leadership

Hard Work Redux

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Hard Work Redux

It’s not unusual to go home now and need to study work documents, emails and Power Points all night long it seems just to be ready for work the next day.  It can feel like you are studying for a final exam.   And some neuroscientists say our ability to think and learn has outrun our ability to remember, execute and act upon what we know.  Yep, that feels about right sometimes.

Our customers’ and prospects’ knowledge relative to us is pretty clueless – at least in spaces we need to be good at.  That’s new.  Used to be everyone kind of knew what we knew.   Not much rocket science to understand what a business card was for, but a “landing page”?  Yeah -you see. 

I can’t sell my colleagues, learners or bosses on stuff and visions like I used to anymore.  Now, I gotta really teach em’ first; really spend a lot of time educating before I can get anyone onboard.  Nothing wrong with that.  Just the way it is now.   Bet it is for you too. 

Hard work used to be – let’s face it, a lot below the neck.  Push harder, run faster , show up more often, beat the other guy to it, keep dialing, keep smiling, drive all night, stay later, get in earlier,  never give up,  never take “no” for an answer,  etc etc.

Now the hard work seems like it’s in your head now.  Again.  Like it used to be.

Know more, read more, analyze more, compare and contrast more, strategize more, think more, share your perspective and insight more, study more, research more.

Ain’t nothing wrong with that.  That’s the way most of us were brought up in school.

Never thought the stuff you did in school would help you in the real world eh? 

Things are different now. 

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Small Business Naked

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I’m not one for craft fairs. But I went to one recently and learned some awesome things.

Normally attending a craft fair, even if it is to only walk through as a courtesy to the organization running it, is worse for me than a visit to (gasp!) a mall.

Add the hustle of the Holidays and hundreds of sugar amped children screaming for Santa (fueled undoubtedly by the 4 tables of chocolate baked goods for sale) and I’d frankly rather drive ingots into my eyes.

But a couple of weeks back, I spent 45 minutes walking through one and it hit me hard.

These folks are Small Business Naked.

There’s no hiding in a storeroom or behind a “Closed” sign or even behind some HTML code for these craft table entrepreneurs. These folks have no choice but to lay out their wares right there in front of you, with no where to hide and are totally exposed.

These folks sit or stand inches away from their hand crafted “life long passions” or their “work that pays the bills” or in many cases as you could plainly see – they stand in front of what they feel is the very definition of themselves.

These naked small business owners have to have tremendous egos and confidence and pride like any small business owner we know but also have the unavoidable stress of being assessed and judged by hundreds or even thousands of people in a compressed period of time.

“Do you like me?” is what each business owner is asking you with his or her eyes as folks walk by. Meanwhile there is no wondering about the competitive landscape. Each naked small business owner needs to only look left or right to see who and what they are up against, fighting for those dollars in the strolling public’s wallets. No where else is the competition so “out there in plain sight”- with dozens of smiling yet competitive and competing small business owners inches from and across from, each other.

On so many levels, it’s clear that these folks who purchase a “craft table” face so many of the same hurdles the traditional small business does ranging from product market analysis to production, to inventory management, to marketing, to pricing strategy, to selling skills and the list goes on.

Except for one thing – They are out there exposed for 5 or 6 hours at a time, hiding nothing about who they are and what they do. That’s an awesome thing. I know now I’ll see these fairs a bit differently; perhaps as an opportunity for me to keep learning from some of the gutsiest group of small business owners out there.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

5 Things You Will Soon Lose (But It’s OK)

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Your Resume:  What you think of and how good you are about getting or keeping customers  (the only thing any employer truly should care about)  will soon best embodied by your blazing trail on the web via your blogs, slideshares, tweets, posts and commentary by businesses and customers you’ve influenced ( or not).  Your web fingerprint is a lot more credible than that single pager of spin we’ve grown to love.

 Your Thirst For Big Numbers.  You’ll soon despise having 500+contacts in LinkedIn or 10,000 followers on Twitter.  Instead you’ll yearn for being part of as many smaller networks you can.  It’s a bit sad, but we are embracing ever more tightly, the belief that “the bigger the network is the lower the trust of those within it.”  Tough business this world of trust is.

Your Memory:  Well, at least the loose data stuff.  With the Googlization of the world and how it changes how we use our brains (it’s a fact by the way)  to find out about stuff,  you’ll need just a swipe or a couple of spoken syllables into your (insert wicked smart battery powered thingy here) to get that memory jogged.  Good news it that neuroscience studies show it leaves more focus for the brain to work on more important stuff. 

Your Social Skills:  Tragic but we’ll soon be hard pressed to remember how to make eye contact, know which hand to lead with to shake hands and remember that unlike IM, you have to wait for someone to stop talking before sharing your thought.  Forget “Virtual Meeting”,  “Flesh Meeting” will become two dirtier words. Happily,  when we realize what we’ve lost we’ll get a fresh start on new and improved social skills. 

Your Boundaries:  It will happen.  Meeting at10 am.  Meeting at2:30 pm.  Go home at4pm.  Play with kids.  Nice dinner at6pm.  Watch reruns of 3 and a ½ men (Sheen came back from the dead- it was of course, just a dream).  Meeting at9pm with New Zealand staff.  Sleep.   Meeting at8am in UK client.  Meeting at10 am.   Rinse and Repeat.  Global is big. Global is different.  But global is money. 

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

 Mark

Reminders

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Apple IOS 5.0 came with a new App called Reminders.   It’s pretty cool.   It didn’t come pre-populated though with any real helpful reminders about work so I thought I would do that in case you’ve forgotten.

  • Discovering needs is dead.  Creating needs is alive and well.   Big difference folks; a huge difference.   One assumes your prospect is a helpless victim of their environment, the other presumes they are definitively in charge of where they intend to go. 
  • Have you ever heard such a hue and cry for information and knowledge before?  Consumers and businesses yearn to understand social media, global marketing, internet marketing, economics, new languages, tablet and smart phone technologies and more.  Teach people too.  Teach people and you’ll corner that market and never go hungry. 
  • It’s not like it used to be anymore.   Before you ever hear from that prospect or customer they’ve been to your website and done lots of digging already (but they won’t tell you that).  When they finally get to you- you best deliver something other and better than a screen shot rehash.
  • You can choose not to have a credible or professional web presence for yourself online but that would be unwise.  Trust is at an all time low.  People, prospects, customers, partners and employers all want to see what your brand is and what you represent before they invest in you for real.    
  • You can have too many contacts, too many followers, too many fans, too many friends.  There’s a point where your influence like it or not, looks like it’s for sale or it’s too easily given away; either way – trust deteriorates, hits the tipping point and it becomes a zero sum game.
  • Be Invaluable.  Differentiate.  Simplify.   Hard to go wrong if you do those three things.  Just a reminder is all. 

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Email: mark.mccarthy@deluxe.com

Internal Blog: http://blogs.deluxe.com/Mark/

External Blog: https://growthebusiness.wordpress.com/

Twitter at:  http://twitter.com/GrowTheBusiness

Steve Jobs Our Loss

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Getty Images

Getty Images

 It feels personal to me.   We  lost a truly great man. He wasn’t a hero, a president, a rock star or a childhood sports idol.  He was none of those but by gosh, he was all of those. There are so few original thoughts in the world yet he thrived in giving us glorious ideas we never thought of.

 

Yet we didn’t know anything about his personal life, his illness or his family. He didn’t want us to.  And we, refreshingly, didn’t care to know.  In that speaks volumes about purity and priority.

There is something better. That is what he believed. So simple;   There is something better. So wonderful.

He was also a business leader (uncomfortably for some), and yet that is what so many of our fathers and mothers, customers and even ourselves are. It’s not a bad thing this business of business he knew, for it fuels the joyful lives of so many people.

As I finish this post on one of his instruments; the IPad, it occurs to me how poignant that is. It never leaves my side. It contains so much better my thoughts, my passions, my dreams and my visions. How fitting is it for all of us and for him that the result of his dreams and visions helps us so easily partake in our own.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Customs Fail and Redemption

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Maybe it was the long drive.  Maybe it was just the thoughts of the most recent conference call that ended on our cell phones.  Or maybe it was the pressure of seeing the guns they were holding. 

 Regardless, it was failure.

Years and years of living, leading, preaching and teaching about our company’s  Transformation had just fizzled into 7 tepid words.

“….Checks and forms and stuff like that……”

That was our answer given to the Canadian Border guards to the question “So tell me, what does Deluxe do?”  when the three of us attempted to cross into Canada on our way to the Mirimichi, NB site from Groton, Ma.  

Waah.  Wah Waaaaahhhh.

After our passports were inspected, our trunk searched and our vehicle registration scrutinized, we sped away and realized immediately the enormity of our missed opportunity.

Chalk it up to what some call “primacy” where under pressure we revert to what we learned first about something years ago.  Maybe that was it.   Or chalk it up to tiredness or laziness or just plain ol’ choking when you got your chance at the plate. 

Either way it was bad, very bad. 

All week in Mirimichi we skulked from meeting to meeting and pondered the blunder.  Elevator speeches are critical and come in all sizes and in all places.  Even, we sadly learned, at border crossings.  What Deluxe Corp really does today is so much more than checks and forms and stuff like that!   How could we have dropped that ball?  What does that mean about ourselves and our next “test” whenever that is?  Will we ever recover? 

3 days and 5 hours of driving later, we had our chance.

We were crossing back over to the other side. 

Sunlight glinting off the M-16 rifles slung low by the two border patrol agents, we sat patiently at the checkpoint awaiting our turn.  Even from 25 yards away, our eyes narrowed and locked on to the men almost daring them to ask us – no not ask –interrogate us about exactly what Deluxe Corp does! 

Our turn came.  We rolled slowly forward with shoulders back, heads held high and with  military like precision slowly lowered the three car windows to proclaim as one, our company Transformation and nail this chance at personal and corporate redemption.  

“And what does Deluxe do?” asked our chiseled, square jawed inquisitor.

“We provide online and offline marketing services and thousands of other products for all kinds of businesses and financial institutions.” 

The agent nodded his head and smiled.  It made perfect sense to him. 

Was it perfect?  No.  Did it capture everything we do or can do?  Heck no.   But by golly, it was real, it was different and it was tangible.  It couldn’t be some catchy slogan, analogy or metaphor or these guys for sure would have given us a different and more personal kind of search this time.  Bottom line- We did it!   It was a lead story about Deluxe that was so so far away from just “Checks and forms and stuff like that.”

Don’t do what we did on the way up to Canada.  Be ready.  Someday someone (hopefully not with guns drawn),  is going to ask you what your company does and how you answer that can be a very big deal.  

Don’t fumble the pitch or mumble the wrong story.  It can be the difference in how well you break through to the other side.

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

From Have to Believe

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It’s best to move on now from what you have, to what you believe. 

 If you are transforming from a commodity-like company to a knowledge and service based company, its best to move on from what you have, to what you believe.

 So many of us are doing just that.   Whether we are a company or a sales rep or a marketer or a trainer;   more and more of us are adding (or must add) insight/ intelligence to our stable of widgets or even in some cases, instead of our widgets. 

 The market is starving for direction.

Don’t get me wrong, what you have is fine for they are the products and services.   Thankfully, they pay the bills and feed the kids.    

But too often we eagerly share, shout and talk about those products and services.  Too often we earnestly show what we have for products and services on our websites, in our phone calls and during our webinars.  Too often we study too hard about what we have for products and services.   Too often we train too much about what we have for products and services. 

And we spend so little time talking about what we believe.  

That’s right, what we believe.  What your company believes.  What you believe. 

You thought I was going to tell you to focus not on what we have but on what your products and services do for the customer; how they solve a problem, how they fit a need.  

Good lord, that is so 80’s.   And that’s table stakes now.   

Belief sharing is better.  Belief sharing is needed now more than ever.   Belief sharing is the new black.   

We spend so little relative time in sharing our credible prescriptive path to success for our customers.  We spend so little relative time espousing our beliefs about the direction our clients must go to achieve what they want to achieve. 

Products and Services are critical yes, but amazingly, they are too often fun, too easy to count, too easy to have sales on and in fact can crowd out the very essence that they should be an extension of a very passionate and clear belief– not just about what our products and services do but what we believe the path is to get there. 

An obsession about what we have may work well for widgets, gum and shoelaces, but what we believe matters more if we profess to be in the Advice and Counsel game; the Insight game or the Knowledge and Service game as so many of us do ( and need to do).

Customers are drawn to those who have passionate beliefs.  Small businesses for example, line up to get counsel from SCORE, to join Mastermind groups, to access advice and counsel from Hubspot, DuctTape Marketing and Amex’s Open Network. .    

The difference between saying “We have this and this and this……” and “We believe the best route to success is …” is awesome.  And powerful. 

What you believe in the knowledge and service game sells the products and services that you have.   It’s not the other way around.

We must also be consistent about those beliefs from the company home page to the person in the field or on the phone.  And we must be different from the competition.  And we must be religiously true to those beliefs as if they were inscribed on tablets made of stone; not just in what the results will be but in the prescriptive method of how those beliefs are executed upon.

It’s OK to teach and lead customers to your beliefs.  It’s more than OK.  In a shaky economy and a world that gets more confusing everyday, it’s got to be your lead story now.  

For without that rock solid, credible path about what you believe, nobody will come to you, or listen to you or give a darn about what products or services you have no matter what they do.

Take a stand.  Have a belief.  Preach it, teach it, brand it, package and sell it.  Leave the obsession with products and services behind.

If your customer is so inspired, have no fear, they’ll ask you what you have.

 

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

Horrible Bosses

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Horrible Bosses is a hot movie of late starring the likes of Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Anniston.  

 The premise is that if your boss is horrible well um… go ahead and kill em’ (or at least try to). 

 That’s a little dangerous in the real world.

 You might get caught.  🙂

 Ah seriously, I don’t condone violence towards any horrible bosses.  Too messy. 

 Here are four other (and better) ways to deal with a real horrible boss: 

Demand he play well with others.   You know the type – the “I’ll take my ball and go home type”.  Not open to hearing concerns about your competing priorities, instead you hear “Fine, I’ll find someone who can get it done” and then you hear a click and a dial tone in your ear.   This same guy makes no effort to collaborate but rather rams his way through people.  This faux cowboy attitude is for the movies and 6 year olds.  Kidnap this guy, surround him with your posse and scream “This is your team, we work together!”

 

Force her to take a stand.   I suspect this is the most common trait of a bad boss; the fear of, or unwillingness to take a stand or pick a path or make a decision that means something.  Swamped or swimming purposely in administrivia, the boss shirks the tough calls and instead being right or wrong, she is neither and everyone suffers in a frenzied, crazy busy world of essentially nothing.  Corner her and take dead aim at imploring her to make choices!  Even wrong decisions are better than none; at least then you can learn and move on.

 

Don’t Dread on me.  She’s the one you can’t stand to see, hear or read – literally all the time.   You see the email from her and you just don’t want to read it as you know it is bad news.   You arrive in the morning and ugh, your voicemail light is on so that means she wants an answer or OMG she just walked out of her office and is walking your way hell bent to talk to you about your “improvement opportunities”.    Enough!  Does every interaction Ms. Boss have to be about something “wrong” or “bad” or “concerning”?   Grab your scepters, your hoods, walk around like the Grim Reaper and let her see what you see.  Dread is not a way to lead.

 

Unfriend him. Don’t you wish could do it more often with your friends in social media or even at home with family or relatives?  But in the world of work, this guy is the boss who saunters up beside you and says “Yeah, this new incentive plan is a stretch” or “Geez, we made this product 10 years ago and it didn’t work then…”  News flash Mr. Boss, I’m not your buddy and I am not your chum.  You’re my boss and your immature efforts to bond with me as a “friend” by back stabbing your peers is appallingly odd and makes you look weak.  And who wants a weak boss?  Collectively dismember your friendship status with this guy as fast as you can and demand a change in his status back to loner.

There you go.  Horrible gets better and nobody dies.   Not much of a movie but aren’t horrible bosses enough drama already?

Till next time,

 Grow The Business.

 Mark

Sharpen Your Sales Message

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Stop yourself just for a moment.  Breathe.   And Think.   

Listen to yourself or look at what you are writing.  Is it really what it should be?

Sharpen your Sales Messaging.   

It’s odd sometimes how much energy we spend pulling all the levers that we do to improve sales but often don’t take enough time to look hard or re-look at the very first lever – the most critical lever: Sales Messaging.

If your sales messaging is poo then it doesn’t matter how often or in how many ways you say it or distribute that sales message – it’s still poo.

  • It’s not “We have a special right now..”,  it’s “This special we have right now is flying out the door..”
  • It’s not “We can help you get Online..”, it’s “We can help you get more good leads …”
  • It’s not “There’s a price break at 2,000….”, it’s  “Hold on, let me save you some money here…”
  • It’s not “I’m calling to see what your supply of..”,  it’s  “I’m calling to take something off your to do list..”
  • It’s not “We’ve updated the product to include…”, it’s “Most people are flocking to the updated product because….”
  • It’s not “We have a some brand new Holiday cards and gifts this year…”, it’s “ Let’s help you stand out from your competitors this year..”
  • It’s not “We can customize this for you and add those things you want..”,  it’s “Let’s make your life easier for you…”

You get it.

But be honest with yourself.  Are you doing it?

Till next time,

Grow The Business.

Mark

A Fool With a Tool is Still a Fool

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A fool with a tool is still a fool.

 

Me using a Weed Whacker?  Nah, I can handle that.   Me after logging into my website control panel or trying to build a half decent Facebook Business page?   Yep, that’s me as a fool.

 

Last week one of our customers said, “I so cherished the time with my marketing advisor because heck, a fool with a tool is still a fool”.   Everyone in the room nodded a collective head in agreement. 

 

It was beautiful.  

 

And timely.  Because right now is when to amp things up in small business that people cherish given the sketchy economy the confusingmarketing world we live in. 

 

Small Business success is a lot of things and successful Marketing is a big piece of it.   But successfulmarketing, (no matter how much we want it to be), is not a commodity, or a widget or something that spits out of an assembly line.  

 

Successful Small Businessmarketing is not just about using 3 random “tools” like Groupon, Emailmarketing and Pay Per Click plus 4 platforms, 5 posts, a bucket of content and a prayer.  Those are, without superb advice and counsel, just shiny and trendymarketing tools fluttering about meaninglessly unconnected and ineffective.

 

Here is the truth; successfulmarketing is a science.   It has a formula, a cadence, a structure and a path. 

 

And it needs to be learned.   And it needs to be taught.  And it needs to be studied.  And in this ever changingmarketing space, it needs to be continuously learned, taught and studied. 

 

And it’s not just onlinemarketing that needs the learnin’.   How to use demographic data to determine mailing lists, how to network in local business groups or how to use QR codes on your business cards or better,  how to connect online and offlinemarketing really well is not all that crystal clear for many small businesses either.

 

So if you are a small business owner or someone who helps them, quit obsessing with the marketing “tools” and realize that the lead story is the insight you need to use them. 

 

We fall into this trap in many parts of our working lives.  It’s easy but foolhardy to just see the “Whats” and grab on to those tools be they online or offlinemarketing wizardry or even sales tools like CRMs and online Demos.   It’s harder yet smarter to see, get or teach to the “How” of using these tools well. 

 

Insight, in the eyes of those who need it most it seems, is the most cherished tool of all.

 

 

 

Till next time,

 

Grow The Business.

 

Mark