Robert Cornish

Why Behavioral Advertising is Absurd

2012-01-31T10:47:00.001-08:00

OK, so there are a huge amount of digital ad companies out there coming up with the new cutting edge method to control the consumers buying habits and get them to buy their clients product or service. So, in the chase for the best method, they've developed tools that track sites you visit and then attempt to predict what ads you should see over and over so you buy that product.

Sounds pretty good in theory. I mean, that makes sense right? If I go to a site, then it would serve to logic that I am interested in that product or service and therefore I should see ads related to it that should cause me to buy. Except, I'm not interested in them and here's why. I was doing some research for one of my clients related to other similar companies pricing scales etc which caused me to go to a few sites that I wouldn't normally go to. I then proceeded to see ads all over the place for these companies. I then was looking into possible ideas for the weekly bonuses for my sales team and while looking came across sites like Disney and then again proceeded to see ads all over the place. This caused me to start looking at all the ads and I realized that I had no interest in many of them. I then started thinking about how many ads these behavioral strategies are making me miss. In other words, the ads I should be seeing, I'm not.

See the full gallery on Posterous

So, the question is, how do the ads actually get to the right person at the right time? I'm not in the digital ad business but we do know the answer to this question, however, I don't want to make this blog a pitch for our services so I leave you with that thought.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Don't Get Too Serious

2012-01-20T10:22:00.001-08:00

As we grow a little older and become more involved in business which includes the ups and downs that sometimes occur, it's easy to get a little too serious about it all. We tend to become a little edgier with people. A little less polite at times. A little less friendly. All the while working toward being successful but the irony is that being serious is very counter-productive to success.

Richard Branson is someone I admire in business. If you know a little about him, then you know that he’s not remotely serious about his work and yet his success is enormous both financially and in general. One could argue that he has a lot to be happy for and that would be true but he’s been this way all along. If you inspect the points in your life that worked out the best. The times when everything seemed to go your way - I'm willing to bet that it was the time when you were having the most fun and were playful in spirit.
Monitor your level of "seriousness" and focus on making yourself act and be less serious and you’ll see greater success. You can always be determined and professional and focused on what you're doing but keep a light heart and have fun with it - because if your not having fun, you may as well get out now.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

There's a Combination to Sales

2012-01-11T22:51:00.001-08:00

When you're selling a prospect you need to understand that it's similar to a lock combination. There are several digits that you need to get right in order to open the lock. The lock combinations are considerations or objections from the prospect. More consideration really. So, you need to know that. If the prospect tells you they are sold but they still are not buying right then and there (the contract isn't signed and money isn't collected) then you haven't actually nailed all of the combinations and for all intents and purposes - the lock is still locked.

So continue selling all the way through. Keep thinking about why the prospect is even talking with you. What do they need? What problem are they trying to handle? Once you have answered these questions, keep selling them on this until you have handled every consideration and nailed the combo to open the lock and close the deal. See, you may have handled 7 out of 8 considerations the prospect may have but the deal won't close because there is still one left. You need to continue to sell until you handle that remaining point that completes the deal, opens the lock and concludes the sale.

Do not buy the prospects reason for why they haven't bought (budget, timing, delays, other reasons etc) it's none of them. You need to handle the real considerations and once you do, the deal is done. You'll know it when you get there. It's as clear as seeing a lock click and the vault door open.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

End of Year Hustle

2011-12-15T10:22:00.001-08:00

The end of the entire year is quickly approaching.... which means it's time to pull out all stops and make things happen to pull off your December numbers. Our agency has been built on this entire philosophy that we simply "disagree" with the common thinking of how things are "supposed to go..." and we make things happen. For example, it's pretty common knowledge that Thanksgiving week is "slow" for many businesses or that companies should expect their numbers to be down.... but we simply disagree with that concept and ramp up everything to fill the pipeline, arm the sales team, get the staff producing, jam the schedules with appointments... you get the idea. This past Thanksgiving these actions resulted in our highest week ever in terms of gross income and the month of November ended up being our highest growth month ever in terms of gross income.

Winning is an attitude. Getting the results you want starts with your mental attitude toward things. If you "buy in" to the concept that it's slow around the holidays, well guess what.... it will be slow around the holidays for you. If you "buy in" to the concept that the economy is down or slow.... it will be down or slow for you. Sounds simple. It is. You don't need to make it any more complex than this. Focus your attitude to disagree with the conditions that exists and decide to flourish in spite of it all. Then work out the actions you need to take to blow up every area of your company to massive proportions. When it comes to this kind of planning, there's no such thing as enough. Plan HUGE and execute HUGE.

By doing this, your company will expand. People will flourish and the economy will thank you. So for the end of the year of 2011, bust out all of the barriers in the way and throw the throttle down. Make sales. Boom promo. Get your production team to produce in massive volume. Encourage a hustle and bustle attitude around the office. Shake things up and get the energy flowing. I can guarantee you that this will boom your numbers and prove that the rest of the world is wrong.... the holidays are a great time to do business!

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter Group of Companies

Agreement with Problems and Barriers

2011-11-09T18:56:00.003-08:00

It's said that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. While it's probably debatable whether that is true or not, we'll use that as an analogy for this blog. The weakest link being your management team or executives going into agreement with the supposed problems or barriers put forth by the staff of the company. In other words, the actual problem is that anyone in an executive position is actually agreeing with the problems being suggested by your staff and by that agreement, making it a reality for the company which hurts many areas of the company resulting in bigger and bigger problems and crashed stats.

So the challenge is to get your management team and executives to disagree with the idea of obstacles, problems or barriers. They must be willing and able to listen to the staff and understand the problems but then be strong minded enough and strong willed to know that they are not really problems regardless of what is being said by the staff. They must push the staff toward handling the supposed problems. By disagreeing I mean, mentally not buying into the problem. For example, you may have a VP over the sales area who has a sales rep come to him or her to say that the reason there were no sales lined up today is because all of the prospects the sales rep is dealing with are getting answers back for various questions and so the sales rep needs to wait for the answers to close the deals. So in this scenario, the VP of Sales would become your weakest link and would add fuel to the fire to ultimately create bigger problems for the company by simply "buying in" to the idea presented by the sales rep why no sales could occur that day. The VP of Sales would then present that same idea to the senior executives who also buy in and the ripple effect continues to poison the other sales reps as the agreement of this idea continues to the point that sales have come to a grinding halt.

So the correct handling is for the VP of Sales to listen to the sales rep's reason and then immediately correct the sales rep to say something like, "I understand what you're saying here but the truth is, all sales are caused by us not by waiting on the prospect. We're the ones that make sales today or not. So, make a list of every way that you can get in touch with your prospects today to get an answer back today. Find any reason to call them as well as create a list of anyone you haven't called or need to get in touch with and then write the entire list down. Make a copy for me as well and then email and call everyone on the list today with an exact plan for what you will do to close each deal on the list today. I will check up with you to view progress at 10AM, 2PM and 5PM to see if you need anything. Thanks" This could be communicated many different ways but the point is, the VP of Sales would not express agreement or go into agreement with the idea that there won't be any sales today based on the reason put forth by the sales rep. The other sales reps would also see this as an example and realize that the VP operates this way and it will start to rub off on them as well.

A culture will develop around not agreeing with barriers or obstacles in the way of the company goals. The anchors to this strategy is your executives and management team. They have to be strong mentally to not be swayed by any of the staff's reasons so they become weak minded to agree with the problems or barriers. Their strength and complete disagreement will result in growth and expansion for the company. It will also result in a Spartan like team that pushes through all possible obstacles that present themselves.

To end with a great quote that forwards this concept, in the movie Mission Impossible 2, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Commander Swanbeck (Anthony Hopkins discuss the mission they need to take on and Commander Swanbeck says "you think this will be difficult?" Ethan Hunt replies "Very" in which Commander Swanbeck says "Well this is not mission difficult Mr. Hunt, this is mission impossible.... difficult should be a walk in the park for you."

So that is the frame of mind. Damn the barriers. Disagree.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Agreement with Problems and Barriers

2011-11-09T18:51:00.001-08:00

So the challenge is to get your management team and executives to disagree with the idea of obstacles, problems or barriers. They must be willing and able to listen to the staff and understand the problems but then be strong minded enough and strong willed to know that they are not really problems regardless of what is being said by the staff. They must push the staff toward handling the supposed problems. By disagreeing I mean, mentally not buying into the problem. For example, you may have a VP over the sales area who has a sales rep come to him or her to say that the reason there were no sales lined up today is because all of the prospects the sales rep is dealing with are getting answers back for various questions and so the sales rep needs to wait for the answers to close the deals. So in this scenario, the VP of Sales would become your weakest link and would add fuel to the fire to ultimately create bigger problems for the company by simply "buying in" to the idea presented by the sales rep why no sales could occur that day. The VP of Sales would then present that same idea to the senior executives who also buy in and the ripple effect continues to poison the other sales reps as the agreement of this idea continues to the point that sales have come to a grinding halt.

So the correct handling is for the VP of Sales to listen to the sales rep's reason and then immediately correct the sales rep to say something like, "I understand what you're saying here but the truth is, all sales are caused by us not by waiting on the prospect. We're the ones that make sales today or not. So, make a list of every way that you can get in touch with your prospects today to get an answer back today. Find any reason to call them as well as create a list of anyone you haven't called or need to get in touch with and then write the entire list down. Make a copy for me as well and then email and call everyone on the list today with an exact plan for what you will do to close each deal on the list today. I will check up with you to view progress at 10AM, 2PM and 5PM to see if you need anything. Thanks" This could be communicated many different ways but the point is, the VP of Sales would not express agreement or go into agreement with the idea that there won't be any sales today based on the reason put forth by the sales rep. The other sales reps would also see this as an example and realize that the VP operates this way and it will start to rub off on them as well.

A culture will develop around not agreeing with barriers or obstacles in the way of the company goals. The anchors to this strategy is your executives and management team. They have to be strong mentally to not be swayed by any of the staff's reasons so they become weak minded to agree with the problems or barriers. Their strength and complete disagreement will result in growth and expansion for the company. It will also result in a Spartan like team that pushes through all possible obstacles that present themselves.

To end with a great quote that forwards this concept, in the movie Mission Impossible 2, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Commander Swanbeck (Anthony Hopkins discuss the mission they need to take on and Commander Swanbeck says "you think this will be difficult?" Ethan Hunt replies "Very" in which Commander Swanbeck says "Well this is not mission difficult Mr. Hunt, this is mission impossible.... difficult should be a walk in the park for you."

So that is the frame of mind. Damn the barriers. Disagree.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Free Can Hurt Stability

2011-09-22T08:09:00.001-07:00

In this day and age, it's common to have companies offering free services or operating on the "freemium" model but don't get disillusioned into the idea that it's the way to go - it isn't. At least, it's not the only way you want to operate. You have to work out a very clear plan that will pull in revenue to support anything that you plan to make free - someone has to pay for it after all.

One of the main problems with the free model is that it breeds a society that expects something for nothing. We start looking at our current economic state and it's easy to see that a lot of companies need to knuckle down and really focus on driving revenue.

What you don't know and don't see behind the scenes of these freemium modeled companies is that they're heavily funded by venture capital which is acting like their revenue - only, it isn't revenue it's debt that is a liability strapping down the company. So the company needs to quickly figure out how to make enough revenue to cover the liability and fast.

Meanwhile, the public (people) that do business with these companies with their free model start to crave more free service and expect everything free for nothing from them. This can really damage the economy as well as the operating basis of our society.

So, we need to get back to a clean exchange system where the public expects to pay for a service and the company delivers that service or product once paid for. It's a highly stable and sane model. I'm not saying the free model needs to go away but I do believe in many cases it needs to be scaled back. It's not a great solution for most companies. Companies should collect money for their products or services rather than try to subsidize their free model via some other method like ads or venture capital which makes a pretty shaky company.

When a company is working on a free model, it also de-values the product or service and the motivation internally to make it the best it can be but reversely, when you charge a fee upfront the whole company is motivated and incentivized to make it great. Their being paid to make it great.

In this market, more companies need to drive revenue that can be injected back into the economy and in order to do that we need to build solid and stable companies that operate with clean exchange that charge a fee and deliver a product or service to the client. Then do this in high volume. Rather than some subsidized life dependent company that solely relies on advertisers or venture capital. Let's get back to basics.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Animated videos help drive sales...

2011-09-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a brief video that explains our animated online videos.

Customers Aren't Always "Right"

2011-06-25T08:48:00.001-07:00

Now I realize that most people in business have heard or have been trained on the concept that "the customer is always right" but it's a trap for your business and not a long-range strategy or operating basis that you should subscribe to.

The truth is, it was you that came up with your business idea. You have created it everyday and worked out the kinks - not your customer. Customers don't always know what they need or want until you acutally present it to them. While it is very important to listen to the customer to understand their needs or problems - it doesn't mean it's a good idea to take every suggestion or to listen to their ideas for how to operate your company.

Your job is to solve their problem. Stick to what you do and stick to your ideas for how to accomplish that. Become intimately familiar with the customers problems and then work out the solutions based on your own insights and knowledge to attain what is needed. If you operate on the premise that the customer is always right, I can almost guarantee that this will lead you off your course down a dark path that you shouldn't be. You've built an entire company based on what you have come up with, your ideas, your methods and the customer signed up because of it. Deal with any suggestions or complaints as they come up, sure. But don't deviate off course based on listening to everything the customer say's until one day.... your progress slows or declines because you've been changing your company based on "the customer is always right".

Know your company. Know your clients problems and then know the methods to solve them and stick to it. Continue to improve your company to solve the problem better but don't get distracted by customer input, ideas or complaints. If you solve the problem and get good at doing what you do and you consistently impropve what you do based on what you know, you won't need to worry about the customers input because they will be extremely pleased with what you have done.

Here's a great quote from Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, that relates to this:

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

So focus your efforts. Improve your systems and delivery for what you do but ultimately you have to know your company goals, purposes and who you are as well as what you are trying to be. That will carve your company into the ideal vision you are trying to attain. The customer doesn't know what the vision is or how to get there and they never will so just focus on doing what you do and servicing them better to handle their problem, need or want and everyone will be happy.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Fast Decisions Make Time

2011-06-03T07:59:00.001-07:00

It's pretty common to hear people complain about not having enough time or being busy. There never seems to be enough time right? Too much work and not enough time to do it. However, a huge sum of the problem is not related to how much time there is, it's related to what people do to themselves that cause bottle necks in their schedules and gobble up their time.

I could list out many many examples of this but for the purpose of keeping this short and sweet, I will name just one. Decisions. Taking forever to make them, that is. Here's an example: your company needs a product or service that has been discussed in the past and everyone agrees that it's something that you do indeed need or want. You have found a company to do the work and all seems to look good. At this point, rather than making an immediate decision to move forward swiftly to get what you want - meetings are held, emails are exchanged back and forth, time is added, people need to approve it, questions and objections are voiced...... well..... you know this example well I'm sure.

If you observe this situation or any situation just like it, you can clearly see where your time goes. It gets eaten by the simplest of things. Learn to make fast decision and you will learn the art of creating time. WAY more time! Do not hesitate to pull the trigger on decisions. Make them fast and make them now. By disciplining yourself to get into the habit of this, you can get a lot more done. You will start to have an abundance of time. Time is not the issue, the issue is the things that waste time and gobble up the little time you have. Focus on making fast decision for everything and complete cycles related to decision immediately and you will start to recapture your time.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Hold Your Position

2011-05-18T11:19:00.001-07:00

In sales, you can frequently be knocked off of your position by your prospect which can lead to no sale. What I mean by this is that sometimes the prospect will push you on a negotiation point that you attempt to handle and cater to, only to realize that this didn't close the sale.

Bending over backwards and allowing every request from the prospect will not close the sale. You must have the ability to hold your position and stay true to what you sell and what you can or cannot do. Use tactful communication to steer the conversation where you want to go and handle objections rather than just buckle to them. It's OK to say "no". In fact, it can be an incredible negotiating tool and sales tool to simply say, "I'm sorry but we can't make that work but here is how we can address this..." or simply walk away from the deal if you can't handle the concern. You would be amazed at how walking away from a deal can be a powerful tool to close the sale. Many prospects will reach back even stronger after you have walked away from it.

The key point here is to stay strong on your position. For example, if the price of any item is $1000 and the prospect wants it for $900, you can simply say, "we can't do it for that price but the truth is, the market price for this is $2000 so you are already getting the best rate and dealing with us, we will provide a best practices guide at the end to help you with this which will help you dramatically improve sales from this service...." With this example, you hold your position while selling them and concluding the deal with a value add. Be smart about how to handle each situation and just keep in mind that buckling under pressure from the prospects demands will not help you make a sale. You're better off to hold your position and use tactful communication to steer the deal toward the desired outcome.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Care

2011-05-12T05:47:00.000-07:00

It's a simple concept but few recognize it or actually apply it to sales or business in general. Care. You have to care about your prospect. Care about your client. Care to be interested. No, not the fake kind that comes across as awkwardness on the receiving end. The authentic kind. Actually be interested in your prospect or client. Ask them questions. Take some time to study their site to clearly understand their company and where they may need help and where you may fit in.

See, all too many salespeople clearly only care about one thing - their commission to fatten their pocket but the truth is, that is the longest and hardest route you could take. Instead, focus on caring authentically about the prospect. There is a reason or purpose or need that they are trying to handle or resolve which is why they called you. Care to find out what the reason or purpose is. Understand it. Ask questions. Problem solve with them to help handle it. Get excited about them and their company and focus on helping them attain their goal faster. Be genuine and care. This is your fastest route to actually making a sale.

It's actually difficult to express this one factor in text format in a blog but all I can really tell you is that you have to care genuinely about the prospect or client enough to be truly interested in them and focused on helping them. Care enough to have engaging dialog, even if it goes off track leading to things like family, travel or life - care to listen, care to be interested and care to genuinely help. Believe me, it will come across to your prospect and they will love you for it. You want faster sales? This is the way. Care.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Contraction and Expansion

2011-05-04T09:20:00.001-07:00

Just a note on how contraction relates to expansion and why contraction is neccessary. When you expand at a large level in a short amount of time after a lot of hard work, push through and ultimately attainment of the expansion goals you set out for, it's natural for some level of contraction to follow right after. It doesn't have to of course - there are ways to quickly stabalize and increase the expansion even further but don't get beat up by the contraction should it occur. Rather, use the time to evaluate what flaws or weaknesses the expansion helped reveal, define what the new expansion goals are, get the team re-organized and energized and put in systems and operations that help bolster the current level as well as allow for the new level you plan to expand to.

This constant ebb and flow of expansion and contraction continues while you grow. It's natural. There's no need to freak out about it. Just ensure that you organize behind all expansion to stabalize the growth and help contribute to new levels of expansion. Otherwise, the contraction will stick and the whole activity becomes a little shakey which hurts your momentum.

So use the contraction to quickly identify what needs to be addressed, address it, plan for new expansion and hit the ground hard to push the next major targets through to complete. You will find your contractions will become larger and larger to soon become bigger that your previous highest ever expansion levels. So as long as the overall stats in the area are trending up - just keep doing this over and over to handle both expansion and contraction accordingly.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Spend More Time Planning

2011-04-18T16:38:00.001-07:00

I realize that planning can seem like a waste of time or an extra headache but it will save you a huge amount of time and wheel-spinning throughout your week.

I see a lot of people just go to work and get into the motion of work and handle actions as they come and attempt to just produce but there is very little forward motion related to this. What we are looking to attain here is precise, predictable forward motion that conquers goals.

So, here is what I want you to do - take time to plan your week. On Sunday, sit down and write or type out exactly what is needed to be done for the week in order to attain your goals. Make it clear, concise and actionable. If you're in sales, list every cycle you are working on and the actions needed to close each cycle this week. Be thoughtful about the physical steps that must be done to execute and attain each action. Print it out or write it down on a notepad - whatever works for you but have it all worked out.

Then, when Monday comes, you simply need to execute the plan. Stick to the plan. Push the plan through. Get it done. That's it. Don't try to just "be productive" with no game plan. Be thorough and make a defined plan and then do it. Simple. Try it out.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Decide for Them

2011-03-31T14:51:00.001-07:00

In sales, there comes a point when you have to ask for the close in some form or fashion. Now this can be a little bit of an awkward moment for many. Some people make common mistakes at this point and then experience the after thoughts after hanging up the phone or leaving the meeting with the distinct feeling of.... "oh... damn it... I should have said [insert appropriate line]" Yes, it's happened to all of us. You get to the point of closing a deal right then and there and you ask them to make a decision like "would you like to do this or that..."

You're making your sales life harder than it needs to be. Here is what I want you to do - make the decision for your prospect. Tell them, rather than ask them. There's a tactful and smooth way to do this and it works. Rather than say, do you want to pay by check or corporate card? Say, "we will bill this to your corporate card and send the reciept over to your email - what are the card details?" Make the decisions for your prospect so they don't have to. Believe me, you save them time as well as your own. The prospect prefers it this way as well. Less decisions, less hassle, less things to think about.

Give it a try. Any situation that may require you to ask for a decision - change to you making the decision on behalf of the prospect to handle it right then and there. You will find that this speeds up the sales cycle and improves the overall close percentages not too mention reduces work and effort for you and the prospect.

You will use this method of making a deicison for your prospect this week and then post a comment on my blog to let me know how it went and I will look forward to hearing from you. (see that wasn't so hard was it?)

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Order and Expansion

2011-03-24T18:51:00.001-07:00

Over the past few weeks I've been on a mission to put order into every single area of our company. Meaning, I am making it orderly, implementing systems etc. The magic of "order" is limitless. Each little area that we've put order into results in things magically getting better. In other words, we made our company more orderly in one area and found that it impacted our growth just that much for the week.

Look around your company and make a list. Find every single area that you can to put order in. Then, simply address them one by one.

Here are a few examples:

- Make all workspaces neat and tidy to improve production

- Make a revision to a contract to ensure it reads correctly

- Address some old "need to get done's" and do them

- Implement a new checklist to help make a process more efficient and swift

- Get rid of a redundant task or function that causes extra work

These are but a few areas. Just start listing out all of the areas that you want to make orderly and then do so. You will be completely blown away at how this will impact you sales, growth, expansion, morale and the list goes on. It's complete magic.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Goal Attainment

2011-03-17T07:08:00.001-07:00

It's easy to get caught up looking off into the distant future and at the overall goal of what you are trying to attain but the actual way to attain your goal is by breaking it down into a series of small sub-goals that ultimately attain the overall goal.

I think a lot of people have trouble with this and get beat up trying to attain a goal that never seems to come to fruition. Here is how to attain a goal:

1. Write down the overall vision that you want to attain. Make it crystal clear so you have the goal clearly defined.

2. Work out the sequence of actions that would possibly be needed to attain the goal. In other words, what do you have to do to attain it. List every possible step or action related to the goal.

3. Take the first step or action and break it down into executable, doable targets.

4. Execute the first step and targets.

Then keep repeating step 1 to 4 over and over with all of your goal targets. The planning of goals and the working out of how to attain the goal itself is important. Once this is done, just focus on execution of the small sub-goals within the overall goal.

As an example, I run a lot and I have an overall goal that I am going after for sure but I focus on the sub-goals and then smaller sub-goals within those sub-goals. I get up everyday and go for a run with a goal in mind but even while running, I am only really focused on the next step in front of me. I am looking to accomplish one concrete block step after the other concrete block step. I don't stare at the distance that I am running toward. I don't think about the overall fitness goal either. I win goal after goal which are the small steps right in front of me and then by focusing on those, I end up attaining the overall goal for that day of the distance I want to go. This then is one sub-goal executed that aligns with the overall goal of a fitness target.

Does that make sense? It's the breaking down of a goal into bit sized chunks that are doable, executable targets that is actually how to attain a goal. Then focusing on the small targets and getting them done. These then will lead to actual attainment of the overall goal. Work out the goal. Work out the planning. Work out the sub-goals. Work out the sub-goal targets. Execute daily.

Here is a great video by Nike that I thought appropriate :)

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Decision Comes First

2011-03-16T05:14:00.001-07:00

Decision seems to be a relatively misunderstood word. In business, people talk about decisions, the decision-maker etc but rarely truly understand the power of decisions and the priority they take in getting anything done.

See, many people try to have all the facts, knowledge and info lined up prior to making a decision and more specifically - SO they can make a decision. It doesn't work like that.

It works like this - you have to look at what you want to do and then completely and utterly decide on what you will do, the outcome etc. Make a decision that is unwavering and fully committed. Then you work toward the decision taking actions in order to execute what you decided on. That is how it works and that will give you the cleanest and exact result of your decision.

Decide, then actions to execute the decision.

Don't waffle and think and come up with options after options and ho-hum and maybe this, maybe that - no - look at what you want, make a decision and take actions toward executing your decision to make it happen. It's that simple. So focus on clear, crisp decisions and taking actions that attain your decisions.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Adding Time

2011-03-09T20:45:00.001-08:00

How much time is added unnecessarily to your life? Just imagine for a second how many situations in your business that time get's added that didn't need to be added. Think about it. Here are a few examples to exercise your thoughts:

- you get an email and instead of handling it right then and there, you put it away for "later"

- you tell someone in business that you will review and handle this "next week" when you could handle it right now. - you don't gather all the people that need to be associated with a decision immediately to put it to bed right now, only to procrastinate and put it off for another day

- you defer decisions to someone else when you can actually handle it and be done with it.

These are just a few examples but just imagine if you made a list of every single time you added time to a situation that didn't require it and then you stopped doing it! A lot of time would be freed up for you. A ton of time actually. So it isn't really that you never have enough time... Is it? No. It's that you gobble up all the available time you have with the fluff of "adding time" to various situations for no apparent reason. Stop doing it and buy yourself extra time to get more done. You will be amazed at how much you are actually capable of. Let your competition or other folks add time but don't join them in this idiotic activity.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Doubt

2011-03-06T19:31:00.001-08:00

The insidious infection in your business is doubt. Seek out anyone who may be infected with it to handle them immediately or get them out of your company to quarantine the area.

Yes, it's that serious. Anyone who may have any doubts about your future, the vision of the company and the certainty or belief in pulling it off is a liability. They will drag you down. Their doubts will infect your progress and your other people - count on it. Handle them or get rid of them. Your team must be composed of enthusiastic, focused, determined and confident people who relentlessly persist toward the goal with total belief that they will attain it. That is how you win.

If you have people on board that are doubtful - shoot them from cannons. Believe in your ability to attain your vision and get everyone to move toward that vision with total conviction and you will absolutely attain it.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Making Friends

2011-02-25T14:55:00.001-08:00

It's easy in busines and in sales to loose sight of what you are trying to do or the purpose behind everything, so here is a little reminder - it's about relationships. It's about people. It's about helping another person or company attain their goals which helps you attain yours as well. It's about the "why" of what you are doing. And it's about making friends.

Business shouldn't be a grind. It's not. It's about building relationships with others that result in more business. We tend to look at sales and taking on new clients as making new friends. It may sound hokey but the truth is, I only want to do business with people that I like and that I would like to deal with daily and in the future. My ideal scene would be to have on-going relationships with my clients so we could actually develop a working friendship. Our goal is to make friends with clients. That is the ideal setting for your business. That is how you build stability and ultimately gain the most pleasure out of what you do. Work becomes more of a game and time with clients becomes fun.

Start looking at your client base to decide who you feel you can develop better relationships with and how to make them more of a friend and also, who you may need to get rid of as a client perhaps because they don't align with your business. This one thing can results in a huge amount of growth for your company. To only do business with people or companies you feel you can create long term relationships with and ultiamtely make your friend. The foundation and strength of your company will grow from this alone. So go make some friends, not just clients.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

People

2011-02-15T19:37:00.001-08:00

People. The essence and core of your business is people. I wanted to make a comment on people as it relates to your company. People are the very core to everything you do as a company. They are what makes it all work. What makes it go. So much of your resources should be supporting your people. This could be training, help, bonuses, creating a nice environment etc. In other words, treat your people well. Take care of them. Help them grow. People are amazing. They are talented, smart and innovative. People are willing and ready to play the game of winning. Take care of them. Acknowledge them. Help and support them and most importantly, put them in the right place, challenge them and allow them to grow and flourish in your company. If you put them in an area, trust them to do the job. Don't do them the disservice of handling their problems for them. Let them solve them, their smarter than you think. I would encourage you to look at doing whatever is needed this week and from here on out to figure out how to help and service your people so they can flourish. Provide training, challenge, rewards etc. Figure out what they need and what you can do to help them perform better. People, if you let them, can do incredible things for you and your company. Trust them and push them to blossom to their full potential and you will see the amazing effects this will have on your company.
- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Dragging Decision is Bad Business

2011-02-10T12:17:00.001-08:00

Too frequently in business you hear people say "let me get back to you next week.." "Let's discuss this end of 3rd quarter..." Etc. This kind of procrastination related to making decisions is bad business. The decision or information at hand will not change in 2 months, next week or next year. Force yourself to look at the situation, evaluate the opportunities and make a decision right now.
Every delay you make, hurts your business. Your slowness or inability to make fast decisions is holding you back. Learn to discipline yourself to make fast decisions and commit to those decisions in order to speed up the flow of your company. Watch what happens when implemented. Swift decisions and swift actions will lead to growth and success. Let your competition mess around with delayed decision making processes but don't allow yourself to fall the effect of it. - Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Staying the Course

2011-02-05T14:33:00.001-08:00

Over the years in business, I have seen two distinct personality types as they relate to success. Those that stay the course and those that jump from place to place. Consistently I have seen the one's that stay the course in whatever path they have chosen outperform those that hop around.

Most people want success but few have the discipline and focus to attain it. You must decide first and foremost on what you are going to commit to. Then you need to do everything to learn it, do it, hustle and get better at it and most importantly, stay the course. The temptation to jump ship and do something else is a distraction. Stay the course. Focus on what you decided to do and do it well over time. This is the road to take if you want long term success.

Let's take a few examples:

- Steve Jobs started Apple in the 70's. He's been focused on computers and doing what he's doing his whole working life.

- Ralph Lauren has been interested in fashion and design since his teens, he has never deviated off of this path.

- Richard Branson started the Virgin brand of companies in his early 20's. Although he own's a large assortment of many different companies, if you ask him and study them, he will tell you that his businesses are all comprised of the same Virgin brand principals making the overall company a "Branded Venture Group" company.

These are just a few examples of high profile people you may have heard of but the reality is, I know a huge amount of successful people not quite as high profile but still extremely successful that have followed the same formula. They have focused on something they wanted to do, plastics, computers, sales, technology, hotels etc and they have stayed the course their entire working lives.

I haven't met too many people that jump around from one place to the next that are successful. In all honesty, I haven't even met one.

So the take away here is this:

1) Find something you want to do forever and decide to do it

2) Stay the course and persist in order to attain success in that field.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Find Inspiration

2011-02-01T21:14:00.001-08:00

Inspiration breeds action. Each day, use something that inspires you to act. Goals take action. If you want to get anywhere in life, you need to act. Inspiration helps action. It pushes you to do. To push through barriers and execute.
What inspires you? Find things that seem to inspire you and incorporate them into your day. It could be a video. A movie. A quote. A picture. An idea. Whatever, just discover it and then use it daily to inspire action. Success and goal attainment comes down to how bad you want something and then acting on you goals to execute tasks that will get you there. People have up days and down days but if you keep yourself inspired and focused, each day can be packed with acting and executing toward your goals. Find something that inspires you and use it daily.
- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

The buck stops with you

2011-01-27T13:13:00.001-08:00

In business as in life, the buck always stops with you. You are responsible for your outcomes. It's a hard fact to face for many. If you just looked at every situation in your life or business and operated on the basis that - it's your responsibility and you will be the master of your outcomes, it would be smooth sailing from there on out.
People fall on their face and deal with hardship or turmoil to the degree that they look for external causes. Looking to blame some outside influence is counter-productive. It's you. Always has been. Always will be. Your efforts, your actions and your decisions are the only thing you should be concerned with. Don't seek other reasons, they don't exist.
Take full responsibility. Full accountability for the outcome of your actions and know that the buck stops with you. Once you know this and operate with it, things get better. You can control the game. You can set your strategy plan and you can work causatively toward your goals. Knowing that it's you is empowering.
Decide to take full accountability and responsibility for all outcomes from here on out and don't look for anything to blame for less than desirable outcomes, ever. With that, you can truly take charge and control the game and your goals.
- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

If they were sold, it would be done

2011-01-26T19:03:00.001-08:00

Any salesperson has gotten caught up in the moment and excitement of a sale but it's not done, until it's done.
So many times salespeople trick themselves into saying and believing that the deal is done. "their sold" say's the confident salesperson. Are they? If they were sold, it would be done. Contract signed. Paperwork in the door and money in hand. That's sold. That's done.
If a prospect is completely and utterly sold on your offering, they'll close immediately. If they don't close (as in done done done) there is something lingering. Some thought. Some reservation or doubt in their mind still that must be handled to conclude the cycle. Believe me, if they have not signed, it's because they are not fully sold. Figure out what is stopping them from signing now, handle it, sell them all the way through and then close the deal.... today.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Long Sales Pitches

2011-01-26T15:58:00.001-08:00

Here's the deal. If it takes a long time to pitch... in the words of Ben Affleck's character in Good Will Hunting ... "Ya suspect"
Whether it's a long email or sales letter web page or video pitch, if it's too long, your leaving money on the table. In other words, your deletion rate or rejection rate is very high. Keep it short, punchy and sweet. Focus your message and don't waste people's time. Get to the point and focus on impact. You're absolutely kidding yourself if you think people will read an email that's a page in content.
If it's an email, keep it to a few lines with a link to where you want people to go or entice them to reach out to you for more info. If it's a video, keep it under 2 minutes. People will look at the time frame of the video and won't even watch it if it's over 3 minutes or 5 minutes but we have found that under 2 minutes is powerful.
People are busy. People naturally resist sales not to mention lengthy pitches that take up their precious time. Sales is a strategy sport. Be brief. Cut to the point and focus on your audience's needs or wants in a short punchy way and your response rate will go way up.
- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Be Honest With Yourself

2011-01-24T07:42:00.001-08:00

The value of honesty in business is clear but the value of honesty as it relates to you with yourself is critical. We've all done it. We've failed to be honest with ourselves about various situations in business which, un-addressed become thorns in our sides. The dishonesty with ourselves comes from our desire to believe things are better than they are or the person we know deep down who is not working out will somehow work out or it could be simply that we don't want to confront the reality of a specific situation. There are zillions of situations in business that come up and are ultimately awkward for you and others but the truth is the truth. You know it in your gut and not doing anything about it or trying to change it - well - won't change anything. Be honest with yourself. Address things candidly and look at the real situation and then make swift decisions based on your honest assessment. You'll find that most situations that come up in business become a lot simpler. Complex handling's are no longer complex.

Difficulties stem and fester from you not confronting and being honest about situations as they come up. They will quickly resolve and dissipate to the degree that you are honest with yourself and act on that honesty to address and remedy situations as they arise.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Isn't it a sport?

2011-01-21T08:42:00.001-08:00

We all agree that practice makes perfect. Training is directly related to winning and in sports, competence from training and practice makes all the difference in the world. So it would make sense to apply the same principals to business, wouldn't it? Business runs on all of the same principals as any sport or game. Rules, strategies, opponents, goals, scores etc. But how many take business as serious when it comes to training and practice? What are you currently doing to get better at what you do?

I heard that when Vijay Singh won the Masters he dedicated a ridiculous amount of time to practice every shot. It seems the same logic applies in business. To become the best at what you do, you need to study, train and practice. This could mean reading, taking courses, drilling, reviewing all current stats to understand the existing scene, going to events, seeing speakers etc. It could be anything. Everyone needs to spend time training, studying and practicing in order to get better at what they do. Without constant learning or practice to improve yourself, you get stale and rote. Take your business and profession seriously. Learn to improve. Study. Train and practice what you do by whatever means necessary. You'll never excel and improve on your year over year results without an effective training strategy. Don't allow yourself to get complacent. Business, like any sport, requires a huge focus on training and practice to stay sharp, improve results and ultimately win at whatever it is your doing.
- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Asking

2011-01-19T14:49:00.001-08:00

Since our agency is completely focused on business development, relationships and ultimately sales, we end up studying and discussing the topic frequently. This then brings up the topic of asking. It's importance in sales.

While you can do virtually everything exactly "right" in a sale's cycle, if you don't ask, you won't close. It's that simple. It even sounds ridiculously simple. It's one of those things that sounds like something that everyone should know, do and apply but most don't. I've had plenty of people attempt to sell me products or services and never ask me which results in me not buying. I'm sure you have as well.

Think it over. On your last sales cycle, did you clearly ask for the sale? If so, how many time's. If not, why? People seem to hesitate at asking. It seem's to be an awkward moment for all involved but if you practice it enough and do it enough, over time, it becomes second nature. Many sales cycles seem to go very well, the prospect is interested, you have a great discussion with them, they need or want what you are selling and the deal doesn't close. You follow up and still the deal doesn't close. Perhaps the follow up goes something like this, "Hi, did you get my proposal I sent over?... great.... well... I was just following up with you..... mmmm hmmm..... ok.... any questions?..... great.... ok I will follow up next week...." If you don't ask.... you won't close. It's that simple.

Ask as many times as it takes to close the deal. If you ask once and the answer is something like.."we still need to look at...." no problem. Don't take it personally, handle that point and then... yup... you guessed it.. ask again. Ask and ask and ask until it's done while handling the objections and concerns along the way. Don't back off. They have interest. They want to buy the product. In fact, it does your prospect a favor by asking and closing the deal. People are not very good at selling and closing themselves. A skilled salesperson that is an expert at selling, asking and closing business is actually a pleasure to deal with. It's the ones that drag their feet and are hesitant and can't control the cycle that cause the awkwardness associated with the sale.

Here is what I want you to do, try asking this week with any deal you are working on. Just ask them. Come right out and say, "Listen, I want you to get started on this strategy this week, let's start on this today" or something similar that straight out ask's them to close. Trust me, this will change your sales for the better for you and your prospects. They want to be asked, so ask them.

- Robert Cornish

CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Second Wind

2011-01-16T06:51:00.001-08:00

Everybody swings up and down in life. Some days your on top of your game and others... not so much. In business, as in any sport or activity, you need to really zero in on what gives you your second wind. In other words, what takes the time out of the equation for you to bounce back so you get your game face on and continue your forward momentum.

For me, it's reading and running. When my thoughts seem a little un-clear and I'm a little beat up by the week or various problems arise in the business that all seem to need "urgent" attention, I run or read. Reading gives me clarity. I read mostly business books but they help exercise my thoughts and allow me to have clear ideas re-circulate in my mind which almost always handle the exact issues I am faced with in my company. Running allows me to completely extrovert so my attention is outward rather than inward. Body's need exercise and pushing yourself to the limit physically will give you a feeling of calm and clarity. While running I typically have clear ideas come to me that handle and address various problems as well.

But you have to find what works for you. How can you get your second wind. For you, it might be shopping or a short out of town trip for a day or two. Whatever it may be, figure it out and do it every time you get the wind knocked out of you a little so you can get back on your game and on your mission to attain your goals.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

What you did yesterday.... Doesn't matter

2011-01-13T16:14:00.001-08:00

It's a tough fact to swallow for most but the truth is, what you did yesterday really doesn't matter in business. People sometimes have the tendency to try to justify today's lack of performance by using yesterday's actions or results. The reality is that businesses operate on the minute. Right now and in the future. What did you do today? What do you have lined up or planned for tomorrow?

My dad's business partner used to always say, "make a good deal today or execute a good idea today, don't wait for the perfect deal tomorrow because tomorrow never comes..." So the focus is on today. Don't use yesterday's success or results to get complacent today. Yesterday doesn't justify today's lack of performance. Judge yourself everyday. Push yourself to perform everyday. It's a daily discipline that will payoff big over time.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Knowledge and Management

2011-01-12T18:37:00.001-08:00

As the saying goes, "knowledge is power". By knowledge I mean knowing your business with measurements and numbers. Many businesses or business people simply come in to work each day and apply effort and "work hard" while making some gains some days and losing ground others but in the end, no real progress is made. Goal attainment and progressive forward motion is not about working hard and trying to do better than yesterday and really knuckling down. Its about knowing your business, knowing the actual numbers so you can correctly estimate and direct actions that will factually improve the numbers. For example, if you're a retail business you would need to figure out the hard numbers that relate to the following:

1. How many promo emails or letters or postcards do you need to send to make one person walk through your door

2. How many people need to walk through the door in order to make one sale

3. What is the average price of one sale

4. What is the average cost of one sale

You get the idea. The point is, there are numbers in any business that you as a manager or executive or owner must know. Once you know them, you can start making real progress. With the example above, if the retail owner knew the above numbers they could accurately estimate their promo, sales and costs and have accurate prediction based on executing their strategy based on the numbers that they knew.

It can be difficult to discover the fundamental numbers of a business but it's a crucial element to making forward progress and confidently growing the company. Without these numbers, your company will flounder with good days and bad days, ups and downs that never seem to end with no real accurate insight into what actually makes the company tick.

Every business has fundamental numbers that can be discovered and measured to create facts that can be managed in order to control outcomes and future growth. You have to "know" your company through numbers in order to gain traction. If you know that you have to have 10 sales discovery phone calls to make one sale and one sale is worth $10,000 and your first quarter goal is $200,000, then you "know" that you will need to have your sales team setup 200 sales discovery appointments in the first quarter. If you knew that it took 100 emails to setup one discovery sales call, you then would know that you will need to send 20,000 emails to make that happen. It starts to give you an idea of the actual effort needed to move the company forward to grow.

Not knowing this stuff means no control over the future of the company and results in missed targets or goals. Why bother having any planning meetings for the new year or the quarter if you don't have these numbers pegged. I read a great quote one time that stated, "the best way to predict the future is to create it..." - you can create your future for your company by knowing the vital numbers cold, from there you can accurately predict, manage and control your outcome.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

True and Accurate Management

2011-01-10T13:45:00.001-08:00

If I was forced to guess at one of the biggest downfalls of any management team or executive, I would have to say it would relate to mis-estimating numbers or actually making decision and executing actions off inaccurate information. Entrepreneurs, owners and most executives tend to be optimistic, as they should be about future growth and goals. In many ways, you really have to be in order to be in management. There's nothing wrong with shooting for the moon but when it comes to information related to management decisions and actions, your data or information needs to be as accurate and precise and real as possible.

It's vital to ensure that your team is getting you the most relevant and accurate information available. Why? Because you need to know exactly where you stand in order to make good judgement calls and set targets that will forward your goals. I would be willing to bet that this happens many times in most companies where they are presented with slightly fluffed numbers that are a little optimistic. People want the numbers in the company to be good and they want to look good which causes people to sometimes fluff the numbers and make them look a little better than they actually are. People don't like to confront what may be worse numbers than they are actually representing and so they present numbers or information that is slightly off (usually on the high side). This then deceives management and causes inaccurate orders and estimations.

Then, of course, management sets targets and goals as well as orders based on the slightly padded numbers thinking they are accurate and the company somehow "misses" the numbers. Now, this isn't always due to bad information, it can also be lack of push through or execution but I would be willing to bet that a huge percent of it has to do with the management team working with bad information.

In order to succeed as an executive or management team, you have be honest with yourself and ask that your team and junior people are honest with you as well in order to make sure that "feel good" numbers or information is not to be used as the vital information to manage, set goals and targets or execute off of. Save the overly positive numbers and information for the PR division. You must insist that the numbers you are fed are as real and accurate as possible so you have the exact data you need to make intelligent decisions and actually grow the company based on your goals, targets and orders being set by those numbers. It doesn't help anyone by having fluffed numbers or information and the "feel good" aspect of it is short-lived compared with the after effect of being disappointed by being off target. So be ruthless about accurate data and information, be honest with yourself and have your team be honest with you when it comes to data or information that will be used to set targets, goals and orders so you can accurately attain your goals and everyone can take a win when you do.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Why We Hate Butterflies

2011-01-04T18:42:00.001-08:00

Sounds like a funny title but the truth is, butterflies are a serious problem in the business world. Chasing them that is. In today's busy and sometimes chaotic world it's easy to get distracted and end up dreaming or chasing butterflies rather than staying the course and focusing on your goals, mission and the immediate tasks at hand. My advice, learn to hate butterflies as well.

Focus on who you are, what you do, what the goal is and your next most immediate step toward it. Get focused in every aspect of your company from knowing what target audience or vertical market you want to go after, exactly what you sell and what your value proposition is making sure that you aren't trying to be all things to all people, getting your people focused on their mission and tasks to attain your focused goal and only promoting and selling to your focused market etc.

There are zillions of things that can take you off course. Distractions. Butterflies. Get rid of them and learn to simplify your company to get focused and then get tunnel vision about that focus to work toward goal attainment. It may sound more "fun" or sexy to chase the constant new adventure or idea but it's wasted time and effort. They prevent you from true victory and goal attainment.

Take a look at any super successful company or person and you will see a very clear trend of doing the same thing with consistent improvement over a period of time that has now put them in a position that most envy. They were disciplined and stayed focused on their mission and goal.

Stop bouncing around and chasing possible ideas, the constant new trend or latest fad and get focused on what you do or love and then work like mad on simplifying and making every facet of your company focused on the one goal and mission. There are countless examples that prove this to be the most workable method to success and conversely probably countless examples that show that butterflies are a parasite to your future.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Look

2010-12-25T05:31:00.001-08:00

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

2010-12-14T10:07:00.001-08:00

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

Chief Executive Officer

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Focus

2010-12-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group

Salespeople are Worthless Without a Sales Pipeline

2010-12-06T18:40:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-28T17:12:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-26T13:49:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-24T07:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-22T10:23:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-11-20T17:24:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-13T17:01:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-02T19:03:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

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

Our Elevator Pitch To You

2010-10-22T16:40:00.001-07:00

Richter10.2 media group cost per reach

View more presentations from Robert Cornish.

Aim Small - Miss Small

2010-10-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-10-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-01T17:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-12T18:23:00.001-07:00

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.