Archive for the 'Reputation' Category

Mar 30 2010

Email Leadership

If it’s not a surprise

                              

party invite,

                                                  

opt out of 

                            

“Bcc…” emails!

                                                                            

     True leaders are transparent throughout their daily conduct. They don’t just open the books, the files, the records, and their agendas to others, they think twice and email once. When you think you need to Bcc someone on an email, think again.

     Paint yourself a worst-case scenario. The To people and the Cc people find out about the Bcc person or people, and then where are you? [Up the paddle without a creek!]

     Just because we are becoming a less one-on-one social and more tech-social society, is no excuse to hide communications with others. If doing that feels essential, you may want to re-visit the purpose and intent of your message to begin with. In fact, you may want to re-visit your organization’s integrity. 

    By using email Bcc options as a matter of practice, you not only run the risk of jeopardizing your own credibility, you threaten the credibility of others. And you definitely set a bad precedent. People always think it’s okay to do what the boss does just because the boss does it. [They need some other reason?]

     If it’s impossible in your organization to be open and forthright about sensitive issues, it’s equally impossible to be an effective leader. Today’s generation doesn’t really care what your leadership messages have to say as much as they are preoccupied with and focused on what you do, and the examples you set. HOW you transmit a message is as important as the content of the message. 

     A Bcc user is a buttoned-up suit functioning out of a closed-door back office when people are looking for a frontline, hands-on leader with sleeves rolled up. Routine use of email Bccs sends out clandestine signals. How can others surmise anything trustworthy about someone who is known for constantly communicating behind their backs?

     Let’s say you have been charged with solving a customer service problem. Why would you leave the customer out of the communication loop? Afraid of the customer seeing weakness in your organization? Perhaps weakness has more to do with not communicating? [And fear is after all, a choice.]

     How about including your customer in the flow of communications so he/she can see and experience your organization’s commitment to resolving the issues at hand? Too risky? What’s the risk of no feedback about the problem-solving efforts? How do those dynamics apply internally?

     How would you respond to employees who Bcc you on emails they’re exchanging with their immediate supervisors? Would you confront the practice immediately or let it simmer? Would you share the news with the immediate supervisors?

     Would it depend on the circumstances and the people involved? Why? Why wouldn’t this, being a policy issue, be treated as a policy issue? What can be done to prevent the destructive practice from being practiced in the first place?   

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Blog via RSS feed or $1/mo Kindle. GRANDPARENT Gift? http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

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Mar 27 2010

Hey, Taco Bell Fans: Think INSIDE The Bun!

Start with

                         

INTROSPECTION.

                                                        

Then, add the

                                 

decorations. . .

                                                                                                          

     There comes a time in every economic curve (and especially like now, where the curve has become a plummet) when we must stop the centrifuge that has our backs slammed up against the spinning wall. Nice imagery, huh? Ever feel like that, or am I just imagining things? 

     We need to step off, collect ourselves, take a deep breath, regain a sense of balance, and re-examine what’s going on with our business. You know, take a look at those activities (or lack of) that we haven’t paid attention to lately because we’ve spun ourselves into a state of dizziness (no I’m not talking about that dizzy state on the West Coast!)

     Management gurus seeking creative nirvana in their leadership styles have been urging us all for years to “think outside the box.” I disagree. I’ve watched an endless stream of business ventures think themselves out of the box and into financial quicksand.

     Contrary to their brilliant branding message, even Taco Bell needs to think “inside the bun” in order to ensure consistent quality of food ingredients, as well as service. Thinking INSIDE THE BOX is like circling the wagons, shoring up the foundation, strengthening existing connections and relationships, reinforcing the structural integrity of existing products and services, and promoting value-added innovation all at the same time.  

     It rivals the explosive levels of productivity that surface the day before leaving for vacation (ah, yes, vacations; I remember those).

     A truly great and successful, well-known man whose memoir I’m presently writing, always says (rather authoritatively): “You can’t do two things at once!” 

     I’m thinking about staring so hard out the windshield that you spill the coffee — or worse, reaching to balance the coffee and crashing into the car in front of you. Well, when it comes to business ownership and management, the expression is equally true. Thinking OUTSIDE the box takes you too far away from what you need to be focused on when cashflow is dwindling.

     I’ve often noted here that the best way to do this is with http://bit.ly/Bb1Tw which I guarantee will help you stay focused on what’s important. The bottom line is that you REALLY need to not leave home without it and the “it” is the part about first making sure your home is safely protected, that some one’s around to keep an eye on it for you, that mail and messages will get forwarded or saved.

     Thinking OUTSIDE the box requires that INSIDE-the-box operations are safe and sound and moving forward without you having to risk divided attention. It’s simple when you start with INTROSPECTION. 

Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

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Mar 25 2010

Seeking Success? BE SELFISH!

When it all looks like

                                           

it’s crumbling down

                                      

 around you–get selfish!

                                                                         

     Selfish . . . as in Piggy? No . . . as in oriented toward your SELF!

     You can’t control government except at election time. You can’t control irate customers who give you fits trying to nickle and dime you at every turn. You can’t control what goes on behind your back unless you never turn your back. You can’t control a lot of people and situations in your business and personal life. But you CAN control YOU! 

     What you say and think and do is entirely your choice, and entirely under your control. (If you doubt this and are ready to shoot back examples to the contrary, examine your examples. Odds are 100 out of 100 that you made a conscious or unconscious choice to set yourself up to not have a choice, but -ALWAYS – there is or was a choice. Take advantage of how you can use that information now, today!) 

                                                  

HOW you respond to someone or something that’s out of your control is within your control.

                                                              

     So stop choosing to think that everyone else is pushing your button. No one can reach inside your brain and control how you think.

     The great motivational theory and studies psychologist Abraham Maslow focused his attention on the path and process of self-actualization. In addition to using their own intellects and talents, Maslow said that self-actualizing people take responsibility for others as well as themselves and (according to James and Jongeward in their classic book, Born To Win), “have a childlike capacity for awareness and pleasure.”

     The authors proceed to note that “these individuals customarily have some mission in life, some task to fulfill, some problem outside themselves which enlists much of their energies … they work within a framework of values that are broad and not petty, universal and not local, and in terms of a century rather than a moment … have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others.”

     If you’ve let outside influences under your skin, it may be time to appreciate more what you already have in life and to take stock in whether those around you are contributing to your growth and happiness, and to the growth and success of your business — or are they detracting from it?

     Exerting your own sense of self-actualization can influence others to change negative thoughts and behaviors and directions, but — more importantly — it will serve to boost your own rockets and reinforce that you’re not such a bad “gal” or “guy” after all.

     You have enormous powers to turn things around when you decide to consistently apply your strengths to what’s in your face or on your plate. Keep outside influences outside.

     Draw instead from your own inner strength and the inner strength of your business, and from those who live inside your inner circle. Making decisions and conducting yourself from inside yourself is a better, happier, healthier choice every time.  

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Mar 24 2010

The Quandary of 30 Million Small Businesses

At this moment

                                      

in history… 

                                    

when small business

                                   

can least afford it…

                               

[4-STEP  SOLUTION AT END] 

                                                               

     GOVERNMENT is muscling entrepreneurs into incipient bankruptcy with this healthcare plan that — contrary to what the spin has been — does absolutely NOT pass along tax credit to all. In fact, 88% (maybe more) of America’s 29,000,000+ small businesses will get ZERO healthcare plan-related tax credit! So, do the math: “Maybe 12%” will get some tax credit.

     29 MILLION? Yes, that includes the 23 million self-employed. They are indeed small businesses by any rational person’s definition, and certainly by any textbook definition, and most assuredly by any measure of reality.

     The healthcare plan forces downward pressure on wages, when we’re at a point in time, facing the prospects of total economic demise, that the exact opposite is what should be happening. Downward pressure on wages inhibits business growth and strangleholds small businesses’ abilities to create jobs.

     SMALL BUSINESS will end up bearing the burden of increased insurance premium costs. Insurance companies will now pass on to small businesses the increased costs of government payments they must make. Insurance companies are not stupid. They will simply turn around and stick it to small business . . . camouflaged perhaps, but it will not not happen!

     Heaven knows we need to create jobs. And heaven also knows job creation will never come from corporate giants or from incompetent, close-minded market government agencies like the US Postal Service. 

     Yet, small business is the last and really only hope for job creation. Job creation is the only meaningful and realistic economic stimulus solution in America’s economy. Yet we are being trapped in a vicious circle of reckless spending partisan-politics that has no clue about the value of free market price competition and tax incentives with teeth!

     Instead, our no-business-experience leadership looks forlornly to the corporate and government executives who run the US Small Business Administration for the kinds of help they are simply not capable of providing.

     Most small business owners and entrepreneurs know how to solve problems quickly and know how to stimulate cash-flow and open new revenue streams, how to build a competitive environment and make it be productive. Give them a chance!

                                                     

THE SOLUTION…

                                                                     

>>> We need regional roll-up-the-sleeves task forces of experienced, successful small business owners and entrepreneurs in place and functioning via virtual meeting site conferences within two weeks.

>>> We need individuals with proven track-records who are willing to step up to the plate and work together for the common good without burden of paperwork overload or complex multi-level reporting systems.

>>> We need task teams to be given full authority AND responsibility to take immediate steps to develop and implement business turn-around programs geared to creating jobs.

>>> We need government acceptance of the fact that the time has come to make the most of America’s great wealth of small business resources by respecting and working with them, instead of pounding them into the ground.   

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Blog via RSS feed or $1/mo Kindle. GRANDPARENT Gift? http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

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Mar 21 2010

YOU’re Married to Your Business, Not the Govt!

For richer or poorer,

                                                                                                             

in sickness and

                              

in health, it’s

                                    

YOUR business…NOT

                                                                                                                          

the government’s!

                                                             

     There may never have been a better time than now, for small business owners, operators and managers to rise up and defend the businesses they’re married to, to take hold of the entrepreneurial leadership that America’s government hasn’t even an inkling about how to make work.

     We’re promised leadership transparency and get instead closed doors.

     We’re assured of job creation incentives and get instead “much ado about nothing.” Mountains of utterly useless government paperwork clog our channels of communication and threaten our existences as free market competitive entities.

   Here’s the line in the sand:

The government wants to tax and spend and provide all the necessary infrastructure to gain total and complete control of our businesses and industries, our families and our personal lives. [This is not exaggerated. Look carefully at what’s been happening every day.]

American business owners want an end to taxation without representation. Small business owners want an end to spending money that doesn’t exist, no matter how great the cause. Business owners do not want the government running businesses; they want government to provide infrastructure tools for use by small businesses to create jobs and economic turnaround opportunities. They want to keep their inalienable rights to freedom and independence.

     America’s federal government has run amuck. It is using today’s lame excuse for a healthcare bill as a Trojan Horse to–once positioned inside the walls of democracy–unleash a flood of controls designed to pursue their mission to usher in socialism.

      Socialism does not work, and will not work. It has never worked.

     And until what I am firmly convinced is our nation’s corrupt union leadership (especially teacher and automaker unions) and until naive, ideological arts and tree-hugger communities are willing to put aside their new-found, Obama-led arrogance long enough to face reality, we as a nation are in deep trouble.

     So why address all this political mess in a blog for small business owners and entrepreneurial leaders?

     Because it is WE who are on the line here. It is WE who hold the opportunity to reverse the reckless spending and reckless mind-games being foisted upon us. It is WE who need to rise up and restore balance and strength to our crumbling economy. 

     No, these are not just words. These are actions that each of us needs to take and pledge to work for. Our government, as it has come to exist in this past year, no longer represents “WE the people.” 

     If any of us with small businesses spent money we didn’t have as mindlessly as the federal government has been doing and continues to do, we would be out of business . . . exactly where America  is headed.

     We are on a runaway train, being driven by a totally-inexperienced group of incompetent (seemingly “possessed” say some) politicians who are intent on taking us all directly over the socialism cliff into Marxism waiting eagerly below. And, God forbid that should ever take place.

     The only way to ensure the survival of democracy bolstered by its capitalistic roots that established the US as the world’s one-time strongest nation, and be able to be in the position to best help others, is to provide small businesses with real (not token) tools to lead us forward once again.

     This can only happen when each small business owner takes an active role this November in voting out those who think it’s more important to “taxdollar-bailout” corporate giants than to put meaningful job creation tax incentives in small business.

     Realize here that we have representatives who are more concerned with their empty, small-business-killing healthcare plan than with reducing unemployment rates enough to allow people to pay for the insurance coverage they’ll need to have, to avoid getting fined with amounts they have no ability to pay, because they’re unemployed. Oh, is that not logical or something? 

     We need Congressional Representatives and Senators who are not afraid to stand shoulder to shoulder with small business, who will foster the spirit of knowledgeable, experienced, and open leadership we so sorely lack.  

     We need small business leadership with the vision to restore the sovereignty and credibility of America that generations before us worked so diligently and hard to preserve.       

Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

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Mar 18 2010

SEX ON THE DESK?

If you’ve even been

                                 

thinking about it,

                                   

STOP!   It’ll

                            

kill your business! 

                                                                                             

     “Fishing off company docks,” as Grandpa used to call it, is a choice. Don’t choose it!

     If you’re not in a home business and married to your partner, there is no excuse big enough to allow room for a sex relationship in your business no matter how discreet you think you can be, no matter how tempting a person or situation is, no matter what any one’s marital status is.

     It will come back to bite you in the butt and wreck your business. Guaranteed!

     No, I don’t pretend to be a preacher or a moralist. Nor am I a prude or an embittered, failed religious fanatic. I have been a personal and professional growth and development counselor to many top business executives and many physicians.

     I have seen and “heard confession” of at least a hundred instances of boss and associate or boss and employee sex relationships at work, and every single one of them ultimately destroyed the business or medical practice. No exceptions.

     No matter how worked up the thinking about it gets, sex on the desk is simply not worth it. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal transformed societal acceptance levels, with of course the help of mainstream media which found it preferable to capitulate and sanction the offenses (rather than bite the Presidential hand that fed them . . . Hmmm, sound familiar?).

     Bill Clinton’s indiscretions don’t make the practice of sex in the office (ANY office) an “okay” thing.

     It’s unfortunate that Clinton’s gross violation of public trust and personal morals will be his only truly memorable contribution to go down in the Presidential legacy history books. The Brothers Kennedy and others, as past events come to light, were apparently no better behaved — just had the wherewithal to stall off public awareness for a few decades.

     The sexual pursuits of employee underlings follow the perceived power of leaders . . . and it’s easy for business leader (the more powerful, the easier) to take sexual advantage of an employee . . . even the owner of a small retail store is not exempt.

     The only thing that keeps business owners above the fray is the active recognition that all behavior is a choice, and that sex at work is a bad choice in every instance. Why? Because it stands to cost the business and the owner (as well as the magnetized employee!) deeply and irrevocably. 

     The risk of lifelong-haunting business failure far outweighs the moments of indiscretion. Entrepreneurs, we need to remember, take only reasonable risks. Leave the mixing of sexlife with worklife to Hollywood where morals don’t exist anyway, and where risk-taking is a fictional pursuit.

     Odds are you have spent enormous energy and untold amounts of time and money to anchor your business in reality. You deserve to keep it there.   

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

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Mar 17 2010

CRITICISM: Dishing Out and Taking It In

First of all,

                              

DO IT IN PRIVATE!

                                                         

Public is the place

                          

for praise only!

                                              

     There is no career more demanding of thick skin than that of a writer. Because everyone thinks they can write (which is of course a massive misconception), writers live in a breeding ground of rejection and criticism. They learn how to take it in. They learn to not take it personally, to process the thinking behind it, and to make it be constructive.

     But most people in other careers will cry, or bitch, or stomp their foot, or kick the dog, or return with a gun. Unfortunately, many of those who dish it out, rarely concern themselves with sensitivities on the receiving end.

     Business and professional practice owners and managers who believe they are the best at what they do (that’s like what?  99.7%?) tend to have massive egocentric personalities. Many think they know it all. They seldom concern themselves with the feelings of those they criticize. And some simply don’t care what others think or feel.

     The most successful bosses are neither tyrants nor mollycoddlers. They are the ones who save critical comments for behind closed doors, who start and end with sincere compliments, who explain themselves and their rationales, who ask questions about why something was said or done in a way they don’t like (just in case they might possibly be wrong in their assumptions), and then who make a major point of criticizing the behavior involved, not the person involved. 

     Remember that asking someone “Why” something happened is never ever as useful or important as asking “How” something happened — or better yet — “How can we prevent this type of thing from happening in the future?”

     Why not “Why?” Because asking someone “Why?” simply sets up getting an excuse for an answer. “Why were you late again today?” will get you “My car broke down, my dog ate my sock” kinds of replies.  

     Asking “How?” gets you real solutions because it forces an assessment of the process involved in the screw-up. Once we know HOW something went wrong, it’s easier to fix it. “How?” is even more productive when it’s followed by a pointed request such as: “Can you please give me a bullet list by noon (or the end of the day) with the three steps that need to be taken (or that you need to take) that will help us eliminate this problem altogether?”  

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT DayBlog emails free via RSS feed, $1/mo Amazon Kindle. GRANDPARENT Gift? http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

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Mar 16 2010

UNPOPULAR COMMON SENSE

If Einstein

                                                                                                     

had been Alaskan,

                                                                                            

would he have been 

                                                                                                                          

wearing your shoes?

                                                                

     In finally getting around today to Sarah Palin’s best-selling book, Going Rogue, I was reminded early on that US Secretary of State William H. Seward bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million (or two cents an acre) . . . well over half a million square miles (589,000 in fact) of mostly rugged (and then considered useless) wilderness.
     The unpopular purchase was publicly mocked and anointed as “Seward’s Folly.” But Seward, it turns out, had uncommon vision and great foresight.
     Decades later (and now, of course, the 49th State), Palin points out that Alaska ultimately produced colossal amounts of “gold and oil and rich minerals, along with the world’s most abundant fisheries.” She notes that Seward was “posthumously vindicated, as purveyors of unpopular common sense often are.”
     Let’s flip this historical tidbit into your own backyard, and explore what we learn.
     You run your own business. You have some terrific common sense ideas that you’re convinced can boost your business (industry, market) sky-high. But your family and your (formal or informal) advisory board considers you borderline crazy? They all agree that your newest business idea is too radical and far beyond having a realistic chance for success?
     You respect and trust their judgment and recognize that they have your best interests at heart, but — in the end, no matter the circumstances– your gut will prevail. Why? When none of them share your instincts, why? Because none of them are in your shoes. In fact, if they really were in your shoes, they’d be running your business instead of you.
     You got where you are because you have an entrepreneurial instinct, because you took reasonable risks, because you weren’t afraid to take up an unpopular cause that you believed in, because when others got too rigid or too flighty with their leadership, you always clung to using common sense.

Q. So how do you fly forward in the face of headwinds that seem determined to take you down?

A.The same way that you’ve done it before: forcefully AND gracefully (yes, both can work together). You need to move upward and onward in the directions you believe are right, but not at the cost of the input, insights, and guidance from those you honor and rely on.

     Claiming that if humans could use 100% of their brainpower, they would be able to separate molecules and walk through walls, neuro-scientists have further speculated that even Einstein never used more than 10% of his brain. (Whew! Imagine what percentage of brainpower each of us not-quite-Einstein-types use?). The man himself was often quoted as having said all we ever have is limited knowledge. 
     Okay, so limited common sense knowledge triggered by gut decisions. Sounds like a plan. Actually, it sounds like every successful entrepreneur who ever lived, from Henry Ford to Bill Gates. Measuring the Alaskan past and considering your present state of “craziness,” one might very well conclude what most of us know but most of us forget:

Forward motion as a human being and as a business leader

is always about having the courage of your convictions.

Just look around once to confirm that, then look inside your SELF to ignite what you believe in. 

                                  

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

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Mar 14 2010

And now, adding insult to injury . . .

Wake Up Congress!

                        

The White House

                                  

is NOT on Your Side.

                                
(PART 2 OF 2… The rest of the story)
                                                                                

PASS ALONG a printout or email this page link to your U.S. Senator and Congressional Representative

     Small business has been the backbone of America’s economy and the driving force behind job creation as the means to economic turnaround since the beginning of time. Yet small business has been not only blatantly disregarded in the search for economic and national survival, it has been literally stomped on by a penny-wise, dollar-foolish Federal Administration … that you are being dragged along into as a co-conspirator!

     Paying back union bosses for buying the election, and overriding common sense with big business bailout rewards that should not have come from taxpayers to begin with, and should have gone to small businesses instead to create jobs, was (and remains) a colossal error in judgment.

     Adding insult to injury, the White House is now trying to ramrod yet another version of a so-called healthcare reform plan down our throats.

     The voters are not stupid. They know that the schmooze-coated advances the President is making and the tokenism dropped at the feet of small business is meaningless, empty, UN-American nonsense designed solely to increase government control.

     The White House wants you to think the “new and improved” healthcare plan is what your constituents want and need. It is NOT.

     The White House wants you to think that small business is being awarded huge decision making benefits as part of this ill-founded, burdensome, unworkable plan. Not the case. Small business is being awarded gigantic, financially back-breaking responsibility for making healthcare work without being allowed meaningful input.

     If this healthcare plan goes through, the bankruptcy court lines will stretch all the way around the block in every city in America. If you, dear representatives of the people, think we have unemployment problems now, just give this financially-numbing plan 9-12 months to boil over… oh, and don’t worry about picking up the pieces because you won’t be around for another term.

     The people you represent are already fighting for their lives to avoid forclosures, pay bills, and feed their families. They sure as hell are not going to re-elect representatives who continually vote to spend more money that doesn’t exist — and that our children and grandchildren will be paying for, for decades.

     Jim Toedtman, the accomplished and perceptive Editor of AARP Bulletin, wrote last October (and it continues to ring true) that “It’s striking how closely” (Obama’s healthcare plan) “resembles the plan outlined by Nixon” (in 1970). “There’s a lesson here, and an important one that” (even the late Senator Ted) “Kennedy learned four decades too late: Don’t allow partisanship and deology to blind you to opportunity. But who,” Toedtman asks, “in the nation’s all but dysfunctional capital has learned Kennedy’s lesson? Who has the common sense and the willingness to listen? Who will set aside the partisanship that has paralyzed the health care debate? Who will step forward and seize the opportunity before them?”

     Surely that “who” could be YOU!

     Small business owners strongly urge that the torch be passed to those who know best how to fuel the job creation and healthcare reform fires: small business and healthcare professionals… not corporate giants, not hospital executives, not unions, not bankers, not automakers, and certainly not government administrators or media people. 

     There must be free market enterprise price competition, administered on a state-by-state basis (because health problems and needs vary considerably in different geographical regions) and small business owners cannot be expected to carry the financial burden.

     The White House is trying to make its backers look like heroes. But reality is that backers will instead be thought of by those who elect them as internal terrorists whose support of White House plans and policies are tearing at the very fabric of American life.

     Wake up, representatives of the people of America! Small Business Job Creation is what we need and want. If you were unemployed, could you pay for “the new” healthcare? First things first!   

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT DayGet blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

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Mar 11 2010

Let Salespeople Sell and Marketers Market!

Should “A-Rod” 

                            

be negotiating

                                

terms for Scott Boras

                                                     

to play third base?

                                                                

     With immediate apologies to all those “not a baseball fan” types who prefer brawn-over-brain sports that require heavy drinking to appreciate, and, oh yes, apologies also to all those who suffered great heartache at having to see Olympic curling competition come to an end.

     It’s just that even Herman’s Hermits have heard of baseball’s super-star Yankee slickster, and America’s champion sports agent (No, not the Tom Cruise character from the “Show me the money!” movie). And everyone knows that neither of these guys could do the other’s job with even a shred of success. Besides, it hooked you into reading this, right? 

     Well, this is not much ado about nothing because business owners and managers insist everyday on putting the avalanche of marketing burdens on the shoulders of salespeople who haven’t a clue about the most appropriate tools to use, nor any sense of the command of psychology needed to make those tools work effectively. And designating marketing people for sales roles can be an even bigger joke.

     Marketing is not sales. Sales is a function of marketing.

     Marketing is also the umbrella over all these other functions: pricing; packaging; online and offline promotion, merchandising, and advertising; online and offline public relations, community relations, investor relations, industry relations, business alumni relations, and much of customer relations; professional practice development; formalized networking, blogging, and social media activities; website design and development; and “buzz” (word-of-mouth) marketing.

     Sales has many parts to it. Not the least of these is that being a sales representative means running one’s own small sales performance business complete with bookkeeping and all the other migraine-promoters. But sales is sales.

     Marketers are the planners, organizers, strategists and creators. Salespeople are the movers and shakers. Salespeople are the lifeblood of every organization. Marketers provide the support services that bring prospects to the point of sale. Salespeople sell!

     If you want your salespeople to do a better job of selling, let them sell. Take away the responsibility for marketing that drains their energy, makes them crazy and is beyond their comprehension to begin with, and let them sell.

     Give the responsibility for marketing to people who are trained to do marketing. Let them come up with the words and pictures and designs and plans and budgets and strategies and slogans and jingles and branding lines and media plans and scripts and news releases and online program approaches.

     When their work succeeds at driving prospects to your door, reward them for the results; but then let your salespeople do their job! 

     Of course they all need to interact and share insights with one another. The more each team and individual knows about what makes the other(s) tick, the more successful all of them will be, and so will be your business. Your greatest challenge is to motivate everyone to do what they do best to take your business in the direction you want it to go. That’s leadership, and only you can do that!

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT DayGet blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

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