Dec 02 2010

NO GO LOGO

“But my sister

(substitute any relative here)

designed it!”

                                                                         

Besides the name, probably the single most important outbound marketing tool any business or professional practice can have is that little mark known as a logo.

A logo may or may not be, or may or may not include, the actual name. That single (seemingly insignificant to many) identifying mark or symbol is what consumes the first tick of the first second of the first ten seconds. It’s what makes or breaks a sale, determines receptivity, and sets the stage for the next step of doing business.

Your logo is your spotlight.

It attracts attention, creates interest, and shows the way to the second second of the first ten seconds (and you already know there’s no second first impression!).

 

What? You want research? Research this: When was the last time you EVER passed-over looking at a business card logo before reading anything else on the card?

What’s the last ad or website you looked at that you just turned your head away from when the logo popped into the corner of your eye? Think about the logos you remember. Odds are they tell a whole story.

“SWOOSH!” I say to you. That’s it. Just “SWOOSH!” And guess what? You can instantly visualize the logo, and the brand name, and can probably offer some experience with the product. How about a “Golden Arch” or a “Red and White Target”?

“But,” you might say, “but I don’t have a spare hundred million bucks to establish my brand and make my logo a household symbol.” So, should we understand that to mean it’s not worth the effort, that hot-shot logos are just for the big boys?

Okay, here we are, right at the very spot where many entrepreneurs drop the ball on the one-yard line.

A great logo identity is worth a great effort!

 

Notice, I said “great logo identity,” not “great logo design.” Some of the most beautiful logo designs in the world are NO GO LOGO failures because they fail to communicate anything of substance about the business or professional practice they’re created to represent.

If you can even imagine this:

I’ve seen a bloody in-surgery photograph of someone’s stomach serving as a logo for a doctor of gastroenterology that surely made most people throw up (maybe that was the idea. Hmmmm, throw up, stomach doctor. I get it!)

…or how about a high-energy exercise program logo with the drawing of a sleeping baby? (a bit of a stretch there, y’think?)

Patriotism? Sure, an orange line through a gray shadow for a company doing business with the U.S. Military? (Uh, what happened to red, white, and blue?)

Weirdness? Can you figure what a propped-up tree inside of a crescent moon has to do with orthopedic surgeons?

 

I’m quite certain you can add substantially to this list just by leafing through your local yellow pages or that stack of business cards in your desk drawer. 

The point is that while many business and professional practice owners manage to find a need and fill it, and work their brains off building their businesses, they miss the opportunity to make the most of their own business identities. Many pawn off their logo design work to the nearest (or pushiest) relative with a C+ in commercial art 101.

Others let (choose to have) someone sell them on using a riveting design of something that has nothing to do with the business or the message that needs to be communicated. Don’t let either of these things happen.

It’s your business. It’s your identity. You will have to live with it for a long time. Make it work for you. Take a pass on relatives, well-meaning staff, your local print shop, your high school art teacher-neighbor, and –almost always– your self!

Find someone who specializes in branding. It’s worth the investment to do it right. Then, there’s that apple with the bite out of it . . .

~~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

2 responses so far

Nov 30 2010

STOP TRYING SO HARD!

Overkill business efforts breed failure . . .

LIKE GREAT MARKETING,

                          

GREAT LEADERSHIP

                                 

 DOESN’T TRY FOR A 

                                      

HOME RUN EVERY AT-BAT

 

The best creative marketing talent, plans, and campaigns — and the world’s greatest leaders — are born and inspired not by blood, sweat, tears, and insanely long hours, but by focus.

 

By adjusting the camera or rifle lens, the stage spotlights, the binoculars, the telescope, the magnifying glass, the microscope, and computerized zoom controls, we increase our visual focus for a moment, a few moments, maybe a few hours.

We do the same by adjusting volume, speaker, bass and treble, balance and other media controls to focus our hearing.

Ongoing mental focus, such as that which is evident in literally every leadership or creative marketing performance, is driven by adjusting and channeling powers of concentration.

 

It is not the product of (pay attention exam-cramming students!) working deliriously through the night, night after night.

Neither is it the product of entertaining others with razzmatazz and razzle-dazzle. (My father used to say, “Don’t give me a song and dance routine; just answer the question!” My father would have made a good Judge Judy.)

Most assuredly, great leadership and great marketing are not the results of political smoke and mirror acts that we see routinely practiced in virtually every local, state, and (especially) federal government-based and corporate giant-based entity in existence. 

Having a true focus means we can “see” and are aware of the actions and influences on the periphery of our focus targets, but that our minds are keenly tuned to the point of what we’re aiming for.

 

That demands concentration, but it is not necessarily “hard work.” It is what you choose it to be. And ease comes with practice.

Practice? Like what?

  • You’re in New York City? Go sit in the middle of Grand Central Station at rush hour and write a three-page essay about your own leadership challenges and abilities.
  • You’re in Delaware? Go sit in the middle of a 1,000-chicken chicken coop and read and digest and summarize two articles on industry issues that affect your business. (No ear plugs allowed. Oh, and I hope you like feathers!)
  • You’re in Chicago? 1) Get as close as you legally can to O’Hare Airport (Car windows open! Chilly, huh? Dress warm. Bring coffee.) 2) Read and answer three days’ worth of emails on your plugged-in laptop.
  • You’re in San Francisco? (What are you doing there?) Hop on the trolley to Fisherman’s Wharf at lunchtime and –while on the trolley– write (yes, with pen and paper) your own obituary (Now THAT’s an exercise that takes concentration!)
  • You’re in Hawaii? Well, we all know about those cliffs over the ocean, and waterfalls, and . . . okay, you’re not reading this anyway. Aloha to you too!  

You get the idea. Challenge yourself (and remember to breathe)

                                                                                                                      

Here’s the bottom line: Wherever you are, if you’re serious about wanting to radically improve your leadership and creative marketing skills, spend more energy learning how to concentrate and focus.

                                                                                                                      

Uh, you DO remember The Karate Kid movies? Well, pay more attention to yourself and stop trying so hard. Working yourself into a frenzy with busyness that you think impresses others, doesn’t. All it does is blockade others by making you inaccessible to them.

If you’re actually trying to be inaccessible, you are not leader material, you will never be a creative marketing star, and you are probably best suited to run for political office or work in some government or corporate-giant dungeon for thirty years.

Hey, it’s your life! (And odds are pretty good that it will only happen once!) Do you really want to make a difference?

~~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

No responses yet

Nov 21 2010

Search Engine Sidetracked

Oh, yes, just what we need:

                           

another pizza parlor in town

                                                

and another business acronym…

 

I really do need to stay away from search engines more. Every time I go to check something out, I end up sidetracked in 37 other directions. Hours pass, and by the time dinner’s ready or the dog needs to go out, I’ve forgotten what the reason was that started me off Binging and Googling in the first place. 

A recent such excursion was earlier this week when I –someone who prides himself on being totally on top of all the latest marketing twists and turns– went flying into Bing to check on a reference to “Synergy Levers” being billed as “THE latest marketing concept.” After all, thoughts are things.

 Well, not only did Bing bong, but it also clearly demonstrated that –if anything– I might be looking at some re-hash of a remarkably old marketing concept which had been re-packaged as “THE latest.” All of this means that “Synergy Levers” is simply none of the above. As the hot news flash went on to say, however, it (Synergy Levers) has something to do with SMEs. Whew! What a relief!

I was deleriously happy to discover that Synergy Levers didn’t turn out to be some kind of toilet flush handle brand!

So, okay, here I am, relieved to learn that we were not dealing with bathroom fixtures, but oh, are we ever so over-laden with acronyms, or what? 

                                                                               

I don’t mean to sound (ahem) overly sarcastic here, but this news came right on the heels of  the latest EPA reports on CFPA, CPSC, MDL, and FEC. Now, if I tell you that FEC is “Foreseeable Environmental Contamination,” you can probably deduct (deduce?) on your own that the other magnificent acronyms are not terribly critical to your day-to-day operations, unless you’re in a tree-hugging related business. . . or run a government agency (shudder) or corporate giant operation (double shudder!).

So –back to SMEs–who knew?– “Small and Medium-Size Enterprises.” Of course! What else could it possibly mean? Of one thing you can be fairly certain, SMEs are not the acronymical brainchild (You don’t particularly favor “acronymical”? Listen, if James Patterson can advertise his books as “unputdownable”) of someone who owns or manages a small or medium-size business.  

How did we arrive at this conclusion?

Because there’s not enough time in the day to be jerking around with some obviously governmental-birthed word-shortening letter grouping.

Yes, another one of those C-Span specials that means nothing, nada, zero, zip, 0! (Or maybe “z”? Hmmm.) 

Secondly, who (whom) do you know (besides the car rental agency) that refers to her or his business as an “enterprise”? Really.  

                                                                                                        

Alrighty then, the S in SME, which stands for “Small,” means (according to the bonged Bing: “fewer than 100 employees for “goods-producing businesses” and “fewer than 50 employees for service-based businesses.” The M in SME, for “Medium” according to “White Christmas” crooner Crosby’s namesake, means “fewer than 500 employees.” Oh, but all this “varies by country.” Well, la-de-dah!

Y’know what? It’s a whole lot more than I want to know. It’s also irritating. Who cares if they’re the owner of an SME anyway? The bottom line is –no matter the size or number of employees in your “enterprise”– are you surviving this terrible economy? Are you pushing out sales? Are you making your business work? Need a little help? Call me at TWW (TheWriterWorks)… SB (See Below)      

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You,

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

One response so far

Nov 16 2010

CAN YOU READ THIS?

Do All Web Designers, Editors,

                               

SEO “Experts,” Digital

                    

Managers, and Webmasters 

                                   

Own Stock in Optical and

                               

Eye Surgery Centers?

 

 

Speaking of Eyes, here are a few I’s for you — just in case you’re looking for good “I” words to characterize the work performance sections of your resumes (which I hope for your short-term well-being that you have up-to-date!).

Let me not beat around the bush.

Here’s my Top 20 List of Words to describe the efforts(?) of those of you who appear to be part of the vast sea of non-communicative business (and especially BIG -time Corporate) websites:  

                                                                                  

Irksome. Irritating. Infuriating. Insulting. Invidious. Inconvenient. Incompetent. Irrational. Insolent. Inapt. Impudent. Immature. Insouciant. Inflammatory. Incorrigible. Implacable. Inconceivable. Idiotic . . . Ignoramus Internet Imbeciles!

                                                                    

And that’s just the I’s.

I dare you to tell me the last website you visited that was physically readable. It’s bad enough you’ve butchered the English language and that you remain out-of-control-convinced that all of humanity speaks only via txtmsg language, now we all read your proudly-designed sites, and need glasses.

                                                                                      

Do you really think that:

type this size
                                                                       

. . . is for normal, healthy eyes? And then you have the audacity (we’ll leave the I’s behind for awhile; I like “audacity”) to do the damn type in gray, and Italicized, no less?

                                                                                       
like this
 

What are you all nut cases?

                                                       

Did you ever consider that site visitors become prospects and prospects become customers and customers’ purchases of the products and services promoted on the site are what pay for your existence?

                                                                        

(Oh, and please don’t start telling me about ways to adjust my screen size to accomodate your lack of customer service and marketing savvy!)

                                                                                  

Sometimes, I might expect to see some brand new business attempting –with, obviously, the communication expertise and guidance of one of you– to spout its message with a touch of class that no doubt came from having once visited a high-priced attorney’s office where everything is gray, including the invoices. But I’ve come to expect better from long-established enterprises.

Or, well maybe I’ll give you the benefit of doubt, maybe it’s just that if you use .6 and .7 font sizes, you figure you can get more stuff on a page and jam it into little corners so you can design Internet castles in the air with all that leftover space. And, shoot!, if you make it gray and hard to read, nobody can criticize your attempts at copy content without having to visit their ophthalmologists, right?

What touched off this avalanche? Check around a few corporate giant sites, especially pages with unimportant junk — you know, things that just don’t mean anything, like instructions, or policies, or payment terms. I have.

In fact, I’ll return to the A words for long enough to say that it is beyond ANNOYING to find evidence of work done by people who really should know better (and who are typically commanding huge fees) that fails 100% to communicate. And somewhere up there is a boss who clearly hasn’t a clue about how to be a leader, who has let droves of techie superstars commandeer their own marketing programs.  

So, in case you’re still reading this (and with apologies for catching up the more honorable among you in my wrath), I have this to say to you:

Don’t give up your day job!

 

~~~~~~~~

www.TheWriterWorks.com  

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

No responses yet

Oct 16 2010

Consistency Sells.

Q. What if it walks like a duck

                                

 and quacks like a duck, but 

                                      

 looks like a tyrannosaurus rex?

 

A. You’ve got trouble. . . 

                                       

right here in River City!

 

And if we’re talking about A~N~Y aspect of your business, you can be sure that your customers will have even bigger problems than you, which is not a good thing.

Take it from experience, the last thing you want is for your customers to be confused, because confusion doesn’t just cost you patronage; it costs you your reputation. All the good things you’ve done, and are doing, get flushed away with one jerk of the handle.

Anything that costs your reputation, costs you sales to existing customers, and costs you prospective customers too. Like winning sports teams, businesses that offer consistency succeed. Attitude consistency is paramount.

From McDonald’s to Charles Schwab, from Hershey’s to Microsoft, from Federal Express to Wal-Mart, consistency of products and services (and of innovation, operations, marketing and sales) is what puts businesses like these over the top.

                                                               

Consistency doesn’t mean having inventories that collect dust or never trying new methods or line extensions, or always doing the exact same things in the exact same ways. Those are investments in maintaining the status quo — a boring and unhealthy practice.

Consistency means carrying integrity and leadership and customer service to the extreme every day of your life that your business exists. It means maintaining and nurturing one strong, simple, single image throughout all the ways you represent yourself to the rest of the world.

It doesn’t matter if some people don’t like your image or your message. What does matter is that your image and message is consistent and delivered consistently across the boards…in your advertising, marketing, promotional and PR efforts, online and off…all of the time, without exception.

You know that repetition sells.

Repetition sells.

Repetition sells.

                                                                                

Repeating what you do and the ways that you do it, over and over, is the best way to build and strengthen a loyal following. Ask any stage performer, producer, or director.

In that sense, you are no different. You are on your business stage every day (and often at night), and your performance (what you have to offer and the ways you offer it) is being judged by others all of the time, even when you’re not aware of having an audience. 

Look at it this way you want to get in better physical shape, but can’t make that happen by eating ice cream, candy and fried foods,  drinking heavily and smoking cigars only on weekends and justifying it by taking a long walk on Sunday afternoon.

Like building a healthy life, building a healthy business is a full time commitment to consistency.

If your business walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, don’t make it something it’s not. Consistency sells.

# # #

 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

 Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

 

2 responses so far

Aug 18 2010

ADVERTISING NO-NO’s

Nine “Do Not” lessons

                                         

learned from 30+ years 

                                               

of sales-winning advertising

                                                                                                                                             

I know, accenting the negative isn’t always the best thing, but if you know what NOT to do, it’s a lot easier to figure out what you can and should do. I don’t pretend to know what you can and should do, but I sure can tell you what I’ve found out that doesn’t work (and throw in a few hints about stuff I know that works better!).

Here’s the scoop:

1. Do NOT advertise that you have integrity, or even about what wonderful integrity-inspiring things you or your business have done. When you conduct business at all levels with a high-trust approach and attitude, you will gain or boost a reputation for integrity that speaks for itself!

2. (…and this is really #1): Here is the single most difficult marketing, advertising, sales and PR challenge to face for all businesses everywhere (yes, you did indeed read that right: “all businesses everywhere”)– ready for this? — Do NOT promote how great you are to the rest of the world. Nobody cares. Well, maybe your mother cares, but nobody else does.

3. Do NOT get too cutesy. Readability must come before cleverness in font (lettering) use and treatments (Italics, boldfacing, spacing, underlining, shadowing, using a horseshoe for the letter “U” or crossed swords for “X” or an egg for “O”…etc.). And don’t trust a designer to worry about readability; most have no training or experience in how to design with and around text, especially branding lines.

4. Do NOT emphasize product and service features. Nobody buys features. People buy benefits. Make sure your marketing, advertising, sales, promotion and PR efforts focus on benefits — on answering the question, what’s in it for me?

5. Do NOT buy into fancy dog and pony presentations that stress how the work a creative service provider individual or organization or group or team can do for you will put you head and shoulders above the rest of your industry or profession. Get rid of creative service providers who seem more interested in winning awards for themselves than in making sales for you. Use performance incentives.

6. Do NOT ever accept a media rate that’s printed on a “rate card” or “rate sheet.” Think of it as the asking price for a house just put on the market this morning. Media people who aren’t willing to work with your budget aren’t worth your time and consideration. There are always other ways to market your business.

7. Do NOT try to hand-off advertising/marketing/PR responsibilities to someone who works with you because they articulate well or can write a mean email. And don’t try to do it yourself unless it’s what you specialize in. Remember that there are two success keys involved: writing skill and psychology expertise. Persuading customer and prospect brains is what it’s all about. 

8. Do NOT communicate too little or too much. Ask prospects and customers what they think the right amount of information is. Have someone who’s experienced at it run a focus group for you to get these answers, and to test alternative marketing approaches. 7 target market representatives for an hour works for this purpose. Give each a $20-$25 value reward for their participation.

9. Do NOT “settlefor ads, commercials, websites, landing pages, blogs, brochures, news releases, or social media executions or strategies that don’t feel right! If you don’t feel sure about something, remember it’s your business. Your gut instinct is your best decision maker.   

                                                                   

www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.
 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 
Make today a GREAT day for someone!

2 responses so far

Aug 17 2010

Why Twitter beats Facebook for business!

Twitter is for extroverts.

                                                        

Facebook is for introverts.

                                                          

 Businesses can’t be introverts.

                                                                                                                     

According to Google, there are now well over 500 million Facebook users. According to anyone engaged in social media, Facebook is an IN-bound media vehicle. This means simply that visitors, friends, customers and prospective customers must come to you to visit your profile, your friends, your photos, your comments, your network, your “wall.” All good stuff if that’s what you seek.

Interestingly, Google also reported at the same time, that there have been over 20 billion (with a “b”) Tweets (message postings) on Twitter. Again, according to social media gurus, Twitter is (conversely to Facebook) considered an OUT-bound media vehicle. This means Twitter users are reaching out to the world with their Tweets instead of (like Facebook users) trying to bring the world to them

If you run a small business (unless it’s minuscule, and caters, for example, exclusively to a neighborhood), odds are that Twitter represents a better investment of time for marketing some aspect of your business than Facebook. Yes, Facebook affords an additional personal touch for many businesses, and there’s nothing wrong with using both when you can afford the luxury of time.

But consider this:

If you already have a website, you already have an IN-bound media vehicle, and it’s one over which you have total control… and you can personalize it as much as you choose, including being able to orchestrate ongoing discussions, exchanges and commentary, even in fact as much as Facebook, if not more.

For healthy and maximally-productive promotion of your business:

  • Focus your energy on developing your own website with your own blog (or have somebody write one for you because the more active your blog is the more activity your site generates and the farther up you move in search engine rankings).

  • Realize that your website will never and should never be done. Accept the fact that the best websites are those that continue to change and reflect the changes in the business and industry or profession they target and the marketplaces they cater to.

  • Supplement your ongoing site development efforts with ongoing investments of time and creative energy in launching ongoing Twitter Tweets.

  • Avoid getting snookered by all the social media and Twitter “experts” out there of which there are probably a hundred trillion or so (and these are probably mostly people who spend all day at it and so proclaim themselves advisors, coaches, consultants, and pros). 

  • Learn the best mix the same way you learned your business — trial and error, and maybe enlist some trusted, proven experience businesspeople who are top marketing writers with a creative flair who can help you get started, or re-started.

So, you can just barely find me on Facebook only because I like to keep in touch with family and friends, but not because I have the need to spend hours “socializing” on the Web or because I think Facebook will help my business. It won’t. I look at my page every few months; that’s a clue. 

You can  find me on Twitter every night because I have built a very selective following of people who are interested in business and marketing and leadership and selling and self-development and communications and creative writing. When those people like what I have to say on Twitter, they visit my blog.

When they like my blog, they visit my other sites. When they like what’s on my sites, they call or email me and that’s how I build a prospect and customer base. In other words, use Twitter as your outbound vehicle (combined with emails and ads or whatever you choose) to get visitors to your inbound vehicle, your website. Why shuffle people into Facebook as an extra step to visit your website?

Shuffled visitors often fall by the wayside.

Don’t you?  

 

302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You.

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

One response so far

Jul 21 2010

OUTSOURCING TO CONSULTANTS

Not getting quality

                                 

from consultants?

                                                    

  This may be why…

                                                                                                                 

     Right off the top, if it’s not a life-or-death surgical, ocean oil leak, or rocket science need to fill, stop with the panic attacks about finding a consultant with industry-specific experience.

     What you need is to find a consultant who can get the job done. Period.

  • Give me a guy, for example, who sells railroad cars full of French fries and I’ll teach him what I need him to know about representing my fine linens products (or my precision computer parts, or my insurance policies). And he’ll do better at it than a fine linens (or microchip) manufacturing (or insurance) expert.
  • As another example, show me someone who maintains an efficient warehouse operation, and I’ll show her how to manage a shipping schedule better than the head of any trucking company.

     Why? Because sales and organizational skills are lot harder, more time-consuming, and more expensive to teach than the ins and outs of your business.

     Learning how you manufacture and package and sell your products and services is easy. Learning how to think and act like a sales or traffic management pro is not easy because it’s often an issue of attitude.

When you’re outsourcing projects and looking for consultants who can get the job done, don’t be making yourself crazy trying to find someone who has extensive experience in your industry or profession.

                                                             

     Look instead for someone who has extensive experience in her or his consulting specialty. A good solid marketing person or writer or web designer or trainer or coach, for instance, doesn’t need to have ANY expertise in your specific business or professional practice in order to help you produce a significant difference in sales, sales leads, CRM, or staff development.

The same principles and dynamics that work for selling hot dogs also work for selling precision parts, accounting and legal services, heart transplant specialists, or (aaah, entrepreneurship!) “Silly Bands.”

                                                                                    

     The art and insight of writing an effective news release, advertising campaign, or website, doesn’t change in the slightest.

     The target markets change; the media selections change; the technical details change. But benefits are still what need to be emphasized.

     All products and services are purchased because an emotional buying motive is triggered — not because a laundry list of rational features has been presented. Skilled marketing consultants know how to plan and create and activate emotional buying motive triggers that get results.

     Your job is to teach them your business, be a sounding board for their recommendations, and help bring about action.

     You can follow the advice of headhunters and placement services and counselors and job trainers all you want, and puppy-dog behind every leader in your industry or profession, but I’ll put my money on you finding the best outsource consulting service teams and individuals based on your own instincts and your own judge of character and chemistry. It got you here. It works.

                                                                                       

Trust yourself.

                                                                       

     The minute you’re able to find people who can fill the role(s) you have in mind, who have a track-record of success in many diverse fields, don’t hesitate to engage her/him/them simply because you think your candy company is so unique that only someone who is a candy business expert can appreciate you and your business enough to do justice to it. A sweet idea, but unrealistic. 

Informed fresh perspectives don’t

    come from clones or ostriches.    

 

 www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America and America’s Troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

One response so far

Mar 13 2010

HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY . . .

IF YOU CAN FOLLOW

                                                       

these 8 sentences, you 

                                 

understand how to fix

                                                              

the economy — and the

                                                                     

White House is puzzled.

                                           

(PART 1 OF 2)

                                                                            

     Entrepreneurs pursue ideas. They taste, test, trial-and-error, and explore applications of their ideas. When they settle on a direction, they find or attract enough financial support to do two things: 1) Create an operations process to develop (manufacture, fabricate, enhance) the product(s) and/or service(s), and 2) Design and deliver a marketing program.

     Marketing drives prospects to the door and creates a support platform for sales. Salespeople (or the entrepreneur herself or himself, acting in a sales role) produce(s) sales. Sales produce revenues. Revenues pay operations process and marketing (and perhaps investor) expenses and hopefully generate profits.

     Profits allow entrepreneurs to create jobs.

     Big business really doesn’t create new jobs. Research demonstrates time and again that far more than the vast majority of new jobs created in America originate with small business.

     So— why does the White House insist on avoiding and glossing over small business as an insignificant source of new jobs? Why does the White House pretend to befriend small business, shaking hands with the right hand while stabbing it in the back with the left hand?

     Can someone please answer this? Can the answer please be a real one, and not some convoluted response anchored by union-held political chips or fantasyland corporate moguls riding bailout coattails?

     How do”We the people…” choose to allow narcissistic political arrogance to override the critical needs of our economically-threatened society to stimulate and foster job creation?  Part of the answer is that we have a federal government that’s universally comprised of individuals who have not one iota of business experience, and who adamantly refuse to get the business advice needed for economic recovery from the only source that matters: small business.

     And surely–because, really, no one could be this dumb– the government can’t possibly be thinking that the SBA is the place to turn for meaningful input. (Yes, this is the same Small Business Administration administered by small-business-braindead government employees and stimulus-recipient big business corporate types who can’t even spell entrepreneur, let alone think like one) .

     The message is: WAKE UP AMERICA!  There’s more to this story, and it’s coming tomorrow.

     I hope you’ll return for –as one of my heroes, Paul Harvey, used to say– the rest of the story!

                           

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Jan 23 2010

SELLING YOUR “INTERNAL” CUSTOMERS

Are You Marketing to

                                          

Your “Inner Circle”?

                                                                                  

     Besides your mother, there is no bigger fan support base for your business than the market that constitutes your “internal” (or “inner circle” of) customers. Perhaps you never thought of them as a market.

     Perhaps you never thought about who, exactly, makes up this hot prospect / top customer group. Here are some quick thoughts you might want to consider:

     Without exception, the best source of business is existing and past business. Most small business owners and managers realize this, if not overtly, then at least instinctively, and do a pretty decent job of catering to these special people.

     The second best source of business is your “inner circle,” your “internal customer market.” This is comprised first and foremost of your own employees and staff. And many owners and managers also recognize the potential attached to this segment of the internal customer market with things like employee discounts.

(As an interesting side note: In Ben & Jerry’s growth years, every employee was required by job description to take home 7 free pints of ice cream every week, which they of course served to friends and family and gave to neighbors, which became a seeding process to help create a “big buzz”! ), but . . .

     How many small businesses take the next step outside this innermost support ring? When did you last, for example, make special effort to gain customers from your vendor/supplier ranks?

     Think about the fact that at least part of the success of every vendor and supplier to your business (from manufacturing and office supplies, to specialized and not-so-specialized services) is dependent on your business’s continued success.

     Marketing? Ha! It doesn’t even cost anything to hand-deliver or email these people special announcements of special product or service deal considerations. The stronger your alliances with your vendors and suppliers, the more they’ll act as your UNcommissioned, UNpaid sales force as they make their rounds calling on other businesses. It’s like networking the networkers.

     Have you made efforts to similarly (perhaps more quietly) market your wares or services to outside visitors –including sales reps– who call on you in person or by phone? What about other businesses on your block, in your building, neighborhood, community, state or region?

     Internet social networks are not the only avenues for capturing customers from among those who already know of your existence and who may share some common ground. Put on your thinking cap, and keep open-minded. 

     And what have you done for or with the mass or industrial or professional media lately? Not only might those people be prospects for you, they have the ability to influence many others … So do you!

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