Year: 2009

Doc Searls pulls out a (pricing) gun at the 2009 VRM West Coast Workshop on May 15, 2009.  Some great thoughts in here about the transformation of "content" industries, and hints at the tools that customers could wield to set their own price.

And just because it's fun to pull it out of context, I love this blurry screen grab, too.  🙂

photo: christopher carfi, creative commons 3.0 attribution

Back in March, I had the opportunity to chat for an hour or so with Mark Woollen from Oracle and Anneke Seley from PhoneWorks around topics related to how customers and sales teams interact at a time when the customer is increasingly in charge of the dynamics of the relationship.  A bit of presentation bits at the beginning, and then the balance of the hour is Q&A with the participants on the webinar.  Here ’tis:

Link to the video here.

(Disclosure: The Customer Collective is a customer of Cerado)

Just got a nice note from old friend Anastasia Goodstein, who is the prime mover behind YPulse (which is a formidable marketing blog and is the place to understand what is current in media, technology and entertainment with tweens and teens).  YPulse is gearing up for their next "YPulse Mashup" event.  Here's the scoop:

"Hey Chris! I hope this email finds you well.
We have an amazing line up this year including Don Tapscott, Donna Fenn (Inc.)
and so many other cool speakers.

 I was
hoping you might share it with your readers. We created a special code SC
(Social Customer) just for your readers/Twitter followers to get 10 percent off
the price."

Indeed.  So, if you want to go and save a couple of bucks, use the code "SC" when you register.  The conference is June 1-2, 2009 in San Francisco.

Keith Hopper talks about ListenLog at the 2009 VRM West Coast Workshop in May, 2009.

Link to the video here.

tags: vrm, vrm2009

At the VRM West Coast Workshop today. Agenda attached. (Click through the pic to expand).

About 40-50 folks here. Open Space format. Follow along here: VRM twitter stream

Recently, the fine folks over at EcSell Institute invited me to participate in a webinar entitled "CRM Doesn't Go Far Enough: Somehow We Left the Customer Out of Customer Relationship Management."  The webinar is about 50min in length, and is viewable in two parts.  We had a lot of GREAT questions and conversation … thank you for all who attended, and thanks again to Bill Eckstrom and Kristi Shoemaker at EcSell Institute for the invitation.

Here's the background:

The video is in two parts; both are available on Vimeo.  Here are the links:

EcSell / Cerado Webinar: Part 1
EcSell / Cerado Webinar: Part 2

The videos are also embedded below.

Part 1:

Part 2:

I think the stuff that Bill and Kristi and the rest of the EcSell team are doing is really unique in a couple of ways.  First, they are creating a community of individuals who are in sales management (not front-line sales reps), and they strive to provide "an arsenal of fact based information, a regular schedule of educational programs, and a network of peers willing to help each other."  (Sounds a lot like a community, doesn't it?)  Second, all the information that EcSell provides has to tie back either to data that is fact-based and scientifically provable, or is the current "best practice" in industry.  It's a degree of rigor that's not often seen.  And it's refreshing.

This was the first chance I'd had to work with them, and really enjoyed it. 

Am now really looking forward to their upcoming Sales Management Summit, which is happening July 28-29 right out here in Half Moon Bay.  Seeya there!

Stunning.  More photos by Chuck Revell here.

The Hoosier Contrarian gave me the big thought of the day.  He writes:

The link is here.

Now, I do a fair amount of this currently, primarily by trying to use plus addressing on my email address whenever possible in order to know who is selling my email address to whom.  (Plus addressing allows me to determine the source of the leak.)

What kinds of marketing countermeasures do you use?

"Advertisers should not make the mistake of trying to recreate classic
Web advertising models that gather metrics like impressions and
click-throughs…a better strategy is to create great branded mobile experiences that
drive interactive usage and brand awareness. Successful brands have
leveraged mobile to extend their overall brand equity, not necessarily
to turn on a new revenue stream in the mobile channel." – Dave Sloan

image: gizmodo