How A Business Marketing Advisory Board Can Transform Your Business


by Ron Finklestein - Date: 2007-03-07 - Word Count: 1195 Share This!

Over 100 years ago Jules Vern wrote three books: Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Journey to the Moon. When those books were written Vern was called crazy, ignorant, and a dreamer-yet the concepts in each book became a reality and are taken for granted today.

Why do you care? Because you are a business owner with your own dreams, goals, and desires that you want to accomplish. You, like Jules Vern, have others who second-guess your vision, your direction, and sometimes think you're crazy too!

In order to succeed as a business owner, there are five marketing problems you want to address in your business:
1.Identifying your ideal customer
2.Getting in front of the right people
3.Keeping your marketing pipeline full of prospects
4.Maintaining contact with prospects, suspects, and clients
5.Having a marketing plan that works

How do I know? I am a business owner and I wanted to fix or avoid those things too. Like Jules Vern, you may feel as though no one understands you or the challenges you face, the pressure you are under, or the opportunities that are available. It can get lonely. You don't know who to trust to help you solve your problems. But you know others did it and you know that you can do it too. You also know that in order to succeed, you need to create a measurable, repeatable, and predictable marketing process that anyone in your business can use.

You're not alone. There are people who you can trust. To find them, consider creating a Small Business Mastery Marketing Advisory Board (SBMMAB).

A SBMMAB is a group of friends, associates, and selected customers who are dedicated to providing feedback, advice, suggestions, accountability, and marketing best practices that allow the members to grow, flourish, and get results. After all, multiple brains and experiences are far smarter and efficient that any single brain or experience.

You know the old saying: It's lonely at the top? When you're a small business owner, you have no one to turn to but yourself. You are expected to make decisions that affect your employees and their families, vendors, customer, clients, and your family. It's nearly impossible to keep thinking straight when you have people coming at you from all directions: bills, payroll, client obligations, vendor problems, and production issues. That's where the SBMMAB can benefit you. Marketing can be complex and difficult. There are so many choices, options, and opportunities. How do you know what works? When you create or find a SBMMAB to participate in, you can put more money in your pocket! The SBMMAB will help you develop new business and increase your success. This Advisory Board can provide constructive feedback and great ideas that you can use to grow your business. This group can help you define and refine your marketing approach and message.

My experience has shown that the best decisions are made in a safe environment, with a group of people you trust, who can be objective and are willing to share what they know. Some of the things the SBMMAB will allow you to experience and implement include:
•Brainstorming and perfecting ideas to grow your business.
•Exploring marketing problems and opportunities in a safe, secure, and friendly environment.
•Masterminding solutions to your marketing problems.
•Creating a marketing team of objective, interested, concerned, and fearless advisors.
•Sharing your marketing knowledge to help others grow and prosper.
•Holding you accountable for taking the actions necessary to achieve your goals.

The process is very simple, but it is not for everyone. If you are not willing to play it out, please stop reading-this concept is not right for you. This group should be designed to help you create (or keep) the right attitude, provide the best marketing advice available, and hold you accountable for the results you want to achieve, but only if you're serious about growing your business.

Basic tips to start a SBMMAB:
1.Define the purpose of the group. Make sure it is marketing-based and that everyone is in agreement.
2.Finding the right members. You want to look for people who are willing to share what they know and are not afraid to provide constructive feedback.
3.Meet at least once a month. All members must treat this meeting time as sacred.
4.Keep it short and to the point: Each meeting should be no more that three to four hours in length. By keeping everyone focused and on-topic you will get more done and will make members believe in the integrity of the group.
5.Respect the voice and needs of everyone. Give each member of the group 30 minutes to put their marketing issues in front of the group to request feedback.
6.Define action items that you will accomplish before the next meeting. This is vital in order to hold yourself and each other member accountable. It will also ensure that the ideas of the group come to fruition and build each member's business.

The outcome you can expect are best defined by Alan Plastow, Founder of the Business Technology Consumer Network:
"I know how difficult it can be to find honest, accurate, affordable answers to mission-critical questions. I know how isolated you can become from business expertise, simply due to fears of exposing too much, or too little. As a member of AKRIS Small Business Mastery Advisory Board, I've discovered an incredibly valuable resource-a group of knowledgeable business professionals with whom I can share advice, diverse perspectives, and expertise-even friendship. This group is demonstrably the most beneficial resource for unlimited personal and professional growth that I have found in over two decades of intense searching."

So what's the next step? There are two things you can do: find a group or start a group. Whatever you do, do it now. If you are like me, if you don't do it now, it won't get done because something else will get your attention and take you away from accomplishing your goals and dreams. Be like Jules Vern and dare to dream what your future can be like.

Action Items:
Here are a few quick ideas for finding or starting a group:
1. Find other business owner who are experiencing your same problem.
2. Create a structure for the meeting so everyone knows what to expect.
3. Give everyone an opportunity every month to share their challenges with the group.
4. Make sure there is no competition between members in the groups
5. Implement a rule in the group-no selling!
6. The best marketing ideas come from different industries that are applied to your industry, so be sure to invite a variety of different individuals from various industries.
7. Limit the group to 10 to 12 members. This will allow for enough people to meet each month and forgive the absentees that inevitably happen.
8. Create an agenda that is always followed. Remember, multiple minds and multiple experiences are far more effective and efficient that one mind and one experience.

This article was excerpted from 49 Marketing Secrets (THAT WORK) to Grow Sales. This book includes: 9 Winning Marketing Strategies, 8 Branding and Corporate Image Strategies, 6 Media Strategies, 3 Networking Strategies, 9 Technology-Based Marketing Strategies, 6 Event Strategies, 8 Sales Strategies.


Related Tags: sales, marketing advosory board, sales growth

Ronald Finklestein, President of AKRIS, LLC, is a small business success expert, business coach, consultant, speaker, author, and trainer, and has published three books, Celebrating Success! Fourteen Ways to a Successful Company (http://www.yourbusinesscoach.net), The Platinum Rule to Small Business Mastery (http://www.celebrating-success.com) and 49 Marketing Secrets (THAT WORK) to Grow Sales (available April 2007). He contributed to 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life. Finklestein is available for coaching and consulting and for speaking engagements, workshops, and seminars. Check out http://www.whysellingdoesntsell.com. You can contact him at info@yourbusinesscoach.net or reach him at (330) 990-0788.

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