What would Brian Tracy do? Here’s a business coaching conundrum for you…

This week’s coaching challenge is being led by Brian Tracy Certified Business Coaching Professional Jim Flemming, from New Brunswick, Canada.

Jim is a seasoned business professional with a broad range of business experience at the Profit and Loss level.  With more than 30 years experience developing sales, operations and organizational teams and infrastructure, his expertise lies in his ability to take underperforming assets and nurture them to greater profitability.

Here is Jim’s response to this week’s FocalPoint Business Coaching Challenge:

“How to bring your clients onboard and online: introducing new media marketing tools to old businesses.”

“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where….“, said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

As we move into discussions with our clients about growing their business, we inevitability become the “Cat” and ask, in our own way, “what do you really want (Perfect Customer) and where do you want to go? (To Find and Connect with this Perfect Customer)”

With the basic foundational corner stones in place:

• What business I am I really in
• Our Perfect Customer defined
• Our Unique Selling Proposition neatly packed into our Elevator Speech

We are now ready to start developing our marketing strategy.

One of best ways I have learned to put together a marketing strategy is by using Brian Tracy’s concept of the 10 Pillar Parthenon. Identifying the 10 ways you are going to communicate with all the levels of your Sales Funnel - Suspects, Connects or Community, Leads, Prospects, Customers and ultimately “Clients”.

The challenge today for mature or older businesses is fitting the new media marketing tools into and complimenting their current Marketing Parthenon. The wise and time-tested old rules still apply.

All of our businesses live with limited resources – time and money. Therefore it is extremely important to work with our business owners as they select all of their marketing media – we must always, always think target…100% TARGET!

      Does their media choice connect with their perfect customer?

• Where in their Sales Funnel is the connection being made? What do they really want? (Suspects, Leads) What do they need? (Prospects, Customers) What is connection time line to move the connection through their Sales Cycle? 
• Is their message appropriate to the channel – content and permission to sell or connect?
• Do they have the processes in place to work with the connection they have made to respond in an effective and timely fashion?
• Are they committed to invest in this media channel? Time and resources for repetition, learning and improving, and building their brand.

With the “Six Pixels of Separation” as my reference, I will look very briefly at some, but certainly not all, of the new media choices and which questions we may want to ask our business owners to zero in on.

• Website /Display Advertising/e-mail marketing Where does our business owner want to connect in their Sales Funnel?
• Lead? Educate and call to action like the “Yellow Pages”;
• Connects? Build their community;
• Prospects? Provide proposals to their problems;
• Customers? To be transactional in nature;
• Clients? Build loyalty. 

More importantly are they prepared to invest time and money on processes to respond to their Sales Funnel target? 

• Search Engine Marketing Is this where their Perfect Customer frequents? Do they have the processes in place to respond? What is this cost of “Lead” acquisition compared to other media and their current costs? 
• Blogs/Twitter/Podcasts Is this where their Perfect Customer frequents? Where in the Sales Funnel is the connection being made? Is the message appropriate? Are they committed to the investment of time and what’s the expected return on their Investment?
• Online Social Network/ LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace Is the message appropriate –content and permission? Is this where their Perfect Customer frequents? Where in the Sales Funnel is the connection being made? Return on Time invested?  Commitment? These channels are more about building trust and paving the way for future relationships than input into your Sales Funnel.

The list of choices for your business owners is growing each day. No matter what your client’s Marketing Parthenon choices are, follow the Lombardi Rules “ …is that we will try to do what we do best. We…will go with our strengths. We will be brilliant on the basics!”