Google’s offer to snap up Groupon for $2-3B is big news (see: Venturebeat.com)

The advantages to Google are obvious: Functioning as a bolt-on to its existing ad buying platform, Groupon would give AdWords advertisers the added option of running local promotions. In fact, Groupon’s reverse auction scheme seems like an idea fit for Google.

Not to over-simplify it, but basically Groupon would become a new radio-button to click on in the AdWords system.

Naturally, a deal of this size is like blood in the water for other suitors like eBay, Microsoft and Amazon. Unfortunately, if history is any guide, of these three, Amazon offers the only true alternative.

But, let me suggest an alternative for an even better tie-up/partnership: Intuit.

As an avid supporter of small businesses, here’s my case for a Groupon+Intuit (G+I) partnership:

1. First and foremost, I hope any deal will be based on what new services can come out of the partnership that neither party could create on their own.

   In the case of G+I, it’s about what both Groupon and Intuit can build together for small businesses. Where Google may make short-term sense for Google’s F500 customers and a handful of savvy web marketers, a Groupon+Intuit partnership accomplishes something bigger.

   Intuit brings more than 3 million, eager small businesses to the deal. Leveraging social media, G+I would be a new, cost-efficient conduit to prospective customers for small businesses.

   Talk about a shovel-ready, economic stimulus!

2. Operating the Google AdWords platform requires skill beyond the scope of most small businesses. For one, buying ads is, at best, confusing. And two, the necessary web page modifications are non-trivial.

   Groupon has no such burden. In fact (other than the reverse-auction price mechanism), Groupon promotions operate similar to other price promotions a small business might run already.

   While Google wouldn’t necessarily have to integrate Groupon with AdWords, I seriously doubt they will avoid the urge.

3. Intuit gets instant increased social media savvy. [corrected based on Kira's comment, below]
   They don’t have it today…and they need it. As far as I can tell, only a handful of Intuit folks are on Twitter, the most popular being @IntuitInc (the PR/Marcom team) with just 1,525 followers. Compare that to Groupon’s founder, Andrew Mason, with 3.4x more followers.
4. Intuit’s Grow Your Business Division (the most likely group inside Intuit to run the partnership) needs a win. Stuck on offering me-too web services like web hosting, G+I would catapult them into a wide-open field (think: Blue Ocean Strategy).

Unless I’m missing something, Groupon doesn’t need the cash. If that’s the case, there’s a mountain of money on the sidelines aching for opportunities like Groupon.

So if Groupon is looking for a partner, I believe an Intuit deal is strategically better.

What do you think?

PS, in case you’re wondering, I have no business relationship with any of the companies mentioned in this article.

Who wants to work for a loser?

I discovered the 16 Deadly Sins of Business eight years ago when I was doing a lot of work with startups.

Written by Emory Winship, an angel investor in New York City, the 16 Sins were his early-warning system. If he saw a company commit one of the 16 Sins, he knew he might end up working with a real loser.

I only wish I knew the 16 Sins earlier in my career. I wouldn’t have to make excuses for the two loser-jobs on my resume.

How do you know you’re working for (or interviewing with) a Loser?

Separating Winners from Losers is tougher than you think. Loser-companies are masters of disguise. You’ve got to scratch below the surface to find out what’s really going on.

That’s why I love The 16 Sins. They go to the heart.

Here’s what you have to do:

• View the original 8-page PDF for a complete explanation of each of the 16 Sins. [it's a Google doc so it should open in your browser perfectly]
• Use my questions (below) in your interview. If a client (or prospective employer) can answer my questions, it’s likely you’ve found yourself a Winner.

1. Elephant in the Boardroom

What is the most pressing issue facing the company right now, and how is management addressing it?

2. Blinded by the Light

How does the company seek out independent perspectives on its products and services? And what does it do with this knowledge?

3. The Mouth That Roars

How much of the marketing budget is allocated to making it easier for sales people to sell and customers to buy its products and services?

4. 42

In one sentence, who is your profile customer?

5. Too Big to Think Small

How does the background or experience of the leadership team map to the current needs of the company?

6. Cowboys

Describe how strategic decisions are made and how often strategy changes.

7. Say When

How does the firm plan for growth? What systems are being developed now, in anticipation of growth?

8. All in the Family

Describe the role of the outside board of directors (or board of advisers)? What oversight and authority do they have?

9. Swiss Watch

How often does management “fire itself” with the intention of building competitive products and business models in order to maintain its sharpness. (see Andy Grove’s book, Only the Paranoid Survive, for more).

10. Who’s on First

How do analytics drive company decisions, performance?

11. Dead Right

How easily does management make difficult decisions? How do they avoid analysis-paralysis?

12. Opportunity Only Knocks Once

They say marketing’s job is to build an ever increasing base of repeat customers—in what way is the firm building a repeatable system like this? And what’s the customer profile at the core of your system?

13. Blue Angels

How often does the company independently assess SWOT? What do they do with the recommendations?

14. White Knight

When you divide revenue between your cash cows, problem children and rising stars, what percentage of the rising stars are outgrowths of current business operations and what percent are in unrelated fields, markets?

15. Patron Saint

Sorry, I couldn’t come up with a question for this one. Maybe you can suggest one or two.

16. More Money

What would happen if your budget was cut by 50%? What would be the last thing to go? What would be the first?

“Just give me a hot lead. Just give me two of the premium leads.”

All sales leads are not created equal. Who can forget Glengarry Glen Ross and the premium Glengarry leads?

Sales reps we’re willing to commit practically any [illegal] act to get their hands on the premium Glengarry leads. Glengarry leads spelled success.

Do you have premium sales leads? You know, the ones that are pre-wired for upside revenue?

If you’ve never seen a premium lead, go to a B2B tradeshow and watch sales reps work their booths. The garden-variety leads are the ones reps put into a box that gets shipped back to corporate for processing. (Think: the final scene of Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark).

The premium leads are the ones Sales Reps put in their pockets.

It takes sales reps just a few minutes to figure out if a contact is ready and able to become a customer. The “figuring out” part is a sales rep’s qualification process. They know the questions to ask and how deeply to probe. They’re masters at separating tire-kickers, stealth competitors and students from those who have the potential of becoming customers.

What makes a lead “premium?”

The difference between a sales lead and a premium sales lead (in Glengarry Glen Ross terms) is: Qualification. Premium leads are qualified leads.

Once qualified, a contact will be passed along to your sales reps or nurtured by your marketing department.

But can you take what a sales rep does naturally and teach it to others? Meet John Coe—Database Marketing Guru.

In John’s book, The Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales and Marketing—Sell More, Spend Less!, he shares the four factors of a qualified lead:

The BANT Process: Qualified Sales Leads

BANT: Budget, Authority, Need, Timing (or Timeline).

1. Need
What are the needs or conditions that have to exist BEFORE your product or service would valuable to a potential customer?

2. Budget
How much money must be available in the customer’s budget to buy your product or service?

3. Authority
Does this person have the authority or can they get approval to make a buying decision?

4. Timing
Does the timing of the purchase fall within the timeline of the sales rep’s commission plan? If it does not, sales reps will have little incentive to pursue the lead. [Go ahead and argue with me on this point…but you’ll lose.]

Definition: Qualified Lead

A qualified lead is a person:

• With need, budget and buying authority.
• Working for a company that meets your customer profile for being a customer.
• With a buying timeline that falls within the time horizon of the sales rep’s commission plan.

It only takes a few minutes for a true sales professional to qualify a contact. And they can do it anywhere—at a busy tradeshow or on a golf course. The real trick is teaching the process to everyone in your company—especially your marketing team.

In Wall Street Journal op-ed: New Business, Not Small Business, Is What Creates Jobs, Kauffman Foundation senior execs Carl Schramm, Robert Litan and Dane Stangler announce their latest report on small business job creation.

The report sorts out small business job growth fiction vs. reality.

Entrepreneurs = Recovery

It turns out that “nearly all net job creation since 1980 occurred in firms less than five years old.”

No wonder start-ups generate so much [intoxicating] fun. In fact, researchers report that “of the entire pool of new jobs added in 2007 (roughly 12 million), about two-thirds was  generated by these young companies.”

While the report is exceptionally well written (and filled with terrific graphs for anyone—like me—who sells to small business), their policy recommendations are off-target.

Here’s a copy of my response and a call to arms for Geeked-out Salespeople…

Carl, et al: Terrific insight… that *new and growing* businesses are the real fuel of economic growth (cf., small businesses in general). Thank you for that important clarification.

Your conclusions, though, leave out the most critical element.

While you present good suggestions (welcoming immigrants, unleashing professors, access to capital, sarbox exceptions), they will do little to break the enormous inertia preventing entrepreneurs and their breakthrough ideas, patents and processes from ever reaching the point at which their [start-up] companies are able to create jobs.

Having worked for and with hundreds of venture-level firms and each of their entrepreneurs, the single biggest contributing factor choking the conversion from entrepreneurial idea to commercialization (and jobs) is lack of customers. Pure and simple, if you can’t create a customer (or in the case of Twitter: a registered user), your idea dies.

Without customers (and the revenue they create) investors won’t invest, IPO’s won’t occur and patents become worthless (fyi: 60,000 patents expire each year… so we really don’t need more patents).

No doubt, the ability to create customers (a/k/a selling) is critical to any firm. But for startups, it is their literal lifeblood.

But given this linkage, it is exasperating to find so little sales training or formal education available. At which institutions do engineers (and for that matter, professors) learn how to sell? I cannot list 5 institutions in the US that provide the kind of bare-metal selling necessary for taking early-stage products (i.e., working prototypes) to market.

Perhaps you’d consider moving this to the top of your list at the Kauffman Foundation. It would be consistent with the realities of entrepreneurial growth and be money and time well-spent.

I wrote the following article a number of years ago and had pretty much forgotten about it until recently when a number of people started calling me about a startup they were considering. You see, I’ve been highly-involved with the launch of 44 businesses in my career. I suppose that qualifies me as either an expert or a glutton for punishment (don’t ask my wife because she’ll tell you it’s the latter choice…), but in any case, I thought it might be useful to blow the dust off this article and republish it now…

. . .

You’ve just developed the greatest product in the world. Now, you’re planning to retire long before your name ever appears on an AARP database. Not so fast. There are no guarantees a product, no matter how good it is, will ever sell.

Launching a company takes a great deal of careful planning, experience and the courage to move ahead. Read on, and discover the basics of moving a product successfully out of your laboratory, past the R&D stage and into the world.

Anatomy of a Marketing Launch

Initial Phase. A successful company launch begins with a strong product concept. The concept takes shape as a prototype. Your vision becomes reality by focusing on three areas:

1. Manufacturing (Should I build or buy?)
2. Product (What makes mine unique?)
3. Marketing (How will I generate revenue? What is my message?)

The answers to these questions will help you develop an initial business plan.

Sales Process Mapping. The second phase you will move through is seed-level funding. Once investment monies are obtained from venture capitalists, angel investors or the 3 F’s (Friends, Family, Fools), your concept is off the ground. Now, you need to gather customer data through sales calls and determine how your customers acquire similar products and services. What is their buying cycle? With this information, you can create a sales process map that will identify the hurdles your sales team will encounter—and give you the know-how to jump over them.

This investigative exercise is also essential for discovering the basic elements for your marketing campaign:

• What markets should I target?
• What are my customers’ titles?
• How will we sell the product?
• Is there a need for my product?
• Why would the customer buy my product instead of my competitor’s?
• How does my product save time or money?
• How does my product increase revenue or reduce risks?

The last questions are the most critical. Emerging-growth companies need to demonstrate a product benefit from a financial standpoint, especially in this market. They need to understand their customers’ problems and solve them by saving time or money. Or both.

After completing the sales process map, a company is ready for larger-than-life marketing. Although emerging companies are the experts when it comes to products and manufacturing, marketing often looms as a huge challenge.

Workplan. Before you start strategizing, get your business plan in place. Once that is accomplished, formulate a Strategic Workplan from information gathered via in-depth interviews with customers, sales people, employees, distributors, analysts, etc. The interviews help uncover the potential “minefields” and identify a company’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

The Workplan describes, in detail, who will buy the product or service, the rational and emotional factors involved in decision making, and the net impression, or what the customer should remember about the product. It states the Key Copy Promise, the “ah ha!” point at which the customer understands what the product does and begins to decide if it is right for him or her. Most importantly, the Strategic Workplan brings everyone onto the same page and provides a clear statement that everyone in the company can follow and act on.

Strategic Elements. Out of the Workplan, the tactical launch elements are born. Communication vehicles may include corporate logos and ID, sales collateral, PR, tradeshows, websites and other customer outreach media, advertising, direct mail, and product packaging. Startups need to tell the world that their product is unique, but they need to launch their business step by step, carefully, professionally and in a timely manner.

The key to launching a company successfully is to find a marketing partner that has the necessary street smarts. Experience and know-how are everything. Without the guidance of an expert, the responsibility is overwhelming, the failure rate high. Small companies can’t afford to market themselves like the big guys are doing, and they don’t have to. They need to make the best use of their funds, to have experts tell them what tools they need to get the greatest return on their investment.

My Top 4 Business Launch Tips & Tricks

1. Who are your primary customers? Those you’d phone with only five minutes left before you enter an all-day business meeting.
2. The image you project is highly important. Don’t slough it off. First impressions really do count, and a bad one is difficult to overcome.
3. In business and life, continue to move through Charles Handy’s Wheel of Learning: question, theorize, test, reflect, question… (C. Handy, “Age of Unreason,” Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1989.)
4. You might be selling a product or service. Your customers are buying confidence.

Steve Bosak, an expert in Public Relations who specializes in high-tech start-ups, spills the beans on public relations and how to get editors to take you seriously.

A unique product. Excited investors. Positive feedback from initial sales. Could there ever be a better time for a public relations campaign? You bet.

One of the biggest mistakes start-ups make is to engage in public relations far too early. Companies have to be very, very sure they have a product, or they are just going to be wasting their money. Public relations is useless too early in the game.

A PR program can be a strong component in your marketing strategy, but before you even think about writing a press release, you need to know your sales process, customers and competition. Dig deep until you uncover every detail of the whole picture, get into production and sell, sell, sell. After considerable success, you can use public relations as a tool to increase product interest and enhance your sales—but make sure your story is unique and compelling, or the press won’t bite.

So how do you tread water in the sea of public relations? Many new companies look to outside professionals. The key here is to hire an expert, not just a well-known name or a large company with impressive office space. Agency size is not related to results, but experience is. Determine that your account representative, the person you’ll be working with daily, understands your technology. You shouldn’t have to train the person who will be handling your account. Before you sign on the dotted line, find out the nature of the working relationship, pricing and contracts. For example, ask pointed questions about what and how items are invoiced, i.e., faxes, e-mails and mark-ups.

It’s also important to take an honest assessment of your business. If you’re competing in a large market, you’ll need to spend more dollars on public relations. In a modest-sized market, about 40 to 50 agency hours a month should be enough to cover your publicity needs. Of course, additional hours are always possible, but may be a case of overkill. It’s smart to appoint someone in the organization to carefully monitor the agency’s activities.

Smaller companies may find it more cost-effective to do their own PR. According to Bosak, the only real requirement to become a good PR person is to possess top-notch communication skills. His marketing communications company provides in-depth training for companies who want to develop an in-house public relations team. Class graduates are schooled in dealing with the trade press, writing effective press releases and handling crisis communications.

While the basic elements of good PR haven’t changed, the way it is done today has been greatly impacted by technology. Press releases are emailed. Information is disseminated through websites. In fact, websites are becoming a must-have PR tool. Professionally done websites compel people to take action. They provide timely information and an inexpensive way to post special offers. Another bonus: websites can be linked to other partner websites and be built to create an electronic database of potential customers.

Public relations has changed form with the technology age, and it also changes as a company grows. Needs become clearer, and decisions of what to do or whom to hire will become easier. For instance, an in-house PR professional may be the right answer for a new company, but an agency that has a strong international presence or one with a greater media outreach program may fit the bill down the road. During a company’s launch phase, however, it’s wise to begin a PR program deliberately and carefully.

You can’t rely on PR to carry the full weight of product introduction, but a good PR strategy will harmonize and enhance your other marketing efforts. Done well, it will increase your results.

Steve’s Top 4 PR Success Tips & Tricks

1. Always tell the press the truth. And always return their calls promptly.
2. Press releases should never handle more than one topic. Keep them as short as possible, never more than three pages.
3. Whether you hire an agency or do your own PR, it’s imperative that someone in your organization methodically read industry material on a weekly basis.
4. Press conferences don’t work to a journalist’s benefit. Every journalist attending will know what the other is asking, so there is little incentive for journalists to attend, unless it’s the only way to get important information.

Here’s some terrific insight from my interview with industrial designer, Sami Elsaden. Sami is President and CEO of Ignite USA—a firm I featured in the Marketing-Playbook. Sami explains how industrial design plays a key role in the brand and product launch of many companies, and especially those in the B2B world.

Ignite turned an ugly industrial computer rack into something beautiful

A product’s performance may be paramount in the purchasing decision, but outward appearances are playing an increasingly important role. More and more, startups are discovering that sales rise exponentially when their product has a well-conceived look. In other words, it pays to decorate the cake.

“Industrial design is a visual way to communicate a product’s benefits, its power of technology,” said Sami Elsaden, President and CEO of Ignite Design, a full-service industrial design firm in Chicago. “It’s a visual language implemented through color, material and form.” And, in many cases, it has become the trump card in competition.

A Visual Step Up

Cadant Technologies used industrial design as an effective way to compete, to differentiate its cable data network system through a sophisticated and unique outer casing. When newcomer Cadant began grabbing considerable tradeshow attention, competitors responded with ads belittling exterior considerations. Unfortunately for the competition, Cadant’s innovative design served as a visible portrayal of its futuristic technology and reliability. The winning combination of design and technology was difficult to compete against.

Startups today spend substantial dollars to develop technology, and more companies are choosing to complete the picture through packaging. Even equipment that sits in the back of a data center can benefit from an external overhaul. “Industrial design is now viewed as an opportunity to feature backroom products, instead of hide them, much to the liking of CEOs,” Elsaden said. “It’s an idea that has invaded many aspects of our lives. At home, we enjoy upgraded electronics. In restaurants, once-hidden kitchens are now frequently showcased. In industry, well-designed products have become cool, flashy…a branding opportunity. A $500,000 mission-critical computer has to look the part.”

Begin with Branding

Indeed, understanding your corporate brand is step number-one in the industrial design process. Design is typically based on marketplace objectives and will reflect how the product is positioned, i.e., low cost, unique, high performance. Prospective clients should have a clear idea of their competition platform before meeting with an industrial design firm and be able relate it to a team of industrial and graphic designers, as well as mechanical engineers and quality assurance specialists. Plan on starting the initial design phase six months prior to your product launch date or a trade show debut.

The second step is knowing the target audience. “Research is a very big part of the design process because we have to depict visually what’s important to the end-user,” explained Elsaden. “Ideally, we like to watch how people interact and study behavior first hand because there is a disconnect between what people say and what they do.” For instance, an Ignite team traveled to Western Europe and studied where modems were being placed in the home environment for one of its clients, Tellabs. Research data in hand, Ignite discovered the target audience could be divided into four different exterior types (classic, soft design, Scandinavian, minimalism) and cost effectively designed one cable telephony housing that blended with every decor.

Investing in a “Look”

Industrial design works in tandem with internal technology and end-user benefits, but the process is also sensitive to manufacturing and maintenance costs. From a pricing standpoint, channel considerations and budget considerations drive the industrial design process. Bottom line, satisfaction is key for all parties involved, in all aspects of the process.

And the price tag for maximizing profit margin without compromising brand equity? Industrial design usually runs between $50,000 for modifications of existing housing and $200,000 for customized packaging—a relatively small investment for a strong and effective marketing strategy that can create a proprietary look.

“Packaging should mirror the value of what’s inside,” Elsaden said, “and at the very least, it should increase perceived value. The truth is, everyone loves their own technology and product, but they have trouble getting their product to market. Industrial design can help overcome that obstacle.”

Sami’s Top 5 Industrial Design Tips & Tricks

1. Well-designed packages or casings differentiate your product and build equity for your brand.
2. Industrial design can cut manufacturing costs by eliminating parts or reducing assembly time. It also can be used to problem-solve high maintenance costs.
3. Word of mouth can be the best route for finding an industrial design firm. Check out the products that you like and ask your sources.
4. Define your service and discuss your objectives—and cost constraints—up front.
5. Tight budget? Bypass customizations and explore existing “shell” modifications.