Tag Archives: Calendar

Do You Need a Formal Marketing Function? Four Points

Situation: A small company serves a specialized, targeted group of customers. The founder/CEO seeks advice from the group on whether it is time for the company to create and staff a formal marketing function or can this be outsourced. Do you need a formal marketing function?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company services a specialized and targeted group of customers. However, they target the high end of this market, so the target market is smaller.
    • A highly targeted promotional and marketing strategy will work best.
  • There are two principal functions within marketing: providing direction to guide product development efforts and creating awareness of the company’s products through promotions and advertisements.
    • To serve a narrow market, the information and insight gathered from trade shows, technical meetings, the company’s sales and design engineers may be sufficient to drive product development efforts.
    • It may not be necessary to do more than this unless the company is planning for substantial growth and wishes to diversify the product offering in a short period of time.
  • To handle promotions and advertising there are two options: hire an individual to do this or utilize the resources of an outside agency.
    • The marketing plan should be refreshed and updated on a regular basis – at least annually.
    • A good task for the company’s marketing committee is to become aware of local resources that could help.
    • Identify marketing themes to guide advertising in specialty magazines, supported by trade shows, technical conferences, and on-site training session for key customers.
    • Create and maintain a calendar of marketing activities and assure that that messaging is consistent across promotional events.
  • If the strategic plan calls for substantially increasing the revenue base or broadening the product offering, consider a merger with a competitor that already has the ability and resources to meet these needs.
    • Just the planning exercise for a merger will help the company to evaluate the issues involved in market expansion.

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How Do You Enforce Meeting Attendance? Six Suggestions

Situation: A company has many meetings. Organizers calendar meetings on Salesforce.com. Despite this, participants show up late, and sometimes not at all. When the right people aren’t present they must re-schedule the meetings. This ends up wasting valuable time for managers. How do you enforce meeting attendance?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The answer depends upon your company culture and priorities.
  • If you have a production-focused culture, absence and tardiness may not be tolerable. Companies with this type of culture can take the following steps:
    • Call out late arrivals and absences immediately – the first time take them aside and explain that tardiness or absence is not excusable.
    • Called out repeat offenders on the spot!
    • One company has a policy that if you arrive late you stand for the period that you’re late. This has been very effective.
    • The example that you set reinforces desired behavior for the others.
  • In client-centered service organizations the rules may be different. Some companies feel that customer calls and meeting customers’ needs comes first, even if it means that the meeting starts without a key participant.
  • Match your meeting discipline to your culture.
  • The quality of meeting is dependent on quality of the meeting facilitator. Make sure that you have the right people leading the meetings to keep them on time and on topic. This may improve meeting timeliness.
  • If this is a challenge for your company, meet with those involved. Clarify the problem and confirm the reality of problem; then agree on the solution and gain their commitment to comply.

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How Do You Prioritize Demands on Your Time? Six Points

Situation: A CEO is involved in a number of outside Boards and organizations, both because this involvement helps the company, and for personal reasons. Recent changes in family demands are now prompting reconsideration of this level of involvement. How do you prioritize demands on your time?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • List all of your priorities – both business and personal – and the amount of time that they require on a weekly or monthly basis. For non-family activities, rate each in terms of importance both to your organization, and to your heart.
  • Decide how many outside Boards or organizations you are willing to participate in and how many hours of the week or month you are willing to allocate to this.
  • Reduce your involvement in outside boards and organizations so that you get the time commitment down to what you are willing to allocate. Thereafter, to maintain control of your time. If you add a new commitment, drop an existing commitment.
  • Where you have commitments that are important to the company, but lower priority in terms of your own passion, delegate representation to good people within your company. This both maintains company presence and enhances their professional growth.
  • Where you want to terminate involvement let the organization know of your plans in advance, and negotiate a phase out schedule and timeline. They will appreciate your working with them.
  • Consider putting someone between you and your calendar to communicate with those making new requests for your time. This person can say no more easily than you can.

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How Do You Maintain Focus on Top Initiatives? Five Methods

Situation: A company is enjoying a good year both adding new business and serving current clients. When business is good the CEO finds it difficult to focus on all of his initiatives. This is frustrating. How do you maintain focus on your top initiatives when it gets really busy?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • When times are good, many new opportunities arise. If you have too many initiatives, you lose focus and have difficulty achieving them. Limit your initiatives to 2-3 at a time, focus on them, get them done and done right. Then pick your next 2-3 most important initiatives.
  • Schedule time for your initiatives on your calendar. Honor this time commitment just as you would an important customer appointment.
  • You might try a daily prioritized list of 4-5 small things and one big thing and focus on these for the day. Keep track of other priorities on a separate To-Do List.
  • Hire an assistant to whom you can delegate the small things – including the background research on your big initiatives. This gives you more time to focus on the big things, and the important decisions within the bigger projects.
  • Create a planning calendar for your initiatives. Assess each initiative for level of effort required, determine specific deliverables, and the amount of time that it will take to complete the initiative. Next, prioritize the list and take on a small number at any one time. This will help you both to complete the initiatives that you start, and to complete more of them in a given time period.

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