This post is for all you developers, vendors and solution providers looking to make a killing in unified communications. I don't really like the couple of pretty negative ones I posted yesterday and today, but sometimes I have to ask "and your point?" in a painful way. In my role as a consultant, I find I'm often the one who has to ask the questions that will hurt. Those hard ones that don't just hurt, but leave a mark.

A commenter asked a simple question to one of those earlier posts - "So what should they do?"

That's a million dollar question. And not one I'll begin to answer with an specifics. Partly because I can't answer with an specificity. There'd be no value because I only have a limited set of information, already seen from my own perspective. But in my blog reading, I can share something powerful that will put VoIP, video, VVoIP, IMS, FMC, and all the rest of the solution providers on the right track.

The post comes, not from a tech blogger all of you follow, although I'd guess some of you read or have read Kathy Sierra's blog Creating Passionate Users. Kathy's prolific in ideas and if she were a baseball player, she'd be the cleanup hitter. She hits her fair share of home runs. Today she posted this:

Motivating others: why "it's good for you" doesn't work

"What matters is what they do when the clicking stops." That was the central theme in the New Media Interaction Design courses I taught at UCLA Extension (Entertainment Studies dept). We all want to motivate our users (customers, learners, kids, employees, members, etc.), but motivate them for what? What do we hope they'll do when they stop clicking/listening/reading? More importantly, how do we make it happen?

I encourage you to go read her full post. I'm not going to copy it all here. Instead, I'm going to share the two basic questions she asks, and take a run at them from a Voice 2.0 unified communications angle. You really need to read her post to get the full impact of where she's leading this.

It's good for you.  I'm 53, and respond instinctively as I did when my mom told the boy still inside me that lima beans were good for me.

So?

But there are starving people on the other side of the world who'd love to have them.

Send them mine.I'm not eating them.

It's good for you has never in the history of mankind been a motivator. Change comes from within. A good motivator finds the way to convince the target audience to bring about change themselves. Change begins within. I've spent far too many years of my career path doing sales and marketing work. Sales and marketing are training. Teaching if you will. Teach why your solution does something wonderful, but make sure it's wonderful enough that it motivates a desire to change. In short, overcome inertia and motivate the user, customer, and student, to take action under their own power. Shift control from the seller/teacher to the student/customer.

Want to succeed at VoIP 2.0? Want to succeed in unified communications? Tell your story in a way that it's compelling, undeniable, and addicting. The user...the customer has to own it, want it covet it...lust for it...crave it. Your product has to be something that the user can't do without. Or it has to be perceived that way.

Question 1: What do we want our users to do?
We want them to change their behavior, but what change do you want? Want your customers to buy your product? Shame on you losr (that's Web 2.0 for loser. We've abandoned the letter e for the sake of cutesy marketing psychobabble  [see also BS]). If that's what you want, may your customers be few, and your company die a quick but painless death and nor hurt to many of your employees on the way into the abyss. You are doomed. Please move along.

I want my customers to sell me. And sell my solution. I want them to be advocates. Zealous advocates. The hot webbish 2.0 phrase of the moment is viral marketing, but the phrase and idea are not new. We want users to tell a friend. Or to further steal from past marketing campaigns, tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends.

If you are marketing to a tiny target audience, you're playing to a niche. And you're targeting too small. Don't target one user. Don't target a sector. Don't target a country. Target the universe. Think large and be larger. Open the door to ideas. Your solution needs to engender users creativity. You want your users to think "wow, what else can I do with this." Not the wow factor of glitz. That'e ephemeral and doomed. If you build it they will come, but if you built it right, they'll come and do things you never imagined they would even try.

Question 2: How do we motivate them to do it?
Integrity. Honesty. Passion. Creativity. Deliver.

Be honest and up front with your customers. Don't sell smoke and mirrors. Don't sell junk. Don't sell "any wine before its time." Don't sell beta software, worse yet, alpha garbage, to customers. And before you put a beta solution out on the Internet, have a passionate, compelling story as to why it so good at what it does.

Empowerment. It's an overused word, but I'll share a different perspective. I worked with many a customer when I was in sales and marketing. There's an approach that's never failed me in an established relationship. First you have to have the relationship. That might be a long selling cycle relationship, and it might be an "about us" page someone reads before downloading your product. I used to tell my customers I worked closely with "help me understand your problem, and I'll make you a hero with your boss's boss." Then I did.

If you make a promise, you better deliver. And if you don't know, you better say you don't know. Faking it is like blood in the water to sharks. Say "I don't know, but I'll have an answer for you by close of business tomorrow." Then get the answer. Deliver on commitments. Deliver on what you say, deliver on product. Be dependable.

Internet time moves quickly. Products, technologies and solutions live out entire life cycles in accelerated time in the Internet world of Web 2.0, Voice 2,0, Life 2.0. If you don't deliver, or aren't dependable, you aren't necessary. You've become your own disruptive technology and pulled the rug out from under yourself.

In our new site here, with a broader focus, one of the things we'll focus on more in the future is the business of being successful in the unified communications world. And here you thought I was just another pretty face geek technologist.

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