Aussie Rules

Recently, when addressing a group of business owners, I asked them to share their greatest business challenges.

Not surprisingly, the responses were immediate and ranged from issues of marketing and time management, to staffing and finances.

We had a short discussion and soon realised that what was needed was more time spent confronting these issues, and a greater and more concerted focus on strategy and ideas generation.

It’s clear to me that if our businesses are not encouraging and acting on ideas, then we cannot expect to move forwards.

So, when was the last time you put priority on creating time and space purely for the generation of ideas?

It can be very challenging to advance and grow at the best of times, and yet here we are not fully respecting our own talents and those within our team, to create solutions and avoid challenges.

I asked the group to tell me what they are generally up to when they have their best ideas.

These responses surprised me:

• “When riding my motorbike”
• “In the bath”
• “When I’m on holiday”
• “When reading fiction”
• “While cycling”
• “When I’m swimming”
• “When I’m painting”
• “When I’m deeply relaxed”
• “When I’m playing with my children”
• “At the Opera or a classical music concert”
• “In the shower”
• “When I’m out walking”

What’s interesting here is that not one person said their ideas came to them while they were working … sitting at their desk staring at a monitor.

If we are to think creatively about our work and find solutions for our current problems, we must prioritise time away from our desks.

This is what the Dalai Lama was alluding to when he commented that when he has a heavy workload, he meditates even longer than usual. Imagine that! You’re so busy that you actually walk away from your work to gain clarity.

Spending an hour a day, or even an hour every other day, doing something that releases your creative juices will be far better for you and your business than an hour stressing out over an “action list” or project plan.

I’m off for a walk now with my dictaphone in hand. How will you spend your hour?

Try as we may to stuff up our planet and numb our brains with unnecessary junk, there remains many delightful human behaviours. One is how we instinctively help the people we like.

In business, this translates to acquaintances and friends who rave about us, promoting us to others simply because they want to see us prosper and are confident our work will help others.

Okay, our wonderfulness also reflects well on them, let’s not kid ourselves.

While many talk about inducements and incentives to promote ravers, I don’t think there’s anything as powerful as being genuinely, honestly, professionally, you.

It shouldn’t surprise you then to learn that the single most important reward we can give to a raving fan is acknowledgement. And it follows that the single largest error we can make is to fail to acknowledge.

So what form should acknowledgement take? The answer is simple: Whatever works for you. Whatever you do must suit who you are; must be something you do consistently each and every time and be something you do speedily.

Personally, I mail a colourful handwritten card with a star on the front every time I receive a referral or a sign of support and I send a small gift to my serial-ravers at Christmas. On occasion I may substitute the star card with an email.

(Note to self: Stop doing this.)

What’s important is that your gesture suits you and is fitting to the nature of your work. Authenticity beats flamboyancy hands down.

Now I have no doubt there will those reading this who have a referral program that has much greater rewards built in — possibly even grubby old cash — and in certain industries these not only work, they are expected.

Fine. If it works for you, keep doing do it. For the rest of us let’s just concentrate on acknowledgement and take good note of how it feels when you rave on someone’s behalf and hear nothing.

Who’s fallen off your thank you list recently?

I have a client who runs a small professional services business and it’s killing him. No, really it is. He’s quite brilliant at what he does, but totally unable to say “no”.

Here’s how I see it. It’s either:

Too many clients = too cheap + too broad an appeal

Or

Too many clients = not enough hands on deck

Solution? One or more of these actions:

• up the price
• focus on more of a niche
• get more support
• fire some clients

Happily these days a very small percentage of small businesses fail. Sadly those that do, do so because the owner has been led away by men in white coats or worse, carried out in a body bag.

Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.

What ways do you have of keeping tabs on your busy-ness?

There’s a little cafe near where I live that used to be a great place in which to hang out. Then earlier this year, under new ownership, everything changed. Suddenly it became one of those places where the customer gets in the way … or at least is made to feel distinctly out of place.

The early signs were subtle. The staff all got a little bit younger and the music louder. So far, so good, I felt more crucial as a consequence. Hey, I’m groovy, I’m on Facebook. Kind of.

Sadly though, this was followed by the staff banter getting more raucous with the conversations going on around the customers, not involving the customers.

Before long the café was effectively a private party and the customers — including me — left in droves.

Today it’s a shell of its former self. Scruffy, handwritten signs on the front windows desperately try to attract passers-by, while inside the music pounds and the conversation continues.

It can’t be long before it closes and another despondent business owner is left to work out why.

How do you front up to the world? Easy and willing to engage, or just a bit too cool and cliquey?

If you could monitor the value of your life as closely as you watch the value of your share portfolio, would you know what external factors have an impact? What’s more, are you doing enough to build value?

Life is not about who has the most toys, surely it’s about having fun with what’s already in the toybox and inviting your mates to come over and play.

I have survived a couple of noticeable business downturns, in both hemispheres, and I have to say that, in hindsight, some goodness comes from them.

I am not advocating that there’s anything terribly good about hardship, more that such a period can have positive consequences some time later.

Hardship forces businesses and indeed individuals, to concentrate on the core of what makes them good. When the going is tough there’s no place for vacuous, meaningless hype, what’s needed is raw talent and skill.

In my mind it’s the distinction between telling everyone you’re a “thought leader” (or whatever the cool phrase of the day is), versus being justly rewarded because you actually are.

So how do you stack up in the “real” stakes right now and importantly, how well placed are you to meander the tough times?

Doing a “stocktake” now can be much better than waiting until you’re in the thick of it.

The way some businesses treat their brands never ceases to amaze me.

Near to where I live in Sydney, a new real estate agency burst onto the scene a couple of months ago. Their signboards were dramatically different to everyone else’s, some of them even appeared upside down to dramatic effect. They bought large billboard spaces to further reinforce the brand, launched a high-profile, schmick office and ran ads in the local media.

These guys had arrived and boy, did we know it.

I confess I was impressed by the manner in which a new company suddenly became so apparent.

Then, over a cup of coffee, my view changed in an instant. There in their lavishly printed, high-gloss real estate magazine was a clear indication that someone had missed the importance of detail when establishing a new brand.

In a half-page photo of a luxurious apartment was a close up of the beautifully appointed kitchen. And there, centre shot was a can of Baygon cockroach spray. All that work establishing a brand and these guys can’t even find a photographer with the common sense to remove a can of pest spray when it jumps out of an image.

Wanna buy a luxury apartment with just a few unwelcome guests? Wanna trust these people to really sell and market your property?

Truly effective branding is so much more than some slick ads and spunky offices and it doesn’t take much to undermine a lot of investment.

Am I being petty? Maybe. Let me know your thoughts.

Some people are never happy — more work and income than they can poke a stick at and still they grumble and complain. Others scrape to make a living, yet whistle away and smile all the time.

How does that work?

Well, it’s either something they put in the tea or only one group gets the whole “satisfaction and fulfillment” thing.

Here’s the scoop:

We all have a means of adjusting our own level of satisfaction, but in order to do so we first have to understand what makes us tick (aka: whistle and smile).

What follows is a short series of questions that can help tease out your present level of satisfaction and fulfillment and importantly highlight any areas that need work.

Ok, here we go.

Instructions: Please read the following statements and give yourself a 1-5 rating on how your current status aligns with what’s said, where 1 means “Fat chance” and 5 is “Yup, that’s me!” Either add the numbers in your head as you go along or if you don’t do that kind of thing any more, jot them down in your Blackberry and email them to your Virtual Assistant for calculation and extrapolation.

1. “My work is varied and interesting and causes me to stretch and grow.”
2. “I am financially rewarded to an acceptable level as a consequence of my work. I am not underpaid, nor do I undercharge.”
3. “I feel connected to the world and am in sufficient contact with like-minded individuals.”
4. “My life is in balance. I spend quality time with my friends, colleagues and family.”
5. “In front of me I see an exciting and challenging future.”

So, out of a possible total of 25, how did you do?

In the style of those annoying trash mag tests, here’s my assessment:

• 20-25 — Well done! You’re doing well. Take yourself out for lunch.
• 15-19 — Pretty damn good. Pay attention to your weakest areas though. Eat in.
• 10-14 — Something needs to change. Time to get some plans in place.
• Below 10 — As above, but with more urgency. Give yourself priority.

I do hope you found this little exercise of value. Regularly asking these questions of yourself (and acting on the results), really can make the difference between loving your work and hating it.

So which is it to be? (Here’s some follow-up reading.)

How often do we see businesses getting in a right kerfuffle with their marketing? Far too often in my book.

There is a better way and that’s to develop a series of actions that you undertake, each day, each week and each month. Let’s look at some:

Daily actions
As any successful network marketing person will tell you, the secret of personal marketing is to “sow a seed” each and every day.

• Tell at least one person per day what you do, who you do it for and what the outcomes of your work are
• Add the name of at least one potential client to an on-going prospect list
• Add one more personal detail about an existing client to a personal profile database
• Send one letter/one e-mail/make one telephone call to a new contact

Most of these actions are directed at developing and building relationships with your customers, whether new or existing.

The main point is to have marketing be the focus for at least a brief period each and every day. Often the best way is to block an hour or so out every morning to undertake such actions.

If you employ staff, have them develop their own daily plan in much the same way.

The key here is to start the engine and keep it ticking over.

Weekly actions
Next, let’s look at compiling a list of weekly marketing actions. These might include such things as:

• Following up the new contacts and relationships you’ve made during the week
• Setting aside time to make a block of phone calls to new prospects
• Asking past customers to respond to some questions regarding your level of service and their general impressions of your business — its procedures, its staff and so on
• Researching your competitors and seeing where your “point of difference” lies

Monthly actions
If you’re effectively handling your daily and weekly actions, your monthly actions can be a time for summarising and looking at more far-reaching strategies.

Where you have a sales-force, this can also be a good time to thoroughly assess their daily/weekly and monthly actions, adjusting their targets as necessary — keeping the revs up on the engine!

Additionally, it’s a time to review areas of your business that you may not consider to be true marketing.

For example, the effectiveness of all the “contact points” of your business:

• the initial phone greeting from your receptionist
• your voicemail and after hours message
• email signature
• letterheads and business cards
• vehicle appearance and vehicle livery

All of these project an image to the outside world, to your past, present and future customers.

Each area is an element of your overall marketing and as such is extremely important to the entire marketing picture. Could any be improved? Could they work harder for you?

Very importantly, I’d strongly recommend that each and every month you and your staff make voice contact (either in person or on the phone) with the people who really support and encourage your business.

These people are your advocates — your “silent salespeople”.

So when you next contemplate a wave of what I refer to as “binge marketing”, try instead to translate your actions into a regular program of activity.

Networking can manifest itself in a number of ways. Today I’m going to explore a quite intimate version that can be undertaken without pain in your local cafe or restaurant. It has to do with growing your own network and the network of others.

The premise is this: You know people who others would like to meet. By introducing both parties you stand to strengthen your relationship and grow your profile. Basic stuff, eh. But read on …

Recently a good example of how simple actions can work for you came up with a coaching client. My client is a designer working with large consumer goods companies. She has recently been in conversations with a small manufacturing company that is going places. In truth, they probably can’t afford her services just yet, but my client wants to stay in touch and was unsure how to do this without being pushy.

One solution we explored was to act as a kind of network conduit and introduce the “small guy” to one or two of the “big guys”. The former would gain an insight into big business; the latter a reminder of how innovation and stealth can help create a new brand.

Within our enterprises we have the opportunity to generate many such introductions and every time we do so it reflects well on us.

If you are ever feeling a little isolated or disconnected, try booking a couple of intimate networking meetings like this. You’ll get to learn a good deal more about those around you and will be reminded that you’re not quite the social outcast you maybe thought you were!

After all, everyone loves a matchmaker.