Harvey Edelman's blog

Okay, it's 2009.  Message-On-Hold has been around for a quarter of a century.  Your competitors have been using it for years and you've been using it for a few less or a few more years than them depending on whether you're more of a leader (willing to take a chance and risk failure) or a follower (like to let others take the fall first and bet on sure things).  Either way you now know that it works, it helps your business grow, it really does promote your products, it really does cross sell your products and/or services, and it really does provide information to your callers/customers that can alternately save your staff time or generate interest in your business and more and more.

A quick note or blog entry to unceremoniously introduce our new blog format.  We previously used blogger via Google at http://holdcomglobal.blogspot.com/ but now with the launch of our new content management software that will allow us to be quick and nimble in all areas of web content, here is where and how you will find us.

Our new blog will allow all our team members to post blogs of interest quickly and efficiently and it will allow our blog audience (not to mention our Newsletter audience, our Press Release audience, etc.) to enter Comments with or without creating a User ID.

Lots more to follow so keep in touch and let us hear from you.

If you're not one of the 6.5 million to date who have seen the now famous YouTube video of the wedding ceremony that had the entrances of all the participants including the bride and groom choreographed (loosely) to the song, Forever, you might want to check it out before reading further. Even if you don't read further you might want to check it out, for a number of reasons:

It's fun to watch and there is a joy in the ceremony that is clearly infectious.

It's a great example of the viral nature of the Internet and YouTube.

And it's also a great example of what can come of something genuine, apparently without an ulterior motive or long range objective (except for some local exhibitionism). The bride was a dancer or had an interest in dancing, so for her wedding, she wanted everyone to dance into the ceremony. She wanted her wedding to be unique, memorable, to entertain her guests. And it did all that.

But like the best marketing campaigns (which it wasn't) it took on a life of itself. After the wedding, the guests wanted to tell others about it, so someone posted the video on YouTube and sent the link to the guests. The rest is history. It was so unique, that the guests had to share it with their friends and the friends with their friends and so on.

The bride and groom and the entire wedding party were invited on network TV shows. They recreated the opening entrances. And they weren't even selling anything (so far), but they could. Anyway, I digress. What's the point? What's the secret?

It was genuine. It was real. In life and in business, keeping it real is a reward unto itself and may bring other rewards, often unimagined.

Can't remember who said it or sang it, but there's a line, "I can't wait until tomorrow, because I get better looking every day." Well that's the way I feel about my business. As a service oriented company, we've always done a good job at a good price with responsive quality service, and we've been rewarded in kind. But now with things getting tougher and more competitive, we need to keep striving to keep service up and costs down. It's a challenge but an exciting challenge, especially with all the ideas and solutions available to consider and implement.

In the past couple of months alone we've launched a robust company-wide wiki and an esign solution for our customers, which promise to streamline our internal operations and our sales initiatives respectively.

Our wiki contains or will contain the entire known knowledge of our business universe (I'm feeling like Superman's dad, Jor-El), searchable by a few keystrokes by anyone in our organization who has a question or needs to respond to a question about anything we do. No longer will we need to meet in office doorways for impromptu trips down memory lane to remember "What do we do when this happens?" "Where do I find this?" "What's our policy on that?" I suppose I'll miss some of those doorway meetings, but hey, there's always the water cooler.

Our esign capability will not only fulfill a request from some of our more forward thinking clients for virtual signing capability, it will open up everyone's eyes to the efficiencies and productivity of sending and tracking Orders via a web solution. It will allow all of our Reps to individually track the status of their submitted Orders for viewing, authorization, and response. It provides reminders and alerts to their customers, themselves, and each other. Even for those customers stuck in the fax world, it will allow our Reps to monitor the submission, receipt, and response of those Orders.

There are definitely deeper challenges out there now than ever before, but more possibilities than we ever imagined, with new ones every day. So yeah, I can't wait until tomorrow, because my business is definitely getting better looking every day!

I went to an old favorite restaurant the other night that I hadn't been to in a couple of years. Like most every other restaurant around, they were probably feeling the economic squeeze a bit and had probably cut back where they could. The night we arrived, however, the place was hopping, almost packed dining room, private party in a side room, and a line at the door. A line we waited in for too long. Management had decided to save money by eliminating the matre' d and the bartender, so you had to wait too long in a cramped space before being led to your table, and if you decided to wait at the bar, you waited for a bartender that never appeared.

Waiters were making drinks and paying scarce attention to customers at the bar, and making drinks themselves, they were constantly behind taking care of their customers at the tables. The result was a lot of unhappy patrons throughout the restaurant. Not exactly what you want to do when you're trying to generate business. And get customers to return.

It was a fine example of boneheaded, short term thinking. If you're going to run a service business, provide service. If you're going to manufacture or distribute products, do it right. If you can't afford to do it right, get a loan, or close your doors. Everyone will be better off in the long run. When the economy recovers, this particular restaurant owner will wonder why his customers didn't return. At a time when money was tight, and people looked for value on their hard earned or saved money like never before, he had let his most valuable asset, his customers, down.

Just saw a piece on CBS Sunday Morning about detoxing the body, that is ridding the body of all the toxic pollutants that are ingested from the air and the food we eat. A business associate of mine does this periodically, explaining the process in detail whether I ask or not. He swears by this ritual for his health and well-being. I don't doubt its efficacy, however, appearances notwithstanding.

At Holdcom, we have thousands of Message-On-Hold clients. Many of them update the content of their programs regularily due to the nature of their business: new products, new services, new customer programs, new sales channels, affiliations, etc. Others are a challenge to get them to change their content. They may say nothing changes in their business and their industry. To them it's same old same old. Their product line is the same. They're still using the slogan that was dreamed up in another decade. And besides, they say, whose got time to recreate their business or the positioning of their organization?

Well if you're still positioning your organization in this economy the way you did way back, oh I don't know... a year ago, you need to wake up and smell the latte' less coffee that has now eclipsed the sweeter, once more popular brews. It's a new world, with new needs, rather than wants, and you need to orient what your business offers to suit the new order, your evolved client base.

Rethink your unique selling positon, your logo, your colors. Are you green? Do you need to be green? Does it matter in your industry if you're green? Are you affordable? Are you competitive? Does the value of your products and services now trump your higher prices?

Are you still unique? Do you need to position yourself as unique? Do you need to ship free? If you're like about 98% of the businesses out there, you need to do something, and when you do it, you need to communicate it... everywhere. Start wherever you like, but make sure the information and positioning your callers hear on hold doesn't get left behind.

In the Old Business World, our dad’s world or our grandfather’s world, everybody had their job to do, their assigned task, their area of expertise. Administrative assistants assisted, service people serviced, drivers drove, receptionist recepted, er… answered the phone, and, of course, salesman sold. And with big profit margins, they sold in style. Dinners, gifts, expense accounts, big ad campaigns. The profits could sustain any marketing budget and the marketing resulting in bigger ongoing profits. A moment of nostalgia here for a time gone by… Okay, let’s move on.

Then along came the New Business World, where business got online, competition got fierce, the speed of doing business accelerated. No longer could a company depend on a couple of guys smoking cigars driving big cars, taking clients to the Copa, be counted on to bring in business. In the New Business World EVERYBODY SELLS. Every contact and every communication with a customer and/or prospect is a selling opportunity. Whether it’s overt, using sales tools and jargon, or subtle, passive or collateral, every contact or communication with a potential customer is a SELLING OPPORTUNITY.

And now, well into the New Business World, with the economy in a downturn, this approach is more important than ever, but now must be taken to its logical and profitable conclusion: Everybody Sells? How about EveryTHING Sells. Where ever there is a customer interaction, customer touch, customer contact, your business needs to be there. From the sign on your building, to your logo on your website, to what your telephone callers hear on hold, EveryTHING needs to sell your company. Forget about having a dinner or afternoon on the golf course to tell your customers what your company is about. You might not even have a face to face meeting or a phone conversation that lasts more than five minutes. Between phone tag, texting, Blackberries, and social networking, the impression your company can make on your potential customer base is shrinking into sound bites and sight bites. Make use of them all.

In this economy, rather than cut back on these less than overt areas of marketing, most companies should be investing further. Getting your companies name, brand, product and service offerings in front of your customers at every opportunity is essential, and when it can be done at a affordable rate, it becomes a no brainer.

Don’t miss the forest for the trees. The trees are real, they’re in front of you, they’re in front of your customers, your buying public. Let them be seen, let them be heard, let them tell the story of your company, your business, your products, your services, your programs, your company’s value. Keep it current, pertinent, on task, state your mission, reach your goal, do business, be happy.