The Salesby5 Blog

Recently, we met best selling author David Meerman Scott at the Fortune Small Business Sales and Marketing Summit.  We had a interesting discussion on social media and marketing. During most of his speaking to large audiences he asks the following questions. When you read this, please take note of your answers!

In the past 2 months, either privately or professionally, in order to find an answer to a problem or buy a product, have you:

1.  Responded to a direct-mail advertisement?

2.  Used magazines, newspapers, TV, or radio?

3.  Used Google or another search engine?

4.  Emailed a friend, colleague, or family member (or used instant messaging, chat rooms, or equivalent) and received a response of a URL, which you then clicked to visit the website?

Over the course of a year, in front of more than 20,000 people ranging from college students, marketing professionals and Fortune 500 companies, the answers are surprisingly consistent.  Between 5 and 20% of people answer “yes” to the first two questions, which means that direct mail, advertising or mainstream media are effective in reaching a small portion of customers.  However, between 80 and 100% raise their hands for the last two questions.  This means the web is critical for any business.

Today on the way to work, I looked at every billboard on the way and found one that had an ability to track performance, the rest were all clutter and a complete waste of time, effort, and money.  If you’re using traditional forms of advertising, are you comfortable with the response you’re receiving?  Are your tracking efforts working?  Share with us on what has and hasn’t worked for you along the way!

For more details from David’s book, check out World Wide Rave.  We highly recommend it.

Today, many of you may have experienced either a delay in the use of your Google services including Google Reader, GMail and other Google services (Google claims that only 14% of users were affected).  In case you were wondering, Google is updating from an older standard of networking to the shiny, new IPv6 for a better and faster user experience.

Around noon today, Google sent out a tweet that they were aware of the issue, working on a fix and they would be releasing more information soon.  Then, at 2:15 PM CDT, they released a blog post, explaining the problem with 5th grade simplicity, apologizing for the downtime as well as including the reason for the downtime.  It’s great to see a company as large as Google recognizing that people rely upon them heavily and communicating in simple terms that everyone can understand.  How do you feel they did with their communications?

Remember the study by Stanley Milgram that explained how most people on Earth are connected by six degrees of separation?  Recently, there was a study done showing that due to applications and devices such as cell phones, twitter, Facebook and Linkedin, the separation has now shrunken to three degrees of separation.  Why should you care?  Well, there is no better time to start putting your contacts to work for you.  Yesterday, I decided that I’d like for us to tour the Googleplex, Google’s HQ.  I personally don’t know a living soul in San Francisco, so I started asking friends and colleagues.  I posted to twitter to see if anyone could connect me, then I asked my great friend, Vid Luther, if he might know anyone.  Last night, I was already in touch with Eric from Google, courtesy of Vid!

How many opportunities are you passing by, simply because you aren’t asking your best clients for business or your friends for a connection?  As we all can agree, life is better lived with others.  If you are in the financial services industry, check out our friend Randy Schwantz’s article on Red Hot Introductions and why you should be leveraging your best clients.  When was the last time you called your friend or client for a warm introduction?  What’s stopping you?

Tomorrow we depart to CTIA in San Francisco.  Will we see the Googleplex?  Come back to find out.  In the meantime, check out the video below to find out what we might get to see.

Jack Daly rocked the house yesterday in Orlando at the Fortune Small Business Sales and Marketing Growth Summit. One of the great points was that it’s the culture that matters. As he stated, Microsoft has great benefits and great pay. They have a market share the is enviable. Guess what? People are leaving to Google. Why? It’s the culture! People want to be part of a winning team AND enjoy the adventure. Microsoft is holding tight to their products and services, Google is here to try and change the world (just how Microsoft USED to be). Google has captured their people’s hearts, hence the cult-like following.

We experienced a great culture to and from Orlando – Southwest Airlines. The chatter from the cabin went something like this. “This is your captain speaking. It seems that most of you made it on this plane alive… If you are needing a bit more light, press the button above you that looks like my haircut. I think they should add a smiley face on it. Now that I think about it, if you have a smiley face sticker, please place it on the button… Just want to let you know that the bathrooms have cameras. They only activate if you smoke, though. Maybe that’s why the bathrooms are so small. If you find the camera in there, will you let me know where it is please? Thank you.” Have you ever heard this banter on a Continental or American flight? Even now, when the domestic airlines are doing terribly, Southwest Airlines still has over 80 people apply per job. I think I know why. Do you have a culture that fires people up to work at your company?

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