The Marketing 24-7 Podcast

There is no denying that the right mindset can do wonders. It is especially true when it comes to marketing and promoting your products to the market. It's important to think of marketing as an asset, rather than marketing as an expense.

Podcast Transcript

There is no denying that the right mindset can do wonders. It is especially true when it comes to marketing and promoting your products to the market. It's important to think of marketing as an asset, rather than marketing as an expense.

If you want to make the most of your marketing opportunities, you need to make sure that every piece of marketing that you produce has the potential to be turned into an asset.

So how can you create assets out of your marketing? 

Let's begin with an example of "Ben Settle" –an email marketing expert who successfully conglomerated the content of emails into books. Ben's books allowed people to learn how they can build a business by constantly emailing their database. 

Typically, Ben followed a simple technique of emailing his list every day to his clients. It helped him establish a relationship with these lists. Also, he was able to use these attempts to sell the offerings to various bits and pieces. 

But it doesn't end here, as he collected, curated, and collated all the emails over time. He placed them into books to show people a perfect example of building a business by using a database. Although he incorporated it as a marketing tactic, he curated and cobbled them together into other assets and sold them to improve profitability. 

Still not convinced? 

Let's look at another example of asset creation marketing. There's a charity called the "Center for Asylum Seekers and Refugees. One of the asylum activities is called "Second Harvest," where every Monday supermarket provides leftover food to the charity and the charity distributes it to their particular clients. 

Over time, it turns out, most Mondays and Tuesdays, when they distribute the food, there's always a little bit leftover. Instead of destroying or discarding it on Wednesdays, they started an activity called Eat, Share, And Connect.  The activity attracted volunteers (generally refugee volunteers) to join in and participate in cooking food by using the leftover food of their particular flavors and cuisine.

Soon it took the shape of a proper meet up and volunteer activity where all clients drop in and have an "Eat Share and Connect" Wednesday lunch.

These lunches have now become a perfect way to get sponsorships from people and obtain grants from people who pursue charitable work. This way, each share, connect Wednesday lunch time has become a brilliant showcase for everyone, including potential benefactors and consumers. 

The Australian football league started an exercise 20 years ago with a game called the "dream time" game. It was an initiative where Richmond played Essendon, and it was aimed at celebrating, and commemorating the profile of indigenous footballers. 

Now the league has grown this game into an annual event and hasbecame a popular attraction in Darwin. It attracts major sponsorships, large TV viewership, and heaps of promotion. Although they always play a football game, "Richmond versus Essendon," it is promoted as a special event called the dream time. 

In short, this annual event is an annual asset that is worth a lot of money to the Australian football league. 

Thinking about developing assets for your business is crucial for the growth of your business. Remember that you don't need to do anything revolutionary for creating assets. However, it would help if you focused on changing your thought pattern and mindset when creating a marketing piece.

Don't think of it as a tactic or a promotion. Consider it a campaign, which can evolve into a marketing asset. It will be an asset that can not only generate leads for your business but revenue as well.

Therefore, instead of taking marketing as an expense, think about how you can utilise this money to create a resource that can ultimately become an asset.

All in all, assets are something that you can put a value to, can sell, or can call upon. And that's how the marketing system works and supports businesses. Thus, if you know how to create these assets, your business will be substantially better off whilst strengthening its identity. 

All humans either move away from pain or towards pleasure - this podcast outlines how to get into the heads and conversations of your customer and prospects and find out which way they are heading.

iMaven is a startup in the recruitment space. I conducted this interview with the CEO and Founder Nitha Coetzer to discuss startup challenges, bringing vision to reality, plus more.

Check out their website imaven.com.au

Look at business like a play or a music concert. You create the show, hire the actors and the producer and the director, build the set, and perform three or four times in your hometown city. You’ve spent all this time and energy putting on an awesome performance. What happens next? You take the show on the road.

Podacst Transcript

Look at business like a play or a music concert. You create the show, hire the actors and the producer and the director, build the set, and perform three or four times in your hometown city. You’ve spent all this time and energy putting on an awesome performance. What happens next? You take the show on the road.

Taking the show to different locations, you make more money because you keep tapping into new audiences.

Online we call that “changing the channel.”

The problem is that a lot of business owners get bored selling the
same thing over and over. We want to create something new and sell that instead. It’s our entrepreneurial desire for creativity and variety. And we lose out on all this extra revenue because instead of spending energy on more selling, we turn our attention to new inventions.

How can you change the channel and take your show on the road? If you’re heavily on Facebook and killing it, don’t start a new product. Move onto Instagram or Twitter or Pinterest or YouTube, or try direct mail or podcasts.

Go to each new channel, bring your offer there, and continue to make money.

There is a dispute raging in sport and inadvertantly I started it. As I tried to hose down the saga on my weekly sport radio show I realised that I was using business lessons to put my case. Many of the lessons are worthy to many of our business lives - so I thought I would share the audio.

BTW - you can hear my show every Sunday here sportfm.com.au/sunday-sports-cafe

If you believe in the product or service you are selling, you have a
moral obligation to do everything in your power to get it into the hands of your customers.

Listen carefully to this podcast you might even hear from Romeo

Growing a business is simple because there are only three ways to do it:

Get more customers,

get them to spend more,

or get them to buy more often.

That’s it!

Podcast Transcript

Growing a business is simple because there are only three ways to do it:

Get more customers,

get them to spend more,

or get them to buy more often.

That’s it!

When you’re working toward your first million dollars in revenue, the goal is to get customers. Get as many as possible. This has a snowball effect because at a certain point, referrals and word of mouth will start to kick in.

Once you hit $1 million, it’s time to move to the next phase. I call Phase Two ascension. To get your customers to spend more, you have to get them to buy the more expensive products. It might mean you have to make more expensive products. It might mean you have to create more trust and culture and expertise so that you are the person they think of first when they have a problem they can’t solve.

Once you have customers ascending up into more expensive products, move to Phase Three. Now it’s about consumption.

Figure out how to get them to use your product so much that they need to buy more of it more often. In our software, consumption means we’re trying to get them to use it more so they stay longer on the subscription plan. Consumption for a physical product is a bit different. If you sell hand lotion, it could mean sending them print materials showing them how to apply it several times a day so they run out of it more quickly. It’s easy to get overwhelmed in business when you’re trying to figure out what’s not working and how to make more money, but it’s really not hard.

Either get more customers, help them spend more, or figure out how to convince them to buy more often.

Provoking Questions vs Discovery Questions: How to Get Your Customer to Think and Self-Reflect
The answer to this is in this podcast let’s get started.

Podcast Transcript

There are two types of questions, discovery questions and provoking questions.

Discovery Questions
Discovery questions focus on “WHAT.” Discovery questions are designed to identify existing needs, problems, customer pain points, customer’s goals etc.
Discovery questions are designed to get to the known, to ferret out what the customer knows about their environment.
Here are some examples:

What are you challenged with?
What are you trying to accomplish?
What happens when you miss XYZ?
How will you be measuring success?
What have been the results to date?
Are you happy with your current environment?
What tools are you using?

Discovery questions target the known. Our goal is to “discover” what is happening with the client in an effort to understand their world and offer a solution to their problem.
Discovery questions are great questions that provide the context we need to begin formulating a solution. Normally, however, not the best solution.
Why?
Because discovery questions don’t go far enough.

Provoking Questions
Provoking questions take questioning to the next level. Provoking questions are designed to challenge the customer to get them thinking in ways they hadn’t thought. Provoking questions are questions designed to get into the thinking processes and the logic behind their choices. Provoking questions target what is
and was behind the decisions of your customers and prospects.

It provides insight into what the customer or prospect knows, what they don’t know and what they will prioritize to make their decisions. Provoking questions help you and your customer or prospect evaluate what they are doing and why.

Here are some examples:

Where you aware that . . . ?
Did you know . . . ?
Have you considered . . . ?
Can I ask why you . . . ?
Have you seen . . . ?
Would you . . . ?
What was the motive behind . . . ?

Provoking questions get the customer or prospect to think.

Effective questioning enables the customer to put unambiguous definition and great clarity around the issues and opportunities they are trying to address.
To be able to respond to great questions from the sales person, the customer has to put structure, definition, and priorities around what they are trying to achieve.
. . . Great questions can help the customer think about how they will make the decision.
Ask provoking questions AND discovery questions. Go deep, get to what and why. Challenge your customer or prospects to self-evaluate. The more YOU get them thinking about their choices and why they are doing what they are doing, the more they’re going to come to you for direction and guidance.

Be your customers shrink and get them thinking about them!

If you search the topic morning routine- google will return 493 million results. Lots of people have one, are interested in one and have written about their morning routine. Here is mine.

Podcast Transcript

My is 2 pronged – one is Vital Greens and two is Morning Pages – I got the concept of adding morning pages into my morning routine after reading The Artists Way  by Julia Cameron

Prior to practicing morning pages – I used to sketch a bit, play guitar quite badly, and I had written three or four books whilst one was a serious hit (Exercise Danger) the others were ok

The bedrock tools

Morning Pages are the primary tool of a creative recovery. From my perspective they are the bedrock of a creative life. Three pages stream-of-consciousness writing done before the day “begins,”

Morning Pages serve to prioritize, clarify, and ground the day’s activities.

They let me clear my mind..

It is a paradox of my experience that Morning Pages both take time and give time.

It is as though by setting our inner movie onto the page, we are freed up to act in our lives. Suddenly, a day is filled with small choice points, tiny windows of time available for our conscious use.

As we write Morning Pages, we tend to get things “right.” Our days become our own. Other people’s agendas and priorities no longer run our lives. We care for others, but we now care for ourselves as well.

In fact I have become a much better person – At least I now like myself so much so that I honestly think that my morning pages are really what I like to call Thinkitation – now this is a term I have stolen from Tom Bilyeu the co founder of quest nutrition and Instagram Philosopher..

Reflection of the results of my morning routine

I am not sure that I have really become an artist..

I sketch a lot more – I have an easel set up – ipad pro and apple pencil

I play bass guitar now and not so much a 6 string – I even gigged in a band in Weekend Warriors

I learnt to radio broadcast and have been doing a weekly show at SportFM 91.3 called Sunday Sports Café for the last 2,5 years. I also volunteer at another station RTRFM where I do a Rockin the Roots show monthly

I write a ton more – but the content is now really about my passion being all things sales and marketing and helping people who have ventured into their own business succeed and have some control.

In line with this I have been podcasting with at time of this recording some 80 episodes Marketing 24- 7 twice per week.

I have created my own App and in it now have three IAP training courses and on my Website I have created a further four larger training type products.

Not to mention the growth of the sales and marketing strategy division of my business and the marketing and business coaching/mentoring I offer to select clients.

And on top of all of this – my mosts atisfying achievement and contribution is being the Chairperson of a not for profit called CARAD

All up I believe we can each achieve more and feel better about ourselves with a decent morning routine. – Why not try it?

petergianoli.com/thinkitation

If you believe the research, only 55% of salespeople make quota.
That means 45% of sales people don't make their quota, and the reason is we're flying blind.

Podcast Transcript

If you believe the research, only 55% of salespeople make quota.
That means 45% of sales people don't make their quota, and the reason is we're flying blind.

For years sales organizations have had to use quantitative metrics to determine if a sales person was effective. We've measured the number of calls, the number of touches, meetings set, closing percentages, average deal size, emails sent, conversion rates, quota attainment and more, to ascertain a salesperson effectiveness.

Metrics represent the science of sales.
They are the quantitative element of selling. Make more calls, sell more stuff. Improve your close rates, close more deals. Set more meetings, get closer to quota. The formula has almost always been quantitative, we've relied on the science, but it hasn't been enough, clearly.
Over the years, we continue to put quantitative metrics under the
microscope, we've looked to get more and more data to help us sell more and get more out of our sales team. The problem is, quantitative data only goes so far. Like the old adage says, sales is a science and an art, and until now it's been almost impossible to address the art piece.
The art in sales happens in the conversations. It's how we engage with prospects and buyers. The art comes in how we respond to objections. The art is the tone we use. The art is our unscripted responses to unexpected insights and customer responses. The art is the part of sales we’ve had trouble seeing-- until now.
Back in the day, there was something called the ride-along.
The ride-along was when a sales manager would drive with his or her salesperson for the day. The sales manager would spend the day on the road going from appointment to appointment with the rep, listening and watching how their sales person sold and how they conducted their meetings. It was a killer way for sales managers to evaluate and observe how their sales people sold.
The ride-along was the one place that provided sales rganisations and sale managers visibility into how their sales people sold.
Not the result of their efforts, like quota or number of calls, etc. but what they did on the calls, how they carried themselves, how the positioned the products and more.
Not all sales managers did ridealongs, but those who did garnered a wealth of knowledge.

Unfortunately, outside sales reps are a dying breed.
Who still goes on customers site sales calls anymore?
Therefore, ridealongs are a dying methodology. (Yeah, yeah, I know some of you still do, but it's becoming an increasingly smaller number every year).
What's a sales manager or sales leader to do?
How do we get visibility into what our salespeople are doing or saying if the ride-along is no longer an option?
How do we know how they give a demo?
How do we know how they overcome objections?
How do we know how they position the value proposition?
How do we know how they do a discovery call?
How do we know how they position us against the competition?
How do we know how they negotiate on price?
How do we know how they do anything they do, now that drive-a-longs are a thing of the past?

How?

Call recording that's how. I don't mean call recording like we get when we call customer service line, I mean coaching based call recording.
We've seen an explosion of new sales tools, methodologies, structures, strategies and more over the past 20 years.
However, I'm going on record as saying, coaching and call recording will have the biggest impact on sales organizations revenue for the next 10 years.
Call recording and coaching will have the same effect on B2B sales that video analysis and GPS wearing has had on football. There isn’t a team in the AFL that could compete without video. Football's entire coaching and strategic methodology have been built around video. Everything, I mean everything evolves around what they see on video, and B2B sales call recording and coaching has the ability to have the same impact on sales.