Branding You - Why Personal Branding Is So Important In Today’s World

By Scott Lahde

Remember all the talk in the late 90s of the “brand called you?” Well, much has changed in the past 10 years – including the way we conduct a job search and the way we network with each other. But the original concept of branding yourself, especially in today’s competitive marketplace for plum roles and positions, is more relevant than ever.

Sure, you have a LinkedIn page. Perhaps you’ve signed up for Naymz and one of your colleagues invited you to join NotchUp or even one of the newer business social networks like Ryze. More and more online business networking opportunities are sprouting up every day. You may have even designed a personal web page with your professional credentials.

That’s a good start, but is that enough to build your own personal brand? No.

Focus on Number One
As executives in marketing, advertising and sales can certainly attest, marketing a company’s product or service, generating sales leads and enhancing the brand is paramount to company success. So why wouldn’t you use that same approach for yourself? Sound too self-serving? Think again.

Really successful executives, the ones that are consistently written about, quoted as experts, and asked to partner with top executives and companies, do one thing and do it well. They promote themselves and their expert opinions.

Creating an online profile in a number of places and monitoring your online presence is definitely important, but if you ignore your real world presence, you’re cutting your own legs. Busy executives pour through hundreds of emails and view scores of web pages each day. Will your digital communication or web presence stand out among the deluge of daily digital information? Well, it’s a big challenge.
What will be remembered is poignant, real world interaction.

Make it Real
You can generate this sort of interaction and attention for the “brand called you” in a dozen different ways. However, the three ways that have had the biggest impact and are often a catalyst for more opportunities are:

1. Participating in industry trade groups and associations
2. Speaking at prominent industry events
3. Writing well-crafted, by-lined articles in trade publications

In a sense, think back to basics. Some may scoff at the notion of participation at the trade level. Whether it’s engineering, finance or technology, the trades are not nearly as glamorous as being featured in Forbes or Fortune or speaking at Davos. But let’s be realistic, only a very small handful of people are invited to participate at those high levels.

So don’t scoff at them – embrace your trades! It will be your entrance to bigger and better things. Everything is cyclical – a trade article could lead to being selected for a speaking engagement, which leads to being quoted in a news article, which leads to a panel opportunity, which leads to being interviewed on television as an industry expert. You never know. Your participation with Beer Advocate magazine six months ago could have led to being asked to comment on the mammoth Anheuser-Busch/InBev merger.

Be Memorable
The same holds true for conferences, conventions and industry association events. You certainly don’t need to attend every single one in your industry, but select a few key events and really focus on your personal interactions. You may be a sales person for your organization, so of course one of your goals might be generating sales leads, but don’t make the mistake of ignoring your other goal – selling YOU.

Focus on real world interaction with people. Have the kind of conversations that will make people remember you, not run the other direction because you are hounding them. Be genuine. Be thoughtful. Find ways you can help people as much as they can help you. These tenets may seem natural to some, foreign to others, but in any case, they will go a long way in building your brand.

In Short
Create this simple litmus test: Is what I am doing improving my brand, both online and off-line?

Remember: Networking is not about collecting as many business cards as you can. It’s about quality over quantity.

I recently attended a conference and during the networking portion I was approached by a gentleman who quite frankly told me that his boss told him to attend the conference and hand out his business cards. He then offered me his business card and walked away.

Obviously, his business card was immediately circular filed the same way I file random online invites when I receive them. Do yourself a favor – don’t be that person.

Scott Lahde is a 15-year veteran of the communications industry and is Vice President, Associate Director of Corporate Communications at Deutsch Inc., a $2.5 billion top-ten, bi-coastal communications agency.

10 Tips For Global Communication

NOTE: This was posted on Communication Nation a little while back, but I loved the drawings and had to share.

By Dave Gray

The difference between local and global markets is like the difference between the fishbowl and the ocean. To understand and engage successfully requires a shift in perspective. Here are a few tips to help you get the most from your global communications efforts:

1. Get outside your fishbowl.
To go global you’ve got to get out from behind your desk. Your culture surrounds you like the air you breathe, and you can’t understand it until you get outside it. Spend some time – an extended period, if possible – completely immersed in another culture. When you return, you’ll be surprised how many things you notice that were previously invisible.

2. Be authentic.
Being global doesn’t mean losing your identity. If you’re a global company that was started in Germany and is headquartered in Germany, it’s perfectly ok to be German. It’s a multicultural world and you are a part of it too. The key is to be respectful of other cultures while being true to your own unique identity.

3. Remember that you are a guest.
When you are visiting another country, or when you open an office there, you are a guest. The same rules apply that would apply if you were visiting a friend’s house. Be polite, respectful, and thoughtful in your communications.

4. Think visually.
There’s a reason why TV is booming while newspapers are going out of business. People understand pictures faster and more easily than words. With pictures you can communicate complex ideas instantly, and virtually nothing is lost in translation. And words need to be translated, while pictures are a universal form of communication.

5. Ask for feedback.
Share your ideas with global teams early, when they are in the napkin-sketch stage, and ask for feedback. When you ask people to participate in defining the message, you build trust. If you build your message globally, then deployment becomes much easier.

See the remaining 5 tips at Communication Nation…

Web Working Team Work Just Got A Whole Lot Easier With Wiggio

Are you on a virtual team? Are you amongst the next generation web workers of the world? Then Wiggio is for you!

From Wiggio’s About Page
As seniors at Cornell, we started wiggio out of our own frustrations with unnecessarily clogged inboxes, using five different websites for five different functions, and all the other hassles associated with working in groups. We were tired of sending eleven emails back and forth just to set a meeting time. We were tired of that guy who just never knows where and when to be there. We were tired of list-servs, contact lists, phone-chains and incompatibilities. We wanted everything to be in one place, and we wanted it simple. So we created wiggio.

Wiggio lets you use the following group tools, and it’s all for free!

• Messages— send mass text messages, voice messages and emails from wiggio
• Calendar— keep a shared group calendar that will send you text message reminders before all your meetings, practices, rehearsals, games and other events
• Poll—survey your entire group and get their responses as they answer
• Folder— dump all your groups’ files into one folder and never send another attachment
• Meetings— never walk 15 minutes through the snow to get to a 10 minute meeting again… setup free conference calls and web chats on Wiggio
• Links— keep a shared favorites folder

Blog Action Day 2008 - Poverty

Last year WeirdGuy blog participated in Blog Action Day. This year, we will again and share from a weird perspective on the issue of poverty. I encourage you to get involved. Find out more details at Blog Action Day.

Interviewing 102: Make a Difference

By Dean Tracy

As I coach candidates on job search and interview tactics globally, I admit that there is a bit of a science to nailing the second round interview. If you have the proper formula, you may be the only candidate to make a lasting impression that the company will not soon forget!

Chances are good that if you’re being invited back for a second round of interviews, then you’ve made a good initial impression and have something that they want. That said, besides charisma and all of the right answers to their questions, what will you bring to the interview that will impress them enough to use your interview as the standard against which to grade all other candidates?

Answer: Your 60/90-Day Strategic Plan.

During your first interview, you probably heard all about the pain-points that are driving the hiring manager crazy. This includes project deadlines, technology initiatives, budgets, client visits (if you’re in Sales), revenue goals and so on. Additionally, you may have noticed that they never seem to have enough people on staff!

If you’ve asked the right questions in your first round of interviews, and you are truly excited about this potential opportunity, then you should have a pretty good idea as to what you will do to be successful in this role. You should be able to identify at least a 60/90-day strategic plan, based upon your knowledge of the role as it is today.

If used carefully and properly, your strategic plan can be “The Difference Maker” for you in your second round of the interview process.

Three of the primary factors that demonstrate your value proposition, and will drive your success in this new potential role are as follows: having a vision / overview for the job, establishing trust with clients and colleagues, and being able to identify and set goals and objectives. Let’s go into each of these in depth.

Vision / Overview
Based upon what you have heard in the interview, you should know the vision / overview of the department or company. What impact will you make within your first 60/90 days that can be tied back to the company reaching its goals?

Consider the following when drafting your plan:

Know the Product
Establish a working knowledge of products or services to create long-term value in your employment.

Be Credible
Become a leader among your peers by spearheading initiatives, collaborating with the leadership team, or presenting to your department.

Establishing Trust with Clients and Colleagues
Establishing trust is essential for success in any role. What will you do to establish a high degree of trust within your piece of the company or amongst your peers

Make Introductions
Meet with key stakeholders in the company or department. This is beneficial on all fronts. It offers an opportunity for you to demonstrate your skills, but also allows you to get their perspectives on the company and projects.

Share Expectations
Understand the leadership team’s expectations. This is paramount to your success. Investigate revenue objectives, if possible, to set your personal goals. Think about setting “best practices” that may be beneficial to the company and your role. This will include understanding client needs and identifying what may have been learned from any mistakes along the way.

Create Buy-In and Set Priorities
Identify how you will partner with the leadership team to create attainable goals for success. Fully understand the company mission statement and be able to share it with others. This represents a degree of commitment and clarity on the corporate goals.

Goals and Objectives
Setting goals and objectives is simply good business practice. You need to fully understand your new role in order to be successful, and you must approach it as a business. In doing so, it’s critical that you identify your personal goals and objectives for success in this new capacity

Determine the Objectives
Educate yourself daily on a new aspect of the company, the expectations or the job. Establish product expertise within the first 30 days of employment. Build cross-departmental relationships with departments that are responsible for supporting your success.

Shape a Methodology
Identify the steps that you will take to accomplish your objectives. For every objective that is listed, you should have a supporting methodology for the accomplishment.

Reflect on Success
Identify how you will evaluate or measure the success of your contributions.

Setting yourself apart from the rest of the candidates is mission critical to having a lasting impact on the person or team that is interviewing you. No doubt, you’ve heard the phrase “raise the bar.” My perspective is that the candidate before and after you can raise the bar all they want. By entering into the second round interview prepared with a 60/90-Day Strategic Plan, you are sure to launch yourself over any bar that is set before you!

Dean Tracy is a Professional Recruiter, Public Speaker and Career Coach based in Northern California. He also serves on the Leadership Team for Job Connections.

Top 5 Reasons To Be A Jack-Of-All-Trades

By Tim Ferriss

Are the days of Da Vinci dead? Is it possible to, at once, be a world-class painter, engineer, scientist, and more?

“No way. Those times are long gone. Nothing was discovered then. Now the best you can do is pick your field and master it.”

The devout specialist is fond of labeling the impetuous learner–Da Vinci and Ben Franklin being just two forgotten examples–”jack of all trades, master of none.” The chorus unites: In the modern world, it is he who specializes who survives and thrives. There is no place for Renaissance men or women. Starry-eyed amateurs.

Is it true? I don’t think so. Here are the top five reasons why being a “jack of all trades,” what I prefer to call a “generalist,” is making a comeback:

5) “Jack of all trades, master of none” is an artificial pairing.

It is entirely possible to be a jack of all trades, master of many. How? Specialists overestimate the time needed to “master” a skill and confuse “master” with “perfect”…

Generalists recognize that the 80/20 principle applies to skills: 20% of a language’s vocabulary will enable you to communicate and understand at least 80%, 20% of a dance like tango (lead and footwork) separates the novice from the pro, 20% of the moves in a sport account for 80% of the scoring, etc. Is this settling for mediocre?

Not at all. Generalists take the condensed study up to, but not beyond, the point of rapidly diminishing returns. There is perhaps a 5% comprehension difference between the focused generalist who studies Japanese systematically for 2 years vs. the specialist who studies Japanese for 10 with the lack of urgency typical of those who claim that something “takes a lifetime to learn.” Hogwash. Based on my experience and research, it is possible to become world-class in almost any skill within one year.

4) In a world of dogmatic specialists, it’s the generalist who ends up running the show.

Is the CEO a better accountant than the CPA? Is Steve Jobs a better programmer than the iTunes VP of Engineering? No, but he has a broad range of skills and sees the unseen interconnectedness. As technology becomes a commodity with the democratization of information, it’s the big-picture generalists who will predict, innovate, and rise to power fastest. There is a reason military “generals” are called such.

3) Boredom is failure.

In a first-world economy where we have the physical necessities covered with even low-class income, Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs drives us to need more for any measure of comparative “success.” Lack of intellectual stimulation, not superlative material wealth, is what drives us to depression and emotional bankruptcy. Generalizing and experimenting prevents this, while over-specialization guarantees it.

And what are the #2 and #1 reasons? Find out here…

Don’t Be Amongst The Millions Of Apathetic

14 Best Google Doc Tricks

1. If you install Google Gears, you can edit Docs word-processing documents offline, and Docs automatically syncs them with the online version the next time you sign in online.
2. If you make other folks collaborators on Docs documents and spreadsheets, everyone can work on the files simultaneously. To invite collaborators, head to the upper-right Share button (for documents) or Share tab (for spreadsheets).
3. It’s a snap to publish documents created in Docs as blog posts—just select “Publish as web page” from the Share menu, and then click the “Post to blog” button.
4. If you want to embed a Docs presentation in a Web site, just go to the Publish tab, click “Publish document”, and then copy the HTML that appears in the Mini Presentation Module box. Paste the code into your site’s HTML, upload the revised version of the site, and voilà!
5. Google gives you a whole slew of functions to help make working with spreadsheets more efficient. (The GoogleLookup function is particularly nifty.)
6. If your Docs list is getting cluttered, you can hide files (documents, spreadsheets, or presentations) to keep your list clean. Just turn on the checkbox next to any file you want to hide (you can select more than one), and then click the Hide button. To make a hidden file reappear, find All Items in the left-hand menu and, if necessary, click its + sign to expand it. Then click Hidden to see your hidden files; select the one(s) you want to see in your Docs list, and then click Unhide.
7. You can easily turn spreadsheet data into all kinds of charts: column, bar, pie, line, area, or scatter. To create a chart, open your spreadsheet to the Edit tab, select the range of cells you want to convert into a chart, and then click the “Add chart” button. In the Create Chart box that appears, tell Docs what kind of chart you want to create and fill in the other info it needs, and then click “Save chart.”
8. If you create a chart based on a Docs spreadsheet, you can save it as an image and insert it into a Docs document. After you create your chart, click its upper-left Chart link and select “Save image”. Save it to your computer, and then open the document you want to put it in. Click Insert and select Image, then tell Docs where to find the file on your computer.
9. If you don’t like a change that you (or someone else) made to one of your Docs files, no problem. Just head to that file’s revision history (click File and then choose “Revision history”) and pick a previous version that you like better.
10. If you’re working on a computer that doesn’t have Adobe Reader and you need to print a document, click Share and select “View as web page (Preview)” to open the formatted document as a Web page. You can then print it from your Web browser. The formatting isn’t quite as good as if you print from a PDF—and you’ll probably have the browser’s header and footer—but all the content is there.
11. If you’ve published a Docs document as a Web page, you can make the Web page update automatically whenever you edit the document. Just click Share and select “Publish as web page”; then turn on the “Automatically republish when changes are made” checkbox.
12. To see how your Docs document will look to folks you share it with, click the Share This Document page’s “Preview document as a viewer” link. If the preview doesn’t look quite right, then go back and edit the document before you share it.
13. You can add YouTube videos to your Docs presentations. In the blue bar above the edit pane, click “Insert video”. Google opens a box where you can search YouTube videos by keyword. Find the one you want and click it to select it. Then click the Insert Video button to put the video on your slide. Once it’s there, you can move, resize, or delete it, just like any image or shape. During a slideshow, viewers can play the video by clicking the Play button on its slide.
14. When you’ve got several collaborators editing the same document all at once, have each person choose a different color for his text to help sort out who made what changes. (The simplest thing is to have each person use the same text and highlight color.) Then, when you finalize the document, simply select the whole thing and click the “Text color” button to change the rainbow of text colors to basic black.

Source: Amazon.com, Google Apps: The Missing Manual

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10 Jobs For The Future - They Are Closer Than You Think!

Quick! Change your major and prepare for the jobs of the future.

1. Organic food producers, retailers
2. Computational biologists
3. Parallel programmers
4. Data technologists
5. Simulation engineers
6. Boomer companions, caretakers
7. Genetic counseling
8. Brain analysts
9. Space tour guide
10. Robot builders, tenders

So, what are you waiting for? Strap on your rocket pack and zoom over to the nearest talent agency. You may be the outer space entrepreneur.

Eclipse di Luna - Tapas Bar

By E. Brown

NOTE- Whenever I eat at an establishment I look at the following factors: quality of service, quality of food, price of meal, portion sizes, and the restaurant ambiance.

I just got back this evening from a networking event at Eclipse di Luna, the Tapas Bar in the Dunwoody area of Atlanta. I must say I am definitely a fan of the food.

Tapas are snacks, canapés or finger foods. Tapas can be anything from a chunk of tuna, cocktail onion, and an olive skewered on a long toothpick to meat with sauce served piping hot. They are served day in and day out in every bar and café in Spain. So much a part of the culture and social scene that the Spanish people invented the verb “tapear” which means, “to go and eat tapas!” (From spanishfood.about.com)

The service at Eclipse was good for the type of event I attended. The wait staff was accommodating and quick to assist with any needs. The side room we gathered in was spacious and would suit any large group or event of 20-30 people.

But is it the variety of foods that was most enjoyable. I personally like having numerous items to choose from and then having the ability to come back for the dishes I like or have not tried. The portions are a little larger than bite-size so you will not fill up quickly.

Most everything on the menu is in the $3-5 price range. The prices are low enough to allow you and a friend or spouse to buy three or four items. I recommend:
Pan Catalan
Toasted Ciabatta Bread Toppedwith Tomato, Garlic, & Thyme Purée
Costillas Espanolas
Spanish-style Ribs in Aged Balsamic Vinegar
Pollo con
Spicy Pressed Chicken Thighs with Almond Gazpacho
Queso Frito con Miel
Fried Goat Cheese with Caramelized Onions & Honey
Menestra
Mixed Roasted Vegtables with Olives & Spinach
As for the wine list – you will not be disappointed. Eclipse di Luna has a decent offering of wines that go well with the variety of tapas.

My only disappointment was the design of the restaurant. The high ceiling and tile floor make Eclipse di Luna extremely noisy. It was very hard to have a conversation without screaming. Also, the fact that music was blaring only hindered any decent attempts at meaningful communication. There was a patio outside that buffered the noisy inside, but most people retreated out there to smoke.

Overall, if you’re interested in relaxing to music and having a variety of foods to nibble on, Eclipse di Luna Tapas Bar in Dunwoody is for you.

Related Links
- Photos of menu items and restaurant

One Semester of Spanish Love Song (Video)

Saw this the other day and had to share. I have to give them an “A” for originality and creativity. So, what does this have to do with WeirdGuy and learning? Well, it certainly fits the creativity bill and, as for learning, the guy should have spent more time learning Spanish if he wanted to woo his Señorita properly.

Watch it for yourself — it’s hilarious!

Sushi - The Japanese Tradition (Funny Video)

I’ve been writing a lot of reviews over on Yelp.com about the restaurants I have visited. One of my favorite foods is sushi. When I think of sushi, I think of all the friends I have exposed to this Japanese tradition. Some love it while some hate it. Regardless, you can’t help but think, “How would the Japanese describe this to westerners?” Enter YouTube! A friend from Japan first told me about this hilarious movie, made by Nihon-jin (japanese people) for all of us Gaijin (foreigners). Enjoy!

CPM Advertising May Not Be Right For You!

This article was put together by my friends over at 5Q Communications. This is a must read if you’re advertising on the Web.

By 5Q Staff

If you’ve ever set up an advertising agreement with some website, you’ve likely seen or heard the term “CPM”. This common term essentially stands for “Cost Per Thousand” impressions and is still widely used as a model of advertising on many web sites.

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t understand the pitfalls with the CPM model and end up wasting thousands of precious ad dollars. The CPM model typically affords you very little control, little forecasting ability and is more of a gamble than a solid method of building a list, developing site traffic or increasing revenue.

Read more…

Amy Tan Talks About Creativity (TED Video)

Here Amy Tan talks about, “Where does creativity hide?” Tell me your thoughts.

For Some Companies, Like Zappos, Twitter May Pay Off

By E. Brown

I am still not sold on the value of Twitter (See Twitter for the ADD Generation). Yet, Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, sees great worth in using the socila medium for spreading the word and getting feedback about his company.

Here is a brief piece from an interview with Inc. Magazine:

You have 5,681 “followers” signed up to read your Twitter updates — that’s not just employees. Who are they?

We have eight million customers. It’s been great for getting feedback. For example, we have a new website that’s still in beta. As we make improvements, I’ll send out a Twitter message asking people what they think.

And you additionally can track anyone who mentions Zappos on Twitter. Here’s an actual example: “Just bought boots on Zappos. Grt cust svc–sent an email last night asking about hiking boots for flat wide feet and had links this AM.” Are Twits a good focus group?

It’s been really useful, finding out what actual word-of-mouth conversations are out there.

Of course, all the Twitter updates from Zappos employees are public, too. Anyone can read about your employees finding good bars to meet at and drink at. You posted a message about your nipples being chafed from surfboard wax. Couldn’t that kind of candor scare customers or business partners or investors?

There may be some times when an individual Twitter message out of context can give a bad impression. But generally people on Twitter aren’t just looking at one single Tweet. They see what we do over time. For customers, I think it’s a way to get an inside glimpse of what our people are like and what our culture is like. Our belief is that your culture and your brand are, ultimately, the same thing. Your brand might lag your culture, but eventually it’s going to catch up. I think where companies are finding challenges now is they want to project this great brand, but if inside the company it’s not a great culture, then they’re going to be in trouble in the long term. For us, I just think it’s important to be real and authentic.

See the entire article on Inc.com to find out more.

Related Articles
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation - Part 1
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation - Part 2
- Twitter For The ADD Generation - Response
- Now, Some Possible Value In Using Twitter

Light and Shadow, Shape and Form, Depth of Field - The Power of Images

Light and shadow…

Shape and form…

Depth of field…

…all play and intertwine in the composition of great photos.
They draw the viewer in and beg the questions,
“Who is this?”
“What is happening?”
“What has happened?”
“Where is this?”
“Why?”
And, in so doing draw us into introspection…

…such is the power of great photos.

[Photos from ArTeTeTrA]

Blogged with the Flock Browser

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10 Tips To Interviewing For Your Next $100K Job

By Mark Cenedella | The Ladders

1. Research the company and be prepared with a “good” level of knowledge. You don’t need to know gross margins in the South-western region for the past 8 years, but you should know enough to show the interviewer that you respect the opportunity and you respect her or his time.
2. Be on time, unflustered, with a clean, well-presented copy of your resume – I know this sounds simple (this is “101”, after all) but you would be surprised at how many people don’t leave 10 minutes early in order to get there 10 minutes early!
3. Dress the part – business-like and professional, no matter how groovy the company is.
4. Be kind to every employee you meet – the receptionist, yes, but also the parking lot attendant, the janitor, and the intern. You know, Southwest Airlines used to have the flight attendants on flights anonymously assess the candidates they were flying in for interviews – it just goes to show that you need to mind your manners all the time.
5. Think of JFK – ask not what the company can do for you, answer instead “what can I do for this company?”
6. This is not a filming of “Biography” on the A&E Channel, it is a sales presentation in which you are selling your capabilities to do a job for the company. Stick, mostly, to the business side and how you can solve problems. Don’t go into a half-hour long disquisition on the relative merits of Mozart and Beethoven, the reason you love/hate the Yankees, or the intricacies of your college rivalries. The interviewer does not want your life story, they want to know your business capabilities.
7. “Bad mouth thee, bad mouth me.” Whenever you trash-talk your former or current employer, guess what the interviewer thinks? “Oh boy, if we hire this guy, I’m next on his firing line!” Never, ever, say bad, mean, unkind, or even true things if it makes you look like a prospective ingrate, gossip, or ne’er-do’well.
8. Save the money talk for last. Focus on the job, your ability to contribute, and all the great things you can provide before reminding your future boss how much of the hiring budget you’re going to soak up.
9. Thank the interviewer for their time and ask questions – again, this shows good manners and good sense.
10. Send a follow-up e-mail – thank the interviewer again and reiterate (very briefly) what you discussed and how you can contribute. This serves as a good memory jog to the interviewer of your conversation and reminds them of the points you want them to make for you in the hiring meeting

Time Off WeirdGuy Blog - Just One Week

By E. Brown

I’ll be taking a week off to focus on closing out a project (July 28-August 1). More to come from the lessons learned during this engagement. It’s a really cool online course with custom hooks into a client app. The back-end was designed as “plug and play” so content can quickly and easily be swapped out while still being applicable to the course testing and grading scenarios.

See you in a week.

Summer Movie Line Up

Where has the Summer gone in 2008? So many movies and so little budget or time. While visiting my friend’s blog I was reminded of all there is yet to see. Here are some of my thoughts as well as my friend, Melvin.

Speed Racer: Visually stimulating, has an odd cast. I have not seen it yet, but Melvin says, “Go with low expectations and you’ll have a blast.”

I have heard nothing but good fun about IronMan. I still wanna see it while it’s in the theaters.

I have also seen:

• Batman The Dark Knight - definitely a “dark” movie with a nihilistic Joker.
• Kung Fu Panda - Good fun CG movie. My kids love the figures.
• Prince Caspian, Narnia - Good adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book (not closely followed). See my previous post.
• Wall*E - I heard mixed reviews about Pixar’s latest release. “Not much dialogue” was a common complaint. However, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think the movements and “body language” created all kinds of dialog.
• Hellboy 2 - Another in a list of good movies directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Still to see: Clone Wars, Indiana Jones, Get Smart, Journey to The Center of The Earth…Hmmm…what else am I missing?

Marketing And Sales Need To Get Along

There is a war going on within organizations: Marketing and Sales are at odds and fighting against one another. Marketing complains that Sales never follows up on all those leads they send. Sales grumbles that Marketing doesn’t bring them any qualified leads. It’s a battle that neither side can win. And the company as a whole loses unless the two sides wave the white flag and agree to work together as partners, rather than against each other as adversaries. The two sides should join together to fight the war against competitors who are conquering market share.

The truth is both functions are crucial for success. Marketing makes the phone ring and salespeople close deals. It’s a very close association between two functions, so why is there such a disconnect? Part of the problem is that Marketing suffers from a credibility crisis. Marketing is viewed as the people who throw parties and spend budgets, rather than as part of the machine that drives revenue and profits. There are companies where Sales holds weekly revenue calls, and nobody from Marketing is on the call. In order to work with Sales, Marketing must be viewed not as a cost center, but as a strategic asset that drives growth. How can marketers do their part to achieve success and end the war?

Prove Your Worth
CFOs make budgeting decisions and recommendations based on facts and figures. Marketing must present useful data that enables CFOs to understand the value of the Marketing department. Evidence of this issue is seen in a Marketing Sherpa study in which only 17% of B2B marketers queried were sure their CFOs understood the value of lead generation programs. To combat this, provide meaningful success metrics.

Collaborate
Traditionally, the Marketing and Sales departments operate in silos. Each department performs its function without interacting with the other. To end the war, the barriers must be broken down. Sales and Marketing should share common goals. Both should frequently meet to share information. Or, savvy organizations might take it a step further: Have Marketing go on a sales call along with salespeople, or invite salespeople to participate in Marketing meetings, so each side can see, first-person, the challenges the other department is up against.

Instill A Focus On The Customer
Instead of paying attention to divisive internal issues, devote your energy to focusing on the customer. Find reasons to work together to solve customer problems…and to focus on the “right” prospects.

Define Core Messaging
Along these same lines, make sure both departments have a clear understanding of the company’s competitive advantage and key sales differentiators. If Marketing is promoting a product based on price advantage, and Sales is touting customer service (but neither mentions the other) they present mixed messages to the marketplace. Agree on a value proposition, and stick to it. That means having coherent messaging coming from all parts of the organization. Make sure all ads, marketing materials and sales presentations communicate that value proposition to prospects.

Prove Them Wrong
When all else fails, prove them wrong. Make sure you’re generating not just large numbers of leads, but qualified prospects. Remember, in the BtoB world, quality is more important than quantity. You might have a big budget, but if y