I recently had a meeting with the CEO of a small $3M company.  He wanted to increase sales.  When I asked him what was keeping him from increasing his sales he mentioned that he was limited by his inventory, or rather matching the right inventory to the right customer.  I asked him how much he thought he could increase his sales if he wasn’t restricted.  He said he thought he could add $250-300K easily.

I didn’t really know much about his business, but since I wasn’t restricted in my thinking by his experience, I was able to give him a simple solution, and it didn’t cost him a thing. His business was regionally based.  So I asked him if he knew his competitors in the surrounding states.  He did.  I then asked him if he’d ever gone to a car dealer that didn’t have the model or color he wanted.  He said yes.  What did they do for him?  They called a neighboring dealer and ordered the model in the color he wanted.  I suggested he could do the same by setting up a cooperative inventory-sharing program with competitors outside of his area.  They would have similar inventory issues and could even buy from him.

Why couldn’t he think of this?  It’s hard to say.  We all get tunnel vision.  We get busy doing the linear things that keep the business afloat.  Or maybe we don’t have a process for identifying and solving issues.  So they just continue to get in our way.

That’s the reason it’s valuable to network and expose yourself to outside thinking. Make it a habit to get an outside opinion.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Yesterday, I had a colleague send me a link to a site that offers to write your blog for you.  The price was very reasonable, an introductory offer of $68.75 per blog!  He asked for my reaction.

My reaction was, “Really?”  And not in a good way.

Think about it.  Do you really want to phone it in?  If you are truly passionate about your business, how can you simply hire out the content and voice of your business’s soul?

I believe that marketers and business bloggers need to provide thought leadership, push the envelope, and not just offer rehashed stuff.  Because when you do rehashed stuff, your readers won’t tell their friends about your posts.  It will be boring.  Your readers will drift away from your blog.  Your posts will wind up like my insurance agent’s newsletter.  I will never read his stock subject, “Summertime Grill Safety.”  I might look at “Five Ways Not To Blow Yourself Up.”  But no newsletter or blog service will ever come up with that title.

Like every other industry, the marketing business can also follow the path of mass production.  Figure out how to produce more at a lower cost, offer it for a lower price, and then spend the money you make “marketing or advertising” your service to the masses.  You may sell something.  So will a hundred other organizations.  They will all be the same.

Yes, occasionally there is a technical discontinuity that happens in the marketing business.  For example, the creation of websites becomes more automated and doesn’t require experienced html programmers.  This can lead to lower costs for putting up a site, and suddenly there are website companies springing up from South Dakota to Manila.  This doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of improvements in technology or marketing.

We are told that blogging helps generate leads, and social media helps leverage your content.  I believe this to be generally true.  But you need to do the hard work.  Thank you to those that do it.

So if you are contemplating blogging and want to generate leads, I would advise against using a blog mill.   You might just as well lock yourself up with everyone else… or blow yourself up.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales With Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

PS: For those of you who want to stop the other kind of mill you can visit this site.

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There’s an old 3M cultural rule that allows employees to spend 15% of their time working on their own ideas without management intervention, so long as their work remotely relates  to the business.  It’s an unwritten rule, and it’s a good one.  I can personally attribute $60M in business as a direct result of this rule.

Recently, I was advocating the implementation of a similar 15% rule for a client in order to boost morale, spark creativity and reward employees with the freedom to work on their own ideas.  While in tacit agreement, the CEO expressed reservations about the potential loss of productivity and the ROI.  She asked how would we measure the program.

While a legitimate question, my reply was that you don’t measure the program.  Not directly.

We hear a lot about how marketing is now a science.  How unless you’re measuring ROI and quantifying each customer touch point, lead source, lead score, and so on, that you are wasting effort, and not as likely to be successful.  Measurement is king.  Quantify everything.

Being an “analytic” and having spent a short part of my career as a “process” engineer, I tend to agree that measurement is a necessary and good thing.  There’s an old statement that says you can’t improve something unless you measure it.  However, only up to a point.

Why?  Because sometimes our marketing and sales results come from people, and there are qualities about people that are hard to quantify.  How does one measure passion?  How do we measure creativity, determination, compassion or empathy?  Or the freedom to create with 15% of your time? These are valuable human traits, and I believe that they can add to the success of any marketing or sales program.

The problem is when measurement is taken to an extreme.  I’m not a fan of measuring everything.   Too many times we seek security in numbers, as if they alone are the key to control, and predicting the future.  The numbers become the end.  Because we can measure something, doesn’t mean we have to.  Sometimes we have to trust the spirit in people.  Their desire to succeed and create.  Managers measure passion, leaders enable it.

In quantum physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is often misstated so as to imply that simultaneous measurements of both the position and momentum cannot be made.   And while a slight misstatement, I believe it can be applied to business.  If we try to measure passion or creativity, we cannot understand their momentum.   As a matter of fact it dies.

Your thoughts?

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Here’s a model I’ve developed to think about the four basic building blocks for inbound Internet marketing: 1) Content, 2) Contacts and 3) Tools, all of which are first surrounded by a clear and concise #4; Messaging.

The first building block is Content.  Without content there really is no value you can provide or conversation that you can construct with prospects.  In Quid pro Nada, I outlined the value of giving away useful information.  Development of valuable content to share is often the major bottleneck of companies today and should be the first priority of CMOs.  However, content is driven by thought leadership and that is the responsibility of the CEO and part guiding corporate brand.

The second building block is Contacts.  Contacts are relevant to both Inbound and Outbound marketing, particularly in Email marketing.  Choosing segments is the first step (Segmentation) and helps refine messaging by targeting specific messages to specific prospects.

The last building block is Tools. These can be Search Engine Optimization tools and processes, Pay per Click services, Sales Force Automation or even Email Marketing which is more an Outbound Marketing tool.  Unfortunately, tools are often the first building block chosen as a result of the Silver Bullet phenomenon (link).  Though sometimes selecting a tool, catalyzes the need for content, segmentation and messaging.

The checklist before you begin:

1. Has messaging been developed and tested?
2. Is the segmentation identified (and the messaging developed for each segment)?
3. Is the tool appropriate to the task?
4. Finally, do I have a plan to integrate these in a measureable inbound campaign?

Thanks.  Do great things.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry with Qualified Leads^SM
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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3M is a successful product development company.  Not only have they developed new products, but whole new categories of products as diverse as copiers, magnetic and optical storage, non-woven fabrics and the proverbial yellow Post It.

3M uses an R&D model where scientists and engineers in a central research facility don’t have an immediate product development goal.  Their focus is to develop new science.  Core science developed there finds it’s way out to product research and development in business divisions focused on products and market segments.  Traditionally they hire PhDs for their Central Research… really smart people with heads three feet across, and they set them loose on fun stuff.  Passionate about what they do, they share what they find with the development labs.

3M also has an unwritten cultural tradition that allows employees to spend 15% of their time working on their own ideas.  This is time that managers can’t ‘second guess’ or override.  The process, which has been in place over decades, breeds a type of thought leadership and product leadership that has been studied and emulated by many.  It also makes the bean counters and upper management uncomfortable because they can’t always measure the immediate result.

In Becoming the World’s Greatest Lover/Marketer I wrote about what Thought Leadership is.   So let me add what it is not, which also helps sharpen what it is.  Thought Leadership is not:

• A marketing or PR campaign
• About your products or services
• A set of communication tactics
• An event or this year’s campaign
• Someone else’s job

If you take these approaches, you are likely to fail.  Thought leadership requires a cultural transformation in most organizations, and it can’t be mandated.  3M’s new product development process has strong similarities to thought leadership, especially in the cultural aspects of allowing time to think and create, instead of simply produce.  It has similarities in the sharing of core ideas and technology.

So… what if your people had 15% of their time to do what they wanted?  What if you shared what you were excited about?  What if you rewarded the behaviors that you want to develop?  Gave away your secret sauce?  What if you played.  Had a little fun?  Developed a glue that didn’t stick very well and attached it to little yellow pieces of paper?

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The CEO of a client company once told me I shouldn’t do a webinar on the company’s, secret sauce.  They were a professional services company, and he was worried the competition would go to school on them, learn something about their secret sauce, and then use it against them.  I asked him if no one knew about the secret sauce, then what good was it?  I asked him what would happen if that competitor began giving away their knowledge?  How would customers and prospects react?  I promised him I would give the attendees only a taste.  Well, it might have turned out to be an appetizer.

Giving away your secret sauce is a type of thought leadership.  You find forward thinking companies and individuals doing this.  CEOs and bean counters don’t like it because it’s hard to quantify the immediate return.  That’s what makes it hard to instill in a company, and why it has to be top down driven.  But what is thought leadership and why is it important?

Here’s my definition of thought leadership:

It is the ability to share with passion the things that truly advance the art and science of your company’s business, your understanding of customer needs and your marketplace, and to do this with confidence and without thought of risk and immediate return.

The longer term value of thought leadership is that it can help a smaller companies leverage their size, become better known and increase their reach.  This creates larger audiences with more significant clients and reduces the cost of client acquisition.  And like brand, it can add to the valuation of the company.  In addition, from several of my last posts, it can help retain customers and engage them in new products and services.  There is value in thought leadership.

A key characteristic of true thought leadership is sharing; sharing ideas, technology, knowledge, and intellectual property, all without the thought of immediate gain.  It contains elements of passion, generosity and education.  Ultimately, like brand, it is about what others say about you.  You can’t say you are a thought leader or if you do, no one will believe you.  It’s like saying you are the world’s greatest lover.  Though that also has something to do with sharing, recognition comes more with simmering the sauce over a long time.

The combination of sharing without asking for something immediate in return is what makes it so hard for senior management to appreciate thought leadership and get behind it.  Like brand, marketing’s job is to help lead organizations into creating a culture of thought leadership, and to help show that ROI.

While the webinar was going on, I shared a text from a prospect with the CEO.  “This stuff is great.  I am reminded again of why we should try to do business.”

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