All posts in English

• November 16, 2009

  Jeff Eisenberg is not only Knowledgeable about the Internet, but also about Latin America

  My conversation with Jeffrey Eisenberg, co-author of the book, Call to Action

  When I spoke with Jeff Eisenberg several days ago, I was prepared to get some valuable insights into how to effectively use the Internet to increase conversions and sales.   I was, nonetheless, incredibly impressed by how succinctly he was able to break down key concepts (nothing impresses me more than the ability to simplify the seemingly complicated).  Nevertheless, the I was completely flabbergasted by the fact that he had been to Latin America many times (20 times to Colombia), his Latin American heritage (his parents are from Argentina) and his fluency in Spanish.

  Jeff and his brother, Brian, are well-known experts, speakers, consultants and authors within the online sales/marketing industry and from my conversation with Jeff, it’s obvious that they intimately understand Latin America (more on this a little later).   Given the fact that Latin America is at an inflection point in terms of growth in online marketing and ecommerce, having access to world-renowned experts in the field who not only know the language, but also, the culture, should be viewed as a gift from the heavens.  Forgive the hyperbole, but Latin America is one of the fastest growing regions in the world (in some cases, the fastest) in terms of Internet adoption with over 100M users and a growth of over 30% and it’s time that companies in the region seek out the top experts in the field to take advantage of the fact that most of their customers are active online.

  The reason that Jeff is so knowledgeable about the region is that his previous job within the financial industry brought him many times to Latin America on business.  Also, his parents immigrated to the states from Buenos Aires in 1962 and since Spanish was spoken at home (as in my case), he and his brother are completely fluent.  Given this fact and the business context described above, I’m surprised that Latin American firms haven’t contacted him for consulting and speaking engagements in order to leverage the knowledge and experience that he brings after working with clients such as NBC Universal, Overstock.com, Dell and Volvo.

  Talking  about Colombia, I mentioned that, though this country is a leading technology adopter with more users on Facebook than any other Latin American country, I’ve only seen organizations with some exceptions take initial steps at developing and executing online strategies.  I also mentioned that eCommerce still has quite a ways to go.  Jeff’s answered this observation with a question: “Are we [Colombian companies] waiting for countries such as Argentina, Mexico or the US to take our market?”  In my view, that is most definitely the question to ask and this scenario will, indeed, occur if local companies don’t awaken to the opportunity.

  With respect to eCommerce, Jeff mentioned that the key catalyst for increasing activity in this area will most probably come from new mobile initiatives down the road.  Nevertheless, regardless of what happens on the eCommerce front, there is a plethora of options that Latin American organizations have available to them to interact with their customers.  Basic websites were fine to start off with, but, asJeff mentioned, when a customer clicks on a hyperlink, that customer is asking a question such as “How much does this cost?”  If a company’s website answers that question with something like “We’re great,” the conversation has little chance of going further and a key conversion opportunity has been lost.  In the current economic environment, wasting these types of opportunities is becoming an unaffordable luxury.

  More than anything, according to Jeff, digital technologies are forcing more and more transparency on all types of organizations and this new environment can be scary.  In order to succeed, organizations need to be authentic and offer real and tangible differentiators. Initiatives such as reputation management, online reviews and participating in online conversations with prospects and customers can yield substantial results.

  Either way you look at it, Latin America is at a cross roads.  Everyday companies are feeling more competitive pressures from outside their country’s borders, their prospective customers are flocking to digital media and differentiating themselves is getting harder. Sticking to traditional techniques of marketing their wares at the expense of newer, more cost effective channels (where their customers are congregating), is a paradigm that will be less and less effective.  Experts such as Jeff have been working with growing stable of companies in other regions with compelling results.  The time has arrived for Latin America to begin amassing its long list of regional success stories before others do it for them.

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• November 4, 2009

  What if Traditional Advertising Went Away?

  My conversation with Denise Shiffman, the author of The Age of Engage

  After reading The Age of Engage by Denise Shiffman, I felt that it was one of those rare books that clearly explains the implications (for organizations) of adopting online marketing strategies.  Having the opportunity to talk with Denise about her book and her perspectives was not only stimulating, but also, incredibly enlightening.  The conversation started off with an excellent mental exercise when Denise posited, “What would you do if TV and print went away?”

  This simple conjecture certainly focuses your mind in order to more clearly comprehend the paradigm shift that is happening in marketing, today.  Basically, instead of marketing being a monologue, digital technologies have made it possible to have conversations with your customers: a proposition which can be frightening if the company in question isn’t a good “conversationalist.”  According to Denise, if that happens to be the case and said company embarks on a social media strategy without anything interesting to talk about, it’s likely that few customers will engage (as has happened to some brands).

  Denise explained that a social media strategy is much more than making use of some tools.  It involves thinking about what your brand stands for and what you want to communicate.   More importantly, it’s about being authentic and building trust and conversing with your prospects and customers where they happen to be.   This is quite a change from traditional media where companies have been accustomed to controlling a specific message, which is relayed through a few well-established channels (e.g., print, television, etc.) to a mass audience.  There’s only one problem as Denise pointed out, customers are listening less and less to these mass messages.

  Thanks to her unique background which includes a degree in Sociology, a Masters in Business and stints as a Vice President of Marketing for companies such as Sun Microsystems, Denise brings her own distinct perspective to the intersection of marketing and digital technologies. Specifically, she finds the current convergence of people’s behavior and the state of technological development truly exciting.  Even more, according to her, technology is actually allowing companies to behave more like real people.

  When I brought up the Latin American market, she was quick to mention the fact that a country such as Brazil is known to have speedily adopted social networking technologies.  Indeed, studies have shown that Latin Americans and Hispanics have great adopters of social networking and are among the most active networkers once they adopt these platforms.

  User adoption is great, but why are so many companies in Latin America basically ignoring their users by not engaging them more on these platforms?  When I asked Denise this, she relayed her observations from about seven years ago in the US, when social media was just ramping up. At that time, there was a notable generational gap between company directors (including CEO’s) and their younger workforce.  While younger workers were blogging and adopting these technologies, many C-level executives were almost oblivious to the changes taking place.  From what I’ve observed, a similar situation (there are some differences) is playing out in Latin America.

  As Denise explained, the Internet offers an incredibly cost-effective, measurable platform for engaging customers. Ignoring this runs the risk of tarnishing your reputation, which is exactly what happened to Dell several years ago when customers filled the social networking “air waves” with tales of the company’s customer service failures.  Back then, Dell was ill-prepared to respond to such communications and its image suffered as a result.  Such situations have a way of hitting the bottom line relatively quickly and the company has since improved markedly in this area.

  As Denise points out, there is a convergence of how people behavior and the maturation of digital technologies, which can only serve to accelerate the changes already underway.  Even companies that one would not normally associate with the digital technology adoption such as Indium Corporation, a metal alloy and solder manufacturer, are engaging more deeply with customers through a well thought out blogging and online strategy. It’s up to Latin American companies whether they, too, wish to take advantage of these tools.  The alternative is to bet exclusively on traditional media while their customers flock to digital media looking for interesting conversations.

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• November 3, 2009

  What would Frances Cairncross, the author of “The Company of the Future” say? I wanted to know, so I asked.

  

  I’ve been a fan of Frances Cairncross since reading her insightful book, The Company of the Future, about the changes taking place within organizations and within society as a result of the accelerating adoption of digital technologies.  Although books on new technologies seem to be published by the bushel, I’ve found that good ones dedicated to the impact that these technologies are having on organizations and people are few and far between.   That’s why I was so happy that Frances graciously accepted my request to speak with her.

  A lot has happened since 2002 when The Company of the Future was first published and I was extremely curious about Frances’ perspective on things now that many of the technologies (collaborative and otherwise) had progressively improved.  After writing for the The Economist for two decades (most recently as its Management Editor), Frances Cairncross, today, is the Rector of Exeter College at Oxford University where she gets charged by the interaction and education of young people many of whom are sure to be leaders of the future.

  I have always been extremely interested in explaining the impact of new technologies to the people who can make the most use of them (usually, not technologists themselves).  I think that’s a key reason for my interest in Frances’ work.  When I mentioned this to her, she reminded me that this is precisely the perspective that economists such as Alfred Marshall have brought to the table in explaining the impact of the telegraph and trains on organizational structures more than a hundred years ago.

  I was curious about her ruminations on recent developments and the first area that we spoke about was the current economic environment (e.g., financial crisis, etc.).  She mentioned that the financial crisis seems to be pulling organizations in different directions at once as they try to react and adapt to the new reality (inducing investment in technology), but also increasingly question any additional spending (putting pressure on investments in technology and other areas).  It’s a dichotomy that will only grow more intense not only because of the current economic climate, but also because organizations continue to grapple with the changes brought about the accelerating pace of adoption and development of digital tools.

  One of the areas that Frances mentioned as ripe for tremendous change is the public sector now that governments will come under increasing pressure to make the most of any funds available to them.  She mentioned that each day there are new examples of innovative ways of delivering government services by better adoption of digital platforms from places such as Singapore and Hong Kong.  Nevertheless, she expects to see much more change in the near future.

  We spoke quite a bit about change in general and, as an economist, she understands how slow cultural change can be, but has been a keen observer of its progress.  In her current position at Oxford, she’s been able to witness the behavior of young people and how different things have become.  For instance, whereas in the past, congregating at a specific time and place either required precision planning and promotion (or luck), today, a quick message on a cell phone can move groups of young people with the synchronicity of a school of fish.   Although organizations are still trying to understand how to make use of all of these new digital tools (not only Internet, but also, mobile-based), newer generations have it in their DNA.

  Finally, I asked Frances about her thoughts on the opportunities available to people and countries in Latin America.  She quickly suggested that these should look at examples of companies such as one that she was able to visit in Costa Rica, which provided technical services to orthodontists stateside by crafting models of patient’s teeth and shipping these through one of the priority mail carriers.  In other words, look for high quality production that is now a possibility for Latin American companies, as the “death of distance” becomes more of a reality.

  All in all, having the chance to talk with Frances was enjoyable and helped me tremendously in terms of gaining additional insight into the changes that are happening before our eyes.  Either way, I hope she continues to put her ideas in writing because it would continue to enrich the public discourse.

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• November 2, 2009

  The Tools to Increase Sales are More Accessible Than Ever

  I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Cabrera, CEO of the wildly successful SaaS start-up, Xactly Corporation

  It must have been quite an epiphany for Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly, when he realized, while employed at another company, that the sales compensation software that he was selling for hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars a pop was ripe for innovation.  When he founded Xactly, Software as a Service (SaaS) was just starting to gain respect as a viable business model thanks to the growth of companies such as Salesforce.com.

  As I asked Chris about the early years at Xactly, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between that business context and the one that we’re living right now in Latin America. As Chris mentioned, at the outset, data security was a real concern, but as the SaaS model became better understood, conversations with prospects have turned towards the business benefits of adopting the solution.   I’d say that Latin America is still at that initial phase that Chris described in the US when executives still had qualms about hosting their data outside their company walls and we’re probably at an inflection point in Latin America where these fears will begin to dissipate (as they have in other regions).

  Xactly has amassed an impressive (and enviable) record with about $60 million in funding dollars.  Their offering is available in 18 languages and they have over 250 customers in almost every continent with 90% using more than one currency.  The company’s offering, Xactly Incent, allows companies to change sales force behavior through adjustments in compensation.  Companies are just now understanding the power of employing specialized software such as this to better manage a key component of their revenue equation: their sales force’s compensation.

  As Chris explained many large and mid-size companies, amazingly, still use spreadsheets to manage sales force compensation even though millions of dollars depend on these employees’ performance.  Using Xactly Incent, both employees and managers can view progress on a series of metrics in real-time.  Depending on the company’s objectives, sales force behavior can be managed to increase cross-selling opportunities,  improve collections (important in this economy) or even promote strategic offerings, all managed from the net or from a smart phone.

  Even more, activities such as discounting can benefit immensely by giving sales people clear visibility into their compensation structure relative to different discounting scenarios.  This is important, because, for some companies, even one percentage point of a discount can mean the difference between millions of dollars to the bottom line.  With so much hanging in the balance, managing this through spreadsheets makes little sense.

  Before the SaaS era came into its own, purchasing, installing and using such specialized software cost an order of magnitude more than it does today and took much longer to achieve its ROI goals.  Today, Xactly can get a customer up and running in a matter of days (or weeks) with substantial increases in profitability in a relatively short period of time at cost an order of magnitude less than what was possible through the traditional software model.

  Now, how does all of this impact the Latin American market?  I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Chris that his father, Eduardo Cabrera Micolta, comes from Colombia, South America (as does mine).   Moreover, Latin America is certainly one of the markets where he sees growth potential.   Even though the CRM wave is just hitting in full force here in Latin America, the opportunity to leapfrog competitors and adopt more sophisticated sales force compensation software (such as Xactly’s) is available and ready to be exploited.

  In terms of advice for Digital Innovators in Latin America, Chris offered an excellent suggestion.  With players such as Salesforce.com offering incredible cloud computing platforms on which to develop solutions, it behooves companies in the region to offer solutions on such platforms and gain access to an audience of over sixty five thousand potential customers (in Salesforce.com’s case).  Coming from someone who’s at the forefront of software innovation (and Latin American descent to boot), it’s worth heading his advice.

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