Following is my interview with Kenneth Barns, founder of Breaking the Sales Bottleneck (BTSB) Consulting (www.breakingthesalesbottleneck.com):

Kevin: What sales challenges do you see the small business owner facing most prevalently today?

Ken: Without even stopping to think about it, I can tell you that it is undoubtedly the process of converting prospects into buying customers, that is, the function of actually getting them to sign on the dotted line. Many small businesses have great success at attracting prospects but actually translating them into paying customers is often the biggest challenge. I would also say that starting the initial discussion with a prospect as followup to direct mail or marketing piece, for example, is another big one.

Kevin: What are some of the things entrepreneurs can do to strike up that first conversation, whether it be in person or over the telephone?

Ken: If they know in advance which company they will be meeting or speaking with, then it comes right down to research, to find the challenges and issues the prospect faces. For example, “I noticed on your website you just announced…” or “I understand your business just had a record quarter…” These types of opening questions allows the small business owner to probe them about their business – what they do and how they serve clients and prospects. People love to talk about what they do. If you can get the prospect talking, you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn about their challenges and needs simply by listening. Once you learn this, you can set an appointment to discuss with them further just how you can help them address their challenges.

Kevin: It sounds like you’re advocating the probing question or consultative approach to selling. Right?

Ken: Yes, that’s right. In addition to using a prospect’s website or recent announcements as a way of getting them to talk, you can also use what I call the “powerful question concept”. This approach is extremely effective and basically focuses on the types of questions to ask and when to ask them. Here are some examples:

• How satisfied are you with your marketing?
• What are your biggest challenges/most pressing problems?
• What has been most successful for you in terms of generating sales?
• What has been the least effective in terms of generating sales?
• Do you have any sort of sales tracking or metrics measurement in place?

Kevin: Ken, you mentioned earlier the challenge of converting prospects to paying customers. Can you please talk about that a little bit?

Ken: Sure. The way I look at it is as a formula. First you create that awareness factor of their specific business challenges. Its demonstrating your awareness as well as them validating their own awareness. Once you dredge these up and show your true understanding of their issues, you have passed a major hurdle. Something special happens when you can effectively uncover a business’s true challenges, many times ones they haven’t even thought of themselves. Once this happens, they will have a certain level of trust in you and they will look to you to help them solve them. You showed them you took the time to research and understand their business. They will then be more apt to bringing their wall down.

Kevin: So it’s essentially the notion of uncovering their “hidden” challenges that they may not even be aware of?

Ken: Right. Strategically it’s all about the customer and his/her issues. Its not about you and your products and services. We all focus too much on our own offerings when we need to be focused on the needs of those whom we want to purchase our products and services.
In the end, effective selling comes down to either having a far superior product or service and/or your ability to create an “a-ha” for your prospective customer that can have serious implications if not addressed. You then position yourself and your business as the solution needed to solve their problem.

Kevin: Thank you Ken for that wonderful insight into effective selling. Can you now take a minute to tell us about your book?

Ken: I had tremendous success selling products and services for Verizon a few years back. I wanted to essentially parlay that success into a tutorial if you will on how to drive sales. So I wrote a book that essentially tells that story. I call it “Breaking the Sales Bottleneck” and it serves as a foundation for sales success covering essential, practical sales techniques. I call it “Breaking the Sales Bottleneck” because we are all faced today with the challenge of identifying viable business prospects and then excrutiatingly trying to pull them through to paying customers.

Kevin: Tell us about your new business.

Ken: I created a program called Listening for Sales Success that is all about this consultative/active listening sales approach we talked about. I also offer one-on-one sales consulting services leveraging these techniques and others that I outline in my book. And my whole approach to effective selling is based on a sales model I developed that I call R3. Essentially it is a three-tiered model comprised of building rapport with prospects, keeping the discussion relevant to their challenges and daily world, and using proven rhetorical sales tactics to pull the prospect through that narrow bottleneck that typically keeps most of us from closing the deal.
For a free electronic copy of Ken’s book and to learn more about his sales consulting services, you can visit his website at www.BreakingTheSalesBottleneck.com.

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com

Personally, through my many years of PR/Marketing/Branding experience, I have come to realize the true power of a company capabilities/sales presentation that tells prospects, investors, partners and even employees who the business is and why its products and services should be considered for purchase. I have developed countless capabilities presentations using PowerPoint and have come to rely on an eight slide format that works for any organization, regardless of size, marketplace, etc. The slides include:

1. Business challenge - Talk about the challenges your clients and prospects face that lead them to search for solutions like the ones you offer
2. Your value proposition – In business value (rather than product features) terms, describe how your solutions (product and services) solve the problems described in slide 1
3. Product/service description – Describe specifically how your customers use your offerings (for what business purposes, etc.)
4. About us – Talk about your company in terms that matter to your audience (include things like years in business, number of customers, locations, awards, financial stability and so on)
5. Why you? – List at least five reasons why your business is better than the rest (include key differentiators that describe values/benefits that matter to your audience)
6. Customer successes – Include at least two or three scenarios describing a client’s initial challenge, your solution and the value (return on investment) they realized using your offerings
7. Customers – Either list or include logos from past clients (if appropriate)
8. Contact us – List various ways your prospects can contact you (phone, email, website, physical addresses, etc.)

This format obviously leaves room for flexibility when necessary in terms of additional slides. This could be for a company with multiple product or service lines, for example.

Once you have a professionally developed capabilities presentation, it will serve you well to post it on your website, provide it to your sales staff (if you have one) and include printed out copies in your press kit.

In the presentations I develop for clients, I like to include what I call customer value models, or visual representations of the business value the solutions provide to customers. These images typically depict value in terms that words sometimes cannot. If you would like to see some examples of customer value models, you can visit the following web page: www.winningmessage.com/CustomerValueModel.html.

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.powerproof.net

Business partners can serve a multitude of purposes in the course of a mutually beneficial relationship. Here are several examples:

1. Help you expand and round out your set of offerings – if you’re a law firm and want to also offer a lower-end “product”, you can align yourself with a pre-paid legal services firm, for example
2. Expand your reach and penetration into new customer segments and markets – if you have a small firm operating in the U.S. and can find a viable, complementary partner in the U.K., for example, you can tap international market segments without having to physically expand into the region.

3. Make your operation appear larger than it actually is – if you have a sales force of just three people and decide to partner with an organization that offers a corresponding product, you can leverage their sales force as well as yours to sell both business’s products and services
4. Grant you access to higher-level individuals within the companies you are targeting – If you can’t reach vice president level executives in your target organizations, a partner that already has existing relationships with these individuals can possibly afford you the opportunity to get some face time with these high-level professionals
5. Increase your organization’s marketing power – if your business has limited promotional resources but can align itself with a partner that doesn’t, you can leverage their breadth to also gain heightened visibility

In life we sometimes find it better to borrow someone else’s stuff rather than buying our own. This same principle applies in business with regard to successful partnerships. You could expend tremendous resources to acquire the additional resources you need to grow your business or like the aforementioned stuff, you can find someone else who has what you need and “borrow” it. Unlike a drill or a lawn mower, however, the business scenario typically requires a mutually beneficial value proposition. No company will let you borrow its resources if you aren’t bringing something to the table that they can benefit from as well.

In the end, effective partnerships or alliances with like businesses can help you scale your business quicker and more easily than going it alone. Give them a try. I have, and it’s working wonderfully!

Like everything else in life and business, why not prepare for it while you still have time?

Continuing with the theme of a person’s body as a comparable framework to a business’s brand, let’s talk about the legs first as they really serve as the basis for stability and are critical in order to support forward momentum. You need a carefully crafted messaging hierarchy consisting of a positioning statement (succinct, 25-40 word statement that details who you are, what you do, for whom and why you’re different) and supporting key messages (concise, powerful statements that offer key differentiators of your business in support of your positioning statement). Let’s assume this messaging hierarchy in whole serves as our body’s two legs.

Next up is the midsection or torso. This part of you brand serves as a powerful foundation with which all other parts feed into and leverage. For this illumination, we will say the midsection is all of your sales and marketing collateral that promotes your messaging hierarchy and arms you and your salespeople with the tools they need to effectively sell your products and services. These elements of the marketing arsenal include brochures, press releases, sales sheets, company backgrounder, articles, success stories, etc.

The next two areas we will consider your arms. For this article, we will equate them to a strong physical and online presence. If you have a storefront and/or a website you must ensure it accurately reflects the values of your brand. If you are a high-end consulting business then make sure your web presence conveys this, for example. Likewise, if you are a nonprofit, it wouldn’t make sense to have an office with $5,000 antique leather chairs. Your arms enable you to reach out and touch. Your web and physical presence do just the same. They serve as your means of reaching your customers, prospects, partners, and so on.

Finally, we have one’s head or face. For purposes of our illustration, this will serve as your diligence around keeping your eyes and ears on your market and your competitors to ensure you are communicating a brand that differentiates. It is not enough to run a wonderfully success business with blinders on. You must be aware of your surroundings and how to best operate within them.

In the end, just like with a person’s body, a brand needs to be well maintained. Like eating right and exercising, it is important to make sure you are doing things necessary to help, rather than harm, your identity.

My point here transcends all communication, especially in professional emails, letter, memos and so on. In business we are always trying to make our best impression when meeting with prospects, customers, partners, vendors and coworkers. We typically dress the part and speak the part but why don’t we always write the part? Your written communications say as much about you as your personal appearance and many of us either don’t recognize this or simply don’t care. Trust me, in corporate America or even in small business circles, people judge you on virtually everything you do, whether intentionally or not. A misspelled word, overt grammatical error or an incomplete sentence can spell “doom” for you in terms of branding yourself and your business.

Would you put your business in the hands of a vendor (regardless of how good it is) if your contact wouldn’t even take the time necessary to spell-check his/her email, for example? I know I would certainly have doubts.

As an author, a business writer, a key message development expert and a tenured branding professional, please embrace the notion of taking the time necessary to communicate properly whether you are corresponding with a family member, a friend, a pen pal or a professional contact. It not only says something about your writing style, it also says something about you.

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.powerproof.net

In my many years of PR and Marketing Communications, I have developed countless Marketing Plans for businesses of all types, sizes and at different stages of growth – from the fresh start-up to the established bellwether that is launching a new campaign. From these experiences, I have learned that a carefully researched, planned and executing Marketing strategy is imperative to the success of any business.

The many successful Marketing campaigns I’ve managed all consist of certain key components that I would argue should never be left out. These include:
A. Situation analysis – synopsis of the market landscape (competitors, target customers, business need, etc.)
B. Market opportunity – What niche exists in the market? What is your anticipated revenue? Can you build or steal market share?
C. Business objectives – What is your business trying to achieve through its marketing efforts? For example: Is it market share, expanding reach into existing set of core customers, expansion into new markets, increased sales, etc.?
D. Key messages – business differentiation statements that uniquely position your business and its offerings against your competitors
E. Strategies – What key approaches will you take to effectively achieve your business objectives? For example: if one of your business objectives is to expand your reach into existing set of core customers, then a supporting strategy might be an executive-level ad campaign targeting senior level executives.
F. Tactics – These are the specific tactical actions you will take to fulfill your strategies. For example if one of your strategies is an executive-level ad campaign, then a supporting tactic might be to develop a new ad that appeals to C-level executives.
G. Execution timeline – putting target completion and execution dates to each tactical action item you have outlined.

This may sound like a lot, but there are many different types of specialized agencies out there to help you flawlessly plan and execute such a strategic Marketing plan including Public relations agencies, Advertising agencies, special-events firms, branding agencies and more.

When creating and refining a brand, it is imperative to keep an eye on the market and your competition so you don’t wind up like the example above. A good rule of thumb I’ve used in the past is to look at your top three competitors’ websites at least once a week to see what news they are coming out with, what new messaging they are using and so on. Also visit the website of the main publication that covers your industry once a week. This will help you keep your eye on key developments in the marketplace and allow you to keep your branding viable and differentiating.

Should something happen in the industry to affect your positioning, you certainly want to know about it as soon as possible. Although seven days (time between your researching other sites and key industry publication) would seem like a long time should this happen, it is certainly better than never knowing! We all know small business owners don’t have much free time in the first few years of business. Finding time to keep tabs on the happenings around us can seem like something that can be put aside and only visited if time allows. But trust me, I’ve seen it happen many times before where a company takes their eye off the ball and learns about a competitor’s better product (for example) from one of its own customers. By then, it is simply too late!

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.powerproof.net

Kevin: How did you come up with MR-SEO.com?

Joe: I had just started my small business, focused on search engine optimization and knew I wanted to come up with a name that would be memorable and would help me brand my business. As a small web-based business, it is important to choose a name that has to do with your industry and will count in search terms. I liked MR-SEO.com but when I typed it into the search engines a bunch of guys were coming up that had nothing to do with my business. I knew I wanted that name and had to think of a way to capture people based on my spelling of MR-SEO. To make it happen I had to work constantly on getting other sites to link to me.

Kevin: Why is link-building so important?

Joe: Link-building tells search engines what other people think of your site or pages. If you can get other experts in your field to link to you, then that makes you an expert too. And in doing so, people linking to you will help brand your business. You can also use audio and video search engine optimization. The audio and video you create can help you get links which in turn help brand your business. That’s what I did with MR-SEO.com. I have specific episodes now linked directly to my site.

Kevin: How else can you leverage SEO to build your brand?

Joe: With Web 2.0, social networking, blogging, etc., if you create a popular post and people subscribe to your RSS feed, they will keep coming back to you and seeing your brand over and over.

Kevin: What about keyword optimization?

Joe: It’s all about finding key words that relate to your specific business and at the same time are highly searched on the search engines. If you are a hot dog manufacturer, for example, and come out with new hot dog… go to Trellian.com or Overture.com and search for “tasty hot dog” to see if they are hot keywords. You can use these tools to gauge how often certain terms are searched. You need to know what people are searching for if you are going to successfully attract them.

Kevin: Some people can get lucky and tap into a wealth of site visitors but most of us need to really work at getting a recurring audience. Right?

Joe: Well, first of all you shouldn’t just generate traffic for the sense of getting eyeballs. You need to get the specific traffic that makes the most sense for your business. If you get people to come to your site and don’t offer what they want, they’ll leave and never come back. You’re wasting your time, their time and potentially creating a negative effect on your brand. People optimize incorrectly all the time, throwing every keyword they can into their keyword tags, on every page, etc. It’s just not effective. You need to take the time to do research to determine what keywords make the most sense for your business. Go to Google and type in your keywords to see what comes up. If no one you compete with comes up, then there is probably a reason. If you choose the right words, often times your competitors are already there. That is why links are so important. They raise the importance of your site over theirs.

Kevin: Can you elaborate more on keyword optimization on specific pages to attract the search engines?

Joe: Every page is a separate doorway into your site. If you have multiple key words you want to use, don’t put them all on one page. Multiple pages on your site give you multiple opportunities to target specific audiences to different areas of your site. Don’t optimize one page for multiple terms, but rather optimize each page for a particular term or several if they are related.

You can visit Joe Balestrino’s site for more SEO insight and to have him help you optimize your site, and brand, at MR-SEO.com.

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com/services.html
www.powerproof.net

What follows is my interview with Chris…

Kevin: What does branding mean to you Chris?

Chris: It is the essence of how your business is perceived, not only inside your company but also by external audiences. I think too many people deliberately develop a brand independent of who they are and it winds up not being congruent. Brands are based in large part on one’s own personality and culture, and a brand should be an extension of you. It cannot be contrived. Your brand is how you are perceived, the words you say, the things you do, what you communicate on your website. It is what people say about your company when you aren’t around.

Kevin: Can you please talk about extending your brand through external parties?

Chris: There are two challenges to businesses extending their brand through external surrogates: first is how they articulate their value proposition to a customer – and, if they can get through to the second step – number 2 is helping others effectively articulate their brand for them. Some businesses struggle with succinct positioning. Those that can effectively articulate their value can equip partners, contacts, etc. with the ammo they need to sell their brand when they aren’t around.

Kevin: Do you have any advice for developing effective messaging?

Chris: A good rule of thumb I use to keep messages simple and easy to relay is to keep it “grandma playing bingo” simple. If your grandma can tell her friends at bingo what you do, and they “get it”, then it’s a successful value articulation.

Kevin: What made you decide to create your own networking organization?

Chris: Recognizing the power of third party branding and promotion, I started my own business networking organization to help businesses do just that. I wanted to help my business, prospects, marketing clients, and others extend their brands through other like-minded business professionals. In doing so, we all benefit from leveraging third-party branding support without doing all of the work ourselves.

Kevin: Tell us about your networking organization

Chris: B2BpowerExchange helps entrepreneurs, consultants, salespeople and others extend their brand to the right audiences through relationships with others who are targeting the same types of clients – senior level executives at B2B companies.

Kevin: What kinds of professionals belong to your organization?

Chris: Business professionals across the board, from marketing to sales to HR to service providers to CPAs and lawyers. We also have application developers, business process consultants, commercial real estate professionals, industrial solar power providers and much more.

Kevin: You said all of these businesses are targeting the same types of clients. Tell us about these potential clients.

Chris: Every member of B2BpowerExchange is selling to director-level executives and above in companies. This includes CIOs, CEOs, COOs, CFOs, VPs of sales/marketing, IT, HR, etc.

Kevin: Can you talk about the size and breadth of your organization?

Chris: Today we officially have 28 breakfast meetings a month covering 3 states – this is across several regional chapters. We expect to add two more states in the next 60 days and our goal is to increase our monthly meetings to 40-60 by the end of the year. We hold our meetings online as well as in-person based on region, metro area or according to specific interest areas. We are primarily U.S. based today but we do have individuals participating from Mexico, Toronto, Philippines, Ukraine and other countries. It helps our members reach into areas where they are not physically located and develop bonds with others around world that can bring them into deals they would otherwise not have exposure to.

Kevin: Can you give us an example or two of the power of your the organization

Chris: We had a consultant in the commercial energy space connect with someone in the commercial property space within his first month of membership. This business connection yielded him an $800K business opportunity that closed less than two weeks later. We recently had a marketing consultant, for example, bringing in an advertising sales rep for a half-million dollar deal. We have application development firms (technology) closing deals upwards of $250,000 based on connections they make through our organization. Our group provides our members with warm introductions to business prospects they otherwise might not be able to access or ever even know about. This dramatically shortens the sales process. In essence we’re providing business introductions to professionals through trusted relationships.

We also have many of our members partnering up to expand their own business capabilities with those of other companies. This in turn strengthens both brands. This teaming enables our professionals to deliver value to clients they couldn’t provide before on their own.

Kevin: You own your own business, aside from the B2BpowerExchange, correct?

Chris: Yes I do. My company is called LeadGenaires. We’re a marketing consultancy that breaks down barriers between sales, marketing and the management team resulting in measurable marketing programs.

Kevin: How has B2B extended your brand?

Chris: When I first started LeadGenaires and was in business for only one year, I was dong okay but not flourishing. After my first year starting B2B, I already was landing clients in multiple parts of the country. Today, I truly have more work than I can handle. Through B2B connections, I am also able to secure frequent speaking engagements, book writing opportunities and further extend my visibility - regionally, nationally and internationally.

Kevin: How many people leverage B2BpowerExchange today?

Chris: We have about 900 individuals participating around the world at various levels with 145 official members.

Kevin: How can people learn more about B2BpowerExchange and sign up themselves?

Chris: They can visit www.b2bpowerexchange.com, call 925-201-3410 or email me directly at chris@b2bpowerexchange.com. I’ll help get them connected right away. I really enjoy seeing people connect, collaborate, and mutually succeed.

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

I write success stories for my clients all the time. Once I’ve received approval from my client and from my client’s client, I urge both parties to promote the piece on their websites. I then tell my client to post the article online, perhaps at a superblog like hubpages.com for added visibility. A recent client of mine posted a success story I developed on hubpages.com and actually generated a $70,000 deal from a person that searched on Google for the types of products they sell (wireless communications systems) and found the success story. The prospective buyer read the story, contacted my client and purchased thousands of dollars of equipment.

An effective success story for any type of business should have several components, including:

A. Business challenge – describes the challenge the company faced which drew it to seek a provider such as yours
B. Solution description – describe the products, services, etc. the client purchased and explain how they are being used
C. Success – explain how the company is benefiting directly from the new products or services. Be quantifiable when possible in terms of the specific value they have realized

If you don’t feel you can develop an effective success story on your own, please consult a professional.

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

Effective business positioning is all about describing the value your products and services provide to your target customer. Yes it is important to some degree to describe what it is you are selling, but it is most critical to focus primarily on the value you are providing. Many businesses fall into this trap of focusing too heavily on their products and services (features) and not enough on the problems they solve (benefits).

Let me give you an example:

Standard “feature” focused positioning: Our all-in-one fax/printer/copy machines feature fast, high-resolution printing and color copying.

More powerful “customer-value” focused positioning: Our all-in-one fax/printer/copy machines feature everything you need to efficiently produce high-quality, professional looking business documents that will impress your clients.

The first example above focuses heavily on the product’s features while the second version effectively addresses the customer value. Positioning your solutions according to customer benefit, rather than product features, will help you surely distinguish yourself and your solutions from your competitors.

I strongly believe this approach to key messaging should be pervasive across all of your sales and marketing communications channels, including in your brochures, sales presentations, website copy, press releases, articles, white papers, etc.

A good rule of thumb for crafting effective customer-focused key messages and positioning statements is to ask yourself the following question at the end of each statement: “What does this mean for my customer?” Here are more examples to further illustrate my point:

Typical “feature” focused key message: We offer a full range of business accounting services, from tax preparation and filing to payroll and accounts payable/receivable.

More powerful “value” focused key message: We offer every accounting service you need to effectively run your business, all under one roof.

The first message puts the accounting firm in a class with every other accounting firm. The second message helps distinguish the accounting firm from its competition.

I’ll leave you with this final thought: It isn’t about the solutions provided. It is, however, about providing solutions.

If you feel you need help crafting effective messages for your business, please consult a professional.

Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

Just like people typically don’t like all the endless pages of detail in novels, people don’t like to be overwhelmed with unnecessary fluff in business communications either. Much like the 10-second elevator speech, you need to keep your sales, marketing and website copy short and directly to the point.

When I’m writing an article, a press release, website copy, a brochure or any other sales/marketing materials, I use a rule of thumb that hasn’t failed me yet. Write your first draft and then carefully go back and review every single word. Consider taking out or combining as many secondary words as you can without changing the meaning or the impact of the text. If you can successfully pull out or combine words without changing the meaning, then you have learned the art of writing with brevity. Give it a try.

Here’s an example of the intro sentence to a press release to give you some additional insight into what I’m proposing:

First draft: Tubular Water Cooler Inc. today announced the launch of a new line of water cooling systems that work with solar power energy to keep themselves cool at all times.

Second, abridged draft: Tubular Water Cooler Inc. today announced a new line of solar-powered water cooling systems that continually keep themselves cool.

You’ll note that the first draft version is 29 words and the second, abridged draft is only 19. I would argue that they say the exact same thing and the second version actually has more punch, even with 10 less words.

In this short article I feel I have already made my point, and in the interest of brevity, this is therefore all I am going to say.

Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

A. Draw significant web traffic to your site?
B. Put your company name in front of hundreds or thousands of prospective customers?
C. Create countless links back to your site for search engine optimization purposes?

Well I can tell you from personal experience that one single article I wrote titled “How to Differentiate Your Business” has drawn over 75 visitors to my website, added 25 links back to my website, has put my company name in front of over 600 people and actually helped me land two clients.

What I do to maximize the visibility of my brand and help generate potential sales for my business is something you too can do. I write my own articles about topics relevant to my business and I post them all over the web for free. You can either do the same or hire someone to write the articles for you. Once you have this rich piece of content that you own, you can do so many things with it.

Hire someone to write a simple 500 word article for you for just $250 and post it for free on countless websites including hubpages.com, ideamarketers.com, ezinearticles.com and many others. You’ll be able to post your article and assign various relevant key words to it that people around the web will type into search engines and locate your article. On most of these sites you’ll be given the opportunity to list your name, your business, a description of your company and even include a link back to your website. Once you’ve posted your article on one of these sites do it again on another one and then again on another one after that. It’s your article and content and you can do anything you want with it.

The brilliance with this strategy is also that other websites (if you grant permission) will re-run your articles (and your name, company name, description of your business and a link to your site) on their website, for free!! You can see how one simple article can quickly take on a life of its own and help you truly brand your business, heighten your search engine listings and draw significant sales opportunities your way — in no time at all.

Again, if you can’t write effective articles yourself, please hire a professional writer that can do it for you.

Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

Today, however, with the power and ubiquity of the Internet, a press release opens up a whole new world of branding/marketing opportunities to businesses of all sizes. Furthermore, if you know how to appropriately craft one yourself, it costs you nothing. In addition to the potential print and broadcast news value, a press release today (whether newsworthy or not) will likely wind up on national and international news distribution services sharing your news with media, investors, potential customers and the like, the world over. All you need to do is develop an effective press release and post it online at a number of free press release distribution sites (listed later).

Just this May, I entered into a partnership with a New Jersey-based Public Relations firm and promoted the news through such a press release. To our surprise, with the power of the free online news services, our press release wound up on CNBC online, Investor’s Business Daily online, Forbes.com and a slew of other lesser-known news sites. Wow! Isn’t that something? With the following simple headline, my partner and I were able to get tremendous visibility for our two firms: “FastLane (www.fast-lane.net) and Winning Message (www.winningmessage.com) Form Alliance to Offer Strategic Messaging and Positioning Services”. Combined, these leading news sources I mentioned above that covered this story account for tens of thousands of online visitors. This means that the names of our two companies were at the very least seen by thousands of eyeballs. Not too bad, huh?

Here’s how to develop an effective press release:

Based on the hundreds of press releases I have developed over my 13 year PR career, here is my winning formula for developing these marketing vehicles…

A. Intro paragraph – starts with a short statement describing the news itself followed by a statement describing, quantifying or qualifying the value of the news
Examples (these are not actual headlines and are for demonstration purposes only):
–WidgetMaker Inc. today announced the world’s first water-based widget that helps manufacturers increase production time by as much as 10 percent. WidgetMaker’s new Widget-H20 speeds the assembly-line process by…
–Jackson Candy company announced today it has acquired Gail’s Gumballs for $750M creating the world’s only full-service wholesale gumball distributor. The combined organization now has a national network of distributors that are able to service every city in the country…
–ABC Real Estate just sold its 750th house this month, marking the record in Boise Idaho for the most number of homes sold. ABC believes this record validates its ability to successfully sell anyone’s home in 30 days or less. The company’s success lies in its innovative approach to home staging and listing, whereby ABC…

B. Second paragraph – Elaborate on the value specified in statement two of the intro paragraph. Further describe the uniqueness of the event, service, product, etc. Be succinct but complete – giving the reader enough information to determine whether or not to seek additional information from the company or companies listed.

C. Quote – Include a quote or two from a leading executive with the firm or firms listed in the introductory paragraph. The quote should add some additional value to the story by offering another perspective on the news, talking further about the use or application of the new product or service, etc.

D. Final paragraph – List any pertinent pricing, distribution or contact information that will enable the reader to take further action if interested. This includes stores where the product or service can be purchased, stock symbols of the newly formed company, website links, etc. Phone numbers and email addresses should be listed separately at the top or bottom of the press release under a “contact” section.

E. About the company – Provide a paragraph describing each company featured in the press release and expounding upon its full set of products or services, industries served, etc.

You may have heard somewhere that a press release needs to be longer than this, but let me tell you that it simply won’t be read by anyone if it is any longer. Frankly, most readers won’t even get beyond your intro paragraph. That is why it is so imperative to include the real juicy news in those opening statements.

Once you have developed your press release and had it checked for clarity and grammar by a friend or colleague, post it for free at one or more of the following sites (just a sampling) to gain wide-spread visibility to clients, prospects, investors and more:

–PR.com
–free-press-release.com
–24-7pressrelease.com
–prlog.org
–prfree.com

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

Without an effective sales and marketing machine your business will likely flounder in the wake of your competition. Like your primary competitors you must have certain tools at your disposal that enable you to stake claim in the marketplace, substantiate your declarations and entice prospects to buy from you.

These sales and marketing tools must be primed, up-to-date and differentiating at all times or you risk missing out on sales opportunities by simply not being effectively prepared.

From my experience with businesses of all sizes covering virtually every major industry, I can tell you that every business – large or small – should have all or at least most of the following weapons in its sales and marketing arsenal: (in no particular order)

1. Web presence – crisp, clear, succinct and differentiating copy that focuses on the business value of your products and services and not just their many features

2. Brochure – a visually appealing takeaway piece that concisely and clearly discusses the value of your products and services in terms every possible prospect can understand

3. Elevator pitch – a punchy, differentiating 25-50 word statement that describes what you provide, for whom, its value and why you are better than your competition

4. Backgrounder – a one-page document that describes the history, structure and philosophy of your business to serve as additional information to anyone considering doing business with you

5. Success stories or testimonial statements – prospects are a tough bunch and often want to hear how you successfully helped others in the past. Ideally you’ll have full stories detailing the business challenge your client faced followed by the solution you provided and the success realized. If this isn’t possible (even if customer-name anonymous), then you must at least have some rich quotes from past, satisfied clients that detail the value you provided to them.

6. Topical articles – when prospects come to your site they are often looking for education and additional information on the topic your business focused on. You ought to have some informational, non-promotional articles on your site or published on the Web that are authored by subject matter experts within your organization. There are few more effective, inexpensive ways of demonstrating your knowledge.

7. Blog or newsletter – dovetailing number 6 above, you simply must have a mechanism to share information with your clients and prospects on a recurring basis to keep them current on your ongoings, to espouse your knowledge and to keep them within your sphere of influence.

8. Key messages/differentiation statements - successful sales rhetoric is imperative to business success; you must therefore arm yourself and/or your sales people with key messages that hit the prospect between the eyes with value they can’t afford to go without.

These are certainly not the only critical sales and marketing mechanisms a successful business should consider, but these are most definitely some of the absolute most important. I did leave out other notable items such as sales presentations, press releases, books, and others.

Thanks for listening.

By, Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

I equate this type of publicity to the multitude of whiz-bang sensory-overload commercials we see today that bombard us with sometimes-outrageous audio/visual stimulation but typically do little to truly sell us on the value of the company’s products or services. I mean just because a one-legged monkey with a Mohawk is riding a skateboard really well on a ramp and drinking a certain type of soda, doesn’t mean I want to purchase the same soft drink. I can’t tell you how many times I hear someone talking about a really neat commercial but can’t remember the name of the company behind it. Is this effective branding? I don’t think so.

There is most certainly something to be said for creating an ad or marketing piece that people will remember, but it is equally as important to make sure the viewer’s recollection is one of your brand’s value, not just how entertaining your communication was. In my branding and communications strategy for my business I utilize a formula to ensure I’m on the right track in terms of effectively communicating value to my clients and prospects. Here are the simple rules I follow diligently in all of my sales and marketing communication:

My communication vehicle must…
Rule #1: differentiate my services
Rule #2: clearly state my services’ value
Rule #3: make sense to the layman
Rule #4: be consistent with my business’ image
Rule #5: not be considered offensive to ANYONE

By following these simple, straightforward rules, I ensure I communicate value and integrity to my clients and prospects at all times. To me, this is a recipe for branding success and I’m willing to leave “shock and awe” at the door if it violates even one of my five magic rules. My advice to you is that you do the same.

Thanks for listening.

By Kevin B. Levi
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

For example, if you live in Spain and have your own rare-coin buying/selling business and website, it would make little sense to call yourself something like Spanish Coin Company. Although this is a very elementary example, it does demonstrate the potential to inadvertently narrow the perceived focus of your brand. As a customer, would you likely visit a website called SpainCoinCompany.com if you were looking for rare French coins? You most likely would not. However, the owner of the company may in fact sell coins from around the world, but you might never learn this because the brand itself might deter you right off the bat.

A brand, when built and leveraged successfully, can communicate a business’s value to customers across the world, therefore opening the business up to international markets. Conversely, when crafted and utilized unsuccessfully, a brand can relegate a business to a very narrow scope and limit its potential significantly.

There are several critical areas to consider when building an effective universal brand:

A. Logo – unless you intend to limit your scope geographically, stay away from logos that closely resemble one particular region (for example a logo with red, white and blue stripes)

B. Messaging – refrain from the use of words/messages that may resonate only with a specific group or region (for example refrain from phrases that use culture or region-specific slang or jargon)

C. Communication – the use of certain images or people in your outbound communication can incorrectly limit your brand’s ubiquity (such as pictures of individuals all from one nationality and/or race)

D. Actions - your actions as a company or organization can also impact your brand identity. All too often companies in a particular region of the world only have their customer support/call center taking live calls during local regular business hours. What about those customers that want support while you or your customer support representatives are not working? Should they simply leave a voicemail? A viable way around this for small businesses is to at the very least provide sufficient “self-help” FAQs and other mechanisms on your website so your customers can get the answers they need when they need them.

As a business owner it is important to look beyond the borders of your region, customers or ethnicity and consider your brand’s relevance to all potential customers regardless of their physical location or cultural makeup.

A. Corporate positioning statement
B. Supporting key messages
C. Supporting proof points
D. Customer value propositions/statements

Together, these four components comprise a business’s key messaging platform. Personally, I never leave home without it. That is, I have a laminated business-card size cheat sheet that states my key messaging platform. If I ever add new employees to my business I will most certainly make a cheat sheet for them as well.

Let’s explore each component:

A. Corporate positioning statement – this highly succinct, 20-40 word statement should clearly and persuasively demonstrate what the company does, why it is different, how it helps people and for whom it provides its products/services. This can also be referred to as the “elevator pitch” because it should be concise enough to articulate in 10 seconds or less. As a PR person, every company I represented either had one of these or I developed it for them so I was able to quickly describe their business and its value to editors and reporters. If you have no other components of a messaging platform, you must at least have a positioning statement.

B. Supporting key messages – these succinct, precise statements support the claims made in the positioning statement. An effective positioning statement will have certain key words that really stand out and help make it unique. These “power” words are typically the ones that correspond to the supporting key messages. For example, if you use words like “…help manufacturing companies increase productivity by…” in your positioning statement, then you must have a key message that supports that declaration. A viable key message in this situation might be something like: “Our widgets speed up the average production line by improving…”

C. Supporting proof points – these bulleted statements or phrases are similar to arrows in your quiver when you are lining up and taking aim at your target. If you don’t have the right ammunition (i.e. an arrow) then you cannot hit your mark. Similar to how the key messages support the positioning statement, proof points support key messages. Each key message in fact must have its own set of proof points. Using the key message above, a viable proof point might be: “Our widgets use a higher performance oil which keeps the assembly line machines running around the clock.” Just like a bow is useless without an arrow, a key message can fall flat without credible proof points to substantiate it.

D. Customer value propositions/statements – these statements describe the actual benefit(s) to the customer from a business’s products and services. Every positioning statement and key message must have one; otherwise the statement might not resonate with your client or prospect. These are the “so what’s in it for me?” sentences that round out the key messaging platform. Using the same key message we developed in paragraph “B” above, an example of a customer value statement might be: “You will be able to produce more products in less time, thereby improving your sales capacity.”

Every Fortune 5,000 company today has a key message platform (in some form or another). Even though you are a small business, trust me when I tell you that you need one too.

By Kevin B. Levi
Winning Message LLC
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com

A. Buy this product and your hair is guaranteed to grow
B. Use this pill and you’re sure to lose weight
C. Our hamburgers use the highest quality meat
D. Our shoes help you run faster

Today’s educated consumer is growing more and more weary of these empty promises as many of us have tried these products and haven’t experienced what the brand promised. Don’t fall into this trap with your business. I’m not implying that you should not make quantifiable/bold brand promises. What I am saying is that if you do, make sure you can back them up!

One of the services I provide to clients is something I call a key messaging hierarchy. Following a comprehensive competitive analysis of my client and its key competitors’ positioning/messaging statements, I develop a set of bullet-proof messages that include statements that can be validated and also help the company differentiate itself from its competition. This key messaging hierarchy includes: a positioning statement, key messages, proof points and customer value propositions.

It is sometimes said that branding is all about two things: your product or service and your marketing. In my world, I too believe it comes down to two things:

Yes, your product/service, but the other is more than your marketing, it is the proof behind your brand promise. I’m referring to the “proof points” you must have to back up every claim you make about your products and services.

I am not a salesperson by trade, nor do I profess to have all of the necessary skills. However, I do know how the sales process works from my many years supporting sales teams. What I do know is that they yearn for proof or validation of their claims. The last thing a salesperson wants is to make a bold claim and have no proof to back it up when the client/prospect inquires further.

Here are two examples of sales rhetoric:

1. What you should not do in your sales and marketing materials:
“Our widgets help companies boost productivity.”

2. What you should do in your sales and marketing materials:
“Our widgets help companies boost productivity by decreasing manufacturing cycle time by an average of 14%.”

If you were a salesperson or self-employed entrepreneur, which message would you want to have in your quiver when you’re standing in front of your target?

From my experiences supporting dozens of B2B companies, I can tell you that PR should stand for “Publicity Received” since it is all about ink and airtime in the end. Virtually every function a true PR agency will provide is all about getting visibility for your business in print, online and broadcast media. Every press release, contributed article, media alert, pitch letter, “letter to the editor”, pitch call and conference call is all about leveraging media for FREE product/service/brand placement.

I am a tremendous believer in the power of Public Relations. Like oil and water, sometimes us PR professionals get into tiffs with advertising professionals. It always goes something like this:

“PR isn’t effective.”

“No, advertising isn’t effective.”

“Yeah, but PR is free and benefits from 3^rd party media endorsement.”

“Yeah, but advertising allows you to control the message and can be extremely pervasive.”

“Okay but PR doesn’t cost a lot of money.”

“Okay but advertising can be viewed again and again and again. PR is typically viewed only once.”

…And on and on.

The brutal truth is that both branding disciplines can definitely help a business improve mind share and market share. It just depends on what you are trying to achieve. In my opinion (and that of many of my PR brethren), PR on its own or in conjunction with an integrated marketing/communications/advertising campaign can pay huge dividends. In fact, it can easily more than pay for itself – even if you enlist the services of a high-priced big-city firm. In the heyday of the high-flying dotcom era (circa 1998-2000), the firm I worked for in NYC was pulling in between $25k-$50k per client each month. Today you can get highly effective, down and dirty PR from an agency in the burbs for anywhere from $2500 to $10,000.

With a single media placement in a magazine, newspaper, on a radio/TV station or on a highly trafficked website, you can earn your money many times over. Imagine you’re paying a PR agency $2500 a month to write a couple press releases announcing your new products or even partnerships, for example and pitching ink for you. Let’s say that only a single story is written as a result and it appears in a relevant industry magazine. The article is about your latest product, includes a photo and a quote from you. This is very likely to happen these days even if the news isn’t all that newsworthy. Now, the equivalent cost of that one-page “third party media endorsement” (written by an editor, not by you – hence, more credible) could be anywhere from $3,000 on the low end (typically) to $8500 or more depending on the readership of the publication. See! Just like that you earned your $2500 back and have thousands in branding equity to boot.

Furthermore, you can then post a link to that story on your website and even in your email newsletter and get even more mileage out of it. You can also get a PDF reprint (maybe $1,000 - $3,000 or so) of the story and leverage it in your sales efforts.

To summarize, a little PR can pay huge dividends in terms of client and prospect visibility and credibility for an affordable fee that you can likely recoup in viable business benefit.

By Kevin B. Levi
Winning Message LLC
www.winningmessage.com
www.muckrakeronline.com