Winning with Customers has a simple and powerful premise: if you can make your customers more money than your competition can, you will win.  When I first got a review copy of this book in the mail, I have to admit, I was a bit daunted. It was thick, thick, thick. But then I dug in and couldn’t put the book down. D. Keith Pigues (recently named one of B2B’s most influential marketers) and Jerry Alderman have laid down the gauntlet for anybody in a selling and marketing to other businesses.  Here are the top 3 things that social media can learn from “Winning With Customers”.

It’s the ROI, Stupid!

Yes, with a tip of the hat to James Carville and his famous “It’s the economy, stupid” quote, I’m going there. As we continue to make our way out of the recession, increasing amounts of business owners and marketing professionals are starting to take social media as a serious channel to grow their business. At the same time, these people are starting to ask the tough questions like “how much money is this going to make me?” To which some very intelligent and well-intentioned people continue to reply: “it’s not about the ROI, it’s about engagement and transparency and…” The problem with this rationale is that it stops working the moment somebody can show your customer a financial model that will deliver value directly to their bottom line. Who do you think gets the gig – the guy who talks about engagement alone, or the guy who talks about engagement and ROI?

Lesson #1 for social media: In a B2B environment, talking in dollars and cents is much better than talking about engagement and transparency.

Yes, joining “the conversation” matters, but…

Yes, there’s plenty of great reasons the you should “join the conversation”. But what kind of conversations are you having? Here’s the great news – you don’t even have to walk in the door with proof that social media will grow their business – you just have to be willing to have the conversation. You should be having this conversation with all existing and prospective customers. Here are the 4 steps the authors suggest you take:

1. Ask the question: how do you believe we add value to your bottom line, and how much? If this is a prospective customer, ask them to explain the current channels they are using to make money.
2. Listen. Your job is to listen to what the customer has to say, and probe as much as possible.  And for god sakes, no selling.
3. No solving. If it’s a current customer, you might hear things like “you haven’t added anything directly to our bottom line”.  That’s ok, and don’t try an solve the issue on the spot. Your one and only job in that interview is to uncover those opportunities, not to solve them. There’s plenty of time to be Superman later on.
4. No justifying. You also don’t need to justify your past actions, or the fact that you haven’t measured the ROI of those actions. In fact, doing so will probably act to undermine the entire meeting, as they’ll understand pretty quickly that you aren’t there to get clarity on how you can help your business, but to cover your own ass. Don’t do that.

Remember, powerful part about this whole process is the conversation itself.  When you leave the customer and head back to the office, I guarantee you that you’ll be viewed in a different and better light than when you walked in.

Lesson #2 for social media: The first step to delivering value to your customer’s bottom line is to open up that conversation in a direct and honest way.

Always Come Back With a Plan

As powerful as that conversation is, it’s not worth much unless you deliver the goods. You now know where you stand, and what improvements you need to make in order to have an impact on your customer’s bottom line. This is the simplest and hardest step, because now you have to come up with a plan that delivers on those results. There’s no magic here, other than you need to have the “test and learn” approach of a direct marketer. Remember, you’ll be returning to your customer with a plan that shows how you’ll impact their bottom line over time, not through a one-time event. When you go back to see your customer, make sure you address these items:

1. What your customer said in the interview. Acknowledging that you heard what they said is critical in order to build trust through this process.
2. What you will do.  Tell your customer what you’ve decided to do about that feedback, and what impact you believe it will have on their bottom-line.  Eventually you’ll be able to lose the “believe” part and replace it with “know”.
3. What you won’t do.  It’s almost a certainty that your customer is going to have lots of ideas on how you can fix the problem.  If you don’t intend on implementing some (or all) of them, let them know and give them a reason why.

Lesson #3 for social media: Engagement is great, but follow up and execution is better.

What do you think? Will you have this conversation with your customers?  Why or why not?

Do you want more?  You can buy the book here, get the workbook full video summary of the book here, and subscribe to our Social Media Action Report here.

What if you could go to work every single day and work on something that lit a fire in your heart? What if everybody had the same passion and drive that you had? What if YOU could make the different between a workplace where everybody was out for themselves to a workplace where a true team environment flourished? What if, rather than platitudes and nice words, you were given a roadmap to make this happen?  The biggest payoff in this book is how to go from a Stage 3 Tribe (getting results but acts like a collection of individuals) to a Stage 4 Tribe (a group united by a purpose and shared values).

Here’s my challenge to you: don’t wait. Starting today, make a commitment to be the person that starts the transformation. Here’s what you can do next to make it happen:

1. Watch the video summary preview above.

2. Take on one of the 3 challenges below right now. Leave a comment and us know what you are doing, and when you’ll do it by. There are studies that prove that if you decide what to do, determine when and where you’ll do it, and let somebody else know that you’ll do it, you are 95% more likely to get it done.

3. Tell at least one other person what you are intending to take on this week.

If there’s anything I can do to help you put your actions into motion, send and email to steve (at) polarunlimited (dot) com.  I’d love to hear from you.

Challenge #1: Build a “triadic relationship”

One of the things that separates a Stage 4 tribe from a Stage 3 tribe is the building of what the authors call “triadic relationships”, which essentially means that the relationship is built between 3 people.  If you’ve ever been to a networking party, you’ll probably remember seeing the “networking jerk” who walks around finding as many people to tell his story to as possible.  That’s a person interested in building a two-person relationship.  However, you might have also seen somebody who was just as busy “working the room”, but always had two other people around them (if you didn’t see this, look closer next time).  These people are essentially great at bringing people together around shared values and interests.  Note: this is different than just doing an “introduction” over email – the powerful part is that you are there participating in the conversation.

Action: find two people who you know have shared values and interests, and set a date for the three of you to get together.

Challenge #2: Assign a challenge that can’t be done by one person alone.

Another thing that separates Stage 4 Tribe from a Stage 3 Tribe is that people in Stage 4 tribes work to get things done with other people.  Most people in Stage 3 tribes are working at a fairly high level, but they are working at individuals.  One way you can start to make the move into Stage 4 Tribe is to get people working together.  This will force them to start building those triadic relationships we just talked about (you, the person you assign the task to, and the person he/she recruits to help).  What you’ll see is a completely different level of results and collaboration.

Action: find one person who is ready for a larger challenge and give them an assignment they can’t possibly finish on their own.

Challenge #3: Explore your “noble cause”.

Tribes that have shared values and a common purpose perform better than those that don’t – period.  There are many ways you can start exploring your nobel cause, but here’s one way that will get the wheels turning right away.  If you ask yourself and your team the following 4 questions below, you’ll get a great assessment of your current situation and what your team’s (or your own) aspirations are for the future.  Within that will be some great hints around what your nobel cause could be.

1.  What’s working well?

2.  What’s not working?

3.  What else can we do to make the things that aren’t working, work?

4.  Is there anything else?

PS: Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter and learn what works and doesn’t work with these principles from our community of thousands across the globe.

Yes, it’s an odd analogy…but bear with me here. I believe that (unless you were a grade school dropout) you already know all you need to know to be successful with social media. Why’s that? In a nutshell: times may have changed but people fundamentally haven’t. The structures and interactions of a grade school recess are astonishingly similar to those of most social media communities.

The same people that show up in your Twitter stream and your Facebook feed are the very same characters you caught eating glue in kindergarten. Here are only 3 of the ways I believe that social media is like recess:

#1: The big group is made up of lots of small groups.

There is no single Twitter community: it’s a collection of tens of thousands of small networks of ‘followers’ that share some commonality. There is no single Facebook or LinkedIn community: just thousands of networks of friends and affinities hubbed around an individual. These networks (or circles of friends standing around on asphalt) are made and stay together by shared interests, where each member of the group has actively made a decision to participate. And this is the interesting part:.you can’t join a group by just standing on the sidelines. You have to get in the game.

Lesson: Find your place in a smaller group. Some people play football, some play with dolls. Recess is too short for both.

#2: Every group’s got a leader.

Every teacher knows how to quickly identity the ‘troublemaker’ in every group. At recess, these troublemakers usually decided what sport they would play or who the topic of the latest gossip would be. When they grow up, these kids will be re-branded “passionate” and “motivated”, but until then, they’ll be visiting the principal’s office frequently. Similarly, most successful social media operations reflect the personality and interests of one individual: Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Leo LaPorte, Mike Arrington, Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, etc. These e-celebs have fostered their networks (and generated gigabytes of monthly traffic) by identifying and holding true to the field in which they love. They also share one other trait: they aren’t afraid to stir the pot every once in a while.

Lesson: If you want to take a leadership position in that smaller group, you need to be willing to stir the pot every once in while, even if it lands you in the principal’s office.

#3: Your actions have consequences.

Whether it’s on the playground or on Twitter, everyone loves to watch a good meltdown, right? There’s a not-so-secret thrill in seeing other people publicly self-destruct. (Evidence here). The difference is that online, those meltdowns stay in the public domain forever. Your friends might have forgotten that time you cried when your 6th grade girlfriend dumped you for the older, more sophisticated 7th grader, but the Internet never forgets. Worth remembering the next time you want to fire off a zinger reply to some snotty comment troll.

Lesson: What happens at recess, does not stay at recess. Remember that.

My point? You’ve seen this all before: on the playground, in your home and at the office. Success in those arenas, as well as social media, comes down to how well you relate to people. You’d be much better off reading Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (written in 1937) than any of the “Secrets of Social Media Success” crap.

Man, I loved recess.

Question for you: what other analogies seem relevant to social media or digital marketing?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – comment below!

NOTE: I originally posted this on Beth Harte’s blog.  She’s got a great mind and a lot to offer you, so you should go subscribe to her blog.

To Change the Culture, Change the Performance.

There are a lot of business books out there today that will tell you that in order to change your performance, you need to change your culture. Randy Pennington – the author of Results Rule – tells us that we’ve got that ass-backwards. What we REALLY need to do, he says, is to change the performance in order to change the culture. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m exposed to an idea that challenges what I believe to be true, I get excited. This is one of those times. Although you’ll have heard most of these principles before (candour, being the best, accountability), what you probably haven’t heard before is HOW to make those principles come to life. For instance, in order to create a culture where candour is the norm, you need to have a group of people that feel comfortable around each other. That’s not advice you are going to get at an MBA program, but could quite possibly be the difference between success and failure to you. If that sounds intriguing, watch the preview summary, and then join me below as we put these principles into action.

What I learned from Seth Godin

I once had a conversation with Seth Godin where I asked him my “million dollar question”: why does the world need your book? His answer was brilliant. He said: “the world doesn’t need more books, the world needs more conversations”. And while I agree with him wholeheartedly, I’ve come to believe that we need even more than that – the world needs more action. So yes, let’s read some books together. Let’s have conversations about these books. But most importantly, let’s put those ideas into action. Together, let’s take one action this week that will move us one step closer to realizing our dreams and to do the things we know we are capable of. These books and principles, if nothing else, will be the kick in the ass we need to get it done. If you’ll join me, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Let me know what your goals and dreams are, and which action you’ll take with me to make them a reality.

Action for Monday – tell yourself the truth and value candor – your success depends on it.

Truth and candor is hard. If you are anything like me, you’ll be able to say how important this is to your business and relationships, but when it comes time to actually open your mouth and have the truth come out, nothing happens. I’ve found that the closer I am with somebody, the easier it is to be open and honest with them. Which leads me to the conclusion that if you want the truth to be spoken at your workplace, get to know them first. When I first read “First, Break All The Rules” by Marcus Buckingham, there was a finding that I thought was a bunch of crap, and it said that one of the determinants of a successful workplace is if people said they had a best friend at work. (Here’s the full 12 questions from an article in Fast Company if you are interested). Now that finding makes complete sense to me. If you are friends with a person, you are more likely to have a frank and honest discussion with them, which over time eventually leads to more teamwork and performance. Awesome.

Action Challenge #1: Find one person at work this week who you aren’t great friends with (yet). Ask them to go grab a coffee and get to know them a bit better.

Action for Tuesday – pursue the best over the easiest.

Pursuing the best over the easiest is, well, very easy to say. Tough to do. Everybody from Jim Collins to Jack Welch have been yelling this one from the rooftops for years now. Intuitively I’ve always “got” this. I’ve spent many an hour thinking about what our company’s “hedgehog concept” is. However, for the longest time, I would only think about how that related to the products and/or services we would be providing. What I forgot to think about was how our company could be the best in the marketplace. There’s an enormous difference between having the best product in the world and being the best company. What Randy opened my eyes to (thank you Randy!) was that there’s an entire list of things that you need to be brave enough to commit to being the best in. There’s resource allocation, operational goal setting, information systems, support processes, and the list goes on and on.

Action Challenge #2: Pick a part of your organization (or life) aside from your product/service and make the commitment this week to pursue the best in it. Take one action this week to set the wheels in motion.

Action for Wednesday – leverage the power of partnership.

This one is by far my favourite from the book, because it highlights the true power of creating relationships. According to numerous studies, roughly 70% of the people who do business with you AND 75% of the people who work for you are looking for new partners. In other words, for 3 out of every 4 people you come into contact with, you aren’t doing a good enough job of building a partnership. Here’s the solution that Randy give us:

1. Make the conscious decision to see more in others than they see in themselves.

2. Communicate that to them.

3. Nurture it until it becomes a self-sustaining reality.

For me, this is a revelation. I’ve heard the principle before, but for some reason this time it really hit home. I can see so many places in my life where I’m not doing this. I also know that when somebody sees something in me that’s bigger than I see for myself, it stays with me forever and that I’ll move heaven and earth to stay connected with those people. This is a principle that I can see being applicable in every area of my life, and I hope you see that for yourself as well. If you take this action challenge on, I’d really love to hear from you.

Action Challenge #3: Find one person this week and find some potential in them that they don’t see for themselves. Let them know how incredible you think they are.

Action for Thursday – make the main thing the main thing.

Once again, here’s a principle that you’ve probably heard of before. In fact, there’s an entire book on this principle by Stephen Covey called First Things First. But in this case, Randy gets down into the details and asks us to start keeping score. According to Randy, we should be keeping score of whatever we think is important to our business. Putting rigour and metrics around what’s important to us is the only way we’ll keep focussed on getting the results we want to get. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but I usually only like looking at the score when the game is going well. If the score is 10-0 for the other team, or I’m behind on my quota, all of a sudden there’s a whole raft of things that I’d rather pay attention to. The insight for me in this is that we need to make it compelling to look at the score at ANY time. So, the discussions around the scoreboard you’ll create need to be empowering, and action oriented. Are you behind? Ok. Now what are you going to do about it? What’s the next step? These are not hypothetical questions, by the way

Action Challenge #4: Create one new measurement around something that’s critical to your success, but that you aren’t measuring today.

Action for Friday – learn, grow and improve every day.

Just by the fact that you are reading this right now means you’ve probably already got this one covered. So here’s a little bit of motivation to keep you moving in the right direction. Jay Leno, even though his latest antics haven’t really endeared many people to him, is the hardest working man in show business. For years, even though he had the top-rated late night show on television and made about 150 personal appearances every year, he would practice new material at the Hermosa Beach Comedy and Magic Club. Here’s what he had to say:

“This sounds silly, but my attitude is, sooner or later, the other guy is going to have to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, get laid, or take a vacation, and that’s when I catch him”.

Action Challenge #5: sometime this week, when you’d otherwise be doing something like watching TV or reading a trashy magazine, steal two of those minutes and take an action to move one of your goals forward.

Have an amazing week, and please let me know how your week goes in the comments below.

For a limited time, we are offering a free trial of Read It For Me Pro where you’ll get the entire video summary of “Power Friending” along with many other best sellers. Do you want to see what a full summary looks like? We’ve got the full summary of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It”, Steve Zaffron’s “The 3 Laws of Leadership” and Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” waiting for you along with your free trial offer.

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Watch the Do More Great Work Summary Preview

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you were inspired 100% of the time? What it would be like if you didn’t do any “bad” work? How great you would feel if your work was a reflection of your best self? What if you could have that for you and your entire team?

Those are some of the questions that “Do More Great Work” by Michael Bungay Stanier answers. In the summary this week you’ll find an inspiring set of exercises to get you on your way from doing mostly bad and great work to focussing on your truly great work.

For a limited time, we are offering a free trial of Read It For Me Pro where you’ll get the entire video summary of “Power Friending” along with many other best sellers. Do you want to see what a full summary looks like? We’ve got the full summary of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It”, Steve Zaffron’s “The 3 Laws of Leadership” and Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” waiting for you along with your free trial offer.

Yes! Take me to the free summaries and trial offer!

Watch the Switch Summary Preview

Do you want to understand how to make change happen? Whether it’s big change like turning around an entire organization, ever small change like getting to the gym more than once a month, you’ll learn that change of all shapes and sizes is possible. Here’s what you’ll learn from Chip and Dan Heath in this Switch Summary:

- how do direct the “Rider”: the logical and analytical part of yourself;
- how to motivate the “Elephant”: the emotional part of yourself; and
- how to direct the path towards change with both the Elephant and Rider working in unison.

Question of the week (answer to win a copy of the book)

What’s the biggest change you’ve ever undertaken? How did you do it?

For a limited time, we are offering a free trial of Read It For Me Pro where you’ll get the entire video summary of the “Power Friending” along with many other best sellers. Do you want to see what a full summary looks like? We’ve got the full summary of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It”, Steve Zaffron’s “The 3 Laws of Leadership” and Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” waiting for you along with your free trial offer.

Yes! Take me to the free summaries and trial offer!

Do you want to get started with social media and don’t know where to start? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Not only will you learn WHY you should be using social media, you’ll learn HOW. Here’s what you’ll learn from Amber MacArthur in this Power Friending Summary:

- develop real relationships with your customers
- find the networks where your customers are interacting
- make time in your already busy schedule for social media
- navigate each of the largest social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

and perhaps most importantly,

- how to do all of this on a shoestring budget.

Question of the week (answer to win a copy of the book)

How are YOU using social media to grow your business?

For a limited time, we are offering a free trial of Read It For Me Pro where you’ll get the entire video summary of the “Design of Happiness” along with many other best sellers. Do you want to see what a full summary looks like? We’ve got the full summary of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It”, Steve Zaffron’s “The 3 Laws of Leadership” and Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” waiting for you along with your free trial offer.

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Watch the summary

Watch this video to see how you can use the 7 triggers of Fascination to make your message spread.

How Fascinating Are You?

This is one of the great questions that you’ll be forced to answer if you connect with the ideas in the book. Here are two great ways that will help you do that:

1. Take the F-Score Test on Sally’s website.

2. Buy Fascinate at Amazon.

For a limited time, we are offering a free trial of Read It For Me Pro where you’ll get the entire video summary of the “Design of Happiness” along with many other best sellers. Do you want to see what a full summary looks like? We’ve got the full summary of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It”, Steve Zaffron’s “The 3 Laws of Leadership” and Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” waiting for you along with your free trial offer.

Yes! Take me to the free summaries and trial offer!

Watch the summary

Watch this video to see how Tony Hseih and his gang took Zappos all the way from $0 to $1 billion in revenues in less than 10 years.

Where can you get more information on the book?

I’m glad you asked. This is one of the most inspiring business stories I’ve read in a long time, and I hope you’ll consider taking a deeper dive into the book.

You can find out more on the Delivering Happiness site here: http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com

And you can buy a copy of the book here: http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappiness

For a limited time, we are offering a free trial of Read It For Me Pro where you’ll get the entire video summary of the “Change by Design” along with many other best sellers. Do you want to see what a full summary looks like? We’ve got the full summary of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It”, Steve Zaffron’s “The 3 Laws of Leadership” and Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” waiting for you along with your free trial offer.

Yes! Take me to the free summaries and trial offer!

Watch the summary preview

Design isn’t just about shiny objects and designer clothes. True design is about creating change in the world. Do you want to learn how to design your business and even your life? Then this video summary is for you.