While there is widespread disagreement as to if the U.S. economy is on the edge of a depression, a recession or is just experiencing an “anxiety economy”, no one can argue that the financial crisis is not having a huge ripple effect and its going to take years to work out.

Rick Erling, President of The CxO Group, LLC, a Dallas, Texas CEO Coaching and Business Performance Improvement firm adds “Today’s uncertain economic times are forcing all executives, managers, and business owners to adopt new strategies for navigating through the current business downturn. At times like these many companies prefer to move into a survival strategy to ride out the storm.

Survival strategy, while conservative, has one underlying problem. In today’s hyper-connected economy things can unravel quickly and when your business is not growing and improving it is falling behind and headed for extinction. Keep in mind that even though your business may be slow today, your business will return to profitability in the future, IF you do what is necessary to survive today. ”

The CxO Group specializes in CEO coaching and business performance improvement by integrating financial management, strategies, marketing, and sales to maximize corporate revenue growth. We use a copyrighted methodology to advise CEOs on action steps to take to grow revenues, consult with management staff on best practices and train sales and marketing teams on tactics and strategies that put your business value in front of you so your prospects see you differently than your competition and take action steps to buy.

So, what are you going to do? Let employees go?  Cut back on marketing?  Squeeze your current clients for more money? Yes, you can do all of this, but is that going to help? What can you specifically do during a recession to grow your business profitability?

Receive our COMPLEMENTARY SPECIAL REPORT titled “10 Tips To Grow Your Business in a Recession or Economic Downturn” that will help answer those questions. You can download your copy now at this special link  http://growth.thecxogroup.com/ . Alternatively, you can contact us by email at  info@thecxogroup.com, or call (972) 727-6880 to request your copy.

“A recession is when your neighbor is out of work. A depression is when you are out of work.” Rick Erling - President The CxO Group, LLC

It’s been said that money hides mistakes. Corporate earnings are down, the market drops and gains triple digits on multiple days, housing prices continue to fall and foreclosure rates are skyrocketing. It’s no question that we are in an un-stable economic environment. Are we in a recession right now, if not today will we slip into one next week, or perhaps next month? With economic uncertainty looming, many of our clients are asking: How should I position my firm in the months to come? We are fast approaching the end of the first quarter. Today, we cover a topic that just might contain the insight you need to uncover any hidden mistakes and help you surpass your 2008 goals.The “Balanced Scorecard” is a strategic management approach developed in the early 1990s by Dr Robert Kaplan of Harvard Business School, and Dr David Norton.Much like the “Balanced Scorecard” of the 1990s, that focused on linking business performance to department metrics, The CxO Group, LLC uses a “Sales and Marketing Metrics Scorecard” (http://www.sales-scorecard.com/) with a similar approach, but designed for today’s economy.Today’s scorecard creates interaction and links between five sales management pillars as a packaged team to help drive performance.– Sales– Marketing– Strategy– Operations/Development– Partners/AlliancesFirst, we create identifiable tactical measures for each of your sales team members and contributing departments. Then, we develop and help you implement the scorecard into a living, breathing business tool to proactively manage and link strategy, marketing and sales.This tool becomes a leading business driver that when used correctly, increases corporate cash flow, accelerates operational success, and allows companies to manage their business model by proactive metrics, not reactively by emotion.With this linkage, the scorecard provides clarity in strategic and tactical goals that can be readily monitored to understand where performance is coming from and where remedial attention is needed. As I mentioned, we are regularly asked about the best improvement initiatives to be made in this uncertain economy. We always suggest companies look towards sales metrics as the way to grow their business and uncover those “hidden” mistakes.Start with the foundation. If your sales and marketing organization doesn’t have clear objectives and metrics for accountability then you probably have a few mistakes hiding in your process that are costing you money. Clear sales objectives that are aligned with company strategy is one way you can be assured of hitting your goals in uncertain economic times.At The CxO Group, we believe the entire company, not just the sales department, is responsible for revenue capture! Visit us online at http://www.thecxogroup.com/ give us a call today at (972) 727-6880, or email info@thecxogroup.com to chat about how we can help you create a sales & marketing metrics scorecard that is custom fit so your firm’s business assets are centralized on revenue development and all departments are linked to the performance.

Does your website create website traffic and generate enough sales leads? If you are like most CEO’s, sales and marketing management I speak with on a daily basis, the answer is probably no.If you perform a Google search on “sales and marketing strategies” you’ll be pleased to find over 62 million web pages devoted to helping market a business and increase sales. Spend just five minutes looking at the search results and two items become very apparent . . .

1. You can’t expect to compete in business today without leveraging your reach with online digital marketing tools and having a Web Site Marketing Strategy.
2. If you’re not appealing directly to the person who is reading your ad, you risk them seeing it without realizing how it relates to them.

Considering there are over 65 million pages devoted to “sales and marketing strategies” validates the importance of creative writing and how to appeal directly to your customers’ need to increase traffic and conversions.Keep in mind that when people meet in a live in-person business meeting, we introduce ourselves with some statement about what we do, and why we should work with one another. In a live meeting it’s important to show very quickly that we understand their issues and needs, and that we have ideas and solutions to address these.Your website is a virtual meeting tool. It must accomplish the very same objectives of an in-person meeting. It must convey common points of interest, whether personal or professional. The virtual visitor must begin to feel that they can relate with you, and this helps to build the beginning of a business relationship. Studies show you have 8 seconds to build this relationship before they click to the next site listed in the search listings. If the visitor doesn’t feel they can relate to you, if they’re overwhelmed, confused, can’t easily navigate your site or simply not interested in your site, they’ll leave in very short order — 8 SECONDS!Keeping the above strategy at top of mind, here are the top seven smart ways to get your business noticed on the Internet.1. Keep it simple.Get rid of Flash and fancy intro pages! Studies today show you only have 8 seconds to convince a prospect how you can help. Does your website describe your product or service in a succinct, compelling and visual fashion in that timeframe?With thousands, perhaps millions of Google hits for a given search term, prospects are looking for exactly what they’ve typed in or they move on to the next search result.2. Value First, Brand SecondDon’t make the mistake of dragging your business value behind you by leading with the brand name of your product, service or company. Push your business value out in front of you and set yourself above the competition by using “Value Forward” methodology!3. Call to ActionOnce you’ve got their attention you must have calls to action like an offer of a free white paper, webinar, or newsletter to harvest prospect contact information.4. Easy NavigationYour website must be easy to navigate with less than 7 navigation buttons on the home page.5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)Make sure your site appears high on search engines’ results pages. By including the right keywords and phrases, your site will appear higher up on Google, Yahoo! and other search engines.The key to keywording is translating what your product or service does into appropriate “Value Forward” keywords and phrases that will turn your visitors into qualified sales leads.6. Pay Per Click (PPC)Your sponsored or PPC listing on a search engine results page (SERP) must call out to the person reading it. If you’re not appealing directly to the person who is reading your ad, you risk them seeing it without realizing how it relates to them.In many situations it may even be necessary to develop new landing pages to help increase site level conversion.7. Podcasting and YouTubePodcasting and YouTube are new and simple technologies that you may want to take a look at. All you need to get started is a decent microphone, a digital audio or video recorder and editing software.This is a great strategy for many small businesses for several reasons. A voice, or video reference or testimonial rather than words on a website can convey conviction, credibility and personality.8. Track Your Customer Conversation Ratio or C.C.R.It is not how many unique visitors come to your website that is important. It is how many you can identify as prospects. Most companies today spend large amounts of marketing dollars on tradeshows, advertising, email marketing, corporate branding and direct mail driving thousands of potential buyers to their website . . . yet they don’t know who is there and don’t have engagement devices to capture their name. To generate more leads, track your C.C.R. through your daily audit logs as well as the names of those who sign up for your free information.Are you interested in insuring your solutions, products and services are conveyed in a compelling fashion on your website? Yes, your web designer will provide the actual website design and artwork, BUT it’s up to you to know what the content should be. Most importantly, you need to supply content that will trigger search engine hits and drive qualified traffic to your website.When you’re not experienced or don’t have the budget to have web strategy, marketing, sales or systems people on staff, or simply don’t have the bandwidth, get help! Smart business owners surround themselves with consultants that are strong where they are weak. Please consider having us help with your sales, marketing, and website strategies improvement projects.

So I know there is a national “do not call” list if you don’t want telemarketers to call you, but now they need to have something like a national “do not visit” list. We’ve been getting these calls already at random hours saying “this is an important message” and a number to call back, but it does not say who or what company it is. Then we now get visitors coming to the door. These visitors are from AT&T for today. They come at noon and they come again at dinner time. Really it’s irritating and there need to be a “do not visit” list or maybe I just need to put a big sign that says “no solicitation”…accept that if you are there customer already for other services, I guess they are allowed to bug you?

These visitors are also very good at nudging there way to get you to sign up with whatever they offer. They really will not take a no for answer. Last time they were trying to sell Uverse and at the end we really didn’t want it since it did not support our Tivo system, and the person basically said we’re almost done, so let’s just sign it and if you want to cancel you can call this number. I guess I could have signed my life away…I probably did. From now on, I guess it would be wise just not to answer the door at all (though I was expecting someone this evening and that’s why I open the door).

Irritating…it makes me want to switch companies since they are such bugs…

Will Your Sales Team Finish 2007 Strong? If not, perhaps it’s because the prospect’s perception of your business value, and the actual value delivered of your offering are mis-matched.

As Sales Training, Marketing Advisement and Strategy Specialists for growth-directed companies in Dallas, we have identified five steps of prospect value identification that take place during your sales cycle. Using these will help you close deals already on the table for 2007 and applying this to your 2008 forecast will help shorten those sales cycles.

Prospect value identification is an integrated process of perceived and actual value delivered based on your offering and your customer’s perception of that offering at various stages of your sales cycle. There are five steps of prospect value identification that take place during your sales cycle and they include:

1. The Vendor’s Perceived Value
   This is a vendor presented value and is based on how you see your value and how you communicate its status to your prospects or existing customers during the pre-sales cycle through your firm’s marketing communication and sales step process.
2. The Customer or Prospect Transitional Value
   This value happens in tandem during the discovery process where the prospect matches or rejects your perceived value (vendor’s perceived value) with their perception of your value. This is a value conversion step during the sales cycle.
3. The Prospect’s Perceived Value of Your Offering
   This value happens when your prospect or your customer finalizes their perception of your value relative to your competition and makes an assumption (correctly or incorrectly) of the value of your product or service relative to price, the business results it produces and the alternative options they have for purchase or non-purchase.
4. The Prospect’s Actual Value
   This is the alignment by the prospect or customer during their post-sale decision process to determine if the perceived value communicated by you in the pre-sale matches their perception of your actual value in the post-sale.
5. The Value Gap
   This is the measurement or gap between the vendor’s perceived value believed during the pre-sale steps and the prospect’s actual value calculated after the first sale.

Prospect value identification by its very nature is a layered, intricate process that must be aligned with your sales and marketing communication as an integrated approach. Prospect value observation starts at the beginning of your sales cycle and your position is often determined based on your entry point into the organization.

Enter into a prospect’s organizational chart below the title of Vice President at the beginning of your sales cycle and you are entering into the commodity zone of buying. Prospects below the title of VP generally make business decisions based on your offering’s features, functions or price.

When you sell management at the Vice President level and above, they buy based on their perceptions of your business offering’s value. This is a variable option that you can manipulate if you can sell correctly.

Often there is a gap between what firms believe in themselves and what their prospects actually experience.

It is not what you sell, but how your prospect positions the value of your offerings against the alternative buying options they have that must be managed.

To sell more, sell above the commodity line, manage the prospect’s perception of your business value, and control the value gap between their perception of your value and your perception.

Would you like to Evaluate Your Revenue Capture Success in more detail? Visit this link and request a copy of our Sales and Marketing Scorecard. It is a management business assessment tool designed to help you to evaluate your firm’s revenue capture success and compare your current operating model against industry best practices to help your company achieve its peak performance. The scorecard contains 100 questions on your sales and marketing methodology and supplies recommended best practices to increase your business success.

Is Your Sales Process Working or Is Your Sales Team Chasing Prospect Rainbows?

As Management Consulting Specialists, Aligning Sales, Marketing and Business Strategies for growth-directed companies in Dallas, we have identified over 45 key sales process metrics that management teams should use to increase company revenue and build a scalable, replicable sales process for their salespeople.

Selling products and services is a premeditated sport. It is a thinking, calculating, strategizing business process where success is based on planning.

Shooting from the hip only impedes your sales success.

To help you as an individual salesperson or to help your sales team, take the Sales Process Audit below to see if you have a sales program that helps salespeople sell more or a sales program that impedes sales success.

Sales Process Audit

1. Have you documented your sales costs including marketing lead costs, sales man-hour allocation, travel costs, and expenses to capture each new sale from a new prospect?___Yes ___No
2. Have you documented the top ten sales objections and appropriate sales response for each product or service and for each business vertical you sell into?___Yes ___No
3. Has your company analyzed why you lose business for each product or service you sell?___Yes ___No
4. Have you documented your sales process and the steps needed to secure a contract or a purchase order?___Yes ___No
5. Have you developed a centralized sales tool box with support and training materials so your sales process is replicable and scalable for new sales team members?___Yes ___No
6. Do you have a written policy on pricing guidelines that is published for the sales team to follow?___Yes ___No
7. Does your sales team have written guidelines and business examples for all prospect correspondence including emails, proposals, and direct sales letters for each stage of your sales process?___Yes ___No
8. Do you have a written sales process for forecasting based on the specific criteria that is needed for each sales stage?___Yes ___No
9. Do you track and use a specific sales methodology for each title your sales reps sell to?___Yes ___No
10. Are your sales quotas based on identified market gap analysis, where demand is greater than supply by vertical for each product or service you sell?___Yes ___No

Test Scoring

All correct answers are yes. Give yourself 10 points for each right answer.

What did you score?

If your score is below 75%, you need to rebuild and plan your sales process more.

Would you like to Evaluate Your Revenue Capture Success in more detail?  Visit this link and request a copy of the Value Forward Sales and Marketing Scorecard. It is a management business assessment tool designed to help you to evaluate your firm’s revenue capture success and compare your current operating model against industry best practices to help your company achieve its peak performance. The scorecard contains 100 questions on your sales and marketing methodology and supplies recommended best practices to increase your business success.

So we had a leaky faucet and it wasn’t leaking on the bottom, but the top body of the faucet. Since our warranty ran out, we had to search for a Plumber to come out. I did use a trusted service to find the Plumbing company, it was at the time one of the top companies. There were reviews on it that were good and some that were ok with prices being high. So I did give them a try.

A man came over and was nice and personable. I told him about it and he took the hot water handle side out and turned it and said we had to replace it since its the body of the facet that’s leaking and you basically can’t fix it. He quickly turned and pulled out a catalog of the brand of faucet offered by his company because he said you get a deal because it’s that brand. It would have been $414 to install the highest model. I asked for a price to install one that we might buy ourselves since haven’t heard of that brand before. He said it would be $264 and that it’s a lower price for me.

At this point, a couple of things going through my mind. One he pulled out the catalog so quick that this is what they will do and it’s a scam or ok we have a bad leaky faucet that just can’t be fixed. The company did a follow call to see if I wanted to replace it. I told them we were thinking about it. We also had a timeframe to think about it. Too long and I would not get my service call amount back (I forgot to mention the $39 service call). So I started researching on the internet about that brand of faucets. First of all, I found the brand of faucet showed different pricing from $109 to about $169. I mean same style, same model. To get it from that company installed would have cost $150 basically. So during the time we were making our decision on which faucet to get, one day last week - I decided to take the faucet apart again. Oh and forgot to mentioned that after he left, the hot water side leaked not from the body, but from the faucet (where water should come out) - before it was only leaking when I mostly used the cold water side and leaked a little only from the body area. It was leaking so much after he came that I had to turn off the hot water from the bottom waterline thing. It was a pain and we had to turn it on to use the dish washer. At this point while I guess most people can make quick decisions about faucet, for us it’s got to be the right one. I mean it is kind of the focal point in the kitchen in some ways. Here’s the thing I’m glad we waited - I decided to take it apart again as he did it (which I’ve done before also, but not as deep) and then I turned this thing the shape that needs a wrench to turn. So I got the wrench and turned it tight and the leak literally stopped.

While I was glad the leak had stop since, I began to really feel VERY disappointed at this company. I’m not going to say more as to why, I’m sure if it was you going through it - you would know why also. I was already skeptical because of something that had happened in the past with another plumbing company. This was through a home warranty company. They were out to our other house before we had moved because there was a leak on the roof of the garage. The guy came out and of course seem nice. He made a huge hole on the garage ceiling and said we will need to do this and that and it’s not covered by the warranty, but we can do it for $500. This was the first time I was going to be “scammed”. Here’s how I know. Since $500 was quiet a big of money, we decided to ask the warranty company to send out a different company for second opinion. They said if they find the same thing wrong, then we’d have to pay them the services fees again, which was fine. The second company said we just needed to replace this plastic ring around the toilet and did it for us and it was fixed and not more leaks.

So now, we were left with this hole in the ceiling. The first company denied to the warrantly company that they had made the hole. No kidding, they DENIED it! What the….I couldn’t believe it either. Why would there be a hole then, I couldn’t have just cut a huge hole myself for fun. I had to call the warranty company and had to go through a few times talking to different people and finally got to the supervisor and he approved for someone to come out to fix it up. Though there is still that reminder since it wasn’t perfect as it use to be.

I’m just kind arrghhh just writing about this. It’s amazing how much they could have gotten away with. I don’t mean just me, but for all the people that never realizes what’s going on. This is like the auto mechanic industry where they scam people. I’m sure there are honest company doing honest things to, but these dishonest companies really are just not very ethical.

Here’s another thing - home warranty. While it’s a peace of mind that you have it. Sometimes when you do those service calls and they come out, they have “loophole” that they can get around. Another Plumbing company (yeah another one) told us a toilet was improperly installed when there was a little crack in the tank. We didn’t do anything because actually this was more of the first time we were scammed. When we try to contact the warranty company, they said it was pass the time that they can send out another company for second opinion. That’s also why I found out you CAN call for second opinions, which are actually useful. I just thought how can a toilet in this 15 year old house be improperly installed. Wouldn’t it have leaked way before then?

Another Plumber (the one that told me about Charro Chicken, so I guess he was useful for something), he replaced our kitchen disposal thing, and did talk about a bathroom drain that was clogged that we should install a two way clean out system. He said it was about $600. We didn’t do it, but I later found out the city of Richardson will do it for about $60.

We don’t use home warranty anymore and I don’t know if we should go back to it, but it’s just really hard to find people you can trust. The warranty company has too many “this is not cover” items under their contracts and you just have to read it all carefully and make sure that the service company that comes out isn’t using it as a loophole. Most of the time, you have to end up buying something you need to replace such as a bigger size disposal, or air conditioning unit that bigger than the standard. The only positive is that they will use the price of the standard and you just have to pay for the upgrade price.

Regarding the faucet company, the one where the faucet leak fixed myself. I called them to ask for a refund of $39, just for the principle of it. I don’t care for the $39, but it will show the character of the company. I talked to one of the managers and he said he was going to talk to the guy who came out and will call me back…so we’ll see.

One more thing. When I told this to Grandma (in-law), she’s been through a lot and she told me a few stories herself. One that one of her grandson had worked in a auto mechanic place long ago and was told by the company to tell the customers they had more problem than whatever it is. When he didn’t do it, he almost got fired. Another story was how she had a service call and someone charged her $600 and told her he did this and change that, and someone else had come out for something and looked at it and said… there are still spider webs here, that guy didn’t touch anything he said he had done. So anyway…it’s not very reassuring of course, but things like this does happen.

David Hanson has done it again. He’s made international news with Handson Robotic’s new creation Zeno. “It’s a representation of robotics as a character animation medium, one that is intelligent,” and “It sees you and recognizes your face. It learns your name and can build a relationship with you.” Zeno is different from his previous creations which where more life like - it instead is more Anime looking perhaps to capture the young market since Zeno is reported to be in market in the next 3 years for about $300 according to local Fox news.

David Hanson obtained his Ph.D from UT Dallas’ School of Arts and Humanities Arts & Techology Program and was already making news with other creations. He’s no doubt a very talented, what makes him stand out to me is that he is actually artistic too.

His previous creation:

Bet you never knew that Donald Trump not only invests in high-dollar real estate and hosts the highly watched reality TV show, The Apprentice, but has an online university: Trump University?

Well, Jack Spirko who is President of Franklin-Spirko Media and a search engine optimization (SEO) guru knew it, and when he read one of Trump’s blogs on Trump U’s site, he felt it didn’t do Trump justice. So in one of his own blogs, he made some recommendations what could be done to improve Trump’s blogs.

The successful businessman he is, Trump’s marketing team at Trump U realized how important Jack’s comments were, so not only did Jack get a quick reply, but within 30 days, Franklin-Spirko had a new client: Trump University!

Franklin-Spirko develops profitable marketing programs that includes offline and online marketing activities. The important thing to remember is that a client - no matter what industry they’re in, or what service or product they manufacture or sell - believes in what they’re selling! And as that client’s vendor, the agency (like Franklin-Spirko) needs to make that client’s customers believe in them too. And you do that through positioning which is how any company exists in the mind of their clients.

The bottom line was Trump’s blogs just didn’t fit the way his clients view him. What he was writing didn’t help improve how people saw him, and most importantly, help build his business. A successful blog will result in increased traffic to your web site, and if the traffic is highly targeted, then you’ll have a higher conversion rate to sales.

You can read Jack’s blog on “Winning a New Client With Blogging” and learn more about Franklin-Spirko snagging Trump U as a major client.

I just saw on Good Morning Texas a segment on the 12 years old jewelry designer, Kelly Alexandra. She custom designs and creates her own jewelry. You can check out her website at The Art Addict. The pricing of her peices range from $100-$300.