If you have not seen one of the newest Nike commercials that is often running on ESPN… please make a point to watch it (see below).

The background song “Ali in The Jungle” by The Hours is the most crucial part. The primary lyrics to the song is that “Everybody gets knocked down….how quick are you gonna get up?” And of course being Nike it has highlights of some knocked down athletes such as LaDainian Tomlinson and Maria Sharapova.

As I am watching the commercial and then putting the song on my Iphone I am quickly reminded of how practical this song applies to businesses… especially now. Often I am talking to businesses who state “We are waiting for the Economy to turn around” or “times are really bad, right now” and just about every time my response is…

What the hell are you waiting for?

Your competition to keep outranking you? The Government to give you a personal “bail out”? Stop waiting and start doing!

Bottom line is if you are planning to stay in business and increase your cash flow now is the time to put a plan together and immediately act upon that plan. Seriously, every business got Knocked Down in the last couple years… the question truly is, how quick are you gonna get up?

Cool news from out of the ProspectMX camp…

One of our company’s co-founders, Steve Young, has been named to Central Penn Business Journal’s (CPBJ) annual “Forty Under 40″ list for 2009.

Young is the second ProspectMX co-founder to earn this recognition from CPBJ. In 2006, Rory Wilfong was also honored with the same distinction.

While Young plays an important role within ProspectMX, he also manages the day-to-day operations of an Inc. 500  company; the first company Steve, Rory, and Dave established in 2003 that was a finalist for CPBJ’s Emerging Business of the Year Award in 2006.

Young was selected for this year’s Forty Under 40 for “his commitment to business growth, professional excellence and the community.”

Nominations for the Forty Under 40 program ended in late April, and a panel of four judges who have all won the award in the past selected the top 40. This is the 15th time CPBJ has honored the region’s top young business leaders.

Young and the other 39 recipients will be honored at an awards reception on October 23. The winners will also be featured in a special supplement to the October 30th edition of the Central Penn Business Journal.

Central Penn Business Journal is an award-winning business newspaper for Central Pennsylvania that provides more information, analysis and advice for business than any other local publication. The Journal has served the Central PA community for 23 years.

Congrats Steve!

The topic of this blog is putting a pricetag on frustration…and speaking of frustration, I’m preparing a sure to be hilarious recap of web usability problems with TNT.com. (Note to TNT- fire all of your web people.)

In the meantime, I found something online that I felt was very interesting.  Tonight I was searching for a ‘Microsoft Wireless Mouse’ on Amazon and came across something I had never heard of before.  Look at these 2 Amazon links and tell me if you can spot the difference.

Link1

Link 2

Could you spot the difference? Congratulations!  It’s not like it was right in the product headline or anything.  For those that missed it, Amazon is selling the EXACT SAME mouse for about 4 dollars more because it is in, what they call, “Amazon Frustration-Free™ Packaging”.

I hate dealing with those plastic death traps they put around gadgets as much as anyone else, but is it worth a $4 bump in price? What would I be willing to pay in any given situation to get the same thing with less frustration? $10 more for shoes you don’t have to tie (oh wait, that’s why I wear velcro). $100 more for a computer that never crashes? I’d pay it (and as I type this on my iMac I realize I did exactly that…except, more than a hundred dollars extra…).

My overspending aside, the point is, your lack of frustration is worth something. It’s just hard to figure out exactly how much it’s worth. In any given situation when you buy something, I wonder how much extra you would pay for better service, a better experience, an easier delivery method, etc.  How much money are companies losing because they aren’t willing to add that little touch to make their extra service worthwhile and “frustration-free”?

But this is starting to get deep.  In this case, for $4 extra dollars, I’d rather buy a sweet pair of scissors and just go to town on that plastic packaging.

Because in the end, I’d then have a wireless mouse and a cool pair of scissors to do with as I pleased. Win-win.

For those of you that can remember this ballad from famed rockers Cinderella, there has never been a moment in my recent memory that this rings truer…..especially when it comes to the job market.

As I am searching for several available positions within ProspectMX it brings reality into the fact that there are tons of good people looking for a career and would be happy with a job. Skilled people are working at places they would not have even dreamed of stepping into as a customer over a year ago. That person bagging your groceries could very well be someone with a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering. Now speaking to all of you with a job, position, career…..these out of work skilled individuals are waiting for you to “screw up” so they can slide right into your position. They are not intentionally stalking you and your position however, employers are realizing the overwhelming amount of talent that is available in the current market and will not be tolerating employees that give a sub par performance as they would have in the past.

So if any of you employed individuals are thinking the “grass may be greener” on the other side and you are not giving your position 150% you may want to consider all of the unemployed individuals waiting for that opporunity you may give them. After all, it may take many of you to realize what you had…..after you lose it?!

Although not as lengthy of a trip as the Tommy Boy venture (but very close to as much fun), yesterday Mark Fischer and I did some old fashioned door-to-door, pounding the pavement sales calls to businesses throughout the greater Philadelphia area.

We want to express much admiration to the many security guards we encountered that did their jobs and would not permit us to pass through to any possible decision makers. Also, we want to apologize to the young lady at the one business that opened the door for us but then took a “tongue lashing” from one of her bosses for letting us through. Thank you!

As Mark and I were venturing through one of the business parks we became curious as to how many other internet marketing/SEO companies send their sales force out cold calling on businesses in this manner. Further more, how many SEO firms have a sales department and do any type of prospecting?

We have been very successful with generating leads online (obviously), but we like to be more aggressive with introducing our services to others. It is still surprising how many businesses do not understand what we do and that a website automatically gets ranked.

I would love to hear any practices or structures that other SEO firms have for their sales and customer service departments. Please include funny stories. Of course, we would love to offer advice on those tough situations.