Here’s what Paula and Joe have to say about the recent Genius Network Mastermind meeting:

Other BIG business minds networking at the event:

If you are looking for an environment of big minds with bigger futures sharing their elegant ideas with one another for the betterment of their companies and communities, then see if this is the right fit for you: www.GeniusNetworkMastermind.com

Hi All, it’s been an amazing week.  The Piranha Team and I spent 3 days in some killer discussions with our top 100 group, Platinum Plus.

We covered the latest internet strategies and the greatest insights on building success in this (or any) economy.  Some of the topics we went very deep with were How To Get Results with Twitter and other Social Networking Capabilities, The Crucial Key Points in Advertising, Copywriting, Real Value Creation and Problem Solving for Clients, Powerful Presentation Skills, and so much more.

We also shared one of the greatest tools for entrepreneurs in existence for helping determine “What’s Important.”  (More about that in a future post – stay plugged in to what we’re sharing here because this is an exercise that will help you determine what it is that’s really important to your prospects and Clients and help you explain to them how it is that what you do actually provides that benefit or solves that particular problem that’s important to them.)

Here are a few of Piranha’s top 100 companies working through this exercise:

Here are just a few of the elegant ideas that came out of the discussions in our meetings:

“Advertise a guarantee not just because it’s effective. Do it because it’s the RIGHT THING to do.”

“Your best unpaid sales force is your existing clients.  Your best sales copy won’t be written by you. It’ll be written by your customers in the form of testimonials.”

“If you ever want to find out what matters to people (or their pain points), you simply have to ask them.”

“What happens with a lot of marketing is that it’s like food that’s left in the fridge that gets hidden behind the milk. Forgotten and rotten.”

“If you don’t take time for the set-up, you’ll never have the conditions for the result.”

“If you’re equipped to be a Capability Gatherer, you can always be at the top of your game.”

And, something my good friend Kathy Kolbe once said to me: “The time to quit working is when working is no longer working.”

We wrote that insight and a couple of my favorite Dan Sullivan quotes on the flip chart:

“Getting results doesn’t take much time at all.  It’s not getting results that takes up all the time.”

The Definition of Selling:
“Get people intellectually engaged in a future result that is good for them.  Get them to emotionally engage and commit to take action to achieve that result.”

“The skills that got you out of Egypt aren’t the same skills that will get you to the promised land” was another excellent Dan Sullivan quote that was discussed in the meeting.

This is me, and two of my good friends who stopped by to share and participate, Dan Hollings (100% responsible for the internet marketing success behind the DVD the Secret who’ll be presenting EASY, free and cutting-edge online marketing how to at my 2009 Rich Cleaner Conference) and Craig Forte (one of the nation’s prominent marketing and business-building experts to the real estate industry and expert in relationship marketing vs. transactional marketing).

Craig shared his definition of marketing with us:

“Marketing is elements of salesmanship and persuasion multiplied on a larger scale.”

In the meeting, when our discussions focused on copywriting one of our Members remembered this video I did with Paris Lampropoulos where we shared some really valuable copywriting information…

I figured I’d re-post this so it didn’t get “left in the fridge behind the milk.”

Thanks to my team, our incredible speakers… Ken Glickman, Patti Mara, Dan Hollings, Craig Forte… and to all our awesome Members for making this Platinum Plus meeting so valuable.

I’ll leave you with one of the simplest take-aways:

“What people really want is more WOOHOO! and less AARRGGH!”

Best,
JOE

FOLLOW JOE

FOLLOW LISA

You never know what’s going to come at you in your day. For example, you could be taking a friend to the airport, letting them get out of your car, and have a Lexus whip around and take out your passenger door (and almost your passenger too) – like this:

My poor car… beat up by a really crummy driver speeding in a loading zone.

But, thank God, my friend was not hit.

And, interestingly enough, a business opportunity came from what would have normally been a slow, irritating, claims process.

My car (not drivable because she took my door from being partially opened to pushing it beyond it’s opening radius) was towed to a repair facility near my home, and I had to rent another car two weeks of repair time. The collision center had Enterprise come pick me up.

I travel a lot. I’ve rented cars from many companies, but never Enterprise. And I have to say, it was one of the best customer service experiences I’ve had in ages. Picked me up from the facility, great staff, a great deal of follow-up to make sure all was okay with the car they gave me – and when there was a problem with my rental (strange noise), an immediate upgrade was given at no additional expense.

In a difficult situation, they made a difference.

In fact, it was such a positive experience for me that it led me to ask to speak to a regional manager to set up a corporate account for Piranha, and make them a Preferred Partner for Piranha where we create a partnership agreement that gets our Piranha Members negotiated rates on any rental needs they have.

The lesson here isn’t simply that I had a car accident… but what was able to be created out of an event I had no control over.

Someone else’s mistake, became my opportunity – because I CREATED it.

And if Enterprise in Tempe had given me a horrible customer experience, I would have simply complained rather than created. (Dan Sullivan talks about how in trying times people have two coping mechanisms, they can either create or they can complain… so this was a perfect example of this truth in action.)

The other lesson is that you NEVER know what opportunity you can create by delivering a great customer service experience.

If they would have seen me as just some woman with a beat up car, and a rental at a low insurance negotiated day rate, this could have been much different.

But, because they treated me as their best client of the day (as they seemed to with every client), this simple single “transaction” has the possibility of becoming a large source of on-going revenue for them.

All of us, in every business, have this opportunity to create “gold” in our business day. By treating every opportunity to connect with a client as valuable, you literally can uncover possibilities you didn’t even know existed.

Keep it ELF!
- Lisa Wagner