William James said, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

 

As a marketing consultant, I’ve seen lots and lots of complicated stuff:

• Statistical graphs and papers explaining complicated consumer patterns
• Focus groups analyzing brain waves
• Case studies involving years of research
• 200-page business plans

Not to mention, just to keep up with technology, you have to know about the latest social networks, websites, marketing software, articles, fads, trends… through your Blackberry, email, twitter account, rss feeds, facebook, myspace page… It’s exhausting.

 

I have literally spent months training myself not to obsessively-compulsively check my emails every three minutes.

 

Of course, email is important. Keeping up with technology is important. Following industry trends is important. BUT there is so much that is unimportant or just gets in the way of progress.

 

Here’s an exercise that you can do with your company to vastly improve your marketing results and simplify your life:

 

Hold a meeting with the important top executives/marketing decision makers at your company. Let them know the meeting is going to last for 60 minutes and they are not allowed to have their cell phones or any kind of electronic device for the entire 60 minutes. Their assistants are also not allowed to come in with notes or outside messages (unless it’s a matter of life and death).

 

Then ask this question, “What are 5 things we could be doing as a company to bring in more sales?”

 

Then have everyone write down their answers. Tell them that all five of their answers should fit on less than one page. Give them 5 minutes to do this.

 

Then go around the room and have them all share their 5 ideas (give them each 3 minutes to do so). Don’t let anyone else give feedback at this point. If the group likes the idea (by raise of hand), put it on a whiteboard or ‘master paper’. Your “master idea list” should be limited to the top 3-5 ideas.

 

After everyone has given their ideas and the ‘master idea list’ has been composed, spend the rest of the time simply addressing these four points for each idea:

1. What is the step-by-step process and who is responsible? i.e. step 1: Julie researches online for companies that may be interested in our services; step 2: Julie puts the information in our CRM system; step 3: Julie sends them an email about our services; step 4: Brian calls the companies and sets up an appointment with those interested; step 5: John goes to the appointment and does a need analysis…. and so on
2. What goals do we expect to achieve? i.e. we expect to gain 50 new leads a day, set up 1 new appointment per day, and close 1 per week.
3. How are we going to track it?i.e. we are going to have a report that tells us the number of new leads, calls, appointments and sales that were achieved every day - and Joe is in charge of following up on it with the team.
4. What needs to be in place for this to work smoothly? i.e. we need to have an email template designed that Julie can send out; we need to have Brian set aside 4 hours per day to make calls; we need to have our CRM ready to run the right reports; etc.

 

Don’t get bogged down with detouring details. If the meeting goes off on a tangent, bring it back in line.

 

Everything you write down should be obvious common sense. And all steps should be easy to follow and explain to your team.

 

When you are finished - you should have a very simple plan outlining exactly how you are going to bring in more sales.

 

The tricky part then becomes ensuring that your team is following the plan… more on that in the next post…

Turns out tweets about food, kittens, and kids are much more appealing than tweets about spreadsheets, product benefits and serious stuff in general.


As Barbara Gibson (Chair of IABC) puts it in her article about the power of writing about food on twitter, “It’s the silly things that bring people together, allow us to connect and develop relationships.”


If you’re looking to woo people on twitter or launch a twitter campaign - sometimes, the best way to do it is by saying something completely silly. For example, if you sell blenders - you may tweet something like “The Top 20 Most Disgusting Drinks of All Time…One Uses Raw Eggs and Sardines!” and then link to a list on your website of the most disgusting drinks - with a link to your blenders and maybe some more appealing recipes


Think of your posts on twitter as what you would say to friends at a crazy party (where you’ve had a few drinks or at least your friends have)… You can still talk about the “serious stuff” - i.e. what you do for a living, why your products are great… but come at it with a jovial attitude and think up things that are a little… well… silly. Do this and your responses on Twitter will skyrocket.