Archives for November 2014

How to Get More Referrals from Your Network

November 20, 2014 by Christine

So you’ve put together a network of people that know about and maybe even have worked with/shopped with your business. Great! But how can you start getting more referrals out of people who are already in your network so that you can expand the size of that network and reach out to new potential clients or customers?

Here are a few tips to help you maximize the referrals that you get:

Show you’re worth it. People aren’t going to refer your business to their friends or colleagues if you don’t display a certain amount of value. The last thing that they want is for you to make them look bad if someone takes them up on their referral. This means that you need to consistently deliver a high level of quality in all areas of your business. Additionally, you should make sure that people are aware of your accomplishments or skills as an organization, as this will give you some more legitimacy.

Ask. Why not simply ask your customers or clients to refer you to their friends? You likely ask for feedback on your products or services, so asking for referrals could lead to a big increase in the amount you actually get. Sometimes people just need that little extra push before giving a referral. In addition, when you ask for referrals, it's a great way to check the pulse of your customers belief in you.

Continue to network. Just because you’ve already established a solid network doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be trying to meet more people. The larger your network grows, the more likely you’ll be able to find people who are willing to refer you to others. Keep going to trade shows, conventions and networking sessions, and keep reaching out to other people in your industry online through social media and email.

Put effort into your relationships. Make sure that you’re constantly staying on the radar of all the people in your network. Try to have some form of communication with them about once a month or so. That way, people won’t feel like you’re only reaching out to them because you need them to refer you.

Referrals could be one of the missing ingredients to help give your business the growth spurt it needs. Contact us today at Viral Solutions for more tips on how you can get these referrals through your door.

by Christine Kelly

CEO and Queen Bee | Viral Solutions LLC

Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.

Filed Under: Analytics

Part 2: Application of the Balanced Scorecard Framework – Theory Meets Practice.

November 19, 2014 by Katie

This is the Part 2 post of the Balanced Scorecard framework. Here, we'll take the principles that were discussed in Part 1, and walk through the steps to apply the Balanced Scorecard framework.

To aid you in this, I encourage snagging a pen and paper to jot down your thoughts that come into your mind at each phase of our application discussion. Doing so will aid you in having a hands-on exercise dealing specifically with how you can use this information in your business, team, or project. So, let's get started on how to easily apply the Balanced Scorecard.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Here, you need to make sure you get the gist of the framework . The Balanced Scorecard is a tool. The purpose is organizing a firm into 4 fundamental aspects: financial, customer, internal processes, and people. Each of these areas require analysis, planning, and monitoring of activities to fully align and achieve organizational initiatives. This is because if one area is off or lagging, other fundamental areas within the firm will also be off. This requires you to be familiar with the aspects that come into play within each of those areas. This knowledge helps you to identify, analyze, and create specific objectives within each aspect of a firm. Furthermore, the scorecard side of the framework will require you to get SMART (i.e. specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time specific). Meaning that whatever ideas that come to mind during this process are simply ideas until you granulate those ideas into purposeful objectives that have targets, measures, initiatives, resources, and by whom to make objectives a reality.
Gather essential data. Planning should not be left to subjective opinions about an organization, situation, or project. There is a time and place for subjective analysis, but for initial analysis the more objective your data is the less emotional barriers within your analysis. You can use primary or secondary data. Primary data is data that is created by you, such as: financial statements, performance evaluations, customer feedback surveys, productivity reports, process analysis flowcharts, and/or other data that reflects your actual firm. Secondary data is data created by someone else outside of your firm. This can include: industry benchmarks, customer feedback surveys, employee surveys completed, and/or other related aspects that could inspire positive change within the 4 aspects of the Balanced Scorecard framework.
Go to Analysis Town on that data. Data means nothing if it isn't reviewed and understood. If you experience anxiety over data because of not knowing what it means, fear not, you can learn. If this is the case, I would encourage reaching out to a professional that can assist you with that learning and application. If this is not the case, and you're confident in your ability to not only analyze, but understand the data is rock solid then it is time to get in the data trenches and come face-to-face with what it means within the context of the 4 fundamental Balanced Scorecards aspects of your firm. Analysis isn't a one shot glance. It requires focus, drive, and stamina to move through the data and really identify the relevancy aspects of it. Doing so, sets the stage for the next step.
Evaluate options and form goal statements. Evaluate your options or alternatives that could shift your current position into a better position. Here, you simply connect the dots from your analysis of data and form firm, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time specific goal statements that fit within the fundamental perspective of the balanced scorecard, i.e financial, customer, internal processes, or people.
Get super specific about your goal statements. I'm hitting home on this aspect again because people tend to loosely identify goals and then loosely work towards them. The Balanced Scorecard is specific. Part of it's framework is granulating goals also known as objectives into specific or better yet, scored platforms. Here, you identify your objective, key performance indicators (i.e. what you're going to measure, how it is measured), target performance (i.e. your performance indicators letting you know whether or not your initiatives are on track or not), your initiatives (i.e. actions to get from point A of your objective to point Z), and in some cases, identifying the people, teams, and resources needed to make this happen. Basically, the BSC helps you to not only get all of your ducks in row with your data, but to organize all of your objectives, measures, targets, resources, people, and time to get it done. In essence, it may remind you of a GANTT chart used within project management. This is because it is the scorecard side of creating a balanced operational plan that aligns with your organizational objectives and mission.
Rock it out. Seriously, a plan without action is simply an ineffective plan. Take action and make your BSC strategy session “rain”. By “rain” I am implying rocking out some serious productivity that helps you to nail your objectives and create more more aligned, productive, and innovative firm for you, your employees, customers, and all other stakeholders. For every action, there is a reaction. Let that be a positive one that yields in growth in profits, productivity, joy, and awesomeness for your firm. You must rock it out in order to reap the returns that you so purposefully planned. To do otherwise, would simply be dreaming without doing, and my friend, you're so much better than that.
Have fun. Seriously, have the best time ever carrying out your initiatives. Your energy will help to support you in moving forward, will establish a positive vibe for your employees, and really, makes the whole process of planning, doing, and monitoring that much more engaging. You may even empower others along the way.
Rinse & Repeat. Sounds like the back of shampoo bottle, right?! Perhaps, but the concept is the same. The BSC works best in a proactive firm that not only evaluates data, strategically plans, carries out initiatives, monitors outcomes, but also does so on a consistent basis. This isn't one time fixes everything tool. Quite the contrary. So, you need to identify the frequency that works best for you and your firm to carry out such sessions proactively. Your bottom-line, business, customers, employees, and stakeholders will thank you.

In conclusion, the Balanced Scorecard is a tool. A tool that is only as effective as the handy-man or handy-woman that uses it. Take the time understand the tool, to feel it, to practice it, to see it in action, to care for it, and to share that tool to help others build and maintain the 4 fundamental perspectives of their business. It's not about the destination of reaching your objectives, but about the journey in which you take to get you to that destination. The Balanced Scorecard can help you along your journey. Enjoy!!!

by Katie Doseck, MBA, Ph.D.

Chief Visionary and Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve | Viral Solutions LLC

Dr Katie Doseck, MBA, PhD Viral Solutions

Katie Doseck, PhD MBA | Chief Visionary & Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve. I catapulted my experience with extensive education, trainings, and personal coaching; earning a PhD in Organizational Management with a specialization in Human Resource Management, MBA in Organizational Leadership, and BA in Law & Liberal Arts. Subject Matter Expert (SME) areas: Human Resource Management, Employment Law, Organizational Change, Change Management, Resource Planning, Strategic Planning, Talent Management, Selling & Sales Management, Training & Development, Decision Making Models, Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Motivation. Dr. Doseck is based out of Logan, Utah.

Filed Under: Analytics Tagged With: katie doseck, viral solutions

Part 1: Understanding the "Balance" of Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard – Get the Gist in a Jiffy.

November 18, 2014 by Katie

Dr. Robert Kaplan and Dr. Robert Norton are two brilliant strategy masters out of Harvard University. The Balanced Scorecard is a framework that the two created to aid management professionals with strategic and day-to-day planning. The premise behind this framework is that it breaks down an organization into 4 holistic aspects that every business experiences.

These four components include: financial, customer, internal processes, and people (i.e. learning and growth).

Kaplan and Norton argued that when one or more of these aspects of a business is out of alignment with organizational objectives, the entire business is impacted. This is because although these 4 aspects of a business are different, they are connected in achieving the success and/or failures of the organization. Meaning, that when one aspect is off, all aspects are impacted.

Say if the financial perspective is off, may impact hiring the right talent needed for the job, which may impact customer service, internal processes, and may come back to harm the financial aspect of the firm even more. Simply put, what started with a finance issue creates a trickle down effect of other issues within an organization. Kaplan and Norton argued interconnections exist within these areas, and as such, creating a framework that encompasses these interconnections will aid management in becoming more effective with their vision, mission, strategy, and initiatives to meet organizational objectives. Therefore, the remainder of this post will summarize the financial, customer, internal processes, and people aspects of the Balanced Scorecard.

Financial: Here, management hone in on essential aspects impacting the financial side of the firm. This can include: financial performance (i.e. revenues, expenses, profits, cash, receivables), return on investment, return on capital, and other financial activities within the firm.

Customer: The focus within this aspect is the customer. Specifically, management narrow in on essential factors to attract, convert, retain, and grow it's customer base. This information is pivotal to the root cause of the customer lifecycle, delivery, retention, and referral aspects related to customers internally and externally within the firm.

Internal Processes: There are some organizations in which the internal process is one of the most valuable aspects of their entire business model, i.e. McDonald’s thrives on it's operational internal processes. Within this aspect of an organization management direct their attention to process design, analysis, alignment / lack of alignment, productivity (i.e. inputs / outputs), bottlenecks or other wasted aspects of an internal process(es). This analysis is paramount to evaluating the operational, project management, and quality management aspects of a firm.

People: This aspect is also known as the learning and growth perspective. Here, managment weigh-in on recruitment, training and development, career planning, retention, job satisfaction, and talent management. The idea is the people side of an organization is fundamental to employee recruitment, retention, training, and performance that aligns with organizational objectives. If we don't have great people working for us, then what are we? We should hire the best. We should inspire, engage, train, and grow our employees.

The Balanced Scorecard provides management with an extensive birds-eye view of an organization. This view helps management to identify specific areas of improvement that are interconnected to the entire organization. Through simple organization of holistic aspects of an organization, management focuses in on that particular areas of an organization. Specifically, management uses this framework to analyze the what, why, how, when, and by whom aspects within these areas. This is seen through the “scorecard” side of the planning tool. Here, the scorecard is compartmentalized to organize key organizational objectives that tie into resolve, minimize, or perhaps grow one or more goals that was forged via the analysis process. The scorecard side simply aid management to organize the fundamental objectives, measurements (i.e. key performance indicators to aid management to identify whether or not the initiatives are on track), target outcome, and the initiatives needed. In essence, the Balanced Scorecard is one of many tools that management can use to become more effective within aligning organizational objectives to specific needs in the organization. This requires a significant understanding of the business mission and strategic vision to assist with crafting additional alignment of initiatives within each of the fundamental aspects of an organization. In doing so, management can use this framework to improve customer, financial, internal processes, and the people-side of an organization.

HERE IS PART 2

by Katie Doseck, MBA, Ph.D.

Chief Visionary and Strategic Ace Up Your Sleeve | Viral Solutions LLC

Filed Under: Analytics Tagged With: katie doseck, viral solutions

Simple Ways to Improve Communication within Your Business

November 17, 2014 by Christine

The most efficient and successful companies are more likely to have outstanding communication practices in place within their companies. If you fall out of touch with your employees or partners, your business operations will quickly begin to suffer.

Here are a few practical tips that will go a long way toward helping to improve the communication among your team members:

Implement daily check-ins. You don’t need to be in your employees’ business all the time, but taking a couple minutes to check in and see how things are going will make it easier for you to become aware of any issues as they arise and also serve to make you more approachable by your employees, as they are hearing from you on a regular basis. So ‘huddle-up' for 17 minutes every day, no more, no less. Stand up! Get close. Listen and allow your team to be heard. As the old adage goes, first seek to understand before being understood.

Encourage team meetings. Every other week or so, see if you can gather your team together to have a discussion about the direction of your business and the steps that each team member is taking to help progress the company. Make sure that you encourage everyone, even new team members, to offer their opinions or ask any questions about anything related to the company. These meetings are a good time to establish an open, unified dynamic in your workplace and are an easy way to build in a scheduled time where you get to talk to everyone on your team.

Have executive meetings. It’s important that everyone on your executive team is constantly on the same page in regard to the direction of your company. So in addition to having meetings with everyone on your team, get together with your executive team on a regular basis to go over recent accomplishments, upcoming goals and any other reports on what’s happening within your company. This should be done quarterly and preferably off site.

Choose the right tools. While email might be the simplest communication tool to use, it’s not always the best bet for making sure that everyone is always on the same page. Try to use more phone calls, or research the various communications applications available for businesses today and decide what would be best for your company. Internal communications should use a more instant message service than external communications. Hey – nothing still beats face-to-face either. Consider laying down those devices and look somebody in the eyes.

Secret Sauce. Great communication is a byproduct of great culture. But great culture is not a byproduct of reading a book. Leadership must set the vision, guide the company with a purpose, instill core values for a solid foundation and hire/fire accordingly. The team needs to own the process, own their role and perform to deliver – but in a culture of collective greatness set to solve the problems of the company's customer.

Communications are part of the backbone of a successful business. For more tips on how you can make yours more effective, speak with us today at Viral Solutions.

by Christine Kelly

CEO and Queen Bee | Viral Solutions LLC

Filed Under: Analytics Tagged With: communication, culture

Click and Mortar | Managing Complex Multi-Channel Marketing Conflicts

November 14, 2014 by Christine

Click and Mortar firms face a managerial challenge: falling prey to channel conflicts. Many marketing pundits have long recognized these conflicts occurring when a product can take several paths to get to the consumer. In addition, traditional sales people can take issue with the lack of integration with the internet sales channels within a Click and Mortar business model.

The phrase Clicks and Bricks have to do with a business model, where there is a marriage between the traditional “face-to-face in the building” way of doing business, coupled with the interaction of a website or email campaign. Each business model uses various channels to market the product to the customer. This integration of e-commerce and the traditional physical plant can create problems for any organization.

Channels in the marketing world are defined as forms of contact and reach. The telephone, fax, email, mobile smart phone and the internet, along with the core traditional print and visual media are used to put that channel into place. Channels are direct sales, call centers, virtual communities, the website, direct mail and again traditional print media. Nearly all businesses use each channel in various phases and in coordination or conjunction with each other to inspire, inform, advise, serve, relate and gain contracts with the consumer.

Cornelius Streit, Marketing Manager for Bayer in Singapore shared his insight into marketing channel conflicts and how business leadership can manage them. When our marketing efforts are in the Inspire/Attract phase, then marketing tactics using resources available via Internet, Direct Mail or Traditional Media can coexist. Streit does not recommend that the consumer can be economically inspired or attracted with Direct Sales, Call Centers or an event Community. When in the Inform/Orient phase his research suggests the best channel is the Internet. Once informed, we move to the Advise phase where Streit offers the Internet or a Community as an economically manageable option. Direct sales should be used to advise, consult at the contracting stage and expand the relationship with the goal of deeper commitments to your brand.

Channel conflicts can occur when one method of reaching prospective consumers interferes or even cannibalizes another. This can range from consumers engaging in one form of the purchase process being confused with another, to the internal perceived threat that the Click side has over the Brick side. To avoid a channel conflict in a click-and-mortar business, it is necessary to ensure that both traditional and online channels are fully integrated. This reduces possible confusion with customers while providing the business benefits of a dual channel.

Such high-risk conflicts generally occur when one channel targets customer segments already served by an existing channel. This leads to such a deterioration of channel economics that the threatened channel either retaliates or simply stops selling its product. The result is disintermediation. The two main disintermediation causes are finance and internet. Selling over the inrnet while maintaining a physical inventory and store-front can enhance this marketing conflict.

Leadership must act to diffuse conflict and assure employees, especially those whose income and performance is gauged upon such transactions, by aligning goals, and coordinating communication to achieve MGR_MultchannelMarketing_Infographic2 synergy. This shows to all employees involved that the whole company benefits from sales from all channels. Some channels may be harder to measure than another.

Customers must be able to freely move from one channel to another and feel as if they are engaged with a company as well as seeing no difference between Click and the Mortar. This requires coordination, control mechanisms, system interoperability and incentives to encourage cross-channel cooperation so that the strengths and efficiencies of each channel are utilized.

A well-executed Click and Mortar strategy will take advantage of, and leverage many synergies. They will share infrastructure, operations, customer base, supplier and distribution channels, branding, and expand upon internal learning and common trust across departments. Once this becomes a well-oiled machine the advantage with Click and Mortar over a pure internet business model, is that people want to do business with people. And those people will level the playing field when they are educated in product knowledge and are used to build virtual relationships.

The strength of a well-planned multi-channel marketing system has many obvious benefits. By broadening the customer reach and market coverage, the costs of marketing can be reduced when the strengths of each channel are used in an optimal way.

Managing a multi-channel marketing system can be complex and challenging. Mostly because many businesses are organized and departmentalized by what it takes to implement a channel and follow it through to where the consumer makes a purchase. Additional considerations would be that certain customer types should be avoided in certain channels.

Source: Channel Conflicts Wiki

Source: Horizontal & Vertical Marketing Conflicts – Small Business Chron

Source: Definition of Channel Conflict

Source: Multi-Channel Marketing & Strategy

Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer | Viral Solutions LLC

Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.

Filed Under: Analytics