This is a funny song. I kind of agree that the whole antenna issue is overrated.

Last week on Thursday April 22, 2010, Erik Deckers participated in the Strategy Session called Mistakes Small Business Makes in their marketing.  Erik was responsible to talk about “The 3 Mistakes Companies Make with Their Blogging and Social Media.  He will discuss the following:

1. Ignoring Social Media
2. Broadcasting, Not Conversing
3. Abandoning the Plan

I think he did a pretty good job.

Check it out:

Years ago, I used to work in the airline industry having spent 10 years in it. My first job was with American Airlines working in reservations in Hartford, CT. (Sad, the office is no longer there). My job required me to be trained on using SABRE, the original computer reservations system developed by IBM back in the 60s. To my knowledge, it is still being used today.

To modernize it, they have upgraded the GUI by putting another application on top of SABRE to make it more user friendly. Here lies the problem. Most of the online travel agencies are GUIs on top of the 60s technology that are the computer reservations system.

There was a company out of New York City that had developed a new booking engine specifically for online reservations. They used the 60s technology to only look at the availability of inventory on a flight, but built their own schedule and fare program. Speaking with my old boss, their system worked and was bought by Get Travel which was eventually bought by SABRE. I don’t think they ever implemented the fast and easy booking system.

So, here I was, making a reservation online and finding myself back in 1997 again. See, nothing has really changed. I went to Orbitz, Priceline, Southwest and Air Tran. All of them kind of suck. It seems that the designs are made based on the underlying technology and not what the user wanted.

The example for me was on Priceline, there was no way to request the flight I wanted and the morning with the flight I wanted in the evening on my return. They had the morning flight with another morning flight even though I told it I wanted a morning with an evening return. As an old SABRE hack, I would have simply selected my segments and said, “Give me the best price for those flights.”

So, in 10 years, non of these online agencies have made any improvements in the online booking experience. They seem more like Christmas Trees with all their 2nd sale decorations than a I need to buy an airline ticket. I advise people on 2nd sale stuff, but do it like the displays in your grocery store. Don’t distract people from their primary purpose for being there, to buy a ticket. Even Bob Parsons lets you get your domain name before he bombards you with all his chotzke offers.

Like AT&T’s confusing pricing, maybe the data is showing these online travel agents they make more money by making their booking systems suck. It just seems that buying an airline ticket online could be easier after all these years.
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An earthquake in China took place today.  It was a doozy that registered over 7.0 on the richter scale.

Image is a copyright of the Associated Press

As I am going through and reading the reports, the news media are focused on the death and destruction of the event.  Reports are 400 dead and possibly 10,000 people injured.  The usual suspects causing the death and destruction – poorly built houses that are not earthquake proof.

Yet, in any of the reports, there is no explanation as to why there is an earthquake in the region in the first place.  See, the region where it has occurred is not on the edge of a tectonic plate.  So, why is the media not educating us why it happened and reporting on the geologic changes that are occurring underneath us? The earth is one big puzzle of pieces that collide and move.  Could the earthquake in Chile have transported energy to the Indian plate which then has pushed itself up against the Asian plate?

I guess we will have to wait for Pat Robertson to give us the explanation.  I am sure there was some ancient deal made where the Tibetans shunned Christianity to follow the bald headed guy in robes.  The earthquake is obviously a punishment from God.

With these natural events happening all over the world, couldn’t we put the death and destruction angle down for once and talk about the science behind it happening?  Not only are we a nation of geographically challenged, we are also a nation who are geologically ignorant.

Come on media, put some of the shock and awe away and include some education in your reports.  If you need the shock and awe at the beginning to grab attention, fine.   Put the education into the article to make us smarter for reading it.
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My cousin in Hungary has renovated an old home in a small town north of Budapest called Göd. He did a fantastic job modernizing the home with a new kitchen to a 2 car garage with opener. It is a home that has a small moment in history as the last place that Admiral Horthy the leader of Hungary during the interwar period stayed before his exile to Portugal.

My cousin is selling the home because the kids are all grown up and they are downsizing. He asked me to post it on some Real Estate sites here to attract Hungarians that may want to move back. After all, since Hungary is no longer a communist country, there is an attraction for some to go back home.

What has happened? I have had some legitimate inquiries into the home from people I am trying to attract. Hungarians that are looking for a nice home back in Hungary.

However, I have also attracted the most bizarre scams. I like this one from a gentlemen professing to be a Colonel Glen Parent of NATO forces in Iraq. There is a real person name Glen Parent who is in NATO, but this guy is just too funny. He obviously has taken on the persona. HIs English is a lot to be desired.

Here is his message to me:

“Hello ,

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Found this online. Kind of repeats a lot of what we usually recommend clients do with their eCommerce.

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Ok, so my wife tells me, “I got you and Andrew concert tickets for “Star Wars in Concert” for your birthday.“ I have to admit, I did not jump up and down. “Ok”, I said with a one eye brow raised.

If you have kids and you have kids that love music, take them! It is kind of expensive at $65 a ticket, but it was worth it.

We saw the concert at Conseco Field House. Surprisingly, the sound was excellent. I leaned over and ask my son, “Is this live, or is this Memorex?” He gave me a puzzled look of course because he is not familiar with the old Aretha Franklin commercials from the 1970s-1980s.

The real point of this post is, “Community Orchestras can learn something from the Star Wars in Concert series.” The concert combined visual montages with the music. People were clearly entertained. (I am still shaking my head at the quality of the sound. The orchestra was so tight).

I remember when classical music was taught to me. I finally learned about classical music while on a study abroad program in Austria. Our Professor taught us the significance of Mozart, Beethovan, Hadyn in the context of their time. He was so enthusiastic about the music that I finally go it.

John Williams film music is very easy to get because we have the visual support of the film to help convey what the music is saying.

What if Symphonies started applying some of the same techniques to traditional Mozart, List, or Beethoven pieces. After all, we are an easily bored society. People want to be entertained by our standards today which include video or visual stimulation. Maybe we should have a video running that accompanies the music being played by the Orchestra.

Think I am crazy? Well, Conseco Fieldhouse was full. So, something tells me people are ok with orchestrated music. They just want to be entertained with it.

It was a great concert. I recommend it to anyone.

Ron Sukenick approached me several weeks ago and described a new networking event he was putting together called “At the Top“.

As he was describing At the Top, it had a familiar sound to it.  It sounded a lot like the old Entrepreneurs Alliance of indiana.  I thought, “man I miss the old Entrepreneur’s Alliance.”  I miss seeing everyone on the 3rd Thursday of every month to have drinks and learn about how business started, failed and succeeded.  See, I used to be President of EAI.  We had too much competition and everyone just kind of pulled out.

So, Ron asked if Professional Blog Service would like to be a co-sponsor of the event.  I said, “Absolutely”.

Here is why, I would not have co-started Professional Blog Service, if not for the Entrepreneurs Alliance.  It was there that I heard many stories from many different Indianapolis business people who were just like me.  My  all-time favorites were:

• Ray Compton – “You don’t need a lot of money to market, you need to be creative.”
• Harley Davidson – “There are three things needed to be a successful manager – knowledge, experience, and emotional competency.”  With the emphasis on emotional competency.
• Jeff Smulyan – Great story about how he got started

And the other companies:

• Ritters Ice Cream
• JD Byrider
• Scott Jones
• Ontario Systems

The list really goes on and on.  There were a lot of great companies and speakers that participated at the Entrepreneurs Alliance of Indiana.

So, Ron has resurrected this idea with his “At the Top” program.  The venue is the excellent Skyline Club downtown.  (See the metaphor here, “At the Top”  on top of Indianapolis?)  The format is going to be similar to what we did at EAI.  There will be cocktails and appetizers with a guest speaker for each meeting.

So, if you are an Entrepreneur seeking inspiration from other Entrepreneurs that have gone through what you are experiencing, go to the “At the Top” meeting November 18, 2009.

What:  At the Top

When:  November 18, 2009

Time:  5:30p

Where:  Skyline Club – Downtown Indianapolis

Professional Blog Service is very happy to be a co-sponser of this important series of meetings.  Without Entrepreneurs, there is no economy.

You can learn more about At The Top here.

Is Cold Calling Dead? Can Social Media Fill the Void?

Yes and No.

I know this is a hot topic right now.

Traditional cold calling seems to be a thing in the past. How many of us like an interruption in our day of someone trying to sell us something? I particularly like the ones that do not even ask, “Is this a good time to talk?” Or, I had one recently where the guy made it sound like he was representing the firm that put on a trade show I participated in. After I realized I was being sold, it kind of pissed me off. I decided not to do business with him anyway, because he had been deceitful.

I hired an expert in cold calling several years ago. She had built a successful IT Staffing business before cold calling had become so widespread. She got frustrated because it had become much harder to get people to even want to talk. Cold calling in her mind was dead.

Those are my anecdotes.

What are the statistic?

Proponents of cold calls will tell you, it depends on the industry. But the fact of the matter is it is about numbers. On one site I found, the sales manager did the math to figure out how his people could make the $100k the owner says they could. He found his folks would need to make 510 calls a day. He already knew that he needed to “speak” to 100 people in order to get three buying customers (a .0058 percent close rate from calls to closes). He presented the numbers to the owner and suggested the following:

1. Purchase a bigger list to support the increased numbers needed.
2. Or, increase commissions so reps can earn the 100k
3. Or, find new ways to work smarter.

The owner’s response: “The reps might do better than those statistics.”

I am not suggesting that the phone is dead. It just needs to be used differently. Prospects need to be warmed up before calls are made. And at a .0058% close rate, there has got to be a better way.

How can social media help?

In B2B, social media can play an important role. It is a list building exercise, only it’s a list you build. The ROI in social media is building the list of possible customers, and industry contacts. An organic list is more valuable to you than a rented or purchased list. If you are generating conversation through social with your marketplace, they are more likely to do business with you.

With social media, it won’t take 100 conversations to get three clients. You can start getting one client in about eight phone conversations — which happens after you’ve laid the groundwork through a social network. Your sales pipeline becomes more predictable.

Cold calling in the traditional sense is dead. But, warm calling is alive and well. Social Media can help warm those folks up.