This always wins, hands down, when the speaker does this because then it’s not canned nor is the speaker using the slides as a cruch.

I did the same thing you did during a recent speaking engagement for Frito-Lay in Dallas a few weeks ago. I allowed the spirit to move through me without notes. Like you experienced, the entire speech was a blur to me. I don’t remember what I said and YES it was recorded. I’m expecting to get a copy of it shortly per my contract with them.

I like the way you organized the 5 phases. There are so many people who think they are NOT salespeople and see sales as a negative – when in reality we are ALL salespeople and the biggest sale we make in any given day is to ourselves. Do we like ourselves and what we do or not?

Just getting caught up on your posts, and this one blew me away. That’s not to say that others don’t, but man this one is brilliant. Been following your lead since I immersed myself in social media, attending bootcamp, Gillette, trying to figure out what’s really shifted here in terms of how marketers need to think differently. The pendulum is forever swinging in marketing, we’re always on the verge of something new to learn. But this shift is one of quantum sorts. What you’ve said to this group applies to any market, in my mind.

What you have done here is created a whole new buying cycle. I was thinking that the buying cycle hasn’t changed, but in fact it has. And it’s all around influence. The fact is people buy from people, those companies who represent common values, the people they have come to know and trust, and feel confident in developing a partnership with. How else do you get access to that information except through people themselves?

You can’t read about it on a web site. A corporate profile may print “in type” the values, mission of an organization. But what matters more is the overall experience for a buyer/customer and how that matches up to their values, passion, and whatever other weights they use. It is truly Return on Influence – another brilliant thought that will create reams of blogsphere.

Thanks for being a true pioneer in this “New Marketing” era. You are carving out new paths in both thinking and in how to crush it execution-wise.

2. Take all the money you spend on your alumni magazine that I don’t have time to read (which means you’ll have to stop publishing it) and put it toward me. Make me a marketer – send me a sweatshirt, or a hat. I’ll wear it!

3. Treat every incoming freshman (or sophomore, or junior, or senior) as a potential marketer, and a future alumni. Make me feel part of the tribe when I first walk through the doors. My undergrad university didn’t do this. It took me years (as a commuter student) to feel any kind of pride in my association with the place. And that pride was short lived.

4. If you’re one of the nation’s foremost communications schools, http://newhouse.syr.edu/alumnus/, don’t put up a wall online. Do something – anything – with social media, and let me find it easily. Do you even know I have a blog? I feel more connected to Obama’s “Change” site than I do to the school where I earned my master’s degree.

Hopefully, these ideas aren’t sounding too negative… one thing this post, and the comments after it, made me remember is the absolutely awesome year I spent getting my master’s degree at Syracuse, and that I really should write a check and send it to the school. Which I’ll do right after I click on “submit.”