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Tag: Productivity

  • Building Your Team – Looking for Folks Who Aren’t You

    Building Your Team – Looking for Folks Who Aren’t You

    There comes a time in most working professionals life when they are tasked with something significant and asked to create or build a team to tackle it. For some of us, this can resemble the team-picking exercise we all got through on the school yard for kickball – with predictable results: poor cohesiveness, bad management skills applied inexpertly, a lack of motivation and poor morale. In short, the project sometimes gets done, usually by the strongest or most domineering two or three, leaving the rest feeling disenfranchised or segregated, negated or worse, and a less than optimal project outcome as well. This is not a recipe for greatness.

    Those who take a more strategic approach sometimes fare better, but not always. Those who look good on paper, and have incredible skill sets and diligence to spare, may not work well with others, may not mesh with the overall “gears” of the group, may not parse out their skills in a way that the team appreciates. The results are similar to the above, but with bigger egos.

                  Really good teams at their root have a level of respect for the challenge . . .

    A recent view of the movie “Moneyball” reveals that business is not the only discipline where emotionally selecting co-workers can have negative consequences, but that even things that look good on paper may not work well in real life. It also illuminates the fact that there is a hidden “something” that all winning teams have that all the statistical analysis, investigative scouting, referral burnishing or other team-selection method will not reveal. There’s a certain “chemistry” among winning teams that is difficult to duplicate, harder to engineer or manufacture.

    One way to set the stage for this “Chemistry” is to find individuals with complimentary skills, and personalities, and just enough commonality to let each be comfortable. Six big ego type A personalities banging around in there is likely to be a disaster, just as five or six introspective, analytical introverts. But two or three of each, with a couple of “neutrals” to referee and act as the voice of reason, and things start to look more productive. Sometimes pushing everyone outside their comfort zone has positive results, because the “adversity” acts like a bonding catalyst, sets up an “Us vs Them” mentality that motivates, coalesces, and helps the normally divergent skills and personalities converge to solve the challenge at hand, just to prove they can.

    Really good teams at their root have a level of respect for the challenge and for each of the members that keeps things moving forward and fosters trust. The more difficult the challenge, and the more exclusive the team, the better this works. Setting the stage for this starts with the team’s nominal leader, showing an even-handed, rational and realistic approach to how they handle the others.

    Team-building has to be looked at from many different angles and good ones are effective on several levels. A group of professionals who respect each other and each others’ talents and skills, and who also spend off time as friends, is a rare combination but can be a very effective one. There’s a certain element of vulnerability that helps cement things a bit more closely when you’ve seen the other team members let their hair down a bit and you do the same, put yourself out there a bit and show another side of yourself – let them in, and have them let each other in, and that’s where the “magic” seems to start.

                 . . . the “adversity” acts like a bonding catalyst, sets up an “Us vs Them” mentality that motivates, coalesces, and helps the normally divergent skills and personalities converge . . .

    If you found this interesting and valuable, and would like to read more, subscribe to this blog above and more like this will be delivered to your inbox weekly – and don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes” 

     

  • Sometimes Business Growth Doesn’t Mean More Customers

    Sometimes Business Growth Doesn’t Mean More Customers

    In our daily consulting practice, we see the inside of businesses all over the country, and can make some fairly educated observations about how they run. Small businesses especially are having a tough time running smoothly, in a couple of aspects, operationally and financially.

    Smaller businesses, especially service businesses like landscapers, technology companies, contractors painters and other building trades, are having trouble securing loans from local banks to use for working capital or expansion, new equipment, bigger crews, more workers. This type of business often has ebbs and flows in cash availability, either due to seasonality of their business or the size and nature of their work and their customers. Occasionally they need some extra capitol on a short term basis to make payroll and keep good people on the employee rolls until they are needed for the next big job. If they can’t get that extra money, they are forced to cut other staff, benefits or worse, close down temporarily. This up and down cycle, when not mitigated by some cash flow injections, can eventually destroy a small business, even one that is well managed.

    1)  Qualified Staff Shortage. Operationally, this cash flow issue changes the dynamic among the core of employees, and causes the other problem this type of business faces: scarcity of qualified staff and an employee pool too shallow. If the threat of being laid off comes repeatedly to the rank and file, word spreads in the industrial community and you will have a hard time recruiting good employees. The stress caused by the impending downsize can negatively affect productivity, loyalty and other critical areas of performance.

    2)  Reduced Risk Profile Stifles Growth. That lack of cash flow can also have a negative effect on management decisions as well. If you’re not sure you can fill that cash gap, but have receivables out there and the next big job is in the pipeline, management will still be reluctant to hire additional employees even when they’re needed. This reduces risk-taking, limits growth and expansion, and slows movement among the employees. Mentoring behavior slows or stops, training dries up, and the whole works can come to a virtual standstill, largely out of fear of that “big job gap”.

    3)  Know When To Let Go.  The third but highly overlooked issue for small businesses these days is making the transition from founder-lead, to goal-driven enterprise. Usually smaller businesses are started by a single individual, who has a skill or a talent. They are successful using those skills and the business grows. They hire some semi-skilled workers to help in specific areas, but the founder still acts as president, chief cook and bottle washer, wearing a huge number of hats on the managerial and administrative side, and still doing the principal work at the same time. If they get caught in this loop for very long, performance suffers, crucial but routine admin work often gets missed or lies fallow for long periods, customer service suffers and eventually work quality will suffer.

    The way to break the cycle is for the owner to know when it’s time to find a trusted team to run the jobs and they move over to take a more strategic role. Its a different skill set, but one that can be learned. Finding that team is becoming increasingly difficult, and this is one of the biggest single issues facing small businesses and impeding their growth. Advice for job-seekers out there – look at your skills and experiences and frame them in such a way as to make you attractive to someone seeking a clone of themselves – make yourself appear trustworthy and indispensable, and you’ll get hired in a second.

    Growth from within, building a team, creating a chain of command, putting in place a management structure and policies that foster growth, innovation, initiative and empowerment are just as valuable as building up the customer list, and are a form of growth on their own.

    If you found this valuable and would like to find out more, pick up a copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • The Devil’s In The Details

    The Devil’s In The Details

    Sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference in the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. I’m not talking about typos, color shifts, production problems etc. Those can be controlled and at some point there are enough eyes on the material that they will likely be found and corrected before too much damage is done, at least in the old days, before instant campaigns online became possible.

    Today it’s a little different, in that with speed comes a greater margin for error, often born of impatience. Get it out there, get it out there, no matter what the cost in accuracy or efficacy. The number of eyes on the materials has been greatly reduced, as the influence and assistance of outside vendors, editors, production artists, printers, mail shop workers, shippers, packagers, truck drivers, etc have been greatly reduced or eliminated. You can now “do it all yourself” and when the mistakes surface, you have only yourself to blame.

    The little things I’m talking about are those small details in the offer, those small production details like proportion and size relationships, and typography, and color selection, and all the other little elements that make up a successful mail campaign. Promo codes that work, addresses that are postal validated or permit numbers that are correct, phone numbers and web addresses that are accurate and that function correctly. And more importantly, concepts that actually sell the right product! You might think I’m exaggerating or embellishing for effect, but I kid you not, I’ve seen marketing pieces that appear to sell the wrong product. I mean wrong compared to the intent of the sponsoring organization. If you are a large manufacturer, and your product contains a licensed product or another branded ingredient under an specific arrangement, (like Laundry detergent with Fabreeze), you can stop reading here. That’s not what I mean.

    I’m talking about when the marketing team gets so involved in the details required to produce the piece, nobody has taken a step back and asked the critical question “What are we selling here?” Those little elements I mentioned above can indeed have a huge impact on the outcome of the campaign (think what could happen if you’ve got 4-5 sponsors or tests and each has a different promo code, and somehow the codes get shifted mid-way or they all lead the same place and don’t differentiate – your metrics are shot, you have no idea how to assign revenue, and your test is inconclusive and invalid – not a good day to be working in the marketing department). But if your focus of the campaign is off, you’ve fundamentally misdirected the audience’s attention, diluted the impact of your campaign, and wasted potentially a lot of money. When reading the copy, those first clues that the focus has shifted will likely emerge. If you get to the end of reading the raw copy, no images, no production, just words on paper, and you don’t feel motivated to find out how to get ahold of that product, start over.

    Laser-like focus is required for maximum results. Each word, phrase, image, element or choice should be selected and added because it enhances the power of the message, clarifies the intent of the piece, or aids functionality for the end-user to facilitate a sale. Editing is a subtractive technology. Good editors take the mass of information presented in the first or second draft, and selectively remove anything that doesn’t force the sale forward. What’s left should be crystal clear, high-impact, high-return marketing madness that drives sales through the roof.

    Once that’s achieved, test it, and mail, mail, mail!If you’ve thought it all through thoroughly, tracked all the leads, attended to every detail, checked every phone number, web address, promo code and list parameter, success is inevitable.

    The Devil’s in the details, so bold marketers, go forth and dance with the devil, knowing that solid preparation, pin-point focus, and data-driven logic are the weapons that help you control the dance!

    Write in your biggest snafu due to missing a small detail, we’d all love to hear about it and commiserate with you – hopefully it was long enough ago that you can now share a good laugh with all of us.

    If you found this valuable and would like to read more, pick up a copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes“

  • Teamwork Pays Off

    Teamwork Pays Off

    After one of our recent brutal winters, including over 4′ of snow, we paid the price for them by replacing the 28-year-old roof on our house. We talked to roofers and selected one with a large number of crews and manpower to draw from, and after checking out some of their work, set up a contract based on an agreed-to price, and waited for the crew to arrive. A week or so later, the project manager called and said we’d be receiving a delivery of our shingles the next day, and that the job would be done in one day. We were amazed, as the roof is rather large and complicated as roofs go, lots of valleys and it’s a hip roof, so there’s lots of guttering and ridge cap and such – a big job for most crews.

    The day came, and at an early hour, four trucks pulled into the driveway and disgorged over a dozen workers, including a huge flatbed delivery truck with a remote operated hydraulic crane. The proceeded to unload their gear, get their materials in place and set to work, with very little conversation or communication of any kind. Like a well-oiled machine, they each knew their role and carried it out at the right time in the right order, and low and behold, within 30 hours of their starting time, the job was completed, just a few moments shy of a thunderstorm.

    Think how effective your marketing team is when faced with a challenge of this magnitude, how they are given direction, how they work together, how much they accomplish in a compressed time frame. To most office-based teams, the level of teamwork and coordination evidenced by these roofers is not only impossible, but alien to their nature. Not one of these workers told the others, “no, it’s your job, I’ll only handle this” or “I’m on a break, you do it” or pointed any fingers at the others when there was a discrepancy – they just worked quietly and competently along side one another, and got the job done, so they could go home. They were quiet, respectful of not only us and our property but of each other. And these were not highly paid, well-read educated executives, they were hourly laborers.

    There is great value in knowing your job thoroughly, understanding your role in the organization, taking responsibility for yourself and your actions, and doing a job well. Working in a team that functions smoothly involves all of this and more. Some of the responsibility for the team’s success falls to the leader, or manager, of the team. Clearly this team had been trained, and supervised carefully until they worked together well, but that wasn’t all of it. Part of their success lies in believing in a common purpose – “us against the mountain” mentality, rising to the occasion to meet a common challenge. The sense of personal accomplishment is shared by all, and they can retire at the end of the day knowing they accomplished a job well done. In return, they received a stable stream of work, a reasonable pay, and the admiration of their customers and colleagues alike for a tough task accomplished.

    If only some of our leaders and top execs in the financial community took some of those values to heart, we’d all be in a better place right now. The leaders failed the team and the public in those cases, and education or compensation for the job didn’t have anything to do with it.

    Next time you’re going to initiate a new marketing campaign, pull your team together for a kick-off meeting and try and instill those same values those roofers showed in your team. It’s tougher than it sounds . . .

    Tell me about your most rewarding teamwork experience, no matter what the industry . . .

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