FIR Podcast Network

Increase organizational engagement by empowering people.This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert, Laleh Hancock (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalehhancock/), who is a leadership and entrepreneurial coach, professional services consultant, personal wellness mentor and Founder and CEO of Belapemo, a global professional services company.

Laleh Hancock is a seasoned consultant with a proven track record of asking the questions no one is asking in order to quickly understand the current state of a business and where the organization wants to go.She partners with the leadership team to create possibilities beyond what has ever been considered. She has worked with Fortune 500 executives, government agencies, non-profit organizations, athletes and veterans.

If you are the CEO of your org and you desire much more engagement than what there is today, you should consider reaching out to Laleh Hancock by visiting her website https://belapemo.com and going to https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalehhancock/.

Here are a few AHA messages from this episode:

* CEOs in orgs who are looking at the #Engagement in their orgs and who desire so much more than what there is today should reach out to Laleh Hancock. https://belapemo.com @Belapemo

* Are most organizations ready for the engagement that is required for creating the future of growth with their employees and clients? No, most organizations have not put in place what is required. Belapemo can assist to make sure that their tomorrow is going to be greater than what they have today. #Engagement https://belapemo.com @Belapemo

* Orgs can benefit from increased #Engagement. I can come in and work with the whole org to engage them and their customers and to see what the business needs to put in place today to have engagement now and in the future. https://belapemo.com @Belapemo

* Do you know that most ideas never come to fruition? They get deadlocked into conversations that go in circles. I can help #Engage the org to work on what is required today to materialize their ideas tomorrow. https://belapemo.com @Belapemo

* Having 30 years in business and working with over a million people, Laleh Hancock is someone who can work with your org to #Engage people and bring your business to where you want it to be in the future. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lalehhancock/

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

Before the world fell apart, we were talking about the different media types in the PESO Model—how they work individually AND together. When we stopped talking about the PESO Model (for obvious reasons), we were at paid media and, because social media ads in particular, are so cheap and still crazy effective, I thought we’d pick back up there.

While we may never see the level of a consistent, reliable, and scalable source of traffic and new leads that we got to enjoy even just a few short months ago, there is still the opportunity to use paid media effectively.

The dream is to build a consistent, reliable, and scalable source of traffic and new leads—and  paid media is a part of making that dream a reality.

Especially before “The Corona” as my seven-year-old calls it, it certainly seems like something every other organization in the world does. And you definitely can’t read a digital marketing blog without seeing case study after case study of success stories where people just like you are opening the floodgates of high-quality traffic generated from a single blog post or webinar or guest appearance or video or what have you.

The internet was pay-for-play before—and it will become increasingly so, but in this exact moment, many organizations are fearful of doing any marketing at all, which makes paid media  inexpensive and far more approachable. And, while earned, owned, and shared media are still critically important to a robust PESO Model communications plan, paid media is required to get the full value out of them. 

On today’s Spin Sucks podcast episode, we’ll talk about what that looks like, how to go about it, and what needs to shift in your paid media strategy amidst a global pandemic.

Links to Peruse

* Episode 16 of the Spin Sucks Podcast

* MarketingLand Paid Media Trends

* Digital Advertising Plan from Digital Marketer

* Spin Sucks Community

* The PESO Model Certification

Achieve higher sales conversions from the inside out with proven mindset and value-based strategies. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert, Sean Erwin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/serwin/), who is the founder of Convurt Coaching. He helps entrepreneurs to identify their own unique value so that they see more success with their sales.

Sean has been involved in inside sales for almost 20 years and has a passion for helping real estate pros, entrepreneurs and online coaches win more business through purposeful, value-driven sales. Having the right mindset, strategy and process is what Sean focuses on in order to increase sales conversions and the overall bottom line.

If you want to have higher sales conversions without the boring scripts and strategies and you are not being successful, you should consider reaching out to Sean Erwin by visiting his website http://convurtcoaching.com and going to https://www.linkedin.com/in/serwin/.

Here are a few AHA messages from this episode:

* Entrepreneurs in small companies who want to have higher sales conversions without being “sales-ey” and are not being successful, should reach out to Sean Erwin. http://convurtcoaching.com @SeanErwin

* Many entrepreneurs who have tried to get started with their #SalesConversions run into challenges. Sometimes they hit a plateau. I want to help determine where you are and how to solve your challenges. http://convurtcoaching.com @SeanErwin

* Companies can benefit from a high-level game plan for their #SalesConversions. I can provide a detailed proposal outlining the key areas for focus with a simple strategy for you to achieve your desired results. http://convurtcoaching.com @SeanErwin

* #Sales coaching is all about listening to entrepreneurs. What is their specific challenge and how can they be more value-driven? I will listen to what your needs are because it is all about you. https://www.linkedin.com/in/serwin/

* I helped numerous entrepreneurs and sales teams to double their #SalesConversion rates. I helped them to see a 30 to 40 percent ROI with their sales processes. That gives me the perceived credibility to help you achieve higher #SalesConversions. https://www.linkedin.com/in/serwin/

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you to be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

Finding your true path with change management.This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert, Rebecca Hulse (https://www.linkedin.com/in/RebeccaHulse), regional coordinator for the Asia/Pacific Region at Access Consciousness and creative producer at Joy of Business. She is also an Access Consciousness certified facilitator and a speaker, consultant, business coach and bestselling author.

Rebecca conducts business coaching for people who are struggling in their jobs and careers. She likes to shake up the limiting paradigms and realities of her clients. She aims to create a world where everyone is actually able to enjoy their work and daily life with change management programs.

If you’re unsure whether you like your life and job, you need someone to talk to and show you a different path with #ChangeManagement.Consider reaching out to Rebecca Hulse by visiting her website at http://rebeccahulse.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/RebeccaHulse.

Here are a few AHA messages from this episode:

* People who are not having as much fun as they’re really supposed to be having in their jobs and careers should look at the work being done by Rebecca Hulse. #ChangeManagement http://rebeccahulse.com @Rebecca_Hulse

* It’s not the norm to enjoy your work. That’s not the normal culture. This can be the truth and reality for a lot of people. #ChangeManagement http://rebeccahulse.com @Rebecca_Hulse

* What we’re looking to create with Joy of Business is a world where everyone is actually able to enjoy their work and daily life. #ChangeManagement http://rebeccahulse.com @Rebecca_Hulse

* We ask pragmatic questions and start to decompose the reality of what you think you should be. We allow you to see what it is that you truly desire to do in your career. #ChangeManagement http://rebeccahulse.com @Rebecca_Hulse

* There are many self-help books about finding a way to go about things but the reality is that there is no one path for everyone. Each person has their own path. #ChangeManagement http://rebeccahulse.com @Rebecca_Hulse

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

Achieving more engagementswith content development.This episode features #ThoughtLeader and Expert, Neil Gordon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/NeilCanHelp), a communication expert and content strategist.

Neil provides content development services to thought leaders for the development and refinement of their keynote speeches and other presentations. He is focused on helping his clients to identify their purpose, distill their message, persuade their audience and achieve tangible results.

If you are a thought leader and you’re not being heard by your audience and you need help with #ContentDevelopment, you should consider reaching out to Neil Gordon by visiting his website at https://neilcanhelp.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/NeilCanHelp.

Here are a few AHA messages from this episode:

* Thought leaders who are struggling to attract others to their messages should look at the work being done by Neil Gordon. #Communication #ContentDevelopment https://neilcanhelp.com @NeilCanHelp

* When thought leaders come to me, they are wonderful and marvelously informed experts in their fields. But, when it comes to putting together a keynote speech, book or seminar, what they often do overwhelms the audience. #ContentDevelopment https://neilcanhelp.com @NeilCanHelp

* Packing your content with so much stuff, well-meaning and valuable though it might be, will totally overwhelm the audience thus leading only to polite applause (or crickets). #ContentDevelopment https://neilcanhelp.com @NeilCanHelp

* I help thought leaders to completely transform their content and become so electrifying and so persuasive that people are falling all over themselves to connect and work with them. #ContentDevelopment https://neilcanhelp.com @NeilCanHelp

* People are not empowered by information, knowledge, or what they know is true but, rather, that which they believe is possible. #ContentDevelopment https://neilcanhelp.com @NeilCanHelp

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Conor Coughlan of Fenergo, a firm specializing in client lifecycle management and digital transformation. They discuss how to implement account-based experience (ABX) marketing and customer service strategy and why your company should embrace this approach. You’ll learn:

* Account-based marketing (ABM) presents a major pitfall if your frontline customer service team isn’t following through on your marketing and sales strategies.

* A developing trend, account-based experience (ABX), extends the marketing and sales integration of ABM to also include customer experience and address that pitfall.

* As with any new strategy, implementing ABX at a company has to be careful and iterative to allow teams time to learn, adjust, and come on board.

“ABM” — account-based marketing — has become a major buzzword and trend in conversations around marketing and demand generation.

Conor Coughlan, Chief Marketing Officer at Fenergo, says ABM has a common pitfall, though.

“If you fail to address the communications that come in or out of your organization from your customer success functions, then that’s where it falls down,” he says. “The last thing you want is to put all this effort into some amazing ABM work and find out it’s not resonating.”

A new approach called “ABX” instead fully integrates marketing, sales, and customer success to create a cohesive customer experience.

Conor joined the AMP Up Your Digital Marketing podcast to talk about how to use ABX to improve your marketing and customer journey.

What is an Account-Based Experience (ABX)?

A spinoff of ABM, ABX stands for “account-based experience.”

The approach rests on the principle that a business needs integration among not only marketing and sales (as with ABM), but among marketing, sales, and customer experience.

It ensures your customer success team follows through on promises your sales and marketing team have made, so buyers have a seamless journey with your brand after they become customers.

“An ABX in its simplest form is the alignment between marketing, sales, and your customer success or customer service functions,” Conor explains.

Why do you need this alignment?

If a salesperson presents a value proposition and the prospect buys and becomes a customer, and the customer success person is focused on a different value proposition, you create a poor customer experience. ABX prevents that dissonance.

How to Implement ABX

Conor says a company’s first step toward implementing ABX is to create a plan. Then, start simple, and be prepared to iterate.

“If there was a quick fix, we’d all be doing this,” he says.

Conor doesn’t recommend you attempt to switch your strategy to full-on ABX all at once. Instead, start with a pilot project that focuses on just one account.

Taking it slow helps you learn and adjust, and it makes getting buy-in much easier.

At Fenergo, Conor says, “politically and internally we launched it [ABX] as a beta program because people tend to understand ‘beta’ means this is in trial. It’s in development…It’s an evolution, and you’ve got to do iterations of what you’re trying to do to succeed.” 

That understanding among teams takes the pressure off whoever is advocating for the strategy to get everything right in the first go. 

“Our first few attempts on this did not go well,” Conor admits. “It’s a detailed process.”

Valuing Your Priority Accounts

ABX is also a strategy to ensure your most valued customers know how much you value them, no matter who they talk to at the company.

The fifth weekly Zoom Chat featuring listeners and FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz.

Links from this week’s chat:

* PwC check-in tool

* PWC — Lots of coronavirus management content on the home page

* “You Need the Sledgehammer” To Bring Down Infections

* Wow, this sums up everything we have been told so far

* Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Memes

Push your business to the next level beyond its plateau with flexibility and purposeful action. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert, Jessica Dewell (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicadewell/), growth entrepreneur, founder and managing partner of Red Direction, strategy consultant and speaker and host of VBBRadio’s Women’s Leadership Roundtable.

Jessica grows startups and small and medium-size enterprises to help them set strategy and achieve a vision and a market potential even when the details are evolving daily. Her expertise revolves around business and management consulting where she supports the development of leaders and teams and facilitates their abilities to determine what needs to be done in order to grow despite rapid changes and how that growth will be achieved.

If you’re in management, driving for more growth and understanding the true worth of your business in order to make decisions, consider reaching out to Jessica Dewell through her website https://reddirection.com/ and going to https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicadewell/.

Here are a few AHA messages from this episode:

* Management teams that recognize their limitations in how company leadership gets to the bottom dollar and a return on investment, and that aspire to more growth with dimensional leadership, should reach out to Jessica Dewell. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicadewell/

* There will always be communication issues between employees. With my guidance, I can help bridge the gap to ensure you maintain a successful business with a healthy work culture and purposeful actions at all times. #NextLevel https://reddirection.com/ @jess_dewell

* When operations and strategy overlap, I can guide you and help you to focus on making the best decisions with regard to that overlap for the advantage and advancement of your business. #NextLevel https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicadewell/

* Do you have strategies in place that get lost along the way when they are communicated and then later on executed operationally another way? I can provide insight where mishaps and missteps usually happen during the whole process of implementation. https://reddirection.com/ @jess_dewell

* When you invite me to your boardroom meeting, or an executive retreat, I can watch and listen and do a whole lot of analysis. In those observations, my role is to supply discernment and prioritization where they are lacking. #NextLevel https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicadewell/

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

Building credibility for professionals with book publishing. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert, C. Mike Lewis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/CMikeLewis), co-founder of Branded Expert Publishing. He is also a bestselling author, writer, publisher and radio host.

Mike conducts coaching and book publishing for professionals and entrepreneurs. He helps his clients build more credibility, become more famous in their field and get more clients by turning their experiences into bestselling books.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “I need a book,” and if you need help with #BookPublishing, you should consider reaching out to C. Mike Lewis by visiting his website at https://brandedexpertpublishing.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/CMikeLewis.

Here are a few AHA messages from this episode:

* Invisible experts who are in a profession that the majority of their clients see as a commodity should turn to look at the work being done by Mike Lewis. #BookPublishing https://brandedexpertpublishing.com

* We base everything on a book because we think that’s the foundation for proving your expertise. #BookPublishing https://brandedexpertpublishing.com

* We do all forms of publicity. But, predominantly, we teach professionals the value of their book by social media appearances and speaking in front of their ideal clients. #BookPublishing https://brandedexpertpublishing.com

* We take professionals through the interviews, get their material and change it into a book. From there, we start to educate them on how to maximize their perception as an expert by others. #BookPublishing https://brandedexpertpublishing.com

* Many published authors I have spoken with can point to the first time they published a book, that it was a major milestone and it was a pivoting point in their success. #BookPublishing https://brandedexpertpublishing.com

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

There are a lot of memes and graphics floating around that talk about how, if you don’t come out of this global pandemic with a new skill, a new invention, a new body, a new something…that you will have wasted this time you’re sheltering in place.

A couple of days ago, I saw a graphic that listed all of the companies that didn’t exist before the Great Recession, including Venmo, Uber, Snapchat, Twitter, and more.

Yes…and. 

The hustle mentality isn’t right for right now—and shaming people who don’t have the time (or don’t take the supposed extra time they have) to do something new is the absolute wrong thing to do. 

That’s what we talk about on today’s Spin Sucks podcast episode.

The Hustle Mentality Amongst Grief

The Great Recession, the dot com bubble burst, and 9/11 have all happened in the last 20 years. All three were the same in some respects, but very different in others. Yes, they were the same in that unemployment was high, organizations went out of business, people were unable to pay their bills, and, particularly during 9/11, the country mourned.

But we didn’t also have the grief that we have today—and that’s what we’re all experiencing. Grief. Grief over the loss of proms and graduations. Loss of friends and routines. Loss of simple pleasures, such as meeting friends out for drinks or having birthday parties. We have grief over the loss of control of our lives and the loss of normalcy, the fear of economic toll, and the loss of connection. 

What we feel is, what the experts call, “anticipatory grief.” This is the feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that we’ll lose a parent someday. 

Anticipatory grief is also more broadly about imagined futures. There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is confusing for all of us. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but we can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety and we feel that loss of safety.

To boot, we don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re smack dab in the middle of the tunnel and we don’t know how much further we have to keep digging.

We talk more about what that looks like, why it takes you longer to do anything now, and what to expect in the coming weeks and months.

Shownote Links

* Anticipatory grief

* Trauma psychologist advice

* Spin Sucks Community