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Marketing Personal Development

B2B Marketing: C-Suite Executive Briefings

Q&A: Cody Pearce, Chief Operating Officer of Nelson Schmidt, On An Evolution in B2B Marketing

The C-Suite Network hosts a monthly online event called Executive Briefings. Each event features an executive thought leader discussing a topic important to the C-Suite. Thomas White, CEO of C-Suite Network, hosts the event with a unique Q&A format. 

During one of our recent Briefings, Cody Pearce, chief operating officer of Nelson Schmidt, joined us to discuss the evolution and landscape, both present and future, of B2B marketing. Nelson Schmidt is a leader in helping companies and clients truly think about the marketplace and how they can engage with buyers in a way that’s really effective both to the top and bottom line.

If anybody has been around marketing they’ve heard a couple of terms: B2B and B2C. So when somebody is talking about business to business, or B2B, what does that really mean?

We talk a lot about the evolution of B2B marketing and to some extent the dissolving of B2B marketing. When we look out at some of the trends that we’re monitoring, we look at three things: One, the market landscape has really dynamically changed even over the last three to five years. Just about every business model has been significantly disrupted. There is a massive influx of information and information technology that is changing the way we do business – changing the way we go to market.

Secondly, the customer landscape – both demographically and the way the customer has been empowered – are dramatically different because of the evolution of tools and information. The empowered customer has changed the way we think about marketing.

Lastly, the B2B landscape is dramatically shifting. We’ve seen a disappearance of our trade with the BMA (Business Marketing Association) being absorbed by the AMA (American Marketing Association) and with our Trade Voice BtoB Magazine being absorbed by Advertising Age, for example. Those trends are real evidence for us that there is a tremendous shift taking place, and a movement towards the creation of a single community of marketers rather than a definitive distinction between B2B and B2C companies, brands, and marketers. That shift, for us, is an incredibly important one, and one that we’re making sure to pay close attention to so we can change our business and our business practices with it.

We certainly have seen these changes in the landscape, the kind of things that we all supported and helped build this market we call B2B are certainly evolving pretty rapidly. What is causing this change? What is going on in the customer space that’s having this change come about?

What we look at, first and foremost, is the emergence of new channels and the access to information for customers that just hasn’t been there until the last three to five years in the way that it is today. That is changing the way the customers get information. It’s changing their ability to be much more intelligent and informed, and it’s forcing companies and marketers to think less about the product or solution they offer – a business or commercial audience versus a consumer one – and to think more about the journey and the considered purchase process of their customers. We need to evolve with these changing demographics, market landscape changes, and emergence of new tools and channels.

You talk about the change in how we market, but this question of the evolution of B2B to considered purchases isn’t really just an issue for marketing folks. It’s really an issue for all the C-Suite, isn’t it?

It really is. I think the changes that we’re starting to describe, and the trends that we’re looking at, it changes how we do business. It changes how we connect with customers. It changes, perhaps, how we go to market and make money. For us, as an agency, and as a considered purchase marketing agency, it means thinking differently about the way that we help our customers from the executive office all the way through the commercial marketing teams and into the sales organization. So it does affect our client’s businesses literally from top to bottom in the way that they do business.

You’ve used this term a few times called considered purchase, what does it mean?

It simply means that rather than defining marketing as business-to-business or business-to-consumer, we are defining our practice of marketing around the idea of the level of consideration we see that customers make before making a purchase choice. Considered purchases are complex and have a great deal of emotional and financial risk and reward.

So you aren’t getting this idea because you sit around a room. You go out and talk to folks and find out from them what they’re seeing.

That’s absolutely right. It’s not just about coming up with a new term for the sake of having something catchy to talk about next. It really is about re-inventing the way that, as an agency, we’re beginning to practice and the way that we solve problems for our customers.

When we talk to marketers, what we’re hearing are a couple of emerging trends. Number one, we hear that there’s a lot more focus around the consideration for purchase of those goods or services. It’s less about B2C and B2B, and it’s more about the level of consideration a customer has to make before making a purchase choice. We also find that the marketers probably feel less informed, especially as business models change and are disrupted. We begin to then shape our conversation around the purchase journey, around the consideration required, and the consequence and complexity tied to a brand choice to define the way that we practice.

For example, if we start to look at and map different categories of products and services along a spectrum of consequence and complexity, we can start to draw a line differently than traditional B2B and B2C lines have been drawn in the past. There’s kind of a convergence and a similarity now between the process someone may go through when choosing a banking alternative or a college choice, and very much being able to connect that to what a capital equipment purchase might look like. That journey looks very similar regardless of a consumer or a business target audience or offering. 

Do you think because we have had these distinctions of B2B, B2C, and so forth that we have failed to really understand what you call the customer journey and how the sales funnel really works?

Yes, and marketers tell us that. They’re starting to question the traditional sales funnel and rethink the way that customers, in a more informed setting along a path of highly considered purchase, are moving through that funnel in a less linear fashion. Instead, they are coming in and out of it much more rapidly, and carrying forward with them preconceived choices based on the level of information available to them. As we look at the customer journey in the highly considered purchase path, it forces us to rethink the sales funnel and how we engage with the customer to affect their choices.

Let’s talk about the customer journey. How do you help people map that out?

We actually give a lot of credit to a company called Adaptive Path. We found some very compelling tools that this organization had developed. They are a thought leader in the space of customer experience, and they make available to us, and this is public domain, a great set of tools that we’re beginning to use to provide structure to mapping out the customer journey.

The tools help us look at the stages a customer goes through, whether it’s in a business-to-business or business-to-consumer setting. We then can map those stages out from decision, through research and shopping, into buying and consumption — all the way down to using and feeding back into the loop their experience.

Not only does this allow us to look at the functional aspects of what customers are doing, but it lets us explore the emotional aspects of what customers may be thinking, feeling, and experiencing at each of the stages of the journey. That allows us, ultimately, to provide some guiding principles and seek opportunities for where we can be most effective with the right content, at the right time, through the right channel, as we begin to map this more comprehensively. 

By mapping this out we know what to do when.

That’s right. It’s about what to do when. It’s about what channels to use. It’s about having some predictability in the work that we do to the outcomes that we’re trying to measure. This allows us to set up analytics and KPIs around our marketing programs to know that the investment is working as best as it can.

We begin to apply this as simply and as informally as a brainstorming session. We literally project it up on a wall for a post-it note session with our media and public relations and digital teams. We also take it very formally into the way that we scope and manage comprehensive annual campaigns.

Through this modeling we can start to look at the tools and the modes of communication. We can look at what customers are functionally doing, thinking, and feeling at each individual stage. We can much more intelligently then shape our messaging, our creative strategies, our channel mix, and investment in a way that we know is going to be most effective and optimized.

This guideline has given us a great framework to start looking at both consumer and commercial purchase cycles and building intelligent plans that use a modern set of tools in the most effective way.

What is the “Zero Moment of Truth”?

Zero moment of truth is something that has been talked about for a few years. This is the ultimate point in time in the customer journey of where they decide and make a final decision. It’s that moment of truth where we can start to look at the first moment of truth – that is when a customer narrows down its final set of consideration brands – and the zero moment of truth when they actually go from the shopping and evaluation to the choice. They have made a critical decision.

This model that you’re using is a considered purchase model. This could apply to what has traditionally been thought of as a business to business or a business to consumer orientation.

Yes, it doesn’t matter for us. For example, laundry machines. A laundromat owner may be considering replacing equipment in his or her store, or a homeowner may be looking to replace the washer and a dryer in their home. Both are highly considered purchases.

For both of those scenarios, we can map those purchase journeys. We start to model very closely the tools, the channels, the content, and the delivery of what we do as marketers to affect their choices.

We’ve got this picture of the customer journey. Is this it or is there more?

No, there’s more. Obviously this is one step towards them building an effective brand and communications plan and strategy. The example that we will use here is connected to that laundry store owner. How it impacts what we then do as marketers can come in three ways and shapes. 

Number one is this has dramatically impacted the way we are shaping and delivering our creative and message strategy that we’re using. We have typically focused heavily on the promotion of our functional benefits. We talk a lot about the value proposition. We talk about promoting features and benefits of a solution.

Now having gone through these exercises, it has completely changed that mindset for us. It lowered the purpose and the role of the equipment and it heightened the emotional feeling of risk and of challenge and connecting it to a broader set of solutions that our brand can deliver. In this case we talk about financing. We talk about construction services. We talk about the business that they’re running and the impact we can have on improving that business. We connect emotionally through digital platforms by showing and telling through much deeper engagement how that is happening, and what other customers are feeling, and how they can connect. The first impact it’s having is changing the way we build our message and creative strategies and the mix that we use. 

The second thing is these individual moments of truth. The great news is that marketing automation, programmatic media, CRM and other marketing techniques have dramatically improved our ability to intelligently hone in on this and very predictably insert the right content at exactly the right moment through the right channel, and keep that engagement to make sure that we are a part of that zero moment of truth. It has really changed the way that we bring automation and use technology to deliver our content in a much more sophisticated and predictable way.

Lastly, it lets us build metrics that are a little bit different than the traditional KPIs of a marketing program. We can not only look at the things that are typical in the funnel in terms of impressions and the things that we usually have looked at as marketers. It starts to help us really hone in and drill down on activities where are we seeing engagement. Getting this in real time and connecting it down to the sales funnel, in terms of active deals and closed opportunities, lets us measure in real time how impactful our message, our mix, and our strategies are at being part of that consideration set.

Those three things to us as marketers are incredibly powerful. What we’re saying and when. How it is being delivered. The way that we hone in predictably on the behavior of consumers at exactly the right time. Then the visibility to measure that along the way to affect our decisions. Those are the three big ones for us.

What does all this mean to how we measure marketing effectiveness? It seems like we have a whole new way to look at things that are much more clearly tied to the sales results we’re producing.

Yes, that is probably the most important question marketers are asking themselves. They are looking at their investments and seeing pressure from the C-Suite in terms of what am I getting, what should I invest, and how are we performing. We owe it to ourselves as marketers – and frankly as an agency committed with a tagline of “we deliver customers” – we have to back that up with evidence.

We’re starting to talk about engagement versus the quantity of impression. Where we typically are thinking a lot about the top of the funnel in terms of impressions, awareness, and perception, and attitude measure – that matters and we care about it, but we also have to know what impact that is having on the quality of engagement – from the engagement of consideration, to ultimately the choice. Being able to connect that from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel literally in terms of active deals through visibility in CRM and a connection to our customer sales teams, is critically important.

What does somebody do if they want to start bringing in this understanding of the customer journey in a considered purchase way but they don’t have a large budget? Where do they invest their money?

Frankly, what I would encourage is to go through the process I discussed earlier — go through a process of mapping the customer journey. Go through a process of truly, intimately understanding what your customers are going through in making their choices in a highly considered decision. Zone in on the areas where you feel you can affect that first and final moment of truth to bring your brand into consideration, and dominate and own that area of your marketing investment.

Regardless of the size of budget, being thoughtful about the approach and careful about the measurements can help you determine the right thing to do at any investment level.

Moving forward, what do people do?

We are hypothesizing here – based on the trends we’ve talked about and the evolution and witness of our B2B trade dissolving, we believe there’s an evolution taking place. We believe that organizing the way we practice around considered purchase versus B2B and B2C is a meaningful path. We believe that the playbook, the way that we deliver, should be centered on the mapping of that customer journey in a much more modern way with the use of the most sophisticated tools we have available to us as marketers. 

We want to continue the dialogue. We want to continue to learn and listen to marketers. We want to invite everybody here to join in this conversation and debate. Let’s, as a community of marketers, regardless of B2C or B2B, begin to recognize truly how disrupted our space has become and how important it is for us to start moving in a direction to re-invent ourselves and redefine our impact in business value. That is critical for us and I think that is what we can all go forward thinking. We believe there is something relevant here for everyone to dig in with us.

You can learn more about Executive Briefings, watch other sessions and sign up for future events here.

 

Thomas White is the CEO of the C-Suite Network and the host of the nationally syndicated video program, Business Matters. This was taken from dialogue on C-Suite Executive Briefings.

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

Self-Expression: The Neuroscience of Co-creation

By Judith E. Glaser

I have yet to meet an executive, who joins a company to be ‘minimized,’ marginalized or to be intentionally held back from making a contribution.

We join a company to make a difference, to make a contribution, to be praised and rewarded.  We join a company to bring our voice to the table, and ‘lean into conversations’ so our voices join in the spirit of partnering with others to shape, create and Co-create the future.

Neuroscience is teaching us that ‘self-expression’ might be one – if not the most important ways for people to connect, navigate and grow with each other.

Validate View and Voice
Why might this be so? This experience suggests that something important happens inside of us when our view of the world is validated publicly—when our voice is heard and acknowledged, when we see we are not alone in our inner thoughts. This article is inspired by an experiment I ran over 25 years ago that created the impetus for the Birth of Conversational Intelligence® – how we use conversations to connect with others’ to share a common view of the world.

Case in Point!

When my children were in elementary school, I created a school project called Children’s World. I proposed that we gather the students’ stories and pictures, and compile them into a book and publish it. When I shared this idea with the principal and teachers, they got behind it and offered to help. And when I shared this idea with some parents, I soon had 20 volunteers. When we shared this idea with the 550 students. Within a few weeks we had all of their contributions.

As we began to compile the books, we put on the floor all of the contributions—everything from stories and pictures from the 5th graders to poems and pictures from 1st graders—and looked for how we could best combine them. During the creative process, something amazing happened. It was as if each child was sensing things around them and with their best abilities they could usher up, they shared their stories and pictures with others.

At the end of our pattern-seeking process, all of the art and stories came together into chapters organized by themes that emerged as we sorted. We found children’s stories from 1st grade to map into illustrations from children at a higher grade.  We found a local printer who printed enough for parents to buy for their children and others. The books sold out in the first two days, and we had to re-order them.

The teachers told us there was an upsurge of creativity during the years we published Children’s World. Other schools in our community heard about the project and began their own Children’s World project.

Later, we did a follow-up study, looking for possible connections that might show the impact of the projects on the children’s emotional, social and academic development. We found a positive impact from the few years we did the Children’s World projects—a direct correlation to the number of children who were accepted into top universities, measurably more than in the years before or after.


Self-Expression at Work
How to you drive self-expression in the workplace? How do you encourage speaking up? In what ways can people apply their talents to create the next generation products and services your company offers?

Conversational Intelligence (C-IQ) teaches us to see differently—to listen differently—and to process what we perceive differently. When we do that, we act in the moment in ways that create energy, activate energy, and help guide energy toward more productive and more powerful ends. C-IQ gives us tools for letting go of the past and transforming the future.

As you become transparent about your aspirations and intentions to co-create and also what threatens you—your fears and “stories” about what is going on—you feel a release inside. You gain the courage and a space to share your views without judgment. You could speak out and have a voice, and not be judged for how you are feeling. You have a chance to speak out and have your opinions valued.

You can reveal your inner thoughts and feelings to one another—to work on Transparency + Relationship together. You can talk about what is bothering you and what you aspire to create. You can move from a state of protection to partnering with others by being open to sharing and discovering their fears and aspirations.

Co-creating Conversations Bridge Realities
By stepping into one another’s shoes and listening without judgment, you trigger the prefrontal cortex (the executive brain) to access higher-level capacities, including how to handle gaps between reality and aspirations; how to access new thinking; and how to move into infinite thinking together and co-create new possibilities. Without this part of the brain activated, you tend to fall back into positional thinking and fight for your vested interests. You become more candid and caring and speak truth in trust, without triggering fear, creating the space for Shared success.

Breakthroughs occur, as you stay open to the possibility that you might discover ideas you have never thought of before. As you create a bonding experience (oxytocin rush), you start to open up new conversations about “what ifs.” You imagine new things that you might do together, fostering higher risk taking and openness. Co-creation opens the “infinite space” our minds need to be free to connect with others in new ways. Positioning, politicking, interpretation, drama, and negative storytelling give way to a sense of shared success and bonding that shapes new relationships.

Achieving greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of relationships, which depends on the quality of conversations. Everything happens through conversation. By grafting C-IQ rituals into your interaction dynamics, you will discover new doors opening up in your mind and in your reality.

Try These Experiments:

  • Think about how to craft an exercise like Children’s World in your organization,  team, or school.
  • Start a meeting by asking people to share a personal story and a business story that just happened that they are excited about—see how the meeting shifts.
  • In team meetings, you might share “What I respect about you and what I need from you.” This exercise helps you understand others, recognize strengths in others and prime one another for partnering and co-creation as you create openness, bonding, connectivity, and empathy for one another.
  • Collect success stories in teams and publish them—watch how the team spirit changes.
  • Publish success stories on your intranet. Ask people to include tips, and practices that underlay the success—watch how the C-IQ grows in your organization


Judith E. Glaser is CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc., Chairman of The Creating WE Institute, an Organizational Anthropologist, consultant to Fortune 500 Companies, and author of four best selling business books, including Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results (Bibliomotion). Call 212-307-4386 or visit www.conversationalingelligence.com; www.creatingwe.com; email jeglaser@creatingwe.com.

http://www.benchmarkcommunicationsinc.com/

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

Your Own Experience Is the Hardest Teacher (But Others’ Experience Is the Easiest)

By Jason Forrest, CEO, Head Coach Forrest Performance Group

What could you accomplish if you had unlimited brainpower and several lifetimes’ worth of experience to bring to bear on solving a problem? The truth is—you do have access to such unlimited power. And it’s not some pill you’ve seen in a science fiction movie. It’s in the people you know.  An effective mastermind group of peers—high level executives from a variety of industries—can be invaluable to your business.

Merriam-Webster defines mastermind as “a person who supplies the directing or creative intelligence for a project.” Wouldn’t it be amazing to have the chance to interact with and learn from someone who could provide this kind of leadership and know-how in an area that’s not exactly your sweet spot? Multiply that level of amazing by two, three, even eight, and you’ll get a sense of what a truly incredible, game-changing resource a mastermind group can be.

A mastermind group—a concept I first learned about from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill—is a place to share ideas, learn best practices, and benefit from others’ brains, experience, and belief systems. The book calls such a group “a coordination of knowledge and effort and a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of definite purpose.”

The benefits of such coordination have been invaluable to me personally. For a number of years, I’ve been part of a nine-person mastermind group of entrepreneurs. Each of the eight others in my group has contributed valuable insight that has helped me overcome challenges, specifically in the realms of HR, marketing, and financing.

Here’s how to start a mastermind group to reap similar benefits for your own business:

  1. Assess yourself. Consider all the tasks you’re responsible for and identify a few areas where you excel and a few where your skills could be sharper.
  2. Explore your network. See who you know or could get to know who likely has a strength you’d like to develop.
  3. Assemble the team. Pitch the idea when you meet with potential mastermind colleagues. Be up front—let them know what you’re looking for, and what you bring to the table.
  4. Share the wealth. Introduce connections to one another. Get the ball rolling by finding ways to support a new colleague using your unique strengths.

You now have the makings of a mutually-beneficial mastermind group. Here are a few experience-tested pointers to keep it going strong:

  • Don’t confuse your role within your company with your role in your mastermind group. In your own company, you’re a leader and likely seen as the mastermind. In contrast, your mastermind group should consist of peers—each with valuable expertise. No one is the leader, and your role is not to manage or be managed. It is simply to share experience.
  • Think outside the industry. You won’t get really varied skill sets or transparent best-practice sharing if your mastermind group consists of a bunch of people in your own industry. Look to other fields—banking, IT, medicine, nonprofit, government, etc.—for colleagues who can help you see things in a whole new way.

Assembling a mastermind group and staying in regular contact with its members will put each member in position to thrive—both professionally and personally. This kind of mutually-beneficial group is one of the best ways to take advantage of the “work smarter, not harder” mindset.

About the Author

Jason Forrest | CEO, Head Coach Forrest Performance Group As a sales professional, author, speaker, and sales coach, Jason’s job is to empower professionals and executives to unleash their human performance and master their leadership skills in sales, management, culture and service. Jason grew up under the influence of his father (a business owner and professional salesperson), his mother, (a persuasive speaking professor), and Zig Ziglar (his Sunday school teacher and world-famous salesperson/motivational speaker). Jason learned sales by selling rather than observing. These influences and experiences shaped him into who he is today-a salesperson first, a trainer on a mission, a national speaker, and a coach who pushes sales organizations to become the best version of themselves. Every year, Jason delivers approximately 92 keynotes/seminars and conducts 850 group coaching calls with sales teams, sales managers, and executives. See him in action at www.ForrestPG.com

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

Think You’re Ready for PR? Tips from Those Who Know

By Jennifer Fleming, President, TallGrass Public Relations

Whether you’re a newly formed start-up or a well-established brand or thought leader, you’ve probably thought about or dabbled in public relations.

No matter how great your marketing strategies are, there is nothing more credible than an effective PR campaign. So if you’re at the stage where you really want to build your business brand, then it’s time to start seriously considering hiring professional assistance.  

The TallGrass team consults with hundreds of clients each year in various phases of their marketing and PR strategy and programs. Some are at square one; others have worked with firms in their past or current companies.

But in order to make PR work, it boils down to three things: definitive goals, managed expectations and the right experts.

Know your goals and your bandwidth

Every new client at TallGrass participates in a strategic planning session – we won’t work with a client unless we do. Your PR firm should spend the time to understand your business. From your product roll-out schedule to growth opportunities, revenue models to target markets, asking the questions and understanding your business is critical to create messaging and stories that resonate. It drives the strategy to achieve your goals.

If you’re unclear about your goals, your mission and your 118/elevator pitch, get clear – fast. Without these guideposts, your PR team can’t begin to understand the parameters of what you’re trying to accomplish (and neither can your company!). A great firm should be able to ask the right questions, form a strategy and guide you in the right direction.

Not only do you need to be clear on your goals, but also your company needs to make PR an organizational commitment. Today, PR professionals outnumber journalists three to one. Requests for contributed content – content originated from your company or a “hired gun” content writer – are more and more common. PR will take time – yours and your firm’s. Are you prepared to drop everything for an interview or draft a thousand-word article?

“Make sure you know what to do with the results,” says Deane Barker, partner at Blend Interactive. “If you get a ton of speaking opportunities, can you fulfill them? How will you vet them? If sales leads come pouring in, do you have a process to manage them? Can you do anything with them? What results from PR is a raw asset that needs to be refined to have business value. Can you do this?”

If you want to be in the NYT, sleep with Paris Hilton

I’m kidding, sort of. Managing the expectations of our clients with the appropriate media outlets and journalists is an important part of what we do. Who wouldn’t love a placement in a major publication? But being everywhere is just as important. Having an arsenal of great coverage provides credibility and establishes you as a thought leader.

“It’s always nice to get a major media hit or article placement in a major national publication like USA Today. However, the real value is all of the smaller placements in industry magazines (print and digital) that focus on a target-specific audience,” says Shep Hyken, customer service expert, author and speaker. “While getting a spot on the ‘Today Show’ was great for my ego, the interviews and article placements in the industry publications were great for my business.”

Equally challenging and important in managing expectations is how to measure your ROI. Having a baseline of coverage from which to measure is great and can be helpful to define “we want X number of placements.” But PR is just part of the overall marketing mix.

“Don’t look at the ROI, it’s hard to measure and nearly impossible to see direct revenue,” says Mitchell Levy, Thought Leader Architect of THiNKaha. “What you are looking for is increased awareness leading to more opportunities for you and your team to engage with your future advocates. Those opportunities, if handled properly, will lead to significantly increased revenue.”

You’re hiring an expert for a reason

Companies can dabble with DIY public relations. But “it’s difficult to be consistent with pitching your business while you’re trying to run your company, too,” says Susan Solovic, small business expert, entrepreneur and author.

Just as you know your business inside and out, a PR professional can find the gems of your value proposition, messaging, product, service and company to tell your story.

But you have to be working with the right people. The ability to have open dialogue and to try a variety of tactics, to be flexible and agile creates a winning strategy.

“What worked in the past may not work in the future, and you want to be working with folks that you like, trust and are willing to try a number of techniques to be able to deliver the results you’re looking for,” Levy says.

A client once said to me, “Great PR is the ability to take chicken shit and make chicken salad.” Well said! You’ve hired an expert for a reason – now let them take the lead and let them do what they do best.

Jennifer Fleming is President of TallGrass PR, a global B2B public relations firm. She’s been known to follow shiny objects. Follow her at @jkfleming.

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

A Celebration Cocktail Each Executive Should Know How to Mix!

A Celebration Cocktail Each Executive Should Know How to Mix! 

By Judith E. Glaser

Great leaders identify, measure, recognize, and reward meaningful efforts and achievements—and celebrate often with the people involved.

Why should managers and leaders celebrate more?

Creating a feeling of celebration helps meet people’s needs for inclusion, innovation, appreciation, and collaboration. Our brains are designed to be social – and the need for human contact is greater than the need for safety. The research by Matt Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger, scientists at UCLA, has shown that feeling socially excluded activates some of the same neural regions that are activated in response to physical pain, suggesting that social rejection may indeed be “painful.”

Those companies practicing celebrations as part of their conversational rituals open up their employees to make them feel part of the company’s common success, enable them to have the confidence to challenge the status quo, take ambitious initiatives, and share their creative ideas with others.

How might the disciplined practice of celebration change the culture of a company?

From my study of The Neuroscience of WE™, and my work with executives, I know that celebration has a big impact on individuals, teams and companies.   It literally works wonders in the brain.

Scientists are learning that our brain is more changeable than we ever imagined—our brains exhibit neuroplasticity.  Our brain neurons can change their physiological properties in response to outside factors.  That is how babies develop and learn.  As we grow older we do not lose that ability to learn and modify our responses to things that happen.  In fact, we now know that a percentage of our genes, can be impacted by the environment – these changes, called epigenetic changes, are part of neuroplasticity as well – however they open up a whole new set of insights about the power of conversations to change fundamental and long lasting changes to our character – yes nurture is as or more powerful than nature!

The Ingredients of Healthy Celebration Cocktails
Neuroscience explains what impact you as a leader can have on healthy physical and emotional changes of your team by having positive celebrations and intelligent conversations.

  • Celebration Conversations elevate the level of such “feel good” chemicals as oxytocin and the endorphins – neuropeptides produced in the central nervous system. Their release into our system gives us a sense of well being, creating a safety space that enables us to experiment, take risks, learn and handle the challenges of growing the business.
  • Serotonin that is boosted by cheering and pleasant conversations is widely known for transforming lazy people into enterpriser, low performer into go-getters, and skeptics into supporters. For individuals or teams, serotonin adds focus, support innovative or disruptive solutions, increases motivation and can even transform stress into success. 
  • Researchers found that by having positive conversations during celebration time you trigger basal ganglia system that releases the neurotransmitter dopamine. This chemical communicates with the brain areas in the prefrontal cortex to allow people to pay attention to critical tasks, ignore distracting information, and update only the most relevant task information in working memory during problem-solving tasks.

What Makes Us Feel So Good?
Recent studies by numerous researchers show that the basal ganglia facilitate learning, with dopamine important to the process. One way that these behavioral routines are encoded is by the processing of reward information.

Wolfram Schultz, a principal research fellow at the University of Cambridge in England, studies how the brain processes reward information. “When something is really good, you go back for it again,” he says. “ Thus, by praising the accomplishments a leader, we are contributing to creating healthy behavioral patterns that will be repeated more often.  Celebration and dopamine is a reward to our brains like treats are to animals.

  • While elevating the level of “feel good” hormones with positive conversations, the level of cortisol is significantly lowered. Cortisol has been shown to damage and kill cells in the hippocampus (the brain area responsible for your episodic memory) and there is robust evidence that excessive cortisol shuts down learning, creates anxiety attacks, can cause depression, and premature brain aging.
  • The words of acknowledgement, encouragement and support, especially when granted to a person under much stress, calms her amygdala mediated response – of fight-flight-freeze – allowing her to move into a more thoughtful and calm state.

When we converse openly with others, we are sharing our inner world, our sense of reality, to validate our reality with others.  We are measuring the levels of trust in our relationship to determine whether we can partner with others. The quality of our conversations depends on how open or closed we feel at the moment of contact. The neurochemical reactions in our brains drive our states of mind, and these affect the way we communicate, how we shape our relationships, and how we build trusting relationships with others.

When we receive public praise and support, we unlock these powerful set of neurochemical patterns that cascade positive chemistry throughout the brain. Highly motivated employees describe the feeling of performing well as an almost drug-like state.

When this state of positive arousal comes with appropriate, honest, and well-deserved (sincere) praise, employees feel they are trusted and supported by their boss. They will take more risks, speak up more, push back when they have things to say, and be more confident in their dealings with their peers.

Judith E. Glaser is CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc. and Chairman of The Creating WE Institute. She is an Organizational Anthropologist, and consults to Fortune 500 Companies. Judith is the author of 4 best selling business books, including her newest Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results (Bibliomotion, 2013) Visit www.conversationalintelligence.com; www.creatingwe.com; jeglaser@creatingwe.com or call 212-307-4386.

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Marketing Personal Development

EEA in Education Pact on Engagement With C-Suite Network

The Enterprise Engagement Alliance and C-Suite Network at C-SuiteNetwork.com have announced a broad marketing partnership to educate corporate management on the emerging field of engagement and to provide the EEA community with a broad range of the C-Suite Network’s learning and networking services.

Under the agreement, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance will develop an education program and content track on all aspects of Enterprise Engagement for the fast-growing C-Suite Network community. C-Suite Network describes itself as the “world’s most powerful network of C-suite leaders with a focus on providing growth, development, and networking opportunities for business executives with titles of vice president and above from companies with annual revenues of $10 million or greater.”  The group currently has over 175,000 executives in its community.

The group holds three conferences a year; hosts online television and radio broadcasts on topics of interest to top management; manages a private online community for business leaders, produces specialized interactive learning programs for C-suite leaders, and offers a book club featuring titles of interest to business management. The EEA will promote these services both through its Engagement Strategies portal at Enterpriseengagement.org and its annual Engagement University at eeaexpo.com, held this year in Orlando April 25-28.

Said Thomas White, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the C-Suite Network, “The emerging field of Enterprise Engagement provides a compelling roadmap for today’s business leaders seeking to gain a competitive advantage by harnessing the power of engaged customers, distribution partners, employees, vendors, and communities to achieve their short- and long-term goals. It’s our mission to help our community find the latest strategies and tactics to improve the performance of their organizations.”

Bruce Bolger, President of the Enterprise Engagement Alliance said, “The C-Suite Network has done a great job of building a community of executives committed to excellence and creating a complete set of learning and sharing tools to help their organizations excel. We couldn’t imagine a better education partnership.”

Original Article from Engagement Strategies Media

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Marketing Personal Development

B2B Marketing: C-Suite Executive Briefings

Q&A: Cody Pearce, Chief Operating Officer of Nelson Schmidt, On An Evolution in B2B Marketing

The C-Suite Network hosts a monthly online event called Executive Briefings. Each event features an executive thought leader discussing a topic important to the C-Suite. Thomas White, CEO of C-Suite Network, hosts the event with a unique Q&A format. 

During one of our recent Briefings, Cody Pearce, chief operating officer of Nelson Schmidt, joined us to discuss the evolution and landscape, both present and future, of B2B marketing. Nelson Schmidt is a leader in helping companies and clients truly think about the marketplace and how they can engage with buyers in a way that’s really effective both to the top and bottom line.

If anybody has been around marketing they’ve heard a couple of terms: B2B and B2C. So when somebody is talking about business to business, or B2B, what does that really mean?

We talk a lot about the evolution of B2B marketing and to some extent the dissolving of B2B marketing. When we look out at some of the trends that we’re monitoring, we look at three things: One, the market landscape has really dynamically changed even over the last three to five years. Just about every business model has been significantly disrupted. There is a massive influx of information and information technology that is changing the way we do business – changing the way we go to market.

Secondly, the customer landscape – both demographically and the way the customer has been empowered – are dramatically different because of the evolution of tools and information. The empowered customer has changed the way we think about marketing.

Lastly, the B2B landscape is dramatically shifting. We’ve seen a disappearance of our trade with the BMA (Business Marketing Association) being absorbed by the AMA (American Marketing Association) and with our Trade Voice BtoB Magazine being absorbed by Advertising Age, for example. Those trends are real evidence for us that there is a tremendous shift taking place, and a movement towards the creation of a single community of marketers rather than a definitive distinction between B2B and B2C companies, brands, and marketers. That shift, for us, is an incredibly important one, and one that we’re making sure to pay close attention to so we can change our business and our business practices with it.

We certainly have seen these changes in the landscape, the kind of things that we all supported and helped build this market we call B2B are certainly evolving pretty rapidly. What is causing this change? What is going on in the customer space that’s having this change come about?

What we look at, first and foremost, is the emergence of new channels and the access to information for customers that just hasn’t been there until the last three to five years in the way that it is today. That is changing the way the customers get information. It’s changing their ability to be much more intelligent and informed, and it’s forcing companies and marketers to think less about the product or solution they offer – a business or commercial audience versus a consumer one – and to think more about the journey and the considered purchase process of their customers. We need to evolve with these changing demographics, market landscape changes, and emergence of new tools and channels.

You talk about the change in how we market, but this question of the evolution of B2B to considered purchases isn’t really just an issue for marketing folks. It’s really an issue for all the C-Suite, isn’t it?

It really is. I think the changes that we’re starting to describe, and the trends that we’re looking at, it changes how we do business. It changes how we connect with customers. It changes, perhaps, how we go to market and make money. For us, as an agency, and as a considered purchase marketing agency, it means thinking differently about the way that we help our customers from the executive office all the way through the commercial marketing teams and into the sales organization. So it does affect our client’s businesses literally from top to bottom in the way that they do business.

You’ve used this term a few times called considered purchase, what does it mean?

It simply means that rather than defining marketing as business-to-business or business-to-consumer, we are defining our practice of marketing around the idea of the level of consideration we see that customers make before making a purchase choice. Considered purchases are complex and have a great deal of emotional and financial risk and reward.

So you aren’t getting this idea because you sit around a room. You go out and talk to folks and find out from them what they’re seeing.

That’s absolutely right. It’s not just about coming up with a new term for the sake of having something catchy to talk about next. It really is about re-inventing the way that, as an agency, we’re beginning to practice and the way that we solve problems for our customers.

When we talk to marketers, what we’re hearing are a couple of emerging trends. Number one, we hear that there’s a lot more focus around the consideration for purchase of those goods or services. It’s less about B2C and B2B, and it’s more about the level of consideration a customer has to make before making a purchase choice. We also find that the marketers probably feel less informed, especially as business models change and are disrupted. We begin to then shape our conversation around the purchase journey, around the consideration required, and the consequence and complexity tied to a brand choice to define the way that we practice.

For example, if we start to look at and map different categories of products and services along a spectrum of consequence and complexity, we can start to draw a line differently than traditional B2B and B2C lines have been drawn in the past. There’s kind of a convergence and a similarity now between the process someone may go through when choosing a banking alternative or a college choice, and very much being able to connect that to what a capital equipment purchase might look like. That journey looks very similar regardless of a consumer or a business target audience or offering. 

Do you think because we have had these distinctions of B2B, B2C, and so forth that we have failed to really understand what you call the customer journey and how the sales funnel really works?

Yes, and marketers tell us that. They’re starting to question the traditional sales funnel and rethink the way that customers, in a more informed setting along a path of highly considered purchase, are moving through that funnel in a less linear fashion. Instead, they are coming in and out of it much more rapidly, and carrying forward with them preconceived choices based on the level of information available to them. As we look at the customer journey in the highly considered purchase path, it forces us to rethink the sales funnel and how we engage with the customer to affect their choices.

Let’s talk about the customer journey. How do you help people map that out?

We actually give a lot of credit to a company called Adaptive Path. We found some very compelling tools that this organization had developed. They are a thought leader in the space of customer experience, and they make available to us, and this is public domain, a great set of tools that we’re beginning to use to provide structure to mapping out the customer journey.

The tools help us look at the stages a customer goes through, whether it’s in a business-to-business or business-to-consumer setting. We then can map those stages out from decision, through research and shopping, into buying and consumption — all the way down to using and feeding back into the loop their experience.

Not only does this allow us to look at the functional aspects of what customers are doing, but it lets us explore the emotional aspects of what customers may be thinking, feeling, and experiencing at each of the stages of the journey. That allows us, ultimately, to provide some guiding principles and seek opportunities for where we can be most effective with the right content, at the right time, through the right channel, as we begin to map this more comprehensively. 

By mapping this out we know what to do when.

That’s right. It’s about what to do when. It’s about what channels to use. It’s about having some predictability in the work that we do to the outcomes that we’re trying to measure. This allows us to set up analytics and KPIs around our marketing programs to know that the investment is working as best as it can.

We begin to apply this as simply and as informally as a brainstorming session. We literally project it up on a wall for a post-it note session with our media and public relations and digital teams. We also take it very formally into the way that we scope and manage comprehensive annual campaigns.

Through this modeling we can start to look at the tools and the modes of communication. We can look at what customers are functionally doing, thinking, and feeling at each individual stage. We can much more intelligently then shape our messaging, our creative strategies, our channel mix, and investment in a way that we know is going to be most effective and optimized.

This guideline has given us a great framework to start looking at both consumer and commercial purchase cycles and building intelligent plans that use a modern set of tools in the most effective way.

What is the “Zero Moment of Truth”?

Zero moment of truth is something that has been talked about for a few years. This is the ultimate point in time in the customer journey of where they decide and make a final decision. It’s that moment of truth where we can start to look at the first moment of truth – that is when a customer narrows down its final set of consideration brands – and the zero moment of truth when they actually go from the shopping and evaluation to the choice. They have made a critical decision.

This model that you’re using is a considered purchase model. This could apply to what has traditionally been thought of as a business to business or a business to consumer orientation.

Yes, it doesn’t matter for us. For example, laundry machines. A laundromat owner may be considering replacing equipment in his or her store, or a homeowner may be looking to replace the washer and a dryer in their home. Both are highly considered purchases.

For both of those scenarios, we can map those purchase journeys. We start to model very closely the tools, the channels, the content, and the delivery of what we do as marketers to affect their choices.

We’ve got this picture of the customer journey. Is this it or is there more?

No, there’s more. Obviously this is one step towards them building an effective brand and communications plan and strategy. The example that we will use here is connected to that laundry store owner. How it impacts what we then do as marketers can come in three ways and shapes. 

Number one is this has dramatically impacted the way we are shaping and delivering our creative and message strategy that we’re using. We have typically focused heavily on the promotion of our functional benefits. We talk a lot about the value proposition. We talk about promoting features and benefits of a solution.

Now having gone through these exercises, it has completely changed that mindset for us. It lowered the purpose and the role of the equipment and it heightened the emotional feeling of risk and of challenge and connecting it to a broader set of solutions that our brand can deliver. In this case we talk about financing. We talk about construction services. We talk about the business that they’re running and the impact we can have on improving that business. We connect emotionally through digital platforms by showing and telling through much deeper engagement how that is happening, and what other customers are feeling, and how they can connect. The first impact it’s having is changing the way we build our message and creative strategies and the mix that we use. 

The second thing is these individual moments of truth. The great news is that marketing automation, programmatic media, CRM and other marketing techniques have dramatically improved our ability to intelligently hone in on this and very predictably insert the right content at exactly the right moment through the right channel, and keep that engagement to make sure that we are a part of that zero moment of truth. It has really changed the way that we bring automation and use technology to deliver our content in a much more sophisticated and predictable way.

Lastly, it lets us build metrics that are a little bit different than the traditional KPIs of a marketing program. We can not only look at the things that are typical in the funnel in terms of impressions and the things that we usually have looked at as marketers. It starts to help us really hone in and drill down on activities where are we seeing engagement. Getting this in real time and connecting it down to the sales funnel, in terms of active deals and closed opportunities, lets us measure in real time how impactful our message, our mix, and our strategies are at being part of that consideration set.

Those three things to us as marketers are incredibly powerful. What we’re saying and when. How it is being delivered. The way that we hone in predictably on the behavior of consumers at exactly the right time. Then the visibility to measure that along the way to affect our decisions. Those are the three big ones for us.

What does all this mean to how we measure marketing effectiveness? It seems like we have a whole new way to look at things that are much more clearly tied to the sales results we’re producing.

Yes, that is probably the most important question marketers are asking themselves. They are looking at their investments and seeing pressure from the C-Suite in terms of what am I getting, what should I invest, and how are we performing. We owe it to ourselves as marketers – and frankly as an agency committed with a tagline of “we deliver customers” – we have to back that up with evidence.

We’re starting to talk about engagement versus the quantity of impression. Where we typically are thinking a lot about the top of the funnel in terms of impressions, awareness, and perception, and attitude measure – that matters and we care about it, but we also have to know what impact that is having on the quality of engagement – from the engagement of consideration, to ultimately the choice. Being able to connect that from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel literally in terms of active deals through visibility in CRM and a connection to our customer sales teams, is critically important.

What does somebody do if they want to start bringing in this understanding of the customer journey in a considered purchase way but they don’t have a large budget? Where do they invest their money?

Frankly, what I would encourage is to go through the process I discussed earlier — go through a process of mapping the customer journey. Go through a process of truly, intimately understanding what your customers are going through in making their choices in a highly considered decision. Zone in on the areas where you feel you can affect that first and final moment of truth to bring your brand into consideration, and dominate and own that area of your marketing investment.

Regardless of the size of budget, being thoughtful about the approach and careful about the measurements can help you determine the right thing to do at any investment level.

Moving forward, what do people do?

We are hypothesizing here – based on the trends we’ve talked about and the evolution and witness of our B2B trade dissolving, we believe there’s an evolution taking place. We believe that organizing the way we practice around considered purchase versus B2B and B2C is a meaningful path. We believe that the playbook, the way that we deliver, should be centered on the mapping of that customer journey in a much more modern way with the use of the most sophisticated tools we have available to us as marketers. 

We want to continue the dialogue. We want to continue to learn and listen to marketers. We want to invite everybody here to join in this conversation and debate. Let’s, as a community of marketers, regardless of B2C or B2B, begin to recognize truly how disrupted our space has become and how important it is for us to start moving in a direction to re-invent ourselves and redefine our impact in business value. That is critical for us and I think that is what we can all go forward thinking. We believe there is something relevant here for everyone to dig in with us.

You can learn more about Executive Briefings, watch other sessions and sign up for future events here.

TW_headshot

Thomas White is the CEO of the C-Suite Network and the host of the nationally syndicated video program, Business Matters. This was taken from dialogue on C-Suite Executive Briefings.

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Marketing Personal Development

Self-Expression: The Neuroscience of Co-creation

By Judith E. Glaser

I have yet to meet an executive, who joins a company to be ‘minimized,’ marginalized or to be intentionally held back from making a contribution.

We join a company to make a difference, to make a contribution, to be praised and rewarded.  We join a company to bring our voice to the table, and ‘lean into conversations’ so our voices join in the spirit of partnering with others to shape, create and Co-create the future.

Neuroscience is teaching us that ‘self-expression’ might be one – if not the most important ways for people to connect, navigate and grow with each other.

Validate View and Voice
Why might this be so? This experience suggests that something important happens inside of us when our view of the world is validated publicly—when our voice is heard and acknowledged, when we see we are not alone in our inner thoughts. This article is inspired by an experiment I ran over 25 years ago that created the impetus for the Birth of Conversational Intelligence® – how we use conversations to connect with others’ to share a common view of the world.

Case in Point!

When my children were in elementary school, I created a school project called Children’s World. I proposed that we gather the students’ stories and pictures, and compile them into a book and publish it. When I shared this idea with the principal and teachers, they got behind it and offered to help. And when I shared this idea with some parents, I soon had 20 volunteers. When we shared this idea with the 550 students. Within a few weeks we had all of their contributions.

As we began to compile the books, we put on the floor all of the contributions—everything from stories and pictures from the 5th graders to poems and pictures from 1st graders—and looked for how we could best combine them. During the creative process, something amazing happened. It was as if each child was sensing things around them and with their best abilities they could usher up, they shared their stories and pictures with others.

At the end of our pattern-seeking process, all of the art and stories came together into chapters organized by themes that emerged as we sorted. We found children’s stories from 1st grade to map into illustrations from children at a higher grade.  We found a local printer who printed enough for parents to buy for their children and others. The books sold out in the first two days, and we had to re-order them.

The teachers told us there was an upsurge of creativity during the years we published Children’s World. Other schools in our community heard about the project and began their own Children’s World project.

Later, we did a follow-up study, looking for possible connections that might show the impact of the projects on the children’s emotional, social and academic development. We found a positive impact from the few years we did the Children’s World projects—a direct correlation to the number of children who were accepted into top universities, measurably more than in the years before or after.


Self-Expression at Work
How to you drive self-expression in the workplace? How do you encourage speaking up? In what ways can people apply their talents to create the next generation products and services your company offers?

Conversational Intelligence (C-IQ) teaches us to see differently—to listen differently—and to process what we perceive differently. When we do that, we act in the moment in ways that create energy, activate energy, and help guide energy toward more productive and more powerful ends. C-IQ gives us tools for letting go of the past and transforming the future.

As you become transparent about your aspirations and intentions to co-create and also what threatens you—your fears and “stories” about what is going on—you feel a release inside. You gain the courage and a space to share your views without judgment. You could speak out and have a voice, and not be judged for how you are feeling. You have a chance to speak out and have your opinions valued.

You can reveal your inner thoughts and feelings to one another—to work on Transparency + Relationship together. You can talk about what is bothering you and what you aspire to create. You can move from a state of protection to partnering with others by being open to sharing and discovering their fears and aspirations.

Co-creating Conversations Bridge Realities
By stepping into one another’s shoes and listening without judgment, you trigger the prefrontal cortex (the executive brain) to access higher-level capacities, including how to handle gaps between reality and aspirations; how to access new thinking; and how to move into infinite thinking together and co-create new possibilities. Without this part of the brain activated, you tend to fall back into positional thinking and fight for your vested interests. You become more candid and caring and speak truth in trust, without triggering fear, creating the space for Shared success.

Breakthroughs occur, as you stay open to the possibility that you might discover ideas you have never thought of before. As you create a bonding experience (oxytocin rush), you start to open up new conversations about “what ifs.” You imagine new things that you might do together, fostering higher risk taking and openness. Co-creation opens the “infinite space” our minds need to be free to connect with others in new ways. Positioning, politicking, interpretation, drama, and negative storytelling give way to a sense of shared success and bonding that shapes new relationships.

Achieving greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of relationships, which depends on the quality of conversations. Everything happens through conversation. By grafting C-IQ rituals into your interaction dynamics, you will discover new doors opening up in your mind and in your reality.

Try These Experiments:

  • Think about how to craft an exercise like Children’s World in your organization,  team, or school.
  • Start a meeting by asking people to share a personal story and a business story that just happened that they are excited about—see how the meeting shifts.
  • In team meetings, you might share “What I respect about you and what I need from you.” This exercise helps you understand others, recognize strengths in others and prime one another for partnering and co-creation as you create openness, bonding, connectivity, and empathy for one another.
  • Collect success stories in teams and publish them—watch how the team spirit changes.
  • Publish success stories on your intranet. Ask people to include tips, and practices that underlay the success—watch how the C-IQ grows in your organization


Judith E. Glaser is CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc., Chairman of The Creating WE Institute, an Organizational Anthropologist, consultant to Fortune 500 Companies, and author of four best selling business books, including Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results (Bibliomotion). Call 212-307-4386 or visit www.conversationalingelligence.com; www.creatingwe.com; email jeglaser@creatingwe.com.

http://www.benchmarkcommunicationsinc.com/

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Marketing Personal Development

Your Own Experience Is the Hardest Teacher (But Others’ Experience Is the Easiest)

By Jason Forrest, CEO, Head Coach Forrest Performance Group

What could you accomplish if you had unlimited brainpower and several lifetimes’ worth of experience to bring to bear on solving a problem? The truth is—you do have access to such unlimited power. And it’s not some pill you’ve seen in a science fiction movie. It’s in the people you know.  An effective mastermind group of peers—high level executives from a variety of industries—can be invaluable to your business.

Merriam-Webster defines mastermind as “a person who supplies the directing or creative intelligence for a project.” Wouldn’t it be amazing to have the chance to interact with and learn from someone who could provide this kind of leadership and know-how in an area that’s not exactly your sweet spot? Multiply that level of amazing by two, three, even eight, and you’ll get a sense of what a truly incredible, game-changing resource a mastermind group can be.

A mastermind group—a concept I first learned about from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill—is a place to share ideas, learn best practices, and benefit from others’ brains, experience, and belief systems. The book calls such a group “a coordination of knowledge and effort and a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment of definite purpose.”

The benefits of such coordination have been invaluable to me personally. For a number of years, I’ve been part of a nine-person mastermind group of entrepreneurs. Each of the eight others in my group has contributed valuable insight that has helped me overcome challenges, specifically in the realms of HR, marketing, and financing.

Here’s how to start a mastermind group to reap similar benefits for your own business:

  1. Assess yourself. Consider all the tasks you’re responsible for and identify a few areas where you excel and a few where your skills could be sharper.
  2. Explore your network. See who you know or could get to know who likely has a strength you’d like to develop.
  3. Assemble the team. Pitch the idea when you meet with potential mastermind colleagues. Be up front—let them know what you’re looking for, and what you bring to the table.
  4. Share the wealth. Introduce connections to one another. Get the ball rolling by finding ways to support a new colleague using your unique strengths.

You now have the makings of a mutually-beneficial mastermind group. Here are a few experience-tested pointers to keep it going strong:

  • Don’t confuse your role within your company with your role in your mastermind group. In your own company, you’re a leader and likely seen as the mastermind. In contrast, your mastermind group should consist of peers—each with valuable expertise. No one is the leader, and your role is not to manage or be managed. It is simply to share experience.
  • Think outside the industry. You won’t get really varied skill sets or transparent best-practice sharing if your mastermind group consists of a bunch of people in your own industry. Look to other fields—banking, IT, medicine, nonprofit, government, etc.—for colleagues who can help you see things in a whole new way.

Assembling a mastermind group and staying in regular contact with its members will put each member in position to thrive—both professionally and personally. This kind of mutually-beneficial group is one of the best ways to take advantage of the “work smarter, not harder” mindset.

About the Author

Jason Forrest | CEO, Head Coach Forrest Performance Group As a sales professional, author, speaker, and sales coach, Jason’s job is to empower professionals and executives to unleash their human performance and master their leadership skills in sales, management, culture and service. Jason grew up under the influence of his father (a business owner and professional salesperson), his mother, (a persuasive speaking professor), and Zig Ziglar (his Sunday school teacher and world-famous salesperson/motivational speaker). Jason learned sales by selling rather than observing. These influences and experiences shaped him into who he is today-a salesperson first, a trainer on a mission, a national speaker, and a coach who pushes sales organizations to become the best version of themselves. Every year, Jason delivers approximately 92 keynotes/seminars and conducts 850 group coaching calls with sales teams, sales managers, and executives. See him in action at www.ForrestPG.com[

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Best Practices Biography and History Culture Entrepreneurship Industries Investing Management Marketing Mergers & Acquisition Negotiations Sales

WATCH: Abandoned by Parents, Kid Vows to Be Successful. Builds $4B Wendy’s Fortune

Dave Thomas was an orphan. Growing up, eating hamburgers in restaurants was the only thing that gave him a sense of belonging and purpose. When he was 8-years-old, he set out a plan to open the best restaurant in the world and later founded Wendy’s.

But even at an early age Dave knew that in order to grow a successful business, he was prepared to learn everything about the business from the ground up.

WATCH:

 

15 year old Dave started as a busboy at a Hobby House Restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana where a guy named Cornel Sanders was touring the country, trying to convince restaurant owners into converting their buildings into Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises.

Thomas’ boss, Hobby House owner Phil Clauss, was one of those restaurant owners.   Hobby House became Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Thomas became one of KFC’s first cooks.

A new waitress, Lorraine Buskirk, caught his eye and they were soon married in 1954.

Dave and his wife Lorraine grew their family to include five children – Pam, Ken, Lori, Molly and Melinda (Wendy was her nickname and who Dave named the business after). All the while, Dave worked toward his goal of owning his own restaurant.

He was pivotal in helping grow KFC. He simplified the menu and came up with the classic rotating red bucket sign. Thomas also convinced the colonel to appear in TV ads for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Thomas’ success eventually enabled him to sell his stake in the four franchises back to the colonel, for $1.5 million. He used the money to open his first Wendy’s and became multimillionaire by the age of 35.

Today there are 6,900 restaurants worldwide.

Dave Thomas passed away in 2002 with a net worth of $4.2 billion. Dave wins.

For more information visit tylerhayzlett.com