Author: themshow

Categories
Great Marketing

Closing a Deal in Twitter

True story: I have been transitioning the family over to Macs. The most absurd part of this is that I don’t own a Mac myself. And yet, I did make the right decision. My Dad is no longer plagued with spyware and my wife can manage her pictures, music, etc.

The lovely Carin is actually very savvy and likes to login through the VPN at work to use a virtual desktop. As a result she’s asking about running Windows on her Mac. After digging in I found Chris Pirillo, freejacking on the cutting edge of tech, as usual, saying that the two are very close in features, price, etc.

So, having already bothered Chris Penn with my Mac question of the day (do I use Super Duper or Time Machine for backups?), I decided to throw it on to twitter:

themshow The boss wants to run Windows on her Mac so she can access work data. Parallels or VMware Fusion?

an hour later I get:

vmwarefusion @themshow Pssst….she wants to run Fusion. She told us ; ) Free 30-day trial, fully featured. Give it a spin vmware.com/mac

I spoke, someone listened. Case closed…

Categories
Geek Stuff

The Future of GPS

Gadget Alert!

The traffic function on this GPS looks incredible, I am in.

Imagine getting pinged when your best customers are a mile in and closing!

Categories
Lead Generation

Quarter End

Nothing like the end of a quarter to consume every minute in sight. I’ve also had the nagging cough that seems to be sticking around, I’m not sure if it’s a cold or the beginning of allergy season as the ground is softening up here.

The good news is that I have another project in the works with Joe from SalesRoundup, we’re going to be talking about the intersection of sales and marketing (which seems to be black and white, it’s either a war zone, or one big party). As a UMass alum, I have more than enough experience building parties.

So, if you are doing anything cool on the lead generation, or lead scoring front please contact me off list, otherwise… watch this space!

Categories
Podcasting

Coffee’s Up

The latest Marketing Over Coffee has hit the stands, a bunch of interesting Google stuff this week and some chat about copywriting offers. You can listen for free over at the site with the best marketing podcast.

Categories
Productivity Booster

100 Words or Less

I’ve had to fill out a bunch of forms recently for a number of different events. New events can be very exciting, covering hot topics and having no established old guard to leave the FNG’s feeling left out. On the other hand, with things being done for the first time, often on the fly, things can slip through the cracks.

Any time you request copy from someone be sure to give them a word count, even as only an outline. Nothing will make a brochure or look weirder, or make your graphic design job a real headache than having paragraphs of text from 20-1,000 words to string together. If you’re going to farm out work, be sure to set some guidelines, otherwise it may be more headache than it’s worth.

Categories
Daily Life The Marketeer

My Name is John

I’m off to an event called Blogger Social the first weekend in April down in New York City. It’s a bunch of Marketing Bloggers getting together just to talk and have some fun. One thing that has made this event special even prior to kickoff is that Steve Woodruff has been assembling profiles of the attendees so everyone has been able to learn about who’s going to be there.

Even though this site is a temple of shameless self promotion, I thought I’d try and assemble some of the info that would be interesting to this audience specifically. Let me boil my whole life down to a few bullets that marketing bloggers would be interested in:

  • I’m a little different because I found my way to blogging through podcasting. In January of 2005 I started The M Show as part of my commute to work at MarketingSherpa, where I was working at the time. It’s really just me rambling for 10 minutes once a week about news, my life, and books, movies or DVDs I’ve seen with my wife “The Lovely Carin” (stage name). I threaten to shut the show down about every 3 weeks, and can never do it because it’s too much fun. Although I bear the shame of being one month too late to be part of the exclusive “2004 Podcasters”, many of them have faded into obscurity, and the rest of the world could care less.
  • I’ve been working at small to medium size tech related businesses for the past 10 years, I was in IT before that, in the insurance industry which gives me 3 benefits – 1. An IT perspective on marketing, 2. Stories about the insurance industry that I will only discuss under duress (or drinks), and 3. funds my gadget addiction. I am currently at AccuRev, which makes the best revision control system on earth that is used by all the greatest software development teams.
  • Finally in November 2006 I opened Ronin Marketeer for business. In addition to writing about marketing stuff I blather about, video games, gadgets, and stuff Marketing people do like travel, drink, work trade shows.
  • I am also the defacto Nike Amp+ reviewer for the web, and ran the Boston Marathon back in 2002, and since have become a fat slob.
  • In February 2007 I started the Marketing Over Coffee podcast with Christopher Penn (of Financial Aid Podcast fame, and Podcamp Founder), which is spreading like a sex scandal on an politician. It’s not too late to join the March Madness Brackets for charity that Chris is tracking as part of the FAP.
  • I’m into photography and bought my first DSLR last year (Canon rocks, Nikon sucks, discuss amongst yourselves), I’ll be taking tons of shots and you can see my past on Flickr.
  • Looking forward to meeting everyone in person especially Matt Dickman, Steve Woodruff, Todd Andrlik. Also chatting with Anna Farmery and seeing if I can convince everyone that Scott Monty is my brother.

See you in New York!

Categories
Productivity Buster

NCAA Basketball March Madness

If you have already set up your picks for the NCAA Tournament please consider entering the charity tournament I’m playing in. The entry fee is $25 and the winner gets to select the charity that will receive the pot.

You can enter here, and it’s pretty low key so you can probably still enter after the first round.

College hoops is my favorite spectator sport. Every player knows their future rides on every game, if they want to go pro they have to give all they have for the entire season. The NBA, like any other batch of middle-aged men, understand the value of a steady pace so that you have some reserve for when it’s needed, NCAA is full throttle 24/7.

I went to UMass during John Calipari’s reign, watching a school transform from when I started and I could walk in and sit 5 rows behind the team at the half, to having to enter a lottery for the chance to get a ticket for a season that was completely sold out was incredible. Nothing generates heat and excitement like success. Alas, I have given up most of my life as a spectator and fan, I make some time to watch championships and follow the scores but everything else goes to my time on the field.

I’m already behind in my picks, but the good news is that I marked all of the teams I missed to drop in the next round, so I’m still in the game.

Categories
Podcasting

Podcasting Stats

I’m just too tired to write anything today, the 5:30 am recording sessions will do that, but if you are a stats junkie, along with the latest show we’ve published the numbers for Marketing Over Coffee for you to check out.

Lots of emailing this week. Interesting stats but nothing exciting to write about…

Categories
The Marketeer

Company Goals

Johnny T. (who, by the way, works for a company that produces some great events (even if some of his customers are trying to kill me, but that’s a story for another day)) had written in about trade shows last week and I wanted to get to the second part of his question: Are the Company goals the same as my goals?

Ahh, the glory of blogs. Would any editor let that last sentence stand?

I digress… The short answer is yes. The company’s goals are exactly the same as mine, come back with X leads. The only exception I could think of to this would be occasionally I’ve had sales guys tag along just to meet a short list of contacts, that may even have deals already in the pipeline.

This got me thinking more about how there really are no company goals. All of the individual employee goals roll up to the company results. The art is getting the desired company outcomes broken into individual goals and then making sure that they roll up again to the correct outcome.

And that makes me wonder if you have profitable individuals, is it possible to combine them and add efficiencies (shared office space, infrastructure, sales horsepower) to create a business? Or is that just an agency?

Categories
Daily Life Podcasting

Wall Street Journal Approved

Thanks to the hard work of Scott Monty of Crayon working with ooVoo, I was part of my ooVoo day, which makes me a “prominent blogger” according to the Wall Street Journal. Now all I need is a link…

You can also check out the St. Patrick’s Day edition of The M Show for some easy listening fun.