I think I’ve discovered the reason behind a problem I’ve been having in recent years with hiring competent staff for my company and assisting clients with hiring as well.  First, the problem:

When on the hunt for a new staff member, I initially look for two qualities and two qualities only: 1) the ability to follow directions and 2) the ability to tell the truth. I test for #1 by including three or four items in the advertisement as requirements for applying for the position, such as current resume, cover letter, three work/school references, phone and email address, salaries at past positions etc…. I explicitly state in the ad that these items are required.

About 90% of the applications I receive fail test #1.

I usually receive well over 100 applications per ad. About 20% do not include a resume, of the remaining applications 25% do not contain a cover letter. That leaves about 60. Of those half do not include three references. Of the 30 left, about 20 will not have any past salary information at all. (I give a free pass to those that include at least one salary entry BTW)

That leaves me with 10 applicants who can follow directions.  The other 90 end up in the shredder almost immediately.

The remaining 10 are given phone interviews and most pass that stage. These ten are then asked to submit work samples – usually writing, web design, graphic design or programming samples.

On average, of these ten, ….this is pretty shocking….about 4 will submit work that is not their own, or not solely their own and will not attribute a co-author or designer. Hence, they fail test #2.

On a side note, it usually takes about 10 minutes to check for plagiarism and copyright infringement via Google and Google Image Search. Any employer who is not doing so is missing out on a quick and easy way to save themselves a big headache later on down the road.

Of the remaining 6, about 4 will do one or all of the following: agree to lie to their current employer to get a morning off for a job interview, state they have a clean driving record when they in fact don’t, or state that they will not bother to give two-weeks notice to their current employer if offered a position. More test #2 failures.

Ok, so now you know what my problem has been, now here’s what I believe is the cause: Colleges are not requiring students to follow directions, and more seriously, colleges are looking the other way when students cheat.

How do I know this? I experienced it first hand in a graduate class.  To make a long story short, I recently dropped out of a Group Project because group members broke both of the above rules repeatedly.  After receiving the final presentation slides from the self-appointed group leader, I realized that I couldn’t be a part of this group and my name could not appear on any of the work. So I wrote and submitted my own version of the project – one with proper graduate level analysis, cited sources, assignment directions followed, and 100% my original work.

Although I didn’t expect to get a pat on the back or even an acknowledgement that I “did the right thing”, (which I didn’t), part of me did expect the group to suffer some sort of consequences for the poor quality of their work, for not following directions and for not citing sources. They didn’t.

Part of me also expected this to be an isolated incident. It’s not.

A few days ago, I was teaching a LinkedIn Workshop at another college and during the segment on job search, I mentioned my struggle to only hire people who can follow directions and tell the truth. One of the students was a new grad and said her biggest pet peeve about her college was that students never had to follow assignment directions – in fact, assignment deadlines were repeatedly moved up to accommodate late students. Another student said her husband just received his MBA and repeatedly struggled with group project students submitting poor quality, sloppy and copied work.  Like me, she said he would abandon the group and submit his own work as the deadline drew near.

Another student emailed me, said she didn’t want to talk about it in the workshop, but that she was in a class where two students copied an entire project from a previous year’s student. When caught they were told to simply re-do the assignment. Oh, and they were given an extension on the due date.

So employers, if you find yourself struggling to find competent, honest employees who can follow simple directions – the above just might be the reason why.

Why are colleges looking the other way? Money, probably. Expelled students don’t pay.  Neither do those that drop out on their own because “it’s too hard”.  Teachers who grade harshly get poor reviews from students and therefore won’t get raises or tenure. I suspect there are many more reasons behind it though.

In fact, I may just research and write about this – maybe even for one of my grad classes. Submitted on time of course.

My dad had a Victory Garden. It took over the entire back yard and produced some of the most delicious vegetables I’ve ever eaten. In fact, I never knew that grocery store vegetables taste like shit until I was about seven and ate a salad at a friend’s house. (Not yet having the colorful vocabulary that I have now, I just said the salad tasted ‘funny’).

Every day after work, my dad would walk through the entire garden and pick off beetles and other bugs by hand, squish them, and toss them in a bucket of water. That was his pest control method. He had a thing about pesticides, store bought fertilizer and other concoctions so preferred to do everything the organic way. We had a steamy compost pile too. And no, you silly city folk, it didn’t smell. They’re not supposed to.

One afternoon we’re sitting in the kitchen playing Scrabble (Words with Friends in real life for you youngins’) when we notice corn stalks wiggling back and fork and then getting sucked down into the corn patch. After about four stalks vanish, my dad starts to freak.

Why did he let four ears go before becoming concerned you ask? Well, in addition to being an ‘organic garden guy’, he also believed in sharing the land and portions of his crop with the wildlife. He’d often plant extra this or that for the birds or other small animals.

But even he had his limits. And nobody screwed with the man’s sweet corn. Not even a cute fuzzy groundhog.

My dad was so focused on producing the sweetest most juiciest corn that as soon as he read (in the library BTW, no home ‘puters yet) that the sugar in corn began to turn to starch as soon as it was picked, he devised this elaborate assembly line of tasks to get it from the stalk to the pot in the shortest amount of time: As soon as the water came to a boil, my mother would yell out the window “OK!” and my brother and I would rapidly pick corn and toss it to dad who’d shuck it so fast you could barely see his hands. Then we’d sprint up the steps and into the kitchen and toss it in the pot of boiling water.

It did taste incredibly sweet…especially when my mother remembered to turn off the burner after a reasonable period of time. Which wasn’t often.

(My mother believed that most foods weren’t ‘done’ until you could no longer recognize their origin. Or shape. But more on that another time.)

But back to the groundhog. Dad heads off to the garden store, and being the organic guy that he is, bought a ‘Have a Heart’ trap. He planned to trap the groundhog and release it in the woods far away from his garden.

Before he put the trap in the corn patch though, he had to load it with bait but wasn’t sure what groundhogs ate, besides corn. (Remember, no internet then so Googling it wasn’t a possibility.) So not too sure what a groundhog considers an irresistible delicacy, he loaded it with a peanut butter sandwich, some grapes, four Oreos and a handful of Bugels (the 70′s version of Scoops).

I remember him placing the trap in the corn patch, pulling back the spring, and looking closely at the bait he mumbled to himself “Ya know, I may just crawl in there myself”.

The next day, the groundhog, looking a bit like he had indigestion, was caught in the trap. Dad tossed him in the back seat of the car and off he went to let the groundhog go in the woods about three miles from the house.

Two days later, he’s back.

Dad goes off to the library to find out how far groundhogs travel. Fifteen miles one book said, so three miles ain’t gonna cut it.

He sets the trap again – same bait as last time- and the next day, caught him again. Off we go in the car with the trapped groundhog in the back seat. At one point, my dad looked in the rear view mirror and started laughing. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

“He looks so smug back there” he said. “As if to say, “Oh you’re taking me on another road trip vacation? Where are we going this time? I hope it’s the beach!”.

About a week later, the groundhog was back.

I asked dad how far we took him and he thought it was about ten miles. Obviously not far enough.

The trap was baited again – same stuff – and set in the corn patch.

About a week later at dinner, my brother asked “Hey dad, did you ever catch the groundhog again?”.

“Oh shit” dad said “I totally forgot!” He runs downstairs, out the back door and into the corn patch.  A few minutes later, I watched out the window as he walked slowly back to the house with his head down, grabbed a shovel and went back to the corn patch.

It so happens, that he did indeed catch the groundhog again…but about a week previously. It was dead, having starved to death after not rationing his bait like he should have.

My brother and I went out to the corn patch and saw the poor dead scrawny ground hog. My brother said “Ya know dad, it would have been more humane if you just pounded its head in with a shovel.” And then, being the compassionate children that we were, we both burst out laughing. To us, nothing could be funnier than a starved to death groundhog in a Have a Heart trap. A friggin’ Have a Heart trap!

From that point on, periodically we’d ask my dad odd questions such as “So dad, what do you think Have a Heart’s new product should be? A ‘bamboo under the fingernails’ kit for problem mice?”

Or “Hey dad, how long can a groundhog go without eating? And don’t say a week because we already know that’s wrong”.

Or how about “Hey dad, the Have a Heart police are at the door, …with a subpoena”.

My personal favorite was when we’d visit someone with a dog or cat, either my brother or I would point to the food bowl and say “Hey dad, see? I was right! Animals have to eat every day!”

And it never stopped, and my dad loved it.

What, you ask, does this story have to do with business, marketing, customer service or sales?

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Last week I had the chance to co-present with best-selling author, speaker and trainer Julie Gaver. In a nutshell, I have never, ever had more fun preparing for and giving a presentation in my life. And I mean ever.

The presentation, for the Frederick Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Women’s Business Lunch, was entitled “It’s Not You, It’s Me: Managing Difficult Client Relationships“.  We referred to it as “Managing the Bad Boys of Business” but more on that later.

The whole idea to bring us together was the brain child of the brilliant Kelly Beach, the Frederick Chamber Events Director and also the founder of her own travel agency, Vicarious Travel. (she owns a travel business and has ‘beach’ for a last name…how cool is that?). Kelly knew us both well and thought our presenting styles would click.

Julie and I had previously met, were Facebook friends and had a few brief chats at chamber events but probably knew each other more from our reputations than first hand experience.  Julie wrote the book (and its sequel) “Must Love Shoes“ and with a tagline of “You can never have too many, laughs, friends, adventures or shoes!” how could I not love the woman?

So Julie, Kelly and I got together to plan our presentation and it was then that I first discovered that Julie is really funny. And I mean really funny. I’d heard she was funny, but there are two things I seldom take someone’s word for – humor and food. For both, for me it’s ‘experience first, believe later’.

Trust me, the woman is a hoot!

So on that day, seated at a corner booth at Weggies guzzling coffee, the three of us collectively gave birth to ‘The Bad Boys of Business’.

In a nutshell, our presentation was about difficult, unruly and whiny clients and how to break up with them.  There were seven in all and we called them the Bad Boys. We gave them names like The Deadbeat, The Freeloader and The Charmer. We gave them faces too: Nicholas Cage for The Deadbeat, Kato Katlin as The Freeloader and Bill Clinton (who else?) as The Charmer.

We went over the presentation on paper a few times, and never once practiced together. Not once.

Kelly posted the event on the chamber website and it sold out really quickly.

We had this theory that half of the people registered solely for the their interest in the topic and the other half wanted to see if Julie and I could co-exist on the same stage without sucking all the oxygen from each other. We both have  a similar presenting style – loud, manic, self-deprecating, hilarious and sometimes a tad frantic. If you know us both, you can easily understand how the curiosity factor sold as many tickets as the topic.

If you don’t know us both, then picture this–> Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence with MBAs and too much Red Bull…but (thankfully) no singing.

The format went like this: We introduced the Bad Boys, shared the signs and symptoms of each, and told a few war stories. We had plenty of opportunities for audience participation; especially when we discussed strategies for dealing with each Bad Boy.

Julie and I totally rocked it.

Smooth as cucumbers, gears clicking like a well oiled machine, it was as if we had been working together for years. Just like Carol and Vicki.

When it was over, everyone said they loved it. Some even said they thought it was the best presentation they’d seen in a long time.

When I think about that day, and how much fun it was, how much work the three of us put into it, how much we all learned from each other…there’s one thought that just goes through my mind over and over and over.

I want to do it again. I want to do it again. I want to do it again.…

Photography by Kelly Beach

Sadly, often it’s brand pages churning out the groaners and not just individuals. We are much more forgiving of a friend posting something ridiculous than we are our bank or dentist. For friends, fortunately Facebook lets you hide the annoying posts, and if the poster is persistent, you can unsubscribe all together.  Previously, your only recourse was the dreaded “unfriend”, but more on that later. For pages, posts like these risk an ‘unlike’.

So for 2013, here’s what will get you an unsubscribe/unlike or two:

1) Like My Page, Like My Page, Like My Page…for the Love of God Like My Page!

I will ‘like’ any page that represents a brand I also like or an entity that posts insightful, informative or funny material. (Note on ‘funny’: it has to be very funny, and I mean very) I will not however, like a page simply to increase a like count. Not for anyone.

It is perfectly acceptable to invite your Facebook friends to like your page provided they are also in your target market. Asking everyone to like your page will do very little good.  In fact, it can hurt the page’s chances of success by growing a fan base that consists largely of non-customers and even non potential customers.

Unfortunately, the worse offenders are other marketers trying to get their clients’ pages like counts up. There is no value to the client in this, none at all, it just makes the marketer look good.

2) Hyper-Photoshopped Landscapes

I’ve seen one too many purple symmetrical forest, non-existent orbiting fuchsia planet and lime green distorted waterfall in 2012. Stop the madness.

3) Photoshopped Images Passed Off as Legit

Attention everyone: a baby giraffe will not fit in your hand and a woman never cuddled a fox while a fawn stood on her back. I saw these images no less than a dozen times in 2012 and each post contained the same argumentative comments going back and forth between those who believed they were real and those who recognized them as fake.

Harmless for the most part….until Hurricane Sandy.

Some of the fake images shared as genuine across the internet are down right scarey and could have caused undo panic in an already stressful situation. Not to mention the waste of perfectly good bandwidth.

4) Instructions on How to Keep the Posts Private

Besides the fact that most of these are total bullshit, anyone who believes that they have a shot in hell at keeping their information 100% private on Facebook (or the internet for that matter) is suffering from delusion.

Who sees your posts is more a matter of your settings than your friends’. Luckily, Facebook has rolled out an easier to understand and manage privacy section – it’s the little lock up in the right corner near your name. Click on it and spend some time reading the content – it’ll be far more helpful than sharing these crazy instruction posts.

In the future, check out Snopes first before posting these silly things.

5) I Don’t Usually Post This Kind of Thing But…..

If you have typed the above words more than three times in 2012 then you do indeed post that kind of thing and should stop.

Lucky for me, my Facebook friends are pretty true to this and those who have typed the above only did so once, twice at the most.

These are the types of posts that can easily fall into the ‘crying wolf’ category and it is best to be very careful in their use. Facebook is a phenomenal tool to get the word out on a cause that you feel strongly about, to raise money for someone in need or to rally the masses for change. But when used too often nobody responds.

So save it for the cause that grabs your heart and won’t let go…we’ll help, I promise.

6) Poor Poor Pitiful Wonderful Me

I hate these posts the most. They are the bragging posts disguised as pain, agony or despair. For instance: “Anyone have a quick cure for hand cramps? I’ve been signing autographs all day and am miserable!”

Here’s the deal…if you wrote a book, won an award, bought a new car, or had any fabulous experience whatsoever, just share it. We’ll be happy. That is what Facebook is for…

Pretending to be miserable when you’re ecstatic is pretty shallow so don’t do it. And BTW, if you do post fabulous news and get your share of attaboys/girls make sure you do the same for others. Don’t simply use Facebook as your personal broadcast tool without ever using if for listening.

Those who repeatedly ignore their supporters will soon not have any to ignore.

A word about unsubscribing, unfriending, blocking and unliking….

Simply had enough? If it’s a brand page, just unlike it.  If it’s a person, you can always unsubscribe – you remain friends but can’t see their posts.  As for the dreaded unfriend,  everyone has their own set of rules but for me, I unfriend those who have deliberately posted something harmful or hurtful or those with online or offline behaviors that make them no longer someone I consider ‘friend material’.

And blocking? Save that for the stalkers, plagiarists and crazies. And we all have our share of those.

This Saturday, November 24th, is Small Business Saturday – a day founded by American Express in 2010 to encourage shoppers to shop in their own communities at independently-owned local businesses.

I love the idea.

I’ve been a ‘shop-local’ shopper long before Amex gave it a name though. I began investing my shopping dollars in the local community about the same time I began boycotting Walmart – about five years ago. For the first couple of years of that time period, I was strictly a ‘shop local’ consumer, and for the last three years I’ve been both a consumer and a business owner helping many local companies grow their businesses locally. So I’ve been able to experience ‘shop-local’ from both sides.

And I found a flaw.

And that flaw is that in my experience for every consumer who is hell bent on keeping a good chunk of their shopping dollars in their own community, there is a business that serves the same community that doesn’t purchase any products or services from local B2B companies. None at all. 

Sadly, it seems that businesses that rely almost solely on the local community to survive are often guilty of ignoring their B2B neighbors in favor of distant online vendors.

Examples:

• At a local networking event, I was handed a branded pen and magnet from a local real estate agent. “Nice pen” I said. “I buy them online” she replied. (Number of promotional item businesses within 20 miles: 10+)
• A locally supported church sports a brand new website designed by a company almost 1400 miles away. (Number of web designers within 20 miles: 20+)
• Local restaurants whose owners and managers opt for the gecko rather than their independent insurance agent customers. (Number of insurance agents within 5 miles: 8+)
• A new entity created by a local government that’s sole purpose is to help new businesses grow just created brand new high end brochures – printed by a company located about as far from the community served as you can get without standing in the ocean. (Number of printing companies in the area : 20+)

If you’re guilty of the above, even by a little bit, know that it’s not just about “being a good neighbor” – it’s about what’s good for your business.

- The real estate agent who doesn’t buy promotional items from a local vendor is missing an opportunity for endless referrals.

- The gift shop owner with the outsourced remote bookkeeper has lost a potential customer and referral stream.

- The nonprofit that purchases office supplies from an online discounter may save a few bucks on supplies but has lost a potential sponsor and volunteer.

So for all of you hoping for a huge spike in business on Saturday, take a few minutes and review where you shop for your business. If you’re overlooking local vendors, maybe you should make a change or two.

After all, shopping local is about everyone doing their part to keep our local business communities thriving. And not just on Saturday, on every day.

Once you are considered influential on a particular topic you get Klout Perks; free stuff ranging from concert tickets to deodorant to tea bags. The free stuff is provided by brands who pay Klout to identify influential social media accounts  for them.

(Note that I said “social media accounts” and not “social media people”. That was purposeful. More on that later.)

Ya with me so far?

So here’s the thing with Klout…there are a lot of strong opinions about it floating around out there. Most of them by people a hell of a lot smarter (and more influential haha) than I am. Here are a few great reads on the subject:

• Sam Fiorella, Sensei Marketing Partner, I’m Taking Back My Influence; Opting Out of Klout
• Pam Moore, Marketing Nutz Founder, Why I Deleted My Klout Profile
• Neal Schaffer, Founder and editor-in-chief of Windmill Networking, 13 Experts Chime In on Klout’s New Algorithm to Determine Social Influence

….and if you Google “Does your Klout score matter” you’ll get over 500,000 results.

To me, Klout doesn’t matter at all. But what concerns me more than Klout scores being meaningless, it’s that the score can damage a reputation whether the score is high or low. For that reason I have opted out of Klout (To opt out of Klout, go here). If you look up my Klout score, you’ll see this:

Which by the way is how you can determine who has truly opted out of Klout vs. those who say that have. Once you have opted out of Klout, you no longer exist to Klout and will not have a score, a profile or even be found via a Klout search. Unfortunately, there are more than a few Klout naysayers who have stated publicly that they have opted out – but when searched they have Klout scores and entire Klout profiles. Hmmmm.

Okay, now that that is out of the way, here is why I think Klout is useless at best, and damaging at its worst.

1. Companies in need of a marketing consultant are using Klout scores to determine ability.   Of the hundreds of marketing consultants I know providing assistance to companies in the social universe, not one is using their own Twitter handle and other social media accounts while working for their clients.

Not one. In fact, it would be rather unprofessional to do so.

Marketing professionals build their client’s brands on client time….not their own.

2. Employees are using Klout scores to hire marketing staff, high scorers get the job. In the 3 minutes it takes to look up someone’s Klout score, a potential employer could do a multitude of other things to determine social media skill level. For instance take a quick peek at their Twitter or LinkedIn stream or ask them about a recent social campaign or strategy they developed, implemented, and measured. Or try this new idea, actually call one of the references on the candidate’s resume.

An employer who believes that a Klout score is valuable when it comes to determining social media skill has no business being a decision maker in the hiring process for a social marketing position. They might as well have candidates wear mood rings to determine personality too.

 3. In a reverse of the above trend, employers are using Klout scores to not hire someone, believing that high scoring employees will be working their own accounts while on company time. I just recently heard about this practice from a friend looking to hire a marketing assistant. He rejected a few with high Klout scores and prolific Twitter streams stating that he is well aware of the addictive nature of social media and doesn’t want to hire someone who is more concerned with their own online presences than his company’s. Valid point.

4. Who is really behind that Twitter handle? I know of one self-proclaimed “marketing guru” who has no less than 3 people managing the Twitter account that carries his/her name – they create the content and then tweet it. The ‘guru’ hasn’t actually tweeted in two years. ‘Nuff said.

And for the record, if someone refers to you as a ‘guru’, that can be rather flattering. But if you refer to yourself as a ‘guru’, you’re basically a nutjob.

5. Klout Perks have caused some people to chat incessantly online about brands just to get the perk. So if I Tweet out a call for a hotel recommendation in Seattle  – of the responders, who has actually stayed there and who just wants the Klout perk?  And how can I tell the difference?

Most of us recognize ads when we see them whether on Google SERPs, on websites (like them thar up there to the right), on Facebook or a Twitter promoted tweet. There is certainly nothing wrong with advertising.

But when someone doesn’t know if they are reading someone’s opinion or an advertisement, it’s bullshit – a bit like buying fake glowing company reviews. Yelp, btw, is clamping down on this practice hard. They’re now posting embarrassing notices on company sites that have been caught buying fake reviews.

So what’s the difference between Klout rewarding its users who chat on and on about a brand (regardless of the truth) by doling out Klout Perks and another company paying people to write a few fake reviews?

So anyway, I was interviewed a few weeks ago by Christine Hall, a journalist for the Baltimore Business Journal. She wrote a number of articles for the BBJ on Klout and interviewed me for one of them. Here’s the blurb from me:

Oct 19th 2012 excerpt from Baltimore Business Journal article by Christine Hall

When I read all of the BBJ articles on Klout though, I was a bit surprised by how many of those interviewed were Klout fanboys and fangirls – especially those who should know better.

Oh well.

And now with this blog post, I hereby declare the end to any more chatter about Klout coming from me. Although the topic is still making the mainstream news, it has worn out it’s welcome in many of the circles I travel/tweet/post/share. Those who truly understand and have embraced the power of the social community could care less about Klout scores and the multitude of knock-off scores.

When you make your social media presence and behavior all about you – it becomes very one-sided, static and predictable.

In face, we marketers have a name for online presences that are one-sided, static and predictable, we call it “circa 1998 website”.

I love trying new products. Especially online tools designed to give me more information or save me some time. As a marketer, I can never get enough of either.

In the last couple of years there has been more new product launches for social media monitoring and management tools, email marketing applications and premium versions of all of the above than ever before. And with these new product launches comes the free trials – loads of them.

I usually sign up for only a few free trials at a time since there is no point in testing via a free trial that will likely expire before I have the chance to seriously try out the product. I divide the products up by purpose (i.e. social media monitor and/or management, CRM, email marketing etc…)  and try one or two of each keeping those I like and letting expire the ones I don’t like.

I’ve noticed that some products require a credit card number to activate the free trial. No biggie, I thought, if I don’t like a product I can just cancel before the free trial expires, right?

Wrong.

Last month I got hit with a $149.00 charge on my credit card for a product that had a week left in the free trial period. The product was a social media management tool reported to be the answer to every social media marketer’s prayers.

It wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

Furthermore, when I signed up, I was told over the phone and in an email that I needed to enter my credit card number to get the free trial but that it would be manually removed from the database.

It wasn’t.

To make a long story short, I was given a refund, but only after I replied to a very terse email that basically stated that I should be grateful for the free trial I received.

Then about a week later, a charge for $89.00 went through on my PayPal account for a premium version of a Twitter management tool that I signed up for the previous year. It seems my one year subscription had expired and the company just took it upon themselves to renew it without asking me.

Yet another round of emails required before I received a refund.

This one made me a bit nervous because my credit card company has an incredible fraud prevention policy – basically I don’t have to prove I didn’t authorize a purchase, the fraudster has to prove I did. But PayPal? They’re not so easy to work with.

So I called PayPal and was directed to review the ‘subscription’ section of my account. This is where all of the companies that I supposedly authorized recurring charges to my account are listed. I was shocked at how many of them were there and how many of them were companies I purchased an actual product from, not a subscription for a service. WordPress plugins and themes, software, domain registrations to name just a few.

I went down the list and canceled them all.

Then just yesterday I noticed a share on LinkedIn about LinkedIn’s premium service by Stefan Berg of Sweden that read “No, I will not sign up for a LinkedIn Premium account free of charge for month when I need to provide payment details …Let me try it free of charge with no strings attached!”

As of this writing, the share has 1161 Likes and 65 comments.

Some of the comments mention how difficult it is to cancel the premium account once the free trial expires. This is something I had heard previously from other users first hand – that it takes multiple emails and complaints to get the account canceled and obtaining a refund is near impossible.

Way to go LinkedIn.

So here’s what I believe…

I don’t believe for one second that these companies require a credit card to activate a free trial to prevent bots or other undesirables from creating accounts. I believe that they do it hoping that they get a few payments out of those that are not interested in the product after giving it a test drive.

In a nutshell, these companies know the exact percentage of people who will not want to purchase their product after giving it a whirl, …and they also know the percentage of this number who will not notice a payment or two (or three) on their credit card until well after the trial expiration. And well after the cancellation deadline.

They call this a ‘conversion’.

I call it ‘bullshit’.

Here’s an idea…how about creating a product that performs as advertised. You know,…a product that people will actually want to buy. Offer a free trial without a credit card requirement and let those who found value in your product buy it when the trial is over. Those who didn’t find value won’t buy it. Ask these folks why they didn’t buy the product and pay attention to their answers.

Here’s what will most likely happen:  Sign ups will go way up because the credit card field is what makes most people drop out of completing the sign up form. Conversion rate will go down – but the number of paying customers  will go up.  Since the number of trials will be higher, probably much higher – the actual number of converted customers will be higher even with the lower percentage rate.

And as a bonus, your customer service staff will be much happier since they will no longer have to deal with such a high rate of complaints from swindled screwed over ‘customers’.

To wrap things up, here are a few companies that have great products and offer free trials without requiring a credit card number:

• Constant Contact Email Marketing 60 Day Free Trial
• Sprout Social – Social Media Management 30 Day Free Trial
• Nimble – Social Media & CRM
• Pagemodo – Create Facebook Pages & Covers for Free
• GroSocial – Facebook & Twitter Management and Design

If you know of others, please list them below.

And before you go, don’t forget to subscribe to my blog. No credit card required.

I recently had a couple of bad experiences with service providers not performing as agreed and not fulfilling their contractual obligations – in other words, they ripped me off.

The first was a a landscaper who’d been cutting my lawn for almost three years. I began to notice that his fees were going up at the same rate the quality of his work was going down. But what was more alarming was that I noticed that when my car was in the driveway, he took more care in his work. The weeks I wasn’t home, he seemed to do a crappy job – if he showed up at all.

The second was a painter I had used previously who did great work. This last time, he gave me a price and said it would take a day and a half. At the end of the first day, he asked for more money stating he needed to add another coat because the colors I chose were darker than he originally thought.

At the end of the second day, he didn’t really do anything – oh wait, he did do something…he took the envelope off the table with the balance I owed him. Basically, he showed up, took the money and left.

I couldn’t figure out why there was such a difference between the first and second experiences with the painter. Then it dawned on me, the first time I was at home and the second time I was not.

Of course I fired them both, and neither will ever get any work or a recommendation from me ever again.

This experience caused me to think about those who do a great job because they’re being watched and those who simply do a great job.

Most people, I hope, fall into the latter group. But there are variations of ‘doing good work only when someone is watching‘ that even those with the best of intentions may develop as a bad habit.

For instance:

Taking more care with customers who spend more money than with those who spend less. Bad idea. Why? Because it makes a number of assumptions that are almost always false. Such as those who spend less are worth less, those who spend less will never spend more, and those who spend more will always spend more.

The manager of a local store I shop at recently gave me a VIP card. I assume because I spend a ton money in there. The card allows me access to the manager at any time and alerts the salespeople and cashiers to be extra nice to me. Great, huh?

Nope. All customers should have access to a store manager, and training employees to only perk up when they see a VIP card almost guarantees that the card-less get treated like shit.

Not a smart way to get referrals and grow your customer base.

Taking more care with customers who are more likely to complain. Don’t nudge a good customer out of the way to pay attention to a chronic pain in the ass. It does nothing but reward the complainer and punish the non-complainer.

If you do this, when your business grows, you’ll most likely be growing it with more high maintenance customers – and there are very few businesses that can thrive with a high number of those.

Taking more care with a customer who has a large audience.  Most businesses today have some type of monitoring in place to scan the internet for reviews, posts, tweets or shares about the company (if you don’t, you should).  The plan is to address and hopefully nip in the bud any customer complaints swiftly, politely and  completely.

Great plan but if those who call or email with complaints are not given the same attention as those on the interwebs then a very large ball is being dropped.

Treat all complaints as if everyone in the world is watching how you respond. That’ll keep you on your toes!

In a nutshell, create a ‘customer care’ protocol for all of your staff (and you) to follow with all of your customers. Treat the lowest average sale customer the same way you’d treat the highest. Treat the quiet customer with the same care and urgency as the loud complaining one. Treat the Tweeter with 50K followers th the same carefully chosen words as the one with 100 followers.

Treat them well because it feels good to do so even when nobody is looking.

In fact, especially when nobody is looking.

Throughout our lives we have best friends, work friends, gym friends, girlfriends, boyfriends and a whole slew of other other friends that come, go and often stay in our lives. These are good relationships. We love these people.

And then there’s the salesfriend.

The salesfriend is someone you think is a real friend but is really only interested in your wallet. And how to get hold of it.

Salesfriends  invite you to lunch, friend you on Facebook and call you often. When you haven’t seen them for a while, you’ll get the ‘I miss you’ message and the ‘call me!’ message. When you finally reconnect, there’s always that request to buy something from them or give them something for free.

My first experience with a salesfriend occurred while searching for a new house. I didn’t have an agent and was just looking at random houses listed in the paper or attending Sunday Open Houses. At one of these Open Houses I met an agent who seemed to know exactly what I wanted in a house. Let’s call her Joan.

Joan and I got along so well that the next day I signed her on as my buyer’s agent and we began spending an afternoon each weekend looking at houses. My husband often joined us on the house hunting trips and we got along so fabulously that Joan often brought her husband as well.

Eventually, we found our dream house and went through the often frustrating settlement process – all while Joan and I talked about the four of us getting together after the settlement for a cookout, or she and I going shopping, and a multitude of other items for our ‘to do’ list.

The settlement was on a Friday and we moved in that weekend. I called Joan the following week to see what she was up to. She never called back. I emailed her. She never responded.

In fact, I never heard from Joan again.

Joan was a salesfriend. Nothing more.

I’ve had other experiences since then, none as blatant though, and none that didn’t take me as long to recognize. Here’s just a few:

• The guy who expressed for years what great friends we were until I caught him using my name to get past gatekeepers. When I asked him to stop, he screamed into my voice mail about how I wasn’t a very good friend.
• The woman who called me her BFF until I stopped buying cosmetics from her.
• The man who asks me to lunch so he can ‘pick my brain’ about how he should market his business…..you know, since we’re ‘friends’.
• The gal who constantly calls me looking for referrals – who I’ve never done business with and have no clue if what she sells is any good

I can guarantee that you’ve had at least one experience like those above. And if you are like most people, you hope it is your last. Here are a few tips to keep you from falling victim to the salesfriend again.

Don’t BE a salesfriend

Sometimes we can become so involved with our own business relationship cultivation process that we become salesfriends ourselves. Don’t pretend to like someone just to get a sale or business lead.

It’s hurtful, rude and disingenuous. It won’t do much for your business either. For example, although I loved the house I purchased and the process went relatively smoothly, I never referred anyone to Joan.

Define the relationship early on

When invited to breakfast, lunch or dinner for the first time, there’s nothing wrong with asking ‘why’. In fact, I’d highly recommend it.  There’s nothing wrong with an invitation to listen to a pitch – it’s a necessary part of the sales process. But pretending it is not a sales meeting is simply rude.

Also, I recently changed my outgoing VM message to request the caller’s name, phone number and reason for calling. If I don’t get those three things, it is unlikely I will call back. The reality is that I get approximately 30 phone calls a day. Too often I get messages such as these:

“Hi Jeannine, it’s Bob Smith. I just need to ask you a quick question. Call me when you get a chance.”

“Hi Jeannine, it’s Sally Jones. Please call me asap.”

“I received your contact info from a friend. My name is Tim Smith and I’d appreciate it if you could call me back some time today”

In the above scenarios, the callers were either people I had never met or people I had met only once or twice. Bob wanted me to recommend his services although I had never used Bob’s services or knew anyone who had. Sally wanted me to buy face cream that was on sale that day only. Tim wanted to sell me a car wrap with my logo.

Don’t be afraid to be blunt

Most of us are instinctively polite and don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But with salesfriends it’s better for everyone all around if you are blunt up front, even if it means bruising an ego or two.

Be clear that you are not interested in purchasing what they are selling or that you only recommend those you’ve done with business with. Be clear that ‘picking your brain’ will result in a bill for the consultation even if its over lunch.

Don’t confuse ‘notworking’ with ‘networking’

The former is believing that hitting up your friends for business or referrals is networking; that those you know somehow ‘owe’ you new business or business leads.

The latter is developing business relationships based on verified good business practices, and mutual trust and respect.

Off you go now….time to get rid of those salesfriends.

Just about everyone I know, both online and off, has a great story about how and why they began using social media. For most, it was all about business and sales – getting more of both. For others, the story is about friends and family and keeping in touch. For still others, it was a task assigned by the boss and simply part of a work day.

The stories are all different with no two alike – except one part; the end. The end for just about all is that whatever they intended for social media at the beginning of their story, isn’t what it became for them.

I’m no different. I initially dived in when I started my company a few years ago. For me, it was all about business, sales, more business and did I mention sales?

Of course that changed rather quickly. I’ve always been drawn to funny people and I found a slew of them online. I in turn, discovered that I could occasionally make people laugh as well, and discovered how addicted I am to the comment “You crack me up!” It makes my day.

I also am a magnet for the techies and I soon stumbled on the tech savvy #usguys tribe of brilliant thinkers and conversationalists. I met the editors at 12Most (meet Peg & Paul) and wrote two blog posts for them. From there,  I was off to conferences as an attendee and then to conferences as a speaker.

I thought that was pretty much how far it was going to go for me, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed, I’d come so far from that first tweet.

But just when I thought I’d reached the peak of that climb, things managed to go even higher with this year’s powerful, painful and inspiring organization of social outreach and support for two tribe members. One facing a medical crisis (read Brandie’s Story here) and the other facing public betrayal from an employer (read Dave’s Story here).

It was like a door opened up. Or a divider came down;  one that separated my real life from my online life. For me, it was no longer different worlds or different lives – they were one in the same. And filled with some great people, and a lot of them.

It made me think about who we are, who we intend to be and who we end up being online. I’m not sure how much control we have over that either.

I think of the possibilities though the way I envision a wall  (separating, keeping us either all in or all out), a window (allowing us to observe but we aren’t heard) or a doorway (inviting us to walk through and connecting our worlds).

In your Social Journey of Adventures, what do you see before you?

A Wall

You pop on your social accounts just long enough to send out your latest promo or sales pitch. But usually, you just schedule a bunch of them to auto-post in a calculated time interval derived from your Google Analytics data. You can’t even remember the last time you actually logged into Twitter or LinkedIn from their log in pages.

The only posts you pay any attention to are people you know IRL (in real life). You don’t really interact much with others online unless they express an interest in buying something from you.

You either have +2000 Facebook personal friends and only share your promos and sales pitches with them OR you have 52 page fans and never share anything. Either way, you delete negative comments and you have 129 people blocked.

You have one Circle in G+, people at your office.

Once a year, you send out a request to all of your LinkedIn connections to recommend you – most don’t.

Prediction: Will either move on to Window or will abandon social media all together within a year and loudly proclaim that social media doesn’t work.

A Window

You read more than you post, tweet or share. In fact, you can’t seem to find enough time to read everything you want to read. Your free Evernote account is maxed out.

You don’t share much though beyond an occasional retweet, but you retweet without commenting. Ever.

For you, engagement is clicking Like on a Facebook share.

You have two Circles in G+, people you know and people you don’t.

Prediction: Will either move on to the Doorway or forever be a reader, follower and non-commenting retweeter.

A Doorway

You’re a reader, sharer, talker and chatterer. For you, it’s more about conversation than conversion.

You have at least 10 close friends who live a continent away.

You know that #SocialGood is real because you’ve experienced it. You know it works.

You’re drawn to brands with an interactive social presence because it shows they want to listen, not just broadcast.

Your favorite sections on LinkedIn are Answers and Groups. You have hashtags in your Twitter profile and you’ve never auto-DM’d in your life. Well, at least not lately.

You’ve changed your profile picture at least once in honor of someone else.

Prediction: Will be too busy experiencing to care about any prediction from me or anyone else.

Our online social journey is not about a Klout score, the number of followers, or the timing of tweets. It’s about the adventure and the people you meet along the way.

Think of it as one big long scavenger hunt – finishing isn’t the fun part, it’s finding all the cool stuff!