Thank you, Lance, for your question “how do you create a  brand image when you are still starting up?”

When you are starting up a business, you first need to get the basics in place. Your business model needs to be created before anything else. You will find it very difficult to create a brand personality if you are not clear about your business.

The sections from your business model that will help craft a good brand persona are the customer avatar, their problem statement, your solution to their problem, and what makes you different (your unique value proposition).

To create your brand, you need to understand your business very well. It will be created from the personality of the business and its founders.

If you were able to attend our Building your brand attribute workshop last July 19,  what I’m saying above falls under the first three steps;
1. Know yourself or your business
2. Choose to be a specialist over a generalist
3. Know your customer

Now that you have a clear business model, you can now go to step 4, define your brand identity.

After you accomplish the first four steps, you need to get the attention of your target customer.

You will then need to craft your origin story as step 5. The best story to write at this point is your origin. Why did you start the business? What’s your mission?

To get the attention of your target customers, you need to understand which channels they are in. As an example, let’s say you are a B2b company. Your prospects might be more on LinkedIn rather than on Facebook.

You need to have a framework to get your brand out there in the market. You need to create a marketing strategy and plans. You can use one of the best marketing frameworks fondly called AIDA.

This standard is for attention, interest, desire, and action. You get your prospect’s attention, get them interested in what you offer, get them to desire it, and get them to act on your call to action.

Let’s reserve the steps in crafting a marketing strategy and marketing plans for another time.

Thank you again Lance for your question. Please feel free to send more voice questions.

Voice in questions
https://bit.ly/AskJordan

Hi Carlo, thank you very much for your question “are great salespeople born?”. With billions spent on sales training programs in various industries, most companies would argue that great salespeople are developed.

I believe that great salespeople are born. These are natural communicators. I have an elder cousin who was born a great communicator. He applied for a sales position in an ice cream company many years ago. These are salespeople that are given a territory. They scour the territory with their small trucks with a freezer at the back. They go from sari-sari stores to supermarkets peddling their ice-creams. In less than a year, he became one of their top salespeople. Of course, he was provided collaterals and product orientations to pull off being at the top. He was born with great confidence and fantastic communication skill, which helped him.

However, raw sales talent still needs to be developed. It’s like finding a raw diamond. You need to chisel and polish until you get a perfectly cut diamond ring. 

However, a great sales organization needs development. There need to be clearly defined processes to ensure the right talent is recruited, trained, immersed in the company culture, coached, and given stretched goals. 

Check out recommendations from HBR on things worth considering when putting together a strong sales organization. 

• Set a cohesive sales strategy that focuses sales effort on the right customer segments with a compelling value proposition.
• Design a high-impact sales process for communicating and delivering value to customers.
• Size the sales organization at a profitable investment level that provides ideal customer coverage.
• Define a sales structure and sales roles that enable effectiveness (high sales for the effort) as well as efficiency (low cost for the effort).
• Assign accounts to salespeople to enable good customer coverage and give all salespeople a fair chance to succeed.
• Hire sales talent by identifying and attracting salespeople with the characteristics (innate capabilities and values) that drive success.
• Train and coach that talent to continually develop the competencies (learned skills and knowledge) that salespeople need to add value for customers.
• Provide data, tools and resources for enhancing sales force insight about customers and supporting the sales process.
• Offer incentive compensation and recognition programs that encourage salespeople to work hard in pursuit of personal goals that align with company goals.
• Set sales force goals that are challenging, fair, and well-understood by the sales force.
• Manage performance by engaging a team of first line sales managers who can effectively direct sales activity and keep the sales force on course.
• Create and sustain a sales culture of accountability, achievement and ethics.

Thank you very much for your question, Carlo. Thinking about the answer was quite interesting. Please feel free to keep sending in your voice questions.

https://bit.ly/AskJordan

P.S. – Please see below the link to the full article from HBR on ‘Silver Bullets won’t fix your sales force’.

https://hbr.org/2012/10/what-really-improves-a-sales-force

Hi Angg, thank you very much for your question “How do I develop leaders and how do I lead them?” I could imagine that it’s a common question in the minds of business owners or executives. It does not matter the size of the company. John Maxwell correctly stated that “Everything rises and falls on leadership.”

Leaders are accountable for the rise or fall of the organization. They cannot pass this responsibility to anyone else in the company. So let me see and try to put together a few easy steps for you, Angg. But, of course, execution is still the key to any framework or suggestion.

Step 1: Learn to recognize potential.

It would help if you were very clear on the potential that you are looking for in your leaders. For instance, are the behaviors you seek; good communication, team building, execution, motivation, and problem-solving skills? What is it that you seek in a potential future leader?

Step 2: Get help finding high-potential employees

Gone are the days of looking at employees from a single dimension – performance. Instead, a better way of looking at your employees is from the lens of performance, potential, and willingness. They may be performing but are they living up to their full potential? They may have great potential but are they willing to take on leadership roles?

Step 3: Sell your Vision

Leaders do not come to work just for the pay. Influential leaders are sold on a grander purpose, the company’s Vision. Are your potential leaders sold on the company’s Vision? Wait, let’s step back for a minute. Do you have a compelling vision to sell?

Step 4: Establish a development plan.

Leaders are created. Identifying future leaders with potential and willingness without a plan is pointless. Work with your HR to craft a 12-24 month leadership development plan. The keyword is their development and not just training. Training is only one method of developing people. It would help if you considered alternative and creative ways of developing your future leaders.

Step 5: Provide opportunities for leadership development and growth.

Development plans must be closely linked to opportunities to use their skills. The best development programs are quickly followed by opportunities to use new skills. Studies show that new knowledge quickly dissipates months after acquiring them if left unpracticed.

Step 6: Monitor. Measure. Reward.

You cannot improve what you do not measure. How effective is your performance management process?

Step 7: Follow-through through coaching and mentoring.

The theory is good, but the experience is better. The best lessons come from the experience of seasoned leaders. The leaders you are building will still need the guidance of battle-worn leaders from within or outside the company. Nothing beats coaching and mentoring when developing people. Experience still plays a significant role in rapid development.

It may sound easy, but the key is putting the commitment and processes in place to ensure the seven steps happen.

For your second question, how do you lead leaders once they are developed? Simple, give them a direction and get out of the way. Then, of course, you need regular alignments to ensure they succeed.

Thank you very much for your question Angg. I hope that I was able to answer your question.

Be safe and keep sending in your voice questions:

HTTPS://bit.ly/askjordan

I sometimes encounter people that are not open to learning new things. For them, learning stops when they leave college. As a result, they feel embarrassed to ask questions or attend learning sessions even if they are free. 

I feel bad for them because they are missing a lot. They can avoid mistakes others made and take the proper steps to help more successful people. 

Of course, there is the other type of people. Some have the humility to learn. They intend to put their new knowledge into practice. This podcast is dedicated to us lifelong learners. It’s for us that know and appreciate that we don’t know everything. 

Life is fascinating and offers something new to learn every day. 

I am amazed by his insight when listening to Gary Vee’s podcast. 

Interestingly, he is an avid observer of life.

He pays close attention to the people around him. Gary actively looks for lessons to be learned. I find his approach fascinating. His unapologetic honesty is refreshing. Of course, his messages would be more welcome without the F-bombs. Haha 

One of the things I love doing is designing and facilitating workshops, both free and paid. I enjoy sharing knowledge with others. Of course, if I were super-rich, all my workshops and consulting would be free.

My life purpose is: 

“transforming lives through continuous learning.” 

Tell you what? Let’s learn together. This way, we don’t make the same mistakes. It also helps us plan and improves every aspect of our life. 

Please feel free to leave me a question or a message. 

I invite you to take the time every day and see what you learned from the day. 

Have a great day. Peace.

I started the first weekly workshop for Biz Sprout Community last night. Mostly BNI friends attended it. There were a dozen attendees in all.

I started the weekly workshop as a venue for sharing what I learned through the years of working with startups. The goal was for new startup owners to learn from common pitfalls and avoid them. The other intention is also for them to understand the better practices in starting, operating, marketing, and leading a business.

I plan to run this workshop weekly and see the benefits. I should, however, remind myself that it’s not a numbers game. I should not let myself get caught up with the number of attendees. Helping transform the point of view and practice of one entrep is a reward in itself.

Like a former manager used to say, ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink.’

It’s also interesting to observe that not all Entreps are interested in learning better ways of starting a business. For most, it’s just a question of seeking referrals. It’s so unfortunate to see Entreps like that.

If they understood the better practices of starting a business and the importance of proper marketing, then their business would be in a much better shape months and years from now.

It’s better to learn to fish than ask for ‘referral’ fish every day.

A few interesting things I observed about the mini-workshop: although the event was boosted, only two non-BNI or friends attended. There were 45 interested, and seven will attend. Only two attended from the boost.

I read an article before that Facebook is becoming so saturated with ads that it’s difficult to cut through the noise.

Second, even if you cut through the noise, an excellent copy is still necessary. My ad resulted in 45 interested registrars. The copy did not compel them to swing to ‘attending.’

Three, I should not take it personally that the turnout of the ad-paid event was low. A marketing professional needs to try to figure out the algorithm. We also have to keep in mind that algorithms change. The patience to figure out what works separates the good marketing professional from those who pretend to be one.

It’s always good practice to stand back and assess something that happened. I need to remember to extract the lessons learned.

Learning is a lifelong journey.

Daniel Humm

When asked at a young age to draw a house on a piece of paper, Daniel Humm asked for a more extensive paper. His teacher told him to draw on the paper he had, just like everyone else in the classroom. He was not getting a bigger paper. He draw a house four times the size of the paper. He drew off the table and everything.

His teacher asked him to leave the classroom. Daniel was then asked to go to therapy. He met an amazing woman in therapy. She got upset with the teacher. They ran to an art store to buy the biggest paper and writing instruments. They drew a huge house. She told Daniel “do not let anyone tell you that there isn’t a big enough paper.”

Daniel dropped out from school at 14, ran away from home at 15, became a dad at 18. He was working in kitchens at 20.

He quotes, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.” Helen Keller

His original passion was cycling. Unfortunately, an accident forced Daniel to reassess his career path. Daniel never gave up, got a job at a restaurant. He worked hard learning to be a chef with no formal education.

Today, Daniel owns the famous Eleven Madison Park restaurant (Three Michelin stars). He also owns The NoMad and Daniel Davies and Brook. Recently he opened a Vegan restaurant that earned a three Michelin star.

Feel free to listen to his podcast interview. He is living an amazing journey.

Lessons from a recent podcast episode of GaryVee.

• Great content is either Useful Information or Entertaining. Better yet, it’s both.

• If you want people to engage with your content, engage first with them. Leave an interesting comment. Do this every day.

• Content must be selfless, not selfish.

• Are you posting content for yourself or your others?

• Content is about creating awareness.

• Attention is real estate. If you are not acquiring real estate, your brand will not get very far.

• What you say is essential. Talk about something you know and are passionate about.

—-

We have read various copies of the lessons above many times. We all hear content is supposed to be for customer consumption and not an expression of vanity. Yet, most postings are about ourselves. Most are not putting our educational or entertaining content.

Check it out. All content with very high engagements is either educational or entertaining. The ones that are both are super viral.

Why aren’t we doing what needs to be done? Do we expect our social media presence to grow and not put in the effort to create the right content?

Transform lives with your content.

Are your meetings productive? Ironically, a vital work collaboration tool can also be a time-waster. Hundreds of hours are spent on meetings every week.

Sessions can also be calculated in Peso value. Depending on the people in the room, the total monetary value can run from thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Why is it that most employees and a few managers are allergic to meetings? They try to shun them. Meetings are avoided like the plague.

With over 30 corporate years of experience, many meetings I attended are time wasters. Some meetings I attended had no clear objectives. Some had no agenda. Some meetings seem to be a repeat of the previous one. There are days that meetings seem like we are listening to a monologue.

Don’t get me wrong. I still believe that meetings are excellent sources of ideas. Great collaboration can be exhibited during meetings. Yes, meetings can be productive provided the following:

– It has a clear written agenda sent before the meeting.

– The meeting is attended only by people who need to be present.

– Any reading materials and presentation decks are sent within 48 hours to participants. Sending reading materials saves time from having to read the deck at the actual meeting.

– If the meeting will be a monologue or announcement, then an email would be better.

– Minutes of meetings are captured and sent to the attendees 24 hours after the meeting.

– The meeting objective is stated before starting the meeting.

– The meeting facilitator keeps discussions back to the agenda.

– You should spend only 1/3 of your working time a week.

So go ahead. Follow the guidelines above and have highly productive and short meetings.

A leader’s behavior shouts so loud people cannot hear what he is saying. Likewise, our actions shout so loud that people cannot hear our words. This is even more so for leaders.

As a leader, people always watch their every word and move. The leader’s behavior will always trickle down the company and become the culture. The values exhibited at the top are mimicked as you go down the ladder.

A great leader I met some time ago was very charismatic. He could utter the most inspirational words at the right moment. He commands attention without even trying when he stands in front of people. He is battle bruised and a successful entrepreneur. This leader has accomplished a great deal, given that he is just entering mid-life.

I would hear him say that the job of leaders is to set up their people to succeed. Leaders should set up people to succeed. That’s a great aspiration and a worthy purpose.

However, with his drive and determination for the company to succeed, he would sometimes forget that his leaders are not of the same caliber and experience.

We, as leaders, often forget that what may seem easy for us is not necessarily easy for our direct reports. What may seem like an easy goal for us can be a scary undertaking for our direct reports. After all, they do not yet possess the years of experience and knowledge gathered through the years as we do.

We all have our management and leadership maturity levels. No two levels are the same. We took different routes and learned different things up the ladder. We had different mentors, different sources of learning, and different values.

Having said this, it’s not fair to hold our direct reports to the same competency standards that we hold ourselves. Unfortunately, I am also a victim of this. I sometimes wonder why a direct report is struggling with a task that I think is easy enough. Well, the answer is because we have different levels of competencies.

When people that was supposed to be set up for success by the charismatic leader start to fail, they get verbally showered with painful words. Once this starts, a pattern emerges, and the occurrence becomes more frequent.

After a few months, the leader in question would begin to strain and leave. It’s not only the mediocre ones that go but also the good ones. Some leave even before being given a promotion. There is no psychological safety in the workplace.

On the other hand, I met another leader that also started from humble beginnings. She created a company of eight employees into 1,600 after several years. Her secret? She sets people to succeed. She never says this, but she does it anyway—one of her core beliefs in developing leaders to succeed. We had set up a leadership development program for the succession pool.

Without proper orientation, training, and support, she does not abruptly place a leader from one role to a higher position. They take months to prepare a leader properly. The up-and-coming leader is then posted in an OIC role for six months. This will give them the time to learn the ropes, and be trained, mentored, and guided accordingly.

One of the worse things we can do to our people is promoting them without providing them the tools to succeed. Providing them with the tools before we allow them to swim makes a big difference. Setting people to succeed means preparing them. Setting people to succeed also means that if someone we promote fails, we take accountability for the error in our judgment. We cannot just blame it on the failed leader. It’s primarily our fault.

Setting people to fail means promoting them, pressuring them, and blaming them. That’s a recipe for a toxic environment with a high attrition rate.

Let’s not do that. As leaders, we must develop our leaders. We have the responsibility to provide them with the tools needed to succeed. We need to teach them how to be successful swimmers before we get them to compete internationally. Finally, we need the humility to take accountability for a failed promotion.

That’s the true mark of a servant leader.

Writing narratives for marketing collateral is challenging at times. Startup owners usually create narratives that are confusing, too wordy, or have too much industry jargon.

There are countless books about writing narratives for Marketing collaterals or copywriting. With a few guidelines, you can immediately make a better impact with your narrative.

All you have to do is remember to use the acronym PSHS. This stands for Problem, Solution, Hero, Story.

1. Craft your message to articulate a problem your target market has. Even better, identify the pain point of the problem.

2. Follow this with an explanation of how your solution solves the problem.

3. End by painting a picture of what success looks like for the Hero of your story, which is your target customer. Remember, your product or service is never the hero. They are the guide to the hero (customer).

4. Stitch the above in a story format. Don’t write this literally. Messages delivered in a story format are easier to recall.

One optional piece of information you may need to include is the CTA or Call to Action. You cannot assume that the reader knows what to do after reading your copy.

To illustrate this, let’s say you are writing a narrative for Father’s Day. You operate an e-commerce website that sells specially curated, limited edition gift boxes.

You can write an email blast with an image of a dad smiling as he opens a gift. Your copy goes, “Don’t forget to get your dad a gift for Father’s Day. We have a variety of limited selection, high-quality curated gift sets. Order now!”

You can then improve it a little using the PSHS approach.

“Are you struggling to find the perfect gift for dad for this Father’s Day on June 19?

You can give him our limited edition carbon fiber money clip, pen, notebook, and leather watch case.

Make your dad happy with our exclusive limited edition Father’s Day gift box.

Watch your dad’s face light up this Father’s Day.

We have limited stocks. Click here to order now.”

The approach can also be used as a guide when creating pitch decks or proposals. The approach highlights how you can solve a customer’s problem and show them how it feels to be a hero.

Customers are more attracted to the benefit of your product or service. Features only come second. Don’t pitch your features. Put the benefits they get front and center or your message.

You are not the hero. The customer is always the hero of the story. Your job is to help the customer solve their problem and paint a clear picture of what success looks like. You are ‘Yoda’ to Luke Skywalker. Luke becomes the hero with the help of Yoda.

There are a variety of creative ways to craft your copy or message. Have fun and make your message more compelling with the PSHS approach.