Buttonwood Technology Group, L.L.C.

Easy answer…buy a promotional product!  Is this a dumb question?  Not really…

So we all know that no client just calls up and buys a promotional product just like that!  Clients do a bunch of things before they buy, like ask for a sample, or a quote, or a presentation, or an idea, or a better price, or a million other annoying things before they finally actually part with their money.  So why should the web be any different?

One of the things we obsess about here at Buttonwood is something called conversions…not religious or metric conversions…but online conversions.

A conversion is an action a potential buyer takes before they actually purchase a promotional product.  This action could be many days in the past or just moments before the buy button gets pushed.  It could be as simple as reading a review or checking a price or something as complicated as posting a link on FaceBook so they can show friends what promotional product they are thinking of buying.

So we need your help figuring out what are the actions that constitute a conversion on Buttonwood’s Promotional Products websites.  In other words what are the things that clients are doing before they buy a promotional product.  Once we know this we can encourage clients to do more of these things and then hopefully purchase more promotional products!!

If you have any ideas can you leave a comment on the left side of the page (I think you can remain anonymous if you’re shy).  I’m hoping we can start a bit of a conversation and come up with some interesting ideas together.

Feel free to be honest just don’t be evil.

Check out the AdAge Top 150 Marketing blogs.

Five quick rules for making money on the web when it comes to company stores and inventory:

1) Decorated inventory is bad

It’s just that simple.  Once you put someone’s logo on something it’s becomes a lot less valuable to anyone else. A $10  hat with a Hertz logo on it is now a worthless hat to anyone but Hertz or maybe some Brooklyn hipster.  Don’t put a logo on anything until someone has agreed to give you money for it…trust me there are not enough hipsters in Brooklyn to buy all those hats no one else wants.

2) Don’t loose money in one place thinking you’ll make it up in another

That’s like agreeing to eat dog food as an appetizer because the main course is Filet Mignon.  Dog food is always dog food no mater what they promise you for dinner.  If you can’t ever make a profit then that is called charity. If you’re feeling like doing some charity work then there are lots of people in Haiti who need your help right now.  You’re in business to make money. Just because a big fancy client suggests you should work at a loss doesn’t mean it’s going to translate into something better later on. Dog food at the Ritz is still dog food!

3) Inventory is worth less every second

Take a look at your watch. Now watch that second hand move. Every tick is your unpaid for inventory becoming worth less.  Tick. Tick. Tick…now you’re poorer than you were three second ago.  Every day your inventory becomes worth less and less until the day when it is worthless.

4) No one cares about the size of your warehouse

The number of times I hear guys (you know who you are!) brag to each other about the size of their warehouse is amazing.  What is exciting about saying I have 50,000 square feet of expensive inventory sitting around making two to three turns a year.  That’s like bragging about your high fee, super risky, emerging market mutual fund that is loosing money or your third wife who just maxed out your American Express on her weekend trip with the tennis pro.   It may sound fantastic when you’re telling the story but everyone listening is not laughing with you.

5) Decorate on Demand is the future of company stores

So now that we know that decorated inventory is bad, loosing money is bad, decorated inventory is worthless and a big warehouse is not always a good thing what can we do about it?

Talk with your suppliers. They want to make money too!

Each large supplier either has or is working on a solution for small and single piece orders.  Buttonwood provides the electronic connection that keeps the order processing cost down and the suppliers can help dramatically reduce your inventory positions while increasing your product offering to your clients.

There are a lot of interesting things going on right now in the world of company stores that can really help distributors make money.  It will involve some new thinking and some up front work setting things up but the rewards are substantial.   Keep an open mind…you might surprise yourself and make some money!

Wired Magazine has a great article on how Google uses context to give us what we’re looking for.

This is the hard-won realization from inside the Google search engine, culled from the data generated by billions of searches: a rock is a rock. It’s also a stone, and it could be a boulder. Spell it “rokc” and it’s still a rock. But put “little” in front of it and it’s the capital of Arkansas. Which is not an ark. Unless Noah is around. “The holy grail of search is to understand what the user wants,” Singhal says. “Then you are not matching words; you are actually trying to match meaning.”

Twitter shows staggering growth.

Updates/Posts

Facebook status updates: 700 per second
Twitter tweets: 600 per second
Buzz posts: 55 per second

So the America’s Cup was on last week.  While overshadowed by the Olympics it’s still the oldest active trophy in international sport, predating the Modern Olympics by 45 years. If you watch the America’s Cup which you can here you’ll see some wonderful technology at work along with some of the best sailing talent on the planet.

WHAT LESSON CAN WE TAKE FROM SAILBOAT RACING?

As a Corinthian Sailor I often look to racing strategy as a way to help frame other decisions in business life.  It’s very satisfying to be able to convince myself that I take away key insights from sports and turn them into really useful business strategy.  So sailing all weekend is really doing research for work…it you get my drift…

Anyway…everyone thinks that the way to win a sailboat race is to sail faster than the other guy.  Well…they’re partly right…but in reality the easiest way to win a sailboat race is to sail less distance than the other guy (or gal).

NOT EVERYONE IS IN THE SAME RACE

Huh??  How does the course shrink for some boats?  That makes no sense….oh, but it does if you factor in the ever shifting wind…a small change in wind direction can have a dramatic effect on a boat race.

I won’t go into the technical sailing details (you can read more here if you’re interested) but the lesson here is that the parts of the competition that are variable (i.e. the wind) are less obvious yet more important than the parts of the competition that are fixed (i.e. the course).

THE BUSINESS STRATEGY LESSON:

Look for the stuff that’s always changing…and change your strategy to fit the new conditions. That’s how you can leap ahead of the competition.

Now what’s the wind shift in the promotional products industry?  What’s the subtle ever changing thing that we don’t see or think about every day but permeates our life to the extent that we hardly notice it….you guessed it…THE WEB.

So which way is the web wind shifting?  What’s happening online that will let you tack on that wind shift and leap ahead of the competition?

THE RACE IS MOVING ONLINE

The big online shift is called Web 2.0.  Web 2.0 is about information sharing and online collaboration.  Some of the most popular Web 2.0 applications are Facebook and Twitter. Millions of people all contributing to provide content and tell stories online.  No one’s in charge and we’re all working together to make up the rules as we go along…

…well that’s happening in the promotional products industry as well.

So what are the promotional products versions of Web 2.0?

Look for services that allow many people to access the applications. Can suppliers update their own prices, add specials and generally control their own information?  Can your customers log in and access their order history and order status?  Can they actually buy online and upload their logo and see all the various options before they buy? Is someone taking all this information and trying to figure out how to make the experience between buyer, distributor and supplier better?

THE RELATIONSHIP STILL MATTERS…

The winners in this boat race are the ones who see that the relationship between buyer and seller is moving online.  In person meetings became the telephone – which became email – which became Chat – which became Facebook and Twitter and Buzz and Wave and Foursquare and Yelp! and so one and so on….

Now I don’t mean to suggest that you should immediately start tweeting your insights to all and sundry…go for it if you feel inspired but chances are you’re not going to sell a ton of Promotional Products on Twitter.

.
..IT’S JUST GOING TO MOVE ONLINE

What you should start to do is look at how you relate to your customers and start the process of imagining those relationships online.  Does the guy you run into at your kids baseball game who gives you a few orders a year have any kind of online life? What are you doing to keep in touch with him online?  Facebook?  Does it help you sell anything? Probably not!!

You have his email address…are you sending him some sort of keep in touch selection of specials and ideas?  Have you created some sort of ongoing place in cyberspace that defines your business relationship together?  Think of a company store but something more fluid and more personalized to your unique relationship…what does that online place look like and how can you use that shared zone on the web to build and strengthen and grow your relationship?

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW?

Take the relationship that you have with your customers and make a place online for that relationship to grow and prosper. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or your website or something else that reflects your unique style and personality the winners of the race will be the ones who move their relationships online in a way that keeps them meaningful and productive.

Here at Buttonwood we’re constantly trying to help distributors use the internet to help grow their business.  We have a weekly email that features some of the most interesting specials and new products in the industry. We have an application that you can use to create unlimited customized stores for all your customers. We have the most sophisticated and up to date product data from the best suppliers in the industry.

And we are passionately obsessed about staying at the forefront of technology for the promotional products industry.

TAKE OUR 30 DAY NO-RISK TRIAL

Keep Buttonwood in mind as you keep your eye on the wind…and when you decide to tack into the shift and take your internet game up a notch give us a try.

We’re here to help you win the race!

Jason Black from Boundless Network shares his observations on what NOT to do in 2010.

Read the meat of the post below….Read the full post here.

Four strategies that should have been left in 2008:

• Selling your personality. Buying decisions used to be unregulated and delegated to the field or individual departments. You could be a hero by having a great personality, offering creative ideas and providing good customer service. But these days, the procurement department couldn’t care less about your winning smile. Buying decisions are heavily regulated, and the only strategy that wins over Procurement is a money-saving value proposition.
• Staying offline. The old guard in corporate America was content with catalogs and product samples. But a new generation of buyers has entered the workforce, a generation that barely remembers a world without the internet. They don’t want to flip through stacks of catalogs. The salesperson that fails to adopt their language and adapt to their needs will increasingly lose market share.
• Focusing on product and price. Sales professionals with a product-focused mentality can survive, but it’s a slow and painful process. To really differentiate yourself, be ROI-focused instead. Smart business people show their customers how they can positively impact the client’s bottom line. In this economy, companies are in the market for solutions that drive revenue. Be that solution.
• Relying on sweat equity. Pre-recession, he who worked the hardest was often the most successful. Nowadays, even the most committed workaholic can be overshadowed by someone with better tools and a stronger platform. The sales professionals who are beating the economic odds don’t rely on 100% sweat equity. They know that having a business partner/distributor that does more than act as a bank is the key to growing and supporting business. They have partners that provide tools, technology, marketing and training that keeps them competitive (without working 80 hours a week).

In this interview Matt LeBlanc is an efficiency expert who gets physically threatened when he moves  someones printer in order to make him more efficient.

Some interesting trends from ROI Magazine.

So Congress is conspiring to force doctors to report gifts….not a bad idea. However they want to include any gift over $5 and total gifts up to a maximum of $100. This will create a nightmare reporting scenario which will cost our industry some serious revenue.

Get involved and let them know that a travel mug really doesn’t have the same corrupting power that an all-expense paid golf vacation does!  I know you’re thinking…who am I…one little voice…never going to make a difference…but it’s a numbers game.

Those geniuses in DC know one thing for sure – if they irritate enough people they won’t get reelected.

So make three phone calls or send three emails (senator, senator and representative) – takes five minutes..tops.

It’s really important!