Staying Dry For Your Tri

A few years back (2010), I competed in the Nations Triathlon in our nation's capital, Washington DC.  For those of you that were not there, the weather report that day called for some showers on Saturday evening and early Sunday morning.  The chance of rain was listed at around 50%.  Coming from Southern California, this would typically mean a very slight chance of light rain or a shower that moves through in a matter of minutes.  The reality of this report on the east coast is that it started raining early Sunday morning and absolutely poured until just before the delayed swim waves took off. In fact, shortly after arriving in transition, the announcer reported that the next cell through contained electrical activity and that everyone should try and seek some type of cover.  Showers? Really?

As you can imagine, one learns some valuable lessons about managing this and other aspects of competing in this sport in weather that is less than perfect.  I thought I would share my "lessons learned" and see what others could share in terms of their experiences in the comments section below. Here goes:

1. Regardless of whether or not you rack your bike the night before or the morning of, mark sure you remember plastic bags or invest in this to keep your bike covered and dry until you exit transition.

2. Know that any threat of rain can lead to a delayed start time.  Make sure you have extra liquid and any food you are comfortable putting in your body before your triathlons.  Nothing worse than going to the swim already thirsty and hungry.

3. Regardless of any delay, know that standing around in the rain causes your body temperature to drop.  Standing around shivering for a few hours before you go is not good especially if you are dealing with any muscle stiffness as it is.  Make sure you are prepared to stay warm and as dry as you can.  For those of you that struggle with back pain and stiffness, a warm wrap would be awesome.    

4. Weather is unpredictable and while all bets are off once you leave the transition area for your swim wave, do what you can to keep your gear as dry as you can. A big plastic tie bag would have been a welcome accessory for shoes, socks, bike helmet, etc.)

5. Think!  Adjust some of your planning. Your helmet, while typically left resting on your aero bars with your glasses sitting inside makes for a speedier transition in good weather but serves only to collect water in the rain.

6.  Make sure that you have a towel available to wipe off muddy feet if the transition area has turned into a mud bath.  This probably has an even bigger impact depending on whether you put your bikes shoes on before or after mounting your bike and may further impact your decision making process.  

This was my first triathlon in bad weather (unless you count leaving on the run and the temperature being 110 degrees at Vineman 70.3).  I would prefer not to have to do it again but the fact of the matter is that I enjoy traveling to different places to compete and am certain to encounter this situation in the future.  I did learn that bikes handle really well in the rain as long as you respect the conditions which was good and my confidence on the bike grew as the race went on.  

We are spoiled in Southern California.  My brother, who lives in Virginia, says he may have raced in the rain more times than he has in good conditions.  It's not ideal, but the truth is that as long as you are well prepared, the rest should be easy and there is no reason why you cannot have a great race day regardless of what mother nature throws your way.

What are your experiences?  What are some of the tips and tricks you can share?        

Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned

Great presentation by the folks over at Dropbox on lessons learned. Of particular interest is the commentary around "cost per acquisition".  One of the biggest challenges organizations face is understanding that while you may have a great solution, if people are not searching for it and don't know that it exists, search is probably not a viable approach to lead generation.

Dropbox summed it up with this - "Search is a way to harvest demand, not create it."

Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned

View more presentations from gueste94e4c.

Real-Time Data Capture - Sales 2.0 Style

I was just reading a great post by the folks over at The Pursuit Group that provides an example of digital body language, a concept first introduced by Steve Woods at Eloqua in his book aptly titled, Digital Body Language.  The post focuses on the huge gap that exists between a standard implementation of a SFA/CRM system and what can be achieved through extending the implementation to include other data-capture, inbound/outbound or marketing automation toolsets.  The difference is obviously night and day but can be taken one step further.

The difference highlighted in the post is one of pure data and intelligence and does not speak to the ability to capture this data in real-time.  There is a lot of research on the limited amount of time that an inside sales person or account manager has to reach the prospect after they spend time reviewing content.  The impact that this has on conversion rates can actually be quite daunting especially if you currently have no visibility into the real-time digital body language of your prospects.  Fortunately, there are a number of really great solutions out there that are providing this level of functionality.  One that seems to be garnering some attention at the moment due to the slickness of it's solution is Pardot.  Pardot has developed LeadDeck, an application that shows in real-time the visitors to your website and does an excellent job of resolving to specific companies and shows those prospects that are clicking through from outbound activity or who have visited in the past.

For anyone that has spent time reviewing this type of data, the single biggest frustration is seeing a marquee company name cross the screen without any additional information on who specifically within that organization is visiting.  At go-ESI we have been using Pardot for the past few months and from time to time I will sit and watch the LeadDeck screen.  On one occasion I noticed a hit from a company in the SaaS space that was an ideal prospect.  We had not called on this company to date and so I knew that this was an organic search and we were flying blind in terms of just who was spending significant time on the website.  We always know more than we think though and sometimes we get a little lucky.  Recognizing the client website that was being visited I immediately jumped into Jigsaw and did a "Title" search for the target persona.  There was only one match and imagine my surprise and that of the prospect when I dialed the number and struck gold.  There was a slightly uncomfortable exchange as I explained just how I had come across the information and had reached him while has on page #3, but one that also served to immediately break the ice and created a solid opportunity for go-ESI and the client.

Sales 2.0 in action.  Happy hunting!

Marketing Automation & Start-Ups

I recently posted a question to both Linkedin and Focus having to do with the "right time to implement a marketing automation solution.” My reason for asking the question was that during my discussions with a number of marketing automation companies, I had always received very different answers to this question.  It seemed that depending on the size of the company, breadth of the offering or their preferred market segment, each had it's own thinking, or perhaps bias, as to when and why.

My early research into marketing automation solutions was largely focused on identifying the best possible solution for our clients.  We learned quickly though that there is definitely a certain maturity level that must exist within each target organization concerning content generation and process. This was highlighted and further validated by a number of people who responded to the question. Both Todd Chesnos and Mark Donatelli provided input on this and Mark summed it up with this response:

“Marketing automation enables organizations to more efficiently scale segmentation and prioritization for the "next action" in the sales or nurturing process - but as Todd pointed out, if your processes for demand generation, segmentation, prioritization, or nurturing/sales are off kilter it won't help - garbage in, garbage out.”

What we also realized fairly early on was that our combination of clients and their associated content actually put us in a perfect position to begin leveraging marketing automation solutions ourselves. We could easily take the content, host it ourselves, and quickly create landing pages. We would then have far greater visibility into what was working and what was not. We would also have direct visibility into traffic and would be able to do our own lead nurturing and lead conversion work. All of this came about as we morphed from purely a consulting organization into a full blown distributor of innovative enterprise software solutions.

All of our clients are fairly early stage and with few exceptions, still testing messaging and validating the oversall value proposition. This is a key part of the service that we provide and what we learned, soon after implementing our marketing automation solution, was that it is possibly one of the best means by which to conduct this research.

I posted the question that I did to Linkedin and Focus hoping that I would find others who had a similar experience and saw the same tangential benefit to marketing automation for the early-stage and start-up communities.  I finally received an answer from The Lord of the Leads, Tom Scearce, who had a similar view. Here is what he had to say:

“Greenfield - an organization that is either a startup or simply has limited prior experience with modern marketing practices. Marketing automation is a great way to build the process right the first time.”

I would be very interested to see what others think about this specific approach. Clearly there is a cost associated with the solution. Clearly content and messaging still have to be created and an effective process, while not necessarily fully-baked, must be in place. That said, do you share my belief that organizations can significantly shorten the messaging/value proposition validation and refinement phase by utilizing this type of automation?

I look forward to additional responses and an ongoing dialog.

Sales 2.0 - INNOVATIVE

During the recent Sales 2.0 Conference, Pam Hudadoff, who writes the blog MarketSense, asked attendees how they would describe Sales 2.0 in one word. Despite the obvious challenges of getting a group of marketing and sales people to limit their answer to just one word, the results were pretty interesting across the audience.

Pam did not include my response in her video montage and so I thought I would share it with you here:

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! The Guinness will soon be pouring. Enjoy the song and enjoy the night - http://ping.fm/V2lfD

Sales 2.0 & The 80/20 Rule

I have been wanting to share some thoughts on the recent Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and Craig Rosenberg over at Funnelholic just provided the impetus. Craig’s reference to Sales 2.0 concepts and products as “the steroids and painkillers that sales and marketing need to elevate their game” captured the essence of what I believe Sales 2.0 is all about. During the conference I was concerned that this message would be lost because all too often panel members tended to revert to talking about 80/20 rules and other Sales 1.0 type thinking.

Especially concerning was reference to the fact that the top performers in an organization (driven by the “sales is purely an art” line of thinking) could not be measured on effectiveness relative to these types of tools because they would not adopt them and therefore would not provide the metrics needed. Adoption has always been a critical success factor when it comes to the introduction of anything new within a sales organization and has especially been an issue for many organizations when implementing a CRM solution. I have consistently been at the forefront of these implementation in the organizations that I have been a part of and am a firm believer in strong executive level sponsorship and a “no excuses” approach to adoption. It is amazing what strong, committed leadership can achieve!

Thinking back to today’s Sales 2.0 concepts and products, I am willing to make a bet that even in organizations where there is zero corporate level implementation, the top performers are already well ahead of the curve. The challenge for organizations, and the true power of a Sales 2.0 model, is to be found in the detailed understanding and segmentation of one’s business along with the right strategy for deploying these tools and concepts for the betterment of the entire organization.

We all had an opportunity to see for ourselves the sometimes overwhelming number of concepts and associated tools, each with either a tiered pricing model or multiple vendors seeking to address specific market segments. There literally is a play for everyone, from some of the smallest companies (go-ESI) to the very largest (Eastman Kodak). The trick is in understanding your business today and which concepts and sets of technologies will have the greatest impact and allow you to achieve the fastest ROI. And, of course, strong leadership...