ChristophDollis.com » Marketing

Logo Saga

Christoph Dollis — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:34:13 +0000

I’ve designed a new logo. Details are on my personal blog.

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ChristophDollis.com Sales Pro
The place to come for more appointments, more people in the door, and more sales!(sm)
© 2007-2008 Christoph Dollis Enterprises. Moral Rights Asserted.

The Positive Impact of Blogs in Corporate Marketing to People

Christoph Dollis — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 12:24:10 +0000

Rob Neppel, President of Kithbride (kith as in Middle English friends, neighbours, or relatives, and bridge as in connection), a company which specializes in modern media relations, reveals some pointers on how blogging can both harm and help your profitability.

As with all things, the devil is in the details.

After watching that interview, I took home 11 points:

Your internet reputation matters.

If customers are writing bad things about you, know about it.

Blogging is an online social phenomenon. While some negative reviews might not be worth doing anything about because of the popularity of the author’s blog, others can spread like a wildfire causing wide scale havoc.

Don’t fight with bloggers; they’ll just post the cease and desist letter and now you’re the bully.

Instead, do what you’d do ordinarily — engage your upset customers and solve the problem.

Get them to write that you’ve done so. Honey, not vinegar…

Not all people blogging about your company is bad by any stretch of the imagination. Make friends with people saying good things.

As for you and/or your employees blogging, do: Openness humanizes you and your company.

Set clear and reasonable limits on confidential and trade information, but a bit of info about your workplace lets your prospects and customers picture you as real people, like them.

Leading edge companies encourage their employees or trusted key people to blog. Large companies (think Microsoft) have blogging initiatives. While maybe only a small percentage of customers might actually read a given post, often media will check your blog when writing a story about you giving you free publicity.

Give them something to write about — you know how media likes to fill in the blanks!

One thing he didn’t mention that I think is important is the comment or “opinion” section on blogs. The only people likely to actually leave a comment on a corporate blog might be the hard core mavens. These are people who are especially knowledgeable and interested in your company or its products and services. You want to know what these people are thinking.

A good example is Ivory soap. You’ve seen the message:

Questions?
1-800-395-9960

It’s soap! Who has questions? Obviously those people who care enough to think about the difference in either price, features, or quality. This particular phone number on a package is known is in marketing-speak a “maven trap”.

It gives a company the opportunity to know what the people who care most about their products and services think. And this is valuable because combined with a few other personality types like connectors, those with wide social circles, and salespeople, charismatic persuasive powerful types, this can cause the popularity of your offering to take off in unexpected ways.

Steady repeat predictable sales are good, but… you’d probably agree are much nicer when you’re dealing with more sales and a hot market. In other words, a trend.

I’m more focussed on making sales than actual marketing itself, but a really good book you may have heard of that has these concepts is “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. You can pick up a copy at my Amazon Associate store or just at your local bookstore.

His ideas together with Kithbridge’s blogging concepts could enhance each other.

Want more on these topics? Browse the archive of posts filed under: Blogging, Marketing, Videos by Others.

ChristophDollis.com Sales Pro
The place to come for more appointments, more people in the door, and more sales!(sm)
© 2007-2007 Christoph Dollis Enterprises. Moral Rights Asserted.

Cold Calling Is a Waste of Time

Christoph Dollis — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 02:36:00 +0000

… or so the man says.

I picked up some free MP3 audios from Frank Rumbauskas Jr. of NeverColdCall.com.

He teaches the cold calling doesn’t work. And yet, I’ve made it work before.

So I’m trying to think, what’s this Frank guy about? Is this just his marketing schtick so he can sell books and audios? Or does he have a leg to stand on?

Well the audios were enjoyable, but anything sounds good when there’s no other person to criticize it or reality to test it.

On the other hand, Stephan Schiffman is a man whose books I read years ago. I recently snatched up an excellent book of his with both hands, “Make It Happen Before Lunch”, for $12 at the neighbourhood used book store. Heck, I sat down then and there and read it for 40-minutes before they threw me out at closing so I had to buy it.

Just like his classic tome on cold calling I put to use, this was stuffed with no-nonsense info he’s used and it revolves around increasing and monitoring sales activity, plus setting a “goal of self”, a mission to define you. This book was fun to read.

These two Aussie gentlemen are in the cold calling camp.

Yet Frank says this doesn’t work. Hmmmm.

UPDATE 9:17 PM: Then there’s the email route. I’ve been had a bias against emailing people without talking to them first, but Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies says:

“Email cold calling is rapidly becoming an accepted way to crack into corporate accounts.”

This brings up some interesting possibilities and dovetails with what Frank teaches. So I’m going to throw that in the mix and see what shakes out.

Want more on these topics? Browse the archive of posts filed under: Marketing, Sales Books, Sales Techniques, Sales Theory.

ChristophDollis.com Sales Pro
The place to come for more appointments, more people in the door, and more sales!(sm)
© 2007-2007 Christoph Dollis Enterprises. Moral Rights Asserted.

Business Cards and Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Christoph Dollis — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 07:42:00 +0000

I designed my cards to go with the site.

UPDATE Monday August 27th, 2007: Redesigned my site so the previous cards don’t go with the new design.

UPDATE Sunday January 20th, 2008: Designed proper logo, finally. See below for the newer newer cards.

(Click the image to see current contact information.)

(Click the image to see the slightly expanded bullet points on my homepage.)

The website itself is based on a template I enjoyed, heavily modified and “modulated” by yours truly. For example, this blog is powered by Blogger, but I integrated it into my existing site.

It’s a table based layout in an era where CSS (cascading style sheet) is supposed to reign supreme.

Oh well. Sometimes I like doing things the old fashioned way.

But change can be good. Like these last two months.

I’ve always had great communication skills, but I’ve been weaker on organization. I decided to plug this leak and study it with a vengeance.

The solution was to implement Getting Things Done®!

My USP is to be the salesperson who is organized enough to take action…

… not the young fellow with a pair the size of watermelons who knocks on your door at 9:23 PM when you’re putting your kids to bed. Nor the perfect secretarial type who has all his I’s dotted and T’s crossed, but is afraid to speak up or go for what he really wants.

More like a geek version of the former: someone with the courage to make things happen, but the organization habits to influence what comes next and stay on top of things.

WHAT DOES THIS GET YOU, the business owner, sales manager, or profit-seeking executive?

Only one thing: money in the door.

UPDATE Monday August 27th, 2007: But now I’ve got the XHTML and CSS to validate meaning it’s well formed and can be read easier in handheld devices and such. Sweet.

Of course, there is a but… the blog (as opposed to the rest of the website, which I hand coded in a text editor) is published by Google Blogger. It’s a great service yet it doesn’t produce code that validates according to web standards. The rest of the site does.

I also made custom tool tips for when you hover over a link… on the main webpage, not the blog. If I use them on the blog’s main area, then the “hidden” tool tip text shows up all jumbled in the links when people read posts in a feed reader or by email.

It’s already bad enough that the hidden text of the custom tool tips shows up on some handheld devices that don’t fully support CSS.

Here’s an example of the custom tool tip.This is just an example; this link doesn’t go anywhere. And if you’re reading it through feed or email subscription, you’ll notice it’s all mixed together in the link!

And unfortunately, even the full-size Opera web browser has a bug in its “hover” property that causes the custom tool tips to fail. I thought about not using custom tool tips, but I like them. Opera should fix its bug!

UPDATE Sunday January 20th, 2008:

Want more on these topics? Browse the archive of posts filed under: GTD / Productivity, Marketing, USP, Web Design.