Marketing 101: Who Do I Contact for a Strategic Partnership?

NOTE: As of the date (5/15/2002) this essay was released, www.openoffice.com still hadn't been published the article mentioned here.  I'm not so sure that this matters to the readers of this essay.  I think that there are some internal issues that they are dealing with. 

The few regular readers I have may recall my descent into hell last week thanks to a combination of Word and FrontPage deciding to gang up on me and do things that, well, I just can't describe.  Blog Entry.  As some of you may have noticed, my answer is to get ANGRY!  This isn't bad and, if it's constructive, is great.  Now, you say, that's nice Scott, but what does it have to do with marketing? 

Doing Something with Your Anger

Well, getting angry only is positive if it's constructively directed.  Here were the two steps I took:

• Launched the JSNTD campaign (Just Say No to .DOC files).  Our banners are now on 3 blogs!  Seriously, .DOC files are just plain dangerous and .RTF files work just fine.  Let's get our data out of the proprietary .DOC format and into .RTF which is documented and just plain works.  This way alternatives to Microsoft Word at least have a chance to open the files.  If .RTF files become more widely used then OpenOffice can focus on this, not on .DOC.  Here's the blog entry.
• Came up with a plan for a web service that could allow Sun to offer easy, painless conversion of ANY OFFICE DOCUMENT for OpenOffice (used to be StarOffice).  Here it is.

Do I really think the JSNTD will go anywhere?  Who knows... I did on a lark when I woke up at 4 am and was still angry.  But, w/in 15 hours, it's grown to 3 web sites and both sites have built custom banners or buttons for it so maybe it will grow.  Either way I did something constructive and that's good.

The second plan was a little bit more interesting.  At first it was just an idea I had in the shower.  By the time I hit the keyboard it was a fleshed out idea in my head.  Then I wrote the Radio story and this is where I almost failed. 

Doing Something Only Matters if You Tell the Right Person

I wrote it, posted it and then I emailed it off to Jeff Covey at www.freshmeat.net thinking that the Open Source community would be interested.  NOPE!  Despite all the complaining they make about proprietary Microsoft formats, Jeff didn't want it.  Strange but no big.  So, I almost lost faith for a bit and then I said to myself (yes, I really do talk to myself) "Why not send this to Sun!".  Oh boy.  Cool.  This is the big leagues.  But, do I send it to Scott McNealy (CEO), every one of 40,000 employees?  Here's the secret for knowing who to email at any company:

Email the person who gets promoted if your input helps them solve the problem.

 Simple, isn't it?  What you really want to think about for any strategic relationship (and that's what this is if it works out) is "who benefits".  Get it to that person and you have the best results.  So the obvious question becomes: Who benefits?  In a high tech context there are really three options:

• The VP of Business Development
• Someone in Sales
• The Product Manager who owns responsibility for the product you want to work with

Most people when they want to work with a company immediately head for the VP of Biz Dev.  This, to me, is death on a stick if you are a small company (and most of us are).  Don't get me wrong -- the VP of Biz Dev can be great -- it's just that if you're small and if you don't have 7 + figures in venture capital, you really don't even show up on their radar.  Also, as VPs, they're busy so they are hard to reach and don't always return calls or emails.  People in sales are only good if you help them close an immediate sale and they get a commission.  Sales people, by and large, aren't strategic -- they're practical and motivated by commissions. 

Now, in the interests of disclosing my biases, I should tell you that I've been a product manager of one form or another for most of my career.  Because of this I'm biased.  Product Managers are usually under appreciated but they're the glue that holds a high tech product together.  Here's how you find their email: Google.  I searched for:

"Open Office" Sun "Product Manager"  @

The " marks delimit phrases.  You almost always can find the product manager's email address since they tend to talk at industry conferences or on product specific mailing lists (that's where I found what I needed, "Bill Roth" is the name).  Also if you just can't find an email but can find a name then always try bill.roth@x.com or  broth@x.com or rothb@x.com.  One of these three almost always works.  

So, now that we know who to contact, what do we want to say?  Here's the email I sent:

Bill,

Hello. Sorry to drop in from nowhere on you but I think that this is interesting for you. 
In a previous existence, I was responsible for a native Word .DOC file filter. This "
experience, which left me with a bad taste through out my body, and being an Office 
developer, has given me a perspective that you may have missed. I just wrote an essay 
about how to implement better viewing and saving in Open Office:

Read This (long link)



Thanks.

Scott
J. Scott Johnson
Physical
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
80 Spring Road
Nahant, MA 01908
Phone:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
781 592 0262 - home
617 970 4719 - cell
Virtual:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * sjohnson@fuzzygroup.com
Site: http://www.fuzzygroup.com/
Blog: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/
Yahoo IM: fuzzygroup
AOL IM: fuzzygroup

A couple of important things:

• Full contact info
• Good home page
• Tie in humor right at the beginning if it's appropriate to his domain (and this was)
• Get to the point
• Give a link for more details

Here's what I got back 5 or 6 hours later (west coast time difference was 50% of that):

Scott,
This looks like a great article! Could we post it?

Zaheda, Louis,
I think this deserves front page coverage on OOo.

br

So now something I wrote has gone from: Anger => Blog => A Sun Corporate Home Page.  Will it go any further?  Who knows.  Everything is so damn random and unpredictable that you never know but this really, really nicely illustrates how a little guy (I'm one guy in a house 3,000 miles away) can get attention -- even from a Big Co.

Comments

Given all the problems that little companies have in dealing with big companies, I have to extend my very honest thanks and "Wow!  You're Great" to Bill Roth at Sun / Open Office.  Rather than take the "Let's ignore the little guy" or the "He's a nut" or the "Not Invented Here" approach that is far too common, Bill acted on it.  Yes, I did target him very specifically since I know how to this kind of stuff.  But Bill could, of course, have ignored it.  Perhaps my solution isn't a good one but by opening it up to the Open Office developer community, he can actually find out.  And, because he took the time and effort to respond, he built a new fan for Open Office and for Sun (more on fans versus customers in a few essay).  Companies that I am a fan of include: www.eastgate.com, www.userland.com, www.zeldman.com and, now, www.openoffice.org / www.sun.com.  

Conclusion

So, Campers, here is the moral of the story:

• Anger can be very, very positive if directed constructively
• Speak up but choose who to speak to by asking "Who Benefits" and talking to them.  Nine times out of ten this will be the product manager.

© Copyright 2002 The FuzzyStuff. Last update: 5/15/2002; 7:50:22 AM.