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118 Seconds

Jeff Hayzlett's At last year's AlphaGraphics conference in Tucson, our featured speaker was Jeff Hayzlett, the author of "The Mirror Test" and the recent Chief Marketing Officer at Kodak. The context of the title is a question about whether your business is still breathing.  In the book, he talks about the 118.  This is his name for the elevator pitch.  The name reflects the amount of time, in seconds,  in a normal elevator ride. You have 8 seconds to get their attention and about 110 seconds the tell your story in an interesting way to hook them. If you haven't made the sale in the 118 seconds, you have lost. Based upon that analogy, Alphagraphics asked the franchise network to submit videos of their 118 with prizes going to the best presentation. The focus of the contest would be to present our offering based upon the "New Now" and the theme of our upcoming conference in Las Vegas in August of "All In". I will say that the videos are great and most of them are very entertaining.  The world can go see the videos at this link. 118 Seconds Videos. My favorite is the DJayMoney video. The videos are all fine and good and they reflect very well on the talent we have in our system. However, I do not believe that these videos reflect the spirit of a 118 second pitch.  I rarely see a projection or TV screen in an elevator. The pitch has to come out 1-on-1. With this, I submit my 118 second elevator pitch for the world: Hi, I'm Steve Adams, owner of the Alphagraphics Center from down the street. Our role, in this day is to get the revenues of our local small and medium-sized businesses back to where they were prior to the recession. Most of the these businesses in the Phoenix market have seen reductions of revenue over the last 36-months of up to 40%. My job is to help these businesses get this revenue back. We have a 5-pronged attack to accomplish this: First, we help our customers to identify their best prospects by analyzing their current customer habits. We do an in-depth analysis of their current customers and then we identify the prospects that will best respond t0 that businesses messages. From this customer analysis, we also identify current customer needs that can be focused on by future marketing efforts. Second, we plan a detailed marketing plan which will include several channels of communication. This marketing plan will cover such things as branding website rankings, seo and sem, print media and mailing, email marketing,  social media as well as opportunities to use mobile marketing. Third, based upon this approved marketing plan, we will help a business plan their marketing budget and their marketing timeline. Fourth, we will implement the plan using our experienced marketing associates. And finally, we will provide the metrics that show how the current marketing plan is working which allows us to adjust the marketing effort as we go. Can I arrange a meeting to start the process with your company? Well, not as exciting as the videos, but this is how it will have to happen in real life to get the sale. You can always contact us at the following AlphaGraphics websites: AlphaGraphics Mesa Printing and Marketing FaceBook Fan Page AlphaGraphics Tempe Printing and Marketing FaceBook Fan Page AlphaGraphics Phoenix Printing and Marketing FaceBook Fan Page Twitter: @steveadams291 LinkedIn: stepheneugeneadams

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