Marketing Articles About Employees

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To CEOs Cutting Budgets: "Cheap is Expensive" . What a dilemma! You are asked to reduce budget, cut costs, reduce expenses. However, you need your BEST to gain market share, compete for customer dollars and emerge from the recession as a winner. You need the best employees, technology, service, partners, vendors, and agencies so you can outsmart and out-execute competition. You need the best to drive demand when marketing rules are being reinvented by customer conversations. You need the best because, more than ever before, the quality of your inside is visible to the outside, and that market is judging with their wallets.You’ve been reading (perhaps experiencing) about recent company layoffs. I’m guessing most companies are making lay off decision based on roles the business needs, but also employee performance. It would seem obvious that every company wants to keep their best people. Although I’ve heard of companies that offer voluntary attrition with a healthy severance package. You know who takes that package? The best employees. What’s left at that company? Well…fewer of those best employees. Again, the quality of your inside is visible to your outside. The quality of a company is a function of the quality of people it keeps. At Bazaarvoice, we go to great lengths to hire the best employees, and it has made a significant difference to our performance, which is a function of the performance we deliver for our clients. But imagine if we didn’t hire the best. Imagine if we hired the cheapest employees, or had no discipline in our hiring... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

The 5 Stars of a "Rockstar" Employee. When you say an employee is a “rockstar” you are saying they will have a great future. They are excelling in their job – that’s a given – but to be a rockstar is to say their career is expected to shoot up like a rockstar’s record on the charts! They will scale, and are competent and trusted enough to do well in almost any job. Obviously you want to be a rockstar and you want to hire a rockstar. So what does a rockstar look like? How do you interview for them?On the plane to San Jose this week I started thinking about this, as we’re doing a lot of hiring at Bazaarvoice. In my career I’ve worked with hundreds of people, interviewed a few hundred, and hired over 100 people. A minority of these folks (say 10%) were rockstars, a minority I’d never hire or want to work with (another 10%), and the rest are in the middle. From my perspective, these are the characteristics I saw in the top 10% whom I’d be honored to work with anytime. The 5 stars of a rockstar…1) InitiativeTo me, maybe because I see what entrepreneurialism and change leadership can do for an organization, this is the most important characteristic. I’ve posted on this before with my 12 career tips, about taking initiative outside your "triangle" and taking bigger risks.Rockstars must have initiative because someday they will call the shots, and as such they need to be trusted to uncover what... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Small Business: Your Employees and Politics.

I was poking around on the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) website this morning doing some client research and found this helpful page on 'how to educate your employees about politics". Namely, how policies affect small business and thus how they affect your employees.

Great resource - check it out here:
Get Ready for Election 2008: Educate Others - NFIB

Factoid: Did you know that of the 45 million Americans with no health insurance, 51 percent are small-business owners, their employees or dependents. Wow...

[UPDATE] Better yet, check out the 'Protect Free Enterprise' site and the NFIB YouTube Channel!

(02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Top 10 Decker Marketing Posts from 2008. After looking at the top posts for 'my other blog' at Bazaarblog, I'm doing the same here and looked back at the top (most popular) posts from 2008 on my Decker Marketing blog: Three Reasons Why Contribution > Community 6 Best Practices for Agencies Geoffrey Moore "Provocative Selling" Presentation 8 Tips for Selling Social Marketing to CFOs How to LIVE RICH 81 One-Liner Marketing Ideas 193 Creative Marketing Ideas The 5 Stars of a "Rockstar" Employee 9 Guerrilla Marketing Answers Top 10 Best and Worst Speakers of 2007 (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

How an 8-Year Old Became Co-CMO. I have to share this story…it’s about how my son got offered the job of Co-CMO for Bazaarvoice.Last week we had kids-at-work day. I brought in my 8-year-old son Kyle and 11-year-old daughter Haley in for half a day to experience my work. They were very excited, however, I had a number of meetings and conference calls. During these meetings my daughter colored, read, and ate ice cream. My son, on the other hand, walked the halls and started offering advice to our employees. Soon, our Partnerships Director suggested he interview for a job. So, Kyle typed up an introductory letter and started interviewing with our recruiter and several Bazaarvoice managers. I still have no idea this is going on. Soon Kyle gets into Brett’s office (our CEO). Brett interviews him and soon realizes that his skills of giving “tips, advice and opinions” on things like pricing and how to sell products align well with marketing. So he offers him the Co-CMO position -- actually senior to me -- paying $50/mo and 100 shares! In the video below I compiled some clips that I and others collected that day, showing his interview with Brett and examples of the advice that he was giving me and our VP of Business Development, Brant Barton. None of this is staged for video, we just captured what was happening. He came up with all of this himself. It doesn’t stop there. He collected 15 business cards and since Wednesday he’s been emailing my employees... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Retailers Reprogram Workers...Should Reprogram Customers. In an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Ann Taylor and stores like it were profiled for their use of systems like Atlas (Ann Taylor Labor Allocation System), developed by RedPrairie Corp, that track employee sales and activities and adjust their schedules to match the store's busy times, thus maximizing profitability. While I understand this is a great productivity tool, it's taking a bit of the humanity out of retailing...somewhat.

The sluggish national economy has put pressure on many retailers to pinch pennies. "The single biggest controllable cost in retail is people," says Carl Steidtmann, chief economist at Deloitte LLP. Because few retail workers belong to unions, he says, it is easier for employers to "move people around." Vendors of the systems claim they can boost productivity by 15% or more, and can help cut labor costs by 5% or more.

What I find even more interesting, and this is JUST for Ann Taylor (having a wife who's a fan of their clothes) is the heavy discounting that they've trained their customers to come to expect! Just last night, she produced a series of coupons, some for actual dollar amounts off of the merchandise and some for large percentages like 20% to 30% off any purchase over a certain figure. I understand margins, I know that they're high in the fashion industry, and I'm sure that there's good reason for this. However, customers of Ann Taylor and other brands like them (some of those mentioned in the article, most likely) have trained their customers to shop based on price and incentives. Period. Sure, the clothes fit...but seriously - 30% off on a regular basis? Action Item: So, what have you trained your customers to do? Expect things on sale, expect things you don't like doing? This is a great opportunity (and I'm doing this too) to look at your customer base from the perspective of lifetime value, and re-segment them based on 'those who should be with you in the future' and 'those who aren't going to be with you in the future'.
(02/24/09 09:00 AM)

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Small Business: Your Employees and Politics.

Great resource - check it out here:
Get Ready for Election 2008: Educate Others - NFIB

Factoid: Did you know that of the 45 million Americans with no health insurance, 51 percent are small-business owners, their employees or dependents. Wow...

[UPDATE] Better yet, check out the 'Protect Free Enterprise' site and the NFIB YouTube Channel!

(09/11/08 09:00 AM)

The sluggish national economy has put pressure on many retailers to pinch pennies. "The single biggest controllable cost in retail is people," says Carl Steidtmann, chief economist at Deloitte LLP. Because few retail workers belong to unions, he says, it is easier for employers to "move people around." Vendors of the systems claim they can boost productivity by 15% or more, and can help cut labor costs by 5% or more.

How an 8-Year Old Became Co-CMO. I have to share this story…it’s about how my Son got offered the job of Co-CMO for Bazaarvoice. Last week we had kids-at-work day. I brought in my 8-year-old Son Kyle and 11-year-old daughter Haley in for half a day to experience what I do at work. They were very excited, however, I had a number of meetings and conference calls. During these meetings my daughter at colored, read, and ate ice cream. My son, on the other hand, walked the halls and started offering advice to our employees. Soon, our Partnerships Director suggested he interview for a job. So, Kyle typed up an introductory letter and and started interviewing with our recruiter and several Bazaarvoice managers. I of course, still have no idea this is going on. Soon Kyle gets into Brett’s office (our CEO). Brett interviews him and soon realizes that his skills of giving “tips, advice and opinions” on things like pricing and how to sell products align well with marketing. So he offers him the Co-CMO position -- actually senior to me -- paying $50/mo and 100 shares! Fortunately I make a little bit more than that. In the video below I compiled some video that I and others collected that day, showing his interview with Brett and examples of the advice that he was giving me and our VP of Business Development, Brant Barton. None of this is staged for video, we just captured what was happening. He came up with all of this himself.... (08/17/08 09:00 PM)

The 5 Stars of a "Rockstar" Employee. When you say an employee is a “rockstar” you are saying they will have a great future. They are excelling in their job – that’s a given – but to be a rockstar is to say their career is expected to shoot up like a rockstar’s record on the charts! They will scale, and are competent and trusted enough to do well in almost any job. Obviously you want to be a rockstar and you want to hire a rockstar. So what does a rockstar look like? How do you interview for them? On the plane to San Jose this week I started thinking about this, as we’re doing a lot of hiring at Bazaarvoice. In my career I’ve worked with hundreds of people, interviewed a few hundred, and hired over 100 people. A minority of these folks (say 10%) were rockstars, a minority I’d never hire or want to work with (another 10%), and the rest are in the middle. From my perspective, these are the characteristics I saw in the top 10% whom I’d be honored to work with anytime. The 5 stars of a rockstar… 1) Initiative To me, maybe because I see what entrepreneurialism and change leadership can do for an organization, this is the most important characteristic. I’ve posted on this before with my 12 career tips, about taking initiative outside your "triangle" and taking bigger risks. Rockstars must have initiative because someday they will call the shots, and as such they need to be... (07/22/08 09:00 PM)

6 Best Practices for Agencies. A friend of mine who owns a small agency asked for my perspective on best practices for agencies. Here's what I sent her, which after I realized would make a blog post!... I’ve worked with about 10 or more agencies, plus many technology suppliers, and there’s a lot to improve. Let me start a few ideas that come to mind: 1) Pitches are not grounded enough in the client’s business objectives, strategy or measurements. Nor are they tailored to the ‘style’ of the company. The best pitches ‘feel’ like that agency was part of the company. I think agencies should be seen as extensions of the team, and therefore evaluated as if you were to hire them as employees. The further they are along on that path of alignment in the pitch, the better the chance to win. 2) Incentives are not aligned. Agencies want to drum up projects and bill hours. I put bonus plans in place for our agencies at Dell driven by Dell performance metrics. 3) Some agencies pitch with the best team and hand over to new employees. The team you have a year from now is rarely as good as the team you got to kick off. 4) Respect client time. Come in with an ‘answer first’ approach, with the recommendation, and with clear follow through, follow up, action steps, dates, owners…along with what we discussed last time. Clients want a sense of progress and what to do next…but done quickly. 5) Perspective. The agency... (07/09/08 09:00 PM)

A Great Hook. Fortunately, I'm homebound with my new son for the next week, but I was able to get away tonight for a dinner at Salt Lick (best BBQ in TX!) with many bloggers who came to Austin for SXSW. Friends made it such as Charlene Li of Forrester and Groundswell, Shel Israel of Global Neighborhoods (Author of Naked Conversations), Bob Pearsons of Dell (runs Dell's community /conversation / social media team), Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester and Web Strategist, and others. I also met some new folks: Jim Long, an NBC cameraman (great stories !) and Twitter pro at newmediajam, and Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid. If you haven't heard of gapingvoid or Hugh, he is the "Web 2.0" cartoonist on business cards. He is most famous (I think) for this doodle: Hugh explained that some Microsofters replace their standard cards and put this on the back. Microsoft actually hired Hugh to walk the halls of Microsoft and doodle on cards as a culture catalyst. This is awesome on a couple levels: 1) Microsoft recognized that an 'on the edge' cartoonist was capturing the imagination of its employees and embraced it. That they embraced someone who inspired their employees through an emotive cartoon that described what they as a company want to do and what the employees want to do. Talented people work at Microsoft not because they enjoy a big company, but because their talents can make a big change occur. 2) What Hugh has created is an incredible hook for himself,... (03/09/08 09:00 PM)

Be Competent, Curious, Creative & Entrepreneurial. I was interviewing a candidate the other day and we agreed on something that is a truism. The resume is 5% of the equation to hiring great people. I once hired a Web Producer at Dell who was responsible for the Systems / PC portion of the web site (multi-billion dollars of online business). She never bought anything online and didn't own a computer at home. But...she was competent, curious, creative, and entrepreneurial (meaning she took initiative). She analyzed metrics, came up with new ideas (curious/creative), could articulate and prioritize those ideas (competent), and quickly execute. She knew how her role impacted the business and customer and took initiative to maximize that opportunity. She turned out to be, in my opinion, the best Web Producer Dell ever had. But her resume didn't say that. My two recommendations: Hire an interview people based on these factors -- general competence, curiosity creativity and entrepreneurism (proof of taking initiative) Be those things yourself to move your career forward I once talked with a COO who said his job was to 'fill the voids'. I'd add to that and say it is also to identify the voids. Any employee can recognize existing gaps when something is broken. Few people identify strategic gaps that are unseen. Few employees are 'maximizers'. So, the few that are stand out! Managers especially should identify the missing opportunity for the business, take initiative, be the leader, pull together people and resources to get it done, and follow through. In... (10/02/07 09:00 PM)

John Moore's Marketing Lessons from Starbucks. Last week was the first event of this year for Texchange (my first as President). The speaker was John Moore, author of Tribal Knowledge and top marketing blog, Brand Autopsy. The title of John's presentation was "Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks". John was a senior marketing guy at Starbucks and Whole Foods. I told him Texchange was an audience of (mostly) B2B entrepreneurs and executives, yet his seemingly B2C message didn't disappoint. The lessons learned from Starbucks are applicable to any company. Essentially your employees are your marketing. The culture and passion inside is what becomes visible outside. John calls it inside out marketing. Another point I should make, that I brought up to my discussion table. In order to create a brand like Starbucks, or any great brand, the key is to decide what NOT to do. Again, what NOT to do. Strip away activities, messages, and resources from anything not core to your core. He presented several principles to the audience. Here are the two I liked most:Building the Business Creates the Brand GIST: Starbucks was too busy building a business to worry about something as nebulous as branding. Because Starbucks was busy working in and on the business, the by-product was the creation of a powerful brand which connects on so many levels with people around the world. Rarely, if ever, can you sprinkle magical branding dust to create an enduring and endearing brand. Starbucks Tribal Knowledge tells us you cannot create a brand... (08/23/07 09:00 PM)

Disruptors Video: Not Your Typical Rental Car (Zipcar). Most people associate rental cars with airports and travel. But Boston-based Zipcar is trying to turn the car-rental equation on its head. It targets urban dwellers who need a car for a few hours at a time to run an errand, go out on a date, or get groceries. Using the Web, the cellular data network, and RFID cards for entry into the vehicles, Zipcar has created a self-serve car rental business that is targeting not so much the Avises of the world as it is the very concept of car ownership. Since Zipcar members, who now number more than 100,000 in 23 cities, book and pick up their own cars, the company can manage its fleet of cars much more efficiently than incumbent car-rental agencies. (Zipcar can manage nearly twice as many cars per employee as Avis, for instance). It is on track to make $60 million in revenues this year, and says it is profitable in its four largest established markets (Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.) The downside to Zipcar's distributed network of cars sprinkled throughout residential neighborhoods is that there might not be a car available on the weekend when you want it. Or if the car you reserved is broken or dirty, you might be stuck without an alternative. Zipcar is trying to mitigate against such scenarios by clustering its cars together in denser packs. I visited Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith to learn more in this week's episode of the New Disruptors (video).... (08/02/07 09:00 PM)

Links for 2007-07-24 [del.icio.us].

AOL HAS AN EYE ON YOU | By PETER LAURIA | New York Post
AOl buys behavioral targetting ad firm Tacoda for $200 million.
GigaOM Is Xbox 360 doomed? «
Why does the XBox 360 keep breaking?
Apple 2.0: AT&T: Only 146,000 iPhones Activated in First Two Days
That's puny compared to the 500,000 estimates of the first weekend gross, but it could reflect early troubles AT&T had getting the phones up and running.
Breakdowns: A drunk employee kills all of the websites you care about - Valleywag
The power outage that took down Craigslist (and Typepad and Technorati).

(07/25/07 09:01 AM)

If You Advertise in Second Life, Does Anyone Care?. Frank Rose has an excellent piece in this month's Wired suggesting that advertisers are wasting millions of dollars by building pavilions in the 3-D world that nobody visits. Excerpt:At least 50 major companies have ventured into the virtual world to date, spending millions in the process. IBM has created a massive complex of adjoining islands dedicated to recruitment, employee training, and in-world business meetings. Coldwell Banker has opened a virtual real estate office. Brands like Adidas, HR Block, and Sears have set up shop. CNET and Reuters have opened virtual bureaus there. It's as if the moon suddenly had oxygen. Nobody wants to miss out. Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn't much to do. That may explain why more than 85 percent of the avatars created have been abandoned. On a random day in June, the most popular location was Money Island (where Linden dollars, the official currency, are given away gratis), with a score of 136,000. Sexy Beach, one of several regions that offer virtual sex shops, dancing, and no-strings hookups, came in at 133,000. The Sears store on IBM's Innovation Island had a traffic score of 281; Coke's Virtual Thirst pavilion, a mere 27. The Internet will eventually be full of such 3-D environments; Second Life might even be one of them. But in the meantime, it's just slurping up corporate dollars and delivering little in return.After factoring out all the double-counting of avatars and the overwhelming... (07/25/07 09:01 AM)

Tips for CIO / CMO Relationships. Forrester just published an in depth research paper titled Partnering for Success: The CIO - CMO Relationship They interviewed me months ago for this paper based on my experience working with IT in startups and Dell. Bottom line: the most important aspect to good relationships is open and frequent communication. Here was the sidebar on my answers to these questions:How can CMOs and CIOs build a more effective partnership? In my experience, there are four key principles for a culture ofeffectiveness: 1) agreement and accountability, 2) face-to-face work with no “over the fence” mentality; 3) open communications andsharing of plans and results; and 4) investment by the CIO, CMO, and their employees to build relationships. What can marketers learn from their IT peers? Marketers can learn that IT is interested in how its solutions impact the business and customer, and, by sharing this, IT is more invested in their work and have a better understanding of requirements. IT thinks in terms of architecture and how things are done. It needs to fully understand the spirit, intent, and detailed requirements of what needsto be done in order to avoid missteps. The more that marketing shares with IT, the better.... (07/18/07 09:01 AM)

Why Facebook will Network Business Users. Facebook launched its open platform in late May, preceded and followed by a lot of buzz. As a (late) early adopter, I launched a profile several weeks ago. I uploaded my contacts and found many professional friends were already on Facebook. People who joined after me did the same thing, and added me as a friend. Today I have 140 friends on Facebook, and growing. I’ve told my team to get on Facebook and introduced colleagues to Facebook. I suppose I’m an evangelist right now, encouraging people to get on Facebook to, if nothing else, experience a turning point in social networking. In the ‘early days’ I was on Ryze, Orkut and eCademy, but I wasn’t very active. Several years ago, I got on LinkedIn. Its superior interface and quality of professional members hooked me. I’ve focused my time there to reconnect with colleagues, find employees, and answer questions. I’ve amassed hundreds of (mostly relevant) contacts. LinkedIn is a superior tool for finding people with relevant business connections or experiences. Now that Facebook is open, how will the landscape of these online networks be affected? For professionals on both networks, which will garner more care and feeding? How will each network evolve, especially after LinkedIn’s announcement of opening its platform to application developers? My prediction is LinkedIn will remain as a business network. It is suited to accomplish tasks: hire people, get answers, find experts/contractors and maintain professional contacts. At the same time, despite its heritage being rooted in fun... (07/11/07 09:01 PM)

50-Strand Template for Building a Word-of-Mouth-Worthy Business. It’s been a month in a half since my last post. Yikes. I’m hoping you (haven't) noticed. :-)I’m back.One of the reasons for the absence has been a lot of traveling, including a trip to London. See my picture here in downtown York. U.S. history is nothing compared to a place like this! I also spent one day in the UK with David Rance, CEO of Round. I worked with David to bring a customer centricity framework into Dell several years ago. There are two powerful parts of the Round system. First is the simplicity of a baseball metaphor and measurement system. As you analyze the customer centricity of your company, you move along the bases, closer to a home run. The bases even bring a language that your people can use to explain why things don’t line up. Second is the sophisticated part of the system: the “Strands”. The Strands represent key areas in your organization, each of which can be measured towards customer centricity based on feedback within the organization…like looking in a mirror. Strands are things such as leadership style, employee engagement, customer data, marketing metrics, etc. On a jet-lagged bank holiday at David's 400-year-old house in northern England, I shared my opinions of what it took for a company to have word of mouth. David opened up his laptop, opened his software, and over the next hour we identified the key strands that are critical for a company to earn word of mouth. Brand Values Collection... (06/18/07 09:03 AM)

Balancing The Three Jobs of Growing a Business: Lawn Mower, Plumber, and Contractor . Weeds are growing in the yard…so I’ve scheduled the lawn mower to trim the yard.My wife told me the toilet is leaking at its base. I called a plumber to keep things running.And we’re in the middle of working with a pool contractor to extend our patio to change the usefulness of our backyard. It takes a lawn mower, a plumber and a contractor to run and increase your house investment. It struck me these are also the ‘jobs’ – in essence --to run and grow a business. There are always opportunities to optimize, fix issues, and innovate in your business. This is the natural mix of requirements during growth. Sustained growth is achieved through the art and science of balancing between a portfolio of optimizing, fixing and launching breakthrough strategies. Or rather, being the lawn mower, plumber and/or contractor. In my experience, many people in startups spend their time as a contractor…architecting, engineering, and building new ideas. Inevitably, there are too few people interested in being plumbers to fix problems from new products. Execution to build new ideas is good, but execution to resolve issues is not as good (or not as interesting). And there are few systems and little patience to optimize (lawn mower).. At companies like Dell, employees are operational, executional, financial, superstar lawn mowers. Business Process improvements drove optimization to new levels. The goal is to squeeze every dime of cost out of or every dollar of margin out of existing products, functionality and programs. Occasional... (04/10/07 09:00 PM)

It Can Be Hard to Find Good Employees. Published in The New Yorker magazine, January 29, 2007, Page 91 TRUTH IN ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT From the Key West Citizen A busy store at 425 Front Street is seeking honest, responsible, reliable ambitious employees for part-time full time positions. Good... (04/06/07 09:01 AM)

Blogging starts a boomerang effect for organizational change. Internal executive blogging is internal only, obviously. But external executive blogs have major internal effects too. The E-mediator blog talks about the boomerang effect of corporate executive blogging, and it's a discussion worth thinking about for those organisations about to start blogging.

"...external executive blogging is an efficient management change mechanism useful to co-orient organisational members towards new strategic objectives. The feedback loop will mobilize an external force to influence employee sense making which has a different effect on their internalization of the messages from the top. External audiences and media influence provides a powerful force in terms of employee acceptance and strategy elaboration. As they are secondary sources they often twist the change narrative away from corporate language towards more comprehensible sub cultural languages that resonate with employee lifeworlds."

(04/06/07 09:01 AM)

How to Put Customer Oxygen In Your Company – FREE Teleseminar (2/22/07). On February 28th at 4:00PM CST, Linda Ford of Ford Business Consulting is interviewing me in a teleseminar titled How to Use Customer Oxygen to Breathe New Life into Your Business! This is a a topic I feel very passionate about, and have written about in my blog and DM News. I’ll share principles and learnings from my experiences in four startups and 7 years at Dell leading change initiatives and customer-centricity strategy. Topics include: Why customer feedback isn't enough How your culture will change if customer centricity is real What works (and what doesn't) to get customer oxygen into your organization How to get everyone in your organization focused on the customers' needs How to make your business more successful by putting your customers to work And learn about the Peacock and Woodpeck (verbs) I believe customer-generated content can drive more than merchandising and marketing strategies. It can impact multiple layers in the culture and company strategy. I believe that only happens by operationalizing the customer voice in your employees day to day and showing operational results. Listen in to hear more. Register here and put it on your calendar. And post a pre-seminar question here.... (02/20/07 08:59 AM)

How Measurement Can Impede Long Term Growth. Measurement and accountability crystallizes movement towards a goal, individual performance, and helps identify employees worthy of merit. Measurement is the language of any organization. The more measures we can hold employees accountable for the better, right? Hold on. There’s a cautionary tale to running a company with an extreme and unbalanced reliance on internal measures. Most corporate measures and employee goals are internally focused, financially-oriented, and functionally silohed. There’s an unfortunate consequence for companies that ONLY focus on these measures. While it’s healthy to manage business with a pragmatic view of financial health, over the long term, a primary focus on these internal lagging measures is not what builds a great company. Can you agree that a great company is one which builds products based on customer needs, strives to delight customers, and generates positive word of mouth as a result? Great companies reinvent and innovate. Now, how many internal measures and key performance indicators directly tie to accomplishing these objectives? Can you identify the internal measures that measure the required cross-functional cooperation to ensure the entire customer delights customers? Sustained-growth companies create great experiences and benefit from positive word of mouth. The Ultimate Question / Net Promoter questions supports this, where Fred Reicheld studied companies with sustained growth and found when customers were willing to tell friends about that company. What companies are you willing to tell friends about? Here are some ideas: Toyota / Lexus, USAA, Costco, Southwest Airlines, Craigslist, Apple, JetBlue, and Amazon. What do these companies... (02/19/07 08:59 AM)

Career Tiip #14: Show and Know Metrics. Once I was in a meeting at Dell, and someone said the company could stop on a dime. A colleague retorted, We’d stop because of a dime!” As funny as that is, this kind of agility is only possible in a metrics-oriented culture. Friends who have left Dell for new companies are amazed at how metrics-deficient their culture is. They are shocked how employees don’t understand the basics of a PL, and so they work to add KPIs into the business that feed the PL. As a result, these new employees are MVPs to executives because they speak their language. A little over a year ago I visited my undergrad college, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and met with the Dean of Business Marketing. I told him marketing graduates need to be more analytically-capable and trained than they were when I went to school. He agreed, and in fact they were in the midst of planning restructuring of the curriculum to focus on analytics. Demonstrating focus and proficiency in measurement will help your career. By showing a command of measuring your activities, you will appear in much better control of your area…and thus be given more responsibility. Executives will have more confidence in employees who can manage and measure, and are comforted by employees who can speak and present in their language. However, don’t make the mistake of getting stuck on the guard-rail of internal measurement. Balance your perspective with customer feedback, customer measures, and creative thinking. Make some principle-based... (01/23/07 09:01 PM)

Career Tip #9: Feed Others. This is a tip if you are a manager...it’s both a career tip and a management lesson. I learned a painful lessons early in my management career. It is foolish to try to control too much. First, I discovered I didn't have all the right answers (amazing!). But more importantly, the company couldn’t get as much done, my employees didn’t learn, and they became unmotivated when I micro-managed or took over from where they left off. Early in my career I had a web developer working for me who sent me a page he designed. Rather than making suggestions and letting him complete the project, I got into the code, made the changes myself and showed him the final product the way I wanted. I could see the frustration on his face, and a couple months later, he resigned. Perhaps every manager needs a jolting mistake like this to change behavior. It only needs to happen once. A leader needs to seed and cultivate great people who will make their vision of producing something they own. I soon realized that there’s an entrepreneur in EVERYONE and a leader’s job is to create a structure so they can exercise that entrepreneurial spirit. By the time I got to Dell I had learned this lesson, and as I built a team I got better and better at feeding others. I might feed them ideas, advice, tips, perspective, introductions, or whatever to help them accomplish. I put a goal out there and see... (01/16/07 09:00 AM)

Career Tip #5: Take Initiative Outside Your Triangle. If there’s one piece of advice I’d give anyone in any job who wants to be considered a ‘rockstar’ it is to take initiative. Be entrepreneurial. See opportunities to improve before you’re told to improve them. Look for new opportunities. Think outside your responsibilities. Mistakes are easily forgiven when you have an employee that is going to be ‘making plays’. Think about the expectations of your role and responsibilities as a triangle. Now, if you put a circle inside the triangle, representing what you accomplish, then there are some unfilled spots, and your performance is below expectations: If you fill the triangle you are meeting expectations, and are a “good” employee: But if you take that circle of accomplishments outside the triangle, outside what’s expected, outside your responsibilities, you are exceeding expectations. You become a rockstar, potentially an A player, and someone who will be considered to take on more responsibility: So what should you take on? Think about it this way: “do your boss’s job”. Consider taking initiatives in areas your boss has focus. Make sure these initiatives that will clearly make an impact, are measurable, are visible and helpful to others as well (they should if your boss is focused on the right things). In other words, if you go outside the boundaries of your responsibilities, choose to work on things that matter most to your company: your boss, your customers, and impact to the PL.... (01/13/07 09:00 PM)

The Whole Wheat Test. It appears that the typical Whole Foods Market employee has a heart. For a variety of reasons, the company attracts employees who care about what they're doing. Which makes this test relevant to you (because you care) and poignant, too.... (12/15/06 09:00 PM)

I Know You're Out There.

I don't know the names of most of the subscribers to this blog. Many people don't submit any name at all, and many use personal e-mail addresses and not the e-mail addresses of their companies and organizations. That is fine with me -- I don't have a need for names or e-mail addresses (except to send my update notifications). My mailing list is never used for any other purpose; it is secure and is never given out to anyone.

However, I do look at the list occasionally, and when I do, I am always surprised at the number of subscribers who are government employees (quite a few of them do use their government e-mail addresses). I am curious to know why they have subscribed to this blog, since it is geared to the "other side" -- writing proposals as opposed to reviewing proposals or preparing solicitations. Perhaps they are just curious themselves, or maybe they are preparing for a career change into the private or non-profit sectors. Or maybe they just want to learn what it's like to be on the other side.

Whatever the reason, I think we could learn a lot from these folks. So, government subscribers, I invite you to speak up! Make comments to some of the blog posts. Or if you have a topic that you'd like to write about, send me an e-mail and I'll arrange for it to be posted on the blog. In either case, you don't have to give your name, e-mail address or agency if you don't want to.

I know you're out there. So give us your thoughts from the government perspective.

(12/12/06 08:42 AM)

How to work from home. "The benefits of working from home are obvious. If you're a regular employee: you skip the commute and there are no office distractions for the day. If you're an entrepreneur: reduced overheads, no commuting and a congenial working environment." (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

[Conference Calls Unlimited] Zane's 10 Rules for Creating EMPLOYEE Evangelists. http://zane.typepad.com/ccuceo/2005/04/zanes_10_rules_.html I loved Guy Kawasaki's 10 Rules for Creating Customer Evangelists. They were crisp, concise; His presentation of these rules at WOMMA Summit was engaging, smart, inspiring. But who carries out your mission to "Make Meaning"? Or who "Localizes... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

Talking with Disabled Employees About Reasonable Accommodations. By Barrie Gross, Esq. The employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protect disabled job applicants and employees from employment discrimination that is based on having a disa ...

(08/29/06 09:02 AM)

Search marketing works for B2B, too.. Thanks to a reader, I learned that there was a 'B2B Case Study' session at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco. The article reviewing the session, titled, Search marketing works for B2B, too, starts with this gem:

"Most people assume search marketing works only to reach consumers, but it's actually quite effective for businesses wishing to connect with other businesses, as well."

Um, I'd counter that SEM is more effective for B2B, but I think this comment just shows the lack of knowledge of the author--obviously B2B is off the charts for some folks. The article throws up comments about basic SEM for B2B but this bit is probably of interest B2Blog readers:

"Rick Brown, President of NetTrack closed out the session with a discussion of the effectiveness of paid inclusion in vertical aggregator sites like ThomasNet, GlobalSpec and Industrial Quick Search. Brown articulated his endorsement of such aggregators cautiously, saying that they can bring in relevant traffic as well as provide valuable links to a company's homepage but that many of the metrics such websites use to promote their services (such as "reach," "page views," and "brand activity") don't have much impact on a client's bottom line.

He also noted that the value of the links from content aggregators is highest when the landing page can be controlled and there is a one to one relationship between the product category being searched and the landing page on a firm's website. Brown suggested than firms who invest in paid inclusion on a vertical aggregator site have their own analytics like ClickTracks to determine the value of the traffic coming in from sites like Industrial Quick Search. "

Um, get an analytics program? Duh. What most B2B folks don't do is actually look at the data and ponder its meaning.

One thing that Rick Brown said that is innovative, is that he proposes a 1-to-1 relationship between the seller's landing page and the product categories on the directories. I've opined before that part of the problem with directories is that once the user clicks-thru, they have to start their search over again.

BTW: A rather interesting post by Marketing Headhunter Harry Joiner about a SEO specialist looking for a new job. Key fact: $125-150K pay for specialists at SEO agencies. Wow! (08/28/06 09:03 PM)

How do I know which federal, state, or local employment laws apply to my employees?. Employment laws can come from federal, state, or local sources and it can often be confusing to figure out which ones apply to your workforce. The answer depends on factors such as how many people you ...

(08/28/06 09:02 PM)

How Soon Do Employees Need to Fill Out Employment Paperwork?. Ideally, new employees will fill out any job-related paperwork ; employment applications, at-will employment agreements, stock options agreements, confidentiality agreements and a consent to arbitrate ...

(08/26/06 09:02 PM)

Is it a problem if our written annual performance reviews are late?. It can be a problem. Companies expect employees to abide by the policies and procedures of the human resources department. Therefore, it is best if companies also abide by the same policies and proced ...

(08/26/06 09:02 PM)

Profit-Sharing Programs. Profit Sharing Programs are employee incentives in which the company announces that a portion of the business' profits will be set aside at year end and distributed to the employees. To be effective, ...

(08/26/06 09:02 AM)

My company uses a lot of contractors, and we treat them much like our employees. Is that a problem?. It is not a good idea to treat contractors the same as regular employees. By definition, a contractor is in a different relationship with the company and it is important to set boundaries so that ...

(08/25/06 09:02 PM)

What Is "At-Will" Employment?.

I have a small company and am planning on hiring some employees. How can I make sure that I am able to terminate them if ...

(08/25/06 09:02 AM)

Sharing Your Business Plan. Business plans have a variety of uses: You can show your business plan to banks, private investors, and venture capitalists to obtain funding. You may share it with potential employees to attract to ...

(08/25/06 09:02 AM)

Hiring and Managing Franchise Employees. As a franchise owner, your greatest asset is your employees. Along with your customers, these are the people who can best help you realize your dream of owning a successful business. Your employees ar ...

(08/24/06 09:00 PM)

Record Keeping and the FMLA. If your company has at least 50 employees who work 20 or more workweeks per year, you must comply with the guidelines outlined by the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Among other things, the ...

(08/21/06 09:00 AM)

10 Myths About Self-Employment. "My article 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job has quickly become very popular, so I figured it would be nice to write something about the realities of self-employment as well. Since there are so many myths about self-employment (especially among lifelong employees), a good place to start would be to dispel some of those myths. I started my first business right after graduating college (I graduated in Dec 1993) and have been continuously self-employed since then. The only time I was ever an employee was during college, when I worked six months as a part-time retail sales associate." (08/10/06 09:02 AM)

How to Battle the Coming Brain Drain. How to Battle the Coming Brain Drain

"How to Battle the Coming Brain Drain
Older workers are retiring in droves. How do you prevent their crucial knowledge from leaving with them?

By Anne Fisher

If you scan the reams of "best advice" in the preceding pages, you'll notice a pattern: Many of the key advice givers are older and wiser bosses. No surprise there. It's the managers in their 50s and 60s who have had time to develop the most valuable knowledge and experience. But few large companies seem to prize that wisdom anymore. Intent on cutting costs, many employers are trying to get rid of people over 50, despite rising age-discrimination litigation. That's an exceedingly shortsighted policy. By forcing out the employees with the most experience, companies may be inadvertently pushing critical knowledge out the door before it is shared with the next generation. They'll probably regret it before long, since demographics suggest that business is facing a dangerous brain drain from voluntary retirements alone. And those folks' lost smarts can cost an awful lot to replicate. "

- I have personally seen this 'brain-drain' occurring. When money becomes your only factor for deciding whether or not to employ someone this is what happens. -ed. (07/29/06 02:29 PM)

Saturdays Contract Management News and Comment (22nd July 2006). P-I employees approve two-year contract (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) A new two-year contract between the union that represents employees at the Seattle P-I and the paper's publisher was ratified Friday. American wants to negotiate a new contract 4:52 PM (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) Airline executives informed leaders of the Allied ... (07/29/06 02:28 PM)

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