Marketing 101: Positioning Statements

You’ve got a great product or service which you’re passionate about, but how do you help make sure that your prospective customers/clients will feel the same way about it? A Position Statement takes into account what you know about your customers/clients and the product/service and presents the ‘promise’ that you’re ready to make to your market.

A Few Questions To Answer

Before you go to market, or whilst you’re reviewing your current marketing strategy, take the time to answer the following questions which should help you come up with your Position Statement:

• Brand Attributes – thinking about your brand, what are the attributes that it offers your customers/clients? 
• The Benefits – what’s in it for your customers/clients to use your products/services? What are the functional benefits they will receive?
• Emotional Reward – people stay with/keep using things that they have an emotional attachment to, so what will your customers/clients receive from being in a relationship with you?
• Customers/Client Values- we all relate more to people and things that we believe share a similar set of values. So what values do your idea customers/clients have?
• The Essence Of  Your Brand – we’ve thought about your customers/clients values, but what is the essence of your brand? What are the core values that your organisation holds dear?

The Positioning Statement

By answering the questions above you’ve gained a good understanding of important factors relating to your products/services, your customers/clients and your organisation. Importantly, you should see where these three meet:

Look For Where Attributes Meet

The Big Question

Where the attributes of your product/service, your customer/Clients and you organisation meet, is your Positioning Statement.

Taking into account what you’ve learned, what promises are you prepared to make to your market?

Marketing’s A Team Sport

In developing your Positioning Statement, remember that marketing is a team sport. Get others from inside and outside of your organisation to answer these questions as well. Do they say the same as you? If they do, then you’re probably on the right track, if they don’t why not?

I hope you find this simple process of value in building a better business. If you’d like to talk further about your business please contact me.

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Team Performance: The Bouncing Ball Model

I’ve found the Bouncing Ball Model of behaviour to be a really useful way to explain team performance to organisations large and small. This post provides an overview of the steps included in the model.

The Bouncing Ball Process

Purpose & Mission

The steps in the bouncing ball model are focused on creating and engaging the team.  This starts with helping the team identify and then communicate to others in the organisation:

• Why the team exists – what is their purpose and how do they fit into the wider organisation. People need a purpose and to feel needed, so make sure you communicate this well.
• What a high performance team is – each of us has different goals and aspirations and ideas on what a high performance team is. Start by making sure the team shares their individual thoughts on this before coming to a consensus on what performance means in the team’s context.
• What the key values of the team are – what behaviours do the team value, how do they want to work together – what’s the team ‘Constitution’. This isn’t something you thrust upon them, the team needs to come up with this themselves.
• A Clear direction for where they’re heading. They don’t need a detailed business plan, just a ‘beacon on the hill’ to show them where they need to head.
• Are we all on the Bus? – Now the team knows who they are, what they value and where they’re going, it’s the time to ask if they want to take the journey with you. Don’t be surprised if some people decide they don’t want to take the journey, it’s a natural step in getting the right people in the rights seats on the bus.

Who – Clarify Roles & Responsibilities

The most important factor in the sustainable success of any organisation is ensuring you have ‘the right people, in the right place, performing the rights tasks.’ Each member of the team needs to be playing their role and, needs to be in a role that plays to their strengths.

Makes sure that everyone is clear what e person in the team is accountable for by clearly defining roles and responsibilities. Once again this isn’t something you thrust upon them, work with them to ensure that the individual goals combine to achieve the teams (and the organisations) goals.

The Goal Clarification Stage

This stage takes time and may need revisiting several times initially to ensure the team begins to work efficiently.

• What - set priorities for each person and link them to the team and organisational strategy and vision.
• How – create action plans with each member of the team. These don’t have to be detailed ‘step-by-step’ task lists, road maps highlighting the key things that need to be achieved by when can suffice.
• Implement & Measure – agree how you are going to measure progress towards the goals (KPIs) and implement the ‘what and how’.
• Review – make sure you stop regularly for the team review their progress and tweak what may need refining. Don’t allow people to be ‘too busy’ to do this. No team ever became great without a game plan and taking time out to review it during the game.

Reenergise & Communicate

If you’ve followed the steps above, you should be moving into the sustaining and empowering stage of team development. The team will have started to work together more effectively and be achieving things they hadn’t believed possible before. As a leader, your job now to make sure you keep communicating with them, celebrating successes and helping them to work through the challenges.

Take time with the team away from the workplace to reenergise them, re-affirm their commitment and celebrate with each other. Remember the golden rule of great leaders, when things are going well let them take the praise, when things aren’t going well, look in the mirror and ask yourself why. Be prepared to take a few steps back to ensure the purpose, who, what and how are right.

Reassess & Renew

Now you’ve developed an autonomous high performing team its time to reflect and seek out new opportunities for the team, it’s members and yourself. Your success should be measured by the success of your people, both whilst they’re with you and after they move on…which they inevitably will one day.

At least annually, take the team out of the workplace to review what they’ve achieved, what they’ve learned from it and celebrate. Start the bouncing ball model process from the beginning again remembering the only constant is change.

Invoke Results - Call On Us

If you’d like to talk about developing a high performance team(s) in your organisation, contact us now.

Contact Us Now!

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Website Project: Kenmore & District Chamber Of Commerce

As a member of the Kenmore & Districts Chamber Of Commerce (KDCC) executive committee, John Belchamber undertook a website project to review and development process ensure that:

• The website was able to take bookings and payments for events;
• Membership subscriptions could be taken on line;
• There was a Blog feature to allow members to write posts;
• There was a Social MEdia strategy developed and implemented for:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
• That the Social Media channels where all integrated allowing for automated posting;
• That the website and social media traffic could be tracked and analysed with google Analytics;
• This was achieved with minimal expenditure.

Keeping Costs Low But Functionality High

To ensure the costs where kept to a minimum, I utilised WordPress for the content management system and tailored a template that I have to suit the KDCC corporate identity. We also updated their logos to ensure that they were suitable for use across social media channels. Utilising my preferred web host, we were able to keep the cost of hosting (including Domain Name registration down to under $100 per annum also.

The shopping Cart I implemented was fully integrated with PayPal to keep the merchant costs down and to take advantage of PayPal’s recurring subscription service for membership subscription payments. However the shopping cart is also capable of integrating with their own bank should they choose this at a later date.

Immediate Success To Build On

Within 12 hours of the website being launched, KDCC received a booking and payment from a person who had never attended a breakfast event before and the Facebook Page was attracting ‘Likes’ from local businesses and individuals and the twitter account had started attracting local followers and retweets.

The chamber are able to keep a close eye on where their visitors are coming from, how they found them and how they are interacting with the website through Google Analytics which also includes ‘real time’ stats and goal setting features to help manage their website strategy.

Can I Help You?

• How does your organisations website compare to this?
• Would you like to be able to sell online?
• Do you have a Social Media strategy and/or know how to implement it?
• Would you like a big-business website on a small business budget?

We only work on a select number of website projects at any one time, so if you’d like me to build your online business:

Contact Us Now!

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JRB’s Haiku Journey

Invoke Results founder and senior consultant, John Belchamber is pleased to have published his Haiku poems as both in e-Book and paperback formats.

John started his haiku journey in November 2012, as he says

Sometimes your best journeys are those that start on a whim and a step from your front door. This is a journal recording my journey into Haiku. It may not be a strictly classical journey, but it’s mine to share with smiles, love and laughter. I hope you’ll join me.

Why JRB?

I’ve been called JB by my colleagues for many years, but few know that I have a middle name. I know it’s not common for people to use their middle initial these days. My Dad was John Belchamber so at a young age I realized that to the outside world, the ‘R’ was what differentiated us. Though my Dad passed away many years ago, the older I get, the more that ‘R’ becomes one of the few ways to tell us apart.

Why Publish The Books?

I’ve always had a love of word play, but it’s only recently that I’ve started writing things down via social media and my blogs. I wanted have a way of keeping my humble words for my family archive and this seemed a good way to achieve that.

As Michel De Montaigne wrote to his reader whilst introducing his essays “I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.” But what does he know!

Where Can We Buy The Books?

The books are released on major distribution channels like Amazon and iBooks and you can get two formats of the eBook (epub and pdf) and two versions of the paperback – one with full colour images, the other with black and white.

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DISC Profiling Professional Pack

This DISC Profiling Professional Pack contains everything you need to become a true DISC profiling professional consulting within your business and/or for external clients.

• A Discus Online account giving you access to individual, job, relationship and team DISC profiling;
• Ten DISC Credits, enough to produce five discus classic DISC reports, a team report, job comparison and relationship reports;
• Online DISC Certification Course this video course guides you through the facts and features of DISC profiling from first principles to interpreting DISC graphs;
• Access to extensive online DISC reference materials;
• Free iPad and/or iPhone DISC profiling Apps linked to your Discus Online account;
• Online technical support;

Once we receive confirmation of your payment, we will set up your DISC profiling package and email you your login details along with a quick start guide and access to the online DISC Certification course. You’ll be producing professional DISC Profiles online within minutes.

You may also be interested in our DISC Facilitator Guide product.

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DISC Profile Consultant Starter Pack

This DISC Profile Consultant Pack contains everything you need to begin consulting using DISC profile tools from Axiom Software, one of the world’s ;leading supplier of DISC tools. The pack includes:

• A Discus Online account  giving you access to individual, job, relationship and team DISC profiling;
• Ten DISC Credits, enough to produce five discus classic DISC reports, a team report, job comparison  and relationship reports;
• Two One-on-One Caching Sessions via Skype to get you up to speed with using your Discus Online account and thinking about how to build your DISC Profile Consultant practice;
• Access to extensive online DISC reference materials;
• Free iPad and/or iPhone DISC profiling Apps linked to your Discus Online account;
• Online technical support;

Once we receive confirmation of your payment, we will set up your DISC profiling package and email you you your login details along with a quick start guide. You’ll be producing professional DISC Profiles online within minutes.

You may also be interested in our DISC Facilitator Guide product

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DISC Profiling Starter Pack

Get started with the world’s leading DISC Profiling tool discus with our DISC Profiling Starter Pack which includes:

• A Discus Online account  giving you access to individual, job, relationship and team DISC profiling;
  
• Five DISC Credits, enough to produce five discus classic DISC reports, a team report, job comparison  and relationship reports;
• Access to extensive online DISC reference materials;
• Free iPad and/or iPhone DISC profiling Apps linked to your Discus Online account;
• Online technical support;

Once we receive confirmation of your payment, we will set up your DISC profiling package and email you you your login details along with a quick start guide. You’ll be produce professional DISC Profiles online within minutes.

You might also like our DISC Facilitator Guide product.

The post DISC Profiling Starter Pack appeared first on Invoke Results.

The course covers topics including:

• The principles behind the DISC system
• How a DISC questionnaire works
• Details about the four DISC factors
• Useful tools to help create an interpretation
• A practical overview of DISC in recruitment
• Integrated self-testing helps reinforce course content
• Provide full Discus DISC certification on completion of the course

Before you can start the Introduction to DISC course, you’ll first need to buy a passcode from us.

DISC Online Certification Course Content

The course is in four separate sessions, but it’s flexible enough that you can learn at your own pace that suits you. Inside An Introduction to DISC, you’ll find units covering all these topics:

Each of these units has its own set of interactive exercises as well as a set of training notes for you to download and keep. At the end of the entire course there’s an extensive final set of exercises; complete those, and you’ll be provided with your own customised certificate.

Course Screenshots

Purchase your online DISC certification course using the button below. Once your payment is processed, we will email you your passcode.

If you need further information, please contact me.

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Our DISC Facilitator Guide pack has everything you need to facilitate an Understanding DISC Program and covers the following key topics:

1. Welcome - including an icebreaker exercise;
2. The History of DISC - take participants through 2,000 of profiling history in five minutes;
3. The DISC Model of Behaviour - unpacking Marston’s DISC model and introduce the DISC traits;
4. Advanced Interpretations - introduce key concepts such as compressed profiles, the Style Card and Trait Analysis;
5. Using Discus Online - slide linked  to Discus Online so you can give a live demonstration of using Discus if required;
6. Discus Team Profiling - introducing Discus Team profiling and analysis of leadership and relationships;
7. DISC Applications - workshop how participants are going to get the most from their use of DISC
8. Action Planning - have participants commit to the what, where, when and how.

Note: when we deliver this program we make us of CCS Vision Cards. We feel that these tools are exceptional for solidifying the learning. If you do not use these cards, you can easily change the slide to suit your own delivery style.

The DISC Facilitator Pack has electronic copies of the following:

• PowerPoint Presentation - a fully customisable presentation with 69 slides including built-in facilitator notes.
• Facilitator Guide Spreadsheet -  the spreadsheet contains all the worksheets you need to prepare for and run a successful workshop including Participant Details, Facilitator Guide, Resources List and Budget record.
• Participant Materials - all the customisable participant materials you need to deliver the program including handouts, attendee list and feedback sheets. Note that we also print the PowerPoint Handouts for each participant.

This fully customisable pack is available for a once only payment of AU$50.00.

To buy, use the PayPal Buy Now button below. Once we receive confirmation of your payment your DISC Facilitator Pack will be emailed to you within one business day.

Contact us if you have any questions or problems purchasing this DISC Facilitator Pack.

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The MLQ 360 Degree Leadership Assessment

The MLQ 360 Consultation Process

Completed online, the MLQ 360 gathers responses from the person being surveyed and up to 24 raters from associates at a higher level, same level, and a lower level. An additional ‘other’ group may also be utilised – for example, the ‘other’ group might be associates, clients, suppliers.

On completion of the questionnaire, I give an extensive report and one-on-one feedback session to unpack the findings with you and start thinking about development opportunities.

Our second one-on-one session will develop a Leadership Development Plan (LDP) which states which behaviours you will be focusing on developing, when and how. At this point, we also recommend you select an ‘Encourager’ who will hold you accountable for achieving your leadership development goals.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW SAMPLE MLQ 360 REPORT PAGES

On receipt of your order and payment, I will contact you to arrange the assessment and feedback process. In the meantime, should you have any questions at all please use the Contact Us Form.

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