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This week’s business update is focused on Rule #10 of the rules of attraction.  We will be discussing all 14 rules of attraction and working on building an action plan for each participant at our upcoming Attraction Workshops.  Go to:http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp to read more and to register.  As an added bonus, all paid attendees will receive their choice of our Attract More Business programs on Branding, Target Marketing, or Generating Ad Response for FREE!Siemens, the global communications company, announced in 2004 that it would cooperate withtheir BIGGEST rivals, Motorola and Ericsson, with the goal of developing a standard for so-called “push-to-talk” technology. Now why would these competitors cooperate on such a mission critical technology? Aren’t they afraid that one competitor might hold back a key ingredient? Or that one competitor might use information gained to try to damage or eliminate the other competitor once and for all?Not at all! They have far bigger fish to fry. You see, push-to-talk allows handsets to be used like walkie-talkies – a feature mobile phone operators believe will significantly increase their revenues by encouraging users to talk more. Apparently, the three companies will conduct tests to make their technologies totally compatible with each other, enabling customers of different operators to talk to one another – something that is essential if push-to-talk is to penetrate the mass market. Do you think this will have a negative or positive effect on revenues and client satisfaction of each player? Do you think that this will increase the “attraction” of each of these players? You bet! In fact it could literally revolutionize the telecommunications industry makingEricsson, Siemens and Motorola the only games in town.Many would say that our entire free-economy system is built on the foundation of competition. Competition drives the supply and demand curve, it is the catalyst in pricing models, and it fuels the need for innovation. Yet some have suggested that cooperation and collaboration with our competitors can be valuable. Co-opetition, the book by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuffof Yale Business Management School makes a powerful case that under specific circumstances there is greater value in cooperating with certain customers, suppliers and even competitors rather than competing.  The central concept is that we can create complimentary product or service relationships that allow products and services to become more important when purchased TOGETHER rather than separately. This relationship results in a reduction of marketing costs and ultimately in an increase in marketshare, client loyalty and even brand value. Using “game theory” the authors demonstrate how complimentary related products can lead to expansion of the market and the formation of new business relationships.In order to increase our attraction we must seek out those partners that compliment our business. A compliment is a product or service that makes any other product or service more attractive. The classic example of compliments is computer hardware and software. Faster hardware prompts people to upgrade. Powerful software motivates people to buy faster hardware. Just look at Windows and Pentium chips.Recently I needed to make color copies of a report so where did I go? Kinko’s. We all know Kinko’s as a reliable, convenient and cost effective place to get your reports printed, copied and bound.  But when I drove to the store I was shocked by what I saw. The name on the front of the store no longer said, “Kinko’s.” It said “FedEx/Kinko’s.”  Prior to acquiring Kinko’s, FedEx spent millions on testing the concept of combining locations. The test was so successful that FedEx eventually bought Kinko’s, lock, stock and barrel. It makes sense. If you are going to a store to design, develop, print and copy business or personal communication material, doesn’t it make sense that you will want to SHIP it somewhere? For FedEx, collaborating with Kinko’s turned-out to be a tremendous windfall.Discovering “Complimentors” is about finding a way to make the pie BIGGER rather than fighting over how to slice up a tiny Scooter Pie. So how do we identify competitors and complimentors? A player is a complimentor if customers value your product MORE when they have the other player’s product than when they have your product alone.Let’s revisit our example of FedEx and Kinko’s. Customers value Kinko’s MORE now that FedEx is located directly inside the Kinko’s location. What used to take visiting two locations (a Kinko’s and a FedEx store) now takes ONE visit. This makes things smoother for the customer and increases value for both partners. A player is a pure competitor if customers value your product LESS when they have the other player’s product than when they have your product alone. An example of this would be Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. Either you have one or the other. You would be hard-pressed to find someone going to a convenience store and ordering a Coke and a Pepsi at the same time. One is valued in EXCLUSION to the other.

Here are some typical partners engaged in successful complementary marketing relationships: · Disney and McDonalds 
 · Universal and Burger King 
 · Sears and Allstate 
 · Visa and American Airlines 
 · Oscar Meyer Hot Dogs and Guldens MustardThese represent collaborative relationships at the “end” of the supply chain. That is to say the collaboration occurs in the arena where marketers cooperate to increase the potential opportunity for each player. Collaboration can also be used at the “beginning” of the supply chain to significantly reduce the cost of manufacturing, development, or delivery. Suppliers and end-users can collaborate on technology, applications, processes, and even supply chain in order to make themselves more attractive as an industry.Ed Marien, director of logistics and transportation management programs at the University of Wisconsin School of Business has made a career out of studying collaborative strategies. He said in an interview with Supply Chain Brain, an industry publication that “collaborative alliances are a means of sharing strengths.” He cites Federal-Mogul, a piston maker for the automotive industry that is using its buying power to purchase sheet metal for many of its suppliers at a lower cost than they could negotiate alone. How about process collaboration? ConsiderBridgestone/Firestone, which began mounting its tires on wheels at the request of automotive assemblers. As is happening in many cases, this activity has been spun off into a whole new business unit that now is mounting not only its own tires but also those of Bridgestone’s competitors. This unit has become one of the company’s fastest-growing and most profitable divisions, illustrating how alliances can lead companies to develop core strengths they did not previously have.Who are good complimentors for your business? As a business advisor, good complimentors for me are attorneys, CPA’s, designers, Internet professionals, computer consultants, training companies, TV and radio stations, magazines, newspapers, printers, and more. I challenge you to brainstorm a list of 5 to 10 complimentary businesses. Then make a list of specific contacts within those categories that can currently be utilized. First see what you can do to help them. Then watch the magic of co-opetition unfold!With all these changes taking place in our society we are seeing the emergence of work-groups, virtual teams and alliance, affiliate and even cooperative competitive relationships like co-opetition. The way collaboration is being used in business today is literally smashing the traditional concept of supplier, vendor, and competitive relationships. The line between partner, competitor and supplier is blurring. In order to be more attractive we all must find ways of using Rule # 10 of the rules of attraction more effectively. We must collaborate rather than compete.Seeking a way to put this into practice for your business?  Come to our Attraction workshops!  Go to: http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp for more information!

Curiosity killed the cat.

Sometimes we business leaders can be like cats. We become a little too curious for our own good. Like cats our curiosity finds us “straying” from the core products and services that provide profit and growth to our business.I spent the first ten years of my career in the consumer electronics business. In the early eighties I found myself running the U.S. operations for a high-end audio company called Nikko Audio. Nikko was a prime manufacturer of, what we referred to in those days as, separate components. We specialized in separate power amplifiers, preamplifiers and tuners. We also sold receivers, tape decks and (Uh Oh – I’m dating myself) turntables. But the “separates” were our core products.This was well before the days of the electronic super stores. At that time the consumer electronics marketplace was dominated by small, independent, and salon type retailers. At Nikko we had built a reputation for providing a great deal of training and support for our retailers. When we pursued a retailer we would spend a considerable amount of time educating the owners and managers, training the sales people and even requiring every retailer to put at least one salesperson per location through our Nikko University. The cost of acquiring new clients was astronomical but we maintained a very loyal retailer base. We were enjoying steady annual growth, strong brand recognition and higher than industry-average profits. Our retailers were also enjoying a high profit margin and the consumer was getting a great product.Disco Days
In those “disco days” the one-brand audio system was gaining popularity. Companies like Fisher, Sony, Pioneer and JVC were packaging amplifiers, tuners, tape decks and turntables into one box in order to lower the price for consumers and provide greater profit margins for retailers.At that time I was the V.P of Sales and Marketing for Nikko Audio. I was receiving a great deal of pressure from our sales force as well as my manufacturing counterparts in our Tokyo office to enter the one-brand system fray. They agreed that our higher-end separate components were our core products and should receive our primary focus but they believed that many consumers could become audiophiles by starting with the one-brand system approach and then “growing into” higher-end separate components. They argued that many consumers simply could not afford our separate components and that the one-brand approach gave them the ability to at least have an experience with the Nikko brand. They also said that this could expand our brand recognition and top of the mind awareness with general consumers. They felt that if we satisfied the consumers need for a one-brand system then they would remember us in the future and choose our brand when their audio palette became more discerning or they had greater resources. They also felt that this would allow us to collaborate with speaker manufacturers, CD makers, cabinet companies and so on thereby making Nikko more valuable to a greater number of retailers and consumers. They argued that these large suppliers were not competitors but rather complimentors to the Nikko brand.Convincing Argument
These sounded like very persuasive and compelling arguments. They made sense on the surface. But all of my instincts told me this was the wrong solution. My feeling was that this would water down our core products, lower our position in the market and destroy our point of differentiation in the industry. In addition, I was concerned about alienating our loyal retailers when these “low cost” systems hit the street. I was concerned about losing our leadership in the market. The Nikko line of audio components were designed for discerning audiophiles NOT the average consumer. I argued that with our current cost of acquisition, the reduction in margin of these “one brand systems” would quickly chew up our profits. I even gave them projected profit and loss statements showing this potential outcome.Unfortunately I lost this debate. Nikko did introduce a line of “one brand systems.” They sold like hotcakes and I ate crow. However, it was the calm before the storm. Within 12 months the marketplace was flooded with these systems and the price war began. It was a blood bath and we couldn’t stop the bleeding. Our warehouse was full of one-brand systems that were simply “me-too.” Our pricing was 30% too high, we were losing money and we had alienated our loyal retailers. Without trying to, we had abandoned our core product selection. Our curiosity in this “one-brand” system approach KILLED the demand for our core category of products. In short, it was the “curiosity that killed the cat.”The First Deadly Sin
We made the first deadly sin of product marketing. We abandoned BEING the leader in favor of FOLLOWING the leader. The only people that won were those companies that we collaborated with – the companies that supplied us with the speakers, CD players, cabinets and so on. We lost, the retailers lost, even the consumers lost in the end.Less than a year later the bubble burst. Nearly every company that entered the one-brand category showed red ink. Companies like Sansui, Marantz, Rotel and others literally went out of business. Thank God I gave those projections to the CEO in Japan. Within months ALL of the executives at Nikko (US and Japan) were fired and those projections saved by skinny butt in the end. But Nikko was left only a shell of what it was in the past. The company was sold to Yamaha electronics for (you guessed it) the “high-end separate component” technology. I was tasked with managing the transition.Maybe you are being seduced by an attractive collaborative relationship. Tread carefully. While I am a huge supporter of collaboration, I urge you to carefully investigate the impact on your core product categories. Remember collaboration only works when it COMPLIMENTS your core product category.Beware of Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing!
As Adam Brandenburger says in his book, Co-opetition, “know the difference between a complimentary relationship and a competitive relationship.”Complimentors
A player is a complimentor if customers value your product MORE when they have the other player’s product than when they have your product alone. (Example: Oscar Meyer Hot Dogs and Guldens Mustard). No one buys Guldens Mustard INSTEAD of Oscar Meyer Hot Dogs. Guldens is only beneficial if it’s WITH Oscar Meyer products.Competitors
A player is a competitor if customers value your product LESS when they have the other player’s product than when they have your product alone. (Example: Coca-Cola and Pepsi -Cola)Also measure the reward basis. Does your profit grow when you are selling your collaborators products or does it shrink? If it shrinks, then this is not a complimentor, likely this is a competitor. Today collaboration, affiliate marketing and co-branding are very much in vogue. Many small business owners and entrepreneurs are becoming involved in what they see to be complimentary relationships when in fact they are just sharing their customer base with the competition. Take particular caution of the large market leaders. They often prey on small players under the guise of collaboration. This is very dangerous and as you can see, for Nikko, it was disastrous.Don’t Follow the Leader
Finally, find some small way that you can be the leader NOT the follower in your market. I see so many businesses making decisions based on the move of a leading competitor in their market. When I ask them why they decide on a specific course of action they tell me, “well that’s what the competitive leader is doing.” This is the very reason NOT to follow the competition. If you do this you will always be a follower – a brand that has nothing unique to offer to your customers. In fact there is greater wisdom in doing the OPPOSITE of your competitor. David Yoffie and Mary Kwak in their book, Judo Strategy talk about how to turn your competitor’s strength into your advantage. They say that the best way to defeat your competition is by NOT copying them. They recommend building your own collaborative relationships not mirroring theirs. They site example such as Real Media, Capitol One, Palm Computing, CNET and Handspring. All of these revolutionary market leaders were born from doing the OPPOSITE of the mainstream.In short product marketing success is about being different, remaining a leader, protecting your core and knowing the difference between complimentors and competitors.

What influences customers and prospects? Is it what a company says about their product or service through advertising, marketing and direct sales?

Or, is it what other people are saying about the company’s product or service?Surely the later. Then why do we spend so much time and money on traditional marketing, advertising and selling, and so very little on word of mouth marketing?From Your Mouth to Their Ears
Most marketing focuses on building a case for a better product or service. This is good and necessary but it ignores the fact that for many, purchasing is part of a social decision. People rely on invisible networks of friends, relatives and co-workers for recommendations. This is buzz. I have spoken before about establishing a unique identity, branding and differentiation. Buzz is the natural extension of a branding and identity campaign. And it is beginning to take a much more influential role in the purchasing decision.Why Buzz Works
Today customer are suffering from information overload. They see and hear so many advertising and marketing messages that it becomes difficult to filter out what is valuable and credible through all the clutter and noise. As a result customers are turning to their friends and associates for purchasing advice more that ever. Marketing experts believe that the new customer, Generation Y – those born between 1979 and 1994 – shop by word of mouth. In the coming years, buzz marketing may that much more important. 
Buzz works so well because talking is in our genes. As human beings, we need to talk. We talk to connect with people. Sharing information is essential to our make-up. We talk about the latest movie we saw, the car we test drove, the book we read and so on.How to Create BuzzHere’s some simple ways to create buzz about your product or service:1. Good buzz begins with a positive customer experience. 
There is no substitute for exceptional performance. The key here is to underpromise and over deliver. Try to change your thinking from: “I need to get this sale,” to “How can I get this prospect to talk about my product or service?”2. Give a little away. 
Ask yourself, “How can I get people to experience my product or service without them making a big commitment? How can I giveaway a small piece of my product or service so that people will start talking about it?” When Hotmail launched its Web-based free email service, it experienced the fastest adoption rate of any product ever introduced. Subscriptions went from 0 to 12 million in just 18 months. And each person who signed up helped to recruit other members because a message was sent with each email.3. Work at building trust
Let’s face it at the core most customers and prospects are just plain skeptical. They don’t trust us. To begin with, they don’t know us. They don’t know our values, our history, or our background. The more we tell them how great we are and how wonderful our product and service is, the less they trust us. Instead of pushing our product or service, let the product spread itself through the invisible customer networks through good buzz.4. Know your customer. 
If you want to create buzz, you have to know your customer and how you are reaching them. Ask yourself the following: From who do your customers learn about your products? What do people say when they recommend your products? In what invisible networks are your products discussed? What kind of information spreads through the networks fastest?

We’ve been talking about branding in the last few Business Updates and as Plato said, “the example teaches.” With that in mind we thought we’d take a look at some of the most famous and successful logos over the last few decades.
The first logo I’d like to discuss is the famous lips and tongue. It was suggested to me by one of our subscribers, Tim Mehloff, that the Rolling Stones “lips and tongue” logo would be an interesting case study. As Tim put it, “I mean, how many rock and roll bands had a logo back then?” More importantly the lips and the tongue came to mean something far more than just the Rolling Stones. It came to stand for a generation weaned on rock and roll. It also came to symbolize the party-like, free attitude that dominated the 60s and early 70s.
Where did the logo come from?
It all started at a party in New York in 1969 when Andy Warhol casually mentioned to Mick Jagger that it would be amusing to have a real zipper on an album cover. A year later, Jagger proposed the idea for Sticky Fingers, the first release on the new Rolling Stones label.
Album packager Craig Braun had also suggested releasing the album in a clear plastic jacket with heat-sensitive liquid crystals inside — “so you could make your own little Joshua Light Show,” he says — as well as with a mammoth foldout cover of Jagger’s castle in the sound of France. But Jagger knew what he wanted: The packaging of Sticky Fingers proved the Rolling Stones had not lost their gift for outrageousness and, as their first post-Altamont studio album, very shrewdly moved the Stones away from what Braun calls “the evil thing” and into a more sexual mode.
Sticky Fingers
Sticky Fingers also debuted the famous Stones logo: a caricature of Jagger’s lips and tongue. The heavily merchandised image was soon incorporated into pendants, key chains, belt buckles and even tattoos.
Warhol took the cover shot; though many assumed the model was Jagger, it has often been rumored to be a hanger-on at the Factory, Warhol’s studio, named Joe Dallesandro. Then Braun realized there had to be an extra layer of cardboard to protect the record from the zipper; that layer features another Warhol shot of a different man, possibly the twin brother of Warhol’s “boyfriend” and assistant Jed Johnson, this time in his jockey shorts.
But it turned out that during shipment the zipper would press into the album stacked on top of it (invariably damaging “Sister Morphine”); Atlantic Records threatened to sue Braun for all the damage. Braun came up with the solution; pull down the zipper before the album was shipped — then it would dent only the label. Braun never did figure out how to keep Sticky Fingers from scratching other album covers.
You can brand anything!
While this story may be interesting, it proves that you can brand pretty much anything. I can think of no more than 4 or 5 rock and roll groups that actually have logos even today, not to mention memorable, influential ones. But this is true for most products and services. Few are meaningful let alone memorable. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist or marketing guru to create a brand. All you need is honesty, creativity and a viable, interesting product. A good brand creates attraction and tells a story that’s worth telling. A good brand “takes a risk” in the story it tells.
Think about your own company, product or service. Whet male’s it interesting? How can you be brutally honest in the way you communicate its meaningfulness? How can you visually communicate this in a creative way? And just like that…. You have your brand!
 Thanks goes to the web site: www.superseventies.com for providing their fabulous historical input and to our subscriber Tim for his idea for a retrospect on the Stones logo.

Remember Steve Martin’s, “Let’s Get Small”? That was a funny skit but it taught me a lot about marketing. The first time I saw it was in the early 70’s when I myself was in college taking marketing classes to supplement my core science courses. Little did I know that marketing, not science would become my primary field of study. 

Think Small
Target marketing is the process of choosing smaller market segments at which to focus your efforts. It is the process of locating specific groups of prospects that share a common description and needs. Target marketing is a “vertical approach” to increasing your influence and market share. The brands with the most highly focused target audience are usually the most successful. 

Rules in selecting a target audience 
Choose one target audience first. Work on penetrating that audience for one year before moving on. You cannot be everything to everyone. 
Choose your target audience based on their revenue needs and budget capabilities.
The tighter your focus, the more often you can provide them with relevant information, and the more that this information will be beneficial.
Choose your target audience based on you own interests.
Choose the type of people with which you like to do business.
Quality is far more important than quantity.

Be Picky
Experienced marketers know that if you reject the kind of business that you do not want, you will automatically become more attractive to those that are part of your vertical strategy. This also gives you the ability to become an expert in your business as it relates to THEIR business. Let’s face it, every business is competitive. Because of this, entrepreneurs might often find themselves chasing any business they can get. I talk about this at length in my “Attract More Business” program:

1. Understanding the marketplace
2. Benchmarking
3. Competitive Intelligence

By fully understanding the competitive landscape and how our product, service, and company fits into it, we can find a specialized need in the marketplace that our product EXCLUSIVELY satisfies. For this reason, we should only accept business that matches the profile of the type of customer we want to deal with.
 Examples:

1. I know a financial consultant that works ONLY with teachers. Now that might sound ridiculous. Teachers, however, have very specialized financial needs. They exclusively qualify for special tax treatment and a larger share of their assets can be sheltered. Additionally, teachers typically have at least two sources of income: teaching and summer jobs or a side business. This requires specialized knowledge and advice. This person has become an EXPERT in the area of financial consulting for teachers.
2. Even the IRS has entered into the world of specialization. They just announced their, “Market Segment Specialization Program” which focuses on developing highly trained examiners for each particular market segment. A market segment may be an industry such as construction or entertainment, a profession like attorneys or real estate agents or an issue like passive activity losses. An integral part of the approach used is the development and publication of Audit Techniques Guides. These Guides contain examination techniques, common and unique industry issues, business practices, industry terminology, and other information to assist examiners in performing examinations. Oh goody, just what we need tax cops with practical industry knowledge!
3. Professionals such as doctors and lawyers have been specialists for years. Today you would be hard-pressed to find a doctor that claims to know how to treat all types of illnesses. In fact, I have become somewhat irritated in trying to get an answer on health issues from just one doctor. It seems today that even the specialists end up referring you to a specialist.

Research WorksDo some research to understand the vertical market that you select. There are some tremendous resources for this today:

• Vertical industry publications or trade magazines
• The Lifestyles Market Analyst
• FIND/SVP – Nexus/Lexus
• The Internet
• Hoover’s

An added bonus to this strategy is that in your research, you will likely come across many prospects that fit your profile. 

Example:
In the early 90’s my consulting firm made the decision that we were going to specialize in specific areas. One of the first areas we selected was the cosmetic surgery field. We had a hunch that this would be a profitable area to focus and so we launched an exhaustive research effort to learn everything we could about cosmetic surgery. We purchased several research studies for just a few hundred dollars. I remember the agency we purchased them from told me that I was one of only 12 people that had purchased the 2600 page study. This gave us an inordinate amount of information about the history of the industry, where it was heading, the most popular forms of surgery, technological advancements, changes in the demographics and psychographics of patients electing surgery, practice management issues, insurance and managed care issues and the potential reduction in the associated costs that were predicted,. 

Additionally, we interviewed 30 different physicians and learned about their perceptions. We even talked to the president of the American Medical Association and invited him on our Small Business Hour radio show. I want to stress, although they would have been great customers, we did NOT pitch ANY of these doctors. With all the information that we gained we were able to write several articles quoting all kinds of statistics about the future of various forms of cosmetic surgery. We were able to speak intelligently on every area of this field. We became MORE knowledgeable in marketing and managing a cosmetic surgery practice than any plastic surgeon. Because of months worth of research and a few hundred dollars, we were soon viewed as the EXPERTS in cosmetic surgery practice management and marketing. We were asked to attend an upcoming medical conference in Sacramento where I gave a speech on the future of cosmetic surgery. It was unbelievable. I was being treated like some expert and I couldn’t even spell liposuction 60 days prior. We gave seminars on practice management and marketing. We were asked to be editorial contributors to the industries trade publication. We were even asked to do a radio show by the massive pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Merck, which we did for 18 months on CBS radio. All this happened well before the TV rage of “Extreme Makeover, “Nip Tuck,” and all of reality show follow-ups. 

As you can imagine, we were able to easily attract some of the most successful, well financed, and well respected cosmetic surgery clients in the industry in just a few short months. In fact, they begged us to take them on as a client! Companies like Sword Medical Center, Cedars Sinai Hospital, Plastico, Boston Medical, and Cosmetic and Laser Surgery all came to us. No cold calls, no mailings, no fancy brochures. We were able to secure a strong position in the market as the leaders in cosmetic surgery consulting. Can you do the same? YES, YES and YES!

Think about your own business: 
Who are the best clients for your business? Why?
What makes them good prospects?
What are some potential target markets that match with these profiles? Why?

Thinking small is the key to big success. The smaller, more tightly confined your marketplace is the better your chances are for success. Locate the smallest pond that you can find. Then figure out how to become the biggest fish in that pond.

McDonalds has granola, Arby’s has yogurt, and even Jack-in-the-Box has fresh fruit. What the hell is going on here? All this healthy eating is making me sick!

Burger King introduced the “Have it Your Way Healthy Options,” McDonald’s launched their ”Balanced, Active Lifestyles Initiative” and even the Cookie Monster is crumbling to a healthy diet with Sesame Street’s “A Cookie is Sometimes Food.”

Let’s admit it, there’s nothing tastier than fast food! Americans have always loved digging into a bucket of chicken, chomping on a Big Mac or downing a Whopper. Then how did the food pyramid ever find its way into the drive-thru? 

I guess it’s because consumers have demanded a healthier diet from fast food operators, right? Wrong. 

Oh, then it’s because our government is forcing fast food operators to be more responsible for planning healthy menus, right? Wrong again!

Ok, then it must be that serving healthier food is more profitable? Not quite!

No one has imposed any “solution” on these operators. Nor should they in my opinion, this is a FREE enterprise system.

Let me introduce you to Morgan Spurlock, a little man who intimidated a multi-billion dollar industry to change their entire business strategy with his award winning documentary, Super Size Me. I loved the movie, the marketing, and the message and you will too. As one critic said; “It will wipe the smile right off your Happy Meal.”

How did he do it? He used the second Rule of Attraction. He focused on the “problem.” In fact he BECAME the problem. As a result, fast food operators were FORCED to make a change. 

What did he do? He decided to eat ONLY at McDonalds for 30 days to see what would happen to his body. No problem there. Right? Wrong yet again! He almost killed himself. He gained 30 pounds, his blood pressure jumped, his cholesterol went through the roof, lipids and liver enzymes were at all-time danger levels and he developed NASH, (non-alcoholic, steototic hepatitis). Nice job Morgan!

How successful do you think he would have been if he had gone to McDonalds with a solution to the problem? Or lobbied congress or written letters to the FDA? Or created a study of the positive effects of changing their menu to healthy alternatives? Not very! They wouldn’t have given him the time of day. 

The first rule of attraction is to become a bigger fish in a smaller pond. In order to accomplish this we need to understand the problems and challenges of those we are attempting to influence Rule #2: The problem is more important than the solution.

Too often marketers make broad assumptions when communicating their message to clients. This happens in both the selling interaction (face-to-face and on the phone) as well as the marketing interaction (with ads, brochures and web sites.) This is a natural tendency since as marketers we know far more about our products and services than our customers. In many cases we may know what the customer needs more than they do themselves. The danger, however, is that customers don’t care about the benefits and solutions that our companies offer. Let me repeat that: CUSTOMERS DON’T CARE ABOUT OUR BENEFITS AND SOLUTIONS!

I can imagine people everywhere are reading this right now saying that I’m crazy. Traditional sales and marketing methods teach that we should elaborate on our features and benefits, and prospects will see how they can be helped by our solutions, and they will logically decide to buy. This assumption is the root of why most sales and marketing attempts fall on deaf ears. People today make buying decisions more emotionally than ever before. Our prospects and customers care FAR more about their problems than they ever will about our solutions! 

Do you think there would have been ANYTHING Morgan could have shown those fast food industry execs that would have convinced them to change? Not until some pain was inflicted. “There is no change without pain,” I like to say.

This is why it is important that we speak to our prospects and customers in terms of their problems! By doing so, they become uncomfortable with the status-quo and our solutions become much more palatable. This is not so much a logical choice, but rather based on their emotional reaction to the fact that we actually have taken the time to understand their problems. The solutions we offer then become the natural choice to help solve those problems.

All marketers like to believe they have a unique solution. They are confident that they are different from the competition. When you get right down to it, however, most marketing says the exact SAME thing. It talks about what the company, product, or service DOES. At best, it may promise some generic group of benefits in which buyers MAY be interested. Even the best marketing materials (web sites, brochure, flyers, ads, radio or TV spots, promotions, interactive CDs or videos) attempt to communicate to the customer why their product, service or company is better than the competition. Few focus on the problems that the customer is having. This is at the core of the attraction mindset.

Interested in LEARNING how to focus on the problems your customers face? Check out our latest workshop:

Attract More Business One Day Workshops 
By popular demand, we are now offering the Attract More Business one day workshop. This full day workshop incorporates content from our “Attract More Business” learning program and 8 week class. The workshop will be held from 9am to 5pm on June 11, 2005 in Long Beach, CA and August 25, 2005 in Pasadena, CA. Attendees of the workshop are eligible for 2 follow up 30 minute coaching sessions. As a special bonus when you attend the Attract More Business one day workshop, you will receive our audio CD on “Branding in the 21st Century.”Sign-up at: Attract More Business One Day Workshop.

This current economy offers advantages to small business that we may not see for quite a while. 

Advantages? What planet am I living on, you might ask. Unemployment is up. The stock market is tumbling and all we seem to be hearing lately is more gloom and doom. 

I’m talking about advantages that allow you to set yourself apart from the competition like never before. While everyone else is crying the blues you can be taking positive, decisive action. Here’s the kind of simple actions that get you results in this difficult economy:

Create Revenue
In most environments today, particularly business-to-business, the demand is for more sales. That’s what clients want to hear. If you have a legitimate, credible story as to how you can help a company generate revenue, management will clear the calendar with great haste to hear what you have to say. This message is a particularly strong door opener for consultants and service providers. What’s your revenue improvement story?

Don’t cut marketing
Particularly advertising support. It’s the first thing that most companies do in an economic downturn because it is the easiest course of action. But all it does is concede the playing field to the competition. Statistics clearly show that marketers who increase their spending during a recession experience sustainable long-term gains in market share and profitability. Think about how you can beat your competition in reaching your target market more effectively?

Market to your base
Revisit your loyal customers, the ones you have probably taken for granted and ignored as of late. Now is the time to consider instituting a workable system that will help you identify and nurture that loyal base by maintaining an ongoing communication channel with them. What are you currently doing to stay in touch with your customers? 

Start sponsoring
In times of stress, consumers gravitate to the familiar. Your job is to be there as a touch point. That means event promotion, cross-promotion, cause marketing, all of the in-the-trenches, one-on-one, hard-working marketing labor that many companies forsake for the ease of an advertisement or commercial. It’s not a matter of either/or, but both. How can you be creative in sponsoring network marketing and event promotions?

Try something new
Consider test markets, new products/ service introductions and any new revenue stream that got put on the back burner when times were flush. If the old revenue streams are drying up, where is the risk in experimenting? Remember, no guts, no glory. How will you “dare to be different” this year?

Think vertical
For small businesses in particular, understanding and mining a vertical segment makes good sense. 
Dig in and dig deep. Capitalize on the credibility that you have built up and sell it aggressively, particularly through referral and word of mouth. Don’t be afraid to leap frog from segment to segment when you think you have a translatable story to tell. What new markets can you penetrate? How can you make your solution more important to that selective client base?

Client retention is key
The importance of “the relationship” with the customer never diminishes. For most small businesses, developing and exploiting the relationship is the one major advantage they have over the big players who don’t have the time and energy for it in the first place. This boils down to added value. Customers crave it but don’t get enough of it. When was the last time you gave serious thought to providing a value-added premium in customer transactions? 

Be the “Terminator” of new business
Now is the time to undertake that aggressive, long-term new business program. Segment the prospects; maintain a disciplined follow-up program (contact management system, direct mail, telemarketing, e-newsletters); and remember that it is a process of consistent and persistent approach and attack. Don’t hesitate to contact prospects out of the blue with an idea as to how you can legitimately impact their business. In focus groups, prospective buyers quite often remark on how little they get called on or approached with a legitimate, new perspective about their business. How can you adopt this strategy?

Don’t forget self-promotion
When times are tight, most small businesses tend to give up on self-promotion. Now more than ever we should be super-aggressive about telling the world how good we are by seeking high-visibility clients, taking on select pro bono assignments, hitting the speech circuit and chasing “ink.” The best line on the subject comes from Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi: “Consumers don’t stop buying when economies go through down cycles. They look harder for value.” 

The job of the survival marketer in 2002 will be to identify that value, proclaim it loudly and go after the thinning customer herd where others show fear and give up. In this economy so many customers are having reservations about getting a good value on whatever product or service they are buying.

The Top 10 Ways NOT to Attract New Clients

They say marketing has a bad name. But I maintain that NOT marketing has a much worse name. If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner interested in attracting new clients, are you still committing any of the 10 deadly sins listed below?

10. Make sure nobody can really understand what business you’re in. Use buzz-words and industry jargon. Never share the results of what you do or mention how you’ve helped your clients. Make people really work to figure out how you can help them.

9. Talk only about features and processes in your marketing materials. Don’t include any benefits or case studies of successful clients you’ve worked with. Throw in lots of impressive industry jargon and don’t worry about professional design or paper. Using 20# copy paper is fine.

8. Put up a quick-and-dirty website with most of the pages still under construction. Make sure to design it yourself and make it look as amateurish as possible. Of course, obscure navigation, huge graphics files and pages that lead nowhere will keep ’em coming back.

7. Forget about spell check and proofreading. People don’t care about typos or if you spell their name wrong. Whip out every e-mail as fast as you possibly can. And never put a signature line on your email, let alone a subject line that means anything.

6. Don’t ever network. Make sure nobody ever gets to meet you in person and learn who you are and what you can do for them. And if you do happen to show up at a networking event, make sure to sit in a corner with a beer and lots of hors D’oeuvres, away from pesky prospective clients.

5. Don’t write any articles or do any talks demonstrating to the world that you’re an expert and really know your stuff. Make sure to keep all of that a big secret. Also never share one bit of your expertise with anyone unless they pay you first.

4. Don’t ask questions when meeting with a new prospective client. Just give them a long, detailed presentation on all the technical aspects of your work. If they don’t understand you, they probably wouldn’t be a good client anyway.

3. Do substandard work as long as you think you can get away with it. Strive for mediocrity and make sure your clients pay for it through the nose. Why should you work so hard when they end up making so much money from your expertise?

2. Don’t return phone calls – ever. Just wait for them to call you back. If they really need your assistance, they’ll keep trying until they catch you in. And when they do reach you, make sure to sound impatient and too busy to help them.

1. Disappear. One you’ve completed a project, make sure they never hear from you again. Heck if they really need you, they’ll call. But don’t make it too easy by ever giving them your business card or putting your name in the yellow pages. You don’t want to look like you’re begging. Have some dignity, for goodness sake!

If any of these symptoms are present in your business, its time to think about making some core changes to your marketing effort. At the Small Business Advisory Network we like to say that we influence decisions, improve performance and inspire change. That’s what our consulting, workshops, web site, weekly articles and The Small Business Hour Radio Show are all about.

You may have seen a recent commercial on TV in which men in lab coats stand before a table that has national brands of both french fries and ketchup on it. They sample the ketchup alone, and conclude that it is good. They then sample a french fry and conclude it is good. Then they try the two together, and determine that it is better than either one. This commercial is a very effective example of alliance marketing hard at work. 

Instead of a ketchup company going it alone and promoting their product or a french fry maker buying all the air time themselves, they have combined efforts to present the idea that while their products are good on their own, they are better when eaten together. This is the classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I can hear people out there now saying, “Sure, it works if you’re Heinz Ketchup and have a multi-million dollar ad budget, but I’m just a small business! I don’t have tens of millions of dollars to risk on just getting people hooked on other products when they should be spending their money on my product instead!”

For those doubters I’m going to have to invoke two of my Rules of Attraction to show how alliance and affiliate marketing can help a small business even more than a larger one:

Rule #10 – Collaborate rather than compete

Rule #4 – Give information away without selling

Collaborate Rather Than Compete
Instead of viewing other products and services as competitors, look for ways in which you can join efforts to help each other’s business. I do a number of seminars every year with the Christopher Howard Companies, and he is a frequent guest on my radio show. Some may say or are competitors. I teach people how to be more successful and so does Chris. So why help out a competitor? Because Chris is more of a complementor than he is a competitor. While we both target the same audience we teach completely different Methods of success. Chris works on the subconscious and I work on the conscious. Working together we are able to reach a greater market as a whole entity than either one of us could reach independently. In addition my methods are more powerful when coupled with Chris’s technologies and his are more powerful when coupled with mine.

You can find collaborators in your industry that you can team with to create a collective solution that attracts a larger audience than any one element could effectively attract on their own. If you make luggage, find someone that makes luggage carts, if you repair cars, team with car rental services, if you sell musical instruments, find a rehearsal studio bands can use and work together to cross promote. Always be on the lookout for ways in which you can work with other entities, rather than ways in which you can compete with them.

Give information away without selling
I’m going to use an example now that I’m sure you never thought you’d see from Mark Deo- while most of my readers have probably never listened to anything from Death Row Records, they are one of the most successful record companies in history, known strictly for their hardcore “gangsta” rap artists. Why bring them up? They also had some brilliant marketing techniques that helped launch the careers of artists that have since sold hundreds of millions of records. How did they do this? By giving away information without selling! With each album they released by an established artist, they included elements in a few songs that featured a new performer. Some songs on their CDs don’t even have the person on the CD cover in them for more than a few seconds! What they have done is given the fans of one performer a free taste of another they are likely to enjoy as well.

When you go to the dentist, do you get a free toothbrush? I bet it’s a specific brand that that dentist is getting for free to provide you with a positive impression of this brand. This leads to you possibly buying many more of them in the future, based upon the lended credibility and positive overall impression you get about this item. How can you do this in your small business? Do you have free samples of collaborative products and services you can bundle with yours that make your solution more attractive?

How to Make It All Work
Perhaps you’re thinking, “that sounds like a good idea, but how do I get started?”

That’s where my attraction workshop comes in. At the workshop I will take you step-by-step through developing an attraction-based affiliate plan. We will work on crafting your affiliate and alliance strategy. This will include:

• Brainstorm partner potentials (in places you never dreamed)
• How to get the best partners to “come to you” without even chasing them
• What to say and why it works nearly “every” time!
• Use guarantees and risk reversal to your benefit
• How to structure the alliance to ensure that both parties benefit
• Integrate alliance efforts into your overall marketing plan
• Use an alliance to look ten times bigger than you already are
• Use affiliates to overcome price objections
• Numerous case studies and the “in class” examples of success stories

Pre-registration is now available on-line at:http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp. 

Register before July 15th for my Monrovia workshop and before August 15th for my Long Beach Workshop and receive a FREE bonus ticket and bring a friend or business associate. The pre-registration cost of this event is just $299, a savings of $200 from the event cost of $499 at the door. Once one of my associates contacts you, if you mention that you are a business update subscriber, I’ll even throw in a free telecoaching follow-up session so that you can get the most out of the event. That’s a total value of $1148 available now for just $299. Go to:http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp to pre-register now!

Two heads are better than one. This is the phrase that comes to mind when I think of collaborative business relationships. There are several types that we see today. These include affiliates, alliances and joint ventures. This is such an overlooked yet incredibly powerful area of business growth that I thought I would give you just a preview of what we will be working on in our upcoming one day workshop on August 6th in Monrovia. I believe the best types of collaboration are those that both reduce costs while creating an additional income stream.

The Joint Venture
A Joint Venture is where two or more businesses share resources to create profitable new income opportunities, which otherwise would be too costly for only one of the businesses to achieve on their own. This structure can be found anywhere, any many industries seem to be practicing this type of collaboration today. One example is the Wal-Mart Super Center. When you walk into a Wal-Mart Super Center you see clothes, furniture, groceries, electronics, movies, etc. Imagine, with all the all different categories what it takes to merchandise this store. In reality, Wal-Mart’s products are merchandised through a joint venture with the many manufacturers of the products they sell. In the end both Wal-Mart and the manufacturers are profiting. Various brands can showcase their products and sell them, and Wal-Mart earns a portion of the sale for allowing them the use of their storefronts. They also save money on the need for specialized labor and merchandising costs. Wal-Mart knows how to outsource. This is truly a ‘win-win’ collaborative relationship. 

Business within a Business
Even more creative is the store within a store concept that is cropping-up. We are starting to see various outlet type stores operating inside of a larger retailer. Just today I was in a local grocery store and I saw a video arcade, a Bank of America, a hair salon, and a Starbucks all in one grocery store! Think about how much sense this makes: Parents come to the grocery store to shop, and they leave their kids to play video games and pick them up when they are finished. They can do their banking, get their hair cut, have a coffee or a snack. This lowers costs, provides rental income, increases convenience and creates a better customer experience. With all of the changes taking place in our society we are seeing the emergence of creative alliance, affiliate and even cooperative competitive associations. The way collaboration is being used in business today is literally smashing the traditional concept of supplier, vendor and competitive relationships. The line between partner, competitor and supplier is blurring. In order to be more attractive we all must find ways of using Rule # 10 more effectively. We must collaborate rather than compete. Think about what you can do to create collaborative relationships that lower costs while increasing income.

Full Day Workshop
One of the things we will be working on in the full day Attract More Business Workshop is marketing collaboration. Attendees will learn how to build affiliates, alliances, joint ventures and how to develop collaborative relationships. Register for the August 6th workshop by this Friday, July 29th and receive a FREE bonus ticket for a friend or business associate at no additional charge. The pre-registration cost of this event is just $299, a savings of $200 from the event cost of $499 at the door. If you mention that you are a business update subscriber, I’ll even throw in a free telecoaching follow-up session so that you can get the most out of the event. That’s a total value of $1148 available now for just $299. Go to:http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp to pre-register now!