Alan Guinn 5-22-12 (2)

Alan Guinn 5-15-12

Based on an article by Jeffrey James, published in Inc Magazine, we take a look at the good qualities–and bad qualities..and what each means to us, as employees.  Be sure and comment on your thoughts on the material.

Alan Guinn 5-8-12

Let’s look for just a minute at some things and see how they impact you.

Yet another friend emailed me this week, letting me know that he’s been “downsized” or “rightsized” or whatever the term of the day is in corporate America.   Notice I’m no longer capitalizing the word “corporate” although I did it for years.  I did it because I lived, breathed, and believed that corporate America was the future of business.  That was when I was 30.  Now, I’m 60, and I have cancer, and that’s forced me to look at some things differently. 

Oh, I still believe that if you’re 20 and not a Liberal you don’t have a heart, and if you’re 40 and not a conservative, you don’t have a brain.  But now I’m 60, and what I’m most sure about is that I’m not sure anyone has the answers right now.  Just a moment.  Let me change that comment.  I’m not sure anyone has the right answers right now.   

But I’m also not sure that we ever did.

Don’t misinterpret this article.  I’m certainly no crusader for change..well, maybe I am to a certain extent— but I’m too mainstream and too past-challenged to stand on a stage and shout at the rain for change to happen, much less lead a group of advocates into creating a new utopia.  This isn’t a manifesto for a change in government, small g, or to foment a revolution, small r.  This is simply some observations about how trains find it difficult to run when they are off the track. 

See, locomotives are built to run on rails of steel that guide their direction and give them purpose and keep them completely and faithfully on a pathway to a chosen destination.  By choosing and throwing switches at the yard, and following the signs of the road, an engineer doesn’t really “drive” the train…he facilitates its trip from one point to another. 

When I think about history, our country–actually, our world–has been more like a pendulum than a steady locomotive on the track of destiny.  Infrequently, to be sure, someone comes along like a flash in the pan and brings an idea to the forefront that helps civilization and humanity along the way.  Or we have a national or world awakening.  Or a political group finds a leader around which it can coalesce and until he or she goes off the deep end in categorical fashion with an oversized ego or a context approaching the belief they can walk on water,  all things work together for good.

Well, folks, we’re not there right now. 

And my advice to my friend was first, to possibly look at a business we’re involved with, but most assuredly, to think about starting his own business.  Why?  Because as sure as a locomotive runs on rails, business isn’t exciting right now.  All the world is waiting on an initial public offering from a internet application that makes people talk to one another, and all the world thinks the public buying and selling shares in its company is going to change history and make business well again.  We’re enamored with a telephone that does more than let you talk to other people…people have downloaded billions..not millions, mind you, but BILLIONS of applications meant to make this telephone work better.  And yet, when I punch in numbers, I still hear a ring, and if the party on the other end wants to talk with me, they’ll answer the telephone and we’ll have a real, live conversation.  And I can ask it questions that it answers.  In a voice.  Sigh.

We’re constantly bombarded in the media by the fact that the ranks of the rated unemployed are decreasing.  Of course they are.  People are tired of looking for jobs and not getting any offers. They’ve fallen out of the measurement scale.  And, as I’ve said in several comments in the press previously, how much confidence do we have that the numbers being reported by the government, small g, are actually correct?  

Let me put it like this:  Would you stake your job, your career, your car, your house—your life—on the accuracy of the numbers being reported and against which so many decisions are made?  I wouldn’t.

So what it all boils down to is this. 

It’s not the economy, stupid.  It’s not whether you think anyone can deliver hope and change, or whether you think the cost of your student loan should double in interest paid.  It’s not whether you believe we should have universal healthcare, or universally paid healthcare, or the government should go on the gold standard.

It all boils down to whether you’re better off now than you used to be, and whether or not you believe you can be better off in the future than you are now.  And if you believe any of those things, what do you need to do to make them happen? 

You.  Not government, small g.   Not your employer, small e.  Not your Family, capital F. 

What can You do to impact Your Life, capital Y, capital L? 

That’s what creates the Oasis, capital O, that you’re seeking.   For too long, we’ve thought that everyone else makes the world go ’round.  To quote from the movie Field of Dreams, “no, it’s you, Ray.”

And if your name isn’t Ray, insert your own name in that quote.   Forget everyone else making the difference in your life.  Chart your own pathway.  Facilitate your own locomotive.  Don’t bellyache that you’re owed, or that you’ve put in your time, or that you shouldn’t have to work so hard.   Just set about in your own small way, making the situation you’re in, better for you.

Find the Oasis.  I’m convinced that it’s out there.

Alan Guinn 5-1-12

Alan and Steve discuss the most recent NFIB Small Biz Survey, and the importance to SMB Business owners to have mobile apps available for clients and customers.

Alan Guinn 4-17-12

Alan and Steve discuss the process of speaking to groups of people–whether they are customers, clients, vendors, employees, or even assembled groups–and some guidelines for creating your own perfect presentation.  Based upon a Blog called “How to Establish Credibility in front of a Crowd without Sounding Like a Blowhard” by Pamela Slim.

Alan Guinn 4-3-12

Consumer sentiment, to a great degree, drives the entire practice of marketing.  When we look at marketing through the generally rosy-colored lens of business, we see marketing helping to create top of mind awareness within it’s targets by using a variety of images, thoughts, themes, messages and music to help create mindshare.   And the marketing we live daily in our lives is, to a great degree, driven by the dollars we have to spend and how strongly we feel about spending them.  Don’t feel strongly about the future?  You’re probably not going to be a ready recipient for the marketing messages that bombard your sensitivities on a daily basis.

But, for all the news we hear in the media, it seems that we’re ready to spend those dollars.  We just need to find where they are hiding.

Today’s Wall Street Journal trumpted the news that the first quarter equities result demonstrate it was, in their words, ” A Roaring Quarter.”   Front page news, on the fold, tells us that the “Dow and S&P 500 sealed their best first quarter gains since 1998, and best-ever in points, amid signs of increasing consumer confidence. The Dow rose 994 points, or 8.1%, and the S&P rose 150.87 points, or 12% during the period.”   (The Wall Street Journal, March 31-April 1, 2012.)

I’m sorry, but when I read items like that, I’m reminded of the headline, “Dewey beats Truman.”  

Americans are told we are spending again on cars, on homes, on items like refrigerators and stoves, and tractors.  Business is committing to, and actually doing, Initial Public Offerings.  Except for the one that dropped precipitously and disasterously in the first nine seconds of trading and cancelled the IPO, returning the money to the investors.  

Everyone is waiting on Facebook to go public, as if the issuance of a percentage of stock in Facebook is going to bail the USA out of those doldrums which were brought on by our own complacency in listening to politicians between 2000 and 2008 tell us that we didn’t need to worry–i.e., every American should own a home–after all, as Rep. Barney Frank told us, “it’s an American right to do so.”   Somehow, we all should have known that you can’t lend money to people who can’t repay it and expect everything to be hunky-dory down the road.  Were we really that stupid?

I’m of the belief that we’ve matured a bit since 2008 and now, we’re actually cognizant that it could all come crashing down on our heads at any time, but we still cling–somewhat tenuously–to President Barack Obama and his discipline of Hope and Change.   Many have long since abandoned his “hope” but now recognize the “change” he offered  as what he actually meant—a polar opposite to what they wanted to believe he said at the time.  You rarely see the screaming crowds at his rallies shown in 2008 on TV these days, and there’s a reason for that–a very well defined marketing reason.  It would communicate just how we let ourselves be led down that primrose pathway to what we thought we wanted and what we thought we heard, but  now can’t be delivered and can’t be believed in.

And the marketers with whom I work seem to be ever more skeptical of what is going on in the marketplace.  We are not seeing the results that are being reported.  We’re not seeing those major swings that are being reported on TV every night.  It isn’t happening in our neighborhoods.  What we see is $4.00 gas.  What we see are unemployment percentages that the media claims are hovering at or above 8%, but in reality must be much higher.  Some estimates put unemployment as high as 25% in some categories of worker, but you don’t hear about that. 

Moreover,  we’re tried and true marketing experts.  And, we’re not seeing results in tried and true marketing efforts.  That speaks volumes about where we truly are as a country. 

Direct mail seems to be dying–probably because the Post Office keeps threatening to raise rates, and then actually does it;  Email marketing doesn’t have the impact it once did–probably due to one of two reasons–either spam filters are improving, or we’re becoming significantly more selective to whom we offer our email addresses.   I remember when people wanted to get email–it was something new and different.  Now, the US Postal Service would charge for each email sent and received if it could find a way to do it, simply to  balance the finances of that failing entity.  Social media marketing is compelling in it’s offers, but everyone hasn’t bought into the trickle of dollars being slowly doled out by large corporations.  Even small startups that became mega-stars–as an example, Groupon–seem to be having issues.   It’s trading today below it’s pre-IPO price of $20.00.  Groupon’s “core issues” are being questioned, because it can’t seem to accurately report the gaps between what it sells and what those who buy what it sells want refunded to them— because Groupon didn’t meet their expectations.

So, where are we at the end of Qtr 1, 2012?   

1) Every business should do some article marketing online, to build up search engine recognition.

2) Every  business should have a Facebook page, which may or may not be the same as it’s webpage, and should have a presence on Twitter.  Watch next quarter to see what the newest and hottest social media opportunities might be, and how your business might fit into the process.

3) Every business should strive to know its customers;  who makes up your customer base, what do they spend, what do they want?  You should know if the offers you make to the marketplace meet and consistently exceed the needs of your customers.  If they don’t, your customers will go somewhere else.  Customers are really fickle, aren’t they?  I mean, after all, here you are beating your head against the ground to give them what they tell you they want, and then they go and change what they want—even while you tell them what it is that they should want.

4)  Don’t waste huge amounts of money on TV.  Especially in second and third quarters in North America, it’s a wasteland.  Other than sweeps weeks, it’s reruns and fill-ins.  If people aren’t watching TV, you aren’t going to influence their buying patterns.  Moreover, there are going to be lots and lots of political ads on TV in the second and third quarters in the runup to the election.  Time will become more and more expensive with lesser and lesser attention paid to the time you pay for!

5)  Finally, and this is one of those really simple, really straightforward suggestions—think about what you do and how, if you were a customer or client–you would react to the marketing you plan to do.   It just might give you some insight into what you could do that could move the sales needle.  And that, my friends, is what it’s all about.