Sustainability is the Key to Success

There are three key areas that most business owner under-value when it comes to driving sustainability in their business. It is safe to say that many small business owners never even think about sustainability in relationship to operational issues. But, sustainability is the key to success.

Three areas that a lack of sustainability will kill a business

Labor

Many managers think that high turnover is an issue of bad hiring practices. Generally, that is not always true. High turnover is attributed more to mismanagement after they are hired than making a bad decision during the hiring process. What does high turnover cost you?

Your employee never achieves optimum productivity. The longer someone does something the more productive they become doing it. They stop thinking about what they need to do next and start thinking about how to do it better. When they leave, you lose that productivity. You also lose some of your productivity as you go through the hiring process to replace them and the training and mentoring process to make the new employee productive. During the hiring process you are down two employees not just one.

Here is another important point to remember. People do business with people they like and trust. When there is no continuity in your customer facing employees this customer/client-employee bond either doesn’t mature or becomes broken. The emotional tie between your customers and your business is weakened. Referral business is the cheapest and most profitable lead generation any company can have. A lack of continuity can adversely affect referrals.

So what can you do from a management perspective to keep employees? First, understand that motivators and demotivators are not linked. The elimination of a demotivator does necessarily motivate. Providing a motivation does not always overcome a demotivating characteristic. You can give a person a promotion with more responsibility, which they crave, and they will still leave you because they don’t like the corporate culture. Removing excessive overtime might remove a demotivator, but it won’t motivate anyone to work harder. Understand what works and what doesn’t work. Create motivators while removing demotivators. Don’t assume that work is called work because it is work. Life can be better than that.

Everyone is different; learn what works for each one of them. People are not robots that need to be treated uniformly. Don’t let the lawyers convince you that everyone should be treated like a clone. Be fair with everyone, but create programs that reward people in ways that are unique to their needs. This takes knowing them, not a pleasant task for some managers. This also takes time to build programs that are more flexible. This might require too much thinking for some people.

Lead Generation

The second area that businesses waste a lot of time and money because of a lack of sustainability is lead generation. In this world of multiple electronic channels, which many seem nebulous at best, there is a tendency to try anything once. It takes time to fine-tune a new lead generation process. Owners need to take the time to fully understand the details of what they are trying to achieve before they start. They need to fine-turn their idea of a prospect. They need to fine-tune their idea of an offering. They may even have to fine-tune their perception of the buying process. Marketing is changing. People don’t buy the same way they did before. They have access to much more information. They have less geographic constraints to whom they do business with.

Plan on going through several iterations before you see results. Using a start-stop approach will only burn cash, confuse your employees and produce limited results as best. I don’t know how many times I have heard an owner say “We tried that and it didn’t work for us.” Did they have a plan for sustainability before they started, or were they just hoping to find something that might work?

Cash is King

Spend money only when you know, or reasonably expect, it will make money. Everything you do must have a tangible return on investment. Even branding strategies must have a payback somewhere out there, or why do it? Track what you spend against what you get back. The only way to sustain a program is if it generates as much income as expense. Otherwise, it will die a slow death as the cash runs out. Don’t throw money at something just to see if it might work. There is no such thing as discretionary income to a business, it’s all critical to the operation. You can’t bet money you can afford to lose, there isn’t any.

The key is to fully fund a program before you implement. Most businesses plan on using cash created by the program to fund the program. That is a recipe for disaster. Use the cash generated by the program to fund another program. Then you will see growth.

Think about sustainability. Think about how you will use what you are planning to do it replenish the resources you use to accomplish it. Ideally, it should pay you back more than what you use.

Is it time to go Viral?

I was thinking about viral marketing and how to take advantage of it if you don’t have a gee whiz product. What I mean is this, what if you don’t have the kind of product that would cause someone to pass it on to their e-mail list. That is one of the primary premises behind viral marketing. What are you saying that’s worth repeating? That’s pretty hard for a lot of companies. What they do just isn’t neighborhood party chatter. Most of your neighbors probably don’t know what you do for a living and don’t care. Either that or it’s so common place they don’t think twice.

We can get advice for solving this problem from two primary places. (This is based on my limited reading so feel free to add your own sources) First is a great book by Chip and Dan Heath “Made to Stick”, and the other is Dan Tapscott’s book “Wikinomics”. Wikinomics is a little of a challenge to me because it reeks of socialism, but that another subject for another time. So here is how I think we can go about building a viral experience that will promote our company.

If we don’t have that mind blowing concept or product that is going to make almost everyone sit up and say “WOW”, then we need to find an angle that will make some of them at least say “Interesting!” The concept does not have to be directly related to your business. It can be tangential to it. Here’s an example: Let’s say I do technology consulting for billing systems in the wireless telecommunications market. It may be pretty hard to get more than a few people to say “interesting” more or less “WOW”. But if I start a Blog or drip marketing program concerning the latest developments in consumer mobile devices, it could go viral and it is in the same space as my practice.

You might be able to find the right subject by using collaboration with, not just your employees, but customers and suppliers. Put some type of reward out there for the best ideas. It doesn’t have to be big, just enough to spur interest. Remember people love recognition over material things. The banter back and forth concerning the ideal subject may turn out to be the viral marketing you’re looking for. Even if it’s not, this is where Chip and Dan come in. Their book will give you the step by step instruction you need to build a story that will not only stick in the minds of those that hear it, but cause those same people to pass it on.

Just like varnishing a table…Let dry and repeat…. Keep in mind to build a brand around viral marketing the same rules apply as traditional marketing….Consistency of the message. Don’t bounce around from subject to subject. Pick something with staying power and build on it. I would start with a Blog, as opposed to drip e-mail marketing, because there is a better feedback system with Blogs. If you are not getting comments and visitors, then it’s not going to go viral on you. Once you figure it out, you can add it to your drip marketing program with some level of confidence that people will read it and pass it on.

If you’re really serious about this, hire a professional to help. They can help craft the message so that it has the highest impact. They can also optimize exposure to attract viewers.

"If the Internet can be described as a giant human consciousness, then viral marketing is the illusion of free will."
- By George Pendle

Web Marketing - Did you start in the right place?

I spend a lot of time in meetings discussing web strategies, Web 2.0, Social Networking, all the latest jargon used to help drive business. The one component that is always missing in these discussions is WHY? The discussion goes around web optimization, Adword, impressions, eyeballs, clicks, and landing pages, but it’s hard to nail someone down to exactly what they want to happen. The short answer is always “I want more business” they haven’t really thought through how their web marketing program was going to actually get them more business. They see it as a “Field of Dreams”, build it and they will come. The reality is that successful web marketing is a symbiotic relationship between marketing, web technology and sales.

Just like no two companies have the same mission and goal, no two companies have the same web strategy. No two companies want the same results from the initial actions taken by potential clients. Even within the same industry and region of the country, each company will have its own unique sales proposition, sales methodology, and sales qualification criteria. The problem is that many companies go to technical resources to build their web marketing strategy without thinking through what exactly they want to happen once they have attracted a person of interest. They’re not even prospects at this point; they may not be good suspects for that matter.

Here is the process I would recommend.

1. Have a thorough understanding of your entire market strategy and exactly how Web Marketing plays in it.

2. Determine the profile of the prospects you want attracted to your site. Remember it is not the number of people who visit your site that counts; it’s the number of people who visit your site and buy something.

3. Determine how much of the sales process do you want to accomplish before you turn it over to your people. At this point I would work out a rough schematic of the process so that I understood how I expected it to work.

4. Now you need to put yourself in the minds of your prospects. Don’t think about what you would use. Thinks about the words they would use. Remember not everyone is good on a keyboard. There are ways to use word combinations.

Let’s say at this point we have found the way to get them to see our little web banner. That’s the summary part they see in the search engine results. Banner Ads are across the top, Adword banners are down the right side and organic search banners are on the left. You have very little real estate to make a point.

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5. What do you have to say that will make them click on your URL? This is extremely important. It’s a sales and marketing discussion, not a technology discussion.

6. Once they click on the URL associated with your banner, which may not be your home page, what do you want to happen? They are going to hit your landing page. The right landing page is critical. Testing many versions is extremely helpful.

Everything starts with the right strategy. If you have thought through that process, here are two extremely good companies to talk with about how to implement it. They are a couple of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firms that understand that it is what happens after they get to your site that is more important than getting them there.

Prominent Placement

Avenue a Razorfish

Generating a lot of traffic with no new business is a waste of time and money.