First, there are only 500 of the Fortune 500 (and they’re a pretty ragged bunch these days, in any event.)

Do you know anybody at the F500 company – anybody that can get you to a decision maker? (Sorry, but your brother-in-law, the store manager in Ponca City, OK probably doesn’t have the CEO on speed dial…)

The 800-pound gorilla leader may not be the best fit for your spankin’ new product. (Sidebar tip: the bigger they are, the safer many tend to play it. Even if they do love you, big boys tend to move slow. It once took me nine months to close a deal with Verizon, that they instigated…and I still have nasty combat flashbacks to negotiations with Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.;-) Do you know anybody at the leading companies?

And, so we come to what I call “Kevin Bacon Marketing.” Somebody you know always knows somebody who knows…You may well only be one or two degrees away from a major deal decision maker.

You can do market research until your computer memory overflows, your eyeballs shrivel in their sockets and your budget is drained. But – when all is said and done – the quickest way to sell anything is to know somebody high up the food chain at the potential customer. And, that’s why – when I’m planning go-to-market strategies – after I’ve done intensive review and qualification of potential targets, I keep digging and digging to find the people behind the market stats, logos and titles. What interests do they have? Where did they work before? Where could we make a (real) connection? Does anybody on my client’s board know someone? Did one of the investors go to school with the chairman? And so on. Sure, it takes a lot of extra work, but it also saves a lot of wasted effort when we actually do get out there.

Today, for example, I somehow went from reading about trends in healthcare IT…to reading this survey about small businesses not using social media…to a really cool blog about social media, Penn Olson. It’s written by “kids” in Singapore (and elsewhere) and it’s easy on the eyes (no crammed, jammed K-Mart blue light special site here!), has easy-to-grok writing and…is fun to read. Just what I needed to recover from my increasingly bad case of social media fatigue.

Here are just three of the Penn Olson posts I read today:

Branding: Should Businesses Join The Social Media Rush? by Sarah Chong. From her takeaway: “To make your social media campaign successful, it requires you to interact and connect with people. That itself makes social media special.”

Ah, and that’s the hard part, isn’t it? You’ve got to open up and be human (and, yes, you’ll screw up.)

Five Reasons Why Businesses Should Not Buy Facebook Fans by Willis Wee

3 Benefits When Using Twitter As A Customer Service Tool by Willis Wee. My friend, Scott Westerman, regional VP of Comcast, fearlessly tweets – taking the good, the bad and the ugly. And, as a result, is transforming the company’s image. (He also gives out his biz card to seemingly everyone…with his direct line. See above about being human.)

Related Post: What Social Media Won’t Do For You. (Like replace hard work and real customer relationships.)

My good friend and all-around marketer poobah, Mary Ellen Merrigan, recently wrote about an event where attendees were forced to visit vendors – so they could get that all important vendor signature to possibly win a prize.  Never mind if the attendees were: a. interested in what the vendor had to offer; b. the vendor wanted the type of traffic the forced herding caused.

I had a flashback to -oh – the 80s in reading this.  So, so old school marketing.  Remember the “booth babes” at the tech shows?  All to generate traffic.  But real “decision makers” were oh-so-rare in the thundering herd. What we really got was Joe and Bob, the IT guys, let out in the world for their one annual business/research trip expense-paid spree (”What cool giveaways do you have?” [sunglasses were always a winner - grab and run]“Oh, look free beer!”)   One year at Comdex, one section of the show had lines back out the door…so the Joes and the Bobs could get the autographs of bikini-clad porn stars (I kid you not.)

I don’t remember what the women were “selling” but then I doubt the guys ever noticed the product.

Related Post: Selling: ABC is DOA

Of course, you need an idea before you can have a product…but you can patent anything (rather it’s a defensible patent…or a good product idea…that’s two other entirely different matters.)

Three Sanity Checkpoints:

1. What does it do? No, not what you’ll put on the patent application. How would you explain it to: your Mother, your bartender, your five-year-old daughter? If the five-year-old gets it – you’ve REALLY got something with potential. And, she’ll ask a lot of embarrassing questions that us grown-ups are too polite to ask. Yes, I realize you may be developing something very specialized in – say – biotech. But, your potential investors (and bankers) most likely don’t have PhDs in biochemistry.

2. Who would buy it? Really? How do you know? Do they have money? Have you talked to them about it?

3. What will you do when it breaks? It will. It also won’t work the way it “should” once it’s out in the real world. You can build and sell one of anything. But, you don’t make real money until you can make and sell a lot of the thing, over and over, which means the product has to work – well and consistently. I once worked with a client who was going through sheer hell with unhappy (and very vocal, all over Da Web) customers. After a bit (okay – a lot) of digging and discussion – the root cause became apparent. They’d rushed to market with a beta – charging full price and papering the world with ads…for something that broke (a lot.)

This is oft repeated as an entrepreneur mantra.  And, yes – you need to show up, but you also need to show up with something.

We all know them:

The gung-ho board member of a nonprofit, who – if he actually does show up – comes late and unprepared, albeit still gung ho! (And, never actually seems to do any of those great things he talks about.)

The excited new entrepreneur who feverishly works the room at seemingly every event in town…forces you to take her biz card (for the 12th time)…yet never seems to have any business.

The CEO of a start-up who schedules lots and lots of VC meetings…yet, never seems to get any funding (but, man, his Powerpoint is a thing of beauty.)

Woody Allen doesn’t just point the camera at someone and say, “Hey, let’s see what happens!”  He does a lot of work before showing up, on little things like scripts and production schedules.

As we were walking around the sparsely attended show, I couldn’t (readily) tell what about 20% of the companies offered.

Even sadder, in at least 50% of the booths I couldn’t see any reason to stop. ( Yawn….yet another kitchen remodeling company… “What’s in it for me?”)

Then there were the booths – where even if I might be interested – the booth people (and their kids,their friends, their family) were standing in front of signage…and products…and info, yakkin’ away (or even eating) so I couldn’t read the signs, look at the product, or even grab a brochure.  And I could only wonder at the deserted booths – products, information…and full drink cups(!?), all left behind.  (Nothing says “we’ve given up”and “we don’t care” like a forlorn, littered trade show booth.)

I’m sure many of these people will complain the “show wasn’t worth the money.” Well, we attendees were thinking the same thing.

That problem with signs and space? Applies to web sites too. It’s okay (really) to leave some white space (and room for your visitors to roam as they wish.)

Today, I searched on a word (which is also the full name of the company I needed)…and the company’s competitor (who also use the word in their name) came up, very first result (and not a sponsored link.) No sign of the company I really wanted to call (and these otherwise smart folks also tout their web marketing expertise…hmmm…) So, why didn’t I find them?

Apparently, someone decided to get “creative” (It’s BRANDING!) with the company name (a very common three-syllable word)..inserting a hypen (grammatically incorrect), capitalizing some other letters and adding an exclamation point. If I want to find the company, I have to enter the name EX-ACTLY! as they have it in their Lo-GO!

Wonder how many people bother?

Related Posts:
Drive By Marketing At Its Worst
You Got My Name Wrong!
But, I’m Just Local! Indeed. And do you have local competitors?
I Don’t Get Any Business From My Web Site

Now, I know it sounds silly…but, but, I liked Geico. Always got great service. (Did I mention the gecko?) Didn’t want to switch (but, a hundred bucks is a nice contribution to the travel fund.) So, I called them. Nope, they couldn’t do anything to keep me. Just like that. Buh-bye.

The phone service rep looked at their guidelines and…well, there was just nothing she could do. Yet another example of the company customer service policies getting in the way of actual customer service.

Then two days later, a nice hand-written thank you note from Nicole comes in the snail mail. It was a “pleasure to meet you” and “I also look forward to seeing you in the future.” Phone number included.

Now, I was already thinking of going back…and Nicole sealed the deal…with a 44 cent stamp.

It’s the not-so-little things, people. The not-so-little things.

This is like an interior designer saying he’s an architect. And, even if the designer is also an architect – there’s no way of knowing he’s good at either job. There are only so many Frank Lloyd Wright genius/god types. Even so, Wright’s furniture is danged uncomfortable…and the roofs tend to leak (a lot). All kinds of “design integrity.” “Infrastructure integrity” not so much. Fallingwater turned out to be perfectly named, for all the wrong reasons.

(Frank Lloyd Wright reportedly said, “If the roof doesn’t leak, the architect hasn’t been creative enough.” Hmmm…and if I’d been his client I would have replied, “If my check to you doesn’t bounce, I haven’t been smart enough.”)

Related Posts:
Why Marketing May Never Get Respect
Good Versus Great Design
Advertising: Creative Or Effective?
Five Signs You Should Fire Your Creative Agency
Is Your Marketing Big M or little m?
No, I won’t write your brochure