There's an old saying that goes something like this: I know half of my marketing works, I just don't know which half! 

Lots of factors contribute to the marketability of your organization and it's offerings. The problem is that you just don't know which is the most important.

Is it the ratio of members to the number of businesses? Is it a great sales team? Great business advocacy or business climate? Could it be an approachable brand or a hip logo? 

Like many of the businesses you serve, the most important thing in marketing isn't any of these things. The most important thing is not a beautiful burger; it's a hungry market. 

But hungry for what? 

Here are three steps to finding out what your market is hungry for: 

1. Schedule a meeting with a business, member or not. Ask them to tell you about their business and what keeps them up at night.

2. Take good notes one what keeps them up at night. These are the...

If you want to be the  go-to organization in your business community, you've got to get  things done. The problem is your to-do list is growing faster than you can keep up. You need a system for prioritizing. Here's how you can prioritize like an army general and take command of the demands of your time and attention. 

Check out this handy tool called the Eisenhower Matrix, or the Urgent Important Matrix as it's often called. The Urgent Important Matrix shows you exactly how to prioritize your tasks. For example, tasks that aren't urgent or important shouldn't be done at all... delete it. If it's important but not urgent, you should decide when to do it and schedule it. If it's urgent but not important for you to do it, you can delegate it. And if it meets your criteria for both important and urgent, do it now. 

To build your own urgent-important matrix, follow these simple steps. 

1. Get yourself a white board or a glass board. I like mine about thirty...

Networking opportunities are one of the core functions of a chamber of commerce. This is according to a study by the Western Association of Chamber Executives where they asked a thousand businesses from across the country what they expect of their local chamber. 

The problem is, lots of other networking organizations have popped up as alternatives to the chamber. 

The chamber that offers networking without also teaching members how and why to connect with other business leaders -- probably ISN'T working as well as it could. I believe chambers have a responsibility to teach good networking skills to their members. 

There are three keys to effective business networking and if you work for a chamber I hope you'll teach these to your members.

1. Be interested in others and how you can help them. 

2. Be and interesting person to talk to and develop your conversational skills so that others want to recommend you to their friends and colleagues. 

3. Accept that...

We have a lot to do at the chamber. Events, programs, committees and boards and... how do we get it all done? Well, maybe the answer is in the question. The question is "how do we get it all done?" 

The problem is maybe it was done a while ago and you haven't published it, released it or shipped it because you're waiting for it to be perfect. 

Perfect is the enemy of done. You're not going to get it all done if you're waiting for perfect. Let's put it this way: if you were drowning, you'd be waiting for a yacht instead of a log or a life raft. It just doesn't make sense but that's happening a lot. 

Here are three ways I focus on done instead of perfect: 

1. Outsourcing. When you hire your team, you're outsourcing. But even your team can be outsourcing. Read the 4 hour work week and you'll be introduced to a million ways you can outsource and get more done. Do what you do best and outsource the rest. 

2. Put it on the calendar with other people besides just...

Leadership is the art of moving so swiftly in one direction that no one has time to stand around and notice their differences. To lead swiftly, we need to clearly define what our organization is for and what it is against. 

There are examples all around us. In the original star wars, Luke and Leia were for the Rebels and against the Dark Side. Simple right? 

Take a look at the TV commercials any Saturday during football season and you'll see the All State Insurance commercials. All State is for saving you money and against Mayhem that happens in everyday life. 

So what is your chamber against? Unnecessary business regulations? Job crushing policies? CAVE people? and I don't mean people who live in caves... I mean CAVE - citizens against virtually everything.

The problem is it's hard to choose just one thing to be against. But if you take a look at the Map to Remembership, you'll quickly be reminded that you're not a membership organization. You're running four...

I've notice that the world is being changed by people just like you. In fact, this world and everything in it was created by people who are not smarter than you are. So you can change the world, but only if you know to sell. 

Oop! I just lost you! You don't like to sell. You don't like people who sell. And you've already made up your mind about this but selling is serving. Selling is influencing. Selling is finding common ground. Selling is having an open mind. 

The world is changing because of people who know how to sell. Maybe not a product or a service, but an idea or a solution. 

Before people buy your product or service, they buy into the transformation in their business or the community. 

If you want to get more sales, I have some tips: 

1. Learn to negotiate. There are some attorneys who are really good at this but they don't call it sales. It's sales. And read the book by Chris Voss called Never Split the Difference. It's a great book on negotiating.

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Information is everywhere now so what's the value of the information you provide to your members? If information is content, the chamber filter is CONTEXT. 

Context is the timing of the right information from the right source for the right intention. If you have content AND context, you're not sharing information... you're sharing intelligence. 

The problem is you have to consider the circumstances of hundreds or even thousands of members in order to have the right context. What's intelligence for one member could be white noise for another. 

One of the simplest ways to do deliver intelligence is to segment your members by interest. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to ask them about their interest areas in an online survey that logs their responses in your member management system. 

This way, you're sure to never send information about your weekly meetup to the member who wants to partner with you but already told you that they aren't interested in your...

We need the attention of our chamber members in order to sell our ideas and initiatives to our members after they join. The problem is that attention is fleeting these days and there's lots of competition and noise out there. 

So the age old debate around my house is what's more valuable: Attention or money? Well it's kind of like the chicken and the egg... Leave it to the banking industry -- where they use attention to buy and sell money -- to conduct a study that helps the rest of us understand the connection between money and attention. The banking industry study I'm referring to tells us exactly how many emails we can send to a new customer or member before they tune your chamber OUT. 

And that magic number is somewhere between six and seven. So let's just call it seven emails. 

The next question becomes in what period of time does a member decide to renew? I used to think we had a year to convince a member to renew but boy was I wrong. Most members make their...

Young professionals programs can get a little unprofessional if it gets a reputation for being a place to drink or hook up! And that's not good! Or is it? 

Some of the top young professionals programs in the country -- like Milwaukee or Tulsa -- are constantly putting out content and events for those folks who are new to the workforce or new to the region. One of the more transient workers in your community is one without a spouse or a mortgage and they are most likely young-ish. Hence your Young Professionals Program. 

Your major employers are trying to hire talent as soon as they are out of college. The problem is once that talent arrives in your city, they need your help to keep them there. Let me remind you that the top ways to keep your talent local is marriage or mortgage. 

Your employers likely have a no-office-romance policy. So before the talent discovers the singles group at their new church, it's likely that some of your young professionals are looking for...

I get to meet a lot of board members and one the questions that gets played on repeat is, "As a board member, how can I best help my chamber or economic development organization?" 

When I served on a board for the first time, it was shared with me that I was there for one of three reasons... for my time, my talent or my treasure. But I don't see that same equation in place for the most dynamic chambers I've witnessed... 

I was working with a chamber outside Houston Texas a few years back and prior to my presentation to the board, I was taking note of how my friend Keri - the chamber CEO - had organized her board into focus areas and how these board members seemed so much more engaged than any other board I had ever seen before. 

Here are three simple steps you can use to clarify the roles of board members at your chamber or EDC: 

1. Create focus areas called Governance, Internal and External. Governance is your executive board committee. Internal is operations,...