Tiger Woods

Every business person (male and female) has had a career-changing open zipper problem. You may have one now, and not even know it. Tiger Woods has one and it is not what you think it is.

As the story was told to me, a rising star in marketing at a FORTUNE 50 company had been on a roll.  His cutting-edge campaigns increased market share by seven percent.  Buzz about him extended from the executive suite, through trade media, to analysts who were downgrading competitors.

Then, one day while preparing for a boardroom presentation, he used the executive suite men’s room. Before exiting, he checked his tie, hair and breath, but overlooked his still-open zipper.  Just as he exited, the CEO walked toward him taking critical note of the gaping fly.

The CEO just stared at his groin

He re-zipped before the presentation where he enthralled everyone, except the CEO, who could concentrate on nothing but the man’s groin.  The star fell.  He never made a boardroom presentation again.  He jumped to another company where his career rocketed skyward once again and never never knew why he lost favor at Company A.

Because we are not Tiger Woods, no one reports the open zippers in our careers. We have to stay alert for the small mistakes or inappropriate actions, having nothing to do with performance, that can thwart our effectiveness.  Woods is lucky, he knows what his open zipper is (the metaphor was not contrived either, just kismet), therefore he can develop a plan for resolving it.

Most of us are not so fortunate.  Like the torpedoed marketing pro, we never see the open zipper.  Sometimes, we sense something wrong and respond by working better or harder, never knowing that the problem is totally unrelated.

For normal non-celebrities, the open zipper might be:

• Being behind deadline on one of your many projects.  It may be the least important, but until you get that one done, those in charge do not care about anything else you do.
• Overcharging $5 on one line item in an invoice that totaled $20,000. Until you adequately explain why it happened, and satisfy the customer’s concern, the entire relationship is tainted.
• Having your words misquoted or misrepresented.  You often don’t know who is reading conference reports, emails and other communications around your business, which means your zipper can be reopened over and over.

Can we learn anything from Tiger?

New York Magazine’s astute assessment,
Maybe Tiger Woods Knows Exactly What He’s Doing, suggests he has an excellent plan for handling the problem. Stay out of site and wait for it to pass. That works for him because he’s Tiger Woods, he knows what the problem is, and he has the resources to outlast it. After all it is just an open zipper.

The rest of us need to be more vigilant. Because an open zipper problem can happen any time, whether we have done something wrong or not, keep your antenna up. If people look at you differently, if you are receiving fewer important e-mails, or meeting invites decrease, your zipper may be open. Do everything you can to identify the problem. Then come up with a plan. Open zipper problems can be solved, but first you have to know the fly is down and shut it.

Until the memory fades from the minds of those who matter — bosses, clients, family members, fans, reporters, etc. — Tiger Woods and the rest of us with open zipper problems are just the same, sideshows unable to do our jobs.

John Ribbler – Media Pro, Inc.

Thomas Friedman

Friedman’s nationwide audience was treated to a too-good-to-be-true story (the usual stuff of B2B blog posts, e-zine articles and white papers) claiming that free Internet tools can enhance any company’s marketing the same way the $9.99 massage belt can eliminate a middle-age paunch without diet or exercise. The accuracy of the analogy sums up the value of Friedman’s theory.

Friedman calls this do-it-yourself economy the “Great Inflection.” I have no idea what that means, but I have been in marketing since before Gore invented the Internet and currently use all tools he describes as marvelous. They do not change the apples-to-apples skill requirements and costs of producing excellent sales and marketing. His claim that the “client got a better product for less money” because of free Internet tools is ridiculous.

If Friedman’s goal was to tell his general readership how technology has changed the way marketing is done, he only touched the surface. Besides, the general public doesn’t care about that. If his goal was to plug his “childhood friend Ken Greer’s” “radically downsized” marketing agency, he did a great job of that. But, the cheaper-yet-better theory has no legs and he’s been hoodwinked if Greer convinced him that free Internet tools are enabling struggling agencies and businesses to create cutting-edge marketing.

Greer claims, and Friedman echoes, that for a budget “about 20% of what we would normally charge,” a client received a better promotional video because:

• The script was developed and approved using a box.net collaborative tool. Well, if an online tool enabled Greer and his clients to create a superior script by committee, his copywriter should have been downsized long before the “Great Recession.”  Come on Tom. You are a writer.
• They had no budget for a live video shoot or stock photography, so they pulled all of the images from istockphoto.com. I have done that often and it is a viable option, but don’t believe for a minute that royalty-free images deliver “better quality.” Greer also tells Friedman that these cheap tools allowed him to focus on “his value add: imagination.”  While I support the notion that hunger can benefit creativity, spending many tedious hours groping through istockphoto and similar sites for cheap pictures does not feed the imagination.
• I agree completely with Greer on the benefits of online voice over services. No one should ever have to waste time in a recording studio. Greer used voices.com, where interested talent bid for the job. I like VoiceTalentNow.com, which has flat rate fees. But, voice over costs are never a huge percentage of production budgets.

My purpose is not to bash Friedman, even though I’ll always wonder how deeply he examines his other sources.  My concern is the Internet economy’s “Great Lie” claiming technology allows people lacking skill and talent to be competitive in business. The ways that professionals do things have been changing, and that has included certain efficiencies, but the rules of life have not. You get what you pay for.

John Ribbler – Media Pro, Inc.

John D. Rockefeller

When I graduated from college, more people took jobs as journalists than management consultants.  Today, newspapers, magazines and television stations hire more management consultants than journalists.  So it goes.

My nephew Julian, who spent Thanksgiving with us, started college wanting to be a journalist.  He switched to business, recently graduated from the University of Illinois and began his career as an entry-level analyst with a national consulting firm.  Still having an urge to write, he wondered how that might be someday be compatible with his daily diet of spreadsheets.

To help him explore the possibilities, I told Julian that business at its best is an art form performed by geniuses who (like all great artists) are well grounded in the fundamentals and rules, but are uniquely gifted in their ability to:

• Understand what people want and create things that meet their needs,
• Manage the resources needed to provide those things effectively,
• Negotiate deals that ensure the enterprise is profitable.

More than 90% of the skills needed to excel in those areas cannot be taught by teachers or gleaned in text books.  But, much of it can be learned by reading great literature about business that illuminates the roots of success and failure.  Whether he wants to spend his entire career wrapped up in the game, or look for opportunities to write about the world of commerce, he should absorb important books about business the same way an aspiring film maker needs to learn both the techniques and the humanity behind all of the great movies.

I told Julian that he could not go wrong by starting with the following seven books on Rib’s Recommended Reading List:

1) Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow

No individual, before or since, created as much wealth and controlled a larger portion of the world economy. Knowing who he was is critical to knowing how and why he did what he did.

2) Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar

When it first chronicled the irrationality and ego mania of Wall Street more than 20 years ago, many believed that its harsh light would prevent future excess. Recent events prove that its portrayal of the insanity behind major deals is as timeless as Shakespeare’s portrayals of MacBeth, Lear, Richard III and the rest.

3) Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann

I read this German novel years before entering business but its lessons return front and center whenever I have dealings with organizations owned or managed by members of the same family, no matter how large or small.

4) Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

A fictional chronicle of Wall Street by the finest reporter on American culture of the last 50 years. Sadly, I’ll bet Alan Greenspan read both this and Barbarians, yet was still surprised that the investment banks imploded.

5) Ford: The Men and the Machines by Robert Lacey

This book about America’s most important manufacturer reveals exactly how a company goes from tinkering in a garage to an immovable behemoth.

6) Trump: The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz

You don’t want to take anything in this book at face value, but it is an important read for those who can see between the lines. You learn that success does not require a sound strategy or competent management, just complete belief in your own abilities, lack of inhibition, and tireless zeal. Trump also possesses a unique and strange form of personal integrity that I can’t describe, but is key to his achievements.

7) The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner

This book about history’s most important economic thinkers used to be required reading for every college freshman in America. Today, most students and recent grads say they have never heard about it. There is more here about how businesses and governments got to where they are now than in any 120 pages anywhere.

Let me know what you think of this list and please suggest other mandatory reading.

John Ribbler – Media Pro, Inc.

Harvey Mackay

No one who has sold 10 million books is an unsung hero, but Harvey Mackay goes largely unnoticed today. I always think about Harvey Mackay a month or two before Thanksgiving but never get around to following his advice, which demands discipline and courage. That may be why the latest generation of sales professionals prefers gurus like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracey, Joe Girard, Barry Maher and others.

Today’s top-level sales consultants (Ziglar, Tracey, Girard and Maher rank highest on SalesGurus.net list of The World’s Top 30 Sales Professionals) deliver excellent assistance to companies and individuals looking to improve sales performance. But, their methods are less rigorous than Harvey Mackay’s. Mackay, who did not make the list, purchased a nearly bankrupt manufacturer in 1956 when he was 26 years. He built Mackay-Mitchell Envelope Company into a $100 million company by making his sales people practice strict and unusual tactics that he revealed to the world in his 1988 best seller How to Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.

Although Mackay is mainly a sales guy and his company almost 100% sales driven, that book has guided my views on the integration of sales and marketing, as well as sales technology, ever since then.

If I could only find a Thanksgiving card

Thanksgiving always reminds me why. Mackay’s employees have never been allowed to send Christmas cards to customers. They send out Thanksgiving cards to be ahead of their competitors and put his company’s message front and center when no one else is around.  The advantage seems obvious.  The genius was in taking the most worn out sales routine and turning it into a stunt worthy of the most cutting-edge marketing or PR campaign.  The problem is that no one sells Thanksgiving cards. So, every year I want follow Mackay’s advice but fail to put in the required effort. Probably, I am like millions of other Swim with the Sharks fans.

The Mackay 66 Customer Profile is the primal guidepost for successful customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA). Mackay’s sales people were required to answer in writing 66 questions about every one of their customers. I’ve done it, even created the template in my first DOS version of ACT!  It takes time and effort. But, Mackay wrote that:

“When you know your customers, some of their special interests or characteristics, you always have a basis for contacting and talking with them.”

Ideally, CRM and SFA should simply make it easier to process and manage the personal information sales people gather, helping to create  more of the relationships Mackay knew were necessary for success. Unfortunately, these technologies fail because their sponsors see them as shortcuts. Mackay disciples chew and spit out competitors who use easy-to-find, inaccurate, and impersonal information about customers.

Mackay has not fallen out of favor because he is 77 years old and out of touch. He has a great website and blog. You can follow him on Twitter and Face Book. Brian Tracey has a nice blog and you can follow him on Twitter. Zig Ziglar has ceded his social media activities to his son, Tom. Neither Girard nor Maher have any Web 2.0 presence.

He’s out of favor, not out of touch

Then, why does Mackay only have 1,200 Twitter followers, while Tom Ziglar has 26,000 and Tracey 11,000? Last year, I entered a Linked In discussion about the top sales gurus.  Out of more than 30 participants, I was the only one who mentioned Mackay.

Mackay’s practices are not for people seeking easy answers to complex problems. But, promises of instant success dominate the Internet and social media. Today, people expect automation to make things easier, not enable them to get more done in less time.  That may explain why too few of today’s sales professionals listen to Harvey Mackay and his inconvenient truths.   But, according to Harvey Mackay, it is easy and fun:

“I really don’t know why I’m here, I’ve only worked half days my entire life. I guess my advice to you is to do the same. Work half days every day. And it doesn’t matter which half … the first twelve hours or the second twelve hours.”

Happy Thanksgiving Harvey.

John Ribbler – Media Pro, Inc.