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All-Time Great Books on Sales

August 31, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

als het me nu nog niet lukt!

I know nothing about sales, at least not the formal sales methods used by the pro’s; I readily admit that. I am, however, very good at selling things. So it makes perfect sense to me that reading some of the best sales books ever written should have some positive impact on my sales abilities.

I had no idea what books to try to read, so I did an experiment. I went to Quora, posed the question, and waited a few months to get a decent amount of responses. The Quora community was even nice enough to summarize the answers and choose the top recommendations. Here are the results.

Top 5 Sales Books (as recommended by Quora users)

 Next Up

Now I want to read each these books and see what I can learn from each and put into practice. I don’t do a lot of direct selling, but I’m hoping the principles will be generic enough to apply to the online startup world.

Your List?

What are your top sales books? What advice have you learned from the book(s) or do you have about sales in general? Comments welcome!

Image credit: Frans & all on Flickr

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Why You Should Ignore Bad Press

August 9, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

042810Pave-11

Time for a little against the grain advice. The common response to bad press and criticism now is to face it head on, own up to the problem, take responsibility, and be as transparent as possible. The utopian approach is all well and good, but I believe that in many situations the proper response is to simply ignore the bad press and criticism.

Don’t Validate the small issues

Any time that you (your company) responds to a criticism you are validating it. If there is a criticism that is definitively unfounded then it’s OK to say that, but if the criticism is valid then the best response, at least initially, is to ignore. When you make a public response to a criticism you are validating the issue and giving the party making the allegation all the power. Unless the criticism is coming from an outlet with a huge following then ignoring will usually lead to the problem just going away.

Here’s an example: If your app has a bug that’s being discussed on a forum then you should work as quickly as possible to fix the problem, without trying to join the conversation. Once you fix the problem the forum’s users will see that and the tone of the conversation will change. They will suspect that you’ve heard their complaint and addressed the issue, but they won’t be sure. For all they know it could’ve been a temporary issue or something maintenance related. If the issue continues to spread to other forums, blogs, or social channels then it may be time to start rolling out the public relations campaign to respond The goal is to act quickly to resolve the issue to keep it from ever reaching the masses in the first place.

This Isn’t Always The Solution

If you have an issue that’s gaining widespread attention then you should immediately seek to gain control of the issue. If there’s a bug to be fixed then fix it and respond. If you have a business practice that others are maligning (right or wrong) then you should wait a couple of days, and if the issue is still there, you should formally respond. It’s OK to defend yourself. In today’s uber-politically-correct world people forget that they actually have the right to defend themselves. You don’t have to just sit back and take the criticism. If you want to fight the allegations then you absolutely should do that.

Bringing It Home

What’s your response when you start receiving bad press? Do you immediately respond? I’d love to hear your experiences!

Image credit: HPUPhotogStudent on Flickr

Filed Under: CEO, Marketing, Misc, Tips and Tools · Tagged With: , ,

Utilizing Evangelists To Promote Your Campaigns

June 29, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Evangelist

I’ve written before about how to find your evangelists. Evangelists are a truly powerful weapon for marketing your company. They are your most passionate fans and will gladly help you spread your message. The next step is to use those evangelists to help in your marketing efforts, whether it’s announcing a promotion or generating publicity.

Preparing Your Campaign

First, you have to prepare your medium for communicating with them. There are a couple of ways to keep in touch, depending on how many evangelists you identify. You can send them emails personally, or put them in a small mailing list and work off of that. I typically lean toward the mailing list option because it’s just a little quicker for the number of evangelists that I manage.

Next, come up with your first evangelist campaign and set some goals for what you’d like to achieve. This could be anything related to marketing your company. Promotions work particularly well, but so do membership drives and social media pushes.

Then, work on the email campaign that you’ll send to your evangelists. Be open and honest with them about what you want to achieve and what you’d like for them to do. Be as specific as possible. If you want them to promote a link, be sure to give them the exact link. If you want them to promote a sale you’re having then give them examples of the text that you’d like them to use. This isn’t to say that your evangelists can’t interject their own thoughts or opinions on your product into their actions.

Finally, launch the campaign and measure the results. If you’ve given specific enough instructions to your affiliates then you should be able to fairly easily measure your success.

Once your campaign has ended you should thank your evangelists profusely. They are working on behalf or your company – usually for no compensation.

Maintaining Your Evangelists

Over time you’ll see that some evangelists don’t do what you have asked as much as others. This is completely fine, it’s their choice, but as a marketer it’s your responsibility to replace them on the list with a better candidate. I’ve noticed that over the course of several campaigns I’ve had several customers actually ask to become evangelists, so there’s always the opportunity to grow your list or to prune and regrow your list.

Have you actively tried to identify and utilize your company’s evangelists to help with marketing efforts? What has worked or not work for you?

Image Credit: WarmSleepy on Flickr

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How To Find Your Company’s Evangelists

May 16, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Branded

Every company has evangelists — customers that fully believe in the service that you’re providing and will gladly do their part to help promote it for little or no compensation. Evangelists will post talk about you Facebook and Twitter, they’ll mention your company to their friends and family, and they’ll talk about you in forums and blogs. These super-customers are the best possible marketers for your company, much better than anyone you could ever hire. Identifying these customers is absolutely critical in today’s world of social media dominance and word of mouth marketing.

5 Tips For Finding Your Evangelists

1. Review your email campaigns.

Email service providers like Mailchimp provide pretty decent statistics about which of the users on your mailing lists are actually opening your messages and clicking your links. Specifically in Mailchimp you’ll want to look for 4 and 5 star users. These are the users who are most engaged with you and your message. If you have a lot of 4/5 star users then you can just focus on 5 stars. This will vary a bit depending on how many contacts you have in your lists and the amount of interaction that you get. Other mail service providers should have similar reporting, so you should theoretically be able to find your evangelists with them as well.

2. Check your customer support ticketing system.

As a normal part of your customer support process you should keep track of exceptionally satisfied customers. Anyone that says they would like to be notified of future promotions or sales should be noted as well.

3. Monitor your survey results.

Similar to #2, if you send out customer satisfaction surveys then you can identify the customers who are most enthusiastic about what you’re doing. These will be customers who answer your survey very positively and volunteer their contact information to you.

4. Social media monitoring

Do you consistently see a few users talking about your brand more than others? These users can be invaluable in helping you spread your message through Facebook, Twitter, etc.

5. Give a little something back

Since these are your top-tier customers you should consider giving your evangelists some sort of gift when they join your new mailing list. A gift card or something along those lines. These customers would most likely join your list for nothing, but there’s no reason no to reward them. The value they can bring to you over the long-term will be far greater than whatever cost is associated with giving them a thank you gift.

What’s Next?

Once you’ve identified your evangelists you should try to pare them down a bit. Make sure that the users that you invite are going to be the absolute best that you can get. This is definitely an instance of emphasizing quality over quantity. I can’t imagine any company needing more than 50 evangelists. You should start a mailing list, separate from your regular lists, just for evangelists, and invite your chosen few to join it. Always make sure you allow the evangelists to signup for the list themselves, using a double opt-in process.

In future articles I will talk more about how to utilize your evangelists.

Do you keep a list of evangelists for your company? How do you leverage your evangelists? Comments welcome!

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Learning To Be A Salesman

April 22, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Fruits for sale

Some people are natural salesmen (or saleswomen). I am not one of them. I don’t have a single fiber in my body that wants to be a salesman. However, that’s not an option when you run a company. Running a successful company requires you to understand sales and even be pretty good at it. The ability to make money is absolutely necessary for any small business owner. If you don’t make money then you won’t be in business long; pretty straightforward and unavoidable. You have to be able to make money, and a large part of that is figuring out what makes customers want to buy and learning how to lead them to a buying decision.

For me, the ability to make money has been a learning process. I’m pretty good at a lot of things naturally, but making money didn’t come naturally. I’ve learned a lot over the last few years about marketing and how customers think. That experience has been invaluable in helping me to hone my abilities.

My Key Learnings Over The Years

  1. Consumers tend to be skeptical, especially of online companies. You have to really make yourself appear trustworthy to gain any consideration. Potential customers will read reviews about your site and any other information they can learn about your service before deciding whether or not to buy. This is the rule, not the exception, so be prepared.
  2. Marketing and advertising is an iterative process. Much like A/B testing on your website, you have to continually test and improve your sales, marketing, and advertising strategies.
  3. Sales strategies will evolve over time. Markets change quickly, so you have to constantly be looking at long-term trends to determine where 1) your industry is going over the next few years and 2) where your site is going relative to your industry. Just because a particular strategy or market segment is profitable for you today doesn’t guarantee its future success or viability.
  4. Try several different approaches. Depending on what you need to sell you should try as many different ways as possible to reach your potential customers. Try cold calls, cold emails, handwritten letters, anything you can think of.

Links

I started a question on Quora – What Are The Top 5 Must-Read Sales Books?

Jason Fried’s Inc. article about How to Get Good At Making Money

 

Filed Under: Features, Marketing, Tips and Tools · Tagged With: , , , ,

Why Aren’t There Generic Web Apps?

April 18, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Generic

I was walking through Target a few days ago when something struck me. Why are there no “generic” apps or “store brand” apps out there? I have never seen a generic Basecamp or Mailchimp. Physical products created by a brand almost aways have a store brand competitor on the shelf, so why is that not the case in the web industry? A well-made product that offers almost the same functionality as a more expensive standard can have a nice market niche.

The barriers to entry for creating web apps have never been lower. Cloud hosting and computer make infrastructure costs ridiculously low compared to even 2 years ago. There is a ton of development talent in India, China, and elsewhere that can be had for much cheaper than in the US. This low cost to entry is another reason that generic apps should be common.

I have a few ideas as to why you DON’T see generic versions of popular apps:

  • Technological – While the cost barriers are lower than ever there are still significant technical hurdles, such as scaling, to overcome for almost all of the popular apps.
  • Intellectual Property – I’m sure many of the most profitable web apps out there have significant intellectual property protection
  • Onward and Upward – tech companies are unique in that they are always looking for the next thing, not rehashing or remaking what is already available.

What do you think? Can you recall seeing any generic web apps?

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What Pearl Jam Can Teach Us About Branding

March 13, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Pearl Jam

2011 is the 20th anniversary year of Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten. Over the last 20 years Pearl Jam has not only built themselves up to be an incredibly popular and enduring band, they’ve built one of the best brands in music history. Branding isn’t something you necessarily think of for musicians, but it is closely related to reputation, which certainly does apply.

Pearl Jam the band has been equalled in success recently by Pearl Jam the business. The Pearl Jam business has a few core values that should apply to all companies, from mom & pops to startups to enterprises.

Stick To Your Core Values

Pearl Jam has always been fairly reserved in the number of interviews they grant and in media exposure in general. They long ago stopped doing traditional music business routines such as music videos and prolonged world tours. Instead, the band chooses to take things on their own terms, making sure that media commitments and touring disrupts their family lives as little as possible.

Every business should understand what its core values are and stick to them at all costs. You don’t want to be known for something and then one day decide to change course, potentially alienating your customer base.

Innovation As A Way of Life

Pearl Jam has been quite innovative, particularly in the last 10 years. In 2000 they began releasing every live concert as an official bootleg available for purchase. This was unheard of in the music industry, releasing up to 30-40 official albums in a year. They have self-released studio albums, re-released albums with tons of bonus content, and more.

In much the same way, businesses should always be looking for innovative ways to service customers and generate revenue. True purple cow thinking gets attention.

Take Care of Your Fans

Pearl Jam’s greatest strength is its devotion to fans. The band does more for its fans than just about anyone else. Fans are able to buy concert tickets before the general public, get discounts on purchases, exclusive newsletters, yearly gifts, a dedicated radio station, and more.

It goes without saying that taking care of your customers is good for business, but truly excelling at customer service can take you to another level of success. There are countless examples of customer oriented companies, like Zappos, that are as well-known for their service as they are their merchandise. Strive every day to make your customers your biggest fans.

 

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Build It and They Won’t Come

February 25, 2011 by · 2 Comments

Build It And They Don't Come

I’m certainly guilty of it. I’ve built several apps and sites based solely on my own intuition and needs. Apparently my intuition is wrong about 60% of the time; no customers were beating down the door for the new products. I naively thought that building apps was like building a baseball field in Iowa… you just build it and people start showing up.

I was lucky enough to be successful with the first 2 companies that I started. With that experience in hand I believed that I would surely be successful the third time if I followed the same formula: Get some traffic and people will pay you. I wasn’t so lucky with my 3rd company… the old formula wasn’t working and I didn’t know why.

The Old Formula

In the past, when advertising was relatively cheap, you could afford to advertise/optimize yourself into a success. It was vastly cheaper to advertise with Google Adwords 5-6 years ago. I distinctly remember bidding $1.00-$1.25/click on highly competitive keywords that would now cost $5.00-$8.00/click. At the current rates it’s difficult, at best, to keep CPA (cost per acquisition) at a level that’s profitable.

When PPC advertising was more affordable you could buy hundreds of targeted clickthroughs per day. For most companies 200-300 visitors per day is enough to grow and be profitable. I’m not taking into account things like customer retention rates and target audiences, even though those are certainly key factors in determining how profitable a company can ultimately be. For a product that can have a mass-market appeal, having lots of traffic generally equals success.

Enter CustDev

Now, with the drastic cost increases for PPC, you have to start looking at alternative methods for reaching your targeted audience. Customer development (or #custdev on Twitter) is all about helping you find your targeted customer, whether that customer is a business or a consumer. It’s a “scientific” process that will help you hone in on exactly who your particular product is the most attractive to through iteration and constant contact with customers.

The information that you learn from your early customers (early adopters, alpha-testers, whatever term you like) is invaluable in helping you find the right marketing methods and audience for your product. If, for example, you create an email delivery service targeted to small businesses you may find that something unexpected, like churches, may be your best customers. Those learnings can help you re-focus your product, advertising, or marketing efforts.

Customer development, when used properly, helps you identify that market segments best suited for your product. Compared to the wide-band approach of PPC advertising, custdev is inexpensive and yields more targeted leads, which is increasingly crucial  as the number of web companies continue to grow and competition for a user’s attention grows exponentially tougher.

Resources

There are many great resources for customer development out there already. If you’re interested in custdev then take some time looking through the following highly recommended sites.

What is Customer Development by Eric Ries

The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Affiliate Link) by Steve Blank

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Affiliate Link) by Patrick Vlaskovits

Why CustDev?

I plan on writing a lot more about custdev in the coming weeks, getting a little more in-depth along the way. Custdev is a way of laying a scientific approach on top of traditional business problems like customer acquisition. These methods speak very clearly to and my mathematical background. I only wish I would have utilized customer development principles in my last couple of projects. It’s not a perfect solution, or a one-size fits all solution, but it’s generally far better than the build-it-and-hope-for-the-best strategy.

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OMG, Not Another #custdev Blog

February 23, 2011 by · 3 Comments

People

I’ve been pretty successful as a web entrepreneur over the past 10 years. I think it’s high time for me to start putting some of my experience to use benefiting all the entrepreneurs out there. This blog is going to be about all things related to starting and running your web based businesses. I’ll write about what I know and what I’m interested in. I’m currently thinking there’s going to be a lot of talk about customer development and lean startup, since they’re both hot topics and very interesting to me.

So that’s what’s waiting for you here. Read more about me to get acquainted. Contact me at any time if you want to talk. I want this blog to be as conversational as possible.

Filed Under: Bootstrapping, CustDev, Features, LeanStartup, Marketing, Misc, Tips and Tools · Tagged With: , , , , ,