After the QB says "Hike"

If you are not a fan of American football, you may not be familiar with the metaphor that I am using - but football fans should have no problem following this discussion.

Our team's General Manager sends scouts to watch the opposition. They may even watch videos of the opposition's Offensive team in action.

Our team's defensive Coach has created a bunch of killer plays. For a week or two, the defensive team practices play after play geared to take advantage of all the information which has been gathered about the opposition's QB and his style.

Then comes game day and our Defense is ready for the opposition's first play.

The opposition's QB says "Hike."

But the play that the opposition runs is one that has never been seen before - and our team's defense is completely unprepared.

Many companies are caught completely off guard when the market does something unexpected. Can you dance with the market?

Jeff Cornwall wrote "The Risk of Assuming the Market wants 'A', when it Really wants 'B'."

Real Gold: Brand Identity Info that You can Use

When it comes to branding, there are two major missions.

1. Establish your identity so clearly that your market never confuses you with your competion.

2. Maintain the reputation and mental positioning that your product requires.

The problem for the small business owner is that most branding information is either written for the big business world or it is insufficiently substantive.

But today's recommendation is an article which focuses on the first branding mission: Establishing your identity. This article is not shallow but substantive. It is written by a source that focuses on the big business world and it is written for the consumption of big business executives.

But this time, it is also useful for the small business owner. Brad VanAuken wrote: "The Brand Identity Checklist."

Significance, Provision and Digging

These three words are the key to marketing success when the supply of customers begins to dwindle.

Significance - Time is more valuable than money in a down-economy. Reduce the amount of time you spend on the insignificant.

Provision - Whichever competitor in your market is most useful to the market will be top dog, if all else is equal.

Digging - The purpose of questions is to learn, not to sell. You don't know nearly enough about your prospects and clients.

Tim Wackel wrote "Stop Blaming the Economy."

We want to invite you back again

Receiving an unsolicited invitation for a repeat performance is one of the sweetest experiences a person can have.

The actor is called back over and over again for encores. The suitor who receives love letters begging for his return. The business whose past clients are cramming their calendar full with repeat businesses. These are visions to which most people would aspire.

But how to make it happen?

Chris Brogan wrote an article about giving speeches. But what he wrote can be used in many different venues. The article is entitled Two Important Speaking Tips but these two points are almost universal.

Why I threw your Newsletter away

So anyway I opened up that newsletter which you sent me today and after looking through it for a couple of minutes, I threw it away.

Do you want to know why I threw it away? Does it matter to you that I threw it away?

Well, to be quite honest with you. It was too much puffery. What wasn't about how great you are and how great your product was - tended to all be stuff that I have heard a million times before.

If you really want me to retain the newsletters that you send me - if you really want me to spend time focusing on your message - there's one big secret to getting my attention. And here it is, listen closely now: Tel me something of substance that I can use. If the information in your newsletter is Practical and Valuable, then I will focus on what you are writing. Otherwise, we are both just wasting our time.

Ryan Allis wrote an article on five approaches to writing a newsletter which will be valued by the readers. However, I disagree with Ryan's first point. Benchmarking and Statistics are useful but only when they are objective. I don't care that much about how well your company is doing. I care about how well your company is treating me and how good my experiences have been with the product you sold me last year.

Borrow a page from the wise Politician

Politicians who stay in office for a long career learn the same lesson. Their constituency's voting patterns are not based on the strident special interest group demonstrators.

Sometimes to survive a primary, a politician will focus on pleasing special interest groups, but when it comes to the general election - the wise politician realizes that the independent vote is often the deciding factor. He also realizes that the size of a market segment is not based on the volume of the vociferous few.

As a business, to discover how to please your customer base, you need to discover how large the silent majority is and what the gripes of the silent majority are.

Seth Godin wrote "Listening to the Loud People."

Abandon Ship

The client who never follows through.

The client who always thinks he knows best.

The client who can never focus.

The client who blames others for his own procrastination.

Sometimes there comes a point at which its best to say "Abandon Ship! This account is sinking fast."

John Jantsch wrote "Do You Hold Your Customers Accountable?"

Your Brand is not your Logo - How To Destroy it.

Too many small business owner's confuse brand and brand identity. However you can't really blame them when a lot of article writers who should know better use the term brand when what they mean is brand identity.

Your company brand is your public corporate reputation. If the general public thinks that your corporation is reliable, trustworthy and customer friendly - that is part of your brand.

But another part of your brand is what the general public thinks that your company does. Some companies have ruined themselves by trying to do too many things under one brand identity.

That is why some companies, for example, Nestle, have separate brands for separate products. Sometimes consumers are surprised to learn that two products are from the same company. This is actually good for marketing as the segmentation of identity allows for more flexibility.

However, some business owners ruin their company's reputation. Ed Roach wrote a "tongue-in-cheek" article entitled: "Dork Your Brand!"

No Presumption of Innocence, Defendant!

You are accused of being a con-artist and a cheat.

The prosecution does not have to establish its case because in this court - there is no presumption of innocence.

This is the Buyer's court and you are the seller. In this court, the seller is presumed guilty.

There are some articles that I almost always skip over and don't recommend. One of thes is the Book Review. But every rule has its exception. If an article could stand on its own even without the Book which is being reviewed then it might just make it to this venue.

Ardath Albee wrote about a book that describes the last century of salesmanship. This book traces many of the traditional methods of salesmanship back to the deceptive practices of a company which was convicted of anti-trust practices before World War I.

Yet their methods of selling became part of the foundation of the culture of American salesmanship. The result is that most Americans find it very difficult to trust any salesperson who they meet for the very first time.

Ardath Albee lists eight of the reasons that twentieth century sales tactics don't work and gives a preview of the tactics which are suggested by the book which she reviews.

Ardath's article is entitled "Salespeople guilty until proven innocent." If you are a business owner or a salesperson, you really should read this article.

Quality or Money

Money has a tendency to cancel out Quality. Although there are definite exceptions to this rule, it is a general tendency.

If a customer buys on the basis of price, the customer will tend to reject Quality to get a good buy.

If an employee leaves one company because of a slightly larger salary at another company, it usually means that either the first company did not provide a quality work environment or the employee does not value nor give quality.

The stereotypical general reaction which occurs when a young beautiful woman marries an older wealthy man is based on the cynical assumption by society that the marriage is not based on quality.

If your company has to rely on cash incentives to retain your best customers, you are probably failing to provide either quality customer service or a quality product or failing in both areas.

Steve Yastrow wrote "A Bribe is not a Relationship."

Doc, You Gotta Help Me - I just Can't Seem To Stop Writing

In spite of the humorous title of this article, frequency of communication is an important business decision.

However, I would argue that consistency is actually more important than frequency. A few weeks ago, I had a booth at the North Georgia State Fair and this recommendation feature ground to a halt because I had too many things on my platter.

There are two main considerations in my opinion when considering frequency and both of them can be included under the single heading of Customer Expectation.

1. How will this frequency schedule affect my brand?
2. Can I commit to this frequency schedule?

I know that for this recommendation feature, I will probably eventually go back to once a day because I have found that twice a day places too much of a strain on my other responsibilities.

Seth Godin is both a writer and a start up visionary. (He is exemplary evidence that Marketing startups and Tech-Innovation startups don't have to play by the same rules.)

Seth wrote an article entitled "How Often Should You Publish?"

Conceptual Conduits

Ideas, Concepts and Viewpoints - "Let ME tell you what I think."

We have all met the bore. We may have occasionally been the bore.

But, communication is key to relationships. How should we communicate?

Big (non)-Secret: The Medium affects the effectiveness of Communication.

To borrow an idea from the past: A telegram should not read like a book, nor vice versa.

Yet some website owners don't know how to communicate effectively on the internet.

Sonia Simone wrote an article on improving the Quality of your content.

Now That Was A Mistake!

The company was run great, the product or service was great, the past customers had always been pleased and then the company's reputation was ruined because the event which they held went sour.

But you can avoid that and you can also harvest leads and conversions, if you follow some simple steps for holding a business event.

Shannon Cherry wrote "Effective Publicity, Anyone?"

Didn't even have to ask

Have you ever watched a medical show in which the surgeon holds out his hand and the assistant places the correct instrument in the surgeon's hand without the surgeon specifying which instrument was needed?

Have you ever been a regular patron of a restaurant, where the wait staff knew exactly what your order would be even before you placed it?

If you really want to be successful in client relationships, you should work on providing your clients what they want - when they want it.

Ivana Taylor explains how to achieve this level of service in an article entitled Use Better Delivery To Enhance Your Image Problem

Your 30 seconds with Warren Buffet

Your prospect is late for an appointment.

His attention is focused on where he is going.

Its a 30 second walk to his car.

You have exactly half a minute to convince him to talk with you again

What Do You Say?

Jonathan Farrington wrote "How’s Your Elevator Pitch? Mine’s Pretty Good."

Speaking Ancient Greek to the construction worker

Monday Morning and Tuesday Afternoon, I wrote about business stupidity and delusions. In this article I would like to talk about communicating with the prospect.

Can you describe the prospect to me? How old is he or she? Is he married, single or divorced? Does he/she have children? Are they young or old? What is distracting him or her from listening to you?

Does your prospect know how to speak technobabble? If you are in the financial industry, can the prospect speak like Barrons, WSJ and an HBS faculty PHD?

There are two major problems that occur when many entrepreneurs attempt to speak to their prospects. First they don't know who their prospect is and Second, they try to speak as if their prospect is an industry insider.

Oh and just to make it more complicated, their target market is not homogenous. (That's technobabble for say that there is a lot of diversity among their prospects.)

To successfully market to your prospects, you need to identify (and I don't mean Guess) the different categories of prospects you have, you need to identify (and I don't mean guess) what their lifestyles (or if you are B2B, what their company is like on the inside) and then you have to learn their language.

Mike Moran wrote a nice article entitled "Do We Really Understand Personas?"

You're just guessing

In the yesterday morning's post, I talked about business stupidity. In this post lets talk about delusionary decision-making.

Oddly enough, many business owners don't realize just how much guessing and "making it up" they are engaged in.

They create marketing positions without surveying the market. They create Value Propositions without any source statistics and they try to sell benefits without knowing what the customer wants.

In other words, many business owners live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Ivana Taylor was rescued from this land of delusions and wrote an article entitled: "Is What You Say What Your Customers Get?"

Your Email Should Not Read Like An Infomercial

Recently my wife and I were watching a Movie on a non-network local market TV station. The commercial breaks were filled primarily with the most obvious infomercials for low end products.

I said to my wife, "If that product was so good, he wouldn't need to YELL so much."

Sometimes an email writer feels that he has to convince the reader to click on the links in his email. Listen closely because I am going to let you in on a BIG secret. If the content of the page is fantastically great, then all you will need to do is tell what the page is about - your target audience will say "wow" and click on the link.

But if you say "WOW, you won't believe how GREAT the content on MY web page is." You're audience will not be convinced no matter how hard you try.

Ardath Albee wrote on keeping your emails brief, bold and germane

Who's your lead off batter?

In Baseball, the first four batters on the roster are the most important. Many coaches put the strongest batter in the fourth position which has been nicknamed "the clean up batter."

But in writing copy for your articles, you don't get three tries to get it right!

The two most important items for your article's copy are the Headline and the Lead Sentence. The next item (if the reader sticks around for the third item) is the opening paragraph. Bringing up fourth, which is a far weaker position in writing copy than in baseball, is the first sub-heading.

Karon Thackston wrote "Get To The Point."

P.S. The first two comments (currently the only two comments) are amusing.

Suffer the little owners

Sometimes business owners succeed by accident.

Or maybe that is just by irritated reaction. You see, while outside of the business world I can be tolerant of the follies of others, within the business world I expect a certain degree of professionalism.

Some business owners seem to lack a lot of brainpower. If they have been in business for several years, they must know something - but regarding some of them - "You couldn't prove it by me."

Two of the stupidest attitudes that one encounters among business owners are: 1.) the owner that thinks that he is the expert on every matter, he has ever read or heard anything about and gets upset if a specialist does not do things the way he expects and 2) the one who thinks that a specialist can produce something that will please the owner without the owner taking the time to communicate his desires to the specialist.

PPPLLLLEEEAAASSSSEEE!!!!!!!!

However,

in the real world free-lancers have to try to pull the project along no matter how low the client's IQ may be.

Kristen Fischer wrote an article about dealing with a business owner who won't discuss his wants and then rejects your work. Although Kristin focuses primarily on the writer and graphic industry this article is useful for anyone who is a "creative" freelancer.

Can you appear tonight on our TV news program?

Almost every news program occasionally has guest experts. Have you ever seen your competition featured as an expert? Have you ever wanted to know the steps necessary to take to be viewed by the Mainstream Media (MSM) as an industry expert?

Dan Forbush recently provided an article for reporters and bloggers to reprint as if they had written it - even though it was actually produced by PR News Wire. Even though the article pretends to be written by a different entity, the blog to which this posting links decided to make it clear to the reader that this was a RELEASE from PR News Wire.

The article is entitled: Steps for Turning Your Organization into a Heavily Quoted Source

To receive Trust, you must first be worthy

Recently, I talked about the need to be genuine.

Today, let's talk about being "real." Real people have convictions and opinions. Real people are not always trying to hide. Real people have the courage to be real. Real people are loyal to their relationships.

In other words, to be real is to be engaged in the humanity of others.

Sonia Simone wrote "Are you trustworthy?"

Are you speaking to Smithers?

If only Charles Montgomery Burns can decide to buy your widgets then talking to Waylon Smithers is a waste of time.

But how can you tell whether you are talking to the decision maker or not, without blowing the sale?

Wendy Weiss wrote: "Identifying the Decision-maker."

Stay in Touch, No Really - STAY in touch

There are no short cuts to doing things right!

The internet has made so many things possible and less expensive, but many of the things that can be done less expensively should have been done even when it cost postage!

But I don't have the time, you say? You can't afford not to!!!!!

One of the things that every successful business needs is the attitude that every customer is our only client - and that means keeping the relationship alive.

Don't be like the boyfriend who never calls or sends a gift but only shows up when he wants a date!

Be like the Romeo who sweeps the girl off her feet because he never lets her forget that he cares.

Bernadette Doyle wrote "Are You Making This Marketing Mistake?"

Would you like to start an E-mail newsletter?

One of the most important facts about successful newsletter publishing is that the wants of the reader are more important than the wants of the publisher. If more than 20% of your newsletter is about something you want to say, then you are NOT going to have a successful newsletter!

Focus on providing your readers with the things that they are interested in - and they are not nearly as interested in you or your company as you seem to think that they are - TRUST ME on this one. (You'll thank me later.)

Corte Swearingen wrote Ten Ezine Startup Tips

P.S. Tape the first two sentences in Tip#1 to the monitor of the screen you use to create your newsletter and re-read it once an hour !!!!!!!!!!

Trying to wholesale beef to Baskin-Robbins

The title of this post is intended as a "tip of the hat" to Seth Godin. But this post is not really about the book Meatball Sundae, as much as it is about identifying the right market for your service or product.

A retail unit that sells ice cream products, but does not sell any bread and meat sandwiches is not the right market for a salesperson who is selling wholesale beef.

So, how do you determine where to focus your marketing attention?

Ardath Albee wrote: "Who's Your Target Market?"

Why does Trust based selling work?

Many people who have not mastered trust based selling do not believe that it works. Sometimes someone who "tries" it without truly being trustworthy becomes convinced that the fault does not lie with himself but rather with the method.

One of the biggest hurdles of trust based selling is that it can only be mastered by someone who is truly genuine. The truth is that many entrepreneur's have an "It's only business" attitude. If that is your attitude then you can never master Trust based selling because when you try it you are a phony.

The reason that trust based salespeople are masters of their craft is because they truly do care about their clients and when their client suffers, they bleed.

Charles Green wrote an article explaining why the idea that trust based selling doesn't work is based on a misconception.

That's so 2003!

In almost every aspect of I and E publishing there is a tendency to cling to methods or truisms from years ago. Only problem is that technology changes so rapidly that if you are reading something that is more than 24 months old - it is almost definitely outdated.

In fact, most industry people cite 18 months as the statistical average for a tech cycle.

One of the areas which has changed dramatically in the last few years is the topic of SE ranking. Many business owners think that they know all about SEO but most of the business owners whom I meet are hung up on something they heard about 2 years ago or something that someone told them recently but their source hasn't read anything up to date.

Karon Thackston is a professional writer who wrote an article a few weeks ago, in which she shows that keywords while still important do not produce the kind of results most business people seem to think that they do.

Karon Thackston wrote "How Many Keywords Are Enough?"

No Testimonials? No problem.

Almost every business owner knows how important testimonials are to the success of a business, but there are times when you may not have any testimonials to offer. What do you do then?

Dean Rieck wrote a very good article on how to promote your company even when you do not have testimonials. Tou should read this article, even if you have plenty of testimonials. It will help you, also.

With your clients: There's a time to talk and a time to be silent

When do your clients want to hear from you?

When do they really wish you would SHUT up, already?

When do they feel neglected?

When do they feel inundated by too many messages?

When do they really wish you would use a different method of communication?

If you can answer all these without guessing or "making it up" out of thin air, then you don't need to read today's recommendation.

Deborah Garry wrote: "Communication is key with your customers."

Identify the reason for loss of sale

Sometimes knowing why a prospect decides not to buy, helps a salesperson recover the sale. Leanne Hoagland-Smith explains the seven most common reasons why prospects say no.

The Motivated Prospect

Every human being is motivated.

If your prospect is human, they are motivated.

The difficulty many salespeople have is identifying what motivates their current prospect.

Actually, many salespeople never even attempt to identify what motivates their prospect. They have a canned presentation and they deliver the same presentation, time after time.

However, if you really want to make sales, you need to identify what motivates your prospect. Your prospect is motivated by wants, needs, dreams and a desire to alleviate pains.

Jonathan Farrington wrote "Find the Buyer's Motivators."

How DO I Know I Can Trust You?

Just because you say to a prospect that your company is trustworthy does not mean that you build their confidence. In fact making that statement may have the opposite effect to what you intended.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. - William Shakespeare - Hamlet

However, there are things which your company can do to build trust and to help build a referral network because of trust.

Ardath Albee wrote "Marketing Behaviors that Build Trust"