"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy
HEADLINES:
Execute without Drama -- 40 seats available for Patrick Thean's March 4 studio taping of his 4-hour workshop, Chantilly, VA (same place we've taped the other programs). Specifics under DETAILS below. $99 per person.
Selling in Harder Times -- Customers will pay more -- for those that missed mention of Neil Rackham's article on selling during tougher times -- here's the link to his article and several other complimentary "tools" from the faculty speaking at our upcoming Sales and Marketing Summit in Orlando (scroll down and click on the "Free Tools" starburst). One surprising conclusion from his research -- customers will actually pay more for your products and services during down times!! He explains why in the article. This and more insights from the father of sales research and the famous author of SPIN Selling and Rethinking the Sales Force.
Do Your Sales People "Show up and Throw Up" -- Eric Darmstetter, founder of SalesBy5, uses as his "marketing piece" an airline-grade barf bag with his Sales Safety Information card inside. It proved to be a "remarkable" piece at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Are your marketing materials "remarkable" i.e. people "remark" about them? Here's a link to Eric's blog where he details the promotion and provides his 10 Sales Safety Information tips. His "salt and pepper" tip is the best!
Best Sales and Marketing Tool -- Andy Buyting, CEO of Green Village Home & Garden, shared with me a detailed update on the specific impact on sales and marketing his book has had since being published last October, including helping him attract franchisees, employees, and establish his credibility as an expert in retailing. And he's going to come out with a new book each year -- details below.
EVERY CEO should write a book!! Contact me if you need a ghost writer -- and here's a link to my short article on writing a book which will give you the inexpensive ($7k), mid-range, and expensive ($70K) approaches to publishing your book.
Here are Andy's thoughts on the impact of writing a book:
The Retailer's Roadmap to Success: 33 Secrets for Driving Your Business to the Next Level has made a huge difference for me and my business, Green Village Home & Garden. Quickly here's what my book has done for me.
- It is helping me to establish credibility as an expert in retailing and gain exposure. It's enabled me to publish a few articles in business & trade magazines, book a few speaking engagements (which I increased my prices and demand has grown), I've been able to meet several interesting people and have actually added the president of Home Depot Canada & Asia to my list of mentors whom I meet with regularly.
- It is also helping my business grow. I plan to start selling franchises in 2008, and because of the book I've gained serious interest from two potential franchisees already, before I've done any kind of promotion or marketing effort. I'm also finding that people, more than ever before, want to do business with me and my company. My purpose for publishing the book has always been for the marketing aspect it could generate for my business. And it is certainly doing an incredible job, putting my name and my business on the map.
- The last benefit, and it's a huge one, is how it helps align my team. I'm finding it easier to attract high quality managers (again, people want to do business with our company), as well as educate our existing staff. This season we are going to have a staff of about 120 people in retail, and each person will get a copy of my book as an initiation gift. For each person who thumbs through it and reads it, I have another person who learns my entire philosophy on management, customer service, marketing, pricing and merchandising. This is powerful stuff. Also, the feedback I see and get is that they are proud to be working with a progressive company, where the leader as actually published a book.
I would recommend it for anyone who really wants to expand their business.
We actually love this approach so much so that we are going to be embarking on a series of books, geared towards our customers as the target audience. I am hiring a ghost writer to coordinate and put together a series of books on gardening. Not entirely decided on the title yet, but the "Green Village" series of gardening and landscaping books will be written using content from our staff and self-published to sell through our stores, on Amazon and possibly through a distributor. This will again go a long way towards establishing our company as experts in the gardening and landscaping field, and will add so much credibility to what we do in the eyes of our customers. We plan to start within the year, and publish one book per year for 4 to 6 years. Exciting stuff!
Andy Buyting
Green Village Home & Garden
Author of The Retailer's Roadmap to Success
Tel: (506) 450-3388 ext. 222
Fax: (506) 450-2622
Email: [email protected]
http://www.greenvillage.ca
http://www.retailersroadmap.com
DETAILS:
Here's a more detailed description for the Execute Without Drama workshop we'll be taping on March 4.
Execute Without Drama™ Workshop
The power of metrics is astounding! Actually, it's the RIGHT metrics that carry all the power. What can you measure NOW that will give you insight into the FUTURE of your business?
You will learn how to:
- Develop the RIGHT METRICS to measure performance
- Get everyone ALIGNED behind the right metrics
- PREDICT outcomes, solve problems, avoid being blindsided
- Make BETTER DECISIONS and make them faster
Tools you can apply immediately and get results:
- Practical and simple Performance Dashboards
- 3 dashboards every growth company must have
- A common language that infuses performance into your culture
Here is what past attendees have to say:
"Thank you for your presentation last week at B.O.G. I really connected with your no nonsense approach and have been working hard to "desuck" my company."
- Clint Drawdy, President, Medical Methods
"Thank you so much for speaking to us at BOG this year. Your presentation was excellent and I look forward to implementing what you have shared with us. I am requesting the forms you had in an EXCEL format and will definitely put them to good use. Please let me know if I can EVER do anything for you."
- Scott Woodland, President, Onestream.net
"Thanks for the awesome presentation at BOG last week. I am going to take my current Rhythm meeting and accountabilities to a new level with the Green, Yellow, Red."
- Jarrett Davidson, President, World of Water International Ltd.
"Thanks again for your amazing presentation and ideas. I've started building my dashboards and it would be helpful to receive what you've built in an excel format. Thanks for everything and I'm excited about the results."
- John Trapp, President, Total R.