10-Point Plan in Action: The Off-site meeting
Money Can’t Buy Love
At a recent corporate team-building meeting, I experienced a speaker’s dream of a setup. The company VP who spoke before me discussed a tactic used by the competition — how they secretly pay people to talk about them from speaker platforms and in the press.
That simple shocking story made my opening statement easy. I repeated the competition’s tactic, then I quoted Paul McCartney …
I don’t care too much for money. Money can’t buy me love.
The company in the room already had a core community of enthusiasts who are fiercely loyal fans.
We talked about how love beats money and these six steps that will get people who love you together into a community and talking about you:
- Build your network before you need it.
- Share that story about you that connects people.
- Let them tell it the way they want to. Leave lots of room for positive mutation. People feel ownership when they contribute.
- Make it easy, fun, and meaningful to share the message with friends.
- Make it so that folks feel proud, important, part of something they do together.
- Reward and celebrate your heroes who share what you do.
I used this presentation to organize my thoughts around those ideas.
We discussed how great marketing and growing businesses are a balance of
- leadership and loyalty — leaders learn from our heroes, align our goals with our advocates, and attract loyal fans with by valuing them.
- customer and company — great businesses value both customers and company. They know that without the company customers won’t be served and without customers the company can’t survive.
Today, I’m talking to another already irresistible organization about the same six steps and the underlying values inside their value proposition.
Great businesses are about one community — employees, vendors, partners, clients, customers — looking in the same direction, working together to build something no one person can build alone. Communities like that grow companies that serve customers who love them. Those customers bring their trust and their energy and are quick to share your best stories with their friends.
That’s how we get to be the first trusted source — a stand alone value that can’t be copied or replaced.
This week I met with the corporation that held the off-site. We began planning the strategy for making it even easier, faster, and more meaningful — irresistible — for the existing community to meet online, offline and even at the company. We’ll be showing them how they can share ideas, swap strategies, and invite their best friends to join them. We’ll be extending an unending invitation to become a bigger part of the living story of how a company and it’s customers grow together and thrive.
What’s your best story — the one that customers are already telling about you?
How easy are making for your heroes to meet each other and pass it on?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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