Fill My Funnel in 30

Oh Great...He's a 'process' guy!

2009-12-21T04:50:00.001-08:00

When I begin a relationship with a new company, it doesn't take long for people to get the sense that I am a ‘process’ guy. I place the term ‘process’ in quotes because I believe it is often misused and even more often misunderstood. Most of the time, coming on board as a 'process' guy generates equal amounts of euphoria and dread - both of which are unnecessary and usually a result of bias -

Don't Ruin your Twitter Rep!

2009-11-24T05:10:00.001-08:00

A nice piece from the Bit Rebels

Guy Kawasaki on Social Media Marketing

2009-11-23T06:07:00.001-08:00

How to Get Found Guy Kawasaki (Alltop) Oct 27, 2009 Brian Halligan is the founder and CEO of HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company that helps small and medium-sized businesses get found on the Internet and converts website visitors into leads and customers. He is also the author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found In Google, Blogs, and Social Media. It used to be

Private Versus Public Online Identity - Do you really have a choice?

2009-11-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

There is an emerging debate about the boundaries (or lack thereof) between an individual’s personal and private online identity. The questions on many people’s minds (jobseekers in particular) seem to be: - To what extent do current (or prospective) employers have a right to view (and make judgments about) my private online identity and - How do I adapt to this

Digital Trust Fund

2009-11-08T15:58:00.001-08:00

You have started saving for your kids college right? You probably have family heirlooms you plan for them to inherent some day. One of my former business partners has even purchased 10 acres of Colorado land for his two year old son. But my guess is, most people reading this haven't started investing in or planning for their children's digital future.... I am referring to the reality that more

Think Your Resume Looks Good?

2009-11-08T08:50:00.001-08:00

It doesn't matter! Nobody is gonna read it! Surge in jobseekers frazzles resume responders

Leadership Training with 9 year olds

2009-11-07T12:11:00.001-08:00

Spent most of this morning at the Lafayette YMCA for kids hockey games. My 9 year old wandered into the 'padded gym' room (hard to explain so just check out the photo below.) Of course a bunch of other kids followed. MY FEARLESS TEAM Naturally, my pathological consulting instincts kicked in so I made up a leadership team building excercise. The rules of the excercise were simple... - one

Comments on Three Sins of Selling

2009-10-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

I posted my last blog - The Three Cardinal Sins of Selling - as a question on LinkedIn (primarily as a shameless marketing ploy) and received a deluge of responses: Thought I would post them here... It is always interesting to see how people think: 1) No marketing strategy 2) Lack of good management 3) Lack of good customer service --- 1) Recruiting the wrong people for the sales roles to

The Three Sins of Selling

2009-10-29T05:16:00.000-07:00

Sales organizations make three basic and critical mistakes on a regular basis: 1) Failing to appropriately pursue prospects Prospects arrive from a variety of sources ranging from trade shows to inbound inquiry (web forms, downloads, SEO, Adwords, etc) and including outbound prospecting (cold-calling.) Obviously, various entry points represent varying degrees of accessibility. i.e An prospect

A Personal Brand Anecdote

2009-10-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was working with one of my Get a Job in 30 Days private clients. I work with folks in a one-to-one or group setting to teach them (and help them implement) an extremely effective method for job hunting. In a typical 'session' with me, participants secure anywhere between two and three interviews where, in many cases, they had gone for months without a single response to their

Do you have a Closing Problem or a Prospecting Problem?

2009-10-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

The conversation most clients and prospects I speak with lately want to have is how challenging it has been for them to convert interested prospects into buyers. Rather than commiserate about economic conditions, I typically ask them what they believe their sales team could do (or should be doing) about the situation. The response is usually something along the lines of: 'We need to get better

What if I don't know what my passion is?

2009-10-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

Just watched Gary Vaynerchuk's Big Omaha keynote. He was asked what question he has a hard time answering and responded: 'What if I don't know what your passion is?' I sent him a quick email and thought I would share my answer here as well: Pick Something! Why? Because ‘discovering your passion’ is NOT a mental exercise!’ Life is NOT a spectator sport! Most people think they will

A social media marketing epiphany (of sorts)

2009-10-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

I had a bit of an epiphany today... or maybe it is better described as a distillation of all this crap I have been sorting through. The ONLY question everyone seems to be asking about Social Media Marketing is: 'How do I use it to make money?' The short answer is this: social media marketing is NO different than traditional marketing...it just provides more venues and high scalability. My

Dinner with my old Forum

2009-10-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

Had a great time last night meeting with my old Forum. For those of you not familiar with Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), the Forum is your working group of peers (other CEOs, Founders, and Principals) with whom you meet on a monthly basis to share experiences, insights, and frustrations associated with running a business. I left EO almost two years ago but still keep in touch with my Forum

Fired up about Sean Ellis (and not in a good way!)

2009-10-08T06:12:00.000-07:00

Received a link this morning from the CEO of one of my clients to an infomercial-blog by Sean Ellis.Never heard of him but apparently he is famous...His headline indicates his approach (I quote) "has evolved over 12 years of taking several VC backed startups to market including two that filed for NASDAQ IPOs."But wait...a glance at his bio says: "...including two where I ran marketing through

Social Media Marketing

2009-10-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Of late, I have been diving head first into the empty concrete pool of social media marketing. Most of this weekend was spent trying to understand how to best integrate and effectively leverage my 'network' which looks a lot like this: - 375 LinkedIn Contacts (not including groups) - 380 Facebook Friends - 56 Twitter Followers (really not getting the Twitter thing) - 597 Address Book entries -

The Magical Marketing Fairy... Coming to an infomercial near you

2009-09-30T01:51:00.000-07:00

I talk to a fair number of entrepreneurs and business owners wrestling with how to grow their business. Not surprisingly, they look first for easy fixes: - 'What we need is better messaging' - 'Our website could use sprucing up' - 'How about a white paper or, better yet, a webinar?' - 'We are launching and email campaign' - 'I heard others have success with direct mail' - 'Social media

Personal Equity

2009-09-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I have used the term 'Personal Equity' when training and coaching sales professionals. Personal Equity refers to the value of your name and reputation as it relates to your career. Whether you are just leaving college or have been in the workplace for awhile, it seems people forget (or just don't realize) that their knowledge (what they have learned) does not matter so much as

DIY (Do it Yourself) Really?

2009-09-22T05:59:00.001-07:00

I run into a fascinating situation surprisingly often... Most companies (and entrepreneurial ventures in particular) have a fixation with 'figuring out' sales themselves. This happens all the time: After spending time helping a prospect understand their problem, building trust, and demonstrating my competency...the response comes back: "You know...I really believe you can help me but I want to

Fishing the Big Horn and Sales...

2009-09-21T05:08:00.000-07:00

...have more in common than you might suspect. This weekend, I had the pleasure of floating of some of the most beautiful river I have laid my eyes on. The Little Big Horn is located in Southeastern Montana smack dab in the middle of the Crow Indian Nation. In fact, if you are able to drag yourself away from the river, you can visit the site of Custer's infamous demise. The stretch of the Big

Qualified Leads from Cold-Calling? Good Luck!

2009-06-02T14:38:00.000-07:00

Sales organizations are justifiably enamored with the idea of using outbound prospecting to generate ‘qualified’ leads for their sales people. To accomplish this goal, companies may try to build an in-house function and/or contract for outsourced demand creation (cold-calling) services. While the premise of not wasting valuable ‘selling resource’ time speaking with unqualified prospects makes

This is a True Story.....

2008-11-25T05:11:00.000-08:00

Ok, I need to break my vow to only blog via SMS for this one but I will keep it brief.A company - let's call them Ranger - hires a few of our alumni. They are not a client so we call them up to pitch them on our services."We are very impressed with your people" they say"We cannot use outside vendors" they say "new corporate policy...budgets are tight.""How about we contract for $1?" I ask"Huh?"

Yet another amazing example of...

2008-10-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

Myopic behavior. Called on a company that is about to hire their second certified sales associate from our company. He was not sure why we would need to get together since this last hire meant they were 'all set.'Apparently he does not anticipate any attrition... and of course everyone he just hired will work out perfectly. Unbelievable....

Psychotic interview candidate

2008-10-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

I know the current economic environment is causing folks some stress but...Last week we had someone call in 15 minutes before his interview looking for directions. In the process, he was rude to our receptionist. He showed up 15 minutes past his time slot and was irate when we told him the VP of HR had gone on to another next meeting.He demanded to speak with our VP and said he wasn't leaving

Interview No Shows

2008-10-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

Here are the facts about interviews. If you schedule an interview on the same day, you will have a 95% show rate. Next day: 75% show rate. 50% of interviews show when scheduled two days out. Three days out nets a 25% show rate and interviews scheduled four or more days out are almost 100% no shows... Shocking but based on data from more than 8,900 applications we have processed in the last three