John Bradley "JJ" Jackson

Strategy

Strategic Marketing in Plain English

There are many books written about strategic marketing and the authors seem to delight in making it look really sophisticated and complex. In actuality, strategic marketing is really pretty simple. Strategic Marketing is about analyzing opportunities while answering three basic questions: * What might we do? * What do we do best?

Elevator Pitch

Elevator Pitches Move Investors

You have 60 seconds to describe your business to an investor. What matters most to them and what will move them to invest in your business? Investors are not your customers, so don’t try to sell them product features or benefits. Investors are people that may want to “own”

Mission and Vision

You Are Going to End Up Somewhere....

You are going to end up somewhere, so why not end up where you want to be? Organizations (and people) all have a purpose or a reason for being. Many call it a mission. That mission helps the firm to make good decisions that are consistent with its purpose. With

Direct Mail

Your Signature Please

At the end of every e-mail is the signature line which tells the reader how to contact you. It also tells them a lot about you and your brand. Surprisingly, many people don’t take advantage of this last step in the communication process in an e-mail letter. The minimum

Business Planning

New Business Concepts- Encore

This is a reprint of a past blog on Business Concepts. A “business concept” is the first step in the process of starting a new venture. It typically describes a vision of what might be. It generally precedes the business plan and it begs feedback on the merit of the

Advertising

Text-Speak

Text messaging has created a new “language” of sorts that is destroying the written word and has infected all aspects of our society. Driven by young cell phone users who would rather text than talk, these abbreviations are appearing in advertising, new media, and college term papers. SMS (Short Message

Negotiation

Selling to C-Level Executives

My recent blogs about using questions as a selling tool got many comments from readers who sell to senior executives. I was reminded about how busy C-level execs are these days and how intolerant they are of "discovery" sales calls. C-level executives (i.e., CEO, CMO, CIO, etc.

Public Relations

Public Relations is Vanity Gone to College

Too many press releases beat the drum about new product releases, product features, and the daring follies of egomaniac CEOs. Most this crap is just plain vanity and worthless to their audience. Can you hear the delete key tapping away? Good PR informs that reader about matters to them, not

Selling

The Doctor Is In

Ever notice that when you go to the doctor, you get asked a lot of open ended questions while the physician says little? Much like a doctor, sales people help buyers with problems by asking questions and saying little. Rather, that is what the good sales people do. The patient

New Product Development

Failure Enables New Products

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." * Carl Sagan, astronomer Many “wannabe” entrepreneurs struggle with the idea of coming up with the perfect product or solution. This obsession with being the best keeps them from launching the product. Instead, they

Strategy

Is Different Better?

"Different isn't always better, but better is always different." * Marshall Thurber, entrepreneur I like this quote because it sums up my thinking about how customers will buy an offering because of its differences not because it is like another offering. This is true even if the

Ethics

Crowds Are Dumb

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." * George Patton, US General during WW II Please extend my apologies in advance to James Surowiecki, the author of “The Wisdom of Crowds”.  His best selling book suggests that groups make better decisions than any made by

Advertising

Swahili Spoken Here

The language of the web sometimes resembles Swahili and this is especially true with domain names. Coming up with a domain name with a .com suffix that matches your company name or offering is darn near impossible. The first thing you have to ask yourself is should your business or

Branding

Selling With Questions

A friend of mine reminded me that selling is not about what you say to the customer, but rather it is about the questions you ask. Many sales people are in love with their own words and ideas. They are often described as having the “gift of gab” which means

Negotiation

Questions to Ask Before a Negotiation

Good negotiators are prepared. It first begins with knowing what you want. Additionally, good negotiators anticipate the wants and needs of the other party. You need to ask yourself a few basic questions: 1. What do you wish for? 2. What do you deserve? 3. What must you have? 4.

Social Networking

Social Networking is a “Must Do”

Facebook, the social networking firm, now has a user base on the verge of topping 100 million people; amazingly, this lofty number is driven by a largely North American demographic. If you are waiting for social networking to catch on, you need to know that the train has already left

Branding

Inside the Buyer’s Head

Sales people are taught to manage and control the sales process by moving the customer from qualification to presentation to close. While this process accurately describes the activities of the sales person, there is a separate and equally important process at play. That other process is the one in the

Selling

Sales Objections Are Cool!

When a customer objects, he or she is asking for you to help them better understand your offer. The prospect who presents objections is often more easily sold on your product. How cool is that? No objections? You may be losing the sale since customer silence is not golden in

Branding

Tell Me a Story

There may no more powerful communication tool than a story well told. A story is not a PowerPoint presentation or a canned pitch or a memorized speech. It is as it sounds: a plain English parable with a beginning, middle, and end. Stories help people understand and make sense of

Websites

Drive Website Traffic With On-line Activities

As a follow up to my last blog about driving web traffic with off-line activities, here are some ideas about how you might drive traffic to your website using the web. Pay-Per-Click Advertising. This can be done with Google, Yahoo, MSN, and many others. If done right, this is cheap

Websites

Off-line Activities Drive Website Traffic

When you think about methods to drive visitor traffic to your website, I bet you mostly think of web related activities. These on-line activities are great, but don’t overlook the offline methods which can be surprisingly effective. Here are few ideas: Signage- If you have a bricks and mortar

Ethics

Ethical Selling

(This is an reprint by special request of my blog from July 6th, 2007) For most of us, knowing the difference between right and wrong is pretty clear, but sometimes doing the right thing is hard to do. Or, let’s say we are challenged to make the right choices.

Ethics

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate America is accountable for what it does and does not do ---businesses must be socially responsible (or, at least they should be). Social responsibility is a company’s duty to make the right choices that will contribute to the welfare and interests of society, as well as those of

Ethics

The Golden Rule at Work

The “Golden Rule”, also known as the ethics of reciprocity, is often expressed as, "Do onto others as you would wish them to do onto you.” The golden rule message is a simple one: do the right thing. Doing the right thing is best for others and ultimately is

New Product Development

The “Tripping Point”: $200 per Barrel Oil

Much is being said and written about how the increased price of oil to over $140 per barrel is injuring our economy. Moreover, the prediction of $200 per barrel by the year end is being heralded as the “Tripping Pont” by many pundits---an unthinkable change in the landscape of western