How I Work with Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers


Jeff Ogden avitarMatt Heinz of Heinz Marketing.contacted me about his How I Work series and he asked me to answer a series of questions.

Check out this article about Jeff Ogden.

Thank you, Matt.  I’ll have to start these too

These are Matt’s words and not mine. I also want to share my new Keynote Speaking video with you.

Qucksprout said to write short sentences and take controversial positions. I hope I measure up and you enjoy this article by a fellow marketing expert. It is Friday and i hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

“How I Work” is one of my favorite recurring features in Inc Magazine as well as via Lifehacker’s This Is How I Work Series, and recently several sales experts (including  Anthony Iannarino, Dave Brock and Trish Bertuzzi) participated as well. Periodically moving forward we will feature a new B2B sales, marketing or business leader here answering what have become the standard “How I Work” questions.

You can catch up on everyone we’ve featured thus far in the “How I Work” series here.

This week I’m excited to feature Jeff Ogden, president of Find New Customers.  Jeff’s been a fixture in the B2B marketing community for several years, and we almost lost him in 2014 when he fell 10 feet in a warehouse and was in the hospital for 4 ½ months and in a coma for weeks. He was essentially a dead man for a long time with tubes all over his body.

We’re glad he’s back (worth reading his story of recovery and attitude on the Salesforce.com blog here), and reinvesting in the growth of his business Find New Customers from a new home base in Tampa, Florida.(Actually, St. Petersburg)

Jeff, suffice it to say, gets stuff done.  Here, in his own words, is how he does it.

Location:  St. Petersburg, Florida – very cool town and quite warm all the time, but not now.

Current computers:  (Updated) We now have a very fast Lenovo Yoga 2 with an i7 Processor, which replaced the old creaky Acer laptop I used to use.

Current mobile devices: iPad Air 2 and iPhone 5. I love the simplicity and elegance of Apple products.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?  ReadNotify.com lets me know (secretly) when people read my email.  I also use social media a lot and believe it is bigger than ever.

(Updated) Partnered now with the Social Media Marketing company Likeable Local. I got a job offer for a commission only job with no benefits - forget that.

I’m more committed to Likeable Local than ever before, because they’re the partner of Find New Customers.

Here is our new mobile page which is good for smartphones. Mobile pages are an offering from Likeable Local. http://likeab.ly/FindNewCustomers

(Updated) I use Twitter and LinkedIn a lot plus Facebook sometimes and I find if you just keep helping people, more and more people connect to you all the time – people connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter all day and all night and (Updated)I now have over 2,800 LinkedIn connections and over 6,500 Twitter followers.

The more 1st level LinkedIn contacts you have, the more see your updates, so it is good to connect with people. Every time someone connects with me on LinkedIn, I send a brief message to them, thanking them for connecting and promising to never SPAM them. People love that and I have thousands of LinkedIn connections now..

Dashlane is a super tool for keeping track of logins and passwords so you can keep track of everything.

To keep my routines, I read the New York Times and Wall St. Journal on my iPad2 every day which I have done for years and I love those newspapers.

(Updated) I also have Presentation Pro on my iPad, for the scripts for my videos, which I now do every month. Presentation Pro is teleprompter software.

I did shoot a video on keynote speaking with Presentation Expert Bob Turel, which I share here and I hope you like it.

I also use WordPress for my blog Fearless Competitor, which I publish often – six days a week.

What’s your workspace like?  Very simple.  A computer desk in a bedroom.  I stand all day because I don’t like to sit. Staying fit is very important to me.

What’s your best time-saving shortcut or lifehack?  I like IDoneThisToday.com.  Yes, it’s bad English.  “I did this today” is the right way to say it.  Just hit reply and tell it what you did that day.  It keeps a log for you.  Very, very simple. That idea came from the New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing. He recommended it.

What everyday thing are you better at than anybody else?  That’s easy. I write an email on the weekend and work on it over and over till it’is perfect! Once the wording is perfect, I turn on ReadNotify. Then I wait till a certain time of day (9:30am for the East Coast, 10:30am in Chicago and 1:30pm for the West Coast) before I hit send. I have never had one not get read right away and I know precisely when they read it.  That process really works and I recommend it highly.

What’s your favorite to-do list manager?  (Updated) Mostly I set up Tasks in Outlook 2013.  It’s very simple. I also use Salesforce, but it’s not as simple and easy as Outlook.

What do you listen to while at work?  I love music, especially rock n roll, but I only do that on the weekends.  Weekdays are for work only, except evenings, because like you I don’t want distractions. Fortunately, my Passat has a kickass sound system and I love to crank the tunes. My guilty pleasure is AC/DC! Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap gets cranked up really loud in my car.

What are you currently reading? (Updated)  Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistable Brand and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (and other social networks) by Dave Kerpen of Likeable Local, which is a partner of Find New Customers.

What’s your sleep routine like?  I usually go to bed around 11pm and get up at 6:30am.  My alarm clock is my iPhone. I also go for a run each and every morning.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Always be helping. That’s been my motto since I founded Find New Customers way back in 2005. If your attitude is to keep helping people, more and more fans come to you all the time. And your network grows and grows. In fact, the software company Mintigo hired Find New Customers to share their marketing content thanks to my network.

Anything else you want to add?  The universe of marketing experts is a small group of really cool people. Here is an example. I had a typo on a LinkedIn post and marketing expert Ruth Stevens helped me fix it.  I didn’t even ask for her help.  She found it and contacted me.

I never take a chance with a marketing award. If someone contacts me about an award, that’s a priority for me. I get back in touch with them. If I get two questions about the future of marketing, I answer them. “Loved your answers, Jeff.”

Marketing awards are the Good Housekeeping seal of marketing, in my mind. Here’s a recent one I won.

Marketing Award A top priority for me is keynote speaking – I want to do more and more keynote speaking, because that’s a great way to promote your business. (See the video above.)

I also have a tag line that I heard from a CMO years ago, but it is good and resonates with people all the time, so I used Henry DeVries ideas of R&D, which is “rob and deploy” marketing ideas. “Find the best marketing ideas and use them yourself” and that’s great advice for everyone.

“Marketing looks for Mr. Right.  Sales looks for Mr. Right Nows.” Sales needs Mr. Right Nows to close. That’s a great tagline.

Fill in the blank: I’d love to see __________ answer these questions.  Paul Dunay who is a CMO is a great friend of mine, so maybe he’s a person to ask. (Paul is also an upcoming speaker for the Business Marketing Association of Tampa Bay. If you click on my LinkedIn profile, you will see that.)

What do you think? We love to read your comments (No SPAM please) and we appreciate those who share on social media.

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