic seating arrangement. I’m just giving a business model that could make the auto companies get new business.

Hopefully, someone will hear this, and they will have me as a customer for life.

Customer Service

My usual rotation for reading follows a pattern of a business book, a religious book, and something else. Last time around, I was a little burned out on business books, so I went to the bookstore with the thought of getting a book that has some valuable insights, but is also a lot of fun to read.I ended up buying a copy of “It’s Called Work for a Reason”, by Larry Winget. Larry is a self- proclaimed “irritational speaker”, who gets in the readers’ face by pontifacting on things that you and I already know, and maybe are guilty of ignoring.
Some of Larry’s thoughts:

• Teamwork doesn’t work. Being a successful manager involves making stars out of your employees..
• You aren’t being paid to enjoy your job. You’re being paid to work.
• You’re responsible for your own results.

It sounds pretty simple, and it is, but Larry reinforces a good work ethic in a straight forward, humorous fashion, that I found very refreshing.

If you want a quick read, that will make you better at what you do, I’d suggest you take a look at Larry’s book.

Uncategorized

Once a year or so, I unsubscribe to everything email. Newsletters, marketing, things I want, things I don’t want. It doesn’t matter, it’s a purge, a way to get things in my inbox back in order.

This year, I’ve only had a bad experience with one company, and to my surprise, it was ZD-NET.   Their emails keep coming, and coming, and coming, like the Terminator.

So, I sent a nice email out to  Jason Young, CEO at Ziff-Davis pubishing.

Jason,

I know this is not intentional on the part of your teams, but ZD has grown so much that when it comes to email, you are a victim of your own success.

Half of my inbox was being filled up with your publications, and despite multiple what appeared to be successful attempts to unsubscribe, I’m still getting them.

I’m a reader, I know that ZD frequently rallies against this type of issue. Could you have someone on your team investigate the issue, and see what’s going on?

Thanks

Paul Misner

I didn’t get a response from anyone on Jason’s staff, but I did have the Web Buyer’s Guides Stop coming, but other email from Ziff Davis keeps coming and coming and coming.  At least 5 more since I wrote this letter.

The Can SPAM act requires

that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a “menu” of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

Ziff-Davis has been made aware that this is a problem, yet they are not addressing it.   What’s up??

Note: Class Action Attorneys, count me out. I don’t want a free subscription to PC World for 2 months, while you collect a big settlement.

Customer Service, Marketing

I started writing this article shortly after being locked in an airplane on a runway for 2 hours. The first draft was noticeably more negative than I normally am. So, here is the much calmer second draft.

I’m a salesperson. I love it. But I’m also a customer too. And sometimes, I’m a very difficult customer.

Sometimes I don’t live up to my own high standards. I try to achieve perfection in my profession, but it’s an unreachable goal. I’m human, but that doesn’t stop me from everyday trying to do my best.

Ocassionaly, when I write an article like this, I’ll get an anonymous message from someone who has some complaint about my past service. Please, don’t be anonymous. Let me know what I’ve done, and we’ll see if together, we can make it right.

OK, so here are 10 things that any salesperson, or any company can do to raise your chances of keeping me as a customer.

1) If I call you, Ms. Salesperson, and you are not at your office, don’t leave a voicemail telling me to call you on your cell phone. Please forward your calls. (The technology is only 10 years old or so, so pick it up).Anytime a customer wants to talk to me, it’s important. Important enough that I forward my calls. If I don’t answer your call, just leave voicemail. I’m with another customer, if it’s during business hours. One number to call: 877-VPNDude (876-3833). It’s simple to remember too.

2) If, Big Company, you have me on hold, please refrain from having a taped recording that tells me how great your company is, and don’t use that message to try to sell me anything. Each minute I’m on hold is a minute that I’m thinking about taking my business elsewhere. If your company was really great, someone would answer my call. I know that sometimes you are slammed, so at the very least, play music. I can then put you on speakerphone, and get some work done while you finish up with the other customers.

3) Please know what makes you different from the competition, Mr. Salesperson.

A lot of my competition doesn’t read my website. Don’t worry, I’m reading theirs. I know all about what they’re doing. I know where I’m better than them, and I know where they’re gaining on me. I know their financial picture and what the analysts are saying about them. If you want to know about my competitors, call me. I’d be happy to give you a brain dump.

4) Read my website. Google my company. Don’t ask me what I do.

I do my homework. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to spend time with you, and I like being prepared. I check your website, Google your company, and Google your name.

5) Please don’t leave me a voicemail without your phone number, Mr. Salesperson. I don’t have my phone book handy all the time, but I will have your message.

If number my competitor does that to you, remember that my phone number is easy to remember- 877-VPNDude. If they send you an email, and it doesn’t have their number, again call me, the number is 877-VPNDude.

6) Please don’t arrive consistently late for meetings, Ms. Salesperson Most of us live and commute in DC traffic, and we know that even the best of us will, sometimes, hit a snag. Many of us have kids, and they get bloody noses or fall just when we’re just getting ready to leave for the call. It happens, but not every time.

I give myself one hour before my first appointment in DC in the morning. If I’m running late, 95% of the time, it’s because my earlier appointment is running late. I’ll call you if that happens.

7) If you want to sell me something by conference call or Webex, please don’t be late. If I have a team of people on a call, and I’m waiting for a salesperson, it’s costing my company a lot of money.

I am on a conference call 5 minutes before it begins, and 10 minutes before a Webex begins. If I’m not on time, it means that my last customer call has run late. I’ll do anything in my power to let you know that.

If you don’t love your product, or your job, please don’t bother to call me, Ms. Salesperson.

I have never taken a job with a company whose products I did not love. Here’s why. Because I’d know I’d stink at it, and I’d waste my time and your time, and maybe do irreparable damage to my relationship with you. I’ve worked with products that were difficult to sell, that I couldn’t sell, but I believed in them, and still do.

And sales… I love it. I love getting on the phone, calling you, educating you, having you educate me, writing emails, doing my newsletter and website. I work a whole lot, but have unbelievable freedom at the same time. My job uses all my creativity, I never run out of things to learn, and I get to talk to my true bosses, YOU, everyday.

9) Fight like a madmen internally for me, when I have a problem. That’ll keep me as a customer.

I learned this one the hard way, and it won’t ever happen again. I had a customer, the World Bank, who I absolutely loved to work with, but who was having some problems with the product I was working with. My customer at the World Bank knows more about Linux and Unix than probably 95% of us, and he probably knew more about my products than most of my first tier engineers at the time. He had a problem that I escalated to the head of support, who just sat on it, and sat on it, even though I called a couple of times to follow up. By the time I was able to get an engineer to help him, it was too late. I lost the customer

World Bank, I can’t tell you how bad I felt losing you, but I can tell you that I’ll never lay down for anyone when I’m representing a customer.

That being said, I’ve been extremely excited about the responsiveness I’ve seen from Product Management, and Technical Support since I’ve joined Websense. They all know me, I think I’ve only had to shout once.10) Please don’t waste my time, Mr. Salesperson, trying to sell products that don’t work for my organization.Guess what? I am always trying to find a reason that I can’t sell to you. I’ll let my product managers know that reason, and if they can’t or don’t want to fix it, I’ll be the first one in the conference room who says good-bye. And if I’m in that conference room, you better believe that I’ve done everything before my first call to you to see if I can’t sell to you.and the bonus…11) Put yourself in my shoes once in a while, Ms. Salesperson. Download your demos, try your own products, and take notes. Let your inside team know the problems, and try to get them fixed.

Customer Service, Sales

The Internet is a very large and somewhat intimidating environment. With well over 60 million pages on the Internet, and with the Fortune 500 pouring millions of dollars in Internet advertising and paid placement, the adage. “If you build it, they will come”, simply is not true.

The true currency of the Internet is information. That’s what users are looking for, and if you provide end users with valuable information for your targeted group, and organize your website so that search engines will give you a high placement, then you will get the audience that you desire. Money may help in getting placed on the Internet, but intelligent information is still is of greater value to the search engines, and by definition will always need to be so. If a search engine takes a user primarily to sponsored sites of little value, the user will most likely find an alternative search method.

Search Engine Optimization

A search engine optimization (SEO) plan should be a part of any web marketing strategy. A business can pay tens of thousands of dollars for a search engine consultant, but it is not necessary. There are a number of free and low-cost tools out there to do analysis for you. Combined with hard work and a bit of ingenuity, you can find yourself in the prime time search engine space, the top 20 of Google, MSN, Yahoo or Ask.

Throughout this article, I will use the example of a typical hardcover book to draw analogies to what search engines are looking for.

What are you about?

And who do you want to reach? You wouldn’t try to write a book without a theme, and you shouldn’t have a website without a theme. Your theme is the mission for your site, and should be consistent with your overall marketing and sales plan. You should frame your mission in the following way.

I wish to provide my readers with information on _______________________ and I will receive __________________.

The first portion of this statement is what you are giving. If you provide nothing of value, then a searcher or a search engine probably won’t arrive at your site. The phrase “unique value proposition” gets thrown around these days, but in this case the phrase is entirely appropriate. The more unique and valuable the information you provide is, the greater the chance you’ll be placed higher on a search engine.

The second portion lists what outcomes you want. Your goal for a business site should ultimately provide some financial value. An objective like “raised brand awareness” is only a partial objective. “Raised brand awareness which will ease my access into major accounts and result in more, faster, and better sales,” is a much more complete mission.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are equivalent to the keywords a library database would have about a book. Once you have your mission down, you should be able to further break down the information topics you provide into keywords. These keywords should be added as Meta tags to your website. Meta tags should reflect precisely what information your site provides. You should keep your metatags at a limit of 300 characters.

Title Analysis

The name of your website is probably more equivalent to a title of a book, but a website also has a title. This website title is the subtitle of your site, and will be used by the search engines to categorize your site. A title should be relevant to your site and also your geography, if you do business in a certain area. For example, you should be “Washington, D.C.’s number one ad agency” if that is your market.

Robots

A robot, or crawler, is used by a search engine to read your site. You should check and see if robots can read your entire site, except for those areas that you don’t want the search engines to crawl. There are tools to do this mentioned below.

Keyword density

When a search engine’s robot reads a site, it is looking for a percentage of keywords that are the same or similar to each other. While in normal writing it’s good to mix things up, on the Internet consistency is the rule of the day. Try to have 4%-7% of your content using the keyword topics. Don’t overdue it, the search engine bots will flag your site for keyword spamming. A good rule of thumb is just to mentally focus on your keywords while you write your content. Much of the time, this conscious focus will be all it takes to get you in the correct range.

Backlinks

When you pick up a book at a book store, you probably look for the reviews on a dust jacket. There are probably a number of quick one-liners on the back from other famous authors. If a book merits a thumbs up from another author whose work you enjoy, it is more likely you’ll pick up the book.

Backlinks work in much the same fashion. Search engine robots are looking for sites that are connected to you. Each site that is connected to you has a relative rating or value placed upon it by the search engines. Your placement is largely based upon the relative value of the other sites and the number of sites backlinked to you.

Authority Sites

When a site is deemed authoritative by a search engine, it receives higher rankings in terms of site value. A link from an authoritative site is a great way to raise your value on a search engine. It’s even better to become an authoritative site. Groups such as trade organizations, museums, or industry publications seem to be deemed authoritative more often than ordinary sites.

Tools and other sites

There are a number of tools that you can use to analyze your site for search engine optimization. Some of the best are free.

You can get some great tools for free from: www.fromshawn.com . Shawn Pringle is an excellent Internet marketer in his own right, and he’s giving away some of the best tools on the market for search engine optimization. Shawn is just a fantastic guy, and he’s a pleasure to do business with. I also love his shareware PR Prowler tool.

The Google toolbar provides a great resource for quickly looking at page rankings.

I have a good, very low cost hosting provider, www.siteground.com. The free SEO tools that they offer are to me worth the cost of signing up for a website, even if you don’t use it. A year of service at Siteground is $6.95 a month, which includes their free SEO tools.

Last but not least, check out www.seochat.com . In my opinion, it is the most definitive site devoted to search engine optimization.

You shouldn’t expect results overnight, and in fact you should be planning your SEO strategy to start bearing fruit in six to nine months. It’s been rumored that Google “sandboxes” new sites for up to nine months to keep them out of top rankings, so be patient.

Snake Oil SEO

I was asked recently by a friend if doing SEO could get her in trouble with the search engines. The answer is “NO” if you use ethical techniques like the ones described above. You are actually helping the search engines improve their ability to find information by using these techniques.

Beware of the “SEO Snake Oil Salesmen” who promise top placements in days for a fee. These are equivalent to “get rich” schemes. They frequently involve using tactics that could get you in trouble with the search engine providers. The only way to get a better placement is to follow the rules, and provide legitimate value.

Search Engine Optimization is a science, but it’s not rocket science. If you use the tools available to you as well as some ingenuity and hard work, you will move your website into the forefront, and you will make your business more successful.

Marketing