Eric Reiss
April 9 10:30AM
With the current economic downturn and significant layoffs among sales staff,
the web has become more important than ever as a means of communicating with
customers/clients/membership. But I have yet to meet a CEO who likes website
development. It makes business leaders uncomfortable. The web experts speak in
a cryptic language – CMS, KM, XML, CSS. The site seems to take forever to
build, costs more than expected, and invariably provides less value than the
organization had hoped.
No one likes signing a big check without some idea as to what they’re
getting. So, I put together the attached document to help outline a few basic,
non-technical tips that will significantly increase a company's chances for
online success. And they let CEOs do what they do best – lead.
The presentation I am suggesting here has now has been very successful in
generating business for my company here in Denmark. I'd like to present this,
as we do for groups of business people, so that IAs and other project managers
can see how we tackle the sales process. Attendees are welcome to borrow as
much as they like for their own client pitches.
April 9 5:00PM
We’ve all been there at one point or another. A project that once held great promise is getting loused up by incompetent marketing assistants or micromanaging CEOs. Here are 10 of my war stories – no slides, no names, no hype, just the facts. Plus a few words about what I learned along the way. This is my preliminary list. It may change between now and April 9, but it should give you some idea as to where I’m coming from.
“What shade of lipstick can you put on our pig?”
What to do when the client doesn’t really care
“Would you consider a no-cure, no-pay agreement?”
How to get screwed in one easy lesson
“Who called this stupid meeting? Who are you guys? Why am I here?”
How to avoid meetings from hell
“But social media is free…”
The truth behind so-called “social media marketing”
“BTW, I’m no longer in charge of the project. I’m transferring to our office in China.”
What to do when the key decision-maker leaves the team a week before the contract is signed
“Oh, the contract is just a formality…”
What to watch out for when dealing with bureaucrats
“We want the best damned site in our industry. Can we have it Thursday?”
How to give clues to clueless clients
“You didn’t deliver what you promised…”
We know about feature creep. What about deliverables creep?
“My wife says links should be blue.”
What to do when the CEO pulls rank
“But your proposal doesn’t contain all the stuff we want but didn’t ask for…”
How to read between blurry lines