Millenium Marketer

You may have heard this line before–whether you like it or not, once you enter the workforce, you are going to have to be a salesperson. Yes, you are going to have to sell, whether it is real customers or pitching ideas to co-workers or convincing friends to go somewhere.

The words are enough to make anyone adverse to the word “sales” cringe, because we have all met bad salespeople and there are very few good ones–mall salespeople come to mind as does the lone consultant who has an honest service to offer but wants to work right away.

But the reality is sales isn’t what you might think, meaning the immediate goal isn’t to make a sale. Sales is actually made up of many goals, whether it is to make an initial contact, get information or ask for a referral.

I should add, too, that often thinking too short term about making a sale right away could eventually cause customers to buy once (just to get away from you) and then think twice about buying again.

So, if you think through the goals of sales much more clearly than to make a hard sell right on the spot, it can be better positioned as as a series of long, enjoyable conversations between to strangers getting to know each other.

It means creating an affiliation with someone looking to see if you are someone who can help the solve a problem.

When I think of sales this way, it reminds me of the goals of social media, the highway to fast connections. There are times when we can add someone as a friend and never speak to them again–that is the story of the hard sell. Then, there are other times when messaging, commenting, posting with someone regularly makes that person more memorable to you–you’ve reached a point with them where you are really connecting and the exchange is easy.

So the real lesson here is that you don’t sell by taking, and you don’t make friends by taking either. It’s making an offer that is appealing time and time again that will keep buyers engaged and coming back to you.

What are some of your favorite lessons about selling?

As a way of learning to build community on the web, I worked with a local young professionals association to rally up 20 volunteers to do some volunteer work in real time, out on the field, at Hayes Valley Farm. There’s nothing like working in real time to observe how people get to know each other and interact. The only difference is the type of contribution, on the internet, we’re typically contributing content, whereas on the farm it’s much more about working the land to make things grow.

Hayes Valley Farm is an urban farm experiment right in the middle of San Francisco. The land is owned by the city of San Francisco and people of all kinds come out to do pretty much whatever they want, whether it’s planting seedlings, weeding out clover, harvesting vegetables or digging dirt. As Jay, the organizer of Hayes Valley said, it’s all about a free economy, whatever you put into the land is what you can get out of it. Also, it was important that you find something to do that you enjoy, basic law of specialization, find something you can do best.

Social Media Community vs. Real Time Community

To organize the event, we started out with a Facebook page, where some of the regular organizers of the organization were the very first to post on the page and indicate that they were attending, or show their enthusiasm for the event. Then, others followed so that the the event became a self-organizing entity and we recruited 30 people. In other words, it begins with Social Proof, starting with just a few evangelists.

I noticed this phenomenon too at Hayes Valley Farm. I met a permaculture buff who was one of the first to contribute to the layout of Hayes Valley Farm, and being a more senior guy there, he was very enthusiastic about the Hayes Valley Farm community, and directed us towards a few tasks that we could work on. Anyone on the farm could quickly become an expert at something and lead others through an activity. Even more amazing, there were young kids, as young as 4 years old leading certain initiatives like building a tool shed or making bridges out of wooden pallets so that areas of the farm were easily accessible. People were using their creativity because they were given the tools and free license to do as they wish.

This idea of community building is the same on the web. Once you can find a few invested people who can corral or direct others, community building is truly an organic entity that grows on its own, as long as you plant a few seeds to guide the way. This has to be a consistent effort, otherwise within an ailing community, people will fall away.

What do you think? Are there ways that communities are built similarly in “real time” compared to on the web?

I went to a sushi restaurant tonight. Not just any sushi restaurant, but a sushi restaurant where I had gotten a really good deal for $40 off. In fact, because we love sushi, we had bought two coupons. Unfortunately for us, tomorrow is the last day that the deal is valid and we had procrastinated, so we will be losing an opportunity on using the second deal.

Having waited until the last minute, we were competing with many other Living Social coupon customers. In fact, we could not even make a reservation because they were booked up with reservations from other Living Social fans. Not to mention the long line at the door.

The host looked very harried as he tried to balance fulfilling pre-made reservations with drop ins waiting at the door. The staff was stretched thin, and making $40 less per party. Is that a good deal for them? Questionable as to whether they are making any profit off of this venture.

So, if there is anyone that really benefits the most out of these deals, it’s probably the deal making company. If people are by default lazy, they’ll pay for their coupons and then maybe never redeem them. Unless, you just wait until the last minute to compete with other coupon buyers!

Do you buy coupons from Groupon, Daily Deals, LivingSocial or others? Are there deals you regret buying or regret that you did not redeem sooner? What are they?

Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love writes that every person has one single word that they live by.
I had to remind myself today that my word is not “marketer.” A little bit shocking given the name of this blog, but marketer suggests a professional or expert.
Have you ever had this experience? You’re so entrenched with reading social media blogs and are so on-trend and steeped in marketing theory, you forget to connect with your actual customers.
At least that’s what was happening to me. So I had to tell myself this.

News flash, ace, your audience is not other professional marketers, it’s people who want to be marketers.

Identifying your Influencers is a Catch Phrase
A couple of years ago, when social media was still growing, I read a lot of catchy buzz phrases through the blogosphere.
Listen to the conversation.
Identify your “influencers.”
Engage or die.
Target your key words and measure your traffic.

I have to say the messages are changing a bit, and I don’t deny that they are true in their own way. The problem is that many bloggers (including myself) have gotten in the habit of repeating these catch phrases. I’ve gotten a bit tired of experts standing on their soap box, because if you are to follow their steps, you may not get your desired result. (A while back, I took some of Chris Brogan‘s advice about blog ideas way too literally. I managed to take some pictures of my neighborhood and post them on Flickr. In hindsight it is funny to me because none of those posts resulted in any of the conversations I desired to initiate.) The point is I started following instead of reaching out to others in diverse contexts.

And, Reciprocation in “Being Social” is Not Equal
Look at Freakonomics on Twitter, how many people do you see Freaknomics following?

The All Stars are few, and the chances that I will collaborate with THEM, are very slim. I may shake hands with an All Start Social Media talking head. It will satisfy that “can I have your autograph, I’m Starstruck” impulse. Still, these are people with already busy lives, families and many other fans to tend to, and I am not writing this blog to impress them.

There are so many more of the RIGHT people who want to have their 5 minutes of fame. So many more who would love to have their say, and who want to talk back.

Truth Is, Real Connections Happen in your Target Community
I met a blogger last week. His name is Will, and he is on a blogger network called Brazen Careerist. He has an awesome blog called Peoplegogy and has been very successful at bringing in guest writers. It is pretty cool, you can see people coming from different backgrounds talking about their lives. He likes to write, and clearly has an interest in social media as a means. I don’t think he pays much attention to the talking heads, the All Stars. He focuses on his audience.

What do you think? Is connecting with your audience hard or easy? How do you initiate conversations about the things they value and want to talk about?

I got in this conversation with my husband this morning about Twitter.
He, like many of my friends, doesn’t perceive Twitter as something that is as pervasive as Facebook or YouTube. It is also thought that Twitter is more of an emerging tool compared to others.

The question is: “Is there a different, natural progression of how Twitter will grow as a social networks, (where when social products become more mainstream, corporations start joining the crowd)?

I thought this was an interesting question because it affirms that those who use social networking tools tend not to use all that are available. Certain groups of people will associate themselves with one social networking tool and not others. Those “others” are seen as less pervasive, less popular and in some cases, less successful models of social networking and crowd-sourcing.

I do have some thoughts on what groups of people tend to use which social networking tools. Think of it as cliques in a high school. Different people hang out in different cliques, while there are some folks who are cool with everyone all around (and use all social networking tools.)
For now I’ll just comment on Twitter and mention others in a different post.

Twitter users are in a group that I like to think of as “Fledglings.”
You tend to see a lot of start-ups, bloggers and small businesses on Twitter a lot. In other words, those who tend to be more mobile heavy. These are people who embrace new media technologies and don’t stop to ask what is it but figure out what they want to use it for.

I have been there as part of my personal Twitter community…it is a nice way to “escape” from your one person office and stay connected to the world at large and keep up on the news. And, those in Africa with limited access to robust tools have made Twitter their communication vehicle as well.

As witnessed by some accidental browsing on Borders, it looks like the mobile devices market is getting more dispersed.

Mobile devices, by the way, used to be cell phones, period. But that market has expanded greatly to include cell phones, laptops or netbooks, tablets and eBook Readers. All of that just twenty years ago was like science fiction. Amazing.

Anyway, if Android-based mobile phones (28% in sales vs. 21% of iPhones), then Android on tablet devices is a natural progression.

Now, it’s up to the classic hardware makers like Sony (among others) who are lagging behind to stay ahead of the game, because clearly this market is going to get noisy and fast. The interesting thing about Sony is that they were the first to come out with an eBook reader (I have seen these devices at Borders stores way before the Kindle was born) but they did not grab the market in the same way.  When I speculate on this, I think of it this way: new internet players such as Amazon and Google have an edge because they are the companies people aspire to be like in this millennium age. I don’t know why, but they are definitely “cooler” than a company like Sony, which has been very savvy in many electronics in the 90s.

By the way, let’s not forget that eBook reader devices came about as a reaction to other kinds of mobile technologies. As a result, book publishers and newspapers are scrambling to innovate and sell through this new, more efficient channel. Technology often has its way of creating a net effect on other industries and causing massive change.

I thought to do something a little differently today, which I hope is going to signify some changes to come. The moment I understood the basic mechanics of Economics was when it was explained to me as a Farmer’s Market. Competing sellers of the same product will try to convince customers to buy their supplies, which brings prices to a equilibrium level, and it’s easy to see what the prices are by simply strolling around the market and checking each stand out.

Anyway, Economics lesson aside, I am planning some new things for this blog on many levels. because I’m multidimensional and honestly, not always interested in writing about the same thing every time. One of the first things I have planned is a nice mix of women in business and sustainable foods. Stay tuned.

Oh yeah, and one more thing, those are Early Girl tomatoes (I think), normal sized leeks, bunch of asparagus and local honey from Small Bees Farm in Los Gatos, CA, very close to where I spent a lot of my childhood. And, jam from Prevedelli Farms, which reminds me of grad school days in Monterey.

While this isn’t usually a political blog, I felt a strong need to discuss my political view out of frustration as an American and because it’s really feasible that my generation is going to have to shoulder a lot of the world’s problems many, many years from now. Let’s just say that Atlas and many Americans have something in common: A huge, heavy, impossible burden to shoulder, or a multiple trillion dollar debt.

Ironically, that’s why we –those who 18 and over and who skew towards being technographically more active on the Internet–wanted Obama in the White House in the first place.

Everybody can admire Obama’s presidential campaign, which was lauded as one of the best social media campaigns in history. His team was good at two things: raising funds and getting us excited about his campaign promises. He said Change is Possible, and yet his State of the Union speech was a re-run of last year’s spectacle.

We’ve hired Hamlet as president,. He thinks too much, claims action, and is amazing at monologues, and potentially has too many false advisors. Basically, he can’t seem to get a cohesive policy together to cure us of this nagging and dangerous malady that is our government.

We should have hired a MD instead of a JD. Preferably someone who understands Chinese medicine methodology, or in other words, somebody who knows how to treat root causes, not prescribe medications for all the symptoms of a disease.

Case in point: the budget and $50 million is set to “change education policy,” which means

increasing

government spending to push further the already over-used public services lever. The objective is to ensure that we will have a long term effective working class. In theory, it sounds fair, but the proposed method to execute lacks true substance.

It is enough to aggravate an already sore and infected budget wound even further. Government proposes to do this by creating a “carrot and stick” effect to reward schools that do better in the aggregate and pay less to schools that don’t. Great idea, Genius President. For all that flowery rhetoric, I feel like I have to go “from the beautiful pacific coast of California all the way to the end of Political Street in DC” to mentally shake the brain of the White House to do the right thing.

So let me see if I got this right. Are you proposing to reward schools in rich neighborhoods MORE money (where students already do well), and allow schools with less money to suffer? This makes me so angry–because it’s representative of a lot of Obama’s policies so far–they push money into places where it doesn’t belong because government’s aim is to placate and reach political compromise rather than to achieve real, lasting results.

I’m no expert, but at first glance, it looks to me like Obama and his Education Policy team never read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

They continue to treat effects instead of the root problems. If you want to focus money into education, focus on encouraging schools to invest in their teachers, encourage creativity, and offer avenues for teachers to get more training and be better teachers. People who don’t belong as teachers will get psychologically squeezed as the field becomes professionally competitive and those unqualified people will move into other areas where they may be more suited. As a result jobs will naturally be reallocated people who really deserve it.

If we continue to push forward more standardized testing, two things will happen. One, we will continue to have the same problems in education that we have had for a very long time and many teachers may simply take their wages and do what is easy. Two, we will be teaching kids to think like standardized tests which is not at all good for the economy in the long run. Our edge in America against China is that we have innovation, a value that China is still struggling with under Communist rule.

I’m not claiming to be an expert economist or even prime to run for President, but seriously (srsly?!) ? Come on, Obama, get to the root of the many diseases that we have developed as a nation and stop treating symptoms.

Well, since it is 2010, you could say I am starting out on a “tabula rasa” or “blank slate,” which I think is a very fitting for a new start to my blog this year.

Not to mention that today was the day that HP and Microsoft today the HP Tablet at Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The news is abuzz, and some say this is the Year of the Tablet (or possibly the year of 3D technologies) [side note: my company is going to love it when that happens!]

I started to try and remember what year it was last year, and I don’t mean that it’s now 2010 and last year was 2009. I mean that what electronics device was the device that caught everybody’s attention?

Was it the Kindle? Or maybe it was the Netbook. A quick look at Google Trends confirmed it: 2008 was the year of the eBook aka Kindle (or end of 2007) and 2009 was the year of the Netbook. And of course there was the iPhone, which is now so common place that I could not locate The Year of the iPhone.

A Year in Review

So, since January is a time to review the previous year and look forward to the upcoming year, I wanted to say something about consumer hardware device convergence. In the Year of the Netbook, there was a slow progression, and this is just based on my experience of having read the news about it. People were first excited by the low price, excited by ASUS’s strong entry and leadership in the market, then confused by the difference between a Netbook and the regular computer (or at least that was my experience), then Dell and other companies started to worry Netbooks would eat up margin.

All of this chatter just suggested that electronics are really moving towards a convergence of devices where it is all going to merge into one. You may have an ebook reader, a computer and a smartphone, but you might at some point find yourself with just a laptop that is also a eBook reader and a computer. And, if you really wanted to, you could probably Skype on it.

Tech Consumers Drive Convergence…and the Market Taught Them to Ask for It
While this is nothing new, the real gem is that consumer attitudes are being shaped by these new technologies. Slowly, we start to expect certain things in a device as they become more mainstream, i.e. a touch screen, mobility, ability to multitask…not to mention, that all of this is largely driven by brand influence and brand equity. It’s the big players such as Apple, HP, Intel, and possibly Nvidia who are able to help declare the Year of the Tablet.

Will China Lead Market Innovation Instead of Drive It?
On a different front, China is starting to come into its own. Up until now, it’s been the supplier backstage that has helped make innovation happen. And China is starting to figure out what brand equity is supposed to mean, which suggests that there will be a year soon where it will be the Year of Innovation Led By China (or something to that effect).

What does your gut tell you will be telling of 2010? Or 2011?

Recently, my thirteen year old brother asked me about a poem he is reading for his 8th grade class, The Road Not Yet Traveled by Robert Frost.

While the poem is ideal, the reality is not as clear as “two roads diverged in yellow wood.”
On my morning commute today, a walk through San Francisco that is full of reminders of homeless and “giving up”, I reflected on my past experiences and what I have enjoyed, such as a leading a group of seniors searching for the next road on their career paths and my love for simply speaking with authority on a subject, because I learn best by talking through things.

I came across this thought as I walked:

To be a teacher is to be a lifelong learner.

In my life, I’ve been very lucky to have teachers and mentors with whom I still keep in touch with. And because my role models have always been teachers, I’ve decided that a good reason for being is to set an example for others, like my brother, friends, family and other people I come across.

A “teacher” is not necessarily someone who works in a classroom, and with that thought, I’ve set my mind to this goal for the week to do the best I can, as to serve others who I can teach and learn from.