Discover Your Strengths and Weaknesses…Why?
August 16th, 2010
Have you ever taken the time to analyze your strengths and weaknesses? Have you ask close friends and colleagues to help you with this task? Do you know why it is important?
We all have specific areas in our life in which we are great at and we all have areas that we are not good at and most likely never will be. If you had two projects at work: One was a finance task and you are very talented in math, forecasting and financial analysis. The second was writing white papers on business processes and you do not spell well, have poor grammar, and hate writing. Your boss suggests that you take the writing piece and Mr. Smith gets the Finance part of the project. How well do you think your boss knows your strengths and weaknesses?
Should you train to improve your strengths or weaknesses? If your boss really wanted you to handle one of the projects and asked you to rate yourself on ability with each task from 1 to 10, and you rated the Finance piece an 8 and the writing piece a 3 would that help his decision on who to allocate the task?
If your boss demanded that you take a course to improve your weakness and you spent an entire week in a writing course, how high do you think you would be able to increase that weakness? Maybe from a 3 to a 5/6? What if you spent the same week in a Finance course, you could most likely get that 8 to a 9!
Would you rather have a bunch of employees operating at 8, 9, or 10’s on projects relating to their strengths or would you rather have 3,4, and 5’s running around trying to get things done? What is the best use of your employees and what is helping them to build their own success the quickest?
Focus on Strengths and have others fill in your weaknesses.
Your Marketing Approach…Do or Die! (and or inside secret)
July 16th, 2010
Newsletter, mail, social media, website, phone calls and advertising are all marketing actions that need to be done consistently. Why is being consistent with marketing efforts so important?
People like the feeling of being secure, they like secure and successful businesses. They do not have confidence in companies that are unpredictable. If you do not remain consistent with marketing efforts then two things happen:
1. Out-flow = In-flow. The more good out flow of marketing you have the more in flow of people you should see. Marketing and sales are both numbers games. Less = out of business.
2. Erratic Marketing = Insecure Audience. The more you do things inconsistently the more feeling of unsettlement you instill in your audience.
An example of our marketing plan (Top Secret) is…
Yesterday we mailed 360 letters to 360 YMCA’s across the country. The letter was part of a half year marketing plan to acquire more clients. It was coordinated around the launch of the new YMCA logo that was launched this past Monday. This letter was part of a large marketing plan that includes 5 mailings done every 3 weeks, 6 newsletters emailed monthly, a phone call campaign done once a week, and social media tactics on LinkedIn.
Now you are an insider to our marketing strategy. The point of mentioning this is that it is part of a high level strategic plan that was set in motion months ago. We are not throwing darts at a board. We are consistently delivering a series of direct marketing and sales pieces in an effort to create In-Flow.
Stay consistent because marketing can take several months to kick in and generate a return for you.
Thanks for reading, The Octopus Solution!
Find Your YMCA MoJo
June 16th, 2010
The MoJo of your YMCA is the energy it admits on a daily basis. The energy level of your staff and environment can make or break a YMCA. Y employees will tell you that “if you know one YMCA, then you know only that one YMCA!”
All YMCA’s are different and each have their own personality and character. Each have their own MoJo! The MoJo is that little special energy that gives a YMCA that positive spirit that connects with staff and members.
Your YMCA Mojo starts with your employees. If your YMCA has a personality it is because of leadership and staff character, energy and passion. YMCA employees are special because most have a higher purpose given the type of organization they work for. When employees are YMCA Mission driven it shows in their performance and action.
At the front desk-Welcome Center, do you have high spirit employees that are service driven with the ability to get things done? Does your fitness staff know how to provide the personal attention and touch for members? Is your CEO and upper management actively engaged in setting the tone and leading by example?
The only way to generate a higher level of MoJo at your YMCA is to lead by example. Raise your bar for what you bring to your office, job, organization and live a higher purpose.
Email us for information on our Leadership Training: info@theoctopussolution.com
Don't get fooled by "Social Media Experts"
April 16th, 2010
Social media is the wild west and many of these sites (facebook, linkedin, twitter, myspace, etc) are just in their infancy. Social media is developing into a hub within a hub. The Internet is the source of information and within this hub over 300 Million people are gathering on facebook alone to interact with one an other. With millions of people on these social sites every day, the business community wants to gain exposure with these users. But as a business how do we use these sites? What is the best way and how many do I need to be involved with? Just ask an expert!
Because of the growth of these social sites many people are crawling out of the wood work claiming to be an expert and not delivering or understanding how to cultivate them. Be carful of those that claim expert status as the social media guru’s because many people are getting burned by companies or individuals that just come into your business and open up 2-3 accounts and then leave claiming you will have fast success…it does not work that way.
Developing sites like facebook, linkedin, twitter, myspace, etc does not take long. You can set them all up in one day. The part that takes time is developing a pool of people (friends, followers, fans, connections) to interact with you and your business. The key word is interact. How can you generate interaction between you and your peers or even peer-to-peer? Interaction leads to an experience with your brand, so it is important to develop a strategy with these sites before starting to move forward. It is also critical to know what the capabilities and uses are for each site to maximize your effectiveness and to give you the most information while developing your strategy.
Do not be fooled by the people claiming to be experts in social media. Many of them do not have marketing backgrounds and may not fully understand how these sites play a role in the grand marketing plan. Plan first! Best of luck to you in this constantly changing environment.
The 5 Step Rule to Making Sales
March 16th, 2010
“I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.” – Estee Lauder
What is the top line of your P&L Statement? Sales, right? Well the economy is doing terrible and competition is fierce and selling is more important then ever. It seems we have steered away from sales being as important as marketing. In fact I would say sales is more important than marketing, just less sexy.
Yesterday we pitched a big deal to a potential client that we are eager to work with and in our discussion we talked about the difference between sales and marketing and how they too often get lumped under the heading of marketing. That’s wrong. Marketing is responsible for research, branding, advertising, communications, and many other specific types of campaigns, but all those have the purpose of driving a potential customer to your door step. Once they are at your door step it is the responsibility of sales to close them.
Selling is not about being a used car salesmen…they are a full of BS. It is not about marketing, advertising or fancy slogans. It is about believing in your company and products and service and presenting them passionately to a potential buyer with their best interests in mind.
Here is our sales process and you can adapt it for your business:
- Generate leads - there are thousands of tools out there to find customers or business names to call. Be creative about how you find them, it is not hard, just time consuming (they may come from marketing). We have an amazing intern; intern Mike, that helps us with all the grunt work of generating leads. Organize all the leads in a customer database like ZoHo CRM, SalesForce.com, Act! or even Quickbooks. Right now we are reaching out to 3 different not-for-profits across New England to offer our services and the next steps will tell you how we are doing it.
- Send a big package - I get about 20-30 pieces of mail per day at my office and most are sales offer crap. We are sending a sales offer too, but you need it to not fall in the “crap bucket”. After putting the leads together you send them something in the mail. Play with the types of mailers you send so that you can customize them to find the sweet spot. We send: a cover letter talking about our successes, news articles about our company helping other companies, detailed information about the projects we have done, and a document that helps the reader in some way. We may send them a “how to make money from Social Media” included in the package or many other articles we have written. This helps our big package stay out of that “crap bucket” and adds value to the reader. Now the goal of your mailer is to soften the potential client to get them to take a phone call with you and have a starting point for discussion.
- Pick up the phone – Making calls to the people you have sent a mailer to is the next step in the process and the objective of making the calls are to schedule appointments. It is hard to close a potential customer on the phone, if you can do it great, but it is more effective to establish a relationship in person (Go back to our blog on dating your customers for more insight there). Before you pick up the phone you MUST be prepared! Being prepared means having a call script, a voicemail script and having practiced it out load (preferably to a tape recorder) before any call is made. If you get a person on the phone the first 2-4 sentence out of your mouth are the most important. You need to start off on the right foot and get them interested in talking with you. Leave a voicemail every time you call if you can not get through. You want them to have enough interest to schedule a meeting with you. If you keep leaving voice mail (LVM) they will, here is your schedule: Call Day One and LVM, Day 3 LVM, One week later LVM, Two weeks later LVM, then get them on a once a Month LV schedule. The objective with this is to have a schedule that is respectful, but gets them to take the call either to say “never call me again” or “you have been persistent, lets meet”.
- Shake their hand – The meeting is when a potential client gets to size you up and vice-versa. You want to build repore with the people you meet because people buy from people they like. Do not ask for a sale if you have not created a foundation of respect. The client must feel that you are trust-worthy and capable and once that occurs you can ask for the sale. Closing the deal does not always happen on meeting one, in fact it may take a long time depending on your sales cycle. But if you are truly interested in building a relationship with the client (and they can sense it too), then you will stay with them and help them succeed. Always remember that your gut will tell you when to ask for the sale. You have to be aggressive, knowledgable and respectful all in one. Once a deal does close and you deliver you must manage the relationship.
- Repeat Customers – Service your customers well and take care of them and they will take care of you. Find a balance between going after new business and servicing existing because it will make a world of difference regarding how hard you have to work. We have said this many times before; repeat customers cost 5-10 times less to retain then acquiring new one and will spend on average 67% more. Enough said. Use step one and the customer database to help you manage staying in contact with your customers on a timely basis.
That is what we do for our sales process. Get leads, mail a letter, make a phone call, meet the client, close the deal, and stay in contact to service them. If you want to survive look more towards rethinking how all the employees in your company can contribute to the sales process and hit the ground. Sitting back and relying on marketing (an important piece) will not solve your income problems. Sales Will! Get after it!
Track Stats like the Red Sox
February 16th, 2010
How do you know if JD Drew of the Boston Red Sox will be productive this year in comparison to the previous year? How does he hit against certain pitchers? What are the odds he is going to hit a home run? Statistics give management the tools to increase the performance of players, strategize, and make real-time decisions based on numbers not emotions. 
Statistics or business numbers, allow business owners to see what areas of the company are failing and what areas of the company are succeeding. Without tracking numbers/statistics, the manager essentially makes blind decisions sometimes based on emotion, that could harm company growth. Make educated decisions based on facts. Think about a time when things were going poorly for you and you had to make tough decisions, emotions factor into making those decisions and can cloud your judgment.
It is important to keep in mind that statistics will be useless to you if you do not know what your key indicators are and what they tell you. Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. For example, a desired product of Internal Marketing is to create a repeat customer. The statistic analyzed here would be the number of repeat customers in one week or month. Therefore, when choosing statistics to track, make sure that each statistic you choose to focus on correlates with the desired product or else you will be wasting precious time on statistics that hold little or no value to your company.
Whether you are tracking the number of customers that walk through the door or the number of phone calls received in sales, each piece of data collected must be recorded daily to provide the most accuracy. Without a daily record, when it comes time to construct a graph, the data will be far too scarce to create an accurate depiction of a particular trend. These numbers can be manually recorded and graphed in an Excel spreadsheet.
The frequency of tracking these statistics may vary from business to business depending on size. For example, if you are a landscape architect and only see four to five new customers per month, tracking new clients on a daily basis will be a lot of unnecessary work. However, if you are a high volume manufacturing company that produces 1,000 products per day, then tracking this volume each day or shift, as opposed to a monthly frequency, will make much more sense.
Big business and sports franchises are tracking key indicators like baseball RBI’s or Customers response to a direct mailer. In summary statistics allow you to strategize and make decisions clearly-”If You Listen To The Numbers”, and also help you analyze return on investment. Set up the key indicators. If you need help and want an objective view to how you run your business email us with your questions and contact info at: info@theoctopussolution.com