Indianapolis Small Business - IndySmallbiz.com

Get into The Mind of the Customer

Tony Rubleski — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:00:09 +0000

Getting into the mind of the customer and prospect of today is not an easy task. We all have a built in BS Meter when it comes to marketing messages of any kind. Let’s take a closer look at what I call “persuasion nets” in our minds that often build up over time with cynicism and doubt when we’re confronted with most marketing messages.

Here are a few key persuasion nets that shape our BS Meter in relation to marketing messages:

Managing Overload: The typical North American is hit with an average of 3000+ marketing messages per day, and the number keeps increasing.

Societal Programming: Sales is a “dirty word” to most people even though everyone is engaged in selling, whether they realize it or not.

Time Challenges: In a sped up digital world, we’re all trying to maximize and manage time.

The Choice Paradox: We love having options, but it often stifles our ability to discern and in many situations make a decision.

Short Attention Spans: This is only going to intensify in a real-time mobile talk, text and online-driven world.

Sales Baggage: This is often not discussed by many marketing pros, but it is very real. It’s the past experiences, good and bad, related to sales that impact and shape how we trust or distrust any marketing message when it appears or “captures” us on our mental radar.

Age: Time is a great teacher and the more life experience we accumulate, the higher degree of habit force and pattern recognition that occurs when we sense or pick up on messaging that attempts to persuade or sell us.

Why You Must Work On Building Authenticity Each Day
for Yourself & Your Organization

Knowing how challenging it is these days to get what I call “Mind Capture” with people, it’s essential that you lead with your strongest marketing bullets or evidence when engaging prospects directly or indirectly in the offline or online space.

To keep and engage people, you must quickly demonstrate why they might have a need for what you do, but more importantly, why they should possibly believe that your claims are real.
In the age of instant search and massive choice, your ability to lower the BS Meter with skeptical prospects isn’t easy.

With a tightening economy, here’s another major reason authenticity is so important: The competition will often make attempts to discredit you, undercut prices, and make false claims out of pure desperation.

A great reputation and strong marketing evidence in your arsenal helps to not only diffuse the competition, but also attract powerful referrals via word-of-mouth in both the physical world and the “word-of-mouse” online world.

Plus, there are several timeless and new strategies that when combined will help you build evidence in your own marketing efforts to quickly differentiate, and persuade with maximum effectiveness.

Here are seven powerful ways to help you build authenticity with today’s overloaded and highly skeptical prospect:

1. Collect and use customer testimonials
2. Create and share relevant content of interest
3. Give value first and your sales pitch second
4. Become active within the community via cause marketing
5. Leverage all positive press related to you and your industry (reprints of print articles, links to radio/TV or online features)
6. Use the personal touch and customize ALL communications if possible
7. Associate and partner with other well-known people and companies

Tony Rubleski
Mind Capture
616-638-39121
www.mindcapturegroup.com

Loss of Key Talent: You The Owner

T. Ray Phillips — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:13:32 +0000

Presented by T. Ray Phillips

Three issues confront a company whose owner dies or becomes disabled prior to a planned exit:

1. Continuation of ownership;
2. Company’s loss of financial resources; and
3. Company’s loss of key talent—you, the owner—and the cascading affect on employees and customers.

Today let’s look at how the loss of an owner affects both sole-owned and co-owned businesses.

Problem for Sole Owners. Your death will likely have the same impact on your company that the death of any one of your key people would have. Your talents, experience, relationships with customers, employees and vendors may be quite difficult to replace (especially in the short term).

Once you are gone, expect employees to jump ship unless you’ve made careful contingency plans. Without employees, your company is likely to default on its contractual obligations. Without planning few businesses have the financial resources or successor management to weather this storm.

Problem for Co-Owners: Multi-owner companies experience the same losses as solely-owned companies, if the remaining owners do not have the experience or talent to replace you. If you are the person who generates new clients, heads operations or maintains most of the company’s key relationships, your death or disability will, at best, jeopardize your company’s survival.

Solution for Sole Owners: Sole owners should create written stay bonus plans to motivate their key employees to remain with the company after the owner’s death. Additionally, you should create a succession of management plan that names the person who will assume your duties. Finally, you should decide now how you want your company to be preserved. Do you want the company to be sold, continued, or liquidated?

Solution for Co-Owners: If your co-owners do not have the skills and experience to replace yours, you must put in place a plan to give them the skills and experience they lack. If your employees are confident that the surviving owners have the skills necessary to bring in new business, run the operations or maintain key relationships, they are less likely to jump ship.

Certainly, business continuity requires cash—usually in the form of life insurance proceeds. But continuity requires more than cash. Your company will need to fill the talent void created by your departure. To do that, you must encourage (perhaps with cash through a stay bonus plan or perhaps through the offer of ownership) existing management to stay. If your business does not currently have, in place, management capable of assuming the reins, you must make it a priority to find and hire that management now.

DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this article is general in
nature and is not legal advice. For information regarding your particular situation, contact an attorney or tax advisor. This newsletter is believed to provide accurate and authoritative information related to the subject matter. The accuracy of the information is not guaranteed and is provided with the understanding that none of the providers of this newsletter, including Business Enterprise Institute, Inc., is rendering legal, accounting or tax advice. In specific cases, clients should consult their legal, accounting or tax advisors.
The example provided is hypothetical and for illustrative purposes only.
It includes fictitious names and does not represent any particular person or entity.

To contact T. Ray Phillips Re: subject matter in this article, call
(317) 208-6312 OR e-mail trphillips@finsvcs.com

Please do not leave trade instructions over e-mail, as they cannot be processed.
Circular 230 Disclosure: To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS under circular 230, we inform you that any U.S. Federal tax advice contained in this communication, unless otherwise specifically stated, was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (1) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or (2) promoting, marketing, or recommending to another party any matters addressed herein.

Radio Indy Smallbiz Guide

John Gifford — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:38:19 +0000