PAKRA Games

Occupy Customer Experience: We wish you a fabulous 2012

2011-12-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

Thanks to our customers, users, game-players, partners, advisers, employees, we met and surpassed all our goals and milestones that we set for ourselves in 2011.

Being a Remarkable Learning Company®, we ourselves learned a lot in 2011. Some of the key learnings were:
1. The value of "failure" from Jeff Stibel's blog post "Why I hire people who fail?"
2. The value you get from continuously experimenting, measuring and adjusting
3. The value of using social media channels effectively for sales and customer service
4. Helping businesses and organizations understand the buyer, especially millennial end-user and mindset
5. According to Horses for Sources and recent purchases of SuccessFactors and Rypple, Business platforms like PAKRA are the future of outsourcing
6. One can bootstrap and with a little ingenuity create immersive learning experiences and data that provide insight. These videos from TED.com inspired us in 2011.
Arvind Gupta: Turning Trash to Toys for Learning
Luis von Ahn: Massive Online Collaboration
Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape the world

Looking ahead to 2012:

As I try to comprehend various events that occurred globally in 2011 (and perhaps best encapsulated in the Time Magazine's "Person of the year"), I suspect that this tipping point of discontent stems from:
- Continual lack of service
- Mismatched expectations
- In many cases complete disregard and disrespect of the customer and the constituent.
This was further elaborated via a multi-disciplinary study done by department of Mathematics (and others) of University of Vermont University of Vermont study of twitter feeds: Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter.

As you know, we provide products and services to businesses and organizations but in most situations, our products and services are tad bit far from THE end-user or constituent. We supply to organizations, who provide services and products to their clients. Their clients can be the end-users or their clients, who in turn provides services and products to their end-users. Needless to say, we are at least 3 degrees out of 4.74 degrees of separation to the end-user.

If all of us in the 4.74 supply continuum, become unrelenting champions for the end-user and continuously focus on the experience of that end-user, then we can address this era of global discontent.

The end-user experience begins from the time products/services are designed
--> To how those are marketed
--> To how they are sold
--> To order and access
--> To using and receiving service
--> To paying for the product and service
And the cycle repeates over and over again.

Personally, I believe that outsourcers, business gurus and management consultants led us astray by telling managers to focus ONLY on the circle of immediate influence. That kind of thinking led all of us (in leadership roles) create and deploy sub-optimized processes, set-up wrong incentives, create bubble economies, followed by a complete loss of line of vision to the end-user.

So! Let us Occupy Customer Experience. Occupying customer experience is the perhaps one way that can bring equitable satisfaction, make us all rich, and make us the fittest to survive all economic business cycles.

For 2012 and beyond: Occupy Customer Experience will be our theme and PAKRA® culture in:
- Every new product PAKRA® Games we build
- Human-capital management platform (PAKRA® Console and Analytics) we improve
- Marketing campaigns and blog interviews with leaders, we run
- Sales experience that you encounter with us and then provide to your buyers
- Customer service that you experience from us and in turn your end-users experience

Join us for this experience.
Wish you and your family a fabulous and great customer experience in 2012.

Rini Das
CEO, PAKRA

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Credit Roll for Mashup Photo: For our Holiday mashup card we give credits to the following image sites:

http://www.sohobooks.net/bobnew/muralgallery/msgmultitag.jpg

http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/PhotoFiles/akon-vibe-magazine.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/NYTimes-Page1-11-11-1918.jpg/300px-NYTimes-Page1-11-11-1918.jpg

http://ladylixa.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/tank_girl_wallpaper_by_daskai.png

Conversations with Jeff Weinberger – A marketing strategist, problem solver, and disruptive thinker

2011-12-22T15:44:00.000-08:00

As a marketing strategy innovator and sustainability visionary, Jeff’s career has been focused on identifying strategic opportunities and creating actionable outcomes for companies such as WebEx (Cisco), Saba, and SAP.

MS> Jeff, Are you a gamer?

JW> I’m not a gamer in today’s typical sense of electronic, console, or internet games, but I have always been interested in gaming. The games I’ve always gravitated toward are strategy games. I enjoy games that require a tremendous amount of thought and problem-solving, as well as a lot of complexity. I enjoy games where there is no specific set of steps you need to follow. Each time you play, the process and the outcomes can be different. And like so many others, I’ve also gotten in to some on-line versions of Scrabble lately (ed. feel free to challenge him!).

MS> Some people game for purely for the challenge, and others do it to learn. And then there are the folks who just want to tune out a bit and play purely for fun.

JW> There’s a trend now toward time or activity-based social and on-line games, versus problem-solving-based or strategy gaming. The time and activity-based games are much more social and more about the connections among players. I find it really interesting to see how these shorter, social games have become so popular. There are some really interesting ideas around how you can use that kind of gaming for corporate and social good. And that’s a topic I find really interesting.

MS> This leads me into another subject I wanted to discuss: gamification. How have you seen the corporate world adopt and use gamification?

JW> First, I must say I think gamification is going to be the most annoying buzzword for 2012. Gamification is being discussed everywhere right now. I think it’s a very positive trend. It’s a way to engage tremendous numbers of people behind a particular cause or goal. It can be used behind any goal, whether it be charitable, corporate, or something else. The engagement factor doesn’t have to be long term, it just has to be interesting enough to get people to want to work together and create common good and common outcomes. It’s a much more engaging way to deal with today’s learner or workforce than any other more traditional manner.

If you were my employee, and I tell you to go update a spreadsheet or complete a mundane task, you may grudgingly do it. But if I tell you that you and 10 coworkers need to collaborate together to do this task as part of a game, that you’ll get points for completion, and that the outcome is an award; the task becomes more interesting and more motivating. There’s a tremendous potential for engagement.

There’s a downside though. If you look at gamification in the sales, prospecting, and marketing world — it’s very hot right now. We know there is tremendous potential for engagement. The problem is, you may only be able to engage a small percentage of your audience in a gaming scenario. So, it may be really wonderful that you get a big hit-count or lots users of the game you put up on your website. And you may realize a certain conversion or purchase rate out of the effort. But you may miss out on engaging a large portion of your audience which could be extremely valuable to you.

MS> There’s an obvious hook to using games this way, but I think there needs to be an understanding of the entire picture. What percentage of your whole consumer base are you grabbing? And what happens after they play? If you are attracting customers, or potential customers, through gamification strategies, are you converting them or retaining them?

There is a core belief at PAKRA that any marketing or sales effort we undertake must have measurable outcomes. We need to understand the effectiveness of any effort we launch. There needs to be identified metrics that will tell us how many people we engaged, how we engaged them, and whether the end result was a new lead or a closed sale.

JW> The idea of engaging your whole audience – and knowing how to address each segment - is a core concept to disruptive marketing, which is what I’ve been known for over the past decade or so. You have to look at your relationships with your entire community, not just with your top 10% or 20% who may be the largest customers or those with whom you engage the most. To be quite honest, the easiest customers for your competitors to pick off are the 80% you aren’t paying attention to. When I am running a company, I want to make sure I find a way to not let that 80% become vulnerable to competitive loss. I think ignoring that segment of customers is a dangerous strategy, and it’s the reason a lot of companies fail or are the victims of market disruption.

MS> That’s so important to be mindful of that 80% that we’re talking about. New accounts acquisition and new sales are important, but so is retention of existing customers.

JW> Customer loyalty and retention is a critical issue in today’s business world. Many companies, in software or internet services for example, are moving more toward a subscription-based model. If you are in a subscription-based business, the most important thing a customer can do for you is to renew. It’s important to make sure that after you’ve closed that initial sale, you are able to retain that customer month after month and year after year. Figuring out customer loyalty is not that easy. Of course you want all your customers to renew. You may not get 100% renewal, but that should be your goal. If you look at cell phone companies, cloud-based companies or even media-based companies, the renewal rates are pathetically small. A churn rate of 20% for a cell phone provider is just not acceptable. When you look at the customers in the other 80%, those who are not leaving, there is more than loyalty there. There is disruptive potential there. And the potential for that group to help you find out why your 20% is leaving.

You may find that you have customers who are more interesting, flexible, and more innovative than your top 20%. These customers are going to provide seeds for the way your market is going to be disrupted. And I assure you, at some point, your market will be disrupted. As a CEO or customer service executive, I want to know what my 80% are thinking so I can disrupt my own market. I would rather have my customer base tell me what needs to change than hear it from my competitor, and I’d rather make that change than let a competitor do that to me. My goal in working with a company on marketing strategy is to help them know what those customers are thinking. In my role as marketing strategist, I want to help you disrupt your own market. If you are the CEO of a company, I want to help you figure out how to listen to your customers and understand what all your customers are thinking. You’ve got to be able to figure out which customers are going to do really interesting things — things that will drive your market.

MS> You said your practice is focused on finding and maximizing the value of customer (and other) relationships. How do you figure out that value and what does it mean for your clients?

JW> I believe in using a customer value model. This looks at the entire customer community and asks, “What is the value of these relationships?” There’s a revenue component to this, because what your customer pays you is obviously important. But there are also some other components we all understand, but may not put together. “Share of wallet” is a common term in many industries. In other words, how much of that customer’s budget are they spending with you? A large customer may give you a small share of wallet compared to what they can spend. A small customer may give you a larger share of wallet and actually be more profitable over time, and will be less likely to walk away. You can develop a much deeper relationship with the latter customer based on loyalty in the relationship, even though the revenue number may appear lower on the surface.

Customer value is made up of a number of dimensions, including these two. To get a better understanding of the value of a customer – or the potential value of a prospect – it’s important to look at how important each is to your particular business and how your customers stack up.

Understanding how valuable each customer is and where they are in your community determines what effort you should put behind that customer and into keeping that relationship.

MS> It sounds like you are talking about a life-long profile of a customer.

JW> Exactly. And this is something that I’m passionate about. Helping companies understand these relationships. Although we are talking about business-to-customer relationships, my philosophies in this area are really drawn from personal experiences.

The value in my personal life, and what I enjoy most, are the relationships I have with people. One thing I’ve come to discover over time is that value in a relationship doesn’t come from an individual but from the interaction between two or more individuals. For example, you and I are talking. You have some ideas and I have some ideas, and that’s all great. But things become interesting once we start to exchange ideas, whether we agree or disagree. Once I discovered that was such an important driver in my personal life, I started to look at in a business context. It’s all about relationships among businesses, customers, suppliers, and shareholders.

As a marketing strategist, I spend a lot of time analyzing the issues around the relationships my clients have with their customers and looking at the value in those relationships. And then I started to ask the “how” questions about those relationships. How is value created between the business and the customer? How can the business continue to add to that value? How do you use that value to create competitive advantage?

MS> Talk to me about how you learn. What is your learning style?

JW> I have two unique learning styles that come up in different situations. In one respect, I’m very empirical. I look at something, and I see it happen six times, and I can say, “Oh, that’s how it works.” In many ways I don’t believe something until I’ve actually seen it work.

On the other hand, I am also very theoretical. I actually have to understand the “why” behind certain things in order for me to really understand it. The real test of learning for me – or anyone, I think - is whether I can explain a concept or something I’ve learned. If I’ve understood the concept, the theory behind it, and I’ve seen it happen, then I can probably turn around and explain it in a way that shows I really understand it.

MS> What you’ve said makes me think about critical thinking skills and the different levels of learning that an individual goes through. Bloom’s Taxonomy tells us that learning sometimes starts at most basic understanding of a subject, knowledge. From there the learning can progress to comprehension, application, analysis, and, finally, synergy.

From PAKRA’s perspective, when we develop a customized learning solution for a client, it’s important for us to understand who our end user is and what their current level of understanding is of a business process. From there, we determine what level of knowledge our products need help attain. Once we’ve established those learning goals and learned the client’s business processes, we can begin to build a gaming simulation from there.

JW> That makes perfect sense. You need to put people in a learning environment that is going to make sense for them. There is a fairly destructive tendency in our businesses (and society) to put everyone in the same learning environment and teach everyone the same skills, and that doesn’t work. It’s just not an effective or efficient way to teach someone. People need to be taught in the way that they learn best.

MS> I call this the tendency to “teach everything to everyone,” regardless of the individual learner’s needs.

While we’re on the topic of learning, tell me what is your definition of immersive learning?
JW> I think of immersive learning very simply. Whatever it is you are trying to learn, you are completely surrounded by it in some way. You are forced to find your way through a subject. You aren’t so much being taught as you are discovering. And for me, I think this works better than other ways of learning. I learn a lot through discovery and experience.

MS> Let’s talk about user adoption of new technology. What do you think drives user adoption?

JW> I think there only two things that drive adoption of new technology in a business. One, there must be a desperate need. B2B companies are really selling to people, and that’s important to remember. There was a slogan on the wall of one of my past employers that said, “Organizations fund. People buy.” It doesn’t matter if you are selling directly to a business. You are still also selling to a person or a group of people. And as ClayChristensen pointed out, people “hire” a product to do a job. The product must have a job and it must do it well. That’s when you have to look at your potential customer base. What job does my product need to do for the end user? And how can my product do this job well? When you know that, you know why the people buying it will care.

The second part of the user adoption equation is having a champion who drives the change your product will bring. There must people in the organization who are willing to do things differently in order to get that job done. Is the champion willing to do something differently, to be disrupted, in order to solve a challenge? If the answer is yes, the chances of successful user adoption are greatly increased.

MS> How do you use social media? I’ve noticed your social media presence reflects a distinct “voice.” You clearly aren’t afraid to express a point of view. Is this part of your brand?

JW> We all want to be perceived as being positive and supportive. But I think there is sometimes a false sense of positivity when people are using social media to promote themselves. We all have challenging or contrary views on certain subjects, topics that challenge our thinking, and unique viewpoints. But many people have a fear of being opinionated in the realm of social media. My experience has always been that being opinionated and expressing yourself authentically is really the best way to establish your own uniqueness and personality.

You’ll notice I’m specifically avoiding the word brand. Branding and style are two very different things, and I think that distinction is often missed. A brand is not how you’ve defined yourself on your website, it’s not your logo, it’s not your company colors. That is your style. Your style is the image that you want to project to the world. A brand is what exists in the mind of others when they think of a company, a product, or a person. Your style may feed in to your brand, but they are two unique things. The classic example is the brand of Volvo: When they think of Vovlo, people think of safety. They don’t think about the logo, the style of the website or the advertising. They think of safety. Safety is why people buy Volvo, and therefore that’s their brand.

My personal style is I tend to be opinionated and put my ideas out there; I’m not shy. This translates in to my brand, how others see me. My brand – at least what I’m told it is - is that I will challenge and disrupt your current way of thinking, help you avoid getting trapped in a rut and get that to produce positive outcomes.

MS> Jeff, as always, it’s been a lot of fun speaking to you. Thank you!

Conversations with Darren Suomi – A sales and marketing innovator, Social Selling advocate, and outdoor enthusiast.

2011-12-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

As a sales and marketing innovator and Social Selling advocate at companies such as HootSuite and SAP AG, Darren is passionate about using social media to engage customers, manage the user experience, and drive user adoption of new technology.

MS> Darren, are you a Gamer? What types of gaming do you enjoy?

DS> I do like games. I’m extremely competitive. I’ll make a game out of the most mundane things. I’m not a gamer in the sense that I play video games till 3 AM with my friends, but I definitely like a good challenge.

MS> Do you play application-based games like Angry Birds or Words With Friends?

DS> Yes, when I have time to kill, I’ll play app-based games on my phone. I don’t actually have time for anything else!

MS> I think that’s why phone based apps have a such an appeal. There’s almost no time commitment. There is the type of gamer who will stay up until 3 AM playing Modern Warfare 3 with his friends on-line. And then you have the other type, who’s in it for a quick experience and will play Angry Birds while sitting in a doctor’s office or stuck in traffic.

DS> Exactly.

MS> Tell me about your learning style. How do you learn? When you approach a new situation, how do you learn everything that you need to know in order to get up and running? How did you approach this effort when you joined HootSuite (provider of social media management for businesses) as a leader in their sales organization?

DS> I like to learn by doing, watching, or experiencing. I usually try to put myself directly in the mix of a new situation. For example, if I’m coming into a sales team at a company like HootSuite, I’ll go in and observe. I don’t approach learning from a judgmental way. I approach it as “Show me what you’re doing.” I rarely even make comments during my observation, it’s literally just observing and soaking in how the team works. Then I follow up with questions after to make sure I fully understand the scenario with context. When I’m faced with a new situation, I approach it like I’m reading a story. I want to bring in all the information together and summarize it for myself so that I can really understand the situation. For me, practical application trumps any type of book-based academia.

MS> HootSuite’s core product offering is a social media management tool that lets a business manage multiple channels from one solution. So, obviously social media is a critical part of everything that happens at HootSuite. How do you apply social media within HootSuite?

DS> Our application of social media extends throughout all aspects of our business, from customer support and marketing, to human resources and sales. They’re all separate moving parts of one singular engine. From a sales perspective we take the torrent of information that comes at us through social and filter it into usable streams. This is gives us a a chance to break down the information and strategically engage with our customers. Which in turn, provides leads, contacts, and situational opportunities. We’ll also schedule and send messages to our market so we’re actively participating through social while monitoring the real-time conversation happening throughout the web. We use similar tactics in customer support and to enhance our customer experience.

MS> At PAKRA, we talk to a lot of clients or prospective clients who don’t have social medial strategies or “listening strategies”. We try to educate them on the amount of information that is out there in the social sphere. We tell them to go out to Twitter and type “#servicefail” and look at what their customers are saying about them, but not directly to them. If a business isn’t aware that this exists, it’s a huge missed opportunity.

DS> Absolutely. From more of a sales perspective, we’ll work with marketing if we’re going in to a new market. We’ll set up a social mechanism and establish a web footprint in that market. This starts by building a social community in that market before going in with a full sales effort. We’ll then engage and promote our culture and awareness so the market knows us before we launch. It helps give potential customers a familiar experience with us that isn’t sales focused.

MS> It’s about building brand awareness. It’s the precursor to sales.

DS> Agreed. We also encourage each of our sales reps to create a social media presence and manage a Twitter account. It’s that individuals voice, speaking on behalf of HootSuite, and it allows the associate to engage in a meaningful manner with prospective clients.

Along with encouraging our team to be active and engage with social media, we also equate listening in to the mix. By monitoring streams for our current customers, it lets us know how we can help amplify their messages.

MS> Talk to me about how you use Sales 2.0 philosophies to enhance your sales strategies.

DS> Sales 2.0 is a true focus on customer service, how they’re interacting online and transforming this information into hard leads. Companies should be having thoughtful conversations using social media that have real value. Keeping in mind that the content being shared and created should also bring the same value. Instead of focusing on traditional channels, like mail, to provide sales materials, a social business should drive information through their blog and website. This sets up an opportunity to track and analyze how people are engaging, and what is really grabing their attention. It should be common practice to collect information that gives insight into how customers are engaging online. From here, there should be a system in place to proactively follow-up on the information based on what a prospect’s interests seem to be.

MS> How do you train your sales force; from a new person coming in the door to a seasoned associate who needs on-going development?

DS> I think that it’s necessary to give every associate a baseline. Starting with a new associate, this person may not have a vast background in social media. They’ve probably been exposed to it, but may not know what to do with it. They may have Twitter but not use it. They may have LinkedIn but not monitor it. So we start with their baseline and immersion in social media and build from that.

Next, I begin to position the “who, what, and why” of HootSuite. What do we do? Where do we fit? What’s the value proposition of our product? Who is our customer base?

Then we talk about the sales process and the tactical aspects of the job. How do I get a meeting? What do I say when I get a meeting? How can we really drive the sales cycle?

From there, I’m a strong believer in ongoing development. I look at who my future leaders are. As we grow, we need to identify the next generation of leaders in the company. We need proactively address the development needs of those individuals who might be stepping leadership roles.

MS> In your experience, what are the drivers behind user adoption of a new technology?

DS> The easier it is to adopt a new experience; the more likely a user will stick with it. New technology needs to be exciting, make people inquisitive and make the consumer feel like that piece of technology is the future. It also must fill a need that has not been met, or a need that the user didn’t know existed. Ultimately, in order to achieve maximum adoption, new technology has to offer an innovative way to complete the task. There must also be ease of use and simplicity. If there isn’t ease of use, adoption will drop off.

MS> I agree. A new technology needs to be easy to use and it needs to work correctly. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be complex in what the application offers, but you’ve got to be able use it easily.

DS> If something doesn’t quite work as it should or it’s difficult manage, it’s going to be viewed as “not ready”. You can address a complex issue with technology, but it has to be user friendly.

MS> What’s your definition of immersive learning?

DS> I really have two definitions of immersive learning. First off, if something is immersive it’s also interactive. And if it’s interactive, there’s heavy involvement and stimulating all senses. Secondly, immersive learning means the environment will be rich in real world scenarios and coupled with constructive feedback.

MS> These are the two drivers behind what PAKRA does with our gaming simulation technology. We want to build our business process simulations to be fully interactive. It needs look, sound, and feel like our client’s real working environment so that an employee can learn by doing, while getting feedback every step of the way.

DS> Innovation, interaction, and ease of use are all key factors for creating new technology. When we’re talking about social media, I think that it’s important, from a business perspective, to remember to engage in different ways. Find out where your audience lives and place yourself there.

MS> Darren, it’s been really great talking to you. Thank you for your time!

Leveraging Social Media Channels – Lessons Learned in 8 hours

2011-11-15T05:53:00.000-08:00

Sure, you’ve got a Social Media strategy. You’ve even got several channels under your Social Media strategy. But how well do you know the effectiveness of each channel? How long is it taking you to pilot, test, and determine the effective of each channel? What if you were able to determine the effectiveness of a marketing strategy before you invested significant time and effort?

Every Social Media effort at PAKRA must have a defined purpose and measurable outcomes before it’s launched. This allows us to implement a program, measure, and adjust. With many strategies, it’s possible to collect data and measure the potential impact before you’ve even made the decision to deploy the program.

Let’s look at LinkedIn as an example. PAKRA actively uses LinkedIn as a channel for both lead generation and building brand awareness. Recently, we explored the idea of using LinkedIn discussion groups to increase our lead generation efforts and better enable brand awareness on our core product offerings – business process gaming simulations and software-as-a-service (SaaS).

We set out to prove or disprove this hypothesis:

We can use LinkedIn groups to engage in discussions that generate marketing and sales leads, increase brand awareness, and enable us to be viewed as an industry expert and trusted resource for information.

So, where did we start? Did we assign resources to spend 2 – 3 hours a day managing the discussion groups? Did we launch a 30-day pilot to initiate industry relevant discussions? Did we spend weeks gathering data and measuring results?

None of the above!

Before we spent time and resources launching this strategy – we observed, we collected data, and we analyzed what we found. Over the course of 2 days and a total of 8 hours, we collected data from over from over 40 different industry specific groups and from 150 different discussion posts (that contained at least 3 comments per post).

Next, we set out to gather data that would answer the question:

“Is there a right way or wrong way to message in LinkedIn groups that will lead to group members responding more often and engaging in discussions?”

To answer this question, we did the following:

1. Tracked the number of user responses to each discussion post

2. Scored the effectiveness (highly effective, somewhat effective, not effective) of each discussion post based on multiple criteria:

Relationship to group goals – How effectively a discussion post is related to the stated purpose and goals of the group
Overly promotional – The degree to which a discussion avoids transparent self-promotion or product promotion
Helpful information – The degree to which information received from the discussion will be helpful to other group members and the originator of the discussion
Actionable information - How usable and actionable the posted responses will be to other group members and the originator of the discussion
Trusted advisor status – Will the discussion posted and responses received result in the originator becoming a reliable source for information and advice
Empathy – How effectively the post relates to the goals, concerns, and issues of the specific group
Tone – The degree to which the posted discussion shows sincerity, humor, and a personal tone

3. Each post was then ranked by:

Number of responses received (largest number of discussion responses ranked highest)
Total effectiveness score (largest overall effectiveness score ranked highest)

What we found was something very interesting!

Based on the Rank of Responses and Rank of Total Score, we saw some relationships emerge.

Relationship 1: High response ranking, low total score ranking

“Hi everyone! If you’re new to the group, please introduce yourself by commenting on this discussion!”

This is an example of a discussion that ranked highly in the number of responses. In fact, this discussion resulted in over 8,000 responses. But it had a very low ranking for total score.

We saw that those discussions with the highest number of responses but that ranked lowest in score relied on very few of the effectiveness measures. These discussions tended to be non-actionable and / or overly promotional and scored lowly in relationship to the groups goals, generating helpful responses, and positioning the originator of the discussion as trusted advisor. For a product company such as ours, overly promotional discussions that result in non-actionable responses will not help us meet our goal of generating marketing and sales leads or positioning ourselves as a trusted expert in our space.

Relationship 2: Middle range response ranking, middle range total score ranking

“When Does the Relationship Between Sales Person and Prospect Begin?”

This is an example of a discussion that fell in the middle range for both number of responses and total score ranking.

These discussions tended score as “somewhat effective” in the criteria of tone, empathy, and relationship to the group’s goals. But they also tended to score as “ineffective” or “somewhat effective” in the criteria of actionable responses, helpful information, and positioning the originator of the discussion as a trusted advisor. This group of discussions also failed to meet PAKRA’s goals for lead generation or brand development.

Relationship 3: Middle to high response ranking, middle to high total score ranking

“Are serious games being used to assess, not just develop? There's increasing interest in using games not just in Learning & Development, but also in assessment. Do you know of any examples?”

This is an example of a discussion that fell in the middle to high range for both number of responses and total score ranking.

The second circle in the chart represents those discussions that had a medium to high response ranking and scored as “somewhat effective” to “effective” in the messaging criteria. We found that this circle represents discussions between subject matter “Gurus” and independent contractors. This group does meet our target market or our goals of lead generation and brand development.

What did PAKRA learn from this exercise?

Based upon this analysis, we learned LinkedIn discussion groups are not an effective space for us to launch a marketing campaign to meet our goals of generating leads, increasing our brand as an industry expert, or being viewed as a trusted resource in gaming simulations and SaaS platforms for our target market.

If you launched a similar exercise, would you have the same results? This is not the question you should ask! The question is not whether our results and findings are replication-agnostic or whether our results will always hold true for you. The question to ask is “will this marketing campaign meet my identified goals in my target market?” It’s critical to understand your own marketing goals, your target market, and the marketing channel that you are exploring.

The key finding to our exercise is that there is free, publicly available data that will allow you to determine patterns and help you understand how a specific channel works. This allows you to identify how people engage and then decide if this is what you want to emulate in a given campaign and whether you will meet your desired goals.

Conversations with Garry Schultz - a customer care visionary, author, and classical musician

2011-07-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

As a customer care visionary and past customer service leader for global organizations such as Sonic Solutions, Roxio, and RIM; Garry Schultz is passionate about delivering best in class service with a relentless focus on the customer.

This interview with Garry is part of our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, and work performance.

RD> Are you a gamer? If yes, what are your favorite Games?

GS> Rini, yes I go way back with computer games, from the very start with the command line games. You know - 'pick up gold', 'run fast', and literal typed commands. From there I recall spending time in the first-person-shooter game Wolfinstien, then Duke Nukem. My favorite type of game is The SIMs. I also like the puzzle based game genre, but I am a little dated with titles. I don't have as much time to game these days as I once had but I keep up with the newest offerings. However, I haven't seen significant new developments in some time. MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) are interesting and the innovation of deploying them in real-time, with multiple players is certainly a cool play.

And my favorite games? Well I have been bitten by the Angry Birds craze on my iPad. Rovio Corp’s attention to detail and the way the programmers have married quasi-real world physics to the game world is great..... I mean the trajectory calculations of the birds and the fashion in which the structures collapse - genius! Really nice balance of whimsy and reality - just the right mix.

Professionally, and you know this as we have riffed on the topic - games have a huge business centric potential with Gen X and Gen Y (and just around the corner Gen Z). Consider that the average attention span of a young person today is dynamically different than it was when I has coming up. Today, access to Information is instantaneous. Sure libraries are still there, but why would a student spend an evening in the stacks when she can wiki up answers, with references, in 9 nano seconds. So, while I was expected to weed through and absorb a wall of documentation at my first job = today's entry level associates need to be fed pertinent information in short, sharp bites. This is where games come in. Educate through interactive gaming.... learntainment, enterlearnment? The Germans probably have a word for it.

RD> You have written a book about customer care, The Customer Care and Contact Center Handbook (published by ASQ Quality Press) What are the key ingredients that make a world class customer care organization? Do you see the key ingredients changing over time?

GS> The key ingredient is to serve your target customer and to have a relentless focus on the consumer. Where this over-simplification gets to be interesting is balancing customer needs with fiscal restraints. This is to suggest that one cannot always economically deliver what the consumer wishes.

The key ingredients to world class customer care have not changed but what has changed are the channels, conduits, and turnaround time to deliver the services. Point in fact - I was listening to a web-cast a couple of weeks ago and the context was Social Media (SM). The crux of the presentation was positioned as a new innovation: crowd-sourcing. But when the speaker delved into crowd-sourcing it was evident that crowd-sourcing has huge overlap with the concept of 'forum gurus' which is an old concept given a new set of clothes in the context of social media.

It’s the same relationship of mass collaboration that is brokered by personnel who aren’t on payroll. Call it what you may, but it’s been around for sometime.

There are a few real challenges with social media. It’s the turnaround time issue, the immediate response that Twitter users expect, the limitation of 140 characters, and making sure that you do not discount corporate liability based on precedent (If Fred got a free upgrade where is mine? And why are you making me ask for it? Just give me what Fred got.).

RD> How can social media channels be leveraged for customer care?

GS> First off let's be clear - managing social media channels is not an option... it is a necessity! If you are reading this and do not have a social media strategy in place - give me a call. I can assist. The key here is to be up and operational on SM for your Customers - they demand it to be so.

Enough on NOT acting.

Social media channels can be leveraged very effectively and I could write a book on the topic - and I am. So let me riff on the foundation of SM in the customer care context… First off, if you want to be successful with your customers in the SM context - take off your customer care hat and get with your counterparts in Marketing and Sales. Social media, at this stage of the game, cannot be compartmentalized into pre-sales, sales, marketing, and post-sale support disciplines. The lines aren’t even grey, they are non-existent. The necessary approach goes across the organization like no other channel.

So, it is time to collaborate closely with your colleagues in other departments.

And secondly - once you are sitting down with your colleagues, the stakeholders, define a working charter for SM. Understand what your goals are as a corporation. From there you can get into the operational business of scalability, repeatability, SLAs, and meaningful performance metrics. These are the core competencies for customer care professionals.

RD> You led a large organization which managed global consumers and their needs. Do you see big differences (due to socio-cultural, geographic, demographic differences) among consumers in how they want to receive customer care and what their expectations are?

GS> Big question, Rini. The short answer is - yes.

The longer answer? There are significant differences based on cultural norms and expectations. Further, there are overlapping differences within cultures (a Venn diagram of this would be interesting exercise) based on additional factors such as: age of the sub-group within the demographic, computer literacy of the sub-group and the whole issue of entitlement. Let`s explore two extremes in the context of non-mission critical consumer software.

EASY - Generation Y... the Millennial. If a failure is experienced, Gen Ys do not reach for the phone. They often go to their own peer-network and find a maven in their sphere-of-acquaintances. Further they are quite at home with self-service and online knowledge bases. The Millennial knows how to conduct an effective search and can understand the subsequent instructions to rectify a failure.

HARD – Baby Boomers...the retiree. If a failure is experienced, the baby-boomer reaches for the phone. They do not have an effective peer-network and often have gaps in their general knowledge and computer literacy. There is an illustrative video of a comedian on YouTube that pokes some fun at the dynamic, fast forward to 4:40 in the video....

Kidding aside - we need to assist the Boomers and Gen Y, and the industry does.

RD> How do you learn? The new and younger associates coming to work in customer care organizations -- do they learn differently than you and me?

GS> I am a visual learner. Show me a graphic and I get the message, text takes me more time to absorb. But the key is... Let me give you an example.

I have wonderful daughter and I taught her a mantra and have reinforced it her entire life. It is really simple.

Ask questions and listen

Jenna is 26 now and has completed three degrees. The truly hard part of the mantra is the 'listen' component. We are simply not good at listening and the fact is that the younger we are, the less developed our ability to listen is. There is no doubt Mother Nature has a sense of humor; when young she endows us with the ability to absorb and learn at our most accelerated rate.... but with a smile she dampens youth’s ability to effectively listen. Funny lady.

That said, today's entry level personnel require training to be tuned to their world. Knowledge transfer (and validation) is one of the most difficult challenges in today's businesses. As I said earlier, attention span is different with today's youth. SMS text messaging has taught a generation to communicate in a truncated form. They talk in sentence fragments (okay - so do I at times) and if you observe them at a party, they don’t seem to have the patience to get through a four minute pop song but continually 'sample scan' snippets of tunes. Golly, as an effective punishment for Gen Y they should be made to sit down and listen to Wagner's entire Ring Cycle (eat your peas.... don't make me get the Wagner). Don't get me wrong, the reality is there is nothing wrong with any of these Gen Y attributes, they are simply different.

What needs to change is our idea of how to effectively transfer knowledge. Like our Customers, we have to come to our associates in a fashion that resonates. And this is the utility of training by games. Not to be thought of 'slight of hand' but a powerful tool to not only get the fundamentals across but to have a meaningful gauge of the success of the knowledge transfer.

RD> How do you think current training practices meeting the needs of customer care organizations?

GS> Not very well. I have worked with some large players in the outsourcing business and for the most part my observation is that training lags available innovation. At best, some of the organizations have put up computer based testing (CBT) programs and rendered the testing (knowledge transfer validation) online. But the core issue of training line personnel in how to handle customers has not progressed. The issue isn't technical knowledge but the old customer care stalwarts of empathy, listening and effectively assisting the consumer. And when it comes to social media, the training chasm is vast and is one of the drivers behind why most organizations that are active on social media channels are doing the work in-house.

RD> How do you envision using games and simulations to teach people what to do here?

GS> This is where I think PAKRA has an incredible play and opportunity. The PAKRA training demos that I have seen are excellent and I believe will resonate with the target Gen Ys that make up the majority of the post-sale talent pool. It’s a win/win. The little touches, like the guy who walks by the cubicle and his comments are golden, it brings levity to the exercise which is another resonator. I think an agent accustomed to the text based format of most CBT programs will embrace the far more dynamic PAKRA world. As for portability, repeatability and scalability PAKRA slams traditional teacher-lecture based models. The gold spot - training that is enjoyable to progress through.

RD> What is next for you?

GS> Professionally, I have a number of pokers in the fire - to borrow a phrase. I have been working with my publisher (ASQ Quality Press) on two additional manuscripts - one on social media and one on contact centers for the entry level hiree. And I am at the initial stages of entering the customer care consulting game - but truth be told my target is the right opportunity regardless of the structure.

On the creative side, being that I have had some time of late, I have managed to finally release a CD of original compositions. You can find them on iTunes if you search for Garry Schultz or Cheerful Insanity. I’ve also rediscovered the joy of some of the classical etudes I was taught back-in-the-day.

RD> Thanks for your time today, Garry. I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for you.

GS> Thanks, Rini. It’s been great catching up.

Conversations with Peter Delgrosso, SVP, Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp., golfer, active VOC listener

2011-05-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

As an innovator, avid golfer and SVP, Business Development of Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp., Peter Delgrosso proactively stays ahead of customer's needs by actively listening and diligently assessing the voice of customer channels.
This interview with Peter is part of our series about learning, games, social media, user-adoption, crowd-sourcing, and work performance.

RD> First, on behalf of the PAKRA team, we would like to thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Your company is a spin-off of the parent company D&B. What does the word “credibility” used in your company’s name mean to you?
PD> We see credibility as including credit but going beyond credit to include the more holistic attributes of integrity, reliability, trust and other factors we all take into account when doing business with a company. Credit, in the strictest sense is a financial measure – credibility speaks to character.

RD> How will you teach/communicate to a small-medium business (SMB) client that they need to care about their online reputation?
PD> We’ve all had the experience of going to a business web site you’ve never heard of and having concerns as to, “Is this a site I can trust?” or “How do I know this company is reliable?” These questions are particularly important for smaller companies that don’t have the a million dollar plus ad budget to build their brand and general awareness or a 40-year history upon which to establish their credibility. For the small companies especially – online reputation is everything. One of our products, called SelfMonitor, actually enables companies to see a visual representation through charts and graphs and other displays of their various business credit scores with the added ability for SMBs to submit relevant information on their business that is vital to determining their overall creditworthiness and ultimately their credibility.

RD> Is your product suite similar to how eBay or Amazon rates their sellers -- i.e. crowdsourced?
PD> No. Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp. occupies its own space providing business credit and credibility services that is accessed by a wide range of businesses looking to both make business decisions and determine a business’ creditworthiness and actively manage their profile. We factor statistical credit measures such as a company’s PAYDEX® and Financial Stress Score into the equation – but we also solicit feedback from partners and vendors to provide a more human picture. It’s that combination that makes us unique.

RD> We met due to a quick resolution of an issue that we were having with our Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp. account. Your CEO Jeff Stibel used his Twitter handle to address our tweeted concern from our CMO Michelle Stewart. When she tweeted, she had called customer service/sales agent using the traditional interaction channel -- phone. Using Twitter, Jeff resolved our issue within the time she was on hold. That was a remarkably fast and awesome resolution.
Where does your company use social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) the most: (1) Brand marketing (2) Lead generation (3) Closing sales (4) Customer Service (5) Customer retention and upselling
PD> The way we met is a great example of how effective social media can be, in this case Twitter, to providing real business value. Social media is an evolving space – and at any given moment it can be used for all of the things you mention. As I previously mentioned, we always want to be listening to our customers and social media is a terrific way of doing so. Twitter and Facebook are probably the two social media networks that we leverage most. I would say we use Twitter more as a conversational resource, monitoring customer comments and responding to them as quickly as possible. Facebook is more of a relationship medium, enabling us to send out updates to our connections about company events such as an ongoing speaker series we run called “Credibility Live.” Personally, I use LinkedIn as an excellent outreach vehicle for business relationships and Twitter to monitor industry news and insight.

RD> Is your social media channel management a budgeted effort?
PD> Yes. We believe strongly in its value and have dedicated resources managing the channel.

RD> How do you learn?
PD> I learn by watching, by listening – and ultimately by trial and error. Learning from mistakes is often the best way to grow.

RD> Are you a gamer? If yes, what games do you play?
PD> I grew up playing on the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 then graduated to the PlayStation2 earlier this decade and sadly that’s where it all ended. That’s about the limit to my gaming these days given a hectic work schedule and growing family with numerous kids’ responsibilities.

RD> How do you teach your employees to leverage information and data to interact with a prospect/customer?
PD> We teach our employees to listen carefully and act quickly. It is crucial to understand our customers’ needs and leverage all the resources at our disposal to help them achieve their goals. We have several hundred Credit Advisors who provide sales and customer training support to our customers. Every one of these Credit Advisors has gone through a rigorous training process both at the point of hire and during their tenure at the company that focuses not only on good customer service, but also on the fundamentals of business credit and business credit formation. This includes a general understanding of the pros and cons of various types of corporate structures, differences between debt and equity financing and the pros and cons of each, and other general issues that a business owner should be thinking about when seeking to manage their business credit. Our staff is able to talk with people about their various business credit scores and what they can do to improve them as well as other general business issues they may have questions about.

RD> Your company and ours both sell software: What do you find are the biggest drivers for user adoption?
PD> At the end of the day it’s all about providing value to our customers and leveraging as many channels as possible to reach the business owner. Providing value rings true across all industries and the reason why customers are either loyal to your company or not, it’s that simple. I would say the key value provided by Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp. is the ability of a business to access and impact all their pertinent business credit information in a single location online with tools, tips and recommendations on how to improve them. Our value proposition is compelling, straight-forward and provides a great visual representation of concepts that may be foreign to many business owners. Business credit is an enduring theme that stays with the business throughout their life-cycle providing ongoing benefit to those businesses that are proactive and make sure they are following best practices to put their business in the best possible light. As more businesses adopt best practices and improve their business credit, the better the chances are for them to succeed and achieve the needed cash flow and credibility required to create a successful business.

RD> Thank you so much for your time, and for sharing your and your Company's vision.
PD> You are welcome! You questions were very thoughtful.

Conversations with Mick Mancuso, a design instructor, video game enthusiast, avid reader, and skeptic.

2011-04-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

As Level Design Instructor at Southern Methodist University, video game enthusiast, avid reader, and skeptic, Mick applies his vast experience to teaching college students at one of the premier graduate video game education programs in the US – The Guildhall at SMU. Mick has been in the game industry since the late 80s and is passionate about theory and design of games, education, and the use of technology in today’s society.

This interview with Mick is the thirteenth in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, and work performance.

MS> How have you been? It’s been a long time since we’ve spoke.

MM> Things have been going very well. I’ve since moved on from KAOS Studios and I’m at SMU now. I’m teaching Level Design and I’m having a blast.

MS> That’s great to hear! Tell me more about why you’re having so much fun.

MM> It's all about whom I’m teaching. When I first got the gig, I was a little apprehensive. Both in terms of - do I really want to leave the industry and go in to teaching? Will I be good at it? Will I enjoy it? I was dealing with all of those issues, but when I got down here I found that the faculty is great, the head of the department is great, but mostly – it’s the students! This is a master degree program. The students are people who have decided that they know what they want to do; they know that the industry is a lot of work, and this is just what they want to do. They have so much enthusiasm! It is so fun to work with them.

MS> That’s really cool. It sounds like there a lot of energy and passion there.

MM> Oh yeah, it’s amazing.

MS> You’re obviously a gamer. What do you play?

MM> Right now, even as we speak – I’m playing Civilization V. I was in the middle of a game when you called! I’ve been playing the Civilization series ever since Civ I and I just love what they’ve done with Civ 5. I’ve just recently finished Shogun: Total War. I really like the entire Shogun series. I really like RPGs as well, like Dragon Age: Origins. Also - Mass Effect, Bio Shock, and Fall Out 3. And I’m waiting for Half-life 2, Episode 3, to please come out soon. Those guys are worse than my favorite novelist at getting that thing done. RTSs are also one of my favorite genres.

In terms of gaming, I’ve always been into games since I was a kid. My parents were into card games. Whenever we went to visit the grandparents, we always played poker or other card games. Board games – me and my brothers always played board games as we were growing up. So, I’ve been a gamer for years and years and years.

MS> It’s funny; I think that most people have certain childhood memories associates with games. Some of my first memories of games involve playing Connect4 at my grandmother’s house with my cousins.

MM> I love Connect4. There were some great games from that time.

MS> What was your first favorite video game?

MM> It was Antietam by SSI. It was a Civil War game, this was in 1987 or 1988. It was actually the game that inspired me to want to get in to video games. I actually went to work for SSI a couple of years later. At the time, I said to myself “I want to do that.” So, I went down to the studio and said “Hey, hire me.” They asked me what I knew about computer games and I told them “nothing – but hire me anyway!” And – they didn’t. I took some programming classes at the local community college, this was in California. About a year later, I knocked on their door again and they hired me. I’ve been in it ever since.

MS> Wow, that’s a great story!

MS> Tell me about how you learn. What’s your learning style?

MM> It depends what I am trying to learn. For example, when I had to learn programming – I tried to learn it on my own first by just getting the books. I realized quickly to just get going, I needed more structure in taking me through the basics. My first class was a Pascal class, then a C class, and then an 8086 assembly language class. They were all introductory classes just to get me over the hump to help me learn the jargon and the basics. Today, if I’m going to learn a new engine, I try to go and find video tutorials. And what I really prefer more than video tutorials are detailed text walkthroughs, but they don’t do those much anymore. But video tutorials and reference materials work almost as well. With video tutorials, I feel that they are sometimes leading me in a direction that I don’t want to go yet. For example, in learning a 3D engine they almost always first teach you how to build an interior. Be it a dungeon, walls, rooms and doors. But the way that I always approach anything that I’m building is to first put it in a geographical location. My mindset, probably from playing RPGs, always goes to the terrain first. I want to learn the terrain editor first and THEN teach me about building the rooms and such. There’s no right or wrong either way, this is just my preference.

MS> This is very interesting to me. With what we do at PAKRA, as far scripting our games and simulations, before I can even start to write a scenario of “what’s happening in a simulation”, I’ve got to think about “who” these characters are. So when you talk about knowing the terrain before you know a room, it’s similar to how I really think through who the character is and knowing this person before thinking about what they are going to do or where they are going to do it. It’s interesting to hear that your mind works in a similar way.

MS> You brought up something that I wanted to ask you about when you mentioned that you see things going more towards video tutorials and away from some of the written instructional guides. Do you see this as being a result of how the under-40 generations learn?

MM> Video tutorials are very good because they can actually show you “click on this button right here, this is were it is.” My issue with video tutorials is that in essence, they go very slowly compared to how I want to learn. I see the button, but they are talking for another 25 or so seconds before we can go on to the next topic. Sometimes I get frustrated at the pace. I don’t think that it’s about being under 40 years old, I think that it’s just a matter of how easy it is to make videos now. The tools are out there and videos are easy to make. I would like to see a much more integrated system -- video, web, all working in the actual editor all integrated together. The technology is there but there are a lot of indexing and UI issues. It’s not an easy problem to solve.

MS> I think that with technology in general the expectation now is, at least it is for me, I expect things very quickly. With some tutorials, you’ve got all of this technology but it still feels like you are being fed more information that you need or want. It’s not as quick and efficient as you think that it could be.

MS> You are with people in their early to mid-20’s every day because you’re teaching. What evolution do you seen in learning styles and teaching? What’s changed over the years?

MM> It’s been a long time since I’ve been in school as a learner, it was the late 80’s. At that time, it was very traditional. Everyone sits down a desk, the teacher lectures, and if it’s a good teacher – you can ask questions. What I can speak to is the approach that Guildhall takes in term of teaching. We have level designers, programmers, artists and are just starting up a production track. They each go through their specialty but the focus of the program at The Guildhall is that they actually build games as teams – in addition to a solid foundation on their individual skills. It’s much more broad and it’s teaching by doing. We give you an introduction to concepts and the engine – and then say “Now put it to work!” We have metrics for quality and specify some content, but we are much more interested in the group dynamics and communication within the team and whether they can realize their vision. We guide them along the way but leave it up to the group as to whether they are going to listen to us. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they really surprise us with what they can get done. And we still have traditional lecture classes as well.

MS> Talk to me about trends that you see in casual gaming, Serious Games, and simulation technology. Where do you see things going?

MM> I see things just expanding like crazy. I think that the entire casual gaming revolution – and really it’s an on-demand gaming revolution due to the internet and how powerful the browsers have gotten over the last few years – have completely reshaped the distribution system for games. We still have our AAA products, and those will always be there, but there will be fewer of them - the cost has just risen to high. The competition will get more fierce. I think that AAA games will become more equivalent to Hollywood blockbuster movies, for all three platforms – PlayStation3, XBOX360, and PC. The new guys on the block are all of the casual games, and that’s really a misnomer and that will shake out. I think that there will be multiple genres that will be opening up and defined over the next few years. The audience that I see being tapped into are people who want to play games but they aren’t hardcore gamers. They don’t have the two to three hours to spend like those of us who are obsessed with gaming. They want to get in to a game within seconds, be playing within seconds, play for five to ten minutes and drop it and come back later With casual games, the internet really taps in to this. How we build games now needs to be cognizant of this.

MS> You’re right. I think that’s where the Facbeook games, the Zynga games, have been so popular. Studies show that it’s women playing these games and I think that it’s partially because they can go in, be in on seconds, use their phone or a computer, and be in for five minutes between other things that are going on. Like you said, there are these distinct niches. I’m like you. I personally will find three hours to play a game I love, because that’s just how I am. But that’s not the entire market. I don’t think that there was a demand in the market – but there was a void. Now that the void has been filled, the demand is now there.

MM> I think that is exactly right. For a long, long time the gaming industry was basically selling to itself. You wrote games for other gamers. It didn’t even begin to go mainstream until the late 1990s/early 2000s. Now it’s a multi-billion industry. But the biggest piece of the pie wasn’t being addressed – the casual gamers. I saw something recently that said the difference between casual gamers and hardcore gamers is that the hardcore gamers self-identify. If you claim to be a hardcore gamer, you’re a hardcore gamer - and that's a very small segment of the population.

With casual games, just because it’s quick in and quick out, that doesn’t mean that the game has to be simple. You can make your game as complicated as you want it to be, as long as you remember that the cost of entry has to be very short. It means that you have to spend a lot more time introducing your mechanics and do it more slowly, more organically. They may be playing the game only in five to ten minute chunks, but three weeks down the line they can be playing something as complicated as any triple AAA product.

MS> Absolutely! These five minute chunks are played two or three times a day and the game builds each time. It’s just a different build and different experience but in the long run it is absolutely as immersive and complex.

MS> Let’s talk about social media. What do you use? What don’t you use? And why?

MM> I use Facebook a lot. But I only use it to keep in contact with friends and family. It’s a way for me to see what my kids are up to, what they are thinking about. When my son was in Iraq, they did not have Internet, but two years later they did have access when he was in Afghanastan. It made a huge difference in terms of how much I worried about him because we could post 2 or 3 messages back and forth on Facebook. He would post a status update and I would think “Oh, great. He’s okay!” My daughter lives in Australia and I follow her Facebook page as well, and it’s not that I’m keeping tabs on her, but it’s like “Oh, she’s posted. She’s doing fine!” I don’t have to worry about her.

MS> What else do you use besides Facebook? Are you a tweeter?

MM> I signed up on Twitter, but I don’t even remember how to sign on. My thing is that if I have something to say, 140 characters isn’t enough. Twitter feels like we are legitimizing the sound byte and that doesn’t do anything for me.

MS> Tell me about what else you enjoy. What else are you passionate about?

MM> I love to read. Generally it’s science fiction, mystery, or fantasy. But I also love to read about history and I love skeptical literature. I’m a huge skeptic, so I read a lot in that area. I’m reading The Landscape of Morality. It’s very interesting. It talks about the elements of human morality that some people say that science can’t address, and how that’s wrong. There is no reason why science can’t address this and the author lays out his case pretty well.

MS> Can we talk about educational gaming and how these are designed and how content is introduced?

MM> When you’re creating games for learning or training, or even casual games, it’s not so much about the content that you need to get across to a known player base – but how do the people being trained live their everyday jobs? If this is training for an everyday job, you have to put it in that context. You learn where they live, where they work, and how they work. What's the jargon of their workplace? What assumptions do they bring to the experience? You have to find out what you don't know about the job - what is there overall context. Then 90% of making the content relevant is already done b/c you’ve placed it in a package that they already understand. I’m finding the idea of context is going up and down and throughout everything that I’m teaching now. For example, if we are talking about documentation, I will ask “Why do we put our documents in a certain formats?” It’s so that you can lead the reader through the context so that as you get deeper and deeper in to the details, the reader follows you the entire way. You cannot give the context in one big chunk. Give them a brief back of the book review of what the design is all about. If the game has a story, give the broad outlines and then – you can start to develop the characters and what they are about. Then you can expand more on the story and what the gameplay mechanics are going to be. Now lets understand player motivation. Now I can break up the levels. The reader is going with me. As long as your context stays relevant to the depth of information that you are trying to give, you are leading the reader along. You’ve got to know the context that you are building the game for – not the people paying for the game, but for the people playing the game, to really make it valuable for them.

MS> Absolutely! This is something that PAKRA has to address in every simulation that we build in training. Our products are typically used for business process training – but that means something different for every client. The context of the training is different for someone who works at home versus someone who works in a call center, the typical education level of the agent changes the context, and the nature of the job also changes the context. What the job is and how it is done can be unique experiences for each client. If we don’t understand this, incorporate this, and introduce this correctly, the simulation isn’t effective for learning. It’s got to me done right.

MM> So many people who get in to Serious Games are gamers who are more interested in “the game” and not the purpose of the game. You need to have both.

MS> I agree. The game is the delivery mechanism but the back-story to it is just as important. It’s both. You cannot have one with the other.

MS> Thank you so much for talking with me today, Mick. I’ve enjoyed our conversation immensely.

MM> I did too. Thank you.

Finally! A neurologist illustrates how video gaming can train the brain and enable learning

2011-04-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

We have been claiming that repeated game play helps to learn.
Finally! the fMRI studies provide evidence.
Judy Willis, a neurologist, provides an engaging and lucid evidence-based explanation of our conjecture on Edutopia's blog.
Enjoy!

Conversations with Anneke Seley, a Sales 2.0 and social selling thought leader, surfer, questioner of the status quo

2011-03-23T20:54:00.001-07:00

As the thought leader of the Sales 2.0 and social selling methodology, a surfer, twelfth employee of Oracle and CEO and founder of Phone Works, Anneke Seley questions the status quo, promotes sales 2.0 best practices and social selling. Her team at Phone Works, improves the operations of sales organizations ranging from global multinationals to start-up organizations.

This interview with Anneke is the twelfth in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, and work performance.

RD> First, on behalf of the PAKRA team, we would like to thank you for being completely instrumental in us selling in the Sales vertical and also being a mentor and adviser to us.
AS> PAKRA’s time is now. I’m glad to collaborate.

RD> So! Are you a gamer?
AS> I play scrabble through Facebook. I am definitely a crossword puzzle fan. I was introduced to Kinect by my cousin’s kid last Thanksgiving, particularly the Dance game. I can see myself playing this especially in the cold weather. I’m a Farmville wife. Once in a while, I look over Jack’s (my husband Jack Oswald) shoulder and he lets me play with some sheep and fertilizer.
RD> He does? Jack constantly plays Farmville, at least according to his Facebook posts. Working with bio ammonia in real life – well! He has to live his brand in a game. We all should live our brand in games.

RD> When I first met you in virtual space, I was very intrigued with the tagline of your personal brand on LinkedIn: "Questioner of the status quo" --- Why is it important to you to question status quo?
AS> It’s important to me because it is very easy to get comfortable with the way things are. If we don’t challenge ourselves, if we don’t change, if we don’t evolve, then we don’t improve. We don’t progress.
RD> So! Is the challenge and change that you are referring to only in your personal sphere, or are you also translating that in your work ethic and customers?
AS> It is not just about my personal life but also I use this mantra in the business world. More importantly, I am always looking for opportunities to improve organizational performance, improve a function, improve a group of people and their skills sets, improve business processes, implement new technologies. There is always room for improvement. Until and unless we question the status quo and the way things are, we cannot evolve nor progress.

RD> This brings us to Sales 2.0. Of course you are THE thought leader in both practice and theory. A quick question about that: Because there are many functional silos that customers have to navigate, what is the start and end step of a sales process in the Sales 2.0 world?
AS> Traditionally we think of things in very structured buckets. In today’s world, that does not work any more. There is so much interconnectedness and collaboration. There is across-the-board customer engagement. That is what sales is all about. The sales process can start differently for different people. It can start online; it can start with social media. It starts where the customer engages with your company. Hopefully, the process never ends. In fact it is more important after the sale as the customer is well qualified to continue to buy either different products and services or additional products and services. A lot of companies have different functions - new business reps and reps that focus on customer successes and nurture the existing customer base.
RD> Do you think that there is one story to be had? For instance, a Sales VP wants to get some part of the sales cycle done so they make a compromise to complete that part or should there be specialization in the Sales process?
AS> I think it is hard for one person to participate and play the entire Sales process role and play each part really well. It is very hard to manage an engagement through to the closing process, especially as one’s company grows, leading to the need to specialize. Also, people tend to be better at one part of the sales cycle than another part of the cycle. Some are better at engaging customers early on and some are better at closing. Specialization will happen.

RD> If you look at your own experience and the experience of your 300+ clients, what are the key factors to both deploy Sales 2.0 principles appropriately and to sustain it? In other words, what are the critical success factors for sustainable user adoption to Sales 2.0?
AS> I think many organizations try to change things very quickly involving too many people. I truly believe that if organizations start small, hand select and involve a small group of people who are very innovation-oriented and who are excited about trying something new and improve their productivity and in turn of course make more money, it is a better start. In my own career at Oracle, there was no way we could have come in and said, “we are going to implement an inside sales team globally and now you have to share your accounts.”
- The trust has to be built; the experiences have to be had. The field reps had to see that inside sales would not ruin their customer relationships and would only enhance the relationships. And once the field sees more revenue to be had, then the middle adopters come more easily.
- Also, you need the right executive sponsorship.
- Metrics and process are not intuitive and this makes it hard for people to rally around it.
- Also the implementation has to be consistent and requires lots of discipline.

RD> I also find that processes, metrics and a visible accountability system –are not liked by many folks in different levels of management (especially first-line managers, supervisors). That is one the biggest resistance we find in users adopting our PAKRA system.
AS> Gerhard Gschwandtner of Selling Power Magazine quotes Warren Buffet: "It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked." That explains it. When I interviewed Stu Schmidt (formerly at Cisco WebEx) for my book he said that it took him a year to get the sales team to really embrace a new Sales 2.0-style sales process, based on their buyers’ buying cycles. That first year, the intensive focus was to get the first line manages on board. It takes practice.
Also, there is a perception that in some accounts, especially those located here in Silicon Valley, who fancy themselves as being innovative and creative, that if one implements process and metrics the creativity will somehow be hampered.
RD> You are now going down my memory lane of the entire Lean and Six Sigma Operations life that I led prior to PAKRA. There is some truth to that last belief because there are some people who like “check-marks” and who make it very bureaucratic. In fact, one of the things I always point out to my team, “over my dead body will you collect data on things that do not give us direction to improve and change.”
AS> You’re right. There has to be a structure that allows room for creativity to blossom. But with no structure at all then all the creativity in the world is not going to be productive in the business world.

RD> How do you define social selling?
AS> Essentially the same way that I define Sales 2.0. It is a more efficient and effective way of selling and buying for both the seller and the buyer, enabled by technology – in the case of social selling, using social technology.

RD> You are involved with Social Selling University. Tell me more about it.
AS> It is a program sponsored by InsideView. It includes in-person workshops, webinars and online content for sales professionals at all levels. It is being rolled out this month. I will be speaking on March 24. It is the first of its kind to help companies understand the opportunity of social selling and develop strategies and implement a social media process and metrics. My particular interest is in developing a track for executives. There are great examples of grassroots activities, but almost all are at the individual level. The opportunity is to capture the best practices such that we can enable and scale sales, marketing and customer success at organizations.

RD> Do you think the accountability of sales managers changes with social selling implementation? I perceive that the organizational structure to manage the process of acquiring and retaining a customer becomes flatter. Do you agree?
AS> I recently read an online post where this question was posed: “Why are we hiring social media managers? We don’t have email managers, or fax managers. This is just another channel.” This is just approaching a customer via different channels. Is that what you are asking?
RD> Well! Let me give you an example. Let’s say I work for a company that sells in different verticals. I sell to the Education market. I belong to a LinkedIn group, where a prospect wants something in the Healthcare vertical, which I know that my company also sells. Right now, I am not incentivized to promote that information and it ends up being a lost sale for my company. The chances of me encountering that request are much higher than before. I see an opportunity to create a new incentive and accountability structure that does not let this opportunity die. Who is held accountable for taking actions on these encounters?
AS> It takes a village or a corporation to communicate with customers. Lots of people are using social media channels and they have a higher chance to meet a buyer. Is everyone then a salesperson? I absolutely agree that the organization become flatter. Salesforce.com gives the example that in Chatter, someone who is an entry-level salesperson can now chat with Marc Benioff because some online engagement allows them to do so. It takes away the hierarchy. Social technology is the great equalizer.

RD> What kind of resistance are you seeing when you talk to your clients about effectively implementing social media?
AS> There are several objections:
- We see skepticism that social media is for kids and personal views and there is no place for it in business and waste of salesperson’s time
- We see the lack of strategic initiatives. There are more grass-root level initiatives that are not scalable and repeatable across the organization
- We have poor metrics management, as most don’t know what to measure to appropriately monitor success
- We see the need for a process that is integrated to the sales workflow and sales process

RD> How do you learn?
AS> I ask questions. I read and I write. I have conversations. I go to the theater. I put myself in sometimes challenging and uncomfortable situations. I practice and I repeat.

RD> Do you think the current training providers and practices are meeting the needs of today’s salespeople especially in the context of Sales 2.0?
AS> My perception is that: like in Sales 2.0, if the idea is to customize the message to the buyer in different parts of the sales cycle, then should we not develop learning content and deliver to the learner when they need it in the learning cycle and deliver the right information at the right time in the right medium - the way they want to engage in learning? There is a huge opportunity here. There is also an opportunity to introduce process and metrics in training content. I think giving people a fun and engaging way to learn the content is important. And I also think that this is how most learners, me included, want to learn and practice. All of this leads to a huge opportunity and that's where I think PAKRA is positioned well.

RD> You have a career where it seems that you do all kinds of fun and innovative things driven by this “we’ll figure it out” attitude. What is next for you? Give us an exclusive scoop.
AS> I’m learning to snowboard. My friend Sarah Cooper started this company called Adventurous in San Francisco that uses the Endless Slope and provides a really cool way to learn snowboarding. It’s a technology enabled training device. It is all about muscle memory and I am completely hooked on it.
RD> I am checking out this site as we speak… This looks awesome! You can avoid the cold, dry wind, and snow and still you can get this simulated experience. This is really cool.

RD> Games! Simulations! Practice! Learning! Grand finale to our chat. Thank you for your time Anneke. This was most lovely.
AS> You are welcome! Talk to you soon.

Conversations with Harlina Sodhi, SVP at Reliance Industries, a change catalyst and Learning visionary

2011-03-02T05:30:00.000-08:00

As recently appointed Senior Vice President of Learning and Organization Development for Reliance Industries, an ultimate Change Catalyst, and a believer of the “Tao of Cricket”, Harlina Sodhi is leading the effort to bring progressive and process driven, workforce training and development to Reliance Industries that is in line with company’s Strategic and Business Transformation goals.
This interview with Harlina is the eleventh in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.

RD> First, on behalf of the PAKRA team, we would like to thank you for being completely instrumental in implementing PAKRA system at your past employer - Genpact. Next, sincere congratulations for seizing this vast opportunity at your new gig -- Reliance. This is awesome news.
HS> Thank you. This is a huge opportunity for me to lead and execute on Reliance vision of getting to be the world’s best company for learning and development of workforce. And as you know, the reason I passionately spearheaded the efforts in Genpact for PAKRA is because I believe in the value that it offers. Right product and platform in the right place at the right time is PAKRA !

RD> So! Are you a gamer?
HS> I play Chess. A strategy-based game intrigues me. Also I am an avid car rallyist …but I am also pleased to share, ever since I got my smartphone, I don’t literally have to risk my life but am able to simulate the experience by playing mobile games like www.carsvideogame.com and Angry Bird

RD> How do you learn?
HS> I learn by doing. Tell me - Show me initially, and then I have to do it and then I can teach one. Learning that involves different levels of achievement motivates me.

RD> You and I are more or less in the same age group (Well! I am older ha!) -- do you think the way we learned and ways we were taught is different from the younger generation that is getting into the workforce? If yes, how different?
HS> It is completely different. The younger generation, in particular when you consider that places like in India and other emerging markets where the median age of an employee is 35 years, learn differently and want to be taught differently. For example, their attention span is short, (140 characters Twitter revolution), they learn on-the-go and they want to pull information when they need it in small chewable chunks. They want technology-enabled learning with streaming media, threaded conversations, blogs, games, simulations and not just a teacher delivering lectures and batch-based learning events.

RD> What role do you see for immersive learning using Games and simulations in today's workplace?
HS> The DNA is changing and being reprogrammed. In a place like India, that leap-frogged it’s growth using technology (i.e. the dabbawallahs, the dhobi, the Tuk-Tuk driver and the person living on the street all have cell phones and are probably playing Angry Bird as they stand at traffic lights), user-driven content is how information is being managed and leveraged. Also, many more women are in the workforce today than 25 years ago and they are influencing their children. This is what economic growth brings. In such type of a growth environment, immersive learning is what all are demanding. It is user-driven need and the role is very strong.

RD> How do you anticipate Social Media and crowd-sourcing will be used in business applications and Learning?
HS> It is coming and vehemently needed as platform for peer-to-peer learning. By “it is coming” I mean that not too many businesses are into it, yet. Like, any adoption cycle where you have innovators, early adopters, initiators, and laggards, here too there are businesses who are innovators and early adopters. Ease of use will drive the utilization of these tools. As you know, this is the ultimate Web 2.0 architecture. It will drive the business applications and how work gets communicated and learned. Based on what I hear from my colleagues and networking groups, there is a demand for a platform that enables the adult-learning paradigm. Brick and Mortar learning and communication channels are more symbolic.

RD> From at multinational companies like Xerox, Zenta, GE, Genpact and now at Reliance, what do you see as trends for Learning and Talent Development offerings in business environment?
HS> It has substantially evolved since I started my job at Xerox when I was 21.
First, for content trends: I am hearing and seeing need for short content and immersive focused delivery that enhances Leadership attributes. Also, I am seeing more demand to provide on-demand domain expertise.

From delivery perspective, I am seeing the movement away from the traditional Level 1 to 3 evaluation based Kirkpatrick model to Level 4; is “Impact on Performance” and ROI and significantly towards Bloom’s taxonomy based learning delivery.

For technology, I am seeing more and more demand for platforms (such as PAKRA) that provides on-demand push and Web 2.0 technology for small and targeted content, games and simulations for immersive learning, peer-learning online community and coaching and mentoring accountability where all this links it to real work performance.

When I first moved to Learning and Talent Development functional area, they typically reported to Human Resources. Progressive businesses are making Learning and Talent Development professionals report to Business and Operations leaders. The reality is that the accountability and responsibility of managing and recruiting high-performing employees still lies in the hands of Business and Operations leaders with Human Resources being an key enabler. That reality will not change in my life-time. With such organizational restructuring, these businesses are able to actualize the value of the monetary investment they put in on-the-job training and talent development efforts.

RD> What is your recommendation for someone entering the world of Learning and Talent Development professionals?
HS> Stop focusing on how many courses the employee completed. Stop focusing on how satisfied the learner is with the trainer or coach. Do not use test scores as the only way to measure ability of an employee to do their job. Focus on real work performance of the employee and how well they can apply the skill you just trained and coached them, to their day-to-day work interactions and the work itself.

RD> Thank you for your time Harlina. If some one can implement change and manage the associated change in an organization, you are the one. Wish you all the best at Reliance.
HS> You are welcome! Talk to you soon.

Conversations with Kevin McLaughlin, inside sales leader, and business technology advocate

2011-02-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

As an Inside Sales Manager at NetApp, technology advocate, and sports enthusiast, Kevin is responsible for building and leading high performing sales teams. In this conversation, we discuss how Kevin enables and drives results in the B2B sales world through technology, motivation and social media.

This interview with Kevin is the tenth in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd sourcing, and work performance.

MS> Hi Kevin. My first question for you is, are you a gamer?

KM> Not at all. I’m probably going to be very much in the minority here - but board games, video games - I have very little interest in either. I’m always doing something else.

MS> Okay, tell me a little bit about this “something else”?

KM> Right now it’s my kids’ sports.

MS> Nice. What sports do they play?

KM> Basketball mainly with my youngest, who plays on his high school team. Volleyball and skiing from a recreational perspective, we participate together.

MS> Sounds like you enjoy games, just not video games.

KM> Yes, I like to play them live. I also enjoy traveling, working out, and business and sports motivation.

MS> Tell me a little about how you learn. What’s your learning style?

KM> That’s an interesting question. To me, the best way to learn is through a combination of audio and video. Just reading out of a book, is more of a struggle. I think that today’s way of learning is much better for me.

MS> What’s interesting to me is that younger generations, elementary through college aged, primarily learn through technology and a combination of media. It’s the only way of learning that they know. Other generations that didn’t grow up with as much technology, I don’t want to say that there is a resistance, but they don’t always adapt as easily to this way of learning.

KM> Understood, but if you are around them enough you can adopt that way and it’s a lot of fun.

MS> Tell me a little bit about how NetApp uses social media to sell and manage the customer experience?

KM> Our marketing team is very much on this path as it relates to using social media outlets like LinkedIn and Facebook. Like many technology companies, we’re using those mediums to personalize the experience. We’re also using these outlets to help increase our brand awareness. Not everyone knows about NetApp, although we feel like we have the best value prop in the industry, as it relates to data storage and data management. I think we're still in the earlier stages as far as cracking in to social media and other ways of branding and getting the word out.

MS> Do you see social media as the future of how your company is going to expand brand awareness for NetApp?

KM> Yes, along with our alliances with companies like Cisco and VMware. That’s a big part of the coaching that I do with my team, I teach them to leverage the credibility and collaboration with these great companies. There’s a reason why Cisco and VMware chose NetApp for data storage/management in the Data Center of the Future. They, from a technology standpoint, know what our capabilities are. So, I think that it’s not just the social media aspect but also the key alliances that you have with strategic partners.

MS> I agree. Clearly you have partnerships with some very credible companies and that does say a lot about your company.

KM> Exactly.

MS> Does your sales team use social media in the pre-sales process? Do they use social media in prospecting before they pick up the phone?

KM> The answer is yes. We’re doing more and more of this. I am teaching my team to do as much pre-call planning as possible. Most sales people simply “Google a company” for information, but that can be multiple steps. We utilize tools like Jigsaw, Harte-Hanks, LinkedIn and others and embed them in our CRM tool, which helps us in our pre-call planning. We are working more closely with marketing than ever before to have them do some of this “information gathering” for us – bundle it, couple it, put a little mini-campaign around it – including scripting and talking points. I would say that my team is thoroughly immersed in that.

MS> Do you see a resistance to using social media, the Internet, and newer tools in your industry? Is there a feeling of new school versus old school, or do you see the industry as a whole moving in this direction?

KM> My sense is that some of this may be generational. Some of the younger users, who maybe tweeting, blogging and on Facebook certainly invite it. For others email is the preferred way. Very few people take direct phone calls, so using technology and social media to connect with prospects and customers is key. We are learning that the best way to reach someone is to have a very well thought out email or e-marketing strategy in advance of the actual call…something that differentiates us from the competition and those calling them on a daily basis. That dramatically increases our connect rate.

MS> That goes to one of the other points that I wanted to raise. How are today’s sales associates trained and coached differently to meet the needs of the busy, tech savvy buyers?

KM> Today’s buyers can hide behind their phones. They screen their voicemails as they do email, but they are open to those who have a compelling reason for them to listen! So I train my team to “connect” with the prospect as quickly as possible and get them talking about their role and IT environment and making it about them. We have an excellent training curriculum at NetApp that teaches the technology and perhaps more importantly, the business drivers behind the technology.

MS> Social media aside, how do you think technology can help enable sales in an environment like yours?

KM> I think that my team is very willing and open to using all forms of technology. A lot of it is, quite frankly, that they’re young. They’re recent college graduates – they expect to use technology and products like PAKRA. We’re building the team to be aggressive “hunters” that use technology like PAKRA and others to their advantage, to reach as many prospects and customers as possible with the NetApp story. I also think that they expect that our Marketing team uses technology to find us new lists, contacts and creative ways of connecting with prospects!

MS> Do you see a heavy overlap between where marketing ends and sales begins?

KM> Absolutely, there is a heavy overlap. It’s hand in glove. To make a war analogy, marketing and Inside Sales is air cover and field sales are the ground troops. I want marketing to soften up the base, get their Inside Sales team in early and then rely on the field/ISR/Channel to close it.

MS> That makes sense. Marketing is often brand awareness and lead generation, with the end goal being sales enablement.

KM> That’s the way that it’s supposed to be in my mind. Marketing needs to open up the door to sales.

MS> What factors do you think drive the adoption of new technology at a company like yours? For example, you rolled out the PAKRA products within the Inside Sales area of NetApp and user reception was so positive and adoption was incredibly high. What were the drivers behind that?

KM> One thing is that I have a boss who is incredibly open to new technology, he’s very innovative. He’s constantly searching for ways to not only improve productivity but also improve effectiveness. It’s one thing to be productive, but it’s an other thing to actually deliver. The other aspect to this is that the technology needs to be fun. I think that it’s a blend of these things, and PAKRA delivers both.

MS> You mentioned that you have a workforce that is right out of college and I do think that technology plays to how they learn. It’s an expectation to this generation. That fun factor and immediacy factor is important.

KM> I agree.

MS> We’ve covered a lot of ground today! Thanks for your time, Kevin. It’s always great talking to you.

From UX Magazine: Interview with Harley Manning Vice President at Forrester Research about customer and user experience

2010-12-14T17:48:00.000-08:00

This interview was not done by us. But we think for our series Conversations, this interview by UX magazine is very relevant and important discussion. UX Magazine interviews Harley Manning Vice President, Customer Experience at Forrester Research at the Forrester Customer Experience Forum

Making User and Customer Experience a Business Competency

The only question we would ask Mr. Manning in addition to what UX magazine asked is "How to crowd source the user interface design?"

Enjoy!

Conversations with Marianne Curran, EVP of Go Daddy, discussing Social Media as a channel to provide Customer Care

2010-12-03T12:57:00.001-08:00

As Executive Vice President of Media & Communications for The Go Daddy Group Inc. , a Hawkeye, and a yoga enthusiast, Marianne Curran is responsible for the strategic expansion of Go Daddy’s communication efforts. She oversees Public Relations, Go Daddy Productions and Social Media. She also leads Go Daddy's Culture Team, which ensures that Go Daddy preserves its unique qualities and internal brand.

This interview with Marianne is the ninth in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.

RD> Are you a gamer?
MC> I haven't been a 'gamer' since I was a teenager. Back in the day, I enjoyed playing Mario Brothers.

RD> How do you learn?
MC> I'm definitely a visual learner.

RD> At the recent Customer Response Summit, you discussed how your company uses social media to manage customer experience. What led you to take on such an initiative?
MC> It's really Go Daddy's customers who led us into the social media space. A number of years ago, we took notice of many customers discussing Go Daddy and asking questions out in this public space. From years of experience providing the industry's best customer service, with 24/7 telephone and e-mail support, we've learned to make ourselves available in just about any and all of the communication platforms our customers might seek engagement.

RD> What were the unique challenges that social media channels presented that you and your team had to overcome?
MC> There are definitely challenges when communicating through social media. Expectations of real-time responses can be demanding from a resource perspective. To meet this challenge, we expanded our social media team to a "24/7" staff. We also cross train members in other areas where appropriate.

RD> Is Go Daddy focused only in B2B customers or personal websites (which is more consumer)? What % of your outreach are Small-Medium Enterprises v. Large enterprises?
MC> Go Daddy is focused on ALL of our 8.6 million global customers. Each and every one is important to Go Daddy as we want to provide them the tools and support to succeed online, quickly and affordably. A slight majority of Go Daddy customers are Small-Medium enterprises - but we have millions of personal users and large business customers as well.

RD> Do you use social media as a channel for selling (i.e. new customer acquisition) too? What kind of resistance do you see among B2B companies like yours in utilizing social selling?
MC> As the world's largest domain name registrar and top Web hosting provider, Go Daddy uses social media to interact with our customers, fans and followers on many levels. We discuss public relations events, brand initiatives, recruiting information as well as straight marketing promotions such as product discounts. For the most part, our fans and followers have been quite receptive to these types of promotions, which are geared toward them and offer a benefit. Go Daddy closely manages the frequency in which we communicate these types of messages out to our community - we are cognizant of customers' time and do our best each and every day to communicate only what they want to hear.

RD> I think employees, especially younger know how to use the tools faster than others but still do not know how to use the content to their advantage -- that requires critical thinking skills. How do you teach critical thinking skills now? Do you envision using games/simulations to teach employees what to do in this space?
MC> Go Daddy has an experienced, dedicated social media team. They are out there every day communicating with Go Daddy customers and potential customers. Our social media team members were selected because they have a strong knowledge of our company, our products and because they have excellent "people skills." Many of Go Daddy's social media employees have customer service experience from working directly within our highest escalation department, the Office of the President. Our external hires in the social media realm have spent considerable time training with the Office of the President team to build that knowledge.

As far as training our employees, Go Daddy uses a number of methods and is always looking to try out new techniques.

RD> How successful have you been in crowd-sourcing solutions?
MC> Yes, Go Daddy has had success in crowd sourcing. Through our ongoing engagement on social media platforms, we've built relationships over time, which is how crowd sourcing transpires. Go Daddy has a loyal community, which understands and appreciates our best-in-class 24/7-customer support, low prices and top-notch quality products - they love speaking about Go Daddy and we love to hear it!

RD> In your experience what are the key factors that are driving company adoption?
MC> There are a number of factors that help drive company adoption.
First, it is to acknowledge and address any and all service issues that arise. Until you step up and help the customer solve their issue, they simply will not be open to engage with you on any other level.
Second, bi-directional communication is so important - folks do not just want to be talked TO - they like to share and express their opinions as much as they like to hear what's going on around them.
Third, but certainly not least, when Go Daddy communicates with our community, it's around all sorts of topics - a charitable contribution, a business tip from our CEO and Founder Bob Parsons to help an entrepreneur succeed, an order-level discount, news about one of our famous Go Daddy Girls, and so on. In other words, Go Daddy stays open and is actively sharing company information on all sorts of levels.

RD> Thank you for your time Marianne. Good Luck with your strategies.
MC> You are welcome!

In the "Instant" world of "Push" Technology how long is 4 minutes?

2010-12-01T17:48:00.000-08:00

Question: In the "Instant" world of "Push" Technology to upgrade web solutions, how long is 4 minutes to a user?
The answer: Per minute delay in instant connect, increases the probability of losing a sale (a customer) or disengaging an employee by 5%.

First, a disclaimer, our company blog is not a bully pulpit to bring personal gripes. This is a case study that I share in order to help us and our readers learn about critical thinking skills, crowd-sourcing, social media and customer service.

We are a remarkable learning SaaS company. We consider ourselves small, but innovative and agile and have maturity to listen and address prospect/customer's needs. So! what will happen 5 years from now, when we have grown and introduced the complexity and structure? Will that not bring down the level of innovation and agility to meet our customer's needs?

When people ask me, "what keeps you awake at night?" I can safely say, this scenario of impending downside of growth keeps me awake at night.

Why does this scenario keep me awake at night?
Let me share an example of a Great Company where some of my good friends have worked and some continue to work. It is a company whose innovation, business model and spirit of agility were something I admired and emulated for PAKRA --- that Great Company also happens to be a key technology provider for us. Their once innovative technology helps our company reach out globally, conduct meetings both internal with our employees and partners and is the place where every potential buyer experiences our products for the first time. In other words, this service provider is as valuable as fuel, electricity and water for our existence. Using their products, we do 100% of our sales and almost all our staff and internal meetings.

This past Monday, they launched and delivered their new upgrade on client-user instance via push technology (browser and O/S agnostic). This upgrade was supposed to bring some delightful array of features (which frankly we did not ask for). By their own estimates (and verified separately by three unrelated individuals) "it can take on average 4 minutes on a reasonable connection for a participant to download this upgrade on their side before they can connect".

This push upgrade brought our lives to a standstill.
After 24 hours of my first tweet (I heard from a conference speaker about their great use of social media to drive customer care) and retweets of other users, I finally heard from them and then it took another hour and half for them to call me.
Then the situation of mitigation became more frustrating.

The customer service representative who finally called seemed to be in a hurry and with a non-empathetic voice wanted to determine the root cause. In summary: why our customers are concerned about on average 4-minute delay; if it was a user related error i.e. us.

This is why?
"All participants over 6 meetings with innumerable O/S and browsers and their versions, from different parts of the world(India, US, Canada, UK) had problems connecting from 3 minutes to 20 minutes. Let me explain, it takes me weeks to coordinate a prospect company to get their team to agree to a 20-30 minutes meeting and coordinate their calendars to find a date and time. Let's say there are 1 to 5 participants and the last person -- the Boss Man joins and starts the process 5 minutes past the scheduled meeting time. Now we are theoretically into a wait of 9 minutes of a potential 20-minutes sales call. We are not even going bring in the statistic of variation, where in one case, one person could not connect over 20 minutes. We just lost a sell. Now do you see the problem?"

When we operate in the world where instant meeting connect means "instant". That 9 minutes just decreased our chance to win our prospect by 45%. Most of our meetings got rescheduled which given the timing of the year, meant delayed the sales cycle by additional 60 days. That's how long 4 minutes is.

What do we learn at PAKRA from this experience – because this can happen to our customers, as we grow?

First lesson:
If at any time, our developers tell me to push a new upgrade to all our customers, and in testing it shows that it will take the user X minutes wait time before they can use the product, I say, "No Go forward".

Second lesson:
Teach our customer service agents, critical thinking skills when discussing with the customer (our brand after all).
For example, teach the necessary skills to the customer service agents, such that they never say things such as -- (These are paraphrased quotes.)
(i) "Oh I am so sorry your customers are not nice to you."
(ii) "Ma'am, your participants delayed in joining -- we cannot be responsible for their actions."
(ii) "Oh! we are giving such a better interface. This is only one-time interface download. Upgrades are free. so! this should be only a minor frustration."
(iii) "How is a few minutes delay an issue?"

Third Lesson:
Teach all employees to understand
-- the impact on the customer when our product and services fail to meet the "must-have" and "more-is-better" Kano features of our products.
-- how the customer uses our products and how they get value out of them.
-- the value our company provides to our customers.

Fourth lesson:
Have 24X7 coverage to listen-in, since social media is the most important channel for us to listen-in.

Fifth lesson:
We must provide influence-capital to the employees who engage in social-media channels with our customers. The agents servicing this channel of in/outbound listening are typically handling situations where "must-have" needs of customers are not being met. Those inquiries require special skilled people not your "let me see which browser you are using M'aam?" problem solvers.

OK! Now I feel relieved, we are just beginning to define a plan to prevent and mitigate issues as they emerge while our company grows.

As I still feel loyal to my friends at this Great Company and I have no guarantee that other providers would not have lost their vision, their strength like Great Company has, I will not cancel our subscription yet. Plus, they said it will take 48 hours while they petition their Bosses, whether our company's account can be locked to past version such that no one invited to participate in our meeting ever has a 4 minute delay, --- I am dying with curiosity and want to see how this plays out.

Meanwhile, we have a company-wide moratorium to use our key provider's products for 2 days -- because we are loyal but not stupid.

Few days from now, on our blog, you will read a fabulous case study of another company that has figured out how to use social media channels to implement a great customer-care and customer acquisition.

Conversations with Jill Konrath, a sales thought-leader, author of best-selling books and avid Gamer -- Part III

2010-11-18T20:27:00.001-08:00

As an author of several best-selling books such as SNAP Selling (#1 Amazon sales books) and Selling to Big Companies (Amazon Top25 sales book since 2006) , founder of the Sales SheBang and a premier thought-leader for building high-performing sales teams, Jill Konrath brings passion and well-articulated wisdom daily to deliver results to her vast and diverse group of clients.

… Continued from Part II

RD> Do you envision that salespeople have to be trained and coached differently to meet the needs of today's crazy-busy buyer?
JK> Look at the current buyer: The amount of information they're exposed to daily through all their "devices" impacts their ability to think and pay attention. They are easily distracted. They clearly have a “net it out” mentality. And, they get quickly overwhelmed with what’s on their plate to do.

A salesperson has to change their message and how they communicate with these people. Buyers listen to voice-mails with a finger on the Delete button. If a salesperson cannot sustain their interest, they'll get deleted immediately. With email, ExactTarget stated that the average person makes a decision to delete/read/forward the message in 2.7 seconds.

These facts force a rethinking of what it means to be successful to sell. In last year, a recent survey 49% of salespersons did not meet their sales quota. What do sales leaders to react to the decline last year? They raise the quota, so now 2010 will be even worse. They don't invest in the salespeople so they can learn to work differently. Instead they just cut the training budget to save money.

RD> Do you think the lack of investment in skills training is due to spending more in technology?
JK> They cut training when they get scared. Instead of figuring out what they can do differently, sales leaders go to an activity-driven work habit. Let’s do more of these sales calls and increase the pipeline instead of targeting more their efforts. They don't spend enough on appropriate technology and training to enable the best results.

The truth of the matter is that I think the training providers themselves are part of the issue for less spend. Budgets allocation is based on real ROI measures. Most training companies provide event-based training and convince sales leaders every few years to do the customer-centric selling or solutions-based selling or some such acronym based training methods.

The sales leaders in turn forget to focus in what helps them manage sales end-to-end from lead generation to contracts to up-selling. And worse, both providers and sales leaders never link the training investment to actual sales. There is little to no learning community to extract the tribal knowledge within an organization. There is very little tracking of sales coaching that is linked to again sales effectiveness.

Having said this, I think companies are realizing this and are forming sales enablement teams where they are determining a framework on that best helps the salesperson integrate their sales conversations and manage the tribal knowledge. Bottom-line is that sales leaders have to stop treating all issues as special causes and stop reverting back to activity based life (checking the box) whenever crisis hits.

RD>Well! [Chuckles] Thank you for endorsing our differentiator. I seldom plug our company in these interviews, but that’s what our software platform does i.e. give on-demand real time linkage and ROI to sales leaders, so they can effectively manage the entire buyer cycle and skills sets of salespeople that meet the buyer’s needs. We care about performance goals and not just learning goals.

RD> What do you think about the using social media tools and its current utilization?
JK> Right now, I am seeing a great seduction of the tools. There are many tools that capture all information about the buyer and that information can be very useful. There is good stuff available and the tools are a very cool aid to prepare for the sales calls.

However, the most important thing is the relevance of the information and how we use it on sales calls. On my website, I have information about my cat. So many people call me and say, “I saw on your website that you have a cat named Cali.” How is that relevant to our conversation?

This comes down to the critical thinking skills – or lack of them. They're not thinking about how to best use all the information that's available. I think this needs to be taught, or else the tools itself becomes ineffective in delivering results. For example, if I see on your website, that you are Lean Six Sigma person, then as a person selling to you, if I can integrate that information while selling to you, you will be more likely to listen to me. The value of the information needs to be appropriately leveraged.

RD> We are actually considering building some games that teach sales and service professional how to filter and use social media information that is relevant to the buyer or customer.
JK> Great idea.

RD> Not to switch the conversation, before we end, I wanted to ask you about your SalesShebang.com website. Tell me more about it and how it got started.
JK> Sales SheBang started when media folks contacted me and would always express “Oh! It is so nice to find a woman sales expert who can talk about sales strategy – and not just the soft stuff like networking and communications.” And I would always respond, there are tons of women sales experts out there that you should talk too – and I'd give them names.

Then I decided that I should bring these experts together and share our wisdom via a website and conference. The best part was having the extraordinary talented people like Anneke Seley , Anne Miller come together and send our message to more talented women salespeople whose ideas are under-leveraged.

RD> One last question, what do you see as trends in B2B sales process?
JK> I think that buyers will be harder and harder to reach. They will have more expectations from salespeople than ever before – and will choose to work with the ones who have good solid creative and critical thinking skills. Sellers who are proficient in this area will excel. I also see the increase use of technology to learn more about customers more quickly. And, I think you'll see companies doing much more online to attract prospects into "their world," then educating them as they're trying to make good decisions for their firm.

RD> Thank you Jill. This was a fabulous learning time for me.
JK> Truly my pleasure. Let's keep in touch so we can continue conversation.

Conversations with Jill Konrath, a sales thought-leader, author of best-selling books and avid Gamer -- Part II

2010-11-18T20:13:00.001-08:00

As an author of several best-selling books such as SNAP Selling (#1 Amazon sales books) and Selling to Big Companies (Amazon Top25 sales book since 2006) , founder of the Sales SheBang and a premier thought-leader for building high-performing sales teams, Jill Konrath brings passion and well-articulated wisdom daily to deliver results to her vast and diverse group of clients.

… Continued from Part I

RD> Your website and our website are probably the only ones that talk about critical-thinking skills for sales professionals. What is your definition of critical-thinking skills?
JK> When I started doing sales, charisma and networking skills were considered as salesperson’s key assets. Also, they needed to have strong product knowledge because it was their responsibility to convey all that knowledge to their customers.

Nowadays all that's available online ⎯ Prospects can go to a vendor’s website or do a Google search and find everything they need. They don't need salespeople for that function. Nor do they have time to meet with a chit-chatty salesperson.

Today the salesperson who wins is the one who is a problem-solvers for his/her clients and who uses critical-thinking skills where she/he can synthesize, curate and dispense vast quantities of information to the client.

This salesperson also needs creative thinking skills by which they are seen as “idea people” who can deliver results for the buyer. Both these skills (creative-thinking and critical-thinking) help them successfully provide the insights on the value of changing from the status quo – and how to do it most easily. This kind of thinking is invaluable to today's crazy-busy buyers.

RD> Are you seeing that many sales managers seeing these two skills as an asset for a salesperson?
JK> I would say, I see it as emerging awareness among sales managers. I don't see it though in middle market and small businesses. In that size company, there's the still the perception that a salesperson needs to be a fearless hunter – who will open the doors. Of course, these businesses struggle because they tell their salespeople to “go get the meat we are starving here.”

On the other hand, larger sales organizations are devoting more time to training salesperson to manage complex situations. They are business savvy and people savvy at the same time. They can navigate these complex buying-cycles.

Recently I was reading the book on successful leaders called Multipliers. In it, the authors Liz Wiseman with Greg McKeown mentions that one factor emerged as the biggest differentiator among successful versus average leaders.

What was it? “Intellectual curiosity”. Those who were intellectually curious and actively listened were able to motivate and facilitate internal discussions with “what if” and “how will” questions that led to multiplying the effect of the results.

RD> It is interesting you said that, I read about an year ago, an interview of Orit Gadiesh, the CEO of Bain Consulting with Harvard Business Review, where she says that, curiosity is what made her successful.
JK> That’s wonderful. I think that “intellectual curiosity” is a soft-skill asset for salespeople. Because if they can provide prospective buyers with new insights, share how other companies are solving problems – they are more likely to make a sale. The salesperson that is curious will step beyond the “old” skills and learn how-to use information to guide the buyer.

The old requirements of a salesperson’s skills are on a quick decline. However, there are many sales leaders who are holding on to that definition, in fact clinging to it. But they will not be able to deal with the new realities. I don't mean to be demeaning about the Sales Gurus of yesterday who still promoting these "old school" skills. Their wisdom was very effective twenty or thirty years ago. But with the advent of the internet and having “crazy busy people” as buyers, their strategies do not work any more.

Salespeople have to become more creative. When my daughter was younger, I coached her Destination Imagination creative-thinking team. I spent a lot of time studying how to help the kids be more creative.

One thing I learned that really stuck out was this: The only difference between people who were creative versus those who weren't was how their perceived themselves. Nothing else. If they thought they were creative, they were. If they didn't think they were creative, they weren't. It was the only variable.

So when sales leaders are asked to train their salespeople to critically think and be creative, it's hard for them to do if they don't see themselves that way. It becomes this vicious cycle. They do not want to experiment. They want binary “right or wrong”. They do not know how to deal with the continuum of possibilities i.e. degree of effectiveness. They are not curious about things like:
− “How can I make it more effective?”
− “What else can we do to make the client excited?”
− “How can we make this interaction where an objection not flare up?”

This lack of curiosity and creativity leads to average or low-performing sales teams. But those who can teach their salespeople these skills will have enormous success.

… To be Continued

Conversations with Jill Konrath, a sales thought-leader, author of best-selling books and avid Gamer -- Part I

2010-11-18T20:06:00.000-08:00

Conversations with Bill Forquer an entrepreneur, strategy consultant and a soap-box derby enthusiast -- Part II

2010-11-17T20:58:00.001-08:00

As an entrepreneur, angel investor, executive leader, and soap-box derby enthusiast, Bill Forquer delivers strategic consulting using game-theoretic modeling that produces roadmaps for C-level executives on their best strategic moves that will preempt market changes and mitigate competitive responses. He is out there preaching the virtues of game theory every day.

... Continued from Part I

RD> Tell me more how these game theory models actually get used.
BF> Through a series of surveys and workshops given to the executives and thought leaders of our client, we extract the three components required in a game model . First, is the “who” ─ the players in the game. These are current and future competitors, partners, regulators, and any stakeholder that can affect the outcome. Second, is the “what” ─ what strategic options are available to each player. Third, we capture the interests of each player. What is a player trying to accomplish? The discussion around this third part is quite revealing because we codify all the players interests using a game theory construct called “preference trees”. A preference tree is a stack-rank list of all the options of all the players from most important to least important. Each participant role plays being a player in the game to construct that preference tree. The preference tree expresses the importance of each option either positively or negatively. That is, a player desires an option to occur, or fears that an option will occur. Priiva takes these inputs, goes away, runs all our mathematical models, and returns to the client with analysis and predictions.

RD> Then what happens?
BF> The analysis and predictions drive the strategic actions that need to be taken. Metaphors often emerge that help communicate that strategic plan. For example, “a rising tide” might describe an immature market where all the players benefit from a technological breakthrough by any of the players. At the end of the workshop, the client is left with contingent scenarios, has a deeper understanding of their market, and is well prepared when big headline events actually occur ─ like a competitor announcing an acquisition, a government scandal that triggers economic turmoil, or new regulatory surcharges on product shipments.

RD> Are these preference trees a proxy for risk tolerance of a competitor’s management team, and not just a proxy for preferences? If yes, do you think it creates a data collection bias because the participant in the room will probably bring in their personal risk tolerance and preferences while role-playing Player X? If no, how do you elicit those “real” risk preferences of Player X?
BF> Yes, it is a proxy for risk tolerance as well. We attempt to eliminate personal bias by confirming each preference tree with group thinking. We also re-run our models tweaking key assumptions. In terms of the risk tolerance of competitors, that comes out in the role-play as the participants need to really understand what makes Player X tick, including their risk tolerance. The team needs to learn everything they can about Player X ─ their personality, their history, where their leadership team trained, the tenure of their CEO, their ownership structure, their swagger (or lack thereof) at investor meeting events, their words, their play, and every piece of information we and the client can get on that player.

RD> How do you drive consensus?
BF> Sticking with our Player X example, a small team would be assigned to role-play Player X, use all the available information, and construct the preference tree. Then that team would appear before the entire group and defend their tree by stating the behavior profile for Player X. This leads to a great discussion, and often the original preference tree is changed. Once the preference tree is agreed to for Player X, we will inspect where Player X’s own options are in the stack-ranking of all options. If a player’s own options are at the top of its own tree, that is an indicator the player is aggressive and will act without fear or consequence from others. Conversely, when Player X’s own options are well down in the ranking it means Player X is more sensitive to the actions of others before initiating their own actions. The models can be run few times on our system – in order to take away disagreements and give a more definitive answer. Insights are the value we provide.

RD> Because your insights are only as good as the information you and the participants bring to the table, do you see games and simulations fitting into your workshops? And do you think there is value in redirecting play online where you could create additional simulations, involve more participants, avoid “GroupThink” issues, or facilitate better decisions?
BF> Today, we use our proprietary software to facilitate the discussion we are leading. But we do not install, teach, nor provide software for clients to use. Starting in 2011, we will have the option to leave the facilitation software tool with the client so they can spark additional discussion on their own. The question about a crowd-sourced simulation model and service is an interesting one. I can envision a cloud service of hand-picked or anonymous participants simulating a game model, and creating a piece of publishable research that Priiva would monetize. Right now, we do not have that in our plans, but we are not ruling it out.

RD> Thank you Bill. It has been most lovely to hear that you and Priiva have monetized game theory and strategic decision-making, something I intensely dabbled with in my past life. Wish you all the best with increasing your client base.
BF> Its rewarding to help companies learn to make better strategic decisions. Thanks for listening.

Conversations with Bill Forquer, an entrepreneur, strategy consultant and a soap-box derby enthusiast -- Part I

2010-11-17T20:45:00.000-08:00

Conversations with Maria Palazzi - a commercial animator, decoder of choreographic thinking, user of metaphors for communications, polymath

2010-10-12T18:52:00.000-07:00

As, a pioneer in commercial applications of computer animation, Maria Palazzi, the director of Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) at The Ohio State University, shares her views on merging arts, humanities, design and technology to further understand creative and other thinking processes. Prior to her academic appointments, Maria was a senior animator and director for Cranston/Csuri Productions. Her work has been nominated for awards from Clio, and screened at ACM SIGGRAPH and international film festivals. She is an unrelenting champion for increasing participation of young women in computer animation.

This interview with Maria is the fifth in our series about learning, design, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work processes.

RD> The first question for you is, are you a gamer?
MP> No I am not. Never was into Board games either.

RD> How do you learn?
MP> I learn in a multimodal way. I definitely learn by doing. I also learn by reflection and I have to internalize, process and reprocess it. I read and probably that’s the best way for me to take in information. I draw and I map to make sense of complexity of ideas (perhaps my Graphics background) – that in turn allows me to process the information that I read and heard. Then lately I finish the learning process by reflecting and by communicating and reinforcing my understanding using metaphors. This last part has become more important to me, as I intensively work with multidisciplinary creative teams.

RD> True – the act of rhetoric is to create an image that someone can relate to and makes the content more relevant to the audience. Recently I read a blog written by Jill Konrath – a leading Sales effectiveness trainer interviewing Anne Miller (an author of the book Metaphorically Selling) – who talked about metaphors in sales communications. Tell me more.
MP> Absolutely, it can be used in any form of communication and understanding of complex transactions and processes. The more images you and I bring to the discussion and use the metaphors to communicate, the better the learning reinforcement is for both you and me.

RD> Do you think younger generation especially under-40 are learning differently?
MP> Well! I read. I don’t think younger generation takes their information by long-form reading that much as I do. Their information intake comes from different sources in shorter spans. I am not judging it, but the only issue I see while teaching students is how they find information. Because my Mom was a librarian and I worked in a library, I was taught very early on how to use a library, my reflexes automatically knew what keywords would lead to faster and more relevant results to find content. When Google and other search routines came along, that transition just made the results be delivered faster to me (from printed cards to my screen). Nowadays, that library visits seldom occur and how to do a keyword search is not a skill that is intuitive to them, , Sometimes working with my students, with all their different devices, they have a tough time finding scholarly information. I find that they struggle to determine what keyword they should put in that makes their search provide efficient and relevant search results. This I think makes their start of their learning longer. Once the information is received, processing the information and complexity of ideas—irrespective of age, I think there is no difference. Then it diverges again during reflection and communication, but that’s more of a style preference. These days, irrespective of age, use metaphors and more non-linear way of communicating simply because interactive learning and media tools make it faster to communicate complex ideas. Of course you must realize I have an inherent bias in my observations because I deal with Arts and Design people.

RD> What is your definition of immersive learning?
MP> It really depends on whether it is a verb or a noun. Sometimes it is how a student or a learner immerses in the content in order to learn and sometimes we create (like in ACCAD) an immersive learning environment where the learners come in to experience. I personally think that creating immersive environments or simulation-lab environments cannot only teaches someone the complex ideas but provide new understanding of old ideas. This is about immersing students in knowledge – then learning happens.

RD> If I understand what you are saying, in the technology world, that “immersing students in knowledge” is what we call “user experience”.
MP> Exactly, after the experience, the learning happens. So! As a teacher, “immersion” becomes a verb. Teaching them how to immerse and then create artifacts where they learn while immersed and then send them to the next level to learn more. Technology enables the building of artifacts. This encourages someone to become lifelong learners.
RD> This reminds me of the movie “Inception”, where you assimilate by building the artifacts and then play out the concepts and then redo for better. Have you seen it?
MP> No! I have not.
RD> You will love it – and try to see it on the big screen.

RD> How do you envision using games/simulations to teach people to use information better and also learn to understand complexity?
MP> A good example of this, is a project called Synchronous Objects that we did at ACCAD. It is about “Choreographic Thinking” based on a dance by choreographer William Forsythe. The dance is called, “One Flat Thing reproduced”. Norah Zuniga Shaw, a professor from the Dance department and I worked on this project to understand how his (William Forsythe’s) choreographic thinking works. It was not meant to be a form of dance documentation, but instead a visual way to unlock the ideas about how Forsythe’s complex systems of organization. The materials we created—animations, graphics, interactive tools—are investigatory as we wanted to probe Bill’s choreographic thinking and they are exploratory as we wanted to discover what we could see in the dance, and how we could visualize those interpretations.
To make Synchronous Objects, we assembled an extraordinary group of graduate students who are animators, designers, dancers, and scientists – as well as an outstanding group of faculty and researchers at Ohio State who brought their expertise the project.

RD> What is your definition of “Choreographic thinking”?
MP> A choreographer’s (in this case William Forsythe) strategies for planning time-based and space-based events and group relationships, and then presenting it in a way, a choreographer presents it to their audience.
RD> This just blows my mind. This is so similar when we think of designing complex simulations of a work process or interactions where eventually there is an output to the audience i.e. the consumer or customer in my world. Tell me more.
MP> When I first looked at it, as a graphics and visual person I could not even understand the complexity and kept asking myself, what am I looking at? I am an animator, I am a visual thinking person, and I never could seem to understand what I am looking at in the dance. I realized soon that what we typically expect a linear experience with a story-line with a beginning and an end like the NutCracker. It was not linear.
He was using this concept called “Counterpoint”, when he was arranging the piece on stage. I have been exposed to the concept of “Counterpoint” from jazz music. My parents had exposed me to lot of Jazz in my childhood. So! What finally helped me, is taking that Jazz metaphor to understand and learn about this non-linear complex narrative or as you would say “immersive simulation”.
We had to then deconstruct that thinking. We had to break it down to little parts of information bits and objects. We had to re-map using many different folks from various disciplines to build relationships among those objects. Then use information visualization skills to reconstruct sets of narrative, while keeping his ideas intact. We had to also determine how different learners would come to the site. By different learners I mean learning styles that different users would be comfortable to assimilate their own metaphors. For example, some are visual learners , some learn by word analogies etc. So! The site presents multiple ways into the material, it is very non-linear. We mined the data from the dance to define each object’s parametric range and what and how they can interact and what relationships can be had.
We have 20 objects – some of those are truly abstract – i.e. you would not assume by looking at the object that it came from that dance. But what the objects do is challenge you to answer the question – “what else might this dance look like?”
RD> To me this latter part of the exercise is applying “Group Theory” and “Topology” from my past life of dabbling in Mathematics. The objects can have certain properties like reflexive, associative and transitive as examples and then as a group or a topologic construct they can behave in certain way and you get more properties out of it that you can visualize. Is the mined data from the project shared with others? Incredible! Still having goose bumps.
MP> [Laughs] To create a continual experience for the audience, we have it available for interactive play at http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/
We share the objects – of course this is not the only interpretation but it is our interpretation. We had statisticians, anthropologists, geographers, mathematics, neuroscientists, designers, authors – lots of disciplines play with the objects and come up with organizational strategies. We shared with them, how we discovered the objects but then had intense discussions of the relationship of the objects and how they relate to the objects and led them create new prototypes.
RD> This project clearly shows how technology, art, humanities and design can be brought together to create an immersive learning environment to do innovation on a very complex process such as creativity of a dance. Of course, this validates how we can use this project thinking to deconstruct complex human interaction and work processes and recreate new innovations in thinking and work processes.

RD> You know – I can go on talking about this. But I have to let you go soon. I wanted to ask my last set of questions. You have led the path here locally in Columbus to increase women participation in technology -- what trends have you seen in 1990's versus 2000's? How do we increase women participation to join the game/graphics production? Are there gender-based differences in design thinking?
MP> We have a summer program at ACCAD, where we bring young women from 8th and 9th grade schools to participate in workshops. These selected women work with women mentors and use “problem-solving skills and collaborative learning to create digital animation”. We have been doing this now for ten years. There are no gender-based differences in output but how they approach a design is very different from what it was ten years ago. These young women understand what media is and understand what story is. They have already played with Photoshop in sixth grade. So! These young women are much more well-versed on the tools and technology and spend more time in the critical thinking or design side and come up with projects that involve complex thinking and production through a collaborative effort. Lately I have invited the same group back a few times to work on more complex projects and they have amazing retention, and I can see the changes. It then makes computer animation careers much more of a reality for them. The other interesting thing I have noticed is that these children finally see that there is a continuum of careers between an engineer and an artist. They no longer feel that they need to pick one. They want to operate in their comfort zone.

RD> Thank you Maria. It has been really interesting to chat with you. Let us continue our discussions.
MP> Let‘s do so -- because I think we have some opportunities to collaborate.

Conversations with TA McCann - a sailor, a CEO, a person "just interested"

2010-09-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

As a serial entrepreneur, sailor and someone just interested in stuff, TA McCann CEO of Gist. Gist provides a next generation contact manager and social media hub delivering value to users as a crowd-sourced solutions to search, to learn and to communicate and to make valuable connections. Prior to starting Gist, TA founded “Jump2Go - providing innovative solutions for the radio industry, HelpShare - a web Q&A company, and Soft Labour, a web design and development consultancy” as well as running the Exchange business for Microsoft.

This interview with TA is the fourth in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.

RD> The first question for you is, are you a gamer?
TAM> I was never a video gamer but enjoy occasional board games such as Scrabble.

RD> How do you learn?
TAM> Primarily, I am an experiential learner. Secondarily, I learn by auditory and verbal learning. The best way for me is doing a project. I generally find people who are learning something that I am interested in and then I put myself around them and then do a project with them.

RD> What is your experience in how people learn and how learning is being delivered especially in the context of corporate training as opposed to schools and universities? Do you see a trend of learning content being delivered to individuals like you where the delivery adapts to the person’s way of learning?
TAM> I am certainly not an expert in education. However, I see a movement towards project-centric and team-centric learning. When I went to school, it was much more individual based and by the book. Now it is much more team reports and collaboration. I am seeing learning is a much more collective task. I see among the progressive west-coasters a more self-directed learning beginning among kindergartners. Montessori teaching was always self-directed where a teacher might say,

You Suzie you are interested in hockey, you John are interested in gardening, you Rini enjoy talking about cooking – let the functional skill follow those interests and I will teach you multiplication or language or composition based on that interest.

Having been on the board of a Montessori school, I understand this principle. But before, once a child was past kindergarten, the teaching became by direction from school and university and it carried on to the post-secondary and corporate world. Now the principles of self-directed training are becoming more prevalent among adults. It translates really well in the corporate world especially with the rise of social media. Now, an employee says,

I need to learn how to do the work or I am interested in having this skill, I know there are others like me who have already learned how to do it, and I will practice with them.

For example, if someone wants to effectively learn how to use social media, no one goes to school for that or reads a book about it. Suppose someone wants to grow roses in their backyard and learn to use the social media technology. They start by creating some social media accounts, follow others who are writing about it, discuss with others, if they like enjoy writing, then they start blogging about roses. Amidst that dialog, and using the technology, the learner uses self-topic of interest and with trial and errors with other people with same interest learn how to grow roses.

RD> Do you see learning and development community in businesses moving away from classroom and compliance-based training? What was your experience at Microsoft when you were there?
TAM> Yes and No. At Microsoft, classes were free and easy to attend. I took more than my fair share of classes at Microsoft, simply because I wanted to learn and it was readily available. Personally, I do not enjoy online training because I like the human interaction. I liked the instructor-led training. Many of these courses were really well done from an instructor-led training perspective but very few were project-based. Given that this was the early part of the past decade, and a bit dated as much has changed or evolved since then, I think it is moving towards a better virtual space where again it is self-directed and team-centric learning. More and more people have taken matters in their own hands via current technology and even mobile technology. They are unwilling to wait for batch-mode training, they want to crowd-source the learning. In software training, more and more people do not use manuals, nor do they sit in classes to learn how to use the software, making demand for instructor-led training less. There are many software now and more and more will be designed in the future, where the user will drive and source learning content.
For example, someone says,

I have a need, I have a passion and I will use the software. If I like it, then I will tell other how well it works and then provide tips on certain things.

Software developers, like us at Gist, are making it easy to use and fairly intuitive interface whereby a user asks these questions:

User - How quickly was it to set up?
Developer - Quick and easy.
User - How much does it cost to set-up?
Developer - Zero for Gist.
User - How much deployment do I need?
Developer - None.

This dialog then creates a consumption-driven learning model. The answers they get are then proven immediately by setting it up and then when they find it easy, they tell others. Then they can answer the question,

How can I get it on my mobile?

Then they ask by searching, if the mobile app is there, they set it up. If they like a cool button, they write about it. Then others follow. This becomes crowd-sourced and on-demand. Software when well designed will still have some complexity behind some three doors that an average user cannot open, and that’s where customer service and trainers or power-users will open those doors and promote that learning about the complexity. I think that’s the trend that traditional training community has to provide.

RD> You are absolutely right. We have been asked many times, why we don’t have manuals for our Learning and People management SaaS console with step-by-step instructions. I always ask the user the question,

What task are you trying to do?

They name the task. Then I ask them,

Given you had an overview, how would you do the task?

They immerse themselves in the product and then within 3 seconds they figure it out. It not shortens their learning time, as our design too is very intuitive, it saves us the cost of having an entire team doing documentation and version controls. This then saves money the user by not transferring the cost in the pricing.
TAM> Yep! It is the continuous cycle from the user to the designer to the developer and back to the user in a continuous learning loop. I think this evolving user-driven learning model for software can hold true with any learning associated with any work process.

RD> This segues well into my next question. User adoption for enterprise software has historically been a big issue. When the user’s initial learning cycle and effort gets simplified and initial getting up and running gets simplified for an organization, data should show that users adopt faster, But there are still big issues with SaaS models such as Salesforce.com and others that come to mind. What factors affect user-adoption in this day and age?
TAM> SaaS design in the past was not very intuitive, when you consider Salesforce.com. There are three trends in the software design today and is foreshadowing enterprise software design in the future.
First, software needs to be easy to use and be intuitive. I do not see some of the SaaS or other enterprise software from ten years ago as being that.
Second the software needs to provide instant gratification to the user. After those first two are met, then the user wants more and then you give them more. There is very tight cycle of effort then reward and then effort and then reward. I think almost all enterprise software ten years from now will have this type of design model that not only addresses first-time users but also addresses the needs of ongoing-users. What this leads to is that there has to be a way where a manager can be able to say and teach in a simulated way how much more improvement user Rini can do. This is where the manager says,

Rini – look what a great job you have done and announce it to the world.

This brings the third piece of how what you guys are doing becomes very important in users adopting. The more and more a game’s mechanics teaches not only critical thinking and how you use the technology and work process; you have built a relationship between that learning skill and the real work. Whether you work at a call center or elsewhere, employees will have “you got a gold star” incentives in real-time. Whether it is passively broadcast or instantaneously broadcast, both are immensely valuable to increase the user adoption.

At Gist, we have a new Game “Learn That Name” that teaches how to maximize the value of using Gist.
Here, we provide no manuals or training, but I-the user scores some points playing it and learns the value with small investment of time, small amount of gratification, and then learning happens.

RD> Our software and games relate not only to immediate learning goals, but also to real-time work performance metrics. We have done pilots and studies to prove the value of how it helps change behaviors and makes the learning consistent. However, the big objection that we hear time and time again, is that the user group of our technology (or other technologies like FourSquare and Gowalla) are self-selecting early adopters and that user-adoption is all about middle adopters and this might not help. We find that the incremental change in performance for early adopters is huge, the change for middle adopters is huge, and that the change for late adopters are much less. The last group, in my opinion, should look for a new job. However, this objection comes up all the time. How would you address it?
TAM> Before I answer that question, let me tell you of another trend. People who try and fail are better learners. Let’s look at the microcosm of iPhone. Most users will download an iPhone app, try it, like it, decides to continue, dislike it then delete it. This cycle is happening with any one user multiple times a month. Of course, Apple has a great job again making it intuitive and easy to install and easy to delete. I try one application but 200th time I do it, I become very confident to increase my productivity.

Mac is very good at giving that opportunity to users whereas Windows has not, hence much faster adoption in use of Mac for those who try it and less for Windows who get into the mode of “living with it.”

People who are lifelong learners are also early adopters; they like this type of change and they do it better. For employees who are these early adopters, I am not surprised that they will have a larger increase in their productivity. The performance gap between middle adopters and early adopters, I see as widening except with right leadership and incentives and rewards for the identified early adopters are leading to the traditional middle adopters move towards early adoption.
Again, the pool of early adopters is larger because failing and learning has become such a faster cycle. Learning Games companies like yours will bring more of these users to light in front of the management teams. I agree with you, late adopters should look for another job, that it’s a lost cause.

Companies should incentivise employees to be more productive with newer technology and tell them,

you guys will figure it out yourself, you tell us how it works, you help others to use the product and we increase productivity and in the long-run, we have faster deployment cycle, we don’t need corporate training and we can have change happen faster.

My experience has been that with that kind of leadership mantra, fast-fail change/reward mind-set, easily deployable technology, intuitive design will move the middle adopters.

RD> What does social selling mean to you?
TAM> Relationship ventured networks. Everyone should consider himself or herself to be in sales. In sales and marketing, customer support, and technical support and for software – you are directly helping with recruiting and selling. In that respect, social media is every employee’s tool to social sell whether it be to end-users or to recruit employees. There are three components for that.

First there is a listening component. This way you just don’t get information about TA McCann the buyer, but more and more components of data about what TA is about. The same goes for the buyer knowing more and more about the seller. Social selling is about the buy-cycle as opposed to the sell-cycle. This means more touch-points with long-term effect in the buy cycle.

The second aspect is the “social” component. Now someone who is trying to sell to me knows I am the CEO of Gist, I started a Montessori school and I am sailor and I have backyard chickens. The seller can connect at that level. Every aspect of the information I provide is socially relevant. It is no different before whereby I met a guy at a church and eventually that guy comes to my hardware store. The last component of social-selling is the how to manage content to build that trust. I can post today,

I am going to go to Hawaii and am interested in scuba-diving.

This is a signal from me to the world – give me content, give me information and recommendations for hotels, best place to dive, best gear place. The opportunity then becomes to those listening how to address this.

For example, I can post today, "reviewing VoIP systems" on twitter. The ones who do this listening badly, will immediately call me to sell me their crap. Those who do it well will send me a tweet about VoIP buying guide. That education and sending me relevant content builds the understanding and builds the trust and that trust leads to the opportunity to sell.

RD> So! Looking back in the past two years what percent of significant and meaningful professional relationships have you built and nurtured using social media?
TAM> Well! The main relationships in last 2 years came from conferences, simply because I go to a lot of conferences, and I go because that’s the way I learn. So! That shared context has given me focused opportunities to generate contacts. However, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin have all been incredible useful to me to nurture that first in-person contact and also bring back people that I knew from the past to have an almost daily interaction. Social media has helped me easily maintain and take those professional relationships to the next level. The percentage is increasing in an accelerated fashion for that maintaining part with orders of magnitude.

RD> Thank you TA. It has been really interesting to chat with you. Good luck with increasing the number of Gist users.
TAM> Let us continue to promote learning!

Conversations with Ray Taylor - a Sales 2.0 manager, a biker, a digital native Part II

2010-08-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

As a Regional Sales Manager at Standard Register, Ray Taylor leverages Sales 2.0 tools and social media to give the best value proposition to his customers. He is a biker, a marathon runner, and a digital native. This conversation with Ray is the third in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, user-adoption and work performance.

... Continued from Part I

RD> Do you see more of a training need for how to maximize the use of a tool, or is there more need for training where you say, here is a bag full of tools, and teach them which tool to use when?
RT> There is a tactical part and strategic part in the training content. For example, Live Meeting: teach people how to use it and tailor sales presentations within Live Meeting. That is the tactical content. Then what you do with that becomes the strategic part, where peers or managers can deliver that training by sharing best practices. For example, on the fly, showing the ability to share an ROI tool with the client once and close the deal, without getting on the road to meet with the client. The sales reps who were with me then became inspired to try something similar.

It is very hard for training events to teach the strategic part. Not because they can’t do it but because it’s too much too fast. It’s about finding the coachable moment, one person at a time.

RD> I use the example about teaching phone etiquette as opposed to training sales reps to manage the interaction. Corporate trainers typically teach the phone etiquette. What do you think about the value of old methodologies in current times? Do think there is some time-invariance to the content?
RT> Exactly, and that’s where we need different ways to train. Having said that, there is one area where corporate trainers truly add value, and that is in creating a common language across the organization. This makes it faster to spread the cultural change as long as the content that they deliver are not restrictive. But, just as the shelf life of products is getting shorter and shorter, the same goes for training content; it cannot be sustained for long.

Our sales training can no longer be focused on products and services. We cannot be walking and talking brochures. Training content that can’t ??? stays the same forever. Trainers and managers who have failed to see that they, too, can innovate are not as valuable. It is like the analogy with colleges: a few years ago, a university banned its professors from putting their lectures on YouTube because that would make education free. A professor went against the policy and posted his riveting lecture on YouTube. It spread virally and actually brought in more college applications for that professor’s department. The University lifted the ban.

Corporate training as well needs to become more innovative and less protective. For example, trainers can embrace the blended model. Their survival doesn’t depend on the classroom-only model.

RD> Tell me about your findings regarding the blended model?
RT> The blended model makes perfect sense. The reps start to learn those minimum skills and common languages online, on their timeline, and then come prepared to the classroom. Classroom interactions are used for practicing and being creative under facilitation, but they move faster because the pre-work is done.

RD> Are you seeing more games being used in sales training?
RT> Not yet—none other than yours!

RD> Well, that’s good news for us. (Just kidding.)
RT> The games are a great way to address this. I have seen e-learning—a PowerPoint with multiple choices—but games are so much more interactive and competitive and fun.

RD> On social selling: what does it mean to you?
RT> Selling using social media is very powerful for lead generation. Before, sales was all about cold calls based on paid research. Now the rep can find good reasons to connect and determine the best timing for getting in front of the buyer. The better understanding of the information they gather from social media they have, the more likely they are to win the competition for the buyer’s time and attention. Social media really facilitates that discussion.

It helps grow the network for future calls. It is a great tool for maintaining the trusted advisor status. Social media allows you to communicate with someone the way they want to be communicated with. Social media has limited capability for the rest of the sales process in qualifying, understanding business needs, and negotiations. The face-to-face meeting is still the goal in many complex sales environments.

RD> What does Sales 2.0 mean to you?
RT> I think it is the second wave of using sales skills in the Internet era. Twenty years ago, to get information about someone’s products the buyer would call the sales rep in the local region and inquire. Now most people research before they reach out to sellers. The skills for salespeople have to be different now. I remember only a few years ago, I heard sales people saying, “Oh! I am not technology-oriented. I do not know how to turn on the computer.” They thought the prospect of using technology was funny. I would ask them if they realized that “what you just told the buyer is that you are stupid… you might want to stop doing that.”

Now, a similar thing happens when salespeople tell prospects, “I think Twitter is just a joke,” or “Facebook is for my kids.” I give them the same coaching: “Did you realize Facebook is a huge marketing initiative for this customer?”

Just as the customer is researching you on-line, they expect you to do your homework. You can no longer get appointments to just learn about the prospect’s business—they expect that you know about their business when you call, and that you can move quickly to how you can help them grow it.

Sales 2.0 fundamentally changed the idea of loading up the salespeople with product knowledge. Now salespeople have to know about the prospect’s company, their problems, their strategy.

At Standard Register, as part of our Lean Six Sigma initiative, we had the customers come to our sales leadership meetings—very different for us. One came to tell us that they wanted us to participate in their Six Sigma project, as we were part of their supply chain.

It is no longer about the typical qualifying closing questions: Are you ready to close? What information do you need to understand the ROI? Now it is more about: What is the problem you are facing? What solutions have you tried?

RD> For somebody taking up a new sales job, what advice would you give as to what they should do the first 60 days?
RT> Be social and be intellectually curious. Own your own career. It is less likely a company today will invest in you. One cannot rely on that any more. Find all the opportunities to learn and don’t sit there and wait for it to happen. Take the initiative.

RD> Thank you, Ray. It has been really interesting chatting with you.
RT> Let’s keep the conversation going.

Conversations with Ray Taylor - A sales 2.0 manager, a biker and a Digital native Part I

2010-08-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

As a Regional Sales Manager at Standard Register, Ray Taylor leverages Sales 2.0 tools and social media to give the best value proposition to his customers. He is a biker, a marathon runner, and a digital native. This conversation with Ray is the third in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, user-adoption and work performance.

RD> My first question for you is, what games are you playing now?
RT> I am addicted to Angry Bird on my iPhone.

RD> How do you learn?
RT> I learn by first reading, then doing, and then teaching.

RD> What do you see as key issues in sales training these days?
RT> Historically, sales training is seen as another training, where everyone learns to perform a process the same way. It is designed to teach you to achieve results the way others achieved success before you. Managers talk about replicating success. However, training modules start off suggesting that you need to “be different” from others to succeed in sales. The training delivered by celebrity trainers eventually makes you “the same” -- very quickly and what seemed to differentiate you, begins to sound the same and will not help you attract prospects and customers any more. Training should deliver content to drive meaningful change.

Another issue is selection of sales associates. We must find people who have intellectual curiosity, the desire to do things differently. In a rapidly changing environment, training in change management will make them more successful than traditional sales training focused on product, cold calls or closing tactics. The intellectually curious will resist getting into a rut and will use any media available to get the results. They will generate their own leads and not wait for Corporate to give it to them. If I look at LinkedIn profiles of CFOs—supposing that they are my target—they are going to express different preferences. Traditional training teaches us to treat them all the same, even going as far as creating scripts to address their issues. In fact, they may not care about the same issue.

I have to learn how to tailor the message—that is the training new reps need. Training in my opinion should be more about what tools are out there, how to use them, examples of how someone used them, and then inspiring the reps to create their own path with some structured coaching. Even better, engage them with multiple types of media: games, YouTube, social media.

Case in point: Marketing these days sends interesting data to sales reps but we cannot just blast that information at all prospects. Trainers can teach the reps how to use the information, but then let sales reps be creative. Some will email the marketing collateral selectively at relevant times, others can leverage the content even more by writing it on their blog or by landing speaking engagements. Sales professionals need to be given the freedom to be creative and to understand better the meaning of the end goal.

RD> With social media and other technologies, I think that lead generation will become more of a sales rep job and marketing will focus more on brand marketing. How do you see that transition happening?
RT> I think it has converged. When I was starting out 20 years ago, Peter Drucker said something to the extent that good marketing will make sales jobs obsolete. That was scary, as I was just starting my sales career and hoping for a good long run. Luckily, he was wrong.

Technology, the Web , and globalization made marketing more difficult. They now manage so many channels, but with each channel having less power. Before you used to be able to tell people what your brand was—do three TV commercials on the big three networks and you were able to reach 95% of your buyers.

Executives in the C-Suite operating in this economy are banging the tables saying, “we cannot have another bad year.” They turn to marketing and ask, “What is your big idea to fix this?”

Traditional marketing folks are focused on campaigns to blast a million prospects to gets 500 customers. But they have to resist that temptation. Marketing has a smaller budget and has to do more with more interference for attention. They can’t tell the CEO, “I only have three people and I can’t get it done.” They have to crowd-source it. Give the sales team messages that can be delivered at the time that the information is relevant to a prospect’s growth strategy. The sales rep can participate in lead generation and qualification. If you can create a strong partnership between sales and marketing, you can be everywhere. Listening is first, use social media to find out where customers hang out and what they care about. Then your guidance—not your sales pitch, but your guidance—will be valuable. It will yield spectacular results.

RD> What do you think about the role of social media in B2B?
RT> Often it can be heard in the offices of larger business, “Well! In the B2B world this does not work.” But every business person is a person with interests and personality—so to embrace social media, a sales manager has to hire sales people with different aptitudes and develop them.

Drip leads as opposed to dumping leads. Use social media to be more effective. For example, at a company that sells to small businesses, we found a monthly source where we could get all the newly registered companies. So this huge list was given to the sales people and they said, “this list is not any good for me as there are no phone numbers.” They researched a few and gave up because the task seemed too daunting.

I uploaded the list and assigned a few leads each day, rep by rep. The leads were added to Salesforce.com and guess what: there are hyperlinks to Google and LinkedIn to acquire phone numbers and company information. The sales people have to have different skills, and managers have to develop different processes.

RD> Why can’t sales people fault the marketing?
RT> Sales people can get blinded by the shiny new technology and expect instant results. You can still knock on the door and pick up the phone and ask. You can use social media. There is just no one way to serve up customers ready to buy without investing some effort and trying more than one strategy. It comes back to that intellectually curious person who will not fall into the rut. Hire for that and train them to learn constantly. Trainers who love their methodology—and their acronyms for do this first, this second and that third—are obsolete.

RD> I agree. We tell people that PAKRA is a philosophy-agnostic learning company; the training methodology is your problem.
RT> Right. Any methodology is good for teaching the minimum skills. If you have inexperienced people you need to give then the basic skills, and most training programs are very good at that. But after that, teach them creativity and reward them for achieving results rather than tracking their compliance with a sales process.

Continued .. Part II

Conversations with Nate Riggs - a disruptor and social media content engineer -- Part II

2010-07-31T10:52:00.001-07:00

As a “social media content engineer” and business communications strategist, Nate Riggs of Social Business Strategies helps businesses determine their branding and marketing strategy using social media. In 2009, Nate was named a mentor in Len Kendal’s “Constructive Grumpiness” blog Top 30 under 30 Tweeters. Interview with Nate is the second in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.

Part II

RD> So far, we discussed social media in the context of marketing. What does Sales 2.0 mean to you?
NR> To me, Sales 2.0 is how-to use new tools and technology innovations to do something in a more predicted way. A sales professional who uses and leverages new technology such as social media can do their Sales 1.0 style consultative selling better. I might be wrong but the process of sales is still 75% what happens face-to-face and the ability to read non-verbals. That will not change. However, with Skype and new phones that do video, at the end of the day, we can do it without field sales. Also in Sales 2.0, a salesperson by using social media can get and leverage information about the prospect that these face-to-face virtual interaction better and more timely.

RD> When you first go into an organization, how do you evaluate the resistance you will see in user adoption of social media in day-to-day work?
NR> Everybody wants to do everything and the kitchen sink. My suggestion is always focus and do something well – that works in social media strategy too. Having said that, you have to also evaluate upfront if the company has to change the paradigm and how to encourage the culture adoption. My most successful company is the contact center in Canton, OH. They first answered the question: what the image of their employees will be to the world, then they went about creating the brand using social media. Typically, I first meet with the leadership and determine what they are about. Michael Hyatt is a perfect example. His company Thomas Nelson Publishers is a culture of innovation, but it began with Michael setting that direction.

As a consultant, I also look for silos and power struggles. 9 times out of 10, I find that there is power struggle between the old and new school.
I am not making a path-breaking observation here and such struggles existed since beginning of humankind. However, the interesting part that I find is who makes the old school folks: they are folks who from mid 1980s to end of 1990s innovated and successfully embraced technology. Now, they hold the key accounts, money and the tenure. Yet they forgot that power of experimentation, they once indulged in. The new school folks are those who got to work in 2000 to now. They want to experiment and do the new innovative stuff. The conflict starts when the old school promotes agendas with things that they are more comfortable with. Meanwhile, the business leader gets caught in the middle and playing both sides. I am learning to manage and influence both these groups of stakeholders.

RD> Do you see the opportunity of games as a solution to manage the resistance and increase user adoption?
NR> I see enormous opportunity. But I also think that you might encounter the chicken and egg problem. Game is very powerful in increasing adoption. If the business is a culture of early adopters, then they will naturally embrace the games and we will never find out if games were the deciding factor to impact user adoption. If the culture is not a culture of early adopters, the games will just work to move them towards the faster adoptions side on the curve of adoption. Dennis Crowley and folks at foursquare nailed it. The idea of badge and point system got people hooked. Four times a week I check my points and compete one week a month crazily and I will beat someone in Columbus called Ben H. one of these days. I must say, I do it because of the points. To me the badge does not do much. The badges are only visual indicators of the human behavior. Gowalla has great badges and some say better user interfaces. But in my opinion, user interface alone cannot create dependency. The game mechanics of points does it for foursquare. Games are motivators. When companies are ready to implement social media and do social selling – games that teach them how and games that help adopt and embrace it – will be an awesome fit.

Having said that, one has to figure out how to address the two issues that will surface with a game: (a) someone will figure out how to cheat and (b) if monetary awards are provided to winners then there is a likelihood of decreasing returns on the intended value. If the game addresses these in the design, then I think there is awesome opportunity to increase adoption for any new change – be it in new technology, new initiative or new leadership.

RD> Thanks Nate. It has been really interesting chatting with you. Good luck beating Ben H.
NR> Let us continue to pick the appropriate strategies.

Here is Alvin Toffler on Education -- Retweet of post from Sir Ken Robinson

2010-07-24T22:31:00.000-07:00

Alvin Toffler -- I read Future Shock -- Oh! Gosh! 25 years ago. I found the book immensely path-breaking but I did not like the neo-cons embracing his forecasts in the 1990s. Having said that, I like his idea about teaching kids "critical-thinking skills" as he says in this video with his wife in 2008 talking about the future of education: Alvin Toffler on Education

It is definitely worth watching. This is a Retweet from Sir Ken Robinson.

Conversations with Nate Riggs - a disruptor and social media content engineer -- Part I

2010-07-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

As a “social media content engineer” and business communications strategist, Nate Riggs of Social Business Strategies helps businesses determine their branding and marketing strategy using social media. In 2009, Nate was named a mentor in Len Kendal’s “Constructive Grumpiness” blog Top 30 under 30 Tweeters. Interview with Nate is the second in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.

Part I

RD> The first question for you is, are you a gamer?
NR> I used to be a major gamer. Not any more—I do not have a game system at home any more. As my kids get to that age, I am sure I will get back to it.

RD> When you played video games, what were your favorites?
NR> I loved Wolfenstein games. I really liked the old games with DOS prompts. In high school I stayed up until 3 or 4 in the morning playing Doom. I was a big Mario Cart gamer in college. I liked the war-type games.

RD> How do you learn?
NR> I learn the best “audibly.” For instance I can read a book, but if I listen to it, I can remember down to the quotes. Also, when I do it and figure it out myself—that’s when I learn. I need a bouncing board, and when I hear myself saying it—it becomes very clear. I carry a sketch pad without lines; the stuff begins to make sense. Then when I communicate or teach, the learning becomes permanent.

RD> I completely relate to what you just said. At age 15, I got my first paid job, which was to tutor a kid who was 14 years old. During that experience, I learned that teaching made the concept more clear to me. I had a big private tutoring practice from that age until I came to the U.S. for graduate school. The reason I have been in the learning business now for 30 years is because at that early age I saw its value. Also, I worked in healthcare where one of the most important learning practices is “see one, do one, teach one.” It seems yours is more like “hear one, do one, teach one.”
NR> Yes. Absolutely.

RD> How did you get into social media and B2B marketing?
NR> I got into social media because of going into game chat rooms. Then my introduction to traditional B2B marketing was through the marketing agency I joined after graduating from college. Where I saw the opportunity is that in B2B, it is still an interaction between one person in a company and one person in another company trying to make something work. (Social media) became the tool to address that interaction. In fact, among all tools in B2B marketing, social media is more powerful because it surrounds the loop of a customer as in B2C2B.

RD> When you look at social media, do you also include the online communities?
NR> Yes! I do. It is the new telephone. Most get confused between viral marketing and social media marketing. There is a sharp contrast between viral marketing and social media. Viral marketing is about ideas that spread and you are leveraging the context. Social media is any technology that allows human communication and allows viral marketing to be successful.

RD> As you work with your clients, are you seeing many businesses asking not only to implement a social media strategy and technology, but also asking how to manage the social media?
NR> Yes and no. Many businesses want to do social media but then mistakenly lump this tool into getting automated multiple directory listings, or paper advertising. This is a tool and you need humans to do it. It is sometimes very hard for companies to understand that. Some get it sooner and some don’t. It is all about the leadership—especially the CEO—understanding how to use the tool; it is not meant to displace an employee. When I see companies not getting that message, I clearly tell them they are not ready to do social media.

RD> You are absolutely right: there is a huge difference between automating a process versus using the technology. For example, while vacationing in Greece I did not keep up with my tweets, and I lost 40 followers.
NR> It is exactly what you said. In the 1990s, I think technology like ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems was about automating manual work processes, somewhat displacing the human and now the technology is about having the humans use it.

RD> Many of these are hard to keep up with in this “short attention span” generation. How do you address that?
NR> From a B2B standpoint, make it a team sport. In Hubspot they are using 50+ bloggers and then with those frequencies they get traction in getting the response. You have to figure out a source for this. Is this going to be insourced or outsourced? I tell a company if they do not want to engage with the right amount of resources, they should consider other channels such as search engine optimization etc. When a company is ready to invest the effort then the benefits are exponential for the company

RD> We decided at PAKRA, after much experimentation, that social media is where we want to place the bulk of our effort for qualified lead generation. The problem I then faced was that despite showing certain employees why they should engage in social media and maintain the effort behind it, we struggled to make them do it. First, I thought it may be age-dependent, but it had nothing to do with age.
NR> I am first-generation Millennial and I am fully immersed in this, but imagine my surprise when I was presenting once to high school kids. They were very skeptical. You could almost hear the voices of their parents stating the dangers of digital presence: of pedophiles, cyberstalkers, etc. I think the way to communicate to those who do not want to embrace this in a business where their leadership is involved and give them guidelines. For example, be professional, don’t post your cell number and address everywhere. The problem is everyone thinks they have to put everything on the web, emote about everything. People tell me that “you put everything on the web, we know about everything you do.” The answer is “no you don’t. I have a complete self outside the websphere. You don’t know what I don’t put.”
Always be yourself online, but leave out the parts of your life that have no fit or relevance to the digital self.

RD> You don’t see age as an issue?
NR> Age barriers have gone. I remember the first day Google came out: a white screen. That point was pivotal. Libraries became irrelevant and we have access to anything we want. If I need five Swahili words I can get on my mobile phone.

RD> Do you think that the Web democratized the learning process?
NR> Yes! You don’t have to be privileged and have to go to expensive schools to learn. You don’t have to get hardware to get the information. Web has enabled us to get information faster and then if you are willing to learn, it has tools and technologies that help you learn better and faster. I remember in Grade 1, I had to learn how to use Dewey decimal system to find something, now I can find something quickly with the words I know.

... Continued in Part II

Conversation with Mrs G. -- Arlene Gregory: an educator and motivator

2010-07-21T16:42:00.001-07:00

A 72-year-old educator and grandmother of six, Arlene Gregory (known as Mrs. G to all who have learned from her), is the subject of our first conversation in a series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing, user-adoption and work performance.

Arlene worked in the Delaware City School System of Delaware, OH. After retirement in 1995, she continued to teach communications and English classes at Columbus State Community College and Marion Technical College, as well as educational psychology at Ohio Dominican University. She has 1034 friends on Facebook; she is a Mafia Wars queen; she has played more Mind Jolt Games than anyone I know.

RD> Arlene - When did you start teaching?
Mrs. G.> January 1960. I have taught literature, writing, communication, business communication, and education psychology. Over the years, the age of the students varied with the youngest at 8 years old and others ranging to past 55 year olds who returned to college.

RD> Why did you become an educator and remain an educator for these many years?
Mrs. G.> My own teachers and my mother pretty much directed me to a career in education; in many ways, I lived my mother’s career dream. Fortunately, her dream was also mine. For me, one important value of education to students is creating a set of choices and opportunities. Obviously one value to a teacher is successfully motivating a person to continue to increase choices and the span of opportunities. I love doing the motivation part; I love watching students capture ideas and concepts that lead them to further inquiry. What other job can give that?

RD> These days, there is a lot of discussion in the web-sphere and media, about how people get information and how they learn has changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Over the years, what have you seen that has remained the same in how people learn?
Mrs. G.> I think how people learn has fundamentally remained the same. There are those that are the top-performers and then there are those that I call Middlers. There is always a curve. What I think has changed in my fifty years of motivating is how educators have embraced how they motivate.

The top-performing students who received opportunities to be creative and taste success using their learning at an early and formative age, learn and explore in inventive ways --- they did it before and they do it now. The educators who have been successful have figured out how to keep them motivated in this technology age. I have found that the best way to do that is engage them to reach their peers. One adaption that occurred is using technology to communicate but inherent interaction between educators and students in this group has not changed all that much.

The underserved group of adults is what I call were “Middlers” in middle and high school. Their performance was average or below average in middle and high school. These Middlers typically will not go to college at 18 years of age. I found that these Middlers need nurturing and not more of boring repetitive learning activities. For example, when I was teaching grammar in middle school, we were instructed to teach the same modules taught to a 3rd grader, 4th grader and 5th grader. Guess what! These students did not care the second time it was presented to them and it certainly was not interesting to them in 4th grade. So! They tune out and the time they could have used for learning is wasted.

People of all ages, learn very quickly how to be lazy in their learning when they know they will have repetitive lesson plans. The same group as adults often do not want to go back to school because they expect the same boring repetitive learning activities. In the last few years, I find that this group is getting better opportunities to come back and acquire skills and knowledge and expand their horizon. Columbus State Community College and Marion Technical College – here in central Ohio have devised curriculum that helps them acquire meaningful learning. If you, as an educator provide the challenge to the students where they figure it out, and they taste the success in figuring it out, then they go to the next stage of wanting to learn more, thus expanding their set of opportunities. Their learning desires have not changed but they are learning faster and more with the new technology such as Google, Wiki and a curriculum that keeps them engaged. I find that Games and such technology have changed the Middler’s desire to learn.

RD> Given that you are such an active gamer, how did and do you use games in your teaching?
Mrs. G.> I always used activities like have butcher paper and crayons and other games in my classroom. This was for students of all ages and from all diverse backgrounds. Games actually provided that challenge and motivation.
My entre into video games came with my grandkids. We created a playroom in our house where we outfitted the room with Playstation and a large number of games. Many of the video games follow patterns and motifs common in mythology and folklore; my grandson Zach was very engaged in playing. At that time I was teaching a classroom course about the narrative of folklore and myths and I found Zach learning how to manage the archetypes of mythology – the heroes and villains. Watching that made me realize that video-games have a great upside to faster learning. Playing the games with the grandkids provided not only opportunities to spend time with the kids, but also a new level of interaction that included several learning opportunities.

Another example was with my youngest grandson. We were playing one of the NCAA games and had to do is pick uniforms etc. for the avatars. I am not good at replaying sports events, and did not want to play. But then my grandson figured out a way to motivate me; he called me on the phone and told me that I assign all the players to have Brutus the Buckeye uniforms. Being the Buckeye that I am, I got hooked. All these kids, when I got stuck or did not feel challenged, were amazing and they would say, “Grannie, try this.”They figured it out and motivated me to keep my interest. Because they enjoy playing with others, they want others to play too and not walk away bored. Games allow people not only to learn by figuring out, but also teaches them how to motivate others to learn and play with them in their peer group. As you know peer-learning takes the pressure off from the educators to constantly battle with how to motivate next. Of course, I am proud to be in the peer group of my grandkids.

RD> What do you see as the downside of so many technology distractions in front of under-40 crowd?
Mrs. G.> I am not good at using mobile phones has they have horrible interface for texting. But that’s not the reason I have issues with the texting phenomenon. I do worry about texting and communication. Over generation, writing had fairly strict style guides and norms. But there are no style guides in Twitter and with texting. It is evolving, but the chance of miscommunication is very high; learning to communicate with clarity is not emphasized. Just because you have to write in 100+ characters and your thumbs are good to handle such a keyboard does not mean one knows how to communicate. There are no style guides or standards on how to abbreviate. The other thing that worries me with new technology like texting is that it has made communication become a reaction and not a dialogue. Lack of focused communication is creating a generation that may not experience sufficient knowledge gain… Information gains sure, but not knowledge gain.

RD> Aside from classrooms, where do you see video-games happening?
Mrs. G.> I am at that age where I interact with many elderly folks at a regular basis. My 94-year old mother-in-law for example. I see a tremendous advantage of introducing computer and interactive games with the nursing home community. Older people – those who are very alert always played games, but they played it as recreation. Nursing homes can make video and online games a daily exercise like mandatory walks for physical exercise. It will help deter lack of alertness and maintain high levels of cognition. In my opinion this is a big opportunity for the video and online gaming industry to explore.

RD> Thank you Mrs. G. It was wonderful chatting with you.
Mrs. G> Let us keep them motivated and engaged and communicate better.

Monetizing an ἰδέα

2010-05-04T12:09:00.001-07:00

Plato said that an idea is "perfect, eternal, and immutable" (Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea)
I simply disagree.

Here is a story of my two grandfathers.
My paternal grandfather -- an engineer in late 1800's; was the Port Commissioner of Chittagong, Bangladesh; loved the English; retired and had an idea of delivering milk via pipeline to homes (pre-pasteurization era); partnered with a German spy; lost his wealth in his idea; and died a pauper.

My maternal grandfather -- born into a famous family in North Calcutta; most of his life he was a freedom fighter and a resident philosopher; had an idea to implement "Metric system" in India; which he petitioned for and won after India became independent; never asked for money for any of his ideas; and died a pauper.

Two men -- Two ideas. One idea had a sense of eternal as Metric system stuck in India (Thank Goodness), however the idea was neither perfect nor immutable (because we have other measurement systems such as bytes getting into the cultural lingua). The other idea was certainly imperfect and not eternal but was immutable (that milk via delivery will not work -- that hypothesis has not changed).

When I look at the future of work (Refer to http://sloanreview.mit.edu/special-report/video-a-billion-brains-are-better-than-one/ and work processes -- What I see is iterative change is the new Black; What I hear is that collaboration is the new plurality.

Currently, VCs and other financing houses monetize isolated and singular ideas or memes. If our work is changing from singularity to plurality, from personal excellence to collaboration, then who and how do we reward the "social" processes and ideas?

How can we monetize an evolution?

Any suggestions?

Can video games help prepare you for college?

2010-04-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

Can video games help prepare you for college? They can if you are seeking a bachelor's degree in video game design. George Mason University, located near Washington DC, is one of the latest universities to offer a degree in video game design. Students are flocking to the program which includes courses such as Culture and Theory of Games, as well as computer programming and motion arts classes.

Other universities offering video game design programs include The Art Institutes, DeVry University, and the Minnesota School of Business.

Click here for more information on the GMU program.

Social Selling/Servicing: Use your customer web/call center/text/in person interactions to learn something about the customer

2010-04-27T21:48:00.000-07:00

Frankly do you really want to be listed as the worst customer service company by Consumerist? -- "Results of ‘Worst Company in America’ Vote By Jennifer Saranow Schultz"

Read this too: Bill Snyder writing in Business Week "Tech Vendors Admit Service Stinks"

Hello all! There is a solution -- consider training your front-line person to learn how to listen and understand what the prospect or the customer is saying? Is it time for all of us to resort to social selling/servicing mode of operations?

What is social selling/servicing?

To me, social selling/servicing is a web-enabled way to deliver whatever that you are doing -- whether it be selling (from "As Seen on TV"(TM) to airplane carriers) or servicing -- deliver it in an affordable fashion but remember here the customer defines how they want to be sold or to be serviced. Affordable is your benefit. But sorry! you no longer get to define what you sell or service.

In this new world, the prospect or the customer defines the critical-to-quality (CTQ) characteristic of the entire interaction that they will have with you. Specifically, they first define the route of the interaction either calls or chats or texts or emails or simply reaches out to us in person. To them, you and your company is one entity.

Recently, I saw this SlideShare Presentation: Social Business Design: web 2.0 NYC. I found the article a bit long but it evoked the image about an eco-system that cannot be managed with putting out a scripted, monotonic act on the web or phone. Scripts and complying with laws are essential "must-haves" Kano characteristics. But to sustain and delight your prospect and customer -- evolution from "must-have" status must occur.

Your salespersons, call center agents, chat agents, (Aruns/Susans/Michaels/Lisas/Davids/Priyas -- whoever signs on):

-- Are they ready to manage any interaction whatever route the prospect or the customer reaches out to you? Or have you created silos within your organization by routing using the source as the reason for routing?
-- Have they learned about the prospect or the customer before they start their interaction?
-- Have they been trained to process and manage all the digital and non-digital bits of information about the prospect or the customer?
-- Do they have a perspective about the prospect or the customer after they learned something about the person they are about to interact with?
-- Are they working towards defined goals of customer learning? Have you defined measures of success for the customer listening and learning strategy?
-- What are their customer listening and learning strategy and tools and process?

So! As you can see -- you -- my friend (and I) have to start by learning about our prospects and our customers before you (and I) start these interactions.

Median v. Average WWE

2010-03-29T23:22:00.000-07:00

My goal in life is to explain standard deviation and the value of it over and over again until I cease to exist. Let us start with median v. average.
Brad Feld is a man of my intellectual liking. This is an old blog posting but .. still funny and interesting.
You Don’t Mean Average, You Mean Median.

Chief Listening Officer and all that at Sales 2.0 conference

2010-03-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

I recently attended the Sales 2.0 conference. My own observations are very aptly described by a recent post by Anneke Seley, Founder and CEO of Phone Works here: Wanted! Help! Chief listening Officer

Hilariosity (Strangely) of Peloponnesian proportions

2010-03-05T18:12:00.000-08:00

This is the funniest thing I have ever read in the context of modern international history of economic crisis.

German politicians are asking the Greeks to sell their islands and/or artifacts in order to mitigate the current Euro and Greece crisis.
First, who would buy them?
Second, can you imagine Parthenon brought to you by Sanyo Electronics or Bharti Airtel?
Second, again, is it true what we want is a Greek island owned by Virgin Airlines?

Here was the Greek Prime Minister's response: “There are more imaginative and effective ways of dealing with the deficit than selling off Greek islands,” Mr. Papandreou said, according to The Financial Times. “We cherish these islands, and selling them would be out of the question. It would not help. It would be a one-off solution, and a viable economy means investing in that economy.”

Read more http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/greece-wont-sell-islands-to-cover-debts/

We need to care about the Greeks and help them with aid to get them out of the Hellenic proportion crisis. If we can solve Iceland's problems, we certainly can exercise similar restraint and implement good EU regulations to help Greece short-term and long-term.

Apple to compete in the gaming console space?

2010-03-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

I've often wondered why Apple doesn't have a standalone gaming system like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft each do. A recent article on Videogamesrepublic.com suggests that Apple may be moving in to the gaming console arena after seeing so much success with web-based applications. Will they be an immediate threat to the "Big 3"? Not likely. Apple's core competency is internal software development, not independent game development.

The full article from Videogamesrepublic.com can be viewed here!

Serious Gaming with Nobel Laureates

2010-03-02T07:08:00.000-08:00

From Nobelprize.org - Serious games and simulations based on the work of Nobel Laureates! You don't have to be a genius to understand the achievements of the Nobel prize winners.

Check out these games and simulations here !

Bon Voyage Mr. Salinger

2010-02-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

Last week, the ultimate icon and influence of twentieth century J.D. Salinger passed away. For most of us from the Gen X minus 1,2,3,10, 20 years, for all practical purposes and given his recluse and agarophobic predicament, Mr. Salinger was in the Dead/Not Dead betting category for quite a few decades now.

However, his writings and the characters in the Glass family with Franny and Zooey and of course Catcher in the Rye influenced us all. The characters live within us. Reading Salinger, as most like me will identify with, is/was a rite of passage that transcended race, gender, geographies, elite or bourgeoisie, class and languages.

As you know, Mr. Salinger dedicated “Franny and Zooey” to William Shawn, where he wrote on the preface,“I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.” [See reference below.]

We all were William Shawn for that day when we read it.

Reference: Read New York Times Obituary "J. D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91" - http://nyti.ms/cYpe4c

Domino's gets people talking by telling everyone how crappy their pizza USED to be

2010-02-01T07:26:00.000-08:00

Cait Warner of BNET recently talked to Domino's Chief Marketing Officer, Russell J. Weiner, about the radical changes to their pizza and their innovative and self-depreciating marketing campaign.

Until recently, Domino's has used the same pizza recipe for the past 50 years. While their pizza was affordable, it certainly was not considered to be.... good. How do you turn your brand around when that brand is built upon an image of cheap, but bad pizza? How do you convert the doubters who normally aren't even willing to try your product? Domino's answer was to admit that their pizza really sucked.

The full interview with Russell can be read here, from www.bnet.com.

I personally was one of the doubters who was hesitant to order Domino's regardless of how cheap it was. Did I buy in to their marketing strategy and try their new and improved pizza? Yes, I most certainly did. As Domino's promised, their new pizza and far better than their previous product. And it's still pretty cheap.

New rumors about the Apple Tablet

2010-01-22T11:55:00.000-08:00

I, like many others, am anxiously awaiting the upcoming preview of the Apple Tablet. If you aren't familiar with the newest Apple gadget, it's basically an overgrown iPod Touch with a screen size rumored to be between 7 and 10 inches. If the newest rumor proves to be true, the gadget will have a Kindle-like text reader. Price wise, it will fall somewhere between the iPhone and Macbook.

The Tablet will be debuted by Apple on January 27th and on shelves in September or October 2010.

For more details on the Apple Tablet rumors, check out this link from CNET News.

Time to make a resolution: Stop multitasking

2009-12-29T19:18:00.000-08:00

It is that time of the year (and decade) where we all make our resolutions for change. My resolution for the New Year is simple.

I will stop multitasking and encourage the end of this practice by all PAKRA employees and partners.

This decade made Multitasking a popular business buzz word (see reference [1]). Having been the consummate consultant, I considered and tried to embrace multitasking.

Growing up in an urban and overpopulated part of the world, I never knew how to work in a quiet place or have ample space to sprawl my necessary possessions. As far as I can remember back, I was able to work in a corner and in all environments. At a very young age, I found out that I simultaneously can:
Task(1) listen to music/noise,
Task(2) drink liquid, and
Task(3) work on one thing and only one more thing.

Task(3) can be -- solve puzzle, chat, write, blog, analyse, code, draw -- name the verb -- I can do it. I can work on front stoop, on subways, or airplanes, or airports or even as a car passenger with Eminem playing -- anywhere where there is some light -- I can work.

Three tasks: drinking fluid, listening and task X -- yep! I can multitask. This led me to believe earlier this decade, that I can be a multitasking pro.

However, over the decade, I realised that there are no task-substitutes for either Task(1) and Task(2) that allows me to create a new combo and maintain the triad of 3 tasks and let me effectively do my task(3).

No more multitasking for me.

Now! to my proselytising spree:
Those of you who use your medical condition to defend that you are more functional and effective by multitasking, we have medical research to support the idea that you are not being effective at all. See reference [2], [3], [4], [5].

Moreover, when you check your emails, play online scrabble, type on your computers (unless you are taking notes) and text during meetings and conversations -- all that you are indicating to me is that: what we are talking about is of no value to you, you rather want to focus on the other task. Stop the disrespect!

Loss of productivity due to lack of focus from multitasking, is only going to get worse in the coming decade. So! let us all abandon multitasking now. Let us simply focus on one task at a time for the next decade.

References:
1. CNN Study (2001): http://archives.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/08/05/multitasking.study/

2. Fast Company (2006): Stop Multitasking

3. Scholastic.com (2007): The Perils of Multitasking-When kids are plugged in, how much sinks in? by Margery D. Rosen

4. Stanford University News (2009): Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows, Adam Gorlick

5. Wired Science (2009): Multitasking Muddles Brains, Even When the Computer Is Off

Crocs: One of the dumbest products of the decade

2009-12-23T09:46:00.000-08:00

I recently posted Inc. Magazine's list of the Smartest Products of the Decade, so it's only fair that I also post their list of the Dumbest Products of the Decade. There have been some truly ridiculous products released over the past decade. The list includes Windows Vista, Crocs, and my personal favorite - The Boyfriend Arm Pillow. You must check out the full list here. Enjoy!

Snuggie: One of the smartest products of the decade?

2009-12-21T10:42:00.000-08:00

Inc. Magazine has included the Snuggie in it's list of 21 smartest products of the decade. How can this blanket with sleeves (a backwards bathrobe, if you will) be included on a list that features such items as the Ipod, Blackberry, PayPal, and Salesforce? Consider this: the Snuggie has been a runaway hit resulting in over 5 million dollars in sales and imitators such as the Slanket.

Check out the other 21 items featured on the list of Smartest Products of the Decade here.

When Social Media Meets Local Networking

2009-12-12T07:37:00.000-08:00

There is a growing trend in e-commerce that leverages social media and local networking. One great example of this is the website Groupon, which promotes collective buying power with daily, city specific bargains. These bargains run the gamut from things to do, eat, and see. Their highest selling daily deal to date came from the Chicago pizza chain, Pompei. They signed up with Groupon to offer $10 worth of pizza for $5. They expected a sell a few thousand offers but ended up selling over 9,000 offers to local residents. So, what's the catch? There's no small print or hidden restrictions but Groupon makes one stipulation. Before the "deal is on", a minimum number of people must agree to buy the deal. This then spurs buyers to promote the deal via social networking channels like Facebook and Twitter.

Check out this article from CNNMoney.com to learn more about Groupon and how they recently got $30 million in VC funding!

Merchants think socially, act locally

Meaning of Heuristics and why it is important today

2009-12-03T18:37:00.000-08:00

Heuristics is the big word, yet a lovely word that you and I should care about. It is synonymous to a "rule of thumb". It can be as simple as Pareto Principle or as complicated as adaptive algorithms. We, the humans love our rules of thumb.

We make decisions using rules of thumb. Everyday as you and I use the web, heuristics get built and decisions you make get captured as data. This is certainly one of the premises for PAKRA's existence.

As Frank Schirrmacher discusses in his HuffingtonPost post The Age of the Informavore
: "This is a very good beginning."

Game theorists, economists, psychologists are promoting the value of Bounded Rationality
principles to model decision-making. The main questions they ask are (a) how do you and I make decisions using heuristics? (b) are these decisions optimal, i.e. the best?

From models to computational algorithms to daily web searches to pattern-recognizing analytics that feed our consciousness from places such as Amazon.com (e.g. "Those who have bought PAKRA Games, also bought ... " --> all these are making us learn and make decisions faster.

Frank Schirrmacher writes, "Gerd Gigerenzer, to whom I talked and who I find a fascinating thinker, put it in such a way that thinking itself somehow leaves the brain and uses a platform outside of the human body. And that's the Internet and it's the cloud. And very soon we will have the brain in the cloud. And this raises the question of the importance of thoughts. For centuries, what was important for me was decided in my brain. But now, apparently, it will be decided somewhere else."

The rule of thumb algorithms that were developed on your and my data, in turn learn/retrain our brain. Moreover, as a society, as we all participate, in this reality/digital existence, we redistribute this wealth of learning.

This makes us (PAKRA), believe that "Real Human Learning" is the ultimate monetization of digital bits.

All that is left for you and I to do is answer the following:
(a) how much do we value "Learning" and
(b) how much are we willing to invest/pay in it?

Forrester survey confirms what most of us already knew

2009-11-17T08:42:00.000-08:00

Forrester Research has recently published a study that confirms what most of us already suspected - most US consumers are unwilling to pay for on-line content. Their research has found that 80% of US and Canadian internet users would not pay for access to newspaper and magazine websites.

What about the 20% who are willing to pay? What did Forrester find out about these people? There was very little consensus in the data. Gender and marital status does not impact willingness to pay for on-line news. Income only makes a small difference. Those willing to pay for magazine content are slightly younger than those willing to pay for newspaper content.

Interestingly, 60% of newspaper executives have considered the option of pay-for-content although only 10% actual charge for on-line access.

Click here view The New York Times article on the Forrester study

Click here to see the study discussed on Forrester's blog

The next phase of social games?

2009-11-16T05:53:00.001-08:00

This CNet article gave me hope that it won't be Mafia Wars and FarmVille forever...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10397896-62.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Disappointing Games of 2009

2009-11-10T07:01:00.000-08:00

Saw this on gamedaily.com and thought you would enjoy! The most disappointing games of 2009 are:

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/bayonetta/xbox-360/game-features/biggest-disappointments-of-2009/

What does it mean to experience a startup?

2009-11-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

Startup is all about the agility with which its leader can make changes.
How quickly can one learn that one is failing and how quickly can they adjust?

An established company that a startup wants to beat has the luxury (and its Achilles heel) to fail every six months -- i.e. wait for six months to learn whether they failed or succeeded in whatever they put in play and then another six months to make adjustments. In contrast, a startup, that luxury is 10 days to learn if you succeeded and then another 7-10 days to adjust.

This is the reality and intensity of innovation.
Fail early and fail often. Learn always.

Learn to DJ by playing a video game

2009-11-04T07:12:00.000-08:00

According to this article in the Mercury News, the new DJ Hero can actually help you learn some necessary skills on the turntables. My biggest frustration with Guitar Hero is that it doesn't teach you to play, but maybe they are finally starting to figure out the power of learning with video games.

http://www.mercurynews.com/columns/ci_13653362?nclick_check=1

What Can't Social Media Do?

2009-11-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

The term "social media" seems to be analogous to "marketing strategy" nowadays. Social Media is an important tool in creating brand awareness and reaching existing and potential customers with your company's messages but it is not in and of itself a marketing strategy. It's a set of tools that feed in to the bigger picture. It's a piece of a much bigger puzzle.

I love this piece that I found on Mal's Blog about what Social Media cannot do. Here are 10 Things That Social Media Can't Do from http://www.malchia.com/wp/.

10 Things That Social Media Can't Do

I'm Adding "Prosumerism" to my Vocabulary Today...

2009-11-02T06:47:00.000-08:00

I just found this interesting article on denisbhancock.com that got me thinking about the idea of "prosumerism"...

http://denisbhancock.com/2009/01/09/exploring-prosumerism-thru-a-dilbert-cartoon-part-1/

"Carrying the bag" from Marc Benioff

2009-10-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

Here is an interview with Marc Benioff -- the CEO of Salesforce.com. Very early on my career, I realized starting at the bottom of any organization and/or learning about the real users how they do their work, gives the best picture of what an user wants and how you can sell to them.

Almost two decades ago, indeed I did start at the bottom -- as a lowly performance improvement analyst at $23,000 per annum salary, which subsequently led me to "learn to see" and understand how one of the most complex (process-wise) organization on planet aka "hospital" works. A learning that I could not have replicated or learned in any other way.

Our PAKRA products simulate how users do their work and learn .. i.e. customer-driven, hence Marc Benioff's comments resonates with me and are reinforced every day in our PAKRA culture.

Read more ...

Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff: ‘Many CEOs are afraid to get too personal’

Teachers are Getting Creative.

2009-10-27T05:53:00.000-07:00

This is from earlier in the year, but the message is still very interesting. I have noticed more and more video games targeted at teaching basic skills and, according to this article from Modbee.com, many schools are picking up on the trend. Come to think of it, weren't many of us playing The Oregon Trail in school 12-15 years ago? Just goes to show how much you can learn when having fun!

http://www.modbee.com/life/buzzz/story/555416.html

Girls can play and have fun. Games with intrigue and strategy component remains important.

2009-10-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

Watch this fairly old TED Talks:
Brenda Laurel on games for girls

Fellas! We can all don our Ma Kali avatars. Watch out!

My kids are not geniuses. Please refund $29.95 for the product I bought.

2009-10-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

Today, I read this New York Times article about Disney's recent policy to offer refunds to all parents who purchased Baby Einstein educational videos and supposedly their child DID NOT become a genius.

I think this is a great example of a business standing behind their customer guarantee -- "we will refund when your expectation is not met, provided you acknowledge your incredulous beliefs were not met."

From Disney's standpoint, how many mothers will really acknowledge that their precious child did not turn out to be a genius?

I say the score for frivolous class action attorneys: 0, business smarts: 1
No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

Mr. Steve Levitt: Here is another case study for you!

Is this our time? Is this our moment?

2009-10-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 conference is underway. As usual, cheerful and interesting ideas are being presented. One of those this year is from Mark Pincus.

A hunch and gut again is all good "shaping excitement" vision. Can someone kick it up a notch? That's the question that I want an answer.

Read ...
Web 2.0: Zynga’s Mark Pincus predicts an economy built around social apps

"When I grow up I want to be middle management?"

2009-10-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

Many years ago during Superbowl -- Monster.com launched its first nationwide ads. One of the ads had a young teen in B&W backdrop saying, "When I grow up I want to be a middle management?" There were many others -- such as "When I grow up I want to file all day." Loved them all.

Remember y'all. It is hard to be a middle manager -- because one has to truly manage up, bottom and peer -- in all 360 degrees. It is one of the hardest scenario for any manager. Burn-out can be high and scope of influence spreads as far as the petty bureaucrat's 4X6 wooden desk.

I find myself thinking about it. I found an article about Middle management excellence.

I have no beef with those who want structured existence and want to forget about their work-lives, once they leave the parking lot of their work-place. They can earn a fair living and and do things in remaining hours in the day that's not "like" work. It is a great choice. Additionally every company needs them, so there is risk-free with some guaranteed certitude to always have a job.

However, if one is a little bit ambitious, a little bit wanting to do more at one's job, then one has to make a choice and work towards transcending their current predicament. They must make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ask oneself, "What should I do to lead, than being led?" "What do I enjoy doing?" "What are my priorities?

There are easy ways to transcend it. I have seen "individual contributors" and "consultants" make this transition and leap beyond the middle management woes quickly.

Others -- they have to start thinking where they want to be be. It is all in one's mind.

Rest -- enjoy your life outside work. That too can be pleasant.

Speculation Abounds - Price of Xbox 360 Gold Membership to Double?

2009-10-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

If you are a gamer and the Xbox 360 is your console of choice, then it is likely that you are paying $50 per year for a Gold Membership. This membership allows you to download content, accumulate friends lists, play others on-line, and even stream NetFlix content. At $50 per year, or $4 per month, most users hardly mind the fee.

What if this fee were to DOUBLE? Many industry experts (including a blogger at www.pcworld.com) feel that it is only a matter of time before this happens. Will the gamer community be tolerant of a 100% price increase when they are already paying $60 per new game and $1.99 or more for downloadable content? You've paid at least $300 for your console, $50 for each extra wireless remote that you've bought, and $50 for a wireless router that allows you to tap in to your internet service. Have I mentioned that each rechargeable battery for your controllers runs you $20 and the charger for that battery is another $20? While $8 per month does not sound that excessive, it certainly isn't easy to stomach in light of the built in expenses of gaming on an Xbox 360.

For more speculation on a Gold Membership price increase, take a look at Matt Peckham's blog on www.pcworld.com.

What If Xbox LIVE Cost $100?

Ron Arad: A view

2009-10-18T18:13:00.000-07:00

As many of you: I spend my spare time pouring over chairs. Ron Arad -- a designer to salivate on. Design -- whether it is a chair, or whether it is a room, or a glass or software. User experience is what matters.

Go to NYC --- to see the exhibit.. Or else via online. Ron Arad at MoMA

What did you just say? "You can pack your data and go!"

2009-10-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

Recently I read the following article about you -the user- packing your data and leaving. This is the best idea that I have come across in recent times.

For those of us involved with customer-driven competition, this makes perfect business sense. If you -the provider- (a) cannot figure out cheaper ways to acquire consumers and (b) cannot keep your consumers by remaining fresh in your consumers eyes, then why should your products and services be a marketplace success?

Unfortunately VCs and Financing communities do not typically want easy ways for consumers to leave your company. However, at the end of the day the product and service must stand on its own merit.

Let our incredible interface and the experience you have and the "ease-of-use" keep you -Our User- with us and not the contract terms and conditions (T&Cs.) Excellent barriers to exit can only be created when one has a great product and gives the user a great experience. It cannot be done with great terms and conditions (T&C). Exercising T&C related business practices to keep you only makes it a further aggravating experience for you.

Some examples of T&C based exits:
1. I remember few years ago how AOL would keep users: If you called them to cancel your subscription, they would harass you for hours and hours and make it impossible to delete your userid. Finally, few State Attorney Generals (includes Elliot Spitzer) had to enforce a new rule -- "If I -- the user -- wants to leave AOL -- I really get to leave." .. without my data of course.

2. Today, the first thing that comes to my mind is Linkedin. They impose a 30 day to get out of their Premium subscription. After you realize that their Premium subscription is still expensive and there are no good applications, making you decide to cancel the subscription -- Guess what? Yes! you cannot leave for 30 days. No way for you to take your data and leave - ever. Even, the payment takes 30 days. Linkedin is waiting to be defeated by the next "connections" imitator coming into play. So! be it.

Read this ... Pack Up Your Data and Leave Whenever You Want, It’s the New Rule of the Cloud

I'm Going to Disneyland!

2009-10-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

What will Disney think of next? This article on CNN.com explains the newest attraction at Epcot...build your very own roller coaster! Step aside kids, I'm going to Disneyland!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/14/disney.math.ride/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Better Than the Arcade!

2009-10-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

I have now lost hours of sleep playing the arcade games on ESPN.com. There are so many to choose from, but baseball is my favorite. Check it out:

http://espn.go.com/free-online-games/sports/baseball

What's Your Social Network?

2009-10-14T06:41:00.000-07:00

According to this CNN article, those in my "social class" are not likely to be on MySpace...and here I thought it was just out of fashion.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/13/social.networking.class/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Women do buy video games

2009-10-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

When we first started our company, many asked us do women/girls play video games? All our research indicated that women/girls made up more than 50% and more the community of those playing online games.

The article Videogame Firms Make a Play for Women discusses the new products that are about to flood the market and cater to the taste of girls and women gamers.

However, unlike the toy industry, the companies will be in for a big surprise of minimal takers, if they make the games too stereotypical femme pink. The gamers have gender-agnostic need of intrigue, strategy and fun.

I am just glad that the video game industry is no longer missing out on the gamergirl power.

Brickbreaker - An Addiction for All to Enjoy

2009-10-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

This NY Times article made me feel a little less crazy for my BrickBreaker habit and even inspired me to join the facebook group called "You Think I’m Doing Something Important, but I’m Really Playing BrickBreaker".

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/fashion/13brickbreaker.html?_r=2&ref=style

We Would Like to Know More About How Your Workplace Hires and Trains Associates

2009-10-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

Hi all. PAKRA would like to know more about how your workplace manages the associate hiring and training process. Please take our survey linked below. It will only take 3 minutes of your time.

Thank you in advance!

Click here to take the PAKRA Associate Hiring, Training, and Management Survey

WSJ announces the end of the reign of email

2009-10-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

WSJ announces the end of email empire. But I still think it is worth emailing -- because Twitter and Facebook are sometimes too little, too self absorbed and one can barely attach a file .. Read on ...

Why Email No Longer Rules… And what that means for the way we communicate

Words Rule or Should have?

2009-10-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Scribblenauts -- interesting but little bit of a flop, according to the critics.
Read more ... Lay Down the Guns and Swords; Your Best Weapon Is the Dictionary

Another instance of: Good concept, poor execution.

Healthcare debate on napkin

2009-09-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

This is a simple but message driven presentation Healthcare debate on a napkin.
I wonder if this the next media channel for "Idiot's Guide" and "... for Dummies".
Reducing patient safety events and helping with reducing costs are not addressed fully.

Blaming the economy and start-ups

2009-09-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

I was recently reading this article More Shop Talk at Inc. 500

The author Jay Goltz describes his self-realization moment: "Here is what I am telling myself: The bad economy has made me watch expenses more, reduce payroll and inventory, and think cash flow more than profits. While the economy appears to be getting better, I should not just sit around and wait for the recovery to fix everything. I need to take a closer look at my businesses to determine what we are doing right, what we could be doing better, and what we should not be doing at all. Not all of my problems are due to the recession; the recession just exposed them more. I am in more control than I would like to think, because with that control comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes working harder. No rest for the weary! Most people are suffering from some level of battle fatigue, and it is time to re-energize and get ready for next year."

Although the discussion in the blog is about an established company, two points made in this article resonates with start-up environment and those are:
1. This is the time to invest.
2. This is the time for people who come to work in start-up to understand success = effort X agility to change.

SaaS Business: How do you grow?

2009-09-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

The article SaaS Startups: Knobs and Dials and Other Insights provides great insights about customer feedback driving product design.

SaaS, Learning, Ant Colonies and Data: Do we have an answer for businesses to improve the quality of their decisions?

2009-09-24T16:53:00.000-07:00

Very few businesses exist today where the culture is entirely autocratic and/or patriarchal. Most businesses, engage in group decision-making (not necessarily democratic -- of course.)

This makes it very important for businesses to understand not only how individuals make decisions but also how groups make decisions. In turn, it implies that a business must:
(a) understand perceptions of risks of a group (especially to minimize group-thinking);
(b) measure performance of the activities and decision-making of the group/team;
(c) understand the individual's critical thinking skills and its impact to the collective intelligence.

Web 2.0, SaaS and great optimization techniques are available now for businesses. Finally! you can improve the quality of your team's decisions.

First goal of building a SaaS application: Make it affordable.
Without affordability, no one will buy or switch from traditional enterprise.

Second goal of building a SaaS application: Make it easy to use.
Without ease, workarounds will be created to reduce (Dare! I say) or sabotage the initial intent of deploying the technology. Also, an easy-to-use application typically reduces GIGO effects of data collection.

Third goal of building a SaaS application: Make it easy to both understand and learn from the collected data.
An intangible asset of a business is the immense quantities of data they gather. This data will remain a swampy mush to reckon with and not good clay to build with, if groups or individuals cannot easily extract and analyze the data. If they cannot easily (a) learn the risks (b) measure the quality of group-decisions (c) understand the individual's critical-thinking skills -- then they will continue to make bad decisions. This "ease of learning" also allows for collaborative sharing across the businesses.

Fourth goal of building a SaaS application: Easily create (almost automatically) the next iteration (version) of the application based on the learning and adaptation of the underlying business process it has modeled.

In my opinion, most products of most SaaS companies have not yet reached the maturity to meet this goal. If we can design and create applications, where the underlying data and learning changes both the underlying work process and the SaaS application then the value of SaaS will be much higher than most experts predict.

Recall, the slow-moving mudslide of traditional enterprise-wide applications such as traditional SAP, Oracle etc. What happens to your SaaS application, when users change their underlying work process for better -- how long will it take your developers to change and adapt the application?

Ant Colony Optimization techniques are becoming more mainstream. This technique uses heuristic (data-driven) models to help systems learn. The models operate on an extremely simple premise: Individual ant is not intelligent, but a colony of ants working together create a swarm or collective intelligence to do many tasks well. See reference [1] for more.

These techniques can be utilized to meet the third and the fourth goal.
Only when these goals are met, then the "cat coming out of the bag" event will happen for SaaS. See reference [2] for more.

[1] Lessons from ant colony overcoming biases web 2.0

[2] The Cat is Out of the Bag (Again): The Hidden (?) Business Model in SaaS