jessie newburn dot com

Email, IM, VM, Text or Twitter?

With clients and colleagues, I've got it down. See, one of the things I like to discern early on in a relationship is where the client is most likely to listen and respond. Are they a phone person? Do they prefer email? Will reaching them through gChat allow space for a decision to be made quickly? It doesn't matter so much to me which communication mode they prefer. What matters is that they are clear in their request and that I then honor their preferred method of communicating. After all, I do want efficiency and results.

So, why didn't I think this same question would be relevant with dating?

OK, so I'm dating a few guys now. And I experienced a bit of  miscommunication and frustration this weekend vis-a-vis preferred communication technologies. (No missed dates, but some stumbles that almost made this happen.)

One guy wants phone calls and voicemail messages  Not just phone, but land line, at home. I once emailed him a note and he somehow missed it and didn't find my message 'til three weeks later! Yeesh.

Another guy is all about the text. Chime, chime, chime goes my cel phone. Text message, text message, text message. It's fun, but I've actually had to ask that he meet me in my realm a bit more, as I'm a bit clumsy with the text messaging.

Yet another guy is making his moves via Twitter.

Last summer, I dated a guy where most of our primary communication technology was Facebook: status updates, wall posts and the FB inbox.

Again, I'm cool with the various communication tools and options. I just realized this morning that I have to apply the same understanding I use with my clients to the dating scene. Works for me.

Does his wife know this?

I twitter*. I twitter at Jnewburn, were you so inclined to following my fits and bursts of twittering. I have, at the moment, a whopping six followers: all of whom I know and have some sort of face-to-face and/or social tech relationship. Today I got an email message that Jay Nabors is following me on twitter. As, just today, I accepted a Facebook friend request from a fellow contra dancer named Jay, I assumed it was him. Nope. Some other guy named Jay.

So I thought maybe he's a social technology advocate, as am I. Nope. Maybe he's a student of generational theory, as am I. Nope. Then I saw his list of people he's following on twitter: As of this evening, it's 649 people! Yeesh. Then I looked a bit closer. Nope, he's not following 649 people; he's following 649 women.

Dude, Does your wife know this?

Anyway, I just blocked him. So, I guess it's more accurate to say he's following 648 women now. :-p

***

Props to Dave Bittner of Pixel Workshops for telling me about twitter. It's different, a bit odd, but I like it. Microblogging, I think is what it's called sometimes.

How to spot a perv in 3 seconds or less

I've created a number of free, online resources for hula hoopers: namely, though not exclusively, themed collections of YouTube videos. Other YouTube users can, and do, submit videos which I can then add to my groups. One of my groups is "Kid Hoopers" and I just received this vid submission.

• Second #1: I notice the girl in the video is not hula hooping, but dancing. Hmmm...
• Second #2: The vid title is "Sexy girl (Woooou)," wherein "girl" means "girl," as in a female who is possibly 3 years old.
• Second #3: A scan of the YouTube user's favorite vids all include -- surprise, surprise -- pictures of girls (the 3-y.o. kind).

So, to YouTube user fruitie75 and all the other pervs out there, if you're looking for a federal agent to come knocking on your door anytime soon, keep up the good perv social networking activities. Not only are you helping the feds catch you, but they can catch all your buddies, too!

A True Gentleman

There is a gentle man who comes through the neighborhood where I live. He does this each year in the fall, like clockwork, offering to clean leaves out of gutters and do minor patches on roofs. His prices are quite reasonable, and I have used his service often, as has my mother.

Physically, this gentle man looks worn. His face is craggy and not-so-handsome. He’s missing a few teeth. The clothes he wears are nothing to speak of. And, not mincing words, I assume he is rather poor.

Often times this gentle man is accompanied by a gentle woman who, physically and energetically, matches him. Their old station wagon, ladder tied on top, by the way, “matches them” as well.

I write of this gentle man because today he came by, offering his gutter-cleaning services.

Each time I see him, he touches my heart. He is rough to my eyes. Yet my experience with him is soft. He approaches me, as a potential customer, with respect and appreciation for the opportunity to be of service, and he expresses simple and easy gratitude for the payment he receives. He doesn’t “sell me” or invoke fear of potentially clogged gutters causing bigger problems if I don’t hire him today. He is clear, direct and concise. And he is incredibly gentle.

This year, some bigger-scale gutter work was required in the summer and so his services were not needed today. We did ask him if he’d be coming back in a few weeks (as he always does), and asked if he would please contact us then.

In short, this gentle man reminds me of the type of person I want to be in business, and in Life: and that is, a gentle woman.

bloom: a different kind of everything

I don’t know too many people who would actually “tour” a new grocery store while on the eighth day of a fast, but that’s what I found myself doing one day several weeks back. 

See, I’m fascinated by grocery stores, as I feel they say so much about culture. (And, folks, in America, that ain’t always a compliment.)

Anyhoo, I walked into this never-heard-of-em-before store and started to explore. Holy moly! Ten steps into the place and I knew I was in a completely different type of store. The entire front area is designed for a quick trip in and a quick trip out, with well-packaged, relatively healthy and yummy-looking “home-made” meals, an upper-end selection of bottled drinks, “healthy” snack treats and single-serving frozen meals.

Then swerving (hear that? swerving!) around, I got to the produce section. Stunning. All beautifully merchandised with fresh produce. And the prices were pretty good.

OK, so I’m not giving an inch-by-inch tour of the place. I’d bore myself, too. But here are some things that popped out at me:

• The appeal is first to a female customer (on the younger side of Boomer and below, I’d say) and second to the wanna-be-metrosexual, single, suburban guy. Everyone else can just be happy to be able to shop at such a beautiful, attractively stocked and refreshing store.
• The produce section has wood flooring, gentle lighting and a farmer’s-market feel encouraging exploration and culinary adventure.
• They have an information kiosk offering recipes for “elegant entertaining,” “tailgating,” “healthy lunches” and more. (That’s from memory, not notes, fyi.) These recipes are wisely provided, for example, “Courtesy of Kraft Kitchen” or the National Honey Board. (Yeah, for co-branding.)
• In the produce section, generously stocked with foods from around the world, is an extensive, well-designed manual showing pictures of the many, for example, onions and alliums available, what they look like when opened, how they vary in taste and what some of their cooking applications are. Awesome! It's like having a personal shopping guide right at my fingertips.
• They have a Taste Ambassador in each store who develops one-on-one relationships with customers and invites them in to try new recipes. This person also floats from department to department to help out as needed, and hears (and collects), from the floor, what customers are saying to staff in various departments.
• Each of the staff has a name badge that also states, “Ask me about (where they fill in a subject).” Energetically sweet.Cute. Warm.
  
• They have short aisles (yay!) which I can visually scan  in a few seconds (yay!), rather than having to trudge all the way through on my search for a particular item (no fun, boo-hiss!).
  

While strolling the frozen section observantly, a handsome young gentleman asked me if I needed any help. (Yeesh, I am in my early 40s! and he was clearly a decade younger, so I can call him a "handsome young gentleman" ... or do I have to be decades older to say such things?) Turns out it was one of their store managers in training: Kenric Richardson at store #2709, who dropped everything he was doing to give me a thorough tour and the background story on the store's concept development. What shocked me is that this was a Food Lion store, and the company is converting a number of their current F.L. locations into bloom stores. Oh, happy day! Someone to give the ubiquitious Giant and Safeway stores a run for their money.

And here is another thing I found interesting. Please excuse any apparent snootiness on my part here: There are times when I walk into retail stores where it seems the managers have somehow hired all the zombies within a 5-mile radius. Now, when I walked into bloom, I immediately noticed a certain vibrancy and intelligence in the staff. I watched their faces and how they spoke to one another. I was struck by this and felt that the management behind bloom must really be doing something differently to attract this type of employee and to create an environment that doesn’t dull them.

So, kudos to bloom, Food Lion and the folk who made this concept come to life … customers included.

The one area where I saw room for improvement was in their website. (I am, after all, a Virgo with four planets in Virgo, so, yes, I will notice small details which are out of order and “in need” of correction.) The website is just beautiful and fun ... really, but I swear I saw three typos just scanning the site!

I recommend the bloom website folks contact Joan Waclawski of TypeIt! in Columbia, MD 21045 at 410-772-0339. She is THE BEST and most conscientious proofreader I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.

And, yes, I just ended my sentence with a “with.”

 

:-p

 

Go, Go Daddy!

Oh, I just love it when a company makes something easy for me as a consumer. I'm just all giddy right now about godaddy.com, a web hosting service, and how delightfully easy they just made a task for me.

'Tis the season to renew one of my domains. As I logged in to my account, I was ready to grab my wallet, pull out my requisite debit card and type away. Instead, one of my options was to pay with the PayPal account I have registered with Go Daddy.

That's a no-brainer. My Paypal account connects to the same bank account.

Dear Business People, being an easy company to buy from carries weight in a customer's decision-making process, especially the female kind. Walk a mile (or a few minutes) in your customers shoes (especially if those shoes are hard leather, pointy and high-heeled) and look at your own company for little ways to make things easier for your customer.

Too close to see your own company? Try doing what Faith Popcorn recommends in EVE-olution, and co-parent your company with your customers. Ask them what they want and how things could be easier for them to buy your goods and services. And then do what they say.  It'll pay off big-time in the end.

Bloom co-parented big time with their customers when Food Lion wanted to create a different kind of grocery store. A Food Lion customer came up with the name bloom! (I'm guessing -- long shot here -- that it was a woman.)

Just make things easy for us, k? Remember: women always appreciate the little things ...

Thanks, I'm Just Looking

Today, I was having with my uber-girlfriend Cherie the umpteenth-yet conversation about marketing, business, energy, life, capitalism, husbands, contracts and hula hooping. (I hula hoop as much as I can while I talk on the phone ... also helps the synapses.)

Cherie and I often examine how to sell to women, or perhaps better stated: how do we as women like to buy goods and services? what's the process? the feeling? the experience we like?

OK, to the point, (HEY -- I'm a woman, let me work up to it a little, OK?!!!!) there's this Divine Rule of Internet Marketing, promulgated almost entirely by now-rich boy-geeks (nice guys, I'm sure) who insist that the way to sell online is to first get the potential customer to give you something (namely: their email address) and then -- and only then -- do they get access to your free secrets which you will happily give them, each one laden with promises of the MORE-MORE-MORE they can have if they just buy your ebook, teleseminar, CD package, etc.

I understand the logic. The internet is filled with data. There is little loyalty to sources of data. And -- I don't know about you, but easily half the time I go looking for something, I forget what I wanted and end up somewhere else: hopefully, somewhere interesting.

So the logic is that if the potential customer gives something of value they have stepped into the relationship, feel special / included and have agreed to receive the seller's free information, chockful of valuable tidbits.

Now, I know that what I'm about to say is not exclusive to women, I'm just going to write AS a WOMAN. I see these "gimme your email address and I'll give you mine" type of sites and almost always say "BLECH!" Well, I don't say "blech," per se, but that's what I generally feel.

Really! "Who are you to ask this of me. I know nothing of you. I don't know if you're some slimeball who's going to sell my email address to one of "those" lists. I don't know if you're going to inundate me with endless stupid emails. I just don't know you, and you can't have my email address ... I haven't made up my mind about You yet."

Sound like a classic woman? Good, it should.

OK, then, what's the solution? Internet marketers want to know who is coming by their site. Who's interested? A potential customer?

A classic comment women make when a retail employee approaches them is this: "Thanks, I'm just looking." So why don't marketers acknowledge that that's how women often shop? (It don't mean she ain't got an idea of what she wants or that she won't be a customer in 30 minutes. Just don't ask her to engage right yet.)

So, how can folks selling on the internet, which Cherie and I intend to do with our American City Girls' art products, among other things, allow women to be "just looking"? Here are some ideas and generalizations Cherie and I made from our own experiences as women and as smart consumers: Please note, we are in the learning and discovery stage. This is not being presented as Ultra Knowledge. 

• No more of this "gimme (your email) first" from marketers. Blech!
• Women like conversations. Conversatonis are energizing, inclusive and a way to get real information. Women are big energy readers (intuition) and get extra layers of data from how info is presented: tone, volume, emotion.
• Women watch - and consider valuable -- information on the periphery more than they do direct info. (Faith Popcorn, in Eveolution.) Women like to OVERHEAR something or see it out of the corner of their eye.
• Women usually don't  want to commit right away to a relationship with future unstated obligations -- my, my, my! -- right up front.
• Women like community. They like to talk into a conversation. Break out to a side conversation. Listen to three different conversations at once. So can't internet selling be more like a fun, social, vibrant market place and less like a snake oil roadshow salesman dishing out all the wonders some magical elixer will deliver? (Reference the endless internet sites selling whatever.)

The solution, me-we-thinks is this:

• Blogs. Real conversations about real products.
• Voice and podcasts ... data women can gather while doing other activities (multi-tasking). What about an audio testimonials from a satisfied customer right next to the "Buy Now" button? How's that for cool?
• Anything where women can participate in a conversation with company folk, other customers and other women before buying a product or service is a good thing. And if they can add their two cents and help someone else with their wisdom, all the better!

Now, before you have a kaniptchin (or however you say-spell it), I know I'm not inventing blogs, nor am I the first person to say, "Uh, do a podcast." Nor the firs to promote actively engaging your customers in a conversation.

I'm just sayin', as a woman, that this male-dictated way of selling is soooo overly male sometimes that it makes me want to turn away and take my money somewhere else, which is exactly what I do.

Imagine instead a genuine blog where folk can talk about the product, how they use it, where they encountered obstacles with it. MAYBE, just maybe! the assembly instructions for an item are really dumb. And maybe, just maybe, it would be really awesome for a company rep to say "Wow, those instructions really are dumb. I just tried to use them. I'll get on that right away! Thanks, Mrs. So-and-so, it's customers like you who keep us on our toes and help us provide the best products in our class."

Selling to women can take more time than selling to men. But women -- once convinced of a good value, a good product or service and a good company behind the product or service -- will tell their network of women about your company like nobody's business. Much more so than men do. And other women VALUE a recommendation from a girlfriend more than men do. It's part of our internal data processing system as women. (Faith, again, Eveolution.)

So, LOGICALLY, even though the process of selling to women can take more time and appear to be more labor-intensive, once sold the woman becomes an independent, non-commissioned sales rep. Hey, that brings up another point about affiliate sales, but it's late and this post is nearing its end.

Cherie and I are going to try this on our American City Girls' art products site and see if we get results. I'll keep you posted.