The French have a saying: Plus ηa change, plus c’est la mκme chose. In times of great change (brought about by the Internet) it is important to reflect upon what has changed (in marketing), and what remains unchanged. When the World Wide Web first burst onto the scene in 1994, it led to a massive explosion in business innovation. The belief in those heady days was that “the Internet changes everything.” The network was seen as a disruptive technology that could destroy incumbent businesses, disintermediate existing channels, and overturn the rules of marketing.          

Once CRM systems got their bugs worked out, ancillary solutions further developed and handheld devices became a favorite of top executives and field staffs alike. However, early mobile sales force automation (SFA) and other CRM offerings had their approach all wrong.

Vendors tried to miniaturize entire CRM solutions for mobile SFA, “which is insane,” Rich Koch, vice president of marketing for Saratoga Systems, tells CRM Buyer. “It’s kind of like doing surgery with salad tongs. You can’t store as much as you have in a CRM system on a mobile device.

“This is why mobile SFA had fits and starts,” he adds. “Vendors and IT [executives] were trying to shove a jet engine in there. The market ran ahead of itself and what the user actually wanted. Mobile SFA is like camping: You’re not taking the house; you need a Swiss Army knife.”

From 2006 through 2011, the number of mobile salespeople requiring real-time network connections will grow from 40 percent to 80 percent, according to a November report from Gartner (NYSE: IT) . Additionally, 50 percent of surveyed companies believe mobile SFA will have a major impact on the way they do business in the next five years, an Aberdeen Group report states.

Saratoga Systems, which has been in CRM development for 20 years, via its Apresta division offers software for this burgeoning market that prioritizes access and functionality field workers need from enterprise systems for smartphones.

Apresta’s technology could be likened to an iPod, Koch says. “You’re not carrying around CDs,” he explains. “Only the music you want and how you want it.”

With Saratoga’s version of mobile SFA, users get only the data they want — such as contact, inventory and pricing information, status of outstanding orders and data on what the competition is buying — in a browser-based interface.

Software Functionality

Once the mobile software is installed on the device and it connects to the Apresta server, it will pull and push data as requested — as long as the device receives service. When the handheld can’t get a connection — in rural areas, for instance — the user can still access information locally from the device.

Apresta’s caching system houses information within the device’s internal memory to allow information retrieval and editing offline. Once service resumes, real-time syncing resets without any direct command.

One Apresta customer, electronics sales firm Phoenix Contact, was able to increase its sales 25 percent with mobile SFA.

“Salespeople can structure a deal right in front of the customer, as opposed to the typical sales cycle in which they try to get information together in five or 10 days,” Koch notes.

“There is a customer demand for real-time interaction,” he adds, and Phoenix reps can even deliver photos by PDA and place orders in real-time from their BlackBerry devices. The Phoenix sales team now has 4,200 meetings with customers and prospects per month, up from 3,500 per month when it implemented Apresta two years ago.

A Competitive Advantage

Phoenix Contact is just one of a multitude of firms to implement mobile SFA, Ronn Duby, research analyst of customer intelligence research at Aberdeen Group and author of The Mobile Sales Solutions Benchmark Report, tells CRM Buyer.

“Top performers at organizations of all maturity levels plan to invest in mobile sales productivity tools to drive top-line growth,” he notes. “They believe that providing their sales professionals with a competitive advantage through timely access to key information such as recent account activity, supervisor’s notes or revised proposals is vital to successful attainment of corporate revenue goals.

“Part of this success includes growing revenues through enhanced customer satisfaction or support levels at the point of customer interaction,” he continues. “Sales professionals cite the ability to improve customer satisfaction or support levels as a top driver for their investment.”

On the Road

There is an argument to be made for rollover of the total CRM system onto a handheld. Technology has progressed since mobile SFA’s early days enough to make this solution sexy to small business BlackBerry and PocketPC users, “any organization that has a remote sales force, external sales force or remote field service force,” Amedeo Tarzia, senior vice president for Sage Software mobile solutions, tells CRM Buyer. “Definitely all are conducive to mobile SFA,” he says.

“After several false starts, converged devices are finally in a form factor small enough for people to consider as an alternative to a cell phone and powerful enough to run robust mobile applications over more readily available wireless bandwidth,” Tarzia adds.

“Users are used to the desktop and want rich applications as much as possible on a device. With a Web-based browser, you’re not getting much traction,” he explains. Compression and encryption capabilities enable devices to store and transmit large packets of data without compromising device memory or clogging connection bandwidth.

From Optional to a Must-Have

Sage Software’s mobile SFA has reached beyond early adopters in financial services and pharmaceuticals to horizontal market acceptance, from a nice-to-have add-on product to a need-to-have offering, even for small to medium-sized companies.

Some firms are equipping their field sales and service personnel with BlackBerry devices and PocketPCs to extend their investments in CRM, Tarzia notes. “We are seeing increased interest in mobile SFA solutions over the past six to 12 months,” he says.

Key drivers of this growth are similar to those of desktop CRM software, Tarzia states, “a move towards more business intelligence and graphing capabilities as well as tighter integration with back-office work flow engines to allow users in the field to drive back-office process.”

Additionally, syncing can be done real-time, on-demand or scheduled, based on user needs and device capabilities.

“In general, we see mobile users syncing up at least a few times during the day, especially prior to customer calls to ensure they have the latest information, as well as following calls, to ensure that information captured during the call or visit on the device itself, is transferred back to the internal Sage SalesLogix  system,” Tarzia concludes.

Because Twitter can be used with ease on both PCs and mobile devices, and because it limits users to very short messages of 140 characters or fewer, it has become one of the largest platforms in the world for sharing real-time data. A number of large businesses and celebrities have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. This includes personalities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. JetBlue (JBLU), Whole Foods (WFMI) and Dell (DELL), along with other multinational corporations, are among the most followed names on the service. (See the top 10 celebrity Twitter feeds.)

As Twitter grows, it will increasingly become a place where companies build brands, do research, send information to customers, conduct e-commerce and create communities for their users. Some industries, like local retail, could be transformed by Twitter — both at one-store operations that cater to customers within a few blocks of their locations and at the individual stores of giant retail operations like Wal-Mart (WMT). In either case, having the opportunity to tell customers about attractive sales and new products can be done at remarkably low cost while providing for greater geographic accuracy.

For Twitter to be a part of a company’s efforts to communicate with customers, the customers must be willing to “follow” the company on Twitter. That allows the individual consumer to choose which firms he is willing to get messages directly from. It may not be surprising that “new age” brands like Whole Foods and JetBlue have large followings and older and much larger brands like Kroger (KR) and American Airlines (AMR) do not. Whole Foods and JetBlue have successfully marketed themselves as being “customer-centric” — the kind of companies that would not misuse the access to a customer’s private Twitter information. (Read Ashton Kutcher’s take on why the Twitter founders made the TIME 100.)

While there may be commercial value for using Twitter to communicate with customers, the danger is that the Twitter community could turn against a marketer viewed as being too crass by being relentlessly self-promoting. Twitter users have set up their own rules of conduct when using the service, not unlike those with MySpace and Facebook. These rules were not put together by Twitter itself, which mandates only rules of use. Like many social-network sites, Twitter is self-governed by its members, and companies must take that into account as they join the service.

Twitter is still in the early stages of developing a plan for making money as a company, but plenty of large corporations like Starbucks (SBUX) are already using it as a marketing tool. Twitter will probably evolve into both a community of individuals and a community of companies that provide goods and services for those individuals.

24/7 Wall St. has come up with 10 ways in which Twitter will permanently change American business within the next two to three years, based on an examination of Twitter’s model, the way that corporations and small businesses are currently using the service and some of the logical extensions of how companies will use Twitter in the future. Some of these firms are already using Twitter, but their efforts are in the earliest stages of development. 24/7 Wall St. evaluated other sensible and potentially highly profitable ways Twitter’s real-time, multiplatform presence is likely to be

— Douglas A. McIntyre

“Sometimes advertising works,” he said, “and many more times it doesn’t. The worst part is you can never predict which is going to happen. I couldn’t in good conscience sell something that I don’t believe will work.”

Ouch. Is advertising more of a gamble than a science?

If advertising is an investment, you should expect to see a predictable profit from that investment. Invest a dollar in advertising, get back four, or five, or six. At the very least, shouldn’t you get back a dollar ten?

But if you you don’t know whether your ads are driving revenue, you can’t very well call it investing. If you don’t know whether you’ll win, or lose, or break even, you are gambling.

And if you put your money into ads that you “feel” are working, but but can’t measure their effect, you’re still gambling.

Noted investor Peter Lynch once said, “An investment is simply a gamble in which you’ve managed to tilt the odds in your favor.”

So, maybe effective advertising is that which has been tilted in your favor. Not so much an answer, as a process, which includes better targeting, more effective messaging, and improved media selection.

The purpose of an ad budget?

The reality is that most of us fear that we aren’t turning our marketing dollars into profit. Not consistently. Not directly. Which is why we have advertising budgets. To limit risk.

An ad budget serves the same purpose as going to the casino with a hundred dollars in your pocket and saying “When this hundred is gone I’m done playing. Maybe I’ll get lucky. But I’ve got to set a limit on how much I can afford to lose.”

Think about it. If you knew you were going to get back more than you spent, why would you ever stop spending?

Perhaps you don’t need a budget so much as a lever.

The Greek mathematician, Archimedes, understood leverage. He’s reported to have said, “Give me a long enough lever and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.”

When applied to advertising, leverage means doing more with less. Getting more bang for your buck. Controlling large sums of revenue with relatively small sums invested in advertising. Stacking the odds in your favor.

But, if you were capable of stacking those odds, wouldn’t you also be running more advertising?

A surprising number of companies try to avoid advertising, then force themselves run ads when sales are down or when they have excess inventory.

Unfortunately, they’re open for business all of those other days, too. And they need customers to come buy what they sell on every one of them.

That constant need for additional sales makes advertising the most important thing any of us can do for our own business. What other activity can multiply raw dollars with this kind of leverage?

First, measure.

Do you know your rate of return?

Note your sales levels. Run your campaign. Note any change in your sales levels.

Divide increase by the amount spent. This is Return On Advertising Investment (ROAI). If you are bringing in more money than you are spending, your ROAI is positive. Congratulations.

Of course if your advertising is not effective, the negative ROAI produces a constant drain on your resources. Is this why you don’t advertise often? Do you justify the resulting poor return as “getting your name out there?”

How effective is your lever?

Is your advertising an investment or a gamble?

The primary question you must ask is the rate of your ROAI. Until you know the answer, this is the only question that matters.

How well does your current marketing stack up? Are you gambling with your advertising budget without even realizing it?

__________

Chuck McKay is a marketing consultant who helps customers discover you, and choose your business

That’s where organizations like National Strategies, Inc., Onvia and Business Matchmaking come in.
In February, National Strategies, a business-to-government consulting firm that helps companies break into contracting and procurement markets, launched the Stimulus Opportunity Roadmap, an online database of tens of thousands of “shovel-ready” projects that could be funded by the stimulus. “We’re able to figure out all the streams of dollars through the stimulus package that are relevant to X business,” CEO Al Gordon says. “Once we do that, we put together a strategy of how we access those dollars by literally matching up–by project and location–what you’re selling with funding [opportunities] and go after them.”

With Recovery.org, public works information aggregator Onvia provides a similar service. The site captures all government spending information from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and reports it so business owners can identify and pursue the appropriate projects.

Michael Balsam and Eric Gillespie, respectively Onvia’s chief solutions officer and chief information officer, say the purpose was to carve out stimulus-specific projects for small- to medium-sized businesses, and provide those businesses with opportunities to bid on work.

You can sift through information based on project type and location, and if you register, Onvia alerts you when matching projects appear in the database. “In many cases we are the trigger for our clients to pursue business,” Gillespie says. “The government is the last client standing … and what we do serves to help businesses get access to projects from the government.”

Balsam says Onvia is the only central portal that not only notifies clients of new postings, but also provides access to additional materials when they arise. “At each step of the process, we’re going to be adding supporting source documentation,” he says. “As the money is set aside, we notify the public of that; when a request for proposal is made available, we’ll post the documents online. Incidentally, this is not something the government can do.”

Go Where the Grass Is Green
Where do the greatest opportunities lie? In energy efficiency and sustainable technologies, says NSI’s Gordon, not only because of the billions earmarked for the cause, but also because the entire stimulus bill is full of “green” components. In fact, he recently spoke to one particular company in the energy industry whose CEO expects to hire another 50 employees based on the work available from government contracts. “That’s a big win for the stimulus package.”

But most important, business owners need to be ready to seize on contracting opportunities because the bill is pushing for all money to be committed by September 2010. “It’s on your shoulders since you’re looking at a relatively short time frame. If you sit back … it’s not going to come,” warns Gordon. “But if you take the bull by the horns, develop a plan and match what you’re offering to these various streams of money, you could be in the game.”

If the red tape is what’s holding you back, the folks at Business Matchmaking are ready to help. And, says executive producer Chuck Ashman, the process isn’t as difficult as you might think.

Ashman sees the stimulus package an as opportunity for business owners to break into contracting and procurement. “Our attendance application and interest on the website is up about 60 percent in the past 90 days,” he says–the biggest increase since the company was founded six years ago.

Beginning in June, Business Matchmaking will embark on a 15-city tour to train business owners on ways they can benefit from all the extra money going into state agency coffers. “We’ll take the top buyers from state and federal agencies, and people from the Small Business Administration, and [explain the process] to companies that have never sold to a government agency, but who have an appetite for it,” Ashman says.

In addition, Business Matchmaking has partnered with the small business arm of American Express to launch a program that helps companies in the same industry collaborate and go after contracts together. “A lot of small-business owners have the desire to sell to a federal agency, but can’t handle it alone,” Ashman says.

Jump These Hurdles
The major problem is that small-business owners are intimidated by the red tape they think exists when dealing with the government. At one time, the process may have been complicated, but that’s no longer true, Ashman says. For example, getting on the government registry is simple: Make one free phone call to Dun and Bradstreet to get what’s called a DUNS number, use that number to register in the Central Contractor Registry and you’re eligible to work with the government.

Much of the information is available on the internet–sometimes exclusively so–so it’s also important to be comfortable working online. Then, look into programs that give you a leg up, especially if you’re a minority, a woman or even a disabled veteran. “There are a tremendous number of companies eligible, but they haven’t taken advantage of the opportunity,” Ashman says.

The main obstacle to get over is the intimidation factor, but NSI’s Gordon points out that business owners should prepare for what comes after, too–the transparency and reporting requirements. “Make sure you’ve got people trained to deal with the government. Every company is going to have to report the dollars they received and how they were used and the impact of those dollars.”

Any reticence is understandable, though. “I’d call it busy-ness. The toughest commodity for a small-business owner is [time],” Ashman notes. “If someone says, ‘You’ve got to go to this training program and learn how to get certified,’ I’m sure they’d say, ‘Sure, but only if you can do it at 2 am on a Thursday.’”

Fortunately, Business Matchmaking, SBA and SCORE are taking it to businesses, and these stumbling blocks are being addressed. Ashman’s also optimistic that policymakers and politicians are noticing that small business is where jobs are and should be created. “The most encouraging thing I see with the stimulus package is an across-the-board recognition of the significance of the role of small business.”

The best place to start prospecting is with people who have already paid money for products and services similar to yours.

When you’re finally prepared enough with knowledge about your product, service, or concept and have a good level of selling skills, you then need to begin finding those people. Because you won’t have a lot of qualifying, presenting, closing, or follow-up to do when you’re new, your primary focus should be on prospecting. In fact, early in your selling career, your daily plan should be to invest about 75 percent of your time prospecting. The other 25 percent of your time should go toward developing your product knowledge and presentation skills.

So, how do you find these elusive, but absolutely essential prospects? Read on!

Friends and Relatives

The first potential clients that usually come to mind are friends and relatives. Then, move to people you come in contact with on a social basis. Those you meet socially would include fellow church members, school workers, and those you enjoy doing your hobbies or playing sports with. Business friends would include people you have worked with in the past or met through workshops or clubs and organizations specifically set up for business professionals.

Other Salespeople

One area of prospecting that is often overlooked is other salespeople. Work up a win-win situation with other salespeople by sharing leads or finding a complement in your product or service to what they have to offer. The favors you give away often return tenfold.

Do your prospecting efforts end with your last appointment of the day? If you answer yes, you’ve closed your eyes to a lot of business.

Enjoying a dinner in a restaurant, shopping in a mall, dropping off dry cleaning, and purchasing groceries put you in contact with potential future clients. If you’re in network marketing, you can benefit by turning those who have demonstrated good people skills on to your business. In doing so however, never intrude on their work time. Simply say, “I can’t help but notice that you have a nice way with people. I’m curious, are you achieving all of your goals working here? The reason I ask is that the firm I represent is in an expansion mode and we’re looking for quality people to take advantage of the opportunity. Do you have an interest in knowing more?”

If they do, say: “Ethically, because you’re working now, I’m not at liberty to discuss it. However, if you’d like to jot down a number and time I can reach you when you’re not working, we can visit and see if it’s a win-win possibility.”

Always carry your business cards with you and freely hand it out to those you feel particularly impressed with. Following up with a letter or thank you note regarding the service they provided leaves a good impression of you and your company.

Newspaper

A favorite prospecting tool, and one that is the greatest source around, can be delivered to your doorstep for under a dollar a day in most areas. It’s the newspaper. I used to read mine with a pen so I could circle all of the opportunities I found. The local news, business, and announcement sections are the most beneficial portions of the paper.

Circle who has been promoted in business, who recently had a baby, who just started up a new business, who just sold or purchased a home in the community, and so on. Then, contact them. You do this by cutting out the article. Make a copy for yourself. Then send a brief note, saying, “I saw you in the news. I’m in business in the community and hope to meet you someday in person. I thought you might enjoy having an extra copy of the article to share with friends or relatives.” Always include your business card.

People love seeing that they were in the news. And they love having extra copies of the articles to send to friends and relatives who are not in the local area. When you follow up, you’ll already have something in common to talk about — the news item. By providing this small service in a non-threatening way, you can gain a lot of big business. I know I did. You can, too.

Executive coach Daisy Wademan Downing takes inspiration from Tom Donnelly, the men’s track and field coach for the past 34 years at Haverford College, a Quaker school with fewer than 1,200 students. Despite the school’s tiny enrollment, noncompetitive philosophy, and lack of athletic scholarships, Donnelly has managed to produce 113 All-Americans and 24 individual N.C.A.A. champions – a jaw-dropping record for a school of any size or budget.

Donnelly’s superb, sustained results are the kind every manager dreams of. And, according to the coach himself, they’r the kind of results any manager can shoot for – and attain. The secrets to getting your team out front, he says, are as follows:

*    Spend as much time with the slowest runner as with the fastest. To improve a team’s performance, focus on its weakest members. As long as a team member is working hard, he or she deservess your attentive, careful coaching.

*   Take away performance pressure by adding perspective – and fun. Donnelly’s pep talks are laced with trivia, history and jokes. He readily acknowledges that running track is not the only important thing in his athletes’ lives.

*    Accept inevitable setback – and move past them quickly. The times when other teams win? Donnelly and his runners spend no time sulking or pointing fingers. “We acknowledge the other team’s accomplishment and we recover.”

*   Let your team’s performance be its own reward. The team’s trophies and award certificates go up in Donnelly’s office. His own coaching awards go in the trash. They get in the way, Donnelly claims, of doing his job – teaching other people how to succed.

1)   Stay focused. Don’t lay off to lay off. Analyze your sales reports for the past two years. Was there an increase in productivity after a group was laid off? How did your sales numbers fare during that period with less staff? Did you end up having to rehiring to stimulate sales?

2)   Keep recognition at the top of  your list.  A team’s good attitude is jet fuel to sales activity. Budget restraints, use an incentives broker to find quality incentives at a discount and invest in your bottom line.  

3)   Communicate frequently and openly. Share challenges and success.

4)   Post your goals and achievements.

5)   Create training opportunities with scheduled cross training and classroom education.

6)   Interact with sister departments for team building and training.

7)   Schedule fun days so that everyone can let out some steam and team build.

8)   Reveiw the importance of being positive, emphasizing the product or services values to each prospect and customer. People want to work with someone who is retaining a business as usual attitude. Grumbling will only mean they are closer to loose a sale.

9)   Greet your sales staff each day. Walk around and/or use email to deliver a “good morning” or “good job”.

10)  Get a commitment from your sales team to communicate back with you when they are worried or frustrated and sincerely listen. Together, you can form ideas and feel that you are truly a team.

It can be a landscape business in the summer or hanging Christmas lights in the winter. It can be training, consulting or tutoring. It can be your hobby such as painting, writing, crafts, woodworking, computers or cooking. But once you start investing even part time effort into your own business, you will find how much more exciting it is to get up in the morning and go to work on your fortune, even if you’re only spending a few hours a week doing it.

How empowering it is to be able to go to work on your fortune every day rather than going to work to pay the rent. Now – it is noble to go to work to pay the rent, but if you could also parcel out part of your time – go to work to make your fortune. Your whole attitude changes; your spirit changes. It is in your voice. It is in your face. It is in your gestures. And then you can say, “I am now working full-time on my job and part-time on my fortune because I found a way to make profits.” Wow!

And I will know what you mean.