Tag Archives: Don Peppers

About 4585 days ago Online Marketing

Digging for Gold

User’s Guide The third week in September was a long, hard, gray week at the Inc. offices. Too many of us had stayed up to the wee hours slavishly watching the Olympics. Like my colleagues, I couldn’t tear myself away from the games, despite our many criticisms that this year’s contest was overproduced. I had to keep watching as the Romanian women took the gold in gymnastics, pushing the Russians out of first place. I was alternately fascinated by Svetlana Khorkina’s good hard sulk after she slipped off the uneven bars and cheered by the open smiles on the Chinese women’s faces as their bronze medal was announced. But through the next few tired days, struggling to concentrate through the dim fog of my Olympics-laden brain, I started to wonder: What are contests good for? Why do we care so much? Beyond the sheer joy of winning — and the curiosity that grips most of us about who’s first, best, strongest, fastest — awards should be good at illuminating what works. At the extreme, the Olympics showcase world-class techniques for running, swimming, and swinging over parallel bars with grace, efficiency, speed, and creativity — not to mention good sportsmanship. In business, by observing how the best operate, we should be able to glean how to run our own companies with more grace, efficiency, speed, and creativity. And amid some wincing, we should also learn a lot from the mistakes of the losers. For the second year in a row, Inc. Technology readers submitted their companies’ Web sites for rigorous evaluation. This year we asked a panel of outside judges — all experts in their fields — to assess how well the entrants’ sites supported their businesses. We identified five broad but fundamental categories in which Web sites could help entrepreneurs grow their companies: customer service, marketing, return on investment, innovation, and community. What we learned — with a few hurrahs and winces of our own — were the following six invaluable lessons for creating a world-class bricks-and-clicks business: You cannot succeed at what you do not measure. Entrants in the return-on-investment category had to show that their sites provided a significant bottom-line impact or that they allowed the company to introduce a profitable new product or service. But most entrants — and even the winners — were not nearly thorough enough in their measurement of ROI to satisfy accountants or potential investors, at least according to judge Nicholas DiGiacomo, former vice-president at Internet-strategy consulting firm Scient Corp. “Saying ‘I got a lot of new business when I put up my Web site’ is not the same as saying ‘I measured a 23% yearly increase in my bottom-line profits after taking into consideration all the fixed and recurring costs of establishing my Web presence,” he said. He counseled the need for the nominees to calculate the numerous ongoing costs of running their sites, including customer-service outlays, for one example. He stated sternly: “If they ignore the cost of their own time, they can’t calculate their bottom line. Such businesses will not survive for long.” Most banner ads are like diamond-studded dog collars: expensive and useless. Raymond K. Lemire (a.k.a. the “Big Parmesan”) spent a whopping $30,000 on banner ads for his pasta-club site, www.flyingnoodle.com (which took second place in marketing), only to discontinue them when he discovered they weren’t producing any visitors. All traffic is not equal. Thomas Neckel Sr., CEO of Sumerset Custom Houseboats (the general-excellence winner), does use banner ads, but he places them where they’ll do the most good — in his case, on sites that attract his affluent (and water-loving) demographic. Forget “share of market” (unless you’re selling cereal or toothpaste). In the words of judges Don Peppers and Martha Rogers of One to One Manager fame, it’s “share of customer” you should go after. In other words, solve your customers’ problems, and those customers will be loyal forever. Hence, they will buy more and more products and services from you. Toward that end, you should offer goods and services to your present customers that allow them to do things they haven’t been able to do before and cannot do elsewhere. Treat your customers personally. The more you can do to make your customers’ lives easier, the happier they’ll be. Consider, for instance, the way real estate agent Elizabeth Gray-Carr saves time and hassles for the people whose homes she sells. Each seller gets a personal Web page on which he or she can review advertising schedules, home visits, and even the reactions of visitors. Sellers can even fill out the necessary paperwork on their personal Web pages. For anyone who’s ever suffered the headaches of selling property, that kind of convenience — not to mention the personal attention — is incredibly appealing. Innovation and glitz are not synonymous. We should all know that by now (but apparently we don’t). Sites that opened with animated intros and other media-heavy graphics annoyed the judges. The truly innovative sites presented new ideas and services in more down-to-earth ways. Dandelion Moving & Storage, for example, won third place in innovation for CEO Bret Lampere’s DickerABid service, which allows small moving companies to bid, in reverse-auction style, on cross-country jobs. Although there’s nothing flashy about DickerABid, the new service is an inspired idea that’s proved to be profitable for Dandelion and useful to small regional competitors. The Web Awards program required a concerted effort by a large number of people over many months. Special thanks go to Cheryl McManus, Inc.‘s editorial administrator, for taking on the mammoth task of entering into a database hundreds of applications, and to the staff of Inc., many of whom spent days and nights reading incredibly detailed entry forms and evaluating Web sites to choose the finalists. To our panel of judges, who took time from their own work to select the winners, thank you — and please don’t hang up when we call you again next spring! For the skinny on the winners, click here. And please visit www.inc.com, where you’ll soon find instructions for entering the 2001 awards. Start training now. – Elaine Appleton Grant, editor Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4585 days ago E-Commerce

At Your Service

Web Wise Service companies need a touch of ingenuity to make the Web work for them. Explicators of the digital economy generally break down E-commerce into four handy categories. First there are the purveyors of stuff — those who sell puppy chow and mascara to consumers, or generators and ball bearings to industry. Next come the purveyors of content, such as the Wall Street Journal, Dun & Bradstreet, and Stephen King. Then there are the “purveyors of eyeballs,” whose ranks include companies like Yahoo that make money selling banner ads on their Web sites — chiefly to the purveyors of stuff and content. Finally, there are the purveyors of Web-based services, the so-called ASPs, that reduce the Internet to just one more company department. But that view of the E-commerce landscape leaves people like me up a creek without an online revenue model. I’m a Web marketing consultant — a service provider whose expertise (aside from the occasional Web-site review) can’t be confined to a digital stream. In that sense I’m like countless other companies that dry-clean clothes, repair cars, massage aching muscles, read palms, and provide other services for which the Web holds little apparent advantage beyond that offered by flyers plastered on windshields. But perhaps service businesses — particularly small, local companies — have lagged in the new economy not for lack of opportunity but for lack of imagination. Think your day spa or television-repair shop or exterminator service gains nothing by going online? Think again. Take, for example, Nick’s Auto Repair Inc. ( www.nicksautorepair.com), which has been at the same location in Boulder, Colo., for more than 20 years. Nick’s proprietors understand that mere longevity doesn’t necessarily translate into familiarity or trust, so they’ve built a Web site designed to inspire those sentiments in customers old and new. First the familiar: visitors to Nick’s Web site are warmly introduced to the company’s past and present. They learn the names and backgrounds of all five of Nick’s employees and are treated to reassuring photos of technicians up to their elbows in car engines. The site also traces the company history, going back before 1978. Although such background may or may not testify to a company’s performance, history adds ballast, and local history anchors a company in its community, which may matter a great deal to some customers. But in choosing an auto mechanic, trust is even more important than familiarity. Nick’s site engenders trust through both its helpful presentations and its straightforward approach to the company’s limitations. “The work we are not able to do is because of a lack of space,” Nick’s site informs its visitors. It goes on to explain: “We have three technicians with three bays. As a result, we are not able to do any major overhauls. However, if you need this type of work done, we will be more than happy to point you to a reliable specialist.” Then Nick’s site does something really smart: it provides three pages of detailed information about an engine’s ignition, fuel, and cooling systems, handsomely illustrated with pictures of an ignition coil and a distributor cap. While this material demonstrates the company’s expertise, it also suggests to the site visitor that Nick’s doesn’t use intentional obfuscation as a sales tactic, which is enormously reassuring to those of us who don’t know the difference between a fan belt and a Sansabelt, and who feel vulnerable in the presence of those who do. Nick’s site is also interactive: the company can send E-mail estimates to its customers, who in turn can look up information written in plain English concerning, say, pickup coils. Dry cleaners have traditionally made hay from their bricks-and-mortar status: a “plant on premises” claim is considered a major selling point in their line of business. So what can an online presence do for a dry cleaner? The people at Dry Cleaning Depot ( www.drycleaningdepot.com) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., know their customers will never be able to get rid of gravy stains by hitting the Delete key, but they’ve figured out another way to make the Internet work for them. “Got a minute?” the company site asks customers. “Probably not. Let Dry Cleaning Depot be your corporate partner. We will pick up and drop off your dry cleaning right where you work.” A nice service, but not exactly Web-centric, right? Then how about this: the site offers its customers a 10% discount on their first bill if they sign up for the service online. Customers can also indicate their starch preferences and, better still, use their credit cards online. That means they don’t have to write checks every week or shamefacedly reimburse the receptionist who shelled out $25 to reclaim their silk blouse and crushed-velvet trousers. And there’s a monthly billing option for those who’d rather not release their credit-card information over the Internet. In addition, Dry Cleaning Depot aggressively pursues new customers using that proven online tactic: word of E-mail. Customers are invited to E-mail the Depot with the name and address of prospective corporate accounts, along with some contact information. If three or more people from the suggested company sign up for the Depot’s services, the referring customer receives $25 worth of free dry cleaning. By advertising that offer on its site and making the referral process super easy, Dry Cleaning Depot is using the Internet to accrue new business. What can consultants, doctors, lawyers, and accountants do online besides boast about their skills? But what about those of us in the professional services? I’m no snob, but offering 25% off my consultation fee to customers tendering an online coupon is a bit dÉclassÉ for a Web-marketing consultancy. And if you need to consult a glossary to understand my advice, then I’m not doing my job. So what can consultants — not to mention doctors, lawyers, and accountants — do online besides boast about their skills, post a list of clients, and archive articles? We, too, can get interactive. That’s what Don Peppers and Martha Rogers have done, which should come as no surprise given the Web’s pride of place in their celebrated one-to-one marketing philosophy. On its site ( www.1to1.com), the pioneering customer-relationship-management consulting firm has posted interactive tools that inform, entertain, and — best of all — explain why you need its help. For example, a program called Checkpoint poses a series of questions about your company: What percentage of your customers account for the bulk of your company’s profits? How different are your customers from one another? And so on. The site then produces a chart, based on your responses, that shows how valuable a one-to-one program would be for your organization. And, no, the results aren’t always that such a program would be ” really, really valuable.” If the Peppers-Rogers Web application is smart, Eric Ward’s is inspired. Ward’s company, Netpost ( www.netpost.com), has been helping clients raise their hands on the Internet since 1994. Ward’s understanding of Web-site publicity is unsurpassed, and — not surprisingly — his public Web site is grand. But it’s the secret-password-protected portion of the site that exemplifies service-company marketing at its finest. Want the password to it? First you have to attend one of his seminars. In vivid detail, Ward lays before his audiences the glorious gestalt of marketing Web sites. He explains how a company can make its presence felt on search engines. And in directories. And on What’s New sites. And in E-zines, newsletters, newsgroups, discussion lists, and on, and on, and on. At the end of his presentations, Ward gives his audiences a gift: the password to the section of his site where all his resources, tools, and ideas are laid bare, ripe for the plucking. Anyone with the time and inclination can follow the bouncing browser and obtain without charge the services for which other people pay Ward serious money. Why would he allow such a thing? Usually, those who are willing to invest the time it takes to follow his exhaustive program on their own are people who couldn’t afford him in the first place. Whereas those who value time over money and who want the job done right by the best in the business flock to Ward and count themselves lucky that the maestro isn’t booked into the next millennium. Service companies are purveyors of expertise, skills, and knowledge, which in the end will always be tougher to sell online than content, banner ads, and stuff. The trick, perhaps, is to learn a lesson from the Wizard of Oz. Use your public face in whatever way possible to impress the hell out of people, but always be sure that the man behind the curtain is fulfilling his promises. Jim Sterne, president of Target Marketing, in Santa Barbara, Calif., is a speaker, a consultant, and the author of the books Email Marketing, World Wide Web Marketing, and Customer Service on the Internet (John Wiley & Sons). Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.