Issue No. 99 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting reviews a tremendously helpful marketing book. Bring it to your next staff meeting and explain why “marketing is an all-encompassing outlook that must inform every activity of your business.” And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Don’t Work With Jerks!
“When I talk to groups of small business owners at workshops,” writes John Jantsch, “I will often make the statement that when you properly target your clients, you will discover that you no longer have to work with jerks.” It’s all about identifying, defining and focusing on your ideal client. Peter Drucker preached the big picture: focus on your primary customer. Now Jantsch helps you zero in with detailed intentionality.
If you agree that 50 percent of advertising and marketing doesn’t work (but no one knows which 50 percent), this book will not only help you—it will change the way you’ve been thinking about your mission and your customers. Jantsch is no huckster—he’s all about marketing integrity. “Copycat Marketing is chock full of problems, but primarily it is a problem because it is dishonest,” he warns.
To order from Amazon, click on this title: Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, by John Jantsch. Listen on Libro (7 hours, 48 minutes).
Simply put, this book will help you create marketing that sticks. The goal: “Marketing is getting people who have a specific need or problem to know, like and trust you.”
On the journey to find and serve your niche, the author suggests “you’ll turn your sales calls into more of an audition.” Ideas abound:
1) Offer an astonishing guarantee;
2) Perfect your “Talking Logo,” a bit like your elevator speech, only better;
3) Create a Client Profile Tracker (simple idea—but you’re probably not doing it); and
4) Call 10 clients and ask them six time-tested questions, including, “What could we do that would thrill you.” Written for businesses; it also delivers great value to nonprofit organizations and even churches.
With a foreword by Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth Revisited, and afterword by Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start, this is a must-buy for your team’s resource library. For me, the tipping point was the enthusiastic recommendation of Bruce Bruinsma, CEO and co-founder of Envoy Financial. The author sold Bruce and Bruce sold me. That’s Duct Tape Marketing.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1. Answer this question: “Who is our ideal client?”
2. OK, now let’s list 25 things, on the flipchart, we know about our ideal client: demographic, geographic, psychological, and product or service-related elements. (For more help, see page 99 in the Program Bucket in Mastering the Management Buckets.)
No Bucket Is an Island - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
Programs are cause-driven. An apprentice program helps homeless people learn job-related skills, enabling an urban ministry to achieve its objectives. A university’s “Semester in Africa” program aligns with its mission to prepare young men and women to be global Christians. An organization’s prison ministry connects volunteers with its Big Holy Audacious Goal (BHAG): “to place 500 ex-offenders in full-time employment over the next three years.”
But! No management bucket is an island. When the other 19 buckets fail to align with the Program Bucket (chapter 6 in Mastering the Management Buckets), the program and your entire operation can quickly spiral out of control. For example:
• The quarterly concert sells out, but the event loses money. (The program folks need more training in the Budget Bucket.)
• The mega-church’s six services are jam-packed, but the parking inefficiencies and rude volunteers squelch the spiritual impact within 12 minutes of the closing praise song. (They need help from the Systems Bucket and the Volunteer Bucket.)
• During the new CEO’s honeymoon phase at the rescue mission, major donors gave generously. One hundred days later, they want her to document the measurable results that their gifts will generate. (There’s a ball in the Results Bucket that can help her.)
At your next staff meeting, introduce your team to the four balls (action steps) in the Program Bucket and help them integrate this management bucket with the other 19 buckets. For more help, visit the Program Bucket online and download “Worksheet #6.2: Top-10 Questions to Ask About Program Capacity and Sustainability.” Question 9 asks, “Under what conditions do we agree that we will pull the plug on this program if the goals are not achieved by the target dates?”
FALL 2008 WORKSHOP DATES. Join your colleagues at one of our Buckets or Board workshops this fall:
Mastering the Management Buckets Workshop Experience
September 16-17, 2008 (Colorado Springs)
October 14-15, 2008 (Chicago)
November 18-19, 2008 (Orange County, Calif.)
Nonprofit Board Governance Workshop
September 18, 2008 (Colorado Springs)
October 13, 2008 (Chicago)
November 21, 2008 (Orange County, Calif.)
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