Jim Estill

Jim Estill is an author, speaker, freelance marketer and business consultant. He helps companies creatively maximize sales and margin by unleashing hidden values.

Estill has experience running companies from zero to $2 Billion in sales. Estill was CEO of SYNNEX Canada for 5 years. SYNNEX is a $2 Billion distributor of computer hardware, software and peripherals as well as consumer electronics.

Prior to that, Estill started a computer distribution company from the trunk of his car while attending his final year of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He grew that company to $350,000,000 in sales prior to selling it to SYNNEX in 2004.

Jim Estill is a board member of Research in Motion, makers of the famous Blackberry. He has been on the board since before the company went public in 1997.

Estill is an avid reader, writer (he published a book on Time Management), Blogger and Social Media Expert. His interests include running, health, computers and marketing.

You Become What You Say You Are

Entrepreneurs often ask me for advice on how they can thrive in a competitive market. My usual answer is "find a niche". What is the one thing you can do better than any other company?

To this, many people reply that they do not have a dominant strength. But as we look more deeply into their customer base, there tends to be recurring themes. Even if the theme is only one or two customers in a particular area.

This is when the advice comes:

"You become what you say you are."

By taking a couple of successes, you can start telling customers you are experts at x or specializing in Y.

One of the principles of marketing is to let people know who you are, and what the main things that your company or yourself are uniquely competent at. The interesting irony is, you could become who you say you are, even if you are not quite there yet.

I started a computer distribution company from the trunk of my car and grew that to be one of the leaders in auto ID (bar code) and point of sale in Canada. One of the ways we did this was to put on our marketing literature "leaders in bar code".

We would follow this up by attending bar code shows, and doing newsletters on bar code, doing emails on bar code, doing seminars and webinars on bar code.

At the time we said we were leaders in point of sale. We only had a couple of product lines (as a distributor you need to have relatively full range of products in order to get traction) and only a few customers. The interesting thing was that the more we said we were leaders in this field, the more customers came to believe it. Suppliers also believed it, so as such they would give us access to their lines so it became self perpetuating.

I also found by saying "experts in" or "leaders in", people would call us for advice. We would be asked to speak at events. At the same time, we would study hard and learn. And as we sold more, we became more proficient.

I had the same experience when I published my book and time management. I said "Time Management Guru" and sure enough, people would send me books and articles and soon I actually was who I said I was.

Becoming a leader in a niche is self fulfilling.

Jim Estill

Building Your Reputation Bank Account

What happens when unexpected expenses happen. An accident, a repair, something breaks. You turn to your bank account to buy your way out of your trouble. If you have to use your credit card or borrow money it costs more so it pays to have money in your account.

The same is true of your reputation. When something unexpected happens - an accident, a mistake, a false accusation, an error. What happens when you get the call that one of your products has caused a fatal accident? Or that $1,000,000 in product that you have shipped over the last 6 months needs to be recalled? One reason to be in shape is so that you don’t suffer a heart attack when this happens. That would be your health bank account but that is not what this article is about.

When reputation disaster hits, you need to turn to your reputation bank account. So it pays to have one.

Reputations are hard to build but easy to destroy. The more solid your reputation, the tougher it is to destroy. So it pays to work on reputation before you need it.

Responding quickly and honestly can help you avoid damage and lessen it. So think speed in responding. And of course having systems in place to minimize errors/mistakes helps keep from getting the hit in the first place.

You might still need some reputation bank to help you.

Some ways to build your reputation bank include:

1) Network. The more people you know, the more likely people are to think favorably of you. It’s a natural human inclination to like people that we know (unless you’re a real jerk).

2) Be a nice, good and generous person. Some things, like smiles and kind words, are free. Plus those simple gestures tend to make people like you more.

3) Consider donating to charities. Although I prefer to be more altruistic and donate only for the purpose of helping a good cause, sometimes donating can also help to build your reputation within a community. You certainly don’t want to be branded as someone who isn’t charitable.

4) Build your online reputation by having a good web presence that is easily googleable. There is lots written about search engine optimization and how to get more on the first page of google. It is much better for you to be on the first page of goggle than someone who is complaining about you and trying to hurt your reputation.

5) Give back freely to the community and to your network. One of the ways I do this is to often do speaking engagements for free. I am also a natural connector. I will frequently make an introduction of one person to another, for something that they both can benefit in, even though I have no financial interest in either one of the people being introduced.

The time to think about building your reputation bank is before you need it. Before you actually have some sort of a crisis. It's like trying to buy insurance after your house is flooded. It doesn’t work well after the fact.

Ask daily " what can I do today to build my reputation bank?".

Jim Estill

Measuring Social Media

Measuring media has been a challenge of business for a long time. I even wrote a controversial blog entry here on
The Fallacy of Return On Investment in Marketing.

Now with internet, social media and web 2.0, the challenge is even greater. This new media has "democratized" the press and proliferation is huge. Tracking this new media and combining it with "old media" measurement is the new goal.

Let's first remember how much the media world has changed. Media was formally shout box from Brands to Consumers: TV, Radio, and Print: that was about it. Then technology and the Internet came along with a major curveball.

The world went online. All the news, weather, sports - everything went online. The sources of information increased dramatically. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc became easily accessible to all. Plus, these medias had influence. But their influence varied based on the number and character of each site. They are not all of equal value. It depends on the quantity and quality of the readership. Measuring the sentiment and changes in sentiment became a challenge.

Listen carefully. The noise on the internet is your customers. Your place is determined by your competitors. You need to see where you stand. Measuring it is the new challenge. Twitter, Blogs and Web sites can make and break companies. And there is no professional editor checking facts. But the media value still impacts. Measuring social media is not like measuring the news. These are your very customers, the most passionate of the bunch, talking about the very products you
are trying to sell. Listen to nuances, the qualitative component of discussion. Discover the context, associated topics and sentiment-laden words. And then check for volume, exposure, and statistical relevance. Your focus groups are
fine, but this is better.

The world has shifted from a few huge media sources to a multitude of small ones. The tough challenge is - how do you measure all this new media? What is the value of it. The new term is Media value. Measuring it is the new challenge.

Marketing Impact Measurement - Whether it's a product launch, public relations push, or advertising campaign, you need a yardstick to measure the reaction. In today's world, Media is leveraged such that you may pay for your first set
of eyeballs, but the rest come as word-of-mouth. Media Value is a new way of attributing impact and measuring the success or failure of marketing initiatives. Your tracking studies can work, but this is better (and cheaper).

Brand awareness is the key. Where does your brand stand? Where do you stand compared to the competition? And importantly, is the perception changing positively or negatively? Knowing what people feel about brands is important. Or trying to get a brand onto the radar. Not only awareness, perception, sentiment. All these are key components.

It is good to have an early warning system. Something that can tell you if sentiment is changing for or against you or for or against a trend. It is also great to know and understand the value of that media.

Measuring marketing impact is the key. Social media can give valuable feedback on the success (or failure) of a media campaign. Having the public comments and weighing them can provide critical decision making data.

Marketers are turning to things like media value reports by General Sentiment to try to figure out the value of various social media mentions and to determine the trending - whether it is positive or negative.

Overspray in Marketing

Overspray is a big problem for marketers just as it is for people who paint houses with a spray gun (this is how most people paint stucco houses these days), getting paint on the windows costs paint and worst yet costs inconvenience to the home owner (or the painter) who either has to remove the paint or live with the ugliness of paint splatter on the glass.

The same concept applies in marketing. If a marketer buys an advertisement in a local newspaper for a nail salon, the natural overspray (at least in most cases) is the 50% of the readers who are men who are unlikely to ever use the services of the nail salon or ever buy from them. Even among the female population, there is significant overspray depending on the location where the actual nail salon is, the hours, whether or not the woman actually are in the market for a new nail salon.

So in an ideal world, marketers would love to target only the prospects who are perfect customers for them. Customers who are in the market for their product, in the right place, right time, right geography, right price range, with money, etc.

Overspray in marketing also has a cost. The cost is the attention and irritation that can build in the cunsumers that are over-sprayed. The biggest place where this is apparent is in email marketing. I try never to give out my email address if I can avoid it, simply because some people take an email address and then spam me with offers for products that I would never buy and have no interest in. In this case, I am the overspray. My inconvenience is having to look at it in my e-mail and delete it. In this case, overspray is easy for the marketer although it still has some cost to enter in the email address and it can have a cost in goodwill, because if a company is particularly aggressive at spamming me, I may get irritated and send them an e-mail or tell all of my friends about it. It can cost a company reputation in the community.

So we recognize the problem but I've never particularly liked problems unless there are solutions. The solution most publications use is publishing demographics on who their readership is. So a magazine, newspaper or television show will say that it's predominantly read or watched by an audience in a certain age and socioeconomic bracket. This method helps but is not perfect. Although 80% of their readers might be in the right demographic, there will still be overspray as mentioned earlier.

One of the best ways to target is to market to buyers who have proven a predilection to buying your product. For example, I have been doing some consulting work for a vitamin company. Doing emails or mailings to their previous customers makes total sense.

Another technique is targeting a customer who buys a similar product. For example, it's probable that someone who buys a fur is likely to buy jewelry. And of course in each case there is a price point, someone who buys $20 costume jewelry is in no way likely to buy a fur.

One mistake marketers make is believing that getting more people to see or hear their message is better than less people. In reality I would argue that you're better off to have more of the right people listening to your message and with more of the right people listening, you can make more of your sales.

For example I would rather send a newsletter to 500 people who have a 50% chance of buying from me (250 sales) than to 10,000 who have a 1% (100 sales) chance of buying from me.

Targeting can have the added benefit of reducing the overall cost of marketing even though targeting often increases the cost per contact. Buying a particularly targeted list will cost more per contact than a general flyer drop but because you can print and send less flyers, the overall campaign can be less expensive.

Split run testing is another way to determine how good an audience is for the message. Send the message to 2 or more different audiences and see which one has the best result.

Marketing is all about the numbers and analyzing results from the numbers and in many cases too much overspray reduces the value (money spent to business achieved) of a marketing campaign.

Jim Estill

The 3 Links of Selling

Sales is all about links.

In order to sell, it helps to get to know people. It helps to stay in touch with them. It helps to connect with them. People like to buy from friends. More friends - more sales.

In the old days, one of the ways to do this was by playing golf or hitting the links. So at one time (some people would still say that time has not passed and insist this is the only way even now) golf links were very important.

Then came the era of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an awesome tool for staying in touch with people. Mostly because many people are increasingly changing jobs and it's tough to keep in touch with everybody. LinkedIn has your friends maintain their contact information rather than you having to keep current.

Essentially it allows you to stay in touch whenever you want to. LinkedIn also allows you to send updates, similar to Twitter of Facebook, which are a good, soft way of staying in touch with people.

LinkedIn is also a great tool for connecting to people whom you don't yet know because you can see who is connected to and ask for a warm introduction.

The third link is about links to your website and blog. Increasingly people are finding business partners and suppliers on the Internet and the most common way to do this is through Internet searching. In order to rank high on the Internet searches (you really want to be on the first page), you need to have what's called a high PageRank. PageRank is determined by the number of quality inbound links coming to your page.

As you can see, it's all about the links.