 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category
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In addition to a clear strategy, good measures, and streamlined processes, reinventing enterprises requires a focus on personal relationships and human potential. As a result, it depends upon emotional connection and excellent communication to function well. The objective business world has often struggled with the subjects of emotions and communication. If they are considered at all, they are spoken of-in businesses and business schools-in somewhat demeaning terms such as “soft” skills.
Something that I learned as a consultant that I didn’t understand very well as an executive was that the notion of command and control with knowledge workers is largely a delusion. When I worked in a large company, people who reported to me would often nod their head “yes” when I asked them to do something. With regularity I would later discover that they really didn’t know what I was asking for, and many times I really didn’t either.
In large Enterprises these types of command and control misconceptions have the effect of making executives think that things are changing faster than they really are. After I began consulting, it became clear that co-creating solutions and building broad relationships was really the only way to achieve sustainable and productive change. It’s hard, but it is required. There is probably no business management area where I have changed my view more than on this one. The truth is that with knowledge work, the command and control mindset needs to be demoted, and communications and emotions need to increase in importance.
If knowledge work isn’t co-created, chances are it’s not going to get implemented productively. Co-creation is different from consensus, however, because co-creation also requires a decision maker. Even though co-creating work produces slower starts, it will lead to faster and more sustainable results. Investing a little extra time now will save a lot of time later. If you want something done productively and sustainably, you’ll probably need to put more of your own skin in the game-in conjunction with those who are actually doing the work.
The objective nature of Scientific Management effectively bred subjectivity out of businesses during the 20th century. Nonetheless, it is very important to articulate how you’re feeling so that you can better connect with how others are feeling. Emotions are important to productive knowledge work and Enterprise reinvention. They increase energy, clarity, and the productivity power of relationships. In this context, key motivators include the desire to win, achievement of something worthwhile, a sense of personal power, approval and acceptance, and recognition of efforts.
In the Operate work-behavior area of the an enterprise reinvention system, feelings influence actions which produces results. As part of this, it’s important to remember that people ultimately love others because of how they make them feel. We too often forget how important the need is to be appreciated, that neglect can often be more damaging than abuse, and that if you really want to honor someone, you should ask for their help. Leaders need to lead with their heads and their hearts, and in difficult times, emotional resistance can only be overcome by a stronger emotion. It’s important to turn negative emotions into positive ones, with special emphasis on the positive emotions of optimism, hope, faith, courage, ambition, determination, self-confidence, and self-worth.
In addition to elevating the status of emotions in Enterprises, communication also needs much more emphasis for companies to be more productive. This requires integrating the four steps of Enterprise Reinvention: Envision-Design-Build-Operate. Where a Design-oriented person might be overly blunt, an Operate-oriented person can instinctively be overly nice. Combining the blunt facts of Design with the emotional sensitivity of is the most productive answer. In practice it is called tact. It is the equivalent in the medical world, of the nurse who has the ability to give his or her patient a shot without having it hurt too much.
Productive communications are socially negotiated. This is harder than being blunt or telling someone what they want to hear. In the communication process, it’s important to connect the dots between where you’ve been, where you are, and where you need to go, because if something doesn’t fit with the past, it will very often be discarded or misread by people. This logical and emotional transition from the past to the future is necessary for sustainability.
Effective communication requires leaders to ask great questions and stick to a few key points. Asking questions instead of giving orders empowers people. Statements limit creativity. When you communicate, it is important to articulate what needs to stay the same, what needs to change, the steps required, and the progress being made. Consistent with this, it is important to have a clear and formal communication strategy to control the dialogue and to channel formal and informal organizational energy toward achieving the vision of the Enterprise.
Focus is as important to communications as it is to each step of the knowledge work productivity system. Short-term memory is limited to about five items. Three is better. If you have more than five points, people won’t remember any of them. To communicate productively, it’s important to be consistent, give people something that they can’t get anywhere else, and make them genuinely feel wanted and loved.
Productive relationships are essential ingredients in effective and efficient Enterprises. To activate them, the Operate step needs to help individuals achieve something as part of the company that they can’t achieve on their own.
Enterprises need leaders who set the tone, connect with people’s personal lives, support employees when they struggle, provide levity in difficult times, and motivate people to achieve the firm’s vision. Motivation requires the combination of emotions and communications. As humans we all need to be treated fairly, trusted, have a chance to grow, and have a vision that is larger than ourselves.
The Enterprise Reinvention system is an important mechanism to activate the human spirit on a sustainable basis. It requires Envision-Design-Build-Operate as a total system. All are needed to help Enterprises, functions, and individuals productively self-organize-using a unified framework and the cybernetic process.
To set the system in motion, it’s necessary to energize human relationships and activate human potential through the Operate work-behavior area. This requires that companies co-create the future with their customers, recognize and capitalize upon informal as well as formal organizations, coach people effectively, and communicate with a combination of objectivity and emotion.
Jack Bergstrand is an expert in enterprise reinvention and knowledge work productivity management. He founded Brand Velocity, Inc., the first company ever prototyped using knowledge work productivity principles, and created the Strategic Profiling (R) instrument, a tool to help firms accelerate and improve important enterprise projects. To learn more about his book, “Reinvent Your Enterprise,” visit: http://www.ReinventYourEnterprise.com/.
By Jeff Becker
Selling your business is something that most business owners do only once in a lifetime. So how do you make sure everything goes well? Many business owners consider working with a business broker, an expert in selling businesses, to make sure they maximize the sell price of their business. Is this always a good idea? Lets look at the pros and cons of working with a broker:
Why you should work with a business broker when selling your business
1) A broker has (hopefully!) sold many businesses for prior clients, and you can use that expertise to learn the basics of the process and avoid making careless mistakes.
2) They can act as a facilitator to the transaction, making sure that negotiations go smoothly, the transaction proceeds at the right pace, and that the business is ultimately sold with all parties satisfied.
3) A broker may reduce your upfront costs of selling the business, as many brokers will pay for creating sales collateral and advertising the business at their own expense in exchange for a fee when the business sells. They also may have insights as to what advertising mechanisms deliver the best “bang for the buck” to make sure as many potential buyers as possible are exposed to your business.
4) They can provide expert advise related to market conditions and can help evaluate potential offers to buy your business. For example, a business broker will typically provide a free initial estimate of the sales price of your business, and can provide information on what similar businesses may have recently sold for in your area.
5) A business broker can help preserve the confidentiality of the sale. By having a third party involved, buyers can interact with the broker instead of the business owner, making it easier to protect the identity of the business for sale.
With so many good reasons why a broker can help sell a business, no wonder that most businesses that are sold ultimately involve a business broker. However, there are downsides to working with a broker that a prudent business owner should consider.
Why you should NOT work with a business broker when selling your business
1) Business brokers may charge a large commission. The amount of commission varies based on many factors, such as the ultimate sales price, geographic location, and the skills of the broker. For a “main street” style business selling for less than a million dollars, it would not be unusual to see between a 10% to 20% commission fee. Some brokers will also have a guaranteed minimum, on the order of $10,000 or $15,000. You should only hire a business broker if you believe that the time and effort involved justifies this price, or if you believe they will raise the selling price by more than the amount of their commission.
2) A great broker is worth their weight in gold, but a bad (or even mediocre) broker costs far more than they are worth. In many cases, the sale will be lost due to incompetence on the part of the business broker. If you are not confidant that the business broker can not only increase the transaction value, but can also increase the chances of actually getting the business sold, then you are probably better of managing the sale on your own.
3) Do not work with a business broker if you go into the transaction not knowing what you want out of it. Many times business brokers will contact you proactively, letting you know that there are buyers interested in buying your business. Selling a business is a big decision, and one that you should enter into with a great deal of care. Make sure that you are talking to a broker because YOU made the decision to sell, and that you have properly educated yourself about the process and the ultimate consequences of your decision.
Working with a business broker, when done properly and for the right reasons, can be a great benefit to selling your business. By educating yourself about the different factors involved, you have taken an important first step towards getting your business sold. Best of luck!
Jeff Becker has bought, run, and sold his own small business using a business broker. He subsequently became a licensed business broker and has advised both small business and Fortune 500 companies on business transactions. He provides insights to the business broker world to business owners interested in selling their business through his website, Business Broker Secrets, at http://www.businessbrokersecrets.com
“Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game, client service wins the game.” Lately, I have been thinking about aspects that differentiate one vendor from another. While expertise, experience, affordability, and ease of communication featured high on the list, client servicing made a distinct appearance.
Effective client servicing is very often what differentiates the winner from the plodders, in today’s highly competitive business landscape. Exemplary client service practices can give your product/service the extra impetus it needs to outshine rival product/service. And since finding new clients is much more expensive than retaining existing ones, the need for superior client servicing gets amplified. Also, a lost customer would mean lost revenue and an unhappy customer can damage your reputation.
With so much at stake, I don’t believe any organization would not want to service their clients well. In view of this, I would like to share some quintessential aspects of effective client servicing.
Honesty is the best policy
Honesty and sincerity go a long way with clients. Do not pretend that you have answers to every problem they have, if you don’t. Admitting a weakness in your knowledge or process is better than outright lies. The genuineness of your concern to formulate an effective solution to your client requirements will win you their loyalty and long term partnership.
Foresee you clients’ needs
Your business plan should be built around understanding and anticipating your clients’ needs and aspirations. Make sure you offerings are in sync with your clients’ expectations and delivers on those expectations satisfactorily. A mismatch would lead to unpleasant experience.
Listen to your clients
Effective listening entails truly making an effort to absorb and comprehend what is being said and acknowledge that understanding. Learning to listen is a key skill that will serve you well in all aspects of your business. Attend to even the smallest details. Try putting yourself in the client’s shoe and endeavor to understand their point of view.
Resolve conflicts in time
Don’t allow issues to remain unaddressed and mould and fester. Prompt and timely resolution holds the key to good client servicing. Don’t shy away from tendering an apology even if you are not necessarily in the wrong. Intervention by a senior member to placate an important client and seek effective solution can be effective at times.
Communicate and follow-up periodically
Your client service initiative should not stop with completion of sales process. The endeavor should be to maintain a free flow of information between you and your clients. The communication should be designed to educate clients about your product/service and organization. Newsletters, interactive forums, and other forms of social media are effective tools to communicate key messages.
Seek to build long lasting relationship
It is imperative to build long lasting relationship with your clients and not just perfecting a singular non-repetitive client. Building an effective relationship involves being responsive to client requests. Every effort should be made to accommodate client requests or to explain options that are available. A client, who feels appreciated, cared for and understood is less likely to leave in pursuit of better service and/or price. Effective relationship can compensate for poor performance, but it cannot be used or rather abused to justify low grade performance.
In short, superior client servicing is critical to your survival in the market place. It should be the cornerstone of your business and will help you retain a loyal client base.
Kneoteric is a leading online marketing company providing PPC Management Services, online marketing consultancy, SEO services and link building services.
By Paul Godines 
When selling consulting, you will need some highly successful methods to get clients. Because one of the most difficult issues that every business owner has, especially during a recession is getting clients. This might make you wonder if there are even enough clients to make it worth staying in business for.
When in fact that’s not the case, especially during a recession, business consultants are HIGHLY needed. Whatever you service or product you are likely the answer to someone’s problem. Even if your product is an audio made with your kids digital recorder, you can make an impact on the world.
More importantly its not how much you give but the value you offer that will earn you tens of thousands of dollars of income. So, lets start with creating a simple method you can use to sell your consulting.
Begin by realizing your not a business consultant, or a transcriptionist, or a virtual assistant you’re a teacher. That’s your job, whose primary role is to discover your prospects needs and than if applicable educate your client about exactly how you can bring value to them with your services and or products.
With that in mind, lets move on. All you need to do is create a comfortable conversation which helps you discover their needs. I suggest you do that by using just a few well placed words.
Here’s a simple dialogue you can use to uncover opportunities and enroll clients;
• So tell me what’s going on – use this to discover opportunities.
• What result do you want – find out exactly what they want.
• What’s the evidence you will use to know you have achieved your goals – determine if you can deliver those results.
• What’s that worth to you – find out to what degree they value those results. I use a scale of 1 – 5 for example.
• It sounds like – here you help them see the possibility of reaching those results.
• We can help you achieve those results – here you actually make a statement with confidence that you can achieve the results they want.
• Is this something you would like to move forward with – here you are asking them if they would like to actually achieve those results.
• Ok here’s the next step – here you take the time to take them to the very next step, usually the procedure involved with enrolling.
• Confirm – get them to confirm to you the nest step, make sure they know exactly what to do next, and when to do it.
Now what makes this system so successful is in how you use this list. Start using it with friends, clients, prospects and family, force yourself to ask them what’s going on. What they would like to see happen, ask them how they would know they achieved their goal.
Than ask them what its worth to them to achieve their goal, tell them what it sound like to you. What’s most important is to be casual and very relaxed. Once you have some practice – you should do this at least 50 times – you will find enrolling clients extremely easy.
If you’re ready to go to the next step, and become a High Priced Expert than go to Adapt on a Dime.com http://www.adaptonadime.com Get your FREE “Quick Start Guide To Become A High Priced Expert.”
Paul Godines Coaches Professionals to become High Priced Experts using Joint Ventures. Leveraging and Multiplying your Skills, Knowledge and Experience into a High Priced Consulting Practice.
By Jan Richards
Your vision of the future – whether it’s positive or negative – is a much more powerful factor than you might ever guess in helping the shape your future success.
A vision that works motivates the person or group who hold it to take action to make the vision come true, no matter what obstacles they find ahead.
Effective visions are ones that appeal powerfully to both emotions and logic.
Discover, express and focus on a vision of the future that’s clear, positive, compelling. Think of creating your vision as a way to “pre-experience” success, in detail. Think of the vision, itself, as a snapshot or preview of the future you are creating.
Here are tips about how you can create your team or individual vision:
1. Create the time and space for it.
You need time to relax and let ideas flow. That requires time and space away from the pressures of the regular workday. Schedule the time in advance.
Create an environment for the visioning work that’s free of interruptions and enables you or you and your team to think expansively, clearly, honestly, creatively.
If you’re working with a group, engage a good facilitator if there’s no one in your group, presently, who has those skills.
2. Envision a compelling future.
Start by setting a target date by which you hope your vision will be real. Perhaps that’s 5, 10 or more years away. Whatever it is, make it a specific date.
Next, imagine what you will have achieved by this time. Imagine in detail. “Be there now.”
If it is a business vision you are creating imagine what your customers, collaborators, and competitors are saying at this future time about you or your group, your results and how you created them:
- When you see and hear their reactions, what do you like?
- What do you want to change, about what they are saying about you, in that future state?
Now, as you imagine being in this future, imagine how you feel about what you have achieved by this time:
- What do you like best?
- What do you want to add or change?
3. Capture and sort the input to create the vision.
Capture the ideas you’re generating in writing or graphics, whether you’re creating your own vision, or working with a group.
Sort the information in some easy way as you move through the process. You can use mindmaps, clustering techniques, or structured brainstorming exercises.
You can also create a graphic template ahead of time of a metaphor you want to use to catch and organize the ideas that lead to your ultimate vision. For example, some people use a metaphor of taking a journey, mountain climbing, surfing, or building a city. There are many other metaphors you can also use.
4. Refine and post the vision. Then follow up.
Take the visioning work you’ve done, and distill it, whether you’re working on your own, or in a group.
Produce a simple final vision statement or graphic.
Post the vision in a prominent place where you or your team will see it regularly. That may be a physical space, or if you’re working as part of a virtual or dispersed team, post it on an online space you share.
And now I would like to invite you to claim your Free Instant Access to “Firewalking: Leading Teams Successfully Through Uncertain Times” when you visit http://www.jgrichardsresults.com from Jan Richards, J.G. Richards Consulting – Turning Business Goals Into Great Results.
There are five key factors that are essential to today’s decision making:
•Intuition – concerning the direction events may follow.
•Flexibility – concerning a willingness to accept foreign information.
•Initiative – in problem solving, decision making, and creativity.
•Creativity – in opening wider ranges of alternative ideas.
•Adaptability – to new conditions not anticipated earlier.
Intuition: Our expanding technology is daily making available a wide range of new potential products and services on one hand. On the other hand, our expanding and mobile population is daily creating demand for new types of products, thanks to new needs and desires. To decide what your company wants, and to blend it with what the customers want, requires value judgments.
Key executives know that in choosing between broadly separated alternatives, they must often rely on intuition in blending the insufficient information available for decision making. How, for example, can a hosiery manufacturer be sure the trend is to longer or shorter skirts? No decision-maker can ever be sure!
As the output of technology advances and as the interactions of communications are speeded up, permitting reports on mass tastes and trends at an overnight pace, the level of intuition required in these areas to make future value judgments must rise. This is an apparent contradiction with the widely held image that new management skills in the information-gathering area are dramatically reinforcing decision making as a science.
The fact is that the new tools of specialized knowledge in such areas as technology and market research, when compiled with the emerging computer technology, are broadening the known choices for a decision-making executive. An executive must be prepared to work to develop intuition and must not be afraid to act intuitively as information streams around him or her.
Flexibility: In the use of one’s executive intuition (in solving a problem or in reaching a decision), when “all the information is in that we have time to
gather,” we do well to remind ourselves of the need for flexible thinking. We can dam up our intuitive capacities if we become rigid concerning areas we are willing to include in the search of alternatives in the problem solving and the decision-making processes.
This flexibility is close to creative thinking – but not quite the same: the creative process applies largely to the creation of alternatives to our decision making process, while flexibility applies more to the problem solving area.
As we attempt to define the cause or causes of our problems, we benefit by staying flexible. If we prejudge a cause of a problem – or restrict our search for causes – we cut the ground out from underneath the subsequent decision making process.
Initiative: In both problem solving and decision making, a high level of personal executive initiative needs to be exhibited.
• A desire to look for solutions to problems.
• A desire to examine alternative actions.
• A spirit of discontent to fuel creative wonderings.
The subject of initiative is subjective. It is one thing to know the techniques involved in executive decisions – it is quite another to want to enter these processes with both feet.
“Initiative,” “verve,” “drive,” motivation,” or whatever you wish to call it, continues to be the prime variable in the competitive arena – between companies and between executives (assuming all other factors to be relatively even: i.e., personality conflicts, no nepotism, no great educational variables, no great intellectual variables, etc.).
Creativity is a key that can in degree be learned and cultivated as a habit. A person with initiative can become a more creative person by initiating a feeling of discontent with things as they are. Also, a naturally creative mind can prod its “body” to take more initiative in order to see fulfillment of its creative impulses.
Analyze your strengths in both areas – and use one strength to help you raise your sights in the corresponding area.
Adaptability: Behavioral scientists tell us that the true measurement of intelligence is the ability to adjust or adapt quickly to a changing situation. To this extent, adaptability to a changing situation is different from flexibility of thought; it can be said that we should be flexible in our adaptability.
A rapidly changing marketplace may require an executive to adapt to conditions created by his or her competitors. In the process, he or she is hopefully:
• flexible in examining his or her alternate methods of adapting to conditions, and
• flexible in determining what the real cause of his or her problems may be.
All strategic decisions in the executive arena require a degree of adaptability to changing events both inside and outside the company. The complexities of today’s marketplace dictate that rapid adaptability must be a characteristic of the contemporary businessperson.
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Michael McCann is a 25-year veteran of developing unique and professional business development programs that create tangible results for individuals and companies. Let him help you instantly…free!
“I’m a writer and I blog.” This sentence, posted at the end of a consumer complaint to any business should strike fear into the heart of its recipient. Note to self: You’re about to be fricasseed. Time to take action: yesterday.
Faster than a polymorphic virus, more powerful than a super computer, it’s [strike up hero's leitmotif] Today’s Blogger! TB’s golden prose (heck, it doesn’t even have to be good writing), shot off the keyboard with a click, is rocketed into cyberspace, multiplied across social media platforms, posted in ezines and consumer complaint sites, and comes back to bite the recipient in the arse. Hard.
The world has changed, and we business owners need to wake up and smell the quadruple Venti nonfat latte. What once would have been a matter between a consumer and a business now can bring down that business, even a Goliath-size business, permanently. David’s stone? A laptop and a WiFi connection. Here are …
10 Tips on Surviving Today’s Blogging Community
- Get real with yourself. Online reputations can make or break your business. Nowhere to run to, baby. Nowhere to hide.
- Pay attention to complaints. They’re not going to go away until you do something about them.
- Give good service in the first place. Even after a complaint is satisfied, the complaint has proliferated across multiple platforms. Prevention is the best remedy to any complaint.
- Read and respond to e-mail quickly. (Hint: if you’ve assigned the task of reading and responding to e-mail to someone who either isn’t married to you or doesn’t have at least a 51% stake in your company, you might want to rethink that decision.) Same goes for phoned-in complaints and letters via snail mail (does anyone actually send those anymore?)
- Have an ongoing dialogue with your consumers. If you have a solid relationship in the first place, it’s unlikely that one error will make someone call in the dogs. (Until they e-mail your underling and don’t get a satisfactory response.)
- Monitor the Web. You should regularly scan for your company name, especially on consumer complaint sites. What you don’t know can hurt you. Badly.
- If you screw up, admit it. Admit it on the same blog you’re blasted on (even if you continue to get blasted, hold your temper).
- Offer to make it right. Be unreasonable with yourself. That means going above and beyond what the situation calls for.
- If the blogger was mistaken, ask politely for a retraction. If you don’t get one, post the truth without sounding defensive. You can assign this task to the same person who failed to answer the original complaint in a timely manner, but I wouldn’t.
- This one you learned in business school: the customer is always right. Don’t put being right ahead of being in business. The online community is large, but very, very close-knit.
Yvonne Buchanan’s company, epublisher Knowledge Base Publishing, does joint ventures with authors of ebooks to edit, publish and market their products, some of which are promoted on her free article submission site,800Muses.com
By Kevin Dervin
How would your clients and prospects describe your marketing personality?
Every small business person has a number of qualities and characteristics that make up their unique marketing personality. Are you conscious of what kind of marketing identity you’re projecting… in other words, how people see you?
This really came to my attention in observing behaviors at a recent Home, Lawn & Garden Show in Kansas City. I spent some time supporting my friend and business partner’s booth at the trade show.
Now trade shows are a little bit of a different animal, but it was unmistakable observing the various marketing personalities. For several of the small business owners displaying, trade show marketing is no doubt an important piece of their overall marketing efforts.
Before I cover some of the marketing personalities that were observed, let’s discuss why this is even important.
One of the ways I’ve always encouraged small business clients to think about marketing is to picture a wall. There is the side that you see because you’re inside your business. But, there’s also another side to the wall that your clients, prospects, and potential referral partners see.
Are your marketing efforts designed from the outside in, or from the inside out? If you only focus on what you see and what you like (i.e., your side of the wall) in your marketing efforts, there’s a decent chance you won’t connect with all the prospects that are possible. Because they’re looking for what’s important to them, and not what’s important to you.
I’m not saying to try and be something that you’re not. It’s more a matter of being conscious of your marketing personality so you can set your marketing processes & systems up to best leverage it.
OK, here are some of the marketing personalities that I observed at the Home, Lawn & Garden Show:
- Extreme Introvert – One individual sat in his booth and I never saw him engage a single person unless he was spoken to or asked a question first. It appeared to be a “Field of Dreams” approach. “Well my display is beautiful. If people want what I have, they’ll come and ask me for it.” It was as if he didn’t want to impose on anyone, not even the people who clearly stopped to learn more about his service.
- Look at ME! Look at ME! – OK, I didn’t see the rainbow colored afro wig. But, you do see some things that are clearly set up to try and draw as much attention as possible. What strikes me is the lack of focus on a clearly defined target market. It didn’t seem to matter whether people needed the product/service or not.
- Extreme Extrovert – Everyone was a friend. Smiles and, “Hello, how are you?” were plentiful. This was different from the Look at ME type. I suspect some these folks did well assuming they focused on engaging in conversations with visitors that fell within their target market.
- Oblivious – Ever been involved in a one-way conversation? It was wild. Questions were not answered and a dialogue was clearly not engaged. He had the things on his mind he wanted to communicate and that was that.
- Attentive – This was my favorite to observe. This person was clearly mindful of the traffic. Smiles, nods and hello’s were given, but not necessarily with the intent to stop anyone. When someone stopped at the booth, if the hesitation was appropriate then he engaged. The conversation was polite, but focused with a clear call to action at the end of the discussion.
There is no scientific conclusion here to say who did better than anybody else at the trade show. It was just observation of the various marketing personalities I noticed.
The things is how does this marketing personality carry over to other marketing tactics like networking, direct mail or social networking? Something to think about.
And now I’d like to invite you find more FREE articles and resources to increase your own small business marketing effectiveness at http://www.MarketingActionClub.com Just come have a look around to see what all is available.
Kevin Dervin is co-founder of the Marketing Action Club and creator the the Get More Great Clients marketing system.
There is no such thing as job security, especially in the IT industry. It matters not whether – like me – you have thirty-plus years of experience, an MBA, are a Certified IT Project Manager, have published a book, or any other past accomplishment. Potential clients or employers only care about the value you can bring to their organization today. It was this way in 2001 when the tech industry tanked, and is again in this economy, forcing us to continuously adapt, retool, rethink and re-behave.
No longer is it “safe” to rely on a single source of income. No longer is it a “sure thing” that our 401-Ks will even retain their values, let alone provide gains over time. According to IRS statistics, 93% of public stock market traders lose money each year. According to the Social Security Administration, over half of Americans must continue working at age 65 or later to supplement their retirement.
In an environment where our “superior” resumes are thrown in a stack of thousands for consideration, we must change our approach. Recruiters are overwhelmed with sellers and a tiny fraction of buyers.
The solution is to think strategically, but from from new angles; to find new ways of attracting customers or clients; to become the hunted rather than the hunter.
We do this by becoming mentors, experts in our field, leaders willing to educate and train our prospects without expecting anything in return. Only by first earning trust and respect will our prospects be willing to do business with us, hire us, or invest their precious capital. This concept is called Attraction Marketing, and it’s no longer the exclusive domain of network marketing plans and affiliate programs. It is based on a long-held principle that, helping others achieve their financial (or life) goals automatically helps you achieve yours.
In years past, relying on a single employer to provide for our families was a point of honor and virtue. Today, it’s a case of “what have you done for me lately.” In today’s economy, we need a second source of income just to cover our teenagers’ text-messaging bills, let alone to stock up a lagging retirement fund.
It is time for managers and professionals — technical or administrative — to become entrepreneurs, to find one or more alternative source of income, and to automate that source so that it consumes a minimum amount of bandwidth. Can Attraction Marketing do all that? It certainly can!
For example, you can have a full-time job while mentoring others online in your spare time, building your expertise and followings on various Social Networks. It may not provide instant cash, but the lifetime dividends this “investment” returns can be enormous.
So, what is your passion? What is your favorite hobby? Do others think you’re already an expert in something? Are any ideas coming into your head as you’re reading this that you believe others would find interesting? Are you willing to share your expertise for free in order to attract a loyal following on the Internet? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you qualify to build an Attraction Marketing business. If built correctly, it will take little of your daily time — in fact, much of it can work on auto-pilot — allowing you to continue with your job and life.
The bottom line is this: In this economic climate, how are you going to retire at any age without multiple streams of income? Your job consumes forty-plus hours per week. If you could invest one hour per day to build a lifetime of revenue, would it be worth it?
Something to think about.
Dan James is Senior VP at LarkinSoft (http://www.LarkinSoft.com), a consulting firm specializing in systems that help businesses thrive on the Internet. See Dan’s blog, and more information on Attraction Marketing, at his website, http://www.DLJames.com