Monetizing relationships...

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One of the paradoxes of marketing and sales is "monetizing relationships."

We typically hate to be sold. The harder the sell, the more we hate it. However, we typically like to buy. Any person who has had an experience of spending their own money knows this. Many of us have been blessed to be able to buy something from someone we found ourselves liking.

This is no accident.

On the other side of that transaction, the sales person has to build trust, rapport, peer-to-peer credibility, some level of personal connection. An emotional connection. A relationship, if you like. That goes triple for the B2B complex sale, where a company is buying big-ticket, high-risk items from another company. (I believe that it's also true in many other types of sales where the stakes are much lower.)

We who are selling stuff want people who are in the market to buy to be confiding their problems to us. Unless they trust us to let us in on those problems and help them solve those problems, nothing is going to get bought. At least not from us.

Why would a buyer trust me [a marketer, sales person, company PR representative, executive leader, etc]? Because he or she believes at some level I am willing and able to act in their interests as well as, and possibly even counter to my own (at least in the short term). There's some human vulnerability going on. They tell me what's really going on, and I tell them what I really can and can't do to address their situation. Because we have a relationship.

Now, in addition to all of this, the sales person is also on the hook to monetize that relationship.

How can I maintain your trust (which implies vulnerability) and still do things that move you toward buying something from my company (which implies control)?

If you've ever wondered why so many startups fail, it's because selling is a lot harder than it looks. Most startups are not run by people who can sell. And sales (including repeat business from happy customers) are what keep companies in business.

If you ever wondered why great sales people make a lot of money, it's because the ability to monetize a relationship is worth a lot of money.

Having trouble picking up the phone?

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Most human beings (except for a few superpeople) experience moments where it's tough to make a phone call. Or perhaps a whole set of calls.

Each of us faces the call that no one else should make. Hiring someone. Firing someone. Delivering bad news to a key stakeholder. A crucial conversation in a negotiation. Saying thank you. Strong leaders earn their keep on these calls.

And then there's the calls I *should* make... but which aren't time sensitive, aren't on any critical path, and require more time and/or emotion than I can find in my schedule.

Here's what trusted friend/consultant and I did a few years ago to get past this internal resistance.

We swapped lists of people we knew we should call but hadn't. She called a client of mine and asked for feedback about a project I’d done for them, what they’d thought of me and my work. I called a connection she’d made at a conference to take his temperature about a potential alliance.

It was surprisingly freeing.

Why I think this worked:

... The accountability ("If she's going to make her calls, I'd better make mine!"),
... Our relationship ("I can't let her down; she needs my help"),
... Our passionate belief in each others’ work,
... Our emotional distance from the people we were calling (and whatever they might say)

We each got what we needed, too.

Successful leaders work with a community or coalition of other professionals. Developed within companies (informal personal networks determine survival, stagnation, or failure for many corporate careers). Nurtured across industries (ex: professional associations). Gathered around communities of interest. Rallied around specific issues or even charismatic personalities. Whatever the glue may be, it takes relationships to get things done. Because most of us really don't want to do everything.

Look at your to-do list. Can you arrange a swap with a trusted colleague to do things you've been avoiding?

Barcamp, continued

Another reaction to the Barcamp-style event I attended last week...

Ten years ago, I founded a concert series called SALON: live classical and jazz music concerts in people's living rooms. It occurs to me that the Barcamp forum has a lot in common with the structure I have developed over the years.

- User generated. The audience all chip in donations for the musicians, so no one person is stuck with the bill. The audience and host bring food, so no one person is stuck cooking.
- Grassroots. The events occur in private spaces, not rented venues.
- Egalitarian. No cover fee is charged, and no one makes money off of the event (except the musicians; the point of the event is to support them).
- Organizer driven, not organization driven. The events happen whenever a few people and I decide to make one happen. If there's demand, the events happen more often. If I get busy with other things, there are fewer events. With no bank account, no state filing fees, no articles of incorporation, no advisory board meetings... there's no overhead to support. The SALON events just happen when they happen.
- Community oriented. Participants come into the community and keep coming because of a shared interest -- in the case of SALON, it's music. This common ground is strong enough to keep the community together & drives continued demand for the events.

The SALON format also has much to experiment with from the barcamp world:

- User generated content streaming to the internet during performance
- Audience participation
- Use of social media to promote / manage events
- Worldwide community of users participating, not just one geofocused community

I'll continue to think about this while finishing up the re-release of the SALON home concerts website. Stay tuned.

Barcamp: a marketer's review

Attended my first barcamp-style event today. (What is a barcamp?) Fascinating mix of very old and very new ideas about community and events! And in-person relationship building plus social media. Loved the experience, both as a marketer and as a human being.

Here's how I saw the barcamp format play out at this event (vs traditional professional conferences and educational tracks at trade shows).

Pros:
- Highly engaged participants. More than 2 or 3 attendees talking during the sessions. A cross between a round table discussion (which it is supposed to be) and a panel discussion (the most experienced, outspoken, curious, and/or knowledgeable people tend to talk most).
- Lots of networking. People felt relaxed enough to introduce themselves to others - even if they are visibly not accustomed to doing so.
- Lots of available information, freely shared.
- Creative, comfortable setting: conducive to learning, ideation, thinking, asking questions. Nonthreatening.
- Variety and quality of participants' disciplinary expertise, professional backgrounds.
- Diversity of age, interests, personal stories.
- Format is heavily dependent on Q&A; relatively easy to ask questions.
- Very humane, spontaneous forum. Very good cross-training for living in a democracy. Very flexible format, attendee-driven. Responsibility is on the attendees to say what you want, get out there and meet people, and get what you came for.
- Liked the public space where this particular event happened.
- Started with a small panel discussion. This worked well as an icebreaker.
- As with online social media, information flows like a stream at the event. You can get up and move yourself to a different person or group at your choosing. You can go outside and take a break if you need to.
- Liked the use of social media to promote the event, capture RSVPs, capture meta information about the event
- The barcamp forum is not designed for privacy and doesn't really allow participants to be invisible listeners. Not everyone is intrinsically comfortable with that. This event did a nice job of letting people show up and get as involved or as visible as they wished.
- Fun! Really fun. Surprisingly fun.

Other observations:
- A lot happening at once. (Ex: simultaneous sessions, side conversations during the sessions, people coming and going all day)
- As with traditionally organized conferences, you must accept that you're going to miss something b/c of the simultaneous sessions, comings & goings, & side conversations. As with a traditional conference, it's up to you to go after what you want to get out of the experience.
- Because the sessions are essentially unplanned, it's difficult to set expectations or match what someone's coming to learn with the information people are planning to bring. A more traditional conference agenda or some other form of advance planning could offset this. (thoughts on that below)
- I like the informality of the event, which encourages wandering between groups. However, still uncomfortable moments where someone is sitting with one of the breakouts for a while and is wondering whether it's *really* OK to get up and move to the other group.
- Informality breeds side conversations. Uncomfortable moments can happen where someone gets pulled into a side conversation but wants to hear the main discussion. (This can happen in any informal business setting, of course.)
- If you're trying to meet people of specific background, niches, or interests within the community, the format makes it difficult to facilitate that when a bunch of people just show up. This is true of most networking events, but I think barcamp's integration with social media actually offers some avenues to counteract it (ideas further on in this post).
- At risk because of the egalitarian format: breakout sessions could get hijacked by the loudest people in the room, who might not be the most knowledgeable or have the most interesting questions.
- Also at risk because of the egalitarian format: the quietest people in the room may have the most to offer. How to get them to participate?

Ideas:
- Would have liked an overhead projector to...
.......project a "who's who" list of participants and capture keywords about them during the roundtable introduction,
.......capture the session agenda while the attendees develop it,
.......capture notes as the sessions progress,
.......do all of this real-time in the event wiki, which would be available to attendees online after the event.
.......project a countdown timer or clock during the breakout sessions.
- Insert formal break(s) about once an hour. Observed uncomfortable moments when people were wondering when it was OK to take a bio break or go get coffee yet not miss an introduction, an announcement, something important. Also, choreographed breaks will help brains process the incoming information.
- Given the unpredictability of internet access in public venues, would have liked a sign in sheet-- even if just old-fashioned paper or spreadsheet.
- Breakout sessions would benefit from professional (or at least experienced/trained) moderators. That's how focus groups and other types of meetings keep from hijacked by talkative/forceful personalities, and ensure that quiet persons have a voice. It fits the egalitarian, democratic vibe of barcamp but could add a level of professionalism, planning, and order to such events.
- I think there's room to experiment with the sizes of breakout groups. Traditional meeting/focus group facilitation tells you that if you get more than a certain # of people in a group (8-10ish) not everyone can participate equally in the conversation. The larger the breakout group, the less likely quiet persons will talk. The group ownership dynamic of the event changes. Individual accountability for participating changes. I'm not sure that's a bad thing or a good thing. I think it would be interesting to experiment with and understand.
- Ideally, I think attendees should register in advance, receive guidelines for preparing (even specific assignments) upon registration, fill out some kind of pre-event online questionnaire at registration, and (potentially) participate in some form of social network with the group before the event. This would help attendees identify who they need to meet and plan what they want to cover during the time.
- For walk-ins who didn't register and attendees who are new to barcamp, it would be nice to have a "democamp" where organizers hold a panel discussion to demonstrate in microcosm how the entire group will interact during the breakouts. Including taking breaks and having presenters wander in and out of the session. Whatever behavior you want from the attendees, model it.

Overall:
- Excellent format for getting informal mingling/networking with people in a community of interest.
- Really challenges traditional top-down, teacher-driven, classroom-oriented notions of learning!
- A really exciting tension between structured events and serendipitous occurrences.
- Creates much more space for building relationships and trust than traditional networking events.
- Takes some getting used to and a lot more work than meets the eye. You really get out of it what you put into it.
- Very flexible event format which can be customized to serve many purposes -- company meetings, client needs assessments, teambuilding, customer advisory committees, problem solving/war room situations, professional networking events, political organizing, fundraising...