Tritton USB Speakers— ‘Cause salespeople need to dance.
These Speakers Rock
If you are out on the road and a music lover like I am, you’d probably find that any speakers on any device in a hotel lack the sound quality you want. If you got your laptop along, then you should take a look at the TRITTON: Sound Bite, Portable USB Speakers. The get great sound, have a very small footprint, and plug right into your usb port. As added benefit is that they set up a separate music driver, so if you are using Skype or some other service, you can keep doing it while getting your groove on.
About the size of a hockey puck, the stereo tweeters sit fold up to look like Mikey Mouse with broken ears. I find that I’ve been using these more and more for business too, in conjuction with my Dell Mini and Dell MIni 109 Projector.
TRITTON Sound Bite, Portable USB Digital Speaker System
Living with the Dell Mini
“Honey, can I have one” I said to my sweetie in my firm, yet begging voice, when the Dell Mini was available. I was looking at the eeePC, but it was too flimsy for me (my latitude has a missing “4″ key. I was able to put $250 in Amex points to it, so it was a good investment.
If you are a salesperson who needs to use Salesforce.com or SugarCRM on the road, then a Dell Mini will be a godsend. It’s small enough to avoid the “coach seat crush” and fit nicely on your plane’s tray table, and it has a very good battery life.
I went Windows. Much as I like Linux, (most of my servers are Linux), I chose to go with XP because this is a work machine, and I don’t have to worry about working with my work applications.
The keyboard is nice sized. I had a bit of trouble touch-typing with it because some of the keys are smaller and placed in unique areas, but after a couple of weeks usage, I’m hitting the apostrophe key with my thumb, and think I can type the longest of messages without adding an additional keyboard. When I do feel like stretching out, I can always add a keyboard.
The Dell Mini is not without drawbacks, or rather the bloatware that we use every day isn’t optimal for the Mini. The memory and drive space on the Mini are limited through dell at 16 gigs of SD Drive space, and 1 gig of RAM. Drive compression is on by default, something you’ll notice if you’re running Outlook. Good thing that Dell didn’t put Vista on this thing.
Dell ships the mini with a cdrom install disk, and the suggested way to do the restore is with a USB CD drive. They really should have put that stuff on a bootable USB drive.
This is the first time since EVDO modems that I can say a piece of technology is going to improve how a salesperson works.
I think a whole cottage industry could be built around making thinner and specialized apps for the Mini. I’d love to see a lightweight Outlook compatible app that worked on the desktop. Maybe with Google Gears or something 
Words that kill
I recently watched an article on Bill Moyer’s Journal (September 12, 2008) titled “Free Speech or Foul- Is the shock talk on talk radio effecting our political discourse?” http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/profile.html
The beginning of the story talks about a murder that occurred in July, 2008 at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universal Church http://www.tvuuc.org. The story then discussed whether the mentally deranged man who did the shooting was affected by listening to and reading inflammatory material from Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0730/p02s06-usec.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Knoxville_Unitarian_Universalist_church_shooting
What struck me emotionally watching this story was seeing how much my church, (Columbia United Christian Church) www.cucc-md.org
is like the church where the murders occurred. Like TVU, we welcome people of all political faiths, sexual orientations, races and genders to our congregation. Our Church Prayer of Thanksgiving is
Thank you, Living Christ, for inviting us and people of all spiritual paths, ages, mental and physical abilities, races, economic levels, political perspectives, sexual orientations and fellowships into this community of love and healing; and for always being present with us in the breaking of bread.
According to a sworn affidavit by one of the officers who interviewed the perpetrator, the perpetrator stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country. My congregation is largely comprised of people who are more to the left on the political spectrum, and if it wasn’t for geography, could have been a choice for the actor’s assault.
It would be inappropriate to blame Savage, O’Reilly, and Hannity for causing the murders at this church. There were a number of factors, including poverty, desperation, mental illness, marital issues, and the ability of this sick man to obtain firearms, which all contributed to this tragedy .But it would also be inappropriate to let those who use inflammatory political discussions that dehumanize and alienate those who disagree with them off the hook.
In Miguel Angel Ruiz’s book, the Four Agreements, he nails the effect of negative communication/ Ruiz equates hateful speech to a virus. Like a virus, hate messages spread and mutate. They become part of the being, and part of the society.
Modern communications provide a rapid delivery system for the virus of hate. The sheer number and scope of our communications provide multiple transmission vehicles for infection, with pinpoint accuracy. And the orators of hate recycle their messages for TV, print, email, and the Web.
As a society, we are titillated by the aggressive argument. Whether it’s Jerry Springer or Michael Savage, we just love to watch a good fight. A strong position argued passionate by a persuasive person tends to strengthen our beliefs when we initially agree with the message.
The problem is that our political rhetoric has gotten past the point of civil discussion or oration. We have moved to incendiary and inflammatory commentary that serves not just to alienate us from each other, but also to dehumanize our neighbors as the irrational, moronic, treasonist enemy. And a very small portion of this population takes this too far.
The one thing that people on the Right and the Left have in common is that both groups love this country with a passion. In general, the Left’s passion is directed towards taking care of the poor, making sure the environment is safe, and justice towards the lower and middle classes. The Right focuses on having a strong defense, personal liberties, strong personal values, and freedom to achieve.
The Right and the Left need to see that their focuses are not mutually exclusive, in fact, they are complimentary. Our respective parties and the media focused on our highlighting and even exploiting our differences, and using these differences as a wedge between us. Ruiz calls how we filter our view of our world as “the dream” in which we live. The “our neighbor is our enemy” dream is dangerous and counterproductive. We need to adopt the “we all care” dream.
There are those who would argue that free speech is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. The Supreme Court has determined that indeed it is, and they’ve also determined that drinking alcohol is a right, owning a gun is a right, and choosing to terminate a pregnancy is a right. But with all of these rights come responsibilities. You can own a gun, but you have a responsibility to use it carefully. You can drink, but you have a responsibility to protect the life of those around you by not operating a car while intoxicated. You have a right to terminate a pregnancy, but you also have an obligation not to use abortion as a primary means of birth control.
The last example is also an example that shows that the law doesn’t necessarily need to define what a responsibility is. I’m very sure that both sides of the Choice/Life argument would agree that a forced termination of a pregnancy is a difficult and tragic event in a woman’s life. It’s self-evident on both sides that abortion should be as rare as possible.
Speech can be informative, speech can be motivational, speech can be exciting. Speech can also hurt, incite, and manipulate people. Speech is a tool, and like most tools, it can be used to destroy or to build. It’s a tool that is protected by our Constitution, and like that protected gun, it can be used for good or evil.
The responsibilities associated with free speech fall both on the sender and the receiver of our right. The sender has a responsibility to be civil, truthful, and respectful of those who receive the message, as well as those who don’t want to hear the message, to the best of the sender’s ability. It’s OK to be forceful, and to have an opinion, but it is wrong to manipulate or deceive, or anger people by attacking them or as equating their beliefs as being non-American. The receiver has an obligation to determine the context of the information being recieved, the motivations of the speaker, and an obligation not to repeat things are offensive and not true. A receiver has an obligation to correct the record, if something is incorrect, if not directly, by at least talking to those around them who discuss the message. Finally a receiver has an obligation to turn off messaging that is of a corrosive nature.
The sponsors of speech also have a responsibility not to support speech which takes the low road. A commercial sponsor who avoids this responsibility, even outside of ratings, transfers the toxicity of this speech to their brand, their goodwill, and their shareholders.
History has shown time and time again that it is abuse of our rights which causes restrictions on our rights. Every Columbine results in people who want to restrict the rights of people to own violent video games and guns. Our right to free speech gets more restrictive every time a riot breaks out. If you love America, if you love our rights, then you are obligated to use them in a correct way.
As a Christian, my responsibility goes beyond this. My speech should be a reflection of Jesus, who told us that next to loving God, treating our neighbors as we would want ourselves treated is the essence of Christian life. Those who receive my messages, no matter where they are, are my neighbors.
What is truly unfortunate to me is that if the actor in the Tennessee church murders would have come into Tennessee Valley Unitarian to ask for help, he would have undoubtedly met with open arms by that congregation. I know he would have been welcomed in mine, and hopefully in yours.
Review Influencer, the Power to Change Anything
I am a big fan of Vital Smarts books, training, and CD’s. Their first book, Crucial Conversations, contains essential skills needed for success working with other people. It was only later in my studies that I realized that Vital Smarts borrowed liberally from the world of non-violent communications studies.
I wasn’t as enthused about the second book, (Crucial Confrontations), but felt it was worthwhile nontheless. I view it as a supplement to Crucial Conversations, which focuses mostly on the having conversations when there is a confrontation at stake.
Well, I’m extremely happy to say that Vital Smarts new book, Influencer - The Power to Change Anything, is not an example of the law of diminishing returns. This book is arguably the best thing coming out of Vital Smarts.
This book is a study of what works in the field of Influence, and borrows from social and positive psychology, management, sociology, and non-violent communications. The folks from Vital Smarts borrow from everybody, but come up with something that is cohesive, unique, and effective.
Mixed in with the data, are numerous examples and case studies that serve not only clarify the content, but make the book an easy read as well.
This book is a must read, (or a must listen to), if you want to understand the tools to make change in your life, your company, and your world. Whether you’re trying to lose weight or reduce disease progression in an impoverished country, Influencer has something for you.
Do Assholes Stink Up Your Day? Then Read On
I went to the book store to get my latest basketful of business CD’s. Almost as a joke, I picked up Robert Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule. I’ve worked with difficult people in the past, and hear stories from friends of mine inside and outside the industry about difficult people, including staff, coworkers, spouses, and others. I thought that this would be fun, and as Fat Albert says, “If I wasn’t careful, I might learn something, too”.
I did have fun, and I did learn something too. Sutton gives an overview of how assholes affect business, from a human relations, legal liability, operational cost, and in terms of loss sales and employee turnover. He does this using examples that are sickening, amazing, and (with the passage of time and no personal involvement) humorous as well.
These examples are also educational. Sutton gives a number of good tactics towards eliminating and disempowering the asshole. Sutton provides a number of good ways for companies and groups to avoid even hiring a difficult person.
Finally, Sutton steps into what is arguably dangerous territory. He talks about the positive side of the asshole, and turning on the inner asshole inside you.
The audio book is not without flaws. I didn’t think that the reader’s vocal temperment and pacing were in line with what Sutton was teaching. It just sounded a little bombastic to me. I felt that Sutton should have addressed more the dilemma of dealing with an asshole you have no power to get rid of, asshole management, I guess.
Finally, it might not be an appropriate book to listen to when traveling with passengers occupying booster seats in your car. So buy it, and put on those headphones.
The 400 Hour Work Week.
Then I lost one. My first loss ever to this competitor in head to head competition. Damn, what a slap in the face, even though they came in $150K less than me.
It was time to change my game. I realized that I was partially distracted by a string of interviews with a Fortune 5 company. I wasn’t crazy about the job, but thought that the management was great, and the company fantastic. But I really think that the company I work at now is in the midst of an exciting and challenging time. That’s more important to me than the money, and I’m happy to say that the money has always come with me.
So, the first thing to change was the mindset. I may have a shitload of people over me, that have more power than me, and more access to resources than me, and it made sense to ask them for help. But that wasn’t enough; I had to respond to my competition in a way that was scalable, focused and fast.
First, I cancelled my interviews with the other company. I needed to focus on this mission and this mission solely.
Then I developed a philosophy. Many of you have read that book, “The Four Hour Work Week”. Sounds great to have your little businesses going “ca ching ca ching” all in chorus while you’re in Fiji contemplating your navel. Yeah, dream on.
What the book did teach was a philosophy. Get rid of worthless stuff. Set up processes, automate, and/or outsource the disagreeable or less profitable tasks to others. Do what makes money, and what I like to do.
So instead of a 4 hour workweek, I’m working a 400 hour work week. I’m leveraging a number of different resources to speed up my impact including:
- PHPList- an open source email tool.
- Jblast- Fax broadcast service.
- Callfire – automated dialing service.
- A Web developer and virtual assistant I picked up from getafreelancer.com
The Internet has made these power tools very inexpensive. PHPList is a free email tool that I use from a $6.95/month web site hosted at siteground.com. The program is literally installed with a mouse click.Jblast charges between 6 and 12 cents per page faxed, and Callfire charges 3.9 cents a minute.
I can play like the big guys, and still get it under the radar on my expense account. Stay tuned. Over the next few days, I’ll give you my experience with each of these products and services.
Review: What (Really) Works
What do great businesses in common? What do bad businesses forget to do? In their book, What Really Works- the 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success, the authors Joyce, Nohria, and Roberson analyzed data from hundreds of different companies. Using total return to shareholders as a results, the “Evergreen” project as it was called identified 8 factors of successful businesses.
In order for a business to have sustained success they needed to exhibit all of the first four, and two of the last four, hence the 4+2 formula in the subtitle.
The four mandatory factors are:
1) Strategy- Devise and maintain a clearly focused strategy
2) Execution- Develop and maintain flawless operational executution
3) Culture- Develop and maintain a performance-oriented culture
4) Structure- Build and maintain a fast, flexible, flat organization
The four optional (remember, you only need two) catagories are.
1) Talent: hold on to talented employees and find more
2) Leadership: keep leaders and directors committed to the business
3) Innovation: Make innovations tha tare industry transforming
4) Mergers and Partnerships: Make growth happen with mergers and partnerships.
One of the problems that I have with some of these management books is that they shoot their wad after the second chapter, the one that outlines the book. The value of this book after the second chapter is arguably less that the outline, but the case studies of both good and bad companies are interesting, well written, and reinforce the premise of the book.
I think one could argue about total value returned to shareholders being the paramount sign of a good company, especially when one looks short term. The authors had to pick something, and I think it was a good enough factor, that was easy to define.
I also know that this book isn’t a panacea. Like every other business book, this one will chaffe with age. I do think it reinforces some basics, and I think it merits reading.
If you’re in Columbia,MD, get a copy cheap. Daedalus Books in Columbia had it in stock for $4.98
Jesus is My Sales Manager- The Interview
Bob, thanks for coming in. Grab a seat. Sit down. Do you want a cup of water? Listen, I know you only have about 15 minutes, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to do most of the talking. If you like what you hear, then let’s set up another time to have a real two-way conversation.
Well, I took a look at your resume, and it’s great. You read and write Hebrew and Greek, we can really use that. The Founder wasn’t really into documentation, and we really need someone who could help us get some of his speeches down in writing. We’ve got one guy, Mark, whose just about ready to finish up something, and I hear another guy, Matthew is planning on doing some kind of revision.
I see you were referred by Paul? Did you know him when he was a cop? Yeah? I know he really has changed a lot since then. Seems a few years back, our Founder’s Son came down to recruit Paul into the organization. They had a brief talk, and Paul joined up. Changed his name and everything. We really had a lot of doubts about Paul at first, but he’s been one of our top performers, really working hard to penetrate new territiories and develop new markets for us. He’s started a number of User Groups, and he’s written some pretty good white papers for us too. We’re planning on adding Paul’s white papers to our user’s manual.
The first thing I want to tell you is that we are selling the perfect product. Everybody needs it, millions have been asking for it, and there are millions out there who need it, but don’t even know that they do. We really need to get out and push the messaging.
Let me tell you a little about ourselves. We’re an established start-up. We’ve been in business for about 5 years now. Our Founder’s Son started this territory, ran it for about three years, and then returned to Corporate. He’s still actively involved with us, in fact I recommend that you talk with him as much as you can. I’ve heard one of the things he’s working on now is a Sales Club for our top performers, and it’s going to be so incredible, that once you’re there, you’re never going to want to leave.
We had some independent agents do a little bit of publicity for us prior to starting the territory, but by in large, people weren’t getting the messaging. Corporate was getting very concerned about this. If we maintained the status quo, this territory would have just folded to the competition. So the Founder sent his Son down to see if we could change things for the better.
Immediately, the competition tried to do a friendly takeover, and was in discussions with the Founder’s Son. He turned them down, and went out and hired 12 inexperienced salespeople, and made them regional managers. We had some turnover, one of the regional managers later left after he leaked some priviledged information.
The regional managers did a pretty good job with the Founder’s Son’s help. The Son is a amazing public speaker, and he could do some amazing demos. He gave the ability to demo to the RM’s but to be honest with you, sometimes they just lacked the necessary confidence to to the demos as good as the Son. They are starting to get stronger with more experience and faith.
We brought on some more people, but now we are thinking about developing a multi-level marketing program. We’ve just found that our customers make the best salespeople.
I want to be straight with you. There are some bad things about this opportunity. . We have some major competition in our marketplace. We don’t hold marketshare right now. The market leader is a company called Darkside, Inc. They have some real slick marketing materials, and they are extremely aggressive in the market. They will say anything to make a sale. They don’t require a lot of committment, but once a customer has signed up, it can be very difficult to leave, even though Darkside has a very poor product satisfaction rating. The salespeople at Darkside just keep promising and promising, and their customers hope they deliver. Unfortunately, Darkside never delivers.
We did start a competitive trade-in program against Darkside about 20 years ago, and while we are not getting the response we’d like, we are extremely delighted even when we can get just one person to make the transistion. And I’ve never seen a customer who’s used our product correctly feel disappointed after coming from Darkside.
The converse is also true. Nothing makes us more upset than losing a customer to Darkside. Darkside promises everything to the customer, but when they sign up, they will find that the most important things are missing.
Also, there will be a lot of travel. The size of the territory is tremendous. You’ll be living on the road much of the time. We don’t have any cars or planes available at this time; you’ll be limited to foot travel and the occassional donkey ride. You can expense your sandels though, within reason.
We don’t have a lot in the way of technology either. No cell phones, no powerpoints, no laptops, no TV or radio marketing. We are expecting these things in future budgets, but right now, you’re going to have to rely on word of mouth, getting out in the field and pressing the flesh. The one technology that we do have is instant messaging with the Son and the Founder. If you need Him, He’s always available.
Ok, I’ve been beating around the bush. We’ve got a problem with regulations in some of the territories in which we operate. I’m sorry to say this, but our product has been determined to be illegal by the authorities in those territories. In some places, allthough we aren’t illegal, we’ve met such a hostile reaction from the locals, that we might as well be illicit. Some of reps and customers have been arrested, jailed, and even killed. You really need to consider the possibility of this happening to you and your people before you accept the position.
We’re not backing away. We feel that our product is so important, that we have to bring it out to the field, even if local governments feel differently. If we can penetrate some of the markets in these areas, we could overturn these laws barring our service.
You won’t be alone managing. After He left, the Son sent down one of His assistants to work in the field. You really should take advantage of this resource if you take the position. I’ve been told that working with the Assistant is like working with the Son himself. This assistant is very efficient, He seems to be working everywhere at the same time.
I know I’ve given you a lot to think about. Go home, talk it over with your wife, and get back to me. Here’s some of the Founder’s speeches to look at while your making the decision. We are going to add these to the User’s Manual. My personal favorite is the one he did at the Mountain some time back.
Review:SugarCRM How Sweet is Is
I’ve been interested in CRM since my days as a Police Officer/Student at the University of Pennsylvania Police Department. While in school, I worked in development of a members database for the Musician’s Union Local in Phila, and for my independent study at school, developed a client management system for the Victim Support Unit at the Police Department.
My career in sales furthered this interest. I became an avid Act! user, and was such a good beta tester for the company, that I usually didn’t have to pay for the software.
Act had a substantial change in 2005, moving to a relational database structure. What I thought would be a great change turned out to actually make the program unusable. Using the .NET framework made the new Act! slower than ever before.
I felt like an orphan, and didn’t know what to do. The lack of a good CRM really was hurting my productivity.
I tried a number of different options, including Prophet (too slow with a large number of users), and Microsoft Business Contact Manager 1.0 (pretty much the same quality as any 1.0 MS product). I was still at a loss to find something that worked for me.
A friend of mine, Haroon Khalid, told me about an opensource product called SugarCRM. I took a look at it, and it showed promise. It was a blatant Salesforce.com rip, which I considered a plus, having worked with the product in the past.
In order to install SugarCRM, I figured that I had to install MySQL, PHP, Apache, and the Sugar code on my laptop myself. Ok, it would take a couple of hours, but I have experience, and I knew I could do it. WRONG! It was much, much easier. There is a project called SugarSPIKE which installs Sugar and all the additional programs in less that 10 minutes. I was up and running.
The product is fantastic, very, very, stable, and bugs are minimal after the first patch. (Warning about point releases, wait until the first patch comes out.) There is an additional software product, available for a fee, that connects with MS Outlook.
The OpenSource version of the product lacks the reporting and quoting functions that I would need to give this a full OK. They are available in the full version, some third party products, or you can do as I did, and hook the database up to access with an ODBC driver. I’d gladly shell out the money for the full version of the product, but the folks at Sugar will only take a 5 license purchase.
A Car That I Would Buy… Some Lessons For the Auto Industry from Southwest Airlines
If the US auto industry wants to save themselves, they might want to take lessons from Soutwest Airlines. That’s right, SWA. Why, because much of the things that GM does is exactly the opposite of what Southwest does, and that’s why we don’t have any loyalty.
So what could a car company do to make themselves “the Southwest of Cars”.
Trim a product line down to 2 cars: A sedan and a station wagon. Keep everything else the same. A simple engine with a decent amount of power, a decent radio (put a headphone input jack in), and a nice quality inside. Don’t offer options on mechanics, and offer options on trim that are fairly priced.
The Internet changed the way that the buying process worked for the auto industry. The average buyer is aware of how much the car should cost them. But we’re still in the dark on repairs. That’s wrong. Let’s make the diagnostic and repair pricing process open, affordable, and transparant.
I know that what I want is not what everybody wants. Some folks like to fly First Class rather than to deal with Southwest’s fair and democratic seating arrangement. I’m just giving a business model that could make the auto companies get new business.
Hopefully, someone will hear this, and they will have me as a customer for life.
