A weblog by Christopher Carfi, since 2004.
Joe Andrieu: "Only in the simplest commodity markets is pricing ever the sole factor.
Whether you focus on relationships and conversations or the 20th
century model of brand-driven differentiation, there are lots of
factors that influence a transaction at least as much, if not more,
than price."
You can find the whole conversation here. Worth a read.
Just in time for SXSW, I am really pleased to announce that Cerado has launched a handy "Unofficial Pocket Guide" that is based on the beta of Cerado Ventana. It’s a mobile-friendly SXSW widget that gives you quick access to:
– People
– Agenda
– Books that authors will be signing in the book lounge
– FAQ
It looks killer on the iPhone, and Koan reports that it works similarly sexily on the Nokia N95.
For the People tab, we’ve built a self-reporting directory (instead of scraping the registration database for everybody’s information). Adding yourself is like adding a blog comment: enter info, click submit, see it immediately. No email addresses; just your name, photo, and URL.
If you fancy yourself an Early Adopter, feel free to add yourself to the People listing. Go to the People tab, and simply click "+" — that’s it. (We recommend using your Twitter stream or Blog URL as your primary link, but you can also link to your Facebook or LinkedIn or other profile as well — how ever you want people who see you at SXSW to keep tabs on you.)
The homepage is here: http://sxsw.cerado.com/
And you can jump directly to the "Add Yourself" form as well.
Takes two minutes. Tops.
Here’s what it looks like (click the images to expand).
However, when building this, we also realized that the whole world isn’t mobile. (Yet.) So, it’s also available as a widget that you can put on your blog.
The blog widget looks like this:
(RSS readers, you can view or get the blog widget here.)
Major kudos to Sarah Dopp on her mad project management skillz in helping to make this happen.
David Hornik writes a post that sums up something that I’ve been thinking about lately, having reviewed a number of pitches and proposals that fall into this trap. David:
"Adjectives are not convincing. Facts are convincing. I may not agree
with the conclusions a company draws from those facts. But I will at
least be in a position to appropriately assess those conclusions.
Whereas adjectives are all about conclusions without the underlying
facts. As an entrepreneur, you are far better off having me determine
that your market is "massive," your founders are "brilliant," and your
product is "elegant," than to tell me that your company has "an elegant
solution serving a massive market designed by brilliant founders." So
reread your pitch and remove all of the adjectives. It will go
massively, monumentally, gargantuanly. colossally better that way."
This one is getting taped to the monitor, just a short reach away from the copy of Strunk and White.
(hat tip to andrew anker for the ^H idea. heh.)
Had a great chat today with John C. Havens on BlogTalkRadio about transparency in business. About 30min or so in duration, was one of the more fun biz conversations I’ve had in a while. Check it out.
David Cushman is doing a little experiment in being a connected, active customer. Here’s the skinny. David:
“There’s a prize at stake, of sorts. The winner gets to sell me a car.I
want to buy a Toyota Yaris – and I’m going to blog about this fact (and
twitter a bit) to see if this simple piece of disaggregated content
gets picked up by someone savvy enough to sell me one.It’s also a
test of word of mouth because it’s possible that the dealer (owner?)
with the car I want isn’t clued up… but he might know a friend, or a
friend-of-a-friend who is.So let’s begin.
I’m in the UK.
I am looking for Deals on a new Toyota and I
want a low mileage Toyota Yaris in either T3 or TR spec, registered
late 2006 onwards (new shape one). Must have aircon of some form.
Ideally 1.3 petrol but will consider 1.0. Probably go for the five
door. My wife prefers silver (and it will be her car). Ex-demo would be
ideal.”
Now, again, there are some basic channels through with customers and vendors typically interact. From the customer’s perspective they are:
Here’s the vendor view of these three items:
Key point: I feel the friction in this process is a result of the transactional mindset that most vendors are in today. For if vendors were truly engaging in “customer relationship management,” David would already be connected to them. Instead, we’re trying to mesh the customer and vendor gears, each of which is spinning at a different speed, and rotating in a slightly different plane.
So, going back to the model…David has already nailed the “Search” part of his process, and is moving into Shop. So, is there a vendor out there who is either (a) actively listening or (b) is connected through a reasonable number of hops to someone who is? Let’s find out…
The Good rocking the house at Martyr’s in Chicago on 23-Feb-2008 at their reunion gig, with old friend John Scholvin on lead guitar. (He’s also a financial trading rocket scientist – really.)
Oh yeah, you can get the music here.
Great summary of last week’s VRM meeting in London, with commentary by Ian Delaney. An excerpt:
"One of the latest solutions to the problem of marketing without wasting
loads of money is CRM. Companies collect loads of data about their
customers and potential customers and then target their marketing
efforts at segments of those groups. CRM is ‘lame and bad’, though,
because it isn’t about relationships at all…"
Larry Dignan: "I’ll predict 2009 as the year of enterprise social networks."
(Click on the globe to learn more)
Yes, I’m in Dubai but, alas, only virtually. As noted earlier, we’ve been doing some groundbreaking work with the Professional Aviation Maintenance Association (PAMA) and the SAE Institute in helping them use social media tools and word-of-mouth techniques to let the world know about the new certification they’ve launched for aviation mechanics.
As part of the rollout of the exam, Cerado created an easily-sharable online quiz that gives a flavor of what’s involved in certification. Here’s what Sarah has to say about the Global Challenge quiz:
"This is a free 10-question quiz based on the PAMA/SAE
Institute Professional Certification exam that will test your
knowledge and get you thinking about your career. It’s also fun! (And
you may want to share it with your colleagues.)"
So, give it a shot. Will you get stranded? Or can you ensure your 747 makes it around the world?
Seth Godin has a strong piece up today on the mindset shift taking place in the "human resources" functions of large organizations. Seth:
"Like it or not, in most organizations HR has grown up with a
forms/clerical/factory focus. Which was fine, I guess, unless your goal
was to do something amazing, something that had nothing to do with a
factory, something that required amazing programmers, remarkable
marketers or insanely talented strategy people.So, here’s my small suggestion, one that will make some uncomfortable.
Change the department name to Talent."
This change is already taking place. For example, this past fall the Future of Talent conference raised key issues in the areas of how social networking is affecting organizations and the talent within.
