I spoke to the marketing director of a mutual fund firm this week and she was asking me if I had any ideas on how they could get a couple of high profile fund managers to record a podcast. She knew Brainshark had a button called "Create a podcast" but she wasn't sure how it worked or if it would help her.
Her problem was that the fund managers were not based in the same city and neither had the time to fly to the home office to sit in a recording studio to create the audio files. She did not have the option of saying it could not be done because her VP instructed her to find a way and get the content posted.
"No problem", I told her. Then I explained to her that all she had to do was get the fund managers on a conference call. She would conference in the Brainshark IVR to record the call. When the call was over all she had to do was click the enable podcast button in Brainshark and we would give her the finished podcast in .mp3 format ready for posting, or if she preferred she could link to the audio file. The hard part would be preparing the speakers to deliver a quality podcast.
She went back to her VP and was pleased to announce she had a solution and would get the podcast done and posted this week. And she did.
Have a Sharktastic Memorial Day!
Last week, Lisa Katze from Xerox visited our Waltham, MA office and she talked about two types of people; Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives. She was referring to those who started using digital technologies after lets say, about 12 years old as being immigrants, and those that started using digital technologies at under 12 years old as natives. One could argue a younger or older age, but right around the time a child might be given a cell phone seems to be a useful demarcation point. Children are getting independent enough that parents want to have their little ones digitally accessible.
What does this have to do with on-demand web presentations? I recently visited the sales team of a customer and was told the "immigrants" were having a hard time wrapping their heads around Brainshark, while the "natives" got it. I found a different story. Those sales people who have been at their craft for a long time, immediately saw the value and were using Brainshark for their prospecting and were looking to take advantage of Brainshark throughout the sales cycle. The less seasoned sales people were trying to figure out how Brainshark fit into a craft they were still learning.
Think of the many immigrants who came to this country with skills and experience from their homeland and with the right tools, hard work and a little luck were able to prosper. On June 10 at 2pm, we are having a User Group meeting for those who use Brainshark for sales and we hope to share more stories with you. Please register at http://events.brainshark.com/brainsharkinc/series09/
In an interview published in yesterdays' NY Times, "Meetings, Version 2.0, at Microsoft" Steve Ballmer describes what a meeting with him is like at Microsoft.
As he describes the "old way", many can relate to the typical way that meetings are delivered across organizations every day - someone delivering a PowerPoint presentation in which a room full of listeners follow the presenter's path to the conclusion. Is this really the most productive way? Neither presenters nor listeners maximize their valuable time together that could instead be used on informed discussion and interaction. Time is money, spending face-to-face time on information delivery is very costly. Read about his version of a better meeting.
The Brainshark leadership team holds its weekly meetings in 2.0 style - but different from Steve Ballmer's approach, we deliver Brainshark presentations to update our peers on each of our functional areas, and we share them with each other the day before the meeting. The updates provide operational results and progress reports, and raise discussion topics that should be covered as a group. Compared to Steve Ballmer's flat PPT decks that don't have the presenter's voice to explain, clarify, and paint a picture; I think that would make our approach a 3.0. In this way, we can start preparing and thinking about important topics before walking into the meeting; instead of spending costly meeting time simply delivering information. Try this new approach for your next meeting; and let us know how it goes.
It's finally REALLY Spring in New England and a fresh, youthful energy is in the air - what better embodies that than a bunch of kids playing baseball in the green grass? The Brainshark Little League Team is off to a good start this season at 1-1.
Go Team Brainshark!
Today I was proud to accept an award from Silverpop for our use of their Engage B2B Marketing Automation solution. It was exciting to be awarded such an honor, especially when you consider that the users of Silverpop solutions are among the best and brightest marketers I've met. Their stories about how they are using engagement marketing to reach, nurture, qualify, and maintain customer relationships are truly impressive. Our use of the Silverpop product is quite innovative - even among these talented and creative marketing professionals.
So, in the tradition of thanking the academy... First and foremost my team deserves the credit for this award, without their hard work, dedication, and constant commitment to improving our marketing programs, this simply would not have been possible. Thanks also go to Joan Babinski and David Fitzgerald for their executive leadership and for empowering my team to execute effective programs. Thanks also go to the engineering team for building such a powerful product, Brainshark, and for having the vision to see the possibilities of Salesforce.com integration.
Bill Nussey, Silverpop CEO, presented the award and when doing so took extra time to call attention to the innovative solutions Brainshark offers and to the innovative approach we take.
Go Sharks!
-Ed Thompson