Knuckle Sandwich - Latest Comments

Re: Would You Pay To Follow People on Twitter?

Anna — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:16:36 -0000

Hmm, if given an offer, I would like to be paid by following... but I don't want to shed some bucks for people to follow me ;)

Re: 6 Selling Rules for a Recession - Sales 2.0…2.0

Ace1 — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:08:09 -0000

Thanks for this insightful post Scott, this will be helping out a lot of people due to our current economic crisis.

Re: 6 Selling Rules for a Recession - Sales 2.0…2.0

schnaars — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:49:25 -0000

Thanks, Kim! Nice of you to say so.

Re: 6 Selling Rules for a Recession - Sales 2.0…2.0

kimmib — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 05:29:40 -0000

This is certainly a great advice in the current economic climate.

Re: Xobni Adds Functionality, Gets Funding

john sviokla — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:15:53 -0000

xobni is so cool. why doesn't msft buy them to create a social network?

http://sviokla.com/context/2008/09/why_doesnt_m...

Re: 6 Selling Rules for a Recession - Sales 2.0…2.0

schnaars — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:04:23 -0000

Thanks very much, Hank. I'm looking forward to learning more about your
program. I'll respond to your LinkedIn message shortly.

Anything that you think that should be added to this list?

Scott

Re: 6 Selling Rules for a Recession - Sales 2.0…2.0

Hank Trisler — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:40:11 -0000

Excellent advice for difficult times. Thanks for the thoughts.

Re: Sales 2.0 - Opening Key Note w/David & Gerhard

Andy Telles — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:52:43 -0000

Nice, good read! "Don’t sell, co-create! Help them build what they want."

Re: Sales 2.0 - Opening Key Note w/David & Gerhard

Jill Konrath — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:07:43 -0000

Scott - Great post that totally captures this morning's opening meeting. Jill

Re: Fill The House - My Guest Post on Restaurant Job Board

Dat — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:15:08 -0000

Scott Schnaars,

As per usual - great article. I too loved Kevin Kelly's article 1000 True Fans.

I think you offer some really great ways to communicate and create stronger relationships with your community online that will surely transfer offline.

My sm biz complain about not having time.... I also suggest getting the staff involved and making a part of their daily jobs is to blog.

Simply blogging about maybe what a customer question like a Q & A would be a great start. Beside, most people come to the internet to solve some sort of problem, so Q & A always work well.

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

schnaars — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:48:40 -0000

Hi Robi,

Your name sounded really familiar when it came through. I think that we had
a bit of overlap at Yahoo. Did you work on Madhu's team?

You bring up a lot of good points, here are my feelings on them from a sales
POV.

1.) Enforceability - This is pretty easy and we do this at Socialtext
regularly. Frankly, we review our online store reports and if we see any
transactions with companies greater than the threshold that we have set, we
look at this as a great sales lead, but also start the process to shut down
the service as it violates the license agreement. No big company wants to
deal with that. In given this to the sales rep, we can generally close a
bigger deal, faster because the need is there. We always have the
flexibility to keep the deal in place, but the goal is to migrate to make
them a more viable customer. Sure, there will be some that slip through,
but for the most part, people are honest and will sign up for the
appropriate tier.

This does raise the question about budgets though and someone who may want
to try this out, may need to go through purchasing to procure a $12,000
service vs. a $1,200 one. I don't know what Mukund's plans are for having a
direct sales team manage these transactions, but one suggestion might be to
have all Fortune X companies go direct and everything else go on a CC.

2.) Adaptability - I think that this will be the exception rather than the
rule. Rarely does a company float between a 500 person company and a 100
person company. There will be the few rare instances when a 125 person
company lays off 30% of the staff. They can call or renegotiate their
agreement when the term expires. If they need to go down to the lower
level, better to take some money than none.

The important part of this is does the customer find 5X the value that they
are paying for the service? If a company is paying $6K per year and falls
under the 100 person threshold, they will still gladly pay $6K per year if
they are seeing $30K in value.

3.) Fairness - I can see this, but I agree with Mukund that, in theory, a
bigger company is going to have bigger requirements and and a larger onus on
the service. Another way to price this, that might be more fair, would be
to charge based on the number of campaigns or amount of data being passed
through or something along those lines. It is a bit more fair, but an
accounting pain in the ass on both sides. $12K a year for a Fortune X
company is probably less than they spend on coffee creamer. I don't think
that any large company will feel like they are getting stuck because of
their size.

Definitely agree that messaging could be better. Maybe limit the number of
campaigns on the smaller tiers and have unlimited campaigns on the higher
tiers.

4.) Appropriateness - Like any enterprise 2.0 venture, the value will be
determined by the customer. One of the great things about a SaaS model like
this is that the job of showing value is on Mukund and his team, not the
customer. If they aren't seeing value, they can cancel the service.

You're right, though, a client needs to be some what savvy when it comes to
their online presence and before investing in BuzzGain will have had to
already made a commitment that being having a good presence is vital to
their success. Like any brand investment, it is less about getting
immediate ROI / revenue and more about making sure that your name is squeaky
clean (if that is what you are going for.

5.) Scalability - I think that this is the easiest of the issues that you
brought up, though it does speak to the importance of having a solid trial
experience. The really nice part that I found with BuzzGain is that you can
see value pretty immediately. I found it to be a great binary experience in
that you either see value (I did) or you don't. As a potential customer, you
should be able to see quickly whether or not you'll be able to get
significantly more than $12K a year of value.

Mukund, this did get me thinking about charging by campaign (I know someone
you can talk with about this) as well as some ideas for the trial
experience.

Let's keep the conversation going.

ss

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Exhibit at The Tech

schnaars — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:47:43 -0000

The Louvre.

Re: Leonardo Da Vinci Exhibit at The Tech

cybersaurabh — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:12:07 -0000

Where is monalisa???

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

Mukund Mohan — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 05:46:40 -0000

Robi
I definitely need help so I am going to email you for sure. Scott's been absolutely awesome all along putting me in touch with smart folks who can help us grow.

My email is mukund at buzzgain dot com
I went to your blog but dont have your email.
Scott can we do a 3-way to discuss the pricing and (I would LOVE to hear your answer to the questions above BTW) via email?

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

Mukund Mohan — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:49:47 -0000

To be honest, I am not a big on "enforcement" guy. I believe most companies are honest. The revenues of the company is an indication of # of users on our system so it does scale for us. The size of the company is also an indication of value since the larger ones generate more Buzz - so they get more items to track, manage etc.

They are all good points and I'd love to have Scott address them (so I can take his input and act on it).

The other aspect as you probably can see is we care little right now about making the most money. 25% of our profits go to children's charities.

When our clients have heard this, they dont really care about being "appropriate".

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

rganguly47 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:05:55 -0000

All right, fair enough. Feel free to email me if you have further
questions (as Scott probably knows, I've been responsible for pricing
strategies at a couple companies). I think you're probably going to
run into challenges here, long-term, but am rooting for you.

-Robi
---------------------------------------------------------------
Robi Ganguly
Blog: http://robiganguly.com/blog
Mobile: 415.939.7143

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

Mukund Mohan — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:49:49 -0000

Robi what would you recommend as a better pricing model then? Since we are in beta I am open to change. Love your feedback.

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

schnaars — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:38:44 -0000

Robi,

Great feedback, thanks for sharing. As a sales guy (not for BuzzGain), I
know how I'd address each of these, but I'll let Mukund respond.

Scott

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

rganguly47 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:04:33 -0000

Well, I think it has some major issues in a few key areas. Thinking
out loud, they are:

1) Enforceability: How do you know what bucket the company is in for
revenue (if it's not public) and ensure that they pay their
appropriate amount?
2) Adaptability: When companies grow or shrink, how capable is the
model of adapting and charging the correct amounts?
3) Fairness: Customers prefer models that feel fair rather than
arbitrary. "Bigger companies (by revenue) pay more" is the premise
behind this model, but the revenue tiers here end up feeling
arbitrary, rather than methodical. Nor is it clear that a large
company is "fairly charged" more, because the model lacks..
4) Appropriateness: This is intertwined with the above point: the
value delivered by the service is not tied to the size of the client's
revenue base. Rather, the value is largely determined by the client's
efforts to be social digitally and the propensity of the company's
customers (current, past and potential) to communicate digitally about
the company. Hopefully, that translates into revenue for the company,
but they are not closely related enough to make this model appropriate.
5) Scalability: As I read this model, a large company who wants to dip
their toes into the water with this service has very little incentive
to do so. It starts off highly expensive, regardless of their usage
patterns and the benefit they get from initial forays. This model
doesn't scale with customers and represents a huge initial mental
hurdle, much like historical enterprise software models.

-Robi

---------------------------------------------------------------
Robi Ganguly
Blog: http://robiganguly.com/blog
Mobile: 415.939.7143

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

schnaars — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:49:23 -0000

Interesting comment, Robi. Why do you think that it is unworkable?

Copying Mukund to get your thoughts.

Scott

Re: BuzzGain - Do It Yourself PR

rganguly47 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:57:48 -0000

Definitely interesting, would love to play around with it and see what happens. The pricing model seems totally unworkable though. I wonder how they decided upon that.

Re: Fill The House - My Guest Post on Restaurant Job Board

Dat To — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:21:41 -0000

Scott, we want to thank you again for this wonderful post. The response was great. The ideas applied to the hospitality industry are fresh, yet practical, and I hope that some young entrepreneur will implement them, and prove you right because social media is only growing from here and will affect traditional businesses in ways that you have given us a glimpse of. The possibilities of this type of marketing on bricks and mortor businesses are going to be amazing to watch in the coming years.

You were so generous with your time even though we are just getting started. It really blew me away that you were willing to speak with us, it got us energized about the process of building our business.

Re: Things You Should Be Reading (Watching) Right Now - 01-12-09

Mike — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:50:13 -0000

Hey Scott! Happy New Year!

Have you considered making the blog the default landing page instead of lifestream?

Re: Things You Should Be Reading (Watching) Right Now - 01-12-09

schnaars — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:32:10 -0000

I'd love to hear your feedback / thoughts on this.

Re: If you're in sales, Socialtext is interested in hiring extraordinary enterprise 2.0 sales pros - DM me for details › Knuckle Sandwich

Tim — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:32:33 -0000

Hi,

Greetings from Australia. Currently doing alot of research around Enterprise 2.0. Currently work in BD role for marekting compnay and have been presenting various enterprise 2.0 concpets to clients. Whilst this is not our core business I can see that it is going to be the future and am very keen to get invovled. To date web 2.0 has not really taken off over here as yet but I can see that it won't be long. I want to get ahead of the curve and am interested in global opportunties as well as partnership opportunties to bring Socialtext to Australia. I sent a generic email to the partnership account and would love some feedback?