Gratitude Marketing: Free Tele-Class

Because you're one of my readers, you're invited to a free learning session by phone this Friday.

I know it's short notice, but the subject is VERY powerful -- I call it "Gratitude Marketing."

On this call, which will last from 12:00 noon to about 12:45 Central Time, you'll discover:

• Why they sneered when I said, "Thank you." But then the new profits started pouring in ...
• The easy way to make selling unnecessary (if you hate to sell, this one idea could change everything for you) ...
• Why email marketing could be the death of your business ...
• And lots more

... all packed into a fast, FUN, 45 minute-call at lunch time this Friday.

Good news: There's no cost to learn these simple tricks to building your business.

Great news: If you can't make the call, you can listen to an audio recording and read the transcript later ...

... but you must register to attend.

Do it now! Register free at this web page. And I'll talk to you Friday, May 17!



Meanwhile, if you're in the Twin Cities and you're looking for ways to grow your business, join me June 14 in Maple Grove for my next business-building event.


You can learn more -- and save $50 for a limited time -- at this special web page.
   

Want More Referrals? Do This Today

You know about positive reinforcement, right? If you want more of a certain behavior, reward it.

It works with children, dogs, college roommates ... and referrals.

Let me explain ...

Below is a thank-you note I just got in the mail from my friend (and ace tax accountant), Linda Haller. She wrote to thank me for a referral I sent her a few weeks ago.

This is very smart, for several reasons ...

First, sending a thank-you note after a referral is simply the right thing to do. It's a basic sign of competence, like zipping your fly or brushing your teeth. If you screw this up, what else will you get wrong in your business?

Second, writing to say, "Thank you" makes the writer feel good. Because you get to relive the warm, fuzzy experience of having a new client dropped in your lap, which is what my referral was for Linda. So, I'm sure she felt good after sending this note to me.

Third, a thank-you note makes the recipient feel good. In this case, me. I had truly forgotten about sending these two nice people to Linda, so her card made me relive those good feelings.

Fourth and finally, by rewarding me for a referral like this, guess what? Linda is going to get more referrals from me. Because I feel very good about sending my friends and colleagues to someone as thoughtful as she is.

When you add it all up, I count four benefits from one humble thank-you note. That's a pretty good ROI.

More importantly, what are you going to do about this? 

Meanwhile, if you want to more clients like your best clients, my free Client Cloning Kit can help. Grab your free copy now, while they last. 

The Strange Case of the Lost Mojo and the Passionate Entrepreneur

My expert interview today is with Steve Adams, a very successful entrepreneur and business person, and author of the new book, The Passionate Entrepreneur.

Read on to discover how setting goals with a strong why can help find your lost mojo ... and how it helped one store boost their sales by more than 50% ...

Kevin: Could you give my readers a quick bio on where you’re coming from? What’s your business background, and why should people listen to you?

Steve Adams: Well, that’s a good question. I’m a middle class kid, grew up in Lansing, Michigan, and my dad was a General Motors employee at the Oldsmobile factory for 33 years. I went off to college as one of the first kids in our family going back many years, to ever go to college, and got a marketing degree.

I started in the banking business because I thought I could learn more about business as a banker. I got into the commercial corporate side and made loans for 14 years for three different banks and got a great training there about how to evaluate businesses and industries and management teams, and really fell in love with entrepreneurship as a banker, because I worked with so many bright ones and some not-so-bright ones where I learned about what not to do.

Then in 1995 I looked into the Pet Supplies Plus franchise. It’s based out of Detroit, Michigan. At the time, it only had about 70 stores. Today it’s about 300. Today we have 21 stores and a little over 400 employees and I just really enjoy what I do every day. It’s just been one day at a time, making mistakes, overcoming them, paying for them. I wrote my book as a means to train my staff as well as share our story with a broader entrepreneurial market.

Kevin: So you’re someone people really have to listen to. You’ve experienced tremendous growth, you’ve got a whole lot of life lessons to share, you’re doing a lot of things right.

Let’s talk about one of your employees, we’ll call him Tony. You told me before our call that he had lost his mojo. Talk about Tony’s problems, how you helped him turn things around, and the lessons that could hold for other entrepreneurs.

Steve: Well, Tony worked down in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. We acquired some stores down there and he was part of the prior ownership group. They were just kind of classic old school business people where they were only focused on costs and they didn’t invest in their people and so he had worked for the company for seven or eight years, and then when we purchased the company, we had quite a bit different culture than what they had.

One of the things I like to do is have ample face time with store managers, because they are the key people in our entire company, and Tony told me, “Steve, when you come, I’m excited for three weeks, and then I lose my focus.” And I found this was not just a problem for Tony, so I met with one of my friends who owns a company and really, I learned the following process from him.

The idea is that whenever we start something new, we’re excited about it and there’s a lot of learning that happens right away, so there’s a sharp upward trend in our growth. And then when it starts to get a little bit hard, we start to lose focus and ambition. And that’s where we were with Tony and, frankly, with all of our managers in that new market -- they were having a hard time staying motivated long enough to do what we asked them to do.

So the thing I learned from my business-owner friend is to have all of your leaders give their personal, professional and financial goals, and teach them about how to pursue them. Your readers are probably familiar with goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and with a time frame.

The team created SMART goals and I met with each one of them. Tony was particularly enthusiastic about this and what I found out through this process (combining personal, professional and financial goals) was that he wanted to move to Mobile, Alabama, which is where he is from.

So I explained to Tony, “This is what’s going to happen now, you’re clear about what you want, and you have a strong why behind it.” And his why was, he wanted to move his kids to where he was from, where his parents were, so the kids would have grandparents and there was a private school there he wanted them in, and all of these things that ended up cascading and creating a very strong sense of purpose.

Then I said, “The only thing missing now, Tony, is a specific set of steps.” And so our regional manager helped him established the steps, because we couldn’t just move him, we had to train a team to replace him. So that’s the process we went through.

Kevin: How often did you review Tony’s goals with him?

Steve: Quarterly. We don’t it quarterly anymore because we’ve been doing this now for three plus years and all of our managers are in this program and have given it a lot of thought, they understand what it is, so we don’t need to meet so frequently on it.

But however often you need to, when you find yourself losing steam, a simple thing to do is to step back and ask, “Am I clear about what it is that I want, and do I have a strong why?” If the answer is no to either one of those, you’re going to drift.

Kevin: We’ve all heard about goals before, but what I think you’re saying is what’s been missing for a lot of people is the why, because that’s the fuel that keeps you going toward that goal.

And for Tony, until he got clear about moving to Mobile near his family, he didn’t have the juice to stay motivated and keep going forward. So you’re saying when you get clear on your why for your goal and you commit to regularly reviewing your goals, you’ve seen it increase motivation among your employees?

Steve: I have, Kevin. Anybody can sit and write down five goals, but if you don’t have a clear purpose about why you’re doing them, and a clear road map -- an action plan -- to achieve them, it’s just a dream, it’s a fantasy.

What we’ve done in our company is to institutionalize this philosophy, both personally and corporately. So within our company, and this is in the book also, we have the store managers set goals for the month for the store, then they have annual goals that they break down into quarterly goals. And then they set training goals monthly with each and every one of their employees. We call those our “30 Day Action Plans.”

So you’re going to have your own personal, professional and financial goals that you’re working; you’re going to have a set of goals for the store; and then a monthly goal review process with each one of the employees. And we’ve cascaded those into all three levels and that has enabled us to have performance that we’ve not seen before.

Kevin: So, did Tony get his mojo back?

Steve: Yes! About six months later, there was an opening at the store in Mobile for him, and I remember how excited my regional manager and I were to tell Tony. He had done everything he was supposed to do and he had trained his replacement.

But the interesting thing was his replacement had a goal of wanting to run the Tuscaloosa store because that’s where she had grown up and that’s where she wanted to stay for her whole career!

It was really exciting because it was a double win. And Tony got there in January of 2011 and today the store is doing more than 50% higher sales than it was before he took over.

Kevin: Wow! Very cool. Okay, let’s break this down and finish up. If you’re talking to an entrepreneur who wants to get to your level of success, what are their takeaways based on what we’ve just talked about?

Steve: Kevin, what I would say is as an entrepreneur you have to be clear about what it is you want.

If you’re in a job, in a corporate job and you want to become an entrepreneur, then your whole set of goals should be to identify your opportunity and the launch.

In any case, if it’s just for money, you won’t sustain it. I mean, I’m as much of a capitalist as anyone, and I want to do well financially, but I have learned over the years that money alone sustains very few people over a long period of time.

So get really clear about what you want, understand why you want to do it, and then when you map out a set of action steps, that’s where you start to confront where I’m going to have to change.

If I want to have 8 dry cleaning locations instead of one, or if I want to double the size of my window replacement business, that means I’m going to have to scale up and build infrastructure and develop people. So by going through these steps, you give yourself a much better chance.

Kevin: Steve Adams, thanks very much for sharing your insights today. How can people get a hold of your book, The Passionate Entrepreneur?

Steve: You can go to PassionateEntrepreneur.com and if you sign up for our ezine, you’ll be eligible for a free copy sometime in the next three weeks. Otherwise you can just go straight to Amazon.com.

Meanwhile, if you want to more clients like your best clients, my free Client Cloning Kit can help. Grab your free copy now, while they last. 

How To Show Up Like No One Else

What do Euro-academics know about marketing that you don't?

According to The Wall Street Journal, researchers in Belgium wanted to see if distinctive recruiting tactics could attract IT talent. So they ran an experiment.

With a pool of 1,997 prospects, half were solicited by email. The other half got postcards with the same design and information. The response rate was 3% -- 62 people applied for the job. But here’s the kicker: 82% of responses -- 51 people -- were postcard recipients, and they were better educated than other applicants (The Allure of Headgames; May 3, 2013).

The lesson?

As my mentor Dan Kennedy said, “Show up like no one else.”

You would expect recruiters to send email to find applicants for an IT job. You would expect a pitiful response. And you would be right.

Instead, by showing up like no one else -- a humble postcard -- a response of 5.1% was achieved (51 replies from 998 postcards, if you do the math). That’s a darn good response rate (2-3% is good).

Although, more important than response rate is return on investment. Did the postcard produce an ideal new employee at the right price? That's not covered in the article.

In any case, the tactic of showing up like no one else is one you can take to the bank.

When your competitors show up by email or Facebook, you can show up by postcard, for example.

If your competitors show up by #10 business envelope, you can show up by FedEx, for example.


And if you want to more clients like your best clients, my free Client Cloning Kit can help. Grab your free copy now, while they last. 

The Elements of Strategy

My expert interview today is with Jeff Prouty, Chairman and Founder of The Prouty Project, a boutique consulting firm started in 1987. Jeff and his team work with clients in areas of strategic planning, organization development, and board and team development. 


You're going to love his ideas on strategy ...

Kevin Donlin: Jeff, let’s talk about strategic planning. It’s a topic that throws a lot of people. When I talk to small business owners or decision-makers at entrepreneurial firms, a lot of them don’t know where to start when it comes to strategy. So, let’s start at the beginning: How would you define strategy?

Jeff Prouty: We’ve got a big quote on the wall in our creative think tank and it says, “Strategy is about stretching limited resources to fit ambitious aspirations.” It’s all about choices, and focus, and alignment.

Kevin: How do you know when your strategy has succeeded?

Jeff: We’re all about metrics and there’s another quote that I heard a long time ago from the CEO of Diageo, Ian Martin was his name, and he said, “Success follows the relentless pursuit of simple objectives.”

So, define your objectives to start with. For us, that defining process includes cash flow, so there’s a profitability element, obviously. But objectives should include customer service, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and employee commitment.

Kevin: What are some examples of metrics to aim for in a winning strategy?

Jeff: It might be that we want to score an 88 percent or better on our annual employee commitment index. Or, we want a score of 75 or better on our customer net promoter index, the percentage of clients who would feel good about referring us to a friend or a colleague.

So we want people to think about how employees and customers grade the company. Then, assuming all those things are working, there ought to be profitability and cash flow metrics.

Kevin: What time frame do you use to measure strategy? Is it one year, five years, 100 years?

Jeff: It varies by client. We’ve got clients who say, “Prouty, I want our team to think out 50 years when my grandson, is running the company.” And we’ve got clients who want to think out 50 weeks.

I think two to three years is a good time frame. And the world is changing so quickly that you have to keep updating and rethinking your strategy every 90 days.

Kevin: What common mistakes do you see among clients who come to you for help with their strategy?

Jeff: I think lack of focus would be one. Lack of alignment would be another. These aren’t in priority order, but things we see frequently.

A third one would be lack of the talent required to do the things they’re trying to do. In other words, we want to win the Super Bowl, but we are weak in some positions that will stop us.

A fourth area is accountability. I’m heading out to California next week to work with a $25-million company and one of their issues is they have no accountability for poor performance. They expect folks to do things but they don’t deliver, and yet they get to stay on the team, or they’re not able to coach those folks to improve their performance.

Now having said all that, we’ve got another quote that we like, from T.J. Rodgers, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductors, who said, “Most organizations don’t fail for lack of talent or lack of vision. They fail for lack of execution.” So a lot of folks know what they need to do, but they don’t execute. They don’t put rituals in place to do the things they need to do to achieve the goals.

Kevin: That idea of execution is so important -- the best strategy on earth does you no good if it’s not executed. How can people be more accountable and execute their strategy?

Jeff: Laser focus. Do 3 things really well versus 10 things kind of well. Focus includes people. I hear lots of clients say, “We want to have two people as the co-champions of this,” and I always say, “Co-champion means no champions.” I want one person with accountability. It doesn’t mean they have to do all the work, but they need to own the initiative so that they are accountable -- did we or did we not achieve that?

I think if I were to boil down all the feedback I see, it’s that people have too many priorities. They’re trying to juggle 12 balls when they ought to be trying to juggle 3.

Kevin: Jeff Prouty from The Prouty Project, thank you very much!

Productivity Secrets from Jason Womack

My expert interview today is with author, speaker, and productivity coach, Jason Womack.

Jason is author of one of my favorite books, Your Best Just Got Better. It’s on my short shelf of 20 or so books that I refer to over and over again.

Welcome, Jason!

Jason Womack: Hey, Kevin. Thanks for inviting me here and the smile I’m wearing after that introduction is huge.

Kevin: The subtitle of your book is Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More. Do you want to touch on any of those subjects? Which of those three ideas are resonating most with your readers?

Jason: People who read the book consistently tell me, “Jason, I can implement a couple of things and immediately two things are happening. Number one, I have an outlook on life that’s 36 to 60 months bigger. The second thing is in my everyday, I’m getting 15 to 30 extra minutes to do things that I want to do.”

Kevin: Both of which are outcomes that I’ve seen in my life, too. I’m much clearer on my goals for 3-5 years out, and I definitely have more time each day to do what I really want to do.

I especially love your idea in the book about how to look at blocs of 15 minutes as precious things. When you divide the 1,400 minutes in a day by 15, you get 96. So 15 minutes equals about 1% of your life each day. Understanding this has made me more cognizant of how I spend my time, which has made me more productive. It's just a very enlightening way to look at the clock.

Jason: Thank you.

Kevin: What else can we talk about in terms of productivity?

Jason: The way that I hear that in my head is there are things that I have to do and there are things that I have, to do. I want to make sure that I get to that second group. What is it that I have ... to do? Why was I put on the planet? I wasn’t put on the planet to manage my email inbox. That’s not why I’m here.

Yet, the more effectively that I manage my email inbox, the more effectively I manage that meeting that I’ve been invited to, the more effectively that I manage that commute, whether I’m driving or flying, all of a sudden then, there’s this opening that I can step into.

Kevin: Speaking of why we were put on the planet, talk about how your ideas relate to the people in our lives.

Jason: Think of that short list of the 5 people you spend the most time with, the people who will influence you the most this week. They’re going to influence what YouTube video you watch, what restaurant you eat in … they may even influence what book you read or magazine you subscribe to.

Here’s a test I need everybody to run this week. When you leave a conversation with someone -- whether it’s digital, face-to-face, or hand written -- when you walk away from that conversation, ask yourself this question: How do I feel about me right now?

What’s fascinating is it is either/or. It is plus or it is minus. I do not walk away from someone at a neutral level. I either am stoked on life and excited … or I’m not. And the more times I walk away from the same person where I don’t feel great, I want to look at that. Thirty-six to 60 months from now, is that a relationship I still want to be in?

Kevin: That’s fantastic advice. You don’t need any technology or outside input. The answers are inside you -- how do you feel? That’s going to be very accurate feedback.

What are some other areas of leverage if people want to work smarter, think bigger, make more?

Jason: Beyond what we just talked about, another concept from the book is an activity called, I Am At My Best When. When I begin working with a client or facilitate a workshop, early in that conversation, I ask everyone to pull out a piece of paper. On the top of the piece of paper, you write, “I am at my best when.”

Then you write down 5, 7, maybe 9 indicators -- the critical few. What are the 5, 7, 9 things that if they happen, the chances of me having a better day increase?

For example, I know if I eat a balanced breakfast, the chances of me having a better day go up. If I write a thank-you card to someone during the day, it goes up. Or, if I reach out to a mentor for help during the day, the chances of me having a better day are higher.

By contrast, everyone that I’ve ever talked to can bring to mind the kinds of things that if go wrong, they’ll have a bad day. If you commute, you’ve probably climbed in your car and thought, “I hope there’s no traffic today. I hope there’s not an accident on the freeway today. I hope my boss is not in a bad mood today.”

What’s fascinating is that you actually start looking for accidents, traffic, and a boss in a bad mood. I’m not suggesting by any means that because I think I’m going to have a good day that it’s guaranteed, but the likelihood goes up.

Kevin: I love that idea. Your exercise forces you to find things you can do to have a better day, like sleep a bit more or eat the right breakfast. And those factors are entirely under your control, unlike traffic on the freeway or a crabby boss.

Jason: If you pop over to WomackCompany.com you can download the first 42 pages of the book free, and it includes the I Am At My Best When activity in chapter one.

Kevin: Thanks, Jason. This is great stuff!

Meanwhile, if you want to more clients like your best clients, my free Client Cloning Kit can help. Grab your free copy now, while they last. 

Personal Branding That Works 24/7

My expert interview today is with Michael Roby.

With 40 years of experience in sales and marketing, he's forgotten more than I've learned about how to grow your business. Michael has been a sales and marketing coach, and a speaker, serving professional service firms such as broker dealers, banks, credit unions, and insurance companies.

And you're going to love his advice in my transcript of our interview:  personal branding that works.

Michael Roby, welcome!

Michael: Kevin, it is a privilege.

Kevin: Let’s talk about personal branding that works. This is an intriguing idea. Branding seems to be done to death by a lot of experts.

Tell us first of all, please define personal branding. Then, let’s talk about how it can really work, and maybe include some success stories.

Michael: Kevin, branding is poorly defined in a lot of cases. We’ll hear branding as logos or slogans, or we hear about the infamous elevator pitch. Here’s the challenge with that. Most people that I talk to -- and I’ve talked to a lot of financial advisors -- can’t even tell me what they do.

If people ask you what you do, what they really want to know is, “What’s in it for me?”

“I” is the single most dangerous word in sales and marketing because it’s not about you, it’s about them. They don’t want to hear you say, “I do this,” or, “I do that.” They don’t want to hear your title.

When I hear things like, “I’m a financial advisor,” my response is, “Really? I’ve never met one of those.” There are only 500 in my building. Or I’ll hear things like, “I’m a wealth manager.” Really? How much wealth have you managed people into in the last ten years?” I’m just asking.

People don’t care about titles. They don’t care about what you do.

People have always been coached that you should have an elevator speech. An elevator speech is about 30 seconds long. But here’s the challenge. Research shows that people make up their mind to listen to you in the first seven seconds. If you lose them, you are done. In fact, if you do lose them, in captive audience studies, they have found that people take an average of two minutes and 20 seconds to reengage with you.

What do we want to do in that first 7 seconds? Here’s the answer. We call this a 24/7 personal brand because you can use it anytime, anywhere. You can use it in copy. You can use it in personal conversation or marketing pieces.

The 24/7 personal brand is this: 24 words, in 7 seconds. Here’s what to do ...

First, identify your constituents. Second, give them the benefit of doing business with you. Third, give them a couple quick answers to make them ask a question.

Kevin: That’s a lot to do in 7 seconds!

Michael: It is. For financial advisors, who are the constituents? Most people, if you talk to them about the fact that you’re in the investment business, they’ll smile and they’ll be nice, but they’re not thinking investments. What do they do think when they hear the word “investments”? They think risk.

And if they think risk, they may be smiling, they may be nodding a little, but they are tuning you out. What you want to do is identify yourself as doing business with conservative investors. The conservative investor piece may be the way you lead. 

The 24/7 personal brand may go something like this: “Conservative investors choose to do business with me and my firm because we can help people reduce the risk associated with saving, investing, and managing money.”

Kevin: Intriguing.

Michael: Let’s unpack that ...

Conservative investors. When you’re talking about your target demographic, you want to go the lowest common denominator. Sure, you’re going to talk to people that like to speculate, but most people just want to save and invest for a comfortable retirement and send their children and grandchildren to college, create a legacy for future generations, transfer business.

Next, choose to do business with us. Notice I didn’t say, “I work with” – or, “My clients are,” because it’s not about me. It’s got to be about them.

Next, we can help people reduce the risk. There’s a pain point. And it’s related to the final part: associated with saving, investing, and managing money.

For most financial advisors, that’s the bulk of what they do. It’s saving, investing, and managing money. If you package that together -- conservative investors choose to do business with my firm because we can help them reduce the risk associated with saving, investing, and managing money -- most people on hearing that will ask something like this, “How do you do that?”

Kevin: Exactly. I know you have a winner there, Michael, because the first thing I thought of was, “Tell me more.”

Michael: When people start asking you questions, the game is over. The deal is done. Then you can dig a little deeper into the benefits and follow up with features. Say something like, “Because Mr. and Mrs. Client, we don’t advise based on prediction. I can’t tell you what time the sun comes up but we use principles."

“We use principles that always work for helping people achieve their long-term financial objectives.” Then you can talk about those things. See, we have them asking questions now. Then after making that secondary statement, I can say, “How do you feel about risk as it relates to your money?” or, “What keeps you awake at night when you think about your finances?”

Now we’re engaged in a conversation. I’m not pitching; I’m advising. I’m not selling; I’m interviewing. I’m having a conversation with my new best friend.

Kevin: Terrific. Just quickly, before we go, you mentioned earlier, there are advisors gross one to two million dollars using this formula?

Michael: Absolutely, because it’s simple. It’s simple and it’s a chain reaction type of marketing. You identify the constituent, hit the pain point, give them a couple of examples, and the conversation builds from there.

It’s conversational, it’s repeatable. It’s something that their clients will tell other people, “Hey Kevin, you should talk to my financial advisor.” “Why?” “She’s helped me reduce risk in my portfolio.” “How does she do that?” “Well, you need to talk to her.”

Kevin: Michael, that’s outstanding. Thank you! Before we go, how can people learn more about the 24/7 formula?

Michael: Send us an email at info -at -michaelroby.com. We’ll be happy to help people any way we can.

It’s interesting because while I work with a lot of really, really large firms. But I’ve been given some fabulous mentoring over the years, so I’m happy to share my ideas with people who need to do a better job at delivering products and services.

Kevin: Thanks, Michael. You’ve been great.

Meanwhile, if you want to more clients like your best clients, my free Client Cloning Kit can help. Grab your free copy now, while they last.