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, sales people, 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.

Mark dropped additional nuggets of sales and marketing goodness in the EXTENDED Interview. Be sure to click here to access all of our great extended interviews, transcripts and more within our Insider's Club.

You can try it for the entire month for only $1.00!

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On a past podcast, I discussed the crazy idea we had of trying to adopt a dog and the lessons learned through the process. Well, a week ago we left downtown Chicago with a new 11-month-old puppy named Layla in the back of my SUV.

We have adopted 5 rescue dogs over the last few years ranging from 3 to 11 years old. They were fairly well trained, housebroken, and generally good dogs. Adopting a puppy is a whole different ballgame.

I get to walk her 3-4 times a day, so I started listening to audiobooks again and pondering business. I have gained quite a few new clients over the last couple of months and that has some parallels with adopting and training a new and energetic puppy.

In both cases, you are trying to learn, working together to develop a beneficial relationship, mutual understanding, and hopefully all for the greater good. It's work and invigorating at the same time, but they do have some commonalities:

* You Have to Build Trust

* You Have to Learn From Each Other

* It Helps To Have Treats

* Watch Like A Hawk

* Each Day Is a New Adventure

In this episode, we will learn while we teach. Puppies can be cute yet a lot of work. Beginning and maintaining new client relationships can be kind of the same!!

Jeannette Seibly is The Leadership Results Coach and an award-winning executive coach and keynote speaker. During the past 28 years, she’s guided the creation of 3 millionaires and countless 6-figure business professionals.

As an author, she’s published six books. The most recent ones are: “The Secret to Selling Yourself Anytime, Anywhere: Start Bragging!” (CareerBragging.com) and “It’s Time to Brag! Business Edition” (BizSavvyBrag.com) Every week she posts blogs on strategic business and leadership management concerns. (You can read them by visiting her website: http://seibco.com/articles/)

Jeannette has a B.A. in Personnel Administration and M.A. in Communications from Michigan State University.

Learn More About Jeanette's Book - Click Here

Do you remember using a Rolodex? It was a device that was round or a slotted platform that contained index cards with sorted contact information in alphabetical tabs. We used to keep all our important business contacts on those for quick access.

Although you may not have one of those on your desk anymore like the old one? You still have one on your desk in the form of a phone or desktop computer.

You still want to keep track of four main groups: clients, prospects, vendors, and referrals. They contain the business relationships and human to human capital that is unique to you. Yet many people have no organized way to maintain and utilize those relationships in a proactive way that can help you promote and grow your business organically (without advertising.

There are five basic steps to building and maintaining a system that will keep those relationships fresh and at your fingertips:

* Clean Up Your Contacts - Slim down and organize your CRM

* Get Out and Network - Find new groups and meet new people

* Have Some One-On-Ones - Look for people that would be a good fit for your business or a connections business

* Take Good Notes and Get Them In Your CRM - Use LinkedIn Or Google To Research

* Stay In Touch and Refer when Possible and it makes sense

In this episode, we will discuss how and why you need to build a Golden Rolodex and how it can be an integral part of growing your business!

Brent Basham is an occasional podcaster, dad of three, co-founder of Poddit.

In 2014 Brent had an epiphany. As a father and tech enthusiast, he realized we were standing at a very unique point in history. We were the last digital immigrants charged with raising the first digital natives. But with everything changing so fast, there was no road map to follow. So he did what anyone would do in his position... he grabbed a co-host and started a podcast. Digital Dads lasted nearly three years and left a lasting impact on both him and his listeners.

After the show ended, Brent realized the challenge of guest discovery, connection, and coordination had yet to be solved. Or at least not in the way he envisioned. So with a background in technology, he set out to create a better solution. As co-founder Brent is now working to help make Poddit the best way to connect for podcast interviews.

Podcasters

Finding the right guests for your show is tough. It takes a lot of time and effort and sucks the fun right out of it. But the quality of your show depends on getting amazing interviews. Poddit makes it easy to find the perfect guest for your next interview. Join now to connect with amazing new people and raise your show to the next level.

Expert Guests

You have something unique to share, but where to share it? Podcast interviews are a powerful way to cut through the noise and get noticed. Poddit helps you leverage podcasts to reach excited new fans waiting to hear from you. Join now and connect with the perfect shows to help amplify your voice in a crowded market.

Learn More About Brent & Poddit - Click Here

Every marketing communications should have a common goal: to create a human-to-human conversation. It could happen online, on the phone, or in person, but that should be the purpose. Sometimes we make that process to complex upfront. Have your methods and systems changed with the changes in the ways we are doing business today?

You want to make it simple to start a conversation. The less information you ask for when starting a conversation, the more likely people are to complete it and actually get the ball rolling. When you make people fill out too much information, people will tend to give up before the process is complete.

You can always break your process into phases to help promote your desired response:

* Tailor Expectations To The Interest

* Ask For Less Information To Start

* Build Your Process In Phases

* Ask For Feedback

* Take Action

In this episode, we will discuss how a simple dog adoption turned into a fiasco that could have been handled better in a way that would have saved time, relationships, and maybe sanity!

Ely Delaney is an Automated Systems Strategist and the co-founder of Purple Knight Marketing, an education company designed to help entrepreneurs go from surviving to thriving in any economy.

He’s an Amazon bestseller with his two books “Marketing Tidbits” and “Networking Tidbits”

With a passion for connecting people, his best selling training course “Networking Like A Rockstar” has over 1350 students registered globally. Ely helps speakers, authors, and coaches automate their follow up to grow their business without having to have an MBA from MIT.

He’s the guy to help you build a 24/7 automated system and turn you into a Follow-Up Rockstar!

Connect with Ely - Click Here

In music, there are two kinds of feedback - Good and Bad. Bad feedback is that high pitched squeal you hear when a microphone gets too close to a speaker. Good feedback is the kind where you control (think of the opening guitar note in the song "I Feel Fine" by the Beatles).

A feedback loop is the part of a system in which some portion (or all) of the system's output is used as input for future operations. In marketing, we need to create feedback loops to help us find the right messages that resonate with our perfect audiences.

There are four parts to a marketing feedback loop:

* Action - Write or Create Something

* Evidence - Engagement

* Relevance - Measure Response

* Consequence - Change or Update Something

In this episode, we will discuss how you can use feedback loops to find the right messages that will resonate with your perfect audience. You can create a great feedback loop by asking the right questions, gathering the responses, dig deeper, and take action!

One business coach has forged his approach to helping entrepreneurs and business executives by using a monumental personal failure and eventual redemption to help get others where they need to go to find their personal success and fulfillment.

At just 18 years old, Miha Matlievski, a Slovenian high school dropout, dreamed of becoming a successful entrepreneur. And he pursued it with a passion, putting in 12 years of hard work that resulted in four successful businesses and a personal net worth of $15M. 

But in December 2009, an unexpected call from his bank, which had decided to foreclose on his real estate investments, brought his world crashing down around him. That one negative event instigated an avalanche of ruin for him and his businesses, resulting in his four, once-successful companies going bankrupt.

Embracing that previous failure, Miha began to climb out of his rut and take charge of his own life once again. In 2014, he created a new startup, generating eight figures in less than a year. Many publications in Slovenia approached him and his story went viral.

Since Miha’s “resurrection,” he has been known as The Fail Coach. In that capacity, he helps entrepreneurs around the world embrace and have a healthy relationship with failure with the goal of reaching a higher level of success.

clients, making it easier for them to trust you.

Check Out Miha's Offering - CLICK HERE

Writing a book is a challenge. It was five months ago to the day that I started the process, and it IS a process. To do it right, it takes a team of designers, editors, proofreaders, and friends.

It's easy to procrastinate and watch your time get consumed by perfectionism. Each of those ebbs and flows throughout any project.

What makes it all work together is having a plan of attack and a system in place to move step-by-step throughout the journey. We all face setbacks and fallbacks, and disruptions that can derail us while we aim to complete any task:

* Good Is the enemy of great

* Perfection is the enemy of done

* Done is the enemy of procrastination

In this episode, I will outline the 12 steps I used to complete the book and we will look at some of the excuses and challenges. When it comes to achieving your goals, procrastination and perfectionism need to be overcome to get your jobs, projects, and tasks DONE!