WHO links cell phone usage to brain cancer.  I’m screwed.  :-|

• Send meeting invites – I have an incredibly packed schedule.  Not only am I dealing with vendors, but also am triaging a billion other things at any given time.  So, as you can imagine, my time is hard to come by.  Unfortunately, for vendors, I don’t have a free calendar with tons of whitespace allowing for a bunch of ad hoc meetings.  I find it most useful when a vendor sends out meeting invites for predetermined times to chat (either in person or over the phone) so I can be sure to allocate my time and not bail when another internal meeting comes along.  You’d think this would be common sense but you’d be amazed at how many folks I deal with that ask my availability and then schedule a meeting with no subsequent invite to block off my calendar.  And how much time does it really take to compose and send one out?
• Check your presentation – Remember, you may be sick of looking at your slide deck for sales demos.  But, it’s the first time I, as a prospective client, get to see how you operate.  How do you put thoughts together?  What do you tout as the biggest advantage of using your service?  How much attention to detail do you put into your opportunity to wow me during my first impression?  Always check your copyright.  Is it 2 years out of date?  I’d rather not see a copyright than an old one.  Are you continually having to tell me not to look at the latest use stats of your product because they aren’t reflected in the deck?  If so, why haven’t you updated them?  Do you have my company name inserted at random places in the slides to show a customized sales effort – but the company name and/or logo is out of date?  How hard is it to look at my company’s homepage to get the latest corporate info?  You probably deal with the slide deck day in and day out and don’t see details as being that important, but when I have limited knowledge of your company, all I can do is judge based on what I’m presented.  A side note here as well is don’t share too much about existing clients, unless you preface it with the fact you’ve gotten the client’s permission.  The first thought that pops into my mind is if they’re that cavalier about expressing potentially sensitive data about other clients, what does that mean for my company’s data if we become a client?
• Check your audio equipment – This should really be a no brainer.  But, apparently some sales folks didn’t get the memo.  Before you bring me and potentially others into a conference call, make sure your $%^& works!  I had a call recently where the vendor’s speaker phone kept ringing during the presentation.  Really?  Same goes for presentations with crying children, dogs barking, or significant others talking about grocery lists in the background.  If I can ensure that you’re not interrupted with random life events with my participation, why can’t you?
• Stay within time – If you schedule an hour long meeting, stay within that hour. I can’t tell you how many times I have to cut people off before we even get to the meat of the discussion because my meeting time is up and I have to run off to another one.  Don’t be afraid to send meeting invites out with a generous meeting time frame if you think you’ll need it (use reason here).  I’d rather leave a meeting early and get back time in my schedule than have to drop off and schedule a follow-up.
• Minimize meeting frequency – Piggybacking on the previous point, my time is valuable and my calendar is full.  Sales folks love to speak to potential and actual clients in person rather than in email threads because it allows for a more personable experience.  I get that.  But, having to jump on the phone every time I have a question with my phone ringing off the hook and people pushing me to meetings instead of answering questions in email gets very annoying.  Either become more liberal with what you express in email (which can be a great tool since it requires less work for me to share with other internal people than writing up minutes and sharing that), or lump everything into a catch all meeting.  I know your priority for closing the deal focuses on my attention but remember that I have other things going on.
• Don’t leapfrog me - This is where judgment comes into play and a little bit of context is good before executing.  Sometimes vendors won’t feel they’re getting the attention they deserve so they go as far up my management food chain as they can to get some attention.  Ironically, my management pushes them back to me.  And then you’re left with me knowing you tried to go over my head to get me to do something.  It rarely if ever works, so please don’t try.  You’re trying to sell me something or keep my business, so the onus is on you to be responsive and accommodating. In turn, we pay you cash.  I don’t work for you, nor do I owe you anything.  I guarantee if I’m doing my job right, my management will listen to me over you every time.  Also, there’s nothing worse than a vendor not responding in a timely manner to my queries and then trying to elicit a response from me to meet their schedule (which is usually dictated by quarterly sales goals).
• I don’t care about your quota - I actually had someone tell me just how valuable I would be as a customer after he explained what his quota for the year is and where I fall into that spectrum.  Again, I don’t work in sales nor do I want to.  I am not beholden to your quotas and quite frankly am a bit offended when told the only value I have to the vendor is in how quickly they can meet their numbers.  Sales 101, I would think.
• Don’t be a sore sport – Vendor client relationships are as old as capitalism.  But, part of the relationship is the dating (just like in real life).  Just because I go out on a date with you doesn’t mean I’m obligated to marry you.  Same with business.  When a vendor goes dark after I turn their solution down, you might be missing opportunities in the future.  Things change along with needs for solutions.  Some solutions don’t work out.  I always have a short list of folks to go to that I’m not currently engaged with but trust enough to hit up as a secondary choice.  However, if you’re pinging me every day before I decide, then when you find out I’ve chosen another solution and go into radio since, I remember that the next time I’m in need.  Again, it reminds me that I’m just a short term figure to help a sales quota and that doesn’t instill confidence in a long term relationship at a later date.

Sales is a vital piece of any organization.  But if you’re not careful, you end up espousing an image that isn’t as flattering as you think it is.  And at the end of the day, I’m responsible for defending why we have certain vendors in place.  Make my job easy by not instilling fear and angst about what you’ll deliver on and how you’ll handle the relationship.  I’m reasonable, but to a point.  Use common sense and pay attention to how your interactions are perceived (along with the consideration you’re getting) and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. 

View all my reviews >>

I think I’m going to write Nick at Night an email to not drop it from late night syndication.  Ever.  Now…back to the show…

Deliverability.com

• Where the !#$@ are the headers?
• What the !#$@ do I do with the headers?

Social Email Marketing

• Revisit your roots!

The Email Zoo

• GoGo email is a StopStop

The Email Guide

• The legend of Spamalot and the nobility of words

As many of you may know, I worked for Amazon.com several years ago working my way up from a Quality Assurance Engineer to a Technical Program Manager with my entire tenure spent with the email team.  As much as I enjoyed it, an immediate family member fell ill and I had to relocate back home to Texas to be within striking distance if/when things went badly.  This limited my employment options geographically and unfortunately severed my stint at Amazon.

Fast forward to now.  My mom has overcome the cancer she was diagnosed with (both types).  I’ve given ESPs a shot while working from Austin but those engagements didn’t work out.  I’ve been looking for a job passively the last few months (putting more importance on finding “the one” rather than a paycheck) and have found myself to be in an extremely fortunate situation.  After receiving several offers from different prestigious companies and having a great time getting to know even more incredibly bright folks in the industry, Amazon.com made me an offer to rejoin my original team.  After traveling up to Seattle to reconnect with my old management chain, it was apparent that it was akin to coming home for a family reunion.  The folks on the email team are just as doggedly determined and head’s down in their work as I remember but did take some time to hang out with me over a few meals.

The opportunity to work with really amazing technology again, participate in an ever increasing global footprint and join a company that I already know intimately was too good to pass up.  I’ll be starting in June as a Technical Program Manager for the Email Platform Team (same title but varied responsibilities), which handles all Amazon.com generated email for marketing, transactional and secondary purposes.  It will be a challenge, no doubt, as I do remember working my ass off.  But, if you don’t constantly challenge yourself, though, you become stagnant.  Ick.  When you have no down time with countless dollars in revenue and users’ experiences hanging in the balance, you must innovate and maintain simultaneously.  I’ll be driving efforts around email deliverability, vendor management, external industry interfacing on behalf of the company and building out new email features which will help reinforce why their ecommerce platform in conjunction with email is one of the most successful in the world.

I am also looking forward to getting back to Seattle this time of year.  As the heat cranks up here in Austin, Seattle will be plateauing at a balmy 70 ° when we arrive.  Getting some Salty’s for a Sunday brunch, strolling through Pike Place, and relaxing (with Blackberry in hand of course) on the Pacific Science Center promenade awaits.

If anyone finds themselves in the area, I’ll be glad to pick up the first meal!

It’s a bit corny of an idea but the theme got me thinking.  Now, here’s where I probably show my true dork nature.  I was thinking in the movie what would happen if the same sort of mentality were applied to email.  Think about it.  An email represents a single event.  Fire and forget.  But, it’s not really forgotten by the domain host aggregating inbound mail.  If we believe the article that came out last year about the major ISPs in the US and their respective footprints, that’s 226.4 MM unique inboxes held in the US.  The population of the US is 307 MM.  That’s 74% of people covered theoretically by an inbox if you spread out the number of inboxes for each man, woman and child in the US.  Of course this is wrought with statistical peril but for the intentions of this posting, the gist is that postmasters at the 4 largest ISPs in the nation have a lot of oversight.

Now, apply this to the theme of the movie and the following questions popped into my head.

What would happen if ISPs…

1. …decided to allow email to not be a static event but rather had leases on email.  For instance, as a sender, if an email made it through to a recipient, you would have to pay for that email to be accessible past a certain grace period.  Otherwise, the ISP would reach in and swipe the email later if  a fee wasn’t paid.  They own the data so they can do what they want with it within the law.  If you don’t like it, as a recipient, you can just host your own mail server (which wouldn’t exactly work for Grandpa who wants to get stupid e-cards for holidays).
2. …a royalty was collected by ISPs when a conversion occurred with an email.  Granted this would be hard to track, but they could just stick senders with the fee they assumed was possible since they can track clickthroughs and assess landing pages.  This could lead into a whole slew of complicated rules around email hierarchy, delivery rates and times.  Sort of like Tony Soprano watching over your inbox.
3. …started charging senders for every complaint received.  While in theory this would probably do a lot of good for the email ecosystem, it could be heavily abused to artificially drive complaint numbers up to extort money or just punish legitimate senders for having a bad send (as with the “oopsie” email).
4. …charged recipients more than they already do in some cases to send an email out without a forced lag to cause an inconvenience on the sender.  I can imagine hitting the send button and then seeing an interstitial page counting down from 100 or some other high enough number to get under my skin to where  I just go ahead and pay the fee to have the sending process sped up.  Think about it.  Cable companies already seem to do this.  They charge me for the “turbo” class of high speed internet whereas it used to be one price fits all.  I’m highly suspicious of whether they really created a new speed where things can be crammed down the pipes faster or they just tiered out the bandwidth and now charge a premium for having the same speed you did before.
5. …akin to a FedEx or UPS, charging for the size of the email being sent.  Sending a quick one line plain text email v. one with heavy page weight and attachments could mean a difference in what could eventually add up to a lot of money for mass senders.
6. …implemented a tax just to be able to send email in the first place, such as CentMail.

This isn’t a rant against ISPs.  It’s just some insight into what could potentially be. I hope it never happens, but going back to the movie, I doubt anyone ever thought companies would repossess organs either.  Look around today.  We’ve got a lot of things that were created in a sense of altruism (I suppose) which have turned into money making machines.  Hospitals – “oh, you didn’t want that extra bag of saline during your surgery?  Too bad.  And by the way, it costs $1k.  Pay up.”  Federal housing lenders Freddie Mac and Sally Mae – “even though we were conceived after the Great Depression to help folks get into homes, we went belly up because we were busy investing in the secondary markets profiting off companies offering sub prime loans.”  Or even schools – “Dear Coke, Please purchase a spot on our football field marquee so we can afford to get the team new equipment this year.   We’re hitting the NRA up next.”

We like to believe that major corporations won’t slice and dice their way through the human condition to turn a profit.  And if government and society is doing its job, this usually doesn’t happen.  But, what if?  ISPs are hurting for money these days and looking for every new and creative way to keep their email divisions afloat.  Who knows if one day we see a newly created ISP Gestapo reigning down on the recipients’ rights.

Thoughts?  Have I officially lost all of my marbles?  Would more ISP intervention monetizing the email pathway be a good thing?

But, today, I finally hit the point where I needed to reach out to the world at large.  As most of you know, I am not employed any longer and have been taking things easy for a bit.  I received another letter of support today from a contact in the email industry and it moved me to action.  Mind you, I’ve been doing some employer prospecting on the side, but haven’t been as zealous as I have in the past since I want to be certain that where I land next is the right place for me.  The community support I’ve received, though, has truly humbled me and reaffirmed that people are inherently good.  I’ve had ex colleagues, vendors, executives, and industry peers taking time out of their busy lives to think of me and pass along words of encouragement as well as job leads and connections for places looking for folks.  Not to mention, I consider most of the people to be true friends.  It’s amazing how that happens, no?  You work in an area for a while, try to be yourself and work your ass off to better the landscape and along the way you make lifelong friends that will stand there by you or look around for you to be with them when the course changes in an unexpected manner.  Heck, I’m considering using this mini-vacation to go see one of my good friends at a company in the Pacific Northwest just to spend some time with him and glean wisdom from his unending fountain.  And I love hearing his stories – puts the rest of us to shame.

But, I digress.  This maiden post is to thank everyone out there who has made an effort without being asked and to show my gratitude.  You know you all can call on me, as some of you already have, when the going gets rough and I’ll be there to reciprocate.  You are an inspiration and reminder of why I love the email industry in the first place.  Without the people in it, there would be no soul or fellowship that I’ve come to love just as much as the technology.

Now, who wants a leftover St. Patrick’s day cookie? 

* It’s still not polished, but I hope to get that done sometime soon.  I figured getting out a word of thanks was more time sensitive.