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Aggressive Small Business Marketing & Advertising
Showing archives from 07/2004.
How are you training your non-salespeople salespeople?
Posted by Michael Cage on Thursday, July 29, 2004Last week I watched a client flush nearly $40,000 in top-notch marketing work down the drain because a $9 an hour employee took the great leads being driven to the business and sabotaged them. In this case, she took motivated and excited incoming calls and shifted their state to negativity faster than a teenage boy on prom night. And not just once.
If you run a business with employees, every single one of 'em who interacts with clients/customers/end-users needs to understand what is and what is not acceptable. We raise people defiant nowadays, so you have to explain why and what's in it for them. Oh, and let's face it... bribes work. (Last month a client with a retail location was having a great deal of trouble with employees unintentionally offending clients. The employees couldn't be fired, so we put together a bonus pool which is reduced every time a customer is lost for a handful of reasons... being offended was one of 'em. It's worked well thus far.)
Employees who do not have contact with clients/customers/end-users need to understand the effect they can have on marketing. (Marketing = everything a business does to get and leverage a client relationship.) Do you have a tech in the backroom who is only allowed out for bathing and feeding? Insulated employees need to know what they do has a direct effect on the growth (or decline) of the business... so instead of playing level 91434 of Doom, (s)he should get the value of speed to a client relationship.
And so on...
It's the old tale, the chain is only as strong as the weakest link.
There are 8 comments, add your own!The real scoop on the American Entrepreneurial Economy
Posted by Michael Cage on Thursday, July 29, 2004My favorite academic/entrepreneur, Jeff Cornwall, has posted about a wonderful, 44-page document on the American Entrepreneurial Economy. I've posted his highlights below -- ordinarily I'd pick a few but they were all just so damned great... I recommend you visit his blog ASAP (here's the link: Data on the American Entrepreneurial Economy) for more info and to download the report.
-Almost one out of every eight Americans (11.9%) is engaged in entrepreneurial activity. This is one of the highest rates in the world and the highest rate of the largest, most developed economies. Our culture remains the strongest force driving entrepreneurial activity that differentiates us from other nations studied. America outranks the rest of the world in all of the key entrepreneurial indexes. -One myth that the cynics like to perpetuate is that these are mostly people out of work who cannot find a job. This study found that 76% of new start-ups were created to pursue opportunities their founders saw in the market, while only 24% were folks looking to create some income between jobs, typically as self-employed consultants. -Another myth is that these businesses do not really create jobs. This study found that 70% of new start-ups already employ at least one person, and 80% plan to hire at least one more employee in the next year, and 20% plan to add at least 19 new employees in the next few years. -Who are these American entrepreneurs? They tend to be young, as the study found the highest rate of entrepreneurship (17.3%) in 25-34 year olds. African Americans and Hispanics have the highest rates overall, and men are almost twice as likely to be new entrepreneurs as are women. -Where is the money coming from to finance these ventures? Everywhere! The study estimated that 5% of the adult American population had invested in someone else's start-up business. In contrast, only 2500 businesses received venture capital funding, and very few of these were start-ups.There are 3 comments, add your own!
Awful Book Title and Entrepreneurial Success
Posted by Michael Cage on Wednesday, July 28, 2004Saw this book in Barnes and Noble today:
"It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be."
The book might be great, I didn't buy it, nor did I have time to flip through it. I can say the title sucks, though. In sum, it contains a lot of what I find "wrong" with self-help culture. (Man-oh-man, just commited another sin. Said something was "wrong!")
Most folks in business for any length of time have experienced the employee/vendor/person with "good intentions" who "wants to do good" but leaves a path of destruction in their wake that'd rival people intentionally setting out to do bad. Fact is, good intentions and wanting to be good count for squat unless they are backed by action with a reasonable expectation of change. Instead, many folks think just because they tell themselves they "mean well" it doesn't matter what they actually do in the world.
As far as I can tell, the world don't work that way... though many in it will pat you on the back and say, "that's OK" when the intentions do not match the reality. I'd argue theey do more harm than good, and out of their own fear instead of wanting to be kind.
Of course, this same lesson and structure also applies to the entrepreneur who "wants" to grow their business; yet does nothing new... adopts no new behavior... tests no marketing... plans no new strategy... and then wonders why things haven't changed a week later. A month later. Then a year. The most successful people I know are absolutely ruthless with self-inspection. With what Napoleon Hill called Accurate Thinking. And what GE ex-CEO Jack Welch called The Reality Principle. When things don't work, their starting position is: "It's all my fault. Everything. All of it." Then they set out to be "at fault" of a better outcome. Worth a thought...........
Tee-hee... Love and light, friends. 
Two Things I Haven’t Been Able To Replicate On My Mac
Posted by Michael Cage on Friday, July 23, 2004Some of you will remember I bought an iBook a month and a half ago. I love it, and I'll never go back to Windows for my primary work machine. In hindsight, I can't imagine how I lasted as long as I did!
Anyway, there are two things I haven't been able to replace and am upset about.
First, RealRhapsosody is not available for the Mac. While the iTunes service is nice, in my opinion, when you are testing and researching music it doesn't even come close to the flexibility and value of RealRhapsody. I hope a client is coming soon.
Second, MindManager, the excellent mind mapping application for Windows. There are mind map alternatives for the map, but the best of the best still is only 1/10th of the application MindManager is. I hope they port it or the Mac applications step it up.
There are 10 comments, add your own!Marketing A Small, One (Wo) Man Business
Posted by Michael Cage on Friday, July 23, 2004This is an answer to a question I was asked privately about marketing a small, one person, b2b service business. It's a sort of follow-up to my earlier "Being Good At Cold Calling Is Like Being A Functional Drunk" post.
In a nutshell, when there is only one person to bring clients in the door AND service them; to be successful you must put marketing systems to work instead of manual labor to get clients. The reason is simple...
With one person delivering the service being billed for, time not spent with paying clients is expense. Nothing more.
Reliable, positive-return marketing in the form of: "evergreen" advertisements, direct mail campaigns, automated and live seminars, newsletters, referral incentive programs, and more need to be put in place and run on autopilot to be successful over the long term.
Far too often, professionals with a terrific service get caught up in the wheels of their success. The very activities that brought them to success level 1 keeps them from getting to level 2. When the only ways you know how to get clients require manual labor --- things like cold calling, networking, even certain referral stimulation activities --- in order to progress a small step back is usually required where manual labor is replaced with tested systems. Many service pros earning a 6-figure income who are still just scraping by are not willing to do that, and remain stuck instead with limited time available for billing and far too much time spent on manual labor client aquisition.
There are 6 comments, add your own!