To anyone who has the unfortunate fate to be spending an unscheduled
overnight in an Atlanta area Home Depot, school, or Piggly-Wiggly, this
sympathy post is for you. If you are one of those unlucky souls, the
entire SJN Sales team, many of whom have slept on some pretty hard
airport and Metro-Rail floors from time to time, send their best wishes
for a speedy thaw and a rapid return to more normal seasonal conditions.
For you who suffer in unplanned storm shelter, we offer only a brief
reminder of what a genuinely good reason to take a personal day is:
you’re in it. Call the office (if you have battery) and tell them you’re offline until the giant ice-rink clears.
Do not attempt to muffle or down-play the sounds of the hundreds of
people around you who are each calling their own offices, or trying to
reach their kids’ school. Remind anyone, in less storm-stuck territory,
how much confidence you have in their ability to handle anything that
comes up, during Snowlanta, and then politely hang up.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Snow Days. Happen
This year’s polar vortex, snow-storms aplenty, etc. have given the
clients and vendors that SJN Sales works with multiple opportunities to
practice the skills of being productive, while working from your
(generally quite comfortable) snowed-in home.
Email works pretty well for most communications. Yes, email is sometimes less than ideal for completing projects, deals, etc. But it has the undeniable advantage of maintaining radio silence between you, whomever is sharing your snow day with you, and the folks you do business with all year long.
This year, we are seeing an avalanche of bad outcomes from snow day communications that do not have the upside benefits of email. Specifically, we have witnessed multiple conference call train wrecks over the past few weeks. Conference calls that left business in worse shape than if one or more of the participants had simply called off. Conference calls that made a few people laugh and one professional squirm. The conference call of too much information, that may yet lead to a divorce and the re-homing of an apparently nice dog, have led the SJN team to have a little chat about when conference calls are not worth the trip.
Conference calls are a way of life these days. The SJN Sales healthcare IT team, that I lead, has no less than a dozen conference calls planned in an average week. The advantages of linking people across geography, and companies, without schlepping on Southwest are well known. These advantages make most people’s jobs far more pleasant than in the old, on-the-road-again, days.
If you work from home frequently, you probably have a quiet sanctum where you can conference call to your hearts delight. It’s a great way to wait for the cable guy or avoid the worst commute day of the week. It also has made it possible for legions of salespeople and other road warriors to accommodate requests for call times outside normal business hours. So far, so good. Everyone wins with accessibility and fewer hours in the car.
Snow days, however, may change your conference calling environment, even if you normally have peace and quiet at your disposal. Kids home from school on the fourth snow day of the year are not as likely to maintain their inside-voice, volume controls, as the smiling cherubs who celebrated with snow angels, back in November. Pets, other adults trying to work beside you, and the occasional drop-in neighbor who thinks that everyone being home means it’s time to roam…your block, are all reasons that you too may need to call off, take a snow day and reschedule the call.
Failure to honestly evaluate whether your snow day calling environment has deteriorated to a level that makes rescheduling the call a good plan, is of course, a judgment call. But keep in mind, as you blithely offer to schedule calls from your home office, that it is far easier to schedule a conference call than it is to get out of a conference call gone terribly wrong. Your mute button will not save you from an ambient noise level that sounds like Bronco Stadium. Your mute button will help with a brief tickle in your throat, but will not rescue you from the impression left by a crying baby backed up by a seven hungry puppy orchestra.
“Daddy, daddy. I am not interrupting because it’s a real ‘mergency, this time.” will effectively end any productivity that the call you are on may have achieved. Odd pounding noises will cause everyone on the call to evaluate their own environment, and end focused-forward motion, even if no one knows that your house is the source. Hanging up and dialing back in, after you remove the hammer from Timmy’s hands, will let everyone know that the noise originated at your home, in Newton–but will not restore the sales call or project progress. End the call, and be thankful that most of us don’t have video conferencing to add images to the mayhem in the background.
We have technology to make seamless communication available throughout virtually any natural or personal calamity. But take a hint from Old Man Winter, and the veteran sales teams at SJN, who have heard your kids whine, your dogs howl, your adorable screaming babies, yipping puppies, and even the plumbing contractors fixing your frozen pipes. Send us an email. We’ll take care of the essentials in your absence. Reschedule the call.
Snow days happen. Go make snow angels with the kids.
Email works pretty well for most communications. Yes, email is sometimes less than ideal for completing projects, deals, etc. But it has the undeniable advantage of maintaining radio silence between you, whomever is sharing your snow day with you, and the folks you do business with all year long.
This year, we are seeing an avalanche of bad outcomes from snow day communications that do not have the upside benefits of email. Specifically, we have witnessed multiple conference call train wrecks over the past few weeks. Conference calls that left business in worse shape than if one or more of the participants had simply called off. Conference calls that made a few people laugh and one professional squirm. The conference call of too much information, that may yet lead to a divorce and the re-homing of an apparently nice dog, have led the SJN team to have a little chat about when conference calls are not worth the trip.
Conference calls are a way of life these days. The SJN Sales healthcare IT team, that I lead, has no less than a dozen conference calls planned in an average week. The advantages of linking people across geography, and companies, without schlepping on Southwest are well known. These advantages make most people’s jobs far more pleasant than in the old, on-the-road-again, days.
If you work from home frequently, you probably have a quiet sanctum where you can conference call to your hearts delight. It’s a great way to wait for the cable guy or avoid the worst commute day of the week. It also has made it possible for legions of salespeople and other road warriors to accommodate requests for call times outside normal business hours. So far, so good. Everyone wins with accessibility and fewer hours in the car.
Snow days, however, may change your conference calling environment, even if you normally have peace and quiet at your disposal. Kids home from school on the fourth snow day of the year are not as likely to maintain their inside-voice, volume controls, as the smiling cherubs who celebrated with snow angels, back in November. Pets, other adults trying to work beside you, and the occasional drop-in neighbor who thinks that everyone being home means it’s time to roam…your block, are all reasons that you too may need to call off, take a snow day and reschedule the call.
Failure to honestly evaluate whether your snow day calling environment has deteriorated to a level that makes rescheduling the call a good plan, is of course, a judgment call. But keep in mind, as you blithely offer to schedule calls from your home office, that it is far easier to schedule a conference call than it is to get out of a conference call gone terribly wrong. Your mute button will not save you from an ambient noise level that sounds like Bronco Stadium. Your mute button will help with a brief tickle in your throat, but will not rescue you from the impression left by a crying baby backed up by a seven hungry puppy orchestra.
“Daddy, daddy. I am not interrupting because it’s a real ‘mergency, this time.” will effectively end any productivity that the call you are on may have achieved. Odd pounding noises will cause everyone on the call to evaluate their own environment, and end focused-forward motion, even if no one knows that your house is the source. Hanging up and dialing back in, after you remove the hammer from Timmy’s hands, will let everyone know that the noise originated at your home, in Newton–but will not restore the sales call or project progress. End the call, and be thankful that most of us don’t have video conferencing to add images to the mayhem in the background.
We have technology to make seamless communication available throughout virtually any natural or personal calamity. But take a hint from Old Man Winter, and the veteran sales teams at SJN, who have heard your kids whine, your dogs howl, your adorable screaming babies, yipping puppies, and even the plumbing contractors fixing your frozen pipes. Send us an email. We’ll take care of the essentials in your absence. Reschedule the call.
Snow days happen. Go make snow angels with the kids.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
This one goes out to the former client who...
...was so irate about our blunder with an import to a new database that he reacted as if we had sold a toddler into slavery on a Thai fishing vessel.
Yes, we acknowledge that we failed to sandbox properly, and as a result he received an unwanted email asking for his feedback on our services. This was an error, and we regret it, though our attorneys maintain that reporting us to Interpol was unwarranted.
This is what a data management error that "leads to dramatic problems" looks like: Austerity that is starving Greek children. Because somebody bungled a formula in Excel, leading to an imposition of economic policy that has no apparent basis in fact and terrible consequences.
Yes, we acknowledge that we failed to sandbox properly, and as a result he received an unwanted email asking for his feedback on our services. This was an error, and we regret it, though our attorneys maintain that reporting us to Interpol was unwarranted.
This is what a data management error that "leads to dramatic problems" looks like: Austerity that is starving Greek children. Because somebody bungled a formula in Excel, leading to an imposition of economic policy that has no apparent basis in fact and terrible consequences.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Working from home: neither working nor home
Katie Roiphe at Slate has a point here: The infiltration of work technology into every corner of our lives is the meat, 'home office' is just the bread.
Why wouldn't you want your employees to work remotely, if you think 'work' means 'respond to the items rated as urgent by the person at the other end of your electronic tether'? Really, how is having more places your staff can be made to report from, particularly places you don't even fund, a bad thing? Framed that way, remote officing is feudal. And it can be.
At SJN Sales, we make a point of hiring only qualified self-starters. If you need to be contacted every 90 minutes, or reminded every 15, about your task list, you're not a fit here. We do engage in some structural design tricks to keep everyone on the job and producing, but we can't achieve anything moderately interesting, let alone strive for the extraordinary, when executive time is being used on task management.
Best of luck to Yahoo! in getting the market to reward their offloading of staff. Meanwhile, if you're productive working from a home office part-time, we're always hiring.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
The only business service called for in the Constitution
This graph from The Atlantic shows the volume and revenue problem.
It fails to touch on the expense problem, which was manufactured by Congress.
What is the public policy argument for overloading the future expense category of the only business service the Constitution requires, exactly? Please leave in comments.
It fails to touch on the expense problem, which was manufactured by Congress.
What is the public policy argument for overloading the future expense category of the only business service the Constitution requires, exactly? Please leave in comments.
Monday, February 4, 2013
I still twist the Oreo halves apart
Apparently it's a slow news day because more than half the stories in my feed today are about ads and tweets that happened adjacent to the Big Super Bowl Blackout, umm I mean game. And yes, Tyler you are correct, since I do not know what city the Ravens play in, I'm just a scammer who shouldn't have an opinion on the game.
But to hear CNET, CNET and the brilliant blackout tweet ,and other, ordinarily reasonable, news sources tell it, the game was the filling that the cookies keep from getting on your Cheeto covered hands. The blackout was the interruption that made the fame for the CK underwear workout. The game was, once the lights came back on, a welcome relief from the gross GoDaddy kiss.
How did all this hyper entertaining advertising, especially the on-your-phone, in-your-lap, much ballyhooed and leaked in advance advertising fluff, get from a big brand agency to you on your couch?
"The key? Having OREO executives in the room, and ready to pull the trigger." This according to a very proud and pleased ad agency executive who equated 13,000+ retweets with successfully selling cookies.
Really? I thought the key was that a huge bungle, in the form of an inability to maintain the power grid and lights in a building that surely knew a lot of folks we're coming over with plans for plugging in, led to an opportunity to entertain millions of folks already eating snacks, already in the pantry, with a quickly executed play in the moment, while a huge crew of furious managers and hardworking facilities folks tried to get the lights back on.
Ask a Girl Scout and you'll quickly find out that tweeting about cookies, in the dark or in the light, is quite different from actually selling the boxes.
Let me catch my, I must just not be the target fan breath, re-read the CNET piece, and summarize: Social media works for big brands if they have every brand stake-holder, in a room, on a Sunday, waiting to pull the trigger on a Tweet?
I think this peek into the group decision making dynamics of big brands may readily explain why they are, in general, having such a tough time responding to the in-the-moment world of social marketing.
Sure occasionally some intern posts a very damaging view or item, pick your own recent example. Mistakes we would all hope to avoid, aside, if brand managers, and their agencies, want to stick with a crisis war room model, I see great days ahead for the smaller, more nimble players in virtually every market niche who can take advantage of a moment, while the big boys are waiting for a news cycle.
SJN Sales offers outsourced sales for tech firms and does not offer to Tweet, Hoot, or Like on behalf of our clients, but we sure do add to a relevant conversation when we see news that affects our client happening on line.
Marketing is a self congratulatory business and the Oreo and other Super Bowl advertising related news items are no exception. In my business we want to make more sales for our clients. Did Oreo or CK sell any extra cookies or skivvies? I bet the brand managers are meeting on that when the metrics trickle in. Good luck with that.
But to hear CNET, CNET and the brilliant blackout tweet ,and other, ordinarily reasonable, news sources tell it, the game was the filling that the cookies keep from getting on your Cheeto covered hands. The blackout was the interruption that made the fame for the CK underwear workout. The game was, once the lights came back on, a welcome relief from the gross GoDaddy kiss.
How did all this hyper entertaining advertising, especially the on-your-phone, in-your-lap, much ballyhooed and leaked in advance advertising fluff, get from a big brand agency to you on your couch?
"The key? Having OREO executives in the room, and ready to pull the trigger." This according to a very proud and pleased ad agency executive who equated 13,000+ retweets with successfully selling cookies.
Really? I thought the key was that a huge bungle, in the form of an inability to maintain the power grid and lights in a building that surely knew a lot of folks we're coming over with plans for plugging in, led to an opportunity to entertain millions of folks already eating snacks, already in the pantry, with a quickly executed play in the moment, while a huge crew of furious managers and hardworking facilities folks tried to get the lights back on.
Ask a Girl Scout and you'll quickly find out that tweeting about cookies, in the dark or in the light, is quite different from actually selling the boxes.
Let me catch my, I must just not be the target fan breath, re-read the CNET piece, and summarize: Social media works for big brands if they have every brand stake-holder, in a room, on a Sunday, waiting to pull the trigger on a Tweet?
I think this peek into the group decision making dynamics of big brands may readily explain why they are, in general, having such a tough time responding to the in-the-moment world of social marketing.
Sure occasionally some intern posts a very damaging view or item, pick your own recent example. Mistakes we would all hope to avoid, aside, if brand managers, and their agencies, want to stick with a crisis war room model, I see great days ahead for the smaller, more nimble players in virtually every market niche who can take advantage of a moment, while the big boys are waiting for a news cycle.
SJN Sales offers outsourced sales for tech firms and does not offer to Tweet, Hoot, or Like on behalf of our clients, but we sure do add to a relevant conversation when we see news that affects our client happening on line.
Marketing is a self congratulatory business and the Oreo and other Super Bowl advertising related news items are no exception. In my business we want to make more sales for our clients. Did Oreo or CK sell any extra cookies or skivvies? I bet the brand managers are meeting on that when the metrics trickle in. Good luck with that.
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