Oil & Gas.
Retail & E-Commerce.
Heavy Trucking & Shipping.
B2B Manufacturing.
Non-Profits.
Consulting.
Wine & Hospitality.
Professional Entertainment.
Retail Service.
Architectural.
Entrepreneurs.
SaaS/Web Services.
And many more…
Last week’s Evergreen Summit was a huge success.
What you’re reading above is just a sample of the industries represented at the event. We could add at least twelve more distinct industries if we were to include the virtual viewers. Attendees flew in from all over the place including North Carolina, Texas, Atlanta, Calgary, Liverpool, New Brunswick, Missouri, and more…
All in all, it was a fantastic event.
I told the attendees at the start of the day that I often learn just as much presenting as I do attending, and this event was no different. I thought it would be wise to dedicate today’s Tuesday Tidbit to sharing my key learnings and takeaways with you. Without any special order, here are my top four learnings from last week’s Summit.
1) Many of us are not telling our stories as well as we could be. Nearly everyone in the room raised their hands and said they read the Tuesday Tidbits. Are your customers eager for the next installment of your story? Do they know when to expect it? Only a few thought they were doing a good enough job in this department and that there was a lot of room for improvement. On a related note, how consistent are you? Consistency continues to trumps quantity (and even quality in some cases!) and yet some compared their sales & marketing revenue generating tactics to a random shotgun blast into nowhere!
2) Some attendees in the room have been reading the Tuesday Tidbits religiously for years. We’d never met, but we both felt as if there was a relationship there. That’s a great litmus test for you and your prospective customers. How well do they know you, or how well do think they know you before doing business with you? We’re often trying to rush our sales process when many of us would benefit from slowing it down. Sometimes we need to slow down the first sale to ensure the fourth sale.
3) For many of us, even those in heavily competitive and commoditized industries need to do a far better job of differentiating our differences in a way that current and prospective customers have a preference to buy from us over the competition, with a willing to pay a premium to work with us, and a desire to buy from us more often. Everyone, including your competitors, says they provide a ‘wow’ experience, are incredibly easy to work with, and have a unique approach. So what? Prove it.
4) You need a fresh perspective and fresh eyes. Nearly every executive in attendance expressed to me how good it was to get out of the day to day and talk/learn from others outside of their respective industries. Most importantly, the ability to get pragmatic, instantly useful information that they could start using the next day. If you want to learn more about how I can help with this, get in touch.
As an added bonus, there were a few companies in attendance, who were not clients but shared that they were using my Pick-3 Process and generating fantastic results from using it. You should be too.
Joe Garcia from Atlanta, GA summed it up nicely with this fabulous testimonial he provided.
While I can’t recreate the dynamics of the room virtually, one remote viewer wrote me to tell me that he watched the Summit over the weekend and took over 15 pages of notes. The recordings are ready for viewing, so I’ll make the same offer this week as I did last week. You can purchase the Summit recordings for $297, or for the same price, you can pre-order 30 copies ($9.80 per copy) of my new book, The Customer Loyalty Loop, for your company, and I’ll give you the Summit recordings for free.
Today’s Key Challenge: Take the time to write out your corporate story (What makes you unique? What makes you different? What makes you distinct?) if you don’t already have it codified and posted on your website.
Next, ask your best customers (or members of your executive team) to tell you about the company in one minute or less. See how closely the stories they tell align to your story, and then determine whether you need to change your story, where the incongruities are, or how you communicate it both internally and externally more effectively.
