Business Insight Zone

Mostly I limit the shamelessly self-promotional messages here, but I want to make sure that you know how to get in touch with us here at Hoover’s if you ever have a question or problem about the service.

• The Feedback page leads you to our online knowledge base, a feedback form, our contact e-mail, and a form you can use to offer updates about any company we cover.
• If you want to talk to our award-winning customer-support team, you can call 800.486.8666 between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. Central Time, Monday through Friday.
• The Products & Services page gives you more information about our subscription levels. If you’re in the U.S., you can dial 866-307-3812 to talk to an account rep who will walk you through the sales process; otherwise you can use this page of international sales office numbers to reach our sales staff.

Failing all else, you can also contact me directly at twalker {at} hoovers {dot} com. My turnaround time runs much slower than our support reps’, but I’ll do what I can to get you pointed in the right direction.

Tell me, folks, what can I do for YOU?

If you’ve spent any time here, you know that I’m prone to talk about the world of work from my own perspective — which is certainly slanted in favor of my own priorities and interests. I hope that’s part of what brings you back for more.

But beyond that, I want to make sure I’m talking about topics that interest YOU. So, if you’d be so kind, please leave a comment here to tell me what YOU would like me to address, whether that means a single topic, a major theme of business, or what-have-you.

For more thoughts on my approach to this blog, see these posts:

• The benefits of failure.
• Comment-crazy.
• The nature of this beast.

Thanks for your feedback!

(Photo by hashmil.)

Psst . . . even though our Hoover’s Customer Appreciation Month has come to an end, you can still access an archive of the great materials we gave out during the festivities. Just go to the Hoover’s Customers Rock main page and click on the links for each week* to find the free white papers and articles.

If your work touches any part of the sales process, I’m sure you’ll find something useful. So please wander on over there and immerse yourself in the goodness, with our compliments.

~

* When I tried it just now, the link for Week 1 (Prospecting) didn’t work, but I’ll investigate to see if it’s temporary, or just me.

Folks, we’re very excited that sales legend Zig Ziglar is offering a Hoover’s webinar TODAY at 11 a.m. Central time. You can still sign up — just go to the Hoover’s Customers Rock home page and follow the directions there.

I’ll have to listen to the archive of Ziglar’s talk, because I’ll be spending the day at the Pluck Socialize conference at the beautiful Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin. If you’re at the conference, be sure to look me up!

Looks like it’s gonna be an action-packed day . . .

Just a reminder that our Customer Appreciation Month is in full swing — and that you can take advantage of it by checking out the Hoover’s Customers Rock home page.

This week’s theme is qualifying sales prospects. Just follow this link to get access to free white papers and video clips that will help you improve that crucial phase of your sales cycle. We’re also excited about our September 25th webinar with sales-coaching legend Zig Ziglar. You can register for the webinar at the Hoover’s Customers Rock home page.

This whole month is about giving a little something extra to our great customers. We hope you enjoy it — and that you take advantage of all the great free content that’s yours for the taking.

Do you get your information from a sprinkler or a pump?

My neighbor down the street hoses down her yard in the afternoon. In the heat of the Austin summer, she walks around for a few minutes and sprays the grass by hand.

Why she does this, I don’t know. But inevitably she loses a lot of water to evaporation in the hot sun, and it’s hard to believe that her hand-spraying could cover the yard as consistently as even one of those cheap rainbow-style sprinklers. According to everything I’ve ever read about lawn care, she’d be better served to run a sprinkler for a longer while every few days, ideally in the cool of the evening.

A lot of the people I know — and me, too, at times — often do something like the lawn-spraying trick with the way we take in information online. Instead of setting aside a time when we can focus our efforts, we “sip” from the Web’s information sprinkler for a moment here and a moment there throughout the day. The results: no consistent coverage, no depth to the “root structure” of our knowledge, and no real plan for how we can best use information to help our business garden thrive.

~ ~ ~

Use the pump, not the sprinkler.

Here’s a self-serving example of an information pump: One of the things that has helped Hoover’s thrive over the years is that we address the sprinkler/pump problem head-on. You may be too busy to dig up everything there is to know on Johnson Controls before you call on them, but our man James Bryant isn’t. James has been a Hoover’s editor for something like a decade, and he knows manufacturing inside and out. So while you’re busy going about your daily tasks, James is busy digging up the latest on Johnson Controls and all the other companies on his beat — just like the other 80+ editors who work here.

It’s the same for some of the best blogs around: people read Gizmodo because they want to keep up with the latest in high-tech gadgetry; they read Jeremiah Owyang’s weekly social media industry wrap-ups to get an expert’s view on what’s happening in that field. Really, this is no different than the news summary at the front of the print edition of The Economist, except that the niches are sliced thinner — and they’re readily available online.

The point is simple: the right sources allow you to drink deeply from the expertise of people who know what the heck they’re talking about. It’s worth it to find out what they know, even when that means drinking from the Web a little more deliberately.

Both of the old saws are true:

• Knowledge is power.
• A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

The trick is to get past the point of being dangerously underinformed, to the point where you can really use the knowledge you’ve gained for powerful business ends.

How do you collect the information you need to do business?

~

(Sprinkler photo by zone41; pump photo by damien_m_in_japan.)

Psst!

Want some Customer Appreciation Month goodness ahead of time? Check out the Hoover’s Customers Rock home page.

Next week’s theme: Prospecting. On deck for Monday, September 8: a half-hour webinar at 10:30 Central time with sales powerhouse Tony Parinello.

How do you sign up for this webinar, you ask? Just follow the link at . . . the Hoover’s Customers Rock home page.

And stay tuned for more, including white papers, articles, and a webinar with Zig Ziglar. It’s gonna be a fun month!

In preparation for a new wave of Company of the Day posts, I’ve prepared a handy archive page that lists all published Company of the Day posts, with convenient links to both those posts and the Hoover’s record for each company covered.

Stay tuned for the entries in the new run of the series — and feel free to leave comments here sugesting other companies you’d like me to cover.

~

(Photo by JohnHHoward.)

I can’t give away too much right now, but suffice it to say we’re going to have a big pile of goodies for you right after Labor Day — and throughout September.

Stay tuned . . .

Y’all please pardon me while I toot our own horn.

This makes the third year in a row that Hoover’s has found itself in the Top 10 Best Large Companies to Work For in the annual survey conducted by the Austin Business Journal.

Last year, we were in 7th place; this year, we’re up to 4th place.

Speaking as an eight-year Hoover’s veteran, I can tell you that St. David’s Healthcare, Austin Regional Clinic, and Hilton Austin — the companies that placed ahead of us in the survey — must be doing something seriously right, because Hoover’s is the friendliest and best place I’ve ever worked.

Here’s the whole list:

1. St. David’s Healthcare.
2. Austin Regional Clinic.
3. Hilton Austin.
4. Hoover’s, baby!
5. Heart Hospital of Austin.
6. Wells Fargo.
7. State Farm Insurance.
8. Silicon Laboratories.
9. Dresser Wayne.
10. Goodwill Industries of Central Texas.

Go, us!