Most CRM implementations fail.  This is a fact.  Look it up.

In my years in the industry, I’ve worked with many vendors on the consulting side to help reduce the possibility of CRM failure.  While there is a whole host of reason that failure occurs, I have a very unique perspective into one of those reasons.  The Nature of Contact Information.

The nature of contact information is fairly finite (i.e. Company, URL, Name, Title, Email, Phone, Social Network membership, etc). In addition, the concept of contact information is a simple one to grasp. It is so simple, in fact, that if often gets overlooked.

One of the most important concepts in business is “be brilliant at the basics”. If you are brilliant at your basics many more complex processes will fall naturally into place. So how are you treating contact information?

The miss-handling of contact information can lead to dire consequences across your company.

Take the following work flow as an example:
Read the rest of this entry »

In 2002, I was excited to get phone calls or even emails from anyone.  My company was a start-up. 2 guys in a office with a dog and a bunch of computer servers.

Today it is different.  Perhaps I am partly to blame.  My contact information is on the Broadlook website, I’m the registration contact for 100′s of domains, and I freely put all my contact information into my email signature.

And…yes, my company, Broadlook,  makes software that pulls information from the Internet to empower sales and recruiting professionals.   Again, I am guilty, but having my contact information is not an excuse to sell badly to me.

Here is a secret:  I love being sold to.  Truly being sold to means that somebody has done their homework, looked at my needs, my company needs and has a solution to my pain.   To save those hundreds of sales reps time, I’ve decided to (1) define the rules of engagement of how to sell to me and (2) post them on my corporate bio.  If you follow the rules, I promise I will respond.  It may be an email that only says “no thank you”. Or try me next quarter, but if you take the time, I will take the time.

I like the transparency of establishing the rules of engagement.  When I passed this idea by a few of my peers, leaders in both small and large companies, they all liked the idea of establishing the engagement rules and being transparent.   My rules are not the next persons rules;  they are mine.  Everyone should craft their own and make them transparent.  If more people did this, selling would be so much more efficient and enjoyable, for both sides.  Imagine that!

In order to sell at a high level, you need more than an email address.  Perhaps having Broadlook’s lead generation tools at my disposal for the last 7 years has spoiled me.  When I reach out to someone, I know something about them and I always personalize my message.

I titled this blog verbosely so people looking to sell to me would find it.  SEO stuff.  We’ll see where it lands…

Rules to sell to Donato Diorio

1. Get my name right.  I can see how people mistake my first name for a last name, but it’s not brain surgery. It shows respect.
2. Personalize. I will not respond to a mass emails. Period.
3. Understand what my company (Broadlook) does.  Can you believe that there is some idiot out there that keeps trying to sell me a list of recruiting firms?     Talk about selling ice to an Eskimo.
4. Show me that I am special.  Customize your sales pitch for my company.  Don’t use generalities.  Research what my company does and ask me good questions. I don’t have a burning need to seek others approval, but if you take the time to tell me.
5. Call and email.   You will probably get voice mail, but I will listen to it.  The email will give me your contact information if I like what I hear.   Tell me you will also be sending me an email.   Be articulate, gosh, I’m sorry, but if your accent is so heavy that I have to listen to your voice mail a few times to understand it, it will get deleted at the very beginning.
6. In your voice mail,  say your phone number two times.  Give me a chance to write it down if I like what I hear.
7. Don’t use a voice mail script.  If you do, you are not at the level yet to successfully sell to me.  Try again next year.
8. Don’t use a negative sell.  i.e.  The economy is bad, and you can help.   Bad for who? Do your homework.  I’m an optimist.  I love hanging up on pessimists.  Realists welcome.
9. Know your product inside out.  If you can’t answer nearly all my questions, you should not be reaching out to me. Have you manager or top sales rep do it.
10. Don’t call me if someone else at my company makes the decision.  I don’t make the decisions on office supplies.
11. Did I mention… get my name right?

Here is the email that put me over the top to write this blog.  It was nth in a series, polite but impersonal.  I will not be working with this company.

==============================================================

Dear Danato,  (got my name wrong)

Hope you are doing fine.   (does he really?)     (the DELETE button was pressed when my eyes hit this line)

This is with reference to my previous mail dated 4th March 2009. (reminding me of his spam) I hope you have received it. I eagerly await your reply as I look forward to exploring a potential business opportunity with your company , which I am sure would prove to be mutually beneficial.  (he has no clue what Broadlook does)

Please let me know your interest and your availability for a short introductory call at a time that would best suit your schedule.  During the call, I would primarily like to introduce XXXXXXXXX, our services, capabilities and address any specific queries that you may have.

Eagerly awaiting your reply.  (and 50,000 others he spammed)

Thanks and best regards,

XXXX

==============================================================

Shorter domain names are better.  One syllable words are simple, short, and memorable. This weekend I was looking for a domain name for a new project I was working on.  Everything I initially tried was taken.  What I did know was that I wanted to add a one syllable word to the end of my “anchor word”.  It had nothing to do with recruiting, but for this example,  I will use the anchor word  RECRUIT.

I needed to create a repeatable, semi automated process to conquer this task.   Here is what I did:

1. Create a list of one-syllable words.  One of Broadlook’s software engineers, Kevin,  had developed an algorithm to do this.  It is a great thing when you have a team with 7 years of software code to pull off the shelf.

2. Pass this list of one-syllable words past a good set of text to get a frequency count.  Kevin suggested to run it past the Brown Corpus.   It was a good idea.  Once I had a frequency count, I could remove words of very low frequency from the list.  The end result was about 6100 one-syllable words

3.  Build a simple Excel spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet allows me to type in a single word and it will create about 6100 lines of potential domain names.    You can get this spreadsheet here at a site I set up.

4.  In batches of 500, paste them into GoDaddy’s bulk registration system.   All the domains that are already registered will be culled out of the results.

If you are looking for a domain name in the recruiting space, you can try RecruitWho.com, RecruitGo.com or RecruitGun.com.  All of these domains were available as of this writing.  Below is the full list of 5700 available domain names starting with the word RECRUIT.   Within this list are some good domains, and many very bad ones.  They are listed in the order of occurrence of the word in the  English language, starting with “the” being the most used.  While this may seem daunting, check your premises. Try manually thinking up a domain name, checking if it is available, and trying again, again and again  vs.  looking through this list.  This way is much faster.   If someone picks one from this list, let me know, I’d love to hear that I saved you time.  Go get em!

RECRUIT  THE.COM
RECRUIT  OF.COM
RECRUIT  AND.COM
RECRUIT  TO.COM
RECRUIT  THAT.COM
RECRUIT  IS.COM
RECRUIT  WAS.COM
RECRUIT  HE.COM
RECRUIT  FOR.COM
RECRUIT  HIS.COM
RECRUIT  BE.COM
RECRUIT  AT.COM
RECRUIT  BY.COM
RECRUIT  HAD.COM
RECRUIT  NOT.COM
RECRUIT  ARE.COM
RECRUIT  BUT.COM
RECRUIT  FROM.COM
RECRUIT  HAVE.COM
RECRUIT  THEY.COM
RECRUIT  AN.COM
RECRUIT  WHICH.COM
RECRUIT  WERE.COM
RECRUIT  SHE.COM
RECRUIT  WE.COM
RECRUIT  THERE.COM
RECRUIT  WOULD.COM
RECRUIT  THEIR.COM
RECRUIT  BEEN.COM
RECRUIT  HAS.COM
RECRUIT  WHEN.COM

Read the rest of this entry »

It is interesting and challenging to pick a new domain name.  At some point, it can get frustrating since everything you try to pick is already registered.  Here is some advice, use a tool.  You would not want to search the Internet by going to every building that is connected to the Internet and looking on each individual hard drive.  We use a tool.  Search engines.

Picking a domain name also has it’s tools.  My first step was to find a source of words.  I wanted short, common words. I found this resource of the top 100 words in the English language: http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/wordfrom/revisedcoed11/?view=uk

This gave me a source of data.  I captured the table from the webpage using Broadlook Eclipse (I don’t cut & paste) and exported a list to Excel.  Next, I visited a few of my favorite sites.   Nameboy.com and Bustaname.com.   With bustaname.com you put words into groups, and then bustaname creates permutations of available web domains.  Using this method I picked up whichwhen.com for $7.   Nice domain.  2 syllables, includes 2 of the top 100 words in the English language, and it rhymes.

Here is an example of what Bustaname.com looks like.  In this example,  you can see a small sub section of available domains based on top 100 words in English.

In my first hour of searching, manually, I tried over 50 domains, and none that I liked were available.  In the next hour I had my pick of about 5 domains I really liked.

Moral of the story: Whether you are picking a domain name or doing Internet Research,  don’t be stupid,  use a tool.

It is rare that spend my valuable time with a complaint.  However, in my recent quest to get support for VMware fusion was met with a hard stop.   I have never been so amazed at the ramifications of a bad policy.

Here is what happened.  I use VMware fusion on my macbook pro to run a virtual windows vista environment.  I use that environment for software demos.  It needs to work.  I switched to a mac for ease of use (that is another blog).   Windows has a tendency to bloat…so my virtual environment ran out of space; I needed to increase the size of the virtual disk.   For one reason or another,  the standard disk-expanding procedure did not work.  Time *is* money, so I decided to call support to get it resolved.

Here is where the nightmare started.

When I called, I was prompted to press the # button for support for fusion.  I eventually got a message stating that there was online support only.  “Ok, I can understand that”, I said to myself.   I would just call back and let them know, I’m willing to pay for support to resolve this issue and get back to giving software demos.

I called back.

This time I pressed the series of buttons to get to a live person.

The nightmare intensified.

I was told that there is no phone support, even if I payed.  Never in my 25+ years in the industry has this happened to me.  I was shocked.   For those who know me…yes, I was speechless for a few moments.  I’ve had tough tech support cases at Broadlook, first when I started the company and I was sales, support, development and garbage man.  Now my tech support team handles everything under the sun.  We have never told a client “NO”.  Yes, sometimes, when there is an issue outside the realm of our software, we charge, we have to.  Sometimes we resolve firewall or Microsoft windows issues. It is not always our software, this is what paid support is for.   I was simply in disbelief.

My issue is still unresolved.  Where does this leave me?  This blog is “what keeps me up at night”.  This time it really will.  I will be re-installing Windows, adding all the software that my demo machine needs, transferring files from one session to another.

Here is my support ticket in case VMware cares: 1136362675

Here is the email of the manager who said “no”:  callum at vmware dot com

Notes to VMware.

-Microsoft, for all it’s faults, will help you if you pay for it.
-Support can be a revenue stream.  (said with a tone of Duhhh)
-If you treat your customers this way, competitors are going to eat your lunch, and I will enjoy watching it happen.  I don’t like being told no.
-Parallels has an alternative to VMware fusion for the mac.  I called Parallels and asked if they had pay-for-support and they said absolutely.  In fact, the guy I talked to at Parallels was extremely helpful and also shocked when I shared the VMware fusion story.

At this point, I don’t want to work with VMware

Fast forward 3 months

I holded off posting this blog for about 3 months.  I switched to Parallels for mac which allows me to run a virtualized windows environment.  I wanted to wait until I had a problem and needed help with Parallels.  When I called Parallels support, I did have an issue that qualified for paid support.  The rep was probably surprised when I was enthusiastic and excited to pay for support.  In the end, I was not even charged, even though I was willing to pay.  My issue only took a minute to resolve and the tech support rep wished me well.

VMware: That is service.