CAN YOUR BUSINESS AFFORD NOT TO?

I have just left a client who has been trying to establish a business which uses a whole range of marketing activities including a fairly significant Internet marketing effort. Whilst many of the other marketing activities were showing reasonable results and he was able to evaluate them using clearly defined criteria, his Internet marketing activities seemed to be producing little or no return.

He had spent not inconsiderable amounts of money on Marketing activities – although when we eventually started to look critically at the numbers, he was clearly trying to get away with doing the Internet side “on the cheap”. This was partly because of some scepticism around this new marketing tool and partly to preserve as much money as possible for what he saw as more conservative or conventional activities – although I would hardly rate Internet marketing as unconventional in this day and age.

Each time we had discussed the allocation of more resource to the Internet side, it was met with some resistance and the “I cannot afford to spend any more there” story. And yet the Marketing results were still not optimal – all other things being considered. At review meetings, everybody was still saying that we should be generating better results from the Internet activities and we had been able to establish that some of his competitors were having considerable success with their Internet marketing.

Eventually the crunch came – budgets had to be cut and something had to go. But in order to decide what he should cut from the budget, we did one final review. Brutal honesty was the order of the day.

We looked at each and every activity with a critical eye – then turned it over and did the same again.  We looked very closely at what he was doing, where he was doing it, how it was being done and who was doing what.

Slowly the realisation began to dawn - the resource he was using to drive his Internet marketing activities was far too lightweight for the job that needed to be done. But that was the only resource that he believed he could afford – how could he throw much stronger resources at something which he did not know was going to work?

It was the old story – he thought that he was doing the right things in that arena but in fact, he had employed a thimble and expected it to generate a waterfall. But how could he now justify upping his spend in this area at a time when he was supposed to be cutting back?

After much soul searching and revisits to every area of the marketing budget, he decided that it was more a matter of ”could he afford not to” than could he afford to!!  He needed to strengthen his Internet marketing area significantly – he went out and found himself a bright young Masters graduate in IT, put the appropriate resources behind the job and has never looked back. His Internet marketing activities are now producing spectacular results.

Frequently in business we are confronted with this dilemma. How often do we allow conventional wisdom to prevail? How often do we not question the paradigms which keep us comfortable? How many times do we doom something or someone to failure simply because we do not provide the commitment and resource needed to succeed?

How strongly do we defend positions because we are too scared to admit we may have been wrong?

Why do we lack the courage to change?

How often do we say “can’t afford to do that” when in truth the business cannot afford NOT to do it.!!!

 

 

Plethora of Small Business Information

The information age is well and truly upon us, in fact we are sinking in small business information. There is more than we can ever hope to take in and so much that is contradictory that one often just doesn’t know where to start once you’ve read it anyway.

Some interesting statistics coming out of the States a few years ago said that 90% of the top Fortune 500 companies had tried 11.5 of the latest 15 business strategies! And that’s the big boys.

So what does that mean for the small business owner who is battling to sift through all the “wanna, shoulda, coulda” information that is flooding their inboxes and their minds.

Often people seek small business information without actually knowing what they want to achieve. They want more, bigger, higher but have not every spent the time with the feet up on the desk clearly defining what it is they’re searching for.

Is that you?

If so, we have this advice. Develop a business strategy for your small business that takes you through all the logical, step-by-step processes to channel your energy, and your thoughts, constructively.

By doing this you will be able to clearly define what it is you’re seeking out of your business. After all, a business is just a vehicle to take you somewhere. Where are you heading to? How long do you want to take to get there? What do you want to achieve along the way?

By developing a clear picture of the destination you’re heading towards you’ll then be able to search for specific small business information relevant to what you need to know to take you towards your goal.

Don’t just grab at any small business information. Take on board the basic skills needed to expand your knowledge in critical success areas and then adapt that knowledge to your needs. If you do that you can’t go wrong and it’ll enable you to sift through the information quickly and effectively.

To find out more about a practical, step-by-step marketing programme for small businesses visit The Small Business Marketing Toolbox today.

Do we really develop minds or just activities?

Whilst involved with doing some marketing planning work with a client last week, I was privy to a discussion between the Sales Director and one of her sales team members. I had asked to spend some time with the sales people in different environments to get their views on what was happening in the market and to get some feel for the vital interface between sales and the business.

The title of this blog post was inspired by an interaction I witnessed between a Sales Director and a sales representative, which left me in little doubt that I had just seen yet another example of ineffective leadership.

Sure the relationship between Sales Manager and sales representative is often a difficult one – the manager wants immediate results and bottom line contribution whilst the sales person is often finding life in the trenches extremely difficult and feeling that they lack real support from the business. And yet what I saw in this interchange was unlikely to make any real impact or difference in the long run.

The primary reason for this was because the meeting was dominated by the sales director (in terms of the time spent talking as opposed to listening) and was made up mainly of the sales director telling, advising and suggesting what the sales person should be doing.

Whilst this works to a point, research suggests that we, as average human beings, reject a large proportion of the suggestions and advice given to us. And even that which we do adopt, we tend to forget within a comparatively short period of time – literally weeks or months.

So what makes us think that someone is going to take every bit of advice and suggestion which we offer them – when we know full well, that if the boot was on the other foot, we would probably only adopt 10% of the advice and then forget it entirely within a matter of weeks.

Which leads us to the crux – should we not stop focusing entirely on what we want and start to find out what they need to learn to lift their performance? Should we not look at the interactions and try to work towards making them ones in which the people we are trying to help learn (for themselves) rather than we continually try to teach them what we want and how we want it?

Should we not be working towards creating a safe environment in which they feel that they can begin to express themselves? And towards developing their abilities to make decisions, draw conclusions and find ways to do these things for themselves? Should we not be looking for commitment and self-discipline rather than simply trying to ensure compliance with what we suggest, recommend or advise?

I am not for a moment suggesting that we settle for second best – our role as leaders is to develop accountability and outstanding performance – not to settle for mediocrity. But surely we can do this so much better by helping our people to learn to think for themselves – rather than simply continuing to expect them to listen to us and do them the way we say? And if we teach ourselves to listen to what they have to say and to ask the sorts of questions which probe to the guts of the issue, can we not coach them to develop this self-reliance, accountability, decisiveness and initiative that will make them more effective people?

If we can help them to see the possibilities and the opportunities that never existed before, will the automatic result not be the improved performance that we say we are looking for?

To find out more about a practical, step-by-step marketing programme for small businesses visit The Small Business Marketing Toolbox today.