Is Social Media Changing Selling?

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Mike McLaughlin (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

Social media has certainly changed marketing, but few people are addressing just how dramatically it’s changed sales. In this interview we hit that subject pretty head on.

My guest for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is Mike McLaughlin. He’s the author of Winning the Professional Services Sale, which offers professional service providers, business development managers, and firm leaders new strategies to identify, qualify, and close any services sale. McLaughlin is also the coauthor of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, the first book to apply the principles of Guerrilla Marketing to the business of consulting and professional services.

In this podcast:

• About the book: Winning the Professional Services Sale
• Changes in the Sales Market
• Success in Sales
• Defining the Shared Answer
• The Process of Closing a Sale
• The Perfect Sales Proposal
• Getting the Next Sale and Referrals

How Zen Does a Small Biz Need to Be?

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Leo Babauta (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

Leo Babauta is the publisher of the very popular Zen Habits blog and author the Power of Less.

Leo is not my typical marketing/business expert type guest but Leo’s personal story and the subject he writes about are important lessons for small business owners.

As business owners we are totally free – free to work 80 hours a week, free to carry the stress of making payroll, free to eat junk food at our desk, and free to blow off any semblance of exercise, because, really, who’s got the time. Essentially, we’re all a bunch of heart attacks waiting to happen, but at least we’re free to have the heart attack on our terms, right?

I’ve been doing this for a long time and I can tell you that an entrepreneur’s diet, exercise routine, and stress release activities are just as important as any marketing plan every devised. Owning a business is not for sissies. Leo’s message of doing more with less is a breathe of fresh air and I count it as a daily.

So, take a long, deep, totally centered breath and have a listen. Namaste

Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Nick Morgan (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

Trust – can’t get enough of that as a brand, business, or person these days. Everyone knows that, but what they may not know is that there are things each of is doing that may be unintentionally eroding trust – particularly when it comes to the topic of speaking and presenting.

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast Nick Morgan, author of Trust Me, talks about trust, authenticity and charisma and how anyone can use it to their advantage as a public speaker.

Charisma is a tricky thing, but I love his definition: The expression of emotion. It’s a tool that can be learned and practiced.

Pay close attention to his thoughts on using or not using PowerPoint.

Check out a recent blog post from Nick: 10 Commandments of Public Speaking

Nick Morgan shows how anyone can be an effective speaker by presenting an image of authenticity and respect for their audience, whether in a group presentation or a one-on-one conversation. He presents a four-step process, perfected in his teaching at Harvard, that enables the reader to use their own personal speaking style while becoming a more persuasive and charismatic communicator and leader.

The four steps of Nick’s system
1) Openness
2) Connection
3) Passion
4) Listening

David Allen on Getting It All Done

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with David Allen (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

Getting all the stuff you’ve got to manage done as a business owner, might be the greatest challenge of all. Then of course all the new social media stuff comes along and the job of managing it all just got tougher. It seems, to some at least, that monitoring, managing, engaging and following is a full time job.

I’ve always been a big fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD), but I think we may need his simple system for collecting, doing, delegating and deferring more than ever.

I spent a few minutes chatting with David for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast and if you’re one of those feeling a little overwhelmed these days I suggest you start with by grabbing Getting Things Done and then work your way up to his latest – Making It All Work. You can get David’s products and books at his Davidco site

There are so many layers to David’s work that I have found people who have changed their lives by adhering to the “2 minutes or less” principle while others have developed a deep sense of vision for their business because they’ve cleared the clutter for the first time.

In this podcast we cover:

• Components of the GTD system
• Tools for GTD
• Using the GTD system in an organization
• De-cluttering to move forward
• About Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life
• How to get involved with GTD

The Inbound Marketing Guidebook

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Hubspot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah have synthesized, condensed and packaged what I believe is one heck of a book on the new reality of lead generation. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs is written in a style that makes it extremely accessible to the smallest of businesses and gets my highest recommendation as a must read.

Brian was a guest on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast not long ago – click to have a listen.

The overriding premise of the book is to persuade readers to come to grips with the fact that the old ways of lead generation, shouting and broadcasting, have given way to being found – by producing something that will be found online and is worthy of people talking about. No surprise here that they too think every small business should be producing content on a blog. One of my favorite ideas in this vein is the notion that we as marketers must start looking at our jobs as half publishing, half marketing.

The website or blog is the hub of an inbound marketing strategy while social media activity creates the outposts and plays a role in the creation of inbound links. The book certainly supports everything the two have been building over at Hubspot, and that’s no surprise, but I was pleasantly surprised with some ideas in the book’s final chapter. Particularly one that addresses hiring Digital Citizens as employees. The grading scale for this is pretty fascinating.

Thoughts on Personal Branding

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Dan Schawbel (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

Dan Schawbel has turned himself into the leading voice on personal branding for Gen-Y. Want to know how a guy, while at the time still in college, took on and seemingly won such an important marketing niche? (Think there aren’t lots of brands that want to own some 20 something mind share?) He did it with, duh, personal branding, and a ton of persistence and willingness to work his tail off. The guy gets what is to me the supreme compliment a marketer can receive – “I see him everywhere.” But, it’s not just being there, it’s being there on message, on brand, day in and day out. Anyone wanting to understand how to build a brand, personal or otherwise, could learn a thing of two from Dan.

For this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, Dan joins me to talk about Personal Branding and his very successful book – Me 2.0.

In this podcast we cover:

• What personal branding is
• Important elements for personal branding
• Ways to differentiate yourself
• Who needs Personal Branding
• If your business brand can be too personal?
• Social media and personal branding
• Steps to implement personal branding

I’ve expressed some of my own opinions about personal brand vs. business brand in the past, (business isn’t personal) and while I fall towards more of the business brand as a long term entrepreneurial play, there is no question that you can more easily achieve many of your personal and professional objectives by focusing on building a strong personal brand.

Using Technology to Co-Create Value

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Joanna Van Vleck (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

I’ve said on numerous occasions that technology and social media pay the largest dividends for small business when employed to co-create value for all involved. In other words, an innovative use of technology that increases the value for both the business and its customers – Even better if it increases human engagement too!

I recently had the opportunity to visit with personal image consultant Joanna Van Vleck and I think she has created a pretty fine example of just such an innovation.

Van Vleck consults with men on their wardrobes, hair and overall style. She found that while her clients loved working with her, they hated being dragged into stores to try on clothes – keep in mind these are all men. On one occasion a client suggested using a web cam instead. He would buy the stuff on his own and consult with her about what worked with what didn’t via video conference. At first Van Vleck found the idea a bit odd, but somewhere along the way she discovered a brilliant innovation.

Today the Trunk Club, a business she founded to take advantage of the video consulting technology, helps men around the globe not have to do something they hate – go shopping. (By the way, that’s the surest way to create a meaningful innovation) The Trunk Club concept is pretty simple – When you need something to wear you get in touch with your Trunk Club Expert, they pick out clothes based on style, need and budget and send them to your home or office. You try them on and get advice via video conference and pay for and keep only what you want. By the way, during our interview she shared that her little idea is poised to do around $3mil in its first year.

Van Vleck is a wonderful example of what a successful entrepreneur looks and acts like – enjoy her advice and her energy.

Croutsourcing Design

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with crowdSPRING cofounders Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson – click to listen or right click and Save As to download

I know, I know – another goofy made-up word, but hey, it’s Friday so outsourcing design to the crowd became croutsourcing.

The point is that the web has certainly made it much easier to find great design from around the world and on the flip side created an unlimited market for those wishing to sell their design services.

Some smart folks have built businesses around corralling and managing the introduction and design process and made buying and selling graphic design a snap. As with most innovations, these services have their detractors. The most vocal being some in the design community that feel this drives the price of quality design down and cheapens the value of great design. Whether this is true or not, the web has impacted most industries in a similar fashion. The ultimate answer usually comes from the market’s assessment of the greatest value.

The process in croutsourced design is that you describe a project (in the greatest, brand oriented way you can) and designers in your chosen platform’s community compete for your project. In some cases the designers bid on your work, in others they submit designs in an effort to win a set award. Usually, you, the client, get multiple designs and alterations to work with on the way to a finished project.

The true strength, and possibly longevity, of these organizations lies in the professionalism of their design community. The one that keeps the designers the happiest wins.

The latest innovation in the industry is that your design competition can be open to public view if you choose. Some high profile brands have started to look to this model to get a design done in public view as a PR opportunity. Here’s an example of a public logo contest at 99 Designs and here’s a competition at crowdSPRING for a Tony Robbins web site design.

Here’s a run down of some of the croutsourcing design players that I’ve worked with:

LogoWorks – Actually LogoWorks, an HP company, wouldn’t really qualify as crowd driven in the same manner as these other three as they do offer your design project out for a bit of competition, but it’s a closed process with a fixed price.

99Designs – This was one of the first compete for an award players and has done a nice job putting designers and clients together at very affordable prices.

Elance – The first and biggest of the crowd sourcing community. Elance’s model is a bid for project model and certainly not just focused on design.

crowdSPRING – This is one of the newest players, but they seem to be capturing a lot of buzz and some pretty high profile projects. (I interviewed crowdSPRING cofounders Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson for an episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast – click to listen or right click and Save As to download.)

Image credit: maraie