Slow Down…or Stop?
July 21, 2010
You’d like my Uncle Lou. He’s 87 years old, intelligent, funny, and one of the best storytellers I know. In another era, he’d probably have been a professional speaker.
He’s also the last surviving member of his generation in my family, since we lost both my mother and my aunt (Lou’s wife) in the last eight months. So naturally, I try to visit him whenever I can, an event that always brings a huge smile to his face.
As always, he shares stories of the old days when he and my father (his fraternal twin) used to get into all sorts of mischief growing up in the Bronx in the 1920s and 30s. Of course, I’ve heard most of these stories at one time or another, but it’s still enormous fun to hear them again, and, specifically, to hear him tell them.
This time, though, he shared a story I’d never heard before. It seems he had been pulled over for running a stop sign some time back in 1965. Okay, he didn’t actually run the stop sign, it was more like a “rolling stop.”
In any case, he got pulled over. The officer approached the car, and asked my uncle if he realized he had run the stop sign. My uncle responded, “But I did slow down…”
At this point, the officer pulled out his “billy club” and began rapidly hitting his other hand with it. As he did this, he said to my uncle, “Imagine that’s your head I’m hitting. Do you want me to slow down…or stop?”
My uncle got the message and got away with a warning.
Sometimes, like a stop sign on the road, life sends you signals. You can ignore them, you can slow down, or you can stop and really consider what these messages are telling you. You may not get in an accident or get pulled over, but ignoring these signs often cause dire consequences.
So Who Needs Customers Anyway?
July 21, 2010
There’s a conversation that takes place far too often with attendees in my live programs. It goes something like this:
Me: What is the purpose of a customer?
Them: To get the sale.
Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that it’s quite the opposite: the purpose of the sale is to get the customer!
Most people follow a very rudimentary business plan: find a prospect, call the prospect, get the sale, move on to the next one. This sounds curiously like the instructions on the back of the shampoo bottle: wet hair, lather, rinse, repeat.
And it completely ignores one of the most important marketing principles we teach: lifetime value. In fact, when we do the lifetime-value exercise in our live programs, people are frequently shocked by the actual value a single customer, client, or member can bring to their businesses – value well in excess of the initial purchase – sometimes orders of magnitude higher!
So make sure you understand what your customers are worth over your entire expected relationship with them, and do everything you can to maintain a relationship that will let you benefit from this relationship while still delivering outstanding value to them.
I’m A Lucky Guy!
July 21, 2010
By David Lawrence, Pangea River Rafting
Michael J. Fox wrote a book entitled, Lucky Guy. I’ve got to say that if you wrote a book about my life right now, you couldn’t pick a better title. I’m one extremely “lucky guy!” Ten years ago I got into the professional recreation business (yes, it’s actually a “real” career opportunity) as a freshly minted college graduate with an English Literature degree and a burning desire to see the West.
For a native son of Virginia, the West meant the Rocky Mountains. When a friend called and asked if I wanted to take a job at a resort in Washington State, my first question was, “Does Washington have mountains like the Rocky Mountains?” Not only did it have big mountains and massive, glaciated volcanoes, the state offered a firsthand degree in outdoor recreation.
Washington is where I got my whitewater rafting start, on the Methow River. The waters of the Methow led me to the Spokane River where I worked as a guide. Those waters led me to Montana and the Clark Fork River, where my wife, Brooke, and I own and operate our own rafting company, Pangaea River Rafting.
I’m one lucky guy because I spend my summers as a raft guide in Montana and my winters in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State as a cross-country ski instructor. Making that kind of lifestyle work as a single twenty-three-year-old was pretty easy when you live on a tight budget. But how do you make a nomadic, recreation-based lifestyle work in your thirties, married, with one child, with hopes of having a couple more, and wanting to own your own house, actually two, one in each state?
The answer is pretty easy: you learn what business you’re really in. At the America Outdoors trade show last year in Reno, NV, I heard Ron Rosenberg present his Outrageous Marketing strategies. I learned from Ron that my business isn’t rafting and skiing; it isn’t even entertainment and teaching – it’s marketing and customer service. The customer service part we got in spades, but the marketing…
I joined Ron’s Inner Circle, read his newsletters, listened to his audio CD’s , reviewed the manuals and supplemental materials, and completed all of the requirements from Ron’s incredible new “Business Self-Defense™ Program.” And I became this weirdly voracious student of marketing!
Because of this, our sales at Pangaea River Rafting increased 15% in one summer. But what’s more amazing, we did this despite losing a whole month of revenue because the rivers were too high to raft! And on top of that, we, like everyone else that summer were battling outrageous fuel costs and operational expenditures. I would have been ecstatic just to duplicate the previous season’s totals, but we blew those numbers away by 15%!
I came back to the America Outdoors show this year because I wanted to see Ron and I was able to schedule a one-on-one meeting with him to review my web site. That one-on-one time with him discussing various marketing strategies was worth the fuel costs to drive to Knoxville, Tennessee; it was worth the cost of registering to attend the show; and it was worth all of the membership fees and educational resources I purchased. Because all of this will offer me a return of more than 10 times their value.
The best part, while I was at the America Outdoors conference and attending Ron’s program, he personally presented me with my Black Belt in Business Self-Defense™.
Brooke and I aren’t anywhere near our financial goals, but every day we get closer to making our outdoor lifestyle more financially viable. I know I’m a lucky guy, and I’m also a hard working student of marketing with a great teacher.
Brooke and I want to meet more of Ron’s Inner Circle Members. Just go to this special web page and tell us your story. There’s a special offer waiting there for you…20% off any rafting adventure and a free waterproof camera! (http://www.leaveboringbehind.com/ron.htm)
While you’re there, tell us how you met Ron, a funny joke, or whatever “floats your boat.” We’d love to meet more of Ron’s clients who are pushing the marketing boundaries of their businesses.
How to Grow Your Business with a Book!
July 21, 2010
In This Month’s Business Self-Defense® Inner Circle CD:
Adam Witty, Advantage Media Group
How to Grow Your Business with a Book!
This month we’re talking with Adam Witty, founder and CEO of Advantage Media Group and he’ll tell us nine ways to grow your business by publishing a book. He is a leading author-centric publisher, innovative marketer, and business builder. He is also author of 21 Ways to Build Your Business with a Book. For a free 30-minute consultation on your options for writing your own book, go to www.AMGBook.com. Plus, you’ll also discover:
* How to build brand recognition and equity for your firm
* How to write your entire book in less than a week!
* The pro’s and con’s of self-publishing, traditional publishing, and print-on-demand publishing and which model is best for you.
Not a member? Find out how to get your free gift – over $559.88 of recession-proof, money-making strategies at www.businessselfdefenseoffer.com!
Gold Coaching Webinars and Teleseminars
July 21, 2010
August 11 (Wednesday) 2-3 pm EDT Monthly Webinar:
The Secret to Connecting with Your Market
The more you can personalize your message, the better your results will be. But this goes far beyond segmenting your database and using merge fields in your e-mails. In this live webinar, we’ll discuss the concept of “affinity” and why it’s essential to everything you do in your marketing.
August 25 (Wednesday) 2-3 pm EDT
Q & A Open Critique Webinar:
Get answers to your most pressing questions and get your web sites and marketing materials reviewed in this interactive session.
Specific call-in and webinar details will be sent by e-mail and fax a week before each event.
If you want to join our Business Self-Defense Gold Coaching Program to enable you to attend these programs, e-mail us at info@qualitytalk.com. Read more
