Waiting for your fairy godmother (venture capitalist/ investor) to save you?

There are no EASY ways to do business. When talking with a client today, I realized something I had never really admitted before, BUSINESS IS TOUGH!

There is no magic bullet, no get-rich-quick. It’s about something much more.

Now, that’s not to say SOME people may find success by being in the right place with the right thing at the right time, but those times are far and few rather than the norm.

Expecting that fairy godmother to come and make all of your dreams come true is a great way to feel like a failure!

THE SMARTER AND MORE SURE WAY TO SUCCESS? FOCUS! Focus on the right things at the right time. Focus on serving your current clients/customers/patients better! Focus on making loyal followers, die-hard fans. (See my post earlier today about Facebook fans and their worth, if you are using social networking as part of your plan.)

Here’s another way to think about it, to quote our man, Seth Godin, “Delight the audience you already have, amaze the customers you can already reach, dazzle the small investors who already trust you enough to listen to you. Take the permission you have and work your way up. Leaps look good in the movies, but in fact, success is mostly about finding a path and walking it one step at a time.”

SOOOOOOOOOOO? How will this change your day, your month, your year?

C

How to charge thousands and be absolutely worth it!

Be a linchpin!
Seth Godin relays this story to illustrate: I had a college professor who did engineering consulting. A brand new office tower in Boston had a serious problem–there was a brown stain coming through the drywall, (all of the drywall) no matter how much stain killer they used. In a forty story building, if you have to rip out all the drywall, this is a multi-million dollar disaster. They had exhausted all possibilities and were a day away from tearing out everything and taking a loss. They hired Henry in a last-ditch effort to solve the problem. He looked at the walls and said, “I think I can work out a solution, but it will cost you $45,000 if I succeed.” They instantly signed on, because if he succeeded, the project would be saved.

Henry asked for a pencil and paper and wrote the name of a common hardware store chemical and handed it to them. “Here, this will work.” And then he billed them $45,000. That’s quite an hourly wage. It’s also quite a bargain.

Read Linchpin to get ideas on how to be a linchpin, but the bottom line is: WHAT VALUE do YOU bring to your buyers?

The problem with us humans is that we over value what we do. You may fight to admit it, but it is a REAL problem.

If you don’t believe me, read Harry Beckwith’s book, Selling the Invisible.

So, IF you want to grow your hourly wage? OR just continue to justify it in a poor economy, then get honest, how much VALUE do you bring? And then concentrate on how to bring even more value. Under-promise, over-deliver! Thre was never a time where this was more important.

Ok, so here we are again, at the point where I ask you, what will this change, improve, alter, in what you do today, tomorrow, next week, month and year.

As you know, if you change nothing, you have gained nothing and you have lost the time you have spent reading (sigh), once again. SOOOOOO, get to it.

My absolute best,

C

Retention, referrals or acquisition? Which is most important to you?

When it comes to you and your clients/customers/patients, do you spend more $, time and energy on retention, on getting referrals or on acquiring new?

Which should you be concentrating on?
I have seen through practice that retention is cheaper, and has a bigger payoff, than the other two! Hence, I recommend YOU start there and stay there. When resources for a referral plan exists in ADDITION to the plan for retention, THEN and only then should that take resources from the business for referrals. Lastly, the attention/resources should be brought to acquisition of NEW clients/customers/patients.

What do you think?

What could you do to make what you do in all three arenas better?

C

Contest to WIN Tony Hsieh’s Book – Delivering Happiness, before it is even released!!!!!!

Delivering Happiness and the Zappos mentality that I SO adore, is all about delivering happiness to customers, employees and the world!

Obsessed with the subject of Customer Loyalty?

Read Daniel Pink’s book Drive?

Love the Zappos mentality?

I am pleased to announce that I am hosting a Book Club all about Culture Creation and Customer Loyalty AND I am having a contest. Enter to WIN a copy of Tony Hsieh’s book before it is even released!

Join the Book Club and be entered into a drawing to win a free copy of Tony’s book! ONE will be given out each week for the next three weeks!

To join, either place a comment here and tell me your #1 struggle/question with creating your company’s culture OR join my LinedIn group called Zappos Insights Mastermind Group OR re-tweet my tweet about this on twitter! My twitter name: christiescott1

Look forward to brainstorming with you on our Book Club calls!

C

Retailers keep the customers from buying on the net! HOW to win the WAR?

If you are in retail, then you are at WAR! The internet is always going to have a cheaper, faster, better resource for your prospects to buy from. So, how can you compete?

You can offer the one thing the internet cannot, the environment, the smells, sounds, what will keep buyers coming back. See how a bookstore competes with giants like Amazon, Barnes and Nobles and Books-A-Million.

http://tinyurl.com/MontagueBookstore

How can YOU take this concept and WIN?

I want to hear about it!

Your coach,

C

Why companies/marketing/tactics fail!

The reality of the world today is harsh, whether we will admit it or not. It’s a killer situation for many businesses, destined to FAIL!

Why??????

They simply are not good enough! Average is not praised, noticed or bought anymore.

Seth Godin puts it well: “The biggest mistake companies make is that they chicken out.  If your idea doesn’t become a virus, it’s most likely because it didn’t deserve to become a virus.”

I blog and rant about it all of the time, if you aren’t innovative, you will not make it in this economy! So once again, I implore you, stand up, be counted! Be deserving!

Your coach,

C

Give gifts to recieve! Happiness, more revenues, loyalty…

I regularly recommend to my clients that they give gifts freely. Seth GOdin ahs a brilliant explanation that really gets us thinking in the right direction with this giving!

Read here, his post:

If I sell you something, we exchange items of value. You give me money, I give you stuff, or a service. The deal is done. We’re even. Even steven, in fact.

That’s fine, but it doesn’t explain potlatch or the mystery of art or the power of a gift.

If I give you something, or way more than you paid for, an imbalance is created. That imbalance must be resolved.

Perhaps we resolve it, as the ancient Native Americans did, by acknowledging the power of the giver. In the Pacific Northwest a powerful chief would engage in potlatch, giving away everything he owned as a sign of his wealth and power. Since he had more to give away, and the power to get more, the gifts carried real power, and others had to accept his power in order to engage.

Or we resolve it by acknowledging the creativity and insight of the giver. Artists do this every time they put a painting in a museum or a song on the radio. We don’t pay for the idea, but we acknowledge it. And then, if it’s particularly powerful, it changes us enough that we become givers, contributing to someone else, passing it along.

Sometimes we resolve the imbalance by becoming closer to the brand or the provider. We like getting gifts, we like being close to people who have given us a gift and might do it again.

When done properly, gifts work like nothing else. A gift gladly accepted changes everything. The imbalance creates motion, motion that pushes us to a new equilibrium, motion that creates connection.

The key is that the gift must be freely and gladly accepted. Sending someone a gift over the transom isn’t a gift, it’s marketing. Gifts have to be truly given, not given in anticipation of a repayment. True gifts are part of being in a community (willingly paying taxes for a school you will never again send your grown kids to) and part of being an artist (because the giving motivates you to do ever better work).

Plus, giving a gift feels good.

So, here is my favorite place to order gifts for , they will even wrap it for you and ship it with your special note! Shipping and the gift are under $10!

I can even get you a discount, if this is your first order and you are one of the first 12 to order with this Blog code, get a dollar off of each gift! Coupon good till Feb. 28th, 2010 – Code to enter at checkout: Blog0210

www.LittleSomething.com

Think about gifts you have received from companies, unexpectedly… how did it make you feel? Did you refer more often? Spend more money with that company?

Wouldn’t you like to create raving fans of your own?

I would love to hear your stories and about what you sent!!!

C

Seth Godin’s TWO approaches to How to Respond to the “Bad Economy”

So, the economy has affected us all. Many companies are looking to cut expenses, payroll, budgets, everything and anything that will lessen the outflow to attempt to balance the lack of inflow!

BUT, is this a SMART business strategy? Well, if you would like even less customers, revenues, clients, then yes.

If you want to grow your business, NO.

Seth Godin illustrates this well today:

One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. That’s actually what they spent most of my time at business school teaching me.

No sense putting more on that pizza, sending more staff to that event, answering the phone in fewer rings… what’s the point? No sense being kind, looking people in the eye, being open or welcoming or grateful. Doing the least acceptable amount is the way to maximize short term profit.

Of course, there’s a different strategy, a crazy alternative that seems to work: do the most you can do instead of the least.

Radically overdeliver.

Turns out that this is a cheap and effective marketing technique.

So, how should you respond, as the business leader? How can you overdeliver? How can impress the socks off of your current clients, customers, patients?

What will that create in referrals, word-of-mouth, and media attention? Whether in your marketing videos, on twitter, facebook, face-to-face with your clients/customers/patients, how will that change the interaction and the reaction and the after affect?

Look at Tom’s Shoes or other companies who seem to just give, give, give! Do they suffer financially? Absolutely not!

So, whatcha gonna do about it?

C

www.christiescott.com

Check out my latest video on HOW to BE more POPULAR with your business! and how to have more fun!

Click here!

I would love to see your latest videos or blog posts, tell me about them and about how you are or are NOT taking my advice I give in this video.

My best,

C

www.christiescott.com

Marketing – Let me Light Your Money on Fire if You Don’t GET this!

Most of us have experienced great marketing. We have wanted products that were SOOOO magnetic that we actually BELIEVED we NEEDED a new widget, dohicky or app thingy. In reality, we don’t NEED these things, but we buy them anyway and we are excited to have them. The connection is emotional, we rationalize it logically (or so we coerce ourselves to believe).

For products  the path of marketing the item is clear, or at the very least in most circumstances the budget and steps to be taken are understood. HOWEVER, I work everyday with service industries because what they do is MUCH more difficult. Marketing a service is like marketing air, there is no tangible product to rationalize. The Call Girl Effect is in action here, which means that as soon as the service is rendered, the value of said service diminishes rapidly!

Hence, the attrition rate for service industries is usually detrimentally high. You can very well lose clients as fast as you acquire them, that is exhausting and expensive, could be ultimately detrimental!

Marketing is important but what’s between the marketing? What is outside of what you market yourself or your company as providing? How much attention do you give to what is outside of the service you provide? What experience do your patrons have when YOU aren’t around?

Seth Godin talks about this:

Marketing is what happens in between the overt acts of the marketer. Yes you made a package and yes you designed a uniform and yes you ran an ad… but the consumer’s take on what you did is driven by what happened out of the corner of her eye, in the dead spaces, in the moments when you let your guard down.

Marketing is what happens when you’re not trying, when you’re being transparent and when there’s no script in place.

It’s not marketing when everything goes right on the flight to Chicago. It’s marketing when your people don’t respond after losing the guitar that got checked.

It’s not marketing when the smiling waitress appears with the soup. It’s marketing when we hear two waiters muttering to each other behind the serving station.

Don’t miss the point, yes, you must spend money on marketing. BUT, you must pay more attention to what is outside of that. What goes on that tears your marketing investment to shreds. What a waste! I have said many times to clients, just send me your money, I will make an entertaining YouTube Video of me burning it for you. But, you know what? If you refuse to better utilize the investment, then let’s send it to the people of Haiti instead, no you won’t get more clients or revenues that way, but SOMEONE WILL put it to amazing use, it may save a life.

How will you plan to start changing this today? If it doesn’t change, then you are wasting your time, make a plan, stop the madness!

Your coach,

C

www.christiescott.com