#1 S&M Book; Scoreboards Everywhere; New ABC; Coastal.com Rings Bell

"…keeping you great"

HEADLINES:  

Scoreboards
Everywhere
— Many of you have seen photos of the huge scoreboard RedBalloon
prominently displays in their HQ providing real time tracking of their BHAG. Now
they have electronic scoreboards everywhere (why doesn’t everyone do this!!),
more below including photos and video, but first…

Coastal.com Rings NASDAQ Opening Bell
— congrats to Gazelles200 member Roger Hardy and his 700 teammates at

Coastal.com. Last Monday they rang the bell to celebrate going public (COA).
Building the world’s leading provider of eyewear, take
1 minute to watch Roger appear on the big screen in Times Square as he
introduces his firm and rings the bell. What a milestone!!

#1 Sales and Marketing Book
— since its release two weeks ago Dan Pink’s book
To Sell is Human
has shot to the #1 sales and marketing book and is outpacing his huge bestseller
Drive.
Just a few minutes ago I received confirmation that Dan is diverting his travel
and is going to be our opening keynote
at the

Leadership Summit in Orlando May 9 – 10.
And given that he’s one of the top 5 biz speakers in the world right now, it’s a
big deal. Book club members will be getting two copies – one for you and one to
give to someone in your company.

ABC of Selling
– we’re all in sales, especially raising children or managing people! As Pink
notes in his book "one adage of the sales trade has long been ABC – Always Be
Closing." In Part Two of his book he introduces the new ABCs – Attunement,
Buoyancy, and Clarity. All of us can master these three attributes of people
effective at moving others to action – and as I noted in an earlier insight,
Pink suggests introverts might have an advantage this century. BTW, Part One is
great (the opening story in chapter 1 strangely brought tears to my eyes), but
if short of time, go right to the first chapter of Part 2 to quickly get the
essence of ABC. Then come hear Pink and a half-dozen other bestselling biz
authors speak in at the

Leadership Summit.

Transaction Every Two
Seconds — speaking
of selling, RedBalloon expects to reach their BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) 2
years ahead of schedule. Australia’s number provider of gifted experiences,
offering over 2500 experiences, Naomi Simson and her team set an aggressive goal
to sell 2 million experiences at a time 8 years ago when they had only sold
7500. Currently at just over 1.6 million, they expect to hit their target
sometime in May this year. So it’s time to update their BHAG.

5 Million ‘Good Times’ By
2020 —

take 2 minutes and watch their new BHAG launch video. Notes Simson, "We have
started talking about the ‘beyond’ BHAG’ and our theme this year is all about
Customer Love — we are teaching our team and suppliers about NPS (Net Promoter
Score). This way we will roll into the new BHAG…getting people ‘dreaming’
already so we don’t fall in a hole when we achieve the 2 million." Exactly!!

Scoreboards Everywhere
— Simson continues "and we now have electronic scoreboards of everything in
every corner of the office (as well as the big main score board)." And during
the holiday season their consumer marketing team set-up a war room in which they
huddled every hour, keeping them laser focused on maximizing sales – if you want
to move faster, pulse faster.

Here’s a link to photos of the scoreboards. And don’t let the first photo
fool you – it’s a large flat screen and those are electronic images of paper
charts.

Biggest Weakness
— I was visiting a client’s offices over the holidays – one of the coolest
facilities I’ve seen. However, what were glaringly missing were scoreboards.
Think of a sports stadium – everyone is within sight of the scoreboard. Great
companies do these kinds of things.

Friday Complimentary
Webinar — 1pm ET
January 18 "Be Sure Your Annual Plan Stays on Track"


Register Now.