Tag: strategy

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Featured Post Marketing

A Facilitator’s Top Three Tips for Strategic Marketing Planning

I recently shared why it’s important to commit time for strategic marketing planning.  Based on my combined experience as a marketer and planning facilitator, here are my top three tips for developing a successful planning session.

1. Be Mission-focused.

The basis for your strategic marketing plan is rooted in your organization’s mission. If your marketing efforts don’t support the company’s mission and goals, then don’t bother.

I post and review the company or nonprofit mission statement in every planning session I facilitate. Keeping the mission front-&-center is critical to helping participants avoid the situation that one executive described: “We spent more time focusing on what we could do rather than what we should do.”

2. Be Creative

Critical thinking and creative thinking are not mutually exclusive. To keep your planning process interesting, you can better envision and explore possibilities while engaging in “What if … ?” questions. For example: What if we had unlimited resources — what could we achieve? What if we could start over from scratch — what would we do differently? What would happen if our products, services, or brand disappeared — would we be missed?

You can also try a different perspective with this two-step scenario. First, you’ve been hired away by a major competitor’s consulting firm to help them assess your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. Following this assessment, return to your current company role and consider how you can improve your marketing to gain and keep a competitive edge.

3. Be Realistic

Besides being mission-focused, it’s also important to recognize the scope of your organization’s capacity and commitment. In the course of creative and meaningful discussion, it’s easy to develop an extensive list of marketing ideas for consideration. That’s why I advocate planning participants develop and agree on a realistic set of two to four mission-focused marketing activities that support their company’s strategic goals. The worst possible outcome from a strategic planning session is for participants to generate an exhaustive laundry list of ideas and actions that overwhelm them. Seriously, it’s a small step from discouraged to disengaged.

For being realistic when it comes to marketing planning, here’s my favorite quote from Dr. Phil Kotler:

“Marketing is a learning game. You make a decision. You watch the results. You learn from the results. Then you make better decisions.”

Happy marketing planning!

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Engagement Training & Development

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Facilitator

Trust me, I never said that to my parents and teachers. But that’s what’s happened as my career evolved, and I’ve spent most of my 25 years with Quality Service Marketing developing and refining my skills as a facilitator.

What is facilitation?
“It’s a powerful way of working that gives everyone a chance to be an active part of the decision making process,” according to the International Association of Facilitators (IAF). It’s used in planning, problem-solving, creative thinking, input/feedback sessions, and other types of collaborative meetings. In my experience, facilitation involves establishing a base of mutual understanding … exploring possibilities and opportunities … communicating concerns … sharing and building ideas … setting clear direction and goals … and agreeing on next steps and responsibilities, including actions and follow up measures.

It’s about discovery
My role as facilitator is to guide the process of discovery that enables participants to determine where they want/need to go and what they need/want to do to get there. I start by learning as much about the group’s situation and culture as possible so I can develop the key questions and activities needed to effectively engage all participants in a comfortable, non-threatening environment. Then I get to serve in a dual, somewhat contradictory role: guiding the group in its discussions to keep on track and maintain focus, while also stepping back for those times when the group goes off in a different direction that’s critical to the discussion at hand.

The process is fascinating as I never quite know what the outcome will be, and I tell clients this upfront. For example, at one organization’s strategic planning retreat, board member discussion raised more issues than answers that needed to be explored further. With the group’s consensus, we suspended the strategic planning portion of the retreat, and the board then focused on identifying the critical topics that needed to be addressed before continuing strategic planning.

As a facilitator, I’ve also discovered many insights into group behavior, communication, and collaboration.

It’s about asking the right questions
Although they may not realize it, most of my clients intuitively know what they need to do in planning, problem-solving, idea-gathering or ideation. So my primary role as facilitator is to objectively ask the questions that enable them to discover and articulate the answers they need. The type of facilitation I prefer to use is Solutions-Focus, a positive approach to generating change that builds on what is possible rather than trying to fix what is problematic. (Special thanks to my colleague and solutions-focus mentor, Alan Kay, for introducing me to this approach many years ago.)

It’s International Facilitation Week
I’m proud to be an IAF member and celebrate International Facilitation Week the third week in October. I’ll share some of my favorite resources for facilitators in my next post.

IAF_Logo_IFW2015_RGB

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Marketing

Marketing Tips for B2B Telemarketers

I know, I know … caller ID and voice mail make it difficult to actually reach prospects these days. If you want to be more effective in reaching potential buyers, here are several suggestions based on my experience as a marketer and consumer.

  • Know your prospect. “I’d like to talk to the person who manages your credit card processing … distribution services …. sales software … ” I’m amazed at how many calls I get from B2B telemarketers offering products and services that I don’t use. Before calling, do your homework to learn if the prospect is even a viable candidate for what you offer.
  • Identify your company. “Unknown name” and 800-type numbers on caller ID guarantee most people won’t pick up the call.
  • Forget robo-calls. On hearing an automated message, I’ll immediately hang up. Why should I listen to you if you can’t have a real person talk to me? Similarly, I’ll instantly delete any voice mail message from an automated call.
  • Dare to be different. If you want to get the attention of qualified prospects, use direct mail. If it’s a well done, targeted piece, they’re more likely to read it. You can also be creative without going to a lot of major expense, depending on the size of your qualified list. For example, if you can’t afford to send customized wrapped candy with your company logo, you can use popular candy such as PayDay®, a $100 Grand® bar, or Good & Plenty® to send to qualified prospects. [Notice a theme  here?] I know a saleswoman who scouts dollar-type stores to find appropriate novelty items to send to potential customers.

Listen Up!
My beef isn’t with B2B telemarketers who strategically and respectfully reach out to qualified prospects. My frustration is with those telemarketers who persist with untargeted, anonymous and/or annoying automated calls. It’s time to wake up, listen up, and consider how much more effective you’d be if you follow at least the first three tips or revisit Sales 101 principles. It’s not complicated: useless telemarketing calls are wasted sales calls!

 

 

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Engagement Featured Post Training & Development

You’re in Trouble If Your Employees Can’t Answer These Questions

  • What is your organization’s mission (purpose) and where is it headed (strategy and goals)?
  • What is expected of employees in helping the company achieve its goals?
  • Who are your customers and why do they choose to do business with you? Also, how do employee efforts impact customer satisfaction?
  • What is your brand promise and what’s involved in delivering on it?
  • How do employees know they are valued by the company?

Seriously, you can’t expect to engage employees if they don’t know why their work matters and what it entails. Be prepared to provide them with clear answers upfront (when they join the company), and then frequently remind them because the responses are likely to change based on what’s happening in the competitive marketplace.

Don’t make them guess the answers. It’s really no fun for your employees, customers, and stakeholders.

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Engagement

“The Art of Engagement”

I scout out and read a lot of employee engagements books to recommend in this blog and my workshops. My latest recommendation is The Art of Engagement: Bridging the Gaps between People and Possibilities by Jim Haudan, CEO, Root Learning. This book provides a framework to bridge the great divide that exists between organizational strategy and execution: specifically, how to effectively implement strategy “through” (rather than “despite”) people by ensuring that people actually understand and embrace a company’s business strategy. (What a concept!)

Setting the foundation for his engagement framework, Haudan explores the roots of engagement as being based on four qualities that people want:

  1. to be part of something big, something special, so that their work is associated with a “sense of substance, importance, pride, and direction”
  2. to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of connection
  3. to go on a meaningful journey, so that their work is invested in something that matters
  4. and to know that their contributions make a significant impact or difference, that their efforts matter.

He also uncovers the reasons for disengagement and disconnection based on listening to employee “voices from the trenches.” Employees can’t be or stay engaged when they:

  1. feel overwhelmed with too many or conflicting directives from management
  2. don’t understand what the business is all about, what’s expected of them
  3. are afraid that their work isn’t valued or don’t feel it’s safe to speak up
  4. don’t see how the various parts of the business connect (“the big picture”)
  5. don’t have a sense of ownership of business issues and aren’t fully involved in problem-solving and offering ideas.

Haudan recognizes that every organization has major gaps (“canyons”) between its leaders (“who see what need to be done but don’t have their hands on the levers of change”), its workforce (“who have their hands on the levers of change but can’t see the big picture”), and its managers (“hopelessly caught in the middle”). Here’s a great description of the situation:

In reality, leaders almost always conceptually outrun their engagement and execution supply lines. … Leaders spend months and months developing a strategy – considering, contemplating, contrasting, and dismissing all the alternatives and possibilities for future success. When they’re finally done, they usually craft this into a “strategy-in-a-box” and ship it off to their people. Then the leaders wonder why their employees don’t get excited about it immediately. Their employees can’t realize how critical the strategy is because they have no idea what went into its creation.”

So, how do you bridge these canyons? Haudan provides specific recommendations for leaders, managers, and individuals that include:

  1. creating a “line of sight” that links organizational strategy to employee efforts
  2. connecting individual – team – and organizational goals
  3. developing capabilities at all levels of the company so it can execute strategy.

These recommendations involve helping employees understand the organization’s reality by creating visual “learning maps” of the company’s internal and external pressures – so they can better see and connect to the “big picture” of where the company is and what it needs to move forward, building employee ownership in the process.

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Engagement Marketing

Interview with Barry Nelson on Employee Communications & Commitment

Corporate communications expert Barry Nelson, retired founder of The Story Board, is a strong advocate of workplace journalism – a business communications approach that addresses employee concerns along with business concerns. With economic turmoil taking a toll on employee engagement, I wanted to get Barry’s perspective on how we can use employee communications to make a difference.

QSM: What’s the most important message that companies need to send to their employees to minimize disengagement?

Barry: The whole trick of getting through hard and trying change with your people still behind you emotionally is to establish a mutually caring human connection with them. Business reasoning and economic motivation aren’t unimportant, they’re just not the most powerful tools. To establish such a connection, the company can’t simply tell, but must show its staff that the company’s top management cares about them as human beings, not just work assets. That means a company must set up institutional infrastructure — policies, systems, programs — that average workers can recognize as promoting their welfare. This goodwill toward workers can’t be whimsical or dependent on the style of a boss who may be gone tomorrow — it has to emanate from and be embedded in the company itself.

A well validated body of research shows that companies where employees believe their organization (not just their direct supervisor) supports their best interests, are overwhelmingly more likely to enjoy high, across-the-board levels of employee loyalty and commitment than those where that perception is lacking. But for employees to get and maintain such a perception, they need a continuing stream of evidence that it’s so. This presents an opportunity for internal communication programs to systematically provide the needed evidence. That’s why I’ve always urged that at least a portion of the content in ongoing internal communications should be about issues employees experience in the work environment, and what the employer is doing to help. It can’t be all about management’s view of the world.

QSM: What internal communication trends do you see emerging in the coming year (or two)?

Barry: Really hard to say, but I would hope that the immensely more difficult job of maintaining employee commitment in these hard times, when work-force and perhaps pay reductions may be unavoidable, might drive our more resourceful colleagues toward more empathetic, less management-centric forms of communication. The rise of social media clearly offers that potential, as overall communication becomes more multi-directional and democratic. But without an underlying philosophy that management doesn’t have all the answers, that employee views matter greatly, even on issues not perceived from the top as central to the strategic agenda (but which could be disrupting efficiency and sapping worker vitality) — without this more humble institutional mindset, the mere implementation of new communication toys won’t do much good.

QSM: What advice do you have for smaller organizations who don’t have anyone formally responsible for employee communications?

Barry: Such an organization these days is almost surely one with a small enough work force that a high level of personal contact by the top leaders is either happening or at least possible. I’d advise those leaders, and the HR or administrative staff who support them, to remember that you lead people mainly by their feelings. And those feelings won’t run in your favor unless you show your people, often and sometimes very deliberately — going out of your way if necessary — that you genuinely care about them. There’s no more powerful communication, or one more likely to be repaid, than an act or expression of love. You don’t need a communication degree to send that message. But you do need to really feel it.

QSM: This is great advice for every manager and business communicator. Thank you, Barry!

 

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Engagement Marketing

Working Smarter, Not Harder: A Nonprofit Case Study (Part 3)

Here’s the last post in this nonprofit case study on how small nonprofits can effectively balance growing demands and limited resources by working smarter, not harder. As a quick review, the first two steps involved staying mission-focused and inventorying your organization’s program offerings.

The third key step called for role clarification and communication. Each ABC Healthcare affiliate was increasingly recognized as an organization that “made things happen and got things done.” As a result, other groups’ expectations were becoming unrealistic in looking to ABC Healthcare to do everything – providing funding, leadership, and manpower. The affiliates needed to better manage these expectations.

Step 3. Clarify and communicate your organization’s role

To do this, they assessed their participation in regional activities – from program development and implementation to assisting with other groups’ programs to serving on community committees. They recognized they played a number of roles (based on their mission and operation) that they labeled as: “advocate,” “catalyst,” “connector,” “do-er,” and “facilitator.”

The resulting discussion helped staff identify which role was most appropriate for certain situations instead of being all things to all people. When someone came to ABC Healthcare with a request for money and/or manpower, staff clarified “up front” their limited resources and the specific role the organization was willing to play. As a result, the affiliates learned how to better manage expectations within their communities.

An ongoing challenge

Coping with success involves a delicate balance of mission, need, and resources. To maintain equilibrium, nonprofit leaders need to continually ask hard questions: What are our mission and purpose? What programs and activities do we need to offer, maintain, or give up to fulfill our mission? What is our role in the community we serve? Should we change that role, given our capabilities and resources?

The answers may be as difficult as the questions themselves. But the results, as ABC Healthcare has learned, are worthwhile. Those who don’t engage in these critical discussions are at serious risk for fragmented focus and staff burnout.

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Engagement Marketing

Working Smarter, Not Harder: A Nonprofit Case Study (Part 2)

This post continues the case study on how small nonprofits can effectively balance growing demands and limited resources by working smarter, not harder.

The first step is to stay mission-focused, but that can also present a challenge. Many nonprofits have broad mission statements that let them justify responding to even remotely-related requests. Staff who are truly passionate about the mission find it difficult to turn down such requests or discontinue programs that are no longer worthwhile. (“But we helped the three people who came to our educational seminar!”)

Recognizing this situation, one ABC Healthcare affiliate took the next step to address the question: Where can we, with our limited resources, really make a difference?

Step 2. Inventory your program offerings

To answer this question, the affiliate conducted a detailed inventory of its educational programs and activities. This was a multi-step process in which staff completed program descriptions and developed a profile for each educational offering. First they reviewed the following key questions (several adapted from the Drucker Foundation’s nonprofit self-assessment tool: The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your Nonprofit Organization) for each of their programs:

  • Who is the target audience for the program?
  • What does the target audience value about the program (based on evaluations and other feedback)?
  • Could this audience get the same program elsewhere?
  • What is the estimated return on investment for the organization (based on mission-fit, resource input, and resulting output)?
  • Will this offering advance our capacity to carry out our mission?
  • If we weren’t already presenting this program would we start now?

Answering these questions allowed staff to sort the educational programs into three categories:

  1. “Need to have” (programs that should be kept)
  2. “Nice to have” (those that might be expendable) and
  3. “Not sure.”

They further assessed each program in the “nice to have” and “not sure” categories by considering: Is what we’re doing precluding other opportunities? Can (or should) we invest our time and energy more effectively elsewhere? What would be the greatest consequence if we didn’t offer this program for a few more years?

Their answers to this second set of questions helped determine which programs to keep, which to phase out, and which to eliminate. Staff also revisited programs in the “Need to have” category to see if they should be kept “as is” or if there might be opportunities to enhance or expand them.

The inventory exercise was a valuable way for employees to prioritize and streamline their programs and activities. While initially reluctant to let go of a number of programs, they recognized that doing so would free them to explore new initiatives as well as improve current ones.

The next (and final) post in this series explores the 3rd critical step involving communication.

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Engagement Marketing

Working Smarter, Not Harder: A Nonprofit Case Study (Part 1)

Picture this: You’re the head of a relatively new nonprofit serving a community need with a small, dedicated staff and board. In just a few years, you experience major growth in your activities and accomplishments. Such success, however, is a mixed blessing: work demands have grown faster than your human and financial resources. In addition, the more you do and the more successful you are, the more others expect you to do.

How do you continue to serve the community’s growing needs with increasingly limited resources?

The challenge of coping with how to do more with less is twofold. On one hand, nonprofits have to guard against potential burnout when staff members are pulled in too many directions. On the other hand, mission-driven organizations have a hard time saying no.

Several of my clients found themselves in this situation, and how they effectively dealt with it may be helpful to others. In this “case study” to be covered in three posts, I’ll share the experience of several affiliates of a healthcare-related nonprofit who learned how to manage their success by working smarter, not harder. To maintain confidentiality, I’ll call this nonprofit ABC Healthcare.

With a broad-based mission and regional scope, each ABC Healthcare affiliate – ranging in age of operation from four to 10 years – was challenged to respond to its area’s diverse healthcare needs while not spreading itself too thin. They were initially funded by government grants, so their budgets were variable (never knowing how much they would get or when they would get it).

To cope with growing demands and limited resources, they followed three vital steps:

  1. Stay focused on the mission.
  2. Inventory your organization’s program offerings.
  3. Clarify and communicate your organization’s role.

Step 1: Stay focused on the mission

Regardless of how long a nonprofit has been operating, it’s a good idea to keep the “big picture” in mind by focusing on the mission. Why? Because the mission describes your organization’s purpose and reason for being.

ABC Healthcare affiliate staff regularly revisited the organization’s mission to: 1) ensure they were on target, and 2) guard against fragmenting their focus to avoid overextending manpower and other critical resources.

In routine meetings or special planning sessions, staff members placed high priority on mission “fit” when evaluating requests to participate in new or ongoing programs. Any requests that didn’t directly fit with the mission were turned down.

While using the mission as a touchstone is a no-brainer, the reality is staff in small nonprofits can lose focus because their jobs involve multiple and time-consuming roles (such as outreach and development) beyond their primary responsibility.

Starting with the mission is an important first step in working smarter, not harder. But by itself, it is not enough as I’ll explain in my next post. So stay tuned.

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Engagement Marketing

Gaining Employee Support through a New Type of Journalism

[2014 update: the following content still resonates, although the original links in this post were removed because they are no longer available.]

Here’s a fascinating concept to add to your internal marketing & communications toolbox: Workplace Journalism — “a conscious effort to make employee communications at least partly about employees and their concerns, not just the business and its issues.”

I learned about this from Barry Nelson, who believes business communicators can have a positive impact by adding more “empathetic, employee-advocacy journalism … into their otherwise business-results focused reportorial mix.”

He recommends that in addition to communicating corporate strategy, goals, progress & results, (which employees need to know), companies should also share stories of how employees cope with on-the-job issues & stresses (which employees want to know). According to Barry, we need to give “at least some prominence to our employees’ human concerns” such as “how and why to get along with the boss, make friends on the job, cope with stress, live the brand, be a good teammate, and other aspects of a satisfactory work life.”

The Pay-Off

This isn’t just ‘feel-good’ communications for the heck of it. Organizations that share these types of stories demonstrate their care and concern for employees, and this contributes to a strong sense of employee commitment and loyalty in turn.

To learn more, check out Barry’s guidance on getting started with Workplace Journalism.