Sounds strange? Well it’s not a fantasy and in fact small business people are now leveraging the social media landscape to get closer to their customers, and in some cases using social media sites such as Facebook to establish their thought leadership. Take the example of the Sunbanque tanning salon on Facebook, that I profiled earlier this year, and how my childhood friend is now using Facebook in many ways as a Social CRM tool. See Small Business Demand Generation on Facebook, February 1, on MyVenturepad.com.  

Glen Asaro, the owner of Sunbanque is now interacting with his customers as a thought leader in the area of his business expertise: artificial tanning. No he is not a doctor, but an authority on a business he has run for twenty years, and he is providing his customers with valuable and trustworthy information and links to it. His industry has encountered a lot of debate- those of us who know the electromagnetic spectrum understand that the sun does not filter its rays, but sun tanning booths do. However questions about their safety still rage on.

Trust is Why Thought Leadership is Important

Again and again and again our research tells us that customers, large and small want the businesses they purchase products and services from to be a trusted thought leader, and so do the partners in that businesses ecosystem. We have all heard about creating 'pull' in an ecosystem and Thought Leadership is a key factor that makes it happen. In December of 2009 we completed our Business Influencer study and looked closely at what were the most important channels of influence in software purchase decision making. The results are listed below and are very similar to the study we completed four years ago. 

Channel Influence Importance in Business Software Decision Making 

Peer networking with colleagues in person/offline was the most important influencing channel followed by:

  • In person/offline events. 
  • Speaking in person at company/Business Software Vendor. 
  • Colleague peer networking online. 
  • White Papers.
  • Emails.
  • Online Events.
  • Webinars.
  • Custom Research.
  • Organizational 1:1 Consulting.
  • Organizational Research Publications.

Channels included everything from books to magazines; academic reports and blogs ranked very low. In recent research conducted in China, we also found that vendor spokespeople as thought leaders were extremely important in channels of influence in purchase decision making.

Some might argue that thought leadership may not be important for every small business. But in today’s world I think it is, whether you are baking muffins in the morning or filling a supply chain. Smart small business people know their business and what makes it run better than anyone except maybe their competitors. Establishing yourself as a thought leader that knows your business, processes, products and services is relatively easy considering you already know all of them. Or at least you should. My friend Ted and his wife Lauryn run the Last Stop Store in Gloucester, Massachusetts and I spent a morning watching Lauryn baking. Not only is she a great baker, but she knows her ingredients and is considered an excellent chef, so she is a recognized thought leader in her ecosystem. Business is still all about relationships. But now the relationship has become digital and there-in is the opportunity to further your thought leadership, gain competitive advantage and increase sales by becoming more knowledgeable than your competitors.

The Personality of Fish: Sea Sickness & Evil Phil

One of my colleagues at Woods Hole named Phil studied myctophids, often called lantern fish which live in the deeper parts of the ocean and are part of the plankton community. They have an unusual personality and they use bioluminescence to communicate with each other during their nightly migration up into the water column. In the world of submariners they are part of what is referred to as a scattering layer. Scattering layers are very important to submarine commanders because when they are thick with organisms you can hide a nuclear submarine under them. Large pods of jellyfish, for example, at 300 meters are excellent sonar deflecting blankets that render sonar and hydro acoustics useless. On some of our cruises we would radio scattering layer coordinates at sea to Navy communications for distribution to the fleet. 

Phil was an intense person with great love for the ocean and but was tough on people, especially wannabe scientists, new comers and summer interns. Phil and I spent many days at sea together working side by side preserving specimens, mending plankton equipment, retrieving buoys, but he especially liked killing fish and sharks.  Phil also loved to make people seasick--especially the wannabes--and was very tough on everyone he supervised. You didn’t slack off on Phil, especially when he was the watch chief. Phil had a special sandwich he made only when he wanted to take a green horn over the edge. Sea sick scientists would often gather in the Officers and Scientist galley, and Phil would be waiting there to make his special peanut butter, lettuce and sardine sandwich. Phil would usually wait until two or three green people would gather in the galley and then make the sandwich slowly by putting two pieces of white bread down on the plate, then grabbing the peanut butter and smearing a deep layer on each piece of the bread. Then he would take a spoon and carve out a little depression in the peanut butter that was filled with sardine oil. Next would come a piece of lettuce for each side and then the sandwich would be assembled. Making sure that the green scientists were watching, Phil would pick up the sandwich and squeeze it together and take a bite. The sight of oil dripping out of the bottom of the sandwich and combination of ingredients would quickly send the green horns into the head and over the edge into full blown sea sickness. The peanut butter sardine lettuce sandwich actually tasted good. Phil delighted in other people’s misery especially at sea and he often did not get as sick as others. 

For several years I watched Phil play the sandwich game over and over. He was torturous on all the new people, especially if you were late for your watch or could not process specimens, kill fish, sharks and whatever we caught quickly enough. This is no April Fools, and until next time I wish you great marketing and selling in the millennium.