Image via CrunchBase

Inside Apple. How America’s most advanced- and secretive – company really works. Adam Lashinsky. 2012. ISBN 9781455512171. (e-book).  Unlike the recent  Steve Jobs bio, this is a fact filled book on the company and the players (as well as Steve Jobs)  that should be on every Apple shareholder and traders reading list. The author is a long time Fortune reporter ( a magazine that Steve Jobs often favored with information over others). You will learn more about the inner workings, strengths and above all the culture of Apple.  As a journalist, Lashinsky writes clear concise copy making the book a good read.   He succeeds in helping pull back the veil in this company.  Highly recommended.

Related articles

• Former Apple employee questions author Adam Lashinsky (tuaw.com)
• Steve Jobs and Apple, an interview with Adam Lashinsky at LinkedIn’s inDay [Video] (winextra.com)
• ‘Inside Apple’ author Adam Lashinsky discusses Apple secret-keeping and corporate life [video 50 mins] (9to5mac.com)
• ‘Inside Apple’ author Adam Lashinsky says Apple is antithesis of Google, talks post-Jobs culture (9to5mac.com)
• Inside Apple: one of the most secretive organisations in the world (telegraph.co.uk)
• Apple’s secrecy extends to fake projects for new, ‘untrusted’ employees (examiner.com)
• Why Apple Keeps New Hires in the Dark (news.dice.com)
• Pulling Back Apple’s Magic Curtain: Fortune’s Lashinsky Talks About New Book (Video) (allthingsd.com)
• The Apple Hiring Model – Let Them Work On Fake Products Till We Can Trust Them [Video] (thetechnologycafe.com)

Image via Wikipedia

How to Say It: Business to Business Selling. Geoffrey James.2011. ISBN 9780735204584.  This is a desktop book that every salesman and sales manager needs to have. It is extremely clear, concise and well written. Each chapter is a treasure trove of useful nuggets.  He covers the bases:

• How to Craft an Elevator Pitch
• Find Hot Sales Leads
• Negotiate the Best Deal
• Sell to Top Execs
• Build Sales Partnerships
• Get a Customer Referral
• Prospect with Voice Mail
• Give a Compelling Product Demo
• Move a Lead to a Prospect
• Develop B2B Campaigns
• Close a B2B Deal
• and more

He built this book through countless interviews with sales giants like Tom Sant, Wendy Weiss, Linda Richardson, Keith Eades, Jeff Thull, Keith Rosen, Joanne Black, Jeffrey Gitomer and others.  As a regular contributor to Selling Power and other publications, the author really knows what works. Buy, read and review.

Related articles

• Why B2B and B2C Sales are Different (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• 10 questions to ask everyday (interconnecta.wordpress.com)
• Why Sales Hates Marketing: 9 Reasons (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• Jan 16, Business to Business Selling: Use Effective B2B Marketing Strategy (more-for-small-business.com)
• Pricing Optimization in a B2B World: Value-Based Pricing Comes of Age for Sales (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• B2B Marketing: Why Maximising Leads Won’t Maximise Revenues (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• 10 Must-Read Books for every B2B Sales and Marketing Bookshelf (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)

Image via CrunchBase

The End of Business as Usual. Brian Solis.  2012. ISBN 9781118171561.   This is the epitome of a very current marketing academic book that is eminently practical.  This does not make it an easy read because Brian is concise and direct in his analysis and expects the reader to do some work as well.  The book is full of aha moments, and my Kindle highlights are legion.  This is the book for you if you are a current practicing marketer and or academic.  I especially appreciated that Brian was able to skillfully weave the entire marketing skill set into all aspects of the company.   If you want to learn and earn in this space, you will need to read this book.  Full disclosure- I bought this book and it is on all my Kindles.   Check out his terrific blog http://www.briansolis.com/

Image via Wikipedia

Related articles

• Book Review: The End of Business As Usual by @BrianSolis (deirdrebreakenridge.com)
• Read The End of Business as Usual for Social Media Insights, Research and Trends (smallbiztrends.com)
• Book Review: The End of Business As Usual: Rewire the Way You Work in the Consumer Revolution by Brain Solis (blogcritics.org)
• Scott Meis: The State of the Blogosphere 2011 | Social Media Today (socialmediatoday.com)
• 3 Steps to Understanding Buying Behavior (serve4impact.com)
• Brian Solis: “The End of Business Usual” (coydavidson.wordpress.com)
• McKinsey January 2012 Newsletter – The next industrial revolution (serve4impact.com)

Image by matt.hintsa via Flickr

Some recent articles on value, pricing and sales came across my desk last week.

You”re pricing it wrong from SmashingMagazine .  You’re pricing it wrong is by Fran Galperin.  He presents some very compelling arguments making this a useful read for all.  I  I picked up on two definitions of value he used,  Perceived and Objective value.   In his words, “You can set a higher price without changing your product just by changing the potential customer’s perception of the product.”  Objective value is how much would people pay if they were indeed rational decision-making machines. “

He believes that buyers are not logical, rationale decision makers, but are much more emotional about decisions, giving the perceived value more importance in a sale. “Vendors can improve the perceived value through marketing with such things as copy, visual design, and demos.” In our research we have seen how marketing has just such an impact on presetting the reference price of a product and contributes to the the retention (or loss)  of value through the sales process.

The Sales Lead Black Hole ( download)  from Penn State Business school – marketing is a scholarly analysis of why 70% of marketing’s leads are not followed up by the sales team.  It is good research and could be one of a kind in this area.  In the summary they say,”

“We find that sales reps spend more time pursuing marketing leads if they

perceive their firm has an effective sales lead prequalification process.

We also find that as sales reps become more experienced, they are less likely to:

1. pursue marketing-generated leads,
2. respond positively to managerial tracking of marketing lead follow-up, or
3. respond positively to greater marketing-generated lead volume.

Our results also show that the better the sales reps’ past performance, the more likely they are to respond positively to

an increase in volume of marketing-generated leads and respond negatively to managerial tracking of marketing lead follow-up.”

This is material that gives good directions for how sales managers can make a greater impact on the team performance.  It is academic but is very direct in application and well worth the read.

Exploring Price Fairness Perceptions in China and U.S. by Lisa Bolton, associate professor of marketing at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, along with Hean Tat Keh from Peking University and Joseph W. Alba from the University of Florida, Pennsylvania State Business School.   Fascinating bit of research.   E.g.

• Bolton, et al  find that both Chinese and American consumers judge it fair to pay a lower price but unfair to pay a higher price than paid by another customer. In other words, “what’s good for me is fair”—a kind of egocentric bias at work.  However, the Chinese are especially sensitive to the type of comparison. For example, Chinese consumers judge it unfair to pay a higher price than a friend but are indifferent to the price paid by a stranger. In contrast, Americans are indifferent to the friend-stranger distinction, judging it equally unfair to pay a higher price than paid by either a friend or a stranger.
• These findings reflect the tendency of Western cultures to possess an independent, individualistic identity, whereas Eastern cultures are interdependent or collectivist in nature. Bolton says the Chinese “view the world as a network of social relationships and are, as a result, strongly oriented toward the in-group (friends and loyal relationships).” In contrast, Americans see the world in terms of independent and autonomous individuals and are less sensitive to relational information.  For example, prior research shows that Americans perceive friends, coworkers, and business owners as equivalents, but such is not the case for the Chinese, who put greater emphasis on their personal social networks.
• Another concept that comes into play in the research conducted by Bolton and her colleagues is a culture’s sensitivity to mianzi or “face.”  Face is defined as status earned in a social network, and a person can either gain or lose face depending on the situation. Keeping in mind the difference between the collectivist Chinese consumer and the individualist American consumer, Chinese consumers typically experience a greater loss of face if they pay a higher price than a person in their in-group as opposed to someone in an out-group. For example, paying a higher price than a friend affects the Chinese consumer’s status or “face” within the social network and is experienced as a feeling of shame. In contrast, the American consumer tends to feel anger at paying a higher price than another consumer, friend, or stranger.
• Ultimately, consumer price fairness response and emotional reactions affect customers’ interactions with the firm in regards to purchase intent. For example, American consumers report lower intentions to re-purchase after paying a higher price than another consumer, whether friend or stranger. Chinese consumers are less likely to re-purchase after paying a higher price than a friend, but are unaffected by what a stranger paid.
• Interestingly, the cultural differences in sensitivity to relationships among consumers also extend to relationships between consumers and firms. The researchers find that “Chinese consumers judge it unfair to pay a higher price than another customer when in a loyal relationship with a firm but are relatively indifferent when in a first-time buyer situation. In contrast, Americans judge paying a higher price than another customer as unfair regardless of past loyalty to the firm.” Again, the results appear to be driven by face:  Chinese consumers experience a greater loss of face when they pay a higher price to a vendor with whom they have a long relationship as opposed to a new vendor.

These findings by Bolton and her colleagues suggest that price perceptions are more a matter of psychology than economics—with many implications for marketers, particularly in the areas of dynamic pricing and relationship marketing. If consumers feel that dynamic pricing is unfair, marketers can defend themselves against consumer backlash by using differentiation to reduce the impact of the price comparison. Doing so may be especially important with American consumers, who will resist paying a higher price regardless of the identity of the other consumer.

In terms of relationship marketing, conventional wisdom states that loyal consumers are less price sensitive, so they’re willing to pay a higher price. According to Bolton, “Our research suggests that, if anything, loyal consumers are more price sensitive.” Americans are equally sensitive regardless of whether they’re loyal or first-time buyers, and Chinese consumers are more price sensitive when loyal. As a result, marketers need to take into account the importance of culture, and the role of social networks and personal relationships, in order to effectively market their products in the United States and China.

Image by ShashiBellamkonda via Flickr

Image by LangleyNewMedia via Flickr

Managing Content Marketing. The real world guide  for creating passionate subscribers to your brand. Robert Rose & Joe Pulizzi. 2011. ISBN 9780983330714.  Pulizzi is the Godfather of Content Marketing – we used his book Get Content Get Customers in our Content Marketing Program.  This book is the business extension of doing the content marketing work in your company. The authors never forget that it is the buyers view point and journey that is important, not your sales process.  It does a very good job and is a valuable addition to the growing body of work on Content Marketing.   I especially enjoy the very readable concise style of this book as the authors recognize that the reader wants to get right to the job at hand. Their chapter on marketing ROI is likely the best documentation out there at the moment. This is must have book for all marketers.  Those who chose not to adapt, choose to fail.

Related articles

• Content Marketing Pioneer and Entrepreneur Joe Pulizzi, First to Join 9Threads’ Board of Advisors (prweb.com)
• How Far Should You Open the Content Kimono? (blogworld.com)
• 5 Reasons Why Your Content Marketing Strategy Fails (searchmarketingstandard.com)
• Content Marketing: Publishing is the New Marketing – Free webcast at Search Marketing Now, May 18 (prweb.com)
• 5 Key Roles for Content Marketing Success in 2012 (toprankblog.com)
• Small Business Content Marketing Gold (growmap.com)
• Marketing vs. Publishing: Both Create Content, Drive Leads (hubspot.com)
• Grande Guide to B2B Content Marketing (cc-chapman.com)
• How to fast-track your career with content marketing (thecontentlab.icrossing.com)
• Content marketing playbook (drewsmarketingminute.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Google Reader warned us it was changing and we would loose the shared feed option. No matter, the loss is so much worse than I expected.

No longer:

• Can I easily find and sent out relevant info daily to my audience on content marketing and sales
• Can I easily read the items as quickly in Reader.
• Can i  post “found items on the Web through Reader – keeping track of everything in one place.

Google – you hurt me personally by stopping Google Health – an absolutely elegant idea of health records in the cloud.

But now the loss of reader as a shared item ( forget the use of G+ to replace it – its a different tool)  impacts my publishing.

I spent five hours yesterday trying  to replace the item – and found the solutions inadequate. You have killed my ability to curate on the larger scale.  Damn you!!!!

Related articles

• Google Degrades Its Reader (delong.typepad.com)
• Google neuters Google Reader (e1evation.com)
• Serious Problem with the New Google Reader (ask.metafilter.com)
• Google Reader Ditches Sharing in Redesign (linearfix.wordpress.com)
• Did Google break the most important site on the web? (arhg.net)
• Google Reader Diaspora (ask.metafilter.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Value-Based Pricing. Harry MacDivitt & Mike Wilkinson.2012. ISBN 9780071761680.  This is one of the best texts on this topic I have run up against so far.  First the descriptions of pricing and how it is arrived at is succinct, clear and bang on the money.  Second this is the first pricing book that really identifies how many objections that sale can find with changing the pricing strategy  as well as the huge obstacle that sales is to implementation.  Then they do show you how to capture customer value in order to extract the price you deserve. The case studies at the end of the book are a bonus for those serious about implementing value based pricing. This is a must have reference for sales and marketing organizations as well as CEO’s.  Plus with both authors from the UK, they do not waste a word- it is all clear and valuable.

Related articles

• LinkedIn Poll – Where does pricing have the most impact in the sales funnel? (leveragepoint.com)
• Webinar – Improving the Value Proposition for New Products with Dick Braun of Parker Hannifin (leveragepoint.com)
• Implementing a Value Based Sales Approach. Part 2 of 4. Marketing (regnordman.com)
• The Art of Pricing: How to find the hidden profits in your business. Rafi Mohammed. (regnordman.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Social Media Analytics. Effective tools for building, interpreting 7 using metrics. Marshall Sponder.2012. ISBN 9780071768290.  This is not a trivial book. It cuts right through the hype and shows the marketing professional how to extract metrics to demonstrate the usefulness of social media. It is chock full of current tools and where they are useful and where not.  The book follows two cycles. The basics and the advanced.  The advanced is deep and well described. Like any other practice to do this well requires  hard thoughtful work. I defy the 20 something flash in the pan social experts to get their heads around this stuff.

Related articles

• Book review of Marshall Sponder’s Social Media Analytics (biznology.com)
• Social Media Book Club September Selection: Social Media Analytics (socialmediaclub.org)
• Awareness Network Webinar Recording/recap – 8/25/11 (webmetricsguru.com)
• Social Media Club Newsletter (9/1/11) (socialmediaclub.org)
• #measurePR with Marshall Sponder (Part II) (waxingunlyrical.com)
• Tracking the KPIs of Social Media (seomoz.org)
• Social Media KPIs- is it really rocket science? (convonix.com)
• The Best New Social Media Analytics Tools 2011 (so far) (bjconquest.com)
• Are You Measuring the Right Metrics for Online Marketing? (verticalmeasures.com)
• The ROI in Social Media? (verigentllc.wordpress.com)

Image by Reuben Yau via Flickr

Zarella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The science, design, and engineering of contagious ideas.  Dan Zarella. 2011. ISBN 9781936719273.   This is a short but useful compendium of “stuff that works’ for driving online engagement using social media.  It was a free Kindle book, sponsored by Hubspot and Mailchimp.   For inbound marketers this is a useful book.  His examples and studies are real, valid and immediately applicable.  Easy to read and reasonably organized.  I enjoyed some of his insights as they are not as readily available elsewhere such the decline in Twitter follower count through the use of negative comments, as well as self references, for example. His timing studies as to when to release information are very current and seem counter intuitive, but I have noticed the same thing recently.  Grab it.

Related articles

• Roundup of the Science of Social Media Webinar (webdesignfromscratch.com)
• Free Download – Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas by Dan Zarrella (randomizeme.wordpress.com)
• Influencers Are Real, But they’re Not Always Who You Expect (problogger.net)
• When to Tweet (servantofchaos.com)
• Facebook Conversations Don’t Achieve The Marketing Boost You Desire (fastcompany.com)
• 18 Hours of Inbound Marketing Knowledge [Free Certification Program] (hubspot.com)
• 3 ideas you should steal from HubSpot (downes.ca)
• Twitter and Facebook: Some New Stats, Tricks and Tips (personalbrandingblog.com)

Maximizing Lead Generation. The complete guide for b2b marketers. Ruth P. Stevens. 2012. ISBN9780789741141.  The subhead is really true, this is a thorough and complete book on lead gen. Combine this with Brian Carrols work and you have all you need.  I recommend this book for the beginner through to the grey haired pro. Sure the tools will continue to improve, but the basics as laid out by the author are very very current. Warning, read this carefully as the  author is concise and direct, so it is up to you to understand each part of each step, including the need for great copy. A great addition to marketing literature and I suggest this is a must buy.

Related articles

• Maximizing Lead Generation (customerthink.com)
• Book Review: Maximizing Lead Generation by Ruth Stevens (mpdailyfix.com)
• Doctor, Heal Thyself! Why companies are unable to diagnose their own demand generation challenges (fearlesscompetitor.net)
• Buyer Personas are the foundation of great b2b Lead Generation Programs (fearlesscompetitor.net)
• Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study Released (prweb.com)