This is the third installment in by collaborative ebook....
Before you begin to market yourselves and your services it is important to correctly identify your career path. To do this you would need to fully understand not only your learned skills but also your God given talents.
Research has shown that people perform best in a career if it is aligned with their talents. I believe a good presentation on this is one by Ken Robinson at TED talks, I provide the link here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I.
Talents are usually formed by the age of 10yrs so one good way of knowing your talents is to picture your self at age 10yrs and recollect your traits. Some common talents are Persuasiveness, Caring, Leadership, Artistry of some type, team player, empathy and so many more. The trick is to try and identify your talents and choose a career path that will draw on your talents. Then you build the skills that support this career.
I believe two dominant talents of mine are Persuasion and Story Telling. I use these talents in my career as Trainer, Lecturer and Consultant. And I support or build on these talents by learning skills in Marketing, Strategy, Training, Selling and Customer Service. Together I try and offer a unique value within Training and Lecturing by telling stories and persuading students to make the effort to learn independently. I use this fact in my customer value proposition of being: Enthralling, Inspiring and Instructive.
One must separate earning money and career, very often in the early stages of your career you may have to earn money in a job, not necessarily in your career path while you build your career. One of the advantages of the New Marketing Revolution is that you can continue to build your career online while you may be working offline. Do not worry about the size of market for your career, in the online world the 'Long Tail' concept prevails. In this theory the online world offers a market online however unique the service.
Whatever the career path you choose one common denominator in these times is that you have to offer value through your service, such as I explained above. It is critical that you identify the value that you intend to offer since it will form part of your customer value proposition when you begin to develop your Marketing Strategy.
The New Marketing Revolution also offers you insight into what value you should offer. By visiting Social Media sites such as Facebook you get to understand what people are interested in, what services they seek and what values they are looking for. I for example started off this ebook with the idea of helping persons grow their own business but checks with my associates and readers online convinced me that people are more interested in building a career. So I have adapted my value proposition to helping them do just that.
So take some time and identify your talents and select an appropriate career path. Do not be limited by your education, since all education is useful and can be applied in many careers and this new digital world offers unlimited access to growing your knowledge in any career.
Next Installment we start developing our Marketing Strategy for our career path. In the meantime please comment on these three installments and your comments will be included in the final ebook.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The New Marketing Revolution
This New Marketing Revolution is complex. At its core it is based on the ability of the previously faceless customer and consumer to talk back, to have a say through the use of new Information, Communication and Social Technology. As a recent Occupy Wall Street poster said....it is the 99% talking back.
But it is more than just two way communication. It is also the ability of companies to better serve and add value, to innovate, to create a constant stream of new products and services in collaboration with this now vocal customer. Not just the business but each employee of the business.
As an employee today or as a small business owner we also have to use the New Marketing Revolution to market our services and our companies’ services. Companies today now need each employee to also market its services. To do this requires that every one of us has to add new marketing skills to our existing skill set.
Recently, I had the good fortune to co-chair a half year Company Sales Planning session and one fact came out quite clearly, that each sales person also has to develop a personal marketing plan to sell themselves. As it turns out, a salesperson without a personal brand name cannot rely on the company’s brand name to get them past the gatekeepers. I have now started to insist that all my MBA students develop a personal marketing plan to sell their services.
This New Marketing Revolution, if used wisely, can also be a source of leverage for small business owners. The new technologies that are driving the revolution also make it possible for small businesses to punch above their weight class. So whether your small business is a dentist office, a lawyers office, a communication production studio or a training and development service, you also have the opportunity to market your services on par with the big guys.
This ebook is intended to be your personal resource on how you can use this New Marketing Revolution to grow your career or small business. I encourage you to follow us on the Blog by clicking the RSS icon or on Facebook and Twitter and to comment with suggestions, successful techniques or questions. As I said in the earlier blog, all comments will form part of the final ebook.
But it is more than just two way communication. It is also the ability of companies to better serve and add value, to innovate, to create a constant stream of new products and services in collaboration with this now vocal customer. Not just the business but each employee of the business.
As an employee today or as a small business owner we also have to use the New Marketing Revolution to market our services and our companies’ services. Companies today now need each employee to also market its services. To do this requires that every one of us has to add new marketing skills to our existing skill set.
Recently, I had the good fortune to co-chair a half year Company Sales Planning session and one fact came out quite clearly, that each sales person also has to develop a personal marketing plan to sell themselves. As it turns out, a salesperson without a personal brand name cannot rely on the company’s brand name to get them past the gatekeepers. I have now started to insist that all my MBA students develop a personal marketing plan to sell their services.
This New Marketing Revolution, if used wisely, can also be a source of leverage for small business owners. The new technologies that are driving the revolution also make it possible for small businesses to punch above their weight class. So whether your small business is a dentist office, a lawyers office, a communication production studio or a training and development service, you also have the opportunity to market your services on par with the big guys.
This ebook is intended to be your personal resource on how you can use this New Marketing Revolution to grow your career or small business. I encourage you to follow us on the Blog by clicking the RSS icon or on Facebook and Twitter and to comment with suggestions, successful techniques or questions. As I said in the earlier blog, all comments will form part of the final ebook.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
This New Marketing Revolution
There is a Marketing Revolution taking place, as profound as the Arab Spring Revolution or the Occupy Wall Street. It is not making the daily news on BBC & CNN but it is being driven by the same force that drive its more popular sisters.
This force is the technology that allows the man in the street to talk back. The vegetable vendor can strike back. He has a voice. The silence is broken, the centre cannot hold, noise is everywhere. Once upon a time the customer was silent, she just looked, listened and complied, no more.
The customer is speaking and brand owners have to listen. She uses Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Online Communities and Forums to express her delight or dissatisfaction. Its no longer a one way communication, it is a conversation.
Brands are no longer the sole possession of its owners and managers, its also owned by its customers. Customers decide how they will use them, how they will be useful to their lives. She will twist them to serve her purpose and when they are no longer valuable she will discard them and she will tell her friends that she has discarded it.
In this New Marketing Revolution even the word 'Marketing' sounds perverse, since it has become to be known as manipulation, slight of hand, do what I tell you and you will be happy. Probably a better word now is Service, Customer Service. Brands now have to provide value, service, utility. The best brands do that, Apple, Google and Amazon are valuable because they provide utility, they empower the customer. Its no longer a brilliant advert, though if you provide value and utility that will most certainly help, but that is not the starting point. The starting point is 'How can I make the brand experience Memorable, Useful of value to the Customer?'
Isn't this the same that the young revolutionaries are asking of their Governments? Welcome to the New Marketing Revolution.
This force is the technology that allows the man in the street to talk back. The vegetable vendor can strike back. He has a voice. The silence is broken, the centre cannot hold, noise is everywhere. Once upon a time the customer was silent, she just looked, listened and complied, no more.
The customer is speaking and brand owners have to listen. She uses Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Online Communities and Forums to express her delight or dissatisfaction. Its no longer a one way communication, it is a conversation.
Brands are no longer the sole possession of its owners and managers, its also owned by its customers. Customers decide how they will use them, how they will be useful to their lives. She will twist them to serve her purpose and when they are no longer valuable she will discard them and she will tell her friends that she has discarded it.
In this New Marketing Revolution even the word 'Marketing' sounds perverse, since it has become to be known as manipulation, slight of hand, do what I tell you and you will be happy. Probably a better word now is Service, Customer Service. Brands now have to provide value, service, utility. The best brands do that, Apple, Google and Amazon are valuable because they provide utility, they empower the customer. Its no longer a brilliant advert, though if you provide value and utility that will most certainly help, but that is not the starting point. The starting point is 'How can I make the brand experience Memorable, Useful of value to the Customer?'
Isn't this the same that the young revolutionaries are asking of their Governments? Welcome to the New Marketing Revolution.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Selling and the Gym Business
The Work Behind the Workout
Guest Post by Brett Bengochea
Me: Hi, good afternoon…
Receptionist: Hi
me: Just looking at some gyms in the area, what are your rates like?
receptionist: Look it right there
I look down at a piece of paper with some rates printed and some corrections scribbled in with a red ink pen. Someone walks by and gets into a chat with the receptionist, I see her smile for the first time while she chats with her friend.
Conversation over, she looses the smile and hands me a newly printed rate sheet which I fold and put into my pocket.
me: Mind if I have a look around?
receptionist: Umm… sure why not. Around so
I walk around for a bit scoping out the machines. The place is well set up, plenty new (or well kept) machines. The gym members pretend not to notice me walking around in my jeans and loafers unattended.
Back at the front desk
me: You guys have anything to squat with beside the Smith machine?
receptionist: *blank confused stare*
me: Is there a squat rack and bar around somewhere I haven’t noticed?
receptionist: *blank even more confused stare*
A gym trainer casually saunters past, overhears the conversation and chimes in.
trainer: He saying he wants to do squats with free weights
receptionist: *slightly concerned frown*
Maybe she doesn’t know what a squat is go figure…
trainer: Sorry man, we don’t have a rack or squat cage, nothing
The trainer seems somewhat embarrassed that there’s no squat rack.
me: Well… Alright… *shrug*
trainer: Yeah man… Easy
receptionist: Alright, take care
This gym is located at a mall in a relatively well to do residential area in Trinidad. Now remember, a gym makes money mostly due to monthly fees of it’s members. It would go without saying that part of a gym’s business plan should include recruiting new members and keeping current members.
It would benefit the owners to go beyond “We have a really good location and plenty money to buy fancy machines.”
I’d imagine people when walking through a mall are more ready and willing to spend some money than when they’re not. I wonder, in a high traffic area like this with plenty potential customers, how many times a week a scenario like this would play out. How many times a day on busy days would people just drop in to “check out the gym”?
What if the owners with no additional purchasing of new equipment invested in training some of their staff to close the sale? Not old school hard sell type canned presentations mind you, just show some sort of interest in people joining because you believe in what a gym represents.
Now let’s pretend the owners were taking their business seriously.
me: Hi, good afternoon
receptionist: Hello *smile and tilt head forward slightly*
She pauses expectantly here, maybe she knows me, maybe I’m looking for another store, maybe I’m a potential customer. She’s inviting me to engage the conversation.
me: Just looking at some gyms in the area, what are your rates like?
receptionist: Gyms around here would go from about “X” to “Y” a month depending on the time of day you’re going or whatever…
Smile, brief pause
receptionist: But!… We have a special on now for new members [insert special here]
There’s no need to pass a rate sheet to someone who hasn’t asked for it because they may have just come in for some information and you’ve satisfied it, they can now leave.
receptionist: *touches a signup sheet*
me: Mind if I have a look around first?
receptionist: Certainly! I was just about to ask.
Receptionist pages for a trainer to come to the front.
receptionist: John Trainer this is… Sorry I didn’t get your name?
me: Brett
Receptionist: Brett! *smile* This is Brett. Brett, this is John, he’ll take you on a little tour.
He shows me around assuming that I’m already a new member and motions a few exercise moves in the air while pointing out the machines and saying what exercises they’re for. He asks me what my training goals are and how we could utilize the equipment here to build a routine.
Maybe, (unless I’m just hell bent on doing free squats) I would have signed up.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Product Planning Success Tips
I had a great evening listening to my business students' presentations on Leading Global Brands Product Management Techniques. I came away with a few insights myself:
- Changes in Technology and Lifestyles are big drivers of new business opportunities
- Leading Brands started with an Innovative Concept. Invariably they enjoyed 'First Mover' advantage.
- They grew over the successive years through filling out their Product Line to support the original concept.
- The major successes over the last decade have been in either Services or Information components of the Supply Chain
- They took advantage of a 'new' under-served customer group (take for instance Starbucks and the new young urbanites & Apple and the new mobile lifestyle)
- As they grew they continued to innovate through large R&D budgets
If you are interested in growing your business through better Product Planning, send me an email at coachbengo@gmail.com and I'll be happy to visit you and chat on the possibilities.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
What must I do to be Successfully Innovative
Recently one of my Business Associates, Marcia Potts, sent me this brief question on Facebook:
Coach, what to do to be innovative and creative in order to earn some of this kind of doe (Like Apple recent record sales)? I am hoping to have some...even if it is 0.50%.
After some thought I responded as follows:
Hi Marcia, I agree with your wishes. The challenge is (1) To see the immediate future, (2) Understand your customers hopes and aspirations in this new future and (3) Be willing to take calculated risks in helping them achieve their dreams.
A brief question and a brief Facebook answer. But not so easy to do!
To really see the immediate future is to be constantly scanning your particular industry and associated industries and capturing the immediate trends. This is more of an art, a skill really, to differentiate what are just fads from what are truly trends. This is not analysis but synthesis, not breaking down and analyzing information and data but being able to pick up the varying clues and snippets of information and joining them to make a judgement or intuition. I believe Steve Jobs and Apple understood the shift away from desk-work to mobile social communication coupled with entertainment and its implications before most of us.
Then to understand your customers' hopes and dreams in this new evolving environment is not so much asking them through focus groups and questionnaires but in anticipating their aspirations even before they have them. In a sense it is knowing them better than they know themselves. Again the Apple Team understood the evolving dream to be able to easily create and consume personal multimedia content while on the go. This also is not analysis but insight through brainstorming.
And then the final step, to be willing to take calculated risks in helping them achieve their dreams. Apple did this by creating the new MacBooks with iLearn software, combined this with the iPod, iPhone and then iPad. Here again the genius is in the design. As Disney another mega successful creator says in their Process...First Dream and then Dare.
If you are interested in growing your business through Innovation send me an email at coachbengo@gmail.com and I'll be happy to visit you and chat on the possibilities.
Coach, what to do to be innovative and creative in order to earn some of this kind of doe (Like Apple recent record sales)? I am hoping to have some...even if it is 0.50%.
After some thought I responded as follows:
Hi Marcia, I agree with your wishes. The challenge is (1) To see the immediate future, (2) Understand your customers hopes and aspirations in this new future and (3) Be willing to take calculated risks in helping them achieve their dreams.
A brief question and a brief Facebook answer. But not so easy to do!
To really see the immediate future is to be constantly scanning your particular industry and associated industries and capturing the immediate trends. This is more of an art, a skill really, to differentiate what are just fads from what are truly trends. This is not analysis but synthesis, not breaking down and analyzing information and data but being able to pick up the varying clues and snippets of information and joining them to make a judgement or intuition. I believe Steve Jobs and Apple understood the shift away from desk-work to mobile social communication coupled with entertainment and its implications before most of us.
Then to understand your customers' hopes and dreams in this new evolving environment is not so much asking them through focus groups and questionnaires but in anticipating their aspirations even before they have them. In a sense it is knowing them better than they know themselves. Again the Apple Team understood the evolving dream to be able to easily create and consume personal multimedia content while on the go. This also is not analysis but insight through brainstorming.
And then the final step, to be willing to take calculated risks in helping them achieve their dreams. Apple did this by creating the new MacBooks with iLearn software, combined this with the iPod, iPhone and then iPad. Here again the genius is in the design. As Disney another mega successful creator says in their Process...First Dream and then Dare.
If you are interested in growing your business through Innovation send me an email at coachbengo@gmail.com and I'll be happy to visit you and chat on the possibilities.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Celebrating 8 yrs as a Business Coach
I can't believe it. But its true! When you are having fun time flies.
Its already eight years since I nervously left the security of a high paying/high flying Corporate Marketing Executive job and embarked on the adventure of being a self employed Business Coach specializing in Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. And what a ride it has been. Surprisingly, it has been the best years of my working career.
There have been times that I have missed the corporate flights to exotic lands, the VIP invitations to grand special events, the pictures and name in the newspapers, rubbing shoulders with the who's who and of course the guaranteed monthly salary and pleasant smiles of the bankers.
But I have gained so much more: the opportunity to chart my own course, more time with my family, being able to build a family business along with my wife, developing my God given talents, having time to devote to my church and surprisingly achieving better financial security. And all this in addition to: no more unending office meetings, no more office games and no more manipulated end of year reviews.
Its been an exciting eight years and the adventure has just begun. I have so many more plans, so many more paths off the beaten track to explore. No doubt some will be dead ends but with God's help a few will lead on to Glory.
"Sancho..my armour, my sword...Our destiny calls, and we go
And the wild winds of fortune
Shall carry us onward"
If you are interested in growing your business through Business Coaching send me an email at coachbengo@gmail.com and I'll be happy to visit you and chat on the possibilities.
Its already eight years since I nervously left the security of a high paying/high flying Corporate Marketing Executive job and embarked on the adventure of being a self employed Business Coach specializing in Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. And what a ride it has been. Surprisingly, it has been the best years of my working career.
There have been times that I have missed the corporate flights to exotic lands, the VIP invitations to grand special events, the pictures and name in the newspapers, rubbing shoulders with the who's who and of course the guaranteed monthly salary and pleasant smiles of the bankers.
But I have gained so much more: the opportunity to chart my own course, more time with my family, being able to build a family business along with my wife, developing my God given talents, having time to devote to my church and surprisingly achieving better financial security. And all this in addition to: no more unending office meetings, no more office games and no more manipulated end of year reviews.
Its been an exciting eight years and the adventure has just begun. I have so many more plans, so many more paths off the beaten track to explore. No doubt some will be dead ends but with God's help a few will lead on to Glory.
"Sancho..my armour, my sword...Our destiny calls, and we go
And the wild winds of fortune
Shall carry us onward"
If you are interested in growing your business through Business Coaching send me an email at coachbengo@gmail.com and I'll be happy to visit you and chat on the possibilities.
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