How The Royal Bank of Canada Continues to Excel in Social Networking

A couple of years ago I was involved in a meeting with RBC, the Royal Bank of Canada. During one aspect of our discussions, we talked about how they were incorporating areas of Web 2.0 into their business process, particularly on the customer side. The year prior, RBC had started a contest around innovation and created a blog, an avatar and video designed to challenge Canadian youths and to help predict how they would influence the banking industry. There were about 18 colleges and universities in the first contest and then it has expanded from there.

Of course, I thought this was pretty cool.  As I learned more about what they were doing and why, I became intrigued and enlightened. I was not expecting this kind of behavior especially from a bank with the word Royal in it. I guess it seemed like an oxymoron at the time. I was used to hearing this level of modern thinking coming out of the likes of Wells Fargo, who at the time and over the years has been equated with one of the most progressive technological banks in the world. Indeed, Wells Fargo initially had the most Internet banking users and of course one of the best online experiences as the Internet was incorporated into financial services in the 90’s.

As a result of something I’m working on, I had occasion to re-enlighten myself on what RBC was doing. Their latest contest features a “Do-Over” video challenge for the best advice on starting school over again. There were 3 student winners in Canada, each receiving $10,000. OK, the Royal Bank of Canada is quite profitable and managed to escape relatively unscathed from the financial debacle. I believe their total losses were less than $10 billion. So $10,000 is not a lot of cash to give away.

But really, what’s more interesting is the fact that RBC took an active role in using web 2.0 to connect with young people and to get their input into their system. RBC started when the use of these social internet mediums was still in its quite early stages. And they began when there were mixed concerns about how to manage and monitor it in the event of negative backlash or comments directed at or to the bank.

They’ve made it a success. I can’t say that RBC is the de-facto standard when it comes to the use of social media technology, but they’ve come a long way while there has been such negativism and adversity in the banking world. I’ve been equally impressed with their commitment to green and the environment, community service, and a recent revamping of their entire online experience. They now service 3 million online customers. All pretty heady doings from a bank with such a stuffy name.

RBC does operate in the U.S. as Centura Bank and RBC Bank USA and I cannot speak to that aspect of things. I certainly would be interested in hearing your comments on social media in financial services.

What Business Alliances Expect From Social Networking

I’ve been in some discussions with a half dozen partners of one of our top technology companies. The purpose of these discussions is to look at best practices and how this partner group can improve in this tough economic climate.

While I have another 6 more discussions to go, here are some early returns in how they are using conversational media techniques and social networking to improve their presence – not only from the perspective of their partnering aspect, but also how they are using it in general.

Two points of clarification – the partner ecosystem that I’ve talked to is primarily focused on business-to-business (B2B) and they include both private (< $100M in revenue) companies and one large public company. All the private companies have been in business 2 or more years and would be considered successful and fast growing in their specific area.

As part of the project that I’m working on, there are another half dozen companies I will talk to that will include more public companies in the mix. So that may alter some of the following conclusions. But here’s what I can tell you so far, at least from the perspective of the non-public companies.

• They all want to use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to a much greater degree, but it must serve their business purpose of course.
• They feel that they are just scratching the surface.
• They are engaging in, acquiring or employing internal resources to learn and explore more of the possibilities in regards to employing some of these social networking techniques.
• They do not have a clear set of goals in mind about which social networking technique is best, under what situation or for what purpose.
• They feel that there is a lot more to accomplish with social media and their common partner, and they will look to their primary common partner for more help, support, guidance and cooperative business social networking in the future.

Whether it’s the current economic atmosphere or not, all of them want to employ these techniques to open up new channels of customer contact and eventual revenue. Customer contact is a primary motivation for everyone.

While I will be sharing more of these general findings in the future, I’d like to summarize this in 3 points:

   -  We are quite early in the cycle of using social networking with a specific business “revenue” goal in mind. But we are closer to using LinkedIn, for instance, to acquire or talk to new prospects and perhaps get professional feedback on our product or service.

  -  There is still minimal hard business evidence to look at which will firmly guide us right now.

  -  And no one wants to be left out of the game!

More to come on this subject soon.

4 Key Ways to Build the Right Balance with Your Alliance Partners and Channels

To start this series on partnering, alliances, web 2.0 and social media, I’d like to begin by offering up some fundamentals. Let me begin by talking about some core principles of building the right balances in the relationships with your business partners.

In the 90’s, I had the opportunity to represent AT&T in one of the first Information Technology (IT) benchmarking studies facilitated by the Nolan, Norton Co. The two founders and principals of the company were David Norton and Dick Nolan. David Norton became famous for his development and use of the balanced scorecard while Dick Nolan was one of the leading professors of Information Management at Harvard. Their company Nolan, Norton Company eventually was bought out by KPMG – but I believe it may be independent again or at least reincarnated.

Our 9 month IT benchmarking study that was geared to highlight IT best practices (world-class best practices actually) was conducted with around 10 companies including Boeing, American Airlines, Canadian Imperial Bank of Canada, Sprint, Ford, etc. We used a number of techniques and as I recall it was an initial exposure to David Norton’s balanced scorecard which had just come out about that time. You can read more about it below and there is The Balanced Scorecard Institute for further information.

Applied to partnering, alliance managers can use these principles to measure:

• Partnership financial performance
• Customer satisfaction and increased customer interaction
• Internal learning through understanding of complementary products and services
• Process improvement through incorporation of best partner practices

Those 4 important balances apply to alliances and partnerships in the following way:

1. Process: Too much process and paperwork can overrun the alliance with unnecessary bureaucracy. Too little and there is not enough of a framework to work within. Having a defined go-to-market partner framework puts boundaries around where to focus.
2. Management: Too much executive interference may kill off the groundswell and viral effect while too little will surely doom its failure as evidence of no real commitment between the partners.
3. Customer Interaction: Too much customer interaction early on in the relationship will result in lack of focus and potentially dissatisfied clients especially if the partners paint the expectations too high. Too few early customers will stall the partnership from lack of concrete success stories and references. Early customer interaction can also help drive new areas of co-innovation that might go seemingly unnoticed.
4. Financial Results: Expectations that are set too high, too early will damage the credibility of the partnership, while too few results ends in a non-start eventually. It’s also important to build a compensation neutral programs with early incentives for both partners so that the line sales people that drive the success of the deals are appropriately compensated. That’s a subject of its own – but is quite important in the overall financial success of most partner driven relationship.

In summary, partnerships naturally imply balance, not necessarily in exactly equal amounts, but more in terms of relative commitment. Lastly, using a balanced scorecard approach can be an important lens into looking at your valuable partnerships and is another way to make sure that partnership success can be equivalently measured and improved.

For more information around the Balanced Scorecard
What is the balanced scorecard?
The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is widely applicable to organizations regardless of size or type of business. The system, extensively used in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide, provides a method of aligning business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improving internal and external communications, and monitoring organization performance against strategic goals.

How Do Strategic Alliances, Channels and Partners benefit from Social Media and Web 2.0

I’ve been spending some time thinking about, listening and discussing how Social Media and Web 2.0 can benefit a company’s partnerships and strategic alliances, whether it comes in the shape of a blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, vitual trade show, etc.

Some of my efforts have come in the form of attending events such as the Search Engine Strategies conference (March, NY), or Federated Media’s Conversational Media Summit (June, NY), or a Mashable meetup, or working with a business client, or business association colleagues such as MENG – Marketing Executives Networking Group and ASAP – the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.

There’s not too much in the way of resources out there that can be of a lot of value since some of these social media capabilities are relatively new or at least relatively unexplored when it comes to B2B alliances and partnerships and how they can be expanded and improved through the judicious use of social media activities. Where I’ve found resources, I will make them known, as there are a some.

So over the next several blogs I will be putting together a series of what’s going on in this area compiled from input and presentations at conferences by companies including Intel, as well as conversations from alliance, marketing (traditional and digital marketers), and sales professionals and executives in my network. I will attempt to capture Best Practices (where there are some early BP indications) and point you to a half dozen resources and places to look for information or expertise.

I may ask you and my larger network to take a survey on what you think and what you are experiencing.

These upcoming blogs will address the following questions when it comes to social media, web2.0 and alliances:

• What is Social Media and Web 2.0’s impact on the strategic alliance process and partnering?
• How can it be used effectively with channels?
• How does it integrate into the traditional partner marketing and business development process?
• Which social media and Web 2.0 strategies are more partner effective and in what situations?
• What are some case studies and who are the successes in using social media and Web 2.0 to improve partnering?
• Who or what failed and why?
• What is the cost and ROI of using social media and Web 2.0 for partnering and how does one measure it?
• Is there an opportunity (lost) cost of doing nothing?
• How do business partners maintain control and are there specific partner rules of social media engagement?
• Who or where can you turn to for help?

As this progresses, I will put the information into a whitepaper for easier reading. So if you would like, send me an email or sign up for my updates on these findings and a complete whitepaper and I will be happy to forward it to you.

Lastly, and just as importantly, if you are interested in discussing, questioning or being a part of the input, let me know.  Or just comment below if you have thoughts.

Can A YouTube Video Undo United Airlines’ Brand?

If for no other reason than its viral spread, this story is worthy of one more comment. As of this morning, this better-than-average you tube video had close to 3.5 million hits and and a whopping 16,207 comments.

I saw this you tube video this weekend while working on a website with my brother-in-law and his wife. He’s a doctor and she is a physicians assistant, so neither of them are tech or social media gurus, but general users of these social mediums. As we were working, she came in to say we had to check out this cool video which she heard about on the news. After a few crack ups, we talked about how damaging this is to United’s reputation and the effect that a $3,500 damaged guitar can have on a $19 billion corporation that employs 53,000 and operates 3,300 flights a day, transporting over 65,000 daily passengers (4 million a year). To put the story in perspective, earlier this month, the LA Times wrote the following:

“In spring 2008, DaveCarroll and company headed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Omaha, by way of (shudder now, frequent fliers) Chicago. Just after landing at O’Hare airport, says Carroll, one of his bandmates and another passenger looked out their windows and saw baggage handlers heaving around guitars with wanton disregard. Carroll says he complained immediately to three flight attendants, but was met with indifference. Some time after arrival in Nebraska, Carroll says, he discovered that, sure enough, the base of his 710 Taylor acoustic guitar had been smashed.

But he had gigs to play, so he found a way to do that. As Carroll acknowledges, he didn’t attempt to complain again until beginning his return flight a week later. Over the following days, weeks and months, Carroll made many phone calls to United representatives in Chicago and (who didn’t see this coming?) India, but basically he says United did nothing for him. Meanwhile, Carroll spent $1,200 getting the guitar repaired “to a state that it plays well but has lost much of what made it special.”

The capping blow, Carroll says, was an e-mail from a Ms. Irlweg, who denied his claim for compensation because he didn’t complain in the right place, or at the right time. The airline wouldn’t even give him $1,200 in travel vouchers, Carroll contends. So he vowed a sort of musical revenge — not one protest song, not two, but three, with a video for each, all to be posted on the Web. Carroll says he told Ms. Irlweg all about it, but got the usual response.”

Here are the links to the video and to the full article in the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

http://travel.latimes.com/daily-deal-blog/index.php/smashed-guitar-youtu-4850/

And here’s the link to United’s 12 Point Customer Commitment - http://www.united.com/page/article/1,,1505,00.html?navSource=Dropdown07&linkTitle=ourcustomer. 

Clearly, three of these 12 items are at issue in how they responded to Mr. Carroll.

From a marketing and social media standpoint, the amazing thing is how quickly this spread, from the original you tube video, to a newspaper article, to TV news and finally it’s near dominating effect on the United brand. I’m certainly not the first to comment on the marketing effects that this has on United and won’t be the last. More importantly, there is clearly a lot of triage and damage control that a company like United needs to be engaging in and that is reflective of any company that touches millions of customers. Any high-touch, million-plus, customer oriented companies must have a team and program in place ready to cope with any issue of this magnitude. I also realize that, thank God, this is not a plane crash, but you would think that United would already be well experienced with how to deal with major negative publicity and would have the wheels rolling so to speak.

This episode continues to illustrate to me that in this highly connected world we live in, the effect of one individual can be enormous. From a technology standpoint, I recall the issues Intel had with their processor’s incorrect math about 10 years ago. I think if that occurred today, Intel would have been addressing a much more severe reputational problem simply because of the immediacy that social networking brings to the table. The bottom line today is that companies clearly need to have a social media triage plan in place to address issues that may mushroom beyond the scope of normal expectation and hopefully use social media as a mechanism to improve quality and customer satisfaction before issues like this come up.

Some of the Best Marketing Associations

Some of the largest marketing associations sponsored an event this week in Florham Park, NJ, under the auspices of the NJ Marketing Council. For anyone interested, I thought the following would be a good list of major, national associations to connect with. I am a current member of MENG and have been a member of the American Marketing Association in the past. The list below is a link to each national association. They each have local chapters and local websites to link to as well. For the purposes of this list, I’ve provided the national link only. You can find your local chapter link on their sites.

Feel free to add others of interest in the Comment section. I’m sure I could have missed a few.

American Marketing Association (AMA)
The American Marketing Association (AMA) is the largest marketing association in North America. It is a professional association for individuals and organizations involved in the practice, teaching and study of marketing worldwide. It is also the source that marketers turn to every day for information/resources, education/training and professional networking. AMA members are connected to a network of experienced marketers nearly 40,000 strong and include leading marketing academics, researchers and practitioners from every industry.

Business Marketing Association
Begun in 1922 as the National Industrial Advertising Association, today’s Business Marketing Association represents a lifetime of expertise in business-to-business marketing and communications. For more than 80 years, BMA has been the pre-eminent service organization for professionals in this vital industry. As market realities so often prove, no one stays in business that long without continually meeting their customers’ needs.

International Association of Business Communicators
Founded in 1970, The International Association of Business Communicators provides a professional network of over 15,500 business communication professionals in over 80 countries. Our members hold positions in: Public relations/Media relations, Corporate communications, Public affairs, Investor relations, Government relations, Marketing communication, Community relations, Writing.

Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)
MENG is a national network of top-level marketing executives. The organization is devoted to enhancing its members’ professional skills, relationships, and knowledge and prides itself on a culture of genuine camaraderie.

Media Communications Association-International
MCA-I is the premiere organization devoted to providing accomplished visual communicators with professional and business development opportunities. MCA-I continues to promote the growth, quality and success of film, video and multimedia communications and related businesses. The organization is based upon vigorous member participation and acts as an advocate on significant industry issues.

Public Relations Society of America
The Public Relations Society of America, based in New York City, is the world’s largest organization for public relations professionals. The Society has nearly 32,000 professional and student members. PRSA is organized into more than 100 Chapters nationwide, 19 Professional Interest Sections and Affinity Groups, which represent business and industry, counseling firms, independent practitioners, military, government, associations, hospitals, schools, professional services firms and nonprofit organizations. The Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) has nearly 300 Chapters at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP)
SCIP provides education and networking opportunities for business professionals working in the rapidly growing field of competitive intelligence (the legal and ethical collection and analysis of information regarding the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions of business competitors).

Driving Better Business Results With Technology

Marketing technology is one thing, getting it to work correctly is usually another.

Since I tend to frequently use what I suggest, I keep getting asked lately what technologies I’m suggesting to help some of my clients. This is not a simple question since it typically depends on the client. What’s good for one situation is not always good for the next. In a sense, I could answer this from different perspectives and to make this personal I’ll use my background as a backdrop. You could do the same since, particularly if you have a broad range of experience or have a specific knowledge base. 

From one perspective, as a former IT Architect at AT&T Bell Laboratories, I typically pushed the edge of applying and incorporating the latest technologies. Since there were legions of programmers around me, if the technology performed poorly, I or someone around me could probably fix it. This is the least likely scenario today in business and although the first to be mentioned here, is my last choice – unless - this new technology could provide you with a significant edge against your competition. This frequently occurred with some of the big capital markets companies like Citi or Goldman Sachs where a microsecond head’s start in trading can be everything (first mover always wins in that market).
 
From another perspective, as an end user of technology and former Risk Manager in the financial and insurance world, I can say I gravitated towards first fully understanding the software programs that I had access to and what their strengths and deficiencies were. I then tended to experiment with commercial off-the-shelf programs that I could manage myself. So I would sometimes try a new software program using a subset of the data and information that I had at hand. Since I knew the data intimately, I frequently tried running new software alternatives against that data to understand whether the new results were better, or more importantly I tried to discover whether I could gain some fresh insights into this old data. If the new program didn’t take me a lot of learing time and was easy to install, I knew I was on to something. As an example, I used this approach successfully to deliver just-in-time risk reports to our large customers using a software tool that no one was using at the time. It took me from a manager to an Asst VP early in my career.

Lastly, I think there is the case of smaller companies (under 200 employees) who simply can’t get too far down the track with new programs. With this set of users, and I have some, focusing on simplicity and complementary programs is the right approach. These tend to be Microsoft Office only shops – maybe with some specialty programs like CAD (Computer Aided Design) if they are an engineering design firm for example. In fact, the operative technique here is to use programs that easily fit together and have been integrated together by many companies.

In short, keep these in mind before adding new technologies:

• What are your business needs – first and foremost?
• What technology resources, capabilities and people do you have and will this drain them from doing other worthwhile projects?
• Does it complement and add value to what I’m doing? What are some complementary and low-risk technologies that I could use?
• Is there a short term ( < 6mos) bang for the buck? Long term ROI doesn’t make it with many managers today.
• Will it require a lot of integration with other programs?
• Can I get a business user to trial it quickly?
• How will it get supported (internally/externally)?

So what are some of the technology picks that I like for business? I have a number of them depending on your size and on whether you’re a wealth management company, a health care company developing its web presence, a small or medium size business grappling with the basics, or a large or small business trying to understand its customer base. I will outline some of these good ones in another blog – or feel to connect with me. Feel free to offer your thoughts, favorites or other comments as well. I’d love to hear them!

Twitter – The New Real Time Market Data Feed

And The Race Is On!

After developing and selling technology for the capital markets and financial services industry, I’ve learned some things about the value of real-time information. The same now seems to hold true for online social information sharing. Let me explain what I mean.

In the world of capital markets which includes brokerages and wirehouses, such as Morgan Stanley, and traditional banks such as Bank of America and Citi, real time information becomes an incredibly valuable commodity (or more precisely necessity). First, the aggregators and distributors of capital markets real time information include the likes of mega-info companies including Thomson-Reuters and Bloomberg. Second, some of the suppliers of this data include stock exchanges such as NYSE. And third, the users of this information include financial traders, mutual fund managers, wealth managers and financial advisors – to name a few. Those users or recipients of this real time information spend a lot of money on purchasing and employing this data to give them an edge about a company or fund that they might invest in (or not).

What is evolving analogously in the world of social media is quite similar. While instant messaging was the early leader in delivering real time interpersonal information, it’s the advent of Twitter that is really making this a potential business phenomenon and necessity. Twitter is the supplier of all this instant opinion information.

Just recently, Microsoft and Facebook announced initiatives to aggregate and promote Twitter information. They are the equivalent to Thomson-Reuters at this point. Of course Facebook, not to be outdone, would also like to be a competitive supplier in this market and is now allowing some real time views (aka status updates) of information posted by its 200 million users to be more publicly accessible. While Microsoft, through its new Bing search engine, is providing an index to the most followed Twitterer’s , bringing Twitter information to its search engine in less than a minute (near enough to real time).

So why is this trend important? It may provide businesses and marketers the ability to look at consumer interests, buying patterns and the effects of new product releases in near instantaneous fashion.

There is one issue that should be important to everyone. In the world of capital markets, real time information is about stocks and investments for the most part – relatively innocuous from a personal standpoint. However, in the world of Twitter and Facebook, the information is about us and our behavior. This type of real time market segmentation information has the potential to infringe on our privacy rights. Many of us have already seen our personal data being used for purposes that go beyond our consent. So while I look forward to the next wave of social media progress, we also need to be vigilant in how this affects our social communities and privacy.

Current Trends for Facebook and Twitter

6 Ideas to Improve the SIFMA Conference

Over the past 15 years in  the month of June, you can probably find me at SIFMA’s (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association) Technology Management Conference & Exhibit. Last week marked the up-teenth anniversary of the event. This year was no exception and I was there enjoying all the camaraderie of seeing old friends and making new ones at the NY Hilton.

At one time, SIFMA was the singular top conference in capital markets and I believe in the 1990’s there were as many as 8,000 attendees. In those days, when I was planning and managing this event for companies including Sun Microsystems and Sungard’s Mint division, the goal was to coordinate all the sales, PR and partnership meetings and presentations so that the staff were not overwhelmed and in the right place at the right time.

There was even a time when I had to order up 2 additional suites to augment our busy floor booth. The suites were geared for round the clock meetings including whisper meetings where we discussed our roadmap to certain clients. And over the past 4 or 5 years, I’ve been attending a fun post-SIFMA client-vendor business dinner, which includes an afternoon of fishing held in the Hampton’s and Montauk on Long Island.

After attending a number of other conferences over the course of the past year, I’d like to offer up some ideas for SIFMA to rebuild its once heralded stature. Here’s some food for thought:

• An event like this begins with industry leadership. I attended a banking event a couple of years ago and the speakers included Ben Bernanke (Fed Reserve Chairman), Jack Welch (CEO GE), Sheila Bair (FDIC Chair) and David Gergen (CNN). Even got to talk to Jack and his wife for a while. Sure, few events are likely to get this caliber of speakers, but consider doing a simulcast from Washington to make it easier for some government employees to speak remotely. And from the tech side, how about Larry Ellison of Oracle or Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.
• Content is King and the full conference price of admission does not warrant the expense for this level of information. I paid full fare last year – thank goodness that I didn’t this year as the agenda suffered further deterioration.  SIFMA must get more speakers from the industry to tell their story. Even some recently unemployed industry veterans could work. There’s no substitute for industry speakers. Have a vendor track if you’d like, but don’t let it dominate everything.
• Build interest before the event. Try a pre-conference mini virtual event to test the waters on content. Or survey the industry to find out what they want to hear most.
• Gather followup after the event. Consider a half-day virtual event for those that couldn’t make it featuring highlights from presentations and exhibits. 
• While the Hilton may have become sacrosanct over the years and a move to the Javits facility on the West side is probably over-kill and would undoubtedly sacrifice intimacy, the SIFMA organizers must consider some rearrangement of the current facility which will create enhanced interest and flow in the exhibits. The addition of the TMC Theater was a plus, but it was too small and even having Frank Abagnale, subject of the movie Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo DiCaprio, did not quite make it. If SIFMA got Leonardo DiCaprio instead – well that would have been something – but of course that’s not realistic.
• One last important comment – use more social marketing including Blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter to network this event.

I could probably come up with a half dozen more, but maybe I can turn it over to you for comment.

In any case, I’m a stalwart and will continue to attend SIFMA if only to keep up with friends and have some interesting conversation. See you next year.

When Is Marketing And Sales Like Acting?

Answer: When the marketing and sales program is organized and facilitated by actors (& actresses).

I recently attended a 90 minute program with about 50 others sponsored by MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) and facilitated by the TAI Group in NY. Since this is my first experience with the TAI Group, let me say a couple of things. TAI has been around for probably 20 years and TAI originally stood for The Actors Institute. They started by training actors but found that their workshops were being attended by non-entertainers (or civilians, as they like to call us) as well. In any case, they have quite an impressive client list including The Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, Digitas (in the marketing space), CEO’s and senior execs. Their entire facility and offices were quintessentially tasteful in an art-meets-business motif.

One of TAI’s main goals in helping you or your organization is to get you to recognize your inner self a little better so that you can understand how you are presenting yourself and reacting to others in business, as well as hopefully understand their motivations that much faster.  Actors, for one, often need to use this talent or ability to quickly prep for a film or show. As TAI was saying, actors have to team immediately for success whether they get along with their counterparts or not. And the acting failure of one performer can immediately doom the show. Personally, I think good sales people have that same talent, not only in knowing what their motivations are (make the sales of course), but in reading their client so that they quickly and accurately interpret their issues, challenges and of course motivations.

Marketers often use this talent but they apply it to a wide range of customers or buyers typically. Marketers also have to understand the psychological and behavioral mathematics across their customer bases. We call this market segmentation, demographic analysis, psychographics, etc. But while marketers have to deal with the law of large numbers, sales ultimately comes down to mano-a-mano.

Since I’ve been on both the sales and marketing side of the business…in fact I often feel that I’m in the middle ground somewhere, I’ve usually found these programs refreshing and rewarding. And in this case, ditto. Maybe there is a similar program in your neighborhood so to speak.

I guess Shakespeare got it right…All the World’s a Stage. If Shakespeare were around today, maybe he too would be training actors and marketers alike.