Rules to Thriving in a Recession

This is the time when money is made, according to Tom Niesen, a sales performance consultant. I listened as he shared his message with the Dallas Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). He noted several companies that were born out of recessions including: FedEx, UPS, Coors Brewing Company, Walt Disney and Cost Co – just to name a few.

The four rules to being successful this year according to Niesen are as follows:

• Rule #1 Follow the money – Money is out there. America’s gross domestic product is more than $13 trillion (that’s the amount of money that will be exchanged this year). Niesen suggests turning off the tv and stop listening to all the pessimists. Then clear your mind and let go of the head trash. Think positive!

• Rule #2 Make Decisions Based on Customers – Ask them, “What do you want to buy, and how can I help you this year?”

• Rule #3 Be Different – Make your competitors irrelevant. Find out what sets you apart and own it.

• Rule #4 Be Extremely Aggressive in Sales – You must think of all of your employees as members of the sales department.

Niesen is CEO and founder of Acuity.

Signs of Poor Communication

Signs are an interesting form of communication. They can bring forth a myriad of emotions with just a few words. A sale sign can make my heart palpitate with excitement. Detour signs generally make me nervous. Signs can also be responsible for great disappointment. I was at the grocery store the other day and there was a piece of paper on the glass door where the dairy products are kept that had Out of Milk – Sorry written on it. It didn't seem very apologetic, and I couldn’t help but hear the woman in sweat pants tell the manager so. Perhaps they could have typed something up explaining the milk truck was in an accident, or the cows weren't up for milking that day? Whatever the explanation, customers expect to see a fully stocked dairy case when they walk into the grocery store. Management could have considered providing more details and directions to the nearest convenience store (ideally they would have called ahead to make sure the milk truck didn't pass them up, too).

The worst signs are the grammatically challenged written in poor penmanship. They are usually found taped to an elevator, or unruly piece of machinery. Soda Machine is Broke tends to be one I see frequently. I can’t help but think of my eleventh grade English teacher every time I see that particular phrase.

The point is – nearly every business housed in brick and mortar uses signs. Most of the people who create them are well-intentioned. They want to let you know that you should hang on to your dollar rather than risk losing it for a bottle of water. Fair enough, but when the communication comes down to an important business function such as, discontinuing a particular form of service or the relocation of an office- you want to make sure that people are being informed at the right time in the right manner. Creating a sign is passive form of communication. It prevents front line personnel from having to engage customers. The notion is if they create a sign, then they don’t have to be the one to provide the disappointing news. Actually, they are only fueling the flames of frustration. The customer is now angry before they even get to the frontline staff person. Conversely, we can’t be angry about something we haven’t made aware of, and it is less disappointing when someone apologizes and offers a solution.

Signs can’t convey tone or sympathy - only humans. Stop spreading signs. Be human.

Leverage Your Corporate Video for More Exposure and SEO

Corporate video can be expensive and have a short lifespan. Annual meeting and milestone celebrations are excellent occasions for creating a video piece, however, once the event is over, the piece can sometimes be put on a shelf never to be seen again. You might consider editing portions of the video in order to make it appropriate for a broad audience. Why not promote your company’s success and culture?

You can continue to leverage your video without spending any more money. Additionally, you can increase your search engine optimization (that means Google and Yahoo will put you up higher on the list when someone searches your for company or services).

You can go about using previously shot video in one of two ways – you can create a YouTube account and add the link to your website, or you can utilize a service that will embed your video on your site for you with little or no cost to you. There are pros and cons to each. YouTube is great because it is free and easy, but it doesn’t add to the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site. However, you can put a link on your site and show off what you’ve done. Check out how the Cincinnati Zoo uses YouTube on its website http://www.cincinnatizoo.org/

Search engines (Google, Yahoo) are constantly reviewing sites for key words and phrases. They are looking at number of clicks of course, and if you add video, you have the opportunity to add more keywords and phrases and more clicks on your site. There are several sites that will do this for you for no cost or low cost. The process is relatively easy. You send them the video and they send you a link for your site. Your video will appear on your site, just as if you had paid a designer to incorporate it into your site. The downside is that many use ads to off-set the revenue. You have no control if viewers see a Tide or Coca-Cola commercial before they view your video. They might also add a logo to the viewer. Check out the following to see how it works. Check out the following sites to see the process in action for yourself:

http://www.fliqz.com/

http://www.vimeo.com/

http://www.videobloom.com/

Shazam! Helping Leaders Stay on Message without Spending Money

Every so often we all have those “ah-ha” moments. Those brief learning experiences in which some small truth is revealed to us. We get to feel a twinge of cleverness when that moment takes place. It could be finding a short cut that takes precious minutes off your commute to work, or discovering a helpful new tool buried in your smart phone. However, an experience that is much more exciting, though more elusive, is the shazam moment. Shazam moments bring a profound sense of enlightenment and can change our behavior or attitudes, but still you can’t help but feel like a five year old kid again when you say the word. That’s most likely because according to dictionary.com, the expression was made up for Captain Marvel by DC Comics in 1940. Regardless, they are exciting and rare occasions.

I had one of these moments about a year ago. I was working as the director of public relations for a large hospital and was feeling frustrated about how information didn’t seem to be trickling down from management to frontline staff. The challenge was to provide information to 4,500 workers who had varying education levels and work schedules, and were all geographically separated. Administration would have monthly meetings with managers to outline new programs, current financials, quality, etc. More than 100 people sat and listened – some even took notes. We relied heavily on managers who often could only meet with their staff once a month due to the diverse work schedules that come with running a 24 hour operation seven days a week.

We had other communication pieces in place – a colorful newsletter that came out every two weeks, an intranet, global e-mails, but each piece had its own flaws. We didn’t print a newsletter for every employee due to expense (we did supplement with posting it on the intranet). Additionally, the problem with our intranet and mass e-mails was that some groups had low computer utilization, such as environmental service workers and plant operations employees. There were still too many ways for employees to fall through the cracks.

As I looked around the room, moving my eyes from nurse, to physician, to accountant, to operations manager - it hit me – I was the only person whose focus was solely on communication. These were all bright people – they can fix your broken arm, balance your monthly statement, or re-build your office from the ground up, but they weren’t all natural communicators and public speakers. In fact we were making it hard on them; some of them wouldn’t see their staff for another three to four weeks. I can barely recount what I had for lunch yesterday; much less summarize all of the salient details of a meeting that was held a month ago.

So shazam! I went back to my office with all the energy, verve and gusto of a comic book hero and created a bullet point list of what we covered. I broke it down in short sentences so that managers could read directly from the list. I had our graphic designer jazz it up with some color. We gave it an easy title – Meeting Notes. Subsequently, we began e-mailing it out to all leadership prior to the monthly meeting. This made it easier for directors and managers to recount what happened in the previous leadership meeting and ensured key messages were being communicated.

The truly heroic element to this method was that it didn’t cost the organization any additional money, and it quickly became one of the most trusted and valued forms of communication we had. The information was provided by supervisors – the most valued source of communication, and helping foster greater discussion between leadership and frontline staff.

Though this shazam moment didn’t save a damsel in distress or prevent a bus load of people from going over the edge of a cliff in fine caped-crusader fashion, it did ensure that managers were able to stay on message. Consistent messaging for large organizations with multiple shifts, and geographic locations is a monumental task, but it doesn’t require a large amount of funds or a superhero alias.