The Bacon Podcast with Brian Basilico | CURE Your Sales & Marketing with Ideas That Make It SIZZLE!

Mark S. A. Smith designs and implements customer acquisition systems that find and recruit customers for disruptive products. He speaks at entrepreneurial events delivering pragmatic ideas to grow and succeed.

He is an electrical engineer, media technologist, computer programmer, hardware salesman, software marketer, and business owner who works with leaders who must develop the best way to bring in the right customers, fast!

Mark wrote 13 books and sales guides targeting government, educational, healthcare, and the private sector, including three with Guerrilla Marketing author, Jay Conrad Levinson. He has authored more than 400 magazine articles.

With his engineering, sales, and business background, he can teach information in a way that customers, salespeople, and management understand so that they can clearly communicate with their customers.

Creates powerful and innovative sales channel tools, combining product knowledge with proven sales skills. Creates custom white papers and books to sell technology to top management. Delivered thousands of speeches on selling.

You have undoubtedly heard the saying that “You can’t teach an old dog, new tricks?” It is true that younger minds are more open to new concepts and more pliable. But that does not mean that older minds have to be ridged. As a matter of fact, minds are amazing things. The more you stimulate them, the more they change.

It’s never too late to grow yourself. While many people may stop learning because they feel they are so set in their ways, you don’t have or need to. You are never too old to pick up a guitar and join a band, learn email marketing, or cook the “Best Burger Ever.’ Now I am excited to learn how to make the Best Chicken and Best Pork Chops Ever (and so much more that I have never tried before.)

One final thought… It was not just the grill or I that succeeded. It was the system. If you hear somebody say that they have perfected something and you can too, be wary of the fact that their skills, learning styles, and life lessons may not be the same as yours.

In this episode, we will discuss how lifelong learning is a prerequisite to succes.

Stan is a Forbes Contributor, TEDx Speaker, IBM Futurist, Certified Speaking Professional, and best-selling author of the Goldfish Series. He is an Instructor for the ANA School of Marketing and Rutgers Business School.

A show-and-tell speaker, Stan empowers audiences to take action that delivers bottom-line impact. He strives to change the paradigm of marketing by encouraging audiences to focus on experiences as the ultimate competitive differentiator. He believes purposeful DX wins the hearts of employees and customers, and differentiation ultimately boosts loyalty, retention, referrals, and results.

A masterful storyteller who quickly connects with audiences, Stan has delivered keynotes and workshops for Fortune 100 brands including IBM, Target, and more. He works directly with you to customize content that matches your audience and your goals to create a memorable and meaningful experience every time. Count on Stan to show up early, arrive prepared, and disrupt the all-work-and-no-play methodology with his sharp wit and trademark showmanship. He makes it his mission to exceed expectations and inspire audiences in ways they just can’t help but talk about — and won’t soon forget.

Find Stan’s keynotes and workshops at StanPhelpsSpeaks.com.

Sitcoms and dramas often have two or three storylines that follow their own formulas, but then meet at the end to form a cohesive plot or storyline. But, if one of those threads ventures off to fat from the other, the show as a whole can becoming become confusing and disjointed.

I’ve mentioned Home Depot a few times over the last few blogs. I have placed a handful of orders for different things. At first, I thought that the process has been consistent, but a couple of the last ones broke from the formula has become confusing and disjointed.

What I have come to realize is that Home Depot online stocks some things. While other products (like a grill) are drop-shipped for a vendor or manufacturer, While others ((like closet organizers or blinds) and done through other subcontractors and vendors. Each has its own ecosystem and ultimately has different communication methods. That may be profitable for them, but it’s confusing and inefficient for their customers.

It made me realize that we may have that in our businesses. In order to build confidence and consistency, every method of communication should be universal. In other words, if you are like my business, clients communicate the way that they like to communicate, so I have to manage multiple systems.

In this episode, we will discuss how your customer service is your brand, and how you can avoid becoming confusing and disjointed!

Neil is a Certified Business Performance Advisor with Insperity. He is an HR professional for small businesses, specializing in employee engagement, loyalty, and retention. His business services include recruiting, hiring, onboarding, payroll, benefits, training and development, performance reviews, performance management, risk and liability management.

Graduated in 2011 with two Bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Economics, from Illinois State University. Neil resides in Elgin, IL with his wife and two daughters at 4 and 1 years of age.

Have you ever eaten an “Impossible Burger”? They do a pretty good job of making plants taste like meat, but why do they call it Impossible? Because meat has heme. Heme is the molecule that gives blood its red color and helps carry oxygen in living organisms. Unlike other plant-based burgers and meats, it was thought to be impossible to make it look and taste like real meat.

So no matter your carnivore or vegan status, you could be fooled that the burger you are eating is meat.

in business, we have all been fed a lot of “Impossible” meals. You often see ads or hear sales pitches that promise results that should satisfy our business sales hunger.

It’s not a lie if it only works for some businesses. It’s a half-truth. We have all been fed these meals when it comes to sales and marketing. Today I want to explore some of those “Impossible” half-truths that often hamper our success when marketing our businesses online. These include:

So how can you maximize your opportunities to stay top of mind and help your clients achieve their end-of-year or end-of-quarter goals? You can nudge them along by providing them with marketing that promotes ideas while reminding them of the time crunch.

In this episode, we will discuss how to avoid falling for those sales & marketing half-truths. It’s not “Impossible” to tase success for yourself!

Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations.

Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola.

Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper’s startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017.

She has also published a book –

We just crossed the autumnal equinox. In layman’s terms – Summer is over (at least on the calendar.) Summer from a personal level is one of the most active times of the year. We have longer days and better weather. Chances are you spend almost more time outside and take more days off than at any other time of the year (unless you live in the hot and humid zones).

When it comes to business, chances are your customers are doing the same. At least in my business, September is when business starts to rev back up again, and by October, it’s in full throttle as we lean into the holiday season and end of the year.

it’s a good idea to start planning how you can market to milestones that your customer may be facing in the next three months.

So how can you maximize your opportunities to stay top of mind and help your clients achieve their end-of-year or end-of-quarter goals? You can nudge them along by providing them with marketing that promotes ideas while reminding them of the time crunch.

In this episode, we will discuss how to use your new or existing content marketing to help nudge your clients and props[ects to doing more end-of-year business with you!

Lou Bortone is known as The Video Godfather. We’re not exactly sure why and, frankly, we’re a little afraid to ask. What we do know is that Lou Bortone has been a pioneer and thought leader in the video space since the launch of YouTube in 2005. He’s helped thousands of entrepreneurs and companies create and leverage online video to build their brands and dramatically grow their revenues.

Prior to his industry leading work in online video marketing, Lou spent over 20 years as a marketing executive in the television and entertainment industries, including stints as National Promotion Manager for E! Entertainment Television and Senior Vice President of Marketing for Fox Family Worldwide in Los Angeles.

Lou is a popular speaker, author, and ghostwriter of six business books. He’s also the author of“Video Marketing Rules: How to Win in a World Gone Video.” You can learn more about Lou at LouBortone.com.

Yesterday, I when to the Digital Summit in Raleigh, where I helped out with the AMA Triangle booth (American Marketing Association – Raleigh chapter)\.

It was a great day filled with meeting new people, and I found some time to catch a few partial sessions. One of the sessions talked about your brand and asked the question, “Has your Brand Voice evolved with your ever-changing business?”

Many business people are in search of a simple answer to complex problems. Although it can be simple sometimes, I have found that complex problems often have complex solutions. In other words, it can be a series or system of simple solutions bundled together to solve complex problems.

So how do you explain that so people get how your solution is simple for them and solves their complex problems? I suggest you do three things.

Do you remember the TV show “Name That Tune”? People could guess a song based on clues and only a few notes (often 1-3.)

In this episode, we will discuss how to evolve your brand voice to adapt to the ever-changing business environment, and name that tune in 1 note!