Barry W Thornton Blog

Welcome to Hard Times, not a town in a Henry Fonda Western but your front door. Everyone wants a discount, times are tough, they are special, everyone knows that you make too much anyway.

Your salesman are weakening, they don’t have a clue about selling the value of the product or service even though they read all the books, watch the CDs and you bring in ‘Experts” to prop them up.

I always felt that in general there are three weak spots in sales people that no one wants to deal with:

First, your salesmen are nice people. To be blunt you don’t necessarily want nice people, you want people who can be nice. You want people who have an almost vicious determination to get the sale at the terms they want; nice is one of the many tools they use to do. A good high-value closer is, just below the surface, well, not a nice person. That is cool, most of us deep inside know we may not be the nicest folks in that what we will do to someone else’s head to achieve our goal has limited bounds.

Was that a distasteful thought we just went through, feel that I am being insensitive and maybe even hurtful in what I advocate. If so you really don’t want to go any further with me in the realities I will be exploring in this series, go find a more sunshiny blog to read, one about kittens and puppies perhaps.

Second, your salesmen don’t have the faith. They don’t have the faith that they can close the deal the way you want them to. The suffer from the ‘Stockholm Syndrome”, they sympathize with the customer and surrendered their own will. Lacking willpower means no Force-Of-Will. It is Force-Of-Will that keeps the good salesman working on the customers head until the customer believes the value proposition that justifies the cost of the product. The good salesman instills faith about him, the company, and the products in the customer’s mind. Only then is the value of the product or service well enough established that the discount is not the winning issue, faith drives the discount aside. It’s called a Value Proposition for a darn good reason.

Third, is Cohunes – Brass Balls. Some look at this as a lack of pride, the willingness to interact with people to n-th degree with a sole purpose. Don’t confuse this with Force-Of-Will, there is a fine and important difference. Force-Of-Will is about drive, Cohunes is about welding that Willpower without being bothered what people think of you. It is about using that drive, which is beyond having it.

Point of it all is that good sales people are animals inside, mental animals with few external signs of what is really going on inside themselves. True stealth creatures, how cool!

Let’s talk about salesmen for a bit.

First thought. It is said with confidence that 45% of salesmen don’t close. Personally I think this number is low, but I will run with the convention for this Blog.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t bring home the order, it simply means that in most cases they take the order, not develop it, THEY DON’T CLOSE! They function as clerks, not sales people, but of course they claim all the credit. In fact they will claim more credit for the sale because they know their weakness and will lie to cover it.

Because we managers are only interested in results we generally don’t seek to understand the difference. The problem is that this means we are out of control, our salesman’s performance is capricious, based on luck and Marketing in many ways. Is this bad? After all, we got the sale.

It is terrible for several reasons:

1 – We don’t know which of our efforts (marketing or sales) made the event happen, so where do we pour our limited resources, more marketing or more commissions?

2 – We loose predictability, the data about our sales pipeline is false or weak at best. If the salesman is really clerking then he in fact is doing three things.

A – Operating in the blind, most likely deceiving himself in the process.

B – Deceiving us, in essence selling us, most likely lying to us.

C – Not developing the customer meaning that customer retention is going to be harder and we are not getting maximum yield for that customer.

This lack of clear vision means that the actual effectiveness of our Marketing is not really understood, without this feedback Marketing cannot better tune itself, understand the success of that they are doing, get better at it.

Most important, we have a B or C player working for us in a time when A-players are on the market. If we understood the truth we could replace him with an A-player thus future-proof our company by increasing our overall quality of the process, moral, and power of our selling force.

I hope you like your clerks.

Hi there, I have been off-line for about two months doing the 10 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week thing bringing life to a bootstrap start-up I started, fitting the family in has left no time to think or write about anything not related to product development and then sales of my stuff. But this is not about me; it’s about customers and sales.

My product caters to the contemporary Carriage Trade. What’s that you say (I heard that you know, these blogs are two-way . . . sometimes, depends on if I a listening, and I have selective hearing)? Carriage Trade refers to the retailers of old who had no front door; you could only get in by having your carriage enter through a portal to a vestibule. That’s class-

Prices are very high, margins are, well, GREAT. But it is an emotional sale that deals with vanity. The point is that after all this work anyone in my company that even mentions the word ‘discount’ is looking for a pink slip. A killer value prop, and oh yea, we don’t even advertise and sales are, well, justifying it all.

High price, niche market with almost universal appeal, lots of pull. How do you do it?

First of all most other entrepreneurs I run across are thinking in old (10 years ago, how long is that . . . let me tell you, a long f**king time ago!) models, too much internet, failure to really understand the tribal approach, lousy sensitivity to customers, too much sensitivity to people like themselves thinking they are the customer, incremental product, and most fundamentally little or no transformational qualities (see Pine and Gillmore, it’s all about the leading edge of the new-old economy).

Thus you now have all the clues to figure it out. Am I going to tell you how to think to find your own version of my path.

Hell No!

I can’t. Like the old crazy Werner Erhard dude said, even if I tell you, you won’t get IT. It’s not intellectual, it’s emotional, you have to feel it, and there is no way that I tell you how to feel something, you learn to feel it by picking up the bread crumbs such as those I have dropped above, fill in the blank spaces, “feel the Force Luke”, your intuition will tell you. Then you do something entirely crazy, you take the leap, ignore all those SOBs that try to tell you what is right, commit, go crazy, and win the day.

Welcome to the new-old world. Go kick your bankers butt.

Adaos Amigos.

Barry the Curmudgeon

Thank you David Farragut, yes, forget the torpedoes, open up the throttle and kick your life into gear.

We may be looking at the great but final age of the Entrepreneur as we know it. I have a theory that I call the “moo-cow” society. It has nothing to do with politics, or economics, it has to do with society in general and the political/economic reality that drives. I see a world 40 years from now (2 generations that is) where we Type-A characters are, well, lets just say there are a lot fewer of us, and our “A-ism” has an entirely different focus. A society of forced equals where everybody has pretty much the same and conformal. We get a handle on poverty at the cost of the general wealth of the top-end and diversity at the cost of uniqueness. I see this not because of any social justice or morality issue, but simply because that’s the way you put 13 billion people on this planet without them all trying to kill each other. We practice a form of husbandry on the herd of mankind to get predictable and controllable results. Fortunately I will be dead because I find this repugnant, but this is only an opinion and oh, by the way, I am not asking you to believe my theory.

But if I am even close to right, for all this to happen, we really need to be the last generation of unconstrained go-getters. The entrepreneur way of life as we know it needs to change so as to be less unpredictable, less disruptive, less individual. The values in such a society will be aesthetic rather than material. Spiritualism, art and internal reflection will be the basis of the value system; I doubt the dollar, as we understand it now, will be in circulation

Now the political part. Our current new government is adjusting us to this new society. It doesn’t know that it is doing this because our political heroes are just seeking power in the old and ususal way, don’t think that far ahead regardless of what they say.

I tell you this not to get into an argument with you (don’t send me any emails with your opinions, they will go unread and unanswered). I tell you this so you will understand that this is the last great gasp of entrepreneurship as we now know it, 10 years from now it will be, well, different . . . and you won’t like it. So now is the time to make the push to follow your dream. About the time you succeed the rules will be changing in such a way as to assure that no one will be following you. It will be time to take the money and run.

I have always said that the entrepreneur state of mind is lonely; in the future it will be socially unacceptable too. So bask in the glow now, do your ‘thing’ and love it. Welcome to the new reality.

While I don’t do enough of it, every so often it is a good idea to take a short break and ponder who knows what? Here it is, midnight on Sunday evening, or is it Monday morning, and usually I would be in bed reading while the rest of the family slept. As usual I am reading three books at the concurrently, a cute Bob Heinlein novel called Job: a comedy of Justice, a collection of essays called Monty Python and Philosophy: Nudge Nudge, Think Think, and a neat little book on humor called Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar . . . . but tonight I am out on the porch looking at the lake lit by a full moon though broken clouds, wind blowing at a good 20 knots, a drink, a cigar, and my industrial strength cat Squeaky whom I sometimes refer to as ‘Squeakal-matter’ (like he cares). We are engaged in a year and a half long drought and is it supposed to rain tonight and oh joy, so far just some drizzle.

I have been working on fund raising for a business I started and was looking for a big chunk of change to get it going. I haven’t had much luck, the financial market has scared most folks, I am tired of the control freaks wanting 51%, VCs are out of the question, and on Thursday I fired my fundraiser. All he could find were people who ultimately wanted a piece of the action for finding someone else.

While I talk a lot about bootstrapping I haven’t done it in a while but a couple of days ago I finally said “F**k it, time to go back to my roots” and I devised a way to get going without playing the investor game. Gawd I feel better, this way I have some control over the process and will be dealing with the only people I really like, my customers. I put together a program, my two guys (COO and CMO) agreed, I got on the phone and found resources to make it happen, and we are off to the races. It’s about time I woke up and took my own advice, boy does it feel good! Trying to please investors can be a pain, their pompous attitude laced with fear stinks the room up. Trying to please customers is a joy, their honesty and happiness with getting a solution is a breath of spring air. As the singing lady Joni Mitchell said, “I’m a free man in Pairs, unfettered and alive!” Damn, it’s nice. It’s what Aristotle said is man’s essential property, his telos. Well the drinks done, the cigar is finished, the cat just squeaked at me that he is bored, and I feel great, time to write some literature.

When was the last time you felt like that?

The other day I was involved in an email thread about bulk mailing. While we on the thread generally agreed that bulk mailing was a bulk waste of time I had brought up a process I had used with some degree of success.  This process involved sending out post-cards with only one word on them.  My theory for doing this was that a post card with one word on it can not be denied, that someone can’t pick the card up and not read the one word as they throw it into the trash.  With this action I have gained brain-space, even if only for a fraction of a second, I got in through the noise, my “word” was in their brain.

“So what?” you might ask.  What does this do for you?

Well consider that you do it a couple of times. That word becomes an accepted data-point.   One way to look at it is brand recognition, you know that brand word.  Maybe you don’t know anything about it but you know the word, it is familiar and in that familiarity it becomes comfortable and perhaps non-threatening.  But it comes with a question.   What is it?

Remember the book/movie “The Manchurian Candidate”? A post hypnotic set of commands is activated with a single word.  Perhaps this is the reverse, a post-hypnotic curiosity is activated by the word.

So you cold-call the individual you sent the cards to and say the “word” in the introduction, the first words you get out before they hang the phone up.   Could this stop them from closing their mind?   Could this keep the door open long enough to get a second or third word in?  Could they be curious enough to ask what it all means?   Could you have a dialog as a result?  Could it lead to a sale?

One word.  What word would you choose?

A little while back I wrote that the real job of marketing is to make the potential customer unhappy with what they have.  I caught some interesting flack about that thought, got accused of being to simplistic naive, and crude.  So to torture those minds I would like to drop the other shoe. . . . good marketers are good Propagandists, the “P”-word in this age of political correctness and propriety.

Propaganda.  What a neat concept.  We use it all the time, daily in fact!  I like Jowett and O’Donnell’s definition.

“Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”

Typically this is an emotional effort; after all, dissatisfaction has a lot of emotional content.  And yes, it is the overt manipulation of an individual or individuals.

Does that bother you?  If it does then you should take some time off and figure out why.  If you are comfortable with it then the real question is how can we get better at it?

The seeds of dissatisfaction, in essence fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD) should be woven into every message and communication you make to your potential customer, and it should be done purely out of habit.  Happy people rarely change, and selling someone something is all about change.

Propaganda is not evil in and of itself.  Like all tools of mankind, it is the intended use that possess good or evil values (compare its use by Joseph Goebbels’ opposed to Billy Graham’s).  Your values are good if your product or service makes someone’s life better in some way.  Be proud of that.  Propaganda is a powerful tool, use it.

I would like to offer some supporting thoughts as to the value of the bootstrap process, the wisdom of your choice to follow it, and the ultimate practicality of it today.  First a couple of quotes:

Forbes this month (Jan 2009 ) “The venture capital industry is staring at the most vicious shakeout in its  history . . . Returns are pathetic for most funds, [and] the public offering pipeline on which venture depends for its exit strategy is clamped shut.”

Bloomberg.com, “IPOs historically dry up at the end of a bear market and don’t begin to recover for months after a  rally as issuers and investors wait for signs of stability.”

During the last quarter, 38 companies withdrew or postponed their filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Bloomberg says “it may take until 2011 for the number of companies going public to return to their 2007 level, according to data compiled by the University of Florida. While the S&P 500 rose an average of 24 percent in the first year after a market plunge, the data show, it takes 34 months on average for underwriting to return to its rate at the start of a slowdown.”

Companies pursuing the traditional VC or investor routes are running into brick walls or valuations that are ridiculous

Yet this is one of the best times to start a business.

We are in a world rich with new technologies, applications of those technologies, services that can be based on those technologies, and perceptions based on those technologies that open unimaginable doors.

Even better, established businesses whose inertia, that is inability to change and adapt, and whose debt or commitment (financial, political, or social) are now untenable are thus going on the rocks and leaving unsatisfied customers with unfulfilled appetites looking for solutions.

This is possibly one of the best times in recent history to apply the bootstrap techniques creating your fortune.  I wish you well and in these stormy times expect to see good results for you on your journey down a good path, stick to it.

Happy New Year and New Era, Barry

Yo-Ho-Ho!

It’s the end of the year and everything is supposed to change, reset, fire-up, get going . . .  you know, improve.  Doesn’t that happen every year?  Like the Nile flooding and rejuvenating Egypt, rebirth!

It is funny how easy it is to imagine time as big circle (couldn’t be something about planetary rotation could it?).  Well, I typically think of a year as a big loop with repeated energy patterns around it.  The ‘Holidays” is one such pattern or block of time that we have all traditionaly thought of a ’slow’ for everything but retrial.  It is symbolically the End. . .  and Start, of another turn on the helix, a continuing next loop through time.

There is always the calm before the storm, things are going to take off right after the New Year and there we go.  It was part of the cycle of life.

Well, the wheel hit a bump this year.  While the clock may be advancing the cycle isn’t.  It’s stuck, in fact it may be slipping backwards a bit in some places.

Fortunately a Bailout is going to get it going again (drum roll and high-hat hit).  But guess what?  That cycle can slip too (it’s part of the cycle now because it exists in our minds, more about that some later blog).

How can you plan ahead to be safe?  Can you foretell the future?

Well, yes . . . and then of course, no.  The probability of this calamity happening was very high, so it did happen and in that it was predictable.  Could you predict when and how?  Only if you believe in Issac Asimov stories.  Our whole system is so artificial that it floats by itself, but just every so often, because it is possible to do,  it does a bit of a reality check.  Welcome to that moment, it happened in your life-time, probability became reality.

Right now History isn’t working too well as a guild to the future so you are just going to have to fake it.

Please, oh Please, remember this.  The best, I mean the very best of the guys are supposed to and claim to be able to tell what will be going on tomorrow didn’t have a clue when it happened.  Don’t feel bad or guilty about being in the same place they are.  We, collectively as a culture, were wrapped in the warm cocoon of that special fabric, Disillusion and Denial(TM) , and loving it.

Now my friend is the time to move fast, maximize you agility, take action, and be cool

As Lord Byron said, “Adversity is the first path to truth.”

You can’t get on the path unless you engage the world

Copyright Barry W Thornton all rights reserved 2009

The big kid on the block, the monopoly that many criticize, has been pushed again by the lowly customer.  From BBC news this morning:

“Windows XP allowed to live again

Microsoft has given yet another reprieve to its seasoned Windows XP operating system.

But now Microsoft has put in place a scheme that will allow the hardware firms to get hold of XP licences until 30 May 2009.

Previously Microsoft extended XP’s life until 2010 - provided it was installed on netbooks and low-cost laptops.

Windows XP was originally due to disappear off shop shelves on 30 January 2008. It was to be removed so as to make way for Windows Vista which went on sale to consumers early in 2007.

Despite Microsoft’s claims that Vista has sold well, consumers have reacted badly to its release.

Microsoft granted the reprieve largely because of customer’s preference for XP.”

Never, ever, underestimate the power of the customer.  And never, ever, think you control the customer.

Last year I got smart and followed Bill Gates, we both left microsoft, he went on his way and I went to Ubuntu.

Oh my gawd!, look at my in-box. Given hard times everyone is trying to fill it. The spam level has exploded and I am getting bombarded with more promotions that ever. The result is of course I spend a bit more time killing this stuff and don’t look at any of it. These folks are getting desperate and the only solution to their very limited marketing imaginations is to turn up the throttle, which is increase, the volume of their customer communications. A simple answer, send more e-mails to your customers with more offers.

Does this really work? A Does it make sense?

Heck no!

I am so busy getting rid of junk communications from people I have done business with and expect to in the future that I don’t even read them anymore. I find myself hitting the UNSUBSCRIBE button more just out of spite for their stupidity.

I have my own stresses, don’t add yours to the pile. There must be a better way. And of course there is.

First, as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy says, in friendly letters, DON’T PANIC!

This is the time to create stronger bonds, not alienate the customer. Here are some thoughts on how to do that.

1 – Don’t Broadcast Your Panic. It stinks. The customer can smell it and is repulsed, usually permanently. Control yourself, the big push isn’t going to save the day so get smart, stop and think . . don’t stampede with knee-jerk reactions. Calm down.

2 – It is all changing, the market and your customers. Define the change so you can adapt your approaches to fit it. In theory the ultimate skill of mankind is to adapt and evolve quickly so try to be a good functional human. This means the first thing is to find out the new rules. Take time to ask the customer what is going on and where they are going. Get feedback, answer questions, be useful and maintain those good relations you worked so hard to get.

3 - You are scared, they are scared, get above it even if you think the ship is sinking, get their input and project your wisdom. Be strong, not overbearing, show wisdom and strength. Become a bastion of hope, it’s what Obama did and worked for him, you still don’t hear a plan but the belief that one is coming keeps people tuned in and listening. Follow that path.

4 – Dialog with your customers. Engage them. Write content that encourages dialog, get their ideas and publish them to other customers. Timely, entertaining, relevant, hopeful content shows that you are on top of it, experts with strength. Listening shows you care, spreading the word, answer to questions and smart advise, all show that you are responsible, trustworthy, and concerned for them.

5 - If there ever was time to be social, this is it! Don’t run off into the ‘WEB.2” illusion, get real. Your customer’s have a desire to do well for others, figure out how you can get into that flow. If it is sales, give some of the cash flow to charity and make a point of it, it is really your customer who is helping out, make sure he knows it and can be proud that when the chips are down what is good for him (your stuff or service) is also good for the community. There a thousand variations on this, find one that works for you.

6 – If you have a local presence, partner with local companies to make an event. Simple things, take your internal expertise, your Financial, HR, Ops, Procurement, even Execs public. Set up a simple “ask the expert’ table top in a bookstore, supermarket, where ever, and offer up their experience and knowledge to those who want to learn or need knowledge. Take those dialogs, now questions from the common man, and use them as content for your email. Practical stuff that can get you newspaper and radio exposure as well as tell you customers you really care.

Use your imagination; push out with who you are, not just your “deals”. Build trust and show concern. It is cheap to do, just open your heart and show you have one.

Copyright 2008 Barry W Thornton all rights reseved

The other day I again ran across a major manager, in this case a CEO but this thought is not limited to the CEO class, who is a bully. I was reminded of something that Halibuton* said:

“A brave man is sometimes a desperado; but a bully is always a coward.”

When you meet and observe driven individuals that you will have to interact with it is important to learn early which kind you are dealing with. In business there is a strong lead and/or follow relationship issue in when two or more personalities work toward a transaction or common goal. Fundamental to the relationship is the issue of personal faith, that is in theory you both put faith in each other as an assumptive basis for the furtherance of your activity. It takes a brave person to deal with the truths frequently necessary to succeed, a bit of the desperado is not uncommon for part of the definition of desperado it to be bold enough to cast a fear aside, in this case to do what is right.

This is not the domain of the bully for he is a coward. The bully will use bluster to camouflage that character flaw, most commonly in the form of misleading you with their supposed fame. Bragging, name-dropping, innuendo, implying relationships, generally claiming what is not theirs are the tools they use and that you must watch out for.

As you build your business you are exercising bravery. For the faint of heart do not pick up the responsibility for their lives and the lives of others, they do not follow their dreams. They steal and claim dreams from others.

You will be besieged by bullies who will try to impress you with their skill, power, and virtue. This is always done with the intent of getting their hand into your pocket, to acquire your power and resources, and to leverage you in the launch on to their next victim.

This guy I met the other day reminded me that constant vigilance is the key to survival and success. Thus again, Andy Grove’s motto, “only the paranoid survive” comes home.

Have a prosperous New Year in these trying times.

Barry Thornton, a part-time follower of Socrates

*Thomas Haliburton (1796-1867) Scottish Humorist

Not gold. That’s right, is not gold!

Glitter is a distraction and mental occupier, it is rarely reality. I have found over the years that the more the lights blink, the more noise it makes, the more buzz and glitz produced . . . the less the profits and potential really exist.  By the time the lights are on you are late to the party.

We are creatures whose brains are based on the attention to change. For the couple of million years we evolved in being attentive to the snap of a twig or the flicker of a color in the tall grass was all that kept us alive. Fight or Flee is a core operating paradigm still in our brains. Ever wake up in the middle of the night because of a sound? Did you happen notice that your adrenaline was already flowing, the cognitive part of your brain, the consciousness, was the last part to come on line, you were already to take action when your eyes opened. You hear 300 to 3000 Hertz best because that is the frequency range of the sound braking twigs and rustling grass. You see more shades of yellow because living in tall yellow grass you had to see tiger stripes from dried grass in an instant. You are sensitive to change , it is the basis of our brains, all this thought stuff we do came much later in the brain’s development, in the last 1% of our evolution. Change is what our brains are all about.

Ever notice that one of the first questions out of most people’s mouths is “what’s new?”

We are driven by fads, the presentation of newness. We love it! Look at our response to hype. How about movies and music, the delivered product is typically a let down compared the promise of something new. What is greater than a new love?

I am not saying you should be cynical (which you should) but that this is the pattern of life, newness and change is attractive because we are wired for it (I am old enough to have seen bell-bottom become popular for the third time that I know of so I have to assume it happened many times before I became aware of them in the 60’s). Virtually everything has happened before but it is new to us the first time we experience it, thus it is exciting, it makes our brains perk up and focus, dream, and for a moment we are more alive than we have been in a while. The habituation sets in, we get used to it, it become normal and dull. Thus are we wired to think.

So what is the point for an entrepreneur you ask?

Simple, don’t fall for newness but use it to your advantage, and do so without shame. After all, it is life’s only consistent pattern besides death and taxes.

The other day I was reflecting on office space. The reason for this is that my newest company, Austin Medical Research has no offices, we all work out of our homes. We have labs and engineering space, but that is confidential and thus not open to anyone other than select employees, it is not public space. It is because we are about to do a big expansion in people that I reflect on this issue.

My last start-up (ClearCube Technology) was started in my garage, as we grew we moved into a rented apartment complex on the lake (it had a pool and gym, great view, water access, patio, etc. – all benefits for the employees). After that we moved into a strip mall office space and then we got a new CEO and it all changed. Suddenly our image required a big public space because our customers were Enterprise, Fortune 100 companies and we had to do the dog and pony show all the time.

Do we really need that now? We use a Contract Manufacturer for production and fulfillment so what are the real office needs? Who will come to our office other than people trying to sell us stuff? Who needs to be impressed and why?

None as far as I can see for the near future but let’s look at that closer.

How about the most important people, my customers? We do direct sales to Distributors, Doctors, and Patients. We can stage local events for the Distributors and the Doctors in a rented-by-the-hour presentation office space when needed. We have budgeted visits to them for everything from training to schmoozing, after all this is an Entertainment Economy so we do it right, rent a real stage.

How about Investors? No, if I can impress an investor with my office building and not my balance sheet then I am dealing with morons. They invested to make money, not to satisfy their ‘edifice complex’. As long as they understand that we will stage what we need when we need it (again, this is after all an Entertainment Economy), they have no reason to complain.

How about Employees? All my managers would rather work from home. They get more done without giving up over a hour a day to drive to work. More important I get people who would not relocate anyway. Communications – well we are Skype-nuts, I can see and talk with each on the computer at any time. Meetings can be done at my house or we can rent a space when needed. Skype is the water-cooler and the conference room. All have an equity stake and are motivated. If I hire intelligently most all the rest of the staff can also work at home and Skype to work. Jobs that fall below the independent worker level and require daily supervision can be outsourced as needed, they are so well defined that metrics alone can drive them. In general I get greater efficiency and happier folks. It is a new culture based on the Internet, why not take advantage of it?

How about my bottom line? No office overhead, no receptionist, no facilities person, Outsourcing IT is a gigantic help, office politics and social issues go away, time is used better, where do I stop?

How long can we do this? I think we can do this until fear sets in and we need organized waste for self-validation. I think I am too old for that, are you?

I think that the market crash teaches us a lesson about information processing technology.  Primarily that lesson is . . . IT DOESN’T WORK!!!.

The idea was all this data collection and processing power, all the decision making software, data mining, analysis, and of course, automation and automated work flow stuff was going to tell us the future.  the problem is simply that it doesn’t work.  In fact, most of it exacerbated the problem.

Technology does make it happen faster, in the current case this means spin-in, out of control, but faster than if done by hand.

We have be awash in promises and claims that the great god of technology would make our business lives easier and better.  Business owners and managers could make better decisions and predict, thus control, the future with greater accuracy and in greater detail.

So we tanked with the help of the illusion provided by software that was to guide us.

The fundamental reasons for this are also simple; a L and the two Great D’s.

1 - Laziness - Thinking is hard, reacting is easy.  When we should have trusted common sense and critical thinking we chose the easy way, let someone (or something) tell us what to do.

2 - Denial - When the crap started hitting the fan we denied it.  We told ourselves it was only an anomaly, we ignored, in fact denied, the signs of what was going on.  We denied what our common sense should have screamed at us.

3 - Delusion - We deluded ourselves into thinking that it was not happening and what did would not happen to us.  It was the other guy’s problem.

Aren’t these a common and reoccurring set of issues.  Let George do it, in this case George was technology.

The lessons are simple.

1 -Technology doesn’t think, it doesn’t even react, it does execute . .  it can do that very fast.

2 - You can’t program common sense with Java or C+++.  Though I now do think that you can program greed in those languages.

3 - In general, EXPERTS SUCK.

4 - In the end, rational human thought and decision-making must prevail for us to succeed.

Nothing new here, that’s why we ignore it and chase the fairy dust.

Remember that slogan? I always see it with an image of a gaggle of ducks, brings a smile, sometimes a chuckle.

Forget about the person in the way, he is a moron and lost. And you can’t tell a follower to lead, it is not in their DNA. Eh? Leadership and DNA? I question that because everyone is born a leader, but not necessarily obviously one but given the right conditions and guess what?.  Maybe it would be most accurate to say that leaders discover themselves over time. We all have leadership DNA in us, we are humans and it is part of the stuff we are made of. Most people don’t want to lead, which is simply denying a trait. It may be they never have an opportunity to lead, it may be that they don’t want to deal with the responsibility that always goes with it, or for some reason leading just doesn’t happen in their life cycle.

Leaders are rarely managers, managers usually follow. Once in while you get a combination of the two, I am not sure it is desirable in the large scheme of the things to have one person be both. I’ll tell you why. Leaders typically have an internalized goal that they drive to. This drive is almost spiritual, it is pure in nature and a combination of abstraction and solidity, but most of all it is non-negotiable. Such a presence inspires faith and thus motivates people far beyond what fear or greed can do.

The problem is that leading is non-negotiable. Getting things done requires negotiation, and that’s what managers do. You can lead to a goal so that people can manage to it. A leader responds in the moment to crises as they arise, never imagining they didn’t exist or wishing them away. And a leader never asks his followers to do something he or she wouldn’t do themselves. Most important is that they never give up, they endure.

A little too ‘John Wayne’ for you? Well it’s only the beginning of the traits you have to possess to take on that job. Let me offer that most CEOs I have met don’t have these characteristics. They are fair to good managers who acquired the job of Leader and let it go to their heads. Take a look at Morgan Stanley, Wachovia, or GM for a good starting reference point for the last sentence.

When you decide to take the reins and truly become the leader of your troops, you will bow to no one and you will finally be a truly free person. So get to it, onward into the fog.

I found this page in an old files, it comes from Texas Instruments from the mid-60s but is ever so true today.

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The Ten Essentials Of Our Business

The Customer . . . .is the most important person in our business.

The Customer. . . . is the purpose of our work, not an an interruption to it.

The Customer . . . . is not dependent on us -  we are dependent on him

The Customer . . . . is part of our business, not and outsider.

The Customer . . . . is someone to work with - not against

The Customer . . . . does us a favor when he calls, we are not doing him a favor by serving him.

The Customer . . . . is deserving of the most courteous and attentive treatment we can give him.

The Customer . . . . is a person who brings us his wants, it is our job to fill those wants.

The Customer . . . . is a flesh and blood human being with feelings and emotions like our own, not a cold statistic.

The Customer . . . . is the person who makes it possible to pay our salaries

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Not much else to say compared to this.

Wow! A couple of days ago someone smacked me upside the head with a Ph.D! It’s been a long time since that has happened and it still tickles.

I was at a lunch of an organization to find out about them and determine my interest in working to get on their Board. I like their premise and know I could help drive them to where they want to go. What I learned was that after 10 month of existence they still don’t know where that exactly is (they’re not a business but a non-profit). Those of you that know me, well, you know how I can be a pain-in-the-neck with my pressure to discover and my thruthaches and the like. So I was torturing the Board to push them to find out what they really want to be and no one understood what I was doing. I ask questions that sound like opinions to get a more profound answer and push people into self-discovery. While I am seeking knowledge they think I am telling them what to do, don’t worry, it is confusing but is style that leads from chaos to order (in a very Shakespearean way). Well, a person there and I had differing opinions and as you also know, I kneel to no one so I didn’t yield to this person’s sense of self-authority and importance.

Anyway, I was taking some heat from them and not responding in the desired fashion when the person in question whipped out the old line ’I know because of my education and my Ph.D!’ It was classic, I couldn’t have found a better line in movie. Surprise - I did conduct myself as a gentleman, I didn’t fall down laughing or say the obvious. I just looked around at the other folks to see if anyone else got it, some did, some didn’t.

I like these folks and what they ultimately can do, I would like to help.

But to the point, which is that you as an entrepreneur are subject to lots of people trying to influence you. Many of them have lots of letters before or after their name. Typically those letters say that person may know a whole lot about a narrow topic. None of those letters indicate that the have any COMMON SENSE.

Only you know the real truth about your enterprise, only you know the real goals, only you are responsible for what happens, only you live it. Don’t ever let an ‘expert’ dissuade you from what you know is right.

I repeat - THERE ARE NO DEGREES IN COMMON SENSE!

Does that make sense?

copyright Barry W Thornton all rights reserved

I was talking with an old friend, he has problems with some property, the zoning, and it’s future use as perceived by the city he lives in. Seems the city wants turn the area into a hipper, more modern area and didn’t like his industrial use of the property, they wanted to fine him and directed him to make some expensive changes. As we talked about it I realized that the only way to beat them (the city) was to take over the leadership. The old ‘find a parade and then get in front of it’ approach, something that politicians understand intuitively which why they are politicians; they have nothing to offer but the appearance of leading. In essence, I told him to “out politician the politicians”.

Politics is perhaps the best marketing in the world. The best of ‘someone is unhappy and we will lead them out of the wilderness and onto the blessed fields of plenty, sign here, and here, and, oh yea, sign here too!’

My friend is an entrepreneur. After our conversation he made up a sign to put on the wall of his office, he FAXed me a copy and I used it as the title of this blog.

He went on the attack, got a meeting and sat down with his City Councilman who immediately explained to him that he, the Councilman, couldn’t influence the zoning enforcement people. My friend didn’t complain about zoning but explained that he wanted to become a participant in their plan and do it now. He noted that the expensive work for the present zoning (which would be different in the new use plan) would mean he couldn’t spend the money on an architect to create the new plan to fulfill the City’s dream. And he wanted to be the first to get this dream going. The now cordial Councilman meeting ended, they shook hands and smiled.

A couple of days later my fiend calls up the enforcement agent to try to get a couple days extension on the compliance review. The agent’s boss remarked that the Councilman called and said that they had a good meeting, the review got put off because the zoning guys were suddenly busy, and that they would like to see his ideas to work with him on the direction. My friend is now leading the parade, not being trampled by it.

Now I know this is a long story but what does it mean to you as an Entrepreneur?

This is not about honey rather than vinegar. It is about getting those who you thought were leading to instead be follower. Your power is in your movement, it is mental jujitsu; use your antagonist’s energy to get what you want by stepping up the pace, get ahead of him. Sometimes your antagonist is an association you work with, sometimes it is associates that can’t focus or move clearly.

Just something to keep in the back of your mind as you work to change the landscape of your world.

Copyright Barry W Thornton all rights reserved

I had noted in an earlier Blog that the key to marketing is to make someone unhappy, it is then the job of sales to them make them happy again, that’s how the two work together. - - So what are the tools of unhappiness?

Try F.U.D. the acronym for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt!

If someone is happy with what they have you clearly aren’t going to sell them a replacement. Only when you break the relationship between what they have and how they feel about it can you expect to get new brain space, and brain space is what you need to convert them into a customer.

So F, U, and D are three great pry-bars or tools you can use to loosen up some brain-space. All of them start out as probes, until one hits a chink in the armor and gets some traction you have nothing, you just slide around on the outside of someone’s “satisfaction shield”.

You must probe with constant FUD questions to elicit response that will start someone thinking. Do this and in most cases a door will open.

Is this marketing or selling? Maybe it’s both.

Anyway, you must do a series of probative adverts, always asking questions that center around ‘what makes you think you are happy?’. Maybe you communicate a message that shows why they should be unhappy or happier. Maybe you do positioning statements or explanations that are really questions in disguise. Statements with words like ‘new’ or ‘better’ or the like are really questions, they ask ‘why don’t you have the newest or the best?.

Ever consider that the opening of any sales pitch is a marketing message or proposition? You bet it is! Every opening sales pitch is essentially an advertisement. Even if the target says no and walks way, just how is that different than having looked at an ad in a magazine or on TV ,and passed on it? It only becomes a sales pitch when some brain-space opens up and an idea enters the mind that can feed the unhappiness and start a change to occur.

In most ways technology marketing and sales is the easiest. Technology offers an addictive solution. Whatever the customer has, it is on the way to being out of date, not enough, too slow; whatever was good about it making the customer happy is now fading away. Technology is about change and change means something better is coming. It is only a matter of time.

What does this mean to the entrepreneur? - - It means two things. One is that the range for new ventures is almost unending and virtually unlimited, it is as wide as the scope of human endeavors and ideas. The second is that you only need to change one thing to make it new; only one problem has to be solved to tap a market. Your business will be based on what makes someone unhappy.  It really is simple after all.

copyright 2008 Barry W Thornton all rights reserved