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Marilynn Deane Mendell
President
WinSpin CIC, Inc.
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Business Development
Enjoy my "Leading the Charge for New Business" talk which I recently gave at the AIA National Convention held in Denver this year. Thank you to each of the 450 who attended and to the AIA for the wonderful opportunity to share my expertise. I have provided both the video and the Power Point. Lesson Learned: Ask a lot of questions. I should've asked if the slide show would be part of the video. When the AIA filmed me in the morning session the next day, I was all alone with the camera crew. They hooked up my Power Point, they filmed me giving my talk, and they never told me that my Power Point would not be incorporated into my video talk. Smile. Assume nothing. That's why I'm providing the Power Point separately. To get the full impact of the presentation, two computers would be helpful with the Power Point on the left. Enjoy.
:)
If you have questions or comments, then feel free to email me at mmendell@winspincic.com and I have a free call-in hour Tuesdays through Thursdays at 10am by appointment.
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Marilynn Deane Mendell
AIA National Convention Denver 2013
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Elbow Grease
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Chicken Fat
I hope you'll enjoy my forthcoming book, "Elbow Grease + Chicken Fat," filled with more ways to win through great marketing and branding. It's a fun read, and I think it can help entrepreneurs build successful businesses. Over the years, I have built several businesses, and my hope is that some of that knowledge will help others.
As the once best and largest
off-premise caterer in Western New York, I have paired the business advice with my fabulous recipes to help cement the business concepts. My book conveys the American Dream: How anyone in this country can become whatever they want with hard work and a never-give-up attitude. Hence the title: Elbow Grease + Chicken Fat.
"Trust Marilynn Mendell's creative spirit to serve up valuable business strategies alongside everyone's favorite... food... and make it meaningful and delicious. Bon Appetit!"
- Cindy Allen
Editor in Chief
Interior Design Magazine
"Marilynn Deane Mendell's inspirational book is not only a HOW TO but a WHY NOT? - offering entrepreneurial ingredients for tasty meals, healthy businesses, and fruitful lives. Delicious food for thought!"
- Bill Cunningham
Television Producer,
Los Angeles
"Elbow Grease + Chicken Fat is hard to put down. I love the recipes, and Marilynn Deane Mendell has included many that I'd like to try. The accompanying words of wisdom--on growing a business and much more-- are just as valuable. Kudos to Marilynn for implementing a great idea! It was extremely movtivational"
- Diana Mosher
Editor in Chief
Multi-Housing News
Thank you.
www.winspincic.com/book.php
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Please follow me on:
Boston. New York. Pittsburgh. Washington, DC
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| Photo of Marilynn by Jessica Marcotte
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Track and Choose
If you have a new website, but it doesn't have analytics attached, then you're throwing your money down a rat hole. If you're sending out a Constant Contact newsletter and you never look at the reports, or have items linked to your site, or to interesting places, then go stand on a street corner with a sign and ask for new work. All of these electronic channels have outstanding support people and they provide excellent reports--if you know how to set them up and access them. If you've put all of your marketing resources into social media and you've ignored direct snail mail, then you think the buggy whip and the DoDo bird went out of existence in a year and you're wrong. Gorgeous well designed direct mail pieces get more recognition today BECAUSE so many people have shifted to electronic modes of advertising. If you're the principal of a firm and you never ask your CMO to show you regular reports with data and ROI from various sources, then you're a silly goose. If you aren't measuring your return from social media, speaking engagements, and marketing collateral, then you could be wasting huge amounts of time and money. Tim Kreider's article in The NY Times is a delightful commentary on how we blindly go forth and Tweet, speak for free, or spend inordinate amounts of time and resources posting on Facebook without calculating the return or totaling up the actual costs. If you're marketing to men and you haven't read about PLAYBOY's marketing campaign in AdAge, then you're missing some critical data. If your advertising rep hasn't explained where to place your ads to get the best bang for your bucks, then you might want to check out this article in ADWEEK. If your mailing list isn't growing and hasn't been cleaned in years, then this may reflect how you tend to your business development prospects overall. Not good.
What's the answer? Roger Martin (Dean at University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management) recently wrote Rethinking the Decision Factory for the Harvard Business Review where he asks you to consider a different approach to utilizing knowledge workers. Many would answer the statements above with, "I don't have time to learn how to find this or that data." or, "We're too busy to fiddle with details like mailing lists and ROI on social media. That's why we have a marketing director." Okay, I hear that, but if you don't know what to ask for in the form of a report or how to review the reports you do see, then hire someone who can evaluate your process and who can set up a plan to make sure your marketing dollars do get a return you can directly link to increased business.
Many of you reading this wouldn't be afraid to call in a consultant to review drawings, or a consultant to check for underground oil tanks, or a tax accountant to review a bookkeeper's process. You should do the same thing in this ever changing world of marketing. When marketing departments and principals are in the weeds with projects and looking for new business, sometimes it feels like well, at the very least a newsletter does go out or a new website does get designed. That's a false sense of security because all of the items I spoke about earlier can't be seen and that feeling of relief is tricking you to think that some kind of visibility and movement is occurring. If you have no clue how your search engine optimization (SEO) on your website is set up, then you might as well have a site that's invisible to the world if meta tags and back links aren't properly inserted. Oh, and they need to change every year or so depending on your projects and market sector targets.
There's a lot to consider. I know. And a few of you had really good intentions when you asked your marketing team to set up a social media channel for your company. You just didn't realize that it's a little bit more complicated and needs monitoring and tweaking.
After reading this article, get the reports, analyze the data from places where you advertise, and start making better choices. Ask yourselves, "Is it costing me $50K to have someone Tweeting or posting to Facebook with zero return?" You might then say,"Holy cow, I could advertise for $15K every year in three different places instead of doing Facebook posts. I know two jobs came from ads in...."
And you can trust your gut too. If print has been working, then stay there for the most part, and put 20% of your effort into electronic channels. Print is not dead. It may not be the place you ultimately might want to spend your hard earned cash, but if you aren't tracking your results, then you'll never know. If your open rate on Constant Contact is 3%, then you're either totally alienating people or maybe you're sending the newsletters out with the wrong kind of subject line. Once you do see what pages people are visiting on your website, either directly or after you've sent out a blast of any kind, then you can evaluate whether your information is attracting, for instance, new business or young recruits. If you only have 20 people following your company on Twitter, then close it down, or figure out a way to build relationships and send out information people will want to save or pass on to their pals. The back of the house for your website really does take an expert in SEO to set up and keep it current. You can't do everything in-house. There's a lot to look at, track, and then make choices.
Conclusion: Learn how to ask the right questions from your full time team. Make your advertising reps turn over better ROI.
If they're not coming up with increased great results or a plan to get you there, then get help and hire a consultant.
Thank you,
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Current Speaking Engagements:
I'll be sharing the limelight with Anice Hoachlander at Hoachlander Davis Photography to help people in our industry create better photo shoots and get terrific media coverage for their projects.
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Read More:
As a compliment to the business development video you might want to consider Dan Pink's recent book To Sell is Human.
Remember the average person reads one book a year.
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