Written by James Gulezian, Adjunct Professor, Goldey-Beacom College specializing in leadership, business management, and human resources.
As leaders we are often faced with extremely challenging, problematic situations stemming from inappropriate behavior or unsatisfactory performance on the part of one or two people who seem to occupy 80% of our time and attention. More often than not, the at-work behavior or performance issue is more deeply rooted in the individual’s personality/temperament that serves to reinforce and self-rationalize their behavior or mode of performance. As such, the leader, and person’s co-workers grow increasingly frustrated, angry, and resentful of the “problem child” and, in effect, suffer from this toxic presence in the work environment. It’s bad enough that this problem person is performing at a sub-par level, he or she has now impeded the performance of the whole team, stemming from delays from work-arounds, others having to constantly follow-up and pay strict attention to everything he or she does, etc.
For various reasons stemming from the employee’s personality, time with the company, time in the job, etc. the leader knows deep down inside that time is running out and the need to effectively address the issue(s) with the person is NOW. By this point, the eyes of the leader’s boss, peers, and staff are on him or her, expecting that this situation is resolved once and for all. The leader also realizes that, notwithstanding the other person’s personality, feelings, and temperament, he or she must come to grip with their own emotional framework; recognizing all the personal obstacles that could impede an effective collaborative problem resolution outcome. While important to identify these derailment influences, it is equally important to identify what the leader will keep in mind and demonstrate to keep the discussion on a productive course.
For leaders who face these high-stakes, high-impact situations, it is critically important to feel confident in knowing what to do and, for that matter, what to avoid when having these extremely challenging discussions. It’s all about the manner in which the discussion is started and navigated to completion that spells the difference between success and disaster.
Come to our workshop (click here to register) where you will be provided a practical hands-on framework for leaders to plan and execute effective interactions with problem employees. Significant attention will be placed on interpersonal dynamics and effective use of important tools such as active listening, emotional intelligence, collaborative problem-solving, preservation of self-esteem, and building greater trust.
written by Kristin Drake, LinkedIn Careers Team. Grow your small business with LinkedIn by using these seven proven tactics.
There are nearly 30 million small businesses in the United States, but only half of them will make it past five years. To ensure your small business is in the successful half, we encourage you to capitalize on the various ways LinkedIn can evolve your business.
With LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, you can generate leads, produce sales, and hire top professionals to fuel your growth. Here are seven ways to grow your business using LinkedIn:
Create a LinkedIn Company Page
We’ve found that LinkedIn members are 50% more likely to buy once they’ve engaged with your business on LinkedIn. But they can’t connect with you if you don’t have a LinkedIn Company Page. According to Forbes, only 57% of companies have pages. The remaining 43% are missing out on a free opportunity to generate leads, talent, and, ultimately, revenue.
If you don’t already have one, create a LinkedIn Company Page. Personal profiles don’t have the same marketing, advertising, and recruiting features as Company Pages, making them less effective at promoting your business. As you create your page, think about the kind of impression you want to create among potential customers and employees. This will help you select the right photos and messages to use on your page.
Once you have a Company Page, announce it to your clients, employees, and personal network. This will help you gain your first followers, who in turn will help to promote your Company Page on the content you post to it.
Promoting your page on other platforms or via email is also a great way to grow your audience. Here are some simple ways to get the word out:
Announce the launch of the Company Page on your personal LinkedIn profile
Encourage employees to follow the Company Page by making it a part of your onboarding process—Social Media Today reports that content shared by employees receives eight times the engagement as brand shared content
Link to your Company Page in the footer of your marketing emails or newsletters
Embed a Company Follow button onto your website so visitors can easily follow your LinkedIn Company Page
Share Content Regularly
The more you post, the more people you can potentially reach and convert. Best-in-class LinkedIn Company Pages are consistently updated to ensure that visitors have plenty of new content to consume and share.
To get started, try posting at least once per week. It’s not uncommon for companies to post three or more times per day. Post whenever you have something worth saying. Posting consistently shows Company Page visitors that your company is active on LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn’s Company Page analytics to see your top performing updates, your best times to post, and which members of your audience are the most engaged. With this information, it’s easy to make data-driven decisions to optimize your Company Page content.
In addition to posting often, here are a few more stats to help you boost engagement:
Posts with links receive up to 45% more engagement
Images see an incredible 98% increase in engagement
Posts that have relevant “best-of” lists get almost 40% more amplification
When a post gets good engagement, consider promoting it to a wider audience with LinkedIn Sponsored Content. Take the Sponsored Content Tour and discover how Sponsored Content amplifies your best content.
Showcase Thought Leadership
Seventy nine percent of buyers say thought leadership is critical for determining which companies they want to learn more about. To get started with thought leadership content, try to provide a unique perspective on your industry, product, or organization. Sharing your opinion on the future of your industry or creating a definitive guide on your product are just two ways to demonstrate your expertise and position your company as a credible partner.
LinkedIn has over 500 million users to date. That may seem like a lot to sort through, but LinkedIn also provides you with tools to identify and target your ideal audience.
LinkedIn members are more likely than other social media users to keep their profiles up-to-date, making it easier for you to find the right people. Use LinkedIn profile data to search for LinkedIn members based on geographic location, education, experience, and even connections. Once you’ve found prospects using the search feature, visit their profiles. Their endorsements or recent profile views might surface additional qualified prospects, too.
LinkedIn has helped 75% of job switchers make informed career decisions, making LinkedIn a top recruiting network. What are candidates looking for when making those decisions? Our research shows that 66% of candidates want to see company culture over everything else. To take advantage of this preference, consider enhancing your Company Page with a LinkedIn Career Page.
Career Pages allow you to target audiences with a personalized look into your company, culture, and jobs. They give you dedicated Life and Jobs Tabs on your Company Page that attract and engage relevant professionals.
In addition to creating Career Pages, encourage employees to share job postings and “day in the life” content as well. This gives visitors a genuine idea of what it’s like to work for you and adds to your authenticity. If you have a few employees who lead the pack in sharing content, consider linking them to your Company Page’s Life Tab. Their shared articles and recent updates will automatically populate, providing visitors with up-to-date information. Watch our video below on how to use the Life Tab to attract the right talent for your company.
Hire Freelancers
You’ve probably had an employee who took on a task outside of their domain. You might have even done it yourself a few times. While the effort is commendable, learning on the fly can also be detrimental.
Fortunately, finding the right talent for the task at hand isn’t as tricky as it once was, even if you can’t afford the salary of a full time employee.
LinkedIn ProFinder enables you to post your projects, receive free proposals, and hire trustworthy professionals all in one place. ProFinder will even pair you with local professionals to ensure you have the best freelance experience possible. With 172 professional services available on ProFinder, it’s easy to find the perfect professional for any task.
LinkedIn vets all the professionals on the platform to ensure they are qualified and leverages your network to find freelancers your connections have used, so you’re never in the dark about who you’re hiring.
By using freelancers, you’ll get access to outside perspectives & broad experience of professionals of all kinds, from creating websites and designing logos to managing your books or crafting your marketing strategy. Plus, with none of the management overhead of a full-time employee, you can focus solely on the job at hand.
By Dora Cheatham, Program Manager, Emerging Enterprise Center
New product development is often spoken of but seldom practiced. Yet it is a process that is all-encompassing, risk-averse and eloquent in its simplicity. When coupled with outstanding project leadership, it’s a winning formula guaranteed to yield results.
Too often, product development in today’s larger organizations is fraught with miscommunication, misdirection, lots of activity with little accomplishment, unclear goals. The end result is wasted time, effort, and sometimes a product that does not deliver on its early promise. An effective development process – my personal favorite is the stage-gate process – that is well executed and well led is critical in eliminating many of these problems, increasing speed to market and ensuring that the product under development continues to meet business goals and market requirements.
The 5 Steps of Development
Step 1: THE IDEA – The source can come from R&D (based on new technology), Marketing (based on market need or gap analysis determination), Sales (based on customer need) or Operations (based on a new process that offers manufacturing alternatives). Each idea should be screened to determine its overall viability before moving on to the next stage. Does it meet the company’s overall strategic goals? Business goals? Market development goals? Product development goals?
It is important to note that new product ideas are based on knowledge: customer and industry knowledge, technological and environmental knowledge. The sharing of knowledge between departments enables the connection of dots that may remain unconnected if left floating alone in a vacuum. R&D or Engineering may be aware of a new technology but unaware of a market application while Marketing may see a market need or application without being aware of the technologies available to meet the application. Manufacturing and operations should be aware of both market needs and trends as well as technological developments so that they, in turn, are well positioned with regard to resources.
Step 2: PRELIMINARY REVIEW – Technological, operational and marketing viability. What is the total market size and potential? What are the R&D cost requirements? What are the operational requirements? What are the ROI estimates? Are there any regulatory implications? Product and time parameters, including product functionality and attributes, estimated cost targets and market goals should be established.
Step 3: DEVELOPMENT – A step in which all departments – not just R&D or Engineering – should be involved with frequent communication and updates to ensure that the product criteria established in Step 2 are being met, and that the needs and timing remain unchanged. If at any point during this stage there is a change in product scope, cost or timing, then a review of the business case may be warranted to determine if further development should continue or expectations should be adjusted.
Step 4: TESTING – A critical part of the process since this will validate the product or determine if additional development time is requirement. If possible, testing should be completed in partnership with a launch customer as this offers external as well as internal validation of product performance. This step will also determine if the product continues to meet the criteria and goals established in Step 2, or if these criteria need to be re-evaluated and/or adjusted.
Step 5: COMMERCIALIZATION and LAUNCH – Production ramp up and marketing plan. Are all the operations pieces – from part numbers to purchasing to production – in place? Are all regulatory pieces (if applicable) in place? Does the sales team have everything they need – from marketing materials to samples to trial protocols to industry context – to sell with confidence? Again, all departments should be involved in the commercialization process to ensure that all elements of the Commercialization and Marketing Plan are orchestrated for a flawless launch.
Effective Project Leadership is a Must
The above notwithstanding, it is not enough just to have a good process in place. The keys to a successful new product development process are project leadership and execution, as well as cross-functional involvement and contribution at all stages of the development process. Effective leadership ensures:
Regular communication across all disciplines at every step of the process;
That the product continues to meet all criteria established at Step 2 of the process;
That the activities engaged in the entire development process add value to the overall innovation strategy;
That – once commercialized – momentum is maintained to ensure that the product yields the expected results.
Too often, a process is put in place but is poorly implemented or poorly led, and therefore fails to yield the desired results. Like any process, success depends on keeping the end in sight, and in this case the end does not finish with first piece approval. Frederick W. Smith said it well when said:
“Leadership is simply the ability of an individual to coalesce the efforts of other individuals toward achieving common goals. It boils down to looking after your people and ensuring that, from top to bottom, everyone feels part of the team.”
Going from supplying a product that meets basic customer expectations to contributing to a client’s organization can be hard to establish and even harder to maintain, but is an invaluable strategy for long term profitability. Keeping a customer requires the creation of a relationship of mutual trust and partnership that goes beyond supplying a quality product.
Seeking to create value and a sustainable competitive advantage is increasingly difficult in today’s data-filled environment. Buyers today are educated and savvy. In the B2B world, the buyer can be 60-65% through the purchase process before he or she even makes contact with an incumbent or potential vendor. They know what’s out there and what it costs so if all you have to offer is a product that meets specifications, then you have effectively created a situation where your only option is to sell on price—and the lowest price invariably wins. That also means that as soon as a competitor emerges with the same option at a lower price, then chances are that customer is lost to the newcomer. So how can you ensure that your customer remains loyal to your product and business?
Smart Buyers Seek Value
A truly smart buyer understands the value of a vendor that contributes to the smooth running of his or her business. If you can deliver a flawless product, on-time, every time, with excellent customer service, then it behoves him to use your product—because spending time dealing with vendor-related problems and quality issues costs money and impacts his own customer service and bottom line (think about the UPS “I’m happy” ads where department managers and customers are happy thanks to UPS Logistics).
By supplying a quality product with excellent customer service you have already established some level of competitive advantage. And many companies today provide good products with good service – it is a prerequisite to staying in business. To sustain that advantage however you need to continually climb the value pyramid and add to your product in terms of additional service and knowledge, eventually making a quantum leap to the peak of the value pyramid to establish yourself as more than a vendor, but a trusted strategic partner.
Can you help lower your customers’ costs or improve their productivity? Can you help them identify new products or markets? At an even broader level, can your customers call on you for advice on operational systems and processes or strategic direction? In other words, does your customer consider you a supplier or a partner?
Schematic adapted from Doyle P. and Stern P., Marketing Management & Strategy, 4th ed., Prentice Hall
As you climb the value pyramid, commoditization decreases and company and product value increases, with fewer competitors able to compete at the same level. The fundamental difference between the lower and upper levels of the pyramid is distinct: to be good at the former, the salesperson and business needs to have a top quality product to sell and needs to understand his product and his own business well.
To be good at the latter, the salesperson and business needs to have an understanding not only of his own product and business, but of his customer’s business as well. He needs to understand his customer’s individual and industry needs and must excel at consultative selling, offering solutions that are of mutual benefit to both organizations. Only then can you hope to ensure an enduring partnership and long term rewards.
You don’t close a sale; you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise. Patricia Fripp.
Do you start out each week—or each day—with a to-do list? Before I wised up to the dangers of to-do lists, I wrote them all the time. A typical one looked like this:
Write blog article
Craft proposal for new client
Throw out orphan socks from sock drawer—or repurpose into puppets
Develop PowerPoint for social media seminar
Pull new gray hairs from top of head
Make sales calls
Memorize lyrics to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Consider singing with sock puppets.
You know what happened? I’d do the irrelevant stuff first (sock puppets, gray hairs, and Queen), because they were more fun and easier to check off. Wow, I was getting stuff done, I thought! Sure, I might work on less-pleasant-yet-critical business tasks…if there was enough time afterwards. But usually I found more tempting ways to fill the time.
Maybe you can relate. Okay, maybe you’re not lured by sock puppets, gray hairs, and Queen. But your tendency to check off simpler tasks—pay a bill, make a quick phone call, etc.—may be preventing you from accomplishing tasks that could make a huge, positive impact on your business.
Here are more problems with to-do lists:
They don’t factor in the duration of each task. Some tasks might take two minutes—others might take two hours!
They don’t say when you will tackle each task (i.e. no real commitment).
They don’t distinguish between urgent and important. Urgent and important aren’t always the same thing.
They rarely get completed in full. Did you know that, on average, 41% of to-do items never get done?
Imagine what your business would look like if you consistently accomplished your big-picture tasks every week.
My business transformed—with revenues quadrupling in one year—when I stopped writing to-do lists and started putting important tasks in a calendar. (I use Google Calendar, but any calendar will do.) Why a calendar? Because it forces you to block out time for the stuff that matters. In other words, you’re making regular business appointments with yourself. Using a calendar also helps you see what your day truly looks like, so you don’t end up over-committing to less important tasks.
Do I still crave a life with sock puppets, gray-hair pulling, and Queen? Absolutely. But now I can visualize what little time I have for it, at least during the workday. (Besides, I’ve found it’s easier to work on gray hairs at night, when my teenage son can help pull the ones I can’t see on the back of my head. Awkward for him, but great for me.)
I’d love to learn what productivity strategies work for you. Block out 15 minutes in your calendar to email me your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you!
Written by Dora Cheatham, Program Manager, Emerging Enterprise Center
We often hear of the failure rates of start-ups and new businesses, or even longer term firms going out of business for one reason or another.The US Census Bureau’s statistics certainly bear this out, with as many as 44% of businesses failing by their 3rd year and 71% failing by Year 10.
While this depends greatly on the industry, the chart below from Statistic Brain, shows just how fragile some industries can be:
While the final cause of death is usually financial collapse, the symptoms most likely started much earlier with failed strategies and operational inefficiencies. While no-one has a crystal ball into the future, you can certainly try to preempt as many obstacles as possible with careful planning and preparation; as Alan Lakein once said “failing to plan, is planning to fail”.
So if you’re thinking of starting your own business, or you’re beginning to see fissures in your business, there are definitely steps you can take ahead of time. Here are a few from a marketing perspective to ensure that your business survives and succeeds.
MARKET ANALYSIS │ THE LAY OF THE LAND
Understanding the lay of the land is critical in helping you determine what actions you will need to take to grow—or in some cases—survive. An excellent tool for establishing the lay of the land is Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model. This popular model forces you to look at your industry within a specific framework that takes into consideration competition between existing firms, the threat of new entrants, the strength of buyers and suppliers and the threat of substitute products. Another simple but frequently used framework: the SWOT analysis that assesses strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats—use it to assess not only your own business but also that of your competition.
How do you fit in these frameworks? What are your core competences? What are your weaknesses? How can you leverage your strengths and improve on your weaknesses? It’s not enough to know and believe in your own product: you need to understand how it fits within the industry and among other like products in that industry. You also need to have a clear understanding of your customers’ (existing and/or potential) needs and wants.
But don’t be fooled into thinking that this is a one time exercise—external forces and world events can impact the lay of the land, change the balance of power in these forces and overturn the positions in these frameworks within a matter of weeks! A catastrophic event – think 9/11 and its impact not only on the aviation industry but also the industry’s suppliers, travel, tourism and beyond – can and will result in a need to re-assess your business strategy in short order.
MARKET STRATEGY │ START WITH THE END IN SIGHT
Once you have a clear understanding of the lay of the land, the business then needs to determine its focus: What is your differential advantage or value proposition as a business? What are your growth objectives? Which products and markets offer the best opportunities to achieve your growth objectives? How will you achieve these objectives? Will it be through market penetration? Product development? Market development? Diversification? How will you position the business and your products to meet these objectives? Which core competences do you need to develop to achieve your targeted growth and create a sustainable competitive advantage? What will the investment be in time, talent and treasure to develop these core competences and what will your return on that investment be?
MARKETING MIX │ THE ROAD MAP
The Marketing Mix is generally referred to as the 4Ps (or 5Ps depending on the source!) and encompasses decisions surrounding your Products (performance, features, design, presentations, name, etc), Pricing (direct, distributor, geographical, etc), Promotion (PR, marketing collateral, advertising), Place (distribution channels), and People (tasks, sales, support). In other words, you know your market and you know your customers. You now need to ensure that you have the correct products, that they are correctly positioned and that your communications correctly reflect that positioning. Do you have the right distribution channels set up? Do you have effective and efficient processes in place?
A common fallacy to avoid is that marketing is the same as sales, particularly on a B2B level. The two are very different and – while they work hand in hand – they perform different functions. Marketing creates the value, the visibility and the lead; it can also provide the tools to make the sales process more effective, but it is an ongoing process and does not preclude the need for a sales strategy to leverage and capitalize on the value created through the marketing process (check out the posts on Creating & Selling Value and What’s In A Brand?).
STRATEGY X EXECUTION = SUCCESS
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it’s not just about the strategy but about implementation and execution of that strategy. Once the lay of the land and the road map have been laid out, specific tactical and action plans, budgets and measurement criteria can be put into place to guide that execution and implementation. One of my favorite quotes is from the entrepreneur Naveen Jain. “A great strategy alone won’t win a game or battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling.”
Written by Frank DeSantis, Certified Growth Wheel Trainer, Former Emerging Enterprise Center Program Director
The link below is to a great article in HBR on Passion vs. Preparedness, and reflects what I believe is the approach the Emerging Enterprise Center tries to take with their Incubator companies.
An entrepreneur has to have passion. It’s entirely too hard to start and run a business if you don’t absolutely love what you are doing! Apparently, according to this research, passion is a key ingredient to attracting attention of investors, especially novice investors, those typically found on crowdfunding sites.
Long term success, however, depends upon your ability to be prepared to scale the business. For that you need to have a vision (what do you want to be when you grow up), a game plan (strategy or business plan), and the processes and procedures to replicate what you do and how you sell. For more experienced investors, the passion and the concept may attract them initially, but they move quickly to determining how prepared they are for success; what is the experience of the management team; have they started a business before; is there a market; have they proved the concept?
At the Emerging Enterprise Center, they try to help you focus first on DRIVING YOUR BUSINESS (sales), while in parallel, developing the business skills and the policies/procedures to enable you to take advantage of opportunities that help you achieve your vision.
I believe you can have and, in fact, need both: PASSION AND PREPAREDNESS!
By being a Presenting Sponsor, Williams Humphreys and Company can bridge the gap between the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the small business community in New Castle County, Delaware.
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