Turn detractors into loyal promoters.
Asking for and listening to the opinion of your customers is worth its weight in gold!
Be P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L. in Your Productivity!
Don't fly Alone - Make Sure You Have Your Fight Crew With You!
Most of us think we are good communicators just because we do so much of it. Often we are failing miserably at it and need to understand important decisions and actions are needed to succeed.
Unique ability plus excellent teamwork equals success.
Getting the right support at the right time is key to your business success. Check out how our panel of experts answers key questions about asking for and receiving support that propels them forward so they "don't fly alone."
Accountability is usually associated with punishment and finger pointing. Operations and talent management expert Ann Prenatt reframes accountability so viewers use it to ask questions and follow a specific system so everyone is successful in planning and executing on what’s needed to get desired results.
People often want new results but in general are not willing to change behaviors. They need a disciplined and consistent way to be accountable. Ann cites the multi-billion dollar industry of dieting and how people still maintain old behaviors because money and intention alone are not enough to get results. Important questions she asks the audience to consider and for which she provides guidance:
In her presentation, Ann Prenatt asserts that proactive approaches are essential to helping people plan and execute on goals so that they see their responsibilities, own them, solve them, and do them. She provides specific steps to ensure changed behaviors occur to improve individual and team performance. These steps include:
In this powerful and thought-provoking presentation, Ann Prenatt helps viewers take practical steps to empower, enhance, enable and engage people and systems so greater accountability and success occurs to celebrate. She imparts to the audience that putting accountability into your operations and using a specific system helps you communicate effectively, focus on results rather than blame, drive high performance, and build and strengthen relationships.
Ann Prenatt is highly qualified to provide human resource management assistance or help you in building strong, caring relationships. You can contact Ann at abp01@charter.net
Successful business owner and organizational development expert Jim Canada opens his presentation with the truism that if you are not moving ahead, you are falling behind. He asserts change is key to how well you grow and succeed in your personal and professional life. He also maintains that cultivating resiliency in the face of change is key to making changes positively and effectively.
In his talk, Jim describes that when capability is greater than challenge, people get bored. When challenge is greater than capability, people get overwhelmed and stressed. The ideal is to maintain an equal balance between capability and challenge. Then people can weather the myriad of feelings they have as they go through change. If people do not develop resiliency, they can get thrown by some of the negative thoughts, feelings and struggles that are a natural part of the change process.
People feel in control when expectations match experiences. Developing personal resilience helps people maintain a sense of control. Jim describes it as the ability to absorb high levels of disruptive change while displaying minimal dysfunctional behavior. Those who are resilient maintain their equilibrium, high productivity, good health, success and rebound well from setbacks. Resilient people are:
Jim Canada ends his presentation by stressing the importance of creating a strong workplace culture in which your people are able to find a new normal occurs easily because you effectively communicate the positive consequences of change and they remain inspired to stay the course through discomfort. The bottom line: learn how to be resilient and promote resilience so you and your business can move ahead successfully.
To learn more about how to enact positive changes in your workplace culture, contact Jim Canada at: http://www.alliancetechnologiesllc.com/contact-us
Judy Ryan, Human Systems expert and Lori St. Clair, Chamber of Commerce President, business owner and CFO for many organizations, team up to help viewers understand the power of using a blueprint process to bring about alignment and positive, productive change.
Want control, consistency, organization and efficiency? This presentation guides you to see how systems help you achieve abundance, freedom, work/life balance and respect.
Content Marketing expert Tom Ruwitch opens his presentation describing how he applied a social intelligence system that enabled him and his team at MarketVolt to consider a variety of approaches people use for solving problems. They did this with and for their team so that values and ways of operating were not inadvertently violated or neglected. By adopting this human systems process, his organization’s meetings become shorter, easier and of higher quality. He uses this story to springboard into other examples of how he has and continues to use systems to ensure his company and the clients they serve are effective in running, growing and living well in their business too. In this presentation, Tom describes the following examples of a:
RUN System: He shares how he used new systems to improve his customer retention ratings and how facing any and every business problem with a system-based solution inspires innovation.
GROW System: He shares how he used a systems approach to integrate lead generation processes from initial contact through the entire funnel cycle so he and his employees could get prospects into their database and stay on top of who is doing what and how.
LIVE WELL System: He shares a system he created and employs that enables him to personally work productively, in a healthy and balanced manner, and get more done.
Tom Ruwitch cites his many successes to his use of systems and recommends that no matter what systems chosen, it matters that each business owner determine them for how to RUN, GROW and LIVE WELL in the business. He recommends everyone to get support; the people and information to help you create a standardization approach in all areas of your life and work.
For support in defining your content marketing plans and sustainable systems within them, contact expert Tom Ruwich at MarketVolt by phone 314-993-3732 ext 18, by email at tom@marketvolt.com or visit his website www.marketvolt.com
Why systematize your business? Gain insight and review examples of how standardization has positively impacted successful businesses, enabling them to outwit, outplay, and outlast challenges.
Bill Prenatt, while being a proven expert in sales strategies and implementation is a knowledgeable and passionate champion for what he calls a game-changing trend of systematizing your business. He opens his presentation asking the audience if they often feel like they are on the show Survivor. He provides examples of how standardization impacted his work with Allen Foods. He also cites the story of how McDonald’s can tear down and re-build a restaurant in 90 days because they are so systems-driven. He uses this presentation to build a strong case for standardization in business stating it is a way to outwit, outplay, and outlast any challenges that arise.
Bill Prenatt describes the predominance of fire-fighting and scarcity and how we support this with the mantra that everything is hard and tedious; in other words, we are our own worst enemy. This is a big reason we are not thriving. He focuses on how systems help us to:
Bill Prenatt asserts that waves of change so big and so bold that we aren’t able to recognize and respond to them. On top of this, we are drowning in information but starved for knowledge. We are a service economy with a product model and don’t know how to sell the invisible, the services we provide. He cites Uber is an example that change is in the air. He also cautions that only 6% of entrepreneurs are systematic.
Bill provides solutions including:
Bill Prenatt concludes by briefly describing the standardization stages and invites the audience to determine where they are on the systems cycle so the learn how to leverage them. He asserts we must identity, banish and replace our way of doing things with a systemic approach for operating.
Bill Prenatt is CEO of Simply Successful and Executive Director of e4e. If you are interested in learning more about the art and science of taking control of your life, contact Bill at bill.prenatt@simplysuccessful-llc.com. He will always have a generosity of spirit and much practical wisdom to share.
Pricing expert, author and contrarian Dale Furtwengler raises awareness concerning the importance of communicating your brand promises in a straightforward, clear and responsible manner. He opens his presentation reminding viewers that prospects and customers don’t care what you are doing and how you are doing it. They care about what benefits you are providing to them. They want to know what results they are going to get from you to help them to improve their life and work. Unfortunately, many taglines don’t reflect these results.
Dale describes the difference between an ineffective vs. effective, results-oriented taglines. He takes four examples of taglines and shows why they are effective because they meet the following key criteria:
When your tagline meets these criteria fully, your customers and prospects are much more likely to confidently engage you as a service provider. A good tagline allows you to answer questions in such a manner that your credibility increases during each stage of the conversation. Dale’s use of real-time stories and examples allow the viewers to quickly re-structure their tagline so that everyone wins. Both customers and providers are able to easily determine when there is alignment and a good fit for entering a business relationship. The stage is set to command prices that reflect your promises and ability to fulfill on them.
Dale Furtwengler is an internally acclaimed author. His company, Furtwengler & Associates, Inc., helps companies get higher prices regardless of what their competitors or the economy are doing. For more pricing/branding/marketing/sales tips visit Dale’s website, PricingForProfitBook.com
In order to develop an effective work team, those in leadership must understand the role of individual private logic (also called paradigm) for how each person sees the world and their role in it. Additionally, leaders must consider how best to influence each team member so they are effective in gaining their willing participation.
Sales and management expert Bill Prenatt shares the wisdom of Steven Covey plus his own experiences and observations on recognizing, respecting and relating well to direct reports who require guidance to fully engage and contribute in your working team in a responsible, productive manner. The following are important to consider when influencing your team members so they mesh well and support the success of all.
Perceptions and Paradigms
We all experience the world in different ways. People are not motivated by facts, but by assumptions – what they believe the facts to be. Our assumptions arise from our experience, our paradigms.
Every normal person craves direction, and a sense of dignity and purpose. Our basic drive is to protect what we perceive to be in our own best interest. We do what someone asks because we will realize personal gain.
Successful supervisors influence people to do things because they want to. The interaction provides a perspective that re-defines the environment into one where people ‘like to do’ and are ‘capable of to do,’ with supervisors helping each person feel useful and contributing.
Supervisors have an opportunity and an obligation to ‘identify and influence people who need their guidance. The role of the supervisor is to clearly define critical issues, plan out how to overcome problems, resolve frustrations, and eliminate or reduce waste, leaving people free to enrich their lives and achieve their goals.
Paradigms and Patterns
Supervision has its roots in the understanding that people, as the principal asset, are the catalyst that make things move. Supervisors create and provide the conditions in which each individual member and the team collectively, can be successful. They call forth each person’s potential by demonstrating faith they can excel when managed properly. In contrast, an authority merely provides a supervisor with the right to expect certain standards of performance.
By the time a person gets to be a supervisor, he/she has spent a lifetime developing specific patterns of thinking and behaving. Each of us likes our ideas of how things should be done and changing our minds can be a problem. We develop a comfort zone. Behavior patterns are buried deep and do not change quickly. These patterns become so fixed they legitimately can be called a second nature. Then behavior plays out naturally without conscious thought because it has been reinforced over a lifetime.
Organizations and companies become fixed in this way too. They have developed a culture that works on its members silently. Then this too becomes second nature to all within its walls. All the traditions, preceding practices, norms, standards, habits, rituals, attitudes and expectations that have evolved over many years, have been woven into how everyone thinks, feels, speaks and acts.
These two factors; the supervisor’s personal patterns and the organization’s culture have a powerful effect on change.
Patterns and Persuasion
Our paradigm is the way we see the world – perceiving, understanding, and interpreting it; in a sense our paradigm is our map.
Each of us has many maps in our head. Maps of the way things are (realities) and maps of the way we should be (values). We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy; and we’re usually unaware we have them. We assume the way we see things is the way they really are, and the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those assumptions. The way we see things is the source for the way we think and then act.
Conditioning has a powerful effect on our perceptions. We have a lifetime of conditioning – family, school, church, work culture, friends, associates, and current social paradigms. All have made their silent unconscious impact on us and help shape our frame of reference, our paradigms; our maps.
These paradigms are the source of our attitudes and behaviors. As clearly and objectively as we think we see things, we come to realize that others see them differently, and from their own apparently equally clear and objective point of view.
Each of us tends to think we see things as they are; that we are objective. This is not the case. We see the world not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, and our perceptions. This is the power of our paradigm. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. In reality, each of us sees things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience.
Trying to change outward attitudes and behaviors does little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.
The more aware we are of basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experiences, the more we can take responsibility for our paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others, and be open to their perceptions too, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.
Persuasion and Paradigm Shifts
Paradigm shifts move us from one way of seeing the world to another. Whether paradigm shifts are in a positive or a negative direction, whether they are instantaneous or incremental, they create powerful change. Our paradigms, correct or incorrect, source our attitudes and behaviors, and ultimately our relationships with others. If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms. Until we change our basic paradigms, we are unable to create quantum change in our situation or ourselves.
Many people experience a fundamental shift in thinking when they have a life-threatening crisis and suddenly see their priorities in a different light, or when they suddenly step into a new role, such as that of husband or wife, parent or grandparent, or into the new role as a supervisor. Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world. The power of a paradigm shift is the essential driver of quantum change, whether the shift is instantaneous or a slow deliberate process.
In all of life, there are sequential stages of growth and development. A child learns to turn over, to sit up, to crawl, and then to walk and run. Each step is important and each one takes time. No step can be skipped.
Paradigm Shifts and Principles
This is true in all phases of life. To understand and accept these principles can be difficult. Consequently, we sometimes look for a shortcut, expecting to be able to skip vital developmental steps in order to save time and effort while still reaping the desired result. It is simply impossible to violate, ignore, or shortcut the development process. It is contrary to nature, and attempting to seek such a shortcut only results in disappointment and frustration.
To relate effectively, we must learn to listen. This requires emotional strength. Listening involves patience, openness, and the desire to understand – highly developed qualities of character. It’s so much easier to operate from a low emotional level while giving high-level advice.
Our levels of development physically are fairly obvious, but not so concerning character and emotional/social development. We can ‘pose and put on’ socially for a stranger or an associate. We can pretend. And for a while we may get by with it – at least in public. We may even deceive ourselves. Deep down inside, most of us know the truth of who we really are and many others can discern this too.
Principles and Positive Change
In today’s complex and demanding business environment, we need to solve chronic underlying problems and focus on principles that bring long-term results. Utilizing Coaching as a valuable tool is one step closer toward being an effective supervisor.
Taken from “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.
PARADIGM SHIFTS
Barter expert and author Karen Hoffman shares over 20 years of experience, including national and international perspectives on bartering. In her presentation and her book, The Art of Barter, she describes trades of just a few dollars up to those involving millions of dollars. While most people are comfortable using cash, layaway, credit cards or borrowing from a bank or family, she describes the many ways bartering can impacts our lives and can minimize use of cash and stretch the assets we have all while attracting new customers and opportunities.
In her presentation, Karen clarifies:
Making the impossible possible is a trademark of Karen Hoffman, often referred to as the queen of possibilities. In this presentation, she demonstrates the power of creating opportunities where they are typically not unrecognized.
Karen Hoffman is founder of Gateway to Dreams, an organization designed to connect and promote people so they can live their dreams and provide their valuable services to the world. Call her today at 314.503.6376 or email her at Karen@cityofexperts.com
Marketing expert Steve Smart is fired up when he can help turn chaos into order and help business owners become more profitable through creating structure around their content and processes. He opens this powerful program by stating that marketing and operations are strongly tied together. He asks the audience this rhetorical question, “What is marketing?” After offering several definitions, he suggests the following as useful to remember, “Marketing is everything involved in successfully taking your product to market.” It’s finding what people want and delivering it to them. He suggests a shift in perspective is needed.
Steve Smart reminds the audience that ideal marketing provides leads, then revenue and then profits. He says in order for this to happen it’s important to think of marketing holistically so that you attract leads, close sales, and make sure you are satisfying customers throughout the entire buying and service continuum.
Operations are inter-related to marketing because they intersect through:
Steve Smart ends his presentation emphasizing the need to live your brand promise internally as well as externally. Intentionality helps everyone play a part of the process to deliver on the brand promise. You will be most successful if you put a structure in place to identify a list of all touch points and make sure everyone involved shares ideas, provides input and gets feedback afterwards to strengthen your values and service.
Steve Smart is helpful and believes in high customer satisfaction. He’s an expert at purpose and value-based marketing. Need help with your marketing efforts? Reach out to Steve Smart at srsmart@2qsolutions.net
Chris Torbit is a successful business owner with a growing, thriving business. He walks the talk, making culture and guiding principles a priority. He shares many stories about how he defines, clarifies and keeps his culture statement front and center with not only himself and his employees, he shares them with vendors and clients. In his presentation:
Chris Torbit is a consummate professional who is wise enough to know that business is more than sales and marketing. He knows that having a values-based and purpose-driven business is key to sustainable and effective growth. To learn more about great business strategy or for help in selecting the best in phone technology, contact Chris Torbit at 314-801-6700.
So you've decided to start a graphic design project. Great! But how do you get from your initial idea to a finished, printed product? If you decide to forgo the recommendation of seeking professional graphic design help, you are probably in the market for some software. It doesn't matter if you are trying to create a logo, banner, sign, or brochure, it can be difficult getting from the project's conception to the final product if you lack the proper tools.
SEO and website development expert Will Hanke speaks from experience and provides valuable information outlining today’s hottest graphic design programs, some known and some more obscure.
Adobe Creative Suite is probably the most known graphic design package, and it contains a lot of different software programs including InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop. If you buy the entire suite, it will set you back a pretty penny. You do, however, have the option of buying individual components of the package. The following are some of the more popular components to help you with your project.
Adobe InDesign is great for making flyers and posters. It even has tools to help guide you in making your own brochure. The tools allow you to do a little bit of image editing, and help you layout your brochure and put text on top of an image.
Adobe Illustrator, on the other hand, is simply a program allowing you to create or edit your own image files. It is essentially a blank canvas and provides you with tools to sketch, paint, erase, and scale a picture. If you are a talented digital artist, then this is a must have for your graphic design projects.
Lastly, I imagine everyone knows about Photoshop. The popularity of this program is so immense it has become a verb in the English language! Still, this photo manipulation software is considered an industry standard by many, and can help you touch up photos before you send them to be printed.
Corel Software
Corel is a software company and a competitor to Adobe products. Corel Draw even has handy brochure templates, and can really save you time. Some people prefer Adobe over Corel or vice versa, but the important thing to remember about Corel products is they are comparable software products and provide almost the exact same features at a fraction of the price.
GIMP
GIMP, or GNU Image Manipulation Program, is part of the open source GNU project and a great piece of software. Software under the GNU license is free to use, copy, distribute and you could even change the source code. It's incredible because it competes with top image manipulation and graphic design programs, yet is still completely free! However, unless you already know how to use similar tools, you are going to need to learn a lot before you can use this program very well. Its learning curve is relatively steep.
These known and not-so-well known programs are great aids for many graphic design projects. Fair warning: they have a tough learning curve to them and some have a hefty price tag, so if you feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed creating your own logo or design, seek the help of acustom printing company. On the other hand, if you absolutely need to do the design portion yourself, these programs will aid you in making your idea a reality!
SEO expert Will Hanke is a Jack-of-all-trades and understands a spectrum of tools available to do a variety of tasks, including those related to graphic design. He informs readers by describing the relative strengths and weaknesses of each product outlined. For SEO and website development tips, subscribe to his newsletter or check out his blog.
