Winston's e-Newsletter - March 2010 - Edition 1

How To Stand Out From The Crowd, Chapter 8
If You’re Looking for a Great Speaker
Your Facebook Entry Could Cost You!
Introducing Eswen!
Eswen’s Editorial
Recruiting with Humour

Another Commercial (or rather, lots of commercials)

 

How To Stand Out From The Crowd, Chapter 8

If failing to have a prospect generation device is one of the cardinal sins of businesses, another is a complete failure to recognise the power of a database. As a market leader you must create a database that contains at least the first name, surname, address, phone number and e-mail of all of your clients, prospects, centres of influence and people who enquired about doing business with you but didn’t do so. Having that information is like owning a gold mine so it’s important that you use it regularly and keep it up to date.

To do so, a market leader stays in touch with their database between six and eleven times a year. That’s a minimum of once every two months. The challenge for most people is knowing what to say when they are in touch (or, if they do get in touch, overcoming the urge to send boastful, boring, self-serving junk mail or spam.)

Building a relationship with your client base is fundamentally no different from building a relationship with a friend or a loved one – you talk about things of interest, you give them tips, hints and ideas and you let them know about special events that are of benefit to them.

You can sit down once a year and create whatever will be the minimum of six to eleven contacts you are going to have with your clients during the year. There could be birthday wishes, a note about safety precautions just before Christmas, some special suggestions for the winter period, some problem solving tips that have been discovered by another client, some maintenance hints or a host of other things you can come up with.

The “how’s things?” call is important to marketing leaders and it’s so easy. Every day you set aside time to ring one or two clients just to ask “how’s things?” It’s so unusual for them to hear from their suppliers that they will probably respond “What do you want, how much is this going to cost me?” and you merely say “No, nothing, I’m just ringing to ask how’s things? ”The wonder of it all is that they will tell you because it’s so rare in a busy world for others to be interested in them. Equally amazing is that as they tell you about what’s been happening to them they will probably, in doing so, mention somebody that needs your products or services.

 

If You’re Looking for a Great Speaker

USA based Sam Silverstein is a fantastic speaker, especially on his topic of No More Excuses: The Five Accountabilities for Personal and Organizational Growth and you can see a preview of him here.

Sam would be great for any conference (we interviewed him on my Business Marketing program with huge response) and you may have a chance to hire him for you conference if you are holding one in May this year coz he’ll be in Australia then. Find out more from him by e-mailing: sam@samsilverstein.com

 

Your Facebook Entry Could Cost You!

Have you ever googled your name to see what your clients or potential employers can find out about you?

Sometime ago the New York Times had this to say about Facebook:

“The next time you lose out on a job (or business) because the HR manager (or the MD) viewed your questionable Facebook photos or saw something inappropriate a friend posted on your wall, you may have second thoughts. But why wait until something bad happens before you address the issue?
Considering that Facebook itself is no longer looking out for you, it's time to be proactive about things and look out for yourself instead. Taking a few minutes to run through all the available privacy settings and educating yourself on what they mean could mean the world of difference to you at some later point.”

To find out exactly what you need to do to protect yourself read the full NYT article.

You can also join us on facebook at Business Growth Centre.

 

Introducing Eswen!

Eswen Chaffey recently joined me as my Personal Assistant and with her tremendous interest in all matters business and marketing, I’ve invited her contribute to this e-newsletter with ideas and information that she finds of interest. I know that you’ll enjoy her articles.

You can e-mail Eswen at info@businessgrowthcentre.com.au

By the way, Eswen is a Welsh name meaning strength.

 

Eswen’s Editorial

As an avid reader, I am delighted to have been given an excuse to give you a bit of a write up every so often about stuff that has caught my eye. This time it’s a book.

Winno and I were discussing (un)common courtesy over lunch and after exchanging a few horror stories, Winno handed me this amazing book titled Complete Business Etiquette Handbook by Barbara Pachter and Marjorie Brody.

It’s a really reader friendly guide on business etiquette! From the bare basics like conversation topics to more advanced topics like managing conflict, this book tackles it all.

If you have you ever been in the embarrassing situation of forgetting the name of someone you really should know, wondered what to wear to a business lunch or how to handle almost any awkward situation, then this is the book for you. Or perhaps the perfect book for a co-worker or friend who might need to polish up on their skills!

I’m so stoked with this book I’ve uploaded it to our website for delivery straight to your doorstep. As an added bonus, if you select it during the month of March, you will receive a FREE bonus copy of “Smart Marketing” which is an absolute gem containing 52 brilliant tips and techniques to boost profits. Find out more about it here

Once you have had a read of both please feel free to shoot me an email and let me know what you think! info@businessgrowthcentre.com.au

 

Recruiting with Humour

A firm of lawyers in New Zealand have a culture quiz for possible recruits… if you’d like to see it have a look here.

 

Another Commercial (or rather, lots of commercials)

Perhaps the world’s most expensive TV spots are those during the telecast of the American Football Super Bowl. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say…

“ The Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League in the United States, is known for the high-profile advertisements that air during its television broadcast. The broadcast typically ranks very highly in the ratings, reaching more than 90 million viewers. Prices for advertising space can typically cost millions of dollars; 30 seconds of advertising time during the 2010 telecast is expected to cost US $3.01 million.

The high price tag of the commercials all but promises that they will be spectacular and innovative in most cases. The commercials are often highly anticipated, generating much buzz even before the game is played usually because of their innovation or sense of humour.

These high-profile ads are usually only broadcast on the originating American network. This is because the cost of buying commercial time on the American network does not include ad time on foreign broadcasters, which sell their own advertising. Moreover, since there is lower interest in American football outside the U.S., other carriers have smaller audiences for the game, meaning that the ads seen locally may not share the high reputation of the domestic commercials.”

So here’s a chance to see TV commercials that cost millions. Take your time to look at them and decide what they do for you and whether they were worth the money. Watch the Super Bowl TVC’s here. Please note there is page of them for each quarter.

 

Business Growth Centre
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