On Rad's Radar? - twitter Archives

Social Media Blurbs from ITEXPO

2013-01-31T16:41:16Z

Startup Camp Comms is tonight. John Sculley is keynote. #asksculley is the hashtag on twitter (which is currently down!) for questions to the former CEO of Apple and Pepsi.

Tomorrow at 11 AM is my session on Social Media #itexpoqa

Gary Vanderchuck has a decent interview about social media on HuffPro.

Lastly, Seth Godin on marketing for small businesses. Make something that is easy to sell!!

Follow me on twitter at @radinfo

The Changing VAR World

2012-10-16T01:44:04Z

Opening evening at UBM's BoB Conference was a panel discussion about the change in the VAR and MSP community. This is a collection of tweets about the panel discussion #bob12.

Social Media (SM) , mobility, are cloud - threats to some, opportunities to some - both to many.

"Behave like a three-year old: fall down, learn something, try again."

How do you scale marketing and lower customer acquisition costs in cloud?

The Channel is hiring sales <-- luv to know where they are finding them.

Amazon has $1bill cloud biz and not even 5 people on the street.

Amazon, folks, offers just 2 services in self-serve fashion.

RainKing, Salesforce, radian6 (social media), data mining to understand clients better.

Vendors need scale, but the channel needs customer intimacy (and the channel needs to build its own brand).

Manufacturers do not like the channel. Channel Partners are not enamored with the the manufacturers either.

Biggest Issue: Mainly vendors don't understand what the channel does. Manufacturers/vendors do not like that channel partners are not exclusive and offer choice to the marketplace. [Telecom vendors are the same way!]

@UBMChannel: Number 1 trouble w/ vendors: they don't understand solution provider business and value. "We are not just vehicles to end customers" #BoB12

@UBMChannel: Marketing has changed as businesses do. Moving from finding customers to how do customers find you? #BoB12

Overall, even as the marketplace is changing, manufacturers are slow to change. Vendors still want the channel to just get them customers, push their products and get out of the way. The Channel now wants to build a brand, retain customers, increase wallet share, and sell managed services (some of which will be their own). Unfortunately, there isn't a huge ROI on that strategy for vendors. In Telecom as well.

A final point by the panel revolved around Gartner pushing the Cloud Services Broker model on VAR's. The panel thought that was a ridiculously low margin business - basically, transactional. It is likely going to become what the VAD (value added distributors like Ingram and Tech Data) will become in some sense.

Here's the flipside to that. Right now VAR's have accounts with both Ingram and Tech Data (and likely at least one other distributor like SYNNEX, D&H, CDW, Insight). When looking for hardware, VAR checks to see who has it in stock, at which distribution center, and for how much. When things switch to cloud services, it is unlikely that VAR's will have accounts at all 3 because they are not going to manage SAAS accounts across multiple vendors like they do now. It will be about going with 1 or 2 plus having their own.

The panel noted that we are in the midst of a change in the VAR business to a completely new organization - structure, personnel, skills, compensation, financing, marketing, sales and metrics will all be different when it is all done.

Sales is changing. Not only what is sold, but to who - IT is not the only buyer in an Enterprise any more. IT doesn't own the desktop anymore due to consumerization of IT. CMO and CFO buy differently from CIO. Can IT sales people sell to buyers other than IT?

Plus sales isn't about low hanging fruit anymore. It's about harvesting the whole tree. Acquiring customers is getting harder and more expensive. Retaining customers will be huge. Acquiring customers is different now. CLIENTS FIND YOU NOW, via blogs, social media, SEO, PPC. Are you involved in that???

The three panelists are making money now on Help Desk, End user Compute Space (which can include VDI) and in Global Managed Services (including help desk).

We Will Cost You Jobs

2012-10-10T14:24:51Z

Don't worry this isn't a political rant; it is a marketing one. Many of the lost jobs in America are due to technology. No one really mentions that. I saw this tweet today:

The VoIP industry makes a couple of claims that I think are ridiculous:

(1) I will save you money. I don't know how we save companies any more money. Rates are lower than ever. In this race to Zero, the industry is losing. How do the prices keep going down when the costs to deliver the services have not declined that much? Payroll, rent, Origination, Termination, colocation and Special Access have not declined that much. It seems ridiculous to me. Not to mention, there is always someone coming along who will sell it cheaper. And cheaper means less quality, less support, less customer satisfaction.

(2) You can save by firing that guy or gal. Huh? For VoIP, how many SMB accounts have a dedicated person for the PBX? What happens to the IT maintenance when you "eliminate" that IT guy? Who manages the WAN, LAN and WLAN? Oh, more managed services you can sell. You still need Digital Hands on-site in the same way that data centers offer Digital Hands service.

Most VoIP companies have no idea what benefit they provide, so being lazy, they go with Cost Savings. The LD and CLEC companies have trained the marketplace to ignore this claim. It explains why sales is such an uphill battle for Hosted VoIP. No one is listening to the tired messaging.

Forbes has this article: "Cloud Providers Pitch Cost Savings, But Enterprises Want More." "What's the big promise constantly being made about cloud computing? Cost savings, cost savings, cost savings." Tired. And wrong.

" 61% say they are already meeting their goals for achieving more flexibility in their infrastructures. Also, they like cloud as an alternative to acquiring in-house skills on their own to manage new applications."

Ah, benefits.

Look, as the audience heard during the ITEXPO keynotes: Cloud, including VoIP, is about Outcomes. It is about flexibility and mobility. Ultimately, cloud has to provide a business outcome, a business process improvement.

Cloud - computing and communications - is about UX, the user experience.

Try selling that - it is stickier. When the cablecos roll out Hosted PBX and voice in your market, they own the network; it gives them QoS; they have a brand; marketing muscle; and can beat you on price. Your message has to be about more than Price. (or you have to be in a market segment that the Duopoly doesn't want.)

Votacall did respond on twitter. see the tweets.

ITEXPO West Wrap-Up

2012-10-08T16:03:35Z

I'm home from ITEXPO West in Austin. It was another great show for me. The folks at TMC did another wonderful job putting it together.

Jaime H. juggled my press room meeting schedule on Tuesday, despite my last minute schedule changes. 8x8, Hostway, snom, Centerbeam and others were all able to sit down with me. (Sometimes that isn't always joyful for the marketing/PR folks.) I'm always happy if I can have one or 2 good conversations out of these meetings - and I did.

The sessions were mainly full. I noticed a couple of things: people were not leaving the session rooms but staying for session after session - and they were not just doing that to use a power plug. Most people were not on their devices during sessions, which is unique.

In my Cloud Services Broker Panel, I asked all the attendees why they were there. All said to Learn.

I think our industry is in a lot of turmoil caused by too much cloud hype and consolidation.

The economy, the change, the cloud, and the consolidation makes everyone stressed and fearful of losing their job, when there isn't likely another available (at least immediately).

The marketing machine has ballooned the hype on cloud to ridiculous proportions. The term doesn't mean much to anyone - customers, prospects, vendors, service providers, employees.

With access revenues flat, apps and cloud services are the only way for many service providers to gain revenue. The CLEC industry HAS to be successful in selling cloud services to survive.

Every show has a lot of cloud - so many titles, headlines, banners, etc. It is worse than VoIP was a few years ago. The noise level is deafening - and boring. The industry has to fix this fast.

Startup Camp Comms was enjoyable. Watching Tampa's own startup, Phonism, pitch was exciting. RingDNA won the popular vote though.

I have to say that the keynotes were very good. I have remarked in the past about the commercialized quality of the keynotes, but this time the keynotes were interesting, tweet-worthy, and informative. Thanks to Shortel's CEO Peter Blackmore, IBM's Mike Riegel, and Siemen's CMO Chris Hummel.

Most significant sound byte: "joy of use" is an expectation not a nice to have @hummel_chris."

It is not about the technology or the marketing buzz. It is about Outcomes and UX (user experience). Without outcomes and UX, cloud is just a clumsy way to push technology on a user. That won't last. they won't use it. Then they will stop paying for it. Then you have a lot of CAPEX tied up in dust.

IBM used a Tire Store as a case study. A tire store. You can't get any less tech than that. If a tire store worries about the UX, then shouldn't tech/telecom companies???

Personal note: I either need new shoes or more exercise because my back and feet hurt from walking around the show floor, the halls, the podium and downtown Austin. The parties were mobbed, but I was in bed before midnight most nights. (It's about Outcomes :).

We go to these conferences to learn, to mingle, to network. (That's one reason I organize a dinner at each event.) This show definitely delivers on those attributes.

What did you think?

Want to learn more? Read my tweets or search #itexpo

What Twitter Told Me This Week

2012-02-10T16:11:39Z

I get a lot of articles off twitter. Too many to write about all of them so I am just going to drop some on you here.

Please be advised that the FUSF rate for Q1 of 2012 has increased from 15.3% to 17.9%. For further information regarding FUSF Fees and rates please see the FCC website.

RebTel is #2 behind Skype with 15M users doing 2 billion minutes of international calling. [venturebeat]

Both Florida state and federal lawmakers are trying to overturn the NFL blackout rules. Main argument is those stadiums were paid for with public tax dollars. [tbo]

Besides the M5-ShoreTel deal, I saw 2 other acquisitions occur. [radinfo]

Your open wi-fi access point leaves you open to lawsuits. Awesome! [radinfo]

FCC Eyes Google Voice’s Rural Call Blocking - just a part of the whole FCC Rural call completion review and the inter-carrier compensation issue. BTW, it's AT&T that keeps poking Google in the eye at the FCC about this.

It's Halftime America!

EarthLink is still utilizing the AX platform from New Edge Networks (now named EarthLink Business). XCast just set up an NNI (an inter-connection) with that platform for better performance. The AX platform allows cloud providers to connect to EarthLink's nationwide MPLS network for better quality to the users.

TELX is building another data center in NYC, land of not much commercial space for sale.

MITEL has achieved CLEC status in all 50 states. Maybe that's to help it deliver Hosted MITEL UC service to its customers.

Sales Stalking

2011-07-27T15:33:08Z

With the loss of any privacy today online, cyber stalking for prospecting is easier. I know it sounds sinister, but the best way to sell is to know your prospect. Know if they NEED your service. Know if they can afford your service. Know if your service can actually benefit them. How to do that? Cyber-Stalking.

First, set up a Google alert with the CEO's name (and another for the corporate name). When you see PR from the company or about them, print it out and mail it to him - or share it with your socila network -- or email him with a short note of congratulations.

As Gitomer says, Give Value First! Maybe that value is information about their biggest competitor or industry reports. There's a lot to be said about BI (business intelligience).

Find out the CEO's sweet spot; chocolate, cigar, golf, something small that is related to this and send it to them.

Follow the company on LinkedIn and twitter. Know what they are up to. It may coincide with your services. For example, if they are opening a new office or hiring or even laying off. In Hosted VoIP, these are sales triggers.

If they just went Cloud, bandwidth, mobility, security and backup become important. Again sales triggers.

But it shouldn't be all about you, it should be about the Prospect. The more you know about them -- and their vertical - the more value you bring to the table.

If you see that they are hiring and there is a webinar about hiring practices today (or whatever), you could invite the prospect to join you at the event.

On LinkedIn, you can see their bio and shared connections. The company page may have info and news. There are many ways to skin a cat today -- you need to be working smarter and creatively. What worked before may not necessarily work now.

If you always get voicemail and your email goes unanswered, first off, be more creative with your messages! Is it about YOU or THEM? Next, try a different form of contact - a postal invite to a networking event; a CD or thumb-drive in the mail; flowers or balloons; ice cream or pizza for the office; or ping them on twitter; see them at an industry event; message them on LinkedIn.

BTW, on LinkedIn, don't use the canned invite message unless you know that person (F2F or face-to-face). Add a personal note about why you want to connect. It gets better results.

It's a new age, so some new tricks are required. Good luck!

SIP Trunking Deployment Lessons by XO

2011-07-13T18:57:27Z

XO has hired Ronan Keenan to handle their corporate social media, like the @XOComm twitter account. They put together quite the resource for SIP Trunking Deployment at Storify: SIP trunking implementation resources including videos, presentations and documents by Steve Carter, who is the SIP Product Manager at XO.

He narrates a detailed video about SIP Trunking: Learn the Steps to a Smooth Enterprise SIP Trunk Implementation. Good info for Agents to use to learn on their own at their own pace.

Is Selling on Price Really Selling?

2011-07-08T20:13:53Z

nQueryTelecom tweeted the following: "Virtual PBX VoIP Phone – Reduced Telecom Expenses: Virtual PBX VoIP phone systems ensure reduced telecom expense." You can see my reply on the left. Basically, I'm tired of our industry selling on price. It is not helping. It is driving revenue down while debt keeps increasing. It is NOT sustainable.

With over 1000 companies offering VoIP services in the US, do you really want to sell on price? I think MagicJack and Vonage have that locked up solid. (I won't get into how this kind of actions reflect poorly on the whole Industry. That's a rant for another day.)

Is it really selling if you just sell on price? Not really. It's order taking.

"Oh, you have voice service? DUH! You called my on MY phone. Well, let me shave 20% off what you pay now to move to us, okay? No thanks!"

Studies show that it takes approximately a 20% discount to get many business owners to move. One reason: the pain of moving phone numbers. If the business owner has ever moved phone numbers before, he knows it is anything but fun.

The other thing that bugs me about this approach is that you don't show any Value. The coolest thing about VoIP is NOT that it saves you money. It saves you time and makes you money!

The Integrated T1 was the penultimate fall from value. There was no way to differentiate for CLEC's because they depended on the ILEC so much. So it became a price war. What customer has not received numerous cold calls saying "I'll save you money"? Do you not think that they are jaded at this point?

I get selling DSL or T1 on price. There isn't much there but a pipe - unless you want to talk about network congestion and management, which can be a differentiator.

But selling VoIP on price in 2011 is just plain lazy. What's next coupons?

Craig's Lifetime of Customer Service

2011-06-15T13:43:47Z

Craig Newmark of craigslist spoke at the CoolTech event in Tampa last Friday. It was a good speech from a nerd with a dry sense of geeky humor. (Not everyone got it.) He was doing his best to "simulate social behavior", he said. He had 3 themes that he repeated throughout the talk (that's kind of my style of speaking, too): Customer Service, Doing what's Right, and the Common Good. Craig was introduced by his former attorney, Brett Britton, as a Bad ass. He kind of lives up to it.

Craig offered up a history of social media. It's been around a long time - just the technology has changed (from town cryer to newspapers to books to twitter). Social media has had the same effect throughout the ages though: social change. Martin Luther learned a valuable lesson about social media: You lose control of the message. Today, the Internet is everyone's printing press. Tough to fact check all the stuff that gets added to the WWW every day!

Craig is worth about $400M accoridng to Forbes with Craigslist generating about $40M per year. Craig considers himself a Customer Service representative. He has started something called Craig Connects, which "helps connect people of good will for the common good by highlighting nonprofits that are making an impact in Community Building, Journalism Integrity, Middle East, Open & Accountable Government, Service & Volunteering, Technology for Social Good and Veterans issues." These are the issues that he actively helps on: the VA, Mideast, journalistic integrity, democracy. Why? He wants to be part of something bigger. He believes in doing Social Good because It's the Right Thing to do. Is it easy? No. And he encouraged the audience to operate outside their comfort zone too. (Growth only happens when you are uncomfortable.)

Fact checking is important, according to Newmark. I agree and he gave the names of many sites that do that. Web 2.0 has certainly had an effect on shining the light in some areas. These sites grade non-profits: Charity Navigator, GreatNonProfits.org, and Guidestar. Also, Donors Choose. These check political facts or money: Politifact and Influence Explorer, [I would add Open Congress here and mention that Politifact is a project of the St. Pete Times newspaper, which is owned by the Poynter Foundation. Local pride for Tampa Bay!]

He is working with some crime fighting nerds to check grant apps and vet veterans groups. Craig worries about journalism (especially since media empires are crumbling), since the Fourth Estate is supposed to keep our Democracy in check. For our democracy to survive, the press has to have integrity and be diligent in fact checking. I'm not surprised that The Daily Show wih Jon Stewart does the best job of fact checking, according to Newmark.

Craig has his hand in many pies that all revolve around social good, customer service and doing what's right. I'll leave you with 3 quotes from his speech.

"Listen to people and then do something about it. That's customer service. Try to listen to everyone because even a disgruntled customer can be right."

"Working together for the common good - whatever your version of that is."

"Sunlight is the best disinfective for government."

IBM's New(er) Strategies

2011-03-29T04:17:56Z

Image via Wikipedia

At IBM's Lotusphere this year (Feb. 1), IBM rolled out strategies for Cloud and Social Media.

IBM identified 5 ways that partners could benefit from the Cloud. They are as follows:

Cloud Application Providers - deliver business apps via a subscription model through the cloud such as SAAS
Cloud Builders - design, build and manage clients’ cloud needs, typically integrating with existing infrastructure.
Cloud Infrastructure Providers - provide a public cloud infrastructure or Platform as a Service (PaaS) on which app can be hosted.
Cloud Services Solution Providers - resell multiple public cloud services and offer complementary services such as training and integration.
Cloud Technology Providers - provide the tools, services, and technologies, such as cloud management, billing metering and monitoring — that help clients use the cloud more effectively.

These are ways for VAR's to stay in the business of providing applications and associated services.

According to some PR sent my way, " IBM is the largest consumer of social technologies. As a company, IBM takes social networking seriously - to develop products and services, to enable sellers to find and stay connected with clients, to train the next generation of leaders, and to build awareness of Smarter Planet among clients, influencers and other communities. IBM will showcase how it is poised to help clients exploit this transformation of a social business delivering new software, services and skills resources to help organizations adopt best practices, policies and software to transform their businesses, including: (1) New Cloud software and services that delivers a cloud-based office productivity suite; (2) New software to help companies and governments socially enable their business processes using the most successful mobile devices, including tablets, such as the iPad, iPhone, Google Android, RIM's Blackberry and Nokia devices."

See how they worked Cloud and social networking into that press release? Google Juice!

"IBM intends to offer a cloud-based version of LotusLive Symphony, an office productivity suite that will give organizations a social platform that enables them to simultaneously collaborate on documents in the cloud. LotusLive Symphony in the cloud complements IBM's on-premise, free of charge, office productivity suite, IBM Lotus Symphony." I didn't know IBM offered free office software.

In its collab suite, IBM will turn the inbox into the Activity Stream that feeds in twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and SAP through the Social Business toolkit. (Yeah, it says SAP in the release.)

Meetrix is an IBM Partner that offers IBM's enterprise-class Sametime Server in the Cloud. "Combining Meetrix with Broadworks Connector provides unique capability for Broadworks operators to deliver a full featured, over the top Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC 2) offering to business-class customers." Simple Signal is using this service. Meetrix is the only partner for Hosted Lotus Sametime presently, which allows Meetrix to offer "businesses access to enterprise-class UCC features such as instant messaging, chat, presence, awareness, document and presentation storage and sharing, audio and video, web conferencing and e-signature capabilities through SAAS." Note: digital e-Signature. [pr]

I'm guessing that this will compete against Microsoft Linc. I'm also guessing that the marketing and branding of this will take some time, which they don't have. The key may be the Activity Box and the digital e-Signature capabilities. At least, that's what I would be featuring in my marketing. It should be interesting to see, especially if other Broadsoft CLEC's jump on that wagon.

Thoughts from Social Fresh

2011-02-24T23:31:00Z

Social Fresh Tampa was this week but I only attended the final panel on Day 2. Justin Levy (now at Citrix) resonates with me. Zena Weist of H&R Block did not. Paula Berg formerly at Southwest Airlines, now with Linhart PR shoots straight. (See some of her SF keynote here). The other panelist spent too much time trying to prove that social media marketing wasn't snake oil.

They talked about the future being about checking in with TV shows and websites for points programs. I think all that checking in will burn people out. I have credit card rewards, coke rewards, and airline programs -- all basically worthless. I see that checking in (to me) would be basically worthless. It was mentioned becuase with the new FTC rules about cookies and tracking may change some online analytics. This may be the way to get real analytics - of loyal customers, which is the kind you want (not the 5000 people who just click Like and then shut off your feed to their feed. A panelist suggested that we need a "smarter use for Like".

Google Real Time search will become more important. (I think it already is especially for news).

Group texting from companies like Groupme or Beluga. A panelist called this "spin up communities" and another said it was "like a chat room".

Facebook is going to be using iFrames because they don't want you to leave and most users of FB don't like to leave FB to go out there. It's 1998 again people. iFrames and AOL-like behavior. Amazing how everything old is new again. A point here: building your business on FB instead of your own website/domain means you are at the whims of FB - and don't own anything. Just saying. You can't have it be about some platform or application. You have to find a way to get those prospects into your sales system.

A couple of college administrators asked questions. One asked what the business world needs from students. Paula Berg asked that students have a realistic expectation of what it means to work! (I blame Tim Ferriss and his 4-Hour Work Week on some of that entitlement expectation). Justin Levy said that they have to be realistic about experience. Being on twitter for a month is not experience. Students need to know how to tactically run a campaign. Know how to drive traffic with content - and more importantly know what kind of traffic they are driving. In addition, students need to know how to write. IM/text writing is not for email or any form of business communications. Expressing thoughts, ideas, benefits, ROI and TCO takes more than 140 characters.

Don't be afraid of negative comments. It's a chance to talk to your community (or marketplace).

Have a content strategy.

Finally, don't face-tweet. And don't face-tweet to LinkedIn!! I know not everyone follows your every waking thought on every platform - and there is a reason for that. And if they do, they don't want to see the same tweet three times. (Trust me, it wasn't that great.) You have to understand that people are on these platforms for very different reasons. Messaging on the platforms has to coincide with your strategy and how people interact and listen on the platform. On twitter, you can post 8 times a day. On FB, the stats are more like once every other day. On LinkedIn, people are there for business. I know you think it's all relative but it is not. All you are doing is adding to the social noise. And people are not listening -- even to you!! Imagine that.

So those are the take aways from the Social Fresh conference. Can't wait for next week because VoiceCon is having a twitter wall :)

UC Won't Last

2010-11-24T20:48:31Z

I started working on a post last week I titled UC Won't Work. Today, there's a topic abuzz about how UC is a scam.

Speaking during a debate on unifiec communications at the recent Gartner Symposium in Sydney, analyst, Nick Jones, argued the case that unified communications is the "greatest scam since Ponzi", saying the technology had no clear definition. "I'll give you the real definition: Unified communications is the bundle of things a vendor wants to sell you," he said, according to NetworkWorld.

I have to concur. Everyone calls it something different. (see this YouTube video that XO did at VoiceCon with me).

It's like SIP - 35 opinions (RFC's) and no standard.

It's not a customer facing term. No customer asks for UC.

It's not a replacement service, which makes mass sales challenging (even expensive).

UC isn't one size fits all. (It's not cookie cutter). It's a forklift upgrade. It contains many moving parts. Scale will be difficult.

UC lies outside the comfort zone of both buyers and sellers. Think about it. It's a concept that you can't define for the prospect clearly. And in some cases, the vendor cannot deliver on the promise due to business process hurdles that handcuff the solution. Those hurdles can include security measures, regulations, policies, inter-departmental politics, and software integration.

Gartner's Jones remarks that UC doesn't integrate SMS, MMS, and social media (particularly Twitter) into one platform. Gen Y is leading the charge in the workplace, yet do not use any of the legacy communications platforms. So UC is becomes another wall. Walled gardens are what telecom has traditionally been about. "If you put fences around people, you get sheep." ~William McKnight, CEO of 3M

Ask Gives Up (and other news)

2010-11-09T21:56:03Z

A bunch of stuff from my twitter feed, which produces all those useless facts in my head (and distracts me all day).

Ask.com gives up on search [RRW] they will just do Q&A (for now).

Twilio raises $12 million to let you call from web apps to phones. [venturebeat] Twilio is a 2x sponosr of StartupCamp Communications.

23% of all US households report that no one in the home uses the Internet anywhere. [Ars]

Phone.com Offers 100% Automated Voicemail Transcription

What does an entrepreneur do for fun? Think, talk, and dream about business.

Mobile payments: Square is processing millions of dollars in transactions each week [TC]

Cisco - 42% of employees restricted from using social media at work.

@HeinzMarketing: "my product is better" triggers a price war. "my product is different" drives discovery and value. #sm20

Do you really think blogging is being replaced by FB, twitter? Thought leadership doesn't happen in 140-420 characters.

Cisco led the Series C funding round which closed last week for RingCentral. RingCentral launched an agent program a couple months ago and already have 150+ sales agent partners. (It's not quantity; it's quality/relationship).

What I Learned From the Locknote

2010-10-27T15:44:27Z

A keynote opens a conference and a Locknote closes a conference.

The Broadsoft Connections 2010 was opened by Wikinomics author Don Tapscott with his talk about the Digital Age. Our industry is aware that ubiquious broadband has changed the landscape of many businesses. The transparency that we have today (think blogs and WikiLeaks) means that nothing is really private.

This is paramount to me - obviously because I blog and occassionally get dirty looks for what I write -- but the Locknote was a panel of twitter experts - Tara Hunt, Joel Comm and Paul Chaney - being interviewed by Broadsoft CMO Leslie Ferry. Let's just say they didn't knock this out of the park. When asked what social media was the replies ranged from "an online platform for user interaction" (@pchaney) to "the water cooler of our time ... on steroids (@joelcomm). It turns the bull horn around; it flips the funnel. (I guess they read Seth Godin).

When asked how to get started, they all said Listen. "Listening is the new marketing," said Paul Chaney. Really? Did you not hear the questions that Leslie was asking? Where you listening to the audience, who were walking out two by two?

The panel never answered how to get started. It's like they came there with the usual pithy phrases that they had to use, like water cooler, bring value, build trust, twitter is a research engine.

They all wrote a book about twitter but that doesn't make twitter the answer to everything. You have to use the platform that your target market is using!

"Mundane tweets humanizes the connection" was a nice way of saying that people have to get over the uninteresting stuff people write online. (People say uninteresting stuff offline all the time!) Social networks are just the new printing presses; the new publishing systems.

When Paul Chaney mentioned that only 15% of Fortune 500 use blogs in a meaningful way, I am reminded that most companies have corporate structure, SEC guidelines, and other trappings that can defeat a blogger in Corporate America. And comments scare the heck out of the PR department. Let me remind you that people are already saying this stuff! I'm just writing it down!

It was a great show with about 900 people including about 450 customers. And the Arizona Biltmore is a great place to have a conference. It's beautiful and relaxing and, as Larry Lisser stated, it had so many places to have a conversation.

Interesting tidbit from twitter this morning: "We have more than 300 internal bloggers at AT&T and more than 30,000 wiki pages for knowledge management. Internal community growth 95% QOQ." (@bklein34)

Another snarky comment from an attendee was why would the author of the Digital Age give out physical books instead of an e-book? :)

The Pitfalls of Social CRM

2010-10-21T21:01:42Z

A consultant sent me a link to look at a CRM solution. (I don't know why because she was researching blogging platforms when I spoke with her Tuesday). The site is intriguing and makes some big promises:

* Manage contacts and build relationships.
* Engage, import contacts on social networks.
* Track sales pipeline and view analytics.
* Organize projects, tasks, and events.
* Monitor customer & team activity in the stream.
* Google Apps Integration

First off, in my experience, you have to force people to use CRM. Unless you withhold pay, most salespeople will fight you on the use of CRM. I know Salesforce.com makes a billion dollars, but that means companies are buying it - that doesn't mean it is being utilized fully or at all. Just saying.

Now CRM will be Social. So you can engage your contacts. That's great if people knew what it meant to "engage". Read some of your stream on Facebook or on twitter. Isn't it a litany of links to read something? Or someone complaining about something? Or checking in somewhere? That's not engagement. That's hardly even social.

So you are going to entrust your sales team with the social engagement? I hope there is training and guidelines and monitoring.

Having a good dashboard has helped Salesforce reach heights that Microsoft had hoped for with its Great Plains purchase. (I still think Landslide has a great concept with the admin feature.) It is also customizable - something that the open-source SugarCRM just couldn't match. Clunky is how I have heard it described.

"Monitor customer and team activity in the stream" - I guess that you can watch in real-time all the social engagement. You have a dashboard. Who needs to shadow employees and customers all day? Who has the time?

The key for CRM usage is that it helps the sales team close business, manage a funnel, and allow for management reporting. That's a lot to ask of employee involvement before adding the social piece.

I can see salespeople tweeting, "Did you get the contract I sent over?" The other side is when the prospect tweets that a certain salesperson doesn't know his product. That will be a bummer. (True experience here). Everyone gets upset. But that's the social part. That's the digital life. I can tell five people via email and phone - and you won't know. But when I blog it or tweet it, you WILL know. (And so will many more people). But deleting it doesn't solve the problem or take it out of the digital footprint either.

Just some thoughts today on where we are heading in sales. And I didn't even touch on the difference between a Hunter and a Farmer and these systems.