Look

The value of thinking is grossly overrated. It's easy to get caught up in "thinking" through problems in business or ideas but the value and application is limited. You need to look. Inspect and observe facts, statistics, operations. Observe what is happening and how and then collect applicable information that you can use and do something about. Look at how your sales reps are acting and speaking on the phone. Look at how your stat charts are trending week to week and month to month. Look at how your delivery or production team is actually doing their tasks at hand and just stand by to observe while they work. Then based on things you observe, make notes on items that need to be corrected and improved. By doing this, you will spot problems, bugged areas and non-optimum operations in plain sight. Now with this information, you can act on it and have workable solutions not based on thought but on real world facts.

Stop trying to think you way through problems to arrive at a solution because I promise, you will never arrive. You need to look and practice spotting the problems through intelligent observation. Then apply what you have learned to address the problem with practical solutions.

Walk around and look daily at every area of the company to observe, take note and correct. Anytime you start "thinking" just switch over to looking and begin to observe and you will find that the solution will flush out every time.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Focus

The other day I was going through my Twitter feed and saw a tweet asking a question to Gurbaksh Chahal  (a very successful entrepreneur who sold his last company for $300MM and the one before it for $40MM) about whether he get's tempted to work on other ideas while he is working on a company. His response... "never. Focus is everything." 

To me one of the biggest elements of failure or simply lack of success lies in most people's lack of ability to stay focused. I'll admit, I love millions of ideas as well and have a tendency to daydream from time to time but being that I have owned four companies, I know the power of focused attention and the deadliness of distractions or dispersals. Focus is everything. 

If you know what your company stands for, sells and delivers and have clearly named out or defined your product or service and then defined your goal or vision the only next step for you to take is to do everything that is focused toward executing the goals to attain the vision. Do not get distracted and do not let any other "bright ideas" enter the equation. Focus your time, energy and effort on your goal. 

The analogy I would use is the one about chasing rabbits.... if you are trying to chase two rabbits at the same time, you'll end up with none but on the other hand if you select one to focus on and go after it, there's a good chance you will catch it. 

Don't try to be everything to everyone. Know what you do and who you are and do it well. Get focused and develop tunnel vision to work toward attaining your goals. Stomp out distractions the second they come up including any new bright ideas that "potentially could make a whole lot of money..." just focus and perfect what you are doing and do it well. That is the road to win. 

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Robert Cornish

Richter10.2 Media Group

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Focus

The other day I was going through my Twitter feed and saw a tweet asking a question to Gurbaksh Chahal  (a very successful entrepreneur who sold his last company for $300MM and the one before it for $40MM) about whether he get's tempted to work on other ideas while he is working on a company. His response... "never. Focus is everything." 

To me one of the biggest elements of failure or simply lack of success lies in most people's lack of ability to stay focused. I'll admit, I love millions of ideas as well and have a tendency to daydream from time to time but being that I have owned four companies, I know the power of focused attention and the deadliness of distractions or dispersals. Focus is everything. 

If you know what your company stands for, sells and delivers and have clearly named out or defined your product or service and then defined your goal or vision the only next step for you to take is to do everything that is focused toward executing the goals to attain the vision. Do not get distracted and do not let any other "bright ideas" enter the equation. Focus your time, energy and effort on your goal. 

The analogy I would use is the one about chasing rabbits.... if you are trying to chase two rabbits at the same time, you'll end up with none but on the other hand if you select one to focus on and go after it, there's a good chance you will catch it. 

Don't try to be everything to everyone. Know what you do and who you are and do it well. Get focused and develop tunnel vision to work toward attaining your goals. Stomp out distractions the second they come up including any new bright ideas that "potentially could make a whole lot of money..." just focus and perfect what you are doing and do it well. That is the road to win. 

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Salespeople are Worthless Without a Sales Pipeline

While discussing the importance of talented salespeople with my partner this afternoon the conversation brought up the critical element of sales which is the step prior to sales that most people neglect - developing sales opportunities.

If you head to a local bookstore today, you'll find many books on selling, sales technique, sales motivation, best practices etc. but you will rarely find a book about successful methods for developing strong interest from the correct audience in order to create sales opportunities.

Having trained and competent salespeople is obviously vital for any company but don't neglect the sales prospecting actions to fill their pipeline. You can have the greatest salesperson in the world working for you but if you lack people to sell to, the salesperson is wasted. Focus a huge amount of your efforts on driving new prospective clients to your sales team so they can work their magic and do what they should be doing which is selling and closing new business. You can never have too much in the pipeline so jam it full of new prospects.

To drive the pipeline, you will need to focus on methods of reaching your target audience to cultivate strong interest for your sales team to sell and close and that is the secret ingredient ....

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Marketing People's Role

At our agency we frequently deal with marketing people (CMO's, VP's, Directors etc) related to our strategies due to the nature of our agencies services. Ultimately when the decision is made or during the negotiation we push to deal with the person in charge of business development or sales. Our agency exclusively deals with creating new relationships for our clients that measurably impact sales so we actually need to speak with and work with the people on the front-lines that sell the product or service.

This brings up the question of what marketing people's role actually is within any company. Since marketing people are not actually selling the product or service, it's crucially important to define roles and ensure that the roles don't bleed together.

Marketing's purpose is to create strategies that cultivate interest and create want for the product or service. From there, the business development team work to sell and close that interest or want with the goal of converting it into new revenue. While this seems very basic, it seems that the marketing people get involved in sales decisions and ideas related to sales that may or may not be applicable. This is generally a bad idea to involve your marketing people in sales related actions since they typically have little to no actual experience in sales.

Separate the two and keep your marketing people focused on effective campaigns and strategies that only produce interest and want for your product or service and then work with your business development team and VP Sales etc to actually take that "interest" or "want" to then sell and close it.

When the roles get confused, the outcome and results are poor in terms of effectiveness of the campaign. As long as you keep the roles focused, you will find that the marketing people produce better results to create interest and want and the sales team will then be able to focus on doing what they know to be workable to sell and close more business. Keep marketing and sales ideas, actions, decisions compartmentalized and focused then route the specific traffic to the correct areas.

For example:

(1) If you have a project for an email campaign, route this to your director of marketing to work out what should be promoted and how as well as what content will be in the email based on past results, survey's etc with the goal of cultivating interest and want for your sales team.

(2) Once you have the interest or want produced, immediately route that out of the hands of marketing and over to the VP Sales to direct to the sales team to handle with what they know best to do. The sales team can then focus on selling and closing the newly developed interest and want produced by marketing.

This sounds simplistic but the truth is that all too often I see marketing people still involved in step (2) as listed above which causes confusion and actually reduces the effectiveness of the campaign not to mention the chances of closing the sale.

Treat it like a relay race and know when to pass the baton as listed above and you'll find that the overall effectiveness of your campaigns will improve resulting in a better marketing to sales conversion rate.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Dealing with Critical Clients

In business, it's truly inevitable that you will run into problems that result in critical clients. We've found there are two ways to handle a complaint or critical client as it relates to our agency:

1) Take the complaint or critical remark at face value and honestly inspect what is being complained about. Do not immediately push back with the client in an attempt to make yourself "right". Investigate to see if you made an error or one of your people made a mistake. If you discover that you have, fix it immediately and turn the complaint into an opportunity to expand and get better at what you do. Every critical client or complaint has an opportunity attached to it. If you can use the critical remarks to strengthen your company, then take advantage of it.

2) If the client seems to be the type that complains about everything or is just critical in general - burn them, in other words, resign them and fast. Don't keep critical clients around, they lower company morale which lowers production and therefore creates more problems for the company as a whole. We never keep clients that are critical and hurt the company morale. Only keep clients that are essentially working as a team with your company to solve problems together and are pleasant to deal with. I promise, this one rule will help expand your company tenfold.

No one likes getting complaints or dealing with a critic but if you apply the above two rules, you can turn both situations into an opportunity to expand your company. Give it a go.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Google TV

I went to the Sony store today and saw the new Sony device with Google TV. While asking the rep about Google TV and watching a demonstration he discussed how many of the networks have blocked Google TV which I feel is very shortsighted and narrow.

Google TV in one word is - integration - meaning that TV and the internet is now fully and seamlessly integrated. This will open up huge opportunities to monetize the actual platform.

Here is the gist about how it works, it's basically TV and the Internet all in one so I can search for the CNN news channel on TV as well as open up their website to see what is going on. So as an example, we could be watching a political campaign and while it's on, from Google TV, immediately go online to post comments and fill out polls about it. This would create a real live experience and take the overall time lag out of TV. The discussions could be happening immediately. TV will then become more dynamic and engaging.

Here are just a few ways for networks, companies and ad agencies to monetize this opportunity:

1) Compulsive Shopping - Just imagine watching a TV ad for Ray Bans sunglasses and right on the commercial it stated, "to purchase these, click here" and you did, which then took you to a "buy now" landing page. Then, you could have your credit card details already saved in a secure wallet for these types of purchases so all you had to do was click "buy" and it was done. The Ray Bans would be billed to your card on file and sent to your address which was already saved. This could potentially be a massive consumer product sales angle for every consumer based company in the world.

2) Selective Subscriptions - I don't personally watch TV and haven't subscribed to it for about 10 years however, if I could select and pay for a program that I want to watch like the Olympics or Lost for a fee related specifically to those shows, I would. The fee would be prorated specifically for those shows and number of episodes. I don't personally want all of the other TV channels regardless of price because I feel a lot of it is garbage that I don't want my children watching but I would absolutely pay for just what I want. I'd like to pay for the World Series of baseball when it's on rather than the entire ESPN channel. With Google TV, you can create these sort of options and therefor bring in new viewers that are not currently paying for TV of any kind. You could also make a higher profit based on the pay per selection model.

3) Increased Viewers - Due to the above two items, the networks would pull in new viewers who were not currently watching TV or subscribing to TV or who were more inclined to use the internet rather than TV. I'm sure the Internet is causing TV to lose viewers and will continue to do so with sites like YouTube, Hulu etc, all of the viewers are shifting online. However, with Google TV, these viewers could not only be maintained but this could actually grow the overall viewers who would have otherwise left.

I think it's smart and I think the networks are being silly for trying to resist it or block it. Why resist it? Embrace and adapt and figure out all of the angles to monetize it. This will absolutely become the way of the future.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Dreams and Goals

Being that it's my birthday today, I started to think about dreams and goals as I typically do every year at my birthday. To me, when I view life through a telescope, the purpose, reason etc, it all boils down to dreams and goals. Think about it for a second. What are we doing here on earth. What's the purpose? I don't mean to get mystical here but it's interesting to put it all in perspective once in a while.

Life is simple. You make dreams and set goals to attain those dreams and then execute to make it all happen. When you attain goals and therefore dreams, you make new dreams and set goals to attain. Your dreams and goals can be to have a family that you take care of and grow together or to learn to scuba dive and then go to the Cayman Islands to do so. It doesn't matter what they are, it only matters that you have them. People get lost from time to time or seem directionless and make life too complex in the process.

Life is about your dreams and goals and the pursuit of making them realities. Make a point to dream dreams, set goals and go after them daily, weekly, monthly and yearly and then follow up on your dreams and goals to check your progress. Never stop creating dreams and goals to attain, it's the very essence of life itself.

Dream your dreams, define them and set goals which you must then work to pull off. When you attain goals, set new ones.

I heard a saying one time that went like this, "there are only two tragedies in life, someone who has nothing and someone who has everything", this to me, relates to someone who has no dreams and no goals and someone who has attained their dreams and goals and neglected to make new ones. Life is about living and you do that through dreaming dreams, making goals and going after them.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Ads That Work

I have to make a comment on ads in the form of email marketing pieces. I am sure we all get inundated with emails from all sorts of sources and companies and 99% of what comes in get's immediately deleted by us before even opening the email to view it. Personally, I wake up around 6:30AM and go through the emails on my Blackberry and immediately delete any and all email marketing/advertisement promo pieces..... except for one. Ugg Boots.

Ugg has successfully created the most aesthetic and appealing ads I have seen out of anyone. They actually make me want to buy boots for my wife virtually every time. Their strategy? Aesthetics. Create ad pieces that are so slick, with photography that is fantastically high end and shoot each shot in unbelievable settings in Australia that anyone in the world would want to travel to or be at the moment they get the email.... and, well, you have a winner. They sell with aesthetics. No coupons, no gimmicks, just fantastic aesthetics that create desire and interest and ultimately response that I am certain creates sales.

Ultimately when we look at the purpose of any ad, any marketing campaign, any PR strategy, they all are supposed to create sales. That is the purpose. In my opinion, Ugg has nailed it.

When you create your next ad piece, marketing piece or PR strategy, decide on your tactic to get a response and do it well keeping in mind that aesthetics is a central element to sales. Make it look great in order to gravitate interest to your product, service or brand.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Increasing Production By Defining What To Do

It's of course important to be productive day to day but I have found that the step before production or executing is the real secret. The actual planning of what needs to be done prior to doing it. If you can create a very clear list of targets that are doable or executable, you can then simply execute them. It wastes so much production time to just attempt to hustle and "be" productive rather than fully visualizing what needs to be done and why, putting those thoughts on paper in doable steps. When I say doable steps I mean it's written in actionable format. Here is an example:

1) Pick up the phone and call Mr. Peterson to discuss proposal

2) Create the proposal as discussed for ABC corp and send via email to John.

The above two steps are both actions that can easily be done. If you break down your daily and weekly goals and targets and really think them through to know exactly what actions need to be done prior to doing them, from there all you need to do is execute. This simple action will make your life easier and will speed up production so you can actually get more done.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Why Sales Teams Should Sell...

Out of all of the actions your business development team or sales team should be working on, attempting to find new business and/or prospecting is not one of them.... If you want to increase production and sales, that is. Every person is different, including salespeople. They have different methods of going about things and how they manage, work and produce. I haven't seen one salesperson that has a steady method of developing consistent news business. Salespeople need to focus on selling and closing new business, following up and catering to current clients that potentially will purchase again.

The vital daily and weekly tasks of a salesperson should include:

- handling new prospects to sell

- phone calls or meetings

- traveling to meetings

- following up with prospects or clients

- emailing or writing letters to prospects

- creating and sending proposals

- closing deals

Prospecting to develop new prospective clients should be done by either a separate unit within your company that supports sales or an agency. It's unproductive having your sales team spend their time trying to find and develop new prospective clients with methods that may or may not work which results in lost time and lost sales opportunities with the people in their current pipeline. The truth is, salespeople are not very good at it and don't really like it anyway.

If you have either internal efforts and strategies to maintain a very full pipeline or hire an agency to do so, it will improve productivity and cut out wasted efforts for your team. Focus on filling their pipeline with qualified new prospective business and keeping it full so they can spend their time selling and closing new business. It will make your salespeople happy and you'll ultimately be happy as well since this will certainly increase your profits.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Bloomberg Businessweek Turnaround

About 4-5 months ago I decided to subscribe to the new Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.... I know... subscribe to a magazine in this day and age?? ... hear me out for a second and I'll explain...

Businessweek had become about as dry as it get's as far as magazine's go. The content was boring. The design (or lack there of) was awful and all of these points basically led to the magazine's demise. I was reading an article on Reuters talking about the possible merger deal with two competing firms which were bidding on Businessweek. One firm had plans to fire all the staff and take the magazine online only to turn it into a digital publication and the other firm (Bloomberg) had plans to keep the staff and go with the traditional model of a magazine and simply bring life to what had become a boring business mag.

I have always admired Bloomberg. Their content is fantastic and their businesses are always strong so I had a curiosity to see what the outcome of the Businessweek deal would be. Anyway, long story short, Bloomberg ended up winning the bid and acquired Businessweek.

I have since subscribed and had the pleasure to get the magazine delivered to my office weekly. Week after week it's jam packed with fantastic content, beautiful images, well done covers that are aesthetic to look at and just an overall fantastic example of what the magazine truly should be. This is a powerful example that all publications should be savvy to. While the whole industry was doom and gloom, Bloomberg disregarded the propaganda about "print" and created a model that can be profitable if executed correctly. While everyone in the industry had crashing stats, closing their doors and taking their publications online or digital..... Bloomberg came in and made a desirable business magazine that was exactly opposite of what all of the analysts were saying about print. As long as the content stays consistent, I have no plans of canceling my subscription and in fact have started to tell others about it (word of mouth campaign) because I am so pleased.

To me, the key takeaway's here are this:

- Don't listen to the analysts or the general population, focus on basic principals that you know work and make your product or service great. Deliver fantastic products or services to your audience that they will buy and promote like crazy to get it in front of them.

- Focus on a valuable quality product or service. People will pay for valuable, quality products or services. The main problem with print was that it started to lack it's value for the price people were paying. If you focus on value compared with price and maintain a higher value in the minds of your buyers than the price you are charging, they will buy. "No brainer" value propositions tend to sell in large volume. Price is completely arbitrary if the value of the product or service is higher to the buyer than the actual price of the item.

- Make it interesting. Businessweek became so bland that even if the content was great, the whole package was fantastically boring. I think people and companies forget that people like to be entertained and they like to look at colorful pictures, images and branding. Make your product or service interesting or sexy (for lack of a better word) in some way to entice interest.

Print still has it's place and done right, like Bloomberg Businessweek, always will.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

The American Express Strategy

If I had to guess, I'd say we have American Express cards for about 90% of our clients rather than Visa or MasterCard. Every time another client gives us their corporate AMEX card I think about how American Express has just completely taken the business market over. It's really not even remotely close to their key competitors (Visa and MC)

This seems to be due to their laser focused strategy and consistency of marketing, advertising and promo to their target public (audience) that they have decided to go after - the business owners and corporations. They aren't dispersed with their strategy, they are completely and utterly committed to every avenue they can possible employ to go after businesses. They have a strong direct response campaign, digital advertisement, their own social media site called OPEN Network, magazine advertisements etc etc.

The takeaway that I have personally extracted from this strategy to completely control the market is this:

1) Decide on and define your target public (audience) clearly so you know who you are going after specifically

2) Create a strategy that is coordinated to get you in front of your target public in every possible way to generate interest and response

3) Have a strong business development team to back up your advertising, marketing and PR strategies in order to aggressively convert interest into sales. I can only imagine that American Express must have this point completely nailed. When someone has an interest in becoming a new business client, chances are, they will close them.

A key point in growth and expansion in any company is to accurately predict the effort and actions it will take to attain the goals. Even once you feel you have nailed what the estimated efforts need to be, it would be wise to double or triple the estimate in order to guarantee your position. In other words, think big and really go after it. But don't get distracted, stay focused. Know your target audience, define your strategy and hammer it until you have controlled it.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

The Best Deal

There is a saying in business that goes like this.... "sometimes the best deal you made was the one you didn't". In other words, it's the deal you turned away or left on the table. It's always tempting to take on every single deal that comes your way in business due to the woo of possible profits related to it, but I would advise to you closely look at every deal to ensure the prospect fits your criteria and will truly be profitable for you.

This may mean that if something doesn't feel right about a deal or the prospect is being difficult upfront or it's outside of your core competency or or or... etc, well you may need to get up and walk away from it for the sake of your company. It most likely will be for the best saving you and your company huge amounts of wasted time and effort not to mention money.

One of the most profitable angles in business is knowing who your target public (audience) is and who is a desirable client to take on and who isn't. If you can peg who isn't you will avoid 90% of all headaches for your company. The ability to spot problem child's early is a vital tool toward a growing and profitable company. Sure, you may end up leaving a few perfectly good deals on the table but you don't need to worry about that. Focus on distilling the deals that don't fully align with your goals, purposes and policies and I assure you that you will be ultimately more profitable and happier.

I have found that the very clients that fall just outside of our core public in one way or the other try to actually sell us on taking them on when all of our instincts and observations are indicating that we shouldn't. One for one, every time we have violated our polices and our instincts we have ended up unhappy about it later so my advice is save yourself the headaches and weed out the possible problem clients early. Don't be reasonable about this. Be ruthless about it. There are absolute hoards of new business out there, why waste your time with the deadwood.

If you currently have problem clients that fall outside of your core public or don't qualify in one way or the other, do yourself a favor and resign them. Move them off the line and focus all of your best talent, time and energy on your key clients to ensure they are happy and being serviced well. Take good care of your qualified clients and work to add more just like them. Do this and you will see the overall morale of your company improve. At our agency, we try to take on clients that fit our target public exactly and have products or services we like. We also try to only work with people we like and if we find a client being difficult or rude to our people, we simply resign the account and move onward and upward. Give it a try.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

The Makings of a Group

The ultimate pursuit in business. To attain a group. A true team. Loyal, focused and driven to attain the goals of the group. It's fantastically difficult to attain but virtually indestructible once created.

Here are the makings of a group as I see it:

1) Everyone is focused on an agreed upon goal. In other words, there's a mountain and everyone see's it and is focused on climbing it without any deviation or distractions. The goal needs to be completely known throughout the group, intertwined into everyday actions, targets and programs. "What will we do today to take the mountain?" Get a goal, make it known and pursue it.

2) The group thinks in futures, meaning that everyone in the group is focused on their future within the group. Where will we be in 2 years, 5 years, 20 years..... This then breeds loyalty to the group and therefore strengthens the group as a whole. A great group is one that no one would ever want to leave.

3) The group works as a unit, synchronizing every action and coordinating efforts. No individuals are in the group, only one unit that operates as a unit knowing and acting with every area, division and department fully reliant and responsible for each other.

4) No internal chatter about another group member in a derogatory way. Any person that seeks to bring down another within the group is immediately ousted.

5) Everyone in the group plays to their strengths and covers others weaknesses in order to push the group forward and be strong as a group.

6) The group encourages, acknowledges and pushes each other within the group forward to move toward the goal.

7) The group has a set of rewards and penalties for hitting targets and missing targets that is agreed upon and known.

8) The group treats the goal as a game and play's the game to win. Let's not be bashful here, the goal is to win. Second place is as good as last place.

9) The group thinks big and set's large targets to become the elite in their field. The group also doesn't allow anyone to think small and set tiny targets that are undesirable. If we're going to go after it, let's go after the entire cake to eat it while letting others set targets for slices that they don't eat.

10) Everyone in the group acts and operates as a complete professional. There is no tolerance for amateurs that cause problems and cause the group to have setbacks. Only professionals make it in a real group and the group members expect the very best performance out of each group member.

That to me is 10 criteria of a powerful group that would overcome any obstacle or barrier. Our agency seeks to attain these 10 points daily in order to become a fierce competitor in the global business playing field. To me, people are the essence of business and the very fiber of a group as listed above. If you can attain a real group that operates this way and works together then anything is achievable. One of the senior goals of your company should be the pursuit to create a real group. Figure that out and you have the keys to prosperity.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Adversity is Your Friend

In business and in life you are constantly faced with adversity. I think there are two ways to approach it. 1. succumb to it and let it beat you up and knock you around or 2. deal with it head on, grab it by the scruff of the neck and throw it around to overcome and benefit from it.

I realize that nobody would select option 1 but to be honest many people actually do allow option 1 to happen to them rather than take control and create option 2.

Adversity is your friend. It's there to challenge you. You can learn a lot from adversity and create better strategies and policies going forward. You'd be a fool not to. When adversity presents itself, the difference between hugely successful people and failures is the way they deal with problems and adversity. Successful people look at the angles, the benefits and the opportunities from it including how to prevent and avoid it in the future which ultimately makes them stronger.

Use adversity to get better, smarter and faster. Don't let it beat you up or slow your progress. It's a blessing in disguise. Learn and expand from it. Me personally, I typically take a little step back from it and look at what occurred and then analyze it from a distance, perhaps even take a run outside to think it over and then I come back to address it gun's blazing with a full throttle "bring it on" attitude! I wouldn't have it any other way.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

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Aim Small - Miss Small

There was a line in the movie "The Patriot" where the character Mel Gibson plays is about to ambush a group of British soldiers to save his son. He tells his other two son's to remember what he has taught them.... "aim small miss small"

The other day I was in a meeting with our production team and while we were discussing strategies to attain client reaches, that exact phrase came out of my mouth... "aim small miss small" which lead to this blog.

It's a great concept and relates exactly to business and client growth. Focus your efforts. In other words, identify a segment you want to go after by profiling who you sell to now. Who buys from you? Then take aim at that small segment and go after them heavy. We are not aiming at the whole audience here, we are aiming at your audience. The people most likely to need, want and buy your products or services.

Why waste your time, effort, money and energy chasing around the entire audience who will most likely never buy from you anyway. Focus. Aim small miss small. Define the audience and go after them. You will "miss" a few within that audience, meaning you won't sell or close them but you will "hit" a lot of them and I can guarantee you that that small audience that you aim at - actually makes up a huge number which is most likely more than your company could ever take on as clients.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Being a Martinet About Neatness...

I was reading an old book by David Ogilvy today and he makes a comment about how he used to work in a professional kitchen in France and the head chef, Mr. Pitard, was a martinet (one who enforces strict discipline) about being neat. He had the chef's clean the kitchen twice per day to ensure the quarters were spotless. David Ogilvy carried many of these lessons over to his agency which grew to be one the best and biggest of his time. 

David's comment for his agency was this, "Today I am a martinet in making my staff keep their offices ship-shape. A messy office creates an atmosphere of sloppiness, and leads to the disappearance of secret papers." 

I tend to agree fully. I am a bit of a neat freak myself and always keep my quarters in ship-shape. I also tend to get a lot more done than the average person, I think partly because I operate in a neat orderly fashion. It's worth taking a look at yourself. Do you keep your office immaculate? Is everything where it should be? If not, I'm willing to bet that you are loosing valuable time and opportunities. 

It takes next to nothing to learn this discipline of being neat. I have met a huge amount of very successful people and have observed this trait - no habit and discipline,  in many of them. Practice it. Start making your quarters neat and tidy this week and you will see that your level of production will rise as well as your personal sense of moral and satisfaction. 

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Sales, Selling Your People and Getting People to Sell

What role does sales play in your company? Have you recognized the fact that every person and every opportunity is another angle to sell? Let me clarify. Sales is intertwined into every aspect of your company.

You need to sell your products and services to your target market. You then need to sell and keep selling your people on the company, the task at hand and on your new clients that were just closed which motivates them to get the job done and carry forward what was sold. You then need to get people in your company to sell to your clients, your prospective public and the employees to constantly carry your company forward.

While there are many posts/titles in any company, everyone has a role in selling. A smile to a new client walking through the door sells. A welcome email to a new client sells. A follow up call to a client sells. Everyone in the company plays a role in selling to either cultivate new business, cater to and maintain current clients to ensure they are happy and are constantly sold on your company or to keep the team focused and motivated. The executive team, managers and CEO alike all sell the people of the company on the goals, future, mission at hand and on their specific tasks to motivate people to get the job done.

Sales is a central part of your company and is by no means isolated to simply bringing in new business.

Keep this closely in mind and review every aspect of your company if you want to stay competitive and grow your organization. Lose sight of this and you will lose the game. Sales is a company wide sport. It takes a team approach and everyone must be aware of the game and rules of the game.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Blockbuster Vs. Redbox

Approximately 5 years ago Blockbuster came up with a campaign to start sending clients late fees to collections. This lead me to start looking at their business model to see how powerful or infallible they really were. After looking at the company model and recent campaigns I realized that they were on their way out. This was in 2005.

Lately I have rented all of my movies from Redbox because it's fast, simple and inexpensive. It just makes a heck of a lot of sense. When comparing the two, Blockbuster had every opportunity in the world to evolve and scoop the market share early for this strategy that Redbox has executed but failed to do so.

I'm not sure if it was arrogance on the part of Blockbuster or lack of insight but they have clearly lost the battle already. I saw recent news that Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection and have noticed a few stores closing. Here is where I feel they failed:

1) Instead of focusing on making their process more customer centric focused, they alienated their customers by sending late fees to collections and ultimately ticking off a lot of people

2) They became too focused with trying to make the mail in rentals work in order to compete with Netflix and must of somehow completely missed the entire concept that Redbox executed.

3) The prices of rentals stayed the same rather than focusing on higher volume and convenience to their customers. There are plenty of profit centers within Blockbuster but they seemed to have failed to monetize them and simply "stuck to what they have always done"

So I feel the takeaway here is to stay nimble as a company and be able to adapt to change as well as always keep your customer experience in mind. How can you better improve your company to cater to your customer or client needs. What can you do to increase your companies value to your customers and therefore extend the reach of a dollar in their minds. When value outweighs price, sales will do well.

Here is what I like about Redbox:

1) It's fast and simple

2) It's inexpensive

3) The system is very A to B without any hidden costs or tricks.

Redbox will own this market in a very short amount of time. They have located a need and filled that need with a very simple, inexpensive and customer friendly model which will soon become the future of the movie rental business. Don't be surprised when Blockbuster (late to the game) starts their own vending machine style of movie rentals and the entire store model and pricing model is gone. If you think in futures with your company, products or services and value proposition, it will serve to help with future prediction and allow you to pounce on opportunities that need to be monetized as they come along.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Why I Would Pay for Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin

I recently heard rumblings of news about Twitter potentially charging a fee. Some people have stated that if they did so, they would cancel the service. Silly.... in my opinion. Here's why:

Thus far, the public at large have exchanged (paid for) nothing from Twitter or most social media platforms yet are willing to pay monthly fees for silly expenses like TV to watch a constant inflow of advertisements that attempt to sell products which takes money from them. Twitter, is quite possibly one of the best promotional and sales vehicles that exists today. That statement may not be real for a lot of people but I assure you, it's correct. Let me qualify that statement further.

Twitter gives people the ability to reach out to any target public audience to establish communication with them and develop relationships that can and do result in sales and revenue. By survey, the number one and two sources of new business for any company is word of mouth and referrals. This is precisely what Twitter facilitates. You may not be familiar with Twitter or how it could be the very best promotional and business development tool for your company to employ but nevertheless, there are ways to use it strictly for business development that produces new relationships and sales. Our agency uses it for this very purpose for ourselves and our clients. To us, Twitter is no different than a cell phone. It's a tool to be able to communicate with who we want, when we want so we can develop new business.

Would I be willing to pay for it? Yes! of course. $50 per month? Sure! It helps me produce new business which is a vital aspect to any company. I pay for my office phones, my staff mobile phones, internet connections etc so why wouldn't I pay for Twitter? I can't wrap my wits around why anyone wouldn't pay for it. It's a tiny price to pay for something that could help me produce thousands of dollars per year for our agency.

Now, I actually don't think Twitter will end up charging for their service but will rather take the advertisement supported model but regardless I support it and will absolutely pay for it if they charge a fee, it's worth it.

Consider the intrinsic benefits of these tools before making a rash decision like John Mayer to close his account on Twitter recently. He just locked out 3 million fans from being involved in the conversation. The value of staying in front of your audience is priceless. John made a silly move to close his account and if I was his agent I'd be having a fit right now. The fans are his customers and his obligation to keep happy. No fans means no money. No celebrity is above bottom line numbers being affected by silly moves like that.

If you're thinking Twitter is simply a site to say "your getting a coffee right now...." then let me clarify that you have completely missed the strategy and opportunity with it. It's more than discussing random thoughts and the people who only use it for those purposes think they get and really don't. It's blows the doors off of most promotional outreach strategies if used correctly and will continue to do so. If there was a monthly fee, it would be insignificant compared to the value of it.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group - Follow us @richter102media

IKEA Model

I made a trip to IKEA with my family this past week and thought I would comment on the entire business model. To start, I feel everyone has something to learn from IKEA. Here are a few key points that can be and should be applied to your company:

1) Demonstration Sales Presentation - If you have ever been to an IKEA store you will know that the entire store is built as a full tour or live demonstration of their product offering. It's basically the Disney World for grown ups looking for home furnishings and accessories. This is a smart approach to sales. The customer gets to see the products and gets a clear picture of what they might look like in their home. The tour actually guides you with arrows to where they want you to go and what they want you to see which results in control of the customer on their part. By the time you're done the tour/demo you should have seen and now know what you want and added it to your cart. The demo/tour model is a phenomenal way to sell your product because it makes the product or service real to the potential buyer. Find a way to demo your product to your possible buyers in a way that allows them to compare it to how they will actually use the product or service. This will help control and improve your sales.

2) Fun - The entire experience is fun. It doesn't feel like shopping or a chore. It feels like you are at a massive theme park for home furnishings and accessories. The vibrant colors and entire layout makes it fun to walk through and look at. There are pictures on the walls about the history, latest products etc which makes the entire experience incredible. Making it fun will result in happy customers which will result in buyers which will result in income.

3) Catering to your Public - There is a HUGE elevator in the middle of the store to fit tons of people comfortably. There is an actual food court that is done beautifully to cater to hungry guests. The layout is perfect to easily maneuver around. There is a child center to leave the little kiddos to play to their hearts content and allow the parents to casually stroll not to mention the fun kid friendly pockets and sections all throughout in case the parents want to bring the tikes along. There are helpful staff spread all around. The checkout is a breeze. Need I say more? It's completely setup to take good care of their customers and to make them happy so they can enjoy their shopping experience.

4) Exchange - The prices are unreal. They are clearly providing a better value than one has to pay. I'm not by any means a cheap or bargain shopper but I can appreciate value and love the idea of geting a great value. IKEA has this pegged. The prices for the items and the overall experience is well below the actual value which makes their exchange with their customers through the roof. Figure out a way to provide a higher value to your clients than they pay for your product or service and you will always ensure long term survival for your company.

I am certain that there are more takeaways from IKEA than I have listed above but these were the basics that I wanted to make notes on. Go and see for yourself. It clearly had an impact on me which is obviously another benefit that will build their sales...... customer word of mouth. Kuddos to you IKEA

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Work Ethic

Just a brief comment on work ethic. I try to challenge myself daily to push harder, get more done, be more disciplined and push through more tasks or goals than the day before.

I have observed that by doing this, my level of action and discipline relative to most people is much higher. It's almost like working out in the gym to physically expand your limits and therefore increase what can be done or how many miles you can run daily. You may start out at half a mile but if you push yourself daily, in a few months you will end up at 3-4 miles.

Today's working society is too lax about work and their limitations of how hard they will push is tiny. Don't allow yourself to fall into this category.

Challenge yourself to increase your work ethic. Push yourself and you'll be amazed at what you are capable of.

- Make a daily agenda, tasks or actions that you must complete and push them all through with zero reasonableness

- Spend less time at lunch and wasting time daily so you can execute your tasks at hand

- Be disciplined about reading something productive daily to increase your knowledge

- Run daily or get some kind of physical exorcise to stay sharp

- When you feel that you are through your tasks, push a little harder to complete another few

If you truly master your own work ethic, you will guarantee your survival and success. Push yourself and you will be an absolute asset no matter where you work.

Think of any sports team or event. Winners have an unbelievable work ethic. This is the one factor that is a constant with any winner. Don't allow yourself to be just involved in the game, decide to win and then push yourself to grow into the type of person that has an incredibly high work ethic that plays to win. Do this and you will win.

I will warn you that it's actually very hard and quite difficult to pull off and very few people who read this blog will do it. That is actually part of the reason that winners win. There is very few people to actually compete with. Most are lazy. Decide against being lazy and step up your entire game so you can attain and have anything you want. The game of winning in life is actually very easy..... you just have to be willing to work your tail off!

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Coffee's for Closers

Here is our take on one of the greatest sales movies of all time - of course we felt they had it a little wrong so we made a few minor adjustments.

To discuss the difference of a lead vs. a reach, get in touch

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Speed

Have you ever truly looked over the value of speed as it relates to your companies growth, strategies, sales, delivery and expansion? I personally rate this as one of the highest valued items in our agency and in any company.

Speed. How fast you can take an idea into execution to make that idea a reality. Speed is your friend and time is your enemy. Speed of delivery. How fast can you deliver your product or service with the highest level of quality. Speed of sales. How fast can you find your audience, prospect, sell and close them to create hoards of new business.

Speed is something you should measure, if you don't already. People talk frequently about competition, what the other companies are doing etc. If you master speed, the truth is, there isn't any real competition out there. Most companies are slow. Most people are slow. Competition is a highly overrated concept. Focus on speed and the "competition" becomes something that you view from a distance scratching your head wondering how and why they don't get it.

Even looking at today's economy, if people and companies operated faster, new companies started fasted, decisions were made faster, speed became a central and crucial element of the marketplace, we wouldn't have a problem. The economy would recover swiftly and new fresh funds would be produced and circulated quickly.

Sometimes simple answers are the hardest to figure out but are ultimately the best solution.

Make a point this week and next to execute tasks faster. Speed up your cycles. Look at how you can take the time out of the equation on situations and your production will increase. Look at all the applications of speed and figure out how to put them into action.

- Speed of sales
- Speed of promotional ideas to get them into action
- Speed of quality delivery
- Speed of internal communications
- Speed of external communications
- Speed of news to the market
- Speed of promotional updates or changes such as websites etc
- Speed of hiring, training and executing actions
- Speed of meetings and phone calls

While this may sound a little overboard - it's not, I assure you. There are slownesses all throughout your personal actions day to day as well as throughout your company and I promise, it's costing you the game. Take speed seriously. Get disciplined about it and your "competition" will become a silly concept. Companies are slow, people are slow ..... take advantage of it.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Get Organized

Just a brief comment on the importance of being organized and having clear systems and administration for your company.

I personally feel that a huge amount of profit is lost in this area. A lot of companies are strong in sales or delivery or customer service but not many are truly strong in administration. In other words, your process, operations, systems etc. Really think it through and make a checklist of the areas that need to be addressed.

Here is a starting point:

- Flow charts for all key areas and functions like sales, delivery, finance posted on the wall so they are viewable for training and drilling

- Progress boards to monitor and track key actions so you can manage and push progress week to week

- Clearly defined positions and actions for each person in written format so your people can study them and become competent for their position

- A form of measurement for all key company indicators that can be tracked weekly to compare from week to week and to set targets for improvement

- Checklists or procedures for handling specific actions like collecting income, closing sales, delivering to new clients in order to have exact sequences that are followed every time without fail

These are just a few basic fundamental points to look into. The basic message here is that time and time again I see companies losing opportunities and income simply by lack of planning, lack of systems and lack of organization which results in chaos and confusion in the company making people look busy when in actual fact it's unproductive business.

Make all systems and functions clearly defined and ensure you have procedures that are organized and orderly in all areas and your production level will go through the roof. It's not time you lack, it's a lack of administration that organizes processes to create more time for you. Inefficiencies are expensive.

Our agency tends to get about a months work done in a week simply because we are organized and can execute and have systems for everything. Don't run around and say your busy and have no time... get organized, be ruthless about your systems and create time in order to focus on doing more to expand your company. Dissect your processes and jam in orderly operations and you'll see what I mean.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Title Vs. Task

What is a title to you? The title of where you work whether it is CEO, VP Sales, Creative Director, CFO etc, what does it mean to you? If your thinking it has anything to do with power or importance then you have completely missed the mark and have lost the true purpose of your job and position within your company.

A title is not for power or importance or making anyone feel under you.... it's a description of where you are in your company and what your responsibilities are. It's a function. Now I realize this sounds a little self explanatory but many people seem to mis-use and mis-apply their titles which I find to be a shame to the company in general.

When you are a CEO or any position for that matter, that title simply is a label for your function. It means that the day to day tasks related to that title are your responsibility and your team relies on you to get it done. That's it. If you thought it was anything more than that, you've lost the focus and true spirit of business.

Think about the tasks and functions that go under your position or title. This is the only importance associated with your title. It dictates your job and reveals your tasks so everyone knows who is who in the company and who will handle what functions. Think of your company and position like a sport.... the goalie is supposed to stop attempts on goal, period. The goalie is not so he can be respected or act important (even though he is) or to be used for power.... it's simply a duty.

Take a look at your post, position or title and ask yourself whether you are exclusively handling the functions for your team to get the job done and whether you are making a valuable contribution to your team for the responsibilities that fall under your position. If you do this, your company will do better and if you can get others to do the same, the company will boom.

Focus on the task at hand, the functions that need to be done for the title and execute, execute, execute and forget the importance of it all.