12 Ways to Survive This Nuclear Winter (Part 2)

Here's part two of Josh Quittner's advice on how to survive (and thrive) in the current dismal economy. Josh is Consumer Technology Editor-at-Large for TIME Magazine.

Number 7: Obsess about data -- cash flow, web traffic, number of customers, etc. Now is the time to let the numbers guide, but not dictate, your decisions.

Number 8: Reconsider your business model. Are you doing what generates revenue? Or are there tangential functions that don't add money to the company or value to the brand?

Number 9: Study the big picture. Where are the major players in your market? What are they doing? Are they leaving niches under-addressed?

Number 10: Overcommunicate with customers, employees, vendors, investors, and all other stakeholders.

Number 11: Work on stuff that matters -- In other words, is this what I really want to do with my life? If not, now is a great time to find that other something and get after it.

Number 12: Have I got a good back up plan? To quote that great philosopher from SNL of old, Rosanne Rosanadana, "It's always something." When you try to predict the future, you will be wrong. So have a Plan B (and C, and D).

12 Ways to Survive This Nuclear Winter (Part 1)

Josh Quittner is the consumer technology Editor-In-Chief for TIME Magazine. He recently spoke to the Arkansas Venture Forum and shared his thoughts on how entrepreneurs and firms who support them can weather this current economic "nuclear winter." He presented 12 strategies for success. This week I'll present the first 6. Part 2 next week will outline the second six.

1. Have an "immigrant" ethic....be very careful with your money; work tirelessly
2. Get cash flow positive NOW
3. Outsource and distribute those things that are not essential to you
4. Spend smart
5. Get hypercompetitive and get aggressive in winning new business and delivering
6. Focus on improving essential features, not nice-to-haves

More next week.

Life and Business Colliding

I haven't forgotten about the blog....will return after Thanksgiving....thanks for staying with me....

The One Call You Always Take

Twice in the last two days, I've been talking with colleagues who interrupted our call by saying, "Hang, on, I've got to catch this call." In both cases, the call was from a child at college. My daughter is 14 hours away at college so I perfectly understood being put on hold. You always take the call from a kid at college, whether the topic is "I need money" or "The oil light came on last month....should I worry?" or "My professor hates me, I hate my roommate, I hate college, and I've just signed up for the Peace Corps, cut off all my hair, and got a tattoo." Some people are just too important to ignore.

Do your clients feel the same way? Do they interrupt calls to take yours? How do you become the "interrupter" and not the "interruptee?" Here are three ways to make sure they take your call:

1. Offer a gift. Every time you talk with a client, you should give them something no one else can give them. It could be a compliment, a tidbit of free advice, a tip on a new technology that would make their life easier, or just a juicy piece of news about a mutual acquaintance.
2. Keep it short. We're all busy, so keep the interruption to a minimum unless, of course, they want to talk.
3. Listen more than you talk. Once you offer the gift, let the recipient do the talking. If they're busy or don't want to talk, fine. But you may have caught them in the middle of an issue. We all want someone who listens to us on our terms. This might just be the time the client wants a receptive ear.

Give 'em a reason to take your call. They'll appreciate it more than the call that begins, "Daddy, who is our insurance company....?"

IVR Revenge

Seth Godin mentions in his blog a company that has found a way around those interminable phone trees we get when we call a large company. Fonolo is in beta with a service that "spiders" phone trees for, say, your bank, and then allows you to "deep dial" the number you want. You bypass the language choices and the inane "Please listen carefully because we've changed the options" speeches we always get and you get directly to the number you want.

Fonolo is an example of consumer backlash against companies that place operational efficiency ahead of a positive customer experience. It will be interesting to see if the large companies fight this or accept it. The excellent companies will take a lesson and make getting to the right number quickly a normal part of their process.

Help a Reporter Out

Heard of this? Help a Reporter Out http://www.helpareporter.com/ is the brainchild of Peter Shankman, an author and PR guy in NYC who got tired of going to his contact list when reporter friends were looking for sources for a story. He started it on Facebook then quickly out grew it and moved to its own site. When you sign up, you get daily (usually 3x) emails from Shankman with one to two dozen requests for stories. You find a story that you can help with and respond to the reporter. The subjects and publications range from the obscure (and a bit weird) to mainstream media.



There are currently something north of 16,000 people who have signed up to be sources. There's also a LinkedIn group.



Why should marketer's care? Well, first, if you're in the professional services world, what better way to market yourself than by being quoted on a subject that's close to your heart and where you can add value? Second, here's another great example of the melding of social networks and digital technology to meet a need.



Check it out. You may get the chance to have your fifteen minutes of fame riffing on your favorite subject.

Staying Up in Down Times

Here in the South, we're "fixin' to" (or preparing to) enter the Dog Days of Summer...a time when the heat goes up and everything slows down. This summer we face the Dog Days coupled with an economy that by all accounts is and has been in recession. What should we marketers do?

If you listen to management guru Ram Charan, you go on the offensive. In a recent Fortune magazine article, Charan lists his four imperatives for business in a slow economy. Good advice for marketers as well.

1. Keep building -- excellent companies cut where they have to but don't touch new product development, innovation, and brand building.
2. Communicate intensively -- your employees are stressed, your investors are stressed, your customers are stressed. Keep the lines of communication open. More importantly, keep listening to your customers to understand their needs. If you can profitably meet those needs now, you'll be in a great position to grow your relationship with them when things pick up.
3. Evaluate your customers -- right now, cash flow is king. Do some of your customers view you as a bank for interest free loans by continually postponing payment? Maybe it's time to let them go or renegotiate. Either way, now is not the time to prolong unprofitable business.
4. Just say no to across the board cuts -- make cuts with a scalpel, not a chainsaw. Slow times may be a good opportunity to sell or close unprofitable parts of the business, but across the board reductions rarely work.

If we take this advice, we can help our clients weather this Dog Days economy so that they are positioned to build market share when we get to better times.