by Scott on April 10, 2007
Here is a site for small business marketers and anyone responsible for customer relationship management to check out. SmallBizCRM.com is described by its founder, Perry Norgarb, as “Your Small Business CRM & Contact Management Software Resource Center”.
There is a lot more content yet for me to look through before doing a full review, but at first glance SmallBizCRM seems to have covered most of the bases when it comes to discussion of understanding, selecting, and using CRM and contact management tools.
Posted in Referral Marketing | no trackbacks
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by Scott on April 09, 2007
A previous blog post covered a 6 Step Plan to build your business with referrals. Current customers are your best source for new customers. Beyond traditional referral marketing, there are tons of ways to turn your customers into a virtual small business marketing department. Here are two:
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by Scott on April 07, 2007
The Emergency entrance to our hospital is different than the medical building entrance. As with all hospitals, there is a big red EMERGENCY sign with an arrow directing you past the medical building entrance to the emergency entrance.
What I noticed today (on a scheduled trip to the doctor’s office – not the emergency room!) was that if in your rush to the emergency room you miss the big red EMERGENCY sign and turn anyway into the medical building entrance, there is immediately another big red sign that again directs you to the emergency entrance from the entrance to the main parking lot. And if you somehow miss that one, around the next turn is yet another big red sign pointing the frantic driver to the Emergency entrance. They are everywhere on the campus and around the parking lot.
You Can Always Get There from Here, Quickly
There is a main, direct route to the Emergency room. But even if you get off that route, you can always easily find it – no matter where you are.
Well designed software is the same way.
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Posted in Synap Software: Design Decisions | no trackbacks
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by Scott on April 04, 2007
Post No Signs
It is very tempting to try to influence behavior by posting signs. On the surface it makes sense. If we want someone to do something, simply post a sign that says so. Yet on a recent family trip to Disney World, it struck me that Disney parks have very few signs posted. And for a park that size there are practically no “do not” signs.
Disney evidently knows the same things I do about about signs. First, people ignore them. People just do not take time to really read anything: including signs, error messages, or user manuals. Second: signs, especially “Do not..” signs, make any experience less enjoyable. The signs are not the experience, so by definition they only detract from it. Software developers can learn from this example.
Cut words from software
There are alternatives to extraneous signage. Let’s look at some signs you will not see at Disney parks, the alternatives, and how these alternatives relate to good software design.
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