"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy
HEADLINES:
BMW convertible purchased for Employees -- Brad Mullahy, President of Cary, NC-based Synaptis, sent me a note earlier this week "just thought I would share a recent article about our latest quarterly theme. After our visit to your Rockefeller Habits workshop in Atlanta we identified we had to build our contractor pool. We hit our goal (20 new contractors) and everyone is driving the (BMW) convertible." Brad purchased Synaptis in 2003 after revenues dropped in half from $9 million to less than $5 million and losing $50k/month. He's since turned it around, generating 20% plus profit margins, has doubled revenue again, and is driving the change with quarterly themes -- here's the article which discusses this turnaround and the latest theme where he purchased a BMW for the employees to drive -- congrats Brad!
FYI -- Calgary, Seattle, Atlanta, DC -- last Rockefeller Habits workshops for 2007 - great way to prepare for 2008.
Lessons from the Growth Summit Day 1 -- I'm in India this week and was reminded by our Indian marketing partner, Knowledge Capital, that I've not yet provided a concise summary of the key lessons learned from the Growth Summit -- my bad -- so here they are -- useful as a review for those that attended but more critical for those who didn't -- here's a summary from Day 1 of Growth Summit -- Day 2 next week:
Robert Bloom -- Inside Advantage -- I already summarized his critical lessons a couple weeks ago -- his book "Inside Advantage" is the finest "how to" book I've ever read. Read it!
Geoffrey Moore -- Core vs. Context -- early in the genesis of your business, most of your activities were spent on the core of your business i.e. delivering a great differentiated product or service to the market. However, as you grow, you and your best people get sucked into spending your time on "context" activities i.e. making sure A/R is collected, dealing with employee turnover, etc. It was a wake-up call for my team. Our core is delivering highly PRACTICAL tools for growth firms. Moore's presentation has made my team focus on shedding/outsourcing more of the context activities (I hired an Indian assistant this week) and getting back to what has made us great. It's all about what you spend your week doing! The key book is Moore's "Dealing with Darwin."
Geoffrey Moore -- Five Types of Marketing Activity -- here's a link to Moore's "Marketing Matrix" -- this isn't in any of his books. It details the five types of marketing activities, how to measure them, who has accountability, types of campaigns, etc. -- this is powerful stuff. And he pointed out that mid-market growth firms should spend most of their time on the Product Marketing and Segment Marketing activities. This was a wake-up call, again, to my team. We have a tendency to spend most of our time on Field Marketing activities. You're going to see us make some adjustments to our priorities.
Robert Cialdini -- Influence, the Art of Persuasion -- this was THE finest presentation I've ever seen and the conference attendee ratings supported this!! My team is taking Cialdini's Six Principles of Persuasion (here's a link to the list on Wikipedia) and applying them to all our messaging. The biggest one for us was the importance of selling based on avoiding pain vs. gain i.e. what an amazing example when he showed the two different Bose radio ads. The one ad announced the "New" Bose radio. The second ad simply changed "New" to "Hear What You're Missing" and it increased sales 40%. It's the fear of loss that drives more decisions than the prospect of gain -- huge, huge lesson in influence. Get his book "Influence" and study it -- and keep his summary card handy, for those that picked one up at the Growth Summit.
Cialdini two-day workshop -- this material was so powerful we're looking at hosting a two-day workshop with Cialdini's people -- let me know if you're interested in participating -- limited to 30 people -- my team wants two intense days to really apply his influence approaches -- price will be $995/person.
Steven Berlin Johnson -- Emergent Systems -- in essence, the four hottest "businesses" on the planet all use emergent systems theory to drive their success -- Google, My Space, Facebook, and Wikipedia. This means all us "old timers" had better catch on and catch on quickly. Again, my team is exploring specific ways we can make our websites and tools more emergent -- and you're going to see us using more emergent ideas in designing our future Summits i.e. we've heard you loudly -- there is going to be some built in time for you to interact with the other participants besides your own team. In essence, emergent systems create a platform driven by a handful of organizing rules and then the participants are free to create! Read Steven's book "Emergence."
Day 2 Summary next week!