by Bert Shlensky | Mar 29, 2017 | Marketing
From the conference room, to the conference stage… Here’s how to create authentic communication with your team and audience, every time.
Businesses are generally focused on issues like marketing, planning, operations finance and people. However, we sometimes are so excited with our ideas we pay inadequate attention to how they are communicated and perceived. Here are ten great tips to get your ideas understood and executed no matter who your audience! Some may seem obvious but, by the end of this article you’ll realize just how out of practice you are and will be ready to put them into action.
- Give them a Glass That’s Half Full. There is no substitute for making your interaction a “WIN-WIN” with an emphasis upon solutions, problem-solving, and the benefits of a relationship. Be sure to respect your audience’s expertise, experience and opinions—this will help insure that you are taken seriously and that you are perceived as being open to new ideas.
- Communication Will Get You Everywhere. A colleague told me that during their Monday morning staff meetings, staffers of all levels would have a few minutes to share something they learned about their job, an observation about their industry, or even a happy family event. They would review the latest company project; offer their uncensored comments in what was considered safe and neutral territory. It led to some of their best ideas.
- The Water Cooler Concept. Introduce processes that encourage more informal communication. My old boss used to walk through the various departments and ask if his employees had everything they needed, or if there were ideas to make improvements. It provided for positive and relaxed interactions that sometimes generated a new idea, but always generated good feelings.
- Cater to Your Staff. The easiest and best tool is learning to say, please, thank you, and hello more often. Informal actives like free lunches, including part-timers, and supporting health and welfare programs are also productive.
- Follow Up! There is nothing worse than interactions where the participants don’t think anyone really cares. An easy solution is: don’t forget to follow up. Emails, calls, reminders, etc. greatly improve your chances of getting the desired call-to-action.
- Know Your Goals…and it’s not just content. In many cases it seems the goal is to bore the audience with unengaging content that puts your audience to sleep without ever really understanding their needs Rather you need to consider your “Goal”; whether it’s selling a product, developing a relationship, impressing the audience, etc.. Similarly, what is the take away or call to action? To buy your product? To sign a contract? To invest? Etc.
- 90% of most impressions are made in the first 30 seconds of contact, and they are not based on the substance of the communication I repeat: 90% of most impressions are made in the first 30 seconds of contact and they are not based on the substance of the communication. The easiest remedy, keep it simple stupid and consider following this: Create your presentation, then cut it in half…then cut it in half again!
- Don’t Depend on PowerPoint. It is among the most overused current communication tools that ignores the needs of the audience. There is nothing worse than having the lights go out, and sitting through a 30-60 minute canned, slick, PowerPoint sales presentation. Instead, aim to create a presentation that engages and interacts with your audience.
- We all know the adage…. features tell, benefits sell. Then how come so many of us still speak in terms of features and not benefits? The prospect doesn’t care what your product or service does, they only care about what it does for them.
- Help Your Audience Keep in Touch. Be sure your name, your business name, your website, email address and phone number are easily found.
The goal for communication is to maximize the understanding and commitment to your ideas. Hopefully these tips offer up some grit to enhance the process elements of communication Tell us a time when you’ve struggled to create authentic conversations.
Dr. Bert Shlensky, President of www.startupconnection.net, offers experience and skills and a team devoted to developing and executing winning strategies for businesses. This combination has been the keys to client success. His book, “Passion and Reality and Small Business Success” is available at www.startupconnection.net.
by Bert Shlensky | Feb 27, 2017 | Marketing
Starting a business is an exciting rollercoaster ride filled with new opportunity and wild imagination, but once the honeymoon phase wears off you have to make it work. In a time when everyone and their brother are creating startups, most won’t get past the first two years. So what can you really do?
Know Your Customers
During my time as president of Startup Connection, I learned a lot about branding and marketing. You might be surprised to learn that customer service, research, and pricing can be more important than your traditional understanding of “branding.”
As it turns out, listening to your customers, developing relationships with them, and knowing them well enough to give them what they want is the best form of branding there is.
They know you and your values and can trust you to deliver. No amount of advertising or logo design can buy that.
Know Your Competition
This is something that’s easy to forget, and we often do it on purpose.
We either get so wrapped up on what we’re doing, that we don’t have a clue about our competition. Or worse, we’ve taken the idea of “not listening to our detractors” to a dangerous level. The simple truth is that if you ignore your competitors, you’ll be blindsided by them.
Use Google and Amazon regularly to scope out what competes with you – directly and indirectly. Direct competition is pretty easy to spot and compare: What’s their quality? What’s their price? Does it solve problems that my product doesn’t?
Indirect competition is harder to spot but equally important. For example, Dominos competes against Papa John’s, but they also compete against other delivery services out there, and they compete against any products that make it easier to stay in and cook.
Be Honest With Yourself
Too often we build up a fantasy that rationalizes our business failings and those ingrained issues that hold us back. Take a hard look in the mirror. The only way to truly fix your problems is to identify them.
Sometimes that means changing your method, or even your attitude, and other times it means making hard decisions like letting people go or pivoting to a more sustainable business model. Don’t let pride come before the fall and don’t fool yourself.
Identify your strengths too. Without reflection you won’t be able to recreate past successes. Plus, it feels empowering to know what you truly have under control.
By running a simple profit model, you can learn invaluable information about the structure and mechanics of your business. Some businesses are set up in a way that makes it very, very difficult to them to succeed. The sooner you can find that information out, the better off you’ll be.
Be Bold
Armed with knowledge, self-awareness, and exposure, you must be BOLD.
Presentation graphics, videos, packaging, and incentives are all keys to stand out. Early on, the money-back guarantee was a great way to get someone to try your product because it takes the risk out of the transaction. It still is a great idea, but you see some companies going even further and offering 200% money-back guarantee, meaning that you would get a refund plus the value of the product.
While you might think that it’s a crazy idea, there’s no question that it’s bold. It gets your attention.
When starting a business, you invariably get a ton of advice. Some things work, and some things don’t. Focusing on your customers, your competition, your results, and presenting it all in a bold, memorable way? Those principles never go out of style.
Dr. Bert Shlensky, president of www.startupconnection.net, offers experience and skills and a team devoted to developing and executing winning strategies for businesses of all kinds. This combination has been the key to client success. His books for the business entrepreneur: Marketing Plan for Startups & Small Business and Passion & Reality for Small Business Success, are available at www.startupconnection.net.
by Bert Shlensky | Feb 24, 2017 | Marketing, Maximizing Effectiveness - Main, Operations
Operations and logistics are frequently viewed as secondary functions that can be handled by someone else. But here’s the thing: With data so richly available, using it to help reinvent operations and logistics can help you stand out just as much as the next electric car or purple cow.
Just take a look at some of the world leaders in business.
Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, and other sharing sites are turning their industries around with structural and operational changes that challenge old paradigms. It’s not the products or services that stand out but the operations, logistics, and method of delivery.
For example, Amazon does not just succeed on lower prices or by offering different products than their competitors. They have revolutionized, simplified, and automated ordering, customer service, distribution, and warehousing.
The results have been staggering. It’s estimated that in 2016, they represent about 30-40% of internet retail sales and 8-10% of total retail sales.
Operations Innovation Isn’t Just For The Big Businesses
You might be thinking, “But that’s for the big businesses. How can that help my small business?”
Changing operational paradigms is for small businesses, too! Take a look at GrubHub. They are a publicly traded company, but think of whom they help: restaurants, big and small. They’ve helped thousands of restaurants expand their sales by providing seamless delivery.
Outsourcing key activities like web design, social media, cloud services, CRM, and even distribution have become both less complicated and more affordable.
No matter the size of your business, you can streamline or maximize your operations to take your sales and profits to a whole new level. The key is maximizing forecasting, inventory control, and distribution to maximize service, investment return, sales, and profitability.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Many operations experts say that 80% of sales are with 20% of your products. It’s often true, yet suppliers continue to proliferate styles, colors, sizes, models, and features to presumably serve more customers and provide more features. By keeping it simple, you help yourself and your customers.
- Pursue profit and not volume. Businesses frequently fail by adding too many stores, products, and marketing. In contrast, focusing on competitiveness, bestsellers, reducing costs, and reducing structure can have huge payoffs.
- Conduct a simple “SWOT” analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to get a perspective on your business. The surprising aspect of this exercise is that we frequently take our strengths and opportunities for granted rather than maximizing them. For example, approaching key and repeat customers usually presents the greatest opportunity, lowest cost, and most profitable source of additional sales.
- Encourage testing new ideas and scrapping ones that don’t work. You will make mistakes. Focus on solving them rather than blaming someone. Consider using the process of develop, test, measure, and adapt. The measure step is, by the way, the most frequently forgotten.
It’s easy to get seduced by design, marketing, or the next flashy idea. Plenty of businesses innovate in these areas. Don’t forget, though, that just as frequently, success comes from innovation in operation and logistics.
This piece originally appeared on Alignable and was published with permission.
Dr. Bert Shlensky, president of www.startupconnection.net, offers experience and skills and a team devoted to developing and executing winning strategies for businesses of all kinds. This combination has been the key to client success. His books for the business entrepreneur: Marketing Plan for Startups & Small Business and Passion & Reality for Small Business Success, are available at www.startupconnection.net.
by Bert Shlensky | Feb 17, 2017 | Marketing, Marketing Templates
Between 2006-2008, the iPhone, Facebook. Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and several other technology companies started to explode. We are still trying to help management catch up with those opportunities.
On one hand, diverse fields like sports, medicine, budgeting, etc. are all using more analysis to make better decisions. The three-point play has dramatically increased in basketball (statistically shown to lead to higher scoring even if you shoot at a lower percentage), and even restaurants are using new analysis to improve sales and profits.
On the other hand, we also focus on innovation and the exceptional, which is outside the norm of everyday analysis.
While there is better analysis available, there are also more opportunities for mistakes and misuse. There are numerous potential contradictions to analysis. For example, bias, background, history, and fear can affect our analysis and beliefs. We see all the data – but only the way we want to see it. Therefore, it can be used to confirm pre-existing beliefs we may hold.
Our decisions and processes are also affected by the pace and complexity of change. Traditional organizations like brick and mortar retailers are dying while the iPhone alone is stimulating the explosion of new companies and industries. Global diversity and involvement is requiring more collaboration and complexity.
There are numerous free resources available on this topic. Some key suggestions to deal with these issues are as follows:
Write things down and don’t be afraid of numbers.
Many organizations I work with are afraid of writing and numbers and thus fail to understand their efforts or potential viability. Their excuses are that they are working on it, it takes too long, or they have no information.
However, as Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.”
The solution? Complete a simple elevator speech or mission statement and a quick budget. Do it for yourself and not for an investor or customer. Accept that it won’t be perfect, and try taking only one hour on each. It could save you days of going down the wrong path. As you go along you can modify, add details, and make it more useful.
Don’t ignore change and technology as critical requirements.
For example, businesses have multiple goals and realities. Many entrepreneurs are so excited with the idea of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg that they completely ignore the need to make a profit and execute.
There are many factors that businesses have to contend with besides their overall profit margin – things like skills, success, and the financial planning of the business must be considered. Also, factors like the environment, safety, and social trends are areas where business owners need to consider.
Watch out and monitor BIAS.
Important issues like bias, prejudice, and, yes, even ignorance are also complexities that must be addressed. Business decisions are made by the accumulation of data, by measurements, and by analysis. How it is used, or ignored, can be devastating to a business. Here are some reasons how:
- Seeking information that supports our favored hypothesis and avoids information that contradicts it.
- Giving preference to positive information and ignoring details. For example, we frequently develop huge general market estimates that ignore the specifics of our target.
- Looking for winners, especially in describing startup success stories, and ignoring the failures.
- Ignoring negative evidence. In particular, the more invested we are in a project or product, the less we are willing to abandon it.
Startups tend to focus on universal answers and simple solutions. However, we know that issues are more complicated, and each business needs its own customization. One-size-fits-all solutions are easier to understand and technologically easier to execute. However, if you realize some of the complexities of these solutions, then it can be easy to adapt them to individual situations.
Dr. Bert Shlensky, president of www.startupconnection.net, offers experience and skills and a team devoted to developing and executing winning strategies for businesses of all kinds. This combination has been the key to client success. His book, “Passion and Reality for Small Business Success,” is available for free download at https://startupconnection.net.
by Bert Shlensky | Jan 26, 2016 | Marketing
“Hello, have you met your customer lately?”
Your customer is everything. Consider, for the purpose of this blog, that your customer is a close friend or associate. Now, do you know what they like, their age, their personal quirks, or whether they like to shop based on reviews? What is their income level? Education? The more you know, the more you can target to them and make them feel good. In return, they will like you, then, trust you, and, finally, buy from you. Even better, they will send their friends. (more…)
by Bert Shlensky | Aug 25, 2015 | Marketing
And remember,
Ceteris Paribus
Every economics course – at least the good ones – will cover the idea of “ceteris paribus,” and its meaning: “all things being equal.” While it’s central to every economics program, the term is taught early in the class, and then forgotten as the semester goes on, and unfortunately when the student becomes a business owner.
But it is essential that is remembered in business, and especially in decision-making. In everyday language, ceteris paribus translates into “every business plan or analysis assumes certain assumptions that must be valid for the analysis to be useful.” (more…)
