Business Insight Zone

Have I mentioned that I’ll be at South by Southwest Interactive? And that I’m speaking there, about 165 hours from now? Oh, I have?

Well, here’s me testing out my new Flip camera, which I plan to use for all sorts of informative ribaldry during the five days of idea-gobbling madness that is SXSW. Roll tape!

(Click here if the embedded video doesn’t work.)

Future installments will be more, y’know, interesting.

And that’s where YOU come in . . . What would you like to see me video at SXSW?

2 comments | Category: SXSW

A friend of mine e-mailed to let me know he’ll be attending SXSW Interactive for the first time this year. He asked if I had any advice for him. I, being lazy wanting to show the awesome power of crowdsourcing in turn, asked my friends on Twitter — and this is what they said:

• Kim Hollenshead: Sign up for more discussions and events then you think you have time for.
• Alex Jones: SXSW is all about flow and new connections. Don’t commit to anything in advance.
• Austin Kleon: Take care of yourself. Take a nap. Eat lunch. Good God, I got exhausted last year.
• Jim Storer: Drink water, nap if you can, wear comfortable shoes, bring a power strip, talk w/ strangers, be nice, drink more water.
• John McTigue: My advice to newb: be yourself. be honest and fair. do your homework. #SXSW
• Mike Neumann: Have a plan, but don’t get too attached to it. Think of it as Jazz sheet music. You know you’re going to improvise, a lot.
• Chad Northrup: I won’t be there, but the point about not looking past who you’re talking to for someone more important seems big to me.
• Pat Ramsey: Stay flexible & do not be afraid to toss your schedule out the window if a great opportunity comes up.
• Kevin Lawver: SxSW Noob Advice: Say hi to your heroes, avoid the organized parties, don’t go to panels on stuff you already know & have fun!

(Kevin, it should be noted, has been coming to SXSW Interactive as long as anybody — so he knows how to do it right.)

To all of this advice, I would add my own:

• Free up your life schedule. This may apply more to Austinites than others, since we can be called back to the office, the house, etc. But SXSW works best when you don’t have to watch the clock. Just book all the days you’ll be there as “Out of Office,” and let your workmates / loved ones know that they should treat those days as though you were on the road at a conference in, say, Minneapolis. SXSW is intense enough that you don’t want you head to be somewhere else while you’re there.

I’d also point you to two more excellent sources:

1. 10 Ways to Make the Most of SXSW — In this post, Brian Dresher of USA TODAY goes into more detail on several of the points listed above (great minds think alike!), plus several more that weren’t mentioned here.
2. How do YOU rawk SXSW? — On the SXSW Baby! discussion board, several SXSW veterans offer their best tips for getting the most out of the event.

If you’re a SXSW veteran, what’s your advice for newcomers? And if you’re a newbie, what else do you want to know?

1 comment | Category: SXSW

My previous posts in this vein talked about using business information to create value for customers and moving from data to action in your use of business information. Now I’ll address why you need to get ahead on these issues now if you want to surf to business success on the world’s rising tide of data, rather than being swept away by it.

The Floodtide of Data

For years now, we’ve understood that information growth is exploding. The amount of data created and recorded digitally does not merely increase every year — it increases exponentially. Smart people are using this wealth of data in wonderful ways, for instance by bringing revolutionary changes to some fields of science.

In the business world, new social networks are creating huge flows of information, including lots of it that’s useful for commercial purposes — ranging from consumer behavioral modeling to straightforward competitive intelligence research.

On the personal front, it’s tempting to think of all of this as “information overload” and assume that being overloaded is inevitable, given the amount of information out there. But Clay Shirky has suggested that “filter failure” is the more useful term. It’s fruitless to blame the information for coming at you in waves when it’s you who signed on for it. In any event, it’s crucial that we develop better filters both personally and for our businesses, since the flow of information is only going to get larger — MUCH larger.

So we need to change our thinking instead. As individuals, we can apply better practices of information hygiene to our inboxes and the like. (Entrepreneur Ash Maurya has some good suggestions about how to do this.) As organizations, we must practice better information hygiene across larger systems, or else we’ll become victims of information overload rather than profiting from information abundance.

Using Better Systems — and Using Systems Better

The same technological revolution that unleashed all of this information on us promises to help us control it as well, but only if we’re willing to grapple with its complexities.

When I talk about complexity here, by no means do I mean only the technical details of systems run by your IT department. The technological aspect certainly is complex, because what IT implements — CRMs, ERPs, data warehouses, analytics, etc. — weaves into the operational fabric of every department in your company. Beyond that, though, it stands to affect the work (and maybe the psyche) of virtually every individual in your company. That’s serious complexity — and if you don’t get ahead of it, you’re sunk.

The easy case in point is the way that CRM systems often run aground within sales departments. If they’re not brought along the right way, sales reps will distrust CRMs, fearing that they’ll hinder rather than help them make their numbers.

The solution isn’t simply to ignore such attitudes and install a slicker CRM. Social CRMs, for example, can do a better job of using social-media information to empower your sales team. But they’re not a magic bullet, and if you don’t use your current CRM well, you can’t expect a social CRM to bail you out. Rather, you have to take on some hard managerial work to instill open communication habits, organizational discipline, and acceptance of change. Only then will you get salespeople, sales managers, and everyone else in the organization pulling in the same direction. That’s when you’ll get the most out of any technology, whether it’s the latest SCRM or pencil and paper.

The key here is to understand this:

Even the best systems can’t save you from the flood of data if you don’t use them in ways that support your business strategy and your customers’ needs.

What we have to do is to rethink all the ways that our business information systems interact with the fundamentals of our businesses, and then revise our approach to data. As CRM strategist Esteban Kolsky puts it, “All the data we are capturing is becoming too much for our antiquated models of data management to handle.” We have to bring our businesses practices around data firmly into the 21st century.

No one said it would be easy — but it’s worth it.

Marketplace Dynamics

Not only is it worth it, you may have no choice about it if you want to stay competitive. Customers and prospects have too many ways to filter you out these days, and their expectations of you are higher than ever. You need to know who they are and what they want so that you can approach them in relevant ways every time you make contact.

There is also increasing pressure from competitors. Progressive-thinking companies can get a jump on their markets if they’re early to grasp the advantages that go along with data abundance. Laggards will struggle to keep their heads above water.

What’s required of smart companies in this environment?

1. Understanding the fundamental issues: the massive growth of data, the need for better filters and systems to pick out the right data and put it to use, the consequences for early and late adopters in the marketplace.
2. Flexibility of thinking. Your future use of data — even the fundamental models for how you collect and analyze it — may not look like what came before. That’s fine — if you’re ready for it.
3. A willingness to experiment. Finding the “right” answers to all of these challenges is likely to be an ongoing journey marked by plenty of trial and error, not something you’ll hammer out in a day-long summit between IT, operations, marketing, and sales. Understand in advance that successful approaches to this new world of information and technology will be marked by failed experiments on the way, and be ready to dust yourself off and try again.

The data flood can be your friend. But you must work out how to filter, analyze, and use the abundance of good data contained in it — all in support of your company’s fundamental strategy and the value propositions that you present to customers. Otherwise, you’ll be swept away.

What are YOU doing to surf the floodtide of data?

~

Image from rappensuncle, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

3 comments | Category: Business information, Management, Technology

Great comment today from Nancy Bailey on my May 2009 post, “Twitter follow-backs: the 5-step lightning approach.” Here’s what she said:

I am fairly new to twitter so I apologize if this is a lame question. I have a company account where my staff posts job openings, news etc. We really don’t want to follow anyone but ourselves but gain lots of followers. Each of my staff has a personal account where they can follow Ashton [Kutcher] and whomever they please. Every week I go on there and find that my company account is following all sorts fo random people. Is this some sort of auto-follow? How can I stop this? Is this is even a wise approach? What would the downside be of having a company follow random people?

Lots of things to chew on there, which is why I’m discussing this in its own post rather than in the original comment thread. Let’s take them in order.

I am fairly new to twitter so I apologize if this is a lame question.

Hey, when it comes to the business use of social media, we’re all fairly new. So, no worries.

I have a company account where my staff posts job openings, news etc.

Great . . . but from looking at the Hire Profile Twitter account, I immediately wonder whether you wouldn’t get more out of Twitter by using it more interactively. You have only a handful of posts that reference other Twitter users, but in my experience (which, if I say so myself, is considerable) interacting with others on Twitter is the royal road to gaining traction there.

We really don’t want to follow anyone but ourselves but gain lots of followers.

Big Question #1: Why? Twitter is of some — but limited — use as a pure broadcast medium. Most people use it for both exposure to interesting content and interaction. If you don’t follow anyone and don’t interact, you’re missing out on a big part of the appeal — and, potentially, a big part of the benefit for your business.

Big Question #2: How? The accounts that follow few but attract many tend to be in the vein of Mashable, Conan O’Brien, and The New York Times. In other words, they have a big footprint before they ever get to Twitter. For the rest of us, following a fair number of people is one of the key ingredients in the recipe for drawing lots of followers. (By the way, this doesn’t mean you need to follow everyone who follows you — I don’t.)

Each of my staff has a personal account where they can follow Ashton and whomever they please.

You’re way ahead of some employers, who blindly prohibit employees from accessing social networks despite the value (including business value) that can be derived from them.

Every week I go on there and find that my company account is following all sorts of random people. Is this some sort of auto-follow? How can I stop this?

It does sound like you got signed on to an auto-follow program at some point, because Twitter won’t follow anyone for you automatically.

As for how to fix: go into your Twitter account — via the Twitter site — click on “Settings,” and then click on “Connections.” It will show you which applications have access to your Twitter account. From there, it’s easy to revoke access for any or all of those apps.

Is this is even a wise approach? What would the downside be of having a company follow random people?

The two big downsides would be:

1. Twitter spam, where malicious (or just obnoxious) followers send you Twitter direct messages you don’t want.
2. Wasted time. If you’re using Twitter to promote your business, it makes sense to interact with business pros who share interests with your firm.

So, Nancy, does this help? What other questions do you have?

And to the rest of you in the audience — what advice would you add for Nancy? How can she get the most out of Twitter without making it her full-time job?

2 comments | Category: Marketing & Sales, Social media

There’s a useful model from the realms of information science and knowledge management known as DIKW. It can help us think better about how we use business information to succeed.

The Basics

The letters stand for the four levels of a hierarchy, like this:

You don’t have to put it into a pyramid — some people prefer a chain, flow diagram, or something else — but the basic idea is that each level builds on the one below it. Before we get to examples and how all of this relates to taking action in business, here’s the nickel tour of the four levels:

• Data can be thought of as raw facts — words, numbers, sights, sounds, and so on.
• Information arises when meaning or relevance emerges from the raw facts.
• Knowledge comes when we situate information in the context of experience, expertise, or systematic study. In other words, information helps create knowledge when it’s synthesized and related within some larger framework of thought.
• Wisdom is our judgment of (a) what knowledge means or (b) what to do about knowledge with reference to our deeper values (for example ethical or moral considerations), to our desired highest outcomes, et cetera.

Some thinkers, notably the systems theorist Russell Ackoff, sandwich another level, Understanding, between Knowledge and Wisdom. But as Gene Bellinger points out, both connectedness and understanding increase at every level as you ascend through the DIKW model.

Playing Detective

Now, I’m sure I’m going to make any information scientists or epistemologists in the audience shudder as I trample on the fine distinctions of D, I, K, and W, but here’s my informal analogy for it: I think of DIKW through the lens of a detective story.

Picture me as Hercule Poirot . . .

(Note: in real life, I’m younger, taller, thinner, less well-dressed, not Belgian, and have much more hair.)

Picture the drawing room of a country estate. Monsieur Poirot has called together all the interested parties so that he can reveal the identity of the murderer. As he speaks, there is a noise in the background. What does it mean?

• Data = the noise in the background.
• Information = realization that the noise comes from a car engine being revved.
• Knowledge = Poirot says, “Yes, it is Professor FitzGibbon in his racing Jaguar, trying to make good his escape.”
• Wisdom = When some of the party tries to run out and catch the professor, Poirot says, “Do not concern yourselves — we need not chase him. The police have blocked all the roads.”

If my philosophical precision is awry from one step to the next, the main point is still clear — you’re moving up a chain of value from raw data — which often has little use in itself — toward greater context.

• The data at hand (noises in background) becomes real information when it’s put in the context of other facts (a lifetime of hearing car engines).
• That information becomes working knowledge in the context of the larger situation and other information (Prof. FitzGibbon is my prime suspect; the noise is coming from where I saw his Jaguar parked earlier).
• My knowledge of the situation, in the context of my professional experience (decades of detective work), prior actions (coordinated a blockade with the police), and overriding goals (catch the murderer), gives me wisdom about my best course of action in the moment.

This last step not only tells me — and those listening to me — that I need not panic; it also tells me what not to do. For example, my experience tells me that if I try to stop FitzGibbon myself, he might run me down with the car, and that the surest way to stop him now is to let the police do it.

From Wisdom to Action in Business

Note that my wisdom about the situation also implies my best course of action. Some thinkers on DIKW have echoed Peter Drucker when they point out that knowledge is about knowing how to do things right, whereas wisdom is about knowing the right things to do.

Since it can never be said too much, let’s pause to emphasize this point:

In business, we should be working every minute of the day to do the right things.

So let’s take my Poirot example and translate it to a business setting:

• Data = the numbers on a spreadsheet.
• Information = the value of Customer X’s account has declined for three straight years.
• Knowledge = WHY they downgraded.
• Wisdom = what to DO about it.

I’ve been an information merchant for a long time, but I can’t know all the ins and outs of every company, every industry, every situation, so I can’t play Poirot with your personal business challenges. In other words, I can’t tell you how to win more business from Customer X in particular — and probably no one outside your own company can.

More to the point, even having the wisdom to know what to do isn’t the same thing as doing it. You have to have everything in place — personal and organizational discipline, healthy working practices, good communications, etc. — to support action . . . and then you must TAKE action.

Fostering Action at Every Point

I can, however, suggest steps to take at the lower levels of the DIKW pyramid so that you’re armed to take the best actions with every customer you serve. The overriding goal is to reduce the friction and increase the utility at each level so that you’re able to move briskly up the pyramid — and, ultimately, to act swiftly to meet customers’ needs and build your business.

Here are a few key ideas to get you started:

• You need good data, and you need it more than once. If your company has a hard time gathering and handling data — about prospects, customers, the industries you serve, market conditions, or whatever — you’ll lose time and money as you try to derive relevant, useful information from that data. Beyond that, you have to be ready to gather data more often than ever, given the pace and toughness of today’s economy.
• Your own employees might not be the best ones to collect that data. Sure, you’d expect me to say so, given that I worked for several years in Hoover’s editorial department, painstakingly collecting and organizing information on many companies. But there’s a reason customers keep coming back to us, and its the same reason that keeps other high-quality providers of business information thriving within their market niches: specialization wins. Let your sellers sell; let your accountants keep accounts; let your marketers market your wares. And find a good business information provider — whether it’s us or whoever else meets your specialized needs — to handle the data load.
• You need data organized into useful information, and information organized so that it improves your customer and industry knowledge. We can help with this, certainly, but an unavoidable part of this work will happen inside the walls of your own enterprise. If your own organization fails to look forward by coordinating how information flows from sources to users, from one department to another, you’ll end up looking back with regrets about the opportunities you missed by being haphazard. You don’t need a magic bullet — you need the hard work of good organization.
• Your tools must work in unison. This is why we (and some other forward-looking information providers) have done so much to integrate our information into popular CRM systems: it’s not enough that the information exists somewhere and that you hypothetically have access to it — you have to have it available at the point of need so that you — or your busy salespeople, marketers, researchers, et al. — can use it on the spot. But again, this isn’t about signing up for Access Hoover’s and then forgetting all your cares; as anyone who’s ever implemented a CRM system will tell you, there’s a lot of technical and change-management work that goes along with it.

In the next installment of this series, I’ll talk about why it’s more important than ever to think ahead in your use of data for business.

Meanwhile, what else would you recommend for making sure the DIKW model translates into ACTION for your organization?

~

Related posts:

• Previously in this series: Does your use of business information lead you back to CUSTOMERS?
• Wikipedia’s entry on DIKW. (Warning: it’s heavy on epistemology.)
• Bellinger, Castro, and Mills on DIKW.
• Nikhil Sharma, The Origin of the “Data Information Knowledge Wisdom” Hierarchy

~

Image source for David Suchet as Poirot.

2 comments | Category: Business information, Management, Technology

After talking about how I follow up with new acquaintances when I get home from attending a conference, I got feedback from a friend of mine who manages the neat perfecta of being (a) a nifty human being, and (b) a stone-cold sales pro. She elaborated on a practice of hers that I also follow, but that I didn’t mention in the post.

Here’s what we both do:

1. As we’re talking to the new acquaintance, or shortly thereafter, we jot down something about them that’s not related to business. My friend called this “some non-business rapport-building topic I’ve discussed with the person.” I might call it “common ground.”
2. When we follow up with them later, we include some reference to this shared interest. My own follow-ups have included things like “Next time you’re in Austin, I’ll be sure to take you out for some REAL Texas barbecue” and “It’s always great to find someone who shares my affection for the Blue Ridge Mountains.”

As my friend points out — and as I’ve experienced myself — this kind of contact makes the other person feel special, and that we’ve connected on a personal level, whether or not any business arises from that connection.

I like doing business, and I like connecting with people — so why not operate in a way that satisfies both impulses at once?

So how do you make personal connections with business acquaintances?

~

Image by Victor Bezrukov.

1 comment | Category: Marketing & Sales, Productivity, Social media

Sorry to shout, but I want to make sure the emphasis is clear:

• CUSTOMERS
• CUSTOMERS
• CUSTOMERS

It’s one of my fundamental tenets of all business, whether you’re running IBM or a taco truck: if you’re finding the right customers, and putting your best efforts into serving customers, and aligning all of your business practices so that you provide maximum value to customers at costs you can live with and prices they can live with . . . you’ll be fine.

Now for a very simple lesson that’s too often overlooked — or undercooked — in companies large and small:

How you collect, organize, and use business information should reinforce your emphasis on CUSTOMERS.

A thousand questions cascade from this one idea, including many that are rather abstract:

• If you’re collecting information by hand — how will you organize it for use in finding and serving customers?
• If you get information from a service like us (and, ahem, we happen to have the most and best business information you can find anywhere), what will you do with it that will help you find or serve customers?
• Do you know all the uses of the information ahead of time?
• Do you have a process for discovering and adopting new uses as you go?
• . . .

And then there are pragmatic questions galore:

• Does everybody in your outfit who needs to know the answers to the questions above know them? (Researchers? Marketers? Salespeople? Your CIO? Your CFO? All the big bosses?)
• Does what they understand mesh with the IT department’s ability to package and deliver the information, whether it’s through a complex data warehouse, a CRM, or simply a set of spreadsheets?
• Does the technological capacity mesh with the ability of your sales ops, fulfillment, and finance teams to track the right account information back to the right customer? Every time?
• . . .

You can fill in the blanks with more questions like these depending on your own situation. (And please feel free to share these questions in the comments.)

Remember that some of the answers to these questions need not be overly complex or expensive. For instance, if you and I decide to open a business together, just the two of us, we might be able to run our whole book of business from a few shared spreadsheets.

Easy, right? Sure — but even then, you and I would need to get some discipline around what information comes in, how we collect it, where we store it, and what we do with it. Even if you run a solo business, you need to answer these questions, because otherwise customers — business! cash money! — falls through the cracks.

Sum it all up, and the real core discipline lies in answering this question:

Which piece of information triggers which action toward which customer?

Until you know that, you can spend all the money you want on a CRM system . . . we could give you the keys to Hoover’s and you could drown yourself in company and industry information . . . you could store terabytes of data . . . and it still won’t drive the performance that your business — and its CUSTOMERS — deserve.

Don’t you agree?

~

Related posts:

• Customer ANYTHING.
• Get on the phone!

~

Image by Oran Viriyincy, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

1 comment | Category: Business information, Customer service, Marketing & Sales

Recently, Aberdeen Group researched the performance of 476 corporate sales teams. It published the results of this research in its December 2009 Benchmark Report, Inside Sales Enablement: “Let Them Drink Coffee!”

Below, you’ll find a copy of Aberdeen’s follow-up report focused on Hoover’s customers — who

“outperform[ed] other companies in both [financial] performance and the adoption of Best-In-Class practices.”

You can access this PDF and download a copy for yourself by clicking on the image below or on this link.

Among other highlights, Hoover’s customers outperformed in terms of:

• Revenue
• Lead response time
• Lead conversion rate

All in all,

“Hoover’s customers have out-performed those that do not use their service, in terms of the percent of companies improving their year-over-year sales metrics, by an average of 25%.”

Take a look at the report, which contains other analysis about the performance of sales teams across the board, as well as a mini-case study that explains how Staples uses our Access Hoover’s product to integrate Hoover’s data into its Salesforce.com CRM.

Here at Hoover’s, we’ve always believed that great business information empowers sales teams to do their best. We’re pleased to share this Aberdeen Group report so that you can see the hard numbers that back up our belief.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, or to drop us a line so we can help you figure out how Hoover’s can empower your sales teams.

1 comment | Category: Business information, Hoover's, Marketing & Sales

I’ve faced down a few stacks of collected business cards like that one in my time, and a friend asked me to talk about this subject, so I thought I’d share my process here.

1. Collect information at the event. Business cards are still useful, in their way. So is a pocket notebook to jot things down while you’re talking to a new person — including their basic contact information, if they’ve run out of cards. Since I’m a heavy Twitter user and often have a smartphone with me, I’ll follow a new acquaintance on Twitter right then and there if it’s appropriate.
2. When you get home, clear your desk and clear some time for following up.
3. On the newly-cleared expanse of my desk, I spread out the cards from the conference in neat rows. Something about doing this helps me to focus on each card individually, while keeping in mind how many follow-ups I have to do in the allotted time.
4. If I’ve collected a ton of cards, the law of averages suggests that there may be a few from folks I already know or (rarely) don’t care to know better. For speed’s sake, I sweep through the entire grid of cards on my desk and pull out all of these discards (dis-cards?) at once. I keep them in case I need to consult them later, but I file them away in a big plastic binder of a type that Kevin Kelly recommended a few years ago on Cool Tools. I don’t alphabetize the cards or anything — I just tuck each card into the next available slot. (The few times I’ve needed to go back to this binder for reference, it’s been easy enough to find the right card based on the mass of cards around it from people I met at the same time.)
5. Optional step for those as obsessive enslaved to instant gratification orderly as me: tidy the remaining cards into fewer rows. You’ll feel a nice little rush of instant productivity
6. I trawl through my social networks looking for the people whose information is on the remaining cards. I may follow them on Twitter, request to be a contact on LinkedIn, (rarely) request to be Facebook friends, add their blog’s RSS feed to my reader, or any combination of these. Typically I just open up all of these networks at once in a tabbed browser and rotate through them as I handle one person at a time across all networks.
7. After I’ve located a given person on each relevant network, I write them an e-mail or make some other sort of contact via social media. Easiest of all are the people who specifically asked for follow-up on some business issue: you write them an e-mail, remind them of your conversation, and let them know that you’re also following them on Twitter (or wherever) to make it easy to stay in touch. (This would also be a good time to make an entry in your CRM, if it’s relevant.) But even if there’s no immediate business reason to connect, you can comment on one of their blog posts or Flickr pictures, respond to one of their tweets, or, if you can do it sincerely, broadcast a tweet recommending them to your friends, like this: “Met @JohnDoe at the XYZ conference this weekend. Super-nice guy, a pro’s pro in project management, well worth following.” They won’t soon forget that.
8. Finally, you file away each card as you’re done with it. One of my favorite aspects of my process here is that it’s so easy to see your progress as the grid of cards on your desk shrinks and shrinks. (I told you I like instant gratification.)
9. Extra credit: set yourself a reminder to follow up with your favorites from the conference at intervals after the inital contact — say 10 days, 25 days, and 45 days. Don’t make it a mechanical exercise; use it as an opportunity to remember why you liked them the first time, and then really re-connect about something that’s important to you both.

Now, over to you: what do YOU do to follow up with the people you meet at a conference?

~

Photo by J Aaron Farr.

7 comments | Category: Career, Social media