There really is no time like the present. In today’s landscape, things are changing around us all of the time. The most successful organizations operate under a sense of urgency in order to take advantage of being ahead and staying ahead. In a world of continuous change, urgency is another critical, yet often overlooked element of growing a sustainable business. Urgency, defined as: “the state of being urgent; an earnest and insistent necessity,” is something that every successful business should live by.

They say in life, why put off tomorrow what you can do today? When you focus that towards business, the ramifications can be very risky. Think about it, in just “one extra day” a competitor can get ahead, steal your business or get an advantage over you in a situation. In “just another week,” the competitors wind up announcing the same killer feature just a few days before you did, getting all of the press and attention. And in this day and age, “another month or two” could potentially mean the rapid rise of a disruptive competitor.

In today’s business climate, the game has changed. Operating under a sense of urgency is a vital aspect of any company who wants to win. There are too many tools available now that lower the barrier to entry and create fierce competition in almost any industry. This creates a need to stay ahead and to move fast with the tasks that will give you an edge.

Need another motivation for operating under a state of urgency? How about approaching each day of business knowing that every one of your customers is getting a call from a competitor. In many cases, this is the case. This type of thinking will help keep you on edge. Protect your house.

Does your team want to win? Once again like all aspects of business, the core of operating under a state of urgency comes down to people. Getting alignment throughout your organization that leads to a state of urgency is a lot easier said than done. Slower organizations weed themselves out naturally, the pace and approach and leadership is different. If you are ok with the status quo, or the comfortable job, then you should work for one of those types of companies. Many people though, like to be challenged and thrive to be involved in new and exciting industries. And new and exciting industries are the ones that need to operate under the most extreme urgency as they are the drivers of all innovation and change. Where do you want to be?

In an effort to clearly articulate my point, here are some of the actions you see from companies who operate under a sense of urgency:

- They provider killer customer service.

- They are continuously innovating their products and services.

- They take customer feedback seriously, act on it, and are better for it.

- They are transparent with their communications and actions.

- They actively engage with customers, prospects and the larger community.

- They are involved in philanthropic causes (the world does need to be saved, and sooner rather than later).

If you operate with some urgency you will most likely always stay in the game, operate under a sense of urgency, and you will win.

What do you think? Is a sense of urgency too extreme in your eyes or do you feel the same way? Give me your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.

As CEO of a growth company, one topic that never falls off my radar is sales. Sales is the lifeblood of every company. As our COO, Doug Broujos likes to say, “if you’re not growing, you’re dying, and no one wants to work for a company that’s not moving forward.” I couldn’t agree more, and that’s the core of why sales is critical to every business.

You may have heard the old saying, “sales solves everything.” Well, I’ve come to learn over the years that it does. When your company is selling, building momentum, and closing business, then you can do things, like grow, if you so choose. That’s how Blue Sky Factory has grown, through sales. We never raised any funding to grow either, we sell and grow through revenue generation. We do that by providing stellar customer service and powerful technology solutions. We do good work, and the word spreads.

Sales is hard. It is the front lines, it’s holding down the fort, fighting off the competition, making your case, each and every day. As a founder, I know what it takes, and I also know that the only way to scale the kind of “hustle” that stems from the founder / CEO level, is to have incredible people around you representing the company, selling your solutions, over-servicing your customers, all while continuing to deepen the relationship with your customers. This practice eventually evolves into the development of a large, vast community of evangelists that not only enjoy, but take pride in, amplifying your company’s signal. There simply is no better marketing than that.

My personal approach to sales, has always been that unless I am asked directly, I don’t sell, anyone, ever. Instead, I develop relationships and nurture them and add as much value as I can when asked or when I see an opportunity. For me, this this has paid off incredibly in terms of growth, and it will always continue to be the core backbone of any business that I personally develop. It’s a great feeling when I first speak with a prospect and learn that a trusted member of my network gave my company and I a glowing endorsement. To me, that is the ultimate business development. Be there before the sale.

Scaling Sales

I’ve also learned over the years that the “Kumbaya effect” (something that will be further articulated in another post) of word of mouth and referrals, isn’t a scalable sales model. In the sense that its only one channel, a VERY important one, but unless your are looking to be a lifestyle business, it can’t be the only one. A growth company should have many channels working towards attracting people to their sales pipeline.

As an organization grows, it becomes critically important for marketing to fill the top of the funnel with prospects, ideally qualified ones. It is then up to the sales team to engage with those folks, identify real opportunities, and bring in the customers. Sometimes, and more often than not, in order to achieve your goals you need to be aggressive on the sales front. This clearly speaks directly to the team you have in place. From what I have seen at my company and others, successful sales people have a lot going on, all of the time. This is no 40 hour work week if you want to win.

What can seem like a potentially overwhelming schedule, ie. a high volume of people to connect and follow up with, managing multiple opportunities at various stages, writing proposals, having meetings, traveling in some cases, etc., is really the regular schedule of a successful sales person. In fact, a successful sales person wouldn’t have it any other way. They thrive off of this type of schedule and activity, and they love building momentum. That said, the most important activity of a successful sales rep is their ability to manage all of that, while continuing to build the top of their funnel.

Building the Funnel

While marketing may fill the top of the funnel, its the job of sales to build their own pipeline of prospects and opportunities – ideally from both inbound and outbound channels, (though I know many organizations differ on their philosophy of inside / outside sales, etc). The importance of this is critical to building momentum and to ensure that once you have a good quarter, a good month, a good week, or a good day, that more good ones follow. This is key to a continuous flow of success. All to often though I hear about sales people who peak and valley with success all year long because the front end of the funnel never has enough time and energy put towards it. In order to win, you need a large pipeline of opportunity at every deal stage.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, the reality is, in the words of Alec Baldwin, coffee really is for closers. I’m not going to sugar coat it. Sales is hard. It takes tenacity, resilience, and a passion and motivation to succeed. If you are in sales and you don’t have these things, you will never be as successful as you can be. If your sales team lacks those traits, then you might want to take a hard look at whats going on.

Sales is a very large subject, and I realize I haven’t deep dived into everything, and there are many factors involved in successful sales, but there are some fundamentals that I have come to learn over the years.

To recap, here are 10 fundamental elements of sales:

1. Sales is critical to every organization and must be treated as such.

2. Having a great product & service helps the sale every time, but that’s not enough.

3. People buy from people (and brands) they trust. Be one of those people & brands.

4. While word of mouth and referrals are great. Never rely purely on the good will of your network.

5. Everyone in sales should strive to “be there before the sale” as often as possible.

6. Marketing fills the funnel, sales BUILDS their own funnel from that (individually).

7. Sales must never neglect the top of their funnel. This is the seed for all future success.

8. Sales is hard. It takes time, patience, resilience and dedication. You can’t be on and off from one day to the next.

9. Sales success doesn’t come in 40 hour work weeks (Though I have seen it done in much less than 40, but that’s Ninja status )

10. Sales isn’t for everyone. Coffee really is for closers.

These are just some of my thoughts. Whats your take? Am I wrong? Want to add your own flavor to this? Let me know your thoughts below.

Thanks for reading.

As I write this, I am attending the Social Graph Symposium in Silicon Valley which I am super excited about. The event is centered around “the social graph and the implications of the social graph in business, technology, and the community.” I’ve been looking forward to it because I have been thinking a lot about social data lately, and in particular how marketers can leverage it with their communications.

Earlier this year at the Email Insiders Summit in Park City, UT, I was on a Social CRM panel with some great folks, where we were discussing in free form, the aspects of the effects of social data on customer relationship management (CRM). I wanted to expand on one of the interesting points that we only touched on in the panel, which was defining the types of social data that are available to marketers. As you can imagine, this could easily have been the focus of the entire panel. Since social data has been a focus of mine over the last few months, I wanted to put down some thoughts on how I view it’s relevance to marketers.

Social Data Defined

The idea of social data is relatively simple. With the growth of social mediums (social networks, micro-blogging, location based technologies, etc), individuals are generating out an incredible amount of activity, content and behavior on the web. This data is propagated and distributed through many channels (web, email, mobile, etc), and at the same time, a market has been evolving that aggregates this data, organizes it, and in some cases analyzes it. This type of data, albeit in some cases, data overload, can bring to bear some interesting opportunities for marketers. Lets look at the two types of social data that encompass the root of these opportunities.

Social Data Attributes

The first, is social data attributes. This is the broad aspect of defining the social graph within a given audience. Lets say for example that the audience is your customer base. Clearly, this is one of the most valuable assets to any business.

Social data attributes allow you to add specific data points to your given customer database, in particular the social graph layer. For example, maybe on average a marketer would have some basic data attributes on their customer list:

1. First & Last Name
2. Company
3. Email Address
4. etc… (the more sophisticated the marketer, the more data fields included in a customer database).

Social data attributes come into play when you can also identify where your subscribers are on the social web. What percentage of them are on Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, etc.. ? Beyond where your customers are on the social web, there are also attributes like “influencer” data – this is where the number of “friends” or “followers” can be aggregated, and you can identify who in your customer base is a potential “influencer.” These data points can also be aggregated and appended to your database. This is the base foundation of adding the social graph layer to your customer file.

Social Data Activity

The next, and perhaps more challenging social data marketers now have at their fingertips is social activity data. What I mean by this is, what kind of conversations, interactions, posts, updates, check-in’s, etc, are your customers generating online?

This type of data, which is almost always in the public domain, truly is the “real time” heart and soul of your customer base. Aggregating, analyzing, and responding to some of this data has the potential to completely transform traditional CRM, and in many cases already has.

Just think of how much more relevant your customer interactions can be when you’ve read their latest blog post, tweet stream, viewed the flickr pix they posted from an industry event they just attended, etc. On the human level, this is social CRM. Deeper, more meaningful interactions.

From the sales & lead generation perspective, acting on social activity also helps fill the top of the sales funnel. Think about it, with the right approach, people are having more meaningful relevant conversations that start online with some kind of social activity, but are quickly brought offline for deeper discussion. I know many companies who are having great success leveraging this, mine is one of them. With these small examples, I am just scratching the surface of what is possible.

Socialize My Database

From my perspective, email and social are a beautiful marriage. When you think about where to start with all of this, your customer email database makes the most sense. Since email offers one of the most targeted, efficient and measurable mediums available to marketers today, it would make sense to build your social graph around the email address, hence why you always hear me and the folks at Blue Sky Factory touting email as “the digital glue.”

Think about it, if all of the other social mediums went away, there would still be the email address. Recent research data from Merkle’s “View from the Social Inbox 2010″ report also suggests that many people use the same email for permission-based emails as they do for social networks. This makes even more of a case to leverage your email database first.

I’ve Got the Data Now What?

Many marketers I speak with are not so much struggling with where to find this type of data, they are struggling with how to use it. This is the beginning of a new era of marketing strategy and tactics. When combined with email, some of the basic social data elements described above, the following are just some of the tactics a marketer can leverage:

1. Identify, and target influencer’s within your customer or subscriber file.
2. Create accelerated loyalty & retention campaigns.
3. Jump start a social media presence (cross pollinate your customers to your social properties).
4. Convert community into new email subscribers – build your list!
5. Build your sales pipeline by active social web participation & engagement.

Again, I am just scratching the surface of whats possible. I would love to spark some additional dialog on this topic. What are your thoughts on social data? What did I miss? Do you agree?

Feel free to comment and continue the conversation below. Thanks for reading.

Being a bit of a road warrior the last many years, I have gone through a LOT of luggage. I’ve written before about some of my experience on best practices for travel, and there has been plenty added to the comments of that post.

I have two modes of travel I operate under, one is the multi-day trip and the other is the day or overnight trip. For each one I now use a particular brand of luggage that suits my needs.

The Day / Overnight Bag:

The first is my day / overnight bag. I have been looking for a road warrior, daily / overnight bag that I could use that ideally was a roller (to save the shoulder). In full disclosure, shortly after I published the 10 Tips to Achieving Travel Zen post mentioned above, the nice folks at Briggs & Riley reached out to me and offered to send me a 15.4 inch Rolling Multicase (KR307) to kick the tires on (see below):

When I first received the Briggs & Riley, I was really worried about the space for an overnight bag. Though the bag also expands, I was still slightly concerned. Needless to say, my first trip tested all of the boundaries of the bag. I brought a change of clothes and a pair of running shoes, shorts and shirt, in addition to my laptop, cords, and notebook. I maxed the bag out and vowed never to put myself through such a frustrating experience again. Since then, I have mastered the art of the day bag, and the Briggs & Riley is what I have been using every day for the past couple of months. The roller aspect alone is worth it It has turned into my office bag, and my travel bag for any trip that requires me to spend the night. I definitely recommend the KR307, and in fact one of the other members of my executive team has already purchased one.

The Multi-day Rig:

For any trip that requires more than a nights stay, I bring my tried, true and tested Tumi Townhouse roller. I usually bring the Tumi Westminster bag that straps onto the top of the roller for my laptop, notebook and accessories, and the rest goes into the roller. Like I said, tried, true and tested. This is very high quality luggage that can take a beating yet always be functional. In addition to being functional, its pretty good looking luggage, I mean check out those chrome rims Tumi certainly brings it and is a major contender in the road warrior space.

In addition, for any travel where I require a suit or multiple dress shirts, I use my Tumi garment bag (below). This great bag also features and external pocket on the front that can store all sorts of  “extra’s” for the intrepid traveler, cords, chargers, etc. I’ve used it for things I need quick access to in the airport or during travel.

The one point I want to mention is that none of my travel gear is designed for checking baggage. I absolutely avoid checking luggage at all costs. The gear mentioned above allows me to always travel with carry on (unless I’m flying a prop or a puddle jumper but thats another situation altogether).

What is your travel rig? Would love to hear your thoughts on the gear you use and how it streamlines or enhances your travel experience. Thanks for reading.

Jeff Ginsberg from The Email Guide, did an interview with me at the most recent Marketing Sherpa Email Summit in Miami. I touch on the intersection of social and email, some of the challenges in the industry, and a little bit of the future. Check it out:

Who’s going to SXSW Interactive this year? I am on the fence, but its looking like I may just route through for a day or two. Check out this great video Tim Street made at last years craziness that is SXSW. I made an appearance in the below video, and gave my thoughts on SXSW. I really do think it is the place to be for any organization looking to push the envelope. For this brief moment in time, Austin, TX trumps NYC as the center of the universe (at least for me). What do you think?

I wanted to put up a quick post to mention a couple of great events I will be participating in this week. I’ll be posting my March schedule shortly as well. In the meantime, hopefully you can join me at one of the below. Looking forward to it!

February 25th – Webinar: “Email & Social Media: Community, Content & Killer Campaigns”
DJ Waldow and I will be presenting this on behalf of Awareness, Inc.

Attendees will learn:
• Why email is the digital glue of social media
• How to integrate email & social (tactical, low-hanging fruit)
• Strategies for using email & social media as complementary channels
• How to optimize content to encourage sharing
• Strategies for effective community building using email + social

You can register here.

February 26th – “Got Effective Email Marketing?” – A Panel Discussion
Hosted by ThinkBusiness Media, join me as I moderate the following panel of marketing rockstars:

Jeanne Jennings, Principal, JeanneJennings.com
Raj Khera, CEO, MailerMailer.
Jeffrey Lupisella, President and CEO, Vizual, Inc.
Bill McKay, Vice President, Direct Media Millard.

The event is in Tysons Corner, VA from 7:30-9:30. You can register here.

I recently had the opportunity to speak at this years Web 2.0 Expo in NYC. I was part of the Web2Open sessions that were organized by the Podcamp Foundation (Hats off to Whitney Hoffman), and in traditional “unconference” fashion, those of us who were asked to speak could do so on any topic we wanted.

The theme of this year’s Web 2.0 Expo was “The power of less,” and with that in mind I took this opportunity to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, get back to my roots and start talking about my experiences with entrepreneurship, starting a business, bootstrapping, and all of the lessons I have learned along the way…. so far. The Web 2.0 Expo theme was a perfect fit to “beta” a presentation I dubbed: “Bootstrapping: Building a Business Funded by Revenue.”

The Web 2.0 talk was the first step in developing a series of posts and presentations that I will be focused on throughout 2010. Though my story is still very much “in progress,” I have started several businesses, and have been building my most recent company, Blue Sky Factory, for almost 9 years. I’ve learned a wealth of lessons through my experiences building a business from the ground up with zero funding.

The Framework:

As mentioned earlier, the Web 2.0 talk was in “beta,’ as I am still very much flushing out the various topics and segments I would like to cover. As I have been thinking through things, there have been three main topic areas that seem to encompass the spirit of what I would like to talk about. They include the following:

1. Start-up Lessons

Just as it sounds, and what essentially encompasses most of the presentation below, there are oh so many start-up lessons to discuss, and every entrepreneur has their own. Sometimes, more often than not, they all have their own version of the same lesson. I plan on discussing several of the ones that I have experienced and have processed.

2. Building a team

At the end of the day, any good entrepreneur will tell you their company is only as good as its people. It is so true. Over the last 9 years there have been many different people who have joined my company, and each one of them play a key role in our operation. I plan on talking about building teams who are aligned, motivated and constantly executing.

3. Managing growth

It is often said that managing growth is simply the act of trading one set of problems or challenges for the next. There is a lot to be said for that statement. Growth isn’t easy, but if you find yourself managing it, then you are doing something right! There are a several “stages’ of growth to be discussed in a variety of topics (team, technology, infrastructure, finance, sales, etc).

Below, are the slides from the Web 2.0 talk, which tend to focus mostly on the first topic of “start-up lessons.” I would love to hear your input, or questions in the comments below. I will be continuing on this topic organically, and hope to begin to drill down on the high level topics listed above shortly.

This coming Tuesday at 1pm EST, I will be doing a webinar with Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot. Below is the overview of the session. Hope you can join us!

Get leads to come to you, then turn them into customers.  Sound too good to be true?

It’s not, and it gets even better.  No more cold calling, telemarketing, or spending tons on print and radio ads.

Enter inbound marketing.  This (more recent) style of marketing allows you to get found by potential customers online.  The key is retaining these leads, building a relationship with them, and turning them into clients.  Enter email marketing.

Join us for “Inbound & Email Marketing: So Happy Together” on Tuesday, October 13 at 1 PM ET as Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, and I discuss the inbound marketing landscape and how email marketing complements this method of attracting customers.

Attendees will learn:

• Inbound vs. outbound marketing
• Strategies for using inbound marketing to attract new customers
• How to build a relationship and retain leads through email marketing
• Tips for making the most of inbound and email marketing as complementary channels

There’s only one week left to register, so sign up today!

This post is about relationships, and specifically how important they are within the fiber of the social web. While much of the business world continues to figure out how “social media” plays into their organization’s marketing communications strategy, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone about one of the simple truths about  social media and social marketing, and that is that:

Community + Relationships + Engagement = “Social Media Integration”

This is the culmination of social media in its purest form. All of the tools in the world, are just that, they are tools. As I mentioned during my talk at Social Fresh, social media is not about twitter, or LinkedIn or facebook, or whatever tool you are using to connect with your base. Its about real people, & real relationships.

I am both honored and humbled to be highlighted in Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s new book “Trust Agents.” (Which by the way if you haven’t heard is officially on the New York Time’s Bestseller list. Congrats guys!). One of the themes that I am highlighted within is the notion of “being there before the sale.” Chris came up with this slogan a long time ago, and it couldn’t be any more right on.

So, in the end what does “being there before the sale” mean? It means building true, genuine, relationships, the kind that are built over time, not over night, and never having the sale in mind. It means being human, building relations, and discovering and understanding that leads /sales / business development, are simply a by-product of participation within your community.

When you think about it, a referral from your network is one of the greatest compliments you can ever receive in business. However, in order to receive that referral one must feel as if they can trust you, your company and your brand. That is done by what Chris and Julien refer to as “building army’s.” You can call them army’s of influence and trust. Building a GENUINE army of advocates & evangelists for your product, service or brand, is something that there is no shortcut for.  This process takes time, effort, and lots of resources. Remember, the tools are only that, they are tools….

At the end of the day this is a PEOPLE thing.  Not a social media thing.

To me, one of the key factors in manifesting the true gem of social media is incorporating the simple concept of face to face. This is where the game changes, when you bridge the digital world into the physical world. Its been said many times before, by those of us who have experienced this. The tools have simply allowed us to connect, generate dialog and engagement with our base, in more ways than ever before, but still  in the end nothing digital can replace or duplicate true face to face interaction.

Real World = Real Relationships

The importance of meeting people face to face is what “social media” and “social marketing” continue to reinforce to me, and its one of the messages that I try to tell marketers every chance I get. It’s also why you see my company, Blue Sky Factory at events all over the country, sponsoring, speaking, exhibiting, etc.. sure we are there for the branding and promotion, etc but more importantly we want to connect with YOU. It’s about the hallway and booth conversations, sharing a coffee or a beer, maybe even a meal, and being able to talk about non-business related topics… and just being human. The importance of face to face is just another an old truth being reinforced through new mediums…..pretty interesting when you think about it.

The takeaway here is that though I do believe companies should utilize the social web to build community, establish relationships and engage with them, more importantly they should continue to invest in any activities that get them face to face with their base. I think everyone reading this post will agree that there is a distinct difference between the pure online / digital relationships that we have and the ones where we have met face to face. The difference being that the relationships we have with people we have actually met in person, and spent some time with tend to be stronger all around. Companies need to build their armies around these types of relationships, and as I mention in the title of this post, there are no shortcuts. Get out there and meet and build your community, face to face.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks for reading.