messages – Page 2 – Jon Turino, Minister

June 24, 2013July 14, 2013

The Cost, Price and Payback for Helping Others

When someone asks you for your help with something do you do a cost/benefit analysis before deciding whether or not to respond positively to the request?

Do you try to figure out what kind of “price” you should charge for helping others, perhaps in exchange for some help you might need now, or to bank in order to ask for a favor sometime in the future?

Do you have a different set of criteria for helping others depending on their relationship with you or based on what kind of benefit you could get in return for your help?

Or do you just help whenever you can, however much you can and without regard to the nature or circumstances of the person in need of the help?

My father used to drill into my head the following: “Always help as many people as you can, in as many ways as you can, whenever you can. Because you never know when you might need some help and if you’ve never given any help it might be tough to find it when you need it most.”

And “If you help others you may never get back as much help as you’ve given. But if you hurt others that hurt will come back many times over when you can least afford it.” I think he was talking about bad good and bad karma before I know what those words meant. Sort of like “What goes around comes around.”

Zig Ziglar said “You can have anything in the world you want if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.”

It takes far more muscular effort to frown than to smile. Do you know that a smile from you will almost always help someone else smile, and thus feel better? How much does it cost for you to smile versus to frown? Smiling is one of those “win-win” situations.

How much does it cost you to say “Thank you” when someone does something nice for you, even if it’s their job to do so? How much does it cost to say “I appreciate your help” to someone, even if their help was minimal but their intentions were good? How much does it cost to tell someone that they did a good job on something or, where appropriate, that they look especially handsome or beautiful at a particular time?

How much does it cost to click the Share button on your social media account when someone you know asks you to do so? Or to “+1” something on Google when you think it was OK or might be of interest to others even if it isn’t of much immediate interest to you? Or to re-tweet something where it might help someone with a project they are trying to promote?

I’m not proposing that all of us help everyone all of the time. That’s just not possible, except perhaps in special circumstances (e.g., where you have all the time and money in the world to give and having that richness hasn’t turned you selfish and immune to the feelings of others). But I am suggesting that helping whenever we can, without first trying to figure out a cost or price or quid pro quo, is a better way of living than the other way around.

I am privileged to have a lot of friends, both in the real world and on social media sites, who go out of their way to help others. They provide advice, they answer questions, they help organize in-person events and they volunteer to help in their communities. All without wondering whether or not they’re going to get paid for helping and without expecting some kind of payback.

I’m also not suggesting that you confuse helping with working. If you earn your living by providing commercial services, I wouldn’t expect you to provide detailed help and advice in your field of expertise for me without expecting me to pay for it. And I hope that you wouldn’t expect me to provide you with detailed marketing help and advice on your particular business issues without being paid for it.

But if you need a generic opinion, or a connection to someone, or some hints on what events might be beneficial for you, I’m happy to help – without charge – because it is something that I can do and am happy to do. I’m convinced that each of us individually and all of us together can make this world a better place just by helping each other whenever and however we can.

I hope you are one of them. And that the next time you are in a position to help someone that you do so – freely, willingly and with goodwill in your heart.

Thanks for reading. Your comments, as always, are very welcome. To read more of Jons’ thoughts and ideas, order The A to Z Blog Book from Amazon or Kindle. You’ll love it.

Scoop.it

June 4, 2013June 4, 2013

Summertime, Summertime, Sum-sum-Summertime…

As I write this in Portland, OR, it is 78°F under a crystal clear blue sky. Yesterday was gorgeous as well and the forecasters promise several more days like this. It definitely feels like summertime is approaching. We’ve already been buying freshly picked strawberries from the roadside stands and the local farmers markets have opened. It’s hard to sit at a computer and work under conditions like this!

There will be graduations to attend, early vacations and a host of other mostly outdoor activities coming up over the next few months. Participation in indoor networking events will be down, but the several al fresco events in Portland will be mobbed, even if it’s hot like last year. That’s because we live for the upcoming sunny months. They renew us in spirit, feed our bodies with vitamin D, encourage us to exercise more and just generally improve our moods.

There will be street fairs and celebrations that provide sellers with opportunities to bring their wares closer to their customers in convivial atmospheres. More people will be walking in neighborhood business districts and thus more likely to visit retail establishments. Restaurants with outside seating will be making more money well into the evening hours. It really is a wonderful time of year.

It’s also time to take a look at your marketing activities to make sure that you capitalize on your opportunities to attract more customers and make more sales. Get that table at the street fair. Hold a sidewalk sale – or two or three at reasonable intervals. Provide gift coupons to your loyal customers for outdoor activities they might enjoy. Perhaps you can partner with other vendors to do this without incurring too much extra expense by cross-promoting each other.

Participate in a parade if your town does one. Or sponsor concerts and movies in the parks, a very popular set of events here in Portland. Partner with a local ice cream or frozen yogurt store to do a promotion. Or rent a snow cone machine and the people to run it. Hire a face painter or a professional balloon artist to bring families with children to your establishment. Offer a mid-afternoon “happy hour” if you run a restaurant.

Celebrate the summer with your prospects and customers so they remember you fondly in the Fall and during the Winter months. And please share your ideas for summer business promotions with my readers and I. We’d love to hear from you. Enjoy June!
Scoop.it

May 23, 2013June 28, 2013

The 2013 A to Z Blog Posts

The 2013 A to Z blog posts have been moved to electronic and printed books called The A to Z Blog Book now available on Kindle in electronic form and from Amazon in print form.

The Kindle Electronic Version is available at no charge until May 28th. If you act fast you’ll save $3.95. All I ask is that you write a review.

You’ll love this book! Order your copies today!

Here is the information on the Amazon Print Version available for $24.95:

The A to Z Blog Book: 26 Articles to Entertain, Inform and Intrigue you.

Authored by Jon Turino

List Price: $24.95

6″ x 9″ (15.24 x 22.86 cm)
Full Color on White paper
112 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1489552747
ISBN-10: 148955274X
BISAC: Business & Economics / Marketing / General

26 Articles to Entertain, Inform and Intrigue You. Starting with the letter “A” for The Power of the Word “ASK” and ending with the letter “Z” for Zero, Zip, Zilch, this book includes another twenty-four articles ranging from Decisions, Decisions… to Emotions, Empathy and Engagement, KISS — As In Keep It Simple Silly (or other “S” words), The Likeability Factor, How’s Your Perspicacity?, Truth, Trust and Transactions and many more.

CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/4295924

You’ll love this book! Order your copies today!

Contents include:

The Power of the Word “Ask”
“B” is for Benefits…
The “C” Words
Decisions, decisions…
Emotions, Empathy and Engagement
Features, Flash and Other “F” Words
Go for the Guts
“H” is for Help
iWords
Jargon and Junk
KISS — As In Keep It Simple Silly (or other “S” words)
The Likeability Factor
Markets, Messaging and Media
Networking Necessities, Niceties and No-No’s
Are You Omniscient?
How’s Your Perspicacity?
Questions, questions, questions…
Are You Responsive to Your Customers?
Success Stories and Strategies
Truth, Trust and Transactions
Usury of a Different Kind
Voracious, Vexing and Very, Very Necessary
Wondering Why
X-Ray Vision
YOU Deserve Some Thanks!
Zip, Zero, Zilch

March 4, 2013June 3, 2013

Time for a Commercial Break

I spent some time today putting together a set of small videos that I’d like to share with you. Some have to do with free offers – the website Event Calendar and the Marketing Strategy Development e-Book – and others have to do with asking you to spend some money with me.

The very inexpensive offers are The Piano Story and the Marketing Plan and Marketing Strategy Worksheets. Very inexpensive and very, very useful to you.

The more expensive offers have to do with the Instant Strategy Session and the Monthly Mentoring Mode. Certainly more costly but much more in depth and personalized service for you.

I’d love to do business with you and I hope you’ll both enjoy these short videos and respond to their calls for action. Because I could use the business and I’m betting that you could use the help! Just click the links above to visit the applicable pages and view the videos.

Thanks for reading – and watching. And please do let me know what other products and services that you would find useful.

December 17, 2012July 15, 2013

Smite Those Tactics!

Marketing tactics are insidious and prolific. They keep popping up on what seems like an almost daily basis. SEO. Content. Backlinks. Tracklinks. PPC. AdWords. Promoted posts. Featured items. Offers. Text messages. Mobile apps. Interactive cable TV. Webinars. Teleseminars. e-Books. On-demand presentations. Gadgets, widgets and plug-ins. And the list could easily go on. In fact it does go on!

Are you inundated by the latest “must have” tactics in your marketing strategy mix? If so, I suggest that you smite those tactics until you step back and take a broader view of your overall marketing strategy. Don’t succumb to the siren song of any new tactic until you figure out if it will do you some good.

To whom are you marketing? Are you in the B2B or B2C business? What are the demographics of your markets in terms of age, occupation, income and interests? What kinds of activities are your prospects interested in and how do they find out about them? Mightn’t that information provide some valuable insights to guide you in the selection of your messages and the media you use to deliver them?

Who buys the largest quantities of what you sell, and where can you find more of those kinds of customers? Are there uses for your products or services outside your existing customer base that could be exploited with new messaging? Would new media selection help your message go viral? Is going viral what you want? Can you support that level of activity?

The right hierarchy for your marketing strategy decisions is goals first, strategy second and tactics third. So if those tactics are distracting you or diluting your overall goal and strategy work then I suggest you smite them until it’s time to consider which of them you’ll actually want to implement to support your plans.

Comments, as always, are solicited and thanks for reading.

Scoop.it

December 4, 2012June 3, 2013

Elements of a Marketing Plan — 3

I’m going to continue posting the materials from my Udemy.com online course entitled The Marketing Plan Seminar in 2013 so that my followers can get a feel for the kind of work that I can do for them on a consulting basis. If you can’t wait for the installments to be posted you can order the complete course at http://udemy.com/The-Marketing-Plan-Seminar at any time. In the mean time, I hope you will enjoy each small installment and please do give me a call if doing so triggers something for you where I can be of help with an Instant Strategy Session or working with you longer term with the Monthly Mentoring Mode. Enjoy!

While we need to answer the first three questions on this slide, we really need to think about the fourth bullet — how will we convert leads to prospects to (new) customers and how will be both retain and convert new customers to repeat customers.

Elements of a Marketing Plan — 3

We’re really asking three questions here. Who are the real target markets we’re trying to reach, what messages that hopefully will resonate with these target markets are we trying to convey, and what is the best media to use to get those messages to those target markets in the best and most cost effective way.

Order the complete course today so that you’ll be ready for 2013 and won’t have to wait for the next twelve slides!

December 3, 2012December 3, 2012

Elements of a Marketing Plan — 2

I’m going to continue posting the materials from my Udemy.com online course entitled The Marketing Plan Seminar so that my followers can get a feel for the kind of work that I can do for them on a consulting basis. If you can’t wait for the installments to be posted you can order the complete course at http://udemy.com/The-Marketing-Plan-Seminar at any time. In the mean time, I hope you will enjoy each small installment and please do give me a call if doing so triggers something for you where I can be of help with an Instant Strategy Session or working with you longer term with the Monthly Mentoring Mode. Enjoy!

: This image goes with the accompanying video that is part of the online Marketing Plan Seminar. This is slide number 7.

Here we see the hierarchy of goals, strategies and tactics. Too often people fall into the “tactic of the day” trap and go off developing tactics before setting initial goals, supporting the goals with strategies and then implementing tactics that will support them.

Elements of a Marketing Plan — 2

The “bottom line” here is to make sure that you develop things in the right sequence.

November 29, 2012December 14, 2012

How’s Your Scotoma Quotient?

If you aren’t familiar with the term, WebMD defines the scotoma as “An isolated area of varying size and shape, within the visual field, in which vision is absent or depressed.” And as “A blind spot in psychological awareness.” The first one discusses a physical manifestation while the second refers to a psychological manifestation. And that is the one I want to talk about.

The psychological scotoma is most often discussed in the context of cognitive dissonance — typically described as the feeling of discomfort when simultaneously holding two or more differing ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions. The phrase was coined by Leon Festinger in 1956 and published in his 1957 book called “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.” According to Festinger, people engage in a process he termed “dissonance reduction” which can be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors.

In plain English what is being said is this: If reality as you are experiencing it does not match the vision of reality that you are holding in your mind, you will feel disharmony. And your subconscious mind will do whatever it takes to resolve that disharmony by either changing or applying a scotoma (blind spot) to your currently held vision or causing you to do whatever is necessary to change your current reality into something that matches your currently held vision.

This theory, which is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology, is the basis for a technique called visual image formation. Using this method you create picture in your mind of how things are when you have achieved your goals. The picture is created in the present tense and is supported by a connected emotional good feeling like lying on a beach or getting married (presuming that was a happy experience!). If your current reality doesn’t match this picture, your creative subconscious will help you do the things you need to make reality as it is match reality as you envision it.

There is a great book called The Magic of Believing, written by Claude M. Bristol and published in 1983, that goes into this theory in great practical rather than scientific detail and I highly recommend it to you. Because it also warns of the second way in which disharmony can be resolved: by altering your mental vision, typically with a scotoma. Your creative subconscious will resolve the disharmony,but you want that to happen by fixing your reality, not altering your vision. Or “patching” it with a scotoma to block out the uncomfortable or disharmonious feelings.

It helps sometimes to revisit your vision on a regular basis to make sure that certain parts of it haven’t been papered over with scotomas that have reduced your energies toward making reality as it is match reality as it should be.

There’s a lot more to this story than will fit here and perhaps I’ll elaborate in a future post. In the meantime, please let me have your comments on this post. Thanks for reading and I hope this helps you identify and eliminate your scotomas.

Scoop.it

November 29, 2012December 17, 2012

Authority versus Power

Do you know the difference between these two terms? And I don’t mean just the dictionary difference, I mean the difference in behavioral terms of both those wield and those who submit to one or another of their forms.

You may be given the authority, by someone with higher authority or with real or perceived power, to sign checks in your company, to hire and fire people, to issue purchase orders (up to your authorized amount) and the like. This authority was given to you and it may be revoked at any time for any reason, however arbitrary (although the more arbitrary the reason the more justified it will be).

Power, on the other hand, is something that you give yourself, even if you have no authority to grant it to yourself. And no one can take it away from you. Let me give you an example.

The supply room people in your company are tired of being interrupted all the time by people demanding pencils, pens, paper, paper clips, staples, copies, etc. So they put out a memo that says, in essence, “In order to serve you better, office supplies will now be available for pickup on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 AM to Noon and from 2 PM to 4 PM. Please drop your written and approved request forms – downloadable on the company Intranet – at least 24 hours in advance to insure that your supplies will be ready for pickup at the time you choose. – Supply Room Management”

Who gave the supply room “management” the authority to modify the behavior of everyone in the company who uses office supplies? No one did. They gave themselves the power to change their environment and work habits by issuing the memo – and publishing it to the whole company because they also own the copy machines and do the mail deliveries! And who is going to question their obvious attempt to be more helpful to everyone? Aren’t they doing this “in order to serve you better?” You don’t want better service? What are you, some kind of subversive chronic complainer who needs to be reported up the management chain?

OK, the CEO’s admin wants something on Wednesday. Are the supply room folks going to give her a hard time? Of course they’re not. They’ll bend over backwards to make her happy so that she compliments their wonderful service to her boss. So guess what he thinks when he hears a complaint about their “in order to serve you better” memo? You’ve got it.

Think about this the next time you decide to submit to an arbitrary “rule” provided by someone “in authority.” Make sure that it’s not an example of the misuse of power I’ve described above. And think about it as well when you think you can do some real good by assuming the power to do so!

As always, your comments are solicited. And thanks for reading. Much more on this topic to follow in the future.

Scoop.it

November 29, 2012December 14, 2012

The Marketing Plan Development Process Flow

: This image goes with the accompanying video that is part of the online Marketing Plan Seminar. This is slide number 5.

This slide illustrates the seven major steps in developing your overall marketing plan. There may be intermediate or sub-steps required during plan development but these are the major ones. Have a good look and a good listen to this one. It is critical to your marketing planning success.

As you can see from the diagram, it’s important to consider both external input — from customers and market and competitive research — as well as your own internal constraints. But don’t let internal constraints alone limit your thinking. There may be ways around them that you’ll come up with as you develop your initial thoughts and plans.

Once the preliminary analysis is complete it is time to kick around the pros and cons of each idea and home in on the actual recommendations that will be implemented as tactics in your overall marketing plan. And don’t forget to include the mechanisms to periodically measure the results of your strategy so that you can continously adjust and fine-tune it based on what’s working and what’s not working as well as you’d planned.

Scoop.it