One of the biggest obstacles to successful  sales and marketing efforts is the constant fear of owning up to real or perceived product shortcomings. When faced with the inevitable question from a prospective client regarding functionality, the knee jerk reaction is almost always - “Yeah, we can do that.” This leads to the age-old struggle between sales and delivery. Delivery teams feel that sales has over-promised with no regard to how their empty promises affect the rest of the team. Sales feels that Delivery teams are sandbagging and whining about having to do their jobs. This continues until all engineering and developer resources are tied up in custom jobs, and all hope of actually improving the product to add new features for future customers goes out the window. If this vicious cycle repeats indefinitely, it will surely prohibit the company from being truly successful.

Moshe Engelberg, PhD, MPH proposes an alternative approach in a white paper titled, Marketing 101: If You Can’t Fix It, Feature It.

The underlying principle is simple and powerful: What you may treat as a “negative” — a liability — may in fact be your greatest asset. Instead of hiding it or trying to change it, lead with it. Don’t hide from the truth, which is usually what your target audiences think about. Disarm the negative perceptions by putting them on the table, front and center. In other words, if you can’t fix these differences, feature them.

Why this Works

Take a step back and look at competing wants. Sales wants a product that demo’s well (i.e. easy to sell), has lots of features (i.e. can be sold into a wide range of customers), and is easy to implement (i.e. they get their commission faster). Delivery and Engineering want reasonable expectations (i.e. something they’re familiar with) so that they can deliver a good product (i.e. bug-free and bullet-proof) and make clients happy (i.e. reduce complaints as much as possible).

When sales does not expose product limitations appropriately, the product does not demo well, it is harder to implement, and it results in unhappy clients. Everyone loses. If we replace the “Do you want fries with that?” sales approach with the “Feature It” approach, then everyone WINS. The customer’s expectations are met appropriately and the project completes quickly with minimal amount of customization. The client is happy that they got exactly what they bought. Sales is happy that the client is happy and paid in full. Delivery is happy that they’ve launched another successful project.

This is a flavor of High Probability Selling, in which marketing generates interest in only the prospective clients that truly WANT what it is your company is selling. By featuring your product’s limitations, you attract a prospective client list that does not value what your product does not do. Conversely, they are more interested in what your product DOES do.

In summary, don’t hide from giving customers the truth. Tell them what to expect up front, tell them why it’s a GOOD thing, and then focus on delivering high quality, repeatable results.

Even though I couldn’t draw a straight line if you paid me, I’ve been known to read a design book from time to time. It’s important stuff to know if you working in online marketing. A colleague of mine loaned me John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity. Capped at 100 pages on purpose, the book is an in-depth analysis and thoughtful masterwork on the underlying concepts that constitute simple, useful design. Geared a little bit toward product design, Maeda frequently references the simple design of the iPod as well as anything from Bang Olufsen as examples of simplicity well executed. The book is constructed around Maeda’s 10 Laws of Simplicity, ordered in terms of most tangible to most esoteric.

Maeda stays true to the topic throughout the book, keeping his chapters, his examples, and his lessons simple. It’s a good, quick read and I’d suggest it to anyone who is involved in design, usability, or art direction in at least some capacity. Coming from a non-designer, I would say this is a must-read book for all designer types out there - especially in this new Web 2.0-age of less-artsy and more user-centric web design.

If you haven’t the time to read the 100 pages, here are the Ten Laws of Simplicity:

1. REDUCE. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. ORGANIZE. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. TIME. Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. LEARN. Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. DIFFERENCES. Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. CONTEXT What lies in the periphery of simplicyt is definitely not peripheral.
7. EMOTION. More emotions are better than less.
8. TRUST. In simplicity we trust.
9. FAILURE. Some things can never be made simple.
10. THE ONE. Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

Maeda’s 10th Law resonated completely with Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, particularly his instruction to “omit needless words.” It’s my fervent hope that If I keep studying, I should be able to draw that straight line someday.

The company at work at, PermissionTV, has been using the Agile Software Development with Scrum methodology since January of this year. Our engineering team, the group responsible for the overall development of our Video 2.0 online platform, first introduced PTV to this way of organizing and prioritizing software requirements, in order to bring some order out of the sometimes-chaos that envelops a start-up company’s product roadmap.

After observing some good results, I went to a training workshop to receive my own ScrumMaster Certification. I’ve brought an Agile Project Management Scrum Methodology to the Professional Services team - an attempt to deliver multiple projects with shifting deadlines and changing priorities. While not completely geared for client-side development work, Scrum has brought transparency of my group’s day-to-day activities to the senior management team. These are the guys that always seem to think that projects are “easy,” “will be done very soon,” and that our overall work troubles aren’t a “big deal.”

I am pleased with the early returns that Scrum has provided. As soon as the team broke out each project into discrete chunks of work (aka “stories”), the rest of the company started to see just how much work we had to do. Now, if they want to horse-trade and shuffle priorities, they at least know, in excruciating detail, the trade-offs they are making with respect to all other client deliverables.

Turns out that maybe my team’s job is so easy after all . . . .

Two nights ago I attended the 2008 What’s Next Forum and Technology Awards Ceremony hosted by the Massachusetts Innovation Technology Exchange (MITX). The Technology Awards “recognize and celebrate innovative [marketing] technologies developed in New England.” My company, PermissionTV, was nominated as a finalist in the “Video” category. Although we didn’t win, it was a great event and it was nice to be considered for the award given the exceptional companies and great talent that was assembled.

Despite a brief interruption due to a fire alarm (the event planners must have loved that), there was still enough time for a short panel discussion on whether software licensing and service fees could be affected by competition in the form of ad-supported online software services. In particular I found Baba Shetty, Chief Media Officer at Hill Holiday to have some insightful remarks. Baba stated that while the Internet has enabled a “seek out or keep out” permission-based ad model that by definition should lead to higher ROI on targeted online ads, corporations are currently suffering with “an outdated marketing infrastructure” that prohibits them from realizing the full benefit of internet marketing and ad-serving technology. I took his comment to mean that the majority of people in marketing these days would still rather focus their time and budget on mailing postcards and attending trade shows. It’s what they know and are comfortable with. This sentiment was echoed by Jeff Bussgang, General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, who pointed that while it’s “easy to get into experimental budgets,” there still has not been widespread commitment from corporates to create an Internet-centric marketing or advertising strategy.

Based on my experiences formerly leading an Interactive Marketing Agency and currently with an Online Video Delivery company, I tend to agree. Interactive is still seen as a “tack-on” to the overall marketing plan, instead of a core delivery and metric model to both online and offline tactics. This reality is not caused by deficiencies in the technologies or products available, but rather in the people who are charged with their implementation and use. For those corporations that have the right personnel in place, they are able to reap the benefits - but from my vantage point, the widespread revolution of internet-based marketing is still a few years away.

I was happy to learn that LiveAutographs, a client I’ve worked with lately, was featured in a TechCrunch blog post by none other than Michael Arrington himself. What is LiveAutographs? I’ll let Mike explain:

LiveAutographs [is] a site that sells celebrity autographs that are guaranteed to be authentic - because they take a video of the celebrity writing the autograph and message and post it on their website.

That’s right, when you view the video of your favorite celebrity autographing event, you’re experiencing the power of online video in your hands. That’s PermissionTV’s slogan, for those of you who aren’t already in the know.

OK, so LiveAutographs is not the next internet revolution. But, it’s a fun idea and a smart use of online video. More importantly, when Mr. Arrington gets his personalized William Shatner autographed “I Love TechCrunch” T-Shirt, he’ll be “testing [PTV!] software.” Do you think his next post after that will be about PermissionTV?

In a recent article on ReadWriteWeb.com, Josh Catone describes the data from a study by PubMatic that shows online ad prices are coming down.

The report found that ad prices (based on effective CPMs) in April across all sites fell an average of 23%. This was most acutely felt by large sites (over 100 million page views per month), led by social networking sites, which saw eCPMs plummet 47% from March to April. Medium-sized web site monetization was essentially flat, while small sites (less than 1 million page views per month) saw modest gains month-over-month.

The article goes on to suggest that a possible reason for the slow down could be residual affects of the current problems with the US economy. Of course, this is a valid hypothesis and the overall economic woes probably are playing a large part in everyone’s reduced spending - from gas, to milk, to corporate online advertising.

Could it be possible that another reason for the drop in ad prices is that organizations simply aren’t getting the ROI on traditional text ads? Catone does point out that the study “didn’t differentiate between display and text ads.” The definition of “display ad” can be pretty broad, but I’d like to suggest that what he’s getting at, is the difference in performance between your standard run-of-the-mill text ad vs. a newer style video advertisement.

I’ve been a big proponent of the next generation of online video - especially as it relates to online advertising. Traditional online ad models aren’t working anymore - and studies like the PubMatic are starting to show the data that will prove it out. A recent April 23rd article by Melissa Chang of The Industry Standard describes three online video formats for the future and how they are proving to be more effective than traditional text ads. Do you think that this recent data from PubMatic suggests that advertisers are starting to pull their money from internet ads the new interactive video formats allow for Cost Per Action models?

I had my first bad experience with Blog it. After spending a good deal of time, doing some researching, creating links, and writing up an entry, the “Post” button returned error - invalid username/password. I hadn’t changed either my username or password since my last successful entry. Of course, my entry was gone, and I felt like I was 13 years old again - staring at a “Disk Read Error 0″ on my Packard Bell 8080 with 3 1/4 floppy drive, knowing I was going to get an F on my book report on Of Mice and Men.

I was really excited by Blog it when it first came out. Even though it burned me, I still used it to make this entry you’re reading now. However, after using it a couple of times, I’m starting to think a blog post is probably faster, easier, and safer, if done in good ‘ol WordPress. I can take the extra 2 seconds to update Twhirl myself.

I was pretty loudly proclaiming to colleagues and friends how Facebook Chat would be a pretty useless addition to the platform. Well, I’m patting myself on the back because it appears as if I got it right. Facebook Chat is pretty useless - for the win.

Ok, so maybe I didn’t really need to go that far out on a limb to make this prediction. Instead, I used common sense. You see, there’s already a few instant messenger platforms that handle chat. You may have heard of Google Talk, Yahoo IM, AOL IM, Skype, Gadu-Gadu, Meebo, ICQ, Jabber, and a few dozen more that collectively amount to over 1 billion registered users. Even with their 60 million users, it’s not hard to see that Facebook has a lot to overcome to be relevant in this space.

Now, the reviews are coming in from Tech Blog big shots. Do we really need another IM? Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb thinks “Probably not.” Michael Arrington from Techcrunch also points out that with “no integration of AIM, Gtalk, or any other protocol yet,” it makes the Facebook Chat another “walled garden.”

Why then, would Facebook come late into a mature market with a technology platform that doesn’t play well with others? Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is starting to believe some of the “can-do-no-wrong” hype around Facebook. In a 60 Minutes interview, Lesley Stahl told Zuckerberg “you seem to be replacing Larry and Sergei.” Stahl continues to refer to Facebook as, among other things, an “internet revolution” and the  “biggest thing since Google.”

The fact of the matter is - we don’t really need another chat platform. Facebook is the poster child for user generated content and Web 2.0 community, but will not surpass Google as the primary online communication, online commerce engine, and information dissementation platform used by people throughout the world. I would have rathered Facebook spend less time trying to prove how cool they are - “there’s a dude on a unicycle - how rad!,” less time explaining how unaffected they are (Zuckerberg claims to sleep on a mattress laying on the floor.), and more time coming up with new innovative ideas that might actually lend credence to all the posturing and hype thrown at the company. Then again, I’m not the one being interviewed by 60 Minutes . . .

For those who are interested in micro-blogging and AIR apps, you’ve probably already installed both Twhirl for Twitter and more recently AlertThingy for FriendFeed.

AlertThingy was just released on April 13th by Howard Baines. Three days in, and I do enjoy it. But being a new “thingy,” it lacks some cooler features, including the ability to post directly to Twitter while posting to FriendFeed. Twhirl currently supports something similar - it allows posts to both Twitter and to Pownce.

With a new release of AlertThingy is coming soon, there’s a strong indication this one will come with Twitter support. One of the authors of AlertThingy is a Twitter user himself. In reply to a Tweet from me where I ask of any plans to have AlertThingy update Twitter, too?, Jeremy replies: you never know!

Now, check out his most recent “Tweet Testing!” . Testing a tweet from within AlertThingy perhaps? Twitter is reporting that his most recent Tweet was sent via web, but stay tuned for more details.

Update: Not only has AlertThingy now released support for Twitter, but Twitter has shot back by releasing support for FriendFeed.

This morning, I learned about BlogIt from a Michael Arrington post on Techcrunch, and had to try it out for myself first thing.

BlogIt is a Facebook app from Six Apart (i.e. Typepad) that allows a blog entry from directly within Facebook. This kind of feature is not necessarily new. YouTube and Digg, for example, both allow the ability for users to link their blog accounts directly to the service and post blog entries from within their own environment. I’ve used these features in the past and they’re OK at best. I find myself wondering what’s the benefit of creating a blog post inside Digg’s rinky-dink plain-text editor, when I could use my WordPress Rich Text Editor and just copy-n’-paste the link to the story I’ve recently Dugg.

BlogIt has a similar plain text editor. It allows HTML, if you’re so inclined. Other than dropping in my obligitory trackbacks to credit my sources, I don’t see myself getting too adventurous with HTML in the 15-row sized plain textarea box I’m provided here. I’m also interested to see what kind of self-promotion links or credits are appended to my post from Six Apart.

BlogIt’s differentiator is the ability to automatically alert other social media sites of posts created through BlogIt. It will update your Facebook status and your Twitter account. I already have my Twitter account updating my FriendFeed account. My Twitter account already updates my Facebook status. My FeedBurner account updates others when my blog is updated. Seems convoluted? Maybe. But now, quick blog posts I generate from BlogIt will be announced via Facebook Status, Facebook mini-feed, Twitter, FriendFeed, and opt-in emails from Feedburner. Not to mention anyone who’s subscribed directly to my blog’s RSS feed.

I’m looking forward to reviewing BlogIt’s potential impact on my readership, and will make sure to provide a follow-up comment after I’ve used it for some time.