1- 330-413-8552 Mark@NoSmokeAndMirrors.com

leadership

What are we supposed to do when the Heat is on and our market dries up?…SOW!

The bible is very clear that we are to SOW in the dry spells, in the time our business hits a dry spell, yet so many market losers do the opposite.

It was 114 degrees yesterday, here in the Arizona, and I know people say it’s a “dry heat” but that does not seem to console me…it’s hot. Simple errands seem to drain you, suck the life out of you even. For example in this time of the year all the trees are dropping their pods full of seeds. Although the animals welcome the food, they quickly make quite a mess. So there I was at 6:00 am (102 degrees) picking up pods in my yard before it got hot. How ironic that the trees are dropping seeds when we are in the hottest part of the summer, where’s natures wisdom in that? Actually it is smart because when the pods fall they are baked in the desert sun and they crack open allowing their seeds to fall into the earth. When the rains return, the seed is now in an environment to take root and grow.

I was thinking about the wisdom in this as it relates to what we as business people must do when our market becomes dry and the heat is on to hit our numbers. The Bible is very clear we are to “SOW” in these times. What does it mean to “SOW”? At Dictionary.com the definition is;

1. to scatter (seed) over land, earth, etc., for growth; plant.
2. to plant seed for: to sow a crop.
3. to scatter seed over (land, earth, etc.) for the purpose of growth.
4. to implant, introduce, or promulgate; seek to propagate or extend; disseminate: to sow distrust or dissension.
5. to strew or sprinkle with anything.

The Bible has a number of lessons about sowing. It is very clear we are to;

 

“Sow in the midst of suffering”

“There may be no fruit now, but the grains of love and faithfulness you have scattered will produce a rich harvest”

“Let your eyes be on the field which you reap”

“Each will receive what he has earned.”

If you feel your market has dried up, it’s time to start sowing. Ironic however that I see a number of companies doing just the opposite; cutting back on marketing and sales travel. Market leaders are taking this time to sow.

As I explore this deeper it is often the result of not having and understanding of what marketing and sales activities actually produce fruit and what are just “ Activities”. To ensure you are sowing to produce the greatest harvest the first thing you must do is understand how your buyers buy. What makes their soil fertile, and what causes the seeds you plant to be washed away? What marketing initiatives are you doing today that are falling among the rocks and will never take root? What marketing and sales activities are you doing today that are falling among the thorns only to have sales spend time on them as “good leads” only to have the life choked out of them before they produce fruit?

The key is to know your market and more specifically your buyers.

How about your company…

How well do you know how your customers shop for your product?

What do your buyers use as buying criteria?

Where do your buyers go when they have a problem they need solved?

Who are the key influencers that impact your buyer’s ability to purchase today?

Answer the above and compare the answers to what your team is currently doing and you will be well on your way to a bountiful future harvest.

What Jimmy Buffet and Bruce Cockburn can teach Marketers about Nailing a Persona?

While at the gym this morning I was listening to my iPod to take my mind off the workout. I guess I hit “shuffle” and in the middle of the upbeat songs I try to keep up with a song by Jimmy Buffet grabbed me. His song; “Pacing the cage” so intimately captured a feeling that so many leaders experience at some time, but more often when the supposedly “made it”.

Maybe it’s because today is my 48th birthday and I am always a bit reflective on my birthday, but this song totally nailed my feelings, and the feelings of a number of the executives I have helped.

If you have not heard the song, below are to lyrics I downloaded from one of the song Lyric web sites for you.

by: Bruce Cockburn
Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it’s pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you’ve lived too long
Days drip slowly on the page
And You catch yourself
Pacing the cage
I’ve proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip’s worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And everyone was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage
[ Jimmy Buffett Lyrics are found on www.songlyrics.com ] I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It’s as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you’ll wind up
Pacing the cage
Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can’t see what’s round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage

The way I feel and what I hear other executives share is our lives can be broken into three phases if you will;

Go get it

Don’t lose it

Give it away.

When I was in the “Go Get it” phase I was working 6-7 days a week, traveling 4-5 days per week, with 18 hour days. I thought it was about building wealth, about building safety for me and my family, but the truth was this time was about self justification and proving my metal. A bad choice as I reflect because lost so many memories with my young children and my wife while I was…on the road.

So you have moved up through the ranks, and now “you da man” and you have teams reporting to you. You still are full of the “piss and vinegar” that got you hear, but now you also focus on growing what you captured as well as protecting it in the “don’t lose it phase”. At some point you have a wakeup call moment, something that happens that makes you say “is this all there is?”

At that moment you have a wakeup call and realize all your focus, all your driving for success is kind of a hollow victory. Some of the worst times in my career were when I achieved a goal early. (Now what?) Sometimes I hear executives say it happens when they are sitting quietly at their big desk when everyone has gone home for the night, and they realize they just missed their daughter’s musical recital.

Then we move into “Give it away” in which success becomes second to significance. In this phase, the phase I am in now, we want to not just “kick ass and take names” but we want significance, we want to make a difference in this world and the lives of others. Studying the Word and becoming a Christ Follower has helped me in this phase more than I can share.

For me, I get much more joy in helping others than the thrill of the conquest I once had in my “Go get it” phase. Each morning before my feet hit the floor I pray “Lord, please help me to help someone today.”

If you are a marketer you need to intimately know your buyer. Jimmy Buffet does an amazing job of capturing an intimate understanding of a feeling a number of us feel. I recommend you buy this song and listen to it today.

My question: Do you have an understanding of your buyer’s that Bruce Cockburn had when he wrote this song?

Hit songs, like hit products happen when we intimately understand a buyer persona and their needs, and that takes work. But once you have it, and speak in that person’s voice you will experience explosive sales growth.

If you are in the go get or don’t loose them phase, make a conscious effort to focus on what really matters, what you will realize, often too late in the give it away phase. Put your family, friends and others intentionally into your schedule, and when you are with them, be with them 100%.

88% of Those Surveyed Said Advertising Services Have Become Commoditized? Ad Firms Heal Thy Self!

I am a problem junkie. I see problems everywhere. Problems are awesome as they provide an opportunity for new solutions that we can monetize. Over the years I have called this “the art of thoughts”. Recently I was on the Advertising Age website and participated in a survey that said 88% of those surveyed feel Ad Agency services have become commoditized.

This really bothered me as one of the favorite companies I helped was an integrated marketing firm in North Canton Ohio called Innis Maggiore . I had hired this firm over the years when I was the VP of Sales and Marketing for a local manufacturer, and when our company was acquired Innis Maggiore group asked me to do what I do, and  help them grow. We served a variety of companies from a small Amish furniture maker to MSN.COM , Harry London’s Chocolates, and a local hospital as well as many more. It was easy to help them grow because their work …well it worked, it added measurable value to their clients’ revenues.

(Obviously they never let me help with client copy!)

Honestly, as a buyer of Ad firm services for years I lacked an appreciation of the what goes on behind the scenes. Many times the good firms just made what they do look too easy.The firms I hired would listen to what we needed and produce something that either drove the desired result, usually revenues, or their work had no effect, and I found another firm. Good Ad firm partners like Innis do a great deal of work to ensure their work produces a result. At Innis we often would listen to the client’s objectives, and after the meeting have more questions than answers. So we would go into our clients’ market and interview customers, non customers, and influencers. From these interviews we would gain a better understanding of the problem our clients’ product solves and then we were equipped to turn those amazing creative folks  loose on the solution. They say you need to “walk a mile in another man’s shoes…”well having helped this firm gave me a new appreciation for what goes on behind the final work for market leading firms.

Good Ad firms connect to the problem in the market, understand buyers and speak to those personas in a voice that emotionally connects. When I wrote “blame-storming” I referred to an ad that is amazing. Whoever led the creative for this ad connected with something almost every executive has felt in a meeting at some time…”being thrown under the bus”. This firm nailed it so well that it  made me feel Direct TV knows me…

What is the value of that kind of creative? Creative that cuts through the noise and gets your message to connect with a targeted buyer persona is not priced as a commodity.

When creative connects so deeply with your buyers that it creates an emotional attachment it shows you have a market leading Ad Firm partner.

Market Losing Ad firms will lower their billable hourly rates and write off more of their hours. They will replace their talented creative’s with young kids fresh out of college to drive down their costs. In a recent Ad Age article it discussed how firms are auctioning their services on EBay, offering free work and crazy low rates to capture large accounts from market leading firms.

If you are running an Ad firm today, you must” heal thy self.” Get out and understand the needs of your customers. Create buyer personas for your customers. For example, in today’s environment it should not shock us that the guy in charge of Ad Firms at P&G comes from a purchasing background. You have a new buyer persona. Like your clients, you now have many more people in the buying decision…make it your quest to understand them! If you speak to him in the voice you used with the past CMO you will fail. Get to know him, how does he make decisions? What are his problems, pain points? Just as you conduct focus groups to verify creative before you kick it off for clients, you need to test your new messaging before you launch your firms’ value proposition.

Or, you can keep playing let’s make a deal and keep complaining about how your accounts “just don’t value your work anymore…” And oh by the way, how is that working for you?

Advertising Age’s Jonah Bloom offered seven steps to fight commoditization;

1. Say No

2. Realize you are on the same side as your rivals

3. Specialize

4. Change the cost dialog

5. Accept risk

6. Stop selling ads as a solution to everything

7. Look for new revenue streams

Markets will always have bottom feeders doing stupid things, and rarely do they survive. It is your job to rise up and connect to your client’s needs of today and your firm will survive. If your entire business model is selling ads alone, then you are in trouble. When was the last time an Ad made you take action and buy something? An Ad may play a role in the overall buyer process, but buyers today are doing much more than waiting for the perfect ad to solve their problems. If your model feels like it has become commoditized it is because your customers have lost the connection between your work and the results your work produces. If all you have been “pitching” are more and more Ad’s then they have also lost trust in you.You are speaking to new buyer personas that make buying decisions differently than your buyers in the past. If you are selling a “one size fits all solution” in ads alone, you will fail.

I need to check in with Dick Maggiore. I learned a great deal working with his amazing team. Get to know the customer, buyer and users and speak to them authentically about how you solve their problems… my guess is Dick is struggling more with turning away clients than commoditizing his services.

Do you need a “Plan B”? Or are you betting the Farm on a Stretch Goal?

I have to love whoever drives this scooter parked outside of McDonalds Sunday morning. I had a cup of coffee and as I walked to my car, I see this scooter.

Here’s a person who drives a vehicle that what, gets 500 miles to the galloon and they still have a “plan B”? As I walked by I noticed the 2 1/2 gallon gas can strapped to the back.

As I drove away I thought how in these uncertain economic times it is prudent for leaders to have a plan B in case their business runs out of gas. Nothing sucks the energy out of a team like fear. I find when I am fearful I am not creative and I am in a defensive mode and no longer leading. When I wrote Is your leadership in a holding pattern while your team runs out of gas? I discussed how our teams are more fearful than ever before. The Bible is also very clear about fear. Throughout the Bible we are instructed to “fear not”. As a matter of fact the only thing the Bible talks about more than fear is “money”.

Market leaders develop goals that do not require “all the stars to be in alignment” to achieve them. Market leaders have plan B’s in the event the environment changes to insure they achieve their objectives. You can establish stretch goals, and that is healthy for your business and your team members. When we are forced to stretch we grow. Where market losers blow it is when they “bet the farm” on a stretch goal.

How about your business…

Are you asking your team to strive for a stretch goal that requires all the stars to be in alignment (when chances are your own sales and marketing are not on the same page)?

Do you have a Plan B?

Have you shared your Plan B?

What is your team’s greatest fear? And how do you plan to lead them through it?

What if you could have a daily tracking poll for your customer satisfaction like the Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index?…You Can!

So the Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index came out today showing only 30% of the nation’s voters strongly approve of the way that President Obama is performing in his role. 38% said they strongly disagree providing a net index rating of -8. 43% say he is doing a poor job. It turns out men more strongly disapprove than women. You can read the full report here at the Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

The purpose of this post is not to bash our President. As a Christian businessman I pray for him as we are instructed to do in the Bible. I pray the Lord gives him wisdom and discernment. The reason I wanted to discuss this report is a “what if”.

What if, as the leader in your business, you too could have a report that frequently showed your “voters” (customers who vote every time they buy from you or your competitors) approval rating? How valuable would that be, particularly in this economy?

The good news is you can…it is called Win/Loss analysis and if your team is not doing it now, get started! In Win /Loss analysis you contact customers you win and ask why they bought, how they came to buy and so on. You also call those accounts you lost. You know, the ones your sales team said you lost “because your price was too high”? Well as I shared in my post WARNING: Buyer’s say what salespeople do wrong? PRICE is not on the list! The top reason buyers do not buy is your salespeople are not listening to their needs; they don’t follow up timely and as a result do not understand the problem the buyer is trying to solve.

Aside from having personally done win/loss over tie years and realized the benefits, it is also a Biblical principle.

In Proverbs we learn ” the tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pour forth foolishness” So there you go, will so start win/loss today and be “wise” or will you keep making strategic decisionsthat add no value ( and may hurt your business) and be a ….( I don’t need to remind you, you just read the passage)

Once you start conducting win /loss you will have a wealth of information to keep your voter approval ratings high among your internal and external customers.

Is your leadership in a holding pattern while your team runs out of gas?

At one point in my career I traveled a great deal spending four nights per week away from home. I lived in North Canton, Ohio so a number of my flights were small commuter airplanes to major hub cities. You learn to accept the slow baggage claim, fueling delays, and needing to run through the hub airport to make your connection. However one aggravation I never seemed to get used to was the plane going into a holding pattern as we approached the Akron Canton airport. If you fly a great deal as I did you know how long it should take to fly from Cincinnati or Charlotte, it was predictable. You know that a flight from Cincinnati should take just under an hour and when you notice you have been in the air for 80 minutes you become anxious. You look out the window and you can often see the runway lights, and then the moon, and the moon again, and again. Why? When will we land? I have flown this flight plan for years and now I do not know what to expect and I am getting frustrated. Eventually the pilot announces “we are cleared for landing, please put your tray tables up and your seats in an upright position…” and we land.

I had a phone conversation with a midlevel executive this week who was very frustrated and his emotion reminded me of the feelings I experienced when planes I was on went into holding patterns. He said that deals that the executives have historically signed are no longer being signed. His competitors are making a run at his key accounts, and management seems to be in a “holding pattern” not knowing what to do, so we are doing nothing.

When I wrote Attention leaders: Don’t look now but your lack of market knowledge is showing… I discussed how employees are more fearful now than ever before. They want to follow leaders they believe will lead their team out of this current situation and come out on the other side positioned to be a market leader. However I am hearing executive doubt in their leadership teams who have their business in a holding pattern. Employees, like me on my flight into the Akron airport are frustrated. They want to make decisions that add value however their leadership teams are stuck in a state of indecision. These mid level leaders just want to know the plan. (Or that there is a plan)

The Strategic Sourceror blog they discuss: Indecision is not an acceptable decision. The author points out “In every business decision situation, whether organizational, tactical, or strategic, there are two acceptable answers; Yes and No. Indecision is the cornerstone of faulty, short-sighted, C.Y.A. management philosophy. It’s the prized virtue of the mediocre and a tattered safety blanket for the incompetent.” Yet some large and small businesses are choosing to be in holding patterns today and their teams are growing more frustrated each day.

Why do you find leaders chose to be in a holding pattern? The above blog sites two main reasons;

 

There’s Not Enough Information

 

Happy Enough with the Status Quo

 

Next I went to the Bible, I was curious what advice it had regarding a lack of leadership and what could occur if a holding pattern lasts for too long…

“In the days with no King of Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes”

Judges 17:6

“When everyone does what is right in his own eyes, before long moral conditions sink”

Judges 19:25

If leaders choose not to lead, their teams will do what they feel is right. If left unchecked, employees doing what they feel is right will erode the core values of what’s left of your culture.

 

Indecision is a tool of the incompetent leader. Determine what you know. Do you know what you don’t know? Admit what you don’t know and put a plan in place to gain the knowledge you require. Your team is counting on you to take them out of this holding pattern and have a flight plan that leads to a future landing as a market leader.

Does your senior leadership team have your team in a holding pattern, a let’s wait and see, plan?

 

Have you experienced your company’s indecision hurting your relationship with loyal customers?

 

Do you find senior leaders or mid level managers with more indecision today? Why?

 

Is a holding pattern ever a safe strategy?

Is a bad decision worst than indecision?

Weight training and Sales training, how doing them wrong adds no value and may even hurt you!

Each morning I start my day with a workout at the gym. I like to start each workout with the elliptical machine. I listen to music and watch others training on the various machines to make my 30 minutes go by quickly. One machine almost everyone does wrong is the lower back machine.

Each morning I watch people plop themselves down on the machine without making adjustments based on their body. Some sit too high in the seat and some are seated too low. Some move the weights very quickly and some let the plates slam in-between repetitions. Not executing the exercise correctly not only fails to isolate the area you are trying to develop, but may also cause injury to the individual and the machine. There are two older gentlemen who train together each morning and not only do they fail to adjust the machine settings for their body size, but they do the exercise, (the training) completely wrong. They select the maximum weight and they begin.( double the weight I use) The weight is so heavy they are no longer sitting on the seat midway through the movement, and they are pressing the weight with their legs as they aggressively pull the weight back with their arms. Once one gentleman finishes I see his training partner execute the training in the same way. My guess is they have used this machine in this way for years and each assuming they are doing it correctly. They are so focused on looking impressive with the amount of weight they are lifting they lost the original objective of using this machine.

This machine was designed to provide training for an isolated area of your body, the lower back. To use this machine correctly and realize the maximum benefit the first thing you should do sit and adjust the machine settings so you are exercising in the proper range of motion. You are supposed to slowly push the resistance back, hold, then slowly return to the starting position while not allow the weight being lifted to rest. If done correctly, and balanced with lower abdomen exercises, you will develop a strong lower back and core.

As I watch these two older training partners each morning, I am reminded how most companies execute sales training wrong. I can speak from experience as I have done it wrong myself. A new product is about to launch so we bring in all the sales troupes to corporate for training. Marketing presents PowerPoint slides covering the market size, and they share the creative support materials, the sales tools they developed to help my team hit their goals. Then the product manager presents the product and reviews each feature and sometimes shares the benefits of the particular features. Far too much time is spent discussing why our product is better than our competitors and not enough time is spent helping my team understand the problems this new widget solves. We may visit the manufacturing facility and see the product being assembled.

At some point I would present our team goals, and each region’s individual goals. Over the years I would develop specific regional play book drafts with objectives by market by account. These play books would illustrate the opportunity in their market my current and targeted new accounts and if every tactic was completed would result in the salesperson achieving 150% of their goal. I would ask each salesperson to review the plan for then report back on how they plan to achieve their revenue targets. We would have specific discussions that resulted in adjustments to the play book. I would often present some competitive information, and share how to overcome objections we may face when trying to displace our competitors, and or gain placement for this innovative new widget. We would establish key indicators the team would be tracking that we believed would drive our desired revenue targets.

About 15 minutes into the training you can see salespeople checking their emails and excusing themselves for incoming calls from “one of their key clients”.

WE HAVE ALREADY LOST THEM!

How do market leaders conduct sales training to produce the maximum revenue in the shortest amount of time?

· Share what market problem the new product solves

· Explain how big is this problem

· Share market data

· Explain what buying criteria buyers use when making buying decisions

· Share the process buyers go through when purchasing

· Position the sales tools developed for the specific steps of the known buying process

· Provide the sales team the buyer persona(s)

· identify the key influencers to the buyer personas, and who also may be involved in the buying process, and provide guides on how to start discussions with them

 

What I am describing is not “Sales Training” (like I did in the 1990’s) but “sales enablement”. Sales enablement is defined as:

Sales enablement is the process of arming an organization’s sales force with access to the insight, experts, and information that will ultimately increase revenue. It is a term that has gained momentum in the last decade. It is often used to describe a variety of tools, processes and methodologies that are applied to enable a sales force, both direct and indirect. The terms “sales effectiveness” and “sales readiness” are sometime used interchangeably to denote Sales Enablement as well.

In David Daniels’ recent blog he states:” According to the “Business-to-Business Launch Survey Executive Summary” conducted by the Center for Business Innovation at Babson College and Schneider Associates, 55% of companies rank sales enablement as critical to product launch success.”

When salespeople were the “keepers of the keys” for product information one could argue how the way most companies conducted sales training was OK. However the internet and the instant accessibility to information have changed sales forever.

Salespeople must become experts at starting and keeping conversations going with buyers. Today salespeople must be experts at understanding the buyer’s process, and what sales tool to use when.

Market leading sales organizations teach their salespeople how their product or service solves market problems.

Market losing organizations continue to spend more time convincing their sales teams how easy their goals are …”even a monkey could do it.” Market losing teams practice “marketing roulette”. They create a ton of sales tools and sales is supposed to use them ALL until they figure out which one works. If none of the tools work, sales will create their own. (A REALITY, BUT VERY DANGEROUS) Market losers are still teaching their teams how to overcome objections.

Market leaders understand the importance of listening to objections.

Stop sales training and start sales enablement today.

Remember people like to buy, but do not like to be sold.

Tell me about your organization.

How does your organization conduct sales training?

When salespeople leave your training do they understand when and where to use the sales tools in the buying process?

Is teaching salespeople how to overcome objectives smart?

How many minutes into your last training were salespeople checking their Blackberries and excusing themselves for an “important call?

Attention leaders: Don’t look now but your lack of market knowledge is showing…

 

 

I had coffee with the president of a local business this week. A friend from church recommended he buy me a cup of coffee and chat. I seem to be meeting with a number of business leaders and owners these days that are struggling. Their businesses are in different industries yet they have common problems;

“My business is down, struggling, this economy is killing us. I have our team doing what we did in 93’, but this time it just isn’t working…”

As a leader in your business your entire team is watching you,looking to your leadership.What is new today is your team’s level of fear. Their 401k’s are down. They have many friends and others in their network now unemployed. Your team deals directly with your customers, and they hear their concerns about the economy. They feel the decrease in activity staging orders on the shipping dock. They prepare the financial statements for your leadership team meetings. They are trying to get extended terms from vendors. They are receiving the calls from vendors with past due balances. They are tracking your team’s key indicators more closely than ever before and they are wondering…

 

Will I lose my job?

Should I wait for the shoe to drop, or should I find something else? Should I work on my “plan B”? “Plan C”?

Do our leaders know what they are doing? Will their leadership take us out of this storm?

 

The good news is your team desperately wants to be led. They want to follow a leader who will quiet those inner fears. They want and need a leader to step up and set a course that pulls the company and them out of the current poor performance.

The common problem, regardless of industry that I hear is a lack of current market information to make good decisions. Media Post just released an article by David Koretz titled Cheating Your Way To The Bottom and he discussed how leaders must use facts to make good decisions .Leaders describe how they used to lead sales “back when they ran the North West region…” I am sure the strategies and supporting tactics they described worked back then,….but here’s the common problem:

The market and your buyers have changed. They have changed how they buy and how they shop for solutions to their problems. Yet the plan you are managing with corresponding activities is based on the buyer needs of the past.

Below is a summary of my recent meeting over coffee. By no means am I poking fun at  this struggling leader nor minimizing the troubles he and his company are having. When I decided to start blogging as I stated in my about page it is my desire to discuss real issues.

So I started our meeting by asking;

“When you ran the North West region and realized so much growth, how did you come up with such good ideas?”

“Well I just knew what to do…it was easy, my customers told me what we needed to do and I went back to corporate and fought for them.”

And now you are corporate?

Yes,… I guess I am, hadn’t thought of it that way

Is anyone fighting for their customers right now and you are shutting them down?

Well yah…

What are they asking for?

You know sales guys…our prices are too high, our quality sucks, and if we would only change the product by adding one more feature….

When was the last time you were in the market, “belly to belly” so to speak with a customer? A user of what you sell?

It’s been a while, but I get weekly reports, and I talk to my sales guys, I feel I am up to date with what’s going on.

Really? What are they telling you about your customers and the problems they are experiencing?

The usual; business is down, no money to invest in their business, just trying to keep their heads above water…you know

Anything new they are struggling with they did not struggle with last year?

Not really, just that business is bad, and they want a lower price and extended terms, I think we have a pretty good handle on what’s going on

When you ran the North West, did you think your boss knew the market and your customers as you?

Well…no (he became noticeably uncomfortable)

I asked a more questions and we agreed he did not have current nor first hand data to answer my questions. Given the importance of turning this business around, we agreed we needed market data.

These conversations seem to have the same next steps…”get out from behind your desk and get into your market and understand it today. After two weeks of meeting with customers and users you will know what to do in today’s environment. You will have first hand, timely market data, and you will be able to make strategic, market driven decisions and provide the leadership your team desires.”

We agreed to meet again when he returns.

What happened next I did not expect, he smiled and said; “you know this would be fun, I have not been having much fun lately.”

How about you?

Are you leading a team?

When was the last time you were “belly to belly “with a customer? A user?

You have the ability to lead your team out of this current economic condition and emerge as a market leader once you have good market data.

(Have you ordered you plane tickets yet?)

Are interruptions “transforming “your customers into shoppers again?

I am a big fan of action movies and the more Sci-Fi the better. I really enjoyed the first Transformers movie and I was anxiously awaiting the second: Revenge of the Fallen…how will they top the first? New villains, maybe 3-D special effects, and so on? I was convinced, based on the first movie I would be captivated again. They helped me establish a brand for the Transformer experience from the cartoons I would watch with my son years ago to their recent special effects of their last release. They set an expectation of a story line that flowed. I expected a great deal of action and special effects and some humor to give me a chance to catch my breath.

However what I experienced was a painful interruption. Unlike the first movie, this one threw in characters that did not support the story line and were actually a painful interruption for me. Interruptions are those elements thrown in to cause a response that add no value other than shock. They create a momentary interruption to grab your attention like a bikini clad model in an ad for spark plugs. Yes, your attention is momentarily grabbed, but for the wrong reason. At one point when one of the transformers were “humping” Megan Fox’s leg they lost me. They lost me because they did not live up to the brand they so carefully established in their cartoons and the first movie when I became a customer, and a fan. They lost me when they tried to get too cute, too funny,” because they could and not because they should”. They lost me when they added adult humor in a movie theater full of young children holding their favorite transformer toys.

 

How about your company…has the desperation to make your numbers caused you to compromise who you are?

 

Can you think of other examples of companies that strayed and could make a comeback?…not made a comeback?

 

What brand broke its promise to you?

 

What are the best ways to find out if you are transforming your loyal customers now shopping for another partner?

 

If you find out your interruptions are transforming your customer base to shoppers, what can you do, if anything to bounce back?

Five questions a radio preacher asks to see if your business is heading in the wrong direction

Each day I listen to a Christian radio station as I drive to lunch. It’s not unusual that a preacher is sharing and often I find myself parking my car and taking notes. Yesterday was no exception as Chuck Swindoll was sharing five questions to know if we as believers are headed in the wrong direction.

As I quickly grabbed some take out and returned to the office I thought how the wisdom he shared could help businesses who may be headed in the wrong direction. Below are his five questions shaped to apply to you and your business.

  1. Do you find yourself fighting greater battles within than without?
  2. Is there more attention on one versus the team? (kingdom building)
  3. Do you feel you don’t need the Lord’s help in your business?
  4. Are criticisms of your leadership and your business quickly dismissed versus taken seriously and respected?
  5. Are consequences of sin are no longer feared? ( as a reminder, the definition of sin is “missing the mark”)

For a preacher who jokingly said he has a “face for radio” I find myself feeling very thankful for his sharing the wisdom found in the Bible. I find the Bible is an amazing resource of wisdom that can be applied instantly to circumstances we face as leaders in our business.

So how did you answer the above the above?

How is your team reacting to the challenges of today? Do they need to just STOP or are they “blame-storming?”

Do you find team members (you?) worried about how an individual may look versus the performance of your team?

Are you your own God? Is your ego preventing you from asking for the lord to bless you, your business, and your customers? (After all, EGO does stand for: Edging God Out) Are you counting on your gut and intuition?

How well does your senior leaders accept criticism and new ideas? How about you? Do you need to hire a Heretic?

Are you allowing bad behaviors that are not consistent with your team’s values? Are you allowing an “end justify the means” mentality?

All of this free business advice from the Bible and radio preacher? You bet!

You may want to check out his web site at Insight for Living, …who knows you too may find yourself parked in your car and taking notes at lunch time.

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