Your Role In History As An Entrepreneur

Side note: In editing Peggy’s book chapters for blog adaptation, I’ve found her style to be surprisingly (for an economist leadership expert, itself, to me, an oxymoron) engaging. Today’s topic, however, encompasses the object of my business teething and career so I feel compelled to spotlight a bit of the professionalism of marketing. Factoids (such as the components of marketing and the distinction between creating and stimulating desire, for example) are seldom addressed or positive-ized in economic treatises or website meanderings. Thank you. Enjoy the journey! Hal

Imagine Marketing

One of the great advances of the 20th Century was the development of the field of marketing. As industrialists were able to mass produce clothing, cars, homes and candy bars, they sought a method or methods to promote those things to a public who may not have known that they needed or wanted them.

Psychology and sociology combined with imperatives to maximize business profitability and the science of markets was born. Where markets existed, they were maximized. Where markets did not exist, they were created. Yet marketing is not a creator of society wants and needs. It is simply a reflection of society–a mirror of what already exists.

You know you need a home but you probably didn’t know you need or want a certain type or brand of kitchen appliance or configuration of closets until marketers educated you about the differences in price, performance, design, function, impressions, and longevity.

You know you need a car to get to work, but marketers let you know which models and styles were available so you could choose those that would best serve your practical functional and budget needs as well as those that best meet the conscious or unconscious emotional wants you most closely identify with (e.g., power, status, sex appeal, safety/service focus, family/parental focus, environmental/energy focus, etc.).

Marketing attaches meaning to the products and services we consume. Think of marketing as a big umbrella over a broad spectrum of marketing functions, which include sales, advertising, branding, pricing, packaging, promotion, merchandising, public relations (news releases, events, media communications), and more. Marketing also raises life necessities to luxury levels for a price.

Marketing does not create desire because humans already possess desire. Marketers stimulate desires that already exist. Marketing sometimes prompts us to purchase or consider purchasing products and services we didn’t know we needed or wanted until subliminal interests are created for them, and our desires are stimulated.

By the mid-20th Century, mass production meant that businesses could create enough products to satisfy the desires of mass markets. Mass communication through a mix of limited channels (using television, radio, magazines, direct mail, and outdoor and transit billboards) standardized desire for mass produced products.

The Internet changed the whole world of marketing. The Internet is a personal communication device. What comes through my computer is as different as what comes through yours as we are. No two computers deliver the same content because the content is a reflection of the fingerprint of the user. One user accesses religious content, another pornography, and yet a third spends most of her or his time surfing the net for the best price on handbags, shoes, or on hunting and fishing equipment and gear.

How do you market to EACH individual on his or her personal communication device?

Like finance, we’re rewriting the discipline of marketing while we’re practicing business in the New Economy.

As an Internet entrepreneur, you find your markets by searching for people who are interested in buying what you are selling. You contact them through social media using list serves, groups, email blasts and subscriptions, blogs and connectivity/referral platforms . . . following where each thread leads. When you pull on a thread, it will lead to a tapestry of related interest groups. As a business person, the end of each thread is a potential customer.

The hardest job of Internet Joe is to refine his product or service to meet the needs of a specifically defined target market within the potential of a global customer base. Expect that it could take time to refine your approach. You will go through several iterations before you hit on exactly what specific flavor of what you offer appeals to which specific individuals.

In the New Economy, your customers are in New Zealand and Newfoundland. Get to your keyboard and go find them.

# # #

C’mon back tomorrow 10/2 for Day 19 —

It’s all about SALES, SALES, SALES, and more SALES.

# # #

S P E C I A L    A N N O U N C E M E N T

Sign up NOW for NOVEMBER 29th (Sunday Night after Thanksgiving)

LIMITED SEATING COACHING WEBINAR:

“ENTREPRENEURS ARE AGENTS OF CHANGE . . . Accelerating Your Business”

Get fresh, informed, proven insights geared specifically to your business market, your biggest problems, your biggest opportunities.

With Hal and Peggy’s wealth of business coaching experience, you’ll learn how YOU match up with what successful entrepreneurs are thinking and doing RIGHT NOW. Get ideas you never imagined. Gain the traction you need within 2 hours — not days or weeks or months. Simply call 931.854.0474 Central Time: 11AM to 4PM Monday-Friday for details, to explain your business pursuit focus and to reserve your seat! $99 total for 2 hours. Satisfaction Guaranteed.

———-

For more information on Peggy Salvatore’s book: 30 Days to the New Economy [© Peggy Salvatore 2015. All Rights Reserved.] click on ENTREPRENEUR NEWS or visit ow.ly/RysnP for the E-book

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Hal@Businessworks.US      Peggy@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

Thanks for your visit and make today a GREAT day for someone!

GOT A GENIUS MESSAGE?

GOT GUTS?

FEARLESS MARKETING is not about thumping your chest or flailing your fists wildly about before even stepping into the ring, the key, the batter’s box, or up to the tee, the net, or line of scrimmage.

Neither is it even about performing these kinds of antics after knocking down an opponent, making a slam-dunk, hitting an extra-base hit, sinking a putt, forcing a bad serve, or rushing for a first and goal. Sorry, truth is that you’re NOT Spiderman or Wonderwoman!

Being FEARLESS doesn’t mean being insane! It’s about stepping up and out as uniquely, as wisely yet brashly, and as customer-consciously as possible.

In the mid-late 60s, a creative marketing genius named Tony Isadore –then with the great Madison Avenue advertising agency, Young & Rubicam–came up with what was, at that time, unheard-of, earth-shattering language to headline an all-out media (TV, radio, print ads and transit signs) campaign to raise donations for The New York Urban Coalition, The message: “GIVE A DAMN.”

Risky business for those involved. Many thought the use of “DAMN” would be putting careers on the line. Yet the word happened. And because it was deemed by the public as appropriate for the purpose, it became a resounding success.

There is a time and place for everything, but the trick in FEARLESS MARKETING is to be that one step ahead, to anticipate what will work and how far to go in making it work. This is not to suggest ferreting through lists of prospective curse words to throw into your marketing and branding programs.

It is simply to make the point that when we look just far enough into the immediate future, with the right eyes (!), at the right market, we can almost predict an unusual word choice that will “click” with prospects. “GOT MILK?” and “DO IT!” and “IT’S IN YOU” and “LOVIN’ IT” and “THE REAL THING” all come to mind as two or three-word, double entendre messages that have made colossal sales.

And it’s hard to beat the great social media names (GOOGLE, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) that are in themselves, sales messages, and have even gained acceptance as verbs!

But, ah, be aware that none of these (or I’d venture to guess that any great, short, FEARLESS MARKETING messages) EVER just popped out of someone’s back pocket. Marketing messages that step up and out, that make a difference, that work, typically require re-working, revising, re-thinking, re-writing hundreds if not dozens of attempts, over considerable periods of sleep-on-it time.

So if you’re paying someone to produce the winning combination of words, be patient. Great branding never happened overnight, and if you can think of exceptions . . . you’re going to be wrong 99% of the time! If you think you can produce the perfect words yourself, become a copywriter . . . but don’t give up your day job!

FEARLESS MARKETING is not just the creation of a message. It’s also having the savvy and guts that underscore the message of FEARLESS! (the stage musical), which, applied here, translates to: If the risk involved is reasonable, run the DAMN marketing. FEARLESS MARKETING ignites FEARLESS SALES!

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Hal@Businessworks.US               931.854.0474

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

You’re on the threshold

of a presentation.

Are you “overkill” ready?

I once worked for an “overkill” boss. It took me awhile to figure this out because he constantly gave me the impression he thought I wasn’t up to snuff with reality, until I discovered that he was simply an OCD  poster boy . . .

“Did you key up the audio so it’s loud enough for those with hearing disorders? Is it timed to come on just as I say ‘New campaign’? Is there a crisp, clean unused legal pad and new pen with keyboard access in front of every chair at the meeting table? Who’s escorting them into the room?

“You’re wearing pinstripes, right? And plain dark suit? No crazy neckties. And kill that erring! Did you check the thermostat? You’re sure the agenda board is 100% perfect and visible from every seat? Their limo is ordered? What time’s their flight? Lunch arrangements? What about lunch arrangements? “

Of course that was just the beginning of his diatribe checklist. He would go on to the exact type and amount and freshness of the tuna salad and bread and veggies and dip and chips and cheese and crackers and fruit, and juice and soda to be served. “What’s the dessert? Who’s making it? Have you tried it?” and on and on. You’d have thought our ad agency sales pitch was a White House attempt at negotiating a global war peace treaty. “WHO,” he would always ask, “is in your pocket?”

BUT WAS HE WRONG?

I’d be interested in your thoughts, but I can tell you this much: While I never became the fanatic he was, I learned to respect the value of being fully prepared ahead of every client and potential client interface — in person, on the phone, and on the computer screen. While I agree that his cage-rattling directives were often excessive, over-the-top, I have come to realize that –in fact– he had a point: You can never be TOO prepared!

And perhaps most important: being fully prepared –including having some contingency plans– helps build self-confidence as well. Why? Because it leaves your mind clear to deal with the person(s) in front of you and adapt to he/her/them and/or the circumstances. If you’re not fully prepared, you may be too preoccupied with fumbling to notice nonverbal responses or room temperature or your own agenda . Sales, remember, are made in “the here and now“!

What is business (and professional practice) all about after all? The customer/client/patient/prospect . . . RIGHT? What else could it possibly be about? So if you think on this a minute or two –or a lifetime’s worth– you will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that your entire career existence is dependent on your’s and your organization’s abilities to attract and keep, and grow your customer base. What else is there?

Even if you work for a nonprofit, and think you exist to make the world a better place, you’ll never succeed without developing a base of supporters. So how does one maximize the odds of attracting and keeping and growing a support base of any kind? With as accurate and perfect and communicative a presentation as possible at every opportunity you get to make a point. You need not become an OCD basket case or a pushy salesperson to make this happen.

You must quite simply put yourself in your audience’s (of one or one million) proverbial shoes and present information at his/her/their level wrapped around expressed needs and interests. Oh, and that can ONLY happen if you listen carefully (at least 80% of the time) to what each and all of them have to say. If you’re unsure or can’t feasibly do this, hire a firm that will do it for you with surveys or focus groups or whatever methods work for your industry or profession.

Otherwise, you’re you’ll find yourself

working inside a box 

that you’ll never learn to think out of!

Need more of a call-to-action? Click here:  86400

“There’s no business like small business

It makes economies grow

Everything about it is revealing

Got everything that customers want now

Nowhere could you get that happy feeling

When you make a sale-with-service vow”

(With There’s No Business Like Show Business adaptation apologies to Irving Berlin)

Like Broadway without lights, imagine America with no small business. We have thrived as a nation because of small business. Small business employs the vast majority of workers in this country, and stimulates the U.S. economy more than all the nation’s giant corporations put together!

ALL things great that happen in business

happen first in small business.

Entrepreneurs deserve the credit for our existence as a people. They brought us (and continue to bring us) to our senses. They made (and continue to make) the freedom of our daily lives happen. Our military forces deserve the credit for keeping our existence free.

Yet neither finds favor in Washington? Or, in fact, with a great many state and local governments?

Why do you think this is?

Government people are charged with regulating business but rarely if ever have enough business experience to even understand the consequences of their regulations. If, in fact, they were entrepreneurs to begin with, they would never have ended up in stultifying government careers.

What more poignant example could there be than the U.S. Postal Service . . . dying a long, painful death since 2008 (at taxpayer expense!)?

Show me a single entrepreneur who thinks that the way to make more money and compete with Fed Ex and UPS et al is to reduce services, close down basic operations, and raise prices. Please. The Postal Service is a shameful waste and an ideal example of everything that’s wrong with our government and our economy.

• They take mailboxes off the streets because they don’t know how to make them profitable.
• They cut employee hours, close offices and stop Saturday delivery in many locations to save money.
• BUT they spend many millions of dollars in meaningless, empty advertising campaigns run by Madison Avenue ad agencies seeking to win awards instead of making sales. Clearly an example of what your Grandmother used to say about the right hand not understanding what the left hand was doing.

What’s really discouraging is that it doesn’t take—pardon the trite expression, but it says it best—a rocket scientist to figure out that the U.S. Postal Service is in shambles and that it’s ego-maniacal ad agency is certainly not the bail-out answer. It takes an entrepreneur.

Only an entrepreneurial-spirited soul has the wherewithal to fully understand and appreciate how to transform the Postal Service into a privatized, profitable business. Think this is unimportant stuff? Guess what? America’s government from the top down is agonizingly in need of reform and innovative new approaches if it is to survive.

This kind of thinking is not forthcoming from our nation’s leaders, and never will be until they are replaced en masse. You own and operate a small business? Are you willing to step up? It’s YOUR business, and ultimately your family, that’s on the line. Please do SOMEthing. Even if that just means “Talk it up!” Without small business, there IS no America!

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 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below

 DOCTORS, THERAPISTS,

PRACTICE MANAGERS

 HOSPITAL EXECUTIVES

. . . ARE NOT

CORPORATE MUCKITY-MUCKS

You and your practice or facility are not likely to be a Fortune 500 corporate entity. So there’s no need to pretend being a marketing guru.

In fact, if you are feeling even a little bit over your head with marketing, you’re likely to be wasting money, time, and energy!

Maybe you’re unearthing a monster budget expense at the behest and/or persuasion of some big-time marketing company, PR firm or ad agency you’re working with or thinking of hiring? It can often feel (and be real) that such entities are simply throwing away your money to create a mumbo-jumbo branding program aimed at earning an award for themselves.

If you’re working with or considering  “experts” who are trying or promising to “position” you as the brightest star in the heavens . . . you may want to re-think it with a dose of reality.

Reality? Yes, you are a healthcare provider. That makes you an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs challenge the system. In healthcare, they use (or retain) innovative thinking to establish, re-establish and upgrade the authenticity of themselves and the “saleability” of their services, careers, investments, and reputations.

You can accomplish this with: much less expense of money, the same expense of time, and sometimes greater expense of energy. Oh, and –by the way– having and practicing a sense of entrepreneurial reality tends to get far better value and results than engaging one of the “big-time-expert” groups noted above.

Just to be sure we’re on the same page here, I’m talking about –specifically– how to increase patient volume, how to stimulate patient and patient-family loyalty, and how to strengthen referral bases, channels, and networks without having to bet the farm!. Is that what you’re looking to accomplish?

Stay with me on the next few weekly blog posts and I’ll tell you HOW… or call or email me (info below) if you can’t wait!

Let’s start with the idea that what truly “sells” people is to be entirely focused on them and not on ourselves. Chest-beating, posturing messages about how great you think you are and smiling-face billboards, ads, and Facebook pages –regardless of expense involved– make no difference whatsoever. In fact, they often do the opposite… annoy, antagonize, create doubt and distrust, and send the people you’re trying to reach galloping off to your quiet competitors.

So do you have to be “quiet”? No, but you do need to be your authentic self. You do you need to be more conscious of the training and talent and experience gifts you deliver in your vital societal role as a healer and healthcare provider. Because THAT is your best marketing!

Is that hard? Of course, especially given the volatility, misdirection, intrusiveness, and mismanagement of government agencies, insurance companies, and today’s Obamacare circus, but –in the end– difficulty (as most entrepreneurs learn) is a choice.

There is much more coming to you at this blog in the hands-on, specific-how-to-steps departments in the days ahead. So, do return for more on how to get started and how to re-start.

In the meantime . . .

CHECK THIS disarmingly true, insightful post

at www.HealthcareTalentTransformation.com  

by David Lee Scher, MD, titled:

“Five Ways Physicians Can Change Patient Behavior“

 # # #

Healthcare Pros STILL

Flushing Money Down the Drain!

Thanks for your visit. We have recently relocated to Cookeville Tennessee (between Nashville and Knoxville), home of Tennessee Tech University. Return here often for new posts in this series for Doctorpreneurs©and Healthcare professionals.

Why not just open the window and throw your money out? Why bother spending it on meaningless, confused thinking about marketing? Why keep feeding the nonperformance of media, mobile apps, direct mail magazines and newsletters, social media and, oh yes, outdoor advertising? Can we look at this open-mindedly?

The business and sports worlds have fed your fires since childhood that you must be competitive at all costs in order to win… that’s 100% false for healthcare professionals! In fact, many healthcare pros have marketing success expectations as unrealistic as imagining that a heart attack can be treated with a BandAid®

REALITY: No one “buys” billboards with smiling doctor faces (or, even worse, the recent trend toward somber looks!). Most people are not so stupid as to think that hospital “magazines” and “newsletters” with feature (dressed-up PR) stories are interesting or meaningful enough to be worth reading. My guess is that –other than the few and far between genuine healthcare educational mailing pieces– most of these exorbitantly expensive items go straight to the recycle pail. All this nonsense came and went thirty years ago. [Interesting how America’s healthcare institutions are accelerating these feeble old-fashioned attempts at marketing. Is it some kind of knee-jerk attempt to cope with the Obamacare muddle?]

BOTTOM LINE: No one cares! The public simply doesn’t care how great hospitals, doctors, therapists (or any professionals for that matter) think they are! Healthcare consumers may have more (and more personal) issues on the line than other kinds of consumers, but they really and truly only care about the same thing that every consumer cares most about: What’s in it for me? Period.

So if you’ve read this far, perhaps it would be useful to explore and reassess your current “marketing” practices, and decide if your money could be better spent on strengthening patient, patient family, and referral network relations. If you’re looking for a role model institution, consider the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center… you’ll find no shallow representations of professional skills… “Treatment” is their specialty, and it applies to everyone who enters their doors. Oh, and guess what? The only expense is training and training maintenance time.

Marketing –if it’s done right– might sometimes succeed at building brand loyalty for some products and services in some markets and marketplaces. But when the two end-results people seek most from healthcare professionals are 1) Reassurance and 2) Trust, it’s not likely either will ever be achieved with empty images or promises.

Doctorpreneurs© Copyright Hal Alpiar, 1994. All rights reserved.

BandAid® is a Registered Trademark of the Johnson & Johnson Company

 # # #

“Got here safe & sound, Y’all!”

AND STILL UNPACKING AND SETTING UP NEW OFFICES . . .

GUESS WHERE?????  Email your guess: Hal@Businessworks.US  (“New Office” in Subject Line) Winning guesses entered in drawing for a FREE first edition signed copy of HIGH TIDE fictionalized account of America’s biggest drug deal! See www.HighTideNow.com

Thank you for your visit.

If you’re new to this blog, please mark your calendar to return on April 16th for the beginning of Tax Return Recovery, and to help kickoff an exciting new series of posts you won’t find anywhere else!

If you’ve been visiting here regularly since the birth of my blog in April, 2008 (and now closing in on 1500 posts), thank you even extra!

You, especially, will want to return April 16th to see what’s in store for innovative, spirited business and healthcare professionals. You’ll get  proven new ways of thinking to boost your sales and make the most of your leadership skills — for profit and nonprofit businesses and professions alike. You’ll get coaching that works in the office and meeting room, on the phone and on paper, on the smartphone and the computer. You will get specific how-tos for building and enhancing your leadership posture in your industry, your marketplace, and your community.

When you return here April 16th, you will get the beginning of an input stream that no one else dares to share . . . on ways to feel better about your SELF (no product or service sales pitches, no lectures, no gimmicks). You’ll get ways to be encouraged, ways to make a difference with your career and family pursuits, ways to rise above the clutter.

You’ll get solid substance based on more years of experience than you probably are old. Not just passive observations, you’ll get frontline/hands-on experience with over 2,000 business consulting and return engagements AND with more than 20,000 students and management training participants. PLUS –as incredible as it’s always been–it will be free on this blog. Try it. You’ll like it. Send your friends.

In the meantime, to better serve our Entrepreneurial Clients (Including Business Startups, SalesPropreneurs©, Doctorpreneurs© and Corporate Entrepreneurs©), BUSINESSWORKS.US and TheWriterWorks.com, LLC will be in the process of relocating to another State. You’ll get the details as soon as we’re settled. In the meantime, Happy Spring!

See you the day after taxes!!!

 # # #

 Healthcare is NOT About

Billboards of Smiling Doctors

 . . . So STOP the nonsense and STOP wasting money!

STOP your healthcare marketing long enough to seriously

ask yourself if your public messages really make sense.

Healthcare is and has always been all about TRUST. Nothing more. Nothing less. Doctors and medical groups and hospitals and therapists and chiropractors and dentists and veterinarians who run smiling (or threatening) branding messages on billboards (or in print, online, and broadcast media) are wasting time and money!

Healthcare professionals are wasting their money. 

But they are wasting our time.

Huh? Why? Because NOBODY CARES!

The public today is not the public of yesterday – literally! We are no longer just Internet-savvy. We are Internet-addicted, Internet-crazed, and Internet-bamboozled. We are being micro-chipped to death!

• Healthcare DOWNside: Rampant Google-dependency and new strains of attention deficit disorder.
• Healthcare UPside: We can now know more about our ailments, disorders, symptoms, diagnostic and treatment procedures than ever before. And we can know it in a heartbeat.

Much of the problem lies with healthcare professionals who think they can knock out effective branding programs because they watch TV (or surf the Net, or read blogs, newspapers and magazines) and that makes them experts! But truly effective and memorable branding programs require special skill sets too . . . and those seldom parallel professional healthcare training. Creating marketing that works is not a hobby.

Oh, and if you are a healthcare marketing person, agency, group, or consultant: Before you jump up and down and run off copies of this post to pass around to support your credibility, STOP!

You may well be the other part of the problem!

• Are you selling healthcare professionals on printing and mailing expensive magazines that no one reads or cares about?
• Are you trying to package healthcare services and market them like hot dogs, popcorn, and underwear?
• Are you pushing email blast campaigns and Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn as ways to market healthcare?
• Are you saying: “We’ve got your back, Doc! We’ll make you famous! Patients will be standing in line, breaking down your door?

For a fraction of the money healthcare professionals are now spending on marketing, the right approach to building volume and referrals and growing patient and patient family loyalty needs to be considered. The right approach can reap two to ten times as much success! It starts with a diagnostic workup to generate a healthcare practice history. It ends with treating the practice appropriately to achieve the most positive prognosis imaginable.

It’s based on ways to build and increase trust levels, decrease and make the most of stress levels, enhance every level of communications, and make the best -most humanly possible- use of time each day with each patient, patient family, and referral source, as well as ensure proper EMR use and full reimbursement compliance.

It takes time and patience to get and keep patients — not fancy, ineffective and expensive marketing.

 # # #

“Huh? Now? But it’s the holidays!”

“Well, Merry Christmas to you! But

after quality family time, remember

1st quarter 2014 is just hours away.”

Why “NOW!”? Just click here: take a quick look at this to see what’s happening this very split second —as you read this— and you’ll realize that delaying this task is simply not in your best interest.

Getting others to refer you/your business is more than a survival tactic, it’s the key to 2014 success. No sales are more important right now than those to the friends, families, associates and online connections of your existing customers, clients, and patients. Because 2014 is bringing increased competitive activity to the surface. And it cannot be sidestepped.

The harder the times, the fiercer the battle! And the easiest, most economical path to increased sales and customer/ client/ patient repeat-sales-and-visits loyalty is a strengthened referral base. Economical? You decide. It costs nothing to delight those who purchase from you.

Cease and desist all marketing? No. But don’t expand it. Instead, consider shifting gears from reliance on expensive media, to fine-tuning attitudes and cultivating a much more pronounced reputation for integrity than you probably imagined being necessary. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US

Beware GEEKSPEAK!

GEEKSPEAK. It’s another name for Tech Talk. Too many tech people are talking to too many tech people in too much tech-eeze and the real world of small business owners, professional practice principals, and even top corporate management is passing them by. If you are looking to make sales and grow your business, think twice about GEEKSPEAK overload.

In other words, don’t let website designers write words for your content. They haven’t a clue about effective marketing writing. Don’t let IT people decide on what and how to communicate with clients and customers and prospects. They know not where they come from . . . nor, it often seems, where they’re going when it comes to clarifying issues for non-IT people!

Don’t let your business messages get caught up in branding lines, site content, collateral/promotional material copy or news release text that contains language your grandmother wouldn’t understand. Nothing is so complicated that it can’t be simplified. Nothing is too technical to be communicated in easy-to-understand language.

When I ask you what time it is,

don’t tell me how to make a clock!

It simply takes more time and is harder work. But it’s often the difference between an enthusiastic buyer and a puzzled, overwhelmed one. Suffice it to say that all communication — interpersonal, impersonal, and otherwise, takes more time and is more work. Decide on what you want as a result, and if the extra effort is worth it.

Promoting and presenting complicated diagrams and examples only serves to underscore an oblivious, uncaring attitude to the markets you’re trying to reach. What’s the old axiom? Keep it simple, stupid! And don’t make the excuse that the prospects you seek understand tech talk because odds are pretty good that their bosses who need to approve purchase decisions don’t.

Sourcing people ultimately report to financial and/or operations people who hold the purse-strings. If those folks don’t understand a GEEKSPEAK message, they simply shut down their budgets. And why not? Would you buy something for your home or car that you have no sense of value about, can’t relate to, or fail to understand what you’re getting for your money?

Bite the bullet and give your business communications — especially to your customers, clients, and prospects — the extra effort that will make what you have to say clear from the git go. Not sure if what you’re saying comes across? Ask your grandmother.

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Hal@Businessworks.US