Customers are dynamic.  Their needs change.

A new set of connected products and services intimately tuned to the needs of dynamic customers is emerging. New relationship-based content, applications and data services are being launched every day by established and emerging companies.

More than just subscriptions, companies such as Google, NetFlix and others are launching new services to existing customers to deepen loyalty and reduce churn. Companies agile enough to re-configure and personalize pricing on the fly are the ones that will retain the customer relationship.

As companies move beyond simple pricing models such as “unlimited” or “all you can eat,” there is an emerging requirement for rapid implementation of activity-based pricing that customizes a consumer’s utilization of a service to an optimum price level.

Companies thinking about launching activity based billing models are embracing concepts such as lean, agile development and perpetual betas as they adapt to the fast incremental cycles necessary to launch new services. Product launch time frames must compress and new services should be launched in weeks instead of months or years.

While product launch cycles are being compressed, developing billing infrastructure to support these activity-based pricing launches has proven to be a problem for some companies because of limitations in ERP and G/L platforms. These platforms are built for selling product in single transactions; they are not designed for monetizing relationship-based, connected services. These platforms lack the ability to manage the Activity-To-Cash cycle – the ability to establish a relationship and capture revenue generated by that relationship.

For those launching new services, it means billing systems, order to cash processes and more importantly a new set of processes called Activity to Cash(TM) must be customized and implemented for each new billing or business model.

My client, Transverse, makers of www.tractbilling.com, has done a great job explaining the Activity to Cash process.

The Activity-To-Cash cycle layers on top of ERP and GL platforms. it nurtures and expands the relationship businesses establish with their customers at the inception of processing an order and then activating, provisioning, assuring, billing and collecting payment for a service. The Activity-To-Cash cycle leverages the capabilities of real-time rating & charging, analytics, and entitlements to monitor how people engage with a service and then allow on-the-fly changes to product and service configurations to further entice consumption and usage by customers.

For example, with entitlements, advice-of-charge can prompt a customer to top up an account and a follow up with a coupon or promotion might entice that person to further engage and consume.

Whether connected products/services digital store fronts or brick and mortar subscriptions, for companies seeking new revenue, the ability to adapt billing to rapidly evolving business models is critical.

Schaumburg, IL (August 24, 2010) — Did you know that more than half of America’s teens are exposed to cyber bullying? Studies show this form of abuse is growing at a very fast pace. Cyber bullying includes rumors, threats, gossip and humiliation and happens through e-mail, websites, blogs, chat rooms, text and instant messaging, and videos. Cyber bullying statistics point to devastating effects on victims, such as bad grades, emotional stress, depression, poor self-esteem, sleep disorders, headaches, stomach pains and in some cases, suicide. As your kids get ready to go back to school, now is the time to think about Internet safety and how to recognize the signs of cyber abuse.

As you check off items on your child’s school supply list, you should also be thinking about how to protect your child from what can happen on the Internet. “As technology advances and new forms of online social networking emerge, child safety on the Internet is of critical importance,” said David Barker, for TrueCare LLC – makers of Truecare.net – a social media monitoring service for parents. “We want parents to know that cyber bullying is very real, sometimes very subtle, and there are things you can do to help prevent it.”

Knowing the signs of cyber abuse is the first step.  Here are 10 signs that your child might be a victim:

1. Your child becomes secretive about what they are doing online
2. Uses computers outside of home, such as at homes of friends, Internet cafes, or libraries
3. Has a sudden decline in homework or grades
4. Doesn’t feel well, headaches, stomach aches, nervousness
5. Is restless, has difficulty sleeping
6. Shows changes in behavior or has mood swings
7. Becomes withdrawn or displays low self-esteem
8. Does not want to go to school or socialize
9. Avoids telling you who their online friends are
10. No longer wants to use the computer or cell phone

TrueCare.net recommends that parents get involved and monitor their child’s online relationships. That they set rules and limits for using the internet and social networking sites, while reminding children that they trust them, but don’t trust the other people out there.

About TrueCare.net

TrueCare’s unique social media monitoring product was designed by parents as a way to effectively monitor their child’s online social networking activity without invading their child’s privacy. It is not easy to be a parent these days. The majority of teens now communicate via social networking sites. It is difficult to keep up with who your child is interacting with on these sites. TrueCare automatically tracks your child’s social networking sites – MySpace, Facebook and Twitter – for inappropriate content and sends you an e-mail alert in real-time when it finds something concerning.

For more information, visit www.truecare.net.

Press Contact

Ben Bradley
630-430-7267
ben@maconraine.com

Paul McCord’s new book “Bust Your Slump” takes General Patton’s advice and applies it to getting your sales back on track fast. His ideas aren’t new but this call to action makes huge sense for sales people that are not hitting their numbers.

In this quick and valuable read, McCord combines positive thinking, smart tactical activities and a pre-disposition for action into a short, easily readable set of 12 strategies that will improve your sales pipeline. You probably won’t have time to implement all 12 strategies. McCord advises you pick one or two strategies that fit what you sell and then EXECUTE.

The critical thing is that you are in a sales slump, you need to ACT and Act NOW.

The dispute is over a small amount – about $220.

The reptile brain doesn’t have complex emotions. It thinks in simple terms: fight or flight.

My reptile brain wants to fight. Maybe post a video of their shoddy customer service practices to YouTube, register a yourcompanysucks.com domain, and generally bitch and moan so loudly that their senior management gets headaches.  I guarantee I can create a headache that costs far more than $220 with just a few hours of reptile effort.

But I won’t.  At least not yet.

Why not yet? We’ll, maybe I can turn them into a customer for BrandProtect (one of my clients) and it wouldn’t be good if I slammed them publicly.  And also because it just too easy to make myself a nuisance. With the power of the Internet, it is possible for one person to tell his story to thousands of people.

This power illustrates just how effective a single “guerrilla” can be in the face of a corporate superpower.

In the past, given a superpower brand’s supremacy in marketing, customer service, public relations and legal support, few rational opponents would deliberately seek a face-to-face confrontation.  It was almost always a loosing battle.

But today, any idiot, including myself, can resort to asymmetric, or David-and-Goliath, strategies. I may not win the battle but I can make myself a nuisance or even bloody the nose of a superbrand by using some extremely affordable weapons such as GoDaddy.com (less than $10 to register a yourcompanysucks.com domain), Twitter, a blog, and the Flip (a hi-def video camera that costs less than $100).

Although it would only take one letter from a superbrand to make me cease and desist, the cost of just the attorney writing that letter is already way more than the $200 in dispute. Now matter how simple the cease and desist, escalation from the superbrand would be costly.

Superbrands are also seeing public relations backlash from stepping on bloggers and vocal complainers. In effect, a legal victory can still equal a PR defeat

So what should the superbrands do to protect against the asymmetric customer with a chip on his shoulder? Should I find someone to help me make a video about this company’s poor customer service? What would you do?

At MaconRaine we’re well known Epicureans when it comes to our appetites. After hearing about Quizno’s new Torpedo sandwich I decided to treat the office to what I hoped would be a delicious diversion. Unfortunately the Torpedo turned out to be more of a limp toothpick than the sub-sinking terror promised in the advertisements. 

 What I received wasn’t the robust sandwich I’d hoped for. I could have dealt with its floppiness if it had come through with the promise of “over a foot of Quizno’s flavor”.  At $4 dollars that’s 3 inches of delicious taste per dollar and I can accept extra cost if the quality is there. However, unless Quizno’s has partnered with DuPont to manufacture its ingredients there’s something seriously wrong with this sandwich.

As you can see from the picture below, amidst the scant scattering of lettuce lies a single layer of ham and some vagrant tomato chunks. A small, limp, sandwich deserves something to bolster its reputation; unfortunately it seems Quizno’s has gone to great pains to put quality behind them.

The amount of plasticized taste they were able to pack into such a small sandwich, with so few ingredients, should be the real tag line on their ads. Not only does it have the consistency of a Tupperware container it also tastes like the manufacturing floor where the containers are made. I guess that’s the value proposition on this inedible disappointment.

Having the right contact information makes it a little bit easier to get some time with potential prospects. You know the sales and marketing process; simply finding an excuse to get in the door is a round-about, adaptive, gradual and hybrid process.  

To perform basic data hygiene and campaign targeting, we use all of the data services: Hoovers, Jigsaw, and a variety of value added list services.   Some of the services are licensed (but seldom used) by our clients and some of the services we license directly.

We use JigSaw the most because we can get prospect email addresses. We don’t spam. All of our email contact is one to one and extremely personalized. 

Unfortunately with Jigsaw my major complaint is the inability to filter and remove unqualified prospects from my queries before I close out my list. When I’ve got to edit my search in the Shopping Cart it slows my workflow and can be incredibly frustrating. For example, I recently conducted a JigSaw search for VPs with keyword “Security” in the title. While reviewing the search results in the shopping cart, I noticed a number of contacts were actually responsible for physical security instead of network security.  Removing those contacts was time consuming.

Recently, we were contacted by ZoomInfo’s PR department, given a membership and asked to evaluate it on our blog. Since I love free stuff, here goes…

For sheer personalization what we like about ZoomInfo is the in-depth profiles kept on each individual. We can quickly research a prospect and craft custom outreach that references past press clippings or web-mentions.  Zoominfo calls this capability “deep” data because it improves how we target and keep tabs on client competitive activity.

Zoominfo’s lead sources are updated daily and, as I said, the service allows for powerful list segmentation. I can also upload key account lists to expand my baseline understanding of organizations in my clients’ target market. This more than meets my criteria for a good prospecting application.

If forced to pick one of these services over another, I don’t know if I would be able too. Each one of these services (ZoomInfo, JigSaw, etc.) does things slightly different and different projects require a different set of tools. In a best case scenario I’d recommend you buy them all, but the economy being what it is sometimes we have to make decisions. So for bulk prospecting I recommend Jigsaw. For surgical high level prospecting, Zoominfo is the way to go.

Which do you prefer and why?

I can’t keep up! There was no way I could have predicted even five years ago that so much of my world would depend on the Internet. Take a look at a few of these apps. Good luck and enjoy.

A few weeks back, I emailed Pete Burgeson at Crowdspring and asked him to share his thoughts about what the agency of the future would look like. As background, CrowdSpring crowd sources graphic design. Companies put graphic design jobs out for bid on Crowdspring then graphic designers submit their ideas. The company picks a favorite, the designer gets paid. As you can imagine, this model threatens the livelyhood of some agencies. But some forward looking agencies are starting to explore crowdsourcing as a possible opportunity to reduce cost, better manage freelancers and possibly reinvent the way they engage with clients.

According to Pete, the agency model is going to be changing in a number of ways.  “One of the more interesting and relevant to us is going to be how I think agencies will interact with clients.  What we’re seeing is more and more shops crop up that have little to no interest in supplying the creative work in-house.  Sure, there will always be those shops – but they’re called creative shops and they’re very different.  The more ‘traditional’ shops are all trying to figure out how they can use more freelancers or (maybe one day) crowdsourcing to come up with ideation phase of the project.  From there, they can sort through the ideas and bring their true expertise to the table – strategy – and then hone in on a winner, perfect it and execute the shit out of it.”

JungleDisk uses Amazon’s web services and allows easy transfer of files to and from our local machines to a file server in the cloud. It is simple to use. I simply map a remote folder to my local Z: drive and can save files or even access my files from Panera.

The price is right. 1GB can be stored for just $0.15 cents per month. The hardest part is signing up for Amazon’s S3 service. The sign-up is confusing and since I am not a developer I had to read some of the instructions. I prefer not having to read instructions and like sign-ups that are more intuitive.