Ron Lindeboom
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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From reading you, Jonathan, it is pretty clear to me that you think that this is far easier than it is. Over the last 20 years or so, I have had a couple of people come in talking like you and telling me how they are an experienced salesperson and can make me money.
Both blanked.
Oh, they were experienced salespeople, no doubt. But what they didn’t know was the nature of this industry and the fact that (by your own admission you are not dealing with major corporations) small local businesses are pitched time after time by local TV stations and cable companies. These TV stations and cable companies will do the production work for free to get the ad buy.
So it’s not as easy as you imply to get these small businesses to bite on $6,000 worth of production and “then just throw another $1200 on top” because “they don’t know what this stuff costs.” Yes they do. It costs them nothing, most times.
The exception to that rule is someone who builds a relationship with a client and proves their value enough to get the money. And the value I am talking about is not sales ability and being able to close a deal.
This is not a commodity item and people are not going to line up like you think they are going to. There are many people who get into this industry because they think it’s going to be a fun job. The reality is, this is not an easy job and it is highly competitive. Added to the normal day to day competition between production shops, are the local TV and cable outlets that work really cheap. They have feet on the ground and when their salespeople burn out they throw a fresh face at the same business owners, who then get the same pitch over and over every time a new person joins the sales team.
I apologize in advance if this seems rude but I think that yours are the machinations of someone who thinks they have found a good idea. Unfortunately it is a formula many of us have seen and heard over and over again in the last 20 years. There are all kinds of versions of this story that I have heard over the years, yet not once have I heard of it working for any of the people that I know here.
But you are welcome to try…
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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Long ago in a desert far far away near Tim Wilson’s house in the sand, I got to spend the day with the retired former VP of Sales for Frigidaire Corporation.
He was a great guy and he taught me a lot of great things in a day.
One of the things that he told me was this: “Ron, if I had someone like you on my team, I gave them a script. If in a week they could not recite the script verbatim, they were gone. But if in two weeks time if they were still using it, they were gone.”
Translation?
He said that the point was that if you are going to sell something, you need to “mentally be in contact” with what you are trying to sell. It needs to be so much a part of your nature that you can reel off the pitch verbatim if you had to. But the magic comes in when you are so skilled at that, that you can shift gears and tweak and modify the presentation to play to the rapidly changing circumstances.
Tim Wilson and I use this approach all the time. We script and rehearse the pitch we are going to make. We practice it back and forth until we get so good at it that it rolls off the two of us. Then when we go in to make our presentations, we can quickly drop and add and modify things based on how things are developing.
I have always thought that “if you can’t do the script in a week, you are gone — but if you are still using it in two weeks, you are gone” is a pretty good mental starting point when making sales pitches.
Works for us.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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Hi Rafael,
We will have the policies posted tomorrow. We have been working on the site and did not have the FAQ ready to go. I am working on it now and we will tie it into the site tomorrow.
Thank you for the kind words about the interface, Rafael, they are appreciated. It has been a lot of work to conceive something so markedly different from everything that we have done before. But people seem to like it.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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[Brad Spinoza] “Walter: The article you are referring to is very thought-provoking. Unfortunately, the link in your post leads to a hacked site in Arabic. Don’t know if this hacking was to the site itself, or something that happened here on the Cow.”
No, the site was hacked and it had nothing to do with the COW. I have fixed your link (which was broken) and have also used your link to update Walter’s link so that the hacked site is no longer pointed to.
Happy new year to you all.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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Hi Monica,
Here is one that covers time displacement as part of a three-part series.
HTH,
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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Thank you, David, for the kind words and the vote of confidence. They are as ever appreciated.
Abraham, Sean and I have been hard at work and hopefully when it is all done — it has been a HUGE undertaking — people will like it.
It is definitely going to be a whole udder cow. ;o)
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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Hi David,
The StockYard took a lot longer than we thought it would as we ended up building the most advanced managerial functions for those who upload work into the StockYard.
Once it goes live — we are in the final private beta rounds now — we will begin launching some of the other areas we have been working on.
The filtering features will roll out with many of the new section/channel interfaces that we have been working on.
We haven’t forgot and the functionality is here, we just do not want to include it in the old interface. There are many other new things we have been working on and which will be added as we roll out the new channels.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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Hello Ian,
You are not in moderation. But ALL JOBS & JOB REPLIES are moderated. No exceptions.
There were too many fights and insults in the jobs area and so we have moderated the whole section, everyone.
It has made the section much more civil and professional.
I hope that clarifies what is happening.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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And why would you do that rather than simply post the question? The most helpful people in this forum are going to get hundreds of these private requests for help.
Why?
This forum gets over 2 million unique people a month now (yes, we are back over 2 million a month again).
It’s always befuddled me that people think nothing of asking people for private help when the whole idea of a forum is to ask so that others can later benefit from the answers given.
When people “hunt others down” to get their answers given privately, no one benefits other than the person doing the hunting. The hunted one doesn’t benefit, and those that might have benefited from the answer are denied the chance.
But hey, that is just my opinion.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
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Juan,
AVID was NOT censoring, we were. And we will ALWAYS do it.
Why?
We believe that YOU have a right to your intellectual property rights being protected. We do not think that anyone’s free speech rights or fair use rights allow them to violate your intellectual property rights. We believe that your rights should be protected and we believe the same for AVID, for ourselves and for everyone else. We are working professionals here and if intellectual property is not protected, then all of us lose. All of us.
If you or others wish to violate NDAs, you can — but NOT HERE.
If you don’t like it, please feel free to drop the COW from your list of places to visit.
If you don’t like our response, then you do not know anything about the COW as we have had this policy since we began building forums communities online back in 1995. It has always been like this and will not be changing in the foreseeable future.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen