As 2010 hits the halfway mark, I’d be remiss to not recognize these additional Pearls of Wisdom - and the people who have contributed so much to my own business growth and learning and entrepreneurial expertise over the past six months…

1)   Recognize when it’s time to get stuff off your plate - and onto someone else’s 

Courtesy of Aldonna Ambler, aka “The Growth Strategist” and one of my advisors who said over a year ago that it was time to find a marketing assistant, and that an intern might be a good place to start.  Took a while, but I’ll never go back to not having this position filled.  Having good marketing help is critical in this economic landscape.

2)   Never hesitate to reach out for help

I’ve had some difficult organizational transitions to make over the last few months, and I am deeply grateful to two of my colleagues, Ted Lebow - who has been a wonderful sounding board and crisis helper and John Gerber - who had stepped up to the bat for me when I required legal advice and counsel.  It’s been great having people like them in my life.  Their support has been invaluable!  Thanks guys!

3)   In economic times like these, be willing to experiment with new marketing and sales tactics

We’ve certainly been experimenting - a lot!  From blogging about our story - thanks to Kevin Daum and his advice and counsel back in January…to utilizing the telemarketing services of Corporate Call Centers (thanks to another advisor - Claudia Timbo - and her great marketing right hand person Jean Dilley) - and getting their assistance running our first lumpy mail campaign…to having the opportunity to speak at Square 2 Marketing’s University last week, we’ve been strategically reaching out and “touching” people.  And it’s keeping us in the game!

4)   Find partners with sympatico - and form strategic alliances

The relationships which we’ve forged with Jim Devine and his crew at the Mid-Atlantic Employers’ Association as well as Karen Marsdale at the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce have been key to expanding our reach in the Greater Philly area.  We’ve really enjoyed partnering with both organizations - and our partnership has resulted in more business for all of us!

5)   Define (and discover) your ideal client

And there’s no way that we could have done what we’ve done without the help of our clients.  From giving us feedback on our value prop,  to participating in video interviews,  and even taking the Caliper Profile (thanks to Dave Griffith of Modern Group - another informal advisor) who suggested that we use the profile to more closely identify our ideal client - Great idea!

So that’s some of our “pearls”.  What are yours?  What have you learned and to whom have you reached out this year?  Drop us a line or give us a call if you’d like to learn more at   ckuchler@ceothinktank.com ….

 

 

u’d like to learn more…   ckuchler@ceothinktank.com

For those of you who missed the fun…and the education – thought that I’d share seven pearls of entrepreneurial wisdom from the Co-Founder of Jiffy Lube, Philadelphia University’s President, Steve Spinelli, from Tuesday’s “Dining with the CEO”…

·       Entrepreneurs need Hearts on Fire and Brains on Ice.

 

·      Never forget the wisdom of the great World War II General, George C. Patton, “Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.”

 

·       Thought to an entrepreneur without action is frivolous.  Action without thought is dangerous.

 

·       Entrepreneurship is opportunity obsessed, holistic in approach and leadership balanced.

 

·       The Field of Dreams was wrong.  If you build it, they may never come.

 

·       Get VERY CLEAR on your market demand, market size and structure and your margin analysis but…

 

·   Be careful that you don’t get so complicated that you work yourself out of a great business model.

 

 

And if you’d like some more “tidbits” about what it took to grow one of the most successful franchises ever…drop me a line at ckuchler@ceothinktank.com and I’ll share the rest! 

 

“It’s the small daily brush strokes that create the painting, no matter how large the canvas.”

That’s the quote that I continue to remind myself of as I work with our Marketing intern Alessandra.  Bringing a new person into a company takes time, commitment and planning - but not everything can happen at once - so…one brush stroke at a time.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the need with new employees - with every employee actually - to be clear about expectations.  Now we’re working on the next part of the canvas. 

So what are three Key steps to creating an “engaged employee”:

1) Making her my priority - Too often new hires aren’t given the time that they need with their hiring manager.  I’ve worked hard to clear my own schedule since she came on board - at least a 1/2 day a week - more at the beginning to have the meetings and answer the questions that all new employees have. 

Spending time with her each week is one of my top 5 priorities each week.  And touching base at least once a day - even if it’s just a quick email - when we don’t meet.  Not necessarily easy - but absolutely necessary if I want to get the most from my investment!

2) Helping her to clarify her priorities - I’ve only got Alessandra for 20 hours every week.  She’s naturally organized - something that I looked for when I hired her - so I asked her to come up with monthly goals and priorities (which we reviewed) and then we’re breaking them down by week. 

The benefit of this to me?  She’s staying focused and on track and knows what she needs to do even if she gets ahead.  Last week she got done everything that she was supposed to do in two weeks in one week - so we came up with another list!  Very cool!

3) Asking her what she’s learning - and having her document it too!  This is a Gallup question by the way that will help you to measure the level of employee engagement in your company. 

“In the last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?”  And there’s another one too about having someone at work who encourages an employee’s development.   

Have your employees set learning goals for themselves and debrief with them about what they’ve learned and how they’ve grown.  And if you have them document the information, you have a ready-made training manual for the next person who comes along!

Intrigued?  

If you’d like to meet Alessandra, she’ll be at our next “Dining with the CEO” event on June 8th with Philadelphia University President and Jiffy Lube co-Founder Steve Spinelli!   Plan on coming and I’ll introduce you!  Click here for more info and to register! 

Hope to see you there!

Why am I so excited to have Steve Spinelli at our next “Dining with the CEO” on June 8th?

1) He’s got a wealth of knowledge and experience… 

From his early days (he was just 24) when he co-founded Jiffy Lube International and went on to become the chain’s largest franchisee to his tenure teaching future business leaders entrepreneurship at Babson College (he’s even worked with Verne Harnish) to his current role as President of Philadelphia University.

2) He’s a great example of someone going for the gold - throughout his career.

After Jiffy Lube, he went on to get a PhD in Economics at the University of London.  Then, during his entire tenure as the Director for the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship and the Chair of the entrepreneurship division at Babson College, U.S. News and World Report ranked Babson number one in entrepreneurship.

3) He’s also willing to share his mistakes and his lessons. 

In an interview last year with Bloomsberg Business Week, he shared the following thoughts:

·           What has he learned about being an entrepreneur?

 

     Never get cocky!   “We were doing so well [at one point], we started having this mentality: “This is easy. If we build it, they will come.” If you start thinking that way, jump in a pool, cool off. That is a huge mistake.

 

         How important is education – and a good business model - to an entrepreneur?

     

           “I don’t think you necessarily need to be in college to do this.  But you need to be a lifelong learner to survive.  I think you will have to evolve your business model five times - and maybe five times in 5 years!”    

   

 

Intrigued?  Me too!  So join us on Tuesday, June 8^th to hear him – from 5:30 to 8:30pm at the Union League in Philadelphia.

And get a chance to ask your question!

p.s.  And if you missed our last “Un-Marketing” event with Kevin Daum, checking out his presentation, “Creating the Awesome Experience”.

So many of you are re-evaluating your marketing - both tactics and strategies - and thinking of new ways to reach your audiences.  As I shared last week, we are too!

In addition to our continued emphasis on bringing great speakers and resources to our community – (Check out our upcoming Dining with the CEO Un-Marketing Event on June 8th with Philadelphia University President and former entrepreneur Steve Spinelli) – we’ve been redefining our value proposition and our tactics. 

To help, as I shared with you last week, I’ve brought on an intern, Alessandra from Drexel.  And planning her onboarding process has been a great lesson in “practicing what we preach”. 

Since many of you have been asking about what we’re doing with her, here’s four key questions that we’ve been asking  to get her off on the right foot.  And hopefully - as you add people - or even cultivate the ones that you have - you can use some of the following ideas…

1) What are our expectations?  

As the folks at Gallup have said for over a decade, clear expectations are the bedrock of a good management system.  Make sure that you’re clear about the behaviors and results that you’re expecting - and communicate them over and over again.  For Alessandra, I ultimately need her to increase our lead generation and close ratios by increasing website hits, helping us to qualify prospects, implementing the value prop and getting our name out into the Social Media world.  That will get her an “A” grade in my world.  

       How do YOUR employees earn an “A”?  

2) What are our Core Values and and how do I expect them to show up in her behaviors?

We’re about Creating a Community with our members and alums.  We also feel very strongly about “walking the walk”.  I never want anyone to say that we don’t practice what we preach to our clients.  What does that mean for the behaviors I expect to see in Alessandra?  How will her performance be measured against our Core Values?  That’s also an ongoing conversation that she and I will be having over the next six months. 

       How do you enforce and reinforce your Core Values with your people?

3) What are her expectations? 

Employment is a two way street.  It’s not just about us.  Knowing what she’s enjoyed about previous jobs, what her goals are in this one and where she wants to go in the future are all critical questions that I’ve been asking her.  I”ve also had her take the Gallup StrengthsFinder and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to help us both understand what talents she has and what her preferences are and quite honestly, how I need to manage her based on who she is. 

       What do your employees expect from you?

4)  What’s the best way to work together? 

How often she wants to meet to discuss her progress and what’s been the best form of recognition that she’s received are also things that I want to know about her.  Alessandra’s a college student.  Part of the Millenial generation born from 1977 to 1997.  As many of you are finding, they’re a different breed.  But highly enthusiastic. 

Harvard Business Review has a great article this month on Mentoring Millenials for you to check out.  One of their research findings?  Millennials view work as a key part of life, not a separate activity that needs to be “balanced” by it. For that reason, they place a strong emphasis on finding work that’s personally fulfilling. They want work to afford them the opportunity to make new friends, learn new skills, and connect to a larger purpose. That sense of purpose is a key factor in their job satisfaction…they’re the most socially conscious generation since the 1960s. 

        How are you helping your 33 and under employees connect to their larger life purpose thru your company?

That’s it for now…more to come in our next post.  And let us know what you’re learning as you try out new practices in this post-recession world!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well I’m back from the Fortune Sales and Marketing Summit in Vegas and ready to get to work applying the concepts that we were exposed to last week!

But I’m not doing it alone.  My marketing analyst started this week - Alessandra - a co-op student from Drexel.  Took a bit of time to find her and was certainly an investment to go thru the hiring process but I’m excited to have the help - and another pair of hands.

Since many of you have been asking - I’ll be sharing what we’re doing over the next few months including what she’s working on and what we’re finding is helping us to create an efficient, standardized marketing process. 

I’ll also be sharing with you how I found her and what you should look for in your marketing people. 

In the meantime, a few tips from Brian Halligan, CEO and Founder of Hubspot and author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs:

1) Hire marketing people using the following acronym - D - a Digital Citizen , A - Analytical mind, R - Reach (with an “electronic” rolodex) and C - Content Creator. 

2) Organize your marketing department into 3 Groups - Get Found, Convert, Analyze.

3) Assess your Inbound Marketing mojo by running your company through www.websitegrader.com (free tool) and find out whether your website makes the grade!

More to come…stay tuned! 

And if you’d like to hear how other successful entrepreneurs have grown their businesses, plan on coming on June 8th to our next Un-Marketing Event featuring Stephen Spinelli, founder of Jiffy Lube and now the President of Philadelphia University.

For more info or to register, click here.

Well I’ve taken some time off from blogging to recover from our March 9th event with Kevin Daum.  His ROAR book is finally out!  (I know that some of you have already purchased it and are applying the concepts so Congrats!  And good marketing!)

For those of you who signed up early for that event, your copies are on their way.  For those of you who didn’t, you can get a copy by clicking here.

For those of you in the Philly area, you can still see Kevin this weekend at the Go Green Expo on Saturday. 

And - if you’d like to take a gander at the Sales and  Marketing Summit, there’s a webcast of Tom Sant’s keynote on Wednesday, April 21st from 4 to 6pm Eastern Time.  He’s the author of Persuasive Business Proposals, Language of Success and The Giants of Sales.  Here’s the link to sign up!  (Courtesy of Verne Harnish…)

Will let you know how the conference goes, what I learn and what’s up with us for the rest of 2010 which I get back!

Well, it’s been a big two weeks.  We finalized our value prop for CEO Think Tank® and had a sell out crowd at our Growth Strategies Breakfast on March 9th.  It was definitely an “Awesome Experience“!

But now that we’ve got the message, we’ve got to get it out to the marketplace - using the next step in Kevin Daum’s process - Intentional Marketing - a phrase I’d never heard before.

And, to understand what intentional marketing is, according to Kevin, you first need to understand the difference between sales and marketing.

Kevin defines “sales” as the pure, direct person-to-person process of how a sales person transacts business with a customer.

Marketing - on the other hand - is the application of efficiency tools to the sales process to help it scale.  The tools, according to Kevin, can be strategic stuff like market research and segmentation OR tactical such as designing a website or creating collateral.

The trick?  You’ve got to have forethought!  That’s the first step in Intentional Marketing.  And that means considering the 105 Questions that will be answered in your sales process - either by design or default.

Here’s just a sample to consider in all of your marketing strategies and tactics for how you’re Generating Leads:

* What are the attractive emotions?
* What are the attractive aesthetics?
* Where can buyers be found?
* What will pique their interests?
* What is the recognizable pain we can identify?
* Where do buyers congregate?
* What is the best opening line?
* What is the identifiable fear component?
* What is the identifiable greed component?
* What are the identifiable logic components?

There’s more of course…check out the website if you’re curious - - or, if you want to use the process that Kevin recommends to get your message heard.

I’ll be talking more about what we’re doing as we continue thru the year and what we’re learning.  In the meantime, drop me a line and let me know if you’re applying these concepts in your business - and what results you’re getting!

 

Well I did it!  Made the time last week and crafted our revised Value Prop - finally.  Clarified the Pain We Solve and what the Best Solution is to solve that pain…but most importantly defined what made us the Best Solution Provider.  Kevin Daum helped me to scribe in a few short bullet points how what we do and how we do it separates us from everyone else and…assisted me to  answer the question: ”What do we do that others don’t?”

So what did I learn in this process?  Or re-learn as the case may be?  

# 1:   How incredibly important getting information from your customers, prospects and others in the market place is - including people who aren’t in your space at all.  And the latter are often the most critical to talk with bringing in the fresh and new ideas - like Dave Griffith of the Modern Group did for me.  Dave’s question?  How could we make our membership criteria more selective and therefore add more value to our Think Tank Groups for our members?  (Great question - more to come on that one…)

# 2: A reminder that creating a strategy is certainly not rocket science but it’s not always easy - and definitely takes work.  And - in the end it’s just good solid business fundamentals - the kind we often say are common sense, but just not common practice!

And # 3:  The value that outside coaching brings when you’re going thru this process. It really helped to have Kevin involved with us.  I especially appreciated his perspective as a marketeer and a successful Inc 500 entrepreneur.  He’s got his own unique value prop as well!  

So come next Tuesday to our Growth Strategies Breakfast and meet him as well as the other Enlightened Executives who are part of our community.   We’ll be talking with Kevin about our own process as well as having him share his expertise so that you too can learn to create your own Compelling Message in 2010!

See you then!

And let me know your thoughts on this process and how it’s helped - or hasn’t helped you in your business.  A special thanks too to Heather Chandler of Seal Strip for some of her feedback in the last few weeks!

That’s what I discovered last week - had every intention of telling you more about what I’ve been doing on my journey to “Create a Compelling Message”  but other things got in the way…

I actually suspected as much when I looked at my list on Sunday before the week started.  That’s how I organize myself and keep focused.  I actually start looking ahead the Thursday before - which I found out one of our clients at Gateway Ticketing does too - so I don’t feel completely OCD.  There are others out there like me.

I knew that with three days basically dedicated to clients and one day that I was taking for some personal time and reflection, there really was no way that I was going to get my weekly blog done, let alone complete the homework that Kevin Daum had assigned me which was:

        ” To use the information that we gathered in our marketing research to come up with the 25 words or so that describe the Pain that We Solve  and the 10 to 15 words that say what the Best Solution is for that pain.”

So what to do?  Well - chalk it up to the fact that sometimes Murphy intervenes and other more important things do require our time - like spending time with clients who are struggling to grow their businesses using the best practices that we teach and taking some personal downtime for me to recover a bit from the fast pace of the last few weeks  - AND

That doesn’t mean that I don’t get back on track this week…and get my homework DONE!

So look for that next week - I’m making sure that it’s done by then.

And if you want to learn more about Kevin’s methodology for “Creating an Awesome Experience”, we still have a few more books available for those of you who register today for our March 9th   event - or you can pre-order directly from the website.

Looking forward to seeing you then!