THIS ISSUE INCLUDES: •  What's New? •  Going, Going … Gone! •  Resource Referral •  Lessons Learned •  Tips & Tricks •  Community Leaders •  Member Spotlight •  Community Stats •  Your Account Summary •  Special Thanks •  Last Laugh

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WHAT'S NEW?

Dear Askers & Answerers,

The MP staff met this week in gorgeous Santa Barbara for a little team-building, competitive analysis and visioning. As you may know, when you work on a virtual team it's important to have meetings like this once in a while. Normally we pound away on our keyboards in our remote offices with some sense of the big picture. But coming together face-to-face immediately crystallizes our focus.

So you won't be surprised that we enthusiastically dreamed up several new developments and walked away with a long list of action items. You'll be hearing about various site improvement projects from Roy (MP's director of strategy & development) or Ann (MP's chief content officer) or I in the weeks ahead.

In the meantime, I'd like to mention two changes in KHE that are in the works right now. First, we have added a small icon next to the titles of questions posted by MP's premium members. It looks like an orange diamond. (See an example.) We're doing this to call attention to the folks who are sponsoring our community by becoming paying subscribers. I hope you'll reward them for their contribution by responding to their questions!

Second, we are working on formalizing a list of community guidelines. We hope this will help new members quickly learn how things work in KHE. I wrote a first draft and posted it for your review. There have been some terrific suggestions shared already. I hope you'll add yours to the list. I'd like to publish these Rules of Play in the next few days.

That's it for now. Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Happy exchanging,

Val Frazee
Moderator, Know-How Exchange
MarketingProfs.com

GOING, GOING, GONE!

Here are KHE's 10 oldest questions. They're likely to close soon. Have an idea to offer? Better do it now!

1. Have any business slogan ideas?
2. Want to study advertising/PR in the US
3. What is the best way to build demographic profiles of site visitors?
4. Globalisation
5. Marketing plan
6. What infrastructure is needed for BPO?
7. Ideas for naming of re-launch of new release of practice management software?
8. What is a dipstick survey? Why is it called so?
9. Email marketing strategy & cost/benefits for charities
10. Positioning statements

RESOURCE REFERRAL: GOOGLE DUEL

In response to last week's newsletter, Peter (helpUhire) recommends another search engine optimization resource:

"I have one related to the one that was in today's Know-How News. This one lets you enter two different terms and compare how popular they are on Google (as in which appears on the most pages). I use it to compare two companies to see which is more popular with Google. I enter the company names or homepage URLs into it."

Resource: http://www.googleduel.com

I'm always looking for resources to share with our readers. If you know of one, send me a blurb. I'll send you 250 Question Points.

LESSONS LEARNED: CUSTOMER FOCUS

Earlier this week a marketing student posed an important question about customer service: Why do so many businesses fail to reach out and connect with their customers? Don't they know how vital it is? Do they just not know how to go about it? Here are a few highlights, so we can all benefit from sadia_na's question.

• gavin.dowling: Simple - businesses get bogged down with the peripheral stuff like immediate profits, delivery, planning for tomorrow, shareholders, reducing costs, etc., etc., etc.


• eugene: Customer loyalty is seen by many businesses as crucial. However, not every organisation is able to capitalise on this due to numerous reasons: resources, technical know-how, budgetary constraint, etc.


• Deremiah, *CPE: a) Companies really don't know (from actual experience) the true value of doing business with a customer geniunely. b) Some companies have many acquisitions and then downsizings without considering the manpower or technology they need to handle customers geniunely. Some of them do this to show profits that are not customer-based. (i.e., the profits are man-made from downsizing, not from customer purchases)


• telemoxie: The cost of providing customer service is a function of the level of service provided, and it is not a linear relationship. As the level of customer satisfaction approaches 100%, costs skyrocket.


• kwinters: To put it simply: There are people worried about doing the job. There are people worried about helping people. Guess which group you are talking about?


• jeffe: Companies really do believe they need to deliver customer service and satisfaction. But in this time-deprived world, it is difficult to do, on both ends of the stick (for your company and for your customers). I would hate to think where our company would be right now if we had not initiated a new marketing/solutions department. It is working for us, but it is easy to get wrapped up in other projects and forget what the mission is.


• jose04: If the customer is weak and the seller is strong, then exploitation takes place in the market. This exploitative trait is furthered by a weak legal system and poor consciousness of customer rights. In such environments, the governments too do not show a healthy track record of taking care of their people. ... Most marketing textbooks belong to the advanced nations and therefore reflect the "in thing" in their developed economies. ... "Customer orientation" and "customer satisfaction" - as experienced in a developed society like the U.S. and in most of Europe - cannot be expected in a developing or an underdeveloped environment, where servility in all its forms is practiced.


• darcy.moen: I would agree that most businesses don't understand how to judge a customer's satisfaction, and they don't know how to encourage loyalty. ... Setting standards and watching how your measuring systems really work is a lot of very detailed difficult thinking and few businesses will spend the time to develop such processes because they are too busy trying to survive. ... I know few businesses even attempt to learn about their customers, let alone study them to discover their habits.

Question: Customer Satisfaction - Why Do Businesses Forget It?

TIPS & TRICKS: REMEMBER ME

If you click the "Remember Me" checkbox in the MarketingProfs login box, then MP will send you a small text file known as a cookie. Your computer stores the cookie as a reminder to MP of who you are. This way you do not have to login each time you return to MP or KHE. As long as you are accessing the site from the same computer, the site will login for you automatically. This is a handy feature for those of us who tend to forget our passwords.

But once in a while a cookie gets corrupted. It's a common problem. The way you know it's happened is you get stuck in an annoying loop trying to login. The site asks you to login (which is odd, since usually it logs in for you). You enter your account info, and then it asks you to login again. Here's what you do to resolve it:

1. Go to http://www.marketingprofs.com/cookiedelete.asp
2. Visiting this page automatically deletes your MP cookie
3. Return to http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea
4. Click the "Remember Me" box (if you want a new cookie)
5. Login again

It doesn't hurt anything to delete your cookie. So this is a good troubleshooting step whenever you're having login problems.

Have a question? Ask the experts.

Post a brief synopsis below, and invite other members to offer their feedback.

My Question Title

COMMUNITY LEADERS

As of this week, these are our superstars! The Most Inquisitive are those who have asked the most questions. (Where there's a tie, we broke it based on number of points they offered for their questions.) The Most Expert are those with the highest number of Cumulative Points (given to them by question authors for offering helpful answers).

NOTE: These are our top members as of midday July 16, 2004

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: MEET PETER (HELPUHIRE)

This week's profile spotlights Peter Donohue, a member who specializes in B2B marketing in the U.S. and Asia. Peter (helpUhire) is also an educator, teaching classes in global management. He has been a participant in KHE since late April. Read on to learn more.

Where are you based?
San Francisco Bay Area in California (USA)

What do you do in real-life?
Currently, I provide marketing and international development contract work to startups/small B2B companies. My main project right now is marketing/business development for a startup called helpUhire Solutions. I also teach global management classes part-time for the University of Phoenix.

Tell us about your company.
helpUhire develops and hosts applicant prescreening questionnaires, so that companies can easily and inexpensively sort through the piles of resumes and find the qualified applicants. I wish it was available when I was hiring at my previous companies.

How did you find KHE?
I've been a subscriber to MarketingProfs Today for quite a while now. A few months ago, I found Know-How Exchange and started participating in that.

Explain your Community Name and why you selected it.
Pretty simple - my first name and the name of the company I do the most work for.

What kinds of KHE questions do you enjoy most?
I like the international ones. I managed Asian Marketing for a division of a Fortune 500, for which I was an expat based in Seoul, Korea. This increased my interest in international issues.

What professional organizations do you belong to?
American Marketing Association and Business Marketing Association. I am currently on the board of the Northern California chapter of the Business Marketing Association.

How did you get started in marketing?
I have over 10 years work experience in marketing, a BS in marketing, and an MBA in International Management.

Describe one of your non-marketing hobbies or interests.
Studying the Japanese language. I spent four months in Japan in 2003 studying, and I've continued at a local Japanese language school. I am not fluent yet, but I'm hoping to get there sooner or later.

COMMUNITY STATS

Active Unique Participants (to date): 1,988
Closed Questions (to date): 2,032
Currently Open Questions: 155
Total Responses (to date): 15,323
Subscribers to this newsletter: 7,872

YOUR ACCOUNT SUMMARY

These numbers come directly from YOUR profile. Question Points tells you how many points you have available for asking questions in the forum. Expert Points indicates your standing in the community based on answers you have posted. Visit this FAQ, if you want to know more.

Question Points: %%PointsBalance%%
Expert Points: %%PointsCum%%

Click here to buy more Question Points

SPECIAL THANKS

Thank you, Peter (helpUhire), for providing content for this newsletter (Resource Referral and Member Spotlight). And thanks to all the following community members who have emailed or posted suggestions, technical reports or questions in the last week. Your feedback and energy drives this community's development. We couldn't do it without you!

ASVP/ChrisB, Vevolution, SteveB, JBtron, SRyan, Jim Deveau/Catalyst, Peter (helpUhire), mbarber, tjh, Nicolas, gerardodada, Michele, Pepper Blue, Allen Weiss, Jett, Richard, cutoo, nada.abisaleh, telemoxie, kwinters, erin, sauk1, sweetasman01, NiqueLite, sam, al, Uma, Eryne, jose04, nkindel, mikatoutoute, Deremiah, *CPE

LAST LAUGH

I like to end with a smile. So this space is dedicated to something amusing I find posted in our forum.

Questions like this one happen with some regularity. The author goes for a vague approach with the idea that anonymity is important to maintaining competitive advantage. But, as you'll see here, the end result is our Answerers have a hard time responding with anything useful. If you find yourself in this predicament, please at least participate in the guessing game you have created! :)

The Discussion: What if There Is a Lot of Competition in Your Area?

Forum Feedback: The Know-How Exchange is awfully young. So we're still refining how things work. We have a gigantic list of action items, and your feedback helps us prioritize it. So please feel free to reply to this email with any suggestions. Thanks, in advance, for your time!

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