All too often we observe people handling situations in life with a “me first” attitude: “What’s in it for me?” “How will I be benefited by this?” “Will I make more money as a result of this?” While it’s perfectly reasonable to want to know how we will personally benefit, it’s also important to consider the effects on the overall group that we are a part of (company, association, school, family, etc.).

How many times have we seen a professional athlete leave one team because another team offered more money? When we (too often) hear this athlete quoted as saying their decision was based on their family’s best interests, some of us are curious how the family is not doing well on 4 million dollars a year and the increase to 6 million a year is crucial to their continued survival. This may sound a bit cynical, but sometimes I wonder if these families really want to be uprooted and start whole new lives in another city or if they would prefer to stay where they are…and that more money is NOT really an issue to them.

Now if the athlete just came out and said, “You know, I love having a ton of money and I just want a ton more and that’s why I’m leaving my current team and moving on” … that would be a refreshing statement.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not begrudge anyone wanting to make more money. What concerns me is that the concept of “team” seems to have eroded some over the years. And a team is an essential element in the success of a business, especially a small business.

I believe if you make it a point to surround yourself with “team players,” your chances of success are ENORMOUSLY improved. And your stress level will go down in proportion to the amount of team “play” you’ve got happening.

This is not to say that you should overlook having skilled people working with and for you. If I had to distill this down to a one-liner, it would be: a “skilled team player” working for you is a far greater asset than simply a “skilled player.”

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To increase performance these days, some companies send their staff to motivational seminars. These seminars can get good results, but if they are mainly “motivational”, we often see the effects wear off in days or weeks. Some companies put their staff through training programs to help them handle the details of their post and to relate better to their customers. These can also be quite beneficial.

And some businesses use rewards programs to increase staff productivity. These have varied workability, some work splendidly, others are not so effective.

In this post, you will be given a very simple way to increase the performance of the people who work for and with you. And as the title of the post indicates, it may possibly be the most powerful way to accomplish increases in staff output and effectiveness.

And here it is:

Read the rest of this entry »

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When the economy is in rough shape, a primary considerations of business owners is to “cut back.” Cut back on expenses, cut back on staff, cut back in any way they can.

I’m here to tell you one area you must not cut back on:

Promotion!

The key to doing well when the economy goes sour is to promote like crazy. I’m not telling you to spend every dime on promotion, but you must promote with an even greater intensity than before.

Go back and look at all of the promotional actions you took that were successful. Put back in every one that’s feasible.

Cutting back on promotion is never a good solution. When the economy weakens, it is even more vital that you ignore the impulse to reduce your promotional output.

I’ve written a number of posts that give easily affordable and very effective promotional ideas. Here are two of them:

Reciprocal marketing

Customer Evangelism

An article I wrote some time ago - Blame It On the Economy and Watch Your Profits Sink - has been featured on many sites around the net. I strongly recommend you giving that a read.

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Before giving advice on this important subject, I want to step back and get a bit of perspective on this economic “meltdown.” I’ve heard more times than I can count: “this is the worst economy since the Depression!”

Not too long ago, I went on vacation with my wife. We decided to take the ole SUV and drive north! We live in central Florida and so we wound our way through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. We spent a fair amount of time on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which at this time of the year is quite spectacular, but we also went through a number of good-sized cities.

With the United States experiencing the worst economy since the Depression, what did we see as I drove through five different states?

We saw nothing whatsoever different from the last time we made a similar trek (two years before). No, I take that back. At a few of the gas stations, they had run out of the Plus and Premium Grades.

But that was the ONLY thing out of the ordinary. We saw one retail establishment after another open and operating. We saw huge malls flourishing with TONS of people shopping. We saw thousands of tourists along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The shops on the Parkway were open and doing a brisk business.

We’re in the worst economy since The Great Depression? My images of this tragic time are: long bread lines, shops closed all over the landscape, more than 25% unemployed, countless images of DEPRESSION.

Is that happening now?

Yes, credit has tightened. Yes, several major investment firms have either gone under, been bought out or bailed out. And the unemployment rate is at its highest in 20 years.

But when people pound and pound on the airwaves that we are experiencing the worst crisis since the Depression…well, there’s something missing that kind of bothers me. That “something” is the complete collapse of our economy with enormous unemployed, shops closed, an economy come to a grinding halt.

Maybe I’m being superficial and I should thank my lucky stars that it hasn’t come to that. Okay, I’ve done that. But what if this whole gig is not really what it’s made out to be? What if a group of powerful folks wanted to convince us it was perfectly okay to spends billions, now potentially trillions of dollars, to bail out an economy that…well…didn’t need all of that money going in that direction?

What did this powerful group of people have to do with the problem to begin with? Hmm. That’s an absolutely fascinating question. You gotta love when politicians call hearings to place blame when those very politicians have so much to do with the bad scene.

I don’t pretend to know the inner workings of mortgage-backed securities (those financial “instruments” that poisoned the financial markets), but I do understand when you pressure banks to give out improper loans to a TON of people, that eventually those loans (called “sub-prime” in today’s vernacular) will come back to bite a lot of people.

Okay, enough politicizing. I just wanted to offer another perspective on the economic scene. I was going to give some advice on how to operate in this kind of climate, but this post is long enough already. Stay tuned, and I’ll post on this very shortly.

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This next video from Common Craft explains "social networking."

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I ran across a great site called Common Craft. They create short and very easy-to-understand videos on a variety of online subjects such as blogging, bookmarking, social networking, etc.

I decided not to re-invent the wheel and instead provide you with a few of these videos here. If you’d like to see everything Common Craft has, head on over to their site and check it out.

This video gives a great explanation of blogging. If you’re new to blogging or if you’d just like to see how a video slide show can explain what blogging is, here you go…

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When it comes to sports, I enjoy many of the things most spectators enjoy: the competition, the intensity, the passion to win, and of course watching extremely talented people do incredibly talented things.

But I also enjoy other key aspects of the game. I like to pay attention to the fine points of winning, the small details. What is very intriguing is watching how two or more players will work together to make something happen (score a basket, a goal, etc.).  For example, in sports like hockey, basketball and soccer, a great deal of importance is placed on the ability to PASS the ball (or puck). There are players who derive greater satisfaction from a precisely-delivered pass than from actually scoring. Seasoned basketball fans are awed by the combination of a fantastic pass culminating in a score. I certainly am.

A game is played to win. In order to win, individual players blend their skills and their actions with other players. Teams made up of JUST individuals, even those highly talented, often fail against teams composed of people who work hard on working together.

The next time you watch a well-played game, observe the degree of teamwork on both teams. Look for the subtle details and you’ll see some really exciting give-and-take that you might not ordinarily see.

The more a group of people works together as a team, the more that group gets done and the easier it is to get things done. This is true in sports and of course is true in the business world.

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At the end of a sporting event, it’s absolutely clear who won and who lost. Records are often kept of the game that shows how everybody did. This guy got two hits and struck out once. This guy scored a goal and was involved in two penalties. This player had 18 points and 12 rebounds. I apologize if the sports terminology I’m using is not understandable to everyone, but the main point is this:

You can tell exactly what happened. There is really not much left to opinion.

In a business, one certain way to weaken your chances for expansion and success is to rely solely on opinion. When an employee comes up to the boss and tells her that “Bob isn’t really getting his job done” and the boss operates on that information, that is a recipe for disaster. Check out Bob’s area very carefully. He may be getting an awful lot done, but perhaps he stepped on a couple of people’s toes while doing so. If you manage a business on opinion alone, you can end up getting rid of productive staff and rewarding other staff who are not very productive.

What’s the best way to manage WITHOUT relying on opinion? Statistics. Figure out what each position should be producing and then measure that production with a statistic. At the end of every week (or whatever period of time is significant for your business) collect up these statistics. Post them so everyone can see them. And then manage the business on what people are ACTUALLY producing.

Give this a try.

If you’d like some help on managing your business on statistics, email me.

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I’m reading another very interesting book: Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force. The authors tell us something we’ve known for awhile, but perhaps haven’t really taken full advantage of:

“The marketing world has changed dramatically since the advent of the 21st century. Technology has leveled the playing field to make quality less of a competitive difference. …product and service levels have nearly evened out, as have price advantages. We’re drowning in a sea of media and information overload. In a world with so much choice, how do people make decisions? By relying on trusted friends, colleagues, or family members.”

The book goes on to show how various businesses of different sizes have expanded tremendously by the actions of their CUSTOMERS. Some of this we know of as “word-of-mouth.” But in some cases, it went far beyond word-of-mouth to a “customer evangelism.” In these cases, you have customers promoting the living daylights out of your business. They’ll do it a variety of ways, but they are so in love with what you do and how well you treat them, they take customer loyalty to the max.

Are your customers going out of their way to promote you and your business? If not, whatever time you spend helping this activity along is time very well spent.

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As I type this, I’m on hold with Delta Airlines. When I first called, I simply wanted to talk to one of their reps and get a couple of fast questions answered about traveling over Thanksgiving.

You’re given the option of speaking to a real person by saying the word “representative” into the phone, but before you can get to this person, you have to speak (slowly and clearly) where you’re flying from, where you’re flying to, what date of departure and what date of return. The machine mistakes my departure date for another month and comes back with they can’t book my flight because it’s not within the next 367 days (or some large figure like that). I try and try (by pushing “0″ and saying the word “representative”) and finally I’m moved on to a real person.

But not before waiting another 15-20 minutes.

Delta had the only non-stop flights for this trip I was considering, so I waited this out. If another airline had a non-stop flight, I definitely would not have waited it out and Delta would’ve lost a paid passenger.

All in all, I understand the big airlines need to cut costs. And of course having a machine (or a web site) handle their reservations saves them the expense of paying staff. And if most (or possibly all) of the airlines are using an automated system to deal with their most valuable commodity (their customers) then I can see how they would justify using it throughout. The logic goes from Delta execs: well, we’re not really going to lose customers because of automating our interaction with our customers because the other airlines are doing it too.

And maybe that logic works for the big airlines and large corporations. But do you really think so? Who wants to be handled by a robot that sometimes hears what you say but often does not correctly hear you.

The moral of this story is simple. The less you interact directly with your customers and the more you put answering machines, automated tellers, automated phone systems in place to deal with your public, the more likely you’ll see a percentage of your customer base erode away. You may think you can handle a much larger number of people with the automated approach and you may be right. But you may also be losing some quality customers who will not be eager to speak highly of your company and possibly just the opposite.

I do realize we’re moving ever closer to machines doing more and more of our work. But when you put them between your company and your customers, especially new customers, I think the downside is greater than most people can immediately observe.

If someone wants to speak to a real person at your company, I recommend highly you make it VERY, VERY EASY for them to do so. And FAST.

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