1 Marketing Lesson; 2 Meeting Tips; 3 Times More Productive Employees; Houston, NYC Workshops

"...keeping you great"

HEADLINES:

Show, Don't Tell -- Jason Cohen's blog makes one of the best marketing points I've seen in a while -- show, don't tell i.e.:

Instead of saying it's fast, show a speed test (especially against competitors). Instead of saying it's easy, have a video demonstrating your tool solving someone's problem in 60 seconds flat. Instead of saying you have eager, responsive, intelligent tech support, put a "chat now" bar on every page of your website. Instead of a bullet-list of benefits, quote actual customers describing your impact on their lives.

Be Specific - Cohen goes on to suggest:

Instead of "easy" say "so straightforward, you won't need a manual." Instead of "inexpensive" say "just a dollar a day." Instead of "powerful" say "processes 6,253,427 requests daily." Instead of "disruptive" say "72% of our customers say they'll never go back to a normal email client."

Cohen makes three more equally helpful suggestions including words and phrases that should be banned from all marketing materials -- take three minutes and read his insightful blog post. And thanks to Gabi Kool, Managing Director of VIOLA Hotel Rewards, for bringing this to my attention.
Two Simple Meeting Rules - and this note (awhile back) from Mushahid Khan, President and COO, O'Rourke Petroleum "We are on a mission to make our meetings more effective and we've implemented two steps to help us:

No meeting is more than one hour - ever! I was one of the biggest contributors to this problem and so it's taken a change from me. Before every meeting, we say: "The purpose of this meeting is _________" If you can't fill in the blank, you probably don't need to meet.

We're also doing some of the basic stuff like agenda's etc but I thought I would share the two simple steps that have helped the most.

3 Times More Productive Employees - The Container Store, named one of the Fortune "100 Best Places to Work" for 11 years straight (twice #1), has a simple 1=3 rule - one great employee can replace three good employees. Mike Jagger, CEO of Provident Security, has taken this message to heart, revamping his employee and customer base to live this rule. He recently wrote about it for Security Director News. Notes Jagger "The article talks about how we've worked to integrate their 1=3 philosophy into our business and when we couldn't in one department, we cancelled several million dollars worth of revenue." This is worth taking 3 minutes to read why he did this!

Houston Sept 16 and NYC Sept 23 -- Updated Rockefeller Habits Workshop - It's now called the "Four Decisions: SuperGreen Execution" workshop (after the four key decisions: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash). If you want to jumpstart execution of the Rockefeller Habits tools, including the updated One-Page Strategic Plan, this is the right workshop. Here's a link for more info