Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

This week's Marketing Jackass Award goes to... me.

Why? Because I just conducted one of the WORST sales calls of my life. Yes, it was that bad.

Let's count the ways so that YOU can apply these 7 lessons to YOUR sales process. And so you never have to blow it like I just did.

1. Wrong prospect. I knew it in my bones even before we got on the phone. He doesn't fit, he's missing a lot of the DNA markers of our most successful clients, he's sort of "out there."

2. Wrong process. Did he read the material I sent ahead of time? No. Did he know what business we are in? No. Did he understand how we work and what we do - and WHY? No. Is this my prospect's fault? HELL NO - it's my fault for not following my own process (and not making SURE the prospect followed it too). The only thing worse than "wrong process" is NO PROCESS. And as a marketing coach, I've been guilty of that in the past as well, but this time it was all on me that I had a process that my prospect did not follow. I should have rescheduled the moment I found this out. But I didn't.

3. Wrong budget. Why, why, WHY do I keep having sales conversations with people whose initial inquiries start with the phrase "money is tight" or "I don't have two nickels to rub together." (I've gotten both of these - verbatim - in the last 5 days). If they claim poverty on the approach, they will not suddenly become millionaires on the call. Bring up money FAST and EARLY. Not your fees but THEIR own pricing, their ROI, their average sale, their customer lifetime value. Do that and you'll set the context for your fees as an investment and you'll be able to avoid the sticker shock when you drop a number on someone before you've established commensurate VALUE for them. 

4. Wrong words. Do you listen (TRULY listen) to what your prospects say in the first few minutes of your sales conversations? Can you identify when they are using the "right words" vs. the "wrong words" to indicate their readiness to move ahead, their understanding of the value that your products and services bring, and their level of sophistication as an educated consumer? If you did, you'd make more sales faster - and you'd stop wasting precious selling time with price shoppers, tire kickers and broke-ass losers. 

5. Wrong questions. Do you listen just as carefully - maybe more so - to the kinds of questions your prospect asks YOU during the sales call? Can you tell from THEIR questions if they are tracking with your best clients and customers? Can you identify their underlying urgencies and priorities based on the questions that they ask? Have you ever gently redirected a "bad" question with the phrase, "The real question I'm hearing you ask is... And the answer to that question is..." Examples of bad questions include fear-based questions that fixate on guarantees, warrantees, all that could go wrong, insignificant details and irrelevant metrics. 

6. Wrong bravado. When a prospect spends any significant amount of time telling me how successful they are, how financially lucrative their business is, how much money they make, and what kind of car they drive, I know we're not a fit. Here's the truth, folks: Successful people ARE successful. They don't TALK about being successful. Someone who brags like this suffers from low self-esteem - or even worse, he is a mental child who is still psychologically trying to impress their Mommy and Daddy who never loved them enough in the first place. Move on - and quick! 

7. Wrong fit. Put your current prospect in an imaginary lineup with your very favorite clients and very best customers - both past and present. Does this prospect fit? Do they belong there? Are they a natural extension of your business family? If not, that should be enough to get you to hang up the phone right then and there. Like attracts like. If your prospect would stick out like a sore thumb in your lineup of current clients, that means there is something seriously wrong and you should NOT allow that prospect into the circle of the clients whom you love working with - and who love you. 

Fail to heed these 7 warning signs and the best case scenario is that you'll waste a lot of precious time, energy and effort on the wrong prospects who won't do business with you anyway. And the worst case scenario is that you'll end up with a goofball client - or at the very worst, a "nightmare client from hell." 

Friends don't let friends blow up their sales process.

You're welcome.

I love you. 

Thoughts? Insights? Reactions? Please use the COMMENTS section below to share... 

Want to Grow Your Business With Blogging? Here’s Your Quick-Start Guide

Guest post by Claudia Somerfield

One of the easiest and most powerful tools for growing your business is the business blog. Most marketing advisers suggest including a business blog as a sales tool. If you are a business owner, entrepreneur, or thought-leading professional and want to expand your influence with blogging, here is a quick-start guide that will have you up and running in no time at all.

Start with a clear plan

A common mistake that many businesses make when they start a blog is not having a long term plan in place. This applies to various aspects of the blog.

Consider these questions:

• What is the core purpose of your blog?
• How do you want it to look?
• What should be the writing style and tone of your blog posts?
• How openly do you want to position your blog as a sales tool?
• What kind of interface do you want to offer your blog readers to contact you?
• How do you want people to find your blog on a web search?

Having a clear cut strategy makes your blog much more focused, consistent and professional.

The web is often referred to as a fickle medium. If your blog readers do not find your blog of value, they will not return, they will not click through to your products or services, and they will not promote it by sharing it on their social networks.

At the end of the day, your reader looks for value, and your long term plan can help determine the specific nature and scope of the value you will offer.

Select your tool

The interface that you will use to upload and publish content on your blog is known as your blogging platform. There are several popular blogging platforms that you can choose from such as Blogger, Wordpress, and TypePad. While your web developer may provide you with a "home-made" interface on your website to create and add content to your blog, it is much easier and more efficient to integrate one of the more popular platforms. Take a look at what these platforms offer, and choose the one that appeals to you the most.

Create classy content

If you want your business blog to attract readers, and if you want the blog to become an integral part of your business strategy, you will have generate high quality content. You may want to employ the services of a professional blogger or content writer for this or you can do it yourself.

In the context of a business, there is no one who knows the nuances of the business better than you. However, you will want to keep in mind that it takes consistent posting of good content on a regular basis on your blog for it to grow in value.

Many business blogs make the mistake of compromising quality of content for quantity, over-using techniques like link building and search engine optimization to get more traffic to their blogs, but across time, they fail to engage the readers or to get them to respond to their call to action.

Promote

The key to popularizing your blog is to promote it. This can be as simple as sending out email announcements every time you update your blog, sharing it on your social networks, and notifying what are known as pinging services that will update web directories with your new content.

Social bookmarking sites are another commonly used promotion tool. The most popular social bookmarking platforms that are worth your time are Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon.

Network

Start building relationships with other business bloggers. Promote their work on your networks. This may seem counterproductive especially if they are your competitors, but it will establish you as a fair and open networker. This will also help you study other business blogs and learn the tricks of the trade. Study how they use interesting content to get their readers attention and how they convert it either into return visits or a click through to products and services.

Visit other blogs and leave your opinions in the comments section. As people take note of your opinion, you will find them wanting to network with you and your blog. As with everything in life, blogging for business has a certain amount of give and take involved. The more you give, the greater your chances of taking something back.

Business blogging is proven strategy that will help your business grow. However, for a blog to be noticed and acquire a reputation among readers and clients, it takes time and dedicated effort.

Study the basics of search engine optimization and keyword research so that you are able to bolster your content with the technical strength it needs to reach the top of search results. Make your content interesting and useful.

Remember that your blog posts are not direct sales messages, but rather high-value assets with which to build a community of interested readers who are your potential customers.

As you grow your dedicated readership, you will find that your blog has become a significant source of web traffic, leads, referrals, and new business.

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About the author: Claudia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on luxury and technology. She recently read an article on a t-rex car that attracted her attention. Her next writing project involves a flying car.

Wow.

That's all I can say. 

Sometimes, a piece of marketing stupidity comes across my radar that is:

a. Almost impossible to believe

b. Too dumb not to share with you as a cautionary tale

Here's an email I just got from a video producer whom I personally KNOW* (and who shall remain nameless to protect the moronic):

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From: "jackass@VideoCoNameChanged.com"
To: David Newman <david@doitmarketing.com>  
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 3:26 PM 

Hi there:  

The attached is something new for 2012 which should make it easier to understand all the kinds of services we provide here at [Video Company Name Changed].  Hope this makes it easier to recommend us to others in the future. Thanks and hope all is well with you! 

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Let's review what's wrong with this picture:

1. He sends a mass email to his database with the salutation "Hi there" even though this is a guy who knows me personally, has done business with several of my clients (not on my recommendation, you can be sure), and - if he had a clue as to how to work his email system - could at least have bothered to do the mass personalization required to make this note say "Hi <fname>" to call all his contacts by name. 

2. I was not really having a hard time understanding "all the kinds of services we provide here at" his company. What I now DO have a REAL hard time understanding is why ANYONE would refer such a self-centered goofball to their clients and prospects.

3. "Hope this makes it easier to recommend us to others in the future." Again, I was not losing a lot of sleep over how challenging it was to recommend this guy. Solving THAT problem is a priority for HIM but not for ME (or YOU for that matter).

You know what would make it a lot easier for me to recommend this guy? If he actually provided me with some REAL VALUE. Some insights, tips, recommendations, resources, tools, and ideas to make ME more successful - not him.

4. "Thanks and hope all is well with you!" This totally inauthentic closing simply rubs salt into an already raw wound. Is this guy kidding? His whole tone, approach, and message is "ME ME ME ME" and he "hopes I'm doing OK" while fighting throat cancer, desperately scrambling to put my parents in a nursing home, and heroically trying to make ends meet in my struggling Jewish delicatessen in the middle of the Bronx. Yeah, right - I'm overcome with this idiot's genuine concern for me and my wellbeing.

The worst part of all this? 

He's a phony. A fake. A fraud. And a taker. This is the worst kind of professional services provider there is. A snake in sheep's clothing. [Do snakes wear sheep's clothing? I dunno - this one sure does!!]

You know what would have been 1000 times better? 

Give me some value. Give me some REASON to want to help you. Personalize your note. Or [God forbid] don't send me a mass email at all and reach out 1-on-1.

This guy has a paltry list so it's not like 1-on-1 outreach to his potential advocates, allies, friends, and referral sources would be so hard to do. FYI I don't fall into any of these categories for him (clearly!!)

You want to do better? Sure you do. So leverage your referral blurb. Create one, share it, use it in good health. 

And don't be like this jackass video guy or this moronic firm I wrote about earlier. 

Please, please, please - don't give me more fuel for the "Jackass Marketing" column. 

* Please note the video firm in question is NOT my video firm. In fact, if you want to get a kickass corporate video or do some video shooting or editing work, I strongly recommend Rob Kates of Professional Speaker Video. HE does a great job AND he knows how to conduct business like a professional, NOT like a goofball! (Speaking of goofballs, this post is worth reading as well about creating your own 9-point Goofball Prevention Screening tool.)

What do you think? Is this too harsh? Not harsh enough? How would you react to the note above? Please share your thoughts in the COMMENTS area below...

p.s. If you'd like some personalized help - and your very own customized social media scripts, email and phone outreach tools, a killer email signature file and more, check out the Small Biz Outreach Action Packs.

Guest post by Erin Blaskie

Does your business only have one income stream? Meaning, one way that you receive revenue from your paying clients?  

If so, please read this post as this marketing concept might very well change your business and your life!  

If you’re a one-revenue pony, you probably trade your time for money. This means that you probably sit at your desk (or on a couch or stand on a stage) and you do something in exchange for income. Maybe you provide a service or maybe you provide your insight and advice or perhaps you provide a speaking event. Whatever it is, you have one way to produce revenue.  

Now, let’s imagine that you have a cap of eight working hours in each day. I know you may have more or less but let’s just say eight for the purpose of this example.  

With eight working hours, let’s imagine that five of those hours produce you revenue whereas the other three are spent answering e-mails, creating proposals, entering expenses, etc. – all of the business stuff that no one pays you for.  

If you have five billable hours in each day, let’s figure out your earning cap. We all have one – this earning cap is the maximum we can possibly earn if we only do what we are doing right now for the rest of our working life.  

Five hours multiplied by your hourly rate is equal to your earning cap.  

Here’s an example:  

• 5 x $50/hour = $250 per day
• $250/day x 5 days/week = $1,250/week
• $1,250/week x 52 weeks/year = $65,000/year  

See?  You have an earning cap.  Most people who come to me say, “I want to earn six figures” but they have no idea whatsoever how much they would have to earn in order to actually MAKE six figures per year.  They just want that elusive figure.  So, let’s see how much someone would have to make per day if they wanted to earn $100,000/year.  

• $100,000/year / 52 weeks/year = $1,923/week
• $1,923/week / 5 days/week = $384.60/day
• $384.60/day / 5 hours/day = $76.92/hour  

You can use the equation above to figure out how much you need to earn per hour in order to hit your various revenue goals. This will help you to understand how much you really can make without trying to over extend yourself.  

Now, imagine that you had your five billable hours each day per the example above AND you had other revenue streams.  

Imagine what it would be like to see sales come in from other sources where you aren’t actively working. Imagine seeing sales come in at night, when you are spending time with your family on the weekends and while you are vacationing.  

Other revenue streams instantly boost your earning cap.  In fact, adding income streams to your business blows the roof off of your earning cap because there is NO earning cap when you have the potential to make income wherever you are, regardless of what you are doing.   

These other revenue streams can come from information product sales, affiliate revenue, group coaching and online training as well as membership sites and more.  

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NOTE: If you would like to destroy the revenue cap in YOUR BUSINESS, there's no better program to get you launched than the 8-week Product Development Toolkit program. Early Bird savings have been EXTENDED for this special offer and full details are online for you here: 

http://www.ProductDevelopmentToolkit.com - Join us!

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About the Author: Erin Blaskie, also known as the Bizinatrix, is in a hot, passionate love affair with the Internet. Whether she is leading her team of creative, outsourcing professionals or sharing information via the web, Erin brings to the table her enormous passion for tech, geek and the Internet

Marketing used to be about “getting in front of” prospects, delivering your pitch, and making the sale.

Today, buyers increasingly distrust marketing “claims” and expect businesses to show, not tell, when demonstrating their products and services. They shun self-serving salespeople and seek businesses that focus on making a difference, not getting a sale. 

Thought leadership centers on earning trust and credibility. Thought leaders get noticed by offering something different—information, insights, and ideas, for instance.

Thought leadership positions you and your company as an industry authority, resource and trusted advisor—by establishing your reputation as a major contributor to your industry.  The exposure you and your organization will receive by focusing on thought leadership in the industry will earn your prospects' trust and credibility AND strengthen your relationships with your current customers.

(For another take on Thought Leadership Marketing, check out Jose Palomino's blog post here)

5 reasons thought leadership marketing really matters for B2B. 

1. Because Prospects Want Your Perspective, Not Your Product

As Jeff Ernst of Forrester Research puts it, “Business buyers don’t “buy” your product or service, they “buy into” your perspective and approach to solving their problems.” 

In other words, your myopic obsession with your individual product or service is a turnoff.

Thought leaders take part in conversations that are bigger than the little niche of the market they represent. You want to show you understand their whole world, not just what your product can do for them. 

2. Because the Sales Process Starts Early and Ends Late

Buyers are out to solve a problem, not a buy a solution. That process starts long before the active buying process does, Ernst notes. And the actual time to investigating the problem to searching out solutions can take months to years. 

Thought leadership helps you get in early, developing a conversation and building relationship with the buyer. This keeps you front-of-mind when you enter that mid-stage and late-stage period of the sales cycle. 

3. Because Your Buyers Use Google

These days people don’t expect to scour your website. They turn to peers on LinkedIn and Twitter, Q&A sites like Focus and Quora, and, more often than not, Google. 

You need to go where your ideal audience is. Once you’re there, your thought leadership content is one of the best ways to get their attention. Google is putting greater focus on identifying content that delivers real value.

Thought leadership is your key to getting found and spread around. 

4. Because Thought Leadership Needs Content, and Content Feeds Social Strategy and Demand Generation

B2B marketing today usually involves a mix of social marketing and demand generation. Both of these require content – compelling content.

The market has a short attention span, which means it’s on you to develop thought leadership that differentiates you from the crowd and gets you heard through the noise. 

5. Because Trust Still Matters

Cynics will tell you that trust doesn’t mean anything in today’s ad-saturated business climate.

They’re wrong, particularly when it comes to B2B marketing. 

It’s imperative that you build conversations that build trust over time, Ernst says. In B2B, where the purchase decisions get more involved and expensive, buyers want to work with brands they know they can trust.

Demonstrating thought leadership implicitly demonstrates you’re a company that can be trusted. 

Adapted in part from Jesse Noyes at Eloqua and Jeff Ernst, principal analyst at Forrester Research.

What does thought leadership mean for you? What strategies have you picked up to become a leader in your industry? Leave a comment and... 

"No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty."
– George Eliot  

"One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or No."
– Thomas Carlyle  

The importance of “execution” is a business and marketing concept that has gained a lot of currency. At its core, it's pretty simple...

Execution is just a big word for DO SOMETHING!!  

In the old business world, the normal process for getting something done could be described as “Ready, Aim, Fire!”  With the quality movement and the other management fads that came and went during the 1980’s and 1990’s, the process became a little more involved.

Perhaps “Aim, Ready, Aim, Fire!” could describe the resulting corporate mindset: Document everything you Do, and Do everything that you’ve Documented.  That meant a lot of extra work and not much improvement in actual quality.

Then Tom Peters encouraged managers to adopt a new philosophy which he presented as “Ready, Fire, Aim” — execute on your ideas, and then refocus/refine later.  Today, successful corporate and entrepreneurial leaders need to be innovative, brave, smart, and fast.

Perhaps our new motto needs to become “Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire!”  

That means that “Ready” has to be built in - In the corporate world, it has to be built in to every department, every manager, every employee. In the startup and entrepreneurial world, "Ready" has to be built in to your venture - your ideas, your messaging, your services, your network.

"Ready" is the new status quo. And aiming is no longer a separate step.

Aiming is about creativity, scoping out the possibilities, and finding the next opportunity before the competition does.  Part of being Ready is, in fact, to always be aiming!

This is the only way that “Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire!” is ever going to work without descending into havoc.  

Yes or No? Fire!  

What do you think? Leave your comment below and... 

This just came across my email inbox from the Soul Purpose Institute and these 14 questions struck me as a powerful marketing concept to help you close out your 2011 and prepare you to launch into your next level of success in the new year.

I'll post some equally powerful questions about your 2012 - tomorrow!

1. What was your biggest triumph?
2. What was the smartest decision you made?
3. What one word best summarizes your 2011 experience?
4. What was the greatest lesson you learned?
5. What was the most loving service you performed?
6. What is your biggest piece of unfinished business?
7. What are you most happy about completing?
8. Who were the three people that had the greatest impact on your life in 2011?
9. What was the biggest risk you took?
10. What was your biggest surprise?
11. What important relationship improved the most?
12. What compliment would you liked to have received?
13. What compliment would you liked to have given?
14. What else do you need to do or say to be complete this year?

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Ready to launch your speaking, consulting, or solo professional practice into its next level of success? You'll get 30 days of specific tools, tactics, templates AND the structured day-by-day guided implementation to remove the overwhelm and make it "paint-by-numbers easy" -- Details are waiting for you here: http://www.SpeakerLiftoff.com

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Got 2011 thoughts and reflections to share? Use the COMMENTS area below and...

Marketing Mix: Happy Holidays!!

Happy Holidays to all our friends, family, clients, and colleagues like YOU who make the world a better place through your speaking, consulting, training, coaching, generosity of expertise and trailblazing thought leadership.

From all of us on the DO IT team -- All best wishes to you for wonderful holidays and a prosperous 2012!

-- Catherine, Katie, Liz, David and all the marketing elves

Marketing Mix: Book Review of "PAID TO SPEAK" published by the National Speakers Association

PAID TO SPEAK is a virtual MBA in the business of speaking. From marketing to positioning to product development to platform skills, it's ALL in here. Well-organized, tightly edited, and with a logical flow from one part of the business to another, PAID TO SPEAK is also unique in that it tells it like it is. No sugar-coating. And no trying to fleece opportunity-seekers into believing the speaking business is a fast, easy, and glamorous way to make money. [It is NONE of the three!] 

Speaking professionally today is about thought-leadership, adding value to corporate, association, and entrepreneurial sectors, and understanding all the different ways that audiences and buyers want to access, use, and deploy your expertise. The book spans a wide range of business models, distribution methods, and revenue models. As it should - to reflect the current reality of many successful speakers (very few of whom have business models that look anything alike!) 

The key value in buying a copy of PAID TO SPEAK, dog-earing it, highlighting it, and taking notes in the margins... is that you will emerge from the experience with a wealth of information, some clear decisions to make, and a game plan to put it all together in a style and manner that suits your personality, your strengths, and your preferences. This is no "one size fits all" template for "THE" way to become successful. There are MANY paths up the mountain - and PAID TO SPEAK should be your personal handbook, guide, and reference to get you there miles ahead of the competition!