All posts with the tag 'Virtual Office'

New Score: Online Magazines 1, Paper Based Magazines 0

It’s rare that I receive a hard copy version of a magazine these days. Somehow Inc. magazine is arriving at my door for free, though I cannot recall how or why this arrangement occurred, perhaps it was from remnant sky miles on airline programs which remained unused or some other type of promotion. I like Inc. magazine and think many of the articles are interesting and thought provoking, once you can find them. In the March 2010 issue, for example, the reader first finds content on page six with a short profile accompanied by a large photograph, on page 14 there is a letter from the editor and on page 17 there is reader mail (hopefully email).

For reasons unknown, I started counting the number of ad pages in the March issue. The reader is provided with three pages of content in the first 17 pages of the magazine, or a ratio of about 82% advertisements to 18% content. Continuing on to page 41, there is approximately 14 pages of content out of 24 pages, which is a happier ratio of 42% advertisements to 52% content. Overall, in the first 41 pages I found 17 pages of content which translates to roughly 40% reader content and 60% advertisement. Of course, if I had the patience, I would have analyzed all of the pages of the magazine. A quick Google search led me to a web site called Magazine.org, which states that the average (traditional) magazine is about a 50/50 ratio between ads and content. Overall, I guarantee my down and dirty research to be somewhere between relatively accurate to completely anecdotal and spurious. Feel free to contact me as you browse your own magazine pages counting ads versus content should your due diligence and subsequent findings prove otherwise!

Let’s compare my Inc. magazine findings with an online magazine (Ezine). I would estimate that the Ezine I review daily has a ratio of 60% content to 40% advertisements, which is much better than the paper based version of Inc., or the Magazine.org estimate. However, and this is an important caveat, whenever the reader selects an online article to read, content always appears. In a traditional magazine, it’s somewhat more challenging, and certainly more time consuming to find the table of contents and then leaf through the publication to arrive at page 41 to read your article. We all have a propensity to browse paper based magazines page by page until an article catches our eye.

Our online information consumption continues to grow as our paper based habits dwindle. We receive the New York Times on Sundays though we have questioned how long we will continue to subscribe to the paper based version. Our Boston Globe and Boston magazine delivery days have long since passed. We continue to embrace a virtual and online centric manner of content fulfillment, which is easier, faster and certainly more environmentally friendly. Though there are often too many online ads, banner ads, click throughs and pop ups appearing in online content, my household seems to quote Yahoo, blogs, and online resources far more than we might say, “I read an interesting article in the paper.” In my opinion, though it is early in the game, the score looks like online magazines 1, paper based magazines 0, in what is almost certain to be a long term rout.

For more information read Your Virtual Success, goto: http://www.yourvirtualsuccess.net

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Inc. Magazine Goes Virtual for a Month

Inc. magazine ran an interesting article in their April 2010 issue. Max Chafkin reported that, The Office is Dead. Long Live the Office., a one month experiment in moving the Inc. staff to a virtually based operation. Inc. temporarily abandoned their plush New York offices and moved to a home office based, virtual company model. Along the way, they recorded interesting perspectives as their employees’ adapted to the commute free, home office based, virtual lifestyle. Most of the comments were very positive on the improved flexibility, lifestyle and even increased productivity offered by working remotely. And of course there were comments about missing the face to face interaction and frenetic but dynamic pace a physical office can offer.

One particularly interesting anecdote in the article pertained to the thoughts around home based SaaS/cloud computing applications and enterprise applications, and I agree with their perspective. Think of this as Salesforce.com versus SAP, or Skype versus a PBX video conferencing phone system. SaaS/cloud computing applications were considered much better than their more established, in house, enterprise application competitors. And you might find it surprising to learn that these SaaS applications are very inexpensive, and often they are free. It’s part of the new internet paradigm; “Good, Fast & Cheap”, these days you can get all three leveraging the virtual internet tools available.

Inc. offered some impressive statistics if the virtual model was adopted, assuming that 40% of the current (non virtual) workers worked from home 50% of the time. These savings included: 100 hours of improved productivity per person by removing the need to commute, $190 Billion in real estate savings, and 276 million barrels of oil (about 1/3 of out Middle East oil imports). If Inc. magazine is experimenting with the virtual model, shouldn’t you company too? I think almost any company can benefit from going virtual, or at least virtualizing certain aspects of a business. Towering office buildings are really a dumb idea these days, an anachronism, an edifice waiting to be converted to condominiums or some other better and more fruitful purpose. Perhaps you’re not ready to believe that. If not, just wait until we are all Skyping on multiparty video calls, using 50 inch flat panel TV Monitors wirelessly connected to an iPad or laptop. And when we are virtual, we are free to be productive whether or whether not there happens to be volcanic ash grounding your European flight for a week or two.

Your Virtual Success (Career Press) examines the virtual model from both an emerging company perspective and an existing company perspective. For more information read Your Virtual Success or go to www.startupselling.com.

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Freezing rain, snow and wind in Boston – Brutal Morning Commute for the Non-Virtual

The weather outside is frightful – but my virtual morning commute was delightful. The temperature was in the low 30′s this morning providing the backdrop for a combination of snow and freezing rain. Unfortunately the storm hit during the morning commute making a typically bad commute, simply terrible. Of course, in my virtual office I was comfortable and ready to go at around 7:45am, with my Starbuck’s Pike’s Place coffee, and a good internet connection. My car was snow free, still parked in my garage as I glanced occasionally out the window and remembered what it used to be like to sit in bumper to bumper traffic on Route 128.
On mornings like this, I especially appreciate my virtual business model and virtual lifestyle. It was a tremendously productive day for us at www.StartUpSelling.com. We ran a successful web seminar for one of our clients with 175 registrants and 118 attendees; we posted a web site update for another client, downloaded lists, distributed web seminar reports, sent out multiple email campaigns and called many targeted prospective clients on behalf of our B2B clientele. In other words, it was business as usual.
More info at: www.startupselling.com www.alanblume.com

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The Knack or virtual knack to create a successful business

Do you have the knack to create a virtual business? If you’re thinking of starting up a virtual business, or have an emerging business that can benefit from the virtual model, I’d recommend you read The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham. The Knack offers a common sense approach to entrepreneurship and truly embraces a clear understanding of the common pitfalls, erroneous impressions, and unrealistic perspectives that can often impede emerging businesses. In some regards this can be summed up as unjustified optimism that plagues most startups. The Knack addresses issues like cash flow planning, margins, expenses (and creeping expenses) and discounts in a simple and straightforward manner which should be of help to any small or emerging business.
Of course, if your business is virtual, or you apply my virtual model to your current business, you’ll inherently keep expenses low and improve efficiency. This improves the odds for almost any emerging or small business, though you still want to have the knack for keeping cash flow, margins, expenses and discounts in check. Check out The Knack – it’s a good read…

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The Skype Video is a little dark – What’s Up With That!

Let me illustrate some of the virtual changes which are impacting our behaviors today, and are almost taken for granted by the next generation. Recently, I came home to find my daughter and her friend Christie sitting next to each other in front of an HP laptop. There was a voice coming from the laptop that sounded familiar to me, it was in fact coming from their good friend Hannah. Hannah was in Sydney Australia, my daughter and her friend were in our living room in Boston. They were engaged in a Skype video call. The connectivity was amazingly fast, Hannah’s real time video which consisted of her head and shoulders and the background of her dorm room were impressive. She might as well have been in the town next to us, never mind a continent over 10,000 miles away. Even more impressive, the call was free and the software to accomplish this downloaded in a couple of minutes. Welcome to the next generation of technology, cloud computing. According to the AT&T Web site, AT&T began transatlantic telephone service in 1927 initially between the US and London. The initial capacity was one call at a time, at a cost of $75 for the first three minutes. In 2009, on a free Skype video call between Boston, Massachusetts and Sydney, Australia which lasted about 30 minutes, one of the three girls commented about the video looking a little darker than usual, and said, “What’s up with that?!” Welcome to the next generation of buyers, their expectations are high, as is their comfort level with all things digital. If you want to sell to their generation, you need to understand the virtual world. And if you want to set up a cost effective virtual business, these are the types of tools you can utilize to your advantage. www.startupselling.com www.alanblume.com

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E is for Efficient and Emarketing and Eco Friendly

One of our new west coast clients was seeking to grow their insurance agency business in the midst of the current economic malaise. They retained our services to help them build an email list and run web seminars for the prospective clients. In about 120 days, we had compiled a list of about 1,000 in profile prospects. We created an email campaign offering a web seminar on some of the important nuances impacting healthcare plans and continually increasing insurance rates. In the first web seminar, 14 HR executives registered, 10 attended, and within 30 days, one of these executives signed on with our client for a $1.25 Million premium. This represents the efficient, Eco friendly, virtual sales and marketing model which we will all embrace. There was no paper, no stamps, no printing, no traditional collateral, and ultimately, only one face to face (client) meeting. Like it or not, the virtual, digital world is Good, Fast and Cheap, and is here to stay.

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Blockbuster is lackluster

I switched to Blockbuster from Netflix some time ago. Blockbuster offered an advantage. Movies which I rented through the mail could be returned to the store, and the store would replace the return with a movie AND mail back my USPS movie to Blockbuster. This worked great because we could get 2 to 3 movies a week for our $12 per month subscription. Enter stage left the bean counters. Somebody must have said that they don’t want to treat customers that well, thus anyone receiving a move exchanged at a store, would have to return that movie before Blockbuster would ship another. Yes, it is confusing, but the long and short of it is, this new policy throttles movies to reduce the number I can now receive.
In a way, I can’t blame blockbuster. Their industry is about to go the way of the record industry. The day will soon come when most movies will be downloaded on-line. After all, why wait for snail mail. Soon, when cable offers a more reasonable on demand subscription rate, or when movies can be easily shared between a PC and Plasma screen TV, Blockbuster and Netflix will transition or die. The virtual model is knocking at their door, if they don’t answer, someone else surely will! www.alanblume.com

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How to get Published – a Virtual Sales & Marketing Case Study

It’s difficult to get published – conventional wisdom states that less than 1% of would be authors receive an offer from a reputable publisher. A few weeks ago I signed my first book deal. This posting reviews the virtual sales and marketing efforts which were leveraged to accomplish this. I worked on a book about virtual businesses for about a year and upon the completion of a basic draft, decided to contact some literary agents (it’s easier to find a publisher if you have an agent representing you). I found several free internet sites listing agents including:  www.1000literaryagents.com, www.writers.net and www.writersdigest.com.  Some sources estimate that top literary agents receive about 400-1,000 unsolicited book queries every month, in other words, it’s very competitive. I started this sales and marketing campaign as I would at www.StartUpSelling.com for any business. I selected 1,200 agents from the free online lists above. In most cases they had an email listed for the book query submission (that’s agent speak for a formal proposal a writer must create to whet the interest of a prospective agent). As with any sales and marketing campaign, it usually begins by building a prospect list. But hold on a minute, this isn’t a smart, targeted, virtual sales and marketing approach. You are much better off targeting a niche or specific profile than you would be sending out emails to 1,200 general literary agents. I refined the list and culled through the agents to identify 100 who were interested in business books, non-fiction and prescriptive books (how to books). I focused first on agents listing business books as a specific area of interest. This information was available for free on the sites mentioned above and the respective agency websites in the instances that the agency actually had one (there are some agencies that have very limited websites or don’t have them at all).
The list building, culling and niche targeting were done in just a few days. I decided to do a test run of 30 agents, and would then do another wave of 70 agents if necessary. I had read that it was extremely difficult to sign with an agent, and that you might not even get a response to a manuscript inquiry (query letter).  As fall approached in 2008 I sent out my first wave of emails. Here are the results for both waves:

Wave 1 Statistics

  • 30 Sent
  • 4 Interested
  • 12 Not interested
  • 14 No response

Wave 2 Statistics

  • 70 Sent
  • 5 Interested
  • 20 Not Interested
  • 45 No response

Overall, 9% of the agents expressed interest, 32% were not interested and I received no response from 59% of the agents. Normally you would follow up a campaign with a personal telephone call/voice mails. In this particular industry, however, the rules of engagement state that agents prefer no calls. After all, in a system that rejects 98% of all would be authors, the number of follow up calls would overwhelm the agents. As a side note, there were some highly personalized responses and suggestions from agents who did not have interest at the moment and some standard form rejection letters too. I sent out wave two a week after I sent the first wave of emails. I did not market to any agent requiring a query on paper.

Most of the results came in within the first two weeks of the respective waves. Of the 9% expressing interest, their approach varied dramatically. Four agents asked me to email my full proposal; another four asked me to print out a full proposal and snail mail it (or FedEx) it to them and one asked me via email if I would like him to immediately contact publishers on my behalf to see if they had interest.  I immediately sent my proposal to the four agents who requested it via email attachment. About a week later I sent out one paper copy to one of the four agents who expressed a particularly high level of interest in my query. In retrospect, I don’t know why I bothered – this is a really stupid approach I liken to the current issues with traditional print Newspapers – the distribution system makes no sense (though it was just fine in 1949). Of the four agents who received my full email proposal, two asked for an exclusive (a period of time whereby they could solely determine if they wished to represent me) and two asked if I would speak with them right away. One of the agents who wanted to have an immediate discussion was Wendy Keller from Keller Media. Wendy asked if we could set up a conference call to discuss my query. I sent her a GoToMeeting invitation, and within 24 hours, we were meeting virtually in cyberspace. Later that day, the agency representation agreement was sent and signed digitally, there was no paper that ever exchanged hands. It took me less than four weeks from the time I decided to approach the literary agency market to sign with a well known agent. About 6 months later, my agent secured an offer from a well known business book publisher, Career Press. My book which is to be called Your Virtual Success, Finding Profitability in an Online World is due out at the beginning of 2010. Leveraging virtual sales and marketing tools is effective, inexpensive and reusable. My virtual business model expands and contracts easily and is far more profitable. I look forward to exploring the nuances of this in my upcoming book from Career Press, Your Virtual Success, Finding Profitability in an Online World. www.startupselling.com  www.alanblume.com www.kellermedia.com www.careerpress.com

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Micro Market Yes – Micro Manage No

In a Virtual Business Model, highly targeted, extremely specific, micro marketing is a great way to differentiate your company and message from the competitive throngs. For example, why market to high tech organizations, when you can market to software companies? Why market to software companies when you can target your marketing to smaller software companies between $5 Million and $25 Million in revenues. Why market to those companies when you can micro market to SaaS software companies (Software as a Service) for example? Now we have a very specific, highly targeted group and we can tailor a message specifically to them. We can even go the extra distance and create a buyer persona for the specific titles we are targeting: CEO, VP Business Development, VP Marketing, etc.
Conversely, in a virtual model we should focus on virtual employee or contractor goals, not their working schedule or process. A graphic artist for example should be paid on a completion date for a final deliverable. Set the goal and the date; don’t manage their time or methodology. Telesales people can be paid upon call production or appointment setting efficacy. Don’t tie them down to specific calling hours (other than it must be general business hours). Let them operate at their peak times and periods of peak efficiency. If you’re using web designers, create a simple process for your personal imprint, initial mockup, full scale mockup and approval. Create a series of milestones (and dates), and manage the results, not their time.
Leveraging the Virtual Model and simplifying your own management process should help optimize your time. After all, you should be virtually managing the results, not the personnel. The Virtual Model minimizes office politics, water cooler time, non productive marathon meetings, and the peripheral gripe sessions. Be more efficient – go virtual.  www.startupselling.com

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