New York Marketer

Everybody loves a bargain, but...

I remember my grandparents grousing about having to buy new things.  For those of us who came of age after WWII, the orientation is more towards wanting to buy things.  We have grown accustomed to a ludicrous abundance of cheap goods and inexpensive services.  We ask "how much does it cost?" without considering what it will do to make things better for our business or personal lives in the long term.  A new book from Atlantic correspondent Ellen Ruppel Shell argues that cheap stuff usually costs more in the long term and there are many hidden costs we don’t take into account (also check out the review in Salon). 

If you’re marketing a professional service, chasing “right now” needs and wants or providing a “bargain” can often turn into an endless grind of transactional (or one-shot) sales.  You not only forgo the chance to build a relationship with clients, but you also spend more of your time and money to land each sale.  Sure, you have to innovate to meet changing needs, but you can’t afford the cost of being disposable – or dispensable.  One of my grandfathers always bought Kenmore appliances because he felt they delivered on their promises and offered the best value over time.  How do you frame your promises and offer value that builds that kind of loyalty?

 

The real meaning of strategic

Seth Godin has a very interesting piece today about what "pro-business" really means.  He looks at how, in the quest for short-term gains we so often end up with longer-term shortfalls. I particularly like his definition of "factory" as any business that focuses on doing what it did yesterday, but cheaper and faster.  Especially with the economy in the doldrums, that's an easy trap to fall into.  So I wonder, what can I do today that's profoundly different from what I did yesterday?  How can I invite my clients to stop focusing on the immediate cost and look at the eventual value?  What am I doing to leave things better than they were when I found them?  Finally, what's the most interesting problem I can solve today?

Where is the Tribe for Me?

You've probably never heard of a musical called "Bajour," which spent a bit of time on Broadway in 1964.  It has a lot of interesting characters, including an uptight NYC police lieutenant, a wealthy widow, rival families of Roma ("gypsies") and a bright-eyed young woman who wanted to be an anthropologist.  One of the most memorable songs was "Where is the tribe for me," in which the heroine searched high and low for a tribe to study (hint:  she ended up trying to study one of the Roma families).  But her lament has many applications, including one that I often hear from clients:  where do I find a networking group that will really work for me?  The current edition of evoke eNews talks about networking groups, why to use them and how.  We also interview visionaries who have founded some very interesting groups that operate in unusual ways and produce amazing results for their members:   Fred Klein, Esq. and Nancy Schess, Esq. of Gotham Networking; Adrian Miller of Adrian's Network; Bruce Stout, CPA of The Rainmakers' Forum; and Tam St. Armand of St. Armand Ventures.  One of these groups may provide the tribe (sorry, Fred) that you're looking for or give you the inspiration to find the right one.  Look, learn, leer and lecture (alright, that's not quite right, but I didn't want to spoil the alliteration).

Paper or Plastic?

I'm not talking about the trip to the grocery store, for which the correct (if somewhat inconvenient) answer is paper.  Rather, I'm talking about how your customers pay you.  The job of marketing is to start conversations that can lead to business -- and to keep them going.  There are lots of other processes in your business that can actually thwart your marketing efforts.  A key one is your approach to invoicing and receivables.  Every time you ask a client to pay for your services you are, in essence, making the sale all over again and reinforcing whatever your clients happen to feel about you at the moment.  So it's a good idea to give some careful thought to your invoices as affirmations of your relationships.  Also, you want that decision to pay you to be as seamless and friction-free as possible.  Marc Halpert of Your Best Interest helps businesses streamline invoicing, get paid faster -- and communicate effectively with their customers in the process.  He is also an expert at helping businesses navigate the treacherous waters of accepting credit cards, a necessity in times like these when you absolutely must make it as easy for your clients to pay you as possible.  Marc is giving a free webinar on the subject, "Credit Cards:  Can't Live With 'Em, Can't Live Without 'Em" on July 9th from 2 -3 pm.  Sign up here.

Some Timely Advice on a Form of Tardiness

Every so often something really useful comes through in a newsletter.  My friend Jan Jasper is an organizing and productivity consultant who has a lot of good ideas.  Her newsletter this month was on procrastination.  In spite of business being a little slow, many businesspeople and professionals I know are procrastinating more earnestly than ever.  Jan's advice, excerpted below, is simple, profound and timely.  I especially like the second point.  Heaven knows I’ve wasted a huge amount of time and energy in my life putting off something I didn’t want to do. I also find this particularly relevant to my clients when it comes to marketing tasks (ahem)…

Jan's Top Procrastination Busters

1. Prune your to-do list of the non-essential items you know you'll never do.
2. For that must-do task you've been putting off, just do it - ideally, the first thing in the morning. This frees your mental energy - often, not-doing something drains you more than doing it.
3. Identify a part of the disliked task that's fairly pleasant - such as calling a colleague for information - and do that first, to get your feet wet. Or make a list of the various steps involved.
4. Schedule hunks of time to tackle work that requires concentration. Actually make an appointment with yourself. Let voice mail pick up your calls. You'll make a lot of headway in a short time.
5. If the task is really objectionable, promise yourself you'll tackle it just for 10 minutes, then if it's killing you, you can stop. You may find it's not so bad and can easily keep going until finished.
6. If you want to avoid being distracted by email or the internet, put your computer behind you. You'll have to swivel around in your chair to check your email for the umpteenth time, or to Google something you're only mildly curious about. Going to the computer will now be a conscious decision.
7. Avoid the temptation to shift from one half-finished task to another. This task-hopping is a form of stealth procrastination that many of us do without knowing it.
8. For digitally managing tasks with sub-tasks, watch for our upcoming article "Use Outlook to Keep Track of Multi-Part Tasks" in the next issue of this eLetter.
9. Some of the best procrastination advice is from Alan Lakein - pre-tech era, but still excellent.

Jan Jasper is author of Take Back Your Time: How to Regain Control of Work, Information, and Technology, published by St. Martin's Press.  Find her on the web at www.janjasper.com

It's All About Me

Not this blog, but an entry on my friend Andrea Nierenberg's Nierenblog.  Thanks, Andrea!  Andrea and I met some years ago at a networking breakfast.  Even though I hate talking to anyone that early in the morning, this proved to be well worth it.  In case you missed it, Andrea was interviewed for the second-ever Evoke newsletter.  The most important thing to getting business for a professional service (like mine or most of my clients') is to get people to talk about you in a good way, and the more public the forum, the better. 

Through the Blog Smog

I sometimes hate to admit it, but I'm a generalist.  Clients often call on me to design and manage complete marketing programs from soup to nuts, starting with branding. This occasionally means that my knowledge of specific things like blogging can be a bit fuzzy.  Well, I got asked to speak later this week on precisely that topic at a Gotham Networking business roundtable in Connecticut.  So what I was I to do?  Easy.  Find an "expert's expert" and devour everything they've put together.  Although I looked at a lot of things, including a secret resource only marketing consultants have, I was really impressed with Ted Demopolous.  You can download his free ebook, Effective Internet Presence, which covers just about all aspects of developing an online presence that can help you build business.  You should also check out his terrific, easily digested book, What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting.  After you've taken a look, let me know what you think.

What's In Your Cereal Box?

All marketing starts with branding.  Without it, people won't have a clue what you're trying to get them to buy -- or why they should even look twice at it.  In a down economy, personal branding is just as critical as any other kind.  Last night I spoke with executive strategist Maxine Hartley's Executive Tiger Team, a group of top execs in transition.  One of my favorite ways into this kind of conversation when it needs to get concrete quickly is the cereal box game.  It's pretty simple:  if you were a product -- say a box of cereal -- what would be inside?  Who do you want to buy you? How would you be represented?  A silly rabbit?  A leprechaun?  A ship's captain?  Euell Gibbons?  What promises would you make?  There are a lot more questions like this to answer (and you get to play with crayons).  If you're having trouble coming to grips with branding for yourself or your organization, I recommend starting with a basic exercise like this -- one that involves both left and right brains and gives you a chance to be silly.  As always, I'll be glad to send you the handouts from the presentation if you email me.

Attorneys Ask the Most Interesting Questions

This morning I spoke to a group at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York with my good friend (and fellow marketing consultant Carol Greenwald).  The topic, as usual these days, was how to allocate scarce time and resources to get a good return on marketing (I'll be glad to send you the handouts if you shoot me an email).  We got a lot of interesting questions, but the one I found most intriguing was about the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn in a business context.  Like a lot of things, the advice that was current six months ago -- that business relationships should stick to LinkedIn -- no longer quite applies.  My take is this:  while the former is largely personal and the latter is largely business, I allow some business contacts with whom I have longstanding relationships to join me on Facebook.  The tone there is a little less formal (I might joke about having martinis at the Algonquin, for example), but never inappropriate (I won't confess how many).  I wouldn't post that on my LinkedIn page, but I find that doing so on Facebook is a nice way to stay in touch with people on a slightly more personal level. How do you approach this?  Let me know here -- and by all means, connect with me on LinkedIn.

It Speaks (and People Speak Back)!

It took a little longer than the month we expected, but the second edition of Evoke's enewsletter was recently published and sent out into the universe.  This one covers the most essential marketing topic of all:  networking.  We spoke with Andrea Nierenberg, best-selling author and networking guru.  This one's kind of a triple-whammy:  you can skim my musings on networking (including how I met Andrea), you can listen to the most essential 15 minutes of my conversation with Andrea in a three-part audio program or you can read the highlights of that conversation in an attractive (thanks to our designer, Doug Santaniello) PDF.  So far, the response to these has been exactly what we intended:  more conversation with both people we've been good about staying in touch with and people we haven't.  Pretty cool; maybe you should try it?