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Recent Posts
When the Founder Is the Rainmaker: How to Scale Without Losing the Spark
In many founder-led businesses, the founder isn’t just the leader—they’re also the best (and often only) rainmaker. They land the big deals. They have the trusted relationships. They know the pitch inside and out because they are the pitch.
It works—until it doesn’t.
As the business grows, this model creates a bottleneck. Every new opportunity depends on one and only person. And it’s the same person every time. But there’s a downside. When that person is also responsible for running the business, mentoring the team, and shaping the vision, something eventually gives.
The 3 Things You Aren't Understanding About Content Marketing
Mon, Dec 8, 2014 — As the CEO of your company, you’re bombarded with words and phrases like content marketing, inbound marketing and blogging. It can all seem nebulous unless you define what content marketing actually does for business. Content marketing, done right, is created to answer questions for people. Essentially, you want to become the Wikipedia of your niche. People come to you because they trust you with the right information.
Things to Know Before Putting Your Kids on the Payroll
Wed, Oct 8, 2014 — Americans like the idea of starting a family business. According to the US Small Business Administration, 90% of the 21 million small businesses in the US are family owned—and 62% of employed Americans work for family owned companies. The success rate of family owned small businesses, however, is amazingly low: 7 out of 10 of family owned businesses fail before the second generation gets a chance to take over.
Customer Empowered Advisory Boards
Tue, Sep 23, 2014 — As a CEO of a small business, you may have either given thought to or have already established a Customer Advisory Board. The rather cliched approach is to hold a semi annual or annual meeting with the most senior customer executives from your most strategic accounts. The agenda is thick with company executives who present current and near-term products and services and solicit feedback from these influential and important customers. Then everyone plays a round of golf or some other participatory sport, has a few drinks and hopefully creates some strong friendships outside the confines of the business. When it's done, you probably pat yourselves on the back that you've cemented relationships with your top customers by keeping them involved, engaged and "in the know" about your plans. Most Customer Advisory Board programs justify their existence based on the ROI they deliver to the company like key accounts retained, new business booked from members, strategic insights gained and costly mistakes avoided by acting on their input.
Why Executives Should Develop Visible Experts within Their Firm
Wed, Sep 17, 2014 — Regardless of your industry, your firm can likely identify with goals like: Generate more leads, Increase revenue and Boost brand recognition. Many of your marketing efforts are likely designed to achieve those goals or similar measurements of success. But there’s one approach that firms often overlook that can achieve all of these goals—and more. This approach is thought leadership marketing and the development of Visible Experts. These experts are the professionals who give keynote addresses at industry conferences, write the defining book in your field and have established themselves as the go-to authorities.
Marketing Budget: 7 Benchmarking Questions To Ask
Wed, Sep 3, 2014 — How much do you allocate for a marketing budget? One of the first questions many clients ask is how much to appropriate for a marketing budget. The quick answer for marketing budget allocation is a target of between 3 -8% of a company’s overall sales – with 5% often cited as the norm based upon a review of a range of benchmarking and peer group studies.
Dos and Don’ts of Marketing Automation
Tue, Sep 2, 2014 — Marketing automation is a powerful tool with the ability to greatly increase your conversions. However, in order for marketing automation to be effective, there are certain do’s and don’ts that you should understand, including how it fits into the larger context of your business. Based on information collected from experts in the marketing field, let’s look at the specific do’s and don’ts for marketing automation "Marketing automation plays a key role in the customer/client acquisition process as it automates lead scoring, routing of qualified leads, nurturing those that are not ready to buy, and greater transparency into prospect/customer behavior on its own. It is important that a CMO and his/her team understand that marketing automation, as with any technology solution, is an enabler to their business strategy vs. a strategy on its own. Read the full article here.
Why Millennial Talent Seems to Be Always Looking for the Next Best Thing
Thu, Aug 21, 2014 — Every generation seems destined to be the most misunderstood generation. This was true for Baby Boomers, Gen X and is especially applicable when attempting to understand the motivations and values of the Millennial generation (also referred to as Gen Y). We’ve likely read about how Millennials grew up on technology and are dependent upon it. We could easily argue with them about their worldviews. While Millennials may be cast as the most misunderstood generation, they’re quickly becoming the most studied and researched generation. Yet despite all the insights we’ve gained, it’s interesting that most Baby Boomers infer they simply don’t understand a Millennial’s perspective on life and work. On the surface, Millennials may come across as being irresponsible, entitled, disengaged, arrogant, idealistic and overly confident. While some of these may be appropriate, from a practical perspective, Millennials tend to be competent, bright and highly focused. The chasm between the generations being, Millennials hold a significantly different worldview about life, their careers and what they expect from their employers.
CEOs: Learn How to Stop Micromanaging
Wed, Jun 11, 2014 — We've probably all had some experience or another with a micromanager, maybe even a micromanaging CEO. But as a CEO, how do you know if you're a micromanager and do you know how to stop? A marketing consultant I know posted on his Facebook page the other day: “Always wonder why some CEOs would rather diddle with things on a web page or other marketing minutia than deal with really important business strategy issues or building a company team.” While I know this was more of an expression of his current frustration with a client than a real question, it got me thinking, and I suspect the answer may be relatively simple: Entrepreneurs stay in startup mode too long.
The One Strategic Marketing Question to Ask
Wed, Jun 4, 2014 — When consulting with businesses, one of the fundamentals I look at is whether their business strategy and marketing efforts are in alignment. Just like a well-aligned vehicle will always move confidently in the right direction, so, too, will a business relationship – provided there’s the right connection between what your customers value, and what you provide. Many times, I will hear companies boast of offering great quality, cost and delivery; how they are innovators; and how they have the best technical support teams. The reality is that it’s quite rare for a firm to be the best at everything – and often, pursuing such a superlative-laden strategy can often be a suboptimal marketing strategy to pursue.