Marketing With Integrity

With all the uncertainty occurring in today's market, combined with the pervasive "what's in it for me" mentality, many people around the country have lost their trust in businesses and organizations. The marketing strategies hyped by many promoters to ensure a large customer base, are no longer relevant. Enduring success will be created by operating from integrity and respect for others.

We have all witnessed businesses crumbling from within. We have watched CEOs being arrested and observed organization after organization being investigated for accounting frauds and illegal insider tradings. The exposure of companies reveals the core of dysfunction and levels of deception that can occur in an organization. These incidents demonstrate the intensity of the greed, competition and lack of integrity that has been occurring in companies. What can we learn from this?

Unfortunately, what is dominating management today is what I call "ego-driven" leadership. But what is not clearly evident to most people is that ego-driven leaders are actually operating from insecurity and fear, including those at the top. They may appear powerful but they are not. And they actually limit the potential of the employees.

The leaders' desire to create wealth and power, of ten at the expense of others, stems from their own deep inadequacies. The schemes, ultimately, do not work as the recent debacles illustrates. Leaders operating from this "artificial power" will never achieve long-lasting success.

The new powerful marketing is really about reassuring your customers that you are a company that can be trusted. Genuinely meeting the needs of customers means showing them respect and a sincere interest in their welfare. Marketing with integrity begins with communicating from authenticity. You must clearly listen to the desires and needs of the potential customers. And then it is essential that you provide the service you promise. That takes teamwork and cooperation of all employees.

John was a successful sales executive in the commercial loan department of a highly recognized bank. He was good at listening and relating to the prospects. He was able to hear their needs and find a way to reassure them that he would be able to provide the best solution for them. However, more and more, new programs with complications and limitations were continually being given to the mortgage department. Additional fees and unusual requirements were making the various options confusing for his prospects. New customers began experiencing small service problems, at the least, and unfulfilled promises and disappointments in other cases. John found himself feeling less and less sincere in his presentations and his personal sales began to drop.

Management was interested in increasing revenues and decreasing expenses. They forgot that the employees were the fuel that ran the organization. They pushed for more sales and cut back on expenses. Their attitude toward the employees was one of superiority. They didn't listen and didn't understand that many employees were feeling a lack of integrity in the bank. This did little to elevate motivation and actually increased the fear and emotional drama.

Individual employees processing various services were also having problems. Gossip and power struggles were occurring and the sense of teamwork had diminished. People were feeling insecure, and rather than working cooperatively, they were feeling competitive with each other. Energy was being drained and this directly affected their productivity and creativity. The beautiful brochures and TV ads that described a bank that cared about relationships seemed to be a facade.

Great leaders understand that it is the potential of all people that make up a successful organization. Ego-driven leaders limit the potential by dousing the spark of creativity in those they lead. It is as though someone is shooting a hole in the fuel tank and then wondering why they aren't getting better mileage.

How could this picture be changed? It starts within the organization. Relating to customers must start first with cooperative relationships in the workplace. Healthy workplace environments result in happy, productive and caring employees. Employees are the service you are selling.

People who feel respected and valued have feelings of loyalty and pride in their organization. Satisfied and empowered employees provide good customer service, one of the most important aspects of marketing. Studies indicate that dissatisfied employees do not give good service, do not refer business to the organization, are not productive and would not recommend others to work there.

There are other unrecognized costs when employees are unhappy. Replacing even one employee will cost between 30% to 200% of their annual salary, according to extensive research. The time wasted in the emotional conflicts is immeasurable.

So it is clear that creating a workplace environment that fosters healthy relationships is important to the overall selling process. Replacing fear and greed with trust and compassion is the first step to generating good marketing and customer service. An organization is a whole system and you cannot simply market with slick strategies. A breakdown will occur when the organization does not have the teamwork, cooperation and synchronization to provide good service.

Leaders can market with integrity by incorporating the following steps:

1. Taking a hard look at their own egos and giving up their need to be superior.

2. Learning to listen and create opportunities for employees to contribute.

3. Treating employees and prospects with honesty and respect.

4. Making decisions that benefit all people, not just those at the top.

5. Making commitments to employees, customers and prospects; and keeping them.

6. Empowering employees at every level to use their full potential.

7. Identifying ego driven managers that drain resources and limit creativity.

8. Showing a public willingness to be wrong and to be willing to make changes.

9. Establishing broad two-way employee/management communications systems, including the opportunity for confidential expressions of concerns and fears.

10. Understanding the source of ego dramas, and taking steps to unravel them.

11. Shining a light on cliques, gossip and personal agendas so they are diminished.

12. Providing training for marketing, communications, management and customer service.

Marketing with integrity starts with each individual honoring themselves and others. The time and money you invest in employees will come back in immeasurable ways. According to Mother Teresa, the greatest disease is not heart disease, tuberculosis or any other physical ailment; it is feeling unwanted, uncared for or meaningless. That is true for all individuals. When organizations operate from compassion for each other and their customers, success will be inevitable. The synergism that occurs as employees work together is more powerful than any marketing strategy you can devise.

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Good Ways to Make Money

A very good way to make money is to market a product or a service. There are many ways to do this, but many more ways to fail. This article condenses the wisdom of experts into just 6 points that you need to follow if you want to achieve success.

There are tens of thousands of products and services to market and many ways to do so. Marketing, unlike selling which is primarily practical, is a well established academic discipline and while academic theory is not usually the first consideration on the mind of a budding businessman, a distilled version of some valuable and practical lessons may prove timely and helpful.

Marketing and innovation (or having new ideas and putting them into practice) together constitute the heart of commercial enterprise. Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology and even operations (or production) are merely support functions of Marketing and Innovation. If you get this wrong (which is not uncommon), you will have a case of the tail wagging the dog!

Many confuse selling and marketing, but they are not the same - as Peter Drucker famously declared "... the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous."). Selling is a tool of the marketing process as is production or operations.

Let's revise the basics of Marketing, because by doing so, we will have a blue print for many good ways to make money.

Lesson 1, on the importance of demand and supply

Marketing ice to Eskimos would probably not be a good way to make money. Marketing ice at a tropical seaside resort would probably be a good way to make money. The reason for the difference is the likely demand and supply in each case.

Lesson 2, on the importance of 3 critical aspects of your product or service

However there is more to it than this. For example, the product or service must be:

* sold at an appropriate price (that must cover costs, but be low enough to be attractive to potential buyers). Remember that a lower priced product that sells greater volume can be more profitable than a higher priced product sold at smaller volumes.

* made available at an accessible place

* promoted such that potential customers are aware of it.

Conclusion

Scarcity of supply and abundance of demand are likely to be a key success factors in the success of a business that is marketing something, but product, price, place and promotion cannot be ignored either. Get these 6 factors right and you will be well on your way to some good ways to make money.

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A Marketing System - Every Successful Business Must Have One

The definition of Marketing is the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling. This includes everything from how your phone is answered to your voicemail to how your employees are dressed to how your business cards look to how your offices are decorated. Everything speaks in marketing.

Most people jump into their business and start running full steam ahead without a strategy or a plan for how to market their service or product. This is like going into battle and saying 'Ready', 'Fire'... 'Aim'. The steps are out of order. You get ready and aim at your target. Once its in your sights, you fire. The same order of things occurs when developing a marketing plan.

Your Marketing system should include goals, activities, and specific strategies for how to accomplish the above mentioned tasks. Some research into what the market wants is imperative. Remember we're living in a microwave society. People want things quick, fast, and in a hurry, with the least amount of inconvenience to them. So one of the questions you have to ask yourself is what is the quickest, safest, most cost effective way to get your product to the purchaser? Can it be delivered electronically? Does it need to be sent by a mail carrier? How will the costs of these avenues be figured in?

Traditional marketing tries to appeal to the masses, but it would be better to locate your niche, or those who are specifically interested in what you're offering, and appeal to them. That way your percentage of conversions will be greater and you won't waste time and money on people who are not at all interested in what you're offering. You want to spend your marketing energy on clients who want what you have.

Your system should initially include a Social Marketing strategy which incorporates sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and a Content Marketing strategy like articles, videos, or press releases. You can also include a paid Marketing strategy like PPC or banner advertising, if you have a bit of a budget to work with. To start out, you should pick one strategy and master it. Once you've gotten that one mastered, add another. You don't want to spread yourself too thin from a time and a money standpoint. You want to do what works.

Once you've selected these, specify the exact tasks that need to be done daily in order to achieve the goals. For example, on Facebook, you should find and join groups of individuals that are interested in your products or services. Connect with people who are going in the same direction as you. Provide value to these groups and individuals. Don't just pitch your business. That is a huge turn off.

Be mindful of your time management. If you're not careful you could find yourself spending hours doing tasks that are not directly connected to the goals you've set. Scheduling of your time is a key element. Prioritize the money-making tasks. Of course, supporting tasks must be done. But be mindful of the time you give to them. Some things are good to do, but they don't add value and thus don't make you any money.

If You're Trying to Market Your MLM Business without a Marketing System, You're Just Wasting Time and Money. A simple, step-by-step Marketing System could mean the difference between success and failure. So this must be one of your first steps in the process as it's basically your road map.

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Creating High Performance Teams Will Maximize Your Profits

We have all heard of CEO's attributing the success of their company to dedicated employees and self motivated staff. But is every employee self motivated and dedicated to the growth of the company? Certainly not! It takes all types of employees to make a company and that includes the cynics, the worrywarts, and the unmotivated. So how do companies manage to improve company performance?

Because of the economic slump, there's a huge strain on employees and their relationship with the management. Counting enduring pay freezes, and job cuts, employees have had to put up with a lot. This easily leads to disgruntled employees and depression, and so, affects employee performance.

In order for companies to prosper, it's very important that a positive relationship is maintained between management and staff. A positive relationship helps not only to attract but also keep talented employees. It also helps companies to avoid costly in-house disputes at bay. For a business to succeed, it's important that employees are creatively involved in many decision making processes. Managements that engage their employees through positive efforts will be building high performance teams.

There are several ways for companies to engage their employees. While a majority of them communicate through newsletters, some communicate through social media sites like Twitter, Facebook or even blogs. The Chief Executive Officer has to transform himself into the Chief Engagement Officer. His primary job is to build a network of staff members that participate in the growth of the company, and help it to maximize profits.

Companies also stay connected with their staff through surveys and opinion polls. But the results of these surveys and polls are often kept under wraps. A company that's serious about its intentions in increasing employee interaction should seriously consider sharing these reports with their staff, so that concrete steps are taken to improve employee satisfaction. In fact employee engagement has a tremendous impact on the short and long term goals of the company. On the contrary, dissatisfaction could easily lead to a negative atmosphere, and affect the employee's relationship with customers.

While communication is an important aspect of employee engagement, it's also important that there exists a good mechanism to engage with staff. But more importantly there should be a genuine interest in the senior level executive to connect with his staff and treat them with dignity and respect. Things like good pay, decent retirement pensions, and equal opportunities to grow with the company are steps that assure your staff that you intend to treat them fairly and with respect.

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Want To Find What Really Works In Small Business?

Are you one of the people who say that they are really keen to have a management systems BUT They are making changes in their business and want to do this first.....

WRONG...

This is the very best way to make your life complicated.

And this is because putting in a management system properly is all about planning first then building your system AFTER you really understand what you really want so that you can keep it simple..

Let's face it, your staff can't be bothered looking up lots of paperwork -

They just want to do the job then they tick and flick your long forms.

I recently heard two true stories that I want to share with you because they totally reveal the right and wrong way to go about systems

But first let me explain why most people do systems wrong.

The big problem is lack of understanding. Like most people, you probably think that quality systems are two inch thick manuals which gather dust on shelves. And you think their only purpose is to get the ISO ticks of approval so you can go after bigger tenders or keep regulators happy.

You probably find it hard to believe this can possibly save you time and reduce your workload. You simply don't believe me when I tell you that you absolutely do NOT need an extra staff person to manage your system.

When a quality system is done properly it not only takes less time and money to develop but it becomes part of your business' culture. It shows you how to develop staff so they become more responsible and more flexible to cope with any problems that come up. AND it is a slimline working system that does not gather dust.

This means your business will be far more profitable. Your staff take more responsibility, your customer service improves dramatically and even more importantly you will be able to demonstrate your new found ability to deliver on larger contracts.

Business needed to restructure their business after a key person left. They very sensibly decided to combine this with implementing their fully integrated management system and it is really working.

Because they started by identifying what the business really does and where there were risks they were able to realistically decide what personnel they really needed and they have ended up with a very different structure than they had before and a much happier and more productive workforce who are turning into a very tight team.

They implemented those resources that they really need to manage their risks and they have absolutely minimised their paper work and become far more efficient at the same time.

They have booked their external audit and they are very happy with the entire process which has been surprising rapid - only just over two months.

Business had been implementing their system for around two years on their They are lovely people and have put heaps of work into this but have no overall plan for their system and no risk analysis.

They have written a huge folder full of policies and for each policy there is a procedure and a form or record - often 4 documents for each issue. They called in an auditing body who told them that they did not have a system and were nowhere near certification. They have a pile of documents.

How totally disappointing after all that effort but we are getting them on track now.

Too much paper plus old fashioned ideas that came out of the military last century are what give quality assurance systems a bad name. It is totally unnecessary!

If you have a policy, why do you also need a procedure? One document will do!

AND please check whether you really need either before writing anything. A lot of your "house rules" can be combined into a straightforward induction.

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How to Use QuickBooks to Improve Cash Flow in Your Business

If you are a small business owner using Quick Books to manage the bookkeeping and accounting aspects of your business, you may also want to consider utilizing some of the other management tools available within Quick Books, including those that can help you to manage and improve the cash flow in your business. If you extend credit to customers, one of the key reports available in Quick Books Pro is the "Accounts Receivable Aging Summary" report. This report summarizes the status of unpaid invoices. For each customer who owes money, the report shows what the customer owes for both current and previous billing periods. It's a good idea to review this report on a monthly basis and pay particular attention to those customers who have overdue balances.

For those customers you are having difficulty collecting payment from, there is an option available in Quick Books Company, linked with Microsoft Word, to prepare letters using specific templates. For example, there are pre-written collection letters, both friendly reminders and somewhat harsher versions that you can use & modify to send to customers that have overdue balances. You can even limit the letter recipients to customers who are overdue by a certain number of days, as well as select specific customers. Quick Books also has letter templates for credit application letters and for addressing NSF cheques.

Other tools available in Quick Books Pro, that can be useful to improve cash flow management in your business include the ability to: customize invoices; set-up reminders for invoices to print and overdue invoices; create statements to send to your customers that summarize all invoice transactions for a particular period of time; and set-up finance charges or service charges for overdue payments. Reducing the average collection period by even a few days can have a dramatic impact on both your company's cash flow and the bottom-line. So, if you are using a small business program such as Quick Books, try utilizing some of the built-in management resources available, such as those designed to help you manage the cash flow in your business more effectively.

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Effective Management: The Key to Business Success

From time immemorial, management has been an integral part in whatever activities that mankind pursues in life. The term "management" derives from the Latin word "manu agree" which means to lead by hand. With sound and effective management, no doubt, organizations can guide employees to productive work. With effective management, managers and supervisors can direct, organize and influence workers to ensure productivity, coordination and profit.

It is the act of getting people together to achieve its desired objectives and goals using its manpower and resources efficiently. Its function comprises of planning, staffing, organizing, directing and controlling one or more employees to accomplish its goals.

It is an important tool in almost all areas in society because with it, you can ensure the smooth operation of whatever undertaking we want to pursue, like associations, financial institutions, schools and companies.

It is considered the backbone of an organization or a company, which guides, controls and supervises all areas of a business enterprise, starting from human resources to production. Lack of efficient and effective management often results to business losses, labor turnover, decline of sales and business closure.

Because of its importance to the total welfare and operation of companies, stakeholders and business owners hire credible, qualified and efficient managers and supervisors to manage the firm. Business enterprises also provides its employees and executives ongoing training to further its skills and to keep them abreast with the latest technology and techniques in the market.

Significance of Management to companies:

* Reduction of cost - with effective management, firms can reduce and can ensure the proper utilization of resources, thereby reducing waste and prevents exploitation of resources. Business enterprises can also identify what resources, raw materials and suppliers are scare and find alternatives to solve the problem. It also implements specialization of jobs to achieve quality output and increased productivity.

* Equilibrium - It enables organizations to be at pace with changing and advancing technology and environment, letting them adjust to the changing needs and demand of societies. It is responsible for the survival and growth of firms.

* Achievement of goals - The management team execute, plan and balance manpower and resources to achieve maximum work output, to obtain targets and to prevent delays, losses and low quality of products and services.

* Utilization of resources - It plans the maximum and efficient utilization of resources, manpower, skills and knowledge to avoid wastage and to ensure maximum utilization of physical and human resources.

 * Sound organization - effective and sound management structure prevents overlapping of jobs, establishes effective responsibility and authority between employees and supervisors. It also gives clear jobs description for employees and provides the needed on-the job training to further the skills of both executives and employees alike.

* Prosperity of society - It leads to improvement of the people's standard of living, business profitability, economic improvement and creation of job opportunities. It also generates income for the government.

* Increases stability - It helps companies survive market conditions, stays competitive amidst myriads of rivals in the market and enables workers to work with peace of mind.

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Can You Believe That It Is Already 2011?

The majority of businesses slowly started opening again around the 10th of January after the holiday break although many had skeleton staff until after Australia Day - with the exception of Queen slanders who have been simply washed away. So what are you doing about your New Year? Are you doing any strategic planning to make sure you are sustainable in 2011? Resolutions don't cut it. Affirmations and positive thinking don't either although a positive outlook certainly attracts more clients and business opportunities than a negative one.

The anecdotal evidence is that 80% of small business owners don't prepare a business plan and even less actually run their business from a plan. And if you do, you almost certainly concentrate on your strengths and opportunities and gloss over your threats and weaknesses because the plan is largely focused on convincing the bank you are a good risk. Did you actually stop and think about risk? But that's another story.

If your goals, resolutions etc are going to work they need to start with looking critically at right where you are now. You need to identify exactly what you really do, then where things could go wrong and how well you are managing these.

So you are analyzing, then planning, then taking action. Sad but true - nothing happens without you take action, so set a deadline for each action, make someone responsible for making it happen then check this is all done on time. And you do need to keep checking as time passes to make sure things are still being done they way you want them to be done and deadlines are being met.

In my business I started the New Year with an internal audit and a full review of my management system as well as auditing the marketing plan that I developed at the end of last year.

How much have I really put in place and how much needs to be integrated into my day to day systems? Have I met my deadlines? Are there areas where I waste time and money? Sadly I know that there are but I want to critically look at these because I would rather use that time and money better.

Are you doing this? Do you review your business at least annually?

The thing that I REALLY like about having a certified system is that it forces me to review with skilled outside eyes looking at my business critically every year. This happens in June for me so my midsummer check is just that - an extra check to keep me on target.

Are you even aware of what your risks are? I was talking to a cleaning company manager this morning about what happens when cleaners forget to lock or to set the alarms in a business when they leave late at night? This seriously upsets clients! And loses clients! But how do they prevent it?

Human error and attitude are possibly some of the biggest threats you have in your business and one of the big things you get when you put in a management system with the tools to change the culture in your business to one where staff are more switched on and caring about risk reduction and customer satisfaction.

Just remember nothing happens without you take action,

· So set a deadline for each action.

· Make someone responsible for making it happen.

· Then check this is all done on time.

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