Ask an Expert by Propelo

Mark Sanborn has dedicated his life to developing leaders in business and life for over 30 years.  He’s worked with over 2,600 companies across the globe from FedEx, HP, RE/MAX to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and has authored 8 books having sold over 2 million copies worldwide.

Tim Wolfley has been in the digital marketing space for almost 15 years, and comes on to talk about some recent technology changes around geofencing.  Historically, geofencing has been intriguing, but due to limitations to pinpoint targeting impressions and budget could be wasted.  Tim shares how accurate the targeting has become allowing for some new strategies businesses can utilize:

1. Conquesting: This allows you to target the shoppers of your ideal competitors.  You can then deliver media that helps differentiate your business from the competitors.

2. Affinity: This strategy allows you to target your ideal customers that are shopping in “like” businesses.  Let’s say you’re a higher-end pet store, and you think your customers would also likely shop at Wholefoods.  You can then filter on demographics to narrow down those shoppers, such as targeting only pet owners to find the perfect affinity match.

3. Recapture:  Just like how you can retarget website visitors, this strategy allows you to target people who have shopped at your storefront so you can encourage them to continually come back.

Tim also talks about the importance of testing into campaigns.  He encourages companies to be very leary of those marketing “expert” that says they know exactly how to approach a campaign.  The reality is that we don’t have unlimited budgets so testing allows you to incrementally build your campaign out.

Finally, we talk about the power of video, especially in the year of social distancing.

Some of my favorite business origin stories are from entrepreneurs who were having a problem and then figure out how to eliminate that problem. Today’s Ask an Expert, Greg Skloot, co-founded a company right out of college that developed an impressive software platform, but they struggled on the sales side because of challenges working with different personalities. To help overcome this they hired a business coach who seemed like a wizard with his ability to interact and engage with any kind of person. Turns out his wizardry was rooted in the DISC personality test that’s been around for over 100 years. 

Greg and his co-founder, Drew D’Agostino, started experimenting with the concept of leveraging AI and publicly accessible information to see if they could replicate the wizardry of their coach. Very quickly they had formed their next venture Crystal Knows which has gone on to help sales and marketing professionals understand how they should approach potential clients before they’d even talked with them. 

Greg explains the benefit of having a rich content strategy focused on how personality traits can help sales, hiring, marketing, and coaches become better at their job. Some of this content was manifested in their book, Predicting Personality, which Tony Robbins stated has “Insanely valuable advice for any business leader!”

Awareness, passion, and staying close to the problem allowed today’s Ask an Expert guest to successfully buck traditional start-up models.  Shani Dowell, Founder and CEO of Possip, was talking to her husband about a gap in good communication between schools and parents.  From a dining room table, a business was born and in just three years they’re now working with over 400 schools.

Shani talks about the slow-growing approach she took to get Possip off the ground from product development, investments, marketing, and her continued approach to scaling up.

After talking to many incredibly successful business people over the years one theme starting coming up over and over for today’s Ask an Expert guest Erik Qualman.  Erik, author of the wildly successful book Socialnomics, shares that successful leaders said that the most important attribute of their success is focus, but that it’s also their most challenging aspect.

Erik realized that was something that he struggled with too, and so he went all-in on understanding how to improve it.  Fast forward to today, and he’s just authored a new book titled “The Focus Project”.  In today’s episode, he chronicles his own journey towards saying “No” more often so he can really focus on what’s most important.  He also shares the value and power of storytelling and explains how you can monitor and improve your personal brand by understanding the difference between your digital footprint vs your digital shadow.

Having spent over 25 years helping organizations from Godiva, Oreo, and Kraft Foods shape stronger brand strategies, Rich Keller developed a personal branding program to help you personally and professionally. Rich’s program is predicated on in-depth personal evaluation through a series of questions, which reveal your one-word personal brand. This one-word brand will help you Stand-out, Conquer Obstacles, and Reach Excellence!

When heading into a negotiation it’s important to understand the differences between what you want to happen, and what you need to happen.  Today’s Ask an Expert guest explains that it’s just as important that we understand that for the other party which requires you to be deliberate with your research while also making sure to ask open ended questions.  

Mark Raffan is the founder of Negotiations Ninja, a firm that helps businesses develop stronger skills in this area, and he’s also the host of the #1 negotiating podcast by the same name.  In this episode he gives insightful pointers on improving your approach, execution and most importantly, your success when negotiating.

We all have weaknesses, and like it or not it’s easy for most of us to see these weaknesses vs. our strengths, but today’s ask an expert has flipped the script by challenging people to change their perspective. David Rendall is a former professor, part-time comedian, and brilliant speaker talks about his philosophy of why “weird is wonderful and weakness is strength.” In this episode, David gives several examples of how what you perceive as a weakness in one scenario can be considered a strength in another one. On the surface, I know how it can seem counterintuitive, but let’s talk about dyslexia. A recent study showed that 50% of Britain’s billionaires are dyslexic, and 35% of US entrepreneurs are dyslexic, even though only 10% of both populations are dyslexic. It’s not that their brains are broken, it’s that their brains simply work differently. This theme of changing your perspective can have a profound impact on your organizations and you individually.

Your logo is not your brand, no matter how much you want it to be, nor how many thousands of dollars you spent creating it. Today’s Ask an Expert guest, Denise Lee Yohn is a branding expert who has worked with big brands from Frito Lays to Oakley.

Today we talk about her book Fusion, which outlines why where your brand and culture intersect matters. She outlines how you can audit your brand, and what you can do to bring your culture and your brand closer together. She also shares insights on how to navigate tough social issues organizationally. Finally, we talk about video, more specifically what you need to focus on before you actually start recording.

With manufacturing shortages and limited inventories coming up against increased consumer demand dealerships need to adapt quickly says today’s Ask an Expert Guest. Stephanie Reck, National Sales Director for CF Search Marketing, talks about how dealerships are getting creative with variable marketing, fixed strategies, and improving the customer experience in an era of social distancing.