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| Volume 9, Issue 4 |
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In This Issue:
 Are you abusing these 10 most irritating office phrases?
 Mastering the psychology of persuasion
Smart presentations: Don't get in the way of your message
Overcoming the fear factor: The three keys to motivating your sales staff
Smart management: The inside approach to sales productivity
Gender bender: Recession selling: Four things to know about selling to men
 Beware the harmful effects of goal-setting
Jazzing up PC marketing
Why PR is the prescription
 [Email: Simple changes increase opens, clicks, response, & avg. order size]
10 high-impact, low-budget ideas for marketing in a down economy
Tips for CMOs: Five ways to keep your team off the chopping block
The dark side of Twitter: What businesses need to know
 Why Salesforce.com's social media smarts could get you closer to customers
Get to know your LinkedIn privacy settings
Free BlackBerry apps: Five can't-miss choices
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Are you abusing these 10 most irritating office phrases?
Everyone’s got their verbal pet peeves, but odds are good you and your co-workers have more in common than you think when it comes to phrases that should never be spoken in the office.
After performing extensive research, scholars at Oxford University and author Jeremy Butterfield have devised a list of the ten most irritating phrases uttered by humans. This top ten list appears in Butterfield’s latest book, "Damp Squid," which
was comprised from books, papers, magazines, journals, broadcast media and other sources:...
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Mastering the psychology of persuasion
Think you're so smart at selling and managing? Test your "gut instinct" skills and answer these [9] questions:
- Which of these is better at recognizing a liar: police officers, teachers, or dogs?
- Are women or teenagers more prone to fear motivation?
- Who would you trust to hold your expensive camera while you went to the bathroom at crowded sporting event: a man or a woman?
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Smart presentations: Don't get in the way of your message
Great content isn't enough when you're trying to influence someone. How we deliver that information is just as important—and some would say even more so.
That "how" could range from the look of your slides to the pace at which you speak…even to the way you walk into the room. I'm not talking about technique, however. If you make a solid connection right at the start with your audience’s needs, interests, and goals, they won’t even notice minor mannerisms. On the other
hand, if you make it harder for you audience to get the message—if your slides are unnecessarily complex or your delivery draws attention to itself—you risk losing them before you can win them over. And what can kill an audience's involvement?
What muddles their attention, distracts them, or just gets in the way of their focus? Here's a sampling:...
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Overcoming the fear factor: The three keys to motivating your sales staff
Don't let fear put a halt on your business productivity. Here's how to help employees conquer their recession phobias and reach success.
The recession is forcing businesses to rethink their strategies and retool their processes as they operate in worsening, ever changing conditions. In the midst of this uncertainty, most businesses overlook how fear, and the lack of a clear plan to reduce it, impacts their employees. The fear epidemic perpetuated by the financial
markets, government and negative media coverage is a deliberate assault on our very nature and must be reversed. The constraints of fear without answers are the catalyst for inaction. Without solutions, denial sets in as people either begin to think they will not be affected, or simply feel hopeless. [The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear without a Plan...]
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Smart management: The inside approach to sales productivity
In light of our unrelenting economic turmoil, companies are under enormous pressure to lower their cost of sales.
Those with a direct face-to-face sales force are reducing sales positions, marketing staff, and support functions. These actions, in turn, are reducing customer relationships and market reach. So how do you address the critical issue of reducing cost of sales…while at the same time continuing to provide visibility with clients,
create awareness with new prospects, and drive revenue growth? One highly effective way to lift the productivity of your sales organization is through a well-run inside sales channel. Many inside sales channels aren’t being leveraged to their fullest capacity, nor are companies seeing the type of productivity "lift" they should be
getting from a face-to-face salesperson once the inside channel is up and running. Here are a few checkpoints to determine whether your inside sales teams are giving you the highest return on your investment...
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Gender bender: Recession selling: Four things to know about selling to men
Several men have surprised me in the past few weeks, and it wasn't with flowers and chocolates.
Actually, it was what they said that made me gasp for air—they were discussing their new "cautious" approach to buying goods and services. These encounters led me to recognize a few key things about the buying behavior of men in our current economy:...
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Beware the harmful effects of goal-setting
The practice isn't a cure-all. Goals should be specific and prescribed selectively, have their limitations spelled out, and be clearly monitored.
Item: Not too long ago, GM (GM) executives wore buttons bearing the numeral "29" as a constant reminder of the company's lofty goal of 29% U.S. market share. Today, a little over six years later, GM's U.S. market share, according to Autodata Corp., is below 20% and sinking. Item: As recently as the fall of 2006, a press release from
the U.S. Housing & Urban Development Dept. trumpeted the success of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in exceeding HUD's "affordable housing" goals for the previous year, including goals for "special affordable families." What do the two items have in common, beyond eliciting a similar sense of irony and sadness? In both instances,
goal-setting was used carelessly. If this is not the main cause of today's auto and housing crises, overly narrow goal-setting has certainly contributed significantly to them and, therefore, to our current recession. [WARNING: Goals may cause systemic problems in organizations due to narrowed focus, increased risk taking, unethical behavior, inhibited learning, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Here are 10 questions to ask before setting goals, along with possible remediations:...]
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Jazzing up PC marketing
As sales fall, makers of computers, software, and other tech gear are experimenting with unusual marketing gambits.
At the new Teen Vogue store in Short Hills, N.J., amid the prom dresses and vanities, marketers have sprinkled some more unusual confections. Alongside rows of flowers arrayed on the shiny countertops sit red and pink Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) laptops. Brochures urge girls to "Say hello to computer couture." Girls can use
HP-designed software to play editor, smacking their photo on a mock magazine and typing in cover lines using the machines. The computer company views the store as a way to showcase...
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Why PR is the prescription
The right story told at the right time can bring valuable attention to your business, even during a downturn.
Times are tough. It can be difficult to keep your focus on driving the top line when the bottom line is bleeding red. A lot of us can identify with John Krafcik, acting president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America, when he says, "Flat is the new up." Still, you know you can't put your marketing program entirely on hold. You need to
do something to attract new customers (and give existing customers more reasons to stay). It may be sacrilege for an ad guy to say so, but I recommend a healthy dose of PR. Yep, PR. There are a couple of trends that, while causing headaches for
journalists, can work in your favor: Properly understood, they can help you generate attention for your business...
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Email optimization: How simple changes increase open rates, clickthrough, response, and average order size
Email marketing is likely your most effective tool for improving customer relationships, building brand awareness, and generating sales. It is also the most abused one.
Practitioners of knee-jerk planning rely on emails to bolster a sagging month or fill in the holes left when other marketing techniques miss their mark. Even though it works (which is why it is abused), there is a price to be paid. Customers become disenchanted when they receive numerous emails promoting one sale after another or
one product over and over. Everyone's threshold is different. Some may opt out after a week, others a month, and still others a year or more. (Note: there tends to be a jump in opt outs at the start of the New Year. People want to start fresh, so they do some housekeeping. If you saw a jump in opt outs in January, then you desperately
need to review your email strategy.) The best way to avoid a mass exodus from your subscriber list is to have an email strategy that works with the rest of your marketing. Because developing a comprehensive plan can take weeks of planning and is beyond the scope of an article, let's start with simple items that have immediate
results. In addition to giving a boost to sales, they will help sell the idea of an overall strategy to the naysayers in your organization. Four steps from sending the email to completing the sale...
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10 high-impact, low-budget ideas for marketing in a down economy
In part 1 of this article, I offered my first five ideas for getting ahead in an economy that's got us down.
As promised, here are five more inexpensive—yet powerful—ideas that can help you and your business come out on top...
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Tips for CMOs: Five ways to keep your team off the chopping block
When times are tough and heads are on the chopping block or deadwood is being removed, marketing is among first (after HR) to be decapitated, axed, or trimmed. Why is that?
It's hard for Marketing to measure its value, especially compared with Sales or Engineering. We are also always in front of the rest of the company—thinking about broad-based, longer-term strategies—and not necessarily in touch with the twists and turns of the current economy.
Sometimes it can be good, in fact essential, to be thinking ahead, but it has got to be frustrating for the CEO to be struggling with making payroll or hitting the numbers for this quarter, and then get a presentation from Marketing about a great long-term opportunity or the latest milestone on a far-reaching (and expensive) ad campaign.
As a result, a lot of marketing jobs are being cut right now. And yet, right after marketing is laid off, I know that the CEO is likely to pick up the phone and hire a marketing consultant.
When I ask CEOs why they have set aside budget for outside consulting at the same time they are laying off marketing team members, they usually say two things:...
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The dark side of Twitter: What businesses need to know
Right now, Twitter is the talk of the Web among marketers. Use of the elegantly simple social-media site has rocketed unlike anything in recent memory—and it's businesses that are leaping onto the Twitter bandwagon.
The New York Times calls Twitter "one of the fastest growing phenomena on the Internet." A recent study (pdf) determined that at least five million people are using the service and new members are signing up at a clip of 10,000 per day. And unlike other "here today, gone tomorrow" services, Twitter seems to have staying
power. As companies tighten their ad spending, inexpensive social media is clearly the next marketing frontier. As with any new craze, there are enormous opportunities—and large pitfalls that must be avoided. For this article, I spoke to some marketing professionals who've been exploring the Twitter terrain for a while.
My quest was to identify the Twitter landmines so you can fast-track your adventure into this vast new frontier. But, first, a short story to convey the power of Twitter...
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Why Salesforce.com's social media smarts could get you closer to customers
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When it comes to social media, Salesforce.com leads rivals like Oracle and SAP — and its success could help your company reach customers. Case in point: Salesforce.com apps now work with social networking services like Twitter and Facebook.
At a time when many companies still struggle to manage the rise of social networks and understand what the trend means to their organizations, Salesforce.com has begun tailoring its business software to help people harness the power of social media. During the past year, the company has taken several steps to make its core products
work alongside popular consumer applications like Facebook, Google and Twitter. While analysts say Salesforce.com's efforts to make its business applications more social and consumer-oriented will further bolster its ongoing efforts to uproot old
school rivals like Oracle and SAP, the strategy also shows a forward-thinking view in how...
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Get to know your LinkedIn privacy settings
Your LinkedIn information can be accessed by people inside your immediate network and, more broadly, by all of LinkedIn's 36 million users. Here's how to control who can see what, and why it matters.
Since LinkedIn doesn't require you to share the same types of personal information as you do on Facebook, the service's privacy settings appear to be much more straightforward than its less business-oriented competitor. But if you leave the default settings in place, you might be surprised to know what information you make
public on LinkedIn. In fact, I've received several e-mails from readers who said they were solicited for products or irrelevant jobs on the service. In each case, they had no idea how the person found them (and didn't appreciate the spam for that matter). How private you decide to make your LinkedIn information will affect...
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Free BlackBerry apps: Five can't-miss choices
Looking for the best free BlackBerry apps on the Web? Our latest set of no-cost downloads includes a mobile search option that gives new meaning to the term "hands-free" and an awesome Internet radio app that saves your stations and settings across multiple devices: PC, iPhone, BlackBerry, whatever.
Time for more free BlackBerry software downloads. For more than a year now, I've combed the Web for the best free BlackBerry apps and delivered them directly to you via CIO.com along with my weekly BlackBerry tips and tricks. [This time around, I'm offering up an]...
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