Dodo Loves Marketing

Now that you have the start of your brand new business at your fingertips, let’s take a look at you and your attitude to being in business.

Let’s make it professional. Don’t fool yourself with the idea that working from home will be easy. While you won’t have to join the morning rush-hour traffic to work, you also won’t have the benefit of the discipline that a 9-to-5 office day and a bevy of co-workers imposes on the rest of us. ..more

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A great deal of interesting and useful information can be derived from close observation of potential competitors. In one sense they are doing today what you are planning to do tomorrow. They should have already refined their product or service and learned from their mistakes — knowledge from which you can benefit. Furthermore, as they will be your competitors, it is wise to know their strengths and weaknesses. As you follow various avenues of research, compile a dossier on each of your competitors and add new information as you go along. This will make it easier to conduct your final assessment. ..more

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Duration of the interview

How long a given interview lasts is, of course, very largely determined by inherent factors. The time devoted to an interview should be sufficient to ..more

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Today you will seldom find home-based entrepreneurs struggling on their own to meet deadlines. Help, whether in the form of people or equipment, makes life easier. Many people contract or employ others to help them on a part-time, full-time or as-needed basis. Another way is to invest in a personal computer or word-processor, photocopier, or fax machine. ..more

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They’ve got these separate silos of authority and creativity, but no one talks across the boundaries,” a consultant called in by one of America’s largest food manufacturers tells me. “People who handle one brand won’t cooperate with people who manage another, let alone try to innovate new products or marketing approaches together. But to stay competitive, they’ve got to create teams that transcend these boundaries: ..more

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Weblike connectivity is the secret of success in many industries where people spend less of their careers in a single organization and more in short-lived, high-intensity relationships. Entertainment is certainly one such field. But this pattern, some predict, will come to typify many or most fields in the years to come. ..more

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Survey of American employers reveals that more than half the people who work for them lack the motivation to keep learning and improving in their job. Four in ten are not able to work cooperatively with fellow employees, and just 19 percent of those applying for entry-level jobs have enough self-discipline in their work habits. ..more

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CEO at a subsidiary of a South American conglomerate was promoted to another position, leaving six top managers vying to succeed him. The six fell into a competition that undermined their unity as a management team. The conglomerate called in a consultant to sort out the strengths and weaknesses of the six and thus help them come to a decision. ..more

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Focus on trivial issues

Sometimes the owner becomes so engrossed in tiny details or an irrelevant issue, that important issues are ignored or glossed-over. For example, the owner may spend days reading through computer magazines simply to choose a personal computer. The problem often occurs when the business is experiencing some kind of difficulty and the owner finds it uncomfortable to think about the difficult problems and resorts to solving a few easy ones. It is a way of escaping from troubling concerns while at the same time feeling that useful work is being done. ..more

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Ten major reasons why new businesses fail

Cash flow problems

This is the single most common cause of new business failure. Many businesses, even profitable ones, fail because they run out of cash — they go insolvent. Insolvency occurs when a firm is unable to meet its obligations such as salaries, creditors, interest payments and expenses. It is caused by cash flowing out of the business faster than it comes in. Although a firm can sometimes survive a period of insolvency by delaying the payment of its obligations, it is liable to be sued by its creditors or employees (or have its electricity or telephone cut off) at any time. ..more

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Selling everything a company can make until you have reached the point where the marginal spending to produce and sell the product won’t yield the return you want.

The implications of that and how a company needs to include marketers in all of its decision-making processes. That’s because if you really want to maximize profits, you need to know how much you can sell before you decide how much to produce. For the moment, however, I will focus on current capacity and simply say that ..more

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It is quite common for our request for a Next Step to meet with the following response: “Let me bounce this off the so- and-so committee (or: such-and-such a work group) and see what they have to say about it.”

Or:

“I’ll have to run this past the committee—they make all the decisions in this area.”

Or:

“It looks good—we just need to get approval from the committee, but don’t worry, that’s just a formality.” ..more

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Why those terms?

An extremely important negotiating question. If you don’t ask it at least once, you are not doing your job well.

If you have an impasse on one of those three things, you can always step back and ask to look at one of the other three elements.

If an issue is only producing disagreement and frustration, there is no sin in asking that it be postponed in order to allow you and the prospect to discuss something that you do agree on. Emphasize commonalities, and you will eventually be able to build up enough trust to move forward to the most difficult issues. ..more

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LEVEL 2: CLASHES

The central message is designed to help us manage differences in good relationships. Clashes happen in good relationships.

Despite our best efforts, Annoyances sometimes accumulate and grow into Clashes. How do we know when the line has been crossed? Indications are:

• Repeated arguments about the same issue, perhaps spread over days or weeks.
• Arguing over an increasing number of issues.
• Feeling less co-operative toward the Other.
• Feeling less trusting of the Other’s honest good will toward us.
• Remaining angry at the Other for a longer period, perhaps hours or days.
• Beginning to privately question the value of the relationship. ..more

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Some conflicts are hardly noticeable as they ebb and flow through our daily social encounters. Others grow into intense disputes that spawn interpersonal tragedies. The severity of conflict ranges from insignificant Annoyances through a middle range of Clashes to severe Crises that threaten the life of the relationship.

Just as a golfer selects the proper club for the shot, and a mechanic chooses the right tool for the job, different levels of conflict call for different strategies. ..more

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Defensiveness, mistrust, and vengefulness lift like morning fog from the interpersonal battlefield, revealing possible routes around the rock in the road. Both you and your other are now emotionally ready to join efforts in mutually searching for the best route.

Why does the Breakthrough happen? Ironically, it does not result from logical persuasion, rational thinking, or reasonable problem-solving, although we may think so at the time. Instead, it springs automatically from several psychological forces that converge to produce this significant but often unnoticed event. ..more

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Reality-Testing

Unless perceptions are tested against objective reality (what the Other really means), inaccuracies can grow. Talking together tests the accuracy of our perceptions against the replies of our partner. Effective day-to-day management of interpersonal differences requires conversation.

When interdependency is high and time for communication is limited, the burden on both persons’ abilities to efficiently check out perceptions is heavy. Being busy people, time is seldom so abundant that the burden of reality-testing does not occasionally exceed our abilities to communicate, to hear and understand the Other. ..more

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Organisational Cancer

There are six cancers that affect the health of organisations. They are Change Paralysis, Score Politics, Havoc, Mission Drift, Stampede and Nepotism.

Organisational cancers are caused by the attitudinal and behavioural responses of business managers and their teams to the priority declarations, strategies, decisions, policies, regulations, value systems and practices originating from owners, chief executives, boards of directors, functional custodians (such as accountants and engineers) and strong individual leaders. ..more

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Firms that experience poor or deteriorating global competitiveness generally suffer from a number of organisational diseases. These diseases originate from internal business management practices or are caused by the dynamics of the market and the intrusion of governments.

Organisational diseases can be explained in terms of the human body and its habitat. The human body is under constant threat of cancers, genetically encoded sicknesses, viruses, bacteria, toxins and injuries. When the body is poorly managed or maintained, ..more

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How much of you can be changed?

If you hate meeting new people, can you learn to love the icebreaking with strangers? If you shy away from confrontation, can you be made to revel in the cut and thrust of debate? If the bright lights make you sweat, can you be taught to thrill to the challenge of public speaking? Can you carve new talents?

Many managers and many companies assume that the answer to all these questions is “Yes.” With the best of intentions they tell their employees that everyone has the same potential. ..more

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