The Martial Art of Difficult Conversations

I’ve read several books that dealt with making conversations work. Here is a brief article that gives specific advice and a clear example of diffusing a verbal attack. Each of us can use this in our business and family lives, but marketers should consider presenting this to their colleagues in sales and customer service.

The Martial Art of Difficult Conversations by Peter Bregman.

Successful entrepreneurs have to beat the odds.

It takes a special kind of person to start a business. It takes skill, energy, dedication and luck to make it successful. The stories told by three entrepreneurs in the following article will sound familiar to every founder of a midsize company.

The statistics surrounding the survival rate for small businesses have long been subject to fervid debate. Depending on who you’re talking to, the predicted life span for a startup can elicit grim to cautiously optimistic responses.

One commonly cited figure is that half of all businesses go under in the first year while 95 percent fail within the first five years. According to a study done by the Small Business Administration, two-thirds of all new small business survive the first two years but only 44 percent will still be operating by year four.

Common culprits for failure include undercapitalization, cash-flow crises, and overexpansion. Then of course there are a host of external factors that nobody can predict — let alone adequately plan for — such as volatile credit markets and unstable economic cycles.

To gain insight into specific practices that enable small companies to keep going and growing even during difficult times, BusinessWeek profiled three entrepreneurs who have reached benchmarks in their companies’ life cycles: three years, five years, and 10 years. Their stories and strategies follow.

Read the article by Stacy Perman for Business Week on CRM-Daily.com.

Can you sell what you wouldn’t buy?

You are a savvy shopper, right?. You think before you buy and so does your customer. He’s looking for the same things you are… value, features, performance, benefits. Oh, yeah… and style, color, newness, hipness, whatever.

Take a quick look at your marketing strategy. Look at your products, your message, your results. Would you buy your product from your company? If not, why would anybody else?

Ask your key people how they would answer these questions. Get their honest answers and empower them to suggest necessary changes. Be ready to change your marketing plan as often as you have to so savvy shoppers will buy from you.

Questions about advertising in a down economy.

I work with people who run companies. As a coach, I don’t try to convince them of anything. I make sure they have the information and resources they need to make the right decisions for themselves. Mostly, I ask questions…

• If you slash your marketing budget, how will your customers know that you are alive and well and ready to do business?
• Your customers are cutting orders. What is the most cost-effective thing you can do to find new customers?
• Your competitors have slashed their marketing budgets. Is this a good time to take away their share of the market?

“Advertising” or “marketing communications” can include a wide range of tools and techniques. Every company has to choose the right mix for their audience… print ads, snail mail, email, blog posts, webcasts, trade shows, sky writing, whatever.

If your industry is off 20% in this recession, that means somebody is getting the 80% that’s left. The important thing is to stay as active and visible as you can. Maybe the most important question is…

• If you decide to compete aggressively, what else can you cut besides marketing?

A good marketing budget includes come combination of brand building, lead generation, direct sales and customer support. Lead generation and direct sales are the easiest to measure, customer support often delivers the greatest ROI.

I would ask…

• What is your current marketing mix and how should it change in response to current conditions?

Of course, this question should be asked routinely in good times or bad.

Leadership Mantras

Not a mission statement or an elevator pitch, they are quick and easy statements that capture the essence of what you want to accomplish. Leadership mantras work like product taglines, imbedding a message in employees’ minds with repetition. To work, a leader must use them and act on them consistently. For example…

“You will miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take.”
“Hire slowly, fire quickly.”
“Hope is not a strategy.”
“Work is not a place.”

Marketing isn’t always external. Leaders must sell their vision to employees and customers. Mantras can be effective, if occasionally hokey, tools.

What’s your favorite mantra? How do you use it? What has it helped you achieve?

Leading your company through a recession.

If you put 15 CEOs in a room and ask them to focus on one important question you get some very practical answers. The following list was compiled by the members of two Vistage CEO groups in the Bay Area chaired by Sterling Lanier.

CEO Driven Activities
- surround yourself with good advisors and seek their help
- focus on sales and staying close to customers
- continue spending on sales related activities
- focus on activities that increase cash flow
- use zero base budgeting and forecast on rolling 12 month basis
- make a cash forecast and action plan for sales down 30%

Get the entire checklist here.

Should you advertise in a down economy?

Most of my clients own or manage midsize companies. Some are finding new opportunities and improving sales numbers during the current economic downturn. Others, not so much.

A few years ago, I developed a presentation that looks at advertising in a recession from the 30 thousand foot level. It asks a simple question: Why advertise in a down economy? This slide show walks you through the process I use in strategic planning sessions or workshops for CEOs and senior executives.

To view in full screen mode, click the SlideShare logo, then click the full screen icon on the slide show control bar. If you prefer a “flat” article, here’s a link that will help.

Also, here’s a post with questions the CEO of a midsize company should ask before cutting the marketing budget.

10 business problems you can solve on the internet.

Most of my clients own or manage midsize companies. Some are tech-savvy, others not so much. None are able to spend a great deal of time worrying about the details of their marketing programs, especially the design and operation of their company websites.

A few years ago, I developed a presentation that looks at web strategy from the 30 thousand foot level. It asks a simple question: What is the most important business problem you can solve on the internet? This slide show walks you through the process I use in strategic planning sessions or workshops for CEOs and marketing teams.

In an hour, the execs have a strategy they can communicate to techies and creatives.

What business are you in?

When I work with a coaching client, I ask a lot of questions starting with…

– What business are you in?
– What products do you sell?
– What services do you provide?

When a potential customer takes a look at your website, brochure, mailer, biz card…

– What do you want them to learn?
– What do you want them to think?
– What do you want them to feel?
– What do you want them to know?
– What do you want them to do?

When it comes to websites, I ask…

– What problem(s) does your website solve?
– … for whom?

When I get a sense of the answers from my client’s perspective, I ask…

– How would your marketing team answer these questions?
– How about your sales team?
– How would your customers answer them?
– How do you know?

If the answer to the last question is not convincing — and it almost never is — I suggest that we work on finding a way to get solid answers to these questions before we do anything else. It is rare for a CEO, sales manager, marketing director and a select group of customers to agree on a description of a business and its products/services, let alone the message(s) they are trying to communicate.

If you think it is time to make sure your company is strategically aligned, here are some real world tools from Kevin Connolly, marketing guy.

What’s up with boomer marketing?

I’m 58. I was born near the leading-edge of the baby boom. I am not a “senior citizen.”

I once gave a local barber a dirty look and a piece of my mind when he offered me a senior discount. I should have shut up and kept the $5, but he caught me by surprise. I was only 55. Sheeeesh!

I was appalled when AARP sent me an invitation to join when I turned 50. A couple years later, I joined just to see what it was all about. I let my membership expire after deciding AARP is essentially an organization that exists to license its membership list to insurance companies and other marketers who target the “senior” demographic. Yeah, they do some lobbying, but they never asked me what I’d like them to lobby for so thanks, but no thanks.