Edward Bellamy's Incredible Crystal Ball

“Marty McFly Day” is as good a day as any to look back at another time-travel entertainment—one that electrified our grandparents' grandparents.

Published at the height of the Gilded Age, Edward Bellamy's 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward became the Number 1 best-seller of its time.

It tells the story of a Boston Brahmin who time-travels to the year 2000 and discovers that life in the future is pretty comfortable:

• War, waste, global warming, crime, unemployment, income inequality, gender differences, advertising and political parties have disappeared.

• Everyone is at least bi-lingual. People speak a native language and the universal language.

• The only form of money is the debit card. People use it to shop at vast warehouse clubs like Costco, but act with civility towards one another, because everyone's well educated. All purchases are delivered to shoppers' homes, via pneumatic tubes.

• Employee engagement approaches 100% and job promotions are based solely on merit. People who refuse to work are imprisoned, and receive only bread and water.

• People retire in comfort at age 45.

• Housework is fully automated.

• Congress meets only once every five years.

Bellamy sold more than a half million copies of Looking Backward. His blueprint for the year 2000 was so talked-about, over 160 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up across the US.

Forty-seven years after the novel's appearance, Columbia University named it the most important book by a 19th century American.

Tomorrow's B2B Sales Professional Needs a Blue Ocean

One million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs by 2020, replaced by e-commerce systems, according to a study by Forrester.

The job-loss can be blamed on Millennials, who prefer what I call M2M (Millennial to Machine) over F2F (Face-to-Face).

First on the chopping block are entry-level "order taker" jobs.

For over a century, order-taker jobs have allowed high-school and college grads to readily enter the workforce as salespeople.

But the tightening market means tomorrow's wannabe sales pro must find a fresh opening gambit.

Inventiveness will be key.

You might have to think like comedian W.C. Fields.

To drum up business for Atlantic City hot-dog vendors, Fields worked one summer in his youth as a professional drowner. 

Twelve times a day, he would wade into the surf and begin to scream and flounder.

Mammoth crowds would rush to the scene to witness Field's "rescue"—and buy lots of hot dogs from the nearby vendors' carts.

Here's a great source for more innovations: The Sales Blog.

Battling Bullies

As a small business, you have no greater leverage than content.

My blog Copy Points, which reached a milestone today—100,000 pageviews—proves the point.

David-size businesses can effectively combat Goliaths in the Bizarro World of social media, and build a proprietary audience of followers, fans and advocates.

But how?

In a study last year, software provider Curata identified 428 bloggers it dubbed members of the “10K Club,” because they attract 10,000 or more pageviews a month. 

Two-thirds of 10K Club members represent small and mid-size businesses, with revenue below $100 million.

Curata concluded that six factors made these David-size bloggers successful:

1. They know all the effort, one day, will pay off.
2. They create content that targets a specific audience.
3. They avoid product-pitches.
4. They post at least once a week.
5. They promote their blogs on other channels.
6. They study their pageviews, to learn what kinds work best.

With 100,000 pageviews under my belt, at last I have something I can boast about to my granddaughter. 

Once she's old enough to know what a blog is.

What's the Most Revealing Interview Question Employers Could Ask?

What's the most revealing interview question employers could ask—the one that would guarantee they hire the best talent available every time? The killer question you should ask every job seeker.

With apologies to the management gurus, it's none of these:

• Why will you thrive in this position?
• What's your greatest weakness?
• Who's your role model?
• What did your parents do for a living?
• What things do you dislike doing?
• Why are manhole covers round?
• Why did you leave your last job?
• What's your spirit animal?
• What's the most significant thing you've done since breakfast?
• What would you like to ask me?

I learned the killer interview question not from an HR manual, but a former boss; and it worked like a charm.

Adman Bill Kircher, founder of Fixation Marketing, posed the killer question at the close of every candidate interview he conducted. 

With it, he built an exceptionally creative, productive and tight-knit team; one that attracted loyal and prestigious clients, enjoyed a reputation for high quality, and earned handsome profits.

His killer interview question: What book are you reading right now?

What makes the question killer?

It's simple. Candidates didn't have to ask Bill for clarification.

It's tricky. The qualifier "right now" essentially disqualified as honest answers To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, and other sophomore-year reading assignments.

It's decisive. Hesitation, blank stares, or answers like "I mostly watch TV" eliminated candidates from consideration.

It's nondiscriminatory. Any title sufficed as a correct answer. Bill didn't care what you read, as long as it was sandwiched between two boards. After all, John F. Kennedy loved From Russia with Love. Ronald Reagan raved at a news conference about The Hunt for Red October. And friends spotted James Joyce in a cafe once reading Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Reading books proved to Bill's thinking a job candidate was curious, diligent, self-caring and culturally engaged.

And his results proved he was spot on.

Come as You Are

In the 1970s, hirsute posers—there were many—who showed up at sit-ins, rallies and music festivals were labeled "plastic hippies."

They'd take time off from their jobs, let down their hair, don their best tie-dye, pack a bong or a bottle of Boone's Farm, and make the scene.

People today are spared the need to package themselves in order to infiltrate happenings.

Brands are another matter.

To rate with Millennials, brands have to protest against global warming, epidemics, racism, homophobia, fat-shaming and unequal pay—or at least pretend to.

Henk Campher, San Francisco-based publicist and author of Creating a Sustainable Brand, calls the pretenders the "quick and dirty"—campers on the bottom steps of a "sustainable-brand pyramid" populated by:

• Snake oil sellers—hypocrites (Volkswagen, for example);

• Blah brands—big talkers (Apple); and 

• Offset brands—penitents (Starbucks).

Not surprisingly, 99.9% of companies, according to Campher, lack any sustainability gene.

But at least they're honest about it.

My advice to plastic hippies: Come to the party, but come as you are. The rest of us—your customers, employees and investors—prefer the real you.