The Creation of the Fanatical Marketing Energizer Bunny

We have all seen the Eveready Energizer Bunny that just keeps on going and going and going. We all like that commercial. Why? Because nothing seems to stop the bunny. It always has a little more energy to just keep on truckin’.

Over the years I have seen a lot of entrepreneurs in various roles as they build businesses. Some entrepreneurs love the thrill of the hunt and are always out looking for new prey (business leads). They never seem to get tired of being out there. They cannot stand paper work, being in the office and dealing with the routine of the day to day business. They love the hunt/closing of the sale. They leave the cleaning of the fruits of their hunt to others. After the kill/closing of the sale, they are off to the next hunt. These entrepreneurs rarely fail. If they do, it is due to events beyond their control. Even after failing, they just get ready for the next hunt and are back in the game in no time at all.

Other entrepreneurial types love operations, designing strategies or working with customers. We are all different but there is one eternal truth. If you do not have a hunter, everyone goes hungry.

The hunt is another metaphor for that ol’ energizer bunny. As I see our locations maturing, each of you is solving the hunt in different ways. Jeff, Bob, Jimmy and Mike have hunters. Jill, Bill and Doug are their own hunters. Regardless of what you do, you have to spend more time hunting, especially in this famine-like economic environment.

One thing is for sure, the more clients you sign up now, the better tomorrow is going to be when it begins to rain. When it is raining, the people that will talk to now will not have the time to talk to you when they are busy (because they have downsized much of their staff) and they will be overloaded and have little time to think about moving to a new drug testing company. They will most likely go to their existing vendor. You might as well be that vendor.

The best time to hunt is NOW.

Radar Will Find Business

Here is an email sent from the Lieutenant Commander Jeff Hastings in Charge of Radar Observation. The Lieutenant Commander is continually scanning his new business radar screen for leads. The radar scans local news stories, Chamber of Commerce meetings and Internet RSS feeds re: local business stories for leads to feed his Star Fighter Pilot Salesperson Ken.

Once a new target has been identified, an email dispatch is sent alerting Ken of this new target. Fighter Pilot Ken upon receiving this dispatch immediately races to his plane and is off to bag yet another client.

The Email Dispatch send August 27, 2009:

McKesson in West Sac is hiring 500 employees in the next 30 days to make and distribute swine flu vaccine….first job fairs were held this week.
Paul Julian is a spokesperson for McKesson……may be in West Sac…or San Fran HQ….or other…

West Sac bureaucrats quoted in the Sac BizJournal article…..Diane Richards, West Sac
City Economics Director…….Ernesto Lucero, an analyst in the West Sac Economic Development Dept.

Neither McKesson nor Mainstay appears to be West Sac members.

Jeff Hastings
President aka Lieutenant Commander Hastings

Organic Ranking #2 Finding Local Listings

Free business listings are an excellent way to boost not only your organic ranking but your website traffic as well. We are always asked "Where do I list my business?"

List your business in any free business listing directory you can find. No need to pay for a listing, there are plenty of free ones out there that are just as good as the ones you pay for. Take your time and include all the information you can, along with images. Always keep a document somewhere with log in information and passwords, you may need to update those listings in the future.

Here are a handful of sites you could start listing your business with;
http://www.bizhwy.com/
http://www.switchboard.com/
http://list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm
http://www.listyoursite.us/

Here is a short video explaining how we would go about finding listings. Very simple, there is no science to it. Please contact Kylee at kmunn@blackstonehathaway.com with any questions or comments.

When ‘Ugly Wins’ Become ‘Ugly Losses’

Losing or failing is a part of becoming successful. It is not if you are going to fail when starting or operating a business, but when. Every entrepreneur fails at something. The question is, “Are your failures going to be pretty or ugly?” In determining if your failures are going to be beneficial or not, the key issue is “how to minimize, reboot and learn from failures.”

Some of the most valuable insights an entrepreneur can gain are from failures. There is not a single successful entrepreneur, franchisee or billionaire that has not failed. In fact, some of the most successful have failed multiple times. The difference between ugly failures and failures that catapult entrepreneurs to better and more meaningful successes is the process used to create future successes.

Next Blog Posting: The Failure to Success Model

AccuDiagnostics Blog Update

Marvin wanted an update on the AccuDiagnostic's blog inquiring frequency of postings, back linking, strategy, tactics, etc. (I'm Kelli, the new Blackstone Hathaway content provider) My update stated that the AccuDiagnostic blogs are posted on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week. Posting blogs often, this will generate traffic to the blogs and websites. Also, Social Networking would aide in increasing traffic to the blogs and websites.

I put links in each blog linking back to one of the seven AccuDiagnostics locations. For example, one blog will have a link to the Los Angeles website, the next blog will have a link to the Lancaster website and so on. Putting all seven links in one blog is not possible, because Google would just think it was a link farm. But putting one or two links in a blog is fine. By putting links in the blogs, this allows the readers to access the websites from the blogs.

The topics that are covered in the blogs are to educate the readers about AccuDiagnostics and what they offer. Plus, the blogs help to promote AccuDiagnostics and their services.

Good News Moments - August 19

Life can get really crazy sometimes and we tend to focus on the moments when things are not going so well. That is one of the reasons why we are going to have a post every other week focused just on the good things/moments that are happening in our business adventures.

In the spotlight today:

Jimmy from Las Vegas was finally able to open his new location and was able to sign his first customer. He’s also enjoying meeting many interesting people with whom he hopes to have a long business relationship.

Jeff and Carol in Sacramento are enjoying good health and have added a terrific new sales person to their team. They have also noted that economic indicators are starting to shift in a positive direction.

Bob in Los Angeles received his first order from Magic Broadcasting LLC, and in his second month of business he exceeded his target.

Someone once said: “We don’t remember days, we remember moments”. If you have one of those good moments, shoot me an email at mblood@blackstonehathaway.com so I can include it in the next ‘Good News Moments’ post and we can all enjoy the moment with you.

Thanks for sharing your good news with us Jimmy, Jeff, Carol and Bob.

CAMPA Meeting Officially Cancelled

The regional meeting for the Fall 2009 CAMPA meeting has been cancelled in order to allow franchisees to attend the National Convention later in October 2009. The next regional meeting will be in March of 2010.

If you have any questions, please give me a call.

Winning Ugly

When I played small town sports in high school the menu of sporting options was more or less limited to basketball, football and track. Our coach also taught biology, math and PE and had a part time business on the side. This is nothing like high school sporting programs today.

In my day many games were won by improvising. This is what our coach called “winning ugly”.

Metaphorically, winning ugly in business is much like my high school sports days – winning by improvising. In Sacramento, Las Vegas and Oceanside, new salesmen are hired without knowing exactly how this is going to work out. In Rancho/Fontana, pet DNA testing is added not knowing if there is going to be any real interest in this type of service. In Martinez, multi-location billing accounts are signed up without knowing the precise procedures. In Lancaster, supervisor drug testing training is held even though Doug has never actually done this type of training before. Yet, the result in each of these situations was a win – even if in some cases the initial win might have been a bit rough around the edges. An “ugly win” is still a win.

Our region is full of franchisees that are winners who are not afraid to take calculated risks to move the ball down the court and to build their business against substantial head winds in today’s economy.

Next Blog Posting: When Ugly Wins Become Ugly Losses.

Organic Ranking #1, Directory Listings

Google Business Listings
Yahoo Local
Bing
Super Page
Yellow Pages
Local
Merchant Circle
and so on...

These directory listings are the first step in creating a solid foundation for your organic ranking. Directory Listings provide you with the following tools that have a direct impact on the traffic going to your website;

Link to Website
Contact Information
Maps / Directions
Customer Reviews
Detailed Business Description
Business Photos

Each of these elements is crucial to a solid business listing. Without an updated link to your website how will customers get more information? Business Photos provide a level of comfort to your future customers, they already know what to expect when they open the door.

If you do not have detailed and updated business listings your organic results and ultimately your website traffic numbers will decrease. Please make updating your directory listings a priority.

Each location needs to update their Yahoo Local business listing. Below is a video that Kylee has created to get each of you into your listing. If you have further questions or if you can't access your listing please contact her at kmunn@blackstonehathaway.com.

Busy, Busy, Busy.

It has been suggested that our 12 pm CAMPA Conference Calls are becoming problematic because of the increased operational and sales activities each location is experiencing – this is a good thing. Jill Chioino feels that a call at the end of the day is better suited for the multitude of issues that need to be covered. In order to see how this works, the next CAMPA call will be on August 20th at 5:15 pm to 6:15 pm. This will be a regular CAMPA meeting, since there are a number of issues that did not get discussed on our last call.

You will be sent the log on and call in information prior to this time.

Dog DNA Testing Success

The success of Bill's “Who’s Your Doggie?” dog DNA testing campaign has been overwhelming. The multiple newspaper features have driven endless calls to Bill’s office and have resulted in the creation of a new landing page specific to animal DNA testing.

This service fills a unique need in the DNA testing market. Owners of mixed breeds can now accurately identify the breed makeup of their animal. Aside from satisfying curiosity, identifying breed-related behavior can assist in the training process. Veterinarians can evaluate breed-specific risk factors and tendencies to more accurately diagnose an ill animal.

The new landing page is specific to Bill’s location at this time.

HR Consultant on Board

Darlene Forsythe has agreed to provide HR services to AccuDiagnostics franchisees in the Western Region.

Darlene has more than 16 years of experience in all aspects of HR. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, with an emphasis on organization relations and public relations. She offers superior HR support on an on-call basis.

If you have any issues that you need to discuss in the areas of how to do performance reviews, hire or fire employees, Darlene is a valuable resource. Her consulting rates are $90 per hour. Please take the time to call her and introduce yourself so when the time comes, and it will, that you need some advice and insight on a specific situation, you will have a relationship in place.

Her contact information is:

Darlene Forsythe, SPHR
Principal, Human Resources and Staffing Consultant
People Solutions
Phone: 408-234-3054
Email: dforsythe@peoplesolutions.name
www.peoplesolutions.name

Supervisor Training

Doug gave the Supervisor Training for a local school bus company. Doug used the DVD that is provided in the Supervisor Training Kit that all locations received during the Bill Judge Training in our last Regional Meeting.

There were 15 supervisors in the training session. Doug did not charge for this training, since this was his first training session. Bill is currently developing a pricing model for this training. Bill felt that the DVD and the other materials was self explanatory and he is planning on offering future trainings to his client base.