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                     What it Takes to Lie Like an EVP of Sales

This conference season allowed me, once again, to hear the best in hyperbole, touts and boasting. That's right, I got to listen to the best in obsfuscation, bombastic puffery and exaggeration - Executive VPs of Sales.

So, take a deep breath and repeat these pearls of lingusitic excess and you will be transferred into a full-fledged champion of outrageous claims:

1. "We are positioning ourselves to be the Microsoft of business software"
2. "We are the market leader"
3. "We are the platform of choice to the (choose one or all) SMB market, Global 5000, ___ industry, global software buyer, etc."
4. "Our solution is being validated by the market"
5. "Our products are market driven"
6. "Our solutions are market focused"
7. "We have the perfect business"
8. "We don't need to make comprises"
9. "Listen to what our satisfied customers have to say"
10. "We are the industry standard"

I think these are akin to the ten commandments of sales leadership. By themselves, these statements are pretty meaningless. But, like anything coming from a sales executive, meaningless is good especially if it sounds great. Keep rehearsing these commandments until you answer any question with one of the above. Before long, you'll be able to converse with prospects in this exciting way:

Prospect: "So, we’d like to know more about your product strategy”

Sales Exec: “Our products are market driven” (#5)

Prospect: “What does that mean? Is that your total strategy?”

Sales Exec: “What it means is that we are the market leader (#2) and our solution is being validated by the market (#4)”

Prospect: “What do either of those have to do with vision or strategy?”

Sales Exec: “We will continue to enhance our product along vertical lines and we are the platform of choice for the widget industry (#3)”

Prospect: “So that means firms like ours will have to do the heavy lifting and do your visioning and strategy work for you?”

Sales Exec: “Precisely, because we listen to what our clients say (#9)”

Prospect: “That sounds like we’re getting ripped off!!!”

Sales Exec: “True but that’s because we have the perfect business (#7)”

Yes, it is the perfect business. If these folks can’t get a software job, they really ought to run for public office.

If you’re in the throes of a conversation with one of these slippery Sales VPs, steer the talk so that you trigger these other automated responses Sales executives can’t help but utter:

1. “Why I’d be delighted to buy drinks for the entire team!”
2. “Yeah, I think Hooters is a great place for bonding, too!”
3. “Oh, I love to play golf. I just wish my game was as good as yours!”
4. “Um, yeah, we closed down the bar that night, too.”
5. “That bar has my name written on it. See, it says “Gentleman’s Club!””
6. “That was my third wife. If I don’t hit this quarter’s numbers, I’m going to have a lot of hungry ex-wives on my tail.”
7. “I take my family on vacation and my girlfriend to the President’s Club outing”
8. “When I said I walked right up to the edge of the ethical line, I was probably already a little over the line.”
9. “We don’t need more R&D, we need more quality leads”
10. “Man, I’m good aren’t I!”

If you'll excuse me now, I've got to find a 55-gallon barrel of Lysol to de-sleaze myself. Thank goodness conference is over.

Travelling During Conference Season

                          Lord, Save Me From These "Expert" Travelers

The conference season has finally wound down as we move into the summer vacation time. Sadly, flying to these events continues to be a deteriorating experience. But, the latest move made by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) made conference attendance worse, not better. What change did they make? - the change to segregate security screenings by your traveling expertise level.

For those of you who think you’re an “Expert Traveler”, please take the following test. If any of these questions or answers surprised you, you are not an expert traveler.

The Expert Traveler Quiz

1. Which of the following qualifies you as an expert traveler?

1. You honeymooned at Niagara Falls in 1959
2. You frequently ride Greyhound buses
3. You have driven a Winnebago through 12 states
4. You belong to the Holiday Inn frequent traveler program
5. You think a Holidome is bigger than the Superdome

(This is a trick question. None of these qualify. You need to fly at least monthly and be current on TSA screening guidelines. Anything else and you’re a casual flyer.)

2. How many rows can be found in a Southwest Airlines jet?

A.    1

B.     4

C.     8

(Another trick question. Southwest’s 737s have approximately 23 rows in them. Unfortunately, the inexperienced travelers seem to think there are only 8 or less rows. That’s why these initiates always screw up boarding by trying to wedge themselves into one of these rows when the rest of the plane is empty.)

3. When a Southwest plane is landing in Cleveland, which row lands first: Row 1 or Row 23?  _____________________________

(The correct answer is neither. They both get to  Cleveland at the same time. Those dolts in Rows 1-8 don’t understand this.)

4. How many ways can you delay everyone else in the Expert Traveler x-ray line? Check all that apply to you:

A.    Pack a full water bottle in your backpack

B.     Forget to put your shoes on the X-ray belt

C.     Wear more metal (i.e., jewelry, belts) than in a steel foundry

D.    Bring every bit of cosmetics you own, even the ones in the 10 oz. bottles

E.     Forget to remove 10-20 of your body piercings before leaving for the airport

F.      Bring a full-sized suitcase up to the X-ray belt 

G.    Brings lots of wrapped gifts up to the X-ray belt

H.    You brought your cigarette lighter and pocket knife with you

I.       All of the above

5. How do you screw up boarding while in the aircraft? Check all that apply:

A.    Bring a roll-aboard that weighs more than you do

B.     Bring a roll-aboard that you cannot lift over your head

C.     Bring two carry-ons, food for six, a child-safety seat, a back pack, a hot cup of Starbuck’s coffee and a wad of newspapers – just for yourself!

D.    Stopping to take a conference call on your cell phone while in mid-aisle in the middle of boarding

E.     All of the above

6. Do you need to be instructed in how to use a seat belt? (If yes, end this test and assume you shouldn’t be flying ever.)

7. You open the overhead baggage compartment and find my sport coat neatly folded there. Do you:

a. Put your roll-aboard on top of it

b. Wad it up, cram it to the side and jam your roll-aboard next to it

c. Put your clear plastic bags of raw beef ribs on top of it (Honestly, this really happened)

d. Hand me my coat and tell me to hold it through the flight as you ‘need’ this space

8. You are one of the first to board and your seat is in the back of the jet. When it comes time to stow your roll-aboard, do you put it in a bin in the front of the aircraft?

A.    Sure, that makes it easier for you to disembark

B.     Sure, you have no sense of fair play

(Note: If I find your gear above my empty row, I will take it out and call the flight attendant over and tell him/her these bags must have been left on the connecting leg and should be removed)

NYC Traveler Quiz

If you’re a New York City resident, here are some special questions just for you. You might think you’re an ‘expert’ traveler just because of your NYC lineage but you might be wrong. Let’s see if you are an expert NYC air traveler:

You’re an expert NYC traveler if:

A.    Seriously think a Prada backpack permits you to cut in front of me in the security line

B.     You’ll go the washroom anytime we’re in flight no matter how many warning lights have been illuminated – even during an emergency landing

C.     You can watch the Kim Basinger movie 9 ½ Weeks on your laptop without any concern for the other people (or children) down the aisle who can also see it!

D.    All the instructions, warnings, etc. about turning off your cell phone don’t apply to you as your call is more important than our safety

E.     You demand to store your carry-on in the space reserved for my feet

F.      You never relinquish the shared arm rest, not even for a second, for the entire flight

G.    You take your d***ed dog/cat out of its underseat carrier ‘to comfort it’

H.    You think other people with pet dander allergies are not worth worrying about

I.       You board anytime you want regardless of what the boarding group says

J.       You consistently illuminate the call flight attendant button every 15 minutes to ‘freshen up your coffee’

K.    You don’t even ask to use my tray table – you just commandeer it

L.     You think the two carry-on rule means everything you can carry in two hands

M.   You have never checked a bag in your life

N.    You brush your food crumbs right into my lap – while I watch you do it!

O.    You have never looked behind your seat before hitting the recline button. In fact, you’re proud of the fact that you’ve caused three laptop hinges to break and caused dozens of drinks to get spilled in a passenger’s lap when you abruptly reclined. When driving or flying via NYC, what’s going on behind you is not important.

P.      You consistently refuse any request to change seats. However, whenever you want to change seats, it’s an absolute necessity and people should magically comply with your requests.

Q.    You think your sunburned, overstimulated, tired and cranky children should be allowed to roam the aircraft, touch other passengers food/computers/person, and fight in the aisles just because their Mickey Mouse ears make them look cute

_________________________________________________________________________________

Hopefully, we'll see a whole new group of travellers before the next conference season. I'll have to watch Vinnie's blog to see how his Delta experiences are shaping the rest of the year.

Another Blithering Media Press Release

It seems every technology vendor, not just the hardware types, wants to get in on the green craze. Check out this press release:

Intergalactic ERP announces Major Green Initiatives

Promises No Coders Will be Harmed in the Making of Future Software Releases

NewCodeStein, Germany - February 27, 2008 - Intergalactic ERP, the world's most super-fantastic ERP vendor, has announced details behind its new Green initiatives. "Our users have made numerous inquiries to our management team over the last few years about our social responsibility efforts. In particular, they want to know how green Intergalactic ERP will be," says Heinrich Mouthpiece of Intergalactic ERP. “We are proud to be making the following announcements today."

Specifically, Intergalactic ERP promised:

1. Software sales execs will no longer speak at user conferences - Intergalactic ERP has determined that the carbon footprint of bloviating technology executives is contributing substantially to the Earth's warming. One speech in 2005 alone generated over 3,160 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That was the talk where Intergalactic ERP announced its SOA multi-tiered architecture. Intergalactic ERP is already shopping the expected carbon credits from this speaking cessation effort.
2. New software releases will be issued every 12 years not every five - Intergalactic ERP has determined that rapid releases of products cause their programmers to work overtime. Programmers that work late hours consume disproportionately more time utilizing espresso machines, pinball machines, etc. Eliminating this excess electric consumption will save 1.1 BTUs per year. Customers will just have to tough it.
3. Intergalactic ERP workers will no longer be allowed to smoke on premise - In fact, the only thing that will be allowed to smoke, catch fire or burn on premise will be certain models of laptops and cell phone batteries sold by hardware partners of Intergalactic ERP.
4. Old ERP software will be recycled indefinitely - On this front, Intergalactic ERP wants to point out that its recent 627 acquisitions have resulted in the reuse of over 271.5 million lines of code. “We’re not wasting a single bit of somebody else's innovation," says Titus Fist Vice-President of Acquisition Management. “We intend to sell this software forever as long as there is some poor business willing to buy it”.
5. New software to ship on recycled AOL installation disks – “We got a great deal on tens of millions of these CDs. We've created a method of overwriting the contents of those CDs and will start shipping them next month. Just in case they don't work, we've silkscreened the phrase “Intergalactic ERP coaster” on each one,” adds Mr. Fist.

Intergalactic ERP is also going green in its marketing. The company has now changed its logo color to be predominantly green. They've registered service marks and trademarks for phrases like “Wyatt ERP when you can have Green ERP?”, “Green -- it's not just for moldy cheese anymore!” and “Green -- the color of Your Money and Our ERP!”

“Most of Intergalactic ERP’s competitors will be green with envy now," says Lackin Trust of Deforestation Research Associates. “We understand that Intergalactic is also trying to convince all of their customers to use wire transfers only as their CEO wastes too much gasoline in her Ferrari driving to the bank depositing those pesky maintenance checks”.

About Intergalactic ERP – Intergalatic ERP has steadily grown its way into becoming the world’s largest and most superfantastic ERP vendor. It doesn’t make the latest or greatest products, but, it does sell the most! To find out more about their bewildering array of products, don’t go to their website because even their Marketing team cannot keep track of what they’re selling from day to day. No, you might want to call one of the 14+ million channel partners they use such as Client Hemorrhaging Partners (www.clienthemorrhagingpartners.com) in the Cayman Islands.

About Blithering Media – Blithering Media represents way too many tech firms and amazingly enough has no one on staff that understands the space. Blithering Media personnel are expert though at crafting press releases on just about anything (or nothing as in this case). For more info on Blithering Media contact us point.less@ blitheringmedia.com

(for serious tech marketing help: contact@techventive.net)

Another to Pass Around

Acronym Shortage to Adversely Impact Tech Sector

 

Not Enough TLA’s Left Warns Expert

 

As if concerns of a new Tech Bubble weren’t bad enough, it now seems an even larger crisis is poised to strike the tech sector: a shortage of acronyms. Industry pundits see the current supply of acronyms to be unrealistically constrained and warn that any further disruption in the availability of these necessities could roil the technology sector.   

 

“Cars need oil, tech needs acronyms (CNOTNA). It’s just that simple (IJTS)” says Speaks FurMoolah, principal analyst at MouthPiece Research. “Without acronyms, how will tech buyers appropriately evaluate the ROI, TCO and ROAE of technology?”   

 

“The problem is worse than most recognize”, says tech CEO Cliff “Options” Hanger of MeltDown Messenging Technologies (MDMTI on the NASDAQ). “It’s almost gotten as bad as the California personalized license plate fiasco a few years ago when too many tech CEOs were all vying for the same vanity plate names. I drove my Ferrari for weeks with regular plates until the state added some special characters to the available alphabet choices. Sure, I now have “IPO RULZ 4 ME” on my car, but those days I didn’t have a special acronym for my car were devastating!”

 

“The lack of acronyms will be especially hard on software and hardware sales forces. They may find their already jammed PowerPoint slides will not accommodate full-length words. Sales people will have to either add additional slides to their decks or start giving their pitches in less technical ways” says blogger Digs DeDirt (blogs.e3#$d,r.com).   

 

Other industry watchers also see the lack of acronyms as impacting productivity, hurting the economy and possibly becoming an issue in the upcoming US presidential elections. “I’d really like to know where each of the candidates stand on the acronym issue” says Red State, CMO of SR1D makers of T3W and .re7 tech velocity impenders. “We’re forming a PAC (political action committee) called MATT (more acronyms to tech) and urging OPS (political operatives) to FFF (fast forward funding) to this issue". 

 

 

Research firm Punditocrity recently noted that “The tech industry must move away from 3 letter acronyms (TLAs) and now support the 5 character acronym ( FLA) as the new, default acronym standard (DAS).” But a competitor of Punditocrity believes that FLA is too short and that tech execs should immediately move to a more secure, encrypted 27 character acronym using control bits and acronym authenticity checking. Microsoft is even rumored to be developing a 64 character acronym standard while Oracle may be eyeing the acquisition of firm building a 256 character acronym generator and authenticator. No word where SAP stands on this matter. 

 

Not everyone is waiting for new acronym standards to emerge. One tech CEO, speaking only off the record, said that his sales force will now start spelling out words instead of using acronyms. He is worried that this will hurt the street credibility of his sales force but argues “what else can we do?” Likewise a major Helena, Montana VC told us “we’re definitely seeing a marked drop in buzzwords, tech terms and acronyms in the pitches we’re getting this year. 2008 could be the best year for clear communications in technology and we’re afraid of what this will do for the tech sector overall”.   

 

Clear communications? Can the tech sector survive this? Media watchers are also seeing more understandable press releases from tech firms. “Obfuscation has been the TLAs best friend in tech. The lack of acronyms has made our announcements too transparent, too understandable and too straightforward,” says PR flack Lotta Noise at Blithering Media, Inc. “Our clients expect us to confuse prospects – not make them understand!” 

Looks like 2008 may be a shake out year for tech. LST (let’s stay tuned)

Please Pass This One Around

The Nothing New Announcement 

 

Ever get the feeling that some tech firms have run out of anything new to say? Here’s the generic press release every tech firm can use when there’s nothing particularly interesting going on: 

 

XYZ Announces Nothing New

Nothing New to Become the New Industry Standard   

 

January 9, 2008 – Chicago - Today, XYZ Corporation is announcing ‘Nothing New’ a revolutionary, industry-leading approach to stall-ware, procrastination and marketing waste. “We believe this is the most important announcement we’ve made this year – maybe this decade”, says Jim Bigwind, CMO of XYZ.   

 

“We struggled for some time as to what to call this announcement. Some thought it should be the “Nothing” Announcement while others voted for “New Announcement”. When someone suggested the “Nothing New Announcement” we knew we had a winner” added Karla Candu CEO of XYZ.   

 

“This announcement is nothing short of extraordinary. It is, in fact, nothing” says XYZ customer Getz Fleeced Oftin at SoftTouch Ltd. “When they told us about this announcement, we couldn’t believe it”.

Industry analysts have already weighed in on the Nothing New announcement. Speaks FurMoolah, principal analyst at FurryGart Research described XYZ’s announcement as “nothing to write home about”. Indeed. “We weren’t expecting anything and when we saw nothing was being announced, we got pretty excited”.     

 

News of this announcement has been circulating for months. Just last week, XYZ officials had to deny that they were about to announce something. “We just felt we had to say something at that time because the media was fueling speculation that we might announce something when we knew weren’t.” added Mr. Bigwind.     

 

“We fully expect that the market will see our position around nothing new as revolutionary and industry leading. Our competitors, as expected, will only see this in a negative light; however, we believe this opens up a new set of opportunities for our customers. Now, customers can continue to use our products and pay us maintenance fees without having to worry about pesky upgrades, conversion costs, etc.” adds Ms. Candu.     

 

“Absolutely,” concurs Mr. Oftin, “We weren’t planning to pay for anything more and now that nothing new is coming, we can even release some of our IT budget for 2008 to spend on other things”. 

 

About XYZ – XYZ Corp. is a venture backed technology firm that leads the industry in buzz word usage, hyperbole and time-wasting missives to industry watchers, bloggers and analysts. If it weren’t for its outrageously over-active Marketing staff and advertising budget you would have never heard of this firm or its products. XYZ was founded by some great people five years but the VC kicked them out and now we can’t even remember who they were. Oh, well.   

 

About Blithering Media – Blithering Media represents way too many tech firms and amazingly enough has no one on staff that understands the space. Blithering Media personnel are expert though at crafting press releases on just about anything (or nothing as in this case). For more info on Blithering Media contact us point.less@ blitheringmedia.com