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!

So you know that I”ve been telling you how Kevin Daum is helping us to prepare for our March 9th “Un-Marketing Event”, and working with us to create our Compelling Message over the last few weeks. 

But who is this guy that I’ve been writing about and why all the hype?  Why do we think that with all of the meetings and conferences and seminars that are out there you should come and hear Kevin?  

With 3000 distractions a day, how will your message get heard?  According to Chet Holmes, author of Creating the Ultimate Sales Machine, the average person in the U.S is exposed to  3000 messages a day.  Yes, that’s right.  3000.   So how will Kevin help you ensure that you get your message heard…?

Well… here’s three things you might consider…

1) As the National Columnist for Smart Business Magazine, Kevin Daum is inspiring people to get above the noise by pursuing the Awesome Experience.  He brings real-world Inc 500 CEO experience to help you create a compelling message for your company.

2) Promoting your business can and should be fun.  You can tell from Kevin’s ROAR! video that he lives his message of creating the convergence of Need, Entertainment and The Unexpected.

 3) His book is exactly what we as business leaders need right now to get our sales and marketing on track.  No need to take my word for it.  You can download the first 2 chapters that explain how to develop your own Value Proposition - using the same format that I’ve been sharing with you these last few weeks. 

Oh - and it’s a fun read as well.

So make a plan, bring a friend, come on March 9th!  And stay tuned for more on my own journey to get our message heard…

That’s the question what I’ve been trying to answer as I’ve been on my own journey to develop a Compelling Message for CEO Think Tank and refine the value prop of what we do for our members as well as our prospects. 

And - after spending the last few weeks talking to over two dozen CEO’s and business owners of small to mid-size companies, some patterns are definitely emerging.  Things that we do well and want to continue to do as well as things that we need to start doing and do more of in 2010.

(Remember:  this is the work that you should be doing in your own businesses - on a regular basis.)  It doesn’t suit anyone to sit on their laurels for long.  The market is always changing and to stay ahead - you’ve got to be talking with people…

So what have we found?

What’s the biggest pain that we solve for CEO’s and executives of growing firms?  

Helping them to find answers to the question “What do I do NOW that I’ve got this problem”- whatever this problem is for the moment.  (You never run out of problems when you’re trying to grow a business after all.) 

The second pain that we’ve helped them with? 

Pointing out the potholes that they’re going to run into…or could run into as they grow.  “I want to know what I don’t know,” one of our CEO members said to me.  “I know a lot but it’s what I don’t know that’s going to get me into trouble down the line. ”

How are we helping them to solve these pains? 

By giving them a braintrust of other smart, enlightened executives who are traveling the same road - and in many cases have been there and done that - and - teaching them how to grow smartly.  We give them proven frameworks and tools and access to resources and experts - things that they otherwise wouldn’t know about or would take them valuable time - something no on seems to have nowadays to find.  

How are we unique? 

Because of our own experiences working with hundreds of small and mid-size businesses - and because we’re entrepreneurs too - we’re working to grow our business and using the same tools and techniques.  As one CEO said, “You guys know stuff.  And it’s not just theory!” 

So where we need to spend more time and do things differently?  

Helping them to prioritize and focus - even more so than we’ve done in the past.  And even though we’re sometimes known as a major pain in the you-know-what with our clients, they also asked us to do an even better job of holding them accountable to what they said they were going to do and noodging them along when they’re not delivering. 

Why this shift?  More so now than ever before, I’m hearing people in the business community talking about not having time to do all the things that they need to do.  And they need help and guidance to:

* Sort through all of the items that they could be focusing on,

* Make the right decisions about what to focus on and

* Have a plan (and make the time) to get their priorities done.

So that’s what we’re going to help them do….along with a whole lot more. 

We’ve been successful in the past and helped our members to grow and survive - but the work never stops.

So what about you?  Who are you talking to?  What are you learning about your market and your customers?  And what  will you do differently in 2010?

Let me know…and come on March 9th if you want to learn more! 

BTW, the first 25 people to register will get a free copy of Kevin Daum’s new book:  ROAR:  Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle!

In our work with Kevin Daum to create a “Compelling Message”, Kevin shared with us that there’s two critical pieces to attracting, retaining and growing your customers.

The first I shared with you in my last blog - the need to gather information from current customers, potential customers and competitors, figure out their challenges and pain and how we either help them - or don’t help them - to overcome those issues.

The second is to tie what you glean from those conversations to your offerings - in this case - our “Un-Marketing” events.  We’ve been doing them for several years now, bringing together fantastic speakers and accomplished CEO’s and business people to learn and network.  It’s been wonderful to have people like Judy Wicks of the White Dog Cafe, Dave Griffith of Modern Group and Verne Harnish of Gazelles come and talk with us - and we’ve gotten high marks from attendees too for putting on great events!

But Kevin challenged us a few weeks ago.  He wasn’t going to let us rest on our laurels and asked some hard questions:

1) How could we provide even more value to our attendees?  (There’s a lot of competition for people’s time right now…how do we make coming to our events “a must” attend versus a maybe?)

2) How could we double our attendance?

3) How could we reach people who hadn’t heard of us before?

4) How could we leverage the event to attract great prospects for membership? and…

5) How could we use our events to create an Awesome Experience for our members and clients? (the reason we started doing them in the first place…)

The answer???  Leverage our network of course - and tap into the power of Social Media.  So - that’s what I’ve been doing the past week or so -

* posting our Events on Linked In, starting discussions (thanks to Kim Levin of Teknuko for her help navigating the LinkedIn world!) and asking colleagues to publish the event to their networks,

* asking our members and advisors who are “tweeting” - people like The Emperor of Fun Dave Raymond of Raymond Entertainment and Phil Jaurique of Sabre Systems - for their help to get the word out to their  Twitter communities…

* using our affiliations with the Mid-Atlantic Employers’ Association and the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce so that they can reach out to their member companies and…

* getting assistance from Jennifer Cohen of the MAC Alliance - they have a great website where you can post all sorts of information and events!

And that’s just the beginning…if I’ve piqued your interest - stay tuned - let your networks know about March 9th and what they could learn - and - sign up!

Last week I told you about my mission for the next few months - to find out what our clients and members really value about what we do - so that we can decide what we need to keep doing, start doing and stop doing to help them be successful in the year ahead.

When Doug Diamond and I sat down a few weeks ago at the Barnes and Noble at Penn with Kevin Daum, the speaker at our upcoming “Un-Marketing” event on March 9th, he inundated us with information. 

His three step process?

1) Create a Compelling Message (and a Value Proposition that truly differentiates you from your competition)

2) Apply Intentional Marketing to a clearly defined sales process that will allow you to scale for growth and

3) Provide Memorable Delivery to your prospects so that you stay “top of mind”.

Where to start?  Well, as we teach our clients in Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, we need to gather information - from our current members and clients, our competitors and our potential customers.

So that’s what I’ve been doing - meeting and talking with clients and members and finding out:

1) What problems we solve for them?

2) Where do we add value?

3) What problems we don’t solve?

4) How do we perform better than our competitors?

5) What do our competitors offer that we don’t?

And the answers?  Some things I knew…but there have been a few surprises.  It never ceases to amaze me what I learn when I ask!

More on that next week…but in the meantime, with whom have you been talking?  What’s the market telling you???

Let me know!

And come on March 9th if you want to learn more…

Over the holiday break (in case you missed it), Doug Diamond wrote about his “plans for planning” and the journey that he’s taking as he commits to become better at weekly planning in 2010.

I’m on a mission myself over the next few months - to learn more about what our members and clients value and like about what we do - AND - what they want us to change - so that we can be better at “doing what we do”.  The goal?  “Create an Awesome Experience” for our clients and members, our prospects and our community.

Kevin Daum, Inc 500 Entrepreneur and the author of the upcoming book “Roar:  Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle”. is advising us along the way.  You’ll hear more about him to but if you want to learn more - stay tuned…

We’ll be sharing the journey with you over the next few weeks and…

“Save the Date” of Tuesday, March 9th at 7:30 am for our next Un-Marketing” event when we’ll hear from Kevin…

My entrepreneurial Think Tank group recently initiated a weekly call to allow members of the group the opportunity to recap their previous week, and to set their intentions of what they were planning to complete in the upcoming week. I agreed to organize and facilitate the call, and behind the scenes, I’m using the call as an opportunity to do my own weekly planning—a great discipline to begin as we near the beginning of a new year.

A few weeks ago, I proudly shared my weekly plan with Cheryl Beth, who began asking questions about what I had set out to achieve in the upcoming week.  Her questions centered around a common theme that translates to “when are you planning to get these tasks done?”

When I could not answer her questions adequately, I realized that I had fallen again into the “wish list” trap.  I had boldly created a list of things that I had wanted to do that week (right brained activity), without taking the time to check my calendar and to allocate tasks to designated times during the week. Without allocating the time, the tasks (particularly the important tasks that were not urgent - thank you Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, habit 3 “Put First Things First”)  would invariably not have a chance to get done, and I would end the week frustrated that yet again, I couldn’t get all the things on my list done.

Great planning over any time period (daily, quarterly, annually) takes time and requires a balanced mix of right brained thinking (develop a creative/inspired list of tasks/projects that could get us to a better position), and specific, concrete left brained thinking (what are the priorities, who will complete them, when do they need to be done?). Without a healthy balance of both right and left brained thinking, the plan is flawed and far less likely to get completed.

Few people naturally do both left and right brained thinking well. We naturally prefer and excel at either right or left brained thinking – rarely both. Whichever mode of thinking we don’t prefer ends up weakening or undermining our plans. We either need to get someone to help us with that part of our planning, or we need to develop the disciplines required to learn and improve in that part of our planning efforts.

I am committing myself to improve my weekly planning in 2010. What changes in your planning process are you planning to make in 2010?

Let Business Improvement and CEO Think Tank help you with your 2010 planning process.

It was easy to be grateful while seated at a Thanksgiving feast with loved ones.  Amidst the chaos of extended family, I counted my blessings readily, especially after hearing repeated tales of loss and dire struggle.  Now, with holiday bustle in high gear, it’s easy to surrender to the endless year-end urgencies that every business faces – things that didn’t get done, people who didn’t get called, numbers that didn’t add up. 

Appreciation at Work

First, I want to transfer some gratefulness from my dining room to my office.   Amidst a recession and a roller-coaster year, what are five things for which I am thankful, professionally?

1.       LinkedIn.   I’m awed by the ability to connect with my network and my network’s network (and their networks, too) around the clock.   Among my goals for 2010 is to fully leverage this tool for enhancing business – mine and others’.  For now, I’m simply grateful that 100+ people are willing to publicly acknowledge their connection to me!

2.       Planning.  Always one to prefer keeping options open, I historically hesitated to commit to a plan.  Now, having seen the light shed by a clear strategy, I appreciate the value of formal programs such as Gazelles Rockefeller Habits, as well as informal tools, like a vision board.  I’ll appreciate some imminent “down time” as an opportunity to continue planning for 2010 — and beyond. 

3.       BoardEffect.  Leave it to online technology to make meetings, scheduling, even filing seem FUN.  This web-based portal, designed to enhance the governance function of nonprofit boards of directors, enables online communication for CEO Think Tank members as well.  As both a user and an e-governance consultant with BoardEffect, I appreciate this online tool with the power to transform how boards and working groups collaborate.

4.       CEO Think Tank.  Colleagues don’t let colleagues drive off the road.  Our community of entrepreneurial business executives ensures access to best practice methodology and solutions to business problems, not to mention peer support for members.   I am grateful for every vetted contact, business advancement, and bit of sanity CEO Think Tank has provided.  

5.       Two-by-fours.  Not the real ones, but the proverbial boards that beat us over the head with business advice.  It’s rarely new information, but certain delivery can pack a wallop.  I’m thankful for the trust, concern, and confidence that a colleague and new friend demonstrated recently in calling the question about a business decision. 

Nobody said it would be easy to grow a company.   It’s been a tough year.  Before it ends, identify your list of five things to appreciate.

Do  you want to crush sales in 2010?  CEOs and entrepreneurs are wanting  to leverage social media for  sales.   One thing is very certain - you need a strategy and the real you for success. 

Differentiation is Marketing

Simple marketing is all about standing out from the crowd and being different from your competitors.   In this ultra-competitive environment, these principles are critical to the growth of your business.   Prospective customers are carefully choosing how to spend their money.  How do you compete?

Your Personal Brand

The basic idea of personal branding is to promote yourself as having certain values, skills or expertise - your brand - so that if someone needs that expertise, they’ll come to you first.  Have you leveraged your personal brand for sales?

As Dan Schawbel mentions in his Generation Y personal branding book Me 2.0:

Personal branding is about unearthing what is true and unique about you and letting everyone know about it.

Trouble is, for a lot of people the ramifications of that statement are scary.  And in my own work, the critical piece that’s missing in business is the need to connect yourself and your personal brand with your prospects and customers.

Your Leverage

Your customers want the real you (both illuminating & enlightening.)  So start leveraging your personal brand and crush sales!