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Lesson #2: Connect with Your Customers
“To be a really successful entrepreneur, you must constantly strive to understand your customers. You must also appreciate them and care about their happiness, ” says Stewart. “There are no people more important to me in my business life than my customers.”
Philip Knight Quotes
Philip Knight Quotes
Why Focus Groups are a Valuable Tool for New Companies and Entrepreneurial Ventures
Focus Groups are a great way for entrepreneurs to receive feedback on the new products they plan to introduce. The advantage of using focus groups over surveys for market research is that they can provide real feedback on real products rather than hypothetical ones.
Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market: Two - audience
This is the second in a series of six articles on how to take your thought leadership campaign to market
What is the Soul of Your Business?- How to Make Your Noncustomers New Customers
Breakthrough ideas for helping your re-think your strategy for growing your business by providing the kinds of products and services your customers and clients really want but don't yet know it.
The Key To Internet Marketing For Online Businesses
For your online business you need to create an identity and define your brand right at the beginning. When your customers arrive on your site they should immediately be able to see what you are offering and why they should want to become engaged with you.
Book Review: Selling The Invisible
Selling The Invisible is packed with tips and insights on how to market your business services. Harry Beckwith claims that most marketing advice is based on a product marketing model, most of which doesn’t apply to service businesses.

Focusing on the Outcome
Learn how focusing on the outcome, rather than your products and services, can help you connect with customer needs.
Top Five Rookie Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Launching successful marketing campaigns takes creativity, initiative and perseverance. Although most business owners learn the best ways to market through experience and pain-staking trial and error, there are several common mistakes made by new owners that can easily be avoided with a little foresight and preparation. We highlight these “rookie mistakes” below to help new owners generate effective campaigns that bring in higher returns on investment the first time and every time.

I Said it was the Money; But I Lied
As the economy continues to strain, recruiting and retaining talent will become even more important than ever. This article tackles this urgent topic, explaining many ways to help organizations go about their recruiting and retention methods. If you need any help with this, here is a great way to kick off your program.

I Said it was the Money; But I Lied UPDATED Oct 2007
Same topic as the original, with data and interpretations reflecting the results from 2007.
Sales and Marketing - Align, Define and Make Money
Too many sales and marketing departments in corporate America are misaligned (even though the two departments share the same corporate office). Here are 6 key areas of misalignment to fix quickly before you lose more clients and money.

Boomer Retirement Planning: It's Not Just for the Retirees
Boomers planning for their retirement has been all over the news of late; particularly hot is the revelation that we Boomers have not planned very well. What is not as well known is that Boomers themselves are not alone in that lack of retirement preparedness....companies are even less ready to handle the tremendous amount of information and skill that will walk out the door along with those retirees. Here's what you can do about it.
The Top Five Rookie Marketing Mistakes
By elements for Women

The Top Five Rookie Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Christopher Palumbo began his career as a partner in a real estate development company, where he developed branding concepts for resort communities in South Florida and the Carolina's. From there his business accomplishments grew as he orchestrated the complete turnaround of a failing national real estate developer. Soon after, Christopher changed gears and used his talents to create an award-winning World Gym concept store. Chris utilized his position within the organization to orchestrate a turnaround and capitalization plan for the World Gym™ brand. To date, he has worked with many of the largest and most reputable companies in the fitness and leisure industries, and is frequently featured in industry and national press.

Primary Research Development
Conducting market research can afford you invaluable insight into your products or services. The following are some tips to get the most out of your research.
Resolving Needs - What Your Employees Wish For!
Sometimes in business, the big stuff gets the all the attention it needs - whilst the small stuff misses out. Yet it is the small stuff that your people live with day in, day out. For them, the biggest issues they face are not 'Mission Statements', 'Visions' or 'Corporate Values' - sorry, they just aren't interested. So what is important to them? Here's how you find out...
Review Lightning In A Bottle How To Develop Saleable Products
Did you ever wonder if your brainstorming and focus groups were effective? Wonder no more, David Minter and Michael Reid reveal the truth and add their own approach to the mix to make products flops a much less likely outcome from your creative activity.
Book Review: Words That Work
Have you ever wondered how to make people react to what you say? While some people are better crafting words than others, this book shows how the pros do it. Written by the person responsible for crafting the words for the political parties, this book gives rules for effective wording.

Other focus groups Related Articles

Communications Tips
"The Greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished." George Bernard Shaw The great quote by George Bernard Shaw confirms what I have experienced in my 35 plus year career. And in my past 23 years in my own business, I cannot think of a single instance where "communication" was not listed as a problem, challenge, frustration, irritant, etc. in the focus groups, discussion groups and other strategic planning endeavors I have conducted. Communication is a challenge. And it is an opportunity for very positive impressions if one works at doing it effectively.
Can Your PR do This
Strive always to sharpen your focus on the very groups of outside people -- your key external stakeholders -- who play a major role in just how successful a manager you will be.
Managers Have you been Shortchanged
Managers like your self can win big when you base your public relations planning on a blueprint that demands of you a sharper focus on the very groups of outside people who play a major role in just how successful you will be -- your key external audiences.

3.1 The public sector: Training priorities, resources and reorientation
"While there is long history of poverty-focused training in developed industrial economies, it is still relatively rare in the large majority of developing countries where most of the poor live" (Malik, 1996:46). This seems particularly ironic given that most of the world's poor live in developing countries. The following discussion looks at why public sector training priorities continue to favour non-poor groups. We shall focus in particular on the design of poverty reduction programmes, overall resource availability and competing claims over training resources from other sectors and groups.

Focus Groups are for Lipstick, not Technology
You're launching a new product, so of course you test your messages with customers. After all, you want to make sure your customers' mouths water (and their wallets open) when they hear your story. More than that, you want to get to know your target market; learn to think like them, speak like them, understand how they react to your story. So you decide to run a focus group. That's what everyone does, right? Wrong. In my humble experience the high technology market does not lend itself to focus groups.
Finders Keepers
Finding and keeping the right team is one of the toughest and most important tasks you take on as a business owner or solopreneur. Yet it doesn’t always get all the attention it warrants. Business owners focus on the work. In contrast, when investors (Venture Capital groups or Angels) look at a business they are likely to focus more on the team than the business. Why? As Jim Collins substantiated with his Fortune 500 research for his bestseller From Good to Great, it’s the team that creates and sustains success.

What High Level Enrepreneurs Think Great Coaching is About
I recently held two focus groups with some of the successful, high networth entrepreneurs I coach.
Focus Group Best Practices
A focus group is a controlled group interview of a target audience demographic. The interview is often led by a facilitator who covers a set series of questions or topics. Benefits of focus group sessions include: increased customer satisfaction & brand perceptions, and informing product development decisions. Focus groups are a key component to an effective market research program. Generating qualitative feedback in this medium can be more insightful than standardized surveys.

Why Focus Groups are a Valuable Tool for New Companies and Entrepreneurial Ventures
Focus Groups are a great way for entrepreneurs to receive feedback on the new products they plan to introduce. The advantage of using focus groups over surveys for market research is that they can provide real feedback on real products rather than hypothetical ones.
Three Basic Steps to Focus on Customers and Partners
Getting customers or partners together in focus groups is generally the most productive. But we can gather expectations through individual interviews as well. We can gather perceptions and expectations from competitors' customers, people who've stopped doing business with us, and those who could but don't use our products or services now. We should always start with a blank sheet of paper, never a preconceived list. This begins by asking our focus group to brainstorm the factors most important to them when using our products or services.
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