What World of Warcraft: Cataclysm can teach you about appreciation

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 22, 2010 in Awakening, World of Warcraft | 0 comments

The third expansion pack to the World of Warcraft franchise, Cataclysm, will be coming out this year. Everything that players have known and loved for the last 5 years is on the table for a re-write, from how characters work to the virtual places and hangouts where players have spent their time for half a decade. It’s Blizzard Entertainment’s way of rebooting the franchise, changing up how it will work, and theoretically giving them room to continue growing the franchise.

From a story perspective, the virtual world of Azeroth is going to be struck by a massive disaster that will shatter it, completely changing things and causing a lot of mayhem. Here’s what’s different about this disaster: we all know it’s coming some time this year.

Some people are preparing by gathering up materials in game to sell later, anticipating shortages. Other people are touring the world of Azeroth as it is now, taking pictures and recording their favorite spots, many of which will no longer be available or will be changed beyond recognition. Some are running through dungeons and other parts of the game they’ve missed or never gotten to in five years of playing. Some are trying to maximize their characters’ gear and abilities so that they’re ready to experience all the new parts of the game the moment it hits the shelves.

So here’s the food for thought part: if you knew with 100% certainty that a major disaster was going to befall this world, the real life world, in the next 5 months (but probably before November), and that you’d survive and have access to the basics like food and water, what would you do now to prepare? If you knew that everything from favorite restaurants to the mountains and seas themselves would be different somehow, what would you do differently today to get ready?

Unlike World of Warcraft, we don’t get the luxury of a grand creator notifying us in advance of a major disaster (or allowing us to beta test life in it).

Now that you’ve got an idea of where you’d go and what you’d do, how much of that is stuff you could do today?

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Newsletter drop at 1 PM ET

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 20, 2010 in Advertising, Social media, Social networks | 0 comments

My personal newsletter will be dropping at 1 PM ET today. If you’re not subscribed, now’s the time.

In this issue, a blogging tool you probably haven’t heard of, a productivity tool you have heard of, a career-boosting trick that yields huge rewards for 5 minutes a day, some stuff about McDonald’s french fries, and the winner’s of last month’s Stuff You Did column.

If you’d like to get in on the action, you have until 1 PM ET to subscribe here.

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How much too much is it?

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 19, 2010 in Sales | 10 comments

One of my absolute favorite sales closes is the how much too much close. It’s a recession. Times are tough, budgets are tight, resources are constrained. We get that. I’m sure you get that many, many times a day from everyone you talk to who’s a potential customer. The trick with objections over price is amortization of the price.

Let’s say you’re a web designer. You make beautiful web designs that cost $1,500 and perform very well for your clients. You know that a client with a good internal sales process can make that back in weeks, if not days, with a design that converts visitors to qualified leads.

One day, you’re pitching a potential new client. You’ve established your credibility and demonstrated that you’ve got the chops to do what they want to do. There’s no question that they believe you can handle the work, and there’s no question in your mind either. It’s a home run…

… until the first thing out of their mouth at the proposal stage is a price objection. “It’s too expensive” or a variant of that phrase. Rather than cutting your prices immediately (which is the most common tactic for a rookie salesperson), get specific.

Mr. Penn, how much too much is the design? Are we a dollar over your budget? Help me understand where you are.

The object of this close is to get them to name a number: it’s $500 too expensive for me. It’s $100 too expensive for me. Whatever the number is, that’s what you need to get out of them. Once you have the number, go to work. In this example, let’s say the site is $500 too expensive. You’d amortize that at a daily rate over a year (500/365=1.37), then you might say something like:

Mr. Penn, I understand how you feel. We’ve agreed that a new web site design could do wonders for your business, haven’t we? We’ve agreed that if it brings in even 1 new customer a month, your business will grow beyond your current plans and expectations, right? Think of your web site as an employee who never sleeps, who never calls in sick, who is always working for you day and night.

Mr. Penn, do you have $1.37 right now? Yes, on you at this moment. Mr. Penn, that’s how much a day too much you’ve said your new web site is. Tell me, Mr. Penn, is $1.37 a day too much to pay for such an incredible employee?

Then shut up and wait to see what they say.

Is this close guaranteed to work? Of course not. No sales close ever is, despite the marketing materials of the sales trainers out there. But as a tactic to help you sniff out whether price is the true objection and how far off the mark your proposal is, the how much too much close is invaluable. For green sales staff and freelance consultants with no sales training at all (like many, many folks I’ve seen consulting in social media), this close saves you from the gut instinct of cutting your worth (price) right off the bat – a useful tactic that could save you and your company thousands or even millions of dollars over time.

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Ben & Jerry's, thank you for surrendering

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 16, 2010 in Advertising, Marketing, Social media, Social networks | 15 comments

I read with great interest about another company forsaking email marketing – this time, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s. Good. Thank you very much!

Why am I thanking them? Here’s the thing about marketing in a global digital economy: you’re not competing with your regular competitors. Ben & Jerry’s isn’t just competing with rival ice cream maker Friendly’s. Ben & Jerry’s is competing with me. They’re competing with you, too.

In the digital age, attention is the most prized commodity we can possibly have. Every message you receive has the potential to consume your attention for a split second or longer. A well-known, trusted brand like Ben & Jerry’s will automatically command more attention than a message from you or me. Think about that for a second. Ben & Jerry’s is known for doing lots of good things and for being generous. If there’s a message in your inbox with a free ice cream cone from them, chances are anything that you or I have to offer is probably going to pale in comparison.

Happily for us, they’ve put themselves out of the running for attention in the inbox, clearing space and attention for the rest of us, and so I thank them.

If you’re a competent marketer in the digital age, understand that you compete with everything and everyone for attention. Use every channel and avenue at your disposal, or risk losing share of mind with your prospects and customers.

Disclosure: I work for an email marketing company. My viewpoint had better be biased or I’m doing it wrong.

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More customers doesn't make you a better company

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jul 15, 2010 in Advertising, Marketing, Rant | 18 comments

I’ve been shopping around the past few days for a terrific lead automation system for the day job, looking at all of the different vendors out there. One thread that’s been common among all of the comparison discussions on LinkedIn, on blogs, etc. that baffles me is this argument:

“We’re better because we have 42x more customers than any of our competitors, which shows that clearly we are the LEADER in our space!”

This argument makes no sense to me. More customers doesn’t make you a better company. More customers just means you have more customers. In fact, it might make you a worse company. If you and your competitor both have 60 people on staff but you have 42x more customers, all that means is I’m 42x less likely to get customer support when I need it.

If more customers were the benchmark of excellence, we’d all shop only at Wal-Mart for everything in life. They have more customers than anyone, right? Are they the best? If absolute numbers of customers were the mark of truly excellent service, logically wouldn’t the IRS (which has every taxpayer as a “customer”) be the best organization in the country to deal with?

What’s at work here is a bit of Robert Cialdini’s bandwagon influence techniques (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Amazon link). The hope of these marketers, I suppose, is that by seeing lots of people doing business with a company, I’ll be persuaded that it’s somehow better, in the same way that social media “experts” try to convince you that because they’ve got 20,000 followers, they’re somehow more knowledgeable about social media.

Sorry, gang. I’m not buying it. In this day and age when service, support, and care is needed more than ever, more customers as a sole metric of your worth means you just have less time for me.

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