Small Business Advice

New Year's Resolutions, Anyone?

It's that time of year when many of us turn to making New Year's Resolutions (or setting goals as we call it in business).

So what are yours?

As part of my goals this year, I'm reaching out to my clients more frequently and asking them what resources I can provide to help them reach their own goals. That means that every client who asks gets help from me in some way.

I've told all of the recipients of my weekly sales newsletter that they can post a comment on this blog, tell me what their goals are for 2009 and I will send them a personal reply with a list of resources to help them there.

I'm making the same offer to you.

Tell me what you want to accomplish in 2009 and I'll send you a list of resources (books, videos, seminars, people) that I know will move you along your journey.

So, what do you want to do this year?

Someone Loves Us!

My heart always does a little dance when I read a review of our book and someone says it changed their life.

Here is the latest one.

The Oldest Sales Trick: How Bernie Madoff Got Savvy Investors To Invest With Him

It's all over the news. Former NASDAQ-head and hedge fund manager, Bernie Madoff, stole as much as $50 billion (yes, with a "b") from investors in a giant Ponzi scheme.

What makes this story so amazing is not that he was a crook, but that the majority of his investors were some of the wealthiest people in the country; people who should have been able to spot a scam a mile away.

So how did old Bernie convince them to invest in his fund while at the same telling them he absolutely wouldn't disclose his investment strategy. They simply had to trust him.

He used the oldest sales trick in the book.

It's called the take-away and it works like this.

First, you create some sort of marketing that attracts prospects to check our your offering. In Madoff's case he signed up a few high-profile clients and used them to approach other wealthy individuals.

When the new prospects inquire into your product or service, you tell them how wonderful it is. If they express any resistance at all to buying, you tell them they can't have your offering. You take it away from them, usually while telling them that they aren't qualified in some way to have it.

In Madoff's scam, when a potential new investor asked about his fund, he essentially told them that they weren't savvy enough, rich enough or elite enough to get in. Imagine what happens when you tell an incredibly successful, competitive, rich person "No."

These folks are used to people sucking up to them and when they heard that they weren't "good enough" to participate in Madoff's fund, their egos kicked in and they chased Madoff, essentially begging him to let them in.

Of course, once in, they needed to tell everyone they were "the chosen ones" and then offer to see if they could get their friends in the fund.

It was simply brilliant. Maddoff played on the strongest traits of the strongest people - ego and competitiveness.

And it worked.

Some of the world's savviest investors poured billions into a fund that defied all logic AND about which they had absolutely no information.

Sadly, for the investors, they were wiped out. Their greed and egos were fed by a snake-oil salesman and they got hammered.

It's a great lesson for the rest of us though.

First of all, while the take away strategy works in sales, it is unethical and will shoot you in the foot in the long run.

And second of all, read the fine print if you are an investor. If you don't get any fine print, take your money and run.

Can Your Clients Find You In The Pile?

In reading a recent WSJ article about network neutrality (you really should read it, too; it will scare the daylights out of you), I came across this graph

It shows that in North America we send and receive 11,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information online EACH MONTH.

That is a 4x increase over 2006.

How much of that 11 million million MB of info is yours?                   

This is a good illustration of why you should be paying attention to blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. in addition to having a super website and email strategy. The world is looking for you. Can they find you in the pile?
 

Dumbest Tagline I've Seen In Awhile

I've been traveling again and when I do I often read the local newspapers and such.

This past trip was to a beautiful area of Kentucky. As I was waiting for my dinner to be served, I read the local free handout that was stacked beside the cash register.

In it was the following tagline for a used car lot:

"We specialize in vehicles that make sense."

Huh? What the hell does that mean? Can someone explain that to me?

While we are on the subject of dumb taglines, if you come across any, please share them with me! I love to hear this stuff!

Why I Love To Fly

Okay, so my latest flight didn't start out too well. My flight out of Richmond was delayed 90 minutes and since my layover was only 30 minutes, I had to rebook through another airport. I ended up adding 4 hours to my original plans but, as always, it was worth it.

My favorite thing about flying is the perspective it gives me. I have a tendency to be a little intense and to worry about the future too much. I am an incessant planner and I am constantly playing out all the possibilities for the future in my mind.

As you may have guessed, it can be exhausting and not very productive.

Flying frees me from that.

At 36,000 feet above the ground I am reminded just how small a part of the world I am and how insignificant my "problems" are. Locked in a tin tube with 200 strangers, there is no economy, no news, nothing to worry about at all. I have time to count my blessings rather than map out solutions to problems that don't exist.

It's a great time to relax, listen to a good book or some soothing music and reassess my priorities.

If the world is worrying you right now, may I suggest booking a flight to someplace fun, even if just for the time you get to spend in the air. It could be the best gift you give yourself this year.