In 1992 when I left high-school and needed a Job, I found that AT&T was hiring. They were hiring for their leased phone division. Since the breakup of MaBell in 1984, AT&T maintained the leased telephone division.

The primary aspect of my job was to convince people that leasing telephones was a viable thing to do. (dumb, huh?) And I was very successful. I would lease cordless phones at $50 per month… and you could go and buy one at the time for $100.

I would very often get calls like, "I just noticed that I had a bill from you all for $4.95 for a Princess Phone. I don’t have this phone, please cancel my bill"

Upon further discussion with the client, we had been billing them since 1984 for that phone at $4.95 per month because prices never changed. (Our records didn’t go before the break-up) Nearly $500 over the 8 years. They often would not have seen the phone in 5 or 6 or more years… yet we were still billing them and they kept making the payment.

How does this apply today?

Well, at my phone book post, there has been a discussion about the thought that if a client buys an ad, he must think that it is worth something… it must provide him some value.

Nope. I don’t buy that sales line for a minute.

Sure, some people may actually see benefit. Some people may actually see an increase in sales, but, just because a salesman can continue to sell someone on something doesn’t mean it is worth the paper it is printed on.

Let’s not confuse the ability to sell something with the actual viability of the value of that product.

I was thinking a little bit last night about how so often we are disconnected from our clients when trying to sell them our products. It spawned a post about remembering our audience on my blog at CopierCatlaog.com. I wrote what I think are the top five things your website (and your language) should include when talking to your clients.

Ken posted a response titled, Are You Being "sold to" or "told to"? 

Pretty good post. I recommend a read (plus, he makes me sound intelligible).

The fact is, if we understand how we buy, we’ll be able to sell more effectively. More to the point, if we understand how people buy, we’ll be able to sell more effectively.

The most important thing about buying is that we buy like we sell.

If are accustomed to selling fast and glossing over the details, we are likely to buy that way. If we focus on selling the commodity, we will want to buy the commodity. If we want to help our customer understand their business problem and want to help them solve it… even if our product is the best, we’ll expect sales people to honor us the same way.

You may not agree with this, but I dare you to take a step back and see how you sell things and buy things. Even if you are not a salesman professionally, you sell things every day. You sell to your boss, your co-workers, friends and your spouse. You try to convince people to "buy-in" to what you are "selling" every day. Think about the tactics you use to sell that. I would bet a nickel that you expect other people to sell to you the same way… if they did, you would likely be interested in buying from them.

Think about that when you sell to someone. If you are trying to sell like you buy, you may miss the opportunity. They buy like they sell. If you can cross that divide and offer them your services the way they sell, you’ll be far more effective.

Thanks to ZDNet, whom I stole the image from.

I couldn’t resist when I saw this. In my opinion, this is one of the best Dilbert’s ever.

Click through to see full size or to subscribe to their RSS feed.

Well worth the daily laugh.

I was looking at some cell phone plans today. What is wrong with this?

I love the line that says, “Whether you have one employee or thousands, T-Mobile as plans that suit your business needs.”

Still don’t see the problem?

They only have three choices. What if I have an employee that only needs 100 minutes? What if I have an employee that needs 1000 minutes?

More than that, why wouldn’t I just just choose the unlimited individual plan for $99.99?

Here’s a clue… if you boast that you have a plan for any need, you better have more than three… you better be flexible in your offerings.

I am often at a boiling point thinking about the laws we have. We have so many laws that infringe upon our personal rights. Laws as simple as a requirement to wear a seatbelt to as critical as the laws that protect one against violence from another.

I heard on the radio today that more and more businesses are putting into place no gun policies. As if telling someone, that wants to bring a gun, that it is wrong will magically stop that person from bringing a gun. It is the same with any law that we have. Making a law requiring seatbelts, speed limits, shoplifting, larceny, theft, drugs, etc does not, nor ever will prevent a "thing" from happening.

Congress can pass laws till they are blue in the face. Businesses can have policies that affect customers and, more specifically, employees, but it doesn’t make a difference. People do not follow a law or a policy simply because it exists.

It is the enforcement of those laws and policies (and fear of the consequences thereof) that make law make a difference. People may follow the law out of a sense of right versus wrong… assuming they agree with it. But, even the most OCD of people (you know who you are) won’t agree with all laws and won’t do everything perfect simply out of a sense of right and wrong.

The primary reason people obey the law or policy is because of fear of reprisal of some sort. They are afraid of the consequence. Think about that when you are driving the speed limit when you are in a hurry. Why do you stay within or at least kind of close to the speed limit and not just drive as fast as you can? What do you do when you see a cop?

Consider this when you try to put a policy or practice in place in your business. If you aren’t willing to follow through on that policy or practice it won’t matter. If you don’t enforce, you might as well not make the policy or practice in the first place.

14 years ago, I bought my first new car. I worked for a radio station at the time and the top sales rep’s husband was the General Manager for a car dealership. I worked out the pricing before I ever showed up. I paid $1 over invoice. I thought I got a great deal (until after I purchased, I found that was the deal for everyone and that I can usually get below invoice if I am patient… but I digress).

After we worked out the details over the phone, I came to do a test drive and make sure that I liked the car okay. I liked it fine.

Because the General Manager doesn’t want to be saddled with the details of one car sale (I don’t really blame him for that), he called one of his salesmen over to complete the transaction. The salesman did nothing more than fill out a sheet or two of paperwork and then hand me off to the finance office.

After I sat and waited for the finance office for about 4 minutes, I noticed the salesman walk over to their big board of sales and write:

"Smith, Ford Escort, $12,740, Sold"

He must have been so proud of that sale… that bluebird of a sale… that he couldn’t even wait until I was in the finance office to write on the board. If I knew then what I know now, I would have gotten up and walked out… but I wasn’t as arrogant then as I am now, so I just sat and thought negatively about him.

Next time you brag about your sales, consider who might be the audience. If your clients know that you brag about sales, they may view themselves as only a statistic to you.

As for my car buying habits? There are a number of car dealerships that I have purchased multiple vehicles from… I never went back there. Never even considered it. After all, I really didn’t get that great of a deal and I was simply a statistic to them.

I don’t know if you have heard this or said it before. But I have heard a number of people over the last few years use this idiom.

If you have this attitude about your customers, then you shouldn’t be in business. Your customers are what make it possible for you to stay in business. Even if you aren’t in a position that works directly with customers, you should respect them.

Your customer isn’t always right, but your customer deserves your respect and your gratitude. Considering your customer a liar won’t get your more business… in fact, it will likely do just the opposite.

When I consider project management, I find that managing what needs to be done in a project is rather easy… as long as I am the only person I have to manage. What really becomes a challenge is trying to manage communication with various people.

I have to manage communication with clients, partners, vendors and employees. It can be a daunting task.

For a professional project manager, there are tools like MS Project that can help bring things together. I don’t like that sort of tool for the projects I manage because it offers far more than I want to learn. I don’t think in terms of a Gantt Chart. I don’t like to worry about some of the things it manages…. especially since my projects have 2 or 3 resources to worry about.

You can go for something online like BaseCamp. It is a pretty good interface that sends email reminders of when something needs to be done. But, it doesn’t answer the real problem with project management… and that is communication management.

I use Outlook for everything. I have it synchronized with my Gmail so that I can get my email on the road or on my mobile phone. The problem is that I receive a few hundred emails in a given day. That means sorting into folders and setting up reminders (if you need them). But, it is still a daunting task.

One of the things we implemented for my web development projects is a weekly development meeting. My project manager and I have a weekly meeting to discuss the status of each site. We have a checklist on each site that we go through in detail during that meeting. Now, we still talk through the week about projects. We still email, Skype or phone each other, but the face to face time provide a significant enhancement to our process.

“But,” you may ask, “how does that help with communication with vendors, partners or clients?”

“Well,” I would say, “I am glad you asked that question!”

We take that opportunity to review what we are waiting on from our partners and vendors. If we have already sent an email and don’t hear back from them, we call them. The same is true for our clients.

Minimally, we compose an email that states exactly where the project is, what we are waiting on from others and what we think people are waiting for us to do. If we have missed anything, it gives our client an opportunity to call us on it.

This is just our attempt at providing a greater level of transparency in what we do.

We aren’t perfect at it, but it has made a huge difference in how we communicate.

How do you manage communication? What have you done that has seen success…. or even failure?

I mentioned that Justin Foster gave me some very pointed and successful tips to building my personal brand. His marketing agency, Tricycle Brand Management Team is putting on a seminar on how to brand yourself effectively.

Take a look at the details of the event coming up here.

If you are in sales or an entrepreneur that wants to get noticed, I highly recommend it. If you are in Boise doing business, I think it will be worth it.

I am going to be there because I figure there is always someone else that can know me.

In my search for VoIP, I decided to check out Skype as an option for VoIP. I figured that I am always on Skype… it only made sense to use it as a soft phone.

I looked at their services and pricing and noticed that they have Skype Pro, Skype Credit and you can get a local number. What I couldn’t tell was how all the pricing and services worked together. You can get a "personal online number" (which took a little to understand that it was likely a phone number) for $6 per month. But, I couldn’t tell if I also needed to get Skype Pro for an additional $3 per month. Then, If I got those two services, would I then need to also buy Skype to add minutes?

Well, on their website, there is no way to really understand that as far as I could figure out. I think that I have a reasonable understanding, but not 100% clear.

I thought that if I could just sign up, the answer would be more clear. At the point of entering my PayPal information, I realized that I still didn’t really understand, so I went to their contact page and found a phone number.

I called the online store… I figured since I was buying product, that made sense.

I was told that the online store couldn’t help but if I would call the Skype voice team they could help me. When I asked if he could transfer me or give me the number, he said, they can’t receive phone calls.

So, I guess I can’t call. I was ready to buy that moment if I could get an immediate answer.

I asked what the Skype address was so that I could just use instant messaging. They don’t have a way to use instant messaging in their pre-sales efforts.

What? A company based on instant communication doesn’t have a way to communicate instantly with people who are ready to give them money?

You can call toll free numbers for free, so I thought I would at least try the service to see if it merited further investigation. I guess my 8Mb connection isn’t enough for them because I dropped my first call.

So, Skype I’ll continue to use for instant messaging and video, but I won’t pay for their voice service.

Corey Smith is the Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing and maintains news for the copier, printer and document management industries.