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Jul
23

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Build Business as a Platform Not a Destination, and “Kick ass”.

Category: Business Strategy, customer relationship, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , Leave a Comment

After I’ve published the post “Are you a destination or a platform? Part I” some of you have asked me to give some examples or make some analogies to help further understand the difference between a business built “as a destination” versus a business built “as a platform”.

Let begin with an Great illustration I’ve seen on this Great blog “Creating Passionate Users” edited by Kathy Sierra and Dan Russell:

The first man is in a business built “as a destination”. The old time style. The Heroic kind of business.

The second man is in a business built “as a platform”, he is there to help YOU shine. This is a Servant kind of business.

Seth Godin listed very succinctly the major advantages of a Business built as a platform in  a great post on his blog Pivots for change.

In troubled times if you built your business as a platform you could:

  • Keep the machines in your factory, but change what they make.
  • Keep your customers, but change what you sell to them.
  • Keep your providers, but change the profit structure.
  • Keep your industry but change where the money comes from.
  • Keep your staff, but change what you do.
  • Keep your mission, but change your scale.
  • Keep your products, but change the way you market it.
  • Keep your customers, but change how much you sell each one.
  • Keep your technology, but use it to do something else.
  • Keep your reputation, but apply it to a different industry or problem.

When you are building a company as a destination you are obsessed by product or service innovation.

But when you are building a company as a platform you are obsessed by users, clients EXPERIENCE and you design your business as a simple tool, just a tool. No emotional connection to a tool, but emotional connection to the people by giving them the power to “kick ass”.

Jul
19

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The Power of Information as Gift ™ to Built Relationships

Category: Business Strategy, customer relationship, leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , Leave a Comment

IRaaS baseline is

“Send your customers to other businesses for free and See your business flourish”

IRaaS can often sound too idealistic to companies who have been in the era of the sales pitch too long. Many companies will be thinking, “Spending extra time and resources to help customers with their problems without any request for a sale, without any pitch at all? What’s in it for me?”

IRaaS isn’t completely altruistic. It’s based on a well-determined component of human psychology: the law of reciprocity.

The Law of Reciprocity

People are naturally inclined to imitate the emotions and actions we perceive in others. If someone smiles at us, we smile in return. If they scowl, so do we. It’s an instinctual, impulsive response.

IRaaS takes advantage of this natural inclination and turns it into smart, successful marketing strategy.

What is the law of reciprocity?

The law of reciprocity states that we repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. It’s a common mantra in our culture – the Golden Rule is another example of the law of reciprocity.

By offering to help customers find solutions to their problems, customers are in turn inclined to find solutions to the company’s problem – getting new customers.

IRaaS in Action. Here is a case of IRaaS in action we have talked about earlier.

Sarah, the housewife and Pete

Sarah, a housewife, meets a man named Pete at the grocery store. Pete sells high-quality, environmentally friendly light bulbs. Sarah doesn’t have any need for a light bulb when she meets Pete, but as they strike up a conversation she mentions a few things she does need – a house cleaner, a mechanic, and a place to find vintage records.

Pete tells her he knows his sister is very happy with her house cleaner, and asks for her email address so he can follow up and give her the name later. He sends her the following email:

Hi, Sarah –

Good to meet you at the store; I enjoyed our conversation. I spoke to my sister Julia about her house cleaner and she recommends Lupe Velasquez at xxx-xxx-xxxx. She says feel free to mention her name when you talk to Lupe.

I remember you also said you were looking for a mechanic and a good vintage record store. I didn’t know myself, but I asked around a little bit, and I hear very good things about Hoshi Motors and Rockin’ Records on Broadway. Apparently the guy to talk to about vintage records is named Dan, and he works there on weekday afternoons.

Hope that helps! Looking forward to keeping in touch.

Best,

Pete

Sarah is grateful to Pete for his help, and her natural response to that gratitude is to do him a good turn in exchange. She introduces Pete a man she knows who does environmental design, and who may need light bulbs for his projects. She mentions his name to a friend who’s looking to cut her electric bill and to her brother the next time she’s with him at the hardware store buying new bulbs.

Why does Sarah put so much effort into helping Pete? Because Pete put so much effort into helping her, without expecting anything in return.

In exchange for the trouble Pete put into introducing her to his network of people, he now has three potential new clients, all of whom need what he’s selling.

If Pete had instead put his effort into selling Sarah a light bulb she didn’t want or need, he might have made a single sale, but Sarah certainly wouldn’t be as eager to refer him to others she knew. Sarah’s not likely to want to help out a random salesman. But she will want to help out – and introduce to her own network of people – a friend.

The power of reciprocity will always be in your favor. The Copywriter guru Brian Clark put it this way

“First, you’ve gone out and either found or created something to solve a need they told you about. You’ve done them a favor, and they’ll want to repay that. If they’re in the market to spend six figures on an automobile, you’re the person they’ll want to buy it from.”

Jul
16

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8 Ways to Praise People and Win them Over.

Category: leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

In my professional and private life, I have adopted 3 main ways to praise people:

  • Catch people doing something good, and praise them instantly,
  • Praise people in front of other people,
  • Praise people in their absence

The first one is very effective. It has a tremendous impact on people self-confidence, motivation, and feeling of belonging. Whenever you find someone doing something good, reinforce the action by praising the person in the moment.

The second  one is very delicate and need to be used with great mastery and care.

The third is the most powerful and the most influential on people and has a boomerang effect. Everyone could practice it, at any time, without any limitation. There is no specific skill needed, but your wish to use it.

Most people are used to speak nicely about people only when they in front of them, but in their absence they will gossip and say mostly bad things about them or talk about things they don’t like in these people. It’s very common and it looks like a human trait. Many casual conversations are about pointing, highlighting the disliked  things in other people or events.

If you follow this practice you act like the crowd and you won’t stand out to become a people star and recognized leader.

How to practice  the technique of “Praise People in their absence”.

1. To start you need to choose voluntary to abandon the old fashioned way of talking about people in their absence. Instead of pointing, highlighting the disliked  things in other people, make it a conscientious choice Stop this practice, and praise people in their absence instead.

2. Systematically try to catch people doing something good. If you can, praise them in the moment. If not record in full detail  the event, and spread a praise of the event to the world. Next time, when the name the  person will pop up in a conversation, when appropriate, go ahead to tell other people your recorded story and express your personal admiration.

3. Praising in general terms like “he is nice”, “he is hard worker”, “he is smart”, “he is resourceful” still is good, but less effective than praising a person with reference to very specific story, event, achievement, etc. Being specific makes your praise more credible and make the person you are praising stand out effectively like an important and special person.

4. Make it a rule to praise   every day at least one or two persons in their absence. it could people from your team, family, friends, etc. If you could Double this number every month during the next 3 months, you’ll be flooded by invitations of people who want to become your friends. You’ll become a People Magnet.

5. When you start the practice of praising people in their absence, Try to do it in front people who are very close to them. Your praise will spread like a wildfire and reach your target in less than 24H.

6. When your target heard of your praise in his absence, he will feel good and things will look for him like you become his private PR agent, telling the whole world how important and special he is.

7. Practice undercover compliment and praise your friends, your colleagues, your kids, your wife, your husband, your investors, your peers  in their absence. Never stop to praise them. Make it an active choice of praising continually people in their absence.

8. You may be wondering when will you have again the opportunity to say some disliked things about people, like everyone does? It’s so good to be caustic, to ridicule people in casual conversation. it’s a world wide practice, so how can you stop yourself from practicing it? Won’t you look boring? Maybe looking boring today, is a condition for your full success tomorrow.

Praising and complimenting people in their absence is the Most subtle and the most powerful way to win people over. Start doing it actively and systematically from Today on, You’ll be stroked by the results.

Keep me in touch.

Jul
5

By

Manifest Your Leadership With Emotions

Category: leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Harvard professor, Gerald Zaltman, found that 95% of how we think is unconscious and emotional. To speak to the heart of people you need to master the language of emotions. Logical language is weak to move people, compared to an engagement to make people feel important.

Mary Kay Ash had built a multi-billion company based on emotional intelligence. At the time of Ash’s death, November 22, 2001, Mary Kay Inc. had over 800,000 representatives in 37 countries, with total annual sales over $2 billion at retail. As of 2008, Mary Kay Inc. has more than 1.7 million consultants worldwide and excess in wholesales of 2.2 billion.

Here is how Mary Kay Ash described the principle behind her life and business success: “I have learned to imagine an invisible sign around each person’s neck that says ‘Make me feel important’. I never cease to be amazed at how positively people react when they’re made to feel important. Everyone wants to be appreciated, So, if you appreciate someone, don’t keep it a secret.”

Emotions are contagious. The more positive the overall moods of people, the more cooperative they worked together and the better the results. Emotional leaders are consciously attuned to people, focus them on a common cause, build a sense of community, and create a climate that unleashes peoples’ passion, energy, and unified spirit.

Without Emotional Connection No Leadership is possible. Emotions are the shortcut to people mind.

The best book I’d recommend about Emotional leadership is “Primal Leadership” by by Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis, Annie McKee

Jun
21

By

How The Law of Reciprocity Could Help You.

Category: Business Strategy, customer relationship, leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

The law of reciprocity states that we repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. It’s a common mantra in our culture.

Here are 2 powerful ways to put the Law of Reciprocity into action:

1. To recruit advocates for your business:

  • To recruit customers as advocates, become advocate for your customers,
  • To recruit peers as advocates, become advocate for your peers,
  • To recruit friends as advocates, become advocate for your friends,
  • To recruit strangers as advocates, become advocate for strangers

Start by asking yourself how you could become advocate for these people in a consistent way.

2.  To make new friends and attract people to you:

  • To make friends, start treating people like friends,
  • Treat strangers the same way you’ll treat a friend. It’s a replication of attitude that works very well to make new friends and attract people to you.

Start by making a list of the ways you treat your friends that makes them feel special, and replicate these attitudes with people you’d like to befriend.

Trust in the law of reciprocity, and you’ll see the miraculous results.

“The highest form of public relations is human relations. People buy from friends, so it’s crucial to make the human bond before you can make a lasting business bond.  Always Develop The Human Bond Before The Business Bond”. Jay Conrad Levinson

Jun
21

By

20 Ways to Express Gratitude and Attract Love.

Category: Conversation, leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Wikiepdia defines gratitude as “a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive.”

The Best way to express Gratitude is to Give Thanks, Send Thank-you notes, or Say “Thank you”  abundantly.

  1. Thank your wife after she cooked a nice meal.
  2. Thank your friend for lending you that Stargate DVD.
  3. Thank you college for the tuition. Send a thank you note.
  4. Thank You friend for spending time with you.
  5. Thank your friends for calling you.
  6. Thank your friends for visiting you.
  7. Thank your boss for praising you. Let him know how you feel when he gives you praises.
  8. Thank people who encourage you. Let them know how you feel when they encourage you.
  9. Thank God for  everything you can’t directly attribute to a person or an institution. Thank God for Good health. Thank God for Peace in your country. Thank God for All the good things happening in your Life.
  10. Send, annually, Thank you note to your Boss for the opportunity offered to you to contribute and serve.
  11. Thank your Neighbors to be so kind neighbors and how you appreciate to a neighbor to them.
  12. Send Thank you note to you local politicians for what they are doing for the community.
  13. Send, annually, Thank you note to the local Fire Fighters and Police departments for their dedication to keep the community a safe and secure place to live.
  14. Thank your Kids for bringing so much joy in your life and let them know how their arrival in your life brought so marvelous things to you.
  15. Thank your husband or your wife for caring and providing help and taking care of you. Let him or her know how special he or she is. Give Thanks abundantly here. It’s a privilege to have a good partner for life.
  16. Send Thank you note to your doctor for his dedication to your health and for his support to you family.
  17. Send Thank you note to your suppliers to let them know how you appreciate their support for your business.
  18. Send Thank note to your Local public transportation office to praise them for heir dedication to the community.
  19. Send annual thank you note to your customers for doing business with you.
  20. Send thank you note to the teachers of your kids.

Give Thanks Notes to heal the world, help friends, support your community. Thanks are intangible assets you can give again and again without being left broke.

“PEOPLE DON’T CARE HOW MUCH YOU KNOW… UNTIL THEY KNOW HOW MUCH YOU CARE.” John Maxwell

If you need inspiration to start, here is a GReat site with lot of Thank you notes samples : http://www.thank-you-note-samples.com/sample-thank-you-note-wording.html

Referral Thank You Note Samples
Sample business referral thank you notes.

Jun
20

By

Your Brand is a Shortcut to Emotions.

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

People buy emotionally, and Harvard professor, Gerald Zaltman, found that 95% of how we think is unconscious and emotional.

To succeed in business you need to associate your product with one or several positive emotions. Once you’ve succeeded to to tie your products to a specific emotion, your brand will act like a trigger of this emotion.

Every time customers see your brand or your products,  they will feel this emotions or recall the memory of this emotion. And, when they will be seeking this specific emotion, your brand or your products will pop-up automatically in their mind.

Your Brand acts  as a Shortcut to Emotions.

To start you need to select intentionally the kind of emotion or senses perception you would like your business to be associated with. it could be:

  • Beauty,
  • Friendship,
  • Kindness,
  • Sexy,
  • Glamor,
  • Empathy,
  • Enthusiasm,
  • Simplicity,
  • Joy,
  • Hope,
  • Cool,
  • Happiness,
  • Belonging,
  • Acceptance,
  • Desire,
  • Fun,
  • Warm,
  • Euphoria,
  • Smell Good, …

The selected emotion or senses perception become your Sensual signature.

Your purpose is: every time a customer, a prospect or a stranger enters in contact with your business you want him or her to carry away this emotion or senses perception in his or her memory and share it with other people. This emotional connection makes you memorable.

You need to get memorable. Only memorable business will thrive in the new market conditions.

Once you have selected your sensual signature, you need to commit to it for years, 10 years, 20 years, and built it so strong and so unbreakable. If want an aroma-smell like sensual signature  for your business, elect one that express the best your business service and commit to it what ever the changes and comments in your environment.

You win with a consistent Sensual signature, not something that changes from one executive to another.

- Apple uses visual seduction to get into its customers mind. Beauty is a powerful emotional trigger. They dedicate all their engineering and design power to their God : BEAUTY.
- Craiglist use authentic ugliness to seduce customers. Craig Newmark, the founder of the site in 1995, call it “unbranding”. UGLINESS could be a Brand you stand for and use successfully.
- Procter & Gamble,  Nestlé , Las Vegas Casinos use aroma-smell-marketing to boost sales and create memories. Human beings are able to distinguish about 4000 different smell or perfume.
- Intel build a brand recognition with a very unpleasant music : the “Intel inside” jingle. Pain in the ears as their price.

We can go on mentioning several emotional marketing examples, but the most important thing to understand here is that you need to create your sensual signature:

  • it could be “frustration mixed with a great service”: long queue in the cold before entering a good restaurant or long time waiting before a star will arrive or before being accepted in a great club.
  • it could “arrogance mixed with dedication for a great service”: The IBM arrogance, we know what we are doing, just pay the big check and wait for the great result.
  • it could be “huggings and kisses”: Clothing Store used to welcome loyal clients by yelling their name once they enter the shop and are met with hugs.
  • it even could be “Indifference to client”, Luxury shop do that for their shop visitors till the moment they pick something to buy. it’s very powerful.

At the end of the day you need to select carefully your sensual signature and be consistent with this signature.

What is your Sensual Signature? Do you have one?

Jun
19

By

Employees are not Assets, Resources, or Inventory, But Humans with Dreams.

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Today, we heard employees referred to as “resources” or “assets” by corporate executives, business press and management thought leaders. Michael Eisner, ex Chairman and CEO of Disney, has been recorded as saying “our inventory goes home at night.”

Bullshit!

Employees are people. Employees are not assets, resources, or inventory, but Humans with dreams and aspirations.

Did you call your friends, your kids, your wife, your mother, your father, … your greatest assets, resources, or inventory?

There is a Chinese Proverb that teaches the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

This is not just an economic decision, it is a psychological and emotional decision; because how you relate to a person, an animal or an object depends a lot on how you name or label it.

People are not resources to be mined nor inventory to be turned over. Time is a resource. Office furniture is an asset. People are people.

In the past, we have seen how before putting into slavery, slaughtering, killing, depriving from freedom, invading, colonizing some populations or countries, their names have been altered; instead of calling them by their real name, they became barbarian, primitives, damned, uncivilized, human without soul, insects, etc.

Employees are not assets, resources, or inventory, but human beings with dreams, aspirations, and personal goals.

The new economy is in need of a new type of leadership—a service leadership. This is the kind of leadership that starts Not from wondering How someone could help you achieve your goals, but from a very basic, active generosity of asking how you can help your people achieve their goals, personal or professional.

From this standpoint, the role of any leader in the new economy is to get to know their people individually. All it takes is to start with some basic questions you ask yourself about your people:

  • Why are they here?
  • What do they want to achieve working for our organization (or buying our product)?
  • What are their goals in life, both personal and professional?
  • Where are they in their life’s journey?
  • What barriers are they facing now in life?
  • And lastly, how can I, as the people leader, genuinely help them get where they want to be, be what they want to be, and contribute what they want to contribute?

The new leadership role is active generosity, based on carefully and intentionally collected information about the people agenda, apart from their contextual status as customers or employees.

Start looking at people not from the perspective of how they can help you, but how you can help them. Master this single law and your success is assured.

No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
W A Nance

Jun
5

By

Send Your Customers to Other Businesses for FREE to Build Loyalty.

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Linkcrafter, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

“What you Say? Send My Customers to Other Businesses for Free as a way to Build Loyalty and grow my business!?”
It sounds like complete folly.
Why would I send my customers away?
It’s very unconventional, but terribly powerful.
And, It’s in this way that Linkcrafter is transforming the marketing landscape, changing the lives of small business owners, freeing millions of entrepreneurs from marketing stress and uncertainty.

Here we go, Instead of giving Planners, calendars, T-shirts, Mugs, coupons, or other material or monetary gifts to customers to build relationship, what in most cases fail to build loyalty, Linkcrafter helps you send your customers safely and securely to other businesses as a powerful way to build Loyalty and grow your business.

Yes, It’s about Sending your Customers to other businesses for FREE as a way to build Loyalty and Growth. And It works.

The old era of egocentric sales pitches never entertained the idea of sending customers to other companies, for any reason. They held on to their customers tooth and nail, even if they didn’t have anything the customer needed at the time.

Companies wanted customers to pay attention to their company, and no one else.

Apparently, no one ever mentioned to those companies that no business is an island.

Customers need more than one company to satisfy their everyday needs and desires. “No company owns enough resources – or can possibly own enough – to furnish unique experiences for every customer,” said C.K.Pralahad in The New Age of Innovation. “Companies must organize a constantly shifting global web of suppliers and partners to do the job.”

A customer experience includes satisfaction in all the customer’s needs for their everyday life. It isn’t enough to sell your customer the microwave oven that person needs. The customer also needs clothes, baby food, music, a good carpet cleaner, a certified massage therapist, and an antique hood ornament.

No company in the world could possibly give a customer every single thing he or she desires.

In short: it takes a village to create a customer experience.

You’ll be recommending companies to your customers that you personally have selected as the best for their needs. You won’t be giving them referrals to professional service and product providers simply because you’ve agreed to – you’ll be giving them the companies that you sincerely believe are the most qualified professionals to meet your customers’ needs.

And your customers will love you for it.

That reputation will buy you customer loyalty and enthusiasm that is impossible to get through any other means.

Linkcrafter marketing solution often sounds too idealistic to companies who have been in the era of the sales pitch too long. Many companies will be thinking, “Spending extra time and resources to help customers with their problems without any request for a sale, without any pitch at all? What’s in it for me?”

The more successful your company is at recommending other companies’ products and services that are relevant to its customer’s lifestyle and needs, the more likely it is that customers will extol the virtues of your company.

Your company gets a reputation for caring about people through this free exchange of information. When a person benefits from information you give them, they become an advocate for you. And the next time they hear someone looking for a service that your company provides, they’ll recommend you – in glowing phrases.

You can’t buy that kind of advertising.

Linkcrafter web based relationship management solution helps you to engage with other qualified companies to co-create customer experiences. You’ll work within a network of partners, all of whom can provide your customers with products and services that are outside of your area of expertise but that are essential to making sure the customer is completely satisfied.

Learn to Co-Create

Through Linkcrafter, you’ll be able to co-create complete experiences for your customers with other companies. You’ll collaborate with these companies to understand exactly what your customers need and how to get it to them.

Your customers will look to you as a resource, a guide, and a trusted ally.

Is Your Company Still in the Dark Ages?

Most companies aren’t prepared for this new approach to marketing. Companies who co-create customers experiences with other qualified companies will keep themselves far ahead of the competition.

How do you accomplish all of this? We’re not going to lie. It takes a change in mindset.

Business people become super-connectors, people who know a lot of people, and know their interests, skills, and needs of everyone in their social or business circle and connect them together.

May
27

By

Daily Marketing Truths You Can't Live Without.

Category: Business Strategy, customer relationship, leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

1. If you don’t have enough customers, it’s simply because you don’t have enough friends. People buy from Friends.

2. If your advertising is not delivering good results, it’s simply because you don’t have enough advocates to confirm your message to their friends. When a person asks about your advertising, he is told: ”be careful, I don’t know these people, and this is  advertising, the reality may be different. You know … Ads are Ads”.

3. If you customers don’t recommend their friends to you, it’s simply because they still think you are a risky business to recommend. They can personally take the risk to do business with you, but they are not ready to recommend you.

4. If you don’t have Advocates for Your Business, it’s simply because you are not an advocate for other businesses.

5. If you don’t have Enough advocates for Your Business, it’s simply because you are not an advocate for a lot of people.

6. If your customers evaporate after the first transactions, it’s simply because  nothing make you memorable and you don’t remind yourself to them in a memorable way.

7. If people don’t listen to you, it’s simply because you don’t have a strong opinion about your business solution and express this opinion with enthusiasm and passion.

8. If  everyone forget about you, it’s simply because you forget about everyone.

9. If no one remind you, it’s because you don’t remind anybody.

10. If you want customers to buy from you every day, You should do marketing everyday.

11. If you do your marketing once a month, Customers may buy from you once a month.

12. If you do your marketing  sporadically, Customers will buy from you sporadically.

13. If you keep in touch with your Customers in ways that add value to their life, they will keep in touch with you in a way that create value for you.


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