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Finding a New Audience

Well, since I like to be diverse, I’m jumping back to some of my marketing efforts.  Once again, some of my best ideas come from talking to my good friend Justin.  We were recently chatting, and he put the idea in my head of the “guest” blog post.  this is a concept out of the Remarkable marketing Blueprint.  We both signed up for this, and it has been so helpful to have another perspective.  Well, the idea of the guest post I pretty much wrote off.  Who would I guest post on?  I’ve looked, and I can’t even find any other blogs talking about SAP Service Management.

Justin, in his great way of playing devil’s advocate with me brought up the idea that posting on SDN is just like a guest blog post.  it is a new audience, new readers and another place for me to try to jump start my readership.  So…  for that reason, you’ll notice that I’m only going to be posting 4 times a week.  I’m going to start moving one of those posts over to SDN.  If you’re one of my readers, I’d love it if you could follow me out there as well.

Michael Piehl on SDN

Anyway, thanks for reading, and please feel free to forward me onto your friends or colleagues that you think might benefits from some good SAP knowledge =)

Mike

Mail Chimp – Using an Old List

Hello again,

Now that I’ve been experimenting with Mail Chimp further, I have another valuable lesson.  If you have an old list, don’t be surprised if your account is temporarily suspended.  I just had it happen to me with the last newsletter I sent out.  I imported my list into Mail Chimp to test my list.  I purposely didn’t filter out the returned names I’ve received in the past, thinking that maybe Mail Chimp could get through where I couldn’t.  Ooops.  I ended up getting 40% of my list bouncing, and instantly my account got put on hold until I could explain what happened.  I explained that it was an old list that I hadn’t really been emailing in a while.  They were ok with that.  Also, note that you get 2 warnings and then your account is shut down.  So, play by the rules.  it’s for everyone’s benefit.

The other thing I learned is that you can NOT include any names that you did not gather personally.  I recently did a marketing campaign with SAP EcoHub that resulted in some names (I’ll tell you more about that later).  Because there was a third party involved, I had to remove those names from my Mail Chimp list.  Another valuable lesson learned for me.

On the bright side, for the time ever in my newsletter I can see how many people opened it, someone else takes care of any returned mails and unsubscribes, and I can even see if they’ve clicked into my link for the rest of the article.  I love Mail Chimp, but I’m still learning.

I recommend checking them out.  Now that I’ve cleaned my list pretty well, I’m going to look at doing a pay as you go auto responder.  I need to get more details on if I still get 12,000 newsletter, and pay for the auto-responder, or if you lose that benefit when you start paying (I certainly hope not).

 

Creating the Sales Contract

when you finally  get the pleasure of doing a sale, you need to make sure you have the right paperwork in place.  One of the key things is the sales contract.  Luckily, I had the agreement that I signed for the SAP partnership, so I was able to use that a guide for structuring my own sales Contract.  What I learned is that there are some pretty standard pieces of it…  then from there, you just need to add your own spin.

For example, here’s the main pieces of mine that I just put together.

1.  The general section.  From the ones I’ve seen, this is the easy part.  It has the name of what you’re selling with a short description, the customer’s information (name, address, etc..)  My contact info and any annexes (additional documents)

2.  Scope of the agreement.  this pretty much specifies what you are selling and what’s included/not included.  It also defines who “you” are.

3.  Next is the Renumeration…  pretty much, what’s the agreed upon price.  Any discounts, etc.  the short story behind this, what are you getting for the sale.  In my case, I gave a list price, then stated the discount the customer gets in exchange for a reference and signing the agreement by a certain date.

4.  Invoicing and Payment.  Pretty simple…  payment terms.  when will they pay by, do you offer a cash discount, do you provide the product or service before or after receiving payment.

5.  the next one was something I added in because it was a customer concern.  that was support.  Because I’m a small company, the customer is obviously concerned about how I will support the product after the sale.  The funny thing is, actually he’s likely to get much better support out of me than he is a bigger company, but regardless, it still needs to be spelled out in the agreement.  Some important things to include are also what isn’t covered in your support.  If you don’t clearly state this, you could end up providing support for things you didn’t intend.  Do your best to think like a lawyer here =)

Finally, the signature page.  Make sure to collect the customer’s PO number.  the name and title of whomever will be signing this agreement, and once again the date.  Finally, you will countersign this agreement to make it all legal like.

All and all, it was pretty painless, but I”m sure glad I had an example to start with.  If you’d like to see mine, just make me an offer on my software and I’ll be happy to send one right over to you =).

As always, thanks for reading,

Mike

Mail Chimp – Newsletters made easy

I just had my first experience with Mail Chimp, and what I can, I’m hooked. I signed up for the free version, uploaded a list of contacts from an excel sheet, put together a slick post card, and have been tracking my results. Previously, I’ve been using a hokey macro that I found online (and of course tweaked) to send emails to my contact list. Using Outlook, there was no tracking, I could only send txt or html (both of which I had to completely design).
I can’t begin to express how much easier Mail Chimp made my life. It handles the subscriptions, I can upload a list, or build a list using a form I added on the website. this was another really cool piece. Mail Chimp lets you design a subscribe form, and then gives you the HTML to put onto your website, or gives you a link to use their form. I haven’t scratched the surface yet, but now I can do newsletters/emails to my list. i didn’t even mention the many templates they have out there to make professional looking emails, newsletters, or whatever you need to send to a group.
I’ll be posting again in the new future when I start to figure out how to do the auto-responder piece. This part you have to pay for, but I do like the idea that you can do a pay as you go format, and then switch over to a monthly fee. When I figure out how it works, I’ll share it with you.
Thanks for reading… I’ll keep learning the hard way, so you don’t have to…
Mike

Features vs. Benefits – It really does matter

My latest marketing lesson that I learned is just how important it is to sell benefits, not features.  Being a programmer, I’m used to dealing with features.  What does it do? is it cool? How fast is it? etc…  but after listening to the lesson, I learned that even I need to know the benefits.  Just because your new widget can do something, until I know why I NEED it to do that, I’m not going to buy.  The latest lesson had us focus on converting a feature into a benefit, simply by going down the ladder of why does my customer care?  For example, you have a feature that provides the fastest dry cleaning in the county.  Ok, great…  but why do I care?

Fastest Dry cleaning in the county:
It gets me my clothes faster than anyone else

why do I care?  I have a big meeting tomorrow, and I need to look my best.
why do I need to look my best? I need to give a great presentation
why do I care?  I need to be my most confident self.
why do I care? it makes me feel good about myself.

I apologize if I butchered that, but the short story is that everyone needs to feel good about themselves, so for every feature, you need to walk up the ladder until you can get that response.  IN this case, having my clothes ready tomorrow for the big meeting will give me the confidence to feel good about myself, so I can make a great presentation.  I just did this exercise with my Broadsword 1 page sales document.  It actually made a big difference.  No, I didn’t make a sale yet, but this gets me 1 step closer and increases my chances of feeling better about myself because my 1 page document are more likely to hook a prospective customer 🙂

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Mastermind Group – You Need One

Tonight, I made a new revelation. A mastermind group is invaluable. I’m doing this marketing class called the Remarkable Blueprint. I’ve been doing some of the exercises, and I kinda hit a wall a day ago. I got to the point of being overwhelmed with all the exercises and trying to apply it to the all of the materials I’ve already generated for my products. I’ve found that often I can get bogged down when I have too much to do, and I don’t have a good starting point. Which is funny, because every time I get to this point, as soon as I start doing something, anything, I get out of the rut.
Well, I was talking to my friend, Justin, who is also doing the Blueprint. He hit me with a flash of the obvious. Just pick one product, and perform the exercises for that one product. The other areas can be tackled later. So I just decided to do my dashboard. I’m going to start cleaning up all the marketing materials for Broadsword. I’m actually pretty excited.
Now, my original point is simple. If you want to get the most of your endeavors, you need someone (or a group) that you can bounce things off of. I actually gave Justin his own ah ha moment, much like he gave me. It’s often as simple as having someone that isn’t neck deep in the details to point out the obvious. So, start finding some people that have similar aspirations. I bet you can help each other out in more ways than you imagined. The funny thing is that I read this in Think and Grow Rich, many years ago… but it took until now for it to finally sink in. It’s amazing the things you learn and don’t use… then out of the blue, it hits you.
Anyway, that’s all for now… I hope you’re learning from my mistakes,
Mike

Our First Trade Show – Carolina ASUG – Lessons Learned

My latest learning experience was the trade show. Now I’ve attended trade shows in the past, but this is the first time I’ve gone to one in the vendor mindset. Now, this was a relatively small group. It was a regional ASUG, so it was a great place to learn. My partner Mike and I got up at the crack of down on Thursday morning and drove 4 hours. We hit the vendor fair, that had about 10 or so booths. We talked to about half of the booths, in order to try to learn what other people are currently doing. We talked to some companies that were even doing SAP Add-ins, just like us. So we got some great information about pricing and we saw some good marketing materials that we can strive to check out. (speaking, please check out our one page document on any of our products. I’d love to hear your feedaback).
Here’s some of the lessons I learned

Lesson 1: Consistent Image:  Mike and I were in the process of getting the new company launched, so that meant we both came in under our own company name, Paper Street Enterprises & DMS. This wasn’t terrible, but since we were often at a booth together, we got a lot of strange looks, especially when we presented a JaveLLin Solutions business card.   So we decided that we need to get some shirts to wear (polo for sure), get a logo, get business cards, change our membership to to the new company.  Little things like that.  ha ha ha

Lesson 2: Avoid panel discussions if possible: On the first day, the last presentation was a panel discussion about ABAP Add-ins.  It was awesome because it gave us a chance to give a quick pitch.  However, we ended up following a guy that took twice his allotted time and just wouldn’t get off the stage.  This quickly annoyed the entire audience because this discussion was holding people up from going to happy hour.  Nobody wants to hear a sales pitch when they could be drinking free beer.  ha ha ha.  We learned that it’s worth the money to be a vendor and do an actual hour long presentation.  Plus, that will give us a booth.

Lesson 3: Talk to Vendors:  This was a big bright spot in the conference.  in the course of the conference we met 2 great vendors that are actually interested in partnering up with us.  So talk to everyone, you never know.  These vendors can help us get in the mobile arena with little work on our part…  (more about this in a future post).

Those are the big things I walked away with…  I”m sure when I go to CWG in Oct, I’ll be doing another one these…

Thanks for reading…

My Ideal Customer – More Marketing Stuff

Last week I started to talk about the unique selling proposition.  That was step one of the marketing class that my friend Justin and I both undertook.  The class is pretty good, but has some gaps, but that what you get when you sign up early and pay the bargain price =)

Well, step 2 (I’m a couple weeks behind on this, but luckily there are no tests) it to define who my idea customer is.  In my head this sounds easy, my ideal customer is anyone that will pay me a lots of money for my applications (or even services, but I’m trying to move out that model if possible).  However, after listening to the class, I learned there is a lot more to it.  Every person you interact can connect with you on different levels.  For example, I met my best friend James one night at a pick up game of flag football.  We had an instant chemistry, and someone knew after that night we would be lifelong friends.  Now I’ve met other people that when I initially met them, they drove me crazy, and hated to be in the same room with them.  Then we eventually built some rapport, and started to find common ground, and some of those people are now friends of mine that I keep in close contact with.  What I personally learned is that I often saw traits in other people that I hated about myself.  Until I realized that I didn’t them, I actually hated that part of my own personality, I couldn’t bring myself to like them.  Anyway, enough with the psychology lesson.  What is important is to know what sort of people you want to deal with, probably on a long term basis.  According to the class, you want to be able to visualize a single person that will be your customer.  It helps to avoid trying to sell to everyone, the whole be all things to all people.  We all know it doesn’t work, but it doesn’t stop us from trying.  Since I need to keep blogging, I figured the best way would be for me to figure it out with you… my audience (that I really hope will eventually show up.  ha ha)

My Ideal Customer is:
1.  someone that knows what they need, and can articulate it to me.
2. someone that can express their needs without being blunt/as ass.  (we all know the type)
3. someone that can afford what I’m selling
4. someone with vision for their organization.  Someone that is constantly seeking improvement.
5.  someone that understand their business.  For example, for me, they should fully understand their Service business and it’s problems.
6.  someone looking to build a long term relationship.  I don’t want a 1 and done customer.
7.  someone in their mid 30’s to early 40’s.
8.  and entrepreneur.
9.  someone with a small family and wants to be able to spend more time with time.
10. someone that reads self improvement books and listens to audio books.
11. someone that LOVES what they do.
12. someone that has seen multiple ways of doing business, not just a single company for their whole career.
13. someone very unassuming.  Doesn’t live and die by name brands or status symbols.
14.  someone that believes in the constitution of the US.
15.  a gun owner, or at least pro 2nd amendment.
16. someone that takes pride in being prepared for possible disasters (corporate or personal)
17. someone unwilling to accept government handouts in exchange for government control.
18. a Green Bay Packer fan (couldn’t resist)
19. someone that understands that success comes from hard work, not just a good idea.
20. someone that roots for the underdog.
21. low maintenance.  Won’t be pestering me daily with every little thing.
22. someone that can make a decision.
23. someone that takes care of their employees and wants to see them happy. (family too).
24. eats primal/paleo lifestyle.

The deal killers, or traits that I don’t want to deal with:
1.  short sighted, doesn’t look at the long term picture.
2.  Micro-managers.  Needs to be a hands off type person that will give a destination, but will allow people to get there any way they choose.
3. someone that thinks the status quo is good enough.
4. someone that procrastinates and just won’t pull the trigger, even when they know exactly what they should do.
5. vegan

Finally, you have to name your avatar (and I don’t mean the blue guys in that movie)…  So for me, my Avatar will be Alex.  I know it’s bias, but for those of you that don’t know, I have the coolest little boy, just about to turn 2.  So I can’t think of a name better than his =)  He will be 6′ tall, athletic build, brown hair, blue eyes.

Think I have him in my mind…
now…  who’s your ideal customer???  according to the class, we need this guy/girl for later lessons…  so start picturing =)

Making Friends – How to connect with new business contacts

Today, I wanted to talk a little about making friends. Now this sounds simple, we learned this before we even started kindergarten, but in the business arena, it’s a little different. Not everyone wants to be your friend. It’s often a “what’s in it for me?” attitude.
I recently was lucky enough to talk to someone that has made it to where I’m trying to get to. His name is Sumit Sangha and he runs Security Weaver. They are a company that provides applications to SAP customers in the area of security. Needless to say, I was able to learn a lot from Sumit in a short amount of time. But I never would’ve met Sumit if it wasn’t for one of my consulting friends. He made the introduction because he knew I was trying to get my business off the ground and Sumit was a friend of his. I doubt I would’ve ever talked to Sumit if I wasn’t introduced to him by someone he knew and trusted.
The point of this is to remind you that everyone you know in your business life potentially knows someone with the next piece of information you need to go to the next level. So remember, promote yourself to your friends too. You never know when they might connect you to someone that can help.

Learning to Market – baby steps

Well, my continuing adventure of trying to sell my first product is certainly no cake-walk. I really thought the hard part was designing a good product. Turns out, it’s a lot tougher to find customers than to build something. Right now, I’m working on my “Consumer Awareness Guide”. I got this tip from an audio program called Piranha Marketing. I’ll talk more about audio programs a different day. Anyway, the Consumer Awareness guide is basically a couple page educational document to give to prospective customers. In essence, it’s a document to convince someone they need my services without actually selling. Not as easy as it sounds. You have to start by figuring out a lot of mistakes that people make and explain those mistakes. Short story, by educating your potential customers, you build rapport and credibility. I’m trying to finish mine now. If you want a copy, please let me know. I’d be happy to send you one… =)