The irony is, 80% of my clients are small business owners themselves and I help them over the hurdles of starting their businesses, which of course, includes sales and marketing.  They are assigned to me, so I don’t have to sell my services to them. The blind leading the blind you might comment. 

On the contrary, knowing my weakness, I invest heavily (time as much money) in professional development activities to compensate. The point is, I know enough about what to do, my challenge is actually applying it to my own business.  

 Frankly, it’s much easier to coach others and help strategize marketing plans to fit their businesses.  Providing a sounding board, and asking the right questions, really helps to test assumptions and clarify directions for promoting a business. Plus, I get to share gems from the Sales and Marketing Experts I’ve learned from. Gradually the message is getting engrained in my psyche and I’m starting to put into practice what I’ve preached.

 One of the most effective approaches I’ve come across lately is Charlene Brisson’s 3 Step Marketing (for non-marketers).  Charlene’s marketing expertise spans executive level marketing positions for major media and telecommunications corporations, operating her own small businesses and teaching sales and marketing. She has been through the trenches and has helped hundreds of businesses succeed. 

 In a recent interview with Ann Pustil, of ‘In A Nutshell Coaching’ Charlene talked about MSS: Marketing Stress Syndrome It was a really entertaining conversation and they had me giggling about how much we struggle with this stuff.  MSS occurs from

• overwhelming confusion – wondering where to start, what to do, frustration, spinning your wheels.
• Paralyzing fear of spending in the wrong place
• Marketing Insanity: repeating the same things and expecting different results
• Breaking into a Cold Sweat with the idea of cold calling
• Wallet Fatigue: spending and not getting results
• Procrastination and head-spinning indecision

 Charlene’s message is to keep it simple, with three steps to overcome the madness.

1. Know your ideal customer. Pinpoint all of the factors: geographic, demographic, psychographic, so precisely that you could give your ideal customer a name and write a story about who they are and what they do.  This gives you a foundation on which to develop your strategies. Use surveys and research to support your assumptions.

2. Craft a message that speaks to your ideal customer.  What you now know from step one helps you to know what to say. Let them know why they should do business with you; and what they can expect from your services.  State your Value Proposition or Unique Selling Position – What you do that is bigger, better, faster, than everyone else. State your clients’ situation and guide them through the resolution process in real time.

In addition to other brilliant examples on the call, they shared Anne’s marketing message for her business. “In a Nutshell Coaching: Gets to the heart of the matter quickly and resolves it quickly.’

3. Select effective marketing tactics to reach your ideal customer.  Strategically and optimally target your tactics to get the response you want. Tactics won’t work if they are not aligned with methods used by your ideal clients.  Always ask yourself if your ideal client uses the media you are planning for.

Granted there are so many traditional and new media marketing tactics: to choose from it can still be daunting. Charlene has solutions for you in her new book “148 Ways to Advertise & Promote your Business”. 

Have fun working easier with your marketing!

Companies often default to spending money on financial incentives, partially because they believe money is what counts to employees. In the McKinsey Quarterly article “Motivating People, Getting Beyond Money”  (http://bit.ly/93Dj87) their survey indicates that companies should seriously consider non-financial incentives. The three keys areas the survey recommends to focus on are:

• praise and commendation from their manager
• attention from leaders, such as one-on-one coaching
• opportunities to lead projects or task forces

In the survey all three of these areas were considered to be more effective in motivating people than any of the financial compensation options.  Plus the non-financial options do not increase the long term cost of employee benefits allowing companies to remain more flexible should the economy sputter it’s way to a recovery.

What gets in the way of companies implementing the non-financial options to engage and inspire employees?  My observation is that there are three

reasons why companies don’t invest more heavily in the non-financial options:

• It is difficult to tangibly measure the immediate impact and long term value of having higher quality connections with employees.
• Management has so many other immediate short term tasks on their to do list that undertaking a longer term strategic program of increasing contact with their people gets pushed to the side.
• No one ever really taught us how to communicate and as managers we don’t know how or don’t feel comfortable giving recognition or having one-on-one conversations with our direct reports.

Impacts of Coaching

An earlier post (http://bit.ly/baLMhE ) indicated that  the average return on coaching is 6 times the investment.  This is usually a short term return and does not take into account the long term learning benefit that the person being coached gets to repeat year after year.  Nor does it take into account the long term learning benefits that a manager may generate with their direct reports.

I believe learning how to communicate and coaching the people that report to you will give your company the best return in the long run.  Unfortunately it  is not the easiest or fastest answer.  It requires a commitment on the part of management to learn a new skill, practice and take the time to connect with their people.

With an investment in non-financial initiatives now companies could exit the down turn stronger than they entered it.

Jacque

“Of the monetary payoff from the coaching they got, these managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies.” Fortune, 2/19/01,

– “Executive Coaching — With Returns a CFO Could Love”

In my own work I have also found this to be true.  Some companies that I have worked with have generated astronomical returns on investment of 2,500%.  I believe there are some key factors that determine if a company will be able to generate an ROI of at least 600%.

• The most senior person in the company or group has participated in coaching and is now a role model for others who take coaching.
• Several other people in management also participate in coaching.   The more people on the leadership team that have received coaching the more successful the program.
• Team development initiatives are taken to foster open communication and collaboration across the company or group.
• Managers adopt a coach approach and consistently meet with staff in both group meetings and one on one.
• Finally you need to stay the course and keep using and applying what you have learned.  As soon as you go back to your old ways, so will your results.

While doing the work with these companies, staff came to regard their organization as the best place that they ever worked.

Companies or groups within a company that have maintained these results for the longest period of time have consistently practiced doing all of the above.  It is a long term game.

Jacque

Demographics however, have not changed. A war for talent is predicted as more people retire than are entering the labour force. The mitigating factor is baby boomers being expected to work longer than any other preceding generation.

How will you assess your company’s readiness?  Here is a list to determine the resiliency of your company:

• Compensation – is it up to date and attractive to the people you want to hire and most importantly to the people you want to keep?

• Management – are you able to communicate with your people in a way that inspires them to be their best and to know what is most important to them? There is a whole new generation of people who have entered the workforce and a new style of management and communication is required to bring people together.

• Opportunities – Do you know where your people would like their career to go?  Are you able to offer them opportunities to develop to get there? Your ability to match what your people want with what your company has to offer will keep people longer.

A new labour market scenario is quickly approaching and a company’s ability to be creative and create a winning work environment will be a key success factor in the future.

Are you and your company up to the challenge?

Jacque

As a result our perception of management has declined substantially.  No one really has a career aspiration to be a manager.  In general the management profession is not well respected and employees are unhappy with their managers.

Julian Birkenshaw in his article Reinventing Management, published in the Ivey Business Journal, January/ February 2010 states that we need to go back “to a basic definition of management—the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives.”

This distinction between leadership and management has historically come from the emergence of large corporations and is a poor distinction when applied to smaller companies.  In my opinion the basic definition of management is one that has always applied to small and mid-sized organizations.   In this basic definition management is responsible for both the modern definition of leadership and management.

What is important is that people on the management team develop a way of working together, be it collaborative or in a hierarchy, which brings people together to accomplish goals.

I diverge with the author’s thinking in one area that the perception of management and that of employees will improve by changing the model of management/leadership as we know it today.  Perceptions will only improve if management shifts who they are Being and the way they are Being when they relate to each other and the people that work for them.  It is how we show up at work that influences how people relate to us.

To read the full article go to:   http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/article.asp?intArticle_id=877

Jacque