Chris Brogan was not able to join us for the show as scheduled on Small Business Marketing, but we had a great line up today.

Rocky Cipriano is a seasoned marketing professional with over 30 years’ experience in the fields of advertising, marketing and graphic design. His agency, SKC Advertising became one of the top travel and tourism advertising agencies. Rocky won numerous regional and national awards for his design and advertising work. In 2001, Rocky launched InSight Marketing, a brand marketing consulting firm that works with small and mid-sized businesses. He is the author of “Branding Insights for Small Business” We talked about:

1. The top three challenges facing small businesses in marketing today.

2. What a brand means to a small business? What works and what does not?

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Alyssa Dver is the chief executive for Mint Green Marketing which
consults for companies ranging from large multinationals to small startups. In 2007,
BusinessWeek recognized Dver as one of 8 female entrepreneurs to watch. She is the author of , “No Time Marketing” She has also been published in Forbes, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, Promo Magazine, and dozens of others. We talked about her “No Time Marketing” where you can do marketing in 30 minutes or less. (Perfect for the Twitter generation!)

We talked about:

1. You usually need to bang on the same prospect door four or more times before
someone answers. Make sure that you have the right address.

2. You are not your customer. Never assume you know them that well.

3. Don’t confuse prospect enthusiasm for purchase authority.

4.  Spend only if you would be willing to pick up the tab.

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Michael Kreppein is the Chief Sales Officer at Inquisix. He is 20+ year veteran of business-to-business sales and sales management.  He’s worked at both small and big companies with roles including bag-carrying sales rep and sales manager for up to 17 sales reps. He founded a boutique consulting company, PeakSales Consulting, to assist early-stage companies with defining their sales process, developing the value proposition, building a sales team and closing those first critical accounts and making them into references. But no matter the company or role, his primary focus is selling to new customers and building a repeatable, scalable sales process for himself and his team. We talked about:

1.  The difference between referral networking and  cold calling
2.  The difference between On-line vs In-person networking (IRL)

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Philip Tadros is a Chicago based social entrepreneur and community builder online and off. He is the founder of Metroproper, a city-based profile-driven citizen media social network where members share local and web content. Phil also owns and operates two coffee houses in Chicago, Noble Tree Coffee & Tea and Dollop Coffee & Tea. As well as Haystack Vintage, an East Lake View shop which sells vintage clothing, furniture, rare finds & antiques, as well as modern goods from local vendors and artists.

We discussed:
 
1. Knowing What You Want
2. Letting Go While Steering
3. Don’t Smother Luck

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