November 28, 2016

Preparing an Annual Marketing Plan

Issue #449

It is a lot of work to prepare an annual Marketing Plan.  After all, a company’s Marketing Plan should itemize — in great detail — all of the company’s goals, the objectives to reach those goals and the strategies to operationalize each objective.  It is also supposed to clarify the target audience, provide a competitive analysis, set the budget and identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats on the horizon.  It should also focus on pricing and sales strategy.  That is a lot of information to think about, research and then crystalize into a document.  It takes a lot of time to think through the vision for what a company wants to accomplish in the year ahead.

It is so much work that many small and mid-sized companies simply do not prepare a formal, written Marketing Plan.  Often, a Marketing Director will write out some high level goals and itemize some new strategies that target those goals.  In reality, the typical Marketing Director has neither the time nor inclination to write an in-depth document that – in some cases – even the company’s leadership will not read.  Moreover, a lot of leaders don’t want to commit to a budget or plan, if one is proposed.  Instead, many small to mid-sized organizations want to take a more casual approach to marketing.   Any planning that is done is never done more than weeks or months in advance.   If so many businesses shrug off writing a Marketing Plan, why do business schools teach marketers how to prepare an Annual Marketing Plan and why do management experts harp on the need for an Annual Marketing Plan?  Is that approach – a 12-month plan — even valid anymore in such a rapidly-changing global marketplace? Continue reading →

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November 21, 2016

There is So Much for which to be Thankful

Issue #448

At this time every year, Americans spend a day “giving thanks” for their many blessings.  Rightly so.  The New York Times recently published an editorial that said that “In many ways, there has never been a better time to be alive.”  The article acknowledged that, while there are certainly still many problems in the world, today “fewer among us are poor, fewer are hungry, fewer children are dying, and more men and women can read than ever before. In many countries, recognition of women’s and minority rights is now the norm. There is still much work to do, of course, but there is hope and there is progress.”

The article goes on to observe how people in struggling and violent parts of the world want to immigrate to richer, more peaceful nations such as the U.S.  That’s understandable.  Indeed, the U.S. has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world amongst capitalist countries.  The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the U.S. ranks 9th in the world.   And when the United Nations combined physical capital (machinery, buildings, infrastructure and so on), human capital (the population’s education and skills), and natural capital (including land, forests, fossil fuels and minerals), the U.S. ranked #1 as the richest nation on earth.

And yet, a Gallup poll this year showed that 71% of Americans were dissatisfied with the U.S. economy and 8 out of 10 felt the country was going in the wrong direction.  Those who live in the safest, most prosperous country on earth were feeling great uneasiness, bordering on hopelessness.  Why such anger and discontent in the world’s most affluent country?  What might account for the huge disconnect between America’s prosperity and the dissatisfaction most Americans feel?   Perhaps it’s a matter of gratitude? Continue reading →

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November 14, 2016

Meeting Etiquette: Rules of the Road

Issue #447

Meetings cost organizations a lot of money.  Consider the hourly rate (wages plus benefits) of each person at the meeting.  Then add in the expense of bringing everyone together, if some of the participants are at different locations.  It can add up.   Yet, in all likelihood, most employees will attend dozens or hundreds of meetings throughout their careers.  And most employees loathe attending meetings.  That’s because meetings take up valuable time that a person could use to “get their work done.”  To add insult to injury, not only do meetings eat away at productivity, they often feel like a waste of time. That’s because so many meetings veer off topic, devolve into entire conversations that have no place in the meeting, have numerous interruptions, and/or drag on way past their scheduled time, resulting in the need for another meeting. Continue reading →

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November 7, 2016

Capricious or Cutting-Edge: When Should a Business Make Changes?

Issue #446

It’s been said that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”  The point is that sometimes you have to break routines and try new processes, products, systems or strategies to find better ways of doing things.  Innovation usually leads to improvement, and refusing to ever try new things is futile and foolish.  Consider the Luddites.  The Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers and weavers who, fearing the end of their trade, protested against newly developed labor-saving technologies between 1811 and 1816.  New inventions such as the stocking frames, spinning frames and power of the Industrial Revolution threatened to replace Luddites with less-skilled, low-wage laborers, leaving them unemployed and obsolete.  The Luddite movement culminated in a region-wide rebellion in Northwestern England that required a massive deployment of military force to suppress.  So famous was their rebellion that today the term Luddite has become synonymous with anyone opposed to industrialization, automation, computerization or new technology, in general. Continue reading →

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October 10, 2016

Top 10 Reasons Employees Stay with their Employer, Part 2

Issue #445

It is well-established that employee turnover is both costly and wasteful.  High employee turnover is, in fact, one of the biggest impediments to positive business growth, no matter the industry.  In the majority of instances, the cost to recruit, hire and train new employees and the additional workload that the process puts on management and existing employees adds no value to the business.  When good employees leave a company by choice, it is just a loss.  So employee turnover has a huge effect on profitability.  For that reason alone, companies with high churn should work hard to reduce the employee turnover rate. Continue reading →

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September 26, 2016

Top 10 Reasons Employees Stay with their Employer, Part 1

Issue #444

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employee turnover is highest in industries such as hospitality, banking and finance, healthcare and the service sector.  Turnover also seems to vary by wage and role of employee.   For example, employee turnover of salespeople is often particularly high.   This should be of critical importance to businesses because turnover is a huge expense.   According to a study conducted in November 2012 by the Center for American Progress, the estimated average cost to replace an employee in the U.S. was 16% of annual salary for high-turnover, low-paying jobs (earning under $30,000 a year), 20% of annual salary for mid-range positions (earning $30,000 to $50,000 a year), and up to a whopping 213% of annual salary for highly educated executive positions.   That means the cost to replace a $10/hour retail employee would cost a company on average $3,328, while the cost to replace a $40k manager would be $8,000.  And the cost to replace a $100k C-Suite exec is $213,000. Continue reading →

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September 19, 2016

Impossible…. An Apostrophe Away from “I’m Possible”

Issue #443

Arguably, no word in the English language is more daunting and discouraging than I-M-P-O-S-S-B-L-E.   It is like a giant flashing red stop sign that halts impetus in its tracks.  It drains energy from any endeavor.  It is just a really long word that means N-O.  No, it cannot be done.  No, it is not achievable.   No, it is not realistic.  It is the favorite word of skeptics, naysayers and negative ninnies.  It renders requests as unreasonable and ideas as ridiculous.  Impossible is the destroyer of potential, promises and prospects.  As the word says so clearly, impossible is the slayer of possibilities. Continue reading →

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September 12, 2016

Recruitment 2.0 – Acquiring Companies to Get Top Talent

Issue #442

Once upon a time, in the age-old, gritty world of business mergers and acquisitions, the focus was on acquiring companies in order to get its patents, property, products, processes, power or prestige.   Think of AT&T acquiring Bell South in 2006 for $83 Billion and Exxon acquiring Mobile in 1998 for $80.3 Billion.   The advertising industry used serial mergers to achieve a global presence, attain substantial influence over media, and offer a full range of marketing services to international clientele.  In some cases, corporate acquisitions have been used to keep patents out of the hands of those who might be tempted to assert them against a mega corporation.   But, while companies still want to acquire innovative institutions and inventive ideas, corporate acquisition efforts have taken an odd and interesting turn in the 21st century.  Instead of buying the competition’s better widgets or customer base, today’s mega corporations are acquiring companies just to get its employees. Continue reading →

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September 6, 2016

Building a Woman-Friendly Workplace – Part 2

Issue #441

Part 2 – Possible Solutions

The idea that there is still gender disparity in compensation and opportunities in 21st century American business may seem ludicrous to some.  After all, there are some very powerful women leading some of the world’s biggest companies.  Mary Barra is CEO of General Motors.  Ginni Rometty is CEO of IBM.  Indra Nooyi is CEO at Pepsico.  Marilyn Hewson is CEO of Lockheed Martin.  Safra Catz is CEO of Oracle.  And beyond Fortune 500 companies, there are female trailblazers such as Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, Jill Abramson, Executive Editor of the New York Times and Oprah Winfrey, creator of O Network.  These women are not just successful, but the companies they lead represent a cross-section of business sectors from aviation to automotive to technology and beyond.   But the real story is in the numbers.   While the 2016 Fortune 500 list shows that 21 companies have women CEOs, those are fewer than the 24 female Fortune 500 CEOs in 2014 and 2015.  More importantly, of the 29 companies that were added to the Fortune 500 list this year, only one had a female at the helm.  The decline in female CEOs in the Fortune 500 this year is due to retirements, mergers and other factors that had nothing to do with gender or the quality of their leadership.   But, with so few females to begin with (just 4-5% in all), any loss of female representation at the top is more noticeable. Continue reading →

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August 29, 2016

Building a Woman-Friendly Workplace – Part 1

Issue #440

Part 1 – The Barriers

As of July 2014, women comprised over 50.8% (162 million) of the total U.S. population and 47.4% of the total U.S. labor force.  Of the 123 million women who can work (ages 16 years and over), 75.6 million or 57%, are labor force participants—either working or looking for work. (Comparatively speaking, 69.2% of men 16 years old and older are labor force participants.)  More importantly, women are projected to account for 51% of the increase in total labor force growth between 2008 and 2018.  And yet women in the U.S. still earn only .79 per dollar that a man makes doing the same job.  They also make up less than 25% of all state and nationally-elected government leadership positions and less than 5% of all CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies.   Economists and leaders see this disparity in female earnings and female representation in government as a problem if the nation wants to stay competitive in the global marketplace.  But what can be done to make things more equitable? Continue reading →

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