If building revenue fast were easy, anyone could do it. We would all be millionaires and clinking glasses right now! Markets shift, industries shift, and we can’t always rely on solutions of the past. At some point, our tried and true ways no longer work. While I firmly believe there are marketing and business strategies that offer long-term success, their tactical application evolves with technology and data availability. “They’re difficult because they resist simple solutions. Glib answers and over-simplification have been tried before, and failed. People have tried all of the obvious solutions. They haven’t worked. That’s why we’ve resorted to calling them difficult problems. Difficult problems require emotional labor, approaches that feel risky and methods that might not work. They reward patience, nuance and guts, and they will fight off brute force all day long.” – Seth Godin  When evaluating complex issues, we must adopt a mindset of testing. Testing takes time, energy, and dollars. The testing process will include failure. It’s in the failure that you see business owners lose confidence. When we are in the thick of testing it is easy to only see the failure and not realize you are learning what does not work! A firm understanding of what isn’t working can save dollars over the long run. However, it will take time and investment to reach this understanding. Testing needs to be methodical. Too many times, testing is cut short and nothing is learned. A year of testing is not a year wasted, it is part of the evolutionary process [...]

You know the email, the one that has a message that puts fire in your bones! One such email landed in my inbox today, it was a forward. The sender was wondering about a future shift in podcasting from shows that are free and sustained by ads to subscription-based revenue. What caught my eye and put a fire in my chest, was the idea that the shift was in the future! The sender had failed to realize that the shift is happening right at this moment! Unfortunately, in business, many of us are late to the party when it comes to industry shifts. We fail to see the writing in the sky and shifts in the sand. The truth is that the signs are all around us! We need to be intentional about our business strategies rather than reactive. Take a peek into my thoughts on the subject below. THE EMAIL: As an avid podcast listener, I enjoyed reading TechCrunch’s recent deep-dive on the future of the industry. The article covers a lot of ground, but I found its central question to be especially poignant for publishers: will podcasts continue to be supported by a freemium or ad-supported model (like many streaming music services), or will the market take a page out of the streaming TV playbook and opt for a paid subscription model instead? For the Financial Times, the answer to the question posed by TechCrunch may lie somewhere in the middle. While the publisher doesn’t [...]

What do customers expect from your brand? Many times in attempting to manage customer expectations, we preach negatives! Your employees learn hard lessons about what clients expect. Anyone that picks up the phone has likely dealt with a disgruntled customer. Eventually, employees start attempting to manage expectations by telling the customer what they will NOT receive in order to reduce angry phone calls. We must train employees to manage expectations without creating a negative brand perception. When your sales team expresses what customers will not receive, they are reinforcing negatives. While we never want to build up false expectations, it is important not to start the brand/customer relationship with a negative perception. This is an easy way to lose customers and prospects to the competition! The more competitive the industry the more important it is to build up the benefits and value of your brand. Rather than discussing what a customer WILL NOT receive, make it crystal clear what the customer CAN EXPECT from your product or service. Be clear about what they will receive and the benefits of those items. Do not preach benefits that your team cannot fulfill. Do you ever hear Walmart promote customer service? No one walks into Walmart expecting GoDaddy 24-hour support. Walmart focuses on what they know they can provide on a consistent basis, the lowest rates. Motel 6 promises they will "leave the light on" not that your bed will be comfortable. Managing expectations is important for customer satisfaction, but when done incorrectly creates a negative customer experience and [...]