Amusing and informing at the same time. That’s the winning strategy for today’s content led selling.

There was a time when the sales rep‘s first responsibility was knowing new jokes, and who to share them with. This customer would laugh like a drain at an off colour story where others would take offence.

Jokes were an essential part of the sales call, amusing the buyer for a few minutes and buying the right to inform him of the new ? – whatever the pitch was that week.
Somehow we lost the plot.

Jokes, along with cigarettes and alcohol lunches are no longer part of the customer engagement process. We’re all too busy, being dreadfully busy.

But when it comes to content based selling we maybe need to think about the way things used to be and get back to Infotainment.

We don’t knock doors anymore, or organise regular calls, or even build relationships with prospects. They choose when they want to buy what and who from. And they mostly do that on the Internet.

Good news for those of us who understand and work to accommodate the new way of doing things. We can build blogs explaining in lots of ways how our solution solves problems for people just like our buyers.

But in today’s world it’s all happening too fast. Nobody has time to read academic treatise on the details. They just want the meat, in 30 seconds or less.

If we’re going to buy the right to make our pitch we have to do more – introduce a little entertainment so we can deliver the information. That’s infotainment based selling.

It’s why we’re seeing so much multimedia in blogs. It’s why we’re using cartoons in our web sites. It’s why Facebook is growing like crazy while traditional media is dying on the vine.

So here’s my recipe for infotainment sales strategy in 2010.

Just to avoid any confusion, this post isn’t about Internet Marketing. It’s about how we sell regular products and services. The old ways don’t work anymore.

That’s where the social media revolution falls down. It’s counter to most people’s culture. Unfortunately the result is networks dominated by those who don’t care. They’re comfortable shouting from the roof tops.

But the benefits of sharing are too great to be torpedoed by the ill mannered. In response to the shouting new services are launching – services which help us find others like us. Now even the modest can use the Internet to find others they want to do business with.

Indux will match us with others interested in the same subjects – the perfect dating service for people using publish and subscribe to find and listen to each other.

Twendly helps us find the experts in whatever subject we’re interested.

Both services are designed to shut out the noise and let the real relationships be heard. With the democratic web the people always win in the end. We just need to give the guys who open the doors a hand, by using their stuff.

So, if like me, you believe 95% of those claiming to make millions are exaggerating you might enjoy this particular piece of research I discovered.

And the best way to make money on the Internet is?

Teach People How to Make Money on the Internet

Actually this is the proper quote:

“My former brother-in-law taught me that information products about making money online are more profitable than selling regular products. He’s an eBay mogul who earns thousands of dollars teaching people how to drop-ship products on eBay. The business of teaching others how to drop-ship is more profitable than actually drop-shipping.”

And the rest of the post is a reasonable discussion of ways small amounts of revenue can be driven by web sites. You can find it at The Long Tail of Online Profitability

Even the establishment is now talking persuasively about software in the cloud as opposed to locally installed.

This is a reprint from AMR Research (link at the bottom) an organization I’ve followed for years.  In the past they’ve mostly seen their role as helping clients understand what the biggest vendors were doing, and how they align strategies with the vendors.

As we see from this checklist AMR is now very firmly on the bandwagon when it comes to promoting the benefits of cloud computing.

All the benefits highlighted in the list of real, and easy to measure.  Perversely they haven’t pointed to the risks, which they certainly would have done a couple of years ago.

But they’ve missed out the most important benefit of all – being connected.

Connection to the cloud offers almost endless possibilities for sharing and collaboration – factors which will drive customer value and service in the coming decade.

My Checklist on the Economics of Cloud Apps

Over the last year or so I have participated in a several webcasts where my role has been to offer advice on how to select your next business system. If you read last week’s First Thing Monday, you will detect my belief that more and more applications should move to the cloud/SaaS because of the economics.

Here’s a slightly modified checklist from the most recent webcast. Feel free to add/delete or rant/rave.

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Month’s ago we asked in this blog “Is this the beginning of the end for Enterprise Software” – not a popular topic at the time. Not surprising given that the only people interested in that stuff are those making very good money out of it – vendors and internal support techies.  As we know turkeys are not very interested in Thanksgiving.

But now even AMR which normally focuses on helping clients understand what’s happening in the big vendors (why should that be necessary?) is suggesting the party is over.

Here’s a quote from the newsletter:

Even though I’ve only presented one quarter’s worth of data, I also looked at the previous quarter and earlier periods too. Since the start of economic downturn last September, on-premises vendors have been harder hit than their cloud brethren. This is especially true for ERP providers.

While the largest enterprises may be the last to replace their financial applications and the bulk of their ERP systems with a cloud offering, it will happen, but only when the largest vendors endorse it, or companies like NetSuite and Workday are viewed as viable replacement products. The economics for buyers are too compelling, which is a theme we’ll explore in future editions of First Thing Monday.

The publicly-traded vendors have more of a challenge, though. Software as a service and cloud represent entirely different business models. Although this is especially true in the shift from large, upfront deals to subscription fees, it also shows up in the company’s business model.

Look at QAD, for example. In its 2009 annual report, the company noted that it had 1,500 employees, including 625 in services and support, with 400 consultants in 23 countries and 15 support centers. It also noted it had 350 developers in R&D centers in the United States, India, China, Ireland, Australia, and Belgium. Some of this comes courtesy of acquisitions, but how many services and support people, trainers, developers, and sites will QAD need if the new business shifts to mostly cloud sales?

Finally, Epicor and QAD are on the top of many private equity firms’ acquisition wish lists, despite the challenges of actually completing a deal.

In addition to appealing to customers, there are also shareholders to consider. As I write this, NetSuite has the highest market cap of the three at $882.06M. Epicor is valued at $397.54M, while QAD trails at $132.24M. The valuations are based on the closing price on Thursday, August 27.

Since the first trading day of the year, NetSuite’s share price is up 41.4%, Epicor 26.7%, and QAD 4%.

The central point here is the cost advantage enjoyed by cloud computing fundamentally changes the point of competition, moving the level of acceptable cost down below one at which those bloated software companies can get prices to break even.

There are lots of other advantages to cloud computing – all related to the value users get out of it when they’re freed from the grip of those techies.

We’ll discuss those in a later post.  For the moment Wall St. understands, even AMR begins to acknowledge, that Enterprise Software as we know it is in serious decline.

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We’ve spent the last year putting ours out there, and it’s paying dividends by the bucket load.

OK so maybe you think it’s all a bit techy, or too much work, or just a little intimidating but let me assure you it’s none of those things.

With all the services available now the world seems to be falling over itself to help us meet people, let them know why they should work with us, and give us a chance to talk to them without the pressures of the typical cold call, or hard sell.

True, there is a learning curve but every step makes a difference.

True, it’s work.  The Nirvana of ten minutes building a web site and an immediate flood of prospects doesn’t exist.  But compared to any other strategy for marketing and selling the Internet is cheaper, faster and more productive.

True, your business is different.  But your customers are still out there looking for stuff they want, interested in genuine insight not marketing, and being entertained.

True, there’s lots of competition.  But they are all in the game, at least.  Are you?

True, there are too many places to be, and they aren’t all appropriate.  But there are some where your prospects would like to find you.

How do you figure out where to be and what to do?  The best answer is get stuck in and explore for yourself.

The second best answer is watch this space.

Over coming weeks we’ll be posting on stuff that’s worked for us, and what hasn’t.  On what we find out as we explore.  On what we infer, based on what’s gone before and our picture of where it’s going.

Following this series could be a big help, especially if you want to chip in with your own perspective.

Please comment and help direct the conversation.

To be honest she’s never really used it, because she’s only ever used the most basic features of Outlook Express and Word.  And now she’s found the new world, she’ll never use those again.

Over the weekend I set her up with Chrome, Google Mail and Docs for email, and word processing, Picasa to manager her pictures, Posterous so she can blog and Facebook so she can keep up with her grandchildren, spread around the world from New Zealand to Chicago.

This isn’t rocket to science to all the Zoomers out there, after all most of us have been using web apps and services for some time, even those still tied to Office and Outlook.

The main point here is my mother is 79.  And she never was able to understand Windows or Office.

She’s able to get her brain around the different services because the people who built them left out the complexity and provided functional, easy on the eye, collaborative software for free.  And the Microsoft for Dummies book is now totally irrelevant.

She’s organized – knows which apps to use for email, letters, blogging, video conferencing, Instant Messenger, storing pictures – and is connected through social networks and blogs.

The message, to me at least, is simple.  If anybody wants to engage the majority of the population in using software or services they have to make those things simple to learn and use, and highly functional without confusing things and generally getting in the way.

This doesn’t come as any surprise to us.  We built Front Office Box to help people with customers, sales opportunities, plans, schedules and tasks to get organized.

We didn’t want to impress with the number of features.  We didn’t want to get involved in feature marketing.  Most of all we didn’t want to lose people because they couldn’t understand how to use the software,

We simply wanted to help them be organized and able to get on with the day job whilst we handle the complexity.

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I’m not sure about you, but I get tired paying those outrageous fees to lawyers, accountants, consultants etc.

Now we have a choice.  We can join this new service and get support from on-line consultants for a fraction of the cost we’d pay those guys downtown.

Founder Maria Tango explains the new service:

“Our purpose is to assist those with business ideas, startups and small business owners start, run and constantly improve business processes and operations from goal-setting to implementation.

We have structured it as a by-invitation, limited membership, “prepaid” consulting and coaching service which offers a combined total of (over) 5 hours to (over) 18 hours of consulting and coaching per month with fee ranges from $99 to $495 per month with added benefits of business networking, promotion and training, all with no contract.

Our mission is to help entrepreneurs, like yourself, be confident starting and running their business knowing they have professionals who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work side by side with them and encouraging them to accomplish their goals.”

For the full story goto Entrepreneurs Sounding Board

Posted via web from stevensreeves

“Every company has its own experience on Twitter. But whether a business has been here for a couple of years or just a few months, its twitterers tend to find that certain approaches lead to success. In this section, we share that wisdom, which falls into a couple of big categories.”

Here’s a link to the full article - 

Best Practices for Businesses on Twitter

I suppose they get away with it because there are some truly inept buyers out there. But they never last. It’s a bit of a joke usually but there’s a new one which doesn’t make me smile.

It’s a Spy, watching what we’re doing on a web site and telling a sales rep to call us when we’ve clicked on particular pages or links. At least I think that’s what it is.

Check out Eloqua and see what you think.  Maybe you can help me with this question?

I think this stuff will allow me to send emails to people, watch when they visit our registration page and then chase them if they don’t complete the form.

Would that be right?  It seems to me this is far too close to Big Brother watching.

Would you access a page if you knew the CRM system was watching you?

Should the page have a notice telling you you’re being watched?

Or maybe I’ve misunderstood what this software’s doing?

Apologies to Eloqua if I have.