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By Chris Bucholtz in Business

crmYou can make the most of the opportunities presented by social CRM (SCRM) and social media by avoiding these four common mistakes.

Social Media — It’s Not A Broadcast Network

Many companies fail to grasp the two-way nature of social media. So they use sites like Facebook and Twitter to saturate their audience with messages while making no effort to listen to their customers and respond appropriately. It’s the social media version of “shock and awe.” This is understandable given the evolution of marketing as outbound communication only. But today, such behavior is seen as loutish and clueless.

Your Customers Might Misbehave — You Can’t

You should behave as a peer with your customers, not a pal. Your customer community may be fairly rambunctious, even coarse on line, but that doesn’t mean you should match their behavior. You shouldn’t. Remain the professional, especially in situations where a detractor becomes aggressive. You can respond to comments and answer concerns without engaging in a verbal brawl. Remember, most social media is not real time. You always have time to craft a response that addresses an issue and reflects well on you and your business.

Don’t Sabotage Your Efforts

Be patient. Social CRM is a new discipline. It will require time for your business to develop effective SCRM processes and for those processes to evolve and take root. If you attach unrealistic ROI goals or timelines to your social CRM efforts, you’ll waste the opportunity that SCRM represents today and dampen enthusiasm for it in the future.

Don’t Be Short Sighted

Skepticism and timidity about social media at a time when its growth continues to outstrip projections almost daily seems incredibly short sighted. Yet, the 2011 Capgemini Executive Outsourcing Survey revealed that 13 percent of executives interviewed at Fortune 1000 companies believed that social media was just a fad and not important to their companies’ success. Not so long ago, the Internet was viewed in the same way. In 1993, none other than Bill Gates said, “The Internet? We are not interested in it.”

Social media and the changes that it promotes are unlikely to disappear. Businesses that ignore this do so at their peril. There will be market share to gain for companies that excel in using social media. Does that mean you should “bet the farm” on social media and SCRM? No, it means that like any business tool–ERP, traditional CRM, business intelligence, supply chain management, and so forth–you should keep an open mind and make strategic investments in SCRM that will enable you to evaluate it thoroughly in the context of your business.

Social Media: The Long View

Since social media is ubiquitous, CRM has no other course but to accommodate and use it. Yes, in the short term, it can strain resources and disrupt the business routine. Most innovations do. But social media, and by extension SCRM, is an opportunity to make sales and service processes more effective, get closer to the customer, and make businesses more productive, responsive, and profitable.

SCRM is not a replacement for traditional CRM; it’s an expansion of its scope. SCRM takes traditional CRM principles and applies them to a new set of data sources. It has the potential to support product creation, revamp old service processes, deliver rich sales and marketing data, and foster peer-to-peer relationships with customers. Social CRM is an opportunity to improve your business and the experience your customers have with it.

Chris Bucholtz is Editor in Chief of CRM Outsiders, a founding editor of both InsideCRM and Forecasting Clouds, and a recognized influencer in customer relationship management. To find out more about how to empower your employees with Social CRM please visit http://www.sugarcrm.com

By Karl Walinskas in Business

business1Ladies and gentlemen, the Peter Principle is alive and well in American business today. Many managers get promoted, but not many know how to become a great innovator in business.

It seems the biggest sole contributor to attaining a position in management is to be absolutely devoid of people and communications skills. I know, that’s harsh, but that’s the way it is in many businesses that I see today. Being picked as the Chosen One at a business is great for the new manager, particularly for his bank account, but it can have a destructive effect on the organization. Productivity declines to near nothing, employee morale disappears, and retained earnings vanish under your very eyes. Management tracks a lot of data and issues a stack of memos like they were born for the job, but they couldn’t lead an army of fire ants to a picnic held by the American Crumb Association. The managers are weak in the leadership department, and chaos follows. What’s really scary is that these traits occur just as much in established managers, people firmly entrenched in their positions and riding it out until they get their gold watch.

Here is the 5 point litmus test to identify a weak manager, a leader in name but not in action. Does your strip stay blue once you immerse yourself in the test? Let’s hope so. You can rise above demonstrating one, maybe even two, of these qualities; more than that, start designing your safety net now, because your team’s going to fall.

1. Can’t Let Go of the Past. Managers in the lower talent quartile continuously reminisce about the old days, when the people worked harder for less, when we didn’t have this damn technology to complicate things, and global rivalry only occurred every four years in a place like Innsbruck, Austria at the Olympic games. They long for the simpler times, and spend an inordinate amount of time telling tales of how it used to be.

Are you living in the past? Move on with your life. I’m not advising ignoring past greatness or the principles that made it feasible, but the tactics you engage to manage these days need to be resilient, flexible. People aren’t inspired by the same things any longer. Money doesn’t govern all behavior, and job security in today’s human capital marketplace just ain’t the anchor it once was. People like hearing about the future, and the only way your business can benefit is to plan for it and then eagerly await its arrival.

2. Lack of risk taking. Don’t cause trouble. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Timid managers say these expressions and others like them, a lot. What’s worse, they believe them. The status quo is great, and they’ll fight to keep things the same. New ideas from employees and colleagues are analyzed for the possible unfavorable results. These so-called leaders don’t see possibility in new point of views; they imagine the danger that may occur. Their managerial careers are governed by fear and reducing, not broadening, their comfort zones. Many of these token leaders don’t even recognize they have this character deficit. One of these guys will steal second base provided his foot is nailed to first.

If you find yourself in this group, start by taking baby steps. Risk taking is a skill that needs to be sharpened to become comfortable. Take a chance on a new initiative where the negative risk isn’t so bad (there NEEDS to be some downside, or it’s not a risk, is it?). See what happens. Work your way unto leading by taking larger and larger thought out risks with higher returns. I’m not suggesting negligence here, but as you move up the risk taking curve, your skill at hedging your bets and creating successes from your decisions will strengthen. Your company can’t move forward residing in the status quo, so this one is critical to future success.

3. Demands rather than earns respect. Strong leaders never have to remind people of their title. Their subordinates, colleagues and customers know who they are. General Schwarzkopf didn’t have to keep telling the troops he was their leader, they already knew it. These type of things happen when respect is earned through actions and the example that a leader sets. By contrast, weak leaders relish telling other people, especially subordinates, their titles. The weak leader’s business card has an impressive title after the name, often using the word “Executive” somewhere in the phrase, as though the rest of us don’t know that a Vice President is an executive. Because respect hasn’t been earned, this lot gets challenged frequently and their only way to secure victory is to pull seniority.

The difference between a leader who has ordered followers and one who has a willing, passionate support team is the distinction between a mackerel and a tiger shark. If you find yourself needing to continuously validate what your position in the company is, you’re the mackerel. The keys to earning respect and loyalty with the troops are many, but here are a few:
• Set a congruent example; practice what you preach. Don’t ask employees to do what you wouldn’t be willing to do.
• Pass along credit to employees, even if their involvement was marginal compared to yours. Nobody likes a glory-hounding boss who is perceived as someone who takes credit for other people’s accomplishments.
• Actually provide a vision for the organization, which leads us to weak leader test number 4…

4. Vision-less. By very definition a leader needs two things so as to exist. The first is followers, and we ‘recovered that. The second is a direction, somewhere to take the followers. Thousands of leaders in modern business miss the mark here, wandering aimlessly through life, rolling with the punches. How do you spot the vision-less leader? Ask her, “What’s your vision for the future of your team, division, etc?” If an immediate answer doesn’t follow, summed up in one clear, distinct sentence, you’ve found an imposter. If shitakes out her business card flips it over and reads the company mission statement, strike two. I’m not suggesting that managers ignore the overall company mission. Far from it, but each individual person who wants to lead must have a goal that sets the direction for those in his territory. That should be supportive of, but not exactly a repeat of the entire organization’s mission. People want a purpose to help give their work significance, something to pursue. If they don’t get it from management, it’s up to chance that they’ll find an enabling vision somewhere else. Managers need to figure out what they want from the organization for the future, condense it down to something clear, and beat the drum regularly so that every employee knows it by heart.

5. No Stick-to-itiveness. Effective leaders demand and get results forth principal initiatives that they want to implement, often by the power of their own personalities. If a manager launches an event that needs care and nourishing, and then abandons it the next time he reads a business book on a trans-continental flight, he is wishy-washy and ineffective. This coward doesn’t have the tenacity to follow his convictions about what is right for the company, so the direction of the group is set by what’s hot-the flavor of the month. Look for this warning sign too-a manager who ends a project at the first sign of trouble, not recognizing the opportunity and results that lies beyond the wall of failure. This occurs daily, where the company accountant brings a report into the big cheese’s office that shows red ink at the start of a project. The manager then thanks the accountant and withdraws support for the change, which heretofore was touted as the “strategic paradigm shift for the organization, critical to our future success.” Poppycock!

There is an old skier’s proverb, “No guts no glory, no falls no…” well, you get it. Staying the course through rough times exhibits character strength and true leadership to those around you. Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, General Custer had courage, and look where it got him.” No, Custer was stupid, ignoring the evidence before him and disregarding warnings from trusted advisors in the pursuit of personal success. Know the problem, know the business plan that you’re going to follow, and know the realistic effects that can stem from the change, including initial red ink, then make a decision and stick to it.

Your job now is to go through your company on a weak manager hunt, finding those who aren’t leading but merely existing and costing the company dearly. If you ‘re one of them, now you know. Once identified, you can help them develop, re-assign the lost causes, or ignore the problem altogether. So what’s it going to be?

Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development firm that helps small to mid-size professional service firms build competitive advantage in an online world of sameness. He is author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business, and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in the SmartShop. Get your FREE LinkedIn Profile Optimization eBook & Video Course, Video Marketing video and course, or Mastermind Groups e-course & video now.

By Amanda DiSilvestro in Business

zippycartAs the holiday season approaches, many retail stores begin to prepare for the sales ahead by getting ready with credit card processing systems and seasonal workers. However, one question that stores commonly deal with is how to set their sales schedule. When sales are placed too close to each other, customers may ignore or lose track of the promotions. However, relying on a single big sale may cause a business to miss out on other opportunities throughout the season. By effectively spreading out sales, retail stores and small businesses can get the most out of their holiday promotions.

How to Determine the Ideal Sale Schedule

In order to increase sales during the lucrative holiday season, businesses should have a number of sales and promotions. However, businesses should not have a constant stream of sales in an attempt to attract customers. An ideal sale schedule should be tailored according to various factors such as target audience, type of industry and budget. The following strategies can help businesses understand when and how often to have a sale:

1. Sales Forecasting
Does your store have financial records on sales in the past years? By using this data, store owners can conduct sales forecasting to determine when it is the best time to have a sale. Sales forecasting is the practice of using past financial records to make short-term and long-term predictions. This will then help businesses make goals and set sales on dates that are likely to have a high turnout.

Sales forecasting can also provide the business with additional benefits. Examining past records can give the store owner an indication on the health of the business. In addition, forecasting data can give tips on how to run efficient operations and conduct cost-effective promotions. By using the information provided by sales forecasting, businesses can determine their ideal sale schedule.

2. Customer Buying Behavior
Store owners should schedule their sales based on when customers are most likely to purchase. Examine your target audience’s purchasing behavior and when they have shopped during the holiday season. Did your store increase in customers during a particular date? Which products sold the most in a particular time period? By answering these questions, store owners can determine ideal dates for sales.

Another way to determine when customers frequent a store is to identify the type of shopper. Some customers tend to be early purchasers (the older crowd), completing their holiday shopping early in the month. Other consumers may be procrastinators (the younger crowd), waiting until the last possible moment to shop for friends and family. In addition, certain individuals may only decide to shop when there is a particularly attractive sale. Understanding what type of customers frequent the store can set the ideal schedule for the upcoming holidays.

3. Predictions:
Depending on the type of industry, your business may want to focus on a particular product for sale. Certain toys, games and other products may be popular, and businesses can benefit by factoring such items into their schedules. One example of an exceedingly popular toy is the Tickle-Me Elmo, a fad that emerged during the late 90s. During “Elmo-mania”, many parents and other customers would scour stores; rapidly purchasing from stores with Elmos on hand. Keep abreast of products and items that are in particular demand and schedule sales accordingly in order to meet the needs of the customers.

A timely sale can have a dramatic effect on a business’s holiday profits. Therefore, an optimized sales schedule can determine whether the business experiences a successful holiday quarter. By understanding when customers are likely to visit and purchase products, the business can increase their sales and end their year with a strong finish.

Photo Credit: zippycart.com

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to credit card processing. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including pos systems to small businesses and entrepreneurs for Resource Nation.

By Chris Bucholtz in Business

crmYou can use social media and social CRM to build a stronger, more responsive business. But these new disciplines are not without risk. To keep your SCRM plans on track, avoid these all-too-frequent missteps.

Social Media – It’s Not A Broadcast Network

Many companies fail to grasp the two-way nature of social media. So they use sites like Facebook and Twitter to saturate their audience with messages while making no effort to listen to their customers and respond appropriately. It’s the social media version of “shock and
awe.” This is understandable given the evolution of marketing as outbound communication only. But today, such behavior is seen as loutish and clueless.

Your Customers Might Misbehave – You Can’t

You should behave as a peer with your customers, not a pal. Your customer community may be fairly rambunctious, even coarse on line, but that doesn’t mean you should match their behavior. You shouldn’t. Remain the professional, especially in situations where a detractor
becomes aggressive. You can respond to comments and answer concerns without engaging in a verbal brawl. Remember, most social media is not real time. You always have time to craft a response that addresses an issue and reflects well on you and your business.

Don’t Sabotage Your Efforts

Be patient. Social CRM is a new discipline. It will require time for your business to develop effective SCRM processes and for those processes to evolve and take root. If you attach unrealistic ROI goals or timelines to your social CRM efforts, you’ll waste the opportunity that SCRM represents today and dampen enthusiasm for it in the future.

Don’t Be Short Sighted

Skepticism and timidity about social media at a time when its growth continues to outstrip projections almost daily seems incredibly short sighted. Yet, the 2011 Capgemini Executive Outsourcing Survey revealed that 13 percent of executives interviewed at Fortune 1000 companies believed that social media was just a fad and not important to their companies’ success. Not so long ago, the Internet was viewed in the same way. In 1993, none other than Bill Gates said, “The Internet? We are not interested in it.”

Social media and the changes that it promotes are unlikely to disappear. Businesses that ignore this do so at their peril. There will be market share to gain for companies that excel in using social media. Does that mean you should “bet the farm” on social media and SCRM? No, it means that like any business tool–ERP, traditional CRM, business intelligence, supply chain management, and so forth – you should keep an open mind and make strategic investments in SCRM that will enable you to evaluate it thoroughly in the context of your business.

Social Media: The Long View

Since social media is ubiquitous, CRM has no other course but to accommodate and use it. Yes, in the short term, it can strain resources and disrupt the business routine. Most innovations do. But social media, and by extension SCRM, is an opportunity to make sales and service
processes more effective, get closer to the customer, and make businesses more productive, responsive, and profitable.

SCRM is not a replacement for traditional CRM; it’s an expansion of its scope. SCRM takes traditional CRM principles and applies them to a new set of data sources. It has the potential to support product creation, revamp old service processes, deliver rich sales and marketing
data, and foster peer-to-peer relationships with customers. Social CRM is an opportunity to improve your business and the experience your customers have with it.

Editor in Chief of CRM Outsiders, Chris Bucholtz is a founding editor of both Forecasting Clouds and InsideCRM, and a recognized influencer in customer relationship management. To find out more about how to build your business’s outreach and empower your employees with
Business CRM please visit http://www.sugarcrm.com

By EarGlue in Business

spn_exclusiveAnyone who makes their living in business either as an owner or marketer, has heard the term “niche” marketing. Niche marketing is a concept that is based on the idea that it is the little things (like little pockets of highly interested people) that we should be most concerned about appealing to. The concept recognizes the reality in marketing that you can’t be all things to all people. Nor would you want to.

Juxtapose this philosophy with a vastly different outlook about how to use space and time to deliver your message to that niche. When it comes to delivery frequency, “less is more” has given way to “more and more and more and more.” Previously under-studied parts of the marketing and customer relations puzzle, are now the province of professional consultants and scientific study. The overall idea is to leave no moment or sensory experience free of immersion for your customer. If that is your approach, then be aware there are inherent risks and pitfalls. Perhaps nowhere are these pitfalls more pronounced than in “on hold” marketing.

On hold marketing is simply the use of prerecorded content to convey your message, make offers, and advance your relationship with people who are on hold on your businesses’ phone system. On hold is one of the newer marketing disciplines not found solely on the Internet. The earliest known on hold marketing professional association came into existence around 2000. The reason that businesses can skate on a pretty thin sheet of ice when undertaking the on hold marketing method, is that people hate being put on hold. If you want to market to people during an already annoying time, consider these issues:

1.) Whether you wish to have an in-house system or hire an off-site full service delivery company, explore options with digital pbx systems via internet delivery. For people who don’t know, PBX systems were originally preferred within larger sized businesses because they were the only type of system that would accommodate music and message on hold capability and reduce costs by handling line system switches in-house.

A digital PBX system puts the power of modern digital line technology (with fast decreasing costs and pure sound quality) to work for your business. The internet connectivity aspect makes it simple to preload on-hold music and messages and allows for ease in prior scheduling of when messages play. The time you will invest in understanding the system (or finding someone who does) is offset by the advantages to an auto pilot system to deliver your message in the precise way you want it.

2.) Seek a system for delivering your on hold message that brings the message in a continuous loop. This ensures that a repeat caller will have a greatly reduced chance of hearing a message a second time.

3.) If you are seeking a full-service off-site delivery company, make sure you are comfortable with their music library and ask for a sample played over your business phone to you. You may also want to have a file played for you while calling via your cell phone. Sound quality for on hold is largely affected by the sound capability of the telephone that you are listening on – whether it is a business or cell phone. Make sure you are happy with what you hear.

4.) Be mindful of licensing requirements when reusing someone’s music. Music licensing fees are legally required to be paid. (This goes to thinking seriously about using a professional full-service on hold marketing service if it is possible.)

5.) Establish tracking systems for better evaluation of performance. One of the characteristics that makes the internet downloading of on-hold messages an outstanding advertising platform (beyond the low cost) are the real-time statistics of the performance of each campaign. Any offers or value deals on your messages should be accompanied by an identification code, web link, or other offer information that allows you to track the source of new business.

EarGlue.com is a company enhancing marketing efforts of businesses by providing their customers with a customized on-hold and in-store experience with informative, entertaining, and attentive productions.

By Chris Bucholtz in Business

crmThe five steps to developing a social CRM (SCRM) strategy are oriented toward the specifics of the social media ecosystem you’ll be working in and the customers you’ll be working with. Your strategy should also fit the time and resources you have. Take an inventory of your staff resources and the budget you have for sentiment monitoring and listening tools.

Step 1: Find Your Customers

You need to learn how your customers relate to social media. Many people connect to the major social media sites, which have broad appeal and large user communities. Facebook, for example, has 750 million users. In 2011, the site’s fastest growing age segment was 55+.

A second class of sites attracts people based on their interests. There are social networking sites for all kinds of people, from schoolteachers and sports fans to parents and programmers. A simple Web search reveals many of these sites.

You also need to keep an eye on sites that might have a peripheral connection to your products and services. For example, the customers of an outdoor equipment company may frequent a site dedicated to adventure travel. You want to be where your customers are and when it comes to social media that means following their interests not just their buying habits.

Step 2: Learn the Language

Once you’ve located the places where customers are either talking about you or about things that relate to your business, don’t jump in right away. Spend some time observing how the group works, who its leaders are, and the kind of language and tone the members use with each other. Your first step is to behave like you deserve to be part of the conversation. Take Mark Twain’s advice, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than it is to speak and remove all doubt.”

Step 3: Listen

Once you’ve located the sites where your customers congregate and spent some time getting a general idea of how they talk with each other, dig a little deeper. If there are subjects that you want to follow and the site has search capability, take a look at what’s been said in the past about those topics. This is listening in the social media world; it should precede participation.

Since you’ve probably identified multiple social media channels to track. How do you listen in on all of these conversations? If you have the resources, consider a staff member dedicated to social media. That person can keep track of the sites you’ve chosen, coordinate responses to conversations, and incorporate data from conversations into your CRM system. Don’t engage in more channels than you can monitor effectively.

Listening is made easier by social media monitoring and sentiment measuring tools. Listening tools can tell you what’s being said and where; sentiment tools can gauge the general tone of the conversations that mention you. Both can increase your social media productivity.

Your company also has great monitoring tools already in place–your employees. Many will use social media outside of work, and they may run across topics that pertain to your business. Employees should be encouraged to report anything they learn to the person you’ve designated to monitor social media.

Step 4: Engage

When your business is ready to engage with customers in a social media conversation, establish clear rules about who does the talking and where they do it. Someone from service could participate in conversations on a site where service issues are discussed. An engineer would be appropriate on a site geared toward developers.

Look for places to engage that will have an impact. If you see the opportunity to make a difference in a conversation, jump in–even if it’s only to say that you don’t know the answer to a question but can find someone who does. Then be sure to follow up. That level of authenticity coupled with tangible assistance builds loyalty with the person you helped. It also establishes you as a reliable participant in the community.

You can also start your own conversations. You could begin with a legitimate question about your customers and what they’re thinking. This approach can deliver actionable intelligence more quickly and inexpensively than a formal survey. Don’t make these the only conversations in which you participate. You’re there to participate as a peer not an interrogator.

Step 5: Make Use Of What You Learn

You can use two types of social media information: the data you uncover in conversations and the data that your customers and potential customers volunteer in setting up their profiles. Don’t focus only on the latter. It ignores the truly social aspects of social media and the richer information that conversations can bring to your attention. It’s also a source that’s likely to diminish as social media users become more sophisticated in their use of privacy controls.

There is no technology that can automatically detect the social media data relevant to your business and sort it by your customers or accounts. People engaged in conversations and monitoring social media sources will need to manually incorporate important information into customer records.

But the use of social media information doesn’t stop there. It also involves careful process design. For example, since a call for help in social media is heard by many people, the transfer of responsibility from social media monitor to designated service contact to the service personnel who can respond is vitally important. The same is true for sales, marketing, and product development.

Finally, make sure your employees know that social CRM can be an all-hands exercise that benefits the entire company, just like traditional CRM.

A recognized influencer in customer relationship management, Chris Bucholtz is Editor in Chief of CRM Outsiders and a founding editor of both InsideCRM and Forecasting Clouds. For more information on how to build your small and medium size business’s customer outreach and empower your employees with Small Business CRM please visit http://www.sugarcrm.com

By Karl Walinskas in Business

spn_exclusiveCommunicating as a Leader in your company is to take a daily assessment on life, and you’d better know the regulations. Fail that leadership communications exam and you’ll wonder where the production went as your business pays for it in dropped revenues. Two days ago I got back from the office feeling refreshed and alive. Five minutes chatting with my wife changed all that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like conversing with my wife. She was upset because of what happened to her at work, and after hearing about it, I was a little miffed as well.

My wife works at a part salary, part commission job selling advertising for a local newspaper. She had gone to work that day expecting the largest commission check of her career, and had left home in the morning drooling like one of Pavlov’s famous pups. Upon picking up her check, she found it a bit light and did some investigating. As it turned out, the boss man had changed the commission system overnight without telling the sales associates. Commissions for year-long ad campaigns would now be paid at the end of the year, when all money was collected, rather than now, when the ads were sold. Now be careful, I am not judging the validity of this commission system. There may be perfectly legitimate justifications for the change, but think about the way it was managed. No one who was impacted was told beforehand that this would happen or was even under consideration. My wife was not the only person impacted.

“Now hold on, there, loud mouth,” you may be thinking, “if you tell the salespeople this sort of stuff in advance, they’ll just whine and cry and try to stop it from happening.” You’re most likely right. Let me ask you this, how much work do you think anyone at the office got accomplished the day they discovered the commission plan alterations? I’m not just talking about the salespeople. If I spent an hour talking about it eight or nine hours after the fact, you can bet that anybody nearby of a peeved salesperson got their fill too– on company time. What’s worse, now your workforce feels betrayed, and may even undermine the company effort to work off their aggravations. You’ve traded a small, controllable problem for a major headache. You choose.

Prepare Them

This touches on rule numero uno. Whether you’re dealing with salespeople, floor-sweepers or doctors, anytime you as a leader needs to make a decision that affects people’s lives, tell them well in advance of the event occurring. At work, this usually affects the wallet or the employee’s benefits. Oh, by the way, this isn’t an isolated example. I consulted with a company of over six hundred employees where management changed the longstanding Christmas bonus plan without telling the employees until they got their checks. Many people received hundreds less than they were expecting, most of which was already spent on Uncle Ed’s new tie and a fruitcake for cousin Zelda. Hundreds of people were not working while grumbling about this breach of trust, and I, an hourly paid consultant, spent extra time hearing about this event rather than tackling the project I was hired for. The fastest loss of the Expectations Game that I ever did see.

Tell Them Why

Another leadership communication problem that will return to bite supervisors, CEOs, even special Project Managers is miscommunication, being misunderstood. When I want my dog to do something, I give her simple, one-syllable commands. “Bear, sit! Bear, stay! Bear, come!” Extra words cause miscommunication. Some supervisors use this approach when asking staff to do things, thinking that the less said the better. Problem: human beings aren’t dogs. We shower daily, don’t have tails to wag, and don’t blindly obey. The human mind is always endeavoring to find the answer to the never-ending question– “Why?” People can’t help it; it’s in our nature. Look at what happened in the Vietnam War, where soldiers– the most disciplined, regimented, and order-following type of American citizen– often struggled because they were doubtful of their mission, their purpose. Let’s hope the Libyan conflict isn’t similarly mishandled.

A second rule of communication then, for those responsible, is to provide adequate information for the employee to answer, “Why?” Many businesses moved to a philosophy called Open Book Management for this very reason. Lack of information frequently causes more complications than revealing those deep, dark company secrets. Look no further than the 2011 labor dispute between the NFL and the Player’s Association/Players. Let the employee complaining about his last meager pay raise see where the company’s funds went, that expenses may have risen and that revenues were down. This will drive an improvement in production more often than not. Even if your business is completely ethical you may have good rationales not to share every little thing with employees; just provide them with enough information that allows them to draw similar conclusions if they were in your position.

Communicate Congruently

What about non-verbal communication? I’m not talking here about intonation and hand motions, although that stuff is critical for effective communication too. I’m referring to a more total aspect of leadership communication that I’ll simply call congruency. This is where you walk the talk of your message. Oh how essential this is to carrying out those pesky, new management projects. Employees will see in seconds if your actions contradict your message. The employer who tries to convince his people how important dedication to the job is and then is seen leaving the office at midday every Friday in the summer carrying his golf clubs is not very persuasive or effective. This doesn’t mean you have to do everything your employees do; after all, you’re the boss. You manage; they produce. It simply means that you absolutely must show that if it’s important enough for them to do, it’s important enough for you to support.

I’ve outlined three things in this article that leaders should be aware of when communicating with subordinates. First, if your message impacts people where they live and breathe, get it out sooner instead of later. Second, if you want workers to implement on the stuff you give them to do, provide the reason why. Lastly, act congruently with the message that you project. There are many other criterions to help you communicate better with personnel. Be aware of these three and you’ll go a long way to sailing a smoother, more effective company ship.

Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development firm that helps small to mid-size professional service firms build competitive advantage in an online world of sameness. He is author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business, and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in theSmartShop. Get your FREE LinkedIn Profile Optimization eBook & Video Course, Video Marketing video and course, or Mastermind Groups e-course & video now.

By Trey McMartin in Business

business1If you are watching the news, you are seeing daily stories about how another government institution is in financial trouble.

And while I despise the phrase “too big to fail,” it is true that governments are actually, “too important to fail.”

At home and in business, we don’t have the luxury to be “too big” or “too important” to fail, so we must be more responsible and either reduce spending or increase revenue. Unfortunately, most politicians feel like they are exempt from having to reduce spending, so they are inclined to always seek methods to increase revenue, which makes our jobs harder when managing our personal or business budgets.

While politicians tend to put too much focus on increasing revenue, small business owners tend to put too much focus on reducing spending.

Bring Balance To The Force, Young Skywalkeryes

During a recession, most business owners pull the reins on advertising budgets, fearful of what tomorrow might bring…

Those who remain fearful have forgotten what made them the success they are today. They have forgotten that they have a God-given talent to overcome the incredible obstacles in their paths.

Some of the largest companies formed in the history of man owe their success to HOW they adapted to the economy during a recession. They reduced unnecessary expenses and focused completely on those things that made them the most money!

Examples of large, successful companies that launched during a recession include:

* Burger King – Started during a recession in 1954.

* FedEx (Federal Express) – Started during the 1973 recession, a recession that resulted from the 1973-1974 oil embargo.

* GE (General Electric) – Started in 1876, by Thomas Edison during the Panic of 1873.

* HP (Hewlett-Packard) – Founded in 1939 at the end of the Great Depression.

* CNN – Started during the recession of 1980, at the tail-end of the Carter administration, when the economy had been struggling for nearly a decade.

* Hyatt Corporation – Opened its first hotel in 1957, during the Eisenhower recession (1957-1958).

* IHOP – Also started during the Eisenhower recession.

* LexisNexis – Launched as a computerized legal research service in 1973, during the 1973-74 oil embargo.

* Microsoft – Started in 1975, during the recession created by the 1973 oil crisis.

* MTV Networks – Launched during the economic slump of 1981.

* Sports Illustrated – Was launched at the tail-end of the 1953-1954 recession.

These companies illustrate that a bad economy will not prevent success, but rather offer opportunities to grow fast and strong.

Studies have shown that rather than to reduce advertising during a recession, the wisest business persons will increase the advertising budget during the recession.

It Seems Counter-Intuitive, Doesn’t It?

The truth of the matter is that recessions bring consumer volatility, which means people are primed to change their spending habits.

Most consumers buy goods and services based on habitual behavior. This is the reason that Bing is having such a difficult time taking market share away from Google.

If you have used both, most people agree that Bing consistently delivers more relevant results. But consumers are habituated to using Google, because they believe that “Google provides the best search results…”

Since the summer of 2009, Bing has been the clear winner in the quality contest. In fact, the quality was so good when Bing was launched that Google raced to upgrade its own search algorithms. In a record time, about six months, Google completely rebuilt its search engine from the ground up.

Lucky for Google, its users never noticed how much better Bing was, because they had been drinking the Google Kool-Aid, forever believing that Google was “the best.”

During the fall of 2009, Google released the Beta-version of its new search engine, and then in Jan 2010, Google took its new search engine public with the Google Caffeine Update.

Once Google’s new search engine had been released, I imagine that its owners and managers sighed a collective sigh of relief. They had managed to return from the quality-underdog to an almost equal search engine, without losing any market share!

Your Competition Wants You To Drink The Recession Kool-Aid

During a recession, your competitors are weakened, because their customer base is also looking for cheaper or better alternatives.

If you tightened the noose on your marketing department, then you will have given your competitors the breathing room they needed to retain their market share, the same as Bing seemed to have done with Google.

Lessons From Failures and Successes

Bing did not tighten the purse strings on its new search engine, but opened the flood gates of spending. And in the end, Bing’s campaign floundered, because they did not clearly define for the global audience what made them better than Google.

Bing had the best opportunity in the history of Google to steal market share from Google. And they blew their opportunity to win market share!

Let Bing’s experience be a lesson to you. Open the taps for your marketing and advertising budget, but also be aware of the message you are trying to send to consumers.

Don’t leave consumers wondering why they should test their money at your company.

Be clear, concise and forceful that your product or service is better. And tell consumers how they can find you.

When the recession finally ends, consumers will fall back into the habits they had before the recession began, unless they have adopted new habits in the meantime.

You absolutely have to convince consumers to give you a chance, and while they are taking their chance on you, convince them that you should be their new, favorite habit to keep!

Burger King did it; CNN did it; IHOP did it, and Microsoft did it!

And if you are clever, you can do it too!

Recessions are an opportunity for the business-savvy to win new customers and market share. Are you going to accept the challenge before you, or let this opportunity pass you by?

If you are not competing for new customers on the Internet, you are making it easy for your competitors to crush you!! Your future customers are on the Internet NOW, looking for new merchants in your local area to serve their needs. Will those people find and choose your competitors or YOU? If you need help with your Local SEO and Local Marketing, then make it a point to find us at: http://MysticMountainMedia.com/ Author: Trey McMartin.

By Donna Gunter in Business

business1The old adage, “Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket,” is especially true in today’s economic climate for any business. Just as you would never let all of your income be derived from one or two clients, creating a diversified business where you have multiple streams of income is the key to success with an online service business. If one income stream tapers off for a time, you are adequately covered by the others. I have been doing this very successfully in my business for the last 8 years.

Where things become confusing for your prospective clients is if you have income streams that are all over the map and serve different target markets, like a career coach who buys, renovates, and flips homes on the side. It’s quite challenging to run a business like this because you’re actually running two different businesses in this example and the streams don’t relate well to each other at all. I recently experienced a situation where a career coach I’ve been following emailed his list about real estate development, which really annoyed me. I’m not interested in real estate development, nor do I expect to hear from that person on that topic.

The easiest way to create multiple streams of revenue in a service business is to create off-shoots of what you’re already doing serving the same target market in your core business. This has been referred to as “going deep” with your customers and providing them with additional products and services rather than “going wide” into other markets. In this way, you can create a great client transition process that would provide multiple ways to serve the same clients. Believe me, it’s easier to continue to sell to people who’ve already purchased from you than to try and cultivate new clients.

Here are 6 quick ways to stabilize your business with multiple streams of income:

1. Consulting/Coaching. Can you work with clients in a more in-depth fashion than you do currently? If so, you may want to add consulting or coaching to your income stream mix. Or, if you can help colleagues in the same industry grow their businesses, coaching or consulting in your own industry may provide the additional revenue stream you have been seeking.

2. Done for You Services. If you’re a coach or a consultant, adding done-for-you-services are a great option for members of your target market who don’t want any part of doing something themselves. So, if you’re a career coach who routinely helps clients polish their resumes, perhaps you could add a done-for-you resume service where you create a polished resume for your clients.

3. Affiliate Marketing. I love making money from recommending products and services that I already use in my business. This is an easy sale for me, as I’m an affiliate only for products and services that I have used or that have come highly recommended from a colleague that I respect. There’s nothing sweeter than getting my monthly PayPal notifications of payments from various affiliate
programs to which I belong.

4. Membership/Continuity programs. If you have a great deal of content lying around in your hard drive, a membership site or continuity program may be in your future. This is an effective way to create a recurring stream of income in your business.

5. Teaching/Training/Speaking. Are others interested in learning the “how-to” of what you do? Then adding teaching, training, or speaking to your revenue stream in the form of teleclasses, live events, or webinars will add a healthy income stream to your business.

6. Information Products. Whether you have developed your own or sell PLR (Private Label Rights) products, the sale of information products can be a lucrative revenue addition to your business. Developing products that are sold at different price points serve as a reasonable price alternative to help your target market solve a problem if they aren’t able to hire you for 1:1 assistance.

Take some time to determine how you can “go deep” with your target market and add additional revenue streams that complement what you’re already doing. You’ll soon discover a sense of relief to have the extra income should circumstances cause your income to drop in another part of your business.

Article by Donna Gunter. Discover other unique ways to stop the client chase and create an online service business drives traffic to your
web site with free instant access to this ebook, Turbocharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> http://www.TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com

You’ll get 7 proven internet marketing strategies that
separate the top 1% of online businesses from the rest.

From Donna Gunter, the Internet Marketing Coach for
Introverts

By Karl Walinskas in Business

spn_exclusiveToday in business you don’t get what you request– you get what you bargain for. You see, everybody asks “What’s in it for me?” So for you to get what you want, you’d better expect to answer that doubt for the people you collaborate with by learning negotiation know-how.

I have had plenty of success in negotiating opportunities lately, specifically since I am not known as an expert negotiator. I have negotiated raises that were 5 times what was proposed, negotiated an executive level position worth thousands beyond the job description with triple the job security, and negotiated online services worth hundreds of thousands of estimated income for my company. How did an amateur like me accomplish these things and learn how to negotiate in business? Here are 10 steps that I use for effective business negotiation:

Know What You Want … and What They Need

How simple this sounds, but how difficult to realize. You need to know specifically what it is you want from the transaction or negotiation. Don’t wait for the other party to state their point of view to decide what yours is going to be. If you want a raise, how much? A commission for click-thru sales, what percentage? Write these things down as a wish list of all the items you do want before you begin negotiations. If not you may think back and find you were persuaded into agreeing to terms for things you didn’t need to begin with. In order to counter effectively and find how your value proposition matches the other party’s needs, you first need to know what those needs are. Again, be very specific in terms of dollars, percentages, times, etc. Experienced negotiators will take their specifics and read between the lines to find needs not stated, emotional issues like political victories within the organization.

Exercise Patience

Lack of patience on your part can make you appear an amateur and ruin a deal. Ed Brodow, writer of “Negotiate with Confidence”, says that your patience can be devastating to the other person if they are in a hurry. The opposite is true for you. Conceal self-imposed deadlines that reveal to your adversary that you might be subject to a timetable. “Never accept the first offer”, says Brodow. “They will be more satisfied if you reject the first offer– because when you eventually say “yes,” they will conclude that they have pushed you to your max.

Know Your Walk-Away Moment

One of the biggest issues with auctions for the purchasers is that people get whipped into an enthusiastic craze during the process and bid, and ultimately purchase, something at a much higher price than they would have ever considered possible. They neglect to know their ceiling bid. This can happen in negotiation too. You must know your fallback position or cut-and-run point. What’s the bottom line amount you will take?

What Battle Is Worth Fighting?

In any settlement you will need to compromise if for no other reason than to allow the other party to feel they have gotten something out of the deal. Decide early what are the key compromises you will not make– what’s really important to you. Don’t die on a hill that isn’t worth dying on, folks. If you ‘re being offered a position as an executive in a company, is the monthly car lease an important enough point to be a deal killer?

Match Benefits to Their Needs

For you to expect anyone to give you something, you know you have to provide quality benefits to him, whether in a verbal negotiation or a written pitch. Now you know what he needs, so review your list of attributes for yourself or your company, and look for matches to the needs of your negotiating opponent. Professional negotiators will find unfulfilled wants that the other party has that weren’t stated and point out how cutting a deal will satisfy them. For example, I recently negotiated a deal on behalf of an online business portal with a national data provider. The data provider permitted us to upload data that is normally purchased on a subscription basis for access to the predicted web traffic on the portal. This traffic means click-thru sales, which we even negotiated a commission on!

Pursue Win-Win Deals

This is an attitude that has to occur for you to be profitable today. There are no more winners and losers in discovering consultative sales or negotiations. There has to be winners on both sides of the table, so find gaps that you can fill and look how the other guys can fill your gaps. The truth is that every company and every person is different with different needs and wants. Use that to your benefit. Something that has little cost to you in concession may be a major coup for the people you ‘re doing business with. Let them have it, because the reciprocal situation applies for you. Free software is an example. Software costs little to reproduce, so therefore the marginal costs to a software company are miniscule, but the value of a package may be tremendous to the right party. Everybody profits if all sides keep the needs of their opponent in mind instead of thinking about defeating them. Opportunities will surface that you never imagined possible.

Find Workable Compromise

This goes back to a prior point. Certain things you cannot live without, but others are manageable. Know early where you can be flexible and just how flexible you can be (Gumby or Plasticman?). Any time you give in on a point in one area, including terms of payment, it is perfectly appropriate and expected that the other party will yield somewhere else. As long as you keep from flinching on your critical negotiation goals, you can find compromises that permit both sides to come together in the middle without losing face.

Don’t Underestimate Your Worth

This is a basic sales mantra that I live by, and it occurs daily when people concede on price or terms without narrowing the scope of service or demanding comparable concessions. If you are willing to take a hit to your bottom line in exchange for zero, your authority goes down, now and in the future. If you do it once it becomes precedent setting. Moreover, it leads to mistrust, because you just proved you did not give your best deal from the outset. You’ve set yourself up for the proverbial spitting for distance contest, subjecting your side to future browbeating for unjustified concessions. Any time you surrender anything in a negotiation, make sure that you show value becomes a little less from your side or demand additional value from their side.

Stick to Your Guns

If you offer a good proposal and you know it, stick to it! Don’t let fear, condescension from your counterparts, or chiding language make you back off from your position. Let her vent, telling you how preposterous your argument is while proving nothing, and then re-emphasize how she wins by doing business with you. Put the ball in her court by asking her to demonstrate there is no value in your offer. It’s easy to throw stones. It’s much more difficult to prove those airborne stones were deserving of flight. Don’t back down and you won’t fail the final test of the negotiation.

If you cannot achieve satisfaction, follow negotiation expert Brodow’s Law: “Always be willing to walk away.” Other deals are just over the horizon, so don’t get too vested in this one.

Document the Deal ASAP

You’ve got what you want and so does the other side. “Look honey, it’s a win-win situation.” Great! Get it written down before you pat yourself on the back and get it to the other party for sign-off. Why? To begin with, tomorrow his memory may recall something in a different way. Second, many times negotiators occur between the leaders of organizations or people who guide the operation but have no legal background. As soon as the lawyers and analysts get hold of the agreement, you can bet that items will be questioned today that were a done deal yesterday. Oh yeah, it’s true.

The next time you’re in a situation where there is give and take, remember that a negotiation is going on, whether you call it that or not. Apply these ten little rules to your situation and watch with marvel as you get that pay increase, secure that new position, make that next sales commission, or get that great deal. Then go out to your favorite restaurant and reward yourself with a hot meal for getting what you wanted– on you. You deserve it.

Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development and cost management consulting firm for small to mid-size enterprises, and Virtual Mastermind, an online network of Mastermind Groups for small business owners. He has made a career of leading, inspiring and raising the game of small business people. He is the author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in the Smart Shop, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com. He can be reached at kwalinskas@smartcompanygrowth.com.

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