Day two included another round of interesting speakers.  We began with a horse of a different color as Paul Orfalea, Founder of Kinkos, shared his store, advice and leadership style (close the door and let the kids run the store). Then we moved on to customer satisfaction and the Net Promoter Score as described by Fred Reichheld, auther of The Ultimate Question.  That question being. “Would you enthusiastically recommend our company to a friend?”  That’s it.  Get them to rate this on a scale of 1 to 10 and if you get a 7 or lower ask them if it is ok for someone to call them.  Kaihan Krippendorf, auther of The Art of the Advantage then walked us all through the famous 36 Strategems of eastern warfare. The key to using these is to master the patterns in order to quickly apply the appropriate strategem as you confront different competitive and negotiation situations in your business and personal life.  The day concluded with a magical addition to the schedule.  Literally, we were entertained by a magician who suggested we should not forget to enjoy the ride and remember the kid in all of us. 

The annual Gazelles Growth Summit began today in Las Vegas with a host of interesting speakes. Robert Bloom was first at the podium to discuss his new book Inside Advantage. It is a good read and I will write a separate post on it soon. Bloom is full of real life examples from his long career at several ad agencies including CEO of Publis Group.

Using real life examples including Sothwest Airlines, Zales Jewelers, Juicy Juice () and Curves, Bloom describes his process for creating and defending a sustainable market position. In short define your customer as one individual person, create an uncommon offering for this person, describe how you will define your uncommon offering to your customer and then Own It through a series of Imaginative Acts.

Geoffrey Moore followed with a discussion of some new models for defining where shareholder value can best be improved. Moore began with a discussion of Net Free Cash Flow and suggested the best way for early stage companies to increase valuation is to improve the long term prospects by focusing on increasing “Power” where you can get the biggest bang for the buck.

Moore talked about five types of Power and described how these match to marketing activities as shown in this table:

He went on to suggest small companies should focus on Product Marketing which leads to Offer Power.

Then we were employed to maximize the ethical influencial power afforded us through the laws of human nature as studied and described by Robert Cialdini. He outlined six primary areas that afford us influence:
Reciprocation – I scratch your back; you scratch mine
Consensus – What everyone else is doing
Authority – Trusted, knowledgable source