You’re thinkin’ maybe

2012 will be better?

If you’re thinking 2012 will be better, and you’ve decided to wait until the new year to kick into gear, you lose! That’s like saying you’re gonna quit smoking (drinking, doing drugs, eating so much) for the new year.

What’s happened to “now”? The “new year”? In case you haven’t noticed, it’s not 2012 yet! Or, perhaps you’re planning to be sick  for Christmas so you can avoid another dysfunctional family gathering?

Maybe you’re a big White House fan and figure –since 2009, 2010, and 2011 have’nt exactly been big economic rebound years– that 2012 will be Obama’s year of small business enlightenment? Don’t hold your breath. He’s proven he prefers union-vote paybacks and government splurging over championing the entrepreneurial spirit that built America.  

He prefers sharing the money you work hard for with those who choose their flat screen TVs and living room sofas over legitimate employment. Hey– free food, free medical care, free education, free cash– who can fault them? Ain’t Socialism wonderful?

So if you’ve worked hard all your life and earn a respectable living, pay your bills, give to charity, and are struggling to make ends meet with your business, don’t expect any sudden shifts in allegiance or respect or support from those in control. You’re just one of 30 million.

Here’s the bottom line:

Your Fairy Godmother

is not on the way.

Yes, the treuth hurts. Sorry about that.

Just in case you were keeping a low profile in your business with the hope and expectations that a more super-sized, more charged-up environment and marketplace is on the way, smack yourself along side the head, take a long hard look in the mirror and measure yourself up against these 5 steps

 . . . 5 things you need to do:

1.  Something instead of nothing. (In business and personal development, some action always beats no action!)

2.  Stop choosing excuses because you’re lazy. Waiting until the new year (or Christmas!) to jumpstart your sluggish enterprise is an excuse. Surprise yourself . . . start tonight or first thing tomorrow morning.

3.  Stop telling all those who work with you (employees, partners, family members, investors, referrers, suppliers, community members) about all the great promise “in store” for next year. Instead step it up now. Now.

4.  Put away the fantasyland thinking that you’ve used to convince yourself that you have time because nthere’s all the rest of October, and all of November and December to plan and get ready for some 2012 launches.

5.  Realize that even with –prayfully– a new administration in Washington to be elected on November 6, 2012, it won’t have any authority until January 2013. And it will likely take another 2-3 years to UN-do the mess Mr. O has put us all in. If your business is hurting now, it won’t survive another year or two, or three, of empty promises.

You really CAN walk the talk, you know. You’ve done it to get this far. It’s all a matter of choice. If you think it’s too hard, it will be. THAT is a choice as well. Choose to make it easy. Choose to make your business work NOW, and imagine how great it will be when we have national leadership that appreciates and respects small business!

~~~~~~~

Footnote: If you think this is a “lecture,” you are either too far gone to see the value of what’s represented, and probably shouldn’t be surfing blogs looking for inspiration that you won’t follow through with anyway, OR you have needed a good swift kick in the butt . . . I hope this served the purpose. Remember what your grandpa (and Thomas Jefferson) said about not putting off ’til tomorrow what you can do today?                               

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Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 A LIVE CASE

OF LOST SALES

A major global service provider recently sent me a direct mail piece offering a $50 gift card for a retailer I frequent if I sign up for their online demo. Hey, this is a win-win-win, I said to myself. I like the service provider company and imagine doing business with them on behalf of some of my clients. I’m interested in their updated information.

The mailing piece suggested I reply by mail OR by phone or email. I called. The rep at first acted skeptical that I was a legitimate prospect (I don’t think I sounded like a freeloader!), but I convinced him otherwise and he proceeded to put my contact info in for the gift card and schedule a demo for me.

A few days later, I sat in on the demo and Q&A,

Three weeks passed, and a follow-up call from the rep prompted me to ask if, btw, there was some problem or delay with getting the gift card. He said he “had no control of the gift card delivery once the contact data was entered, but it shouldn’t be longer than 30 days fulfillment period.”

Another month later, after an additional follow-up phone message and two follow-up emails — and no gift card!–  I politely asked once more by email reply, underscoring my legitimate interest in doing business, about the $50 card. His response was that those cards were only for people who sat in on the demo, and did I still have the mailing piece.

As luck would have it, I did have the mailing piece in a file folder (along with 12 pages of the company’s service descriptions that I downloaded to share with clients) and emailed him with the mailing piece code number and the exact date of the demo, which I had jotted on the file. I politely asked again for the gift card.

I added the comment that “given the circumstances of not delivering on a promo promise– I am not feeling very confident in your company’s services.”

His response: “I did put in the request. I apologize for it taking longer than expected. But what does a promo gift card have to do with using our services? Don’t let a gift card get in the way of what we can offer your clients. (boldfacing mine)”

 Ah, but it   

DOES get in the way.

In fact, on the “Don’t” list —

Don’t Promise What You Can’t Deliver!

[Keep in mind that I never questioned legitimacy, or entertained any doubt about this company prior to this failure to honor a promotional deal — and the attitude that accompanied it.] 

The experience made me wonder how many others were deceived. I wonder if the company provides all the services it claims to provide. I wonder if the company thinks so little about $50, what its attitude would be about an invoice discrepancy with one of my clients (or whether they would pad their bill).

The experience made me wonder how true their performance is and whether any of their performance documentation is fudged (there would be very little way to know without hiring a detective). The services they deliver are not always tangible or identifiable. Neither do they always produce accountable results.

Does it strike you as odd that a business (with sales far beyond a hundred million dollars) whose performance is entrenched in trustworthiness, and in the interest of protecting their brand integrity, would balk at making good as promised on a $50 gift card promotional incentive? 

Do you see shreds of bad customer service here?

Or is it just me? 

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Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Success seldom surfaces

when creative service

providers are squashed

. . . or does it? 

Show me a writer or designer who thrives on being torturously pushed and prodded to stressful deadlines, and I’ll show you someone who is likely to be a do-nothing PR agent or brain-dead news media person, but don’t expect to find great advertisers, marketers or creative service people thrive in angst-ridden  pandemonium.

With rare exception, creative development work that’s “rushed” breeds mediocrity (and costs more, which makes the engager a double loser!). Truly remarkable talent, it is said by many, is born of free spirit, and ample time.

Do I know exceptions? Plenty. But exceptional creativity is the product of unconstrained imagination and self-discipline. The exceptions I know –ah, including myself (!)– coulda/shoulda/woulda produced more outstanding creations if they’d (we’d) not been pushed, prodded, intimidated, threatened, and time-pressured.

My best writing has surfaced during both

great duress and great relaxation. So

maybe the rule is an exception?

My national boo0k award effort was done at my leisure. Its underperforming predecessor took two years under pressing deadlines. My worst book was written under crushing due dates. My best book –now almost ready to market– was ten years on the drawing board. My best award-winning jingle was done in one all-nighter.

My worst ad campaign took six months to research and justify and another six months to finalize and launch. My national award-winning, record-sales marketing program took three months start to finish. I have a future award-winning children’s book series ready to launch after 40 years in hiding.

And only heaven knows how many hundreds of new business startups have benefited by my rushing attacks on their website content, news releases, packaging, media positioning, and strategic planning. Yet the most successful, sales-productive efforts I have made have come only with major investments of time.

The trouble is that upstart business owners want what they want when they want it and time is not a worthy commodity to offer when they’re sitting on a hot idea and investor dollars.

Neither patience nor perfectionism has ever been a trait of entrepreneurs.

Neither has analysis, which is typically the province of corporate muckity-mucks. 

Okay, so knocking this subject all over doesn’t settle the issue of business time pressures and the creative product. That, however, is the issue. Pushing and prodding and time-pressuring creative people may not always produce the best or most productive work, but it gets the job done.

Depending on circumstances and the marketplace and the economy (and who can depend on the economy?), a judgement must be made about whether you want to win awards or customers. Without a lot of room for awards on the walls of a crushing economy, the bottom line should be to insist on results, not pretty words and pictures.

Design awards only produce sales for designers. Copywriting awards only produce sales for copywriters. You can stop paying for your creative service providers to get more sales by putting some heat on their abilities to perform for you, the client.

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Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Turning prospects

into customers

means leading

with your soul

. . . not your mouth.

Not a whole lot happening with accounts receivable, eh? Welcome to the cusp of The Great Obama Depression. As many business owners keep stumbling along, muttering to themselves that they’ll vote for the Aflac Duck if he can beat Obama (and, hey, who knows?), many others have given up wallowing in self-pity, in favor of enlightenment.

What exactly does this mean? There’s a new found awareness that prospects are not whipping out their wallets just because you tell them how great you are or how great they are, or just because you map out all the logical, rational features of your products and services.

People have not stopped buying with their emotions just because incompetent government, union thugs, and big corporations are heartless and have no clue about how to create real jobs, and really restore our economy.  

Every purchase

–including those that 

seem most rational–

is emotionally triggered.

It’s human nature to want to be sold, to want to have someone show you how what you want is what you need. But you can’t accomplish this with the words you say anywhere near as effectively as you can with the actiojns you take. As a writer, I hate to admit that, but words can only lead someone to your door. Actions make the sale.

What kinds of actions? Authentic ones. Sincere ones. Actions grounded in genuineness vs. sound bites and photo ops and slaps on the back. It’s called “leading with your soul” which means that when you effectively put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and see things from the prospect’s perspective, you are practicing empathy. Empathy sells.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?  When you buy something from a sales representative, odds are overwhelmingly in favor of you actually buying into the rep’s attitude. And, in fact, the more you keep hearing kiss-up statements, the less interested you become in purchasing, at least from that platitude attitude. Instead, you go down the street!

Who needs a salesperson filled with pandering, patronizing remarks and preoccupied with ticking off product or service features? You want someone to show you passion and conviction and authenticity.

You need only to have

an emotional buying motive

trigger pulled to justify your

wallet on the counter or

your pen on the dotted line.

So surely you don’t think you’re any different because you own or run a business? That’s exactly the point. You ARE no different. Everyone is unique, yet we are also all predictable when it comes to what happens psychologically when we make a purchase. Our egos get pumped up. Even a can of beans is an emotional purchase.

Emotional buying motives are ignited by exceptional and sincere service and by positive (and contagious) attitudes. So, how do you think you come across to prospects? When did you last ask one? Is your ego keeping you from learning more about yourself and what it takes to be enlightened and exuberant?

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Hal@Businessworks.US    302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

When you think 

you’re communicating

just the right amount of 

information, you’re not!

How do I know? Because you are the boss. And the boss rarely if ever gets it right the first time because what the boss thinks is “too much” or “too little” information is not what employees think, but are often afraid to ask about or say so. And when it’s not what customers think, they won’t ask or say so either; they’ll just go somewhere else.

Okay, I know it’s making you crazy. So what does the blog post title ROTFLMBOAFOYCTBPSSOHLT mean? You should know, first of all, that this “message” actually appeared on the screen of a Fortune 500 company employee, sent by a departmental teammate. Even the recipient had no clue  

It stands for: Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Butt Off After Finding Out You Caught The Boss Playing Spider Solitaire On His LapTop. The acronym is obviously an example of a text messenger gone amok and, of course, far too little information to be understood.

Sending a convoluted message is

  like telling a joke that nobody gets.

Misunderstood verbal and written one-way messages have ended in disasters, explosions, shootings, robberies, suicides, addictions, bankruptcies, firings, lost confidence, and lost sales. Even when the message receiver has perfect hearing, perfect vision, three college degrees, twenty years of experience, and is sober, confusion happens.

You already know all the little rules about not assuming things. You’ve learned the hard way that communication can be either verbal and/or nonverbal and that both of these forms have many signals, styles, applications, modes, and inferences. You have a general sense of when you’ve said or written too much or too little.

BUT — the recipient of your communication is the only one whose sense of what’s too much or too little really counts. If a receiver on the football field cuts right instead of left and the quarterback launches a picture-perfect pass to the left, it doesn’t much matter how great the pass looked. Your message is all about the receiver.

The only insurance you have for being clearly understood is to check on what’s written or said or agreed-to with the receiver, to confirm delivery, to paraphrase statements, to request feedback. I just received an important piece of mail from three weeks ago, from a neighbor who’s been away for three weeks, who got my mail by mistake.

Horror stories run rampant through the halls of shipping, transportation, and delivery companies worldwide every day. Wrong addresses, wrong times, wrong account numbers, and on and on. Your small business cannot afford communication screw-ups. This doesn’t mean harping away and repeating things.

It means accepting the reality that others do not have the same ways of thinking as you, and that getting it right the first time will take you longer and be more work than you would like. YOU must take the responsibility to ensure that the messages people get from you are indeed the same ones you intend them to get. Work at it. It pays.

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Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Every entrepreneur falls

and needs to get back up.

 There’s no doubt about it . . .

If you haven’t failed at business,

you’ll never be successful.

Implicit in that bit of wisdom is that you must make a strong recovery after being knocked down. And that takes guts and gumption.

Though some upstarts and some do-nothings may get themselves fired and need to find new jobs, corporate employees know little of this “Comback Trail” pursuit, or what it takes. Government employees? Their heads fall off when they try to even think about reinventing themselves.

But entrepreneurs? That’s what small business is all about. It’s a calling. It’s the excitement and challenge of being successful –making a success of your idea– against the odds! In other words, for an entrepreneur, reinventing yourself and your idea and your business –the action– is a way of life.

Unfortunately, some corporate muckity-mucks and top-ranking government officials who see themselves as voter-mandated, or hand-picked by those who consider themselves voter-mandated are often in the way.

They block entrepreneurial efforts to get back into the free market competition fray by throwing up roadblocks to economic progress under the guise of social reform. I mean hey, remember we’re talking about the same political types who think they need only to change their appearances and messages to make comebacks.

Small business owners know better. They recognize that it takes more than a haircut and flamboyant (or –as long as we’re onto “flam”–  inflammatory) oratory. Business comebacks demand changes that are grounded in substance. Putting a blue spotlight on the outfit doesn’t make it a blue suit. Talk does not cook rice. 

It is more important, say some misguided politicians, to make the whole world wonderful for every living soul no matter how much that state of bliss is earned or not earned, than to encourage small business growth and job creation.

The problem is

that the economy is the problem,

and 

only small business job creation

can solve that problem,

and there’s not enough TRUST

in government to convince

small businesses to create jobs!

And, yes, that problem has to be solved before we can address other world needs from a position of strength.

The bottom line is that there’s nothing wrong with reinventing yourself and/or your business in order to get back up off the floor and revitalize a staggering or TKO’d business venture. The world’s most successful entrepreneurs have all done that repeatedly.

What IS wrong is to make a half-hearted effort at it, or an intentionally deceptive or manipulative one. You’ll never “dance with the stars” or get back up on your feet if you’re wearing cement shoes (an old Mafia saying). To put yourself on the comeback trail, focus your energy on the here-and-now present moment, not the finish line.

A map is useful, but always be prepared for detours. And never give up your ideas, your pursuits of them, or your sense of integrity. The trail you seek is just around the corner. It will all work if you will. 

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Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Books, billboards, news

releases, website content, 

magazines and magazine

articles, posters and

displays, newspaper

 columns, surveys, signs,

 postcards, brochures, 

commercials, promotional

 emails, direct mail, photo

captions, jingles, branding

themelines, package labels,

training curricula, promo

literature and exhibit

 materials, webinars, sales

presentations, seminars 

lyrics, booklets, speeches,

 ebooks, blog posts, scripts

  business plans, marketing 

 strategies, love letters,  

manuals, greeting cards,

and matchbook covers

Ever write any of these yourself? How’d it come out? Did you get the results you wanted? What happened? Are you a skilled writer? An experienced wordsmith? Probably not. If you’re reading posts on this blog site, it’s because you’re an entrepreneur, a small business or professional practice owner, manager, or principal, a student, or a leader.

If you fit any of those kinds of career descriptions, odds are that you are marketing a product, service, or idea (or some combination) and the daily challenges of keeping your business or organization moving forward leaves little room for you to indulge in fantasy of seeing yourself as a talented writer. And you’re smart enough to know when to get help.

One telling characteristic of successful entrepreneurs, in fact, is that they know how to pull their ideas forward while leaving necessary professional services up to professionals they engage — CPA, attorney, management consultant, and more often than not: creative services, especially writers and designers.

Entrepreneurs, after all, are the catalysts of business and the economy, and serve as mirrors of society wants and needs. They alone are responsible for new job growth (not corporations, and certainly not government). As a result, entrepreneurs are also the most sensitive of business people, and the quickest to recruit outside expertise when they see the need.

Small business owners are far more in touch than their big business counterparts who are obsessed with analyzing with what message content and structure communicates best, and sells.

They recognize that one dot or small sweep of a design line, or one word can make the difference between sale and no sale.

They respect and appreciate the value of expertise.

So the list above is not just a teaser or composite of writing applications. It is a list of real business-related (yes, even love letters!) writing needs that most entrepreneurs are confronted with at one time or another. It is also a list of writing applications that anyone you hire to write for you should have experience with, at least most of them.

I know. I’ve written all of the above many times over. And I can tell you that a marketing writer who hasn’t written a book doesn’t know how to tell a story, and stories sell. A website content writer who hasn’t written radio and TV commercials has no sense of writing concise, punchy stuff that’s short and sweet, and short and sweet sells.

Someone who’s never written a billboard hasn’t even a clue about how to write branding lines because the discipline is the same:  Aim for 7 words or less and tell a story in those 7 words that has a beginning, middle, and ending . . . and is persuasive. And in direct mail, the more you tell, the more you sell — that means, literally, a blanket of billboards.

Writing emphasis must always be “you” focused (not “we”). It must attract attention, create interest, stimulate desire, bring about action, and deliver satisfaction. All writing –even an instruction manual– represents an opportunity to make a sale and/or create a favorable impression. The writing you have now? Does it work as hard as you do?

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Throw up in ’em. (Yuch!)

Make masks.

(For nonsmoker & nonBBQ parties)

Carry diamonds.

(They DO in NYC Diamond District, except in rain)

Use ’em for baseball gloves.

(Kids DO in The Dominican Republic – Ouch!)

And a lotta people couldn’t

punch their way outta one!

They’re biodegradable, and thus”sustainable.” That alone should appease all the dirt people, tree-huggers, and eco-freaks out there.

(Yes, some of us only worry about dumb stuff like the economy, jobs, Qaddafi, unions, leaving 3,000 troops in Iraq, and critical issues like “All My Children” finally leaving TV, if Casey Anthony was really guilty, and will it be a Yankees vs. Phillies World Series).

Anyway, I think it’s time to return to the substance and simplicity of yesteryear by bringing back the all-time king of convenience — the plain brown paper bag! It was used for more tasks and had more “apps” than your PC, laptop, iPOD, iPAD, BlackBerry, Wii, electronic reader, invisible fence, and barcode scanner combined!

Once upon a time . . .

One of the jobs Fat Norman and Skinny Frank did (they ran the grocery store downstairs from the apartments by the railroad tracks on Chatsworth Avenue, in Larchmont, New York) was to collect customer order money and put it in the cash register — a fancy drawer with a hand crank and a little bell that rang when it opened.

No plugs. No adding machine.

Brothers Norman and Frank both kept a crayon behind one ear. When you brought all the groceries you wanted to get to the counter (no shopping carts) and piled them up, out came the crayons . . . and a brown paper bag.

The left side was for one-word descriptions of items (carrots, milk, bread, toilet paper, etc.). The right side was the important side; that’s where the prices were written.

Norman usually broke his crayon when he tried to add up the column and carry the two. His pudgy hands hated the task, and Mother always found addition errors on the bag (which was of course also the receipt).

If the errors were in the store’s favor, Mother would send you right back with the bag and instructions on what numbers to jab your fingers at. Frank, though, was always right.

Frank did an old business trick that must have enhanced his mathematical accuracy. He’d wet the tip of his crayon with his tongue when the price part was hard, like five pounds of mixed onions at 3 1/2 cents a pound for yellow and 4 1/3 cents a pound for red.

Sometimes he had to turn the bag over and use the other side as a worksheet.

Everything was packed with great care . . . with always a piece of penny candy tossed in . . . and handed over with a smile, a thank you, and “tell your Mother hello!”

The bags were only doubled up when you had messy, bloody stuff or if it was pouring rain. They were always recycled for garbage and returning empty soda bottles for a penny each.

One time, Norman caught kids taking bottles from the back alley and re-paperbagging them to bring around the front and turn them in. He broke more than crayons that day.

The bags that survived became –you guessed it– plain brown wrappers for gifts, packages, storage, and shelf paper.

Slower, simpler times indeed, but something to be said for the personal exchanges and personal service attention required by the absence of technological advances.

So, just a good old story? I don’t think so. I think there’s a message here about the occasional value of looking back to gain a better perspective for looking forward.

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Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 A marriage,

  a partnership  

…your business

on the rocks?

No need to contend for an Academy Award. Don’t get me wrong. acting isn’t always a bad thing if it serves to entertain or educate. Besides, theatre is in my family’s blood going all the way back to early Armenian and early Irish performers. (More on this some other time :<.)

The point is that acting to maintain or

enhance an image rarely serves the purpose.

Keeping up appearances only works for limited periods of time with limited audiences. With crumbling marriages, acting may not be a bad thing with young sensitive children who need to know –no matter the cause– that it’s not their fault. The same can be said for employees and customers when a business partnership goes south.

When a business stands firm in the face of a tsunami, the tsunami will prevail. It’s best to not pretend all’s well to those you do business with when it’s not . . . unless you’re certain a short-term BandAid will not prevent forward motion once the air clears, and you’re mentally prepared for any worst case scenario.

If you’ve been pretending things that are terrible are really great, be alert for reality to take its toll. A little snack for thought: Consider taking periodic mental inventory of where things are and where they’re headed. Step back. Take a break. Go for a walk, a drive, a ride, a swim, a vacation. Breathe. Get your brain unwound.

Accept that the stress these acting roles

produce is simply not worth all the pretenses.

Failing to own up to perceived threats of reality often puts businesses and their owners under. You are, you know, after all is said and done, a human being. And your body may, as some say, be a temple, but it is also (regardless of fitness level) a fragile temple. 

In a business tsunami, you are as susceptible to psychological trauma as you are to physical and emotional assault.

You may not be able to prevent accidents simply by staying out of harms way, anymore than you can avoid business upsets by just dressing things up and acting the part of conquering hero.

Even when you might think you are on track to a best actor or best supporting actress Oscar, when you begin to see that all the affectations, costumes, makeup, props, and mastering of character study you can muster are just not going to bail you out, face the reality head on. Be honest and direct.

Remember that –while you might think the situation at hand is the most humiliating and crushing life experience possible– others who are not as good as you have survived it, and most have become stronger for it. So, don’t shut it down. Put it out on the table.

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  Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116

  Open Minds Open Doors 

   Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone!