00:00]

Cliff: Hello, and welcome. Today is November 19th, 2009, and you are watching Visible Gains live. [applause] My name is Cliff Pollen, I’m—and I’m at “Cliff Pollen” on Twitter. With me today is Kiki Mills, President of the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange, also known by most of us as “MITX”. Kiki, welcome.

Kiki: Thank you, Cliff.

Cliff: It’s great to have you here. Um, you can talk to us on Twitter, so you can send feedback to the Visible Gains hash tag and we’ll answer your questions here live.

[00:43]

Cliff: Um, Kiki, why don’t you tell us a little bit about MITX, and what it does, and—

Kiki: Sure.

Cliff: –And what you’ve been doing there.

Kiki: Great. So MITX is a non-profit industry association. And, uh, we are an industry association for the internet business and marketing industry. And for some, that’s not necessarily something that might, necessarily understand, because we, we operate at this very interesting intersection of technology, marketing, and media. So the companies that are members of our association are the digital agencies and the marketing services firms that are creating the experiences on the web, um, the media properties and companies through which all of this is unfolding, and then all the technology providers that are powering a lot of the web, and video, mobile, and social media applications. And then also the brands, basically the deployers of all these technologies and strategies. So, it’s, it’s a, it’s a broad mix of, of companies and of people, but a very, very dynamic one.

[01:43]

Cliff: It strikes me, having been involved with MITX, that people don’t have a sense for how big an industry this sort of represents. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Kiki: It’s a great question, and, um, thank you for asking, and one which, um, you know, we struggled with for many years as we tried to put a wrapper around what this industry is and explain it to people. And just two years ago, we started a market sizing study which would actually measure it, and, and, in, now in our second year in doing it, we’ve uncovered a twenty-nine billion dollar industry in New England that employs sixty-nine thousand people in over two thousand companies. That’s nothing to, to sneeze about. It’s a significant industry.

[02:09]

Cliff: It’s, it’s almost mindboggling when you hear those, those numbers.

Kiki: Yeah. It, I mean, I think in our first year, we, we were a little bit spellbound ourself, because we didn’t realize the impact of it. And, uh, so you’re on, you’re even doing that, and we’ve gotten more attention from the state, and the people around economic development that need to understand that this is a pillar of the, the state economy.

[02:28]

Cliff: One of the things that sort of represents it was the big event the other night, was the MITX Awards.

Kiki: Yes.

Cliff: And, tell us a little bit about the event, and what it was like, and what it represents for the New England area.

Kiki: So, uh, the MITX Awards, it’s, it’s uh, our fourteenth annual, so it’s been around for a long time, it’s back in 1996 that we started it. And, um, it’s really a labor of love. It’s really our flagship event, and, and the goal of that is to celebrate the, the great innovations that are happening on the web. Um, I, I talked to many people about it, I said, “Well, think of it as the Academy Awards for web work.” And, in, throughout, throughout the, throughout the years, you know, we, we will honor websites, and new emerging technologies, and the application of those technologies for small businesses up to large-scale brands like Fidelity, Genzyme, um, consumer goods companies like Coca-Cola, so it’s, it’s a really, really broad spectrum. And, and what it means is, it means a lot of things. Number one, it, it shows that Massachusetts is a leader, um, in digital marketing and media. There’s a lot going on here, and we’re doing it for some of the biggest brands in the business. And then number two, it just, it brings together the community in a way that, people need to network and understand, what’s happening, what are the best practices, how are people using the mediums. So, it’s very much a brand-building for the state, uh, but also kind of a, a, a, basically an ohm-building for, for the companies and people there.

[03:47]

Cliff: The other thing I was struck by, not to, not to, um, we were talking about a little bit was also, some of the awards around the non-profit websites, so this doesn’t—

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: –Just per, pertain to business, but, you know—

Kiki: Yep.

Cliff:–Government and other organizations. Yeah.

Kiki: It’s a great point, and every year we take a look at the categories and, and we change them up, because so many things change. For example, um, this was probably mid two thousands, financial services was a huge category, I think a lot of things were exploding at that time, in a good way. And then non-profit became a much larger category over the years. So we see trends based on, kind of, a particular area of an industry where the web is becoming a more widely-adopted vehicle.

[04:22]

Cliff: So talk about a few of the winners that you think stoo, I know they were all great.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: But, talk about some that you think stood out, you know,

Kiki: So…

Cliff: In an exemplary way.

Kiki: Yeah, so I, I, uh, Zipcar, number one.

Cliff: Yeah.

Kiki: Um, was a huge winner. I mean, what a great brand to work with. Um, and, they have so much going for them. And, so, one of their firms, I-site Design, was involved in, um, their web, their website redesign, um, they also won an award for best user experience. Um, so that was, that was really great to see. Um, another one, Sapient, uh, who won Best of Show for the Happiness Factory with Coca-Cola, which is a really cool, unique, immersive 3-D experience, and, and, it’s for people and their, their kind of, fans to come in and just experience the brand. Um, another agency that won a lot, Mullen, um, did, did uh, won several awards with one of their iPhone apps for Stanley. Um, they’re non-profit, actually, category. Um, and, let’s see, and Arnold actually won for their financial services site for Citizens Bank for their Green Sense campaign, which was, um, one judge commented on, this is where the industry’s going. So, when you see things like that it’s just really inspiring, you know, that a lot of that’s happening here.

[05:25]

Cliff: You could feel the excitement, I was there that night…Can, tell us, um, tell us a little bit about, just, the concepts behind the awards.

Kiki: Right.

Cliff: What are people getting recognized for?

Kiki: So, so, a, a few different things. I mean, number one, this is a great, um, way for a company to show their prospects and their current clients, you know, we are creating award-winning work, and we’re being judged by our peers, which, are frankly, probably a lot more, harsher, than maybe other groups of independent bodies would be. Number two, it’s great for internal team-building. I mean, these people are slaving and creating these projects, they’re not necessarily client-facing, and they’re behind, they’re behind the boxes doing the work, and so, when it comes time for some recognition, you know, it’s just a great way to really, you know, mobilize the, the team, and show them how great, you know, what’s happening. So…and I think the third is, you know, just seeing and learning what’s, what’s happening, and, and understanding how certain agencies and companies are, are really pushing the media.

[06:22]

Cliff: Yeah, it seemed, it, one of the things I was struck by having been there was just the excitement of people using, and also was a very, a big networking event.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: So, yeah, talk a little bit about that. Yeah.

Kiki: It’s, um, it’s a, it’s a grand-daddy, that’s for sure. You know, over eleven hundred people, and, and you know, frankly, I went into this year, 2009, thinking, well, you know, this, this is going to be a struggling year, can we really pull off a big event? And, I was blown away, because we had a bigger crowd this year than last year, and, and that, honestly, all that speaks to is just the incredible power of the community and the vibrancy of the community here in Massachusetts. And, you know, this has been a, this has been a, a troubling year for everyone. And the power of networking, and, and being together, as, as kind of, you know, silly as that sounds, or softy-feely sounds, it, it’s the most important thing that people could do right now.

[07:13]

Cliff: Well that’s one of the things I think that MITX does, obviously, is to bring people together. So we have some clips, because we asked a bunch of the winners,

Kiki: Great.

Cliff: You know, what did, what did they think, and how did MITX, you know, help them achieve their goals. So why don’t we take a, take a look at that.

[several interview clips]

Kiki: That’s great.

[08:46]

Cliff: So Kiki, what do you take away from that, what are some of the things you hear?

Kiki: So, I hear, a lot, um, about learning, and education. And, that, um, about, I think, that we bring together the intellectual capital to help people make sense of next generation marketing and media. Um, I hear, um, platform, and an avenue for companies to promote themselves, and for their work to be recognized. Um, and I hear stuff about talent, which is about, how do we cultivate and, you know, retain young talent, how do we foster entrepreneurship, and, and, you know, that’s really kind of the crux of what we do, so, thankfully we validated it.

Cliff: Right.

Kiki: Woo! We’re doing something right! You know? [laughter]

[09:26]

Cliff: Um, talk a little bit about the educational programs,

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: That you do do?

Kiki: So that’s really the crux of what we do, when you think about the product of MITX, it’s actually events. And, um, they’re all, um, professional development events. We have about sixty or seventy a year, and they range on, on topics from mobile, to video, to general marketing technologies, to social media, online advertising and strategy, so, quite a big breadth and depth of content. And, you know, with all those events, you know, we, we’re probably bringing together, I’d say, probably two to three hundred speakers over the course of a year in all different types of competencies, at all different types of levels, because while we like to hear the senior, we also like to hear the person that’s really in the trenches actually implementing the work. So, two-hour sessions, you know, enough where you learn something and you can apply it back, you know, to your, to your company. So…

[10:13]

Cliff: And just so people understand, can, can individuals become members? Corporations? How does it work in terms of joining MITX?

Kiki: So, it’s a member-based organization, um, we do have individual members, we actually have student memberships too. On the individual side, we reserve that for sole proprietors, so essentially, kind of one man/one woman shops, that don’t have employees yet. So once you start to have employees, that’s when you get a corporate membership.

Cliff: Right, right.

Kiki: But we were sensitive to the fact that, you know, a lot of, a lot of our companies are frankly, our history, you know, starting back in ’96, started with, you know, one-person, kind of multimedia designers which evolved, so, that’s really where it came from.

[10:46]

Cliff: How do you help local businesses find employees? Talk a little bit about the connections you’re doing there.

Kiki: So, a couple ways. Um, we’ve always had, which is, which is standard, but in, in the, in the heydays it was the most valuable thing, and we have our job board. So companies can post jobs there, and also, people can, um, um, post their resumes there. And, and, over the years, and I’ve been with the organization for ten years now, so I’ve heard a lot of stories, but over the years, I’ve heard the, “I got my job from you guys” and, and “I found someone from your website”. So, that’s a really powerful thing. And then, I think, just the obvious aspects of networking, um, at our events. You meet a lot of people, and, you know, when times are bad, you need networking, and, when people are out of work, you know, they need organizations to meet people. And the same with students, when they’re starting to learn and look for jobs, you know, they, they need to come to, to events, and, we’ve been working very hard around a special initiative called Recruit-Retain, um, which is about how do we cultivate the young talent here and keep it in Massachusetts. So, uh, we’re doing a lot of effort to work with the schools, and, and put, um, some tools on our site so we’re more student-friendly, so they think about, you know, find, they can find us, and see what type of entry-level jobs there are out there. And this something we’re, actually, haven’t really, out, rolled out yet to our membership.

Cliff: Right.

Kiki: So it’s, it’s coming in the next few weeks.

[11:59]

Cliff: Right. That’s, I think that’s such an exciting thing, because we all want to get, you know, there’s such great talent, you know?

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: And how do we, how do we, you know, har-, you know, get them connected so they know there’s great opportunities for them.

Kiki: Exactly. We’re in our second year, and we’ll have the results next week, of our, um, hiring intentions survey for entry-level talent. So we poll the membership and ask them a series of questions around, are you going to be hiring for entry-level? What types of positions, what majors are you looking for? So, we’re excited to launch that, um, and that will be, um, also rolling out some of our services on the website.

[12:30]

Cliff: That’s great. Let’s hear a little bit, then, about what some people’s, on that point, what were some people’s plans for two thousand and ten?

Kiki: Okay.

Cliff: So we asked a bunch of the award winners that question.

[several interview clips]

[13:59]

Cliff: Great, thank you. So, Kiki, tell us a little bit about what you see in 2010, we’re hearing a little bit about—

Kiki: Right.

Cliff: –What the companies are seeing, what are some of the initiatives for MITX, and what do you see in some of the industry trends?

Kiki: So, a few things, um, and we saw this from the awards, I mean, number one, kind of the whole social application, social influence, social networking, is, is becoming kind of mainstream. So, um, and you saw that in a lot of our, in almost all of our websites, and we’ve been seeing as, sort of, the categories have grown, um, as well in the awards competition. So, um, much, a lot more focus, um, on social media and more about the application and the case study and really trying to get to the, to the root of the ROI, which is what everyone wants to understand, and more importantly just also wants to figure out how to actually use it and ensure that their brand’s voice is resonating the right way. Mobile is still a very important area for us. Um, Massachusetts is rich with a lot of the mobile industry, so we focus a lot on the mobile apps side, on mobile advertising, and more of the application of it. Um, video is still a very important area, we’ve got a lot of great companies here, including the one I’m at, so um, there’s a lot more around that we want to do. Um, user experience is very, is also been an area that we’ve started to explore last year, and it was interesting, one of the, one of the person on the video was talking about user experience, and I think it’s, it’s a growing competency, um, and you’re seeing a lot with just, even like Fuse Labs here at Microsoft, where so much is at around social activity and how to actually combine it into user experience, so it’s a growing area for us. Um, consumer internet, um, you know, there are more and more companies that are here and growing, but you still have the mainstays, like TripAdvisor, e-commerce players like ShoeBuy, and CSN Stores, so, we’re focusing more on that, and, and on e-commerce as well. Um, and then, digital trends and strategy, I mean that type of area never goes away for us. Um, but that’s the content area. From the more, you know, initiative area, um, we’re really going to be ramping up our student effort, um, you know, it’s no small task to try and get into a lot of the universities and talk to them, and just explain to them what this industry is. So, you know, that’s a huge area for us. And then also, how do we foster more entrepreneurship, particularly among the web industry-type startups, that are in, you know within kind of the confines of our, our purview. So, those are some areas, and then , you know, kind of the ongoing awards shows we do, career fair, just to help, you know, promote and help advance.

Cliff: That’s, that’s a big agenda.

Kiki: I know, I know.

[16:26]

Cliff: Let’s, um, let’s switch gears for a sec,

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: Because we talked a lot about these awards, but you have the other set of awards which represent sort of a whole nother part of things in the technology awards.

Kiki: Yes.

Cliff: Right? So that was in the spring.

Kiki: Yes, exactly. And interestingly enough, it used to be part of the MITX, uh, the big MITX Awards, but we found that, um, there was just such a difference between kind of the creativity and application and the actual building of the technology. So we split it off several years ago. But the, the um, the, the theme of that show is to honor the, uh, technologies that are developed here in New England. And we focus more specifically around kind of our core competency area, around communication, and mobile, and video, and collaboration technologies, and, you know, all locally-grown, built in New England, and, you know, it goes through a very different process, where we bring in a lot of the VCs, and analysts in media, and CTOs and experts to do, um, to hear pitches from these companies on what their technologies do. So, um, and then we do a, a show as well. So, the MITX Awards, we have the big one, our technology awards, kind of the science and technology of the Academy Awards, but it’s growing in importance.

[17:31]

Cliff: Well I thought it was great, I think, um, you may want, I think we had, the lead speaker there, uh, honorary, was the head of iRobot. Right?

Kiki: Yes, exactly, Helen Greiner.

Cliff: So, you can talk a little bit about, just to give people a feel for that side of it, what that was like.

Kiki: Yeah, um, it’s really interesting, we have always had, um, called our Innovation Hall of Fame, and, um, so where we could bring in one type of, you know, one special person to talk about, kind of, how they got to where they did and their vision, and, and, it’s, we’ve, we’ve had so many speakers, a wide range of years, from Ray Stata, Bob Metcalfe, Nick Negroponte, Tim Berners-Lee, Helen, way back in the day, Patty Mays, and David Weatherall, when he was just launching CMGI, George Colony, Ray Ozzie, so, it’s been a rich mix of speakers, and it just, hearing about what they’re talking about.

Cliff: Yeah.

Kiki: And what they’re doing.

Cliff: Terrific.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: It’s a terrific group.

[18:17]

Cliff: So why do you think this has grown up, when we think, we’re sitting here on 128,

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: And this used to be, you know, sort of, whether you wanted, the, the hardware capital,

Kiki: Right.

Cliff: With that, with Prime, with Apollo, you know, we can, and, and all of a sudden, here this is, and probably, if you surveyed most people, um, they wouldn’t realize how big an industry this is here.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: So, so, how did, how did it come about, and why are we such a leader? What’s, what’s driving that?

Kiki: It’s a great question, I mean, our roots started, um, in, kind of, in the design area, and what we did was, we brought together designers with a lot of the software companies, when the, kind of, user-design interface was a developing competency. And, you know, through that design, and we were, really rich, it just grew into these independent, kind of, multimedia design boutiques, which then expanded into these web development competencies. So, it’s been a very interesting ride to get there. I think that one of the issues in terms of understand it has been because the industry is constantly conver…it’s constantly changing, and it’s converging into all different types of industries. And so, when we talk about how, and, and what’s interesting is, you think about a lot of industries that, innovation happens on an intersection. And, and I’ve heard that and I’ve read that in many books. And that’s where we sit, at that intersection of marketing, media, and technology. And so, I think a lot of times, it’s just hard to understand that and grasp that, because in reality you could, you could talk to a company and you could say “well, I’m a media company.” Well, no, but another person would say “I’m a technology company.” And so everyone has a different filter on it. And that’s the beauty of it, and the strength of it, by just an understanding, the power of it, you have to, kind of, take off that lens to see, kind of the, all different sides of, that play into it.

[19:57]

Cliff: It, it really is amazing that we sit here, and we have Unica behind you.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: Right? And then upstairs, in our building, we’ve got Constant Contact,

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: Which is one of the big, sort of, success stories that plays into this whole environment of, of connection. So I think it’s been interesting to just, um, to see the juxtapose of not the big hardware companies, where scale is the big issue.

Kiki: Right.

Cliff: Um, but Constant Contact, you know, built over eleven years. And, a market leader in what they do at this point.

Kiki: Exactly. I think, you know, there’s so many small, and I know the argument of, there’s not the big companies here anymore, but, you know, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing necessarily, when you think about all the small companies and small business, runs and rules this country, so, there’s so much of that that’s happening here, and you see it in a lot of different events that are happening, whether it’s Web Innovators’ Group, whether you’re Dart Boston, whether, um, you’re Mass Innovation Nights, I mean, there’s so much going on to promote the small companies and businesses and start-ups that are out there.

[20:55]

Cliff: I think another trend we, which maybe you can comment on, is, we have a lot of companies here, it appears to me, that are servicing very small businesses. I’ll go back to Constant Contact.

Kiki: Right.

Cliff: For a second. And so, there seems to be a change also, that what used to be able to be just afforded by the largest companies, is now really being democratized in, you know, and people are creating their own content, and using the tools at a much smaller level. But a very huge market in that context.

Kiki: No it’s, it’s a great point, actually, as I, as I had written on, on our blog about some of the trends we saw with the awards this year, and this is not just this year, it’s been happening over time, but just, with the technology becoming cheaper, with the barriers coming down, there’s, there’s so much more that someone with a, you know, a million, millions-dollar budget to uh, not zero, but, a very limited budget, can do now. So the, the entry fees to do this have completely lowered or gone away. Um, and so you could create the same type of experience because there’s such, quality tools out there that allow you to create that experience. And then you see things like, you know, Brightcove’s announcement the other day, about—

Cliff: Yeah. Right.

Kiki: –the express solution, about they’re offering a low-cost solution, so, you know, you, you see it happening, and it’s been pervasive, and I’m sure you guys are seeing it as well.

Cliff: We are. And then you look at, you know, I was looking at some, just look at the YouTube statistics in terms of online video, you know, the new medium that’s being created there for—

Kiki: Right. Yeah.

Cliff: –for people to communicate with. And that has, just, sort of, become the newest communication vehicle.

Kiki: Exactly.

Cliff: You know, whether it’s the Brightcove announcement, whether it’s watching the views on, on YouTube. Now, I was reading a statistic in a Nielsen report, um, that, uh, that basically video viewing has exceeded, uh, email.

Kiki: Really? I didn’t see that.

Cliff: So there’s more videos being watched than emails being read from a marketing perspective.

Kiki: Wow.

Cliff: So, um…

Kiki: I know. It’s good for us, I think. We have to be, start doing more of that.

[22:48]

Cliff: Um, so talk a little bit about, um, you, you touched on it, I wanted to come just back to, the education, and the colleges, and that can actually, because there’s a big initiative that you really, you know, got going there, to get, to keep the kids here.

Kiki: Right.

Cliff: And talk a little bit about the challenge. I, I’ve been in some of the meetings where we’ve talked about some of the challenges, so…

Kiki: Yeah. So, we’re, we’re, our strategy is kind of to go to, kind, there’s three-pronged strategy. Number one, we want to get to our members, because a lot of our members who are small businesses, they don’t have an HR, they don’t have a person who kind of helps them find an intern or go to the schools, and stuff like, “Oh, who graduated from where” and then you go through that route. So number one is, how do we help our companies get more, um, understand how the schools, and how to get in there. Number two, it’s around the schools, and how do we educate the schools, and a lot of that is going in and talking to a lot of the professors and identifying them. We’ve done a lot of work with Northeastern, we’re starting some with BU, um, we can’t go to all the hundreds of schools here, but we gotta start small and work with a few. Um, but then also, working with the students as well, and, and that’s the area that’s going to be the challenge, just from the fact of, how do we reach them, and how do we engage them. We’re coming, um, we’ve, we’ve, uh, just launched a contest called My First Big Gig.

Cliff: Right.

Kiki: And, what that is about, is to get to the, the pe-, the kids that have, well kids, but you know, their first job, and, and talk about what they’re doing in their first job and how excited they are, and so for us to be able to build a, a roster of videos, and we’re getting some in right now, just so then we could go and, and show the schools and show people that these are the types of jobs that are out there for after you graduate. It’s, because it’s not, it’s not necessarily a, an easy concept to understand, what types of jobs are within this industry, so we’re also doing just some, um, research, and some charts and things, into what types of jobs are out there for entry-level students. So if you’re, if you’re a liberal arts degree, then, you might be interested in more the social media. If you really like numbers a lot, then analytics might be the way for you to go. So, just kind of putting it into common terms and language, so they can understand and see the vibrant companies out there. So, it’s, it’s a large effort, and we will need more people to help us, and more members to step in and do it, but, um, we’re really bullish. I think we have the right, um, vibe and energy, and the right types of companies to help us really market what this industry’s all about.

[25:04]

Cliff: It’s, it’s interesting, and I’ll put in a plug for it, we have a great intern from Tufts that’s been with us,

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: Since the summer, and Avid just does a, a fantastic job. And it brings a whole different perspective to what, to what we do.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: And um, you know, in some sense, and I will say it, they’ve grown up on a lot of this stuff. We’ve adopted some of the, you know,

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: some of these things, but, that’s all they know.

Kiki: Right.

Cliff: You know, so we’re still clouded with some other experiences. So, it’s been a great sort of–

Kiki: Good cloud. [laughter]

Cliff: –education. Yeah, exactly.

Kiki: I don’t mind the cloud sometimes.

Cliff: Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s been, you know, uh, I encourage everybody to sort of, you know, to, to take advantage, if you will,

Kiki: Yeah, that’s great.

Cliff: of the fact that there’s great energy. You know, sort of, out there.

Kiki: Right.

[25:46]

Cliff: I wanted to touch, and we touched on a little bit, one of the things I’m struck by, and I’m bringing us back to what the piece was, um, that, all of this technology can be harnessed not only by small businesses, but, but, it’s interesting, I was watching the other day, we talked a little bit about the computer exchange.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: Um, which is, for those of you who don’t know, is a, is donating computers to, uh, over a hundred countries, to help, sort of, non-profits. And I met the person at the MITX Awards. And, I was watching another non-profit that I know, um, and they were using a phenomenal video-based approach to sort of get their CEO out there.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: So just the use of these tools in that area, feels, you know, like there’s a great new connection that’s come of, out of this, that not only the big businesses, but, all of a sudden non-profits can have a great presence and tell their story.

Kiki: It’s so true. I mean, I, I’ll put ourselves in that same boat, because we’re a different type of non-profit, but we still are one. But the, the, the tools now that we have to market ourselves, it, it goes beyond anything that we had even five years ago. I mean, just the free publicity, and, and the ease of, of so many of these things, that we don’t even have to do the marketing. Um it, it has changed everything that, that we do. And I think anyone would say that whether you’re profit or non-profit, um, particularly when it comes to events and things that you have to do customer acquisition, that it’s completely changed your entire, it’s completely changed your outcome. It’s a game-changer.

[27:14]

Cliff: And, thinking about that in relation to what’s about to happen, which is, um, you know, tremendous cuts coming in the state budget, talk a little bit about all the work you do at the state level, so that people are aware that we actually exist here. Right?

Kiki: So, we got introduced, when we first came out with our market sizing study last year, and, we got introduced to Secretary Gordon Bialecki and his team, who are responsible for business development. Um, it was great, because we started a dialogue with him, to understand that there is this industry here, and they were very interested in it. And so since that time they’ve done, um, several events, um, focusing around innovation, and have been using a lot of our board members as, essentially, kind of poster children of what’s happening here in New England. Um, we also participated in the State Innovation Day, where they had a lot of the lawmakers come in to understand some of the different types of companies that are in gaming, and mobile, and video, which we, um, contributed to. So, you know, I look at our first year, first year and a half, as more of awareness-building, and then really figuring out how we can, how we can work with them more hand-in-hand. And, a lot of that is just having the dialogue and starting the dialogue, and they understand that there’s a lot of vibrant businesses around.

Cliff: That’s, I mean, it’s been a big effort, I’m sure.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: To get that going.

Kiki: No small effort, but, you know, you need to do it.

[28:28]

Cliff: Do you think the state takes advantage of enough of the technologies? That you’re seeing? Or, are there some good examples, maybe, a different way to, you know, put it, you know…

Kiki: I’m, I’m impressed, I mean, I haven’t delved too much into it, but you know, they’re, they’re, they’re adopting some of the social media technologies, and I’ve seen that. So, I think that’s really good. I think, any time, particularly in these budget cuts, they’re going to be forced to look and see how they can consolidate. I mean, sometimes you need those, you need those, kind of, negative, you know, triggers to happen so they can actually become more efficient. So, um, they have to now. So, I think that we’ll probably see an even more efficient government, you know, if they’re applying their technologies right. But, you know, they’re, they’re adopting, how, some of the, now what we might say is mainstream, but, Twitter, and, and YouTube, and following, essentially, kind of President Obama’s lead in, in, incorporating some of those into his campaign. So, I think they’re getting it.

Cliff: Which was, which was, a lot of that which was, driven out of one of the local companies here.

Kiki: Yeah, exactly, Blue State Digital.

[29:30]

Cliff: So, so as we, as we, um, you know, get ready to wrap up here, I guess the other question that, um, that I was thinking about was, letting people know, how do they get up for these awards? What’s your process for that? Because there may be companies out there who say, wait a second, I didn’t even know about this thing.

Kiki: Yeah, no, that’s great. So, we have a special website for it, it’s MITX, m-i-t-x, awards dot org. And, for the technology awards, we start our call for entries in January-February time frame, it’s about a three to four month process, and so that, um, show is in June. And then we kick off our interactive awards in the summertime, it’s typically July. Um, we have about a two, three month entry time there, and then, the, the judging, and then the awards show is in November. So, June and November are kind of the milestone events, and so, basically, subtract four months off each, and that’s where the entry process starts. So, I mean, we have a lot of great partners that help us market, and we have a lot of great social media tools to help us get out there, but this is a perfect venue for me to raise the flag, so, thanks for asking.

[30:30]

Cliff: And the final piece.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: Some of the key upcoming events that you’ve got. We, we have the big, you had your, you know, uh, the awards obviously.

Kiki: Yeah.

Cliff: But I think there’s a couple events left this month. Right?

Kiki: Yes.

Cliff: Or this month, I say, before the end of the year.

Kiki: We just, we just, I know this is probably, this, Jamie’s gonna laugh, from the team, she’s gonna be like, she’s not going to remember it. [laughter] It’s a bad question to ask. No, I can answer a few. We just had, uh, we just had an event today on, on how HR people can use social networking to hire people, which was a very, very well attended event. Uh, we’ve got an upcoming one on Facebook Connect, and what it is, how to use it. Um, we have a charity gala, um, on December 10th, which will be raising money for the homeless children for Horizons, or, the, Horizons Children for the Homeless. Um, and then we’ve got, um, we do in December, we do kind of a digital trends, digital strategy wrap-up on how the year’s been, and so I believe that date is December 17th. So…but, I’m probably wrong, but check the website.

Cliff: That’s right, check the website.

Kiki: MITX, m-i-t-x, dot org.

Cliff: Kiki, thank you so much.

Kiki: Thank you for having me.

Cliff: It’s been great. Wonderful.

Kiki: This is great.

Cliff: Thank you.

[00:00]

Lee: Good afternoon. I’m Lee Phillips, and this is VisibleGains Live. (applause) Thank you. My guest today is Ken Wax, he’s the principal of Ken Wax and Associates, and Ken has something we all want – expertise in shortening sales cycles and building incremental revenue. You know, he’s done just that for everyone from tiny entrepreneurial startups to giants like IBM, Monster.com, Progress Software, and Accenture. Ken is a writer with many, well over a hundred magazine articles to his credit. He publishes a blog on selling by Ken Wax at the KenWax.blogspot.com. If you wish, you can follow Ken on Twitter at KenWax or connect with him at LinkedIn. For the rest of you, you can reach him by email at KenWax@gmail.com.

Ken, welcome to VisibleGains Live.

Ken: Thanks very much, a pleasure to be here, Lee.

[01:07]

Lee: It’s great to have you. Now, Ken, you spend a lot of time in sales over many years, and sales improvement, sales training with organizations, and you’ve been witness to the change from personal-focused selling to technology-driven selling. I’m wondering, from your perspective and your vantage point, how those changes appear?

Ken: The biggest change is that, for the first time since the dawn of business, customers no longer need salespeople to learn about things. This is the first change and it’s undermined a lot of classic selling techniques in that it used to be, if you had a new product and I want to learn about it, I had to meet with the salesperson. Those meetings will develop a relationship, that relationship would, eventually, perhaps lead to a sale.

Not anymore. Now, I may never get to meet you. If a new product comes out, it’s on the website right away, I can get specifics, I can get stats, I don’t need salespeople. So, a salesperson who’s been trying to sell by informing, which is how most people have been selling, is in trouble because I don’t need information from you anymore. I need something more.

[02:18]

Lee: So technology, in this case, has really stepped in to take away part of the selling process.

Ken: It’s wiped it out.

[02:26]

Lee: It took it away.

Ken: And it did it quietly, subtlely. It was about, I’m going to say, about five or six years ago, website reached a critical mass. Until then, it was stopped being and all of a sudden, one day, they had it all. They had enough information, they had enough of the specs that customers wanted, they had the frequently asked questions. You could now serve yourself raising the question of, “Well, exactly, what do I need to meet with my salesperson for?”

Then, it got more complex because, at the same time, life got busier, more hectic, there’s more things to do. Do I have the time to meet with salespeople? The answer, more and more, was, “Not really. Can’t we do this through email?” So the whole construct of relationships, the rug was yanked out from underneath it.

[03:12]

Lee: But now, certainly, there must have been some changes brought about technology that were favorable to selling.

Ken: Absolutely. It made communications faster, cheaper. I can interact with you several times from afar. So, it’s brought magic. I mean, email alone. What’s the magic of that is being able to connect with someone even if they’re tied up in meetings. But then along comes the other side of the coin, which is, I don’t just have email, I also have instant messages. I also have my phone beeping, I also have all these distractions. And the biggest problem is that, technology doesn’t care who’s using it. So, if I’m trying to use technology to advance my relationship with you, an existing customer, at the same time, there are other people out there with new companies who are trying to get in to you. And you know what? They have the exact same technology, the exact same almost free cost.

[04:06]

Lee: Now, just as technology has changed the sales side of the equation, I suspect that you would observed that there’d been changes in both B2B and B2C buyers brought about by technology as well. How would you characterize what you’ve seen developed there?

Ken: Well, it’s not just the technology, it’s what technology has brought, or taken away. What I mean by that is, when things started getting hectic and fast-paced and everything was working in the late ‘90s, something vanished quietly from business – the whole concept of mentoring. In the past, as people would be within organizations, they would either, directly or indirectly, have people they could pattern after, they had processes they could learn from.

When I used to be a buyer in retail many years ago, I would have a merchandise manager. And as a young buyer, I would say, “I think we’re going to replace this line with that.” He would say to me, “Ken, well, slow down. Are you sure?” And he would impress upon me the importance of those ongoing relationships and how it worked. That was good because, otherwise, my enthusiasm would have shaken things up. Mentoring is gone! So, a lot of the people who your B2B salespeople are trying to sell to, are, in a lot of cases, winging it, and they’re not exactly sure what to do, and that makes for problems.

[05:27]

Lee: That makes for challenges. That makes for challenges. One of the comments here that people oftentimes make is that technology is something that’s difficult for an organization to swallow. I’ve heard it said, in a number of organizations, that sometimes, the most difficult place to digest a new technology is in the sales side of the organization as opposed to, say, the marketing or the manufacturing side of things. What’s your observation? One of your blogs is on selling technology, what observations do you have about the adoption of technology by people in the sales process?

Ken: Well, technology is tough for the sales organization to adopt even if it’s terrific, because the sales organization, unlike just about every other department, is not always in the building, is not working together on things. They tend to be islands. Sometimes they are separated by thousands of miles in many time zones. In a lot of cases, they are just working on their own projects. So, in a different department, if a new technology comes in, I’m having a question on how to handle it, I can call over a friend and they can show me, “No, do it this way, do it that way.” If I’m in my remote office in San Francisco and my headquarters are in Boston or in Atlanta, and I’m not sure what to do, I’m a little bit lost. We now go also to the additional fact that salespeople don’t get paid to learn and master a new technology. Primarily, they get paid if they bring in the sales.

[06:58]

Lee: That’s right. It’s quota.

Ken: It’s quota, and time taken away to learn about technology, usually, does not reduce your quota. So, I want to go out there making the sales, I’ve got other departments saying, “You need to learn this.” It’s a challenge, and it also is a new way of doing things. Salespeople, including the most terrific ones, are reluctant to change.

[07:22]

Lee: Now, and you work with sales organizations, large and small. I’d imagined that you’d come in to contact with things that begin to feel like a generational difference or a generation gap between young sales people and old salespeople. Young salespeople maybe who have grown up with social media technology, isn’t really comfortable with technology. Then you’ve got the old dogs, the old salespeople who learned to use the telephone, maybe, as their one and only tip of the hat. Do you see that often or frequently now in organizations, or is that not a problem?

Ken: Well, it’s not a problem in that, if you look at someone and you’d guess their age, you’ll be able to predict how they’re going to act. Where it is a challenge, is what’s management focus on the right way to do things? For example, I’ve been brought into sales organizations where the salespeople, primarily, were sending out emails, and wondering why things weren’t happening. I think it’s really easy to understand why things aren’t happening by sending out emails because the person on the other end of the email is getting a lot of emails. OK? Their coming is a distraction, they’re parading off the screen, they scroll it away.

Not only that, if I want to do something, I have to look at your email that I wasn’t expecting anyway, push everything else aside, hopefully, I don’t get distracted, and then focus on it. So, selling via email is arguably not a very effective way of selling, and we’re really in a flux period. It’s a big flux period where we’re figuring out the right way to use the right technology and the right combination. A lot of people hide behind the technology. So, they send out emails, and really, they should be on the phone in certain situations. In some cases, an old hard copy letter will accomplish things that a ton of technology couldn’t.

[09:12]

Lee: Right, because they’re in your hands, it’s not parading by, as you’re saying.

Ken: Right, and they don’t get that many of them. When’s the last time you got a regular letter? I mean, they’re so easy to do.

[09:21]

Lee: The last time I had a child in college.

Ken: (laughs) There you go. So, is that the right tech? No, that’s not the only way to do things, but there are some ways to reach the right people that require a little bit of creativity, and not just going through the motions. That’s the enemy of selling is salespeople who are going through the motions and not using creativity.

[09:41]

Lee: Now, I’ve heard you used the expression, “words evaporate.” Certainly, in today’s world, whether it’s a Twitter, whether it’s a very tight reign on what people can say or email or other technologies that use words, it would strike me that there must be some corollary to the notion that words evaporate. Why don’t you pick up on that for a moment?

Ken: The spoken word disappears like smoke in the air the moment it’s articulated. So, if you and I were having this conversation without a video camera, and I had said something, as soon as it’s said, if you didn’t capture it, remember it, assimilate it, and decide to take action with it, it’s gone, it’s gone. In a lot of ways, the same thing happens for the onslaught of raw text. Who here doesn’t get enough emails?

You know, I remember, I would ask when I give speeches, “Who here gets more than 10 emails a day?” Joking, and very often, the number would go up to 50, 75, a hundred emails a day, people have to triage. Now, even if I have to spend only 20 seconds going through them, you add the Math, I don’t want it. Not only that, I don’t want emails from my salespeople, from people who are trying to sell to me because that’s not my priorities. So, there’s too much of everything, and somehow, we have to find a way to become important to that person. Nothing will happen unless a salesperson and their key message, not 20 messages, but their key message or two becomes important.

[11:15]

Lee: So, they should use things like PowerPoint, presentations.

Ken: Sure, that’s the answer. And not only that, it’s only 20 slides long and they only each have seven bullets on them, so what’s 140 points? PowerPoint is a marvelous technology, and when it came in, it changed the world, arguably, in unpredictable ways. When word processing first came in, companies said, “Here it is, do your own typing,” network. When PowerPoint, and back then, other technologies came in, companies said, “Well, we no longer need graphic artists. We don’t have to make 35-mm slides anymore.” Make your own slideshow.

[11:57]

Lee: We had the genographics machine, and then that was the beast that you had to feed.

Ken: That’s right. That’s right. Before PowerPoint came in, and it’d be younger to say the early, the mid-‘90s is going to really got locked in. The most powerful person in the entire corporation, the one who could tell the CEO, “No, you can’t have that,” was the graphic designer. They could say, “I’m sorry, you can’t put more than four bullets on a 35-mm slide even using our marvelous technology.” And guess what? They had to do it. Then, all of a sudden, slides came in. The key about the slide is a slide is not about putting words on to the screen, it’s about putting ideas into people’s heads. That is not something that (snaps fingers) comes automatically like that.

[12:43]

Lee: Sure. Sure. It’s not a skill that we’re trained. We’re trained to write and learn English or another language and we know how to put together a sentence, but it’s tough to communicate an idea.

Ken: It really is. And, how often our people are taught about how other people perceive? For example, when someone’s giving a presentation, whether it’s over the Web or whether it’s in person, who has been taught about a good way to start it? I don’t want to go too deeply into presenting, but when a slide comes up and it says, “The name of my company,” and you know, “why we’re terrific,” a lot of people just close up. So, for example, the best way to start something like that is with a question. What are companies learning form this or that. So, there’s a lot of ways of doing things using technology that are more original. They can use up a lot of time and they can use up a lot of one’s access.

[13:30]

Lee: Sure. Now, but to its credit, PowerPoint and other technologies, did change things by making it possible for your presentation to travel, for it to move into an organization and have an impact after your departure.

Ken: And it still does, and it can really be very powerful, particularly, if it is combined with some voice over, or whether it’s combined with some video clips or whether it’s combined with something that brings it something human. Too often though, a salesperson will say, “I’ll send you over the slide deck,” and that person will now receive more slides than they ever wanted. Slides that they can’t make sense of on their own, and those are not going to travel. If I want to make you a hero on your company, I’ve got to somehow get something…

[14:20]

Lee: Which is your objective.

Ken: I’m not going to get the sale unless you have something that’s big enough to make your boss and your boss’s boss say, “This is worth the money.” So, if I want to do that, I can just rely on words. I’ve got to give you something that you can use so you don’t look like a show, you don’t look like you’re showing a commercial for me. That’s what’s going to have the impact, and it touches every part of selling.

[14:47]

Lee: Sure. You know, it’s interesting, it strikes me that with the sacrifice of the personal contact form of selling and the substitution of technology, one of the things that got lost along the way was the opportunity for an organization to communicate its personality – the personality of the salesperson, the personality of the CEO, of the engineers, all of the people who are involved in making and distributing a product. That’s something that’s been lost forever to technology. Are there ways back? Is there a way to bring personality back into the selling process?

Ken: Sure. Again, we’re at a point where the pendulum’s swung this way in terms of just give them a row of text, send them to the website. Now, people will think that’s a marginal approach, so…I’m sorry, I lost track of where we’re headed though. Yes, if I can get people back to the very human desire to connect with other people, go back a hundred, 200 years. Your grandfather made his living probably the same way his grandfather did, your grandfather’s grandfather did. My kids are doing nothing, pretty much the way I did it when I was their age. But, deep within us is the desire to connect. People buy from other people, people have faith in other people. There’s a saying, “I’m not going to purchase something unless I look across the table and I see that person.” So, how can you use the technology to make that come alive? That’s really what we’re doing these days.

[16:17]

Lee: So, we’re doing a video, for example.

Ken: We’re doing a video. Imagine if a clip of this video could be captured. I bet you have imagined that because you [xx].

[16:24]

Lee: I bet you will probably going to do that for you by the time it’s all done, said and done. Exactly.

Ken: This gives me, if I’m inside a company, a real powerful tool. If I’ve got even a minute and a half, little clip, and I want to get on my boss’s radar screen, I can easily say something along the lines of, “I know that we’ve been told the mandatory 20% reduction in all purchasing, or 30%. But, boss, this is something that I think we need to actually invest in even more. I’ve attached a short clip about two minutes will give you an idea of the three reasons why I think this is the case.”

I can send that off with pretty good confidence, and my boss or boss’s boss, only has invested a minute or two, and things can happen. Otherwise, it can die right there. If I can’t give you the tool you need to get them involved, I can meet with you all day long. I can talk to you in emails for weeks and months. It’s not going to happen.

[17:19]

Lee: Right. Right. So, the whole role of competition has changed with the advent of technology. Now, we’ve seen the old axiom that everybody looks large on the Internet. Everybody is global, everybody’s got this, that, and the other. Everyone can compete in every marketplace when they’re competing on the Internet. How do you see that impacting the world of sales these days?

Ken: It has made it easier in a lot of businesses for new competitors to pop up and to [xx]. It used to be, if I want to be seen big, I had to have all sorts of quite expensive brochures and booklets and materials professionally created and published. Now, it’s not that hard to have a good-looking website. So, how does that customer – remember, unmentored – how do they come to conclusions about you? It’s a challenge. In fact, I’ve got a client right now who has competitors coming on saying, “Well, you know, we’re global, too.”

But they’re not, they’re not. But to that customer, what’s global? Global is global, isn’t it? It’s around the world. Well, no, it’s not. So, we have to do what we’re doing now is we’re helping their salespeople explain, without saying bad things about any competitors, when we say “global,” here’s what we mean. We’ve got people and engineers and analysts on the ground, living, working, and knowing all the players in this region, in that region around the world.

Some people say “global,” when they only have people who fly over or if they have a mailing address. So, as you look at us and our competitors, now they’re more knowledgeable. Now, we’d helped that customer become a more discriminating purchaser, which, hopefully, works to the advantage of that particular client.

[19:10]

Lee: So, the challenge here would seem is in probably that, really, find the right way, the right technology or use of technology to differentiate yourself. Because everyone’s going to send their PowerPoint deck, everyone’s going to send their written proposal, everyone’s going to do pretty much everything the same way because technology has level the playing field.

Ken: They all have the same tools, but how you use the tools is what depends on whether or not you’re going to make a beautiful work of art or whether it’s going to appear quite clunky. In the same way, if you look at the world of direct mail, there’s an old business. Someone writes a creative letter and it gets sent out to a lot of people. A lot of money is spent in the actual mailings, but the real key is the creative work. So, everyone had the same tools, the same envelopes and postage and letters, but those who could home in on what matters, what will speak to the customers, what’s going to make something rise up to become priority, they win, they’ve won.

The same thing is here. What we do when we work with sales teams, is we encourage them to think like their customer. That’s a real challenge because they’ve never been with that customer. In fact, even if they were with their customer, employed there a year or two ago, they’re still not that customer anymore. Things have changed. But if I can get in to your head a little bit and go, “All right, busy person, got a lot of priorities, a lot of confusion, a lot of distractions,” and I can then, on you with things that will have you self-motivated to champion this, armed to do it without taking too great a risk, and I can make the steps easy, we’re going to win.

[20:42]

Lee: Now, I can be a hero.

Ken: I want you to be a hero.

[20:43]

Lee: In fact, if you’re doing your job as a salesperson, you’re creating heroes everyday.

Ken: Nothing’s going to get bored, unless someone can justify it. And, an interesting thing, because sometimes we teach salespeople how do you sell to senior managers? Senior executives, see quest, because very often, that’s where sales die. I work with lower level, it moves up, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good. I finally get in to the big meeting with the major decisions we made, and that senior executive has got some concerns, I was ready for it. So, we teach them how do you approach that. The salesperson who understands, and can sometimes even help their contact sell higher, because the contact doesn’t know how to impress [xx].

[21:23]

Lee: Because it’s not their job to sell your product.

Ken: That’s right, nor they even know how, because they don’t know how senior execs think either. So, if we can help them understand, senior executives, for example, they live slightly in the future. They’re looking for competitive in the marketplace advantages, not feature benefits. They’re looking for big, not little. That’s going to be an interesting meeting. If a salesperson comes in to a meeting, whether it’s over the phone, on the Web, or in person, and they’re completely surprised when the senior exec hits them with something, it doesn’t work.

[21:56]

Lee: They’re dead. They’re dead in the water.

Ken: They, certainly, aren’t having a good day, or it’s not as good as they’d thought they’d have.

[22:01]

Lee: One of the more provocatively worded blogs of yours that I saw recently was entitled, “What’s the purpose of this sales call?” I was intrigued by that, because you would have thought, or one would have imagined, that the purpose of the sales call is immediately known. Right?

Ken: Make money. They get the sale.

[22:23]

Lee: Sure. Exactly.

Ken: What do I do when I get the sale?

[22:25]

Lee: But that’s not exactly what you said. Why don’t you share that with our audience.

Ken: OK. OK. I’m going to lead into it, because you made such a good build up. Most salespeople know one way of selling, and it’s not to their detriment. They learned one way of selling along the way and they’ve been doing that. Unfortunately, it’s been by informing, and the Web has taken away that job. So, these days, and to companies who want our people to be more consultative. Well, I will use you as a consultant if I see value in it. What’s the job of a sales call? The job is to create desire. That’s it.

Now, a different point in the sales process is a different sort of desire you need. For us meeting with you, I want to create desire for you to learn more, so I want to make sure you grasp some big benefits, and important benefits is not feature benefits. Then, as we rise up, it’s different. When we finally get to meet, whether if it’s a major purchase, senior executives, I want to be creating desire for the advantages that your folks will have. I want them seeing themselves with it. I want them imagining, “If you had this working for you right now instead of doing it this way, your folks will be doing it that way, you’d be benefiting this way, this way.” If people can envision themselves already owning and benefiting from your product, they’re probably going to move ahead because it’s in their own best interest.

[23:43]

Lee: You know, that’s an interesting point because it’s almost rationale for fly into B to C world conventional advertising, in media, was so powerful, particularly around things like motor vehicles or other large ticket purchases. Because your people will really challenge in the ad to put themselves in that car, to really feel what it was like.

Ken: That’s right. Actually, if you would go into the dealer, they know how to do that, too.

[24:11]

Lee: Sure. Give them to take a test drive.

Ken: They do that, but [xx] they go, “Mr. Phillips, can you imagine how this car would look in your driveway? Can you imagine driving up to a friend’s house in it?” And, what they’re doing, because the automotive business, they know what they were doing because they’d done the same thing for so many decades. What they’re doing is they were using your imagination against you. They don’t know what your driveway looks like. They don’t know what your friends’ houses look like. But they’ve got you in that car driving up, feeling good, and it worked.

When you’re dealing with B2B business, these are professional buyers. Particularly if you get a higher up, but nevertheless, they’re all sufferings in ways that they won’t usually tell a salesperson because it’s confidential. But if you can have them imagining, and particularly, if you can have them appreciating what other companies are doing right now, then, it becomes so easy for them to say, “I, at least, think we should be exploring this.” If I can get them exploring it, then we’re on our way to a sale. It’s much better to have someone exploring something than to say, “We’re going to wait another six months. Times are tough.”

[25:11]

Lee: Sure. You bring up a point when you talked about the person on the buying side of an equation. Another one of your more provocatively worded blogs was entitled, “Can your salespeople deliver a stimulus?” I thought that was a wonderfully, shameless way of borrowing from the controversy in Washington. But you have a point to make in that blog posting, don’t you?

Ken: Yes. It’s that a lot of people out there, people with a lot of power to purchase and to guide their companies have never been through this sort of times before.

[25:47]

Lee: Kind of economic uncertainty that we’re in.

Ken: Absolutely. They have not been through challenges, setbacks, in some businesses, the whole world has changed. It’s very easy to panic. It’s very easy, particularly if you’ve got young kids and a mortgage, to want to do nothing risky, nothing risky at all. If the company says, “Our goal is to not spend,” a lot of people will immediately not do that. Now, they’re not saying that. What the companies are really saying is, “We’re not going to spend on something unless it’s crucial and important into our future.” The company still wants great ideas to come forth if the company doesn’t want to close up shop. So, sometimes, a salesperson has to gently teach their contacts what companies are looking for. The best way to do that is by talking about experiences of other organizations.

[26:34]

Lee: Sure. Sure. I want to wrap us all the way back to the first question in the beginning. It goes back to this notion of technology – the technology that can help and the technology that can hurt or impede.

Ken: Or distract.

[26:51]

Lee: Or distract, which is just as bad. Exactly. That’s a good point. You know, I’m curious. If you were to just use a baseball analogy, the season is over now, unfortunately, for us, I suspect. But, there’s a baseball analogy that comes to my mind, and all of a sudden, you’re going to be the manager of the All Star Sales Team. What kind of technology bats would you want to have in the hands of your homerun heirs(?).

Ken: OK. I can’t just say I want to hand them technology, because technology, for its own sake, can waste a lot of time. I’ve seen companies where they were sold a bill of goods that the answer to all of your sales problem is to bring in this marvelously complex sales monitoring technology, and your people put information over here. It was all internal, it didn’t touch the customer. So, what’s going to work is the technology that can touch the customer and touch the customer in the way that, in a lot of organizations, the CEO, knows how to do.

In almost every company, one of the best salespeople is the CEO. They can explain situations, they can get people excited. That’s what they do, they do that all day long. They do it with analysts when they meet them, they do it at high levels. If we can take the salespeople and give them a little bit of that knowledge, of that comfort telling the stories, and then arm them with the tools to get it across. What’s the right tool? It depends.

If I can’t get through to you at your company, if you’re a company I want to crack into, I can’t get to you, I can’t just send you emails. I can’t send you links, it’s going to take me nowhere. I have to get creative. And, there are creative things you can do in almost every business. So, if I can get creative, now I get in to meet you, or I talk to you on the phone, I create a little interest, a little desire, I now feed you a little bit more. Maybe it’s a link with a provocative [xx] – which you’ve been so good with in this discussion – maybe it’s a video, maybe it’s something that makes it easy. I want to, hopefully, with the sales ladder, the whole concept of holding people up, up.

The real concept, the real secret to the sales ladder is not the notion of moving people up. That’s easy. The problem is that, to the customer, you may not have the rungs they need. So, if I said, “Come over to my house and help me fix my roof.” I bring out my ladder and it’s missing some rungs, you’d go, “I’m not going to do that, it’s too risky!” So, the customer sees things differently. I want to arm my salespeople with the comfort, the knowledge, the tools, and knowing how to use them, it’s going to make that customer go, “Oh! That’s not too risky at all. I’ll take the step, I’ll take the step.” If I’ve got the right solution for them, I’m doing it with high integrity, a good percentage of them will arrive at the top of that ladder and it would become a sale.

[29:44]

Lee: There’s another thread that I picked up at one point in your blog postings, and that was about the importance and the value of creativity. I recall you telling a story about that phenomenal activity in the old days, back when you and I were younger and working together at Lotus. The phenomenal trick that was done when you’re at COMDEX, that, literally, I use the shirt on people’s backs to really command attention and to sell.

Ken: It’s more of a marvelous marketing story, but it really shows you what some real good thinking can do. There’s a lot of bright people in every organization, and it goes like this. One year COMDEX was coming up, and it was Borland that predicted this. Borland was a relatively small, not a startup, but they were not as big as the big players. They wanted to get people to their booth. Well, you can spend a small fortune on the booth or you could do what they did. They printed up, I believe it was 200 t-shirts, 200 or 300 t-shirts, and they then hired very attractive models, because the people going to COMDEX, typically, were male. They went to the airports and they could, at those times, and as people got off flights, and you could tell the profile who’s going to COMDEX, they gave out t-shirts. The t-shirts said the following, “Follow me to Booth – with the number – to see Borland’s…” I forgot the name of the product.

So, the next day, the show starts and what happens is Borland has, walking through the show, hundreds…Also, by the way, if you wear the t-shirt, here’s the payoff, if you wear the t-shirt and we spot you, we may give you a hundred dollar bill. There’s the incentive, there’s the incentive. So, for what, a thousand dollars or so of hundred dollar bills, the t-shirts cost to nothing, they had walking billboards going through at that huge tradeshow bringing business to them. It prompted a new rule, the very next year, no longer would any sort of promotional t-shirts be allowed in anybody trying to enter the place.

[31:43]

Lee: (laughs) It’s a great story.

Ken: You can bring creativity like that to a sales call as well. If you’re going to a sales call or even on the phone, by starting with a provocative question, that’s creative. By saying, “What are companies like,” and you name some competitors or companies in their genre. What are they benefiting from through this technology? It makes some good, “Gee, I didn’t know that. I don’t know. Let me find out.” So, maybe it become more valuable to my company. At the very least, I won’t be vulnerable if a senior exec comes in and says, “They’re doing that, why are we doing this?”

[32:18]

Lee: Sure. Ken, before we sign off today, I know one of your favorite phrases is “to sell like a CEO.” I’m sure you use that constantly and thought it might be a good chance for you to share that observation, that meaning with our viewers.

Ken: Most CEOs know how to tell a terrific story. They can, because let’s face it, no one’s going to say to them in the company, “You should mention that.” So, when I come in to work with a company, very often, one of the first things we’ll do, even in the discussion stages, is I’ll get to meet with the very senior executives and I’ll listen to what they bring up. I’ll say, “What are the challenges you’re fighting?” because there’s always challenges. And, they usually have great answers. I go, “If we can just take the sort of things that I’ve heard at this table,” because, typically, it’s senior execs in the first meetings, “and we can make it so that your people have this knowledge, access to it, we can shift the bell curve over. So, all of your people,” the whole goal is to get more sales, more effects than this from the same people. If we can make them sell a little bit more like the CEO, the curve shift is over and everything works better. Every sales call is now more valuable. It’s more valuable to the customer and, therefore, it becomes more valuable to the company.

[33:37]

Lee: And, brings in revenue, shortened sale cycle, and hopefully, gives opportunity to person like yourself.

Thank you, Ken, for coming in today. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

Ken: Thank you.|”

[3:35]

Matthew: First question is, how important is it to an organization, a b-to-b organization more specifically, to embrace transparency online these days?

Larry: Huge. Not only should businesses be transparent but they need to be completely open with their customer base because they will not retain the customers and they won’t get new customers unless they are honest, direct and build conversations around what they do well. I’m amazed that I still go into companies and we’ll go all the way up to the C-level and the CEO or this CMO will say “”you mean somebody can say a bad thing about my product or service?”" and I’ll say yeah. And those conversations are happening anyway, why not have them on your site? That way you can answer them, say “”hey, it’s already fixed!”" if there’s a problem and move on. But transparency’s huge in the first three phases of the web there was a lot of aliases, people hiding out, we have all the famous stories of that one PR firm that was faking names to help Wal-Mart to have a better image. Then there’s the CEO from Whole Foods who that the alias that was attacking his competitor, and that just can’t happen anymore. We’ve gotta be open, transparent and let the web self-police itself.

[6:38]

Matthew: Talk a little bit more about what you mean by “”trust equity”".

Larry: Trust equity is a concept I’ve had that actually works in the real world too, the more you are open and honest you almost get points for that in customer’s minds so that if something does go wrong you’ll probably get the benefit of the doubt, right? Because you’ve just built up so much equity over time that a customer’s going to say “”hey, you know what, everybody makes a mistake”" and you were honest about it and you fixed it and that’s terrific. That’s what we need. So I think it’s about building equity, trust. I also think that it plays into a whole strategy around the web. People can’t think of the web as a channel anymore and that’s especially business-to-business. It is not brochures/advertising web. You have two strategies, that is your real life strategy and your digital strategy. And you’ve gotta understand that reputation and brand are all intertwined, and so is influence and trust equity plays into all of that.

[8:00]

Matthew: Talk about, just a little bit, what you’re seeing how those three things are coming together or already have come together and what that means for an organization.

Larry: Branding, in the past was always bought in a lot of ways so it was a lot of advertising. It was a lot of one-way broadcast messaging. Brand today is the dialogue you have with your customer or the customer base. The better the dialogue, the better the brand. The weaker the dialogue, the weaker the brand. So that’s conversation. Reputation comes out of the conversations that you’re having with your customers, potential customers, partners, etcetera. And influence comes out of the brand and the reputation working together to influence opinion. It’s my view that the future of marketing especially, no matter who you are is around the influence of opinion through content. That can be funny content, we can have funny stuff on the web, it’s ok. Serious stuff. But you’re only going to influence and change people’s minds and get a sale by, again, leveraging your openness, your trust, your directness and combining the concepts of brand, reputation, and influence. Which again, in the past 50 to 75 years were separated and they were owned by different people in the organization. That brings on a piece I don’t cover as much in the book, and I’m probably going to do that in this next book that I’m writing but it’s about how we organize. I’m still going to companies that don’t have a VP of content or a director of social media or a head of analytics and this kind of stuff. We’re still very much organized like we were in 1960, which is sort of silly.

[10:05]

Matthew: In the second major section of the book, called “”Shape Your Reputation”" you advocate for implementing what you call creative approaches to promoting dialogue. What are the steps required to do that? What are some examples that you’ve seen? Maybe talk a little from the book on effective dialogue.

Larry: First of all, everything’s driven by content. People wanna talk about things that are of interest to them. The reason the social web has taken off, and I believe is going to have more impact over time than television has had on our society as it matures, I think the social web will have that kind of impact even more. So is the, especially because of the visual on this and its nature, you have to develop and create great content so that people talk about it. Obama was very good at this when he ran for President, and I talk about that in the book. About wherever you were if you signed up you could get on your mobile device where Obama was, what he was talking about that day. If you wanted to hear the whole speech or just part of his speech you could get that. Then you could talk with other people that had interest in that same part of that speech. So there was a dialogue created by his speaking, his whereabouts, where that goes. There’s a great site for Sony called Words Move Me right now. Now Sony wants to not take all the heat from Kindle anymore. They think they have a better device than Kindle for a digital reader and the site Words Move Me is by Sony but it lets people like you and me put quotes of our favorite books on it and it’s all categorized by different categories whether that be a romance or business book or whatever. You meet other people, you talk about it, it’s passionate and it creates those dialogues that are so important to keeping people there. In the future we’re going to be measuring this kind of marketing about an engagement time, around downloads, around how much you participate, etcetera. I think it’s really important. I also use the example which I think is important for everybody to know because I think the future of all marketing, especially b-to-b is going to be about creating experiences and environments. And if you’ve been on Amazon lately, even though it’s a consumer experience I think it’s very relevant to businesses. You’re gonna say “”Larry:, get a life”". I was on Amazon for an hour and a half the other night. While I was there I got a permission-based email that said “”Dear Mr. Weber, as you know a great American author we lost earlier this year, John Updike, we noticed you bought a few of his books and we just want to let you know we’re going to post some videos Tuesday at six o’clock. Some rare shots of the author reading from his books.”" So I go, ok, that’s cool, right? So I go on, I make a drink and sit down at my computer, I watch these videos then I notice there’s other videos of other authors, I go watch those. Then what do I do, I go read some reviews of Sticks and Stones, I was mad at a guy from Taipei, who gave me only three stars instead of five stars. Then I wrote a review of Malcolm’s new book because I wondered why you can write tipping point three times in a row. And I bought six books. Four for myself and two for friends. So what did I do for an hour and a half? I was absorbed in an environment that produced commerce, that produced sharing, that produced content, everything. So that is what is marketing. That’s where we’re headed.

[16:30]

Matthew: My next question to you is if the goal is to create content of value, what does that mean, and how do we make it emotive? How do we inspire passion and interest, especially in this b-to-b setting which I’m sure you’ve heard a million times over that it’s just not that sexy, it’s just not that interesting. Is that true?

Larry: No. Because people are still people. People have emotive qualities all around them, by emotive I don’t mean crying, it’s laughing, selling, buying. Something that creates or stirs something in you. There’s phases of the web. I’m lucky enough, being as old as I am, I was lucky enough to be around when we did all the PR for HTML when Sir Tim Berners-Lee laid it on the Internet in early 1993. That was phase one of the web. We literally had business-to-business companies come to us with stacks of brochures and said just put this on the web. Second phase was the browser came around, that changed everything. So we were transactional. Third phase, social. 1997 or 1998, Friendster comes out. You start to see social, but social, believe it or not started in software companies. If any of you that are out there work for a software company knows, that usergroups were very important to the starts of most software companies. That was the first physical element of a social network around business-to-business. And what was the content? The content was how good the product was, how bad the product was, what it was good for, what would you change, what would you not change? That to me is emotive because it helps you shape a better product, shape a better customer set, and that’s just going to be a win-win situation. The fourth phase of the web which is starting right now is really a highly video-rich media, interactive video kind of world that’s going to change every way we present. It doesn’t mean text is going to go away completely. But I believe we’re going to have increasingly more video, more rich media that will try to sell, communicate, connect with you. It doesn’t have to be fancy video, it just has to be understanding, it has to be clear, it has to be content that’s relevant to your job. You will win, you will get people to watch that and comment on it and work with you around that content. I see a world where it’s going to be highly visualized, especially when you look at 2020 which is just about ten years from now, fifty percent of the workforce is gonna be 30 years old. Now you gotta go, these are going to be people highly video oriented, only know the web, complete digital natives, that is going to be the only way we’re going to communicate. You’re not going to have any newspapers in four years, you’re not going to have any nightly news in five years, and you’re not going to have any trade publications in two years. So you better start visualizing everything.

[24:20]

Matthew: The final section of the book is the “”Tools and Tactics”" where you lead off with the chapter on YouTube and this kind of gets back to a little bit where you just talk about, great quote, “”every organization needs a more video-oriented culture in order to thrive in world 2.0″” and that kind of feeds into what you were just saying about using it to talk to your employees, use it to talk to your shareholders. Use it to talk to anyone. Is it a medium that is important?

Larry: YouTube’s the most underrated social platform that we have right now. It will continue to blow out, it will get organized, it’s not just about funny videos that we watch and viral videos, it’s going to have more corporate and business-to-business communications. Even their gadgets are much more controllable now. Companies should be building libraries of visual, the way their products are being used, how they’re solving problems, throughout leadership, all these things in a more visual manner. That happens to be my favorite chapter in the book. The “”YouTube Juggernaut”" is what it’s called. I couldn’t be more higher on that, again, that use of the visualization of the web, and when he says world 2.0, that’s my encapsulation of where we’re moving in a business world. As we come out of this recession I believe there’s going to be a huge business renaissance that I think we all can partake in. Some big brands are going to die, some big brands are going to get bigger, and some new brands are going to come out of nowhere and they will not have done one dime of advertising.

[26:33]

Matthew: We did get one question from Janine Swenson who says, how to manage micro-segmenting without being overwhelmed by too much information?

Larry: You have to really balance and prioritize your micro segments. Java developers and SAP is a pretty defined area. You have to build your content around that. You have to prioritize and make sense of your audience. That’s why I say that you have to [coughing] prioritize the micro segments that are going to most effect your business. That’s why I say in the book you have to do a constituency map first, before you do any of this, so that you can prioritize the customers or constituencies that you’re going to build content around. I would not pick more than four to start with so that you can control it.

[28:00]

Matthew: We’ve got a couple of minutes left. What would you like to talk about with the final few minutes?

Larry: I think the final few minutes is that business-to-business has a huge opportunity right now to first explore where social media is evolving in their categories and really to start to brand themselves as the solution and the thought leaders in their categories. All you’ve got to do is understand that you have to organize for that properly, it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, that it’s content driven, and that you just gotta get going. You know you’re going to make mistakes, but that’s okay as long as you’re open, transparent, and direct with what you do.