Posted by business901 on November 7, 2011
USERS, NOT CUSTOMERS
Forrester predicts that by 2012 half of all consumer purchases will either be transacted online or driven by online research and word of mouth. To succeed in the digital marketplace, it’s no longer customers that matter most, but users—anyone who interacts with your company digitally. Keep users happy, and customers follow.
The Business901 Podcast guest, Aaron Shapiro CEO of digital agency HUGE in Users, Not Customers: Who Really Determines the Success of Your Business
, shows why today’s most critical driver of success is usability excellence.
"Today’s most successful companies organize their business around users and building user satisfaction," writes Shapiro. To make users your growth engine for your customer base and for your entire organization, Shapiro introduces a comprehensive approach to refocusing every aspect of your operations on users including sales, marketing, HR, and organizational structure.
Based on his experience helping some of the world’s biggest brands evolve to meet the challenges of rapidly changing technology and evolving consumer habits, Shapiro outlines the seven things every company needs to change in order to survive in a digitally driven economy. Shapiro's analysis also includes a study of the Digital Leadership Set - companies in the Fortune 1000 that most effectively utilize digital across all aspects of their business. These companies, including Best Buy and Zappos, attract customers by providing appealing digital experiences. And they're rewarded with rising stock price and performance. You'll learn how digital leadership has brought huge profits to companies large and small including:
You don’t need to be a techie to master a user-first management philosophy. You just need to accept that the people who interact with your company online are what's most important.
Related Information:
It’s the Who, not the Why @simonsinek
It’s not about the things we make, it’s how we use the things we make
The Zappos Culture Defined!
Do you understand where demand comes from?
Posted by business901 on October 31, 2011
One million new users per month. Twenty-three check-ins per second. Millions of people—in every city, in every country, on every continent, and even from the Space Station—are vying to become mayors of their favorite shopping locations. What is foursquare and why has it become the hottest customer magnet ever conceived? Internationally bestselling author Carmine Gallo not only has had unprecedented first-hand access to foursquare’s founders, he also has interviewed dozens of business owners and marketers who have revolutionized their businesses through The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers to Check In Wherever They Are
.
About: CARMINE GALLO is the communications coach for the world's most admired global brands. A former anchor and correspondent for CNN and CBS, Gallo has addressed executives at Intel, Cisco, Google, Medtronic, Pfizer, and many others. Gallo writes My Communications Coach, a regular column for Forbes.com. He has written several internationally bestselling and award-winning books, including The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Carmine Gallo may be found online at www.carminegallo.com.
Related Information:
Carmine Gallo's Books
Developing a winning Culture the Zappos way!
Spontaneous Marks help you think – Doodling
Five Secrets of Finding Clients
Posted by business901 on October 24, 2011
My guest on the podcast Joseph Michelli takes you through the Zappos company culture now and maybe the future. Joseph’s latest book, The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW has generated my interest on the relationship of employee and customer experience as demonstrated in my blog post, Is Zappos the Next Toyota?. We discussed this and the Zappos approach that Michelli breaks into five key elements:
- Serve a Perfect Fit—create bedrock company values
- Make it Effortlessly Swift—deliver a customer experience with ease
- Step into the Personal—connect with customers authentically
- S T R E T C H—grow people and products
- Play to Win—play hard, work harder
Against all odds this online business (known primarily for selling shoes in a playful and emotionally engaging ways) has revolutionized social media strategies, developed an environment which has earned it a consistent spot in the top ten of Fortune Magazine’s best places to work, created zealous fans, and attracted Amazon.com as a purchaser for more than 1.2 billion dollars. It’s time to integrate (not balance) work and fun. It’s time to benefit from the unique and effective customer employee and customer engagement techniques of Zappos!
Joseph A. Michelli, Ph.D., is an internationally sought-after speaker, author, and organizational consultant who transfers his knowledge of exceptional business practices in ways that develop joyful and productive workplaces with a focus on the total customer experience. His insights encourage leaders and frontline workers to grow and invest passionately in all aspects of their lives. Dr. Michelli has been recognized by Focus as “one of the top five Customer Service Influencers to Track in 2011.”
Related Information:
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When Efficiencies and Innovation no longer work, is Customer Centricity the answer?
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Posted by business901 on July 4, 2011
Beth Goldstein, Founder and CEO is an author, consultant, trainer and founder of Marketing Edge Consulting Group, she has empowered hundreds of entrepreneurs to successfully grow their companies. We discussed her newest book, Lucky By Design: Creating Real Opportunities that Empower Your Business coming out this fall. 
Beth‘s special talents is helping companies gain an understanding of how their customers think, what they value and what influences their purchasing decisions. She then applies this knowledge to create targeted sales and marketing programs that drive revenue growth while increasing profitability and customer loyalty.
Her first book, The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Toolkit: All the Tips, Forms, and Strategies You'll Ever Need!
is used in 30+ cities around the U.S. to teach business owners the critical skills they need to accelerate growth.
Are You Lucky In Business?
TAKE HER 5 MINUTE SURVEY &
RECEIVE OVER $75 IN VALUABLE BUSINESS TOOLS FOR SHARING YOUR OPINION
(You will be re-directed to Beth’s site.)
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Posted by business901 on May 23, 2011
Whether we call it PDCA Lean Startup, Agile or Scrum. author Peter Sims believes this shift from slow, calculated execution to rapid, low-risk iteration has fundamentally remade business. His book, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries
explores how companies are using these ideas to achieve big things. Peter provides examples from Kid Rock to General Motors in an enjoyable and easy read. However, when you look under the hood Little Bets is grounded in an amazing amount of research. 
In the Business901 podcast, I had the opportunity to speak with Sims about the concept, and how it related and differed from the typical PDCA methodology. The relationship of iteration and Lean by Doing is very apparent and the author feels that the Lean community is on the verge of some remarkable breakthroughs at their next level of performance.
Peter Sims is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He was the coauthor with Bill George of the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek bestselling book True North
. His articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Tech Crunch, The Financial Times, and as an expert blogger for Fast Company.
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Posted by business901 on May 16, 2011
Wouldn't it be great to be able to connect all your marketing activities to their impact on sales revenue? Wouldn't it be great to remove the guesswork from your marketing? Over the last 20 years, Guy Powell of demand ROMI has done just that in senior level sales & marketing across the globe both on the client and consulting sides.
Guy is a marketing measurement expert and has been measuring the effectiveness of social media right from the start. Guy states, “We can’t measure the effect of social media as a stand-alone media. Social media has a unique impact on consumer behavior but we need to realize that it also affects the impact of traditional media and traditional media impacts the effect of social media.” Our podcast discusses the interaction between the two.
P.S. Very tempted to make an A3 out of this!!!
Guy’s Books include:
ROI of Social Media: How to Improve the Return on Your Social Marketing Investment
Marketing Calculator: Measuring and Managing Return on Marketing Investment
Return on Marketing Investment
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Why does sales and marketing operate to a different quality standard?
The Future of Marketing is Lean
Posted by business901 on February 28, 2011
From the McGraw-Hill Press Release:
Social Media. Brand Collaboration. Content aggregation. Microblogging. User-generated content. And the list goes on… It’s been said that business is in the midst of the customer-centric marketing revolution—a trend which points toward business treating brands less like “property” and more like an extension of an organization’s values. The upshot is this: Smart companies are finally figuring out how peoples’ desire to participate is becoming a key driver of marketing success. But to be a winner in this environment, businesses have to fill this need and at the same time compete for consumers’ increasingly scarce time and shrinking attention spans. More complicated still, companies have to do all of this while also earning consumers’ trust.
The secret to connecting with consumers in a fragmented, chaotic marketplace, then, lies in how businesses collaborate with customers. 
Mike Dover, co-author of the book, WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace
was interviewed on the Business901 Podcast and though we did not cover every topic above, we certainly touched upon how you go about engaging customers, creating experiences and building communities – FROM A BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE.
Mike is Managing Partner of Socialstruct Advisory Group. As Vice President, Research Operations, for New Paradigm (Moxie Insight), he led the operations for research programs for the bestselling books Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital. He also has provided review support for more than a dozen other books.
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Quality and Collaboration eBook
Online collaboration is leading the way for Lean Marketing
Posted by business901 on January 31, 2011
Sample the first 2 minutes of this podcast. This is a tool-less conversation about social media. We actually started out the podcast with me commenting on the title and telling Francois that when I first picked it up, I thought, yes another book on social media which led to this comment:
Francois: I think a lot of people are like that. I wish we wouldn't have had the subtitle that says it's a competition by leveraging social media, because that's what people think: "Ugh, there's another social media book," and it's so not a social media book, it's really a business book.
In The Hyper-Social Organization: Eclipse Your Competition by Leveraging Social Media
, Francois Goissieaux of Human 1.0 and Ed Moran of Deloitte identify how (and which) social media are fundamentally changing core business processes and the way businesses and customers interact. These changes are being driven by what the authors call the “Hyper-Social Shift.”
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Posted by business901 on November 12, 2010
Ed Muzio, president and CEO of Group Harmonics was my guest on the Business901 Podcast and we had a great discussion on how to Make Work Great (Super Charge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture, and Gain Influence One Person at a Time). 
He is a leader in the application of analytical models to group effectiveness and individual enjoyment. This is a must listen for Kaizen Leaders and participants. Great tips and tools that can be instantly implemented. I was very impressed on his ease of explanation and mastery of the subject. 
The author of the award-winning book Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want
(FT Press, 2008), Ed was originally trained as an engineer. He has started organizations large and small, led global initiatives in technology development and employee recruitment, and published articles and refereed papers ranging from manufacturing strategy to the relationships between individual skills and output. His analytical approach to human productivity has been featured in national and international media, including CBS, Fox Business News and The New York Post; he is a regular guest on CBS Interactive. With clients ranging from individual life coaches to the Fortune 500, he serves as an advisor and educator to professionals at all levels, all over the world.
A Cornell University graduate, Ed's accomplishments include the creation and stewardship of a worldwide manufacturing infrastructure program, a nationally-recognized engineering development organization, and a non-profit organization providing residential services to at-risk youth in his home town of Albuquerque, NM.
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what I learned about Kaizen and Agile from Pixlar
Posted by business901 on March 22, 2010
Kanban just seems too simple to be that effective,
Posted by business901 on March 22, 2010
Kanban just seems too simple to be that effective, or is that the beauty of it?
Listen to Jim Benson discuss the intricacies of not only Personal Kanban but how Kanban can be used effectively within industry. Jim was seldom lost for words as you will see and his passion of the subject is obvious. 
Jim Benson incorporates his background in cognitive psychology, government, and management to build community through policy and technology. His company, Modus Cooperandi, helps organizations change through the application of Lean principles, Agile methodologies, and social media. He is also the developer of the productivity tool Personal Kanban, an adaptation of industrial kanban which helps individuals and small teams actualize. His book on Personal Kanban, which applies Lean thinking to daily living, will be out in Spring 2010.
Jim says, "Personal Kanban is an idea that arose from necessity. I began a personal kanban prior to starting Modus Cooperandi, but it didn’t translate as cleanly from the programming and industrial world as I would have liked. It wasn’t until one day when Corey Ladas and I sat down and really started to talk about the differences between industrial kanban and personal kanban that things really started to gel."
Posted by business901 on September 5, 2009
I had Chad H. Pollitt on the Business901 podcast discussing the effects of Social Media on SEO and what it can do for you. Chad has a unique view on what he terms successful SEO. He is not after achieving #1 or #2 ranking on Google for his customers, he is after achieving the entire 1st page for his customer. Listen to the podcast and find out some SEO tips on how you might be able to start on this path. Also we discussed, Chad's upcoming workshop on September 24th, 2009. Chad will be holding the Fort Wayne Chamber Business Brown Bag on "Cost Effective Marketing Using Social Media." If you are thinking of participating in a workshop on social media, this podcast is a good listen on how to evaluate Social Media workshops.
Chad H. Pollitt list of accomplishments include Internet Marketing Masters Certification from the University of San Francisco's prestigious School of Business and Management, BS in Entrepreneurship from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. He has won multiple awards in sales/marketing and sales management while working and residing in Fort Wayne, IN. Chad is also a Lieutenant in the Indiana Army National Guard and a decorated veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Chad currently works for Digital Hill Multimedia, Inc. as a Web Technology Consultant and Internet Marketing Manager and will be featured in The Wall Street Journal Sept. 16th.
Digital Hill Multimedia, Inc. was founded in 1997 as a web design agency with a focus on providing professional website solutions for businesses while helping them promote their business to the vast global audience on the Internet. Now with a more diverse clientele and with clients nationwide, Digital Hill Multimedia has grown to become a full-service Internet Marketing Agency.
Disclaimer: I do not employ or have any affiliation with Digital Hill Multimedia but thought that their ideas about Social Media and SEO were interesting. By the way, if you do not think you can own an entire page on Google, do a search for "Fort Wayne Marketing Coach."
