It's All About THEM - Author Bruce Turkel shares valuable branding advice for business and life
Grow your business by focusing on others
by Terry Brock for Business Journals
Successful relationship marketers know that business is about people. It is about building relationships with customers, with employees, and with other key stakeholders. To succeed in business requires a mentality to focus on them and their needs, not just focus on what you want.
Successful Resume-Writing —- and selling in business
Recently I had the opportunity to interview Bruce Turkel about his book “All About Them: Grow Your Business By Focusing on Others” To see the video, click on the link to " DTube" at the bottom of this post.
Turkel is a branding and marketing expert from Miami who frequently appears on Fox Business and other networks. As I talked with him he shared the importance of writing a resume in a contrary way in order to get the job.
Most people use a resume as a way to talk about what they want. Turkel says you will get better experience by thinking of what the other person is looking for. Frankly, they don’t care that “you’re looking for a challenging position with growth opportunities, blah, blah, blah.” They care about how you can make them look good for hiring you. They want their supervisors to compliment them on hiring just the right candidate for that position. As Turkel says in the book, “Your career is unimportant to them except as it affects theirs.”
This same principle applies in selling to your customer. They flat out don’t care that your new-fangled widgets have a whirly-do with pink thinga-ma-bobs on them (all the features). They care about how your new widget will help them. The more you can make your conversation all about them, the more successful you will be.
I like this line from the book: “Like friends, good brands make people feel good. But great brands make people feel good about themselves.”
Does passion have a place in business?
I taught CPAs for many years the benefits of doing their traditional write-up and accounting work on spreadsheets. This was back in the early 80’s when a tool called Lotus 1-2-3 was all the rage. Most CPAs aren’t known for being overly emotional. They tend to be more serious, objective, and, well, balanced. Yet I learned when presenting that when I could use humor, fun, and imminently practical applications, they enjoyed the learning experience much more. I often joke that several of those CPAs came dangerously close to having an emotion!
The passion and enthusiasm that comes from getting the right tool (in this case Lotus 1-2-3) and letting it accomplish more in less time was exciting. Passion was a big part of the learning process for these CPAs. Passion is a big part of business as it relates to helping others achieve their goals.
Think of the passion that people have at places like Facebook, Apple, and Google, to name three hot companies. Employees are passionate about what they do. Customers are passionate about using products. Sometimes the passion is favorable and other times not so favorable, but passion is an element in what is involved.
Passion also helps in conveying your message. As Turkel says, “Sharing your passion will help eliminate any concern that you may have about blowing your own horn and shamelessly marketing yourself.” You both win when your employees and customers see that you are genuinely passionate about how you can use your products and services to help them achieve their goals.
Turning a nationally-seen negative into a positive
Turkel shared a story about a time he was on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News program, The O’Reilly Factor. Turkel is often on national TV as a branding expert and he was on The O’Reilly Factor a while back talking about a controversial topic. On this evening O’Reilly disagreed with Turkel’s position and told him he was “zero for two.”
Yet, in the midst of this, Turkel was able to make a third point where O’Reilly agreed and said “You’ve just brought up a brilliant point.” Turkel has used that sound bite to illustrate the benefits of pivoting from what could have been a negative into a strong positive. Make it your goal to focus on “all about them” and you can turn the proverbial lemons into lemonade. Always be on the lookout for a way to help the other person achieve their goals, no matter what happens.
Focus on the other person and practicing relationship marketing the right way. Remember that you succeed in business, and in life, when you make it your goal to think of their point of view and tailor your message to be all about them.
———————————————————————————————————————
Success in life is about helping others. This applies to business and to your personal life. The more value you can bring to others, the more value you'll experience yourself.
In this video I get to share with a an interview I had with Bruce Turkel, the author of "It's All About Them." Turkel is a branding expert and has worked with major companies like Bacardi and organizations like The City of Miami, Florida. He is a member of the Speaker Hall of Fame and a best-selling author.
Watch this video and learn from this marketing genius on how you can turn around your business and even your personal life by practicing these principles. Please leave a comment. I look forward to hearing from you!
Terry
Terry L. Brock, MBA, CSP, CPAE
Member, Professional Speaker Hall of Fame
Certified Speaking Professional
2018 Recipient of the National Speakers Association's Highest Award, The Cavett
Master of Ceremonies
Professional Video Coach
Syndicated Columnist with Business Journals (43 papers across USA, 11 million monthly page views)
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/bio/19251/TerryBrock
See some wonderful (!) videos on my YouTube Channel!
https://www.youtube.com/user/TerryLBrock/videos
My TEDxBocaRaton presentation.
Former Editor-in-Chief for AT&T's Networking Exchange Blog
Former Chief Enterprise Blogger for Skype
www.TerryBrock.com, [email protected]
+1-407-363-0505
@TerryBrock - Twitter
@terrybrock - Steemit
www.facebook.com/SpeakerTerryBrock
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marketerterrybrock
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS