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Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Archives for March 2018

“Follow Me Home” Is a Solid Gold Gift

March 25, 2018 by Jim Blasingame

First, let’s establish two maxims: one classic, one new.

Classic: The cardinal rule of customer acquisition – it’s not your customer’s job to keep your business top-of-mind, it’s yours.

New: Every year your website becomes less of a destination and more of a distribution center – develop a strategy that doesn’t depend upon prospects and customers returning to your homepage every time they need/want something from you.

It’s easier to keep a customer than find a new one – everybody knows that. The bad news is, with all of the mega-corp algorithms, online competitors, and cyber-clutter, keeping the attention of even our most loyal patrons is getting harder every day. But here’s the good news: For every example of how technology makes business more complicated, there is a corresponding tool or application that increases efficiency and productivity. Even for small businesses.

One prime example of how to stay on the radar screen of people who already know you – users, prospects, customers – is to practice what I call the “Follow me home” strategy.

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Filed Under: Customer Care, e-business, Ethics / Trust

You can buy your American Dream from someone else

March 17, 2018 by Jim Blasingame

The American Dream has many components, but to me, the big three are: liberty, business ownership, and home ownership. The order is intentional.

1. Liberty is prime because it makes the other two possible. Freedom is from God, but liberty is a contract we give to each other. 

2. Business ownership in America has produced more self-determination than any other force in history, including from all of the associated jobs. 

3. Homeownership is available to all Americans who’ve claimed one of those jobs. 

 As much as the latter two are part of our liberty, business ownership is the most challenging.  Blasingame’s 1st Law of Small Business states: “It’s easy to start a small business, but it’s not easy to operate and grow one.” 

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Filed Under: Franchising / Licensing

Mobile Computing Will Dominate Your Future

March 11, 2018 by Jim Blasingame

What if I told you that seven-of-ten of the prospects and customers in your market can’t find your business? You’d be very disturbed by that, wouldn’t you?

Now, what if I told you that three-fourths of the calls your prospects and customers want to make to your business are not getting through? Would I be able to see the veins in your neck as you raise your voice to declare that such a thing would be impossible?

Well, in the past year or so, addressing small business audiences around the country, I’ve asked this simple question: “How many of you have a website that conforms to the small screen – a mobile website?” I’m sorry to report that the number of attendees who raised their hands – across multiple industries – was in the vast minority.

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Filed Under: e-business, Marketing / Branding / Advertising, Mobile Computing, Sales / Sales Management, Technology / General, Uncategorized

Storytelling – older than the marketplace

March 4, 2018 by Jim Blasingame

Storytelling: older than the marketplace

 Cogito ergo sum. French philosopher Rene Descartes proposed this idea in 1637, which translates to “I think, therefore I am.” Certainly, the power of abstract thought is what separates humans from other animals. 

Anthropologists now believe Homo sapiens succeeded, unlike other members of the genus Homo, Neanderthals, and Cro-Magnon for example, because their (our) brains had a greater capacity for speech and language. Today Descartes might modify his philosophy to “I think and speak, therefore I am.”  In Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith proposed the written word as one of the three great human inventions; the other two are money and mathematics. But long before humans were writing we were telling stories. And these stories – told, memorized and retold over millennia – became the headwaters of human development. We, humans, love to tell stories almost as much as we love to listen to them. 

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

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