John Boudreau's Blog

I’m sure you’ve seen the commercials for 5 Hour Energy. It’s a concoction of "who know’s what" that is supposed to give you the energy you need to function for 5 hours.

This reminds me of the concept of “time tellers” vs. “clock builders”. I’ve taken these terms from Jim Collin’s book, “Built to Last”.

If you’re the type of leader that is not engaged in the daily details of your business, but constantly live at the 50K foot level trying to pump up your staff, you’re a “time teller”. You’re a “five hour energy drink”. He're the problem, people can’t live on five hour energy drinks. They need to see the connection between the vision you’re casting and boots on the ground implementation.

Collins contrasts of the “time teller” and “clock builder” leader reveals that what is needed for true long term growth.

I say all this to remind you that running a business is hard work (I’m sure you know this). It takes focus and diving into the dirty details. It’s not fun all the time and can be challenging. It takes discipline of time and focus.

If you’re frustrated that your staff is not implementing your vision, ask the following questions:

(1)   Are you a 5 hour energy drink or a satisfying balanced diet?

(2)   Do you connect the dots of your vision with the details of implementation?

(3)   How much time do you spend with your key staff helping them grow and improve?

(4)   Are you concerned with building a long term business (clock builder) or just swooping in from time to time (time teller) and slapping backs?

It been a little while since my last post, but I’m back. I’m continuing to read Verne Harnish’s book, Mastering the Rockefeller habits. Check out my post on the Astonish Results blog for some more insights from his book.

One quote from his book really struck me. It focused on the concept of making sure you have the right people on your team. Sports teams know how important this is. They have a whole staff dedicated to recruiting the RIGHT team members. Once on the team, the coaching staff ruthlessly MEASURES each team member. If the player doesn't produce or measure up they’re gone.

Here’s the quote from Harnish’s book, “The first question you must ask is, “Do I have the Right People?” And a quick way to discern the answer is to ask yourself if you would enthusiastically rehire each person on your team if given the opportunity”

Wow. That is powerful. Sports teams are wired to think this way because there is always a NEW season. A time to re-tool and re-build, but if you want to be the best, you must think this way too.

If you’re looking to find out what typical open rates are for various B-C or B-B email marketing, you should pick up the 2009 Email Marketing benchmark guide. It’s full of interesting information regarding email marketing trends. Since Astonish Results does a fair amount of B-C email marketing in the insurance vertical, it’s a great resource to see how well we’re doing. In many cases we’re above the averages.

That brings me to my next point. Not ALL email messages are created equal. There’s a great rule you can apply to email marketing (and all marketing for that matter) called the 40/40/20 rule. The rule states that the bulk of response opportunity in any marketing campaign comes from:

(a)    The List (40%)

(b)   The Offer (40%)

(c)    The Creative (20%)

That means if you get a and b right, you’re going to have a successful email marketing campaign. Where people go wrong is by blasting out email (the offer) to people (the list) that really have no interest in their product or services. These campaigns typically have a low open rate (< 1%) and even lower click through rate.

You’re much better off focusing on building a targeted email list. The more targeted you can be (i.e. the more you know your audience) the better you’ll be as hitting your target audiences’ hot button points.

Check out this great blog post and video from www.seomoz.com on link building. This confirms what I’ve always know; there is NO EASY way to build search rank. It takes time and focus. Link building is especially difficult and must be done carefully. You should focus on your business partners as those who should link to you. Just give them a reason WHY.

I also ran across this great interview with Matt Cutts who heads up the Webspam initiative at Google. Seems like something you’d want to pay attention to in regards to link building. Check out the interview here http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-061608.shtml.

A Google Alert is a great service Google provides which can keep you informed about any topic you choose. I have my name and “Astonish Results” as keywords. Any time these keywords exist on a website, in the news or in a blog, Google sends me an “alert” in the form of an email.

To get started go to http://www.google.com/alerts and enter your search term (keyword) and your email. Google will begin delivering these alerts the next day.

This a great tool for SEO to see if your site is getting indexed for certain keyword terms or for reputation management (see what others are saying about you).