Category: Blog

How clear customer focus can prevent a crash landing

Valcort 35 Keys to Business Growth: #15  Have a clear, customer-focused approach to your business that drives important business decisions. “Six Alpha Romeo, clear to land.” An F-16 fighter pilot recently told me that they are routinely trained and warned to keep their head up and eyes outside the cockpit.  Without...

Value Matters. Measure It.

Valcort 35 Keys to Business Growth: #14. Consistently measure all marketing and sales activities and your progress toward achieving your vision, and communicate the results with the company regularly. How would you define personal success? What will make your life a success? These are great questions to ask yourself. Perhaps it’s...

The 10 Best Super Bowl Ads of All Time

Watching what most analysts saw as a relatively weak field of  Super Bowl ads in 2015 left us yearning for a look at the great ads from years past. What have been the best Super Bowl ads of all time? You’d get a lot of different opinions on that question. But...

Questions you should ask about your marketing efforts

Instead of making decisions based on feelings or shooting in the dark, marketers need to use metrics and data. Data provides information you need to make adjustments in your marketing program, and can demonstrate to the organization the value of your efforts and specific campaigns. As you develop measurement tools,...

Are you trending? How to improve social media effectiveness

Social media is exploding as a way to build a community of followers and share your message with them in an efficient and cost-effective manner. How do you evaluate which social media platforms are working for you? How do you prioritize your time? It’s a big topic, but here are...

Building trust-oriented business relationships at every point of contact

Valcort 35 Keys to Business Growth.  #13 - Identify every point of contact with your customers.  Assure that every employee that has personal contact with a customer or can influence a customer relationship is trained and equipped to engage them in a trust-oriented relationship with your company. Frequently I drive...

Top 25 Nonprofit Management Tools and This Weeks Other Leading NPO Stories

Leaders  Weigh in on 25 Nonprofit Management Tools For nonprofit organizations to realize their potential for social impact, they need more than a good program and ambitious leaders to expand it. They need good managers who adopt approaches that make the most of opportunities, anticipate threats, develop talent, and produce...

Changing how America shops, and the week’s other top business stories

1. The man who changed how America shops – Chief Executive To successfully market when forces conspire to make everything a commodity, amplify the emotional content. 2. Ensuring that business transformation does not fail -- Forbes Just because everyone agrees business transformation is important doesn’t mean everyone knows how to do it....

Executing mind-shaping media campaigns

Last winter was pretty rough in many areas of the country, including here in the upper Midwest. So when this winter started early and came on with a vengeance in recent weeks, memories of last year’s record breaking snowfall had me thinking about the wisdom of a snow blower. That was no...

Get a cue! Connecting your brand to everyday life

One way that your advertising can influence what people think about and notice is through ‘cueing’ –linking your brand to words or expressions that come up naturally in everyday conversation. Repeated often in your advertising and other communication, they become cues that help increase the power of your brand. You...