Marketing is: The science of finding prospects and turning them into profitable Customers for your business. Let’s have a look at the 3 core elements in this statement:
- Science:
When I use the word ‘science’ here, I am referring to the methods and approaches that have been carefully tested and refined over time that deliver successful results. In marketing, doing things right incorporates metrics to measure results, testing to understand what works best and ROI accountability to know what elements and methods deliver a better return over time.

Here at BoxOnline we have been testing and retesting hundreds of approaches since our launch in 1999. We have followed the scientific method to eliminate all sorts of approaches that do not work well. We have also identified a few amazingly good approaches that seem to deliver exactly what our Client’s want time and time again. These sort of methods are what we refer to as proven methods. Today, we only offer proven methods to our Clients.

- Finding Prospects:
We often start by building a profile of your prospect(s) so that when your sales message reaches one, it connects with them and they find your offer irresistible. If we did not do this, the sales message would likely fall on deaf ears.

- Turning them into profitable Customers:
Our objective is to persuade prospects to act in a measurable way. We want to be able to measure our performance and know how well a given approach is working and what the difference is after a change has been made to a campaign.

Our marketing formula is based on something that has been dubbed the Business Friendship Model.

Consider how people make friends. The actual process is:
1) Get someone’s attention
2) Connect with them based on a common theme
3) Emotionally commit to do something with each other in the future
4) Act on the commitment by getting together again or doing something thoughtful for them such as buying a gift.

Often a business owner wants his business to appear larger and mightier than it actually is and thus they try to create an image of being a large corporate firm. We rarely support this sort of thinking because our experience has shown that when you try to behave like a big company, you de-personalize your relationship with prospects. In our research, small businesses grew faster when they were fueled by relationships rather than by expensive image campaigns.

So, what does a business typically do when they want to build a relationship with a new prospect?
1) Run Ads to get their attention
2) Relate to the prospect in the Ad
3) Get prospect to respond and commit emotionally
4) Get prospects to act

Well, Consumers don’t necessarily want to follow this process because they have needs of their own and based on our experience here is what prospects actually want:
1) that you, (the business) pay attention to them
2) that you, want to connect with them
3) that you, want to make a commitment to help them
4) that you, want to act on that commitment and are ready to deliver a desirable result to them

Does this make sense to you? If you are able to think like a prospect, it should. If it doesn’t, let us know… We’d love to hear your opinion – especially if you have a product to sell.

I have been asked countless times for my recommendation, my review, my feedback and even my thoughts on a given service that I had experienced or consumed. Often this occurs after purchasing some sort of service in a hotel, a restaurant or a hip retail store. Now, those that know me well understand that I have a particular attitude when it comes to paying for a service and then getting a request from the service provider to deliver my recommendation (my services) for free.

So, in such situations, I typically ask the question… What’s in it for me?

The standard (and often rehearsed) response from the staff is:
“well, if it is too much to ask, then we won’t bother you with this but we would like to improve our services and we have heard from others that your advice really works well so, your feedback could help us…”

and then I get to deliver my favorite retort:
Did I come into your restaurant and request a meal expecting to get it for free?  No.  So, can you imagine how my paying Clients would feel if I were to offer you free advice that actually improves your bookings, your profitability and your overall business performance?

My day job focuses on helping our Clients sell more of whatever it is that they are trying to sell. This is what I do for a living. The typical result is that our Clients double their sales in both new and existing markets. It’s no wonder that my Clients spread the word around.

So, how do you do it? I guess now would be a good time for me to come up with a segue into the main topic of this article which without a doubt is The Single Most Powerful Force in Marketing.

Do you know what it is?

If you can answer this question correctly, your name will be entered into a draw to win free access to our newest online course, coming out VERY soon.

No, this is not a trick question.

Yes, there most definitely is a right answer.

But even if you know it, I can almost guarantee most of what you’ve been taught about it is dead wrong – and I will prove it to you in full detail over the coming 4 days.

Post your answer in the “comments” section below to enter the draw. We’ll pick 4 of you, so you have a good chance to win.

OK… it’s now 4 days later and the responses are in and four winners have been selected and informed via email of their success.

For those of you still reading this, here were the winning responses:

“It is Word of Mouth but only when Trust and Credibility have been established.
I have recently been enjoying a referral group called Business Network International (BNI) and the leads do not come in until the relationship is built. People do not care one bit about who you are or the features of your product. I have found the the ears really perk up when a benefit is mentioned. The old WIIFM…”

“Word of mouth – from satisfied Customers who have had a fantastic experience with your product.”

“Word of Mouth is the single most powerful force in Marketing. Product endorsements create sales. The more people you can influence with your endorsement, the more sales you will make.”

“The most powerful force in marketing is word of mouth recommendations or as Dr. B calls it Viral Buzz. A recent example: THE SECRET. Regardless of what you thought of it, they did no advertising that I’m aware of and the thing spread like wildfire to millions of people. It’s the first time in my life I can recall having so many different friends and co-workers and strangers recommend a product to me.”

Sure, there are boatloads of books on this topic so I’ll do my best to keep this article brief, helpful and to the point. First, this page is dedicated to the many kind folks I meet each day who really need help selling their products and services.

Products and services are wonderful things from both the perspective of the consumer or Customer and the person or company that is offering or selling the products and services. For starters, the consumer gets some form of benefit from the products or services otherwise there would be little reason to purchase them. The seller, likewise receives a benefit in the form of compensation, usually monetary. The difference is that the consumer gets value whether perceived or real from the transaction or the receipt of the product / service.

How the consumer perceives this value is the topic of this article today.

From here on out when I mention the word ‘products’, please understand that I mean both products and services.

Here are my suggestions when you want to sell a product to a given target market.

1) Know your target market well.

That means that you need to understand who they are, how they tick, what they like and dislike etc. If you have hundreds or thousands of Customers this goes for you too – that is what databases are for!

Let’s start with something basic like Motivation Strategies.
Are your Customers motivated TOWARD something or Motivated AWAY FROM something?
If you were to ask them why they purchased your product, what would they say?
More importantly, what would you learn from their response?

If you were to ask your Customers something neutral such as “What did they do this past weekend?” and then follow up the question with “Why did you do X this past weekend?” Chances are good that you will learn something about their motivation strategy.

If they were to answer that they “went to the mountains to ski” this would indicate that the person is likely to be motivated TOWARD something and thus, they tend to know what they want and they will move toward their goal of getting what they want.

If the response to question 2 were “to get out of the city” then you might guess that this person is motivated AWAY FROM something and this sort of individual knows exactly what they don’t want.

In order to sell to these two very different types of people, you need to be able to identify their motivation strategy quickly and then apply a marketing tactic even quicker. Your first step is to create two sets of marketing tools from business cards and form letters to signs, messages and selling phrases that you will learn by heart. Your purpose is to communicate with your prospect effectively using their choice of motivation strategy so that your message is accepted with gratitude and your offer is given priority consideration.

If you wanted to sell a massage to a person that is motivated AWAY FROM something, your marketing message may be something like:

- Want to relieve stress?
Come visit our Spa on the 3rd floor right now.
(special offer limited to the first 5 people, today only)

- Need to get away from it all?
Experience our 100 minute vacation
(Hurry, we only have 4 slots left)

If you wanted to sell the very same massage to a person that is motivated TOWARD something, your marketing message may be something like:

- Are you ready to relax?
Our experienced massage therapists are waiting for you on the 3rd floor.
(special offer for first time Clients – today only)

- Would you like a treatment that is usually only offered to top athletes?
Sign up for a medical massage on the 3rd floor today – there are only a few slots left.

In addition to knowing your Client’s motivation strategy, learn all you can about them and take notes so that you can communicate in a very personal and meaningful way in the future. For example, if you do not see a Client after several weeks, why not send them a thank you note for their last visit and mention a few personal things in the note that would perhaps encourage them to get back in touch with you. When they contact you, present them an offer that they would find hard to resist.

2) Always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS include a benefit in your marketing message. Just to be clear, I am referring to a benefit that your Customer experiences when they do business with you.

3) Incorporate some form of scarcity in your offer – there may be thousands of X available but to many people, the perception of scarcity is a very powerful magnet.

4) Upsell and Cross Sell at the appropriate moment but do it as often as possible. This is a lesson learned from McDonalds and it pays off royally. Have you ever been to a restaurant where they asked you if you wanted fries with your order? That would be an example of a cross sell. If you heard someone ask a Customer if they wanted a large order of fries for only 20 cents more, that would be an example of an upsell. Do not miss out on this essential element of profit building unless you really want to leave money on the table.

5) Practice each of the above suggestions with Clients, Customers, Prospects, Friends – you have nothing to lose

6) Test variations of the above to improve your results and keep track of what works and what does not work.

7) Reserve time in your schedule for building relationships. Many of our Clients are so busy delivering products that they forget to keep relationships warm. The result is that they have to work extra hard to acquire more new business. It is much easier to keep a Client than it is to find a new one so, spend a few hours each week, keeping tabs on your Customers and going out of your way for the ones you really want to keep. The idea is to grow the business you do with your best Customers in such a way that you build a lifetime of value into the relationship. Build those relationships and they will pay off big time.

Naturally, we offer our Clients courses in the above areas with the implied benefit that knowledge will increase their sales but we do things a bit differently over here. We select our Clients very carefully, only a few applicants are accepted each time we open the doors but those that make it through have a compelling business case and a determined desire to succeed. These are the kind of folks we enjoy helping. We could guarantee that our methods will double your sales or you get your money back but instead, we often opt for a success based fee thus, we only get paid if our efforts deliver results. Have you ever worked with a company like that before? Come on, give it a try and apply for a chance to be one of our top performing, revenue generating Clients today.

This is the first of a series of posts we are going to publish on state of the art search engine optimization techniques to help you rank your site organically in the top search engines as high as possible for your top keyword phrases.

There are two main areas that search engines consider when they’re deciding how to rank your page and the first is what you publish on your page and how relevant that is to what people are actually searching for. We call these on-page elements. The good news is that you can optimize on-page elements easily. All you need to do is edit the text on your website.

The second thing the search engines look at is how popular your site is on the internet.

• How many other sites are linking to you?
• Do you have important authority sites linking to you?
• What text do such sites use to link to your site?

These are called off-page elements and we will address them in the next post on this topic.

On-page elements are important in determining your rankings but off-page elements are even more important. You’re unlikely to get to the #1 spot in Google, MSN or Yahoo purely because of your on-page elements, but they could mean the difference between being on page 3 or page 1 – So be sure to read Lesson 2 in this series for some off-page tips.

Here are a few critical on-page elements that you need to optimize in order to get reasonable organic listings for your keyword phrases.

Ensure that your <title> tags include the keyword phrase that you are optimizing for.

<title></title> tags indicate the title of your web page and gives the search engines a strong clue as to what a specific web page is about. This text appears on the very top of your browser window when you are on a given web page and this very same text is what the search engines will display in their organic listings as the clickable text link to your site. So, it’s really important that your <title> tags contain the keywords that you’re optimizing that particular page for.

For example:

If you  wrote an article about how to read text faster, then the title of the page could be:

How to read text faster | Read Text Faster.

notice that I used the separator ‘|’ to boost the importance of my keywords for this page: this is an easy and natural way of doing it. You can use another separator if you wish, the idea is to present your keywords clearly for both users and search engine consumption.

Ensure that your <h1> tags include the keyword phrase that you are optimizing for.

Search engines read H1 tags first to find out what your page is about like headlines in a newspaper. If the search engine spiders discover your most important keywords in your <h1> tags, your page will be seen as more relevant for that search term and you will rank higher.

In your first 50 words of text be sure to include your keyword phrase.

Many search engines pay more attention to the first 50 words on a page than to the rest of the content on that page so be sure to include your keywords at least once within the first 50 words for each page you publish.

Keyword density: at least once in every 100 words of text on your page, incorporate your keywords and keyword phrases.

Your keywords need to appear a few times on your page integrated into the text but not more than 4 times for every 100 words. This is also known as 4% keyword density. If you go any higher than 4%, your site may be penalized for using a spam tactic.

Your internal site links need to include your keywords.

Search engines use the words in your link text (otherwise known as “anchor text”) to estimate the nature of the page you’re linking to. This can be used to your advantage in your on-page SEO efforts, giving your pages a little boost for your keywords.

We have many Clients who struggle to rank well in the search engines until they understand the importance of this tactic. Prior to working with us, they insisted on having a link on their site called ‘Home’. These people are actually optimizing their home page for the word “home” when they should be optimizing it for their main keyword instead! If they were to change the text “home” to “Read Faster Home”, or “Improve Reading Comprehension home”, they would give themselves a boost for “read faster” or “improve comprehension”. If your keyword for a page is “optimize your website”, then link to it from your menu using the text “optimize your website”, or “How to optimize your website”.

The same goes for all pages on your site. Don’t ever link to a page on your site using “Click here” unless you’d like to rank well for the phrase “click here”.

Original content means that visitors will spend more time on your site.

The search engines don’t want to display twenty sites with the same content. It doesn’t provide a good experience for their users. So you’ll find that many search engines have implemented “duplicate content penalties” for sites that seem to be displaying content very similar to content found on other website(s).

So what do you do if your content is the same as someone else’s?

This happens quite often, particularly if you’re using content from private label rights (PLR) articles, where hundreds of other people might be doing the same thing. The trick is to reword the article to make it unique. Shuffle the paragraphs, use synonyms, and try to change the article by at least 50%, and preferably more to be on the safe side.

Get the best quality content that you can for your site, because the search engines will also pay attention to how long people spend reading your pages. The longer visitors stay on your pages, the more relevant your site appears to the search engines for the keywords you have optimzed the page for. If visitors leave your site within a few seconds, the search engines may interpret this action as a poor fit for your keyword phrases. So try to write text that your visitors would be interested in and thus, try to increase the amount of time visitors spend on your site.

What have you got to lose?  Better decisions satisfy our objectives and get us what we desire – most of the time helping others to get what they want at the same time. Learning how to make better decisions should have been a course in our educational experience – sadly, it was not and that is one of the primary reasons we still offer this training to the general public. Decision making skills are critical to both success and to having peace of mind.

We’ve been helping people make better decisions on a variety of levels since 1999. As you can imagine, decisions need to be made in board rooms and offices as well as over the kitchen table.  We provide the tools and processes so that you can master the art of decision making in any situation whether it be in a board room or a dining room, your business environment or during a meeting with neighbors. You can count on our process to deliver results for you every single time.

A typical training course that guides you to making the best possible decision takes approximately 2 days to learn including time spent on applying the secret process to your unique situation and one on one coaching time to answer questions, eliminate barriers and speed the process up. We all know that learning something new requires an investment in time and energy and usually it takes a while before we master a skill to the level where it becomes second nature to us. Our objective is to follow up with our Clients and help make the process become one of your favorite and most trusted tools in your mental toolbox. After coaching, most of our Clients require no more than 30 minutes to apply our DA process to an important decision.

Are you willing to invest just two days to learn the core skills needed to make better decisions for the rest of your life?

Hey, I’m sure that you’ve already invested more than that for other courses which may or may not have given you returns year after year but this is different. This is a life-skill that, as long as you use it, will deliver results for you and those you care about.

At BoxOnline and through the b6group of consultants, we deliver top level training to both companies and individuals that want a methodical process for making and supporting decisions. Along these lines, our corporate Clients typically want three things.
a) They want their board members, executives, employees and team members to make better decisions using a proven process rather than a ‘gut feeling’
b) An increase in confidence that their subordinates will make similar decisions to those that their team leader would have made thus improving both delegation and trust within teams.
c) They want to present clear reasoning, proof that risks were evaluated and that the best possible alternative was chosen for each decision made based on the company’s (or supervisor’s) objectives.

BoxOnline has been providing the tools, training and guidance needed to help make better decisions for both groups and individuals since 1996. This process was developed in the 1950s for NASA and has been honed to perfection over the years. Wouldn’t it be great if such a decision making process were a required part of a high school or University curriculum?

In the case study below, the focus was on selecting the best possible alternative for an information technology purchase decision. This decision involved selecting a vendor, the appropriate software, hardware, infrastructure, staff support and an implementation partner. It was something of a complex decision to tackle and thus worthy of review here since so many of our Clients need to make exactly this sort of decision at least once every 5 years.

The decision analysis or ‘DA’ process can be used on simple decisions as well. You can adapt the DA process to meet EVERY decision making situation you are likely to encounter in both your personal and professional environments.

Knowing when to apply the DA process is important as well.

The method we teach is a tool you can apply when you need to make a selection from a set of alternatives to meet your specific objectives for a given project.
Personal examples include selecting a new place to live, rent or buy decisions, buying a car or even selecting a gift.
Work examples include leading the Board of Directors toward a mutually acceptable decision based on facts rather than emotions, selecting a distribution partner, hiring decisions, choosing the best possible option for growth, selecting marketing events given time and budget constraints. There are literally millions of ways to use this powerful tool and we challenge you to put it to task today.

The plain fact is that the pressure is on to make decisions rapidly in today’s market, including choosing which software and services suppliers to partner with to deliver on strategic objectives. Responsible managers want to deliver on objectives in a timely way, yet protect themselves from career jeopardy. Can they achieve both?

One approach to making the best possible decision is to use a highly logical process. The DA (Decision Analysis) methodology used and taught for 50+ years by top business process consultants world-wide is something that we have adopted and applied for many of our Clients. Yes, it’s a time proven process that even NASA uses and it involves many well-orchestrated and synchronized steps. The BoxOnline DA process is designed to avoid some of the classic pitfalls typical of the way many people make decisions today.

Here are the key steps when evaluating alternatives for an important decision:

• Clearly state the decision to be made.
• Set the strategic and operational objectives.
• Classify objectives based on Client’s musts and wants.
• Weight the “wants.”
• Generate alternatives.
• Screen alternatives through the “musts.”
• Compare alternatives against the “wants.”
• Identify adverse consequences.
• Make the best, most balanced choice.

IT decision making requires additional steps:

• Decide on technology standards into which the decision fits.
• Recognize the major pitfalls typical in each step of the IT purchase process.
• Use the “relationship manager” between IT and business organizations.
• Evaluate vendors against objectives.

Setting Strategic Objectives

The decision analysis method begins with the decision statement, which provides the focus for everything that follows and sets the choice’s parameters. The criteria to be developed will follow, detailing the decision requirements. Alternatives will be evaluated according to those requirements. The decision statement always indicates a choice and its intended result, and it often implies a prior decision has been made, such as to select a services vendor for a certain operation. The decision statement sets all activities in motion, so be sure to word it carefully.

Conducting a full decision analysis for every single decision you make is not very time efficient. Sometimes, just agreeing on a decision statement and objectives will give you and your team the clarity needed to make a sound decision.

Decisions must meet objectives. Once the decision statement is drafted, objectives are established. Alternatives are discussed and identified possibly only after objectives are established. The opposite of decision analysis would be a process in which the course of action is identified first; then a case is built to support the intended action. In such situations, decision analysis would not be the tool of choice, we use a process called PPA to protect the plan. If this is something that interest you, please don’t hesitate to ask us for more information.

Objectives related to technology strategy are important for selecting software and services providers. You need to know if the company is trying to build a platform for the future or keep existing systems cobbled together. Some strategic decisions will include certain vendors and technologies, and thereby eliminate others. In essence, the guts of the technology platform should be well understood, covering strategic areas such as security, data, development frameworks, communications standards, infrastructure and available people skills. This view enables the IT manager to attain a strategic perspective.

Some common mistakes in this phase include overemphasizing cost objectives and defining requirements without Customers in mind. There is a whole class of criteria for front office people or users of the system, that will have different weights for different Customer needs. Costs must be estimated, and viewed according to whether the project is strategic (an investment is justified) or tactical in which case low cost is an important criteria in the decision process.

Many times a manager is not exposed to the real project requirements and thus, looks at the estimated price tag and says, “We can’t do that – it’s too expensive.” You might find that you are unnaturally constrained by a budgetary concern that has nothing to do with the problem you are trying to solve.

Getting back on track again:
Decision analysis divides objectives into two categories: musts and wants. Musts are the minimum requirements, not necessarily the most important. When alternatives are later evaluated against objectives, any alternative that can’t fulfill a must objective is immediately dropped.

Objectives must be measurable to screen against alternatives. In IT decisions, measurable objectives may include response time, mean time between failures, service levels and access speed.

Must objectives need to be reasonable. For example, requiring .Net programmers to have five years of experience might be unrealistic, if the .Net framework was launched less than 5 years ago. To require e-business service firms to have such experience would knock out many options. To rate vendors, IT managers need to establish their minimum requirements. This is an absolute priority.

Once must objectives are clearly defined, all other objectives are called “wants”. Wants are used to provide a picture of how alternatives compare.

A common IT pitfall is to base objectives on ‘new’ or ‘compatible technology’ when actually, the Customer’s needs may be satisfied by older technology. IT guys should not purchase products simply because they are new. Newness has to be weighted against factors such as potentially longer testing cycles.

The second largest stumbling block to decision making success is when a group responsible for making the decision begins their process with what from our perspective is a comparison of the alternatives; Thus System A may be compared to System B, or Product X to Product Y, or Hardware C to Hardware D. This comparison of one to another so early on in the decision making process launches the team into a challenge / defense mode and is clearly not a productive way to reach the best possible decision outcome.

Creating a written record of the reasons why a specific decision was made is an additional benefit of the decision analysis process. In the real world, when people are making decisions, some things are more important than others. If you can get that on the table, it really helps move things forward. This also demonstrates to people both in the decision making quorum as well as those outside (perhaps sitting on the management team or board of directors) that logic, fairness and process were used to reach a mutually agreeable conclusion that also took into account potential risks and probability of occurrence among other factors.

Try using decision analysis to determine which projects to work on. Your objectives should include the anticipated results of the project, as well as resource and other restrictions you face.

When a group is choosing between a current and proposed course of action, both are considered alternatives. Both are evaluated against the objectives as if both had been proposed. In the absence of any alternative, the group can usually build an alternative from available components.

Never get tangled up in the alternatives before you define the objectives. IT people are typically analytical, so they go for a system involving weights and scores, but that is not an end in itself. The decision meeting is about making the decision not influencing your favorite alternative with a high score. In fact, the KT method has some brilliant built-in checks and balances to ensure that the best possible group decision gets made. Use the objectives to help the team keep an open mind while working toward a viable solution and be sure to keep score.

The final step in decision analysis is to consider adverse consequences for all feasible alternatives. Once a decision has been made and implemented, any negative effects can grow into real problems. The effect of the decision always outlives the process that led to it. Before making a final decision, the group must explore and evaluate adverse consequences. When the group identifies a risk, it can plan to avoid the risk or reduce its likely effect. A risk may not be fatal, provided someone recognizes it in time to do something about it. Omitting this step is an invitation for disaster.

It can all be overwhelming: strategic objectives, alternatives, weighting, scores and implementation plans. Many IT organizations now have defined the role of “relationship manager” to bridge the gap between the IT and the operational business worlds. The decision process outlined in this article helps you figure out how to start. Since we all know that IT people come from different planets and speak different languages than their business counterparts, the clearly defined process helps them understand exactly what needs to get done on the road to making a good decision. After a few minutes of bewilderment, most people physically relax as they learn this 40 year old time proven methodology for making the best possible decisions. There is an order and a logic that helps the IT people become more like internal consultants. They are not just throwing stuff over the cubicle wall, but rather listening to their Customers and applying their knowledge to come up with viable solutions.

Here is one more tip regarding your MUST criteria. When you evaluate your MUSTs consider if you would accept something slightly more or less than described in the objective? If the answer is yes, then the objective is a want, not a must.

If you’d like some help getting started with your own decision analysis just drop us a line – we love helping our Clients achieve results and the DA process delivers consistently great results. It is truly a tool that you can use for the rest of your life. So, go ahead, make better decisions today!

Most guides to writing an executive summary miss the key point: The job of the executive summary is to sell, not to describe.

The executive summary is often your initial face to a potential investor, so it is critically important that you create the right first impression. Contrary to the advice in articles on the topic, you do not need to explain the entire business plan in 250 words. You need to convey its essence, and its energy.

You have about 30 seconds to grab an investor’s interest. You want to be clear and compelling.

Forget what everyone else has been telling you. Here are the key components
that should be part of your executive summary:

1. The Hook
Lead with the most compelling statement of why you have a really big idea. This sentence (or two) sets the tone for the rest of the executive summary. Usually, this is a concise statement of the unique solution you have developed to a big problem. It should be direct and specific, not abstract and conceptual. If you can drop some impressive names in the first paragraph you should—world-class
advisors, companies you are already working with, a brand name founding investor. Don’t expect an investor to discover that you have two Nobel laureates on your advisory board six paragraphs later. He or she may never read that far into your doc.

2. The Problem
You need to make it clear that there is a big, important problem (current or emerging) that you are going to solve, or opportunity you are going to exploit. In this context you are establishing your Value Proposition—there is enormous pain and opportunity out there, and you are going to increase revenues, reduce costs, increase speed, expand reach, eliminate inefficiency, increase effectiveness, whatever. Don’t confuse your statement of the problem with the size of the opportunity (see below).

3. The Solution
What specifically are you offering to whom? Software, hardware, service, combination? Use commonly used terms to state concretely what you have, or what you do, that solves the problem you’ve identified. Avoid acronyms and don’t try to use these precious few words to create and trademark a bunch of terms that won’t mean anything to most people. You might need to clarify where you fit in the value chain or distribution channels—who do you work with in the ecosystem of your sector, and why will they be eager to work with you. If you have customers and revenues, make it clear. If not, tell the investor when you will.

4. The Opportunity
Spend a few more sentences providing the basic market segmentation, size, growth and dynamics—how many people or companies, how many dollars, how fast the growth, and what is driving the segment. You will be better off targeting a meaningful percentage of a smaller, well-defined, growing market than claiming a microscopic percentage of a huge, heterogeneous, mature market. Don’t claim you are addressing the $24 billion widget market, when you are really addressing the $85 million market for specialized arc-widgets used in the emerging wocket sector.

5. Your Competitive Advantage
No matter what you might think, you have competition. At a minimum, you compete with the current way of doing business. Most likely, there is a near competitor, or a direct competitor that is about to emerge (are you sufficiently paranoid yet??). So, understand what your real, sustainable competitive advantage is, and state it clearly. Do not try to convince investors that your key competitive asset is your “first mover advantage.” Here is where you can articulate your unique benefits and advantages. Believe it or not, in most cases, you should be able to make this point in one or two sentences.

6. The Model
How specifically are you going to generate revenues, and from whom? Why is
your model leverageable and scaleable? Why will it be capital efficient? What are the critical metrics on which you will be evaluated—customers, licenses, units, revenues, margin? Whatever it is, what impressive levels will you reach within three to five years?

7. The Team
Why is your team uniquely qualified to win? Don’t tell us you have 48 combined years of expertise in widget development; tell us your CTO was the lead widget developer for Intel, and she was on the original IEEE standards committee for arc-widgets. Don’t just regurgitate a shortened form of each founder’s resume; explain why the background of each team member fits. If you can, state the names of brand name companies your team has worked for. Don’t drop a name if it’s an unknown name, and don’t drop a name if you aren’t happy to give the contact as a reference at a later date.

8. The Promise
When you are pitching to investors, your fundamental promise is that you are going to make them a boatload of money. The only way you can do that is if you can achieve a level of success that far exceeds the capital required to do that. Your Summary Financial Projections should clearly show that. But if they are not believable, then all of your work is for naught. You should show five years of revenues, expenses, losses/profits, cash and headcount. You should also show a key driver or two, such as number of customers and units shipped each year.

9. The Ask
This is the amount of funding you are asking for now. This should generally be the minimum amount of equity you need to reach the next major milestone. You can always take more if investors are willing to make more available, but it is hard to take less. If you expect to be raising another round of financing later, make that clear, and state the expected amount.

You should be able to do all this in six to eight paragraphs, possibly a few more if there is a particular point that needs emphasis. You should be able to make each point in just two or three simple, clear, specific sentences.

This means your executive summary should be about two pages, maybe three. Some people say it should be one page. They’re wrong. (The only reason investors ask for one page summaries is that they are usually so bad the investors just want the suffering to be over sooner.) Most investors find that there is not enough information in one page to understand and evaluate a company.

Please remember that the outline above should not be applied rigidly or religiously. There is no template that fits all companies, but make sure you touch in each key issue. You need to think through what points are most important in your particular case, what points are irrelevant, what points need emphasis, and what points require no elaboration.

Some other general points:
! Do not lead with broad, sweeping statements about the market opportunity. What matters is not market size, but rather compelling pain.
Investors would rather invest in a company solving a desperate problem for a small growing market, than a company providing an incremental
improvement for a large established market.

! Drop names, if they are real; don’t drop names if they are smoke. If you have a real partnership with a brand name company, don’t hide your
lantern under a bushel basket. If you consulted for Cisco’s HR department one week, don’t say you worked for Cisco.

! Avoid “purple farts”—phrases and adjectives that sound impressive but carry no substance. “Next generation” and “dynamic” probably don’t mean
anything to your readers (unless you are talking about DRAM) and tend to be irritating. Everybody thinks their software is “intelligent” and “easy-to-use,” and everyone thinks their financial projections are “conservative.” Explain your company the way you would to a friend at a cocktail party (after one drink, not five).

! State your value proposition and competitive advantage in positive terms, not negative terms. It is what you can do that is important, not what others cannot do. With the one or two most obvious competitors, however, you may need to be very explicit: “Unlike Cisco’s firewall solution, our software can operate…”

! Use simple sentences, not multi-tiered compound sentences.

! Use analogies, as long as you are clarifying rather than hyping. You can say you are using the Google model for generating revenues, as long as
you don’t say you expect to be the next Google.

! Don’t lie. You would think this goes without saying, but too many entrepreneurs cross over the line between passionate enthusiasm and
fraudulent misrepresentation.

! Go back and reread each sentence when you think you’re done: Is each sentence clear, concise and compelling?

Finally, one of the most important sentences you write will not even be in the executive summary—it is the sentence that introduces your company in the email that you or a friend uses to send the executive summary. Your summary might not even get read if this sentence is not well-crafted. Again, it should be specific and compelling. It should sell your company, not just describe it. Venture investors are predisposed to like entrepreneurs. Many were entrepreneurs in prior lives, and all enjoy the challenge and excitement of starting up companies. Most are on your side. So please help them get to know you better by telling your story clearly and concisely.

Ever come across a successful football team without a coach / trainer / manager?

How about a top basketball or ice hockey team?

Each player has his/her specialty, each has a training program to improve skills, abilities and experience yet the coach ties it all together for each player and then again for the entire team.

Typically, the coach has been there before – they have played on a variety of fields and can leverage their experience to benefit the whole team. Ever notice that the coach does not put on a uniform and replace a non-performing player? The coach has a different sort of job that is oriented around managing people rather than executing on a given play.

Interesting that when comparing sports to businesses, only the most successful businesses have coaches. These coaches or mentors help guide executives by providing external input and expertise so that the business person can score a goal.

Why is it that only the most successful business people have a coach?

On the one hand, you could interpret this as “in order to be successful in business, you need a coach” or “When you have achieved a certain level of success, you can get even further with a coach”. We believe that the answer is something of a combination of the above scenarios in that, an external coach or mentor is a tremendous asset to any given business. Sadly, business people today typically come to the conclusion that they need help only after they encounter an obstacle crossing their path to success.

Why not hire a coach before you run into an obstacle?

If a coach can review your strategy, your plans, tactics and team profiles, do you think you could increase your probability for success?

Given what we have learned from coaching 25 companies during the past 10 years in addition to the learning we captured from our own coaches, the definitive answer is YES, coaching makes a positive difference. Here is how we came to this conclusion.

Many companies have learned that their employees can overcome self doubt, fears and concerns created by corporate restructuring or poor leadership by hiring a coach. Today, more and more firms are looking for support by bringing in a coach rather than sending employees out for additional education. Depending on the challenge at hand, a coach often is able to deliver results to a company faster and for less investment (time and money) than sending a team to an offsite for a few days.

For a coach, there is no secret recipe that can be applied to all Clients. The coach needs to explore the needs and objectives of each Client separately and then tap into a library of experiences, tools and resources to be able to deliver results that can make the difference between missing quarterly objectives and over-performing by 20%.

Several years ago an investor came to us to help get his bank get back on track. A few areas within the bank were delivering adequately yet not enough to offset the poor performance in one key division. This division of the bank had a ‘new’ manager who apparently lacked leadership experience and as a result, was losing many key employees. This particular manager was promoted one week after the former director passed away unexpectedly, more than 10 months ago. The manager may have been a good deputy director but was not prepared for the challenges faced by his boss and thus, the team wanted out.

The knee jerk reaction would usually be to remove the new manager and reform the team however, banks don’t necessarily work this way. They are very slow and resistant to change. Removing this manager was not an option but providing him with guidance in the form of a coach was in line with the bank’s culture and objectives.

The coach observed the manager in action, took notes on the methods he used to lead his team, plan for the future, inspire others and instill a sense of belonging in typical day to day situations. In the process the coach noticed that this manager allocated very little of his time dealing with employee’s needs or even listening to his people when they had feedback for the team. There was little doubt that this was one of the most probable reasons for the mass defections and the coach found a way to get the message across to this manager that a percentage of each day needs to be allocated to the bank’s most important asset.. its people. The coach provided a few models and some guidance on active listening techniques and then participated in a few sessions with employees while the manager put his newly acquired skills to work.

The first objective was to initiate a change in the way that this manager dealt with his staff so that each staff member felt as though they were able to communicate openly with their boss and that their voice was heard. The second objective was to ensure that the manager scheduled time to resolve the issues that each employee had raised and then to report back to the employee and close the circle. Mission accomplished: company board members happy, company execs happy, employees happy – a win-win-win result.

What exactly is coaching in today’s constantly changing business environment?

During a recent restructuring project there was a component of reorganization which created not only an uneasy emotional environment but outright confusion among staffers and management alike. Managers that go through a change process like this often have no one to turn to for advice or guidance. Access to a good coach is key to the manager’s well being and success. A coach’s role in situations like these is to create a sense of security so that all involved are able to see things clearer thus bringing a sense of calm into the organization. Also, as an external observer, the coach is often able to present a totally different perspective to the Client thus encouraging each member of a team to move toward something positive rather than away from something negative – but that is an entirely different topic that we will cover later this year.

If you believe that hiring a coach might help you to:

• see things more clearly
• introduce a sense of calm to your team
• leverage experience to provide you with guidance
• motivate yourself and inspire your team
• identify obstacles in your path to success
• better prepare for your business challenges
• achieve success

you are probably right on track and we’d be delighted to hear about your needs. Who knows, perhaps our coaches might be able to help you and your company achieve your mutual objectives this quarter.

There is a real difference between managing and leading, managing ends up being the allocation of resources against tasks and projects. Leadership focuses on people. My definition of a leader is someone who helps people succeed. Is there any way we can help you succeed?