I talked about this briefly last month, but I wanted to go into more detail here.

Angie Morelock, the Downtown Director for Downtown Fremont, Inc. in Fremont, Ohio, has wanted to bring a group of business owners to my 2 ½ day Destination Business BootCamp for years. She’s applied for grants to help fund the trip, but the grants never materialized.

But towards the end of last year, Michelle McGovern, the Marketing Director for the Croghan Colonial Bank called me, and we talked about the value of bringing a group of business owners to the BootCamp. Michelle’s bank office is located in downtown Fremont, and she was considering using part of her bank’s marketing funds to sponsor a group of business owners to attend my 2010 Destination BootCamp. I told her about cities that had sent groups of business owners, like Hanford, California (that sent their first group in 2009); Rockwall, Texas (that had sent 2 groups), and Lafayette, Indiana (which has sent 3 groups of businesses over the years). We’ve had groups attend from small cities, like Arkansas City, Kansas; Skowhegan, Maine; and Worland, Wyoming, and from large cities like Seattle, Washington.

You might wonder why communities keep sponsoring and paying for independent business owners to attend a workshop that will improve their businesses? It is because when those businesses improve, their improvements impact the entire marketplace where they reside. Plus, when a group of business owners return from over 20-hours of learning, they share their ideas with their neighbors and help them improve. Financially, it’s a great deal for a community because they receive extra services that we don’t otherwise provide for small business owners, including a free workshop in the sponsoring community and onsite visits with all the businesses that attended the BootCamp. When I go and speak in the city, more business owners are educated, and some communities end up turning that small group of six owners into a group of hundreds of owners, learning together, changing all of their businesses using what they learned at the BootCamp.

You might know where this story is going. Michelle went to Angie and decided to pay for the costs to send a group to our March BootCamp. When I asked Michelle what convinced her to take some of her bank’s marketing dollars towards this cause, here’s what she told me:

“The Croghan Colonial Bank is a recognized leader in community banking throughout Northwest Ohio. Their business model is based on the understanding that when the company’s clients, employees and communities are financially strong, the company is too.

As the Marketing Director for a small regional bank, I have the responsibility to make sure everything we do measures up to the mission of the bank. That includes how we spend our marketing dollars. In that regard, our mission is to support the financial well-being of the clients and communities we serve.

It costs $11,563 to run one ad in all our market papers telling people how much we support our local community. It costs $10,500 to send 6 businesses through Jon’s COMMUNITY REINVENTION PROGRAM. So, do we run an ad telling people how much we build our local communities or do we actually build one? I think the choice is clear on which is actually more aligned with my company’s mission. So, I created the “Croghan Colonial Bank Small Business Reinvention Scholarship”. In this tough economy, is there really any better way to grow my company than to help others grow theirs?”    Michelle R. McGovern, Marketing Director, Croghan Colonial Bank

To read what the local papers are saying about Croghan Colonial Bank’s small business scholarship program, click here to read the Toledo Blade.

You can also read the excerpt from the North Coast Business Journal by going to this address: http://ncbj.net and clicking on page 23 of the article.

Now, let me put my “Marketing Hat” on:  Not only has the Croghan Colonial Bank done a great thing for the business owners there and the Main Street Program, what do you think will happen when business owners start associating the Bank with its pro-small business stance?  Let’s not forget that written articles are also seen by readers as being 12 times more believable than advertising.  The sponsorship of these business owners will have more collective marketing power than any ad, while also doing more good.  That’s a true Win-Win scenario for the Bank and the community.

If you’d like to bring a group to our next Destination BootCamp from your community, but don’t know where to start, either call our offices at 303-774-6522 or download our application information by clicking here.

Earlier this year, Jeanne Stinson, the director of the Kansas Main Street Program, asked me to speak at their State’s annual conference on the topic of Business Reinvention.  She asked me to talk about small businesses in today’s economy that had to change core parts of their business to continue to be successful, in response to this recession. 

Finding businesses that had been impacted by this recession was easy.  All over the country, people were spending less money and making fewer trips to businesses and every business owner was feeling it.  The trick was finding business owners who had successfully changed their business in this recession, who were also willing to share with me the steps they took, including all of their failures and successes along the way.

The owners I turned to were those who had attended my Destination Business BootCamp in Colorado (www.DestinationBootCamp.com), but there were some important criteria they had to meet.  First, I chose not to interview any owners that had new businesses because a new business can often implement a single tactic and sales will skyrocket.  No, I wanted mature businesses that had a track record of profitability.  Second, I didn’t want any businesses that were a hobby for the owner; I only wanted businesses that were the sole source of income for an owner.

All of the business owners I interviewed were independents and not affiliated with national chains or franchises.  All would be considered “Mom and Pop” businesses.  In fact, many were run by husband-wife teams, all juggling their businesses and their families.  All of these businesses had been around for years, the youngest being 10 years, the oldest over 80 years in existence, many considered leaders in their respective industries.  Finally, though all of them annually generated substantial sales levels, in the last 18 months, they had all been hit by this economy and were forced to change how they did business.

Some Background on Business Reinvention

In normal economic times, business reinvention happens all the time and is not that unusual to observe.  For example, business reinvention happens when someone relocates a business to a new location.  It happens when someone expands the retail floor space of a store.  It can happen when physical changes are made to the business, like a store remodeling its interior, or restoring the exterior of a building, like the restoration of a facade of a historic building.

Business Reinvention: Not the Norm in This Economy

In this economy, business reinvention took on a different form.  The reinvention that these owners had to go through did not come easily or occur because of a change to the look, size, or location of their businesses.  Reinvention was forced on this group because customers weren’t coming into their stores or businesses as often, or worse, they were coming in, but not spending near as much.  Several owners even noted that customer traffic actually was increasing, but because people were buying so much less, sales were crashing. 

The recession that hit all businesses in the last 24 months made business reinvention an entirely unnatural process.  The owners I interviewed found that what they had always done previously was no longer working, bringing in the customers and the dollars like they used to.  The more these owners did what they had done in the past, the more sales didn’t increase, and the more things went downhill.

The owners I interviewed all came to realize the same thing: they had to stop doing what they had been doing in the past and start leading their companies differently, sometimes drastically departing from behaviors and past successful tactics that led to their success.  For each of these owners, there was a time in each reinvention where the owner looked at himself or herself and said “I have to change.  What we’re doing no longer works”, and then, was willing to go in a different direction.

The end result was their Reinvention worked.  Sales and traffic increased in their businesses while other businesses around them experienced decreases, or worse, closed entirely.

The result of these interviews is a new keynote speech and workshop I now conduct called:  “Reinvention on Main Street and Every Street”, and Jeanne’s group was the first one to hear it.  If your organization would like to host this event, and have your business owners learn the lessons of these reinvented independent businesses, email me at Info@JonSchallert.com to schedule a time when I can call you to discuss how this workshop can be presented for your group.

When I was recently in Texas, I took time to look up Stewart Thompson, the owner of Martha’s Bloomers in Navasota, Texas.

If you are asking where’s Navasota and who’s Stewart Thompson, let me tell you: If you really want to know what a Destination Business looks like, you will remember both of these names.

If you’ve never been to Navasota and you’ve never visited Martha’s Bloomers, you have not visited one of the most interesting garden centers and nurseries in the world. On top of that, you are also missing out on one of the few retail establishments in the country that combines a garden center concept with all of the following retail components, all in one place: A full-line gift shop; a pottery house; retail and commercial greenhouse with ready-to-bloom plants, flowers, and shrubs; a quaint tea room and restaurant with a full wine menu; an eclectic antique collection; a gourmet food department, and the world’s largest teapot.

Stewart and I met back in 2005 when he attended one of my Destination BootCamps. He has incorporated many of the tools that were taught at the BootCamp into his day-to-day operations and since that time, has been recognized by many national publications as a true Destination for shoppers and visitors. My favorite is that Southern Living Magazine named Martha’s Bloomers one of its “Top 50 Shops” (click here to read the Southern Living article). Other accolades have followed, but the ones that really count are from its customers who return time and time again, to shop, to eat, and just to browse the acres-worth of experiences he has created here.

The experience begins when you just drive by Martha’s Bloomers. You can see the world’s largest teapot from the State 6 Bypass. Though Chester, West Virginia makes the claim on the world’s largest teapot, Stewart made sure his dimensions left no doubt on whose teapot really was the largest.

Then, you enter Martha’s Bloomers to the sound of a fountain, right next to the front door.

Want to hear the fountain in action? Click on the words Martha’s Bloomers Entrance below to watch the short video of the fountain.

Martha’s Bloomers Entrance

As you walk through the retail space, there’s a lot to see and much to buy. But you haven’t really seen all of it until you go outside and start venturing around outside.

By the way, there is a huge wall that opens up to the outside (seen below). Martha’s Bloomers uses the same moveable wall that is used in NFL stadiums in luxury suites!

As you walk around, you will see the full-line pottery area

You can also enjoy the Café M. Bloomers, (part tearoom, all full-blown restaurant).  This is not like a typical tearoom with little cucumber sandwiches that won’t fill you up.  This has real full size meals so when husbands accompany their wives, they have something to eat, too.  This photo shows the outside waiting area by the Cafe.

On most weekends, the Arbor Room holds workshops on gardening and other topics from world-class authors and instructors. Here’s a picture of the Arbor Room that will hold 100 comfortably.

At any time when you are roaming around Martha’s Bloomers, you might meet Bloomer, the Maine Coon cat that Stewart is holding below.

Martha’s Bloomers will hit their ten-year anniversary next year, and there is one thing you can count on when you visit this place. The Martha’s Bloomers experience will always be consistent, even though the business evolves, changes, and expands as the years go by. And I think that part of the reason this business is such a great Destination comes from Stewart and his crew who work diligently to make sure the business delivers on their one-of-a-kind experience every time.

There’s one last thing I want to share with everyone about this great Destination. I asked Stewart as we were walking around to tell me what he did before he built Martha’s Bloomers. And Stewart rattled off quite a few vocations and accomplishments, but summarized it all by saying:  “I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but I never did anything I wanted to do the rest of my life until I did this.”

This commitment can be felt when you visit Martha’s Bloomers.  Be sure to visit them in Navasota, or online at www.MarthasBloomers.com.

Part 1:  Do you have customers in your community walking around lost, wanting to know where to spend their money?  You might not think you do, but you do.

In every community, large or small, there are new customers.  Some have moved into the area.  Some have moved around, from one home or apartment to another.  Some are passing through or spending time in your community, but they live somewhere else. 

All of these customers have one thing in common: they don’t know where to spend their money on the problems they have.  For example, they might not know which restaurant is best for dinner or breakfast.  They might not know where the best dry cleaner is.  They might not know where the best pizza can be found.  They might not know where to get their car fixed. 

In many cases, new people are left to themselves to learn where to spend their money.   

Here are some questions to ask yourself about how your business courts new customers:

• Are you hoping that new customers will find you through word-of-mouth?  That would be the wrong thing to do as word-of-mouth is the slowest form of marketing.
• When someone walks in your business, do you have a system in place to identify first-time customers?  If you don’t, you are losing a major opportunity to bond to a new person in your community.
• If you are trying to market to new customers moving to your area, direct mail is typically the most targeted method because it is easy to obtain a new address of a new person moving to an area.  When someone moves into a new town or city,  they leave a trail of database information when they get phone, trash, cable, water, and electric service.  There are numerous companies that can help you get this database information of new consumers moving into your area, and one of my favorite database companies is Jay Siff’s Moving Targets, which uses a proprietary system to gather new home buyers, renters, and others moving into a city. You can learn more about them at www.MovingTargets.com.  There might be other database companies in your city who provide a similar service.

New Consumers Must Be Invited Back

OK, let’s say you have pulled someone new to your city into your business.  That’s great, but your job has only begun.  Unless you can convert that one-time customer into a regular customer, your business sales will never grow as rapidly.

A wise business owner once told me: “My goal with every customer is to get them to come back for an additional visit.”  Smart person!  If you think about it, that really is the only goal every business should have.

Let me give you a specific example of a business in our town that doesn’t understand this principle.  There is a cute little coffee shop in our city, and when I buy something there, the only question I am ever asked is:  “Do you have one of our punch-cards?”

They are referring to their customer reward cards that you receive if you are a regular customer of their shop.  The card has 9 spaces on it, which can be punched whenever I purchase a drink.  When I get 9 cups punched, I can get my tenth cup for free.  I probably don’t have to describe this in too much detail because this seems to be the mandatory marketing tool of coffee shops nationwide.

Now, my first time in this coffee shop, I didn’t have a card.  So they gave me one.  They didn’t ask me if I was a new customer, so they couldn’t know if this was my first visit, or my tenth.  The mistake this company is making is presuming that their incentive for 1 free drink after purchasing 9 is enough to get me to return another 8 more times. 

For me, this incentive is not enough.  I might accumulate 9 punches eventually, but then, the card is just a reward for my perseverance.  But it is not an incentive capable of causing a repeat visit, after just one visit!  Unfortunately, these cards are also a problem because I always forget my card, and so, I am always getting a new card punched, which I often misplace again, so my repeat customer visits essentially go unrewarded.

How do you do a better job of bringing customers back?  Follow these steps:

1.     Decide that you will start attracting first-time customers.

2.     When someone enters your doors, develop a system to identify first-time customers.  Perhaps a question, like: “Have you ever been here before?”  If they answer “Yes”, go to #3.

3.     Develop a method to invite them back.  This is where you must create an incentive that is designed just for first-timers, to get them to become second-timers.  It must be a powerful enough incentive to take a first-time customer, and bring them back.

4.     When they come in the second time, convince them to become part of your core-consumer database, where they will receive all the benefits of a full-time customer.  This assumes you have a system in place to capture their names in your database system. 

5.     Finally, you will have to train your employees to capture customers’ names, and provide incentives for them to continue to do it.  If you don’t, they won’t perform, and your future marketing efforts will always be more costly.

Mom and Pop Are Hip Again

Let me go back to this coffee shop.  The place is attractive and pleasant, but honestly, it could be anywhere, and coffee shops like these are everywhere.  I have been in hundreds just like it.  Do coffee shop owners read some type of “Coffee-House Instruction Manual” that says everyone must have the coffee shop when they plan the interior of their business?  Or do coffee house naturally radiate to an image that Starbucks created with their muted colors and upbeat music?  Let me suggest two things:

• It is not a good thing to be an exact copy of their competitors
• Create noticeable differences that are extremely visible when a customer enters your door are some of the easiest ways to convince someone that your business is worth revisiting.

 I won’t dwell on the obvious point except to say, for goodness sake, if all of your competition looks the same, alter several components in your business to at least surprise the customer and catch them off guard!  Surprise is a powerful emotion for a new customer to feel when they walk through your doors!

One quick mention about the Mother of All Coffee Shops, Starbucks.  Maybe you haven’t seen it yet, but Starbucks has launched a new prototype store that essentially takes their chain-concept, and repositions itself to look like an independent Mom and Pop.  No, they aren’t deceptive, saying they are a Mom and Pop outlet.  They just look like one, by adding independent attributes that we enjoy at Mom and Pop coffee houses.  They know that people will feel the independent vibe from these restaurants in a totally different way from the Starbucks cookie cutter system.

If you haven’t read about Starbucks new prototype 15^th Avenue Coffee & Tea, just follow these links:

http://news.starbucks.com/news/fact+sheet+15th+ave+coffee+and+tea.htm

They are so independent, they even have their own Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/15thAveCoffee

Isn’t it cool that Mom and Pop are being endorsed by Starbucks!

Why Locals Don’t Spend Locally

Maybe you are seeing this whole “Shop Local” thrust becoming a major force in towns and cities around the United States.  There are several main reasons why people don’t shop locally.  I cover all of the reasons in my half-day workshop (click here to read about it) and I also cover the most critical points in my new webinar (which you can host in your area, click here to learn more). 

What exactly does it mean to reinvent a business and reinvent a marketplace?  There’s no better example than the business owner you’ll see here who is helping reinvent his downtown. 

Listen to this video of Ivan Brumbaugh, owner of Main Street Cheese and Wine Cellar in downtown Lafayette, Indiana.  (To get to Ivan, you first have to listen to an advertisement).  Ivan attended our March 2009 Destination Business BootCamp.  He called me several weeks ago and told me: “Jon, if I hadn’t attended your BootCamp, I’d be down 30% to 40%.”  Now you can see why he’s ahead in sales for the year.  It’s about attitude and action: instituting new programs, significantly changing your business, and then getting the word out to your most profitable customers!

His attendance at our Destination BootCamp came about because of a grant from the City of Lafayette’s Redevelopment Department, spearheaded by Dennis Carson.  Dennis was the first director in the country who saw the value of sending independent business owners to our Destination BootCamp, first sending a group in March, 2003, more owners in May, 2006, and yet another group in March, 2008.  Downtown Lafayette is now organizing and sending another group to our September 15-17 Destination BootCamp.  When this next group attends and graduates from our BootCamp, the City of Lafayette will have helped send 24 attendees to our program, totaling nearly 500 hours of training!  This program is the proof that if you want to make a marketplace a Destination, it’s always easier to teach the business owners in that marketplace how to be their own Destinations first, and then, have them teach their neighbor.

Listen to Ivan as he talks about his experience changing his business and how he’s using his new information to better the entire downtown area.  It’s inspirational, it works, and it’s what reinvention is all about!

I want to share with you some random thoughts I’ve had this month about the economy and the challenges all of you are facing: 

Every month, this economy throws another surprise at all of us. For all of you, this change in consumer buying is causing you to work harder and market smarter than you’ve ever done previously, and that is a challenge.  It’s tough to constantly try to operate you and your business at peak efficiency, not missing any sales opportunity with customers and constantly thinking about the parts of your business that need to be improved, changed, or abolished, all the while generating cash flow.

One retailer really hit the nail on the head when she told me:  “Panicking is a waste of energy.”  She’s right.  You have to stay focused on making the best use of your financial resources, using your time wisely, and deciding how to pull the best possible customers to your business, all the while understanding that luring them inside your doors is only half the battle.  Getting them to part with their money is the critical part.

This same retailer also came up with the new mantra for this economy:  “Doing OK is the new Great.”  Think about it.  With so many people pulling back on their spending, if you are writing a slight sales decrease or a slight customer count decrease, this is pretty good in some parts of the country.  Writing a small increase in customer count, individual average transaction (IAT), or if your online Internet sales are up, well, that’s a cause for celebration!  Yes, doing OK today is what doing Great used to be.

Focus on looking at your numbers.  You should know your breakeven analysis figure, and be able to analyze whether your customer traffic is down, or whether your customer individual average transaction (IAT) is down.  Now more than ever, you have to know where you stand.  We’re all passionate about our businesses, but this information has to be top-of-mind with all of us, and for too long, it’s been out of our awareness.

The good news is that I am receiving more emails and calls from many of you who are now looking more closely at your own business sales and customer traffic count numbers.  For example, many of you are now saying to me: “I am down 15% in IAT, but only 2% behind in customer count” (or whatever your specific situation is).  This is great!  It’s a little thing, but most of us have been satisfied to carry around an intuitive feeling about whether our customer count and IAT are up or down, but just having a feeling about your numbers is not good enough these days.  You have to know exactly where you are, and where you need to go, especially when it comes to customer traffic and the individual average transaction of customers as compared to last year.  Some of you have even begun your conversations with me by saying: “I knew you were going to ask, so I figured it out.”  That’s fantastic!  Congrats to those of you who are forcing yourself to look closely at your business numbers!

With that being said, there are businesses these days that are being hit hard by this economy, and many businesses are closing, and it’s important to understand something about a business closure.  Closing a business feels like failure, but not all closings are failures of the owner.  It’s not necessarily a failure of the owner when a major change in your marketplace hits a company.  Sometimes, when a major business was contributing the majority of your sales, or when a group of employees (like a group of auto workers in a factory), all are suddenly put out of work, and their spending stops, all of this is not a failure of the owner when a business closes.  Often, the sales revenue of a business and their impact on the success of the business just changes too drastically for business reinvention to occur.  Sometimes, a business just runs out of time to turn things around.

One last point:  Every business is going to have degrees of difficulty during this economy.  It’s important as an owner to not let these tough times wear you out emotionally, wear your down physically, or put you in such a negative mindset that all of your future decision-making is based on fear.  It’s important to still be the visionary for your business, to lead your team of employees with ideas and inspiration and to keep your company focused on moving through the difficulties, not bogging down and wallowing in them.  It’s tough to do, but in all your multiple roles as an owner, providing a positive future-picture for your business can only be done by you!  Only you can be the cheerleader, and no one else!

Geoff Colvin’s new book “The Upside of the Downturn: Ten Management Strategies to Prevail in the Recession and Thrive in the Aftermath” is not written for the audience of small business owners to whom I usually speak.  Nevertheless, the book has key points in it about business reinvention, and business owners taking the steps to change both their behaviors and the way they lead their employees.

If you haven’t read the book yet, I suggest that you click this sentence to read this month’s Fortune Magazine and the excerpt they have taken from Colvin’s book.

Then, if you want to read some better news, click on this sentence to read Fortune’s Big Picture Index, that takes seven (7) key metrics about today’s economy and graphs them to show you that, just perhaps, the worst is behind us in this Recession.  According to the indicators of home sales, stock prices, jobs, business loans, consumer loans, household income, and CEO consumer confidence, we might be seeing better times sooner than the pessimistic experts forcast.

Can you summarize, in 130 words, the dilemma every small business in America is facing during this economy?

Guess what?  You don’t have to.  General Motors and their advertising campaign did it for us.

The hottest word in General Motors new vocabulary is officially “Reinvention”.  You can listen to the new 60 second GM ad called GM Reinvention, by clicking on: GM Reinvention

Or you can read it below:

“Let’s be completely honest: No company wants to go through this.

But we’re not witnessing the end of the American car.  We’re witnessing the rebirth of the American car.

General Motors needs to start over, in order to get stronger.

There was a time when eight different brands made sense.

Not anymore.

There was a time when our cost structure could compete worldwide.

Not anymore.

Reinvention is the only way we can fix this.

And fix it we will.

So here’s what the new GM is going to be:

Fewer, stronger brands.

Fewer, stronger models.

Greater efficiencies.  better fuel economy and new technologies. 

Leaner, greener, faster, smarter.

GM is not going out of business.

GM is getting down to business.

Because the only Chapter we’re focused on is Chapter One.”

Let’s be even more honest than this ad’s slick 60 second presentation:  GM told hundreds of independent car dealers that their business dealership model was the way to go.  Hundreds of independent owners trusted in GM’s way of doing business, if they supported their Big Brother car company.   And guess what?  GM’s business model didn’t work, and the company itself would have ceased to be, if we as taxpayers hadn’t sent them cash to stay alive. 

The truth is:  GM’s Reinvention is much less painful than what small business owners nationwide are experiencing.

Some small businesses are figuring out that Reinvention is more than just tweaking a few tactics here and there.  But many are operating just as they did last year, but complaining a lot more.

As one owner told me when she couldn’t get fellow business owners to attend a workshop I conducted in her city:  “I cannot understand our local businesses.  When I pitched your presentation to them, they say things like: “I already know all that” or “I employ a marketing firm and don’t need that” or “I’m too busy”.  These are the same folks that say “How come you’re successful in this town?” or “I’ve tried everything & I can’t get people in my store”… We see lots of envy, frustration, excuses, and so little effort from them.”

Business Reinvention means that you as a business owner must admit that the business model you have been using in the past no longer works.  It also means that you must admit that the answers currently in your head, and the experiences you have gathered over the years of running your business, are not currently fixing the decline in sales and customer traffic you are experiencing.

Here are six lessons in Business Reinvention that every small business owner should recognize from GM and its failure as a major company:

#1:  There is NO franchise in the world that guarantees success!  NOT ONE!  And if you are a business owner in a franchise who blindly trusts and follows the company guidelines verbatim, you do it at your own risk.  All of the independent car dealers who are now out of business because of GM are the living proof of this.  They trusted the business model GM had set up for them, and it no longer works.

#2:  Brand uniformity is not all it’s cracked up to be.  There is no safety in brand uniformity and doing everything exactly the same as other businesses in your industry.  It feels safe, until everyone goes over the cliff at the same time.

#3:  I’ve been telling small business owners for the last 14 years that reinventing your business into a Destination is the most profitable way to operate your business. But in this economy, Reinventing into a Destination and being one-of-a-kind are no longer options.

#4:  It’s time for every small business owner to start learning what you’ve avoided learning.  All business owners know what they aren’t good at doing.  It’s time to address your weaknesses and correct them.  It’s time to quit doing the same things in your business today that didn’t work in your business last month.  Doing the same things only puts off your business reinvention for another day, and frankly, some of you are running out of days.

#5:  No one is going to be coming with any cash to save you and your business IF you don’t reinvent yourself.  Free cash is only for companies like GM.  You are on your own. 

#6:  And remember the words of the GM ad:  “No company wants to go through this.  Reinvention is the only way we can fix this.”

Listen to those words every time that advertisement pops up on your television screen.

Will you learn from GM’s experience and hear it as your wake-up call?

“Raising the Ring” is a technique taught by Robert Gordman and his company, The Gordman Group.  If you’ve been around me for any time, I’ve probably told you about how much I loved his first book, “The Must-Have Customer: 7 Steps to Winning the Customer You Haven’t Got”.  Click on the link here to watch a 4 minute and 32 second video where I talk about “raising the ring”, and how you can use this technique to gain extra dollars from customers and it’s all invisible to the consumer!