Sweet Tea

On June 2nd there was an article in the News & Observer’s Life section with the bold title “Refresh Your Iced Tea … Add some new twists to the South’s favorite summer drink”. As part of this article by Andrea Weigl, Fred Thompson’s take on the South’s penchant for sweet tea was that sweet tea balances the acidity of two other southern favorites: fried foods and vinegary foods – especially (eastern NC style) vinegary barbecue. The article title and comment captured my attention for a momentary musing that then rolled right into a business thought.

What do new twists on sweet tea have to do with business? The concept makes an important reminder than even something already good can be enhanced with a refreshed view, a new direction, a shiny (and helpful) new bell or whistle now and then.

So think about periodically taking time to add some extra energy to your business - cast an eye toward what might be getting a little tired and shoot some juice into it. How about looking for balance – are you artfully matching customer and client needs with your products and services? What more could you do? Have you checked on that lately? How about infusing your current marketing with new vitality and new direction –are you keeping up with changing times to share your company’s message?

Sweet tea is good, but sometimes adding a refreshing twist takes it to a whole new level. Borrow the concept – add a special twist to your business and keep your eye on the results!

August Issue 2010

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Happenings

August

Business Alliance After Hours

****No August After Hours!****

New Venue starting in September – watch for the announcement!

Business Alliance Open Table

Join other Business Alliance Partners and Associates for a casual lunch and free ranging conversations in the Main Dining Room at the Capital City Club.

 

Navigation Series: Unit Three: Growth Strategies: Marketing – Sales – Customer Experience – Distinct and Important!

Unit Three begins by clarifying the roles of marketing and sales and moves on to give you more tools to help you find your market, develop and execute a marketing plan. You also will learn to define your relationship with your customer with the goal of creating effective marketing and the best customer experience. North Carolina State University is providing the key facilitator for August and September.

This kickoff session will be divided into three parts:

# 1 - Marketing vs. Sales

• learn key functional distinctions between Marketing and Sales
• learn how to make sure you are maximizing these functions instead of creating friction, gaps, and overlaps

# 2 - ABC Analysis and Business Fundamental Tables

• learn more on how to best delineate and segment your market
• learn how to apply simple business structure to set the foundation to move solid marketing planning into real executable steps

# 3 - One-2-One Relationship Marketing & Customer Experience

• learn about marketing tools of the trade
• learn how they are applied to generate & nurture leads
• learn why you should incorporate Customer Experience strategy in your next marketing plan (and what a Customer Experience Life Cycle is all about)

Facilitators:

Joseph (Joe) Pirozzi has been involved in high tech Sales/Sales Management with start-up organizations as well as Fortune 100 companies for the last 30 years. Companies he has worked with include BMW of North America and Eaton. Joe held various leadership positions throughout his career, including National Sales and Marketing Vice President and Global Director of Sales. Joe has been involved in establishing new businesses as well as growing existing organizations with local, national, and international responsibility. He has been involved in most aspects of organizational operations in supporting his role in Sales and Marketing. After retiring in August 2008, Joe joined NC State’s College of Management as a Full Time Lecturer teaching Global Marketing, Personal Selling, and Marketing Management, both in-house and Distance Education. He holds an MBA from Fordham University and also has a BS in Business Management.

George Culbertson, founding partner at GAP Marketing Group, has a 30 year career ranging from a sales rep and sales management to a CMO with primary expertise in sales and marketing. George creates client strategies that unite the sales and marketing process and drives new business. He has worked for a Fortune 50 company as well as mid-sized and startup technology businesses. He holds an MBA from Duke University, a BS in Biology and a BA in Philosophy.

Pete Vorenkamp is a founding partner at GAP Marketing Group. Pete has 25+ years of cross-functional experience spanning a wide range of leadership roles including technical consulting, business development, program and operations management, marketing, sales development, and customer experience strategy. Currently Pete’s focus is developing and executing strategic marketing programs allowing clients to evolve into highly differentiated and valued companies. Pete holds an MBA from Fuqua School of Business at Duke and a BS in Engineering.

September

Business Alliance Business Connection Expo

“From Us to You – from Retail to Technology” - a double decker event with Exhibits on both floors!

Join us at the beautiful Cardinal Club for the Fall Business Connection Expo. Take a leisurely stroll through the exhibits, see what’s new in the business world, feast your eyes on beautiful custom jewelry, things for your home, try out some new health and beauty products - just take the opportunity to hear about (and even buy) great products and advantageous business services in a warm, relaxed, no-pressure atmosphere.

Complimentary soft drinks and hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar plus Door Prizes galore from 6:15 until 7:30!

Business Alliance After Hours

*New Venue – New Date*

Watch for upcoming announcements!

Business Alliance Leader Lunch

NC Politics 2010: Potential for Partisan Power Shift

John Davis, a political analyst, writer and consultant who has followed North Carolina politics for 25 years, will speak on the key election year trends pointing to a waning of voter support for one-party rule in North Carolina and the growing potential for an era of divided partisan power in our state. John will cover the primary results, the latest campaign finance reports and public opinion polling results, and will highlight the game-changing matchups in the battle for the majority party status in the state legislature.

John Davis' 30-year political career includes 23 years as President of NCFREE, a non-partisan, political research organization, where he served as Editor of the Almanac of North Carolina Politics. He has helped business leaders in over half of the states in the U.S. create political research organizations, and is co-founder of the USA Roundtable, a national association of state business political professionals organized in 1986.

He is one of the state’s leading authorities on evaluating the strengths of candidates and predicting the outcome of political races. During the five election cycles since the beginning of this decade, John projected the winner in 942 of 982 North Carolina campaigns, for an accuracy rate of 96%.

John also is a highly sought after state and national public speaker, and appears frequently on TV and radio news programs. He is quoted regularly by leading political reporters, and is widely considered an authority on North Carolina’s state legislative and congressional districts.

Currently he is president of John Davis Consulting, where he writes a weekly political blog called the John Davis Political Report. In addition to his consulting and blogging, Davis is working on a book titled, The Fall of the Magnolia Curtain, the breakthrough story on happenings in statewide campaigns in North Carolina since the end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era in 1870.

Business Alliance Open Table

Join 15-20 Business Alliance Partners and Associates for a casual lunch and free ranging conversations in the Main Dining Room at the Capital City Club.

 

 

The Navigation Series: Unit Three: Growth Strategies & Marketing

This second North Carolina State University College of Management sponsored session will again be facilitated by Joe Pirozzi, Pete Vorenkamp and George Culbertson. This session will focus on input received from the August session to cover the material determined by the class. It’s sure to be dynamic with great take aways – and as always designed to be an effective ‘stand alone’ session as well as integrate with the over-all Navigation Series.

BA Member Announcements & Celebrations

(Please send submissions to bag_editor@yahoo.com)

Al Fortuner of Carolina Barcode Inc is proud to announce a strategic partnership with KoamTac – manufacturers of the KDC line of miniature barcode scanners. These barcode scanners are as small as a Zippo cigarette lighter, and can connect wirelessly to your PC, Blackberry, Windows Mobile phone, iPod, iPhone or iPad. Fully programmable, the KDC line of scanners can collect barcode data remotely, prompting the operator for the next scan using its 4-line OLED display. Carolina Barcode Inc is now the exclusive supplier of KoamTac scanners in North Carolina. The product line can be viewed at http://www.barcodeguy.com.

Lorraine Stephens, president of L. Stephens & Associates was granted a contract to develop and serve as coordinator for a Micro-Enterprise and Innovation Center (a small business incubator program) in Raleigh. The first class of participants launched on July 19th and will run for eight weeks. For more information: Phone - 919-876-3100 / lorraine@lorrainestephens.com / www.lorrainestephens.com

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Congratulations

Tesh Parekh, Professional Artist and co-owner along with Mica Parekh of IWP Photography, took home best of the show for his 13 X 19 Watercolor named “Concert at North Hills”, http://bit.ly/dvpZZr, and the Quick Paint Contest with his 18 X 24 oil painting named “Farmers Market at North Hills”, http://bit.ly/dvpZZr. Tesh created both of these winning paintings on location at the Festival in North Hills. Previously, he won the 3rd place prize for his watercolor named “Parrot Store” in the Kinston CCA 2010 Paint Out held earlier this year in Kinston, NC. Tesh Parekh can be reached at tesh@teshparekh.com, or 919.622.5399. For additional information, please go to www.iwpphotography.com or call 919.270.2510.

Lorraine Stephens, president of L. Stephens & Associates, Inc. was recognized by the North Carolina Association of CPAs as a Speaker of the Year for 2009. Lorraine also has just published her sixth book. This one, “The Present of the Past” is her first book of inspirational stories. Lorraine Stephens Speaker - Author - Consultant – Trainer www.lorrainestephens.com

New Members

• Jason L. Amen Hetep
  The Amenta Institute of Policy & Research - Non-Profit / Profit Funding Support
• Barry Borgerson
  Complete Leadership, Inc. - Coaching & Training
  www.completeleadership.com
• Virginia Clay
  Stanley Morgan Smith Barney – Financial Services
  www.fa.smithbarney.com/clay
• James Z. Daniels
  BizHeal - Health/Counseling
  www.jzdaniels.com
• Wendy Harrington
  Spotlight Creative Group, Inc. - Advertising/Graphic Design www.spotlightcreativegroup.com
• Pugalenthi Natesan
  Precision Marketer – Marketing
  www.wsiwebmagic.com
• John R. Wagner
  Stuart Walston, Inc. - Interior Decorating & Design
  www.stuartwalstoninc.com
• Wendy Tefft
  Spotlight Creative Group, Inc. - Advertising/Graphic Design
  www.spotlightcreativegroup.com

A letter from the front lines to the BAG!

(Please send submissions to bag_editor@yahoo.com)

From Dr. Thomas Griggs, President and CEO of New Science Consulting Group, Inc. in Raleigh:

July 17, 2010

I am writing this from Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I have had the immense good fortune to be invited to The Fetzer Institute to participate in a 5 day retreat with my consulting colleagues at VISIONS, Inc. The purpose of our gathering is to explore the relationship of VISIONS' work in cultural diversity to Fetzer's mission to bring the power of love, forgiveness and compassion to the center of individual and community life. This is a compelling dialogue; I know you would love it. Yesterday I learned that the Institute's founder (John Fetzer, 1901-1991), was a very successful broadcaster and a deeply spiritual man who was also the longtime owner of the Detroit Tigers. Cool enough, but what intrigued me the most was that Fetzer was a devoted student of both Nicolai Tesla and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Can you believe that Fetzer was teaching Transcendental Meditation to his baseball team as early as 1958! (They won the World Series in 1968; the trophy is here, also.) If you are interested in learning more about either the Institute or VISIONS their links are fetzer.org and visions-inc.org.

Be well and I will see you soon,
Thomas

If you are involved in community projects, we want to hear about them! Many of our members serve meals, help build Habitat homes, and volunteer their time to help others in need. Please share your experiences, or your company-related activity, with your fellow BA members.

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