I’ve been on a 10-day, road-trip vacation through the Midwest with my wife and five kids.  We saw 10 states, a ton of interesting sites and more corn than I care to mention.   With the exception of three 10-minute glances at my Blackberry, I left work completely alone.  It was great and my family LOVED it.  My oldest son said on the last day of the trip, “This is the best vacation we’ve ever had!”  Success.

Last Monday, we went to an amusement park.  The roller coasters were great, the games stole a bunch of my money and the stuffed animals I won were, well, cheap.  But we had a good time because my kids and I love riding roller coasters.  The interesting thing was a comment my wife made as we left.  I thought the day was a huge success, but she said, “Well, it’s certainly not Disneyland.”  I thought the rides were more fun than Disneyland’s.  But she was annoyed that the grounds weren’t clean.  I started asking her questions about what she loves about Disneyland.  It all came down to cleanliness, familiar characters and happy, cheerful employees.

Truth is, I think the characters were the least important part to my wife.  She spreads word-of-mouth wildfire about Disneyland because of clean grounds and happy employees.  She won’t tell anyone about the amusement park we went to the other day.  Considering the cost of acquiring new customers, this was a great lesson for me.

In working with business owners and entrepreneurs over the years, I’ve noticed that when it comes to acquiring new customers, most of them are hunters.  They pounce on new leads, chase the prospects, make themselves readily available to the prospect and then bend over backwards to land the new customer.

On the other hand, I’ve noticed that the most successful business owners and entrepreneurs take a different approach to customer acquisition: they are harvesters.  They gather in all their leads, work hard to prevent any from slipping through the cracks, cultivate those leads and then harvest them when the time is right for the customer.

The most interesting thing about these two styles is that the hunter usually gets tired, a bit humiliated and ends up getting small margins.  On the other hand, the harvester stays fresh, confident and usually earns higher margins.

What I’ve described here is the difference between a sales mentality (hunter) and a marketing mentality (harvester).  Every business owner or entrepreneur who experiences some level of success has hunting skills… and that’s good.  But the difference between minor success and major success is the difference between hunting and harvesting.

Oh, and just so we’re clear… I’m not saying that harvesting is an easy, non-aggressive job.  When it’s time to harvest, you swing the sickle sharp and fast.

Happy harvesting!

Every business has a sales department.  And every business has a marketing department.  Sometimes those departments are one in the same.  And sometimes those departments are one person wearing (at least) two different hats.  But the point is, we all recognize there are two hats.

Well, a recent article on InsideCRM suggests there ought to be a third hat: the lead warming department.  Why?  Because so many leads die in between the marketing department and the sales department.  As pointed out in the InsideCRM article, we recently ran a survey and found that follow-up failure is the biggest challenge business owners and entrepreneurs face in their marketing efforts.

Most of the CRM software solutions out there will help business owners get organized in their marketing efforts.  And that’s a step in the right direction.  But what business owners really need is a software solution that not only organizes the marketing, but automatically executes it for them… which is why I love what we do at Infusionsoft. 

Last week, Scott Martineau, and I spent a couple days in the Bay Area and then we flew out to Cleveland for a day of consulting with Dan Kennedy.  The Bay Area was great, as always.  I love the entrepreneurial vibe that oozes out of San Jose.

Sidebar—a couple funny stories.  First, our car got towed from metered parking when we were seriously no more than 120 seconds overdue.  Those dang tow trucks in downtown San Francisco are Johnny on the Spot.  Our car was towed to an impound yard called “Auto Recall—We Care!”  Whatever.  Second funny story had to do with the dinner Scott ordered at the Village Pub.  Let’s just say that “soft-shelled crab” is nothing like Alaskan crab legs.  When the waiter brought Scott his plate, all he could say was, “Wow!  There’s a mamma crab and a papa crab,” and they were staring right at Scott, waiting for him to dig in.  I don’t think Scott’s recommending soft-shelled crab these days.

Anyway, back to my point.  The long flights to and from Cleveland gave me a chance to read a couple of books: one by Dan Kennedy called Ruthless Management of People and Profits; the other by Michael Gerber called Awakening the Entrepreneur Within.  Dan’s book is a pragmatic, realistic, no-holds-barred approach to managing people to build a profitable venture.  Michael’s book is an idealistic, optimistic, dream-the-impossible approach to building an enduring, world-class organization. 

Both books have so much good in them.  I recommend them both.  But it’s the blending of the two philosophies that I think provides the real power to think big and swing for the fences.  I consider both Dan and Michael to be world-class entrepreneurs.  Both have had a profound influence on me and our company.  And I recommend all entrepreneurs study both of their works.

Our customers are smart entrepreneurs.  At a show a couple months ago, one of our customers pulled me aside and gave me a suggestion.  He recommended we take Infusionsoft to our customers in major cities around the country, training them on the software and helping them revolutionize the way they grow their businesses.  I took him up on the suggestion and we launched the Marketing Revolution Tour.

I was in Dallas last week on the Tour.  Had a great visit with about 25 customers.  It’s always fun to be with customers, hear what they’re doing and see their enthusiasm for the software and the way it’s helping them grow.  I also love hearing the clever ways they’re using the software, applying it to all different aspects of their sales and marketing.  I swear our customers are way smarter than we are–it’s just plain fun to see how they’re using the software.

Anyway, the Revolution Tour has been a great success.  Third stop on the Tour is tomorrow in Houston.  I’m grateful to Andrew Lock, the customer who recommended we do the Tour.  He was spot-on in his recommendation… which is no surprise because he’s a savvy entrepreneur and marketer.  By the way, Andrew has created a cool online TV show for entrepreneurs who want to improve their marketing.  I highly recommend it.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of getting to know Anita Campbell, an expert on all things small business.  Anita runs www.smallbiztrends.com and she recently invited me to be a guest expert on her site.  I gladly accepted and I now blog on her site each month.

My first blog was posted yesterday.  I wrote about “Your On Again, Off Again Marketing Relationship” and it generated a bunch of great comments.  Check it out.

I’m a huge Phoenix Suns fan.  I have enjoyed their strong regular season win-loss records for the past 20 years.  No team in the NBA has a better regular season winning record than the Phoenix Suns over the past 20 years.  But championships aren’t won in the regular season.  Championships are won in the playoffs when mental toughness, not talent, is the most important characteristic of a team.

This year I hoped we would finally break through.  We traded Shawn Marion (who I love as a player) for Shaquille O’Neal.  As much as I hated to lose Marion, I believed it was a good trade that would help us in the Playoffs when toughness would be required.  Shaq’s tougher than Marion.  And some of the other guys have stepped up their toughness.  But one thing is still missing…

The leader of the team is the coach.  And although I like a lot of things about the Suns’ coach, Mike D’Antoni, I really don’t like his mental toughness.  It’s weak, simply put.  In Game 1, he made so many crucial mental mistakes in crunch time that I was yelling at the TV like an idiot.  I’ve since seen the error of my ways and calmed down… a little 

Toughness.  NBA Championship coaches have it and their teams mirror their coaches’ toughness in the way the teams play.

What does this mean for entrepreneurs?  You’ve gotta be mentally tough to win, to lead your team, to accomplish something so many others say you can’t accomplish.  You’ve gotta be smart, calculated, hard-nosed and tenacious in your pursuit of your entrepreneurial goals.  And if you’re leading a group of people, I can promise you this, if you don’t develop the mental toughness your company needs, your people will not exhibit that toughness in their work every day.

Our re-branding initiative has created quite a stir.  One of my all-time favorite bloggers, Paul Greenberg, called us out in a recent blog post.  You can see my reply on his blog.  Suffice it to say, our focus is on entrepreneurs and small businesses and what they need to efficiently GROW their businesses, regardless of what the market calls our software.

As I said in my reply to Paul, I think eMarketing software more accurately describes the marketing automation software we provide to help small businesses grow fast.  Simply put, eMarketing software is automated, integrated marketing and sales.  And I think automated, integrated marketing and sales (or eMarketing software as we say) is the future of small business.  Whatever it’s called, I think Paul and I agree on the fact that automated, integrated marketing and sales is the future of small business.

In CRM Magazine, writer Marshall Lager’s coverage of our re-branding pointed out that Aberdeen Group’s research bodes well for our focus on marketing automation.  Lager said:

Infusionsoft may be tapping into emerging market demand. According to research from Aberdeen Group, “the average small business does not have the luxury of many disparate solutions due to budget and resource constraints, but…they are aware of the benefits of these technologies.” In fact, Aberdeen says, 76 percent of small businesses — which the research firm defines as having annual revenues of less than $10 million — do not currently use marketing automation solutions, but 66 percent are planning to implement them over the next 2 years. Aberdeen also suggests that all organizations are “starting to assess the strategic value of integration between sales and marketing technologies.”

Hmmm… “The strategic value of integration between sales and marketing technologies” ???  Sounds like eMarketing to me. 

When I did my MBA program about 10 years ago at BYU’s Marriott School of Management, there weren’t many schools in the country offering an Entrepreneurship track.  I had one class on running small and family-held businesses, which was outstanding.  But beyond that, there wasn’t much offered.

Lately, I’ve noticed more and more universities and b-schools offering up Entrepreneurship degrees and MBA tracks.  I think that’s GREAT!  And I have some pretty strong opinions about what should be offered.

So, the other day when I read Scott Shane’s post on Anita Campbell’s blog, I had to chime in.  Scott’s original post and the many replies are seriously worth the read for any entrepreneur.  Check it out.

I’ve spent some time recently with John Jantsch, a great guy who really knows his stuff when it comes to small business marketing. He’s written one of my favorite books on the subject, Duct Tape Marketing, and we recently did a podcast together where we talked about the real engine of business growth - marketing automation. Check it out. I think you’ll be glad you listened.