I have an important point to clarify. While I’m 100% bought into the idea of creating systems and processes in a business and advocate it constantly, there is one HUGE inherent flaw in that thinking: assuming that systems run themselves. Any time you have a human being involved...
In one of my favorite books, Harry Beckwith’s What Clients Love, is this story: NICE IS NOWHERE. You do NOT want everyone to like what you do. Ian Schrager created a revolutionary chain of elite hotels. His properties are to hotels what Salvador Dali paintings are to art...
We are about to head into another recession, and most MSPs will be looking to cut costs, including marketing (they look at it as an expense not an investment – but correct marketing will always be an investment). A recession is the ideal time for growing your MSP,...
[NOTE: This was originally an article published in the Marketing Strategy Brief a year ago. I decided to share it here because it is just as relevant today (if not more so) than when I first wrote it. While many things have changed since it was first written...
There’s an old sales joke about a hotshot sales guy sitting down with a little old lady to sell her a new heater. He tells her all about how the heater is made in America and has the highest-quality ratings for efficiency and safety, about the BTUs, construction,...
From AdWeek: 62% of small businesses see NO return on their investment in Facebook. From Forbes: 44% of businesses can’t even measure social media ROI. Despite this, according to a survey from the Manifest, 63% of small businesses plan on increasing their spend on social media (!). One...
Recently a number of questions have come in about how to go about prospecting right now. Some (most) feel it’s a very, very bad idea. I’m not so sure. Yes, I do think you have to be more strategic and careful…but stop? Hell no. At the time I’m...
As the casualties on the business battlefield start to pile up with the sudden forced cessation of business by the government, restaurants are taking a hit and many are closing their doors, never to reopen. However, in the midst of all this, one Seattle restaurant owner is THRIVING,...
As Ogilvy famously said, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.” John Caples wrote, “If the headline is poor, the copy will not be...
Much of our society incorrectly describes small business owners as “entrepreneurs.” But as Gerber famously pointed out, most entrepreneurs are not entrepreneurs at all – they’re technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure. Nothing is truer in our industry, where most (roughly 80%) are self-employed with helpers, generating under...
