Word Marketing Blog

Communicate Your Strategy

Research has shown that less than 25% of employees actually understand their organization's strategy.

Many do not believe there are goals for their company at all and most don't feel that they are prepared for the challenges we'll face in business in the next decade. If business leaders don't communicate (and remember communication is made up of two parts: transmission and reception) how can people be motivated or even know how they are supposed to contribute?

Some questions and thought-starters:

• Does everyone understand the mission, values and vision for the organization?
• Are there Vital Few Objectives that are clearly communicated and does everyone understand their part to play in achieving them?
• Are these items communicated multiple times and in multiple ways frequently?
• Do you have your resources aligned to support these plans?
• Does everyone understand the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) associated with each VFO?
• Is your training aligned with the results you are trying to achieve?

Creating The Future

Peter Drucker said "the only way to predict the future is to create it".

Anxiety, worry and fear are all caused by nervousness over the unknown. Predictability creates confidence. If you are driving in traffic in a major city and you grew up there, you probably have a lot of confidence about your destination. Conversely, if you've never been to that city, your palms may be sweaty, your voice terse and your actions a little erratic. Why? Because, you've never been there before and confidence is low about the outcome.

The way to more confidence is clarity and predictability. Take ownership of your future and your ideas. Know what you want to achieve in the next year, the coming quarters, weeks and days. Know what you want TODAY.

Couple of suggestions:

• Brainstorm: Get quiet, write down all your thoughts and ideas. Clarify them on paper. Let your mind go free, brainstorming is a time to let yourself totally go. Only have one rule with yourself, don't judge your ideas or thoughts, just try to let the ideas flow as freely as possible.

• Prioritize: Put your thoughts together in the order they are important to you. Trimming your vine can keep your fruit plentiful.

• Eliminate: The beginning of strategy is what NOT to do. As soon as you realize there are more reasons not to do something, you will no longer want it. Think each item through and prioritize.

• Visualize: Begin to take your priorities one by one and think them through to completion. Reverse-engineer your way to success. All goal setting begins at the end. Play this "movie" as often as your can in your daily thought-life. Create your own future.

Product Clutter

The world's first Department Store opened in 1838 in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. So, that gives us 171 years of Department Store history.

Why are they called Department Stores? Because of the various departments of products they stock, market and sell. Have you ever stopped to consider how many different kinds, shapes, sizes and packages of random products there are?

In 1965, the average supermarket carried 20,000 products. Now, we have over 40,000 available.

Guess how many product-jammed catalogs are published per man, woman and child in the United States? 134. total number? 40 billion catalogs.

Just look down a shampoo aisle.

• How many deodorants?
• How many clothing products?
• How many furniture?
• How many cars?
• How many universities?
• How many medical?

See what I mean. There are departments outside the department stores, which we call product categories. Sometimes, we even say the furniture market or the car market which we are trying to draw a geography around. Actually, globalization has changed all that. Those boundaries no longer exist.

There is no book market. If someone in Nebraska wants a copy of my book and someone in Belgium wants a copy of my book, they are essentially in the same market. The problem is, there is just so much of everything now, it's all so cluttered.

In the next couple of years, there will need to be a major mind-shift. Actually, it should happen now, but because we've become so re-active, rather than pro-active, most of us will learn the hard way. Here's the paradigm shift. We will have to move from a provider mindset to a consumer mindset.

The provider mindset goes like this: "How do we profitably sell what we know how to provide?"

The consumer mindset has go this way: "How will we profitably provide what we know our consumer will want?"

Catch the change?

The question that begs answering:

How do we satisfy customer needs profitably?

Follow The Leader

There's an old children's game called "follow the leader" that goes something like this: first, a leader is chosen, then everyone else lines up behind the leader. The leader then moves around and all the children have to mimic the leader's actions. Any players who mess up or do not do what the leader does are out of the game.The last person standing other than the leader is now the new leader.

This same paradigm goes on all the time in business as well as in kid's games.

Someone establishes themselves as the leader in a marketplace category, everyone lines up behind them and tries to mimic what they do, afraid if they do not, they will be eliminated from the game or category. A person I was talking to the other day said "if everyone is over there and I'm over here, I figure they know something I don't and I'm wrong somewhere."

Actually, the opposite is true.

If everyone else in your category is "over there", then you are in a unique position.

Of course, there are no absolutes and there are nuances to every situation, but it's amazing how many people try to just mimic the leader.

As my Partner says, "you will never out-Wal-mart, Wal-mart."

Now, those are words of wisdom. Who can take on Wal-Mart head to head? No one, you have to find another way. Another unique way.

If someone in your product category is on television yelling at the buyer that they have something for $1.50. It's amazing how many counter-strategies are to go on television and yell that you have it for $1.35. You can't out Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart. Someone will in fact be the cheapest the most amount of time and will yell it the loudest on television. There can only be one who can do this. In order to make headway, everyone else should be trying something else. Namely, a brand strategy that solidifies another position rather than the leader. It's a different game than "follow the leader".

If you can't win the game, change games. Sounds simple, right? Not many do it.

Some ways you might change the game:

• What rules has the game always been played by that you can change?
• What rules has the game never had that you can create?
• What standards in the game can you raise well above what has always been considered standard?
• What standards in the game can you completely eliminate that have been taken for granted?

Creating a new value game, based on something other than the low-cost provider might give you something to talk (not yell) about.

Everyone is in Sales

The fact of the matter is, everyone is in sales.

It could be in the traditional sense of the idea, and you have a solid product or service that you would like someone to buy from you. It could be that you have ideas, which when capitalized or back by investors could really be effective. It could be that you have been wanting a promotion and more compensation. It could be that you want your children to grow up and be your legacy in a positive and impactive way.

In all these situations, sales is required.

If you are a student, parent, teacher, musician, actor, doctor, manager or maybe doing nothing for work, you are still a salesperson. Selling does not necessarily have to involve the exchange of money. In fact, people sell something to others every single day, they may not even realize they are selling or have even ever heard of a selling process.

• Parents sell values and wisdom to their children
• Teachers sell knowledge and learning to students
• Doctors sell skill, advice and comfort to patients
• Actors sell entertainment to the audience

The fact is, to build your company and your brand, everyone needs to sell. At least, gracefully persuade.

I've heard people say "I'm not a salesperson". They are when they want something bad enough. Kids are really good salespeople, sometimes better negotiators.

From this perspective to build brand try these tips:

• Teach and train every staff member that they are salespeople
• Make sales a good word in your company and not a dirty one
• Expose all staff to the same sales training your sales department gets
• In your role-plays (yes, you should be doing them) involve all staff in the role plays, after all when non-sales staff deal with customers, it's not a "dry-run". 

Institute a 4-part belief system into your company:

• Why do you believe in the company?
• Why do you believe in our products and services?
• Why do you believe the customer is better off with our company?
• Why do you believe in yourself?

Brand Credibility

One of the things I talk to my clients and prospects about when building a brand is "who are you"?

Just as in a human's DNA structure, inside a brand's double helix lies complicated strands of pieces and parts, and one of those is credibility.

Credibility is made up of two parts.

Part 1-Trustworthiness

• When I do business with your brand, will I get what you promised?
• When I do business with your brand, will I get what I expected?
• Will your brand deliver it within the price quoted or budget discussed?

Part 2-Expertise

• When I do business with your brand, do it possess the skill required to deliver the results?
• When I do business with your brand, will you deliver the value I expect?
• When I do business with your brand, will the results you deliver be the best possible?

These are just a very few of the questions to pose when analyzing the credibility portion of brand building potential.

Building Brand Requires Focus

What is at the absolute core of your business?

The prevailing cause of "brand rot" in a lot of businesses and organizations is a lack of focus. Focus on the true core of the DNA of that business. Jim Collins calls this "The Hedgehog Concept" in his book, Good to Great. This is made up of three questions:

1. What are you deeply passionate about?
2. What can you be the best in the world at? (and what you cannot)
3. What drives your economic engine?

For small business owners, I also like to ask them:

• What feelings do you experience (or would like to experience) connected with your business? and..
• How do you feel now at the end of every day?

These are just some of the questions connected with the razor focus or lack of razor focus that your business might be getting from you.

Several business problems lie at the heart of a lack of focus:

• Spread too thin
• No prospective customer can actually describe what you provide or who you are
• Too long throwing a lot of things at the wall to see what sticks
• Too much generalist and not enough specialist

In most businesses and organizations, the lack of focus cure can be painful to face, painful to execute, but for the long haul, profitable for sure.

Building Brand Problems for Small & Large Organizations

The benefits of long-term brand building are very similar for both small and large organizations, however some of the most common problems related to brand building are very different.

Most likely brand problems in small organizations:

• No background or skill level in developing a plan for the brand
• Lack of time
• No or little understanding of who is buying their products and services and for what reasons
• Lack of funds
• Little or no marketplace awareness of the brand

Most likely brand problems in large organizations:

• Market/Advertising position is no longer relevant, distinctive or compelling
• Marketing (and other dept) functions are not integrated
• The brand structure (if present) has become too complicated and unclear
• Current leadership doesn't have a clear and accurate view of what the brand position should be
• The brand identity standards and systems have fallen in use or are not measured and inspected anymore
• Organizational structure and bureaucracy work against an invigorated new brand position

Although these are the most common brand building problems, they are certainly not insurmountable. Building brand is an ingredient to staying in the balanced and predictable growth mode for organizations and business.

Moon Landing

I went to the refrigerator the other night to get something to put in my mouth since I was feeling a little stale. Ever feel that way? You are watching TV or reading a book and you just need something to break the monotony in your mouth?

So, I go to the fridge and spy a bag of fresh cherries from a recent shopping excursion. Water on, after washing them..pop a few in. Immediately upon bursting the first one, my mind immediately regurgitates a memory of the cherry tree I used to play on in my parent's back yard forty years ago.

We lived in this particular house from the time I was 4 until 14. We had several apple trees, a maple, a pecan tree and one cherry tree. It always had nice red ripe cherries every single year and my Dad used to diligently prune it's limbs and branches.

My mind also raced back 40 years to the summer of 69 (not a Bryan Adams reference) where that cherry tree was a regular playspot. That summer 40 years ago, just a few weeks earlier, I had sat in the living room floor of my Uncle Russell's house in Salem, KY and watched Neil Armstrong become the first man on the moon. As I watched him come out of the lunar vehicle and descend the ladder of the vehicle to the lunar surface, my uncle grabbed my leg and yelled "gotcha". I leaped and screamed.

Many a summer day in '69, I was Neil Armstrong descending to a new world and exploring new adventures. I climbed down slowly from the cherry tree's pruned branches as if it were the lunar lander and I took what seemed to be the same jump off the ladder as I had watched Neil do.

Isn't it funny the imagination we had as kids. We dreamed and acted out all the things we wanted to do and all the adventures we wanted to take. The movie UP is about the older guy who dreamed of adventure as a boy and never acted on it until his later years.

I've heard it said that "we are the solution to the problem". Let's never stop dreaming and using our imagination. Let's not let the day to day of life steal our ability to dream and our excitement for what tomorrow will bring. Can we get that excitement back?

I think we can.

Follow Your Heart

Success is doing what's right in your heart despite public opinion.