The results? Nothing. Bupkis. A big fat zero.

Like a lot of companies in our industry, our bread and butter “sales” have been through referral. We love referrals—the prospect is half sold on using you from the first contact. You do a good job and work keeps flowing in. But the economy has throttled the referral pipeline. We’ve learned that referrals aren’t sales at all. It would be an easy and comforting excuse to blame the economy, but the reality is that a dedicated sales program SHOULD work, even when times are tough.

Starting a real sales effort from scratch is a steep learning curve. I’d like to share some of what we’ve learned on our way up.

Know what you’re selling and to whom
Almost anything any creative agency does can now be done cheaper by freelancers or even by “one size fits all” online tools. If you’ve got even a modest overhead, you just can’t compete on price against these resources.

What we’ve learned is that we’re not selling a “deliverable”, we’re selling a relationship. There are so many quality firms out there that just getting the job done isn’t the problem for the client. Finding a reliable, affordable resource that understands their business challenges is a whole different matter. Selling a relationship implies that there is going to be more than one decision maker you have to engage with. It is a “complex sale” where you have to gain insights into the organization and understand how each player sees their “personal win” in hiring you.

Past performance is no guarantee of future gains

This has been a tough issue for us to overcome. What we’ve learned is that a sales person with a successful background in selling products, or even services, may not have the skills to successfully sell a relationship. Time and again, we’ve seen sales people on our team start strong and then become frustrated and more or less give up when they are not able to close quickly and earn their commissions. The reality is that establishing a relationship with a new prospect takes time, as much as a year of staying present and nurturing the lead.

Get creative with compensation

Good sales people are measured by and driven to earn that commission. When commissions are not near at hand, sales people understandably become frustrated. We’ve tried any number of combinations of base salary, draws, commission schedules, and bonuses to motivate sales. None of the things we’ve tried yet has hit the “sweet spot” that would motivate our sales person while maintaining our margins and total overhead.

It’s the networking stupid

Cold calling doesn’t work, at least if your expectation is that a sales person will pick up the phone and close a deal right then and there. Cold calling is more about enlarging the universe of contacts you have and creating more people to put into a nurture and contact program. If you’re considering trying out inside sales, be sure to ask a lot of questions about who the interviewee knows, what social and business circles they travel in, and how they participate in engaging with the audience you want to reach. We’ve found that these informal network contacts are much more valuable than a list of names and numbers that a sales person cold calls all day trying to break through gatekeepers.

Know who you are hiring

Sounds pretty obvious, but we’ve learned the hard way that checking references is important. You may also want to conduct a background check on any potential hire. If your sales person is any good, to be effective they need a degree of autonomy. You want to feel confident that the person representing your company to the marketplace is trustworthy and ethical.

We are still dedicated to developing an effective sales strategy, executed by great people who are experienced professionals. We’ve learned a lot and expect to continue to climb the curve. We have much more clarity on what we’re selling and why our potential customers can benefit from working with us.

The bottom line is that we’ve learned that sales is really selling us, both individually and as a team. The role we’re asking sales people to play is more like a talent agent than a traditional sales person. We’re still looking for the answer, but the more we learn, the closer we get.

The most straightforward answer we give is that the organic search results are always the “most relevant.” This is a loaded term, but needs to be understood. The engineers and folks at Google are a whole lot smarter than we can ever be, and so we always have to assume that the sites which appear in search results are those that are best suited – most relevant – to the user. If Google could not promise this relevancy, no one would bother to pay for ads. And we know Google’s getting plenty of people to pay for their services.

This system cannot be gamed or overcome through techniques that SEO marketers will try to sell you. There are no magic bullets or tricks you can use to make your site more “relevant.”

There are, however, plenty of  good design practices you can implement in your site, some of which even come from Google. We take these recommendations to heart and always build our sites to be findable.

And guess what? It works. One of our clients, Fleetwood RV, Inc., manufactures recreational vehicles. So what search term could be the most relevant? We found in our analytics that most people arriving from search engines didn’t even need to use it: they are searching for “fleetwood” and “fleetwood rv.” It’s easy and not much of a challenge for the site to appear in those search results, but what about more generic terms?

As of today, without any special voodoo or other questionable attempts to raise their site’s PageRank, fleetwoodrv.com is currently #3 for the oh-so-generic term of “rv.” We know that the products on http://fleetwoodrv.com are relevant to those searching for RVs, and based on our approach of building a site that provides the right information, our client is seeing substantial traffic from Google.

What we’ve learned throughout these engagements is to remind our client of the benefits of keeping IT out of the picture: less burden on IT’s limited resources, a design approach that doesn’t impact internal architectures, and better user outcomes. And as an outside agency we can usually meet a pressing need more quickly than IT would be able to, given their planning and budget cycles.

If possible, it helps to have an advocate within the Marketing department who will stand up and say, gingerly, “We want to build this outside of the usual corporate IT infrastructure.”

Of course there will most likely be some kind of data exchange (internal lists of users, etc.) so IT will need to be involved at that level. However, given the robust nature of web services, XML, or even daily FTP of text files, we always try to convince our clients that even though it is their company’s extranet, it can, if at all possible, live outside of the corporate firewall.

This allows our web applications to be successful because we can bring design understanding to the site that IT doesn’t want to or is unable to. We understand better than IT that usability and clean user interfaces are paramount; they usually are more concerned about making internal tools tie into existing infrastructures than about user experience and site design.

Making the pitch to build an extranet outside of IT can be done. If nothing else, focus on how IT probably doesn’t have the time to support such an initiative, much less build it out. Too often we’ve seen interfaces often get bolted onto existing ERP and SAP systems without enough/any thought of usability. In the end, this increases the need for training and/or support of the tools.

When we as an agency build an extranet, we can focus on web standards and build beautifully functional sites. And because we know exactly why the audience is coming and what they need to do when they arrive, we know when to step away from eye candy and renew the focus on the “application” nature of the site. The spit and polish of the site needs to be in how it works and how it lets its users accomplish their tasks.

Building consumer-facing web sites is often the bread-and-butter of web design firms like ours. But we can succeed as well when we pursue internal opportunities within our clients’ companies and in the process bring our design and usability sensibilities to applications often relegated to whatever IT has had time to put together.

Despair or hopelessness was not of the family’s way, when days passed without an order or a visit that brought the bell above the door to life. Yet there was a day, a day much different from the others, when the bell did ring celebrating the return of Aamir the son who has been lost to the shameless desires of the city and beyond. Recognizing the dire mood of the shop, Aamir said, “Papa, I know you have not so isolated yourself to be unaware of the Internet?”

“Yes, but why speak of it now?” It has little to do with the life your family leads, and I can open that door and within a few steps greet everyone I know. Why do I need this Internet you speak of?”

Pleading with Papa to understand the nature of the Internet and viral marketing, he realized it had to be framed in the familiar. “Papa, what happens when a customer leaves this shop, joyous with the good work you have provided them?”

“Our commitment to good work creates talk among friends and acquaintances. Our good work has its own voice and is passed from friend to friend.”

“Papa, in my world, we call that viral marketing. Yes, it is a fancy term, but as you and others have learned, the age-old practice of conversation is perhaps the best way to find success within your community.

“Upon my return I find the family happy, yet I sense times could be better. What if I were to apply a new approach to the age-old practice of conversation to ring that bell a few more times each day?”

Skeptical, Papa replied, “My son, this is to be your business one day, so perhaps this is the proper time, as times have changed and you are the best to know what this means. So, what is it that we should do?”

“I will ask that you do very little, but I will promise that the vitality that we once enjoyed will return, bringing you more prosperity than you could imagine. There is just one thing I will ask of the family. There will be temporary sacrifice, but the reward will be worth the price. Please ask my brother Muntadhar if he can join us, as he will be instrumental in this plan.”

“You mean your brother the writer?”

“Yes Papa. What I will ask my brother will only take a moment of his time. Papa choose the best of what you make with his own hands. Have Muntadhar wear them proudly, and when the time is right toss them at the President of the United States.”

“But how will this help us?”

“Trust me, your bell will ring, and customers from near and far will turn to the most famous cobbler in the land.”

A simple example from my personal life illustrates this point. About a year ago I was called for jury duty. Rather than pay the ridiculous parking rates in downtown Seattle, I decided to use mass transit for the first time. One of the things that kept me in my car for so long was, frankly, my intimidation about learning to use the Metro system. Metro’s web site does offer a trip planner but I found it clunky, difficult to use and not that helpful in making my route visual to me.

And then I found Google Transit.
The Google Transit system uses the exact same data as the King Country Metro trip planner, but the interface is so much more elegant, easier to manipulate, and, critically, blends Metro data with Google’s excellent maps. As a result of using this tool, I overcame my reluctance to use Metro and have become a committed user of mass transit (and this was long before gas nudged near $5 a gallon).

The key idea here is that it wasn’t data that changed my behavior, it was a superior interface. It was a better user experience that got me on the bus. In this example, Metro failed in the last mile (no pun intended) because, despite the massive investment in resources and advertising to increase bus users, they failed to convert me due to my online experience with their brand. Fortunately for them, Google came to their rescue.

The issue of usability is at the core of what makes a truly effective business extranet or consumer web site. Often it’s not the capabilities of the software that define whether a solution will be a success, but how quickly it is embraced by users. Well thought out and implemented user interface and user experience design are key to driving user adoption. Tremendous efficiencies can be gained by automation. Communication can be made much more timely. Prospects can be responded to more quickly and at lower cost. But only if the system is actually used by the people it’s intended to benefit.

So I headed to the KLIIK website. At the homepage, you are asked to select between a Flash or HTML site. No matter which one you select, a popup opens, and this now serves as the website. That is, however, until you select the catalog. This selection opens a new window in the original browser. Talk about bad UX…. To top it off, you can only view 4 of the hundreds of frames they offer unless you have a login and password.

I do not understand the thinking behind this. The entire collection does exist on the website, so no added production work is needed to let the customer browse your entire collection. And, this is not the type of purchase normally made online, so sharing this information would not alienate the dealer. Customers will still need to head to a dealer to try the glasses on, have measurements made, and to place the order.

Consider the money KLIIK spent on the Flash intro on their website – the models, the photo shoot, and the music. Why not spend a little more time thinking about the “Last Mile”, and how your customers will want to interact with your product?

Google has been indexing Flash since 2004

Well, the news isn’t exactly as groundbreaking as some first thought. For starters, Google has already been indexing flash files since 2004. Google’s spiders have been able to view any static text information since shortly after Macromedia released their Flash Search Engine SDK. The difference with this latest update is that Google’s mystical little crawlers can now access dynamic text as well as recognize URLs in that text.

Because it deals with their algorithms, Google is very close mouthed about the specifics of this change. But of the three technical limitations they (Ron Adler, Janis Stipins, and Maile Ohye) cite, two of them stand out conspicuously.

1. Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.

2. We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.

No JavaScript?

The first isn’t too bad at first blush, but it raises quite a few questions. Best practices for embedding Flash has involved the use of JavaScript for years now. Most developers use scripts like SWFObject to do the dirty work and take care of IE’s old problem with Eolas and the ActiveX warning. So does using this method cancel out Google’s new ability? Or would a simple noscript tag be good enough for their bots? And what about libraries like SWFAddress? Which would you choose between, having Flash indexed in this new way, or deep linking, bookmarking, and analytical functionality?

Dynamic without being flexible

The second caveat is much bigger and makes the new indexing possibly pointless, some would say worse than pointless. What is the point of dynamic text if you can’t load dynamic data? And does “external sources” cover Json and other text files? How about Remote Objects? Google simply doesn’t tell us enough.

What’s more, as some of the anti-Flash crowd (I’m looking at you Reddit) have pointed out, is that this might encourage old, bad habits. If keeping your data separate from your presentation loses out to SEO, than the myth that Flash pieces aren’t maintainable starts to become true.

And then there’s this point:

At present, we are only discovering and indexing textual content in Flash files. If your Flash files only include images, we will not recognize or index any text that may appear in those images. Similarly, we do not generate any anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.

So does this mean that URLs appearing within the Flash are only indexable if they are spelled out explicitly, or that they need to be labelled? Once again, we simply don’t have enough information.

A step towards a more open Flash player

But for me, whether this proves to be a boon or a bust, the big news isn’t Google’s update, but the change at Adobe that instigated it. In yet another step that may eventually lead down the garden path of an open source Flash player, Adobe opened up the player up to Google and Yahoo in order to facilitate this change.

Adobe has provided Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! that allows their search spiders to navigate through a live SWF application as if they were virtual users. The Flash Player technology, optimized for search spiders, runs a SWF file similarly to how the file would run in Adobe Flash Player in the browser, yet it returns all of the text and links that occur at any state of the application back to the search spider, which then appears in search results to the end user.

More to come

And here’s the kicker. This is just the start:

We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers, and end users.

I’m not sure how far behind the curtain Adobe will eventually let us look, but they’re not through just yet. Until they do, we’re very much in the dark regarding the specifics of Flash’s new searchability. If I can find the time, I intend on doing a little experimenting to try and fill in some of the blanks that Google left out. I’ll post my results if I do.

But what does this mean for marketers

The jury is still out on exactly how this affects web strategy. There’s simply not enough information available to make a judgement call. In the meantime, Flash implementations that were a bad idea yesterday because of SEO, should still be treated like a bad idea today.

The concept of Web 2.0 is soon, if not already, going to be at that same place. The mainstream media has heard the term but generally doesn’t get that it’s more than just big shiny buttons and simple social networks.

How refreshing, then, to see an entry today from BusinessWeek of the 10 Commandments of Web Design that pretty much gets it right. Their Biblical hyperbole not withstanding, it’s a good list that will introduce to a wider audience the sentiments and approaches we’ve been preaching for years.

Had lunch with a good friend I hadn’t seen in a while and we spent a lot time talking about the Pokémon trading card game. I don’t know a thing about Pokémon, but what “Joe” told me about how the game works posed some interesting questions about the concept of the “wisdom of crowds”.
Joe has been mad for card trading games for years. And while Pokémon is aimed at kids, he’s a serious player and competes in the “senior” category. According to Joe, game play is pretty simple—a player assembles a “deck” and competes in a sort of rock, scissors, paper way. Each year, Pokémon issues a new series of cards and there’s a season ending in an international tournament every year.

Players from all over the world share ideas about strategies and figure out what combinations of cards are the most effective. In other words, they create a global “evolutionary” environment where many, many players are constantly making tweaks and figuring out winning combinations. The result is an unbeatable “super deck” that, if played well, virtually guarantees a winning result.

Joe told me he’s been expecting to meet an individual player who’s better at assembling a deck than he is, and he’s not found one yet. But he can’t beat the super decks. He’s a very smart guy with a strategic mind, but as he said, “I’m not smarter than the internet.”

I asked him, “But where’s the fun, just in the winning? If everybody’s playing the proven performer, where’s the suspense, the fun, of competing?” But he told me there’s a catch. Typically, most of the players that make it to the finals are playing the super deck, but that is often not who wins. Even though “the internet” has created the super deck, it’s often the individual who’s come up with the combination that beats that deck that takes home the trophy.

I think this example has interesting implications for the nature of social networks. There’s no question that a large number of people contributing to finding a solution to a problem can often lead to a really smart solution, a solution that’s “smarter” than you are as an individual.

But we shouldn’t forget that there is still that potential out there for a scary smart individual to beat the crowd, and do it consistently. To rely only on the wisdom of crowds would be a mistake—whether in investing, research, politics, etc. Potentially, relying on the crowd misses the opportunity for a contrarian or an original thinker to produce a world-beating idea.

Now that social networking technologies are linking more and more “crowds” together, do we risk becoming lazy about challenging assumptions and looking for the best solution? When is it appropriate to challenge the wisdom of a crowd? Is it more efficient to go with the almost best solution to a problem, even if it means sacrificing the very best idea? When should we kick over the conventional wisdom, even when it’s proven to be effective?

Pivot+Levy has developed a reporting approach that provides dynamic and graphical analysis of any demographic or psyographic inputs from online forms. These may include information or subscription requests, or summary data from ecommerce transactions.

A client comments: “What once took weeks and a dedicated staff resouce, has been entirely automated. Critical prospect and product preference data is now available to key decision makers in real time.” – JoAnne Foist, Fleetwood Homes.

Purchase Timeframe/Lead Counts & Age Data (Chart is dynamic, and reflects data collected from consumer form submissions).

Most leads plan to purchase within one year. 7-12 months is the purchase horizon most often stated, followed by 4-6 months, and 0-3 months