Learn when to call…

If you are like me, you hate sales calls: doing them, almost as much as getting them.  If you have a small business, you probably get them and do them a lot.  The trick to making (and receiving) sales calls, is doing them when they will be best received… here is a few tips.

  1. Never call after 4pm, or before 8:30am… period.  
  2. Try calling no more than 2x per day.
  3. Call first in the morning, leave a message saying when you’ll call back later that day, and do it.  
    • (10am and then later at 2pm are good times).
  4. After 2 or 3 days of call attempts, email to ask to set up an appointment.  (email the admin if you can), then switch to once per week.
  5. Figure out their “slow day”… here is a hint, its probably NOT Monday.  
    • Often it is Friday at 10am or 2pm.
  6. Don’t call on the weekend, or at lunch.

Karmaback, my Seth Godin inspired company.

Sometimes, we forget where inspiration comes from.  I am a Seth Godin fan.  If you don’t believe me, read my blog… check out the movie I made… or consider my company: Karmaback.  Yes, almost everything about Karmaback is inspired by Seth Godin’s principles.  Permission Marketing is really the core of Karmaback.  We’re trying to match up companies that care about their customers with customers who appreciate permission marketing.  We want to leverage peoples social networks, WITH their permission, and help companies create great end user stories.  And the really exciting part: Karmaback is working GREAT for a bunch of really happy companies.

Here are a few “Seth” principles we live by:
Permission Marketing? (Very much so… we give points for permission!)
Purple Cow? (We think so, although our colors are green, we are unique in several key ways)
Linchpin Commitment to Service? (our customers think so, and I work dang hard to keep it).
Meatball Sundae?  (We’re different and we’re getting our word out “the right way”.)
Giving? (Yes, we frequently go above and beyond for our customers.  Plus, we have some amazing free programs, and frequently give our services to others at little to no cost).

Also, At last night’s Austin Seth Godin Linchpin meetup, I met Pace from FreakRevolution.com.  Pace is building a company to try to “change the world”.  She’s got a Linchpin factory that turns people with world-changing ideas into world-chagers.   It was speaking with Pace that got me re-jazzed about permission marketing.

Stay tuned for some “little tweaks” to Karmaback to get us back in line with Seth Godin’s principles.  We want to be the BEST place for Permission based Marketing on the Planet.

Austin is a Linchpin City

Announcing the introduction of a new short-film called: Austin is a Linchpin City.  A small group of very loyal and passionate Seth Godin Blog readers started a Meetup.com group back in June 2010.  We shared a vision.  We wanted  to “ship” something valuable and interesting for our city.  We all believed in the tenants shared in Seth Godin’s book Linchpin: Are you Indispensable. From that we wanted to do something cool and fun to tell the world, YES, we are, and so is our great city, Austin, Texas.  So here it is, just 2 months later: http://vimeo.com/13843742.

Special thanks to Ryan Jeanes of http://www.theriverislife.com/ and David Crews of www.CrewsCreative.com.  These guys are both Linchpins and were essential in the creation of this film.
Also special thanks to the entire Linchpin Group, Mark Katz of Katz Deli, Roppolo’s Austin, and all the others who made this film possible.
So, what makes Austin a Linchpin city?  Without a doubt, it’s the people who live here.

If you live in Austin, and want to check out our Linchpin Group, join us!  We meet monthly, and help each other “SHIP STUFF”:  http://austinlinchpins.com

Getting Stuff. Loot.

Loot is the stuff you get for doing the stuff you like.  In video games, it’s usually a “just slightly better” piece of armor, or “a little bit of coin”.  Hundreds of Millions (if not Billions) of people aged 4-40 (and above) play games with loot.  My company, Karmaback, has loot too… and a new kind of game altogether.  Marketing to a new generation of thinkers.  People who “get it”.  Gamers.

Karmaback is a game in one sense only: you can EARN loot.  That’s me sporting some of the REAL WORLD loot you can get.. yah, it’s just a t-shirt… but it’s more than that.   Its a symbol of TRUTH, that you can “do stuff on karmaback” and get “real loot”.
So, learn about Karmaback, how we reward END USERS with points… points they can turn in for real loot. And learn how Karmaback’s loot can help YOUR BUSINESS grow!   
http://karmaback.com
Awesome.

A Focus on Small Business

Small Businesses, whether they be a burgeoning startup or a solid “mom & pop” or something else entirely, have needs.  They need sales.  They need cost efficient Marketing techniques.  They need to reach “the right people” at “the right time”.  They need passionate fans to help evangelize their greatness.  We at Karmaback have interviewed dozens of small business owners around the country.  Now, we are proud to announce, Karmaback is dedicated to helping companies (of all sizes, especially small) to address these needs directly… with results.

Sales: The Goal.  This is the ultimate need of any company, and for small businesses, it is usually the #1 topic on their mind.  How am I going to make rent, lease, payroll… How can I keep my dream alive?

Karmaback’s answer: We believe you should be delighting the people who love you.  Give them special deals and special offers.  Let us help you make those offers viral, so friends of your fans can see the generosity and the love.  Karmaback Social Coupons are live now, and they are going to get even better soon: http://karmaback.com/sweepstakes/social_coupons/

Efficient Marketing: This means reaching “the right people” at “the right time”, with the “right message”.

We can’t help you with your message, but we are dedicated to helping small businesses reach the right people at the right time.  Social Coupons do this… Social Sweepstakes do it better.  http://karmaback.com/sweepstakes

Passionate Fans!

We can help almost any company find them, reward them, motivate them, and leverage them.

This is what we do!

Let us help you!

We’ll only charge you if we are successful… and it will be 100% more efficient than any other advertising or marketing method you’ve used before.

If you are a big company, we’ll help you too… especially if you treat your customers with respect, love, and almost act as though you are a small company, even though you are big.

Innovation at the Speed of Customers vs. Technical Debt.

Last night, a Karmaback customer asked for the impossible.  Around 6pm EST, I got a message asking how our new Social Coupons can support % rather than just $ discounts… he wanted it right then.  He said simply “how do I do this?”.  Well, one answer would be “you can’t”.  Karmaback’s answer, though was, “hold on a second…  let me build it.”  That’s speed of customer.  Less than 15 minutes later, you could.

How did we do it?  Do we have an army of programmers?  Is it such a trivial thing?  No, and No.  We do it because we have almost zero “Technical Debt.”  So adding a feature, by just 1 programmer, can take 15 minutes.  Even when that feature touches 7 different files, including templates and web-pages.

Consider, every time you “don’t comment” or you “hack it together”, you incur Technical Debt, or stuff you will have to do later… cleanup.  We all know cleanup almost never gets done, so the debt piles up.  Some companies have literally man-years worth of technical debt.  Their entire software has been “kludged” together.

Now consider when  you do it right.  You take the time to “architect, plan, comment, code, test”.  You have no technical debt, and you can Innovate at the Speed of Customers!

Why Karmaback was founded.

“What? You mean we’re spending HOW MUCH on advertising?” I asked, dumbfounded at the amount of money we were spending related to the number of units we were selling.  I had just built a new metric for my startup, Bigfoot Networks, called “Marketing Spend/Unit”… or what I thought of as ‘customer acquisition cost’.

This scene, and more like it, serve to why Karmaback was founded… where we came from and our main goal.  But first, welcome to the Official Karmaback Blog!  This Blog is an extension to my Blog on Business and is “feedburned” into Karmaback just for you.  Now, on with the story.

“So, we spend $x with Google to get a site visitor, then y% just leave or BOUNCE on the first visit… and so on and so on till we get to what, a conversion?” I asked dumbfounded.  This was my first stint as CEO.  Prior to this I had been in Engineering, Architecture, or Sales… and now Marketing was my #1 expense!

“Okay, so how do we measure when this 1 special Google ads site visitor actually buys one of our products?” I asked, hoping for the best.  I got the worst.

“So, we don’t have any way to know if that customer who we say ‘converted’ because he clicked on a reseller link, actually bought or not… so, we have NO idea to know if all these Dollars we’re spending is worth a dime, right?”

This frustration led me on a 3 year chase at Bigfoot Networks to shore up this hole.  I wanted Marketing to justify itself.  I wanted to be able to say $X in marketing spend will yield $Y in sales.  What I wanted, was unheard of.

Years later, I had an idea.  I thought it likely that thousands of companies have this similar problem.  I thought it possible to solve with technology, and so Karmaback was founded.

Our main goal, if you didn’t know by now, was to create a system… a fun system… to somehow connect “interest” to “the sale”… in short, to Justify the existence of Marketing.  After looking at the landscape, and building our first product (the like-it-flow), we discovered that MANY companies do have this problem… especially with Social Network Marketing.

Now, 1 year after Karmaback’s founding, we are on the threshold of Success.  Using Karmaback a company can:

  1. Grow fans and followers at a low variable cost of $0.25/new relevant fan.
  2. Measure those fans and followers interactions as they “evangelize” and “follow” the company.
  3. Convert those fans and followers into REAL and Measurable sales.
All without the constraints of Time, Space, or Real-estate.
With Karmaback, a company really can justify Marketing.
Call us to find out how.
(888)-406-5033

Karmaback converts FANS into DOLLARS at $0.10 per “social coupon”

Karmaback launches Social Coupons aimed at helping companies convert & reward real sales from Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter.  http://www.sunherald.com/2010/07/27/2359874/karmaback-inc-launches-social.html

This builds on our previous product, Social Sweepstakes, which brings companies tons of fans and followers.

Now, companies can BRING fans and followers and then leverage that attention into REAL sales.

Choosing to make a difference with charity over profit.

If you know you could make a difference, would you?  I mean really?  My company, Karmaback, has a chance to leverage some of our profits to help a ton of very worthy charities… all we have to do is… well, do it.  Yes, it will cost us some profits.  The profits we lose are probably 10x in value because of leveraging effects.  So, I ask, if you could make a difference, one where it has a “multiply” effect, would you take it at the expense of some profits?  I would.  Here’s why you should, and how you can!

You should take it, because you are doing MORE than just “linear” help.  You are doing non-linear, multiplicative help when a business gets involved supporting a charity.  Your employees participate, your partners participate, and your customers participate too.  For Karmaback, all 3 will be true when we launch our upcoming new program! (more details to come in the future).  So, just find a charity or 2 that you believe in, and do it.  The KARMA you get back will nonlinear as well.

And how can you do this?  How can you participate in charity in a “non-linear” fashion?  Simple, get your business involved.  Don’t have a business, easy, get your community involved.  Don’t have a community?  No problem, get your family involved.  Don’t have a family, for goodness sakes, join a community!  After all, we humans need each other!

When plans go awry.

In the startup world, plans often go awry.  A well-thought out plan can almost never foresee all contingencies.  Interestingly, many entrepreneurs are so overconfident that they even forgot the obvious contingencies.  Nevertheless, when something doesn’t go as planned, a decision usually has to be made.  The decision is sometimes as simple as “fight or flight”, and sometimes as complex as “steal or die”.  From my life, a real-world example is what to do when you build it, they come, but they don’t buy?

My startup Karmaback has had some HUGE success.  We’ve launched amazing innovative products, collected thousands of fans and followers, and are actually pretty good at bringing qualified customers (companies) to our website.  The problem?  How to get those qualified customers to pull the trigger and start running Karmaback Social Sweepstakes or Social Coupons for their fans and followers.

Classic marketing theory would say, lower the barriers to participation.  For example, we don’t offer a “Free Trial”.  The problem with this is it goes against my principles.  I don’t believe that it is fair for a company to reap the benefits of our thousands of fans AND our viral features AND our platform AND our legal, etc. without paying.  Fairness is a core value, a principle, of mine.  So, what do I do?

Well, when plans go awry, here is what I suggest you always do: stick to your principles.  I believe in fairness, and free is definitely not fair.  But “pure variable” micro-transactions are fair.

So, for now, we’re going to begin to offer “pure variable” priced products & services, beginning with Social Sweepstakes and Social Coupons.  Pay only for success.  That’s fair, and that’s a decision.

Meanwhile, I am looking to bring more “free” stuff to Karmaback for companies.   Stay tuned for parts of THIS blog to show up on Karmaback and for white papers, tutorials, and more to be offered for free.  Why?  Because knowledge should be free… or so say my principles.