k – Page 611 – client k

Accountability And Contract Employees

For the past few years, I’ve worked contract gigs.
I sign long term contracts for the companies.
I drive multi-year projects.

I am supposedly to be held accountable
for actions and investments
happening years after my contract ends.
Supposedly because everyone involved
knows darn well I won’t be.
I’ll have long since left the company.
It is a sham,
a way to shelter permanent employees
from possible mistakes.

If you’re a business owner or shareholder,
take a serious look at the sign offs
on big projects.
If the sign offs are
by contract or leaving employees,
they are meaningless.

Marketing Techniques, Timing, And Plans

An executive
on a past product launch
asked for a response rate on a magazine ad
the week after it launched.

He came from the direct mailing world.
With a direct mailer,
you can expect 80-90% of responses
between one to two weeks of mailing.
Calculating a response to an ad
in a magazine
might take the month or more.

If we had given him the extremely low numbers
we had after that first week,
he would have declared the marketing compaign a failure.

Marketing plans are important.
They lay out not only the marketing techniques and budget
but the response timelines.

Carrot Or Stick

There are two general ways of incenting your employees.
You can bribe them with a carrot or
you can beat them with a stick.

If you can find the right carrot,
that technique always works.

The stick has decreasing effectiveness
with the skill of the workforce.
With skilled labor shortages,
employees prefer to move rather
than suffer the beats.

Forget about using it in volunteer situations.
I was recently on the board of a charity.
The President would talk to us under only two situations.
The first was when she wanted something done.
The second was when she wished to reprimand us.
When I realized that I dreaded talking to the President,
I resigned.

I was working for carrots
and those carrots were scarce.

Tumultuous Times

Donald Trump Jr recently told BNN that
“Sometimes tumultuous times
are the best times to make a deal.”

These are tumultuous times.
Whether the U.S. is officially or unofficially
in a recession doesn’t really matter.
The average person is facing challenges.

The average person is.
Donald Trump Jr is not average.
I am not average.
I would bet you’re not average either.

We should be the ones looking to make deals.
Keep your eyes open for them.

Vinyl Lives

A fear of any CEO
is heading a company
whose complete product line becomes obsolete.
That happened to Cris Ashworth
of United Record Pressing
yet the company and his leadership survived.
Survived the mass consumer move
from vinyl records to CD’s to digital.
Survived with a core business still in vinyl.

How did they do it?
They embraced going niche.
They targeted DJ’s
(avid users of vinyl).
They played up the novelty,
the quality,
the colors,
the artwork.
And now, they offer hosting of digital downloads
driven by special codes on the records.

Landing Pages, Not Front Pages

Darren at Problogger in his post about advertising
reminds us that when we promote online
to link to a landing page,
not necessarily a front page.

So say I was advertising my writing site
in the Romantic Times eNewsletter.
I wouldn’t send them to
http://businessromance.com/,
I’d send them to a page specifically set up
for Romantic Times readers.
This page would introduce visitors to the site,
talk about my latest novel, and
suggest some starting posts to read.

This automated response
is easy to do
and
makes the reader feel special.

Qualifying Prospects

For some unknown reason,
client k got on a ranking of top Health blogs
(must be all that talk about selling more M&M’s
and how sleep is overrated).
I promptly contacted the listmakers and
got it taken off.

Why?
Because not all prospects are good prospects.
Calming down readers
who are never going to return
is a waste of energy.

As is trying to sell a beef burger
to a vegetarian.
Or marketing a romance novel
in a car magazine.

Concentrate on talking to the prospects
interested in the product first.

On Borrowed Time

A loved one is looking at a layoff.
He doesn’t know when it’ll happen
but it will happen.
That’s a sure thing
(the company is bleeding red ink uncontrollably).

Until then,
he’s living on borrowed time.
That isn’t a sad thing.
It is a rare opportunity to plan for change
before it happens.

If you are in the same situation,
use this gift wisely.
Plan and prepare…
and be thankful.

How To Blow Press Coverage

I got an email from a start up company
looking for press.

They did everything right.
They used my name,
they mentioned a recent blog post,
and they offered up
either a guest post or an interview.
Impressed,
I emailed my 3 quickie questions.

Then they blew it.

First, the reply back was
a cut and paste of their FAQ page
(insulting).

Then scrolling down,
I see that my email was flipped to someone
with a “this came from our blast email.”
So I feel like a fool for responding to spam.

The lesson?
Don’t talk to the press
unless you want a conversation.

The Rules Of Being Asked For Help

Being asked for help is an honor.
The asker is consciously putting herself in the askee’s debt.

In order to have this honor repeated
(thus building a power base),
there are some simple rules to follow.

Always take the request seriously.
It takes a lot of guts to ask.
Even if you can’t help,
be polite and timely about it.

Give the best help you can
(or refuse the request).
Try to exceed expectations.
If you’re asked for information on firearms,
give not only the information
but additional online sources.

And

Keep the request for help quiet.
Don’t broadcast to the world
that the asker needed help.
If you need to get additional assistance
from another source
and have to mention the asker’s name,
ask her permission first.