Business

Leadership is a Verb…

cpankey 4 Comments
John C. Maxwell, Author, Speaks to 4600 TN Con...

Image by Old Shoe Woman via Flickr

I love the magazine Success. One of my favorite features is a monthly motivational/educational CD they include in each issue. This very unique feature is something I look forward to listening to each month. Today I had the pleasure of listening to an interview with John Maxwell, one of my favorite motivational speakers. He provided me with today’s topic… Leadership is a Verb not a noun.

How often in your life have heard some one say I am the Leader of XXXX. Like it is a position of possession, they own it, you want it, but I am not giving it to you attitude.  John shared today that leadership is an action that people choose to follow it is not a noun or position to be looked at, and admired. Leaders often struggle with this I would imagine in todays corporate structure. See in the late 90’s Leadership in our country began to change from the traditional do as I say because I am the leader corporate structure to a structure where people decided internally which leader they wanted to follow based on actions and convictions of that individual.

Leaders over the last decade had to adapt and change, from ones that simply dictated direction to leaders which actually shared knowledge, know how and motivation to get it done from the front of the line. Think about it, how did we get out first Black President, Obama is a natural leader whose vision and actions inspired a mass of people to not only come along side his movement but also develop their own leadership style and direction and helped build his movement in to the largest nationwide campaign trail most of us had ever seen.

My wife is a former English teacher, yes she is very critical of my writing style as well, and I know that she would have just loved the thought of leadership being taught as a verb.  Here short tenure as a teacher was under the direction of a “leader” which was more about the Noun than the Verb if you know what I mean.

I recently left a career of 17 years in Newspapers for very similar reasons, here is an industry filled with Leadership that has little action. When I left I decide to start my own business and follow the only leader I knew I wanted to trust at the time, me. ( www.1to1valet.com ) For newspapers survival they will hopefully find Leadership with action in the near future.

I was thinking today at what drove me out of the sales field and into management in that industry, it was the people who I worked with. They were the reason I thought being a manager was going to  make me a great leader, but I wonder if at times I forgot why they made me feel that way in the first place. I was just a hot-shot sales person for the first five years of my career, but I started to realize that my knowledge base and willingness to help others in the paper was making me very popular. I started to believe that I could be a better leader than my boss and started to really step out of line to develop my own voice in leadership.

The Key that I think most leaders miss there even if they are a leader of action is knowledge base. The willingness to share knowledge and develop future leaders.

John Maxwell is right, Leadership is a verb, it is a symptom of action, but action without knowledge is not leadership, it is foolishness.

If you are a leader and you are wondering where all the followers are going, look around for the person which is displaying confidence in actions and knowledge in the work force and you will identify the leader of the group.

How do you develop more leaders:

1) Become a person of action and start to lead your company from the front lines.

2) Share your knowledge, and empower others to lead the way.

3) Encourage group dynamics in the organization and let leaders develop in the  group.

4) Help team discover leadership qualities and styles they already posses

5) Step back and become a follower of strong leaders in your own organization, when it is called for. Let others knowledge base that is superior to yours not stop you from growing and learning.

Related Articles

Trade Show and Event Marketing Do’s and Don’ts

cpankey 3 Comments
JATA World Tourism Congress & World Travel Fai...

Image via Wikipedia

Do you have your business scheduled for a trade show or an event this spring?

I have spoken with several business owners in the last few weeks and thought it would be a good topic for me to get out. I have a few strong beliefs on the mistakes that business owners make at trade shows or events and a couple of suggestions to help you make a better marketing strategy. For the sake of this conversation we are going to assume that trade shows and events are relatively the same.

So here is the where I need to make a point:  Why do people come to events or trade shows? To Buy?  Or to socialize and browse? I believe that 95% + of all visitors are there for the latter. So my opinions on this matter take that assumption as reality.

Don’ts:

  1. Just assume that your marketing materials will make them want to buy.
  2. Assume they came because they were interested and are a warm lead.
  3. Your free give away will be enough to sway them to give you a try.
  4. Assume that the e-mail they gave you was the best way to contact them. (ever heard of a junk e-mail folder)
  5. Fail to follow-up with leads

Do’s:

  1. Get a short Code and invite them to become a TXT Vip for additional savings.
  2. Hand them a discount card / coupon  for your website or their next visit. Make it a really attractive offer that will bring them back.
  3. Invite most interested to an after hours cocktail event to discuss additional opportunities to connect (best for business to business)
  4. Post company invitations around event center driving them to your booth. (might be a great way to use the TXT marketing system)
  5. Ask for best contact information, don’t be afraid to make sure you are not going to end up in spam, and let them know you will be contacting them.
  6. Smile and enthusiastic about meeting them.  People remember the booths or stores at an event that make it enjoyable for them and not just a sales presentation.

Remember that 95% are there to socialize, get free items, and to see what is new. You need to do a lot of show and tell but also need to encourage them to come again when they are ready to shop. 

Have a great event season.

Related Articles

International Networking Week

cpankey 4 Comments
Skyline of Reno, Nevada. Camera is looking nor...

Image via Wikipedia

This week has been powerful for me as a professional. I was invited by a friend and business colleague to come to a BNI event in Reno, International Networking Week Celebration.

Now I have often gone to networking events and could not wait to get out of the place, usually hiding near the food line or in a back table until it was ok to leave the event. However this event was a little different for me.  Same type of set up as before but I had given myself a little pep talk, regarding over coming fears and being a positive figure in the room.  It worked. I made over 100 contacts and was able to communicate with fellow business leaders and discuss how I could help their business and them mine.

I had the pleasure of listening to three great speakers: O.C. Gillam (stand up Comic), Molly Geil, PHD. (Arbonne), and Jordan Adler (self-made millionaire, author of ‘Beach Money” and professional networker) The topic’s these speakers spoke on centered on Goals and developing teams  that can help you achieve.

Goals and Teams – you know after one leaves competitive sports in their lives, I wonder how often we actually think of our teams when developing our goals? Do you know what I mean? When I was young I would set goals to achieve but they were always  in the scope of team achievement,  I wanted to lead the league in Rebounding so that our team could be a dominate defensive team.  etc… 

However in my professional life I struggle to think of Goals I have created that involve the help and talents of my team.  I have set goals, I have been blessed to even set goals for companies, however I am trying to think if I ever considered the team when developing the goal?

What is my point and why do you care? We are now into our second month of 2011. How are your goals going? When you set them did you have a team around you ready to help you make them? Did you consider if you needed a new team in order to help you reach that goal?  I just wanted to put that thought out there today, maybe as much for myself as for you, I may need to reevaluate my goals and the team of people who I now work with in order to find success in the near future.

Jordan Adler, spoke of future (Goal/Dream) journaling for his goals. This was a practice that I learned way back in high school and I know it works. The key is to write your goals in a present tense, to write honest goals that strike the core of who and what you want to be.  Take this challenge and see what happens for you in the next year.

Goal journals:

1) Find some quite time and relax.

2) Start writing a story about your life one year from today. ( Maybe you want to right it two or three years away, does not matter)

3) After finishing this story, save it and read it to your self every day for one month.

4) Find a team that will help you start to accomplish pieces of your dreams.

5) go to work.

I believe 98% of the world would never do this. The other 2% are living that life that everyone else aspires to.

Good luck and join me on this Challenge.

Related Articles

Enough with the phone books already.

cpankey 2 Comments

Ok this might be a the most negative thing I ever right. But enough with the phone books. If you are a business owner out their why do you continue to support a product nobody wants.

Time for us to wake up and realize that you can get more leads today by follow ing twitter or joining LinkedIn then you will the phone book.

I have now received my third phone book for my house and my county has a total of 50,000 people in it. Can you are wasting your money. Maybe I am wrong and the phone book is now free!  Next time the phone book calls listen if you want to all their online offerings, but do not buy another display ad.  90% of the public already knows who they want to call and are only looking for the number, you only need a listing.

Don’t let your ego get in the way and make you believe you must be as big as MR> Jones.

Sorry for the rant but I just can’t believe I have three books now filled with advertisement messages that will never pay for themselves.

Related Articles

Have you forgotten the basics in Marketing?

cpankey 7 Comments

I read a great article this morning written by Steve Howard, author of Powerful Marketing Minutes and Corporate Image Management,
11 key marketing trends. In a vast world of marketing opinions this article hit me as very intuitive, and well thought out. It tackled the question that many of us are asking ourselves about the new marketing world we live in today.

The tip that caught my attention was number 6) Marketing fundamentals

— Marketing Fundamentals are as important as ever. Too many marketers and organizations have gone astray in recent years jumping on the bandwagon of “hot” marketing trends like customer generated content, viral marketing, and mass email marketing.

The marketing model mixing 1) product, price, place, and promotion with 2) positioning strategies based on customer needs, wants, desires, likes and dislikes and 3) an understanding of customer perceptions of the product and corporate brands to create a compelling value proposition to customers is not broken.

It has merely been misused in recent years by a) inexperienced neophytes who think naming a product is equal to branding, and b) by senior managers more focused on quarterly profit statements than on building brands that open vast marketing opportunities unseen and untapped by competitors.

Those who focus on knowing and understanding what customers truly value will create sustainable businesses that deserve customer loyalty. Those who do not will continue to fall by the wayside.

Product, Price, Place, Promotion, four simple marketing basic that we often forget when the next trends come swooping in a create the panic to catch up.
Do you have the right Products, at the right price, where the target consumer wants to get them, and have you told them about it?
I can recall hundreds of business visits I have made where the store had a fantastic product that I had no clue they carried. How often do we as business owners go to trade shows and buy inventory in a great new product line but then come back and not promote the item? Instead hoping that our current customers will find it their next visit and just have to have it.
So let’s take a step back here from Steve’s marketing tips and get a solution for these key marketing practices in todays media environment.

  1. Product – Do you have the right product? In todays information super highway It is hard to understand how a business can not know what their target consumer wants? It seems that with a simple Google search you can find trends and analysis on almost anything. But maybe the most organic approach today is best, use twitter and Facebook to ask your consumer base what they want and need, imagine being at the next trade show, snapping a picture with you phone of a new design and posting it on Facebook seeking feedback. (of course I assume you have developed a Facebook fan page and base of targeted consumers) Todays Social network are a great sounding board for likes and dislikes. A business must invest in the relationships prior to these tactics but can you se the potential?
  2. Price – Again with the world of information at your finger tips and Social networks filled with people sharing information you can determine both market value and competitor pricing with the click of a mouse. No you just need to decide on a pricing strategy and implement.
  3. Place – Location, Location, Location – the most basic marketing principle most often ignored. Location or place has become complex, with the growing inventory of shopping outlets online and the ability for companies to literally buy locations on the internet, place has changed. If you are a bricks and mortar store front location is still crucial to your goals and future. But on the web, you can be in any location you wish and can target consumers at the very place they wish to meet you. The challenge is that the locations are often changing, so you need staff or expert help in how to place your business in the multiple locations that your target consumers are at this month.
  4. Promotion – Wow has this category changed in the last 10 years. Don’t let the new technology scare you in promotion, think of the added connections you now have to promote your products at a value that still will give you ROI. I understand that in the past you could not afford to place a new product in your newspaper or TV ads because you would never receive the ROI needed for that single product to make it worth the expense. However with the internet and social media, you can now have independent marketing campaigns for every one of your products, targeted, geographically, social economically, behavioral etc…. and the cost can range from Zero to a couple hundred dollars per qualified lead.
Related Articles