The ROAD - A secret to small business success

This is a nice, short, motivational video you can watch to give your week a good start!

Seth Godin on Marketing to Stand Out

Seth Godin talks about marketing at a "Technology, Entertainment, Design" (TED) conference. This is a relatively long video (around 20 minutes), but worth watching.

Godin stresses the need to be boldly different to attract attention. According to Godin, playing it safe is risky. This is a message most contractors can benefit from. If you doubt it, just flip through a yellow pages.

Godin also talks about attracting the early adopters because they're passionate and talk to other people, lots of other people. As you watch the video, think not only how you can make your company stand out from your competitors, but what products and services you can offer that appeal to the early adopters in your community.

Google Executive Offers Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips.

This 10 minute interview was shot at a conference in 2007, so it's somewhat dated, but the advice is still relevant and clearly explained. A lot of search engine optimization (SEO) is really simple. Provide good content for users in a manner that the search engines can read.

Note the emphasis on local search through Google. At the Service Roundtable we've been pushing contractors to stress local search and have offered several tools to help.

How to Guarantee You'll Buy a Winning Lottery Ticket

Doug Vickery from AirPlus Inc. in Corona, California shared this story with me and I thought I'd pass it along. Here it is in Doug's words...

This weekend I was in San Diego with my wife and she wanted to visit "The Worlds Largest" Bead Store - they offer wholesale discounts to the public. Huge place, well lit and organized, and I was wondering how many beads you'd have to sell monthly to cover the lease on 25,000 s.f.

While she was shopping this older guy approaches me and has in his hands a dozen 'quick pick' lottery tickets - all fanned out like a deck of cards. I'm immediately wary of some scam - but his explanation surprised me.

"This week the lottery is drawing for $43 Million and we'd like one of our customers to win it, so please pick one ticket, preferably the winning one."

Then, he adds, "If you win, all we ask is that you have a party here with the employees, they'd love to celebrate your good fortune."

Turns out he owns the place and uses this promotion (and a bunch of others) whenever the mood strikes to liven the place up.

I selected a ticket (wife has custody now) and we talked about it for 30 minutes on the drive home. It left an indelible impression - and I would guess it did the same for every customer that got one. All for $1.00. That fits my current budget and seems easy and original. The thing that set it apart was that he delivered it face to face (something my sales guy could easily do) and now I felt some desire to stay connected.

The lottery doesn't hold much appeal to me. I can still remember a business professor using the lottery as a way of explaining decision trees and expected value. We calculated the odds of winning the lottery and multiplied this times the cost of the $1 ticket. In the end, the lottery ticket was worth around 50 cents. Whenever I see people buying lottery tickets in the store, I'm always tempted to give them a 50% better return by taking their dollars and giving them 75 cents for each. However, giving lottery tickets to customers to build relationships, strengthen memorability, and strengthen the potential for future business seems like a winning strategy.

Finally, there's a way to buy a lottery ticket and guarantee you will win. Thanks Doug for sharing!

Incredible Promotional Video Goes Viral

To promote reading, the New Zealand Book Council commissioned a stop motion video where Maurice Gee's book, Going West, literally comes out of the page.  This was a stop motion video that was all hand cut.  It consists of 3,000 frames and took eight months.  The camera work was done by a pair of single lens reflex cameras.

Imagine someone with a 10-A surgical knife making each cut by hand, positioning the paper, setting the lighting, and snapping the shot. I wonder how much it cost.

The video was designed to be shown in theaters and packaged on DVDs. Thus, it was designed for visual venues to encourage reading. As such, it's been highly effective.

A bonus for the New Zealand Book Council has been the viral nature of the video. It's been seen around the world and probably has near universal penetration in New Zealand.

Take a look. It's incredible...

Creating Positive Imprints on the Self-Image

For most of us, just competing in the Olympics would be a lifetime highlight. Winning an Olympic medal would be the thrill of a lifetime. After Lanny Bassham won an Olympic Silver Medal in rifle shooting he says he spent the next four years apologizing for being number two.

“A silver medal in the Olympics is the best you can do in the world and still lose,” says Lanny. “You are the world’s best loser.”

Lanny didn’t like losing. He decided he wanted to do something about it.

He says, “I came home from the Olympics motivated to find out, how do you manage the mind under pressure?”

“My problem was not holding the rifle,” he adds. “My problem was thinking. My problem was the mental game.”

After trying a sports psychologist, Lanny decided to talk with the people who were the best in the world. He talked Olympic Gold Medalists. He talked with a lot of them and based on the things he learned, he created a system he calls “Mental Management®.”

Lanny applied his system to himself. He returned to the Olympics and took home the gold, followed by a several world championships. Today, his company trains athletes, performers, and business professionals on the mental game.

One element of the mental game is the imprinting we do on the self-image. Our self-image constrains our performance and it is influenced by imprinting.

There are two types of imprinting. First is the imprinting of actual performance. Once we accomplish something, we are confident we can do it again.

The second type of imprinting is imagined. It’s our self-talk. Do you see yourself achieving a goal or failing to achieve it? Either image is imprinted on your self-image.

Your self-image cannot distinguish between an actual imprint and an imagined one. As individuals, we need to focus on the outcomes we desire, not our mistakes. As parents and managers, we similarly need to direct people to focus on positive solutions and outcomes.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that focuses on the negative more than the positive. Even if you are an upbeat person, you are likely to fall into the trap of focusing on the negative.

“Ask people how they did after a performance and they’re likely to talk about what they did wrong,” says Lanny. “We live in a culture where it’s become socially acceptable to talk about what we did wrong first, and to talk about what we did wrong more than what we did right.”

Don’t focus on the mistakes your people make. Focus on the things each can do to perform better. That is creating a positive imprint. That is building the self-image.

“We build self image by what we cause them to picture,” notes Lanny.

If you want to learn more about Lanny Bassham or order his books, CDs, DVDs, or other products, visit his website at Mental Management®.

Faith and Fear For 2010

“Faith and fear are different aspects of the same thing,” said Gina McWilliams.

Wow. I’d never thought of it that way. Gina had. Gina lost her right leg below the knee in an automobile accident at age 25. Her left foot was severed and reattached. Since the accident, she had 37 different surgical procedures.

As a single woman and an athlete, Gina knew fear. She says that fear can be an overwhelming companion. If she let fear take over, she would never leave her bed. She faced fear of falling when she got into her wheelchair, fear of falling when she got into her van, fear of not being able to find a handicapped spot, and on and on. Fear can be a constant companion.

Fear is belief in a negative future. Fear is a belief in the unseen. It is belief in things that may or may not be realized.

Gina rejected fear. She chose faith...

Read more at Contracting Business Hotmail.

Contractors Expect Growth in 2010

The Service Roundtable Contractor Expectation Index is 79 for 2010, indicating a broad expectation of business expansion among the home service trades (an index above 50 reflects positive expectations). The index includes the outlook of air conditioning, electrical, and plumbing contractors in the residential service market.


Expectations are strongest among plumbing contractors at 84. Electrical contractors follow closely at 83. Air conditioning contractor expectations are 78. When contractors who were expecting a better year in 2010 were asked why they see improvement, the most common answer was an increase in marketing on the part of the contractor, particularly to existing customers.

Read the press release at the Service Roundtable.

Improving Your Loyalty Program

"Deeper engagement and personalized contact drive loyalty, not mass blast communications and gimmicks," writes Marketing Charts about a new report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council. 

The classic loyalty marketing program is an airline's frequent flyer program. For service contractors a service or maintenance agreement program is a loyalty program, even though many do not think of them as such.

Marketers think loyalty programs make sense and make money for their companies, but that they're not doing a good job executing.  According to Marketing Charts:

According to the survey, most marketers (61%) believe that loyalty program participants are the best and most profitable customers with 65% of respondents viewing customer loyalty program investments as an essential, or quite valuable part of the marketing mix.

However, only 13% of respondents believe they have been highly effective in leveraging loyalty and brand preference among club members, and nearly 20% don’t even have a strategy for this. Another 25% admit they have not mobilized brand loyalists to become active advocacy agents.

Yikes.  Here are the problems (click to enlarge)...

A few key stats from the report are:

• Loyalty programs do generate buzz with 50% of customers in loyalty marketing programs talking about the brand some of the time and 20% outright cheerleading.
  
• One out of two (54%) customers will drop out of the loyalty program following a bad service experience.  It's surprising it's not higher and indicates a degree of forgiveness among loyalty participants.  Still, the company must deliver or lose, regardless of a loyalty program.
  
• Even though customers complain about spam, nearly two out of three (64%) want electronic communication.  The good news is you can reduce costs with customers who want electronic communication.  The bad news is you can't use electronic communication across the board.  A mix is required and it's necessary to ask customers what's preferred (and it may be both).

Service agreement programs are strong loyalty marketing programs. They can be enhanced by the inclusion or a "rewards" element, such as the Service Roundtable's "Comfort Cash" program.

Click here to read the full article from Marketing Charts. Click here to learn more about the Service Roundtable.

Tips to Improve Your Direct Mail Results

My January Column in Contractor Magazine...

With a gazillion cable channels and the ability to record and fast forward through the ads, satellite radio and personal music players, the increasing replacement of the Yellow Pages by the Internet, and the decline of newspapers, many traditional marketing methods are falling by the wayside. One, however, remains. It's direct mail. Plumbers often complain about direct mail. It's no wonder — most plumber direct mail stinks. Here are 10 tips to improve your direct mail results.

Read The Rest In Contractor Magazine