CPM: Cost per thousand impressions
CPC: Cost per click-through
CPA: cost-per-action
Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action
Customer Acquisition Cost: The cost associated with acquiring a new customer

-- Internet Marketing Dictionary

What it feels like trying to figure out Search Engine Marketing.

Searching for  Search Engine Marketing

I recently signed up for Google AdWords and started playing around with its campaign site. After twenty, or, thirty minutes, I started getting a splitting headache and through frustration, closed my Google Chrome browser and defiantly opened up Firefox.  Now to be fair, I had no business signing up for AdWords, since I can't even spell S-E-M (SEM) but, I was determined to get a better understanding of what I could be missing.  Being a start-up and desperate for bootstrapping sales, it seemed only logical to investigate.

Google Sales to the Rescue, sort of

The very next day I received a call from a Google Sales Rep - Terry Dewey, who was incredibly helpful, and patient, in walking me through the site & giving me my very own S-E-M 101 Course. But, by the end of the call, there was one thing terribly obvious to both of us. If I couldn't manage to spend $7500 a month on AdWords advertising, then there simply wasn't any point in getting started.

WCT: Wholly Crap Through

At $7500 a month, with an average of 3% conversion rate, my customer acquisition cost was probably going to cost me more than I was going to make.

Reality Check and The Referral Engine Bibles

So needless to say, I've abandoned my jump into SEM and have returned to the teachings of Guy Kawasaki's Reality Check & John Jantsch's The Referral Engine. If I understand correctly, the key to success is sharing with those who can help. So that's the motivation behind the :AnotherSocialEconomy Reseller and Referrer programs. Another lesson learned, is that I have to make it real easy for those folks to pass the message along and that's why we developed the :Widget and the :Bookmarklet.

The Ultimate Cost Per Action (CPA)

CPA offers are the truest form of performance marketing. Rather than basing payouts on bulk traffic which may or may not convert, cost per action refers to compensating affiliates/publishers for real sales, leads, and other conversion metrics. This is often the most empowering method for advertisers, as they are able to gain direct results from their advertising budget. The CPA model is a risk-free approach to advertising that usually targets niche specific publishers or clever affiliates.

-- Peter Hamilton

According to Rubicon Consulting & Online Communities and Their Impact on Business: Ignore at Your Peril, where they found 10% of the community members contribute 80% of the content. These Most Frequent Contributors (MFCs) are second to word of mouth when it comes to influencing others.

So for starters, here's how our Widgets whip click-through and pay-per-click advertising for Influencers (MFCs).

1. Prep work:
   1. Become an AnotherSocialEconomy Reseller
   2. Post an AnotherSocialEconomy Widget on your blog, or, web site. The widget can be customized to your site's look and feel so it doesn't distract your readers.
   3. Contact Retailers, suppliers, manufactuers, brands, distributors, and anyone else in position to close a sale - locally, or, online and have them register as AnotherSocialEconomy Retailers.
2. Blog, review, rate, do whatever you do to contribute valuable content.
   1. Your readers can then fill in your site's Widget to purchase whichever goods and/or services mentioned.
   2. AnotherSocialEconomy will then notify all registered Retailers within range of the Consumer's location and ask them if they have the goods/services available for sale.
   3. Those Retailers with inventory on hand, then propose their goods to the Consumer via AnotherSocialEconomy.
   4. Once Consumers confirm, they can then proceed to the local Retailer and pick up their goods.

Bottom line

AnotherSocialEconomy is about connecting serious buyers with local retailers. So only those Consumers interested in buying, will click-through.  And only those Retailers in a position to close the sale, need to reply. There's no conversion rates, or, customer acquisition costs to worry about. Retailers only pay when they close the sale.

But wait, there's more ...

And what about that kind Influencer? Since they Referred the request via their site's Wdiget, they get to share in some of AnotherSocialEconomy's proceeds.  And in this particular scenario, since they- as  a Reseller signed up the Retailer who made the sale, then they again, get to share in some of AnotherSocialEconomy's proceeds. Now that's some CPA, eh?

Thanks

I'd like to thank Michel Drouin for connecting the dots between click-through advertising and the value proposition of :AnotherSocialEconomy's :Widget.

Stay tuned and I'll let you know how this one works out.

Related posts:

1. My First Cold Call Demo Pitch and Are All Retail Sales Associates Like This? Prior to heading off to pitch a potential business partner,...
2. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2 My Idea's Unhidden Agenda, also known as, Work-For-Attribution, and how...
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Golden Rule of Branding:

1. Choose a name that is your URL
2. Don't choose anything that paints you in a corner. With the word "tweet" in it, it's painted into a corner.

-- Mark Suster, referring to TweetUp at 6:11 into This Week in Venture Capital #2 with Mark Suster.

In the beginning

There was something familiar about Twitter back in December 2008 when I posted My Five Ws of Twitter in less than 10 minutes (video included). It wasn't necessarily the short messages - like text messaging (SMS), even though those were its roots. It wasn't so much the chat-like short messages either. It was something I recognized as an IBM MQ Series feature call Message Persistence - basically meaning, the messages are saved on some hard disk on some server somewhere on the network. So what? So as opposed to email, text messages, or, chat messages that are 1) unless they're spam, are sent to a select group of people, and 2) can be deleted, Twitter messages are potentially in the public domain, persisted (save to some disk) and searchable.

The original idea behind Twetailer was to expand on those persisted tweets, as if they were MQ Series persisted messages and use them as a poor-mans' communication channel. And just like MQ Series with its ability to have operating system agnostic clients communicating to the MQ Series server, there were already a whack of Twitter client applications out there like TweetDeck, Twhirl, Seesmic, etc. That way Twetailer could focus on the transaction engine and let its users choose their favorite client app. We even had free text messaging (SMS), courtesy of Twitter.

Hence the name Twetailer, which is short for Twitter Retailer.

Sounds like a plan, eh?

But Dom Derrien was concerned about relying on Twitter for these persisted messages, so, we decided to persist our own. Still true to our Twitter inspiration, we built a transaction engine that runs in 140 characters, or, less. As a Consumer, your initial request looks like:

d twetailer wii console locale:1235 us range:25 mi expires:2010-12-23

and subsequent requests could look like:

d twetailer rent twilight dvd

since we already knew your previous preference for location and default the expiry date to one month in the future.

Oh, by the way, Dom was right! To date, Twitter does not persist searchable messages beyond a few days, at best!

Too cryptic

While everyone we yakked to about the concept Where Demand comes to meet Supply loved it, they either didn't tweet, or, thought the messages were too cryptic.

How to paint yourself out of a corner

Twitter is still a force to be reckoned with. But so is email and so is the web and so is text messaging and so is Facebook and so is Google Talk and so is iChat and so is Android and so is iPhone and so is yada yada yada. Cryptic, shmyptic!!! Our  Twitter-inspired transaction engine has an open application programming interface (API) allowing us, or, you to build more client apps than ever before. Nonetheless, we have to heed the outside-in advice of  those we respect.  So we're keeping http://twetailer.com as our project name but moving forward with http://AnotherSocialEconomy.com.

Thanks Jason, Mark & ThisWeekIn

A big thanks to Mark Suster, Jason Calacanis and the rest of the crew at ThisWeekIn for helping us paint our way out the corner. I'm pleased to say we have gone from the single Twitter Stream to multi-stream and from Twetailer to AnotherSocialEconomy.

Thoughts

Has anyone out there been faced with a similar situation? Did you stick with your 'program", or, re-positioned yourself?

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Background

We've reached our techie milestone. We have quality code running in the Google AppEngine clouds. We've validated our concept with as many people that will listen to us. We're at the point now where we have to validate with the market. We need users. More specifically, we need Consumers and we need Retailers. We need marketing & we need public relations (PR).

Challenge

So while the real techie - Dom Derrien, can breath a little easier, the other - me, with my techie background, has to go out and market the crap out of Twetailer. But, I'm not really a marketing kind of guy. While I absolutely love demoing and presenting and evangelizing, I'm not particularly strong at finding the right people to get in front of. So, I need to find myself a marketing guru. But being an ultra-light start up (read "living of my wife and kids"), I need to find a marketing guru - preferably one shooting for the social networking sphere, who's willing to drink the Kool-Aid. Fortunately, Marc Bienstock likes Kool-Aid.

Lesson Learned

Twetailer was conceived and originally targeted for techies like ourselves - cube dwellers. Which is fine, since we never planned on using the line "If only 1% of China...". So demoing to techies was never a real problem, despite some minor usability issues. But in order to get to the next level, we had to demo to prospective partners, prospective CEOs, prospective Consumers and prospective Retailers. And the further away we got from the cube dwellers, the greater the usability issue became for those higher up in the org chart - tower dwellers. Thankfully, everyone got the true value of Twetailer's service:  "Brokering Consumer Demand with local Retailers' available Supply - via simple messages, for f(r)ee, or, Reverse Retailing". But even our own accountant and lawyer turned on us with comments like "Can't I just have one button to press? I'm not very comfortable with all this texting stuff. Hey, I have a great idea! How about an app for my Blackberry?". Not bad for tower-dwellers, eh?

So now I think I understand. While I originally intended to service techie consumers, I needed non-techies to help me get that service to them. In other words, my techie solution had a non-techie dependency.

Time to Pivot

It pays to get out of the basement. Last April, I attended the Montreal venue for the Startup Lessons Learned Conference where among other gems, I was introduced to what Steve Blank calls Customer Development process and Eric Ries calls the The Pivot:

“Pivoting” is when you change a fundamental part of the business model. It can be as simple as recognizing that your product was priced incorrectly. It can be more complex if you find your target customer or users need to change or the feature set is wrong or you need to “repackage” a monolithic product into a family of products or you chose the wrong sales channel or your customer acquisition programs were ineffective.

Modified Business Model

Originally, the fee plan was to charge both Consumer & Retailer a transaction fee similar to that of Amazon Flexible Payments Service fees (about 3%). But after speaking to several people, it became clear we couldn't build a sustainable business like that. The common thought was the best idea is to solve a real business problem and charge money for it. So we're going to charge a monthly subscription fee for registered Retailers. And because Marc felt Twetailer was too generalized and people needed a sense of urgency to use it, we've also introduced a Reseller distribution channel with our first one being targeted towards golfers & golf courses. (Congrats to Marc for being our first Reseller!) And to address usability issues, we're offering a Managed Service for those non-techie Retailers out there.

Modified Development Roadmap

As much as I didn't want to go down this route until there was actual income to pay for it, I seem to be in a Catch 22: If we don't build it, they won't come. If they don't come, then I can't afford to build it. So we re-prioritized some things & built it - an Android app targeted for the Golfer (Consumer) wanting to find a local Golf Course (Retailer). And since Twetailer is vertical agnostic, we're making the app open source so other's out there may be encouraged to built their own vertical, or, reseller market using our open application programming interface (API). Oh and by the way,  for those of you like my good buddy Rick Boretsky who think only techies have Android mobile devices, I encourage you to take a look a the First quarter 2010 information from The NPD Group's Mobile Phone Track which reveals a shift in the smartphone market, as Android OS edged out Apple's OS for the number-two position behind RIM.

Golf Pivot Videos

Please take a look at our pivot trilogy (less than 10 minutes) and let me know your thoughts. The first is intended to address our target audience with the second identifying their pain and the third illustrating our solution (for non-techies and techies alike).

Reflection

What do you think? Am I setting a bad precedence? Am I clouding my inability to market/sell my start up by throwing more code, time & energy at the problem, as opposed to, finding/solving the root-cause? Or, do you think this is a step in the right direction?

Related posts:

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Maybe it's time that there be a service that's only for kids.

-- Jason Calacanis at 1:13:29 into TWiST #50 Anniversary Show

Lon Harris, Creative Director at ThisWeekIn brought up an interesting story on Anthony Orsini, the principal at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, who sent out an e-mail Wednesday morning asking parents to help him get all of his students off social networks and keep careful track of their text messages.

"Please do the following: sit down with your child (and they are just children still) and tell them that they are not allowed to be a member of any social networking site. Today! ..."

-- As covered by New Jersey Principal Asks Parents To Ban Facebook, Social Networking, Text Messaging - wcbstv.com

His basic concern is about bullying & how these social sites empower cyber-bullying. In response, Jason & Lon go on about how to deal with children, the Internet & even offer a few novel solutions for the car / auto-insurance industry. (I love the Key one, myself.) But, my favorite prosposed solution was Jason's at 1:13:29 into the show:

Maybe it's time that there be a service that's only for kids... I think maybe that's the solution

In all fairness, Jason doesn't know about edu.cyn.in but I thank him for the words of encouragement, again!

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Just one post
A lot of people have blogs. But most people don't.

I think you should. Even if you only have one post in you.

Having a blog is pretty daunting, especially if you don't like blank paper and are the sort of person that hates falling behind. I can imagine that the idea of posting 50 or 300 times a year is a little bit nuts for many people.

But what if there's just one thing you need to say, but you can say it clearly and well and in a way that hasn't been said before? What if you've got one great blog post inside of you, and, even better, you're willing to update that post as you learn more and gain more insight?

An entire post about a certain kind of fossil. Or the misuse of a certain word. Or about a key difference between two kinds of bluetooth...

Why not?

-- Seth's Blog: Just one post

Not only does Alex love movies, but he wants to Produce them one day, despite the fact that none of us are all too clear on what that actually means. Nonetheless, he felt left out by Sara having edu.cyn.in (see Kicking off social software in Sara’s elementary school) to play in and really wanted to get something off his chest. His last post - Real Early Adopter was on Alice in Wonderland.

In the interest of full-disclosure, Alex created & typed the content on his own & I helped with the WordPress formatting. Here is Alex's guest blog post...

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

RatingsTrailer: Scary:

In theaters June 30 2010.

As you ALL know The Twilight Saga: Eclipse continues this year. But Bella must choose between Edward the vampire or Jacob the werewolf before graduation. But Bella's got bigger problems. The Volterrains are mad about Bella still being human and if she dose not become a vampire then she cannot be with Edward. But lucky for her she's got Jacob to protect her from Victoria the vampire. Just don't expect this one to be as light as The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Click the picture & watch the trailer on the official website.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

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#1You do not get credit before you do the work

-- Jason Calacanis, TWiST #47 with Niel Robertson (0:11:17)

If you've never heard of Jason Calacanis, then you owe it to yourself to check him out on one of his many ThisWeekIn episodes. I had the privaledge to demo to him once & he's a character & a half! This past week he went after Generation Y - well 80% of them. And to be quite honest, I agree with him. Check out my own experience - My First Demo Pitch. Are All Retail Sales Associates Like This?

Living the Ultra Light Startup Life

Having lived and died the start up life during the dot com days and after reading everything on the right sidebar under Pivotal Reading, I'm now a proud ultra light startup entrepreneur. (See What are the characteristics of an Ultra Light Startup?.) With Guy Kawasaki's autographed copies of Reality Check & The Art of the Start tucked under my pillow at night, I have no trouble admitting to living off my faithful wife, dipping into my two beautiful children's savings accounts the odd time and yes, there is a line of credit. So, if this was your reality, how would you go about soliciting help starting your startup?

Drinking the Kool-Aid

Work-For-Attribution. That's what I called it back in my post The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2 and that's what's in my Copyright Assignment Agreement. At least that's the politically correct way of putting it. But lately, I just refer to it as Drinking the Kool-Aid.

The Pitch

Here's my scoop

1. I have no money.
2. I'm living off the kindness of my wife & kids.
3. I've done the startup thing & I've done it all wrong. Just Read Guy Kawasaki's books for more examples.
4. I understand the value of lawyers & accountants, so they get paid first and that comes out of my line of credit.
5. If I understand my accountant - Sheldon Miller, correctly; banks just want the interest on your line of credit. VCs' have a different kind of interest.
6. If I understand my lawyer - François Senécal, correctly; pay for what's in the critical path to getting your product to market.  Don't pay for things like; "but what if one day Google buys this thing for a gazillion dollars?".
7. If I understand Guy Kawasaki correctly, paying for things that may never happen simply reduces the likelyhood they will.

Here's what I believe

1. I believe there's a certain group of people in the world that love what they do but not necessarily where they're doing.
2. I believe there's a certain group of people in the world that desperately want and can do more than what they're do now.
3. I believe these people just need an opportunity.

If you're one of these people, then here's what I'm offering you

1. I'm offering you a chance to build your own micro startup doing things exactly the way you want them done.
2. I'm offering you a chance to go beyond resumés and looking backwards when all you want to do is look to the future.
3. I'm offering you a canvas, silly putty, a stage for to show the world what makes you so hot.

Here's the Risk

1. You have to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
2. You have to sign a Copyright Assignment Agreement. Typically, when you sign one of these with your employer, you agree to give them total ownership of your work & they agree to financially compensate you for it. In my case, you agree to give me (Milstein & Associates Inc.) total ownership of your work & I agree to fully attribute your contribution. You get no money, no shares, no promises of anything beyond public attribution. Oddly enough, it's exactly as Jason said in above episode.

Here's the Reward

1. If one day Google wants to offer a gazillion dollars, one of the first questions they may ask is; "Is the Intellectual Property locked down my Milstein & Associates Inc.". The answer is "Yes".
2. If one day Google wants to offer a gazillion dollars, one of the following questions they may ask is; "Is the team that contributed that coveted Intellectual Property locked down my Milstein & Associates Inc.". The answer is "No". At that point, my guess is that Google will then determine the value of locking down these contributors.

Bottom Line

In order for my startup to succeed, I can't afford to chance that maybe you'll contribute enough for Google to offer that gazillion dollars. In order for you to truly succeed, you can't afford to give up an opportunity like this. Besides, who would you rather assess your true value? Me - a guy living off his wife, kids & a line of credit, or, Google? Basically, all I'm offering you is a chance to sit at the table. But first, you have to set it & fill the glasses with Kool-Aid. Do you have a better offer from someone else?

Reflection

So far three people have drank the Kool-Aid & I'm hoping one, or, two more will belly up to the table in the coming weeks. Take a look at Dom Derrien's blog and let me know if you still think, in the worst case scenario, that he's not seeing some form of immediate returns on his investment.

Next Up

Thanks to TWiST #46 with David Heinemeier Hansson, I just ordered Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (founders of 37Signals). Stay tuned to see why.

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Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

-- Bill Gates

Geniuses at Work: Gates watches his friend and future Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen typing on a teletype terminal at the Lakeside School in Seattle in 1968. Gates was 13 when he entered the exclusive prep school, which was around the time this photo was taken.

Background

I have two start-up projects underway. The first, Twetailer was inspired by one of those "OMG! Wouldn't it be great if you could just yada yada yada?" moments. The second, http://edu.cyn.in, was not. No edu, was created out of my 11-year old daughter Sara's frustration with her school's computer curriculum. Complaints like: "Why do I care if something is bold?", or, "Insert a column? When am I ever going to need that when I grow up?". Yikes! Wouldn't it be great if Sara could actually use technology for something she cared about?

You can't always get what you want

- Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones

But Sara also shared the frustration she felt when some of her friends - who are on Facebook, kept urging others to join up, even though they know the minimun age is 14. Similarly for those with MSN, or, gmail accounts. And while I love seeing kids adopt technology, there are valid reasons why these services have age requirements. So, as a parent, what do you do? Do you stick to the rules & tell them to wait until they're old enough? Do you let them waste their effortless ability to embrace these social technologies and stick to making things bold & inserting colums?

But if you try sometimes, you get what you need

- Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones

So again, as a parent, how do we monitor our kids' activities on the Net? Google it. Here's Dr. Phil.com - Advice - Monitor Your Child's Cell Phone and Internet Activity. There are lots of sites offering all kinds of advice. But mostly all of them assume one thing - that you are as tech savy as your kids. And let's face it, kids have a lot more time & friends to show them how than most parents do.

But what if you were able to trust another parent to monitor your kid's activities for you? Like when you let your little one go on a playdate to a friend's house, or, they're invited to the movies. If you trust the friend's parents then you let them go.

Perhaps your first digital social safety net

edu started out to be a way for Sara & her Grade 6 classmates to socialize in a secured and monitored Internet playground. A place where they could experience the power of blogs, wikis, discussions, audio, video, image sharing, etc. while learning the new minimun skills sets required in today's digital and globally distributed workplace. Pretty soon, edu will be made available for the rest of her school and any other school interested under the following conditions:

1. The student has to be attending an educational institution registered with edu
2. There must be at least one parent/guardian, teacher/faculty member monitoring that student's grade.

In Sara's case, I monitored her grade. Did that mean all the other parents trusted me (and edu with their children's related activities? Not necesarly. It turns out, most didn't have a choice. Over the course of the project, I spoke with a few parents and they simply felt they didn't have the skill sets to monitor. Even after informing them its just a matter of reading their email, they still felt uncomfortable with this "type of stuff", but looked forward to watching how their kids used it.

Do the math

So in essence, condition #2 above, became those parents' new social safety net. All they needed was one adult out of twenty students, to feel comfortable enough to watch over their child in their new digital playground. Is this any different than letting your child go to the movies, or, a school field trip with a parent like that?

My parents always told me: "All we want is for you to have more opportunities than we did growing up." And they certainly succeeded. As a parent in today's digital world, it would be a shame not to continue the tradition. edu gives those who aren't as connected as their kids the opportunity to do just that.

Reflection

What are your thoughts abouts giving your kids access to things like Facebook, MSN, Friendfeed, MySpace, Twitter, Google Talk, AIM, Bebo, Blogger, buzzup, Delicious, digg, faves, Gmail, Mister Wong, Reddit, Stumbleupon, twine, WordPress and Yahoo? Do you have the skills to monitor their activities across all these sites? What percent of parents do you think can? Where do you fit in this Study: Ages of social network users | Royal Pingdom?

photo credit

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Just demo!

-- Jason Calacanis, TechCrunch50 2009 Twetailer semi-finalist demo.

In 140 characters, or, less

Twetailer: Brokering Consumer Demand with local Retailers' available Supply - via tweets, for f(r)ee, or, Reverse Retailing.

Rehearsed version

Live version

Last night I presented the slides & recordings as above but did the audio part live. Technically, I had 10 minutes - 5 for demo & 5 for Q&A. I actually consumed 7 minutes, leaving on 3 for Q&A.

Here's the Q&A (paraphrased):
Q. Do you have any retailers signed up?
A. That's the stage we're at right now. We actually have one, my Volkswagen dealer Volkswagen Des Sources. GregVW thinks its great for used cars!
Q. Is it fully functional?
A. Yes! The recorded demo part was just to make sure we didn't run into any timing issues. We also weren't sure about Internet access here - which as it turns out, there's none. But Yes, it's fully functional. You can even do you own demo by sending "d twetailer what-are-you-buying #demo" and a robot will play the Sales Associate role. If you want, try sending "d twetailer used vw 2010 #demo" and Greg may even play along too.

Big Thanks!

Many thanks to Montreal NewTech, Felipe Coimbra for all his time, twitter apps & organization savy and the sponsors Bolidea and 63 Squares - Web Technologies and Marketing Collective.

See you at the NewTech Series: Pitch, Thu 2010-04-15 6pm.

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Man I told you... my day is, I come to work, I get paid, I go home. You think I want to do this all my life?

- Retailer Sales Associate (Let's call him Trevor)

Like I care?

Background

Over the past few posts, I've spent some time describing my Social Software in Schools project, which has been an absolute blast & has yeilded some surprising results. (But that'll be another post.) However, I also spend my time on my true start-up - twetailer. Without going into much detail here, I'll just put things in context by defining it as:

Twetailer: Brokering Consumer Demand with local Retailers' available Supply - via tweets, for f(r)ee.

Prior to heading off to pitch a potential business partner, I decided to try out my routine on an unsuspecting Retail Sales Associate who I thought fit our personna - young, tech savy, looking for an easier way to get things done. My pitch demos how consumers Google for product reviews, make a decision, then search for a local retailer to make the sale. Part of the demo, demonstrates how local business directories / search engines were failing local retailers, thereby creating greater barriers for entry (sales) to their stores - partly due to their antiquated taxonomy/categories.

The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

-- Dragnet trademark

My Story

I approached Trevor - an unoccupied Carl's Cameras Sales Associate, as opposed to, the older gentleman behind the cash register making sales. I introduced myself as being part of an Internet start-up company offering a free search service that matches consumers ready to purchase products with local retailers ready to make sales - all via Tweets/text messages. While Trevor didn't use Twitter (too young), he was willing to listen, so I opened my MacBook & started my Keynote presentation. I went through all the slides/videos & stopped at the demo part to elaborate. Trevor was engaged! He had questions & thought it was "really cool". He thought searching Yellow Pages for "cameras" locally was useless but did accept there may not be many alternatives, even after I demoed Google Maps local search. He wasn't surprised to see Carl's Cameras not among the initial Yellow Pages search results & conceded that no one walks into the store asking for "digital image processing equipment" - Carl's Cameras taxonomy & there's no way anyone in the store could change that. He loved the idea of "social tagging" Demand & Supply in the language (terminology) of the consumers' & retailers' & thought it was very practical.

However, here's how the conversation continued;

Me: "Would you use Twetailer to help you close sales?"

Trevor: No. It's not like I'm going to work here the rest of my life. My day is, I come in, I go home, I get paid."

Me: But you could just sit down in the back room, have a coffee & make sales? Do you text message?

Trevor: True dat. Yah of course I text.

Me: Do you have unlimited text messaging?

Trevor: Yah, for sure. But I'm not going to use my phone for work & Carl's Cameras is not going to give me a phone to text.

Me: Carl's Cameras doesn't have to give you a phone to text. Especially, if you've already got unlimited texting. Tell me, if a friend texted you & said he knows someone looking for a nikon d5000, do you have any in the store, would you text back? Wouldn't you text "Yes, tell them to come see me."?

Trevor: True dat... of course I would.

Me: So what's the difference with Twetailer?

Trevor: I guess nothing. But my day is, I come here, I work, I go home, I get paid. You know... you should really speak to Carl's Cameras' Regional Sales Manager. He's a really nice guy & he's gonna love this thing. He could probably get all the stores to use it. (He then went to get me the contact info.)

Me: Thanks so much for your help. I really appreciate it. Take care.

I then glanced over to the cash, where the elder gentleman was eavesdropping from all the time, waited to see if he had anything to add & then left.

Following Up

In the days that followed, I tried on several occassions to contact the Regional Sales Manager. The phone number Trevor gave me was also listed on the web site. Yet everytime I called, the phone system went on & on about the office hours & no matter what options I chose, no matter what day, no matter what time, I always ended back at the beginning. For the record "Carl's Cameras" is my alias for a national retailer!

Moving forward

A few days later, I demo'ed to Kevin Makice - author of Twitter API: Up and Running - O'Reilly Media. He had a funny/sad take on this story. His theory is that small/medium sized retailers - the Mom & Pop stores, are so busy treading water, that they can't imagine stopping for 5 minutes to try something new, simply on the hope that it can change their world. This would be especially true, for a technology they don't get - like Twitter/ text messaging.

Ironic, eh?

Unfortunately, the irony of the situation, is that text messaging/tweets empowers these retailers to get back in the digital age. There's no need for static brochure-ware web sites - which they may have missed, or, are out-dated. There's no need for online e-commerce shopping cart sites - which they probably can't afford, or, could never see any return-on-investment. There's no need for anything more that an old mobile phone that can text message & someone to push those little buttons.

All they need is someone like Trevor to give a damm. Someone who would probably love the excuse to text at work. Someone who would probably find it easier than answering the phone.

Lessons Learned

Next time, I'm going to demo someone on commission

Reflection

Have you had a similar experience? Is this a generational thing, or, simply a management issue?

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Apple Specialists are at the heart of our reputation for extraordinary customer service. You love people. Have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Apple. And can translate technology-speak into everyday language. You’re ready to not just serve up information, but also inspire the next generation of Mac, iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV fans.

- Job posting for an Apple (Store) Specialist & the Steve Jobs philosphy of why a customer should care

In my previous post - Early social software adopters eager for extra homework, I bragged about how quickly and effortlessly Sara's Grade 6 class not just adopted, but embraced their new social software site. But this week, was about The Project & actually working in their Deliverables - modifying Cynapse's Best Practices Guide For Elementary School Students.

Sample comments posted on their interim deliverables

I don't get "getting feedback on interim deliverables"
Mayby you can shorten the text to make it seem less,... daunting.
i don't get it ????????????
What does surfacing and interim mean?
I guess it makes sense, but 1/4 of your day is a pretty long time - 3-4 hours' worth!
What does fragmented mean?
What is RSS?
What's IDC?
What's 2.0 enterprises?
Kids usually don't care about publishing!
2.0?????????????
What is tacit knowledge

-- from Collaboration - What is it and Why is it needed ?

what does infrastructure mean?
What is this adopting, exactly?
What's facilitate and aggregate.
well what are we talking about?

-- from Driving Adoption

Can you reply to their comments, like an Apple Store Specialist - translating technology-speak into everyday language 11 and 12 year-olds can understand?

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