Marketing Influence & Thought Leadership

Is the Social Media Bubble Bursting, or Will The Tsunami Continue?

 According to Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media lab,  the social media bubble is about to burst, here is an excerpt from his post on HBR March 23, 2010, “I'd like to advance a hypothesis: Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn't connecting us as much as we think it is. It's largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.” You can read the full editorial and it is actually quite an interesting myopic look at the new world of Internet communications: http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/03/the_social_media_bubble.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-WEEKLY_HOTLIST-_-MAR_2010-_-HOTLIST0329&referral=00202

What is most fascinating about this post is that he tries to draw a connection in the form of a metaphor on the subprime loan business? Quite bizarre indeed if you think about it, the subprime loan scenario evolved from the perfect storm of:

·         Giving anyone a loan that could fog a mirror.

·         A spectacle of American greed where banks and investors were not and are not being held accountable even today, so much for Sarbanes Oxley.

·         Digitization of mortgage loan origination systems where loan processing leveraged business process management software to take loan processing time down from months to less than several days.

(There were business rules engines in the BPM systems that could easily kick out those with low credit scores, but somehow they were tweaked to let those less worthy in.)

I simply don’t get this metaphor, do you?

Trust Enters the Global Social Media Landscape

All right lets attack this hypothesis. The customer is king and has just been given a new pen that moves at Internet business velocity and the only thing slowing down the social customer’s influence (word of mouth marketing) are time zones. One of the issues that Mr. Haque argues is that social media sites lack trust, well that may be the case for some sites that are blurring the lines between our personal and professional lives, but they are not creating fake thin relationships in my world. In fact we decide to enter into them and they are bringing us closer to our friends, past friends and relatives that we still want to know more than any other platform. In the business world we know exactly how social media helps to bring us closer to our customers and how they are leveraging the platforms to drive change.

One of the key findings from our SNCR research last year was that professionals do trust information and relationships on social media sites. This is key for any business and for many companies it’s all about influence because trust is the foundation of influence on the social media planet influence flows like water, it’s everywhere. This is why I always say that social media is the new word of mouth marketing. In several of my previous posts I have demonstrated how P&G, Indium, Kodak, SAP and others are gaining competitive advantage through social media. Is your company leveraging social media to their greatest advantage?

Why the Internet is the Greatest Innovation of Our Time

When Proctor and Gamble decided to build a social network of more than six hundred thousand mothers, do you think they were worried about trust? Probably not, but what they did was build and leverage a social network to build their brand and get competitive advantage. This is a story best told by the most social customer of us all Paul Greenberg, the inventor of Social CRM. The Internet has not only connected us in ways that are innovative and great but from an anthropological standpoint it is melding the cultures of the world.

As a member of the WWW conferences I had the pleasure of working with many early Internet pioneers who would have never predicted the social media tsunami. At the time we were still babbling about how a protocol standard called TCP/IP had just created a global area network called the Internet and debating the nuisances of stateless vs. stateful protocol streams. Remember that this was just sixteen years ago. For those of us that have gray hair we remember how Microsoft fought the Internet and would not endorse this routable protocol even though theirs wasn’t routable. Wow times sure have changed, but guess what, now I am a social customer, author, participant and B2B marketer.

·         I don’t think my relationship with the hundreds of people that read my blogs each week is weak or fake.

·         I don’t think that sites like YouTube are a fad.

·         When I don’t like something in a business I go Yelp about it.

·         When I need information I do a search.

·         Before I buy a product I do a search.

·         My sales friends are using Facebook and LinkedIn to do “digital hard rock mining.”

·         When I need to find old friends and relatives I go to Facebook and most of them are there and I don’t think my relationships are weak.

·         When I join a professional group I go to LinkedIn.

·         When I watch baseball now it’s on the IPhone with MLB.com.

·         And today I did not join 304,059,724 against Obama's Healthcare takeover.

·         I would really like to know how the Havas Media lab positions itself as a platform for a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs and firms experiment with, craft and drive radical management business models and strategic innovation.

 

Net/Net:

The Internet has rapidly expanded to become a global network of seamlessly connected computers and devices that has revolutionized information sharing and communications, challenged governments, broken down cultural barriers and driven innovation and business velocity to levels never before imagined. One of the most important successes of the Internet is how it is enabling globalization and more importantly business model innovation. Today’s most successful companies are driving product and business model innovation from outside their own walls by leveraging the Internet as a collaborative community building platform. This platform has allowed organizations to harness the innovation power of the community and not just individual innovation.

There are many that would argue that many of the enabling technologies that drive the Internet and Web 2.0 today have been around for some time. The reality is that we are finally leveraging their potential in new and exciting ways, there is more to come, because the Internet is all about innovation. 

Business Model Innovation: Blue Ocean Your Startup Thinking

When I think about what to post each week, foremost in my mind is how I can leverage my startup experience into actionable information that you can use in your business. Startups and small businesses as you all know operate at business velocities that are significantly higher than most companies. Most of the time you are too busy selling, providing services and/or producing product and you don’t have time to think, strategize and vision. I have learned that this can be an important time to stop, think, and look closely at where you are and what the road ahead could be like if you visioned it out and prepared for the growth ahead. It is also an important time to evaluate your long term business model and look for ways of optimizing business critical processes. As Socrates once said “the very thing that made you great will be your undoing,” and how many times have we heard CEOs say, “We made the biggest mistake when we were at the top of our game.” This week’s post is all about seeing the forest and the trees at the same time and creating an organizational culture of thinkers that think things through in pursuit of the Holy Grail, sustainable and profitable business model innovation.

 

One of my favorite business books is Blue Ocean Strategy, written by Professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of INSEAD, now one of the world’s leading business schools. Blue Ocean Strategy features a great Cirque Du Soleil case study of how to take the best of an old business model and mold it into a new successful one by using the attractive elements of the original model. Cirque as we all know has been wildly successful and has attained global appeal. Blue Ocean thinking can separate the “life style” startups from high growth companies with tremendous potential. I was lucky enough to work with the Cirque founders in the early days of their evolution and helped build some of their internal business processes and workflow engines, which at the time were way ahead of any potential competitors.

 

In my view, Blue Ocean thinking is a key element of any entrepreneurial visionary planning process. Getting out of your own Idaho so to speak, is often a great way to gain new perspective and generate ideas on where you currently are and your vision for the future. We accomplished this in several of my startups by having regular visioning discussions, and we also organized retreats away from the office with key officers and stakeholders in the company. It may sound like herding cats; however, if you bring in outsiders that can help facilitate the meetings and generally keep them on track; you will be much more successful than attempting to do it yourself. I would love to hear from you if you think differently about this strategy.

 

Visioning off sites are not uncommon in Silicon Valley and it is important to conduct them at seminal intervals in a startup company’s development. They are usually associated with revenue thresholds such as $5M, $20 or $100M. I can tell you from experience that off sites of any kind are not for everyone. And it is always in your best interest to carefully architect the offsite team’s chemistry to include just the right combination team members that are visionaries vs. those who are more execution oriented. I will again refer to Lynda Gratton’s excellent book, Hot Spots, as a reference guide to assembling the right team chemistry. Lynda’s research at the London Business School has focused on analyzing the team chemistry/organizational structure and how companies fail and/or are successful in reaching team objectives. Ms Gratton’s research was published in HBR early last year and reviewed more than 80 company’s team building efforts and results, www.hotspotsmovements.com.

 

Results from off sites can deliver amazing results in my experience and bond together executives and regular staff in ways that you never imagined. Make sure to clearly set objectives and if possible break out into sales, marketing and product oriented groups, with each bringing back their own vision of success. The focus is always on the bottom line, seeking sustainable profitable growth and applying what I call “joint value assessments” to business models and processes. Engaged and empowered executives and staff can bring out the best ideas for optimizing individual processes and models to meet the growth demands of the company. Always remember that the most valuable capital in your company is the human capital, and sales does not fix everything all the time, as some pundits say.

 

 The Personality of Fish: The Mole Crab 

At approximately twenty miles out to sea all scents of land and earth disappear and the smell of the ocean dominates. Last week we talked about the ocean being a river of rivers and we followed some of the rivers, visited with their inhabitants and experienced the unique personality of the Portuguese Man o War. One of the amazing things about going to sea for several weeks is the unique scent of the different water masses, and just like fish these water masses have their own personality, including destructive forces like warm core rings and the havoc they bring onto larval fish populations. This week we come closer to shore and enter the hostile world of the surf break zone and experience the life of Emerita, the Mole crab.

 

One of the most hostile places to live on our planet is within the surf or intertidal zone, where thousands of tons of water regularly crash onto sandy beaches, rocky outcroppings, breakwaters and barrier islands. Animals and plants that exist in this zone are some of the toughest on the planet and are regularly exposed to extremes of heat, cold, water and pressure. Mole crabs live in one of the safest places to exist in this environment, just below the surface of the sand and away from the pounding waves. I am sure you have watched birds running along the wave breaks probing the sand with their beaks in the wash zone of beaches; they are in search of mole crab colonies. Mole crabs are slightly bigger than the size of a human thumb and live along most beaches worldwide. In some parts of the world Mole crabs provide an important source of protein are harvested regularly.

 Mole crabs are one of the few inhabitants of sandy beaches and they continually borrow into the sand moving up and down the beach with the tide sifting plankton and detritus from the wave wash. Female mole crabs are much larger than males who become almost parasitic during mating season by clinging to the females for weeks at a time. During the spring and fall the female’s bellies swell with hundreds of red orange eggs and they are eagerly hunted by birds in pursuit of a protein snack. Most people who have been to the beach never realize that there are Mole crab colonies of thousands just below their feet. Often in business innovations and optimizations are so obvious and simple that you can’t see them.

Until next time great marketing and selling in the Millennium!

 

 

 

Startup Leadership in Turbulent Times: Company Values, Customers and Employee Morale Have Never Been More Important

Today, perpetual optimism is the force multiplier, now more than ever (Colin Powell, My American Journey). These are perhaps the most turbulent days of our lifetime, rampant uncertainty about the global economy, our jobs, our friends and families’ livelihoods, health care, education, global warming and to make things worse a weakening US dollar. These are the times that bring out the best and the worst in leaders. Leaders that have built their house on a rock of integrity, trust, and customer loyalty will weather the continuing storm. Those that rely on illusions, gimmicks and fear mongering and have already lost sight of their customers will sink deeply and quickly into the abyss. If you have ever witnessed a ship sinking the rats are the last to swim away from the vortex. This week’s reading is HBR’s, Drucker Centennial, What Would Peter Do? Is the title and as you all know, I am a huge Drucker fan.

Over the course of my career I often thought that participating in a startup was an adventure and it always reminded me of going on research cruises. Although several weeks at sea might seem short, activities and events at sea are accelerated at paces unimaginable, so it is actually a great metaphor. At the beginning of a cruise there is always uncertainty and doubt about the weather, the equipment, but most importantly the people. And unless you have personally handpicked all of your crew/employees, you have no idea how people will adapt and what leadership actions you will execute during your business voyage. There is really no difference in a startup or small business today, in some cases you need to act rapidly and effectively, in others time is your friend and using your best gut judgment is king. The really big difference is there is no day to day nausea of sea sickness to deal with in addition to lack of sleep, but that may not be the case for many employees today.

How Employees Think & Act in Turbulent Times

·         Employee thinking revolves around leadership:

o   Do I have confidence in the management’s decision making?

o   Do I trust the company and leader’s value system and integrity?

o   Are our leaders empathetic and understanding?

o   Is there fairness in decision making across the organization?

o   Can I trust the company’s business model?

o   Is my job safe?

 

These are all vitally important human issues today that seriously impact performance, productivity, innovation, attrition and your ability to conduct business. Dealing with them in an open, honest and fair environment will only deepen employee loyalty over the long run.

I have learned that there is no more powerful radical in the organizational equation than the negative power employee. They must be identified, controlled and/or expelled from organizational culture if necessary. This is the most important task of the sea going scientist manager, and the same goes for startup management. Negative power people will destroy the very basis of your management foundation and have the potential destroy your relationships with employees, customers and partners alike. On every ship I sailed on over a course of ten years there was always at least one negative power person.

 

·         Some employee actions in turbulent times revolve around:

o   Loyal employees persevering and maintaining focus and culture.

o   Lack of management trust results in a serious lack of morale.

o   The negative power people and managers wreak havoc by poisoning your relationships with employees, customers and partners.

o   New siloed political groups emerge across the company.

o   The best employees seek other opportunities, leaving behind a culture not favorable to the high performers.

o   Fear uncertainty and doubt creates apathy that drives down productivity and kills innovation.

·         How many of you have identified and dealt with the negative power people, I would like you to comment and share your management tactics.

 

Net/Net

 

One day I saw a bumper sticker that said, “There is no government like no government and then I thought to myself well if that is the case what about, ‘there is no management like no management.” There are many dysfunctional companies that creep and even some the cruise along with weak and unsupportive management cultures, in the end they almost always fail. One of the hallmarks of successful companies today is great management culture with a clear voice and vision of the future. Those are the companies that attract and keep the best because their managers are clearly focused on establishing and managing people to their highest abilities. Successful managers today need to be more sensitive to the human needs of employees, they are part therapist, mentor, teacher, but most of all they are fair and drive the best from the best. Being tough on employees that are challenged with work and family issues in these times doesn’t work, have more frequent one on one discussions with employees and most importantly preserve their trust. They will be there for you when the going gets tougher.

  The Personality of Fish: Killer Whales in the Sea of Cortez

 

 would have thought there would be Orcas in the Sea of Cortex well here is proof, this picture was taken two weeks ago about 50 miles off Puerto Penasco, in Sonora Mexico. The Marine Mammal Protection act of the 1970’s has been one of the only regulations that have had significant impact on the marine mammals in the US. In the Sea of Cortez marine mammals are alive and well, during the course of our eleven hours at sea we encountered more than fifty whales in addition to huge pods of dolphins and a small pod of killer whales. These animals are at the top of the oceanic ecosystem and appear to thriving in North America, this is extremely good news for our oceans.

Marine mammals, especially whales are like fishing boats that harvest nearly twenty four hours a day, they herd schools of fish and at times blow large clouds of bubbles underneath prey to concentrate them. They feed on plankton, bait fish and sometimes in the case of the Killer Whale they will separate a baby whale from the pod and feed upon it. Whales in general are some of the most unstudied creatures on earth and many of their habits and migratory patterns are unknown, especially their communications. I am sure that many of you who have encountered a whale remember the almost human look that a whale eye casts upon you when it looks up from the ocean. In these turbulent times, be understanding when your employees cast a worried eye in your direction, be a leader with compassion and great selling and marketing in Q4!

 

Making Marketing Accountable: And Beachcombing Tidal Drift Lines

How to make marketing accountable is an age old question that keeps rearing its ugly head in nearly every organization. And every time sales slide we hear the same old song: our marketing is not working, we don’t have enough leads, we aren’t sending the right message, our positioning is off, we are too expensive and the competition has better marketing “they are everywhere.” My dear old boss at Hummingbird, Jan Adamek would always say “marketing smarketing let’s just sell the stuff.” In many ways he was right and in many startups sales and marketing are connected at the hip, this is not the case in many large organizations where marketing often sits in the glass house.  Last week we discussed Indium’s three Cs of social media and how MVP executes best practices in integration social media marketing to drive lead generation and revenue for SAP. This week it’s the old and the new of marketing.

Age Old and New Marketing Questions:

·         Is marketing too important to be left up to the marketing people?

·         Can everything we do in marketing be measured?

·         If it can’t be measured then why should we do it?

·         How do we measure the impact of social media marketing?

Sales Driven Marketing People Rock

I firmly believe that marketing is too important to be left up to marketing people. So recruit and develop marketing people that have carried a bag. There is no substitute for front line selling experience, and if you find and/or convert sales people to become marketers they are, and/or will become your best marketers.  However, they are a rare breed, find them and your marketing department shines. For them marketing every day begins with sales and they think about it from the perspective of a sales person and what a sales person needs to sell.  They will automatically reach out to sales people and ask them what the current barriers to sales are? What ammunition (content, influence & qualified leads) can they put in a sales person’s hands that day and what kind of air cover they can provide for the sales marines in the field? Marketing and its various communications functions are in many ways the air force of business war, sales guys are the marines.

Measuring Marketing & Communications

Nearly everything you do in marketing and the various functions of communications efforts can now be measured. The first step is to take a close look at all marketing processes and look at how they are integrated to fill your funnel. Marketing in the sense of the four Ps used to be much harder before the Internet in my view, but those that have not adapted to the social media change will say it was much easier. The fact is that it is much more measureable now than ever.

Four Ps

Marketing your product to a place and positioning it with a price was the foundation of early marketing that has changed radically in the last ten years.

Think about how difficult it was to get competitive information fifteen years ago, it meant going to trade conferences, in some cases dumpster diving, and the best case scenario was always when the customer hated the competitor and told you all about them.

What is Measureable Today?

·         Traditional Marketing Vehicles:

o   Brochures and collateral created.

o   In person events and trade shows.

o   On premise customer visits.

o   Snail mailings.

o   Executive thought leadership.

o   Third party thought leadership.

o   Sales visits.

·         The Internet & Web 2.0:

o   Search word and engine effectiveness

o   Click through, from partners.

o   Unique visitor’s impressions.

o   Chat streams.

o   Downloads of content, ebooks etc.

o   Global distribution of visitors.

o   Webinar and virtual trade show attendees.

o   Brand experience and sentiment.

o   Number bloggers on your radar screen.

o   Blog tonality.

o   Social media sites that review your products and services.

o   Engagement: Facebook, Twitter, eg blog comments.

Communications in its various forms is the mouthpiece of marketing and the two organizations are connected at the hip in most successful companies. This is often the case in startup companies and SMEs where marketing- sales - senior management are completely integrated and this provides them with significant competitive advantage over larger competitors. And they simple can’t afford not to have effective marketing.

Measuring Brand & Thought Leadership

In the social media world it is becoming easier to measure reputation and brand experience by looking at the tonality of the blogosphere and social media peer groups involved with your products and services. Marketing is more than branding and brand management; however, these are two factors that were not easily measured just ten years ago. Brand is one aspect of marketing that is still very hard for small business to measure; however, social media can make it easier when employed. Thought leadership is also more measureable than ever within the collaborative influence chain that social media enables. Finding your thought leaders and evaluating the depth of their ecosystem and number of followers has never been easier.

As Darwin so aptly said, “it is not the strongest that survive, but those that can adapt to change.” The smartest marketers today are rapidly adapting to the social media tsunami and are leveraging it to competitive advantage.

 

Beachcombing Tidal Drift Zones

Every day our oceans fluctuate in a pattern of low tides and high tides in two sequences, with two lows and two highs every twenty four hours. When the moon and sun are in alignment with our earth we have our lowest and highest tides because of the gravitational pull exerted by these objects. Gravity pulls our oceans towards the equator and they bulge out creating extreme highs and lows in regions north of the equator. These are called spring tides and when they occur with storms we see the most damage and erosion on our coasts. During these times we have the highest and lowest tidal amplitudes and they can be very extreme, examples being the Sea of Cortez and Bay of Fundy where tidal amplitudes can exceed fifty feet. I have experience extreme tides in both of these areas and it is truly an amazing event.

As a young man I spent a great deal of my time working the tides and learned that on every beach there are two tide lines. At the top of the beach we always find what is called the high tide line and at the bottom of the beach or coast is the low tide line.  When beachcombing one should always walk both tide lines because they will have different animals and shell and of course my favorite beach glass. Beachcombing is one of my favorite past times and until next time I wish you great marketing and selling in the millennium. 

Cooking Up the Right Startup Culture: Recipes for Empowering Employees

The movie Julie and Julia inspired this week’s title and I was pleasantly surprised to see blogging so prevalent in a movie, but I wont’ ruin it for you. Creating, managing and sustaining startup culture is all about selecting employees with the right stuff and empowering them. I have been on both sides of the coin, two successful startups and two failed and I can tell you that culture begins at the top. Again, I will refer you to Lynda Gratton’s great book Hotspots and her excellent research on how to build collaborative teams of people that drive innovation. The Net/Net from her book and research is that you must create the right mix of people in a team to facilitate collaboration that leads to innovation. Too many thinkers vs. executers and the team quickly becomes jello.

 Organizations globally would love to have the nirvana of a team-oriented collaborative culture, where every employee treats the company’s business as if it were their own. The reality for most companies is that this will never happen. Once a culture is established in an organization it is baked, and as I always said, you can’t make putanesca without anchovies.

 The most effective ingredients that drive startup collaboration and innovation in my experience are:

•  Strong and focused and motivational leaders
• Entrepreneurial employee personalities
• Organizational silo busting
• Destruction of politics
• Clearly defined and agreed upon management business objectives (MBO) and their associated key performance indicators (KPI).
• Empowerment of employees

Leadership

 Abraham Lincoln once said “the culture of a company takes on the personality and characteristics of its leadership,” and if you look at companies like Apple, and Intel in the early days, the leaders demonstrated great vision and motivation. When many said Apple was dead, Steve Jobs re-invented the company with brilliant thinking, strategy and amazingly innovative design.  Focus, integrity and honesty are the hallmarks of great leaders, see, The Daily Drucker. At my third startup, Survey.com, I was nicknamed the Nutcracker because of my aggressive and walk around leadership style. Everyone at Survey.com had a nickname and I described this process in an earlier post this year, coined the “Sicilian naming celebration.” My focus and passion was sales and everyone knew it because we had to make payroll every two weeks. So I installed a ships bell in the office and every time someone made a sale the bell was rung. Shortly after the bell was installed, every time it rang the entire company started clapping and yelling. Motivational leadership is also a major factor and making people believe is not an easy task, this requires experience, depth of personal character and continuous work. Those employees that don’t believe in a startup company stick out like a sore thumb. I could write for days on this area, however, the world’s recognized expert on this is Peter Drucker, he was so smart that I don’t think he was from earth.

 Employees with the Right Ingredients

 This may be the most important factor in the success of your company and down the road its ability to sustain profitable growth. Look for entrepreneurial people that are not political and won’t live in a silo. One thing I have learned is that those people that have worked together before in another company will flock together in a startup and exclude others from their trust. This is good and bad, good if you can get an entire marketing, sales and/or engineering team that have worked together and trust each other. It doesn’t work when they exclude others and are not transparent and play politics. That is when I would say if you want to play politics then move to Washington DC, there is no room for politics in any startup and it is the kiss of death.

 Recipe for Success, Clearly Articulated MBOs and KPIs

 In the world of well run enterprises with strong management and accountability, we live our MBOs and we deliver on our KPIs. Clearly defining the mission statement of your company and ensuring that managers articulate your value proposition to all employees is paramount to success. Accountability is king in startup land and the minute that one person or one unit fails to deliver the entire organization feels it. This is often difficult to do from a management perspective in a startup because employees are often asked perform multiple tasks and sometimes loose focus on their real job. I have learned that recognition is a key factor here, and the ships bell is just one example of team building and empowering of employees.

 Key Recipes for Managing and Empowering Employees

 Believe it or not many companies do not understand this concept and it is one I have leveraged for many years. When I first joined SAP, one of my employees called me the sink or swim boss. At first the person did not get it but before long what they realized is that I had hired them because they did not have to be micro-managed. And I wanted to give them the freedom to do their job in their way as long at it aligned with our MBOs and delivered on the KPIs. This is called empowerment, and this gives the manger the opportunity to focus more on strategy, vision and execution. Remember, “There is no strategy without execution,” Peter Drucker again. Key to this is hiring the right employee and providing them with the resources and advice when they need it. This instills trust, not the false sense of family that many companies and organizations tend to foster. Employees realize that you trust them, and this is huge because they begin to treat their job as if it were their personal business.  They will come to you when then need direction, there is conflict, and need advice because they trust you!

 The real hard work is in managing for success, and that is making sure managers keep employees focused on their job, reward them accordingly and identify signs of burn out. If you have ever done a startup, you know how stressful it can be not only on employees but on their friends and family. As a manager it is your job to know your employees and know when they hit the wall, and respect their private lives. Startups are a marathon that never ends, so when an employee is burned tell them to take a breather. Recognize your employee’s success, keep them focused on their real job and manage them when they begin to burn out. At Zona Research and at Survey.com we always had award ceremonies that included analyst, salesperson and researcher of the year.

 

The Personality of Fish: Ancho Chile Salmon with Mushrooms

 Enough about sharks, they are in the news and if you watched 60 minutes this week you know that everything I wrote about them last week was true, they are over used, abused and under studied. We know more about the moon than we know about sharks, however, I disagree with the egalitarian group that thinks shark tourism is stimulating shark appetite for human flesh. Sharks have been eating man since we emerged 4.5 million years ago; there are just more of us in the water now. This week its salmon and I am including a new recipe that I created after watching the movie Ratatouille. Science this week will be the science of cooking and next week we will dive into the complicated life history of salmon.

 Ingredients

• One cup whole chantrelle mushrooms
• One cup whole baby shitake mushrooms.
• 1/4 cup white vermouth
• Two cloves finely chopped garlic
• Two skin on salmon filets about 8 oz each (try to get the thick filets closer to the head, preferably ¾-1 inch in thickness.
• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• Juice of one medium lemon
• Half stick salted butter
• Two tablespoons freshly grated ancho chile pepper
• Tablespoon salt
• Table spoon black pepper
• Ttable spoon cumin

 

Prepare the fish by washing and drying it and removing and interstitial bones with a pair of needle nose pliers. Let fish sit at room temperature for 15 minutes. In one large non stick skillet (12” or more that can be placed under a broiler) pour in olive oil and cook at medium heat, once the oil is hot add butter and mushrooms whole, (don’t cut mushrooms up) fry until mushrooms are about half cooked, three to five minutes depending on your cook surface.

 Remove mushrooms from the pan, but be sure to keep the oil and butter in the pan.

 Add fish skin down, (note that you will not be turning the fish over).

 As soon as you put the fish in the pan, add vermouth, lemon juice by pouring it over the top surface of the fish.

 Then evenly sprinkle over the top of the filets the black pepper, salt and cumin, ancho chile and chopped garlic.  

 Cook fish five to six minutes or until you can see on the sides that it is cooked half way up the filet.

 Start broiler in oven and adjust to high.

 Remove skillet from burner and add some of the mushrooms to the top of the fish evenly distributing them over the surface and on the side of the fish.

 Put skillet directly under the broiler and broil for five to eight minutes or until the fish reaches your level of cooking, some people like it rare on the inside.

 Test fish with fork to see if it is cooked to your liking.

 Remove from pan and place on plates pouring remaining sauce and mushrooms from the pan over the fish.

 Enjoy this recipe, you may over cook it the first time but it is a great way to cook one of our favorite fishes. Until next time great marketing and selling in the millennium.

 

 

The B2B Social Media Olympics, Sponsored by Penn State’s ISBM & a Chance Meeting with George Bush Senior

Pennsylvania State University’s Institute for the Studies of Business Markets (ISBM http://isbm.smeal.psu.edu/ and part of the SMEAL College of Business) is another example of academic thought leaders who are working directly with industry to understand and capture competitive advantage in B2B marketing. Ralph Oliva, the Executive Director is what I call a “cosmic bondini” in that he connects the dots between what industry needs, and addresses those needs by building his network and foundation on rocks called research and B2P networking. Ralph, brother of my friend Vinnie Oliva at Gartner, assembled one of the first ever B2B conferences focused on social media. This ISBM conference was genius in the sense that it not only presented research that clearly shows where social media is going; but also provided speakers and practitioners that are actually doing it! HELLO!

Those practitioners included myself and Robin Carey of Social Media Today, Rick Short of Indium, Jeff Hayzlett of Kodak (see him on YouTube) and Cisco’s Doug Webster, in addition to several consulting organizations. One particular consultant/social media guru, had the audacity to actually get on stage and admit that they don’t even blog, wow are u kidding! This conference is one of the first I have ever seen that provides insights into how to execute a B2B social media strategy that addresses the bottom line, sales.

For background reading on thought leadership see Thought Leadership is Key to Marketing Communications Today at: http://www.thesocialcustomer.com/blog/PeterAuditore1/site/posts/

Net/Net: The Barrier to Executing B2B Social Media Strategy= Company & Org Culture

As Drucker always said “there is no strategy without execution,” and after spending last week with 100 marketing CMOs, directors and managers from more than fifty companies and organizations, I can tell you that most of them are far from executing any social media. Although many of the companies were from the manufacturing and the services industries they don’t get that B2B social media is simply another way of getting closer to their customers, partners and suppliers. Their company cultures are stuck in the mud of the antiquated four Ps of marketing, intellectual property protection discussions, and are threatened by the change of represented in the social media landscape that is downright scary to them.  This again harkens back to what I said multiple times last year about how social media can drive competitive advantage and most importantly sales. Get it!

I had the pleasure of keynoting this conference at the Houstonian hotel last week with my partner in crime Robin Carey. We presented SNCR research on how social media peer groups are rapidly becoming trusted decision support tools, and discussed the development of our famous MyVenturePad best practices in social media marketing case study. Here is a quick overview of the most important presentation that hit the spot.

Best Conference Presentation: Rick Short of Indium

Imagine if you were the marketing guru for a company that makes solder and solder paste how would you leverage social media?  Well Rick has been doing it for nearly five years now, Rick and I presented last year at the BMA conference and his formula for success with social media can be summed up in what he calls the three Cs and I love this:

• CONTENT        2          CONTACT        2          CASH

Rick’s story is indeed a best practice in B2B social media and he provided a roadmap to executing it. Rick has now convinced seventy of his company’s engineers to blog regularly on their areas of expertise and they are driving revenue from the people that read their blogs. He used one specific example of how an engineer was blogging on an obscure metallurgy topic and as a result the potential customer came to them because Indium has more content on the Internet about this area through blogging than any competitor, so they were viewed as an expert. In spite of the fact that Rick Short was there to tell them just how his company, Indium, makes money from social media, many conference attendees still did not get it, amazing.

A Chance Meeting with George Bush Senior

It is not often that I meet a President and have a conversation with one, but it was indeed fun to meet President Bush one of our kinder and gentler Presidents in Houston. While sitting out front of the hotel having my afternoon cigar, I noticed two secret service people open the door to the veranda I was sitting on, and out of a side door to my surprise emerged George Bush and his cane. For an older guy he looked great and vibrant and as I arose to shake his hand as he approached me and said “hi I am Peter from California, nice to meet you President Bush.” He looked at me and said, “You are enjoying a cigar” and I said “yes my grandfather told me that the man who smokes the big cigar has his life and plans well in hand.” (That is because usually when you light up a cigar everyone around you that does not smoke exitsJ)  George laughed and said “nice,” and then I said “we need to change this Cuban situation.” ‘George said why? George W likes cigars what should I tell him?’ I said “tell George W this, “Cuban cigars smoke up to twice as long as others, and they often taste like chocolate, nutmeg and other wonderful flavors and they are really smooth.” President Bush said, “I will, nice to meet you Peter.”

There is an awful lot more I could tell you about this conference but the net/net is most companies even today don’t understand the value of social media and don’t know how to use it, their competitors will. Until next time I wish you great marketing and selling in the millennium.

 

 

 

Today We Need a Professional Bloggers Code: And Pirate Code

The power of the pen has never been more important than in the millennium.  Bloggers are everywhere and their influence is growing daily at the speed of the Internet. Think about this for a minute, the new Harry Potter theme park was announced through a secret mid night introduction to a handful of the world’s most popular Harry Potter bloggers. Somewhere around 20 million people learned about the new park through their social media peer groups and ecosystems, amazing.

These days it seems like everyone in certain demographic groups thinks they are a blogger, I would fathom to say in some cases they are not. Many companies have assembled swat teams of “brand protectors” that watch and engage with rogue bloggers that attack their company, products, and services and even in some cases employees. There are also many excellent bloggers that regularly share views and analysis that reflect great depth and knowledge of their areas, but blogging is just on channel of their voice. These are the bloggers to follow they only speak in one voice.

The Element of Trust

The ultimate question is does the blogger you are following really have the depth of knowledge and experience in their industry, and more importantly can you trust it? Trust is the foundation of value in all groups of people and without it there is no sustainability to the group or its information. Thought leadership is built on the hallmark of trusting that the information is accurate, the vision practical and the source credible and this in enforced in the academic world. What surprises me is the lack of academic professor’s blogging and the limitations put on traditional analysts by their parent firms and the inability of financial analysts to share information is highly regulated by the GOV. Many financial analysts simply can’t blog because of regulation.  

One of the few academics, who has built his house on a rock and also blogs is Andrew McAfee of MIT, Andrew, along with myself are great Red Sox fans. What I like about his research is that it is built on a solid rock of data and in my view he has proven beyond a doubt the IT matters.

The Business Impact of IT

http://www.duchamphotel.com/hotel_site/index.htm

Let’s take a look at blogging code today for example, we now have so called “expert bloggers and expert blogging communities,” check out this headline from Fast Company: Carbon Accounting Software Market Experiencing Huge Period of Growth BY FC EXPERT BLOGGER TRACEY DE MORSELLA Today This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

In this scenario the expert blogging community is established by a media channel, Fast Company, my question to you is can we trust a media channel, magazine or whatever you want to call it, to select and manage a blogging community that delivers trustworthy information?

On Wikipedia I found what I would call a primitive Bloggers Code, I don’t know what trolls are, I never keep my sources private, I think once and post, I take action against attacks and I always take responsibility for my own words, actions. This all seems very immature to me in many ways, what do you think?

Create your own code by selecting the modules you want:

1.     Responsibility for our own words

2.     Nothing we wouldn't say in person

3.     Connect privately first

4.     Take action against attacks

5.     a) No anonymous comments OR b) No pseudonymous comments

6.     Ignore the trolls

7.     Encourage enforcement of terms of service

8.     Keep our sources private

9.     Discretion to delete comments

10. Do no harm

11. Think twice - post once

 

I follow these guidelines which were created last weekend, I wish more blogger do.

A Professional Bloggers Code

1.      Bloggers have a duty to provide valuable insights into the current affairs of their ecosystem.

2.      Bloggers will not create spectrums of negativity and hate amongst the social media peer groups they influence and reward everyone fairly.

3.      Bloggers will not gamble with a person, organization or company’s brand by unfairly interfering in the business of business and damage the reputation of others, organizations, companies and their products and services.

4.      Bloggers know when it is time to move on, avoid obsolete information, their mantra is to obsolete information.

5.      Bloggers are not self appointed gurus, their ship is built on a foundation of experience, intelligence, honesty and integrity and they keep their mind sharp.

6.      Bloggers know who they are and not everyone is a blogger.

7.      Bloggers stick to their guns and don’t waver in their analysis.

8.      Bloggers don’t attack other bloggers with unfounded and inaccurate information and analysis.

9.      Bloggers know the challenge is the next blog and accept the creativity and innovation required to command respect.

10.  Bloggers know how to share the prize.

Bloggers blow their horns in many ways and blogging is just one channel of influence.

Those of us that have studied pirate history know that the “Pirate code” was a prevailing wind of justice in their society, on board vessels and land. I have been a big fan of Pirates and studying their history has been fascinating indeed.  Today I present to you the Pirate Code and my reference is Angus Konstam’s wonderful new book The World Atlas of Pirates, from page 173:

1.      Every man has a vote in the affairs of the moment.

2.      Every man to be called fairly in rum.

3.      No person to game at cards for dice and money.

4.      The lights and candles to be put out a eight o’clock at night.

5.      To keep their piece, pistols and cutlass clean.

6.      No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them.

7.      To desert their ship or quarters in battle.

8.      No striking another on board.

9.      No man to talk of breaking up their way of living.

10.  The captain and quartermaster to receive two share of the prize.

11.  The musicians have to rest on the day of the Sabbath.

 

I hope you enjoy this month’s post as I have been thinking about it for some time, and until next time I wish you great selling and marketing in the millennium. 

Thought Leadership and the Social Customer

The social media tsunami is significantly impacting the world of communications, marketing, sales and how we currently engage with influencers. This change mandates that we reassess current engagement models and the importance of individuals and their influence in social media peer groups (SMPG). Social media is more than a phenomenon and it has created new and viral forms of influence that are changing the way purchasing decisions are made in nearly all industries, including information technology. Social media is the new word of mouth marketing and advertising platform. The good news about this change is that it is allowing us to identify and better understand new and old influencers and their followers. For the influencers and thought leaders it is a panacea that is enabling transformation and innovation of their own business models. New social media influencing mediums, such as blogging and SMPGs /peer networks can provide a simplified method for evaluating and effectively scoring the overall importance of influencers in the purchasing decision making process. However, it is not the true sum of their influence within your ecosystem.  

Evaluating the Importance of Influencers

Who are your thought leaders and how do you evaluate their level of importance in your ecosystem?  This is perhaps one of the most important questions asked during discussions on thought leadership with colleagues and also when I present at social media conferences. At SAP we have developed effective systems and process guidelines for assessing the influence of thought leaders and have created “influencer scorecards” that assess the importance of influencers. Our ability to accurately assess the scoring value of each influencer requires an in-depth knowledge of their activities, reputation, standing in their firm or university and business model. We have assigned weighting values to parameters that we have identified as important, blogging is just one channel of influence.  The scoring parameters will vary depending on influencer type, for example, IT analysts include a parameter for influence within their respective firm and luminaries include a parameter for reputation.

Some Influencer Types

• Academic Influencers, university professors and their consulting arms.
• Business Influencers, by product or market focus.
• ITIR Influencers-traditional analyst firms and boutiques.
• IT Industry Thought Leaders, Geoff Moore, Don Tapscott etc.
• Industry Influencers, by vertical market segment or industry.

 

(A Business Influencer is a combination of consultant-analyst-author with in-depth industry expertise that focuses on the business value of technology and consults with LOB and IT and/or runs a systems integration software organization that often implements technology solutions in Fortune 500 or SME companies and organizations.)

Example Academic Influencer Scorecard

Weighting Parameters       0-5	Thought Leader One	Thought Leader Two	Thought Leader Three	Thought Leader Four	Thought Leader Five	Thought Leader Six
Author	5	5	5	5	5	5
C Suite Consultant	5	5	5	5	5	5
Independent Consulting Organization	1	3	1	5	2	1
Research Depth	5	5	5	5	5	5
University Rank	5	5	5	5	5	5
Speaking	5	3	5	5	5	5
Press Appeal/TV	5	3	5	3	5	5
Venture Capital Involvement	?	?	?	?	?	?
Geographic Reach	5	5	5	5	5	5
Blogger-Twitter	5	5	0	0	5	5
Score	41	39	36	38	42	41

 

The BIG team has intimate knowledge of all the thought leaders in this scorecard after working with them for several years now, and as you can see they are all nearly at the same level of influence at the C suite level of companies.

Guidelines for Key Weighting Parameters

• Author-has published at least two books and HBR articles etc.
• Blogger-is a regular blogger and has Twitter following.
• C Suite Consultant-consults regularly with C suite executives.
• Independent Consulting Organization-separate from University, Innosight, Keystone Strategy Group, etc.
• Research Depth-recognized expert in field conducting regular primary and secondary market research
• University rank-renown University, one of Top 50 in US example.
• Speaking-regular speaker in field of expertise
• Press Appeal /TV-Quoteability-PR friendly and TV appearances.
• Venture Capital Involvement
• Geographic reach

 

The influencer scorecard is not meant to overly simplify and/or provide a mathematical formula for assessing influence, but it is a good general framework from which to begin evaluating thought leaders. The social media tsunami has certainly changed the overall dynamics of influence in our businesses and its impact on brand and sales has yet to be measured. And thought leaders are seminal players in the social media landscape.

 

 

Thought Leadership is Key to Marketing Communications Today: How R Thought Leaders Influencing Your Customers?

Thought leadership whether it’s from academics, industry experts and/or luminaries is now a seminal component of any marketing program, especially in the technology industry where the holy grail now is the business value of technology. The C suite and many LOB managers are now heavily involved in technology purchasing decisions, which have become much more centralized and collaborative. Do you know who the thought leaders in your industry are and how they are engaging with your customers through all the communications mediums now including social media? If you don’t it’s time to take a good look at your industry’s landscape. The bullet list below depicts a high level view of a thought leadership classification model.

 

Thought Leadership Classification Model

 

·         Policy & Institutes

·         Strategy & Planning

·         Change

·         Innovation & Collaboration

·         Leadership

·         Infrastructure

·         Operations

·         Finance

 

Suggested Reading this month is Ranjay Gulati’s new book, Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business and I have had the pleasure of working with Ranjay over the last several years. “Customer data, information and case studies are the lifeblood of thought leadership, “without them thought leaders live with their heads in the clouds, but their feet are not on the ground,” said Ranjay Gulati of Harvard Business School.”  Gulati keeps his feet on the ground and his head in the clouds by working with vendors and customers alike, much like Mohan Sawhney of Kellogg and Henry Chesborough of UC Berkeley.  As leaders in strategy, vision, execution and management, the hallmark and success of any successful thought leader is their knowledge of customer success. Pick up any business management book today and you will quickly find yourself reading about company success stories in innovation, organizational management, human resources and product development. Thought leaders need access to customers and the responsibility of (the most advanced) vendors today is the development and maintenance of these key relationships with the leading thought leaders worldwide.

 

Leveraging thought leaders to provide vision and enhance marketing is not new to our industry, or to SAP. However, it is becoming very important that vendors not only leverage their vision and content, but develop and maintain deep and healthy relationships with these important influencers, especially in these tough economic times. During the Perfect Storm of business process re-engineering in the 1980’s, SAP came to market with ERP software at the same time Michael Hammer’s book about reengineering the corporation radically changed C suite thinking, and revolutionized business process management. SAP worked with Michael Hammer throughout the world as a visionary thought leader and during the 1990’s NCR’s Teradata, leveraged Peppers and Rodgers, the original creators of CRM to promote their data warehouse. SAS institute (who also gets it) has been working with Tom Davenport a prolific author on all topics analytic and enterprise software related. Over the last two years SAP engaged with several of the industry’s important thought leaders to promote the concept of business network transformation (BNT), as a result created a book entitled, Business Network Transformation: Strategies to Reconfigure Your Business Relationships for Competitive Advantage,  proceeds from this book are contributed to the World Food Organization.

 

For the most part many universities haven’t understood how to work with industry vendors outside of the traditional research grant until recently; however, this is changing significantly in the millennium.  Entrepreneurial professors have formed their own consulting arms over the past several years to work directly with vendors and are now deeply engaged with many of your customers.

 

• Harvard’s Kaplan and Norton formed the powerhouse Palladium group now the gold standard for performance management experts and even have their own social media peer group called XPC.

 

• Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christiansen formed Innosight.

 

• Marco Iansiti, the author of The Keystone Advantage and also a Harvard professor created the Keystone Strategy Group.

 

• Mohan Sawhney of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business is on the board of British Petroleum, and he is working directly with many large technology vendors, and his new book The Global Brain is also worth looking at.

 

• Ranjay Gulati of Harvard is working directly with General Electric on innovation and customer centricity and has published a book: Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business. 

 

• Ram Charan now the world’s leading strategic management consultant is working with many of the world’s leading CEOs and their boards by stretching their minds and challenging their philosophies and management styles. He has published too many books, (some co-authored with CEOs) to list.

 

• Dr. Henry Chesborough of Berkeley’s Hass School of Business formed a unique alliance network of innovation peers from industry, universities and technology vendors all collaborating together in an open forum to discuss one of the hottest topics of today, innovation.

The days of bells and whistles are long gone in our industry, I led a charmed life during the 1990’s and sold a home run product that had more features, functions, interoperability, performance than any competitor. Our industry today is dominated by the platform vendors, technology has become commoditized and “good enough” is rapidly replacing “best of breed.” The holy grail of enterprise software now is the business value technology brings to organizations worldwide and the business critical business processes it optimizes for competitive advantage, growth, productivity and innovation. Today’s thought leaders, management consultants and university professors are playing a major influencing role in many of the world’s leading companies and organizations.   Until next time, I wish you great marketing and selling in the millennium.