I remembered an advertisement from Empire Today. The appeal was that they offered to come to my house, show me samples and install my carpet the next day. So I went online on Sunday night and booked an appointment for Monday night. The sales guy came on time, helped me pick a carpet and asked what time I wanted the installers to come the next day. Amazing. And I didn’t even have to leave the house.

This whole episode reminds me, once again, of the importance of meeting clients and prospects on their own turf. I’ve rarely landed an account where I didn’t take the time to visit the prospect’s office, meet the staff, walk around, and learn about their pain points. Yes, I can probably get good information over the phone and via Webex, but somehow, meeting prospects in their own office makes a difference.

I just came back from a client meeting in New York City. Yes, it took all day because of the train ride up and back, but we had a fun and productive 5-hour meeting. While I don’t necessarily recommend marathon meetings like that, we had to pack a lot into the day to make the travel time worthwhile. But guess what? Meeting for five hours in person was enjoyable because of the amazing information the client was sharing, the conversation and the socializing during lunch. There’s no way to replicate that type of connection via phone and no way to hold an effective multi-hour conference call.

When I get busy, my first inclination is to do a call instead of a face to face meeting. And e-mail is quick and easy when I don’t have time even for a phone call. But I fool myself when I pretend that I connect with staff, clients and prospects via e-mail and phone the same way I do when I meet them in person. I know it’s not practical or cost-effective to do all of my meetings in person so I aim for in person gatherings for the kickoff and midway through the project.

How about you? Do you prefer in person or phone meetings? Voice or e-mail? And how do we steer our interactions back toward face to face in this busy, time-starved, electronic age?

This got me to thinking.  What are all the ways, big and little, that we make it difficult for our customers and potential customers to do business with us? Consider these examples.

• A few years ago, my husband and I were shopping around for a mortgage.  I called three bankers.  One was only available between 7am and 3pm.  Another sent me 20 pages to fill out about our assets.  The third asked me when it would be convenient to call (7pm), asked me to send bank and 401(k) statements so that he could fill out all the paperwork.  Guess who got the business?  At that point, I knew each banker would give us a competitive rate, but Craig Miller from BF Saul made it easy for us to work with him.
• During the planning for our office move, I called several vendors about office furniture systems.  One never called back.  One asked me to send her the architect’s drawings and information on what we wanted (I didn’t yet know what we wanted so I didn’t call back.)  The third, Michelle Ferrari from Office Images, offered to come by with catalogs, look at the architect’s drawings with me and discuss our needs.  There was no contest.
• I called a company to get a reference for someone applying for a job at Matrix Group.  It took me 3 tries before I could figure out how to leave a message in the general mailbox.  I couldn’t even imagine calling as a prospective customer.
• I’ve had a relationship with Insurance Designers for a very long time.  Every time I have a question, I call or e-mail Neal or Wendy Cohen and they get back to me promptly.  One time, Matrix Group was applying for some new type of insurance and Neal’s office sent over a very long questionnaire, which I couldnot figure out.  I called Neal and he said, “don’t worry about it, let’s fill it out over the phone.”  I love the guy.
• I was looking for a specific Thomas the Tank Engine train for my son and I found it for less money (than Amazon) on a small retailer site.  I had questions about the train (because a certain 5-year old had a specific request) but, for the life of me, I could not find a phone number on the Web site.  I gave up, ordered the product from Amazon and prayed that I had ordered the right thing.
• I love that live chat is available on so many retail sites these days.  I can get my question answered asap, place my order and be on my way.

The lessons for all of us who sell products or services?

• Make it easy for our customers and prospective customers to contact us the way they feel comfortable doing so (phone, fax, e-mail, Web form, smoke signal).
• When a customer calls your office, make it easy to navigate the automated attendant voice mail system.  Better yet, have a human answer the call, find out the caller’s need and route the call to the right person.
• Call people back (yeah, I know, this one’s a no brainer).
• Don’t put too many any obstacles in the way of you sending a quote and closing the deal. I’m legendary in the office for not being quite human before 9am, but if a customer wants to do a call at 7am, I’ll be on the line at 6:55am.  I’ll be in my PJs, but I’ll be on the line.

As a CEO, I’m always on the lookout for ways to make it easier to say “yes” to Matrix Group.  We sometimes stumble, but for me, the important thing is to constantly look for ways to make life better for Matrix Group clients.

How about you?  What site or retailer do you love to do business with and why?  And who makes it impossible to do business with them?  Got any horror stories?

I actually hear it all the time from friends, family and clients: why can’t this (insert name of site here) work like Amazon?  Okay, forget for a moment that that Amazon has spent tens of millions on their site.  Here’s what I’ve come to expect from Amazon and would love it if other e-tailers followed suit.

• Much as I hate to think that my shopping patterns can be predicted by a computer, the personalization on Amazon rocks. Yep, the site pushes all kinds of merchandise on me via e-mail and the Web site, but it’s not crap if I’m even mildly interested.  I’ve been introduced to new bands and authors, and I love that the related items often lead me to what I’m really looking for.
• Amazon fulfillment is lightning fast. I placed three orders on Black Friday and they all arrived Monday morning.  Meanwhile, another retailer tells me I have to wait 7-10 days for regular shipping.  7-10 days, are you kidding?  What are the people in the warehouse doing?
• Amazon embraces user-generated content. I rely on the reviews and ratings from my fellow consumers, esp. fellow moms.  And I’ve used lists created by Amazon customers for great gift recommendations for family and friends.
• Amazon does a great job of communicating the status of my order. I get an e-mail when I place the order and another one when the order ships.  I’ve never left guessing about where the heck my stuff is, and I have handy links that let me check on the order directly.

Some of my other favorite retailers embrace a lot of the practices above.  I think Land’s End does a particularly good job, as does Snapfish.  The smaller retailers, not so much.  Do I do a lot of my shopping on Amazon?  You bet, and the superior user experience on the Web site is the reason why.

Does your company have an online store?  How can you make the user experience more like Amazon?

What on earth does the Miss Universe pageant have to do with running a business?

Well, it turns out that if you run a business long enough, no matter how successful you, there are times when you don’t take home the prize.  I can remember deals where we came soooo close to winning the account, but ultimately, we came in second place, or 1st runner up.

But unlike a Miss Universe pageant, the 1st runner up in business often has a good chance of taking the prize when:  the first choice can’t deliver, the client’s needs outpace the capabilities of the selected vendor, or a change in staffing triggers a review of the account and the contracts.

When Matrix Group comes in second, yes, it totally sucks, but here’s what we try and do:

• We ask for a debrief so that we can learn why we didn’t win the account. We learn a lot from these debriefs and the prospects know that we care about their feedback.
• We ask the prospect if they’d like to stay on our list and continue receiving news about our launches and webinars, and sign-up for our RSS feeds, blog or social media pages.  This strategy allows us to keep in touch with the prospect with little effort and in a non sales-y way.
• We ask the prospect to please keep us in mind for future projects; this lets the prospect know that we’re not upset (even if we are), that we still want to do business with them, and the door is always open.
• We check back every six months or so and monitor the site to find out when the new site goes online.  If we don’t see the site launching according to the scheduled timetable, we drop an e-mail or check-in with a phone call.

Matrix Group has been a proud 1st runner up that ended up taking the crown in many, many instances.  We landed the Catholic Charities account over nine years ago when the first vendor stumbled; we still have the account today.  Just this week, I heard from a prospect from 2005 that had selected another firm for their redesign; the redesign is still not done and they’ve selected Matrix Group to finish the work!

How about you?  Has your company come in second (1st runner up) and then taken the prize?  What strategies do you use to take the prize away from Miss Universe?  Finally, do you ever watch the Miss Universe pageant and would you ever admit to it?

Since then, I’ve made made pasta, soup, cakes and cheesecake from recipes on boxes, cans and cartons.  For the most part, the recipes have been excellent and pretty easy to make.  I know, it’s really  low brow to cook food from recipes on cans and boxes.  In fact, I can’t believe I’m admitting to this on my blog, so please pretend you heard me say that all my recipes are from my Gourmet cookbook.  But here’s what I have learned: if you are a manufacturer of a food product, it’s in your best interest to have a really, really good recipe on your packaging. I bet the folks at Quaker Oats spent a lot of time on that chicken barley chili recipe because it was going to be printed on millions of boxes and, for a lot of people, that recipe was going to be their introduction to barley!

So what does a recipe on a box have to teach us about marketing?  Just this: that the first interaction potential customers have with your company had better be really, really good. Here are some examples:

• If you’re a Web design company, your Web site and the sample projects in your portfolio need to represent your best work.
• If you have a book to sell, the first chapter that you offer for free should be an amazing read.
• If you have a newsletter or magazine, the sample issue should be your best ever.
• If you have an ice cream shop, the free sample should be the best flavor, not the excess inventory.
• If you have a conference to market, showcase the sessions with an amazing video of one of the speakers.
• If you’re a graphic designer, your business card should stand out.
• If you’re a writer, your Web site, cover letter and proposal need to be perfectly free of grammatical errors and typos.

Because my first barley dish was great, I’m now a barley lover.  I buy barley regularly and hunt for new recipes in cookbooks and online.  That free, sample recipe on the side of the box made a lifetime customer out of me.

How about you?  What are you selling and how are you presenting your product or service in the best light with a sample of your work?

In addition, I recommend against blasting the same message across the different platforms.  Instead, I urge clients to create a layered approach that uses each platform according to its strengths and capabilities.  Here are some examples:

Example #1: Trade Association Wants to Promote a Conference

• Create a microsite for the conference that contains information about the conference, the venue, the program and speakers, and benefits to attendees
• Use Twitter to broadcast conference updates and deadlines, industry news and statistics
• Post photos from the previous year’s conference to Flickr
• Use a Facebook fan page to feature program and speakers, host discussions about conference topics, and allow attendees to interact with experts
• Host a blog where conference organizers can blog news before the conference; during the conference, assign members to blog about the sessions

Example #2: Shoe Boutique Wants to Increase Traffic to Bricks and Mortar Store During the Holiday Season

• Send a holiday postcard to the mailing list; offer a discount and feature a really hot shoe
• Send blast e-mails every few weeks with featured shoes, gift giving tips, and a discount coupon
• On Twitter, tweet about new arrivals, secret shopping discount codes, fashion tips, and cool shoe sightings
• Host a blog and comment on the hottest looks of the season, discuss fashion trends, and offer fashion advice
• On Facebook, create a fun Facebook quiz about shoes (e.g., what your favorite shoe says about you, what’s your favorite shoe this season?), post photos from events at the store, and feature shoes paired with outfits

Note that on the social networking platforms, it’s important to offer advice, share links, and report on industry news and trends and NOT just market your company and offerings.  By participating in the social networks as a provider of content (not advertising), your organization becomes a friends and an advisor, worthy of following.

How about you?  How is your organization integrating social media into traditional marketing campaigns?  How is your message and content different on each platform?  With what results?

You can read a nice recap of the panel on the Solutions are Power blog, but here were my take-aways:

• Your customers, prospects, staff and potential staff are increasingly using social media and they expect your business to have a presence on the most popular platforms.
• We need to view social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook as vehicles for marketing, customer service, prospecting and conversation.
• But businesses should not view social networks as just another place to advertise. Social networkers (you, me and anyone with an account) are both suppliers and consumers of content. In order for businesses to thrive in the social media environment, they, too, must be suppliers and consumers of content.  In other words, companies and brands must interact with customers and prospects by engaging in a two-way dialogue.
• The vast majority of Americans’ initial interactions with companies and brands online, so we all better have a great online presence that tells our story, focuses on benefits, and talks to our customers and prospects in a natural, real way.
• When in doubt about where our prospects are and what content will interest them, all we have to do is ask.

What I loved about the panel was the diversity of our backgrounds and perspectives.  The panel consisted of:

• Jill Foster of DC Media Makers and Women Grow Business served as the moderator
• Danilo Bogdanovic of Loudoun Scene is a Realtor and social media consultant
• Terri Holly of Creative Marketing Solutions is a social media consultant and coach
• Brent Leary of CRM Essentials covered the data and CRM (customer relationship management side of the equation)
• Me, Joanna Pineda of Matrix Group International representing an interactive agency

If you were at the Grow Smart Biz conference, what did you think of the conference?  How are you integrating traditional marketing with social media?

Me:  Good morning, I want to order a birthday cake with the Thomas design.
HT staff:  Sorry, we don’t have Thomas cakes.
Me:  But you have a Thomas cake on display in your bakery section.
HT staff:  Sorry, we don’t have Thomas cakes.  I think that display is old.
Me:  I saw Thomas cakes in your catalog.
HT staff:  I haven’t seen the catalog lately.
Me:  Okay, I guess I’ll call Costco.

Lucky for Harris Teeter, I am a big fan of the store and was not to be deterred.  I went to the store, found a manager, showed him the Thomas cake on display and asked if I could please order it.  Yep, he was happy to take my order, especially since Thomas cakes are expensive!  I told him that I had called the store a few days earlier and the person said HT didn’t make Thomas cakes.  The manager apologized and said that perhaps the person I spoke with was new or didn’t know about the special order cakes.

Yikes!  How many sales has HT lost because of this bakery guy?  Could this happen in your company? I know this kind of “revenue leakage” has happened in my organization!

A few years ago, one of my Project Managers was telling me about a call she had just completed with a client.  The client wanted to know if we could help with an online voting system.  The Project Manager explained that Matrix Group did not do online voting.  You can imagine my jaw dropping at this; the conversation went something like this:

Me:  Um, why did you tell the client we don’t do online voting?
PM:  I don’t know of any voting projects we’ve done and my team hasn’t worked on any.
Me:  Uh, but you’ve only been here less than a year and you manage 1 of 4 teams.  How do you know that the other teams haven’t done online voting or that perhaps we’ve done online voting in the past?
PM:  Oh, I didn’t think of that.  Sorry.
Me:  Let me call the client and see what I can do.  (tearing my hair out)

Here were my take-aways from this exchange, reinforced every day by interactions with folks like the Harris Teeter bakery dude:

• We can’t funnel all calls to “trained” salespeople so it’s important that every person in the company what the company does. Clients and prospects talk to staff at all levels at Matrix Group and they ask them all kinds of questions, so staff need to know what Matrix Group does.
• This training needs to be reinforced regularly and staff need concrete examples they can relate to.  We do a lot of sharing at Project Manager meetings, staff meetings, and designer/developer/front-end developer meetings.
• Staff need to understand in broad terms what we do and don’t do. For example, we cover a lot of territory when it comes to Web, but we definitely don’t manage internal networks and e-mail servers.
• Staff should know when to say yes, when to say no, and when to say “let me check.”
• We store information about our projects on the company intranet, searchable by client, keyword, category and date range. I try  to remind staff that this resource is available and a must-use tool.

How about you?  What kind of revenue leakage is happening in your firm?  What are you doing about it?

So last night, I paid $1.99 for the Police’s Synchronicity.  I love this song.  I loved the album when it came out.  I even saw the Police in concert for this tour.  So I was happy to shell out $2 to be able to sing one of my favorite Police songs.

Then it hit me:  I’ve paid for Synchronicity four times:

• When the album first came out, I bought the LP.
• Then I bought the cassette so I could have it in my dorm room in college (yeah, I know, I’m dating myself).
• When I started my CD collection, I of course bought Synchronicity on CD.
• Last night, I paid for Synchronicity so I can do my best Sting imitation while playing Rock Band.

I can think of a couple dozen other songs and albums that I’ve paid for multiple times as technology has advanced and I “had to have” a favorite song collection in the new format.  When it comes to videos, the same thing has happened.  I’ve paid for Harry Potter in Full Screen format, Wide Screen format and Blu-Ray.

I wish I could pay one fee, add myself to a master database, and be able to download my songs and movies in different formats, but I guess that’s not a sustainable model for musicians, music labels and the movie houses.  Or is it?  If more and more of our music and videos are being purchased on demand from Web sites like iTunes and Amazon, will the platform really matter much in the future?

Oh well.  I just wonder how many more times I’ll purchase Synchronicity, Stop Making Sense, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, yada, yada.

This is a topic that comes up a lot at Matrix Group. Unfortunately, there isn’t a magic formula for calculating ROI on social media activities. Mashable says that you can measure the ROI in two ways:

• Qualitative – Are you part of the conversation in your industry? Are you able to demonstrate that you or your organization is a thought leader? Is social media able to help you build better relationships  with your target audiences?
• Quantitative – Look to your usage reports, RSS subscriptions, e-mail opt-ins, e-commerce sales and registrations to see if social media is increasing traffic and transactions.

At Matrix Group, our social media initiatives include: a blogging strategy (this blog and participating in other blogs like WomenGrowBusiness), Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.  Here are the metrics we use to track ROI:

Qualitative Metrics

• Are prospects, clients and candidates mentioning our social media activities?
• Are our clients and prospects interacting with us on the different platforms?
• Are we getting mentioned?
• Do clients and prospects see us as a leader in our field?
• Do clients and prospects reference articles and posts from our Web sites?
• Are we getting recognized in industry and trade publications?

In this area, I’m honored that I made the Washingtonian’s list of Top 100 Techies and SmartCEO’s list of top 50 CEOs in the DC area.  In addition, we’re getting lots of mentions and clients are referring to our social media pages on a regular basis.

Quantitative Metrics:

• Number of followers on Twitter, fans on Facebook, subscribers to our RSS feeds, and opt-ins to our e-mail lists.  This metric is important because these numbers represent the people who are willingly allowing us to communicate with them.
• Increase in traffic to our Web site and this blog. We’ve seen a steady increase in traffic to our sites as we beef and promote our content.  Interestingly enough, traffic to this blog recently outpaced traffic to the Web site, largely because of referrals from Google and social media sites, esp. Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon.  We use Google Analytics, Webtrends and FeedBurner for these statistics.
• Number of interactions, including comments on the blog, retweets and direct messages, and comments in Facebook.  Over the past year, we’ve seen a steady increase in these interactions as we gain followers.

Ultimately, where the rubber meets the road is whether or not we are getting leads and converting prospects to clients. Over the past year, here is what we have seen:

• We are getting 2-3 high quality leads per week from our Web site where we were getting 2-3 leads per month in the past.
• Traffic on our Web site and blog has tripled in the past 12 months.
• Twitter and Facebook are two of the top five referrers of traffic to our site.
• At least three clients in the past three months told us that they believe Matrix Group to be a thought leader in the interactive space for associations and non-profits.
• We closed our last fiscal year up 10% over last year.

No matter how you track it, we’re getting a positive return on our social media and that’s worth blogging about.  How about you?  Are you tracking the ROI of your social media activities?  What’s been your experience?

Tom says that whales are like large companies and we all know that large companies usually buy from other large firms because they:

• Are perceived as having more resources
• Have a more well-known brand and reputation
• Speak the language of whales
• Represent less risk and more security

We’ve heard it before: “nobody gets fired for picking (fill in large company name).”  So how is a small business supposed to compete against the big guys? Tom says that large companies pick small companies when they are looking for an advantage in their business, specifically:

• Innovative solutions that are usually  not associated with larger, bureaucratic companies
• Access to the brightest talent
• Speed and nimbleness
• Knowledge of a niche market
• A relationship with a company where they’re not just another customer

Ultimately, small businesses can only the land the big sales when:

• Executive management is involved in the sales process because whales will only talk to senior staff
• Someone on the customer side believes the small business can help them move the needle in their business in a big way

My favorite quote from Tom:  “People only buy what they can safely sell to others, or defend if challenged. Our job as whale hunters is to equip and train the buyers to defend themselves from the attacks that will come later.”

Landing a whale obviously has financial benefits to a small firm.  But there are other, intangible benefits:  attracting other whales, attracting the best staff, and transforming your company because whales require and demand a different level of staffing and service.

Who’s ready to go whale hunting?

• Send out a special e-blast to your membership or customers. Be sure to highlight new features, new functionality, tips for navigation, links to popular pages, etc.
• Include an article in your newsletter or magazine. Consider a series of articles in the next few issues of your publication.  In each issue, focus on something different about the new site, e.g., the navigation, how to use the site search, how to manage their profile, etc.
• If you have a printed magazine or newsletter, put in a house ad that promotes the new site. Include a screen shot and list of new features and benefits.
• Ask your staff to update their e-mail signatures with a message and URL, e.g.,Visit the redesigned Matrix Group Web site – http://www.matrixgroup.net
• Ask staff to include a message about the new site in their voice mail message. For example, if your site now features online registration, ask the Meetings Department to promote the new feature in their outgoing messages.  During membership renewal time, be sure to remind members to check their profiles and pay their dues online.
• Ask staff to post a link to their Facebook and MySpace pages.
• Ask staff to tweet (post a link on Twitter) about the new site.
• Write an announcement describing the new site, features and benefits and link it from the front page as the top story during the launch month.
• Don’t forget the staff.  Send out an announcement to all staff describing why the Web site was redesigned, the process you went through, who helped, the new features, how the redesign benefits the organization, etc.

If you have other easy and inexpensive ways to promote your Web site, I’d love to hear about them!

I picked up the gingerbread train kit from Target, the manufacturer is Create a Treat, Ltd.  The cute box says: We want to hear from you, send a photo to myhouse@createatreat.com.

Now, I’m not one to send photos of my kid to various contests.  But I thought it would be fun to send a photo of our finished gingerbread train. So I sent a nice message with a nice story to myhouse@createatreat.com.  So what happened?  You guessed it: the message bounced back with this message:

The message you sent to createatreat.com/myhouse was rejected because it would exceed the quota for the mailbox.

Are you kidding me?  I sent two photos, each about 60K.  It’s not like I sent high resolution versions that were 4 MEG each.  I specifically resized the photos before sending the message.

So, Create a Treat screwed up three times:

1. They created a campaign but then didn’t have a large enough mailbox to support the e-mails; c’mon guys, gmail gives you 6 GIG of storage
2. They missed a great story that they could use on their Web site, marketing materials, yada, yada
3. They annoyed a mom who blogs (me!)

So retailers, if you launch a campaign where you solicit consumer feedback, please mean it and actually be prepared to receive it. At least act like you care.