3 Ways to Connect to Your Customers’ Buying Journey

Do you know where your online readers are in your typical customers’ buying journey? Inbound or content marketing on a business blog or website works to attract potential customers but it depends on how well you connect to customers at the right time with the right words that inspire action. Just as it’s important to […]

Buyer Personas – How to Develop for Better Marketing

Understanding who your customers are and what motivates them to buy means better marketing and more sales. It may seem silly, but actually outlining a sketch of who your ideal customer is can be beneficial in this situation. To learn more of what a buyer persona is check out this Wikipedia definition. Here are some suggestions for […]

Blog Strategies: Writing to Different Target Markets

How can you adjust your blog strategies if your business needs to reach different customer segments? Let’s say you sell accounting software to big businesses, small businesses and freelancers. Clearly, you wouldn’t want to send the same marketing message to all of these groups, as it can be confusing. Sending a mixed message turns off […]

Purposeful Leaders: Are you Part of the 40% or 10%?

Are you a purposeful leader? If so, you’re in the minority. According to a 10-year research project, only 10% of managers are purposefully engaged, highly focused and energetic. This is according to Heike Bruch’s and Sumantra Ghoshal’s study, published in A Bias for Action, (Harvard Business Press, 2004). “By its very nature, a manager’s job […]

Knowing vs Doing: Beware of Business “Busyness”

As a business leader, you know what to do, but are you actually doing it? Knowing vs doing becomes a struggle when day-to-day business requires triage – putting off some priorities in favor of others. Only about 10 percent of managers work purposefully to complete important tasks, according to a 10-year study of managerial behavior […]

Feedback from Employees: 3 Simple Questions to Ask

The first thing I do in any almost any new client engagement is survey their clients and employees. It’s critical to getting the information I need to get the results the client wants. It immediately tells me if the client is living their brand promise, if there are customer service issues that need to be […]

Accountability Plan: Making Priorities Real & Aligned

Let me ask you about your business: Do you have an accountability plan that people follow? Does everyone know what their priorities are? Is everyone aligned with their priorities, do they know why they are doing what they do? Why is it that we put so much energy into things that aren’t important, just to […]

Top Five Priorities: How to Grow Your Business

If your company is growing, it probably has well-established priorities. The organization that understands and acts upon its top five priorities is one that progresses and grows. As a business leader, how are you growing your company? You need to keep each person working in the company focused. It’s harder to do once a company […]

In Praise of More Meetings

What’s needed are more meetings. Everyone in any kind of growing company should be in some kind of five to 15-minute focused, purposeful meeting on a regular basis. Yes, I know everyone is busy, and we’ve learned to hate meetings. But not the kind of short and focused meetings I’m talking about. Even if it’s […]

Do You Work for a Good Boss or a Bad One?

Would you say you work for a good boss, or a bad one?Ask people about their bosses, and you’ll hear about the two types they’ve worked for: the ones they’ve loved and the ones they couldn’t wait to escape. When asked for a list of defining qualities, most people identify the following attributes, according to […]