Who Are You - Overhead Or Asset?

If you receive a salary and benefits, occupy office space, have a manager or file an expense report, you contribute to your company's overhead.

Have you committed to consistently add value that exceeds your expenses?  I believe that there are two sustainable ways to do this; namely, to innovate and to provide an excellent customer experience.

An excellent customer experience earns repeat business and referrals.  Innovation not only affects products and services but can also impact business efficiencies.

Each employee can become a valued resource by asking questions and probing the answers to learn what is feasible to help the business to meet its goals. So, develop the skills and motivate yourself to contribute on a consistent basis.  This habit will propel your career to its next level.

If you don't rise above your job description, be wary of the potential consequences since you are replaceable by another person or by an automated process.

By John Bernardi

Hidden Gems In Your Content Marketing Calendar

Fortify Your Marketing Calendar To Play Two Valuable Roles

• New Content Keeps Existing Followers Interested
• Drip Market Older Content To New Followers

Do you typically plan the release of new content without considering new followers who join your community after this content is published?  Schedule your marketing calendar to get new followers caught up in a reasonable amount of time.  "Drip market" older relevant content in bite size chunks.

Here's an example marketing calendar that schedules a weekly educational tip and blog post; a monthly press release and success story; and a quarterly newsletter:

Weekly Educational Tip

• Every Tuesday
• Repeat 4 weeks later to new followers

Weekly Blog Post

• Every Thursday
• Blogs reference past posts, so no need to republish them

Monthly Press Release

• First Wednesday of the month
• Repeat 4 weeks later to new followers

Monthly Success Story

• First Friday of the month
• Repeat 4 weeks later to new followers

Quarterly Newsletter

• First Monday of the quarter to existing followers
• First Monday of each month to new followers

Your website and social media outlets should have archive links to all historical content for followers who want to proactively search your libraries.
 
Refresh your content annually and try delivering it via different channels such as video.

When you run lead generation campaigns, avoid information overload on a given day by using the Monday, Wednesday and Friday open slots in your marketing calendar for these communications.

By John Bernardi

Fearful Of Interviewing Customers After Key Engagements?

Quality Reviews

Identify Gaps After Important Customer Projects

• Customer Experience
• Products and Services
• Attitudes and Behaviors
• Easy To Do Business With
• Customer Facing Processes
• Touch Points
• Channels
• Complementary Partners
• Communications

Prove Total Customer Satisfaction by gaining approval for logical next steps, referrals, new ideas, and customer participation in authoring success stories.

Discover Uncontrollable Business Risks: Competition, technology, economic, social, regulatory.

Interview The Customer, Partners And Team

Your interviewer must be perceptive about things that are difficult or unclear so that you can gain a deep understanding and insight about your business.

Compete Like A Commodity But Win With Value

You Can't Avoid Buyers Who Position You As A Commodity

Their Goal Is To Compel You To Compete On Price

Below the surface you compete as a commodity to generate sales and cash flow.  Above the surface you thrive with an authentic value proposition.

 

 

Before Pitching

First, do research and conduct a sales interview to learn about your prospect.  Then, see if you can convince yourself that you have the best solution for them.  If you can't convince yourself, how can you expect to persuade your prospect?  If you proceed with your pitch before establishing emotional value in the mind of the prospect, you'll reinforce the sales stereotype by making it appear that you are interested only in yourself. Develop the patience, confidence and ability to lead with value as opposed to features, benefits and price.

Start with a sales funnel baseline where 80% of your sales opportunities are offered by commodity shoppers while 20% search for underlying value.  Determine how can you profitably compete as a commodity as you continually increase the baseline from its 20% starting point.

Are KPIs Your Catch-22?

KPIs Can Be A Catch-22

People Will Behave

Processes Will Be Implemented

Based On What You Measure

If you are unable to measure what is important, you will communicate importance to the things that you can measure, which may be sending people and processes in the wrong direction.

Important Vs. Urgent: CEO Dilemma