Nan Palmero, MBA

Does Best Buy’s Twelpforce Help or Hurt?

This morning I watched the new Best Buy Twelpforce commercial (@twelpforce) where a gentleman stands up in the middle of a football field and proclaims his need for a new tv. Best Buy’s team of people, known on Twitter as the Twelpforce respond to him from the bleachers suggesting an LED tv. He responds back that he’s price conscious and the Twelpforce explain they have a price match guarantee. Here’s where it gets interesting. Back in March 2009, Best Buy was charged with a class action lawsuit for providing financial bonuses, based in part, by denying valid price match requests. So, I posed the question to the @twelpforce linking to the Consumerist article (linked above).

@twelpforce replied back:

I understand that Twelpforce, as most twelpforce’s go, is powered my hundreds, maybe even thousands of people (look at those commercials!). My curiosity extends to wonder whether there was some type of approval process for determining how you get to join the Twelpforce (are there elite Twelpforce SEALS or Rangers?) and who answers what questions? At this point, the Twelpforce says it’s business as usual with their price matching shenanigans. The tweet was surely a mistake, right?

So do you think the Twelpforce approach is helping or hurting Best Buy? I’d love to know your thoughts.

UPDATE: Thank you to @bernierjohn, @TWELPFORCE, @rickmead, @Coral_BestBuy, @BestBuyDanvers. You all responded back quickly via Twitter to let me know that if there’s ever a price match discrepancy, to contact (888) BEST-BUY and the Customer Relations Department should sort it out. I appreciate the responses!

If I Can’t Read It, I Can’t Buy It

Vision at 55, just like driving the speed limit, sucks. Unfortunately, what you’ll find is designers love putting together beautiful marketing materials that only a fourth grader can read due to the 8-point font. Have a good look at all your marketing materials, business cards and websites to make sure you use a legible font and text size. If the customers with the money can’t read what you put in front of them, they’ll likely toss your materials, rather than admitting that their eyesight is too poor to see what’s in front of them. So make sure you use clear and concise words anytime you communicate with prospects and clients and you use a font anyone can read. How do your marketing materials hold up?

Change Your Day With One Word

How frequently do opportunities come into your life? Oftentimes, we’re paralyzed by some fear that has been hounding us for years. I’m just as guilty as you. Amazing situations have lined up in my life and I have turned them down simply because “no” came to mind first. What if we actually looked at these opportunities intentionally and before we said “no,” we thought through what a “yes” might look like…what could be?

Here’s an example from my life. Last week, Robert Scoble came to town. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s an internet star. His opinions are valued by many and he’s an all around nice guy. He comes to San Antonio infrequently, so we had a party that he attended. The night was winding down and there were a few of us left, so he, his (awesome) cameraman Rocky and some other fun people decided to get a bite to eat. I chose to opt out and head home. A few minutes later, I realized what a silly mistake I was making. There was no reason to say “no.” I turned around and met up with Scoble and the rest of the folks and I’m glad I did. I would have missed out on a great conversation, learning more about the people I was with all because my first reaction was “no.”

I certainly had said “no” in the past to opportunities without any real reason for saying it, but I always found a way to rationalize my decision later and you’ve likely done the same. This week, I challenge you to look at your situation and say “YES!” where you’d typically say “no.” Are you an overachiever? Get someone else to play along. If you’ve got a great story to tell about your “YES!” adventure, please share in the comments or catch me on Twitter.

photo by cpalmieri

Innovate or Die – Part 2

Welcome back! In developing your product or service to be meaningfully unique, you’ll need to leverage three additional points.

Explore Stimulus

Exploring stimulus is a crucial component to the development of new ideas. In typical brainstorming, people make a list of ideas to develop something out of nothing. Imagine if you decided that you wanted to buy a new digital camera. Rather than coming up with a list of features you’d dreamed up, wouldn’t it be easier and more effective if you reviewed different models for the features, benefits, designs and quality to make a decision versus trying to come up with a list of things you think you’d like? Exploring stimulus when developing a new product is the same, where you begin with some building blocks to develop brand new ideas.

Leverage Diversity

Leveraging diversity requires taking different members of your team, even suppliers and vendors, and looking to them to provide new pieces of inspiration. If you only ask one team for their view on a rose, they might all come back saying beauty. Leveraging the diversity can yield different perspectives on the same rose including vitamin c tea, romance and rose water. Bring in different teams and look at what different world views can do for your process.

Drive Out Fear

Drive out fear by applying a system to your innovation process. Deming, who helped Japan rebuild after WWII implemented what we knew in school as the Scientific Method. Plan > Do > Study > Act. Plan what you’re going to do and what you want to test. Do what you’ve planned inexpensively. Study the results. Act on your findings to adjust your idea. A fail fast, fail cheap attitude is best in finding out whether your idea is worth determining that you should continue, you should quit or you should continue but adjust course.

Innovate or Die – Part 1

Recently, Erik and I traveled to the Eureka! Ranch in Cincinnati, Ohio. You may have never heard of Eureka! but you’ve likely been affected by their innovations; most Americans have interacted with about 18 products or services that were conceived or developed at the Eureka! Ranch, including the Swiffer Sweeper, Nissan Xterra and American Express Centurion Card aka “The Black Card.”

The takeaway from the Ranch was amazing. Today, you either have to be meaningfully unique or you’d better be cheap. Meaningfully unique means that your profit margins are 10%+ greater than your industry. Interestingly, we also found that only 1 in 7 small businesses closes leaving debt, while the other 80% determine it’s just not worth the effort and shut down.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost. There is a system to affecting change in your organization to become meaningfully unique. Doing so involves 6 components.

Dramatic Difference
Having a dramatic difference increases your odds of success 3.7x when selling to new customers. People love buying things that are the “first” or the “only” one of it’s kind. The iPhone is a perfect example. The market was flooded with smartphones, but iPhone brought the experience to an entirely new level and has proved to be a tremendous success.

Overt Benefit
How many times do you see a new product with a new polymer, a special stainless steel finish or different battery technology? We see these too often. These are features. People want to see features, but most importantly they want benefits. Having an overt benefit (“the battery lasts a lifetime, you never need a charger!”) makes your sales 3x more effective. Keep the features as backup.

Real Reason to Believe
If companies followed through on what they said they’d do, this wouldn’t be necessary. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. When you make fantastic claims, you’d better be ready to back them up. Was this technology developed by NASA for the astronauts? Do you have a patent? These are all real reasons to believe that you can deliver what you promised and they yield a 2x probability of success.

If this is the end of the road with you, be sure to consider the
critical components listed above. Always ask yourself and your team
“Why should I care?” similar to the way a child would ask. Ask this
question repeatedly and often, to help get to help you crystallize the most basic value of
your offering. If you’re interested in learning the remaining 3 components, come back tomorrow for the end!

Crowdsourced Questions for Mark Goulston, M.D.

Mark Goulston, M.D. is a psychiatrist, business consultant, and FBI hostage-negotiation trainer. He His expertise has been tapped for in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Newsweek, Time, Los Angeles Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, BBC News, Oprah, and The Today Show. He recently wrote Just Listen, Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone. Since I’ll be interviewing Mark soon, I’d like get some questions answered for you.

Do you have a person professionally or personally that you’re having trouble getting through to? Do you struggle in times of conflict or crisis? Submit your question in the form, use a fake name if you’d like, and I’ll ask Mark. Then, stay tuned for the answers in the next few weeks!

You can follow Mark on Twitter at @markgoulston

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Who is Boy Genius? UNMASKED Here!

Want to know Boy Genius’s true identity? You can find out here.

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If you keep up with mobile technology in the slightest, you no doubt have heard of Boy Genius. He has an army of “ninjas” that uncover new phones, sometimes years before they are released. It really is an amazing feat. As open as Boy Genius is with his information on new handsets, product releases and software updates, he’s equally as secretive about his identity. Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place, as I’ve unmasked Boy Genius. Let’s run through the hints that he’s provided to lead to his unmasking.

Attitude: If you follow Boy Genius on Twitter, you’ll know he talks trash. It even says so in his bio: “I talk a lot of smack.”

Food and Drink: Boy Genius is quite the cook. In fact, he makes risotto, bolognese sauce and wine reductions. He’s even been known to sneak a lemon ‘tini here and there.

Respect: Boy Genius is held at an amazing level. He’s shaped products, launches and their downfalls. Insane levels of power rest on his shoulders. At Boy Genius’s one year anniversary, celebrities like Michael Strahan, Diddy and DJ Clue showed up. BG is clearly no chump.

References: The final giveaway was where you can find Boy Genius and the BoyGeniusReport.com mentioned – CNBC, BrandWeek, ABC Radio and The Wall Street Journal.

If you put the street cred together with choices in food and beverage, company kept and attitude found on Twitter, you come back with only one person. A man that has been in the industry longer than most and has been hardened to the embargo, the PR flack and the grief of corporate. A man that loves both Apple and RIM. Who is this uber-connected, feared and loved technology soothsayer? A man you’ve known all along by another name and who I’ve had the pleasure of sharing a meal?

I want to know who Boy Genius is right now!

Never Say “No Problem” Again

Most humans live by the law of reciprocity where you do something of positive value for someone and they feel an obligation to do something of positive value in return. Taking the time to enhance the lives of others will have a positive effect on yours.

The critical moment comes when someone says “thank you.” Due to our prior interactions and media we’ve consumed, we often respond with:

“Nothing to it.” or “It’s just my job.” or “No problem.”

We’ve all said these lines before when someone thanked us. It’s easy. It seems like the right thing to stay. According to Dr. Robert Cialdini, you’re throwing away a valuable part of your social currency. When someone thanks you, they are extending themselves in showing you how they honestly value what you’ve done for them. If you respond with one of the terms above, you’re destroying the goodwill you’ve created and robbing the grateful person of an activity their brain wants to complete – the need to reciprocate.

Next time, instead of responding with “no problem” or “it’s just my job,” try “you’re most welcome, you’d do the same for me.” You’ll notice that most people will respond positively and agree that they will do the same for you! I’ve been using this method for years. The first step, though, is being willing to extend yourself to help others. Help others genuinely, repeatedly and without keeping score. You don’t need to keep score any longer when you do this. You’ll have built goodwill and solidified your goodwill and the benefit you provide in the minds of others. Do this for people that are close to you, do this for strangers. Everyone benefits from you reaching out, including you. How much goodwill can you build today? In effect, how many people can you help today?

As seen on MySA

Your Mind’s Pathway

Did you know that your mind starts out like an untouched field?

As you develop, you end up falling into patterns and your mind ends up carving pathways that you follow. You use the same vendors, call on the same size/type of clients, and hang out with your usual group of people.

As time goes on, you have a choice. Do you continue proceeding down the same path or do you make a change? Making a change takes time, effort, and can be a bit frightening. Since the path hasn’t been carved, it may feel like you have started over.

The benefits of carving a new path can be amazing. You can keep the best parts of your old ways (vendors, clients, friends, processes) while finding a new adventure and opportunities. Are you thinking too small? Spending time with people who are de-motivators? The path splits here. Which way are you going?

As Seen on Salesby5
Photo by dan.atx

WES2009: All They Can Say is No! – The Story of Nan

Written by my friend Drip at Themes4bb.com

I am here to tell you that RIM did a bang up job on the BlackBerry WES party. With the drinks flying and the music of Will.I.am blaring, you can imagine the stories would be flying. Yeah, I’ll say. But I am not here to talk about this girl dancing. (See pic above) I am here to talk about a man and a video. Nan Palmero is one of the best guys you will meet. We share alot of the same business philosophies and zeal for life.. Now with all that being said, why is he meriting his own post? Him and I were chatting and raving about the good energy that was in the room tonight. Here is how I remember the conversation.

Nan ” Will I am is putting on quite the show”

Me: “Yeah man. Although I do miss Fergie.”

Nan:” You know, I got this press pass and I wanna see how far this will get me. I am gonna try and get on stage.””

Me: “Never gonna happen. (Although in my mind I’m thinking – this dude has balls the size of church bells)

Nan: “Why not? I’m going up. I will probably get shut down but why not!”

Me: (thinking to myself. Dude you’re done. I got $20 on the big Jesse “the Body” Ventura grabbing him by his throat.) Alright go!

Next thing I know, he is walking toward the stage. I grab our trusty camera and I see him talking to the stage bouncer (FAIL) The bouncer looks at him and says “go ahead.” And he did and he never looked back. (Smart move) Now, I am mentally navigating him on where he should go. He is first stopping at the drummer. He is taking pure video and good quality. Ok, it’s been fun right? Shows over. I mean he can’t be actually thinking about going to film Will.i.am right? Oh snap! He walks over to Will and starts filming him. Will looks at him and gets back to business on the turntables. Nan tells him to keep working. At this point, I see the po-po waiting for Nan to come off the stage because they got a special prize for him. They stop him and completely are ready to yank him and his video but somehow he wiggles his way out of their midst. He looks at me and I am rooting for him like he is a special olympic hurdler winning his first goal. He is noyt interested in my salutations. He is beelined for the door. All he says is, Chad I gotta go. Follow me to the door. Now, I realize what is going on. He can’t stop or they may strip him for his film. I am happy to say he is a free man and I have the video of his stage presence with Will i am.