If you’re here to buy a SMM blog, they are on live auction at flippa.com. Click on either of the two panels to the right to go directly to the relevant auction page. Alternatively contact Barry Welford on any questions you may have.

If you go to the flippa.com website and are interested in this auction, remember you can keep a watch alert on it by clicking on the link towards the top left as shown in the image on the right. By doing this, you will be informed by e-mail of all developments in the auction. This could include a shortening of the auction period or a reduction in the Buy It Now (BIN) price, both of which the seller has the right to do. You would also be informed of any comments on the auction page that could include new information. You do need to register with the flippa.com website to do this.

If you would like to know about strategic pruning and why SMM is selling two of its blogs, then please read on.

Strategy, a word that first came up in a military context, is all about determining how available resources should be best used to achieve desired outcomes.  It’s an essential first step in deciding to start up a business or an organization.  Michael Porter, the doyen of living management gurus, is the acknowledged master of competitive strategy.  However he has less to say on what you should do about strategy on an ongoing basis as the business grows and evolves.

Holding on to the same strategy until it fails is certainly not the best approach. A regular review is better and a very sound approach can well be what works for gardens.  That is what is suggested in a CharityInfo.ca article on Pruning, harvesting and strategy and it makes a lot of sense.  Pruning achieves two purposes: it allows the stronger shoots or branches to have more space and to receive more energy and nutrients.  At the same time it may be possible to use what is harvested for other purposes.

With a neat play on words, Speer and Associates offers similar words of advice to banks with Branching Out or Pruning:  Developing Rational Branch Strategies.

This nicely complements Peter Drucker’s key piece of advice, Focus, Focus, Focus.  It’s a mantra I’ve suggested to many others in the past.  However they might quite rightly have said, Physician – heal thyself. I keep running with my enthusiasms if they’re doing well.  The result can be that you spread yourself too thin.

Focusing or pruning: they’re very similar concepts.  Just as with a garden it should be something you do on a planned and regular basis.  Possibly 10% of what your company is doing should be pruned every year after a careful review of strengths and weaknesses.

The SMM blogs to an extent have grown like Topsy.  They all are successful in their own niches. However in deciding where efforts should be concentrated at least two had to go.  Balancing all the factors and considering how best the values of the blogs could be ‘harvested’, the clear choices for selling were StayGoLinks and Senior Money Memos.

As mentioned at the start, if you are interested then you can find more details at the following links:

• StayGoLinks, all about the Mobile Web, and
• Senior Money Memos, personal financial advice for seniors

Technorati Tags: blog, sale, senior money, staygolinks

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When a prospect contacts your company, it is important that they are not left hanging without some acknowledgement.  At the least it is a  mark of common courtesy and of course they could represent a sizable purchase.  Surprisingly, companies often do not put enough effort into making that response.  Given the changes on the Internet, this is an even more critical function than before.

Social Media empower customers

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are the factors that are changing the status of individuals relative to companies.  It is now very easy for someone to share with their friends their satisfaction or their disgust with the way they have been treated by a company.  People assume that a company will be trying to make sure that their customer experience is satisfactory.

Customers Have A One-To-Many Relationship with Suppliers

Part of the challenge here is that the contact is more important to the prospect or customer since they would like an immediate response.  On the other hand, the company may have a large number of people contacting them at the same time.  If they lose a small proportion, they may not care.  However this is foolish since it is costly to get prospects calling you and this might just be the big one.  The prospect’s perception of the time to respond may be much longer than what it actually takes.  Nevertheless most people are reasonable and understand that an immediate response is not always possible.

How responsive are suppliers

Unfortunately many companies determine what resources they will provide for responding to prospects by considering what it will cost.  That explains why so often you will run into one of the following telephonic responses:

• a busy signal on the telephone
• all our agents are dealing with other customers, please call back
• all our agents are dealing with other customers, the expected wait is 12 minutes.

The ‘Your call is important to us’ that often precedes such messages is almost guaranteed to make you feel even more frustrated.

They would be much better advised to consider alternatives by looking at these from the point-of-view of the prospect.  In other words, they should adopt a customer-centric approach.  The most important factor here is probably to allow the prospect to be in control of what happens.  Offering choices is particularly useful here.  Here are some possibilities:

• Contact via a form on the website
• E-mail
• Leaving a telephone number for a call-back
• Chat line

A really customer-savvy company will probably offer all of these.

Timely Responses as part of your USP

The way most company handle their responses is often less than satisfying.  If that is true in your market place, then you have a way of standing out from your competitors if you respond to customers as they deserve.

Of course if your competitors all do this well, then it is almost a condition of survival that you should match their performance.  Either way it should be a priority function for you to consider.

Timely Resolution or Timely Response

Jay Baer sings from the same hymn-sheet in a recent blog post:

Ultimately, speed wins. The companies that engage customers on Twitter and Facebook within minutes are making a none-too-subtle statement about their embrace of the social telephone and the primacy of the customer. In comparison, slow response or no response produces a decided “meh” vibe.

Danny Brown took issue with this in stating that:

It’s speed of resolution that will really define how successful a company is in social media (or any other business medium).

However if you check through his article, you will find the following:

If you’re a brand, make it clear on every single customer touch-point what your practice is for issues and queries:

• Standard customer service issues will have a response within 24 hours.
• Identified escalated issues will have a response within 12 hours.
• Emergency issues or concerns that have health implications will have a response within the hour.

Make it clear too, that a response is not the same as a resolution. Offer timescales for internal procedures to let customers know that, to get the answer they need to really resolve the issue, the process involves X departments and Y amount of days, to get to Z resolution options.

So even though he is emphasizing the speed of resolution as the ultimate decider, he is still requiring that the customer should receive a timely reply indicating that action is being taken.

That is exactly what we are suggesting here.  Unfortunately many companies may reply in a very tardy fashion or not at all.  This is the fastest way to show the lack of competence of your company. Instead make sure that customers sing the praises of your timely responses.  It’s the best promotion you can have.

Related: Rapid Response – When is it needed?

Technorati Tags: call centre, rapid, response, telephone, timely

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Write Each Day

Robert “Reb” Rebele feels that it will be a real benefit to you to Write Something Every Day.   The daily discipline of setting down something in writing can bring you multiple benefits.  Here are some that Robert  Rebele noted and he has the research to prove it.

Writing to learn – “Writing across the Curriculum” is an educational practice that extracts writing from the strangle-hold of English classes and puts writing exercises in every class, including math and science.

Writing to heal – Expressive writing can be a therapeutic process. When trauma victims write about these intense emotional experiences, they are often able to improve not just their subjective well-being, but also their physical health.

Writing to grow – “Write down three good things that happened to you today and why.” “Write a gratitude letter.” “Write about your best possible self.”

Writer’s block

Writing every day is easier than writing a few times per week. You don’t have to write much – just open that notebook at least once per day.  Develop strategies to make it effortless to start.

Some people feel that having to write something is a stress.  What should I write?  However it is easy to have a mountain of ideas if you just look around you and make a note of remarkable things.  It is a little bit like smelling the coffee or the roses. Remember you are writing for you, so no one else will see it unless you decide.

If you do want to share your writing with others, there is always something going on that would be of interest to them.  So the first step in preparing to write is to have a way of capturing all of these potential sparks that could trigger a written sentence, paragraph or article, whether short or long.  Keep a notepad or keep notes on your tablet or smartphone.

Doing the writing

Check out
Dragon Naturally Speaking,
the voice technology software
used on all the SMM blogs

Once you have the ideas, the writing comes easy. Make sure it is something you enjoy writing about.  If it includes humor, that’s even better.  Just as this blog post is being constructed, you can use voice technology such as
Dragon NaturallySpeaking and talk about your topic as if you were talking to a friend.  With a little practice, the software becomes used to your voice and a reasonable text version of your thoughts is easily produced.

Once written, what do you do with the text you have used.  That is entirely up to you since you have already received the key benefit that came from doing the writing.  You can keep your own private journal or your own blog or you can submit it to another blogger and ask her to publish your writings.

The important thing is to get started.  You can then get all the benefits that Robert  Rebele described.  All it takes is a roving eye, an alert spirit and an ability to tell others about the things you see. 

Technorati Tags: growth, healing, learning, write, writing

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The book is intended as a working process and workbook to help you achieve a successful business.  I found it fairly complete and some of the ideas are presented in a very effective manner.  Anyone who uses this book to guide them in their business decision-making will not go far wrong.

Before zigging and zagging, you should be figuring out what is this business you intend to grow and check that it will achieve the goals that you have set yourself at this time of your life.  The book gives some useful checklists and tables to help in doing this.  Once this is established, then it’s time to zig and zag.

The three main zigs or zags that Christiansen presents are the following:

• A first zig of getting to profitability is important to every business, because being broke and always fighting for funding can cause a lot of pain. More importantly, profitability can drive you to find hidden assets, zag to interim revenue sources, and force you to pace yourself in getting to that final destination. You must know you can survive and get the new business on its feet financially without resorting to injections of capital from others.
• The second zag is then to define processes and add resources. It is now time to formalize and document the processes that have worked up to this point. Only then can you expand those things that led to your initial success. It also means that it’s time to stop micro-managing, hire some of the right people, and start giving up some control.
• Once you have your team of right people, the third zig is then to Scale or expand the business. This is implementing a model that you can replicate many times over, to get your product or service out across the country, and around the world. Scaling models charge by the transaction, or subscriptions, or have digital assets with no cost to reproduce. Switch to a mindset of working “on” your business, rather than “in” your business.

There are several other evocative ways of describing important considerations in the book.  Beacon in the fog was one (where your dream will take you) and staying within the guardrails was another (knowing the boundaries on what you will accept).  These are not new concepts but it was good to see them discussed at some length in this approach.

This is a fairly slim book and an easy read and on the whole I would recommend it to business readers, not least because it is provocative.  However at the end of the day I am not convinced that zigging and zagging is the most effective way of describing how to grow your business.  I think the steps that Christiansen described are fundamental and should be followed.  However they are taking you in the same direction and calling them zigs and zags I believe is potentially confusing.  The book might have been instead called Ready, Aim, Fire for the three main zigs/zags.  It then would have better represented how I believe businesses should grow while keeping in mind that essential Peter Drucker Focus.

Technorati Tags: focus, Peter Drucker, zig zag

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Note that this is an updated version of a white paper that first appeared in December 2001. Over the years it has been the most read white paper of all. Although it reflects policies that one hopes most companies would now be applying, this still seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

In his book, Harvey Thompson suggests that an organization like Amazon.com is one of the best examples of a customer-centered company. At the other end of the scale, he puts Microsoft as an example of a product-driven company. I am sure we can all relate to what Thompson is saying. The book has some excellent advice on how being customer-centered in your marketing and your selling can produce much better business results than the product-driven approach.

In some ways, Thompson did not go far enough. The real key is to try to relate to how the customer sees our company. How will our typical customer feel when he or she contacts our company? We should try to stand in the shoes of our customers. Doing that, how does our company rate?

The following 7 habits distinguish the truly customer-centric organization from a business that merely thinks a lot about its customers.

Why not score your own company and see how you rate.

1. We Have A Promise For Our Customers,
Not Just A Mission For Ourselves

We have a Mission statement for the company, which is like this:

2. We Bundle Services In With Our Products

3. Our Website Is A Welcoming Door,
Not A Magnificent Edifice

Our website is like this:

4. The Customer Finds It Easy To Contact Us,
By Whatever Method Is Convenient

There are four usual ways of contacting any company – telephone, fax, email message, website form. How many of these can the customer easily find from your website?

5. Our Telephone System Is “Customer-Friendly”
And Not Just Cost-Effective

6. Our Customer Has One Main Contact
Who Makes Everything Happen

7. Our Customer Service Gives The Service
The Customer Really Wants

So add up your scores for the 7 habits and see how your organization rates in its marketing and its selling.

Total score

0 – 14 You probably turn off a large proportion of potential customers

15 – 20 You probably irritate some of your potential customers

21 – 25 You’re doing pretty well but the competition may do better

26 – 28 Now you’re a company I would like to buy from.

So how did your organization do? Perhaps you feel the rating is too critical. However with the Internet, the customer is now in the driving seat. Some companies are really giving incredible service and that is what is setting the standard for what customers expect. This is not rocket science. All it takes is a little more thinking and a little more attention to detail. So why not join the winners. Look at each of the questions where you scored less than 4 and see whether you should be doing more to make your customer feel valued.

If you would like your organization more customer-centric, then SMM will be happy to help you figure out your best approach. Our help can be configured to meet exactly the needs you have. Our strengths, experience and creativity can complement those of your company. So Contact Us today on what you’re looking for without obligation.

If you are interested in checking other articles in the series in their original format, follow these links:

• Previous: Windows – 3 for Outstanding Performance
• Next: Faster Is Better

Technorati Tags: Amazon, customer service, customer-centric, Harvey Thompson, IBM, microsoft

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• October 12, 2011 -- Windows Phone: A Weak Name For The Microsoft Smartphone (0)
• October 7, 2011 -- Should Microsoft buy Yahoo (0)

After conducting an annual performance review of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the software giant’s Board of Directors took him to task for poor sales of its Windows Phone 7 operating system, dampened Windows revenue and the “need for further progress” with new form factors, awarding him just half of his maximum yearly bonus.

Clearly Microsoft is competing with two very strong competitors, Apple and Google.  However it has the talents and the financial resources to match them in a toe-to-toe fight.  The Windows Phone certainly seems to have some strong technology behind it and from the website, the Windows Phone would seem to match up well against its competitors, the iPhone and Android phones, offering Easier sharing, smarter apps, and a better web.

So what explains the poor performance in the marketplace?

The Importance Of A Strong Product Name

Probably few would argue that a strong product name is a prerequisite for satisfactory sales performance.  A well-chosen name should create a positive perception of the product in a potential customer’s mind.  It also should be one which is easily searched for on the Internet and which can easily be found.  It should not create any confusion or question marks in the buyer’s mind.  You might have thought these reasons would be no-brainers.

Some Big Company Product Name Bloopers

Despite the obvious reasons for selecting a strong product name, there are a number of horror stories one can quote from the past.  Two examples of bad product nameswere chosen by major management consulting groups over ten years ago.

It should be obvious that people should have no difficulty in typing the chosen name.  Yet Accenture chose to include an unprintable accent in its official name, which we can only display as an image.

An even more impossible-to-believe product name was that chosen by PwC Consulting.  They copyrighted the name Monday as their new name.  With such a name, they would never have been found on the Internet.  Perhaps it is not surprising that they were shortly thereafter swallowed up by IBM and the name Monday vanished without trace.

Why Big Companies Settle For Bad Product Names

Any good marketing campaign to introduce a new product or indeed company is always lengthy.  Many of the key parameters cannot be defined until the product name has been chosen.  This puts pressure on a name selection process selection which is not too long.

In this time compressed program, any of the two following processes may result in a less than satisfactory product name.  If a committee is involved, then usually a compromise name must be selected which has no violent opposition.  The chance of an innovative name succeeding in this selection process is very low.

In some companies of course, everything is run from the top.  If the alpha male who runs the company prefers a particular name, then who will choose to rock the boat rather than meekly jumping on the bandwagon.  Sometimes the resulting name can be good but not always.

Why Windows Phone Is Weak

I have no knowledge of the precise process by which Microsoft chose to give the name Windows Phone to its range of smartphones.  Anyone living within the Microsoft culture might well feel that the name Windows will provide clear product identification.  It does of course alienate a certain proportion of the population but they would probably not buy anything from Microsoft anyway.

There is a certain perverse logic in going for the simple word Phone to signal the simplicity that will be involved in using this mobile device. Unfortunately perhaps more importantly it will work in the reverse direction of that intended and suggest that this is not a smart phone.

Of course the actual product name is only one factor in the market success of a product, but my own personal judgment is that the name Windows Phone will prove to be a poor choice.  This is particularly so in a market place where two very strong competitors have already established positions that will be difficult to beat.

Related articles

• Windows Phone, a year on (asymco.com)

Technorati Tags: Android, iPhone, microsoft, Steve Ballmer, Windows Phone 7

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• October 14, 2011 -- 7 Habits Of A Truly Customer-Centric Selling Organization (0)
• October 7, 2011 -- Should Microsoft buy Yahoo (0)

Microsoft is considering making another bid to purchase Yahoo! That final exclamation point is not to indicate astonishment but is, of course, part of the official Yahoo! company name.

As is usual, most of the posts I write are triggered by unusual events or coincidences.  In this case, I had signed on as a writer for Technorati this week.  I was alert to possibilities for my first post when my weekly e-mail from Week In China came over my desk.  There I noted that Internet tycoon Jack Ma has declared he wants to buy Yahoo.

He is the founder and chief executive of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.  This would be a real turnaround for this rapidly growing company. Six years ago Yahoo invested $1 billion for a 40% stake in Alibaba, at the time when the Chinese upstart was in need of funding and technology know-how.

Doing a little research, I found that within Microsoft there are internal divisions on whether it should pursue Yahoo again. The possible cold feet for Microsoft and the ardor of Ma suggested a line of thought for my first Technorati article. My effort was quickly published as Microsoft, please leave Yahoo! to Alibaba.

I realize that there is a sizeable crowd that are not too fond of Microsoft.  However it is pleasing to see that a few hours later, the post is one of the Hot items on the Technorati Home Page.

Technorati Tags: acquisition, alibaba, microsoft, yahoo

Related Posts

• October 14, 2011 -- 7 Habits Of A Truly Customer-Centric Selling Organization (0)
• October 12, 2011 -- Windows Phone: A Weak Name For The Microsoft Smartphone (0)

Visitors using mobile devices such as smart phones or Blackberries are an increasing share of our total traffic. It may well be that such visitors represent the upper fraction of our visitors in terms of purchasing power and could also be the movers and shakers in society. In order to give them a satisfactory user experience on their small screens, we are in the process of converting the SMM website to be more mobile-friendly.

We are doing this by using WordPress as a Content Management System. This involves using a child theme from the twentyeleven theme that WordPress now promotes as the latest and best. This has been used for all the SMM blogs and the result on mobile devices is really impressive.

Since 1998, SMM has created a huge reserve of white papers and articles on business and Internet Marketing. These are all static HTML web pages. The task of integrating them all into a Content Management System would be extremely onerous. Accordingly a fraction of the most frequently read will be updated and re-presented in the new website format. The remainder will be maintained as is for the visitors who frequently peruse them.

We hope that in this way we will provide the best user experience for all our visitors, whatever the device they may be using to browse the Internet. Please let us have your reactions, particularly if this format creates any problems for you. Happy and fruitful reading.

Technorati Tags: samsung, smartphone, twentyeleven

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