". . .keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy
HEADLINES: (Quarterly Theme time!)
Archive of Quarterly Themes -- Gazelles is launching a public wiki (think Wikipedia) in partnership with AboutUs.org where we're asking you to upload past quarterly themes so other firms can garner new ideas for their themes -- include theme title, pictures, pdf's of posters and handouts, description, etc. -- here's the link -- more detailed instructions under DETAILS below (though the beauty of wikis is the simplicity of putting up information on the web!). Please upload and share your quarterly themes, past and present, with others. Hopefully we'll have a bunch for you to look at by the next Insight.
Exceptional Employee Retention in Notoriously High Turnover Industries -- FORTUNE magazine needs two companies under $100 million that have figured out how to retain their hard-to-retain employees. Tech/Software and Health Care are two industries that have high turnover rates. Have you cracked the code on employee retention? Let me know and I'll pass along your info -- U.S. companies only.
Chicago Bread Company "Makeover" -- any suggestions for how to help this company? Here's the link. Post your comments by Wednesday, April 2, and the best comments will run in the May issue of FORTUNE Small Business magazine.
200 Sales Leads -- this was the 4th quarter Critical Number for Boise-based Employers Resource. Noted co-founder Mary Gersema, "our 4th quarter goal was 200 leads from employees for prospective clients. (We have 97 employees so figured 2 from everyone was lofty). The prize. . . 42" flat screen to watch the Super Bowl (#42). Theme NFL 'need for leads.' We did daily phone calls to tally the count. On December 19th we had stalled out and I did impassioned pleas (I was shameless) and got us from 189 (at 9am) to 200 by 1pm! We ended up with 215 leads, had a ball (get it. . . football), gave a TV to a great employee and have already converted 2 of the leads to clients and will most certainly convert more."
Rolling out Themes to Branch Offices -- continues Gersema "I forgot to mention that we have 8 branch offices around the country so each branch became an NFL team. Almost all branch offices have a 'real' team so it was easy to have the Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Falcons, etc. Full decorations and tailgating parties for every 50 yards (leads). Awesome fun and 100% participation."
Captain Ahab and Ishmael -- Sherry Hoffman, head of Marketing & Communications for Portland-based Fairway America sent me this note about their latest quarterly theme "We just had one of the most amazing 1st Quarter Kickoffs ever to date. Picture our CEO dressed as Captain Ahab and our esteemed President as Ishmael. It just gets better from there. You can read/see the story in brief on our website."
Power of Themes -- concludes Hoffman "We greatly appreciate your trainings and guidance as it has made an immense difference to our company culture and growth as we have integrated the Rockefeller Habits into our daily rhythms. Last year was our best year ever, and we anticipate this year being even better."
New One-Page Strategic Plan Word Document -- and yes, there were some formatting issues with the Word version of our new One-Page Strategic Planning template. So we hired some pros and the Word document works fantastic now. We still have the "Classic" version available as well. Just click on "My Gazelles" in the upper right corner of our website, enter your email address (our system will recognize you if you're already registered) and scroll down the left hand column of your personalized page -- you'll see links to the New and Classic One-Page Strategic Planning templates.
Top Two CEO Concerns -- the latest IDC annual survey of CEOs found that "Sales Productivity" and "Customer Care" are the top two concerns of CEOs given the volatility of the economy. These happen to be the two main topics of our April 22-23 Sales and Marketing Summit. Take 48 hours and immerse yourself in the practical ideas contained in over a dozen leading books. "Ideas are our main value-add as executives." And those that attended our Summits know that there is very little theory and a lot of practicality. BTW, we've exceeded our numbers from last year, so it will be a dynamic Summit.
Speaking of Ideas -- I had a thirty-minute call with Insight reader James Dickey, who runs marketing for a half billion firm (he did it after hours!). IntroNetworks, our new community-building system in which he's participating, matched him and me up based on how we each filled out our profiles. His expertise matched a specific challenge I'm facing in my business and his advice and insights were invaluable. Thanks James. Take five minutes to fill out your profile and visually see who is in your inner circle. It's a dating service for executives of growth firms. Many of you have already shared how you've met fellow executives in our network that share common interests, concerns, and talents. "Whoever has access to the most brains, wins!" And we'll be doing a live networking event at the Sales and Marketing Summit led by Mark Sylvester, co-founder of IntroNetworks. Find the ideas that matter to you!
DETAILS: (Quarterly Theme wiki)
Ray King, founder of AboutUS.org, is a serial entrepreneur who has built and sold several technology firms -- and has been one of our longest standing clients -- many of you met Ray at our last Growth Summit. His last firm, SnapNames, provides the domain name backorder and auction engine for most of the domain name registration companies -- in fact, rather than pay domain name backorder charges upfront, like you have to do at GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc., you can go directly to www.snapnames.com and declare which URL's you would like to own. And you only pay if you get access to the URL. It's how I got www.bestpractices.com (I get lots of requests to buy it!)
Anyway, Ray's latest firm, AboutUs.org, has technology that automatically builds a parallel wiki for every website in the world. And since most websites are business oriented, AboutUs is becoming the largest wiki of businesses. In fact, the founder of wiki's is on his board and Ray, himself, if recognized as one of the top five experts on wikis.
Why do you need a public wiki (lots of you are starting to use wikis internally to capture employee IP)?
- Information in wikis pop higher on search engines because they are so hot-link rich
- We should all have wikis to start tapping into the collective intelligence of our own networks -- again, "whoever taps into the most brains, wins" -- this is the key behind the success of Facebook, My Space, Wikipedia, and Google
- You don't want your wiki to be an island on its own. You need to be hanging out in a large ocean of wikis so people can find you
This is why we're partnering with Ray. Gazelles is going to be building a bunch of topic specific wikis to make it easier for our network of 15,000 to share best practices around meeting rhythms, strategic planning, etc. And our first is a wiki to share Quarterly Theme ideas.
Start sharing and networking with what I believe are 15,000 of the savviest and smartest executives of growth firms on the planet. And the network is growing.
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