Your Team Dynamics

Your Team Dynamics

by | Dec 23, 2019 | Sound ADvice

It Takes All Types 

 Managing Different Personalities

Most businesses, regardless of the business category or type of work, have a plethora of different personalities.  Keeping them all happy can be a challenge.

There are four basic personality traits: Type A, B, C & D, or more scientifically known as sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic.

It takes all types!

A manager’s responsibility is to keep the team focused, motivated, improving, continuing to do the right things, producing, and, keeping the team in line!  You are part motivator, trainer, psychologist, referee, friend, confidant, evaluator, and prison guard!

So, how do you handle employees with different personalities?  The short answer is, handle them all differently!  They are all different people and how you try to motivate Mary will not necessarily work well with Mark and vice-versa.  With this said, there are areas where you need to be very consistent.  In the areas where you do allow some latitude, make sure both sides understand why this latitude is extended. Maintaining their trust is extremely important. 

Always keep in mind that regardless of the type of business you are in, your team will be made up of different people, with different personalities and they will come in different shapes, colors, and sizes. But, they all will have one thing in common and that is… they are human, and as managers, it’s our job to lead by example and treat them with respect. Give them the attention to help them be as successful as they possibly can be. Never ask them to do something you are not willing to do yourself.   Respect is earned!  I wish you the very best in earning it!

Remember, it takes all types! 

If you would like to see the “7 Personality Traits of Top Salespeople” that was published in the Harvard Business Journal, click here.  We believe that these same traits will provide a good base for any position within any company.

This weeks ScLoHo Media and Marketing Update was from a weekly newsletter I send nearly every Wednesday.  We are taking a couple weeks off during the holidays but if you want to start receiving them in your inbox in 2020, fill out the form below.

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The Power Of Appreciation

The Power Of Appreciation

by | Nov 11, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo Sales Tips, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Show Them You Appreciate Them!

The New Technology World we live in has certainly made some things easier, but in return, it has taken away a lot of the old fashioned customer service and appreciation. 

There was a time when you made a purchase and you might have received a handwritten thank you note, or from time to time small tokens of appreciation for simply being a loyal customer.

While these little marketing gestures may have faded, they certainly haven’t gone away.

Amit Kumar, a University of Texas professor who studies well-being, says that most of us underestimate the impact of sending an actual note rather than a text or email.

When Doug Conant became the CEO of Campbell’s Soup, the company was struggling and morale was at an all-time low.  He did a lot of things to turn the company around, but one of the most powerful was he wrote over 30,000 thank you notes in his 10-year journey.

According to a survey by TopResume, two-thirds of employers say receiving a thank you note from a job applicant following an interview impacted their hiring decision.

The continued advancement of technology makes the “human touch” that much more appreciated!  The impact of a handwritten note is greater than ever!

It also goes beyond just your customers.  The same appreciation can be shown to your staff, your suppliers, and vendors.

The cost to acquire a new customer is high.  The cost to keep them can be as little as a handwritten thank you note, or a simple token of appreciation!

Show them – you appreciate them!

Here in the United States we are on the cusp of the end of year holiday season starting with Thanksgiving this month followed by all the December holidays including Christmas and then we ring in a new year.  Do you or does your company give gifts to your clients?  Do you give bonuses to your staff?

While tradition may dictate that you do these things this time of year, I urge you to set up a system of appreciation that is outside the Holiday timeframe too.

Click here to view 14 Appreciation Marketing Tactics to make an emotional connection with your customers, staff, and suppliers.

You can also get a free subscription to my Sound ADvice marketing and business tips email newsletter by filling in the form below.   As always feel free to ask me anything by sending me a note to Scott@WOWO.com

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Getting Paid For Your Work

Getting Paid For Your Work

by | Oct 1, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Recently a friend of mine who is in the advertising business was lamenting about how he has “challenges” getting his clients to pay him in a timely manner.

I rarely have this problem and I thought this would be a good topic for an article and podcast.

No matter what you do for a living, there is money involved. What I am about to share with you is how I work and will give you some insight on expectations I work with in my world, so if you and I ever work together, you’ll know how the money side all works.  For those new to the idea of paid advertising this is part of the conversation I have with them, because, well they don’t know how it works.

We are all in business and we need money for our businesses to stay alive.

You should never be sheepish about asking for payment due to you, however you need to have the discussion before you agree to do the work.

In my note to my friend, here’s what I shared about my experiences of getting paid:

If it’s a new company or one that is new to advertising, they prepay monthly with a credit card we keep on file. If they have established credit for advertising that we can verify, then we extend credit.

For Example:

Advertising that runs in September. If it is pre-pay, we need payment before September 1st.

If Credit is extended, then it is due within 30 days from us sending the invoice. Invoices for ads that ran in September will go out not later than October 1st. We expect payment before October ends.

Some organizations get 60 days because they are a third party biller, like an ad agency that bills their client and that adds an extra 30 days for them to get their money and then cut us a check.

Anyone that is in danger of going 90 days gets a phone call, an email, a text, a message somehow, someway by the 75 day mark to make arrangements to get the old payment paid before 90 days.

I have two clients that are always in that last category. With one, I send him a reminder and a deadline and he emails me his credit card payment. The other one, I visit and they hand me a check.

Sometimes, the owner and the bookkeeper are not on the same page and so if I need to get the owner involved, he makes sure I get paid so we keep his ads running.

In my 16 years of doing this in Fort Wayne, I have had very few losses, sometimes it was due to unfortunate circumstances on their part like a divorce that tied up their funds.

This is the professional way of taking care of business. Do it with a firm smile and expectations up-front when you start the business relationship.

You started your business because of a passion and I bet that passion was not hunting down a paycheck.  But like taxes and payroll, this also has to be done, or you will not have a business.

Do you have any questions about advertising and marketing that you don’t know who to ask?  Ask me.  Email me at Scott@WOWO.com

You can also get my free Sound ADvice Marketing and Business Tips weekly email by filling out the form below.

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Digital Burnout

Digital Burnout

by | Sep 24, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Do you ever get annoyed at advertising?

I did an informal and unscientific poll of friends and strangers recently and discovered that the answer is Yes.

This is nothing new.  As long as there have been advertising, there are reasons for people to dislike it.

Music radio stations that play too many commercials in a row, that’s an annoyance.

TV ads that are just plain awful, usually it’s the locally produced ones that look and sound bad.

In the digital world there are a couple of irritants I discovered too.

One is the number of times we are shown an ad when we are online.

There is a practice called remarketing that is as old as digital advertising, that is part of the culprit.

When you visit a website, it places a tracking pixel, or “cookie” on your computer and adds you to their database of website visitors.

Then when you are visiting other websites, you start seeing ads from that website you just visited.  The reason is statistics tell us less than 10% of us buy the first time we visit a website.  So to remind you of that website you were visiting and the stuff you may have bought but 90% of the time, the stuff you didn’t buy, these ads that follow you around online.

It’s a neat concept from a marketing standpoint but it has become an irritant. A recent survey said that if you are still sending ads to people who visited your website a week after they were there, you are annoying 85% of the people you are trying to convert to customers.

Nearly half only want to see your ads for 24 hours and after a couple of days, you are just creating a bad vibe for your company.

One company has taken this seriously.

Proctor and Gamble which spends between 6 and 7 billion dollars a year in advertising announced this summer that going forward, they are reducing the number of times a consumer sees the same digital ad.

I know that there are multiple ways to track our online actions and one that seems to be missing involves connecting the dots between visiting a website and making a purchase.

If the digital marketers could get an alert when we make a purchase so they stop bombarding us with ads that are wasted, because we already spent our money on what you are still trying to sell us, everyone would be happier.

I know the technology is out there to do this, it just needs to be implemented.

If you are currently doing or are considering digital ads, talk to me first.  There are better ways to invite people to become your customers and buy your stuff without annoying them to death.  Drop me a note Scott@WOWO.com.

By the way, you can subscribe to this weekly ScLoHo Media and Marketing Article update that I share on my website, you can also subscribe to the podcast version which is pretty much the same weekly content that you can listen to in 10 minutes or less.  I also have a separate email business tips newsletter called Sound ADvice that you can get by filling in the information in the box below.  All free and yours just for the asking!

 

 

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Do You Provide Meaningful Touches?

Do You Provide Meaningful Touches?

by | Aug 21, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Maintaining a good relationship with your customers is critical to your lasting success.

Roy H. Williams in his article on Advertising Oversimplified covered this:

  1. Most customers are repeat customers or referral customers. Mass media is the most efficient way to maintain top-of-mind awareness among these groups. In addition, it will bring you new, first-time customers.

  2. Your plan to stay in touch with your customers through social media and email blasts is based on the assumption that your customer is willing to open, read, listen to, or watch what you have to say. Is this actually happening? And if not, why not? (HINT: The Subject Line gets people to open it. The content, itself, gets people to share it.)

I get direct mail pieces from a couple realtors and other business people I know and I also get some emails but most of them get deleted or tossed without being read.

I even have a weekly marketing email you can subscribe to free using the form below for Sound ADvice.  

As business people we are told that we need to be doing something to maintain that connection, but is what you are doing the right thing for your individual customers?

Even if you are doing the right number of “touches” with your email or direct mail…

Are they meaningful to the people on the receiving end?

I’m not suggesting you drop everything you are currently doing unless you see no value in it at all.

I am suggesting that you also add a personal touch, the kind that is not “mass media”.

Every once in a while, I will contact some of my advertising partners with a note, a phone call or an article that would be of interest to them.

When I did this with a Financial Planner friend of mine, she asked me how I found the article I sent her because it’s from a publication written specifically for people in her field, not the general public.  I told her my research secrets and she got a greater understanding of how I am looking out for her interests, not just selling her advertising.

Like I said, I don’t recommend stopping all your mass media advertising and only focusing on personalized one-at-a-time marketing; that proved disastrous for an old friend of mine who thought word of mouth alone would be the way to go.  He had to shut his doors after he tried that experiment and his business had a 25 year history.

Do both.

Mass media reaches both your current and future customers.  Personalized messaging can be used to retain that relationship.

Want help? Contact me: Scott@WOWO.com

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