The Numbers

It is a new era.

Social Media, Free, Community and Transparency are all the rage. The world has changed my friend and you must change with it or perish.

But what about the old school ways? Are they just dead? Does the MBA mean nothing now?

Keep the old. Embrace the old. Maintain the old while you explore the new.

The numbers are your reality.

Cost of acquiring a client
Life time value of the client
Average sale per month for a 12 month period

How about just knowing those 3 numbers?

Could that change you life in a hurry?

Free

I am becoming more and more convinced that FREE in any iteration of the sales process is the key to web success.

As Tweeted, are you getting potential clients coming to you to work with the low price (say 1.00) and then thinking they will get a 5% conversion. This “I will rule the Long Tail” thinking can lead to disastrous consequences and premature web death.

You must guide them to FREE. How can they offer something of value for FREE? Can it be made to go viral? Can you use the “Open Source” model. Give them all the information to build it themselves but have a paid version available for the impatient and wealthy.

Feel FREE to link to this FREE advice and tell your friends.

I have not come up with the secondary monetization phase of my genius FREE plan, but one cannot do everything at once.

The Dearly Departed

Well, it has obviously been a while since last this Blog has been updated.
I throw myself on the sword of busy, busy and moan mea culpa.
I shall endeavor to be more consistent on my senseless ramblings in the future.

Let’s talk about community for a minute. I have been investigating the community milieu and searching for the magic bullet.
Apparently that magic bullet revolves around belonging. Our intense desire to belong. Our primordial mission to join a tribe,
a herd, a grouping of 3 or more coming together as one.

My desire is to create a community of community creators. I have certain mundane joys in life and one is a tiny bookstore here
on the rock of Newfoundland. I will presume upon myself to start a community around this oasis of the obscure as I want to ensure
its continued existence.

I will reveal the name of the place shortly and start my assault on the community of love.

As a man thinks

I have been reading or listening to motivational material since high school. From Norman Vincent Peale to Jim Rohn, they all are based on the same theme. You are what you think about. You become what you feel you should be. You are the sum of your thoughts, external factors are irrelevant and so on.
Good thoughts like good seeds will produce good crops and bad thoughts will produce bad crops. You external reality must align with your internal conception or you will be harmonically demented and live less fulfilled then you should.
Don’t miss the magic ingredient that makes all of the above true.
ACTION
You must take action whilst thinking happy thoughts or you will become no more than a happy underachiever.
That is why I have little faith in “The Secret” or other systems of that ilk that are resonance receptors for the goodness of the universe.
A saying I once heard goes something like this, “Man waits a long time sitting in a chair waiting for a BBQ’d chicken to fly into his mouth”.
ACTION
Now that’s the ticket.

First or Better

Interesting article on the danger Microsoft saw in the iTune launch and how they could do nothing about it. What was even more interesting was the fact that music companies already had some stores online that were dying on the vine. They were first (always a marketing guru mantra), but the functionality sucked.
Along came iTunes with the idea of unlimited copies for iPods and the ability to burn to CD downloaded songs and bang, they rule the digital music world.
When will every one in the ivory tower get it?
You can cash in on the way the world is changing, but you cannot control it. Outdated thinking about security and ways to control distribution that are in effect “buggy” to the consumer will get you killed.
Dead.
Joining the invisible choir.
In fact and EX-player.

The Vast Wasteland

I admit I have been lax on updating my illustrious blog. It has had no viewership as far as I can tell, and thus, becomes an amusement for myself.
But I digress.
My thought today is on the expectations of the web. It has become just another form of distraction to me. Not unimportant, nay, but extremely important and as such I expect it to work like my toaster or my tv.
Sites that don’t load, dead links, slowness are all jolts to me now. I expect perfection, just like watching football. If you jolt me you lose me forever.
Dejoltify your sites my friends.
Geddes OUT

Another Customer Service Tale of Woe

Ok, so I decide to buy a digital camera online this year from Future Shop (a Best Buy like operation in Canada).
Place the order and get the email confirm along with my Canada Post tracking number. Yesterday I tried the tracking number and the fun began.

The tracking number was not in the Canada Post system so I phoned customer support at Future Shop. Hit the buttons needed to get to “tracking web orders” and the message
said use the web for tracking and hung up on me.

Ok, so I call back and avoid that menu like the plague and get a human. His computer was wonky and he could not help me and also, lo and behold could not transfer me so I had to call back again.

Ok, so I call back and get another human and she keeps me on the phone for 7 minutes writing out a web report that will go to another department. After 7 minutes of hmmm and so forth she asks if there is anything else she can do for me today. I say I am not sure of what exactly she has done for me at this point. She has written out a web report and someone will email me back. In how long says I. 2 days says she.

Ok, so I ask her what happens if it is still lost after 2 days. She says I can cancel the order, re-order on the web or go to a store and pick it up. Thanks and good-bye.

The real beauty is I got a customer service survey from Future Shop yesterday but no word from the web report genie.

The saga continues.

Another lost sale

Well folks (I know presumptuous)
I have had another in a long line of customer service and sales interactions today that left me gasping.
I went to Staples to buy a monitor. Had the money and intent and a small glitch, I needed a mini-divx connection to hook to my iMac.
Of course none of the monitors came with the connection, so I asked the young clerk if he had an after market one as I was buying a monitor today.

He led me to an aisle, searched and realized they had no such item and politely said sorry and good-bye. No attempt to sell me a monitor. Just good-bye.
Well of course I left in a pouty mood. Went to another store and bought a monitor and have ordered the elusive mini-divx connector from Apple itself.

The moral of the story is the same as from time immemorial.
ASK for the sale.

Improv Skills

Just thinking about the social media wave. Are you on the leading edge? Thousands of Twitterites following your every missive? Facebook maven with a million friends and 400 fun apps to keep you busy for a millennium? Are you a method actor or can you jump onstage and whip out the improv skills.

Feeling safe?

Well my friends, I say remember the Alamo! I was waiting for my Osbourne laptop to fire up so I could crunch some numbers in Lotus 1-2-3 when it hit me. It seems that change is inevitable at some point. The Internet universe is the greatest single example of the old saw, “the only thing that will never change is that change is constant.” How are the giant Friendster and MySpace doing now? Using Napster anymore? Not very long ago they were the giants. They were to rule forever.

Keep alert. Watch the pundits. Watch the conversation agents. All things you view as set in stone will turn to Lava soon and you need to be able to jump out of the way.
It is exhausting I know.

Customer Delight

Will be working on getting a web site up to snuff on customer experience hopefully leading to e-commerce on a staggering scale. It is a work that is already in process and will need a bit of a top down viewpoint.
The secret of course is a seamless and totally problem free interaction for potential clients. Forms that do not de-populate if a field is missed and one must go back and fix the error. Displays that tell the client before they go through 12 stages of ordering if product delivery is unavailable their area.
How about this?
Let’s not even send them the promotional email with the free shipping come on if we cannot deliver to their area!
Rapid payment methods with no glitches and immediate access to a live help desk are also delightful when dealing online.
Drop down menus that are smart, let’s have the US, Canada and maybe the UK as the first names on a geo drop down list instead of having to scroll through Burundi and Guam.
If you have any thought on this one I would be glad to hear them.