Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

Guest Column By Lee Thayer

Firing someone is often a distasteful, sometimes painful, act. It is the end of something. Hiring someone is usually full of hope and expectation. It can be exciting. It is the beginning of something.

You could learn a great deal about yourself and about others from the process of firing someone, however.

If you can do a better job of firing, you could do a better job of hiring. The most direct way of learning how to do a better job of hiring lies in what you can learn from the process of firing.

Here’s why:

• Hope and wishful thinking clouds your perspectives when you are hiring someone. But when you fire someone, you are challenged to understand why.
• Firing can clear the lenses. It can be – ought to be – a very rational process. If you do it right, you are dealing with bedrock criteria, not wishful thinking.
• If you can figure out why and how and when to fire someone, it will clarify why you went wrong in the first place.
• If you did a perfect job of hiring people, you would have a perfect understanding of how to fire people. But most organizations haven’t done a better job of hiring people in spite of the tsunami of advice about how to do it.
• You have to come at it the other way around. There is no reliable recipe for doing a perfect job of hiring. You have to learn from your failures – as all leaders have had to do.
• It is figuring out who needs to be fired and why that provides the clarity needed to get better and better at hiring.

There are always the conventional reasons for firing someone: poor performance, redundancy, obsolescence, RIF, attitude, and myriad others. There are reasons. And then there are the real reasons.

It is these real reasons the chief executive needs to uncover. You have to plow through the verbiage and your own thinking to arrive at the real reasons. Was it a poor hire? Was it just a poor “fit”? Was it the culture of the organization that was at fault? Was it the attitude of the person’s peers? Was it the person’s boss? Could it even be you?

Done well, this kind of forensic exploration begins to illuminate better hiring practices by starting with reality rather than the jargon of the day.

To the person targeted for being fired, there is often no correlation between the reasons offered and that person’s assessment of his or her own performance. Big clue.

Here is the crunch issue:

The person being fired was probably not told at the time of hiring the specific reasons that might lead to dismissal.

Three mistakes were likely made:

1. The person was probably provided with a list of activities to be performed. That’s the way conventional “job descriptions” are constructed. There may have been some past experience or credentials thrown in for the company to hedge its bets.
2. It was likely nothing was said about what was to be accomplished. You can’t measure activities objectively. But you can measure accomplishments.
3. The person was most likely hired for a “job.” He or she was not hired to a role in the organization’s future. It is the future that really matters, not the past. Past performance does not predict well to future performance.

Competence is difficult to measure. So most organizations measure what’s easy to measure – the financials. But, to use a provocative metaphor:

Financial performance can only be measured in the wake of the ship. It is where the ship is headed that matters most. And then it is how it is powered and steered to get there.

It is full competence in every role in the organization that seals its fate. If you hire for full competence to carry forward in a well-specified role, you won’t have to fire for incompetence.

A key ingredient of competence is being in the “learning mode.” The best evidence for being in the “learning mode” is that the person performs his or her role better today than they did yesterday. You fire for lack of that. Maybe you should hire for the presence of that.

And, if it isn’t necessary for the person to perform his or her role better, poor performance may not be the person’s fault. It may be your fault for not making continuous improvement in every role necessary.

What is necessary will likely happen. What is not necessary may not happen.

Every organization, like every person, arrives at a status quo – ways of doing things that take precedence over doing them right. Percy Barnevik of ABB fame considered the status quo to be the enemy. His suggestion? Kill it.

There are people who have one year’s experience repeated 20 times. They become deadwood. How frequently do you clear the deadwood? Ranchers cull their herdsat least annually, in order to get better breeding.

Jack Welch eliminated the bottom 10% of performers annually. That takes the uncertainty and pain out of firing.

Outstanding performers are disruptive of the status quo. They are therefore more likely than mediocre performers to get the axe. If the culture of your organization is a safe haven for mediocrity, you are not doing a good job of firing.

And if you aren’t, you can’t do a good job of hiring.

One of the hidden reasons for firing people is that they don’t seem able to learn from experience. They never seem to get consistently better at what they do. Lesson? Make that explicit.

The best CEOs are not in their role to do the job. They are there to learn how to perform their role better today than they did yesterday. They expect the same of others.

If that’s not why you are there, you should be fired. You are, after all, the exemplar.

The best time to fire someone is the day before you hire them. If you can do that, you will be doing a far, far better job of hiring.

The bonus is that firing the wrong people for all the right reasons makes room for hiring more of the right people for the right reasons. But you have to know clearly what those are.

This is why knowing the real reasons for firing people will help you to make better and better judgments about hiring. In other words, the best way to get better at hiring is to get better at firing.

For what good reasons would you fire yourself? If you really figure that out, you will do a far better job of hiring – including casting yourself in the right role.

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Lee Thayer has been a CEO coach and consultant for 45+ years and is known worldwide for his work “in the trenches” with executives to create high-performance organizations. Dr.Thayer has also held distinguished professorships in many of the major universities worldwide. His recent, acclaimed books include: Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing; The Good Leader; Leaders and Leadership; Leadership Virtuosity; How Leaders Think; Explaining Things and The Competent Organization.

1. I'm scared to...

2. They won't let me...

3. It sounds too simple...

4. It sounds too complicated...

5. I'll never find the time to...

6. Sounds crazy...

7. I've never done anything like that before...

8. I've done that a bunch of times...

9. It'll turn everybody off...

10. I don't know how...

11. That's not the way we do things around here...

12. It's too expensive...

13. It's too far-fetched...

14. I need another 6 months to test it...

15. I need to be 100% sure...

16. It's not perfect yet...

17. People will say I'm foolish...

18. People will say I'm crazy...

19. I would never buy something like this myself...

20. I don't know...

21. I'm not ready...

22. I'm not smart enough...

23. I don't have the right degrees and certifications...

24. What's the exit strategy?

25. The competition is already way ahead of us...

26. We can't just pick up and start...

27. The other guys are bigger...

28. The other guys have more money...

29. The other guys are so well-connected...

30. It'll never work...

31. Maybe next year...

Which one(s) of these scare YOU the most? Please use the comments area below to share your SCARIEST source of fear, uncertainty and doubt... so we can overcome them TOGETHER!

Want to blow past all these scary excuses and tackle your most important marketing, sales and business growth TO-DO items all in a single, super-focused day? Check out DO IT DAYS and join us for the next one.

Guest column by Tom Marin, Orlando Business Journal

Brand marketing is facing a power-shift in today's marketplace. Customers want to be part of a brand's direction and development.

Listening to their expectations can determine your firm's level of success. To take full advantage of today's market share, companies will need to "lose" control of their marketing strategy to ultimately gain it, by embracing this powerful dynamic of customer expectations.

Fifty years ago, there weren't the number of brands or media choices there are today. The market is filled with brands, sub-brands, cross-brands, and strategic-brand partnerships. Add to that list the ever-increasing media choices, including Internet marketing, and it's difficult to make a minor change to a brand that will affect top-line sales significantly.

Investing in cutting-edge, no-cost and low-cost promotional tools for branding ideas will allow you to market your company profitably.

Consider these suggestions for energizing your brand in today's marketplace:

• Create uniqueness. Uniqueness is a brand's No. 1 asset. The greater the brand uniqueness, the higher its score in market share. And those brands that create a unique brand category usually become the leaders. What comes to mind when you consider: theme park, soft drink or overnight delivery? Most likely it is Disney, Coke and FedEx. They are the recognized leaders, though there are other brands in their categories. Your brand's uniqueness can be determined by completing this sentence: Our (brand name) is the only (product category) that (does what).

• Replace repetition with interactive promotions. A common branding strategy is repetition of the brand message to build awareness. This strategy is not as effective as interactive promotions. For example, a 30-day trial use, a sample pack, an on-premise presentation or a portion of the service you offer are all effective interactive strategies. They allow customers to discover the benefits of your brand and move closer to making a purchase decision than the repetitious sales pitch provides.

• Replace outbound marketing with inbound branding. Traditional methods of outbound marketing include telemarketing, voicemail campaigns, e-mails and direct marketing. These standard marketing strategies have become less effective because people use spam-ware, caller ID, firewall devices and the "circular file" to eliminate them. Internet searches have become a primary source for obtaining product information. Popular Web sites such as Google and Yahoo are tapping the exploding volume of today's online buyer.

To increase your potential customer base, consider using these methods:

1. Publish articles on Web sites that are relevant to your target audience.

2. Write book reviews on related topics for Web sites such as Amazon.com.

3. Publicize your brand on Web sites like prnewswire.com and prweb.com.

4. Increase your online identity with listings on LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Ziggs, Naymz and others.

• Replace monolithic marketing with customer-centric branding. Don't be a follower. If you're trying to overtake a brand leader, don't emulate their strategies. Create your own. And let your strategy strike at the heart of what your key customers want. Of course, knowing what they want will be paramount to your success, so ask them.

• Don't plan for overnight success. If someone offered me $10 million to help them launch a successful brand tomorrow, I'd tell them instead to give me $1 million and five years to make their brand successful. Understanding this dynamic of time, I'll bring home the bacon based on what prospective customers want.

Accepting and using this branding power-shift between you and your customer will allow you to involve their needs in your strategy and, in time, will establish your brand successfully. Their involvement offers them new reasons for becoming a loyal customer.

Guest post by Rick Burnes

Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.

In traditional marketing (outbound marketing) companies focus on finding customers. They use techniques that are poorly targeted and that interrupt people. They use cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, spam and trade shows.

Technology is making these techniques less effective and more expensive. Caller ID blocks cold calls, TiVo makes T.V. advertising less effective, spam filters block mass emails and tools like RSS are making print and display advertising less effective. It's still possible to get a message out via these channels, but it costs more.

Inbound Marketers flip outbound marketing on its head.

Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information.

Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet:

The most successful Inbound Marketing campaigns have three key components:

(1) Content - Content is the substance of any Inbound Marketing campaign. It is the information or tool that attracts potential customers to your site or your business.

(2) Search Engine Optimization - SEO makes it easier for potential customers to find your content. It is the practice of building your site and inbound links to your site to maximize your ranking in search engines, where most of your customers begin their buying process.

(3) Social Media - Social media amplifies the impact of your content. When your content is distributed across and discussed on networks of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic and nuanced, and is more likely to draw qualified customers to your site.

Why Inbound Marketing Makes Sense in a Recession

As the economy slows down, companies are turning to Inbound Marketing because it is a more efficient way of allocating marketing resources than traditional, outbound marketing. As our CEO, Brian Halligan, puts it, when you're inbound marketing, the thickness of your brain matters a lot more than the thickness of your wallet.

There are three specific ways Inbound Marketing improves on the efficiency of traditional marketing:

(1) It Costs Less - Outbound marketing means spending money - either by buying ads, buying email lists or renting huge booths at trade shows. Inbound Marketing means creating content and talking about it. A blog costs nothing to start. A Twitter account is free, too. Both can draw thousands of customers to your site.  The marketing ROI from inbound campaigns is higher.

(2) Better Targeting - Techniques like cold-calling, mass mail and email campaigns are notoriously poorly targeted. You're reaching out to individuals because of one or two attributes in a database. When you do Inbound Marketing, you only approach people who self-qualify themselves. They demonstrate an interest in your content, so they are likely to be interested in your product.

(3) It's an Investment, Not an Ongoing Expense - When you buy pay-per-click advertising on search engines, its value is gone as soon as you pay for it. In order to maintain a position at the top of Google's paid results, you have to keep paying. However, if you invest that money in quality content that ranks in Google's organic results, you'll be there until somebody displaces you.

p.s. If you'd like some personalized help - and your very own customized marketing and sales toolkit PLUS an easy-to-implement inbound marketing game plan with 1-on-1 guidance for 90 days, get all the details here.

• Leadership Skills
• Teambuilding
• Motivation
• Supervisory Skills
• Customer Service
• Meeting Facilitation
• Process Improvement

• Healthcare
• Corporate
• Financial Services
• Small Business Owners
• Entrepreneurs
• Non-Profit
• Faith-Based Organizations
• Anyone who wants to maximize potential, overcome obstacles & achieve goals

• Architectural drawings
• Building plans
• Hammering
• Screwdriving
• Framing
• Drywalling
• Plumbing/HVAC
• Roofing

• Tall people
• Short people
• Families
• People who want a new house
• People who'd like to move
• Caucasians
• African Americans
• Asian Americans
• Latinos
• Anyone who wants a house they can call a home, a roof over their heads, and to obtain housing

MARKETING TIP: Nobody CARES about YOU and what YOU do! They want to hear about the outcomes. Outcomes go way beyond features, benefits, processes, and methodologies.

Sell me on the HOUSE and what my life will be like when I've moved in, or have guests over, or have a picnic, or retire.

Talk about ME, MY life, and what MY experience of your product/service will be. That's all I really care about!

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David Newman is a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professionals who want to do a better job of marketing so they get more leads, better prospects, and bigger sales.

This video clip speaks for itself (you should have your audio/speakers turned on):

What can YOU do that will impress people with YOUR versatility and talent?

These days, "being good" (or even great) is merely table stakes - you need to MASTER your offerings so your audience knows they're in the hands of a professional good enough to deliver A+ work while being confident enough to have fun.

A colleague recently said to me, “No one has found the top secret formula for successful online marketing yet.”

I disagree. A number of companies know exactly what works and are making small fortunes with it.

The primary concept is that online marketing works best when you e‐mail to people who ALREADY know you. Therefore, successful online marketers build their “house file” or “e‐list” (lists of prospects and their e‐mail addresses) using the process outlined below, and then sell to those people via e‐mail marketing:

1. Build a Website that positions you or your organization as an expert, guru, or leader in your field or industry. This is the “base of operations” for your online marketing campaign.

2. Your Website should include a home page, an “About the Company” page and a page with brief descriptions of your products and services (each product or service description can link to a longer document on the individual item).

3. You should also have an “Articles Page” where you post articles your company has published on your industry or area of specialty, and where visitors can read and download these articles for free (e.g., a home improvement contractor would have tips for small do‐it‐yourself home improvement projects).

4. Write a short special report or white paper relating to the problem your product or service addresses, and make this available to people who visit your site. They can download it for free, but in exchange, they have to register and give you their e‐mail address (and any other information you want to capture).

5. Consider also offering a monthly online newsletter, or “e‐zine.” People who visit your site can subscribe free if they register and give you their e‐mail address. You may want to give the visitor the option of checking a box that reads: “I give you and other companies you select permission to send me e‐mail about products, services, news, and offers that may be of interest to me.”

6. The more “content” (useful information) on your site, the better. More people will be attracted to your site, and they will spend more time on it. They will also tell others about your site.

7. The model is to drive traffic to your site where you get them to sign up for either your free report or free e‐zine. Once they register, you have their e‐ mail address and can now market to them via e‐mail as often as you like at no extra cost.

8. The bulk of your online leads, sales, and profits will come from repeat e‐ mail marketing to this “house” e‐list of prospects. Therefore, your goal is to build a large e‐list of qualified prospects as quickly and inexpensively as you can.

9. There are a number of online marketing options, which can drive traffic to your site, that I can help you with. These include free publicity; e‐mail marketing; social media advertising; search engine optimization; direct mail; and e‐zine advertising.

10. The key to success is to try many different tactics in small and inexpensive tests, throw out the ones that do not work, and do more of the ones that are effective.

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Need a great marketing speaker for your next association conference, company meeting, or franchisee/dealer event? Marketing speaker David Newman delivers the goods - over 600 presentations since 1992. David's clients include 44 of the Fortune 500 and countless small and mid-size organizations, associations, and non-profits.
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Simon Sinek wrote a great book called Start with Why. One of the key lines in it is...

"People buy WHY you do something before they buy your WHAT or HOW."

Meaning - People first buy your purpose, your intent, your WHY.

I'll make that even more specific - they buy WHAT YOU BELIEVE. And, perhaps most important of all, they buy what you BELIEVE IN.

Face it, beliefs are easy to spot. You either believe or you don't - you either believe IN or you don't. The proof of your beliefs is in your actions.

Which of these things do YOU and YOUR TEAM and your COMPANY believe IN?

• Being nice (Zappo's)
• Overdelivering (Nordstrom's)
• Helping others (Tom's Shoes)
• Joy (BMW)
• Design (Apple)
• Simplicity (In 'n' Out Burger)
• Gifts (Seth Godin keeps sending me books!!)

Want to make this abundantly clear to your prospects, customers, clients, partners, and the world?

Great! Post it - share it - let the world see your beliefs not only in what you SAY (like my marketing pal, Steve Miller has done so brilliantly here) but in your ACTIONS.

When it comes to small business marketing, only action creates results and only action proves your beliefs.

How to Design a Client-Magnet Presentation

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach, I see too many speakers, consultants, and thought-leading executives who commit to a speaking strategy built around their professional passions, interests, or favorite topics within their expertise.

Sounds like common sense, right? Well, that would be a huge mistake. DON’T do it!

For your speaking efforts to pay off in terms of marketing results, you need to design the presentation content NOT around what YOU are passionate about, but what your buyers and prospects are passionate about!

Imagine a pair of X-ray vision goggles that you are now using to zoom in on your target clients. Ask yourself the following:

• What do they want?
• What are they missing in their lives?
• What hurts?
• Where is the pain?
• What are they yearning for?
• What do they worry about most?
• What are their biggest headaches, heartaches, and hassles?
• What are their urgent, pervasive, and expensive problems?

Gather Live Ammo Data

What’s the first step? Research. Preparation. Homework.

Industry, regional, business, and company news is now at everyone’s fingertips on the Internet. Look for verbatim quotes, video clips, blog entries, trade journal profiles, and audio interviews to capture as much as you can from representative members of your buyer persona.

Then go directly to the source – YOUR real live customers and prospects. If you’re not intelligently researching your prospects’ issues, challenges, and pressures, how can you possibly come in with credible high-perceived-value solutions? One of the best ways to approach prospects is with:

• Interviews
• Surveys
• Research
• Data gathering

It positions you and your firm as an expert resource and it gives you valuable data you should be getting anyway!

Bottom line: for thought-leadership marketing to work for YOU, you have to be a dealer, collector, curator, and dispenser of thoughts... and one of the best ways to LEAD is to LISTEN.

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach who works with professional speakers, consultants, and professional services firms, one of THE most frequent questions I get is "How do I find the best places for me to speak so I generate business?"

I always come back with the following key question: What Audiences Are Your Clients In?

What groups do your ideal clients belong to? This will obviously determine which audiences you want to be in front of.

Not sure? Don’t guess – ask!

Here is the script to ask your current clients, prospects, and centers of influence who know your target market well…

“I’m looking to speak more in front of groups of [BUYER PERSONA]. I’d love to get your Advice, Insights, and Recommendations.”

(Thanks to my pal, networking and referral marketing speaker Michael Goldberg for the A-I-R approach!)

Another way to ask might be…

“Of all the industry groups and associations you belong to, which ones provide the most value in terms of the speakers and programs they present?”

With both of these scripts, the natural follow-up discussion would center around your desire to serve this industry/community more and to share information with them that would help them become even more successful.

Likely outcomes from this discussion would include:

• Names of specific groups, associations, and conferences
• Names of specific people serving in board or programming positions
• Names of other executives or decision-makers in the field
• Names of other companies or firms in need of similar information/services
• Specific networking introductions
• Offers of referrals to the individuals they already know
• An opportunity to reciprocate and ask how YOU might be of service to THEM

Resources for Targeting Best-Fit Venues

Finding venues to speak profitably could be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Here are some resources to help you laser-target your speaking to your best-fit audiences:

• The Directory of Associations online (http://www.marketingsource.com) 
• National Trade and Professional Associations of the United States – hardcopy from http://www.columbiabooks.com
• http://www.LeadershipDirectories.com for access to 500,000 corporate and association decision-makers (this comes at a hefty $5,000 annual fee)
• Your Public Library – free access to high-priced proprietary business databases (Hoovers, D&B Million Dollar Database, InfoUSA)

Have fun, speak well, and go generate some business.

Got questions? Comments? A resource or tip of your own? Please use the COMMENTS sections below and let's hear from YOU...