Hey it's June already! I'll be getting back to exploring what account execs in complex environment find most helpful - but in the meantime, I had the chance to spend time with John Jantsch while he was in Toronto for the MESH Conference.
John led a session on Referral Marketing at the Intelligent Office site in First Canadian Place, making the point that referral generation needs as much discipline and systemization as any other business development approach. Participants found the biggest challenge was to move from simply describing their business to making it intriguing and relevant to prospects - I loved his idea of creating a statement you can use at a party when someone asks "And what do you do?" - one that will get them asking "How do you do that" instead of heading for the bar.
I couldn't go to MESH since I was in the thick of a client meltdown, but here's what some other people had to say:
Jack Kapica reported:
Things got to be much better today in the afternoon, with an intelligent group of people who have had extensive experience with Teaching Old Media New Tricks, as the conference was titled. Jennifer Evans (president and founder of Sequentia Communications), John Jantsch (creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system) and Maggie Fox (president and founder of Social Media Group) offered up their experiences trying to drag companies mired in old-media thinking into the world of social networking...
Jantsch also offered a great way for bloggers to feed the insatiable hunger of the gaping blog, which he recommended updating three to five times a week. “Use a tape recorder,” he said. “Just walk into someone’s office, shove the microphone at them and say, ‘What do you think of this?’”
Parker wrote:
One of the other people that I had the chance to meet at mesh07 was John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing. During his panel discussion with Maggie Fox
(who said she liked my shoes) and Jen Evans, someone asked a question
about why he blogged and about the return of investment on blogging.
John’s answer was probably the best that I have ever heard to this question. He said that when he first started blogging, he didn’t think anyone would ever read it. Blogging gave him a chance to gather his thoughts, and forced him to research some of the topics he was writing about. As a result, John said that he became a better writer, and was able to speak more confidently about what he was writing about.
Those two reasons alone are enough for most people to start blogging. While it might be possible to make similar improvements by just keeping a journal, a blog forces your thoughts and writing into the public sphere. You become much more accountable for what you’ve written, and as a result are more likely to take it more seriously.
Another point that was brought up in the same panel discussion (I don’t know who said it, but I’ll attribute it to Jantsch just because I like his good-natured attitude) (Note: apparently Maggie Fox actually said this - Liz) was that we don’t try and measure the ROI on taking a client out for lunch. A meeting like that might not result in anything tangible at that moment, but its about building relationships.
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