Learning Anything?

A few short years ago Agriculture ceased to be the number one occupation for humankind. It was overtaken by the Services industry. This is momentous news given that this is the first time more humans were occupied by something other than agriculture in over 10,000 years.

Learning and teaching are clearly the currency of the future. 66% of us are already knowledge workers. This is where the real leverage in today’s society and economy are. Simply put, the people who can learn and teach effectively will be the people who have the most success in the future. I recently attended a conference on the topic and decided to share my notes with you… enjoy!

Our obstacles to learning:
First off, the two greatest obstacles to learning are:

1. I already knew that.
2. I disagree.

As you read this material, you will probably have those reactions a few times.

One of the reasons could be that you’re an entrepreneur (or an aspiring entrepreneur.) As an entrepreneur it’s likely you’re a “difference” person. That means your brain is very adept at spotting the differences between things.

Some people are “sameness” people, some people are “difference” people. (There are also mis-matchers who are the “yeah, but…” people.) None of these types are good or bad, they’re just different ways of looking at the world.

There tend to be more “difference” people among entrepreneurs… so the odds are pretty good that you’re a difference person, which would make you especially vulnerable to these two obstacles of “I already knew that” and “I disagree”.

In any case, please try to fight those two urges as you read this. It will be a huge obstacle to your learning process.

Guidelines for optimal learning:
a) Don’t become too invested in your positions… things are bound to change and
b) Never believe anything too much

In other words, stay open to learnings and change. Otherwise you will stop learning.

Every time you say “I already knew that”, you are closing the door and preventing yourself from learning. Every time you say “I disagree” you are blocking yourself from learning.

Become “not me”

Another key to learning is becoming “not me”… if you lock into your current self-image and behaviors, then you lock yourself out of learning.

You want to become “systematically outrageous”.

You want to be open to new experiences and new learnings. If you aren’t, then you’re not going to grow. You’re not going to change. You’re going to keep getting what you’ve gotten in the past.

Do what you’ve always done and your going to get what you’ve always got.

Get outside yourself. Become not me. Stay open. MOVE OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE. Learn.

Learning = behavioral change

Perhaps you’ve already had some insights and ‘aha’ moments in the past. Maybe you even get a surge of adrenalin or good feeling in your body when you make such a connection.

No real learning takes place with an insight… It’s just trivia, or data collection until you use that insight to create some behavioral change in yourself.

Some attendees stated: “I’ve learned to get very clear on the specific steps I need to get to create my vision and attain my goal.”

Sounds specific, right?

Well sorry… that’s not learning either. There is actually nothing specific or measurable in the statement.

To turn that into real learning, you would need to state something like: “For the next 10 days, when I sit down at my computer the first thing I do is close my eyes and visualize my day for sixty seconds. I then write down my action plan for the day.”

It’s kind of like taken something that you have read and putting it to work for you and then measuring the effectiveness.

Here’s a way to judge whether you have had a real learning experience. If a week later you asked 10 objective people to judge whether you had actually changed your behavior, would the learning be specific and measurable for them to come to a simple conclusion?

It took many of us a few days to get a real learning experience under our belt. Mine was a simple learning, but it was very specific and measurable. It had specific time frames and specific actions. And over the next 20 years that learning will probably have an enormous impact on my life.

The reason it took me and everyone else a long time to achieve this learning objective is primarily because we are all masters of self-deception. But the benefits are rewarding when you get there. It will likely change your life.

Give it a try…. Be specific. Be Measurable.
or just plain get out there and learn, learn learn.

Currency Valuation Methods Leaked?

Ever hear of the Big Mac index? We’ve successfully used it as a guide to valuing currencies and as such, it provides some really interesting insight into the world of valuation. The index (thanks to The Economist) is based on the idea of purchasing power parity (PPP), which states that currencies should trade at the rate that makes the price of goods the same in each country.

So if the price of a Big Mac translated into dollars is above its average cost in America (currently $3.57), the currency is more costly; if it is below that benchmark, its a bargain. This month, a Big Mac in China is half the cost of one in America. Other Asian currencies appear to be similarly undervalued. At the other end of the scale, many European currencies look over-valued. That is, excluding the ever so humble British pound, which was more than 25% overvalued a year ago, is now approaching ‘fair’ value parity with the USD.

Here in Switzerland, it is a different story. The Big Mac with it’s 100% Swiss beef and side order of fries made with 100% Swiss potatoes turns into a comparably priced meal when compared with local restaurant fare. Many Swiss see the brand as a status symbol rather than a fast, fattening food source and thus.. they don’t seem to mind over-paying for the value received which results in skewing our lovely currency valuation index.

Non the less, what we have learned is that non EU countries such as Switzerland & Norway command higher prices and have higher currency valuations than those in the European Union followed by the USD and then trailed by Japan, Australia, the Middle East, Russia and Asia. What’s this all mean? Pack your bags, it’s time to go shopping in Asia!

Twitter For Business?

Twitter for business?

Lets start by covering what Twitter is, then we will check out the different ways Twitter can be used, followed by ways to implement your fresh knowledge to create value for your business.

So exactly what is Twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, SMS,  or external applications (like the Twitter iPhone app).If you want to group conversations or categorize tweets, then consider using hashtags. These are words or phrases prefixed with a ‘#’. A search for “beer” would turn up all messages that included the word beer, a search for #beerfest2009 would turn up all tweets that included the hashtag ‘beerfest2009’ in the tweet. So when you want to track tweets about your brand, ask people to insert a hashtag (one that you create – remember that the hashtag must be unique in order to distinguish the relevant tweets from noise)

[flashvideo file=http://b6-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/twitter-how-to.flv /]

The first step is to create a Twitter account, this is fairly easy process, and you will end up with an account for your marketing campaign at Twitter like this: http://twitter.com/box_online. Remember to create separate accounts whose names are related to the product/service you are going to promote, even if you have a personal Twitter account. This will look more professional in the long run to have a dedicated following comprised exclusively of the target audience and will allow you to keep your personal account for your more quirky personal tweets (i.e., individual posts to Twitter).

Customize the profile. Once the account has been created, tweak the profile details to make it attractive to the target audience. Add an original logo, match the color of the profile with that of the logo, include keywords about the product/service to be promoted, add pictures and bits of information which are interesting and usable and fill in all the sidebar information.

Put badges on the website. Putting badges on the website and the web pages related to the promotion will allow the visitors to the website to follow you on Twitter. Twittercounter and Twittergrader badges are recommended for this purpose.

Seek followers. This is the most important aspect of Twitter, whether you are doing it for personal reasons or for a marketing advantage. Web marketers seek quality followers from the business vertical in which they are promoting their product or service. This can be done by going through the profiles and tweets posted by various followers and getting noticed by contributing to their conversations.

Jump in and reply to interesting @-reply tweets, which are public conversations between two users. [If they expect a conversation to be private, they should be “direct messaging” (DM) each other instead.] Check out both parties and “follow” them if they interest you. If you follow someone with, say, 10,000 followers and reply to his/her posts meaningfully for long enough, chances are good that he/she will start to reply to you and start following you.

Retweeting means forwarding someone else’s tweet to your own follower list. Proper retweeting can go a long way in gaining invaluable followers who are very popular themselves. Credit your Tweet source by adding their @ tag; e.g., when Box_Online, whom you follow, sends out, “Great new productivity site at http://b6group.com/,” retweet it to your list as “RT @Box_Online: Great new productivity site at http://b6group.com.” If you have characters to spare, you can spell out ReTweet. If someone with 10,000 followers retweets your posts, their followers may retweet your post and so on, with the potential for massive exposure.

A Break-Down of Tweet Topics During A Recent Event: WordPress WordCamp SF

Does It Actually Work?
Here are some examples of companies that are using Twitter in various methods.
@DellOutlet : Sales : Additional sales channel to sell refurbished products.
@HomeDepot : Marketing : Allows people to get more information on the products that they needed or wanted.
@JetBlue : Customer Service : 600,000 followers to let Customers know about upgrades, delays etc…
@IBM / Sun : B2B :  for events, and new product launches.
Do this:
@JeffreyHayzlett : CMO Kodak
@DellOutlet : Not always pitching… talking about adding value, they also follow their other brands.
@CNN : Strong bio, links back to the site, follow the followers
@IBM : Events, B2B group, partner channels, design group… if you are in the
design business, you are not going to know about IBM Design… you will
search for IBM.. and via Twitter you will find it if the brands are
also followed on the IBM Tweet.
@DunkinDonuts : Good logo, good following, offering feedback for not having shops in a given state.
@ScottMonty  : Personal dialog.
@zappos: Taken their brand and presorted it for you, provides insight into
behind the scenes ops, used as a contest & feedback mechanism to
better involve and serve customers.
Not this:
@ FujifilmInkjet : No dialog
@ofc : Same 5 posts re-written 40 times selling products.
@GU : No bio, no links back to their main site.
@Microsoft : Zero posts.
@ Subway : No presence but the brand is one of the most talked about brands on Twitter.
@nissan : Dealerships are followed but no dialog, no persona, no spokesman.

Can You Implement A Twitter Strategy Now?

Your new Twitter account is a key to a successful online pull marketing campaign.  Using your new account can help you to research what people are saying about your brand or topics related to your business. Using API’s like Twittervision API, you can even figure out where people are talking about which topics. You can Tweet about your products and services to attract Consumer attention to your brand.  Once you have a solid following, its time to spread information and content in order to attract Consumers to your website where you can give them value and convert prospects into leads. Consider using tiny urls as a way to save space and lead Customers to content.  Twitter is an excellent medium to use for promoting company events, remember to create a hashtag (#) for your event that will not only inform Customers regarding event details, but also provide a forum for valuable feedback. Remember to post your press releases to keep Customers up to date.

If you have any questions, or would like to recieve a Twitter marketing process map, please feel free to contact us at anytime.

Will Pull Marketing Generate Leads?

If you know your prospects and have their contact details in your CRM system or database, well… pull marketing may not be the most effective method to use for increasing sales leads this month. That said, it could be a viable way for converting prospects into Customers using our Triangle of Trust process if you have some very compelling content to give away to your prospects as teasers.

Folks, if you need new business from potential Customers that are currently unknown to you… pull marketing can be a highly effective weapon in your arsenal. Many people have asked us to present a list of best practices when they need more leads for their business so we collected a few of the best tips and posted them here for your review – hope it helps to answer some of your questions. If you’d like more concrete information or a customized process map, just get in touch with our sales team by filling out this form. Just to be sure that we are on the same page, please understand that it is essential to integrate push marketing techniques to support your pull marketing efforts. This helps to ensure that your brand’s buzz generates leads that you can convert into sales.  A good pull campaign will:

• engage your audience in a dialogue
• compile consumer data
• build and maintain trust
• provide value to the Customer
• compile leads
• empower your Prospect and Customer
• provide an authoritative knowledge base about your brand or niche
• increase your search engine visibility
• give your Customer the tools they need to inform others about your product or brand

Here are a few action steps to get you started.

Establish your marketing objectives:

What exactly is your goal? What will you use to measure your success? Once you have established your optimal end result you can begins to lay out a road map of specific milestones which will help you to achieve your goal in a timely fashion.

Master your keywords:

Which search terms do you want maximum visibility for? B6 Group has developed a set of processes to create first page search results in Google, Bing, Yahoo and other engines for virtually any long tail keyword. Always consider optimizing the ‘buying terms’ (those keywords that carry the highest potential for commercial intent). Positioning articles, pages and lenses for a wide variety of buying terms is an effective step in each campaign. For example; instead of focusing on “widget”, strive to target phrases such as “widget price”, “cheapest widget” or “buy widget”. Microsoft has an effective tool for measuring terms with commercial intent here.

Know your PPC

Get very familiar with driving traffic for low cost using PPC. In order to achieve this objective, you will need to achieve a high quality score on your landing page which means that the page your PPC ad points to must be highly relevant to the keywords in your Ad and it helps if the keyword is also included in your URL, your title tag and even your domain name.

Empower your Customers:

A well run campaign will give consumers the tools that they need to send your brand “viral”. If you gain your Customer’s trust and provided them with value, they will not hesitate to spread the word. Integrate your brand with social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg or Squidoo.  The key value to your brand in this category is that you are giving the Customer an opportunity to do your marketing for you, as well as providing valuable feedback and metrics.

Video:

Videos are useful in two primary ways. First, a video allows you to provide value to your Customer. Information always has value and a video is the most effective way to transmit your message. Secondly, a video that is hosted on Youtube, Google Video or metacafe is an excellent vehicle for traffic generation. Next time you check out a YouTube video, click the link under the user avatar and chances are you will wind up on a sales page.

Social Bookmarking:

Always distribute links to your blog posts, web pages, press releases and videos to social bookmarking services such as StumbleUpon, del.ic.us, reddit to name a few.

Interaction:

Get out there an begin a dialog, learn how to tweet, set up accounts on facebook, twitter and other social networking sites in the name of your business or your product and then personally develop the dialog with your target market. You can search for prospects, interact with them directly and even pitch them in real time but be careful… social media is extremely powerful and can have lasting results on your brand image so be prepared before you cross the line. If you always act with your Customer’s best interests in mind, you should do just fine. An examples of how to do it right can be found here.

Link Building:

Link building will increase your search engine rank and increase your online visibility. We can organize a unique linking system that is proven to place your website among the first page results for all major search engines. One easy method of gaining search visibility is to swap links with the owners of other websites, or include a url with comments wherever possible. Remember that on-site linking with good quality, long tail anchor text is equally important to off-site linking from other sites and article directories. Try to focus on optimizing each page for one single keyword and you can expect to experience a real boost in SERP rankings.

If you have specific questions or wish us to prepare a quote to help you with one of your projects, you can always reach us with questions.  Remember that an effective pull marketing campaign is only effective if it is thoroughly planned and executed in a professional manner.  A really effective pull marketing campaign requires months of planning and years of daily maintenance and execution.

What Are Vendor – Client Relationships Like These Days?

Rather than reading my take on this balancing act of graft vs PC norms… allow me to put you into the shoes of a few service providers that deal daily with people who want the moon and stars but insist on running their departments on pre-established budgets.

Enjoy the video and let us know if we might be able to help you implement processes to minimize such nonsense in your sales & purchasing cycles.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY

Push and Pull?

One significant marketing trend in recent years has been the growing use of pull marketing techniques and channels.  Outsell, Inc., a media research firm, recently estimated that U.S. marketers will spend $65 billion in 2009 on their websites, which are constructed for the purpose of pulling Customers.  MediaPost recently reported that U.S. spending on search engine marketing (another pull marketing technique) will grow from $12.2 billion in 2008 to $22.4 billion in 2013.

Strictly speaking, pull marketing refers to marketing communications that are initiated by the prospective Customer.  In a general sense pull marketing is a distinct approach to marketing that relies heavily on engaging or informational communications to engage with potential Customers.  The single most important characteristic of good pull marketing communications is that the content is not overtly promotional.  The primary focus of most pull marketing efforts is on providing information that prospective Customers will consider to be valuable.  So for example, you might create a series of white papers, recorded webinars, articles or even micro-sites that address a concern your Customers have raised. We can show you how to efficiently discover your Customer’s concerns online and then deliver an ongoing stream of information to help both your Customers and Prospects get back in sync with your brand values and core messages.

The basic objective of pull marketing is to demonstrate your expertise and thereby establish your company as a credible and trusted source of information about a particular subject matter area. By doing this, you have provided the consumer with value even before they consider buying your product. When potential Customers go looking for solutions that fall within your area of expertise your company is more likely to receive favorable consideration because you have already established a bond of trust with the consumer.  Better yet, consumers who trust and value your content and products are more likely to use social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to help build your buzz.

The effectiveness of traditional push marketing techniques is clearly declining. The fact is that people like you and me are bombarded with up to 3,000 advertisements each and every day! It’s a wonder that we are able to remember any of these ads. Sure, chances are still good that the ones that appeal to our sense of humor have at least a shot at our daily top 10 list but we have our own agenda today and we have access to the internet which means that we can PULL information that we need toward us when we need it.

The Internet has also contributed to the diminished effectiveness of traditional push marketing.  We have become confident that we can use the Web to find information about almost any product or service.  More importantly, we are confident that we can obtain that information whenever we want or need it. We rarely pay attention to marketing messages that aren’t relevant to our immediate interests or priorities.

Pull marketing is growing because marketers have recognized that their prospects are determined to control when and how they access marketing information.  Rather than fighting this mindset, savvy marketers are using pull marketing techniques to build credibility and trust enabling potential Customers to obtain the information that they want exactly when they want it.  We don’t believe that pull marketing will ever replace push, but it has become an essential strategy for many companies to reach out to those prospects that live by today’s social networking norms. 

Today’s most effective marketing programs are often a combination of push and pull.  For example, I frequently receive e-mails (push) that invite me to attend a Webinar (pull), watch a video (pull) or download a white paper (pull).

Are you ready to integrate pull marketing? Click here and let us know if we can help you set up a successful strategy.

What Does Your Business Need Today?

Every business needs to succeed in at least 4 out of 6 core areas in order to survive
and all 6 areas if they want to prosper. These areas are:

• 1) Create products that Customers want to buy
• 2) Generate sustainable and healthy profit margins
• 3) Sell products / services profitably
• 4) Generate new sales leads
• 5) Convert prospects into Customers efficiently
• 6) Run a productive organization

We frequently coach our Clients to achieve success in each of these 6 main areas. If we could help you to improve any one of these categories – where would you want us to start?

Give us a call, let us know your thoughts.

Product Promotion?

I just read a police report online from the lovely state of Georgia, USA and it was pretty strange… the theft involved more than 6,000 post it notes! So, I G00gled it and and discovered that Students @ the Savannah College of Art and Design recently produced a Post-it ‘Stop Motion’ Art Film.

Initially I thought: “Is there a cooler way to market your product than to show the world a few outlandish ideas produced by your Customers?”

Then I remembered the police report and wondered where these students got so many new post it notes… hmmmm

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs

and of course… there was the ‘making of’ video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArJYvaCCB3c&feature=player_embedded

How Fast Can You Achieve Results?

Success is about planning and process. Sure, there is more to it but it really boils down to knowing your goals and then planning the steps needed to achieve those goals

Did you know that 50% of a manager’s job is trying to figure out where the company is going in the next five years while the other 50% is supposed to be focused on execution. The latter seems to present a formidable challenge for most execs but the interesting thing is that know-how and technical proficiencies are not the major obstacles here.

Most managers today are burdened with issues such as a lack of time, insufficient planning, unclear communication, lack of accountability, no mentor or senior leadership to guide them, low commitment to getting a job done well, lack of determination, lack of passion for what they do, lack of focus and discipline etc. There you have it – the no holds barred – anything is possible – year 2000ish – next generation manager’s issues in one simple paragraph.

What to do… alas, what to do…

Here’s some food for thought:
1) Get organized and set some clearly defined goals for both yourself and your company.

2) Break those goals down into smaller and easier to achieve stages.

3) Create a vision of your best outcome scenario.

4) Be able to clearly communicate your outcome to others.

5) Write down a plan to accomplish the tasks involved with achieving success in each stage. Be sure to include milestones and metrics.

6) Be determined to focus the majority of your time and efforts on your goals.

7)  Remember to take a few days off each week to do other things and recharge your batteries.

8) Celebrate your success each time you achieve a milestone.

Want to take a shortcut to success?  Just drop us a line and let us know why we should help you. Five lucky winners will be chosen next month.

Brilliant Linguistics

I am going to dedicate this article to phrases, quotes and sayings that I come across during business discussions, coaching sessions and educational experiences as a living reference for things people say and write that are so incredibly effective… I could not improve on them if I wanted to.

The first one was uttered by an incredibly good salesperson who refused to pitch anything until he knew what the person he was communicating with wanted. This salesman used a brilliant, easy-going method to uncover his Customer’s desires, objectives, wants, needs etc. and then orient the pitch around helping the person (his Customer) achieve his goals. Among others, his trademark follow up was:

“What would you definitely buy from me today if only I were smart enough to offer it to you?”

If you are ever on the receiving end of this question, have your wallet ready because the psychology of the query is more powerful than most people realize. This is a killer line and there really is no escape from it once it has been thrown into the court.

Going in a completely different direction, here is a quote that is simply remarkable.

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists“

Each week we meet with senior executives with professor doctor titles running multinational corporations. Most are convinced that they did everything by the book and can not understand what is going wrong – why is their business not performing as expected?  Their concerns almost always deal with situations that were not described in reference books or textbooks in years past. While education is important, a continuous cycle of learning is even more important.  Today’s business managers need to equip themselves for an age where the only certain thing is uncertainty in a climate of constant change. You need to be a learning machine accepting that what you learned yesterday might not help you tomorrow. The quote above was written in the 1950s!