If you haven’t guessed the reference, I’m currently reading Seth’s very enjoyable book Purple Cow. He makes the very convincing argument that you have to be absolutely remarkable to gain lasting success in today’s market.

Now I’m seeing everything through purple glasses, which brings me to the real topic of my post:

I made a minor post the other day suggesting Zoho Polls for companies wanting to get feedback from their customers. Almost immediately I received a comment from someone at Zoho thanking me for suggesting their company. That was nice… and kind of unusual.
Then I got to thinking. I had posted to my MySpace blog several months ago a brief comment about my very positive experience with Zoho CRM (which I still use to this day). A Zoho intern politely commented with thanks in that case as well.

What in the world?!?! It seems clear to me now that Zoho at least keeps a very close eye on the “blogosphere” to see what is being said about them, which is surely more that many companies can say. But they apparently go much further than that. They participate promptly in other people’s blogs.

Let’s face it - my blog isn’t anywhere near the top of the charts yet, but the Zoho staff noticed and took action right away. That’s impressive. That’s unique. That might even be purple. It means a lot to a blogger, and I’m sure they understand that.

When is the last time that Microsoft commented on YOUR blog? Don’t hold your breath. What’s sad is it doesn’t have to be that way. They surely have the resources to go the extra mile, probably to the tune of at least 100 support staffers to every 1 Zoho staffer. (Just a guess).

To further test my hypothesis, I looked up some recent blog posts relating to Zoho:

Zoho makes good… (Zoho commented back)

Lightweight project management (Zoho commented back)

Kathy on success and management (Zoho commented back)

To be fair, I did find some blog posts relating to Zoho that didn’t contain replies from the company, but many of them looked to me to be more “formal” reviews of the company. I could imagine that they might be afraid of appearing overanxious with a “serious” review site.

All-in-all these guys are to be commended. I know I wouldn’t be writing this if their software wasn’t fairly exceptional as well, but it just excites me to see that these guys haven’t stopped at just having great products. They appear to me to be attempting to be a great company.

So here is my question to you and to myself: What three things could we be doing today to absolutely set ourselves and our organizations apart from all others?