Reddit has grown to be giant community of people who’s individual decisions collectively and filter out irrelevant content. This process of crowd sourcing can have a huge impact on your life and our society as a whole. Here are five surprisingly simple things on reddit that could influence your education choices.

The State of Things

An online PhD in the management of nonprofit organizations can give the student all the tools needed to own and operate a successful nonprofit which will hopefully make a positive change in his or her community. The bored, apprehensive college student still struggling to decide on a major may be browsing reddit and come upon a great deal of articles regarding the state of things. ‘The state of things’ encompasses a lot of issues — the environmentally unfriendliness of giant corporations dumping into the ocean and refusing to pay retributions for their horrific mistakes, the political issues and turmoil in various countries around the world, the ineffective war on drugs, and more. One of the largest issues being discussed right now is Occupy Wall Street, the now nation-wide protests against the dysfunctional, corrupt system in which Americans live. Even if you’re from a tiny town in the midwest, all the news on OWS is enough to inspire a person to act — and possibly earn an online PhD in management of nonprofit organizations, becoming politically active all through the learning process and ending up creating a nonprofit which will somehow aid the plight of the 99%.

Food Section

The food section on reddit is huge. There are so many people perfecting their cooking skills and posting photographs of the delicious end results on reddit. The community of redditors who love cooking only inspire one another to get better at their craft with these pictures of friendly competition. The casual food enthusiast without any type of degree may browse the food section of reddit too many times whilst enduring the munchies, and therefore choose to pursue an online PhD in culinary arts. The more serious applicant, perhaps someone who already has a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts, may see the posts and submit to an irresistible urge to school all the other kids on what cooking is really all about. An online PhD can escalate a chef’s career from simple cook to kitchen supervisor, meaning all those snotty comments about what other people should be doing better may not have been for naught — call it training!

Clinical Psychology

A popular subreddit is psychology, which examines odd cases studied in psychology as well as new scientific advances in the field. After reading article upon article of weird, interesting psychology news, one may develop an urge to pursue a career in the field. A PhD in clinical psychology leads to a career in which the psychologist is responsible for evaluating, diagnosing, treating, and even trying to prevent mental illnesses in either a group or individual setting. One of the most interesting things about a PhD in clinical psychology is that even though the degree may be pursued online (with plenty of reddit psychology reading in the background), the learning process also requires the student to train in the field for a number of years. This
means that the learning process eventually becomes the student working in an environment they can expect to be in after graduation.

Criminal Justice

There are a large amount of posts on reddit in regards to and debating about criminal justice and the legal system. Videos of police brutality, basic ridiculous insanity involving the law, new laws, and injustices such as the lynching of Troy Davis are constantly hitting the front page and flooded with comments. Some of the debates may get you so heated that you’ll want to pursue an online PhD in criminal justice so that you can be a part of the fight against injustice, help create new laws that actually make sense, or expose an upsetting issue you think should be getting more public attention. An online PhD in criminal justice can turn a bachelors degree to a PhD in a few studious years, and the student can then work trying to prevent or correct criminal issues. Jobs with this online PhD are often with large organizations such as a consulting agency.

Design

Another large community on reddit are designers and artists, comparing work and promoting tips or artists that they think are interesting. All that art can make a guy with a bachelor’s degree want to take it further with an online PhD. Learning online allows for a lot of schedule flexibility, so pursuing an online PhD in design can be done while browsing the internet at your already-cushy design job. After graduating, the student will only move up in the world using their bright, shiny new PhD.

It’s true, not all of the older business executives understand the value of using Twitter. The micro-blogging tool is placing a human face on corporations that otherwise wouldn’t be able to directly communicate with their stakeholders. The Fortune 50 is an exclusive club of the top companies in the United States with a minimum entry point of $48 billion in revenue. I would hope these companies are taking full advantage of social media as their reach is massive.

This feature is to highlight the Twitter marketing lessons we can draw from America’s 50 largest companies. Let’s start by crowning the winners. With the follower count metric the top five includes: Dell, Best Buy, Target, Microsoft and Pepsi. Apple could be included in this list because they are using several different accounts that sum to millions of followers.

Now let’s crown the losers. Believe it or not, there are actually 10 companies in the Fortune 50 that are not using Twitter at all. The industry is usually energy or banking. For example, JP Morgan Chase whom ranks #13 with $115 billion in revenue has no account despite having $400 million invested in Twitter. It’s fair to assume they are laughing their way to the bank so hard they need not worry about Tweeting with the peasants.

The follower count metric isn’t everything. Recently I wrote a Social Media Marketing Ideas feature and I want to expand the idea of using Twitter as a tool within a big business.

The Home Depot

@HomeDepot is one my favorites as they are fully taking advantage of the human angle. They are always Tweeting customers directly and making conversation. Occasionally they will feature an article on the topic of home improvement. The hardware store has a daily Do-it-Yourselfer feature that gives the spotlight to one of their customers. The store truly shines in making their consumers feel special.

Ford

@Ford mixes the corporate approach with their online marketing message. They are constantly pushing #thefordstory hash tag which matches the title of their blog. By pushing resourceful articles they create a community-esque feel for the Ford driver.

Kraft Foods

@KraftFoods can’t help but covertly push their products by providing you with great recipes to try out. Can you really blame them though? The company account mixes in the proper amount of user engagement by polling their followers on their favorite foods. Kraft expertly caters to the mom demographic.

UPS

I’m partial to @UPS because it bleeds with love. It’s covered in hearts because of their latest slogan “We <3 Logistics.” Despite the relatively low follower count, the voice behind the account is very friendly and positive. The name of the game is human relations and positivity rules above all so it’s fair to say UPS is doing a good job on social media.

Pepsi

@Pepsi takes a cool approach because they take the least blatant effort to talk about themselvses. The soft drink giants seems to just be Tweeting for the fun of it. As a marketer I know it’s mostly for their branding effort. Needless to say it’s working as they have amassed over 100,000 followers.

I want to clarify that we have only examined the first 50 companies within the Fortune 500 henceforth the title is not missing a digit. We hope this article inspires those large corporations and small businesses that have avoided Twitter because it’s a new tool. It’s easily one of the best ways to reach your consumers. The business world should start to see Twitter as one of the primary consumer communication channels available.

Guest contributor Jay Singh is the co-founder of ViralMS, a social media agency. ViralMS offers large scale social media campaigns along with the ability to buy Twitter followers.

Tip #1: Your Phone is a Powerful Business Tool

Smartphones (not just the iPhone… Droid does, after all) offer numerous advantages to those who know how to use them well. They not only let you work away from your desk without losing contact with clients, but also gives you access to a wide range of apps that can help you work more efficiently when you are on the go.

There are also many suites that you might be accustomed to using (Netsuite, for instance) with have mobile versions.

While some apps will help your business more than others, there’s a ton that are beneficial to all- Chase bank, for instance, lets you deposit checks with your smartphone.
Having this convenience allows you to 1) not have to run around with those big, black deposit bags, and 2) allows you the freedom to deposit whenever you want, wherever you are.

Tip #2: Use an Electronic Document Signing Service

Signing business documents (or having them signed by clients and business partners) can take up a lot of time when you rely on the postal service. Successful startups know that there is a smarter way to have documents signed.

Using an electronic document signing service dramatically reduces the amount of time that you spend waiting on paperwork completion. Whether you have insurance policies, contracts or other types of business documents, signing them digitally can reduce a three day wait to a matter of minutes. Signing documents electronically also allows you to track progress online so that you know who still needs to sign it- saving time on both ends.

Best of all (and I can certainly vouch for this) you know that the documents have actually reached your client- no more paranoia- not even certified mail can give you instant notification OR gratification.

Tip #3: Share Everything With Your Team

Online calendars make it possible for you to sync your schedule with others on your team. When everyone in the office shares their schedules, it becomes much easier to coordinate meetings- and instead of concentrating on contacting numerous people via phone or email, you can just look at their online calendars to see when they are available and set meeting times from there.

Sharing contacts can also make your company more efficient. When each person keeps his or her own contact list, you have the potential to have a major problem on your hands.

Say, for instance, that an important member of your team is out sick one day, so you need to contact her client to cancel a meeting.  If your team member doesn’t have their contact list sharead anywhere you could end up with an angry client on your hands.

Google Apps is great to use for your company if you’re going this route. You can sync up your contact/chat list automatically with everyone in the company, as well as share your calendar (keeping details public or private) to make booking meetings easier- you can also integrate with sites like SmartSheet (a project management system) directly from your Google App account.

Successful startups will tell you that working efficiently offers a lot of advantages-and as you get past the startup phase you can look into the benefits of cloud storage or NAS storage, utilizing VMware, etc. Depending on the amount of things you’re able to store in cloud storage, you may actually need to have memory and CPU intensive programs (for instance, if you’re in automation and helping to build a process for machines) and could benefit from having something like an I7 laptop.

Many established companies, however, have a difficult time adjusting to the newest opportunities created by technological developments so make sure that you ease into these changes and structures rather than give your company a culture shock.

What startup tips can you offer that will help businesses avoid becoming one of those dinosaurs on the brink of extinction?

In man’s modern-day battle against the robots, the winner last week was abundantly clear. Watson, an IBM computer, appeared on “Jeopardy!” and soundly annihilated his two human opponents, previous “Jeopardy!” champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The show was the finale of a three-night throw down pitting an oversized computer chip against flesh-and-blood trivia nerds.

At the end of the first day, Watson was tied with Rutter at $5,000, and Jennings held a mere $2,000. At the end of the second day, Watson was in the lead with a $35,734 pot, while Rutter had netted $10,400 and Jennings had scored a paltry $4,800. In the end, Watson emerged victorious to claim the tourney’s $1 million price with $77,147 to Jennings’ $24,000 and Rutter’s $21,600. “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords,” Jennings, who won 74 consecutive “Jeopardy!” games in 2004, wrote on his video screen in surrender.

So, how can mankind expect to fare moving forward? As it turns out, the war between man and machine has only just begun.

Here’s a look at five telling man vs. machine competitions:

Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov

On February 10, 1996, Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer created by IBM, took on the reigning chess world champion, Garry Kasparov, in a six-game matchup held over seven days — and lost. In the Russian grandmaster’s battle against what looked like a refrigerator, the human mind prevailed, with Kasparov winning three matches, drawing in two matches, and losing in one. Then someone called, “Rematch!” In May of 1997, the two met again, but this time, Deep Blue had been retooled and ominously renamed Deeper Blue. The upgraded machine trounced Kasparov 3-1/2 to 2-1/2, and Deeper Blue became the first computer to crush a human at chess.

RealDoll vs. Real Woman

For the discerning man who won’t settle for just any factory-made sex surrogate, Abyss Creations’ in San Marcos, Calif., offers the RealDoll collection, a line of high-end love dolls retailing for $5,999 to $10,000. Made of pliable silicone and a posable PVC and steel skeleton available in “10 female body types and 16 interchangeable female faces,” the anatomically correct RealDoll is the inanimate alternative to a living, breathing human female. While the RealDoll will always be there when you need her and doesn’t require expensive dates or, well, food, the drawback is that a RealDoll, unlike a real woman, will never love you back

Hand-Held Scanner vs. Human Doctor

For those who find taking a trip to the doctor’s office fills them with terror, soon they may be able to skip the Homo sapiens in the white coats and diagnose themselves with a handheld scanner. The $280 device was developed by Jürgen Lademann, head of the Dermatology, Venereology, and Allergy department at Charité -University Medicine hospital in Berlin, Germany. Aim the scanner at your skin, wait three minutes, and your health will be graded on a scale of one to ten through an analysis of your antioxidant levels. Currently, the gizmo is being tested by a group of 19-year-old college students, but don’t expect it to replace bipedal doctors in the near future. Unlike on “Star Trek,” this machine grades your overall health and doesn’t diagnose specific medical problems. Still, users can expect the same cold and distant bedside manner.

Deep Green vs. Pool Shark

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the pool hall, the Robotics and Computer Vision Lab at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, spawns a pool-playing robot equipped with a spherical wrist, a series of spy cameras for expert game-play, and a vacuum-powered ball-lifter. According to its human creators, the robotic pool hustler Deep Green plays at a “better-than-amateur level,” and the goal is to pit the ‘bot against professional pool players. Regardless of how Deep Green fares against the likes of, say, Jeanette Lee, Maxim model and the author of The Black Widow’s Guide to Killer Pool, we’re going to have to bet that she’d look better doing it.

High-Frequency Trading vs. Human Trading

If following your intuition, wearing your lucky sneakers, and watching Jim Cramer rant and rave like an insane asylum escapee on “Mad Money” isn’t making you a killing in the stock market, high-frequency trading is the computer-generated alternative. Here, the human brain is replaced by computer programs that can read market algorithms faster than you can. Sounds smart, right? Historically, trusting the computerized over the humanized can be risky. (Didn’t you see “2001: A Space Odyssey”?) The S.E.C.’s report on the May 6, 2010 stock market crash has regulators pointing the finger at HFT for contributing to market volatility, although high-frequency fans argue the practice has an overall stabilizing market effect.

Before you decide to join the ranks of America’s self-employed, find out if business ownership is right for you. Try these 6 steps.

Know your motives.
Are you bored, wanting to be free of a boss, or eager to jump on the bandwagon of a hot technology? These are not valid reasons to start a business. But if you’re focused on solving a customer problem, believe you can do better than anyone else, and are dying to work long hours, wear many hats, and balance responsibilities, you have the right start-up mindset.

Meet the people.
If you equate business ownership with solitude and freedom from annoying coworkers or managers, you’re in for a surprise. Entrepreneurs spend most of their time dealing with people — investors, professionals such as lawyers and accountants, suppliers, and customers.

Prepare yourself.
Ever managed employees and vendors? Do you know your industry inside and out, including aspects such as accounting and marketing? If you don’t have all the entrepreneurial skills you need, acquire them before starting your business. Spend time working in a similar company, shadow a business in your industry, or accept an internship.

Check your checkbook.
Be honest about your relationship with money. Do you have money to invest? Are you able to lose it all? Will you rely on others? Do you avoid financial risk at all costs? Are you “good” with money? How you handle money now will influence the type of financial manager you’ll be.

Know your competition.
Is your market saturated with successful businesses? Is your industry littered with bad businesses? Is anyone doing what you want to do? If not, why not? To brand your business and woo investors, you’ll need to understand why and how you can outshine competitors.

Test your scalability.
Successful businesses rely on automation and delegation. Will you be able to teach other employees to do your work? If your business relies on your brain and skills alone, you might have a successful job, but not a successful business.

Official bio: A popular media personality on Fox News, MSNBC, and WGN-TV Chicago, among others, Carol Roth has an award-winning blog at www.CarolRoth.com. Her new book is The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business (BenBella Books, March 2011).

By this time, most people realize that PowerPoint is a scourge — on our ability to communicate effectively, be remotely impressive or keep an audience awake.

If you haven’t received that memo, your PowerPoint presentation probably stinks. It’s loaded with data in small type, it goes on forever and you believe words that swoosh onto the screen are a substitute for being an interesting presenter.

Sorry to be so blunt, but over the last decade, I’ve worked with executives from the C-level down and 99% of those people use PowerPoint miserably.

The perfect analogy here is the costume wearing the character. Have you ever seen a kid wearing a thoroughly impressive scary costume? Although they remain shy, hiding behind their friends and barely speaking, they have a belief that their costume is making them scary.

Have you ever seen a suit wear a person? Great suit, fabulous accessories, perfect hair – but the person says little of substance and has less personality to back it up. It’s the same with PowerPoint – we believe that IT is the presentation, not us.

PowerPoint is a lot like email – a perfectly good tool, which should save us time and make our lives easier – but has become a monster. What are we doing wrong and how do we fix it?

There’s a lot of room to cover in this subject, but let’s start with four basic rules.

1. NEVER read your slides! – If you have to sit through one more person reading their slides out loud, believing that constitutes a presentation, aren’t you going to scream? Guess what? Most of your audience has probably completed the 4th grade. We can read! So give us something new – add to the bullet points with engaging stories, tell us the outcome of the study, remind us why this information is important, and who or what it may impact. Your part of the speech should NOT be on the slide. We don’t want to see the script, we want to see the performance.

2. Use pictures to illustrate points – one of the best slides I’ve ever seen was simply a photo of a pile of sawdust, with more sawdust falling from above to increase the pile. Todd Sattersten, www.toddsattersten.com, was discussing a rather complicated concept of writing, creating content, managing output, and using extra ideas in a way that could be marketed. No bullet points or statistics, yet I have clear recall of the concept, his 5-6 points, and his recommendations. All because his analogy and picture were so striking. Pictures really are worth a thousand words. In a study out of UCLA, it was found that after three days of bullet points on a PowerPoint slide, people only had 10 percent retention while visuals enjoyed 50 percent retention.

3. 10/24 – This ratio means that you should never have more than 10 words per slide, never smaller than 24-point type. Ok, start shouting all of you in data-driven industries. People really get nasty over this ratio, “I have important data to cover! My leadership expects me to show them all the numbers!” Yes, you are right. Your data is very important. But tiny type numbs the brain, and the correct place for data is in a handout. Your slides should be clean, simple, and be a backdrop to YOU. This point is the lead-in to rule #4…

4. You are the presentation, not the PowerPoint – The point of standing up in front of people is to let them know that YOU are the expert. You know your material and you are the one telling the story. If your technology should fail – or as one executive found when trying to enter the Pentagon, “Your laptop is not allowed inside, Sir.” – you can still present without the visual cues. Numbers and statistics tell a story. So tell the story showing a simple bell curve rather than cluttering the graph with numbers and tiny type. I repeat, PowerPoint is your backdrop – you are the show.

When considering how to create the greatest impact, first try using devices such as storytelling, music or pictures. Then, only if you really need it, should you consider PowerPoint. There is far more impact in surprise, expertise and good ideas than there is in another predictable presentation. And one more thing – leave the lights up. It’s more important the audience see your face than every detail of your slide. Besides, you don’t want to give them an invitation to nap.

Karen Hough is the Founder and CEO of ImprovEdge and the Author of “The Improvisation Edge: Secrets to Building Trust and Radical Collaboration at Work” published by Berrett-Koehler, www.ImprovEdge.com/book. She speaks internationally and writes on negotiation, leadership, sales, and presenting with impact, and is the recipient of the Athena Award for outstanding woman-owned business.

If you sell goods to buyers over the Internet, the process of product storage, purchase by an end-buyer, packaging, labeling and finally shipping the product is called “order fulfillment”. It is no secret that as your business grows you may find this process becoming incredibly time-consuming, costly, as well as distracting. When outsourcing your needs to the “professionals” you can concentrate on marketing your product and growing your business. This is where outsourced order fulfillment services start to look compelling.

In a nutshell, outsourced order fulfillment is defined as storing your inventory in a third-party warehouse (3PL or third-party logistics) where you route your orders for processing. This outsourced fulfillment provider will take your order then pick, pack, and ship the order to your customers in a way that you define.

The Power of Multiple Warehouse & A Global Warehouse Network

For online e-tailers selling product nationwide or globally, this is critical. Location is key to shipping price savings; however don’t settle for one (1) good location; you need multiple locations that are geographically close to major population centers and your buyers.

Why Multiple Warehouses Are Better For Your Business

If you ship 25% of your orders to the U.S. West Coast, 25% to the U.S. East Coast, 25% to Canada and 25% to Europe it is very probable that most of your shipments will go to major population centers where buyers are, (LA, Chicago, New York, Toronto, London, Paris, etc). If your current warehouse is in Portland, you’ll only be outsourced and optimized for only 25% of your orders, if you are lucky.

A better solution would be to spread your inventory out into 5-6 warehouses in LA, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver and the UK or mainland Europe. Move inventory globally using bulk freight shipments and local warehouse storage close to major population centers. Shipping orders out from the warehouse closest to the end-buyer results in lower parcel delivery costs, faster delivery times and true shipping cost savings.

Multiple Warehouses Reduce Costs

If you strategically place inventory in multiple locations, you can decrease delivery time and costs.
Now if you were thinking, “I would have to pay to move my inventory to my second warehouse.” Consider this. Bulk freight shipping, those 18-wheelers seen on the interstate, is cheap compared to the outbound piecemeal parcel shipping of FedEx or UPS. An 18-wheeler filled with 10,000 stuffed animals will cost less than $5,000 to ship from NYC to LA, that’s $0.50 a stuffed animal, in return for $3.00, $5.00, or more in savings for each stuffed animal you would ship individually – not to mention your buyers get faster delivery times.

Therefore, the rule is to strategically place inventory closer to the end-buyer, and always try to shorten the last leg of the parcel delivery by the carriers. In industry jargon, this is sometimes known as “forward warehousing”; think of it as real savings. Alexander the Great actually invented the concept; he called it a “forward supply depot.” Whatever you call it, it means real savings to you.If you want to know more about outsourcing your order fulfillment including checklists and questions to ask potential vendors please see our guide to outsourcing order fulfillment.

About the author: Nate Gilmore is VP of Marketing at Shipwire Product Fulfillment, with warehouses in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Why would anyone contribute an article to Wikipedia? News footage to CNN iReport? A T-shirt design to Threadless? In some cases, customers may be motivated by curiosity, personal interests, or deeply held social values. In other cases, they have more commercial goals or a desire for personal benefit.

The biggest cause of failure in network collaborations is likely a misunderstanding of the customer’s motivation. Thomas W. Malone, Robert Laubacher, and Chrysanthos Dellarocas of MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence describe the motivations for network collaboration as love, glory, or money. These three categories can provide a good starting point for understanding why customers choose to collaborate.

Love
In many cases, participants choose to collaborate with others out of purely social motivations. These motivations may include: altruism (the desire to contribute to the common good); a passionate interest in the topic; work that is entertaining, fun, or creative; participation and connection in a community; the chance to contribute to social values they believe in (such as a cause or candidate); or a sense of duty or obligation (perhaps because they are already enjoying the benefits of the project).

These social motivations are the kind that spurred supporters of Barack Obama to participate in the MyBO network for his candidacy. They also explain why users contribute to Wikipedia without financial reward or byline. New Wikipedia articles are typically written by users with a particular knowledge of their subject and often a passionate interest in it. Other users who frequent Wikipedia may take the time to fix an occasional misspelling or error that they spot out of gratitude for the value they gain from the site. The power of the networking tools behind MyBO and Wikipedia is that they allow all these small acts of generosity to add up to very large impact, far beyond what was feasible in our prenetworked past, when it was virtually impossible to amass and assess contributions of people scattered around the world.

As Clay Shirky has observed, “We have always loved one another. We’re human. It’s something we’re good at. But up until recently, the radius and half-life of that affection has been quite limited. With love alone, you can get a birthday party together. Add coordinating tools, and you can write an operating system . . . In the past, we could do little things for love, but big things, big things required money. Now, we can do big things for love.”

But what if your cause is not an inspiring political candidate or a charity or a free public service? It is very unlikely that you will get people to contribute for “love” alone, even if they do have a passion for the project. Your customers may love taking photos of local events, but they may not want to share them anonymously on your news platform if you will be earning a profit from and retaining the rights to the images they produced. Fortunately, humans harbor other motivations.

Glory
The key to CNN attracting unpaid collaborators to its iReport news project is that their submissions are not anonymous. If a customer’s photo, video, or story appears on CNN’s Web site or broadcast, his or her name is credited for all to see. The opportunity to be seen as a “citizen journalist” contributing to such famous and popular network provides a powerful motivation to the iReport customer network.

Even without such a mass-media spotlight as CNN, mechanisms that highlight and confer social status can be an effective motivator for active collaborators. As we saw in the last chapter, the top participants in technical forums will answer thousands of questions posed by fellow customers when they are recognized in the forum as a major contributor. Forums can use public markers of status-awards, name recognition-to draw attention to users’ high level of contribution, their expertise and knowledge, or their creativity, taste, or style.

Money
Of course, sometimes the best way for a for-profit business to motivate network collaboration is to offer money or other commercial benefits.

When Cisco announced its Innovation Prize, or I-Prize, in 2008, the company placed an open call for teams anywhere in the world to identify billion-dollar business opportunities for Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group. After several rounds of winnowing down twelve hundred business proposals received from 104 countries, Cisco announced the winners: Anna Gossen, Niels Gossen, and Sergey Bessonnitsyn, a wife, husband, and brother team of two computer science students and an engineer. The three not only received $250,000; they were also given the opportunity to work for Cisco on their proposed new venture, a “smart grid” framework to reduce the passive consumption of power by electronic devices. The prize award was a small price to pay for Cisco, which estimated that the project could generate a billion dollars in revenue within five to seven years.

It is important to note that while the prize was a good deal for Cisco, it also represented an extraordinary reward for the recipients, who were doing work (business plan development) that was not part of their normal careers or business. Some short-sighted companies have seized on the notion of “crowdsourcing” as a means to exploit the same vendors they would normally hire to carry out a professional task. Rather than hiring one firm to complete work, they simply ask many to submit a solution and offer to pay “the winner” at a rate similar to what would normally be professional work for hire.

This kind of spec-work masquerading as “collaboration” can yield resentment and a bruised reputation, as ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky found when it tried to solicit logo designs for an advertising client with a thousand-dollar prize. Businesses should not confuse collaboration with exploitation. But money can be an effective reward when the sum received or the type of work is out-of-the-ordinary for participants.

Hybrids
In many cases the motivations for members of a network to collaborate with a business are a hybrid mix of social, status, and financial rewards. Threadless contestants may be motivated as much by the chance to see their design advertised and worn by others (they are not, generally, professional clothing designers) as by the cash reward. In the Netflix Prize, the team that produced the winning solution to improve the company’s recommendation engine received not only a million dollars but extensive coverage in mainstream media such as BusinessWeek, Wired magazine, and the New York Times. And although a quarter million dollars may have attracted participants to the Cisco I-Prize, the winners were probably motivated just as much by passion for their business idea as for their long-shot chance at winning the money.

Official bio: David Rogers, author of The Nework Is Your Customer: Five Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age, teaches at Columbia Business School, where he is executive director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership. He speaks at conferences worldwide and has consulted and advised numerous companies and nonprofits, such as SAP, Eli Lilly, and Visa.

This is a guest post by Mary Lamia, Ph.D.

Your emotional system can give you an advantage in your decision-making if you make proper use of it.

Your emotions will drive the decisions you make today, and your success may depend upon your ability to understand and interpret them.

Many people think of their emotions as something they have to manage or control rather than something upon which they could capitalize.

When an emotion is triggered in your brain, your nervous systems responds by creating feelings in your body, and certain thoughts in your mind–what many people refer to as a gut feeling.

Emotions attempt to tell you if a situation is optimal or not aligned with your goal, and how you might approach it. For example, imagine that you are negotiating a contract and begin to get anxious.

You can be disrupted by your anxiety or you can take a look at it: Are you being trapped? Does the other person remind your emotional brain of someone in the past who took advantage of you? Is this person doing the same thing or is it just a particular mannerism he has that triggered your anxious response? Is your anxious response a reaction to the other person or to yourself, such as your fear of success or failure?

Emotions have tremendous action potential. Yet the drive that emotions provide, particularly in the workplace, is sometimes seen as stress related to task completion, time management, or productivity, rather than a potential for decisive action.

Consider, for example, how people respond differently in their approach to completing a project. For some people, a project will trigger anxiety until it is completed. But for others, that same project will not trigger anxiety until the deadline for completion is near; that is, the deadline creates anxiety that serves to motivate action. For this latter group a deadline is necessary to trigger the anxiety that fuels action.

An emotionally intelligent manager would recognize that deadlines have the potential to motivate their direct reports in different ways. Thus, whether an employee completes a task early on (because getting rid of task anxiety motivates them) or at the deadline (because deadline anxiety motivates them), is less important than evaluating outcome. Recognizing how emotions affect your own motivational style can help you more consciously make decisions and pursue your goals.

Official bio: Dr. Mary Lamia is the author of Understanding Myself: A Kid’s Guide to Intense Emotions and Strong Feelings (American Psychological Association/Magination Press) and The White Knight Syndrome: Rescuing Yourself From Your Need to Rescue Others (New Harbinger). She also blogs for Psychology Today, view her latest Intense Emotions and Strong Feelings posts here.

At a recent Chamber of Commerce social gathering, I ran into my website manager, John, whose company also offers services such as website redesign and pay-per-click management.

“Kevin,” he said, “how do I sell to some of these people I’m talking to? I’ve met two people tonight, both of whom own successful small businesses and could benefit from my services.”

I asked him to tell me about his experiences.

“They ask me what I do, and I start talking about my company,” he replied. “I can literally see their eyes glaze over. But I can tell from what they say that they could use my services. It’s very frustrating.”

John is obviously very enthusiastic about what he does. Being enthusiastic is surely an important asset for a small business owner. But becoming better at selling is even more important.

The key, I told John, is that he has to understand more about how customers buy. Even salespeople with a lot of training make the mistake of focusing more on what they want to accomplish than on what the customer needs to know to make a buying decision.

Explaining the intricacies of customer buying was beyond the scope of a short conversation at a social gathering (John needs to read my new book), but I did explain to John that his prospects first have to appreciate that they have a need to make a change. They will then invest in learning about their requirements and options before deciding to shop and buy.

What happened with John—and happens a lot with the small business owners and entrepreneurs I’ve met—is that he is an expert in his field. In the conversations with the two prospects he’d met that evening, he assumed he knew their needs, and they both showed some interest in what he did. So he eagerly launched into talking about his services.

“That curiosity about your services is fool’s gold,” I told John. “It is not a request for more information, let alone an implied need for your services. You were selling too fast.”

“What does that mean? How can someone sell too fast?” asked John.

Studying features and benefits is something customers do in their learning phase, I explained. But John was talking to people who likely had not even recognized they had a need. They just went to a cocktail party.

“When you pitch the specifics of your services too soon, while people are in the need phase,” I explained, “you are out of sync with the customer’s buying process. You’re moving faster through the steps of selling than they are moving through the steps of buying.

“Plus,” I added, “when you make that mistake early on with a prospect, you’re trying to make them jump to the middle of their buying process. Worse—you forfeit the opportunity to help them diagnose their needs.” Once the customer knows about your services they don’t need to talk to you anymore, there’s nothing more for them to learn.

In short, I told John, do not try to sell your services in a social situation like this. Or, in fact, whenever you talk to a prospective customer for the first time.

“What you want to do is get the person to agree to a follow-up 20-minute meeting with you. Getting that agreement is Step 1,” I said.

I reinforced that idea: No talking about all your services. No mentioning of results or impacts or success stories from other clients. No asking for their business. The only thing you’re selling at first is the idea of a 20-minute meeting focused around exploring their needs.

“And then I talk about my services in that meeting?” asked John.

“No, not yet,” I answered. “Assume that the prospect may not even be in the need stage of buying. The people you meet at a party or social business event may not recognize they have a problem that can be solved. Or, they may recognize they have a problem but not be willing to spend thousands of dollars to solve it.”

So Step 2 is to hold the 20-minute meeting, preferably in the prospect’s office. The purpose is to sit down with him or her, talk about their business, and analyze their current website.

I told him he should ask about their overall business concerns, what’s changing in their market and so on. Then dig more into their website issues: What’s working? What’s not working? What concerns does the prospect have about it? What would they like to be able to do with the website that they can’t do now?

I suggested he discuss with the prospect what they consider to be the top 10 “opportunities for improvement” with their website. “Talk about each of these problems, and help the prospect to more fully appreciate the significance of each one,” I advised John.

I asked John to tell me about one of the problems he hears frequently.

“They complain that their website doesn’t generate good sales leads,” he answered.

“Is that a problem that your web management services can solve?,” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “It’s one of the main benefits of what I do.”

“Great,” I said. “The key, though, is not to talk about it as a benefit, but get the customer to think about the value of having that problem solved. That way, once you do talk about that capability, they will have assigned it a value on their own.”

“How do I do that?,” he asked.

“It’s simple,” I said. “Just ask them, ‘What is the value of a good sales lead to your business?’”

John asked, “Then do I finally get to tell him about what I do?”

My answer surprised him. It was another “no.”

“Not yet,” I said. “Schedule another appointment to come back and meet with the prospect again to discuss your capabilities and deliver a proposal.”

“By the way,” I asked John, “how do you usually deliver your proposals?” He said he e-mails them.

“That’s a bad idea,” I told him. “If you are in the same town as your prospect, why would you miss an opportunity to meet again, and ask for the business face-to- face?”

His proposal delivery, I continued, is as much about building trust as it is about providing solution information and pricing. In today’s tough market it’s harder and harder to differentiate what you sell.

“Focus on differentiating how you sell,” I advised. “Build more trust by slowing down your sales process. When you do that, you can speed up your customer’s buying process. And that’s why when you sell slower your customer buys faster!”

Official bio: Kevin Davis, author of Slow Down, Sell Faster!: Understand Your Customer’s Buying Process and Maximize Your Sales (Amacom; January 2011), is president of TopLine Leadership, Inc., a leading sales and sales management training company serving clients from diverse sectors. He has 30+ years of experience as a salesperson, sales manager, sales trainer, and consultant. His 1996 book Getting Into Your Customer’s Head helped redefine how salespeople approach selling.