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Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Friday, April 16th, 2010
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!
Tags: Enlightened Executives, Leadership, Marketing, Sales and Marketing
Posted in Business Improvement, Enlightened Executives, General, Leadership, Marketing, Sales | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
 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!
Tags: Business Coaching, Business Improvement, Enlightened Executives, Executive Roundtables, Marketing, Sales and Marketing
Posted in Business Improvement, Enlightened Executives, Marketing, Sales, Strategy | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
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…
Tags: Awesome Experience, Business Improvement, Enlightened Executives, Leadership, Marketing, Sales and Marketing, Strategy
Posted in Business Improvement, Enlightened Executives, General, Leadership, Marketing, Sales | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
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!
Tags: Business Improvement, Enlightened Executives, Executive Roundtables, Marketing, Sales and Marketing, Social Media
Posted in Enlightened Executives, General, Marketing, Sales, Strategy | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
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!
Tags: Dan Schawbel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Marketing, Personal Branding, Sales
Posted in General, Marketing, Personal Development, Sales, Strategy | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 4th, 2009
Who are Your Best Customers?
When asked the question, so many marketers respond with basic demographic information that profiles hundreds of your ideal customers. A typical marketing response - “companies who need our services and are located in our market.” I want to know - “Who are your best customers?” “What are their names?”
Want More Customers?
If you’re seeking word of mouth referrals, then you should know your best customers by - name. You should be asking them for their opinions about your company’s products and services, educating them with valuable information, and finding out how they think to build your company’s marketing copy. Get online testimonials from them. Provide online places for comments, communications and opinions such as Facebook pages, forums, reviews and ratings - all to be shared and viewed.
Get Socially Clever
Perhaps some of your best customers have a problem with your company. What if you found them, reached out, and resolved their problem individually and efficiently? How much is an enthusiastic customer worth? Consider this clever strategy - focus on the individual not the mass just like @comcastcares? Now, that’s leverage your competitors don’t have.
Tags: Business Coaching, Marketing, Social Media
Posted in Business Improvement, General, Marketing, Strategy | 1 Comment »
Friday, June 5th, 2009
The tooth fairy missed an appearance at my house last night. Maybe she couldn’t face the chaos.
It’s the last week of school, so I’ve prepared teacher gifts, emptied overstuffed backpacks, soothed weary souls, organized a birthday party, scrambled to cover a gap in childcare before camp starts, and crafted two proposals, a business article, and a client’s revised growth strategy. And that was just at night.
Web-based Ecosystem
No wonder the Tooth Fairy bailed. No wonder I can’t find time for Facebook. And no wonder there’s a subculture of entrepreneurial companies thriving on the support of social networking.
Free Services
Ping.fm, for instance, is a free service that updates social networks. Users can send messages from various sources (such as: iPod Touch, SMS text messaging, Yahoo! Messenger, and iGoogle) to over 40 social networking sites, including Plaxo, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Twitter Revolution
As a business owner, I’d been too busy even to realize there were that many social networking sites, let alone use them! I get the growing importance of blogging and leveraging social media for marketing. Twitter alone grew 700% in the last year to 10 million visitors, many working it for branding, customer service, and prospecting. What I didn’t get, though, was how hard — and easy — it could be.
Tools for Tweeting
The hard part is time — for designing a strategy, if nothing else. The easy part, at least theoretically, is “tweeting” for business through various tools. HootSuite, for instance, is a popular account management service that allows users to switch back-and-forth among accounts. There are also web-based tools for contact management, tracking and metrics, monitoring and alert services, and marketing.
Help on the Horizon
Now that I know what I don’t know, I’m thrilled there will be a CEO Think Tank session entitled, “Creating Competitive Advantage with Social Media: Integrating Web 2.0 into your Digital Strategy” on August 12. Guest speaker Chris Bryant (writer, entrepreneur, and new media pioneer) could explain why I don’t need to choose between updating my LinkedIn profile and sleeping.
If only there was a web-based service for scheduling the Tooth Fairy.
Tags: Business Improvement, General, Marketing
Posted in Business Improvement, General, Marketing | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 24th, 2009
As we say in the “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” workshop, people are the oil that keeps the gears turning in a company - and yet - who’s paying attention to the people who are critical to your business’ success this year? Here’s three tips that Enlightened Executives should heed for their Key People - their employees, their customers and themselves!
1. Manage your “Presenteeism” - and involve your employees:
As we recently learned at an event put on by the Eastern Montgomery Chamber of Commerce, ”presenteeism” is when your employees are at work, but not really working - because they’re focused on other things, worried or distracted or taking care of personal issues. Almost 80% of all workers are wasting time focused on money issues right now - and the cost of presenteeism is about 7.5 times the cost of absenteeism. Make sure that you’re keeping the lines of communication open - both one to one and in weekly meetings. Get them involved too - and make sure that you’re recognizing success every five to seven days aka as the folks at Gallup tell us to do. If your employees feel valued and know they’re contributing to the success of the business, they’ll be more committed.
2. Talk to your Customers - and learn about your market:
I think that I’ve said this a thousand times since last October. If you’re not talking with your customers right now, you’re missing the boat. Have a goal for each week and make sure that everyone in your organization is reaching out and touching base. Use the four questions: How are you doing? What’s doing on in your industry / community? What’s happening with our competition and how are we doing? You’ll learn some valuable information about your brand and your product AND cement relationships at the same time. As Bob Bloom says in “The Inside Advantage“, it’s all about imagainative and ubiquitous acts - and staying in touch is critical right now.
3. Keep in touch with other Business Owners, share success stories and keep learning:
There’s nothing like taking the time to check in with your peers and colleagues - but find out what’s working, as well as what’s not. Check out our “Keys to Success” video from our “Un-Marketing” event in December to find out what other business owners have done to promote growth and increase profitability. Take a look at this month’s addition of Inc magazine for the cover story on Jim Collins and what he’s finding in his research on how other companies have dealt with turbulance. Download David Meerman Scott’s free e-books on Viral Marketing - all great stuff!
Will you implement these 3 tips to manage or will you simply get caught in the eye of the storm? Let CEO Think Tank help you implement your next action.
Tags: Add new tag, Business Improvement, Enlightened Executives, Executive Coaching, Executive Roundtables, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
Posted in Business Improvement, General, Leadership, Strategy | 1 Comment »
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