Several weeks back my family and I attended a Chicago Cubs baseball game.

Yes, they lost. In the 12th inning.

As we walked out of Wrigley, a middle-aged homeless-looking guy stood in the middle of the sidewalk with a cardboard sign: “Why Lie? I need money for cold beer.”

Gutsy, I thought. But I didn’t reach for my spare change.

Three other stories of need: The other day as I was exiting Starbucks, an apparently homeless man asked me for a Passion Ice Tea Lemonade with sweetener. He was specific, if not tactful.

A couple weeks ago, as I was driving from Boulder, CO, to Denver, a man with a deeply tanned face textured like that of a lizard skin, stood at the exit off 36 and held up a cardboard sign saying he was out of work. I averted my eyes as my car slowed at the top of the exit ramp.

As he walked past my car, he pulled out a purple mobile flip phone out of his back pack and took a call.

Last week, while leaving a downtown Chicago restaurant at around 10 PM, I turned down Clark and stopped at a light. A woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties emerged out of the darkness, ran up to the front passenger window of my car, and screamed at me, “I’ve got a baby in car and I’ve just run out of gas. You have to help me now.”

It’s all messaging, subtle and not so.

In April I spent a week fly fishing in Montana with a friend of thirty years. It’s our annual trek to Bozeman to fish the lower Madison and the Yellowstone in Paradise Valley.

I’m always puzzled by large number of fly fishing shops near Bozeman, Montana. How do they all survive?

Every fly shop looks to be the same. Each carries rods, flies, waders and boots, rain gear – the basics. Each shop promotes guided fly fishing trips. There are small shops and slightly bigger shops. The bigger stores simply carry more gear or a wider selection of brands than the small shops. One fly shop boasts that it is the official Orvis (a well known brand in fly fishing rods) dealer in the area. Each shop has an online presence, of course.

But that doesn’t really give the business that much of a competitive advantage over the others, does it?

My friend heard that Dan Bailey’s fly shop in Livingston, Montana, was doing well, and we stopped in one morning before floating the Yellowstone.

The downtown Livingstone store looked about the same as the other fly shops, but with less gear, perhaps, than some of the other, newer shops. We were the only two in the store.

Then I learned why Dan Bailey’s fly shop might be doing better than some of the others: the retail outlet is mostly a front for its business-to-business strategy.

Dan Bailey’s is a distributor of fly fishing products to other fly shops across the country. That’s where it has found success.

Strategy does matter.

It is that time again: college visit season.

This spring my daughter, who is a junior, and I made it to five colleges for overnight campus visits.

A campus visit is no small thing. It involves time off school (and work for mom and dad), travel, and the expense of accommodations. You don’t do them on a whim. And you certainly don’t visit schools that your child is only mildly interested in.

By the time a prospective student visits the campus, that student is a “hot” prospect.

Schools foot a big bill to get them there—purchasing names for search mailings, sending admissions staff to college fairs, conducting email marketing and advertising campaigns, and designing glossy view books. Add to that the expense of the visit weekend itself – more mailings, tours, free meals and tee shirts and Nalgene bottles, and the herculean efforts of admissions staff, administrators, professors, and student ambassadors to make it all happen.

Why leave any element of the visit to chance?

Since my son was searching for his ideal college fit two years ago, I have been a proponent of overnight visits, thinking the best way to get a feel for a campus culture is to experience the campus. But not every school allows overnight visits.

Now I may know why.

Twice now my daughter has been picked up by her student host, brought back to the dorm, and told, “I have to go to the library to study for a big exam tomorrow. You can go and do the stuff they’ve got planned for prospects. Here’s my cell phone number – call me when you want to get back in the room.”

Huh?

You are leaving your hottest prospect to fend for herself for hours on end during a visit that could seal—or break—the deal?

At one school I learned that the student hosts aren’t compensated for their efforts, they aren’t trained, and they don’t even volunteer to be hosts. The admissions office sends them an email telling them they’ll be having a prospective student stay with them.

A prospective student is a potential paying customer – more than $120,000 for four years. A campus host is the closer.

Would you entrust the best leads in your sales pipeline to someone who isn’t ready, willing, and eager to engage in the sales process?

Would you allow your $120,000 prospect to feel lonely, bored, and annoyed during the most critical moments of the sales process?

By Bernice Mirrilees
Account Executive
CZ Marketing

A man walks into a bank.

All he wants to do is deposit a check. He should have trusted his instincts and used the ATM.

He is greeted by the sentinel guarding the door at the customer service desk, “Hello, welcome to Chase Bank. How may I help you?”

He averts his eyes: “I just want to deposit a check.”

The sentinel persists: “We can have one of our personal bankers help you.”

“No, really, I’m good. I have everything I need.”

He walks to the counter with deposit slips, fills one out, signs the check, and gets in line. I should have simply used the ATM.

As soon as he gets in line for the teller, another woman, perhaps the personal banker, approaches, “Why are you visiting Chase Bank today?”

“I’m here to deposit a check.”

“Is there anything else we can do for you today.”

“No, I just need to deposit this check and I’ll be good.”

Thirty seconds later a teller says, “I can help you here.”

She takes the check and deposit slip and says, “Do you have any other accounts with Chase?”

Can’t she see that on her computer screen? he thinks.

“Yes, I have my business account, my checking account, and my mortgage through Chase. I’ve been a customer since 1992 – you bought the bank we originally started with when we moved here from Colorado.”

The teller says, “Have you heard of Chase Exclusives?”

“I think so. I just need to deposit this check.”

“Well, you really need to hear about Chase Exclusives. It’s a credit card with a ton of awards and benefits. I can have a personal banker go though your accounts and see if you are receiving the full benefits of Chase.”

“I don’t really have time for this today.”

“Okay, so could you give me your telephone number? I’ll have our personal banker call you.”

He finally agrees, thinking, I’m free. Then, the teller says, “Why don’t you wait while I introduce you to your personal banker.”

By this time, he is perspiring, trying his best to be non-anxious and polite. He doesn’t give a hoot about Chase Exclusives. He needs no credit card with frivolous awards with every purchase.

Apparently, the bank has abandoned its monotonous, day-to-day activities (such as providing small businesses with lines of credit) and gone into another business: annoying its customers with stuff they don’t want.

We really do live in a post-advertising marketplace. It’s all white noise if you can’t deliver on the promise of your basic services.

A neighbor is working on a post-graduate degree.

His days in class are in chunks: Several times a year, he spends four days at eight hours a day sitting in a classroom. Listening to lectures.

There are eight experienced folks in the class. From around the globe.

The professor who is nearing retirement reads his lectures.

He puts a slide up on the screen, reads it, and then moves to next slide. That’s on the good days.

On the bad days, he reads his notes verbatim, head down. All day. Every day.

The class wants to grapple with the ideas of the lecture. To “cross discuss” with each other. To engage the professor. To apply the content. The professor shuts down the conversation with nervous anxiety and moves to the next slide.

Each person in the class has a laptop.

On day four, my neighbor, numb from the previous three days, sets up a chat room on Tiny Chat (www.tinychat.com).

During the break, he says, “Hey, let’s discuss the lecture while the professor is reading his notes.” He coaches his fellow classmates about how to join the chat online, and they all jump on. My neighbor’s first instruction in the chat room: “Okay, let’s work hard at not mocking the professor.”

Soon, the room is abuzz, online. It’s not easy to say nice things about the oblivious professor when you can discuss his teaching methods silently in real time, but the class soon begins to engage him and the lecture …

… without him.

If the professor had simply moved the eight chairs into a circle and hosted a conversation about his topics, there would be no need for Tiny Chat. At least not that day.

There’s the joyous message that you plan to communicate.

And then there’s the message that your audience (or prospects) receive and internalize.

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary recently, and we five kids put together an open house that included a short program.

Of the kids, I’ve orbited the farthest from my home state of North Dakota, where we held the reception for my parents. I had not seen many of my parents’ friends for twenty years. I was devastated at how frail many appeared. I still remembered them when they were in midlife. Many arrived alone, their spouses long since buried.

“I almost didn’t come this afternoon,” one woman said. “It was 10 years ago yesterday that my husband died – we had been married 42 years.”

Another elderly woman, whose rigid face looked like she’d had a stroke, lost two teenage children years ago to two different tragedies within six months, one of whom was a classmate of mine. The woman’s husband was not able to make the 50th anniversary celebration because he was wheelchair bound, in the late stages of Parkinson’s. She also said, “I wanted to see you, but I almost didn’t come.” We talked a while about her beautiful daughter Suzanne, who died in an avoidable car accident in 1980.

When planning the celebration, we five kids never considered the emotion that my parents’ 50th would evoke in their friends.

That day, there was a sense of joy for my parents’ successful partnership (and that fact that the marriage survived the rebellious teenage angst of their oldest son).

But for some, the gathering marked a milestone they would never reach, because of divorce or death.

It’s true that there is no such thing as a brute fact (or brute event, for that matter). Every message that is sent by your organization is deconstructed in transit and then socially reconstructed through the filters of your prospects. It makes communicating your message the greatest (and most wonderful) challenge facing your organization.

The only thing I despise more than car payments is paying for car repairs.

For the past 17 years, I’ve taken my cars (vans, trucks, etc) to a small garage run by two brothers. The other day when I picked up my truck, the younger brother (who is the boss) had on a shirt with the words: “Specialists in Imports.”

Years ago, my brother-in-law referred me to the garage, saying, “Mello Motors is really good at imports.” That resonated with me since, at the time, my wife drove a Toyota Camry.

I remember, though, thinking, “How will the garage do with my Buick?”

Of course, the Mello brothers had no problem with an American engine.

They had positioned themselves as experts in one thing: imports. It worked. The Mello boys ended up servicing our Camry and our Buick … and every car since.

This is an important point about messaging: You always message specifically to your position. Mello Motors advertised as a specialist in imports. That doesn’t mean the garage won’t service domestic cars.

You always grow by focusing your messaging on your one thing – while still providing services in other areas. The only exception is if you want to lay claim to the generalist position (which is the death knell for most organizations in today’s highly specialized environment).

I’ve found that in general, most organizations fight the strategy to specialize, but it’s the only way to stand out.

An article in The New York Times recently provided some statistics on the state of blogs on the Internet. The stats originate from Technorati, an Internet search engine that tracks blogs:

•There are roughly 133 million blogs;
•Only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs had been updated in the past 120 days; and
• Between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs generate most of the page views.

Millions and millions of poppies: Which poppy is prettier?

The stats on blogs confirm how cluttered the marketing landscape has become. The herculean challenge is to position your organization accurately and to communicate your message to your prospects with clarity and power.

I say, “Good riddance to the blog fever,” if in fact fewer folks are paying attention to their blogs. Most were lousy writers. Maybe the slow death (or at least slower growth) of blogs will free up some attention for those organizations whose message is worth hearing.

I have a 13-year-old whom I love every other day.

I pray that someday my affection will get back on schedule, once pubescence wanes.

On the off days, he toys with my emotions. He messes with my head. I carp that he should quit skateboarding, since he broke his index finger in his pitching hand while trying to skateboard across the railroad tracks. Yes, the railroad tracks. He’s out for much of baseball season.

He counters that I should quit my business because it interferes with my coaching responsibilities for my 8-year-old son’s baseball team.

I am not able to follow his logic, but therein lies the problem: logic and a male 13-year-old do not go together. It is logical, however, for him to sneak a peek at himself as he walks by the dining room mirror.

The other night, in one of his “I’m smarter than you” modes, he asked, “Dad, how much did you pay for that web site you created?”

He was referring to the social media community for new nurses that our team from CZ designed and built several years ago.

I was about to say something fatherly and loving like “None of your business,” when he added, “By the way, I just created a web site for my English project. The teacher said we could create a website or a PowerPoint, and the web site looked easier. Take a look!”

I was reminded by the innocent hubris of my oldest that one of the biggest barriers to communicating on the web is gone. The tools of technology have been created for 13 year olds.

Now, contrast that with the fact that the law firm that created the incorporation documents for my business back in 2000 just sent me an enewsletter. Now how “old world” is that? It was the firm’s first digital communications in 9 years. Not all organizations are part of the sea change.

The real question with all marketing technology, of course, is always strategy. Should you really Twitter?

Or is it an exercise in narcissism? Are your thoughts worth 140 characters of attention?

Is the busyness of social media (monitoring a Facebook fan page, for example) really a good investment? Or, given the scarce resource of time, should your staff be calling your student prospects by phone?

The devil of technology is not so much in the details but in the strategy.

Bread Poets is a bakery in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Its growth is a fattening symbol of the post-Atkins-diet economy.

In 10 years, the bakery has baked and sold more than 100 different kinds of breads, though today only 42 kinds of bread are actively made at various times of year. For example, the bakery occasionally makes “challah” bread, which is part of the Jewish tradition.

Bread Poets bread is comfort bread, food for hearty folks, the kind of carbs that make you feel warm about life, especially during the long, bitter winters of North Dakota. You need lots of sweaters. Not just for the cold but for the layers of lard that you’ll need to cover up once summer comes – around July.

The bakery, by the way, also makes cookies and scones.

I’m originally from Bismarck. In early March, I yanked my youngest son out of second grade for a week-long visit to my parents. It was 15 degrees below zero the night Cory and I drove into my parents driveway. Without the wind chill. It was March 11.

The next morning, my dad cut me a slice of cinnamon bread from the Bread Poets bakery. I had another two slices. I’d not heard of the bakery before, even though I travel to the Dakotas once or twice a year. I thought the bread was a new phenomenon.

I recently talked with Jon Lee, the owner, who said it took an additional four years prior to starting the business in 1998 for him to perfect his first set of recipes. Jon said, “It was about a four-year process to not only to learn how to make bread, but how to brand the business, and build the business model from scratch.”

Essentially, it took a total of 14 years to become an overnight success, at least in the Bismarck area.

Now Jon plans to sell Bread Poet franchises. He hasn’t sold one yet, but my guess is that just like it took 14 years to perfect the original bakery, it will take some time to learn the art of franchising. A bakery and a franchising company are two completely different types of businesses.

But he’ll succeed. If you look at the logo of Bread Poets, it’s in the same design family as that of Panera Bread, a popular franchise where I live in the Chicago area. However, Jon is after a much different kind of franchise owner than is the person who might ante up for a Panera Bread.

In establishing the franchise, Jon has done the hard work of capturing the essence of the brand. Bread Poets is not so much about the bread, but about what baking bread means to an owner-operator of a franchise.

The promise of a Bread Poet franchise is the promise of a deeply satisfying lifestyle. It’s about creating a tangible product in an intangible world, something you can see and touch and smell and taste. It’s about the satisfaction that comes from making people smile (and much more thick, I might add). It’s about an integrated life that is one part craft and one part home. It’s as much “being” a franchise owner as it is owning a franchse. It’s really about becoming the Bread Poet in your community. Trust me, North Dakotans are not a deeply reflective lot, but there’s something profoundly contemplative in the Bread Poets brand.

See for yourself at www.breadpoets.com.