Setting Down the Rules

The vast majority of human beings—more than five billion of us—are connected instantly to each other via web-based and mobile communications devices.

While the communications revolution provides immense benefit, in our technology-driven life we crave humanity.

Information about products and services is available to buyers everywhere, 24/7, and for free.

Publishing valuable content has become essentially free for companies. At the same time, customers have a (loud) voice through social networks and review sites.

Living Up to Their Name: OPEN Communications to Customers

Now that we've taken a look at the new rules of sales and service, let's turn to a story of a company doing many great things to reach buyers and promote sales.

OPEN Cycle, an Amsterdam-based company building an extremely lightweight and strong mountain bike, was founded in 2011 as a completely open company taking advantage of the new communication tools that you are reading about in this book. Since it was a brand-new company, the founders were able to create an organization completely around their vision of the company's character and then set a goal to communicate that directly to the marketplace. OPEN's greatest assets are the fantastic engineering that goes into creating the best mountain bikes in the world, and the stories the founders convey to their customers about the bikes and the company they created. Everything they do is shared with customers, retailers, and vendors on social networks and via email in real time—it helps them build better products, keep existing customers happy, and grow their business.

“If we want to have any success, we've got to keep it simple,” says Gerard Vroomen, owner of OPEN, a company he co-founded with Andy Kessler. Prior to OPEN, Vroomen co-founded Cervélo Cycles, a Canadian manufacturer of the fastest and lightest professional racing bicycle for road, triathlon, and track. He sold Cervélo Cycles in 2011 to focus on mountain bikes. He says, “Now you can really make the difference with customer service. So many businesses do such a poor job responding to their customers that even if you have the simplest company and respond effectively to emails, you're ahead of 90 percent of your competition.”

When Vroomen established the company, he focused on “relentless simplicity” as the guiding principle of OPEN. This was a very strong story that his buyers could relate to. He has made a point of communicating that story to all of his constituents, including buyers, existing customers, the media, suppliers, and others who work in the bike industry. OPEN's guiding principle has established itself as a powerful differentiator, setting the company apart by the honesty and sincerity as well as the consistency with which it communicates.

In an introduction on the OPEN website signed by Vroomen and Kessler, the company story is available to all:

Three words describe this new venture: bikes, open and simple.

Bikes we live and breathe. Andy's career spans from downhill racer (back when helmets were optional!) to CEO of a mountain & road bike company. Gerard's career includes co-founding Cervélo, where he's done everything from engineering and design to sales, supply chain and marketing.

OPEN means open to new ideas; from our customers, retailers, vendors and ourselves. Open to show the intricacies of our products but also our company. Open even to issue shares to some of our customers.

If open is the goal, simple is the tool.

“Relentless simplicity” is our guiding principle. Reduce the number of models and you simplify production, logistics, customer decision making, the website, everything. Avoid traditional advertising or sponsorships and free up precious time. Transfer logistics to third parties and you can focus on what matters most, which in our case means:

1. Designing better bikes, the first of which we introduce here.
2. Connecting with our customers.

And when you put it that way, is there really anything else to do? Welcome to OPEN.

A great story comes directly from the passion of the top person in charge. When the founder or CEO lives his or her passion much like Vroomen does, the company itself almost becomes secondary. The key is that the passion and the story behind it intersect brilliantly with what the buyer wants. The passion results in the delivery of tangibly honest, authentic, and humane ideas, which inspire trust and confidence in the company and its products.

Once there is an honest and inspiring story built into the very heart of an organization, the first step in successful selling is to understand buyers and segment them so that marketing and sales are aligned around customer needs and integrated into a seamless selling process. (We'll look at that in detail in Chapter 4.) At OPEN, because Vroomen and Kessler are communicating with buyers on their site and through social networks like the @OpenCycle Twitter feed, Facebook, and LinkedIn, they truly understand buyers and communicate in language the buyer understands, not gobbledygook.

The OPEN concepts of simplicity and authentic engagement played out in early 2014 when the company decided to stop selling kits of bike components, an assortment of additional parts used to complete a bike after purchasing only an OPEN frame. Many OPEN mountain bikes are sold through the company's worldwide dealer network, but OPEN also sells bikes directly from its website. Prior to the change, visitors to the OPEN site could choose to purchase a frame alone or a complete bike. Since OPEN designs only bike frames, the components were taking time and attention away from the core business.

Indeed, the name OPEN was chosen, in part, to signify that the founders' approach to business was to be open to customers. So that's what informed the way they honestly communicated the decision to the market.

In a blog post titled “Simplifying parts,” Vroomen wrote:

In my previous blog I wrote about how we use “relentless simplicity” as our guiding principle. With only two people running the company, it's the key to getting things done without going crazy. And therefore, we regularly look at which parts of the company take a lot of time, and what we can do about it.

Some big time sucks are unavoidable; without product engineering, we don't have a company. But one of the biggest drains the past year has been the component kits. The ordering, coordination, warehousing and shipping of these kits takes more of Andy's time than the selling of our frames. So the simple question that arose was: can we not stop offering component kits?

The direct financial impact would be negligible, since we don't really make any money on them. The only reason to offer kits in the first place is that it gives people an easy way to buy a complete bike, which obviously includes our frame on which we do make money. However, as time went on, we noticed that it really isn't so hard to sell just the frame.

Our dealers can buy the components for not much more money than we can, and sometimes even for less.…Most importantly, many of our customers don't just want to change a few parts, they want to customize everything. That means that a component kit doesn't bring any benefit at all.

For the past year, these component kits have merely been a nuisance (easy for me to say, with Andy doing all that work). But going forward, it will become a real hurdle. As we increase the number of frame models from one to two or three, the logistics and sales of those will take more time. This is time we will need to recoup elsewhere.

And so we have decided to stop with the unlimited kit. Not because it isn't a great spec (it is), not because it isn't a great value (it is), but because we need to spend our time where it makes a difference. And whether you build the frame up yourself or do it with your local retailer, you can find these parts all over the globe without much trouble.

What does this mean for you? Well, in the long run likely very little as we will continue to showcase specs to give you inspiration (just like your fellow customers are doing in the Owners' Showcase).

Notice how Vroomen connects with his customers by telling them the details behind the decision to stop selling components. So many companies would just announce the change and make up something to tell the market. Given the authentic nature of how OPEN is open with its customers, Vroomen chose to tell all. And within a few hours customers began commenting positively on the post, and Vroomen himself responded to each comment.

“That blog post was interesting,” Vroomen reports. “Once we decided to make this change, we started to think about how to communicate it. And then after a bit of discussion we thought, ‘why not provide the whole truth?’ In business there is often a difference between the truth and the whole truth. You can call it spin, PR, or whatever you want, but it's so ingrained and it's easy to fall into that wordsmithing trap. It's liberating to realize we can simply tell the whole truth because no matter what it is, it fits our company philosophy to share it.”

Open and honest communication means that customers feel a part of the company. They feel like owners. Heck, if you pay many thousands of dollars for a bike, you want to know who you're buying it from, right?

On the OPEN website, every page has a place for customers to leave comments or ask questions, and Vroomen and Kessler answer the questions in real time and in public for all to see. “There are a lot of good mountain bikes out there,” Vroomen says. “But if we can show people that we care about them—we do that by responding to people and also being open about how we're running the company—then they will reward us. If they're going to choose between bike A and bike B, and bike A is from a big faceless company and bike B comes from a company where one of the two owners helps you decide which size to get, which wheel, and which handlebar, well, that's a very appealing proposition.” At the OPEN website, visitors interact on every page, and Vroomen can observe which content has generated the most interest.

In a world in which most sales processes are generic and each potential customer is sold to in the same way, understanding the individual buyer based on the content the buyer has viewed is a revolutionary concept. It's a fundamental idea behind the new rules of sales and service. If you know how the process works, your salespeople can close more business by being less aggressive.

At OPEN, the open communications concept carries forward, informing customers how to connect directly with the two co-founders. “On every page of our website there are two buttons. One says ‘Email Andy’ and the other says ‘Email Gerard’ along with a list of the specific topics that are our responsibility,” Vroomen says. “Everybody sees that on our Web pages, but maybe only 10 percent use it. So it gives a warm, fuzzy feeling with everybody aware that we are approachable, but the amount of work is small enough that we can handle it. The vast majority of the people who email us end up buying a bike. And for us a complete bike is between $5,000 and $12,000. So that's worth two emails back and forth. It's mind-bogglingly simple, right? You don't have to get the calculator out.”

When an email comes in, the people from OPEN respond right away and in detail, an agile selling strategy of the first order. Vroomen offers an example: “I had an interesting case today when somebody wrote and asked, ‘I'm 95 kilos. Am I too heavy for your bike?’ So I responded, ‘Here's our test results. Yes, the bikes are light but it surpasses the tests and etc., etc.’ I gave a complete and elaborate response. And they wrote back saying, ‘Oh, that's great. I really appreciate that you, one of the owners, responded to me so quickly. So yeah, I'm very confident about it, and if it does go wrong I know that you guys will react to the warranty situation promptly.’ That experience really gives people confidence.” Besides email, OPEN has the same level of responsiveness on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Instant engagement via social media is a concept that many companies are focused on today, but too often that effort is limited to merely monitoring Twitter for mentions of their brands. They aren't doing actual real-time customer service of the sort practiced at OPEN. “I think people are very aware that you cannot let a situation on Twitter spiral out of control,” Vroomen says. “So they're monitoring like crazy and as soon as something happens on Twitter they jump on it. But they haven't taken the important step, which begins by offering good customer service. If you treat people well they don't end up venting on Twitter.”

There are many happy riders of OPEN bikes, including me. And because of their interaction with the OPEN team during the buying process and later support, many OPEN owners feel they know Vroomen and his colleagues. Some are compelled to share the specs of the bikes they've custom-built using OPEN frames. OPEN started a public owners' showcase on the website where customers have uploaded photos and specs of their bikes.

Vroomen consciously decided to keep OPEN simple, making the personal real-time communication with buyers and customers a hallmark of the company's authentic story. OPEN is successful in a very crowded marketplace because the story resonates with buyers.

After my examples of expensive consumer products and services so far in this book, you may be thinking, “This sounds fine for guys selling trips to the Antarctic or catering to the high-end sport bike enthusiast, but does any of this apply to my restaurant or my small business doing picture framing or my business-to-business company?” The answer is absolutely! The new rules can be applied to any business today, and I'll show examples from many types of businesses in the pages that follow.

The Communications Revolution That Wasn't Televised

Now that I've outlined the new rules and we've met a few people who have developed success with the ideas, I'd like to step way, way back and look at the big picture for a view of where we are today with our ongoing communications revolution and why these ideas are so important for the success of modern sales and service organizations.

This is not a view from 30,000 feet. It's the view from 1,000 years into the future.

The new rules of sales and service are a part of the much bigger and incredibly important communications revolution we're currently living through—the most important in human history.

In my thinking, there are three major periods in human communications:

Up until the mid-1400s, illiteracy was the norm and life was difficult for nearly everyone. Knowledge was the domain of specialists, often the ruling elite or the church. Information was very, very expensive, as storing it required either disciplined, time-consuming memorization or knowing how to write on clay tablets, papyrus, or parchment. Although movable-type printing (as well as paper) had been invented in China as early as the eleventh century, printing wasn't mechanized. Not until mechanical printing arose independently in Europe 400 years later did a world cultural revolution take place.

Beginning 570 years ago, knowledge became cheap because it could be reproduced mechanically. Almost anybody could own one's own books or could gain access to those owned by others nearby. However, this era of communications was essentially one-way: Information originated with a relatively small number of knowledge creators whose work was distributed to a larger population of readers around the globe.

In the past 20 years or so, information has become largely free and two-way. The long-term ramifications are huge. One thousand years from now, the two things that will be remembered in the history of the time period we are living through right now will be the first lunar landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, and the development of real-time communications instantly connecting every human on earth with every other human on earth.

Let's look at the importance of the second most transformative communications revolution in human history. Johannes Gutenberg's invention of printing with movable type (circa 1439) meant that books could be mass-produced, rather than painstakingly copied by hand. It meant ordinary people could refer to things in books, like laws. Previously much of this information had to be committed to memory. The printing press liberated people's minds from the need to memorize large quantities of information, allowing them to use that extra brainpower to be more creative. In addition, Gutenberg's communications revolution (which took many decades) hastened the spread of literacy, making vast quantities of knowledge available to average people, while raising living standards along the way. And since large numbers of people could access different ideas and philosophies, they no longer had to rely on religious leaders for the truth; now they could decide on their own whether, for instance, the earth was the center of the universe or it actually revolved around the sun.

Some 556 years later, in 1995, the most important communications revolution began. I chose 1995 because it was the year that Netscape went public on the success of Netscape Navigator, the first popular product to allow easy Internet connection and web browsing.

We're fortunate to be living at this moment in history, the time of another important communications revolution. I figure we're about halfway through it. The first 20 years or so were fast-paced, and things changed very quickly. Usage went from a few million people online to billions.

Now any person with an Internet or mobile phone connection can communicate in real time with virtually any other human on the planet. Talk about a revolution!

According to the International Telecommunications Union, there were 5.9 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide in 2011, and mobile networks are available to more than 90 percent of the world's population. It's not creaky old technology, either; nearly 150 countries offer high-speed 3G service.

In fact, more people have access to mobile phones than have access to toothbrushes. More people have access to mobile phones than have access to working toilets. That may sound kind of gross, but it's true. The first thing people want to buy after they've earned enough to eat and have shelter is a mobile communications device.

When people can communicate in real time with one another, it has fundamental ramifications for humanity. A handful of people in Egypt can create a Facebook group that generates support from millions of ordinary citizens and bring down a government.

Anybody can do independent research on the web and choose what to believe about the products and services they consume.

Communications technology has far-reaching influence on the world's economy. People who relied on traditional selling techniques in use for hundreds or even thousands of years suddenly have a global market at their fingertips.

I saw this firsthand when I was visiting the village of Cangandi in the Guna district of Panama on an expedition organized by my friends at Earth Train.

What's remarkable about Cangandi is that the several hundred villagers chose to move the entire village more than one kilometer to the top of a hill because that was the one place that had good mobile phone reception. In 2010, they moved the entire village, huts and all—obviously a massive undertaking.

The village of Cangandi does not have running water. It does not have electricity. But Cangandi does have cell reception (with solar power for recharging).

Having cell reception in Cangandi has already transformed the way the villagers do business. Previously, before they had mobile devices, they would load up their canoes with the cassava roots, maize, and plantains. They then paddled downriver to the Pacific Ocean islands to see who wanted to buy their goods. But it was hit or miss. If another seller had been there recently it was difficult to make a sale, so they frequently returned home after wasting several days.

Now, they have spot market intelligence via mobile phones. Islanders frequently contact them to place orders, which the villagers deliver when needed and at fair prices. This is particularly relevant for cassava and other roots because the plants can be kept alive for a long time and harvested as needed or when the offered price and desired quantity make sense.

Without the spot market opportunities via mobile devices, the villagers would frequently be stuck with a canoe full of roots out at sea skipping from island to island, only to discover that there was little need for roots at that moment, and they would have to sell their goods at a loss.

Time to Join the Revolution

Even now, more than 20 years into the revolution, many organizations still aren't communicating in real time on the web. Their sales and service organizations remain stuck in the past.

Are you one of the revolutionaries? Or do you support the old regime? Are you selling your product or service like the villagers of Cangandi, using modern tools?

The next few decades will bring a continuation of the revolution. We need to be constantly learning and updating our skills to reach buyers as they're looking for the products and services we sell.

This is an exciting time to be in sales and service. In 1,000 years, people will study this period in history to learn about the tremendous transformations in society brought about by the technological changes that have been introduced only a few years ago.

Just as we study how medieval times transitioned into the Renaissance as a result of knowledge spread by the printing press, the wide global availability of mobile technologies and web content will be viewed in the future as a decisive moment when humanity was made better.

Okay, now that I've dispensed that history lesson and my bold prediction, let's return to today, the new rules of sales and service, and what these mean for your business.

An Invaluable Sales and Service Asset: Your Employees

I really enjoy doing business with companies whose employees are friendly and who treat me with respect. It's a dramatic contrast from those companies whose people go through the motions, treat you like you're intruding on their lives, and count the hours until quitting time.

Earlier we described the power of an authentic story created by people at the top of an organization, like Hans Lagerweij of Quark Expeditions and Gerard Vroomen, co-founder of OPEN Cycle. When these stories are embedded in the very heart of an organization—with all the employees sharing a clear vision of what the company stands for and living that vision every day—then everyone is pulling together to move the company forward.

Several years ago I traveled to Lapland in northern Finland to experience life above the Arctic Circle in wintertime (fascinating!). On the first leg of the return trip, we traveled via Finnair from Ivalo to Helsinki. As we climbed the stairs to the plane, I composed an awesome photo in my mind focusing on the plane's cockpit with the terminal in the background. I thought this would be a great way to show what midday looks like in a place where the sun doesn't rise in midwinter.

I quickly got out my iPhone to take a snap. At that moment the captain turned and saw me through his window.

What could the captain have done? Well, he could have made a signal indicating “no photos.” He could have pretended not to see me and turned away. Or he could have simply waved hello.

But this captain took a moment to open the cockpit window and flash a thumbs-up gesture and smile. Fortunately, I got the shot, which I tweaked with Instagram. When I tweeted it, @Finnair social media people responded in real time. Perfect.

Most pilots do what the handbook tells them to do and nothing more. They say “Your business is important to us” over the loudspeaker at the moment prescribed, and that's it.

It's not just pilots. In all businesses, many employees just don't show that they care.

A culture of caring comes from the top. It starts with how the CEO treats employees and customers. It comes from how people are hired, what skills are valued, and how people are promoted.

No matter how such a culture develops, your people are a terrific sales and service asset.

Big Data. Rich Data.

The term big data has gotten a lot of attention in sales discussions.

It's a concept most executives know a little about, but most don't understand big data's potential for their businesses. And very few organizations are actually taking advantage today.

I prefer the words rich data, a term and idea advocated by Nate Silver, a statistician and writer who analyzes in-game baseball activity and elections. Silver became well known for having successfully predicted the outcome in 49 out of 50 states during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Today he is the editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight blog and a special correspondent for ABC News, and his best-selling book The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don't dives into rich data in a big way.

No matter whether you call it rich data or big data, the concept involves using very large data sets and powerful analytics to generate real-time information that is valuable for making decisions.

Some examples: Billy Beane was the first Major League Baseball general manager to apply statistical analysis to players, quickly leading all the teams to reconsider how they evaluate players. He was profiled in Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball, which was made into a 2011 film starring Brad Pitt as Beane. As another example, the American government monitors massive amounts of telephone and Internet traffic searching for words and phrases that might indicate nefarious activities, and routes suspicious traffic to analysts for further scrutiny.

In the context of business, big data is used in sales and marketing departments to analyze website traffic and click activity, search engine word and phrase patterns, and social media streams—all in real time. And big data is invaluable for helping sales and service organizations understand the motivations of their existing and potential customers and anticipate their future needs. Making sense of this massive amount of data can be used develop strategies to grow revenue.

At the micro level, a company can combine someone's social profile on Twitter and other social networks with his or her customer data and market demographics to draw a detailed portrait of the person's interests and lifestyle. With this intelligence a company can deliver the right personally selected information at the right time.

To some, such massive data sifting sounds a bit creepy, but I welcome the companies I do business with to use these informed approaches. It surely beats the untargeted one-size-fits-all pitches that most companies have been sending for decades. I would be happy to have the airline I patronize realize that I take an international vacation every December with my wife so that six months in advance it might suggest options and places we might consider traveling to this year based on our past journeys. (And now, lest you think that I travel only to cold-weather places like Antarctica and northern Finland, I actually enjoy a tropical vacation, too!)

Big data is also used at the macro level to calculate sentiment analysis, the aggregate positive or negative attitudes gathered from what people are saying about companies, brands, and markets on social networks.

When sentiment analysis is calculated in real time, executives and marketers can learn whether a blog post with content negative to the company is drawing attention, and when appropriate they can respond right away. Or, in real time, salespeople could be armed with the knowledge that a competitor has just launched a new product and could know instantly what customers are saying about it.

Large companies use big data to generate revenue, either by being more efficient at what they already do or by implementing new sales and marketing strategies that would have been impossible otherwise.

For a macro example of big data at work in sales and service, consider big box home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe's or general merchandise stores like Walmart and how they might create specific sales strategies around the weather.

If early predictions forecast snow for a region, the store could shift inventory to outlets in the affected area during the hours preceding the storm. Things they know people purchase prior to and after snowstorms—snowblowers, shovels, generators, and the like—would be moved to locations in the affected area while keeping inventory at a manageable level.

Meanwhile, the retailer could create a dynamically updated website showcasing these weather-related products on its homepage, but only in the areas of the country affected by the storm. In other locations, the regular products would be shown.

As actual products are purchased and stock is depleted, the point-of-sale systems at each store could drive a real-time display showing how many units of the popular items are available at each store. This way, customers could expect a unit to be available (or not) and plan their visit to the appropriate store to make a purchase.

Marketers could monitor social media as well as mainstream media for keywords like “snowblowers” and comment as appropriate.

The home improvement store could also calculate (from loyalty card purchase records) which customers had not acquired shovels or snowblowers recently and target them with a content-rich email focusing on tips to survive the storm, and could offer a video about what they need to know to buy a snowblower appropriate to their needs. In addition, the email could include incentive offers for other products likely to be needed during a storm or patterned to the buying habits of the customer.

Real-time Google AdWords and Facebook advertising could be run, targeted to the precise time and location of the impending storm. I'd imagine an online ad headline something like “Snow Blowers in Stock” and text “Popular models available right now at Home Depot in Massachusetts.” The ad would point to the dynamically updating real-time product availability page.

There's a lot going on here. Big data–based sales and service strategies rely on crunching huge data sets that no human with a spreadsheet could ever manage. It's the future of real-time sales and service that's happening today in some forward-looking companies.

I'll share other examples of big data and how you can use these ideas in Chapter 6.

An Underground Business Cooks Up Innovative Sales and Service to Discover a Menu for Success

Many people I meet have a tough time using content for sales and service. This is especially true for those who have spent their entire career generating attention via paid advertising and direct sales efforts.

With that context in mind, imagine how difficult it would be to generate sales if you're running an underground business that can't use traditional sales and marketing methods because it is outside mainstream distribution channels.

That's why I'm excited to share the story of Liza Puglia, owner and chef at NOLA Buenos Aires. She relies almost exclusively on web content and social networking to fill the several tables in her fledgling restaurant.

NOLA Buenos Aires is a puerta cerrada restaurant. That translates to “closed door” and is a way for chefs to showcase a specialty cuisine and to bring people together through delicious food. Like NOLA Buenos Aires, many puerta cerrada restaurants are located in private homes. This form of underground dining is common in Buenos Aires, and the trend is growing in other cities around the world.

“Puerta cerrada is a great opportunity to tap into the restaurant business as an owner before making that big commitment, whether that's a financial commitment or a time commitment,” Puglia says. “It's like getting our feet wet without jumping all the way in the pool.”

I totally enjoyed the NOLA experience. There's the excellent food, of course. But as an added benefit I got to visit a Buenos Aires home, hardly the typical experience of a business traveler on his first trip to Argentina.

But to experience this, I had to do my homework. It's kind of like a members-only club, and I felt as if I was part of an in-the-know community once I figured out the scene.

Puglia knows this. “One of the things that really sells us is our exclusivity. We're small capacity. We're a private residence. It's somewhat difficult to get a reservation.” Notice how Puglia tells the story of NOLA. It's a powerful founder's story that her buyers (like me) relate to.

When my wife and I visited NOLA, we chose the communal table and were seated with about a dozen people from all over the world who, like us, had learned about NOLA via social media. I inquired among my fellow diners and all of them—every single one—had found the restaurant via their social networks, or foodie blogs, or review sites like TripAdvisor.

“Social media is everything for us,” Puglia says. “It enables us to spread the word. We know that people are coming to Buenos Aires and they're literally searching hashtag Buenos Aires on Twitter. So we'll tweet out that we have availability this Saturday night at 9:30—hashtag Buenos Aires, hashtag Palermo—so they have a little concentrated search on what it is that they're looking for. We're trying to make it as easy as possible for our future clients to find us and make a reservation.”

Puglia knows that photos attract people who love good food. “Food is so much to me, esthetically,” she says. “If people can see photos of the food that we're executing, they're more likely to make a reservation with us. Facebook and Twitter and blogging really allow us to share that content.”

Buenos Aires has a strong community of food bloggers and many write in English, so when people are planning a trip and searching for Buenos Aires restaurant information, NOLA is there and easy to find. “Local food is one of the city's biggest tourist attractions,” Puglia says. “People blog about it. And then they'll link to their blog and they'll put us on Twitter. And then we'll spread their article around so everyone is winning. They're getting more traffic to their blog, and we're getting more reservations and more exposure.”

With a business that relies so strongly on social media to drive sales, Puglia has techniques to get people talking. “Twenty-four hours prior to your reservation, we send out an email to all of our clients with our exact location as well as a reminder that we'll see you tomorrow. And in the email we say we're on Instagram. We're on Foursquare. We're on Twitter. Feel free to share the word. And then after they've dined with us, we share the photos of that evening on the Facebook page, tagged with people who were there. People like that and they share those pictures and the word starts spreading.”

Puglia actively encourages people to share their experiences. “When we conclude the evening at NOLA, we bring out our guestbook,” she says. “We present the book to the table as a way to close the evening and to let people know that we're a small business with the hopes of getting bigger. And we're eager for feedback. Tell us what your favorite course was. Tell us anything. We want to know the good and the bad. That gives people an opportunity to speak their minds about the experience before they have a chance to write about it on review sites. In addition, we always send an email the following day, a thank you for dining with us and giving us your time. And if you'd like to spread the word, here's a direct link.”

Puglia knows that reviews of NOLA Buenos Aires are important, and she generally gets very positive ones. However, as is true of all restaurants, there are occasionally people who want to express other opinions.

“It's been a mini roller coaster with the reviews,” Puglia says. “We definitely don't dispute anything, because we don't want the future clients feeling uncomfortable when writing a critical review if that's the route they're taking. We know we can't please everyone; how boring would that be? However, negative reviews get me upset. It's my blood that I'm putting into this business. We're trying our hardest. And if we disappoint someone, then I'm disappointing myself. However, I believe there's a lot of feedback in the reviews, both good and bad, that can help our business and want to be aware of it. But I don't need to personally obsess about every review.”

The content Puglia creates on her blog as well as on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram is the link between the story about NOLA Buenos Aires and the potential diners she hopes to attract. “I'm extremely reliant on social media,” she admits. “I don't think my business would be half as successful without it. I started my blog when I came to Buenos Aires strictly as a way to stay in touch. This forced me to use Twitter and start a Facebook page. It's really allowed me to make connections, and helped me grow as a person. And it's opened many doors for my business and helped me learn during the process.”

NOLA Buenos Aires is successful today because people sharing on social media have driven interest and sales, filling the restaurant with diners who are eager to experience a terrific puerta cerrada restaurant. As an underground establishment, traditional methods simply cannot work for it.

No matter what industry you're in, driving sales via content creation and sharing on social networks can benefit your organization in the same way it is benefiting Puglia and NOLA Buenos Aires.

Navigating Your Sales and Service Plan

At this stage I've introduced the concepts of the new rules of sales and service. We've looked at the old ways of selling and servicing existing customers, and we've explored the basics of the new rules. I've shared a few examples of success using the methods in these pages, including those of Quark Expeditions, McGlynn, Clinton & Hall Insurance Agencies, OPEN Cycle, and NOLA Buenos Aires.

The next chapter details the concept of developing an authentic voice and communicating what your organization stands for via storytelling. This is the core of the new rules. Later, in Chapter 4 we'll focus on the idea of buyer personas and creating content for each buyer. This concept is critically important to align the marketing, sales, and service organizations of companies. Too often there is a massive disconnect in typical organizations when the marketers prattle on about products and services and waste massive amounts of money on advertising rather than focusing on the needs of their customers and creating content that directs people into and through the sales process.

Chapter 5 is a deep dive into the buying process and how your organization can build a lead generation machine. In particular, we'll be focused on how the availability of web content empowers buyers and why your existing sales process should accommodate this shifting dynamic by becoming a buying process. Chapter 6 takes an understanding of the new fundamentals of the buying process and adds the component of instant engagement. Agile selling is an incredibly powerful way to reach buyers and close more business.

Chapters 7 and 8 address how you service your existing customers. Because great customer service is one of the strongest predictors of future return business, these chapters are also part of your long-term sales strategy because they will help you grow your business.

Chapter 9 explores the need to change your personal mind-set to be engaged with your marketplace in real time. We discuss how to become active in social networks and content creation. And finally in Chapter 10, I talk about how all of the previous chapters lead toward the new paradigm of a social company that succeeds with the new rules.

You don't need to read the chapters in this order, though. Feel free to jump around as much as you like.