or online "sorry about the nimrods in customer service if it was up to me I would have given you back your $576.87," is a valuable quality to possess. Trust is the critical characteristic in a world that has this ease of access to information and others. Trust is a two way street, why? This post was inspired by Jeremiah Owyang on the topic of personal brands within a corporate community. In some ways this is more an issue of individual popularity rather than a personal brand, but I'll use the term personal brand because it is commonly accepted.

Rain T oday , a great resource for those who market and sell services, selected their Best Book s of the Decade for marketing and selling professional services. If you market or sell professional services or have a complex sale be sure to put these “ best of the decade ” on your reading list. Winning the Professional Services Sale by Michael W. I was humbled to see that they picked my book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale for their list.

What is it that makes me -- and your potential buyers -- trust one company more than another when viewing a website? As a prospect, one of the things that makes me feel good about a product or service to is to see that others have had success it, and there is no better way to do that than through case studies and quotes. But, having a clearly-written website also inspires trust with me as it gives me the feeling that you a) know your business and, b) haven't I've been doing a number of competitive analyses for clients, which means I've been spending a lot of time looking at websites.

Client service comes first, always. There has been quite a bit of discussion from the original post and on a post by Jeremiah Owyang titled “Walking the Talk: Some Agencies and Vendors Demonstrate Social Media Prowess,” . I honestly didn’t think that my initial effort would generate such discussion, which I think provides a lot

Trust is not a new thing in marketing and communications. The most trusted name in news, is the most hackneyed phrase on TV. I believe trusted means you transfer your brain space for figuring stuff out to others, you transfer your emotional defense mechanisms to another entity. Like, I trust this pilot to land this plane, or OK Guy Fieri, I’ll trust this place that’s Time 22:33 One of the most awaited studies in the PR world is the annual Edelman Public Relations Trust Barometer . Apparently, people like you are trusted by you more than institutions

The purpose of this post is to solely highlight the increased use of social media for sales, customer service, and customer feedback. However, as more potential and current customers seek information from trusted sources, that is our social graph and friend networks, these previously “secret” processes are being brought to the surface. Tags: Social media Twitter Chris Heuer Customer Service customer support marketing sale I noticed this series of tweets with Chris Heuer, Social media Club Founder , on Twitter the last couple of days. Before I continue, I

The focus of the story is the impact of the economic downturn and potential TARP guidelines on the financial services industry. You get the people, you get the customers.” The first quote was in response to the Northern Trust involvement/sponsorship in a golf tournament. What I said was that in the B2B world of Financial Services (Investment Banking, Commercial Insurance, etc.) This post was linked to a story on CNN (see the bottom section "From the Blogs ") Last Tuesday, I was quoted by BtoB magazine in an article entitled “ Bank bailout a game changer . ”

I helped host an ITSMA round table this week and a near universal complaint from our B2B technology clients was how difficult it is to launch new services in a fast, efficient way. In other words, companies start trying to deliver new products and services before they’ve adequately answered all the questions about whether this new thing is something customers actually want, whether it’s something that salespeople can actually sell, and whether it is something that operations can actually deliver at a reasonable cost. One client summed it up by saying that there are two points of resistance in the process of bringing new things to market.

I helped host an ITSMA round table this week and a near universal complaint from our B2B technology clients was how difficult it is to launch new services in a fast, efficient way. In other words, companies start trying to deliver new products and services before they’ve adequately answered all the questions about whether this new thing is something customers actually want, whether it’s something that salespeople can actually sell, and whether it is something that operations can actually deliver at a reasonable cost. One client summed it up by saying that there are two points of resistance in the process of bringing new things to market.

Summary: Entiera is a sophisticated consumer marketing automation system, offered as a service and at a lower price than conventional competitors. Entiera Insight is a marketing automation system primarily for companies that sell to consumers. This makes them sound more like a “hosted” vendor than “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS), per the distinction in my July 25 post . I’m highlighting this because most of my recent posts have been about B2B marketing automation (demand generation) systems, and the two types of systems are quite different. This means I apply different