FRAM SYSTEMS ^blog

What happens if your wheels on your car are out of alignment?…

One of the first things you’ll notice is your car will pull or drift away from straight line. the spokes of the steering wheel will want turn off to one side while you’re driving on a straight and level road. In other words, you car will want to go off course. That’s the result of misalignment. As we’ll see its the same in your business.

If you’ve taken the time to examine your business, I mean really closely examine your business, you may well know certain aspects of it very well. For example, you will have a good handle on your fixed costs, operating expenses, cost of goods sold, cost per selling opportunity, supply contracts, asset values and the like. You should be able to tell the state of your operation at any given moment. You should know who your best customers are, who your suppliers are and what your commitments are to them. These things are all important to success of your business and you should be on top of them at all times.

There is however, something even more important, something so vital that if you ignore it long enough, it may make all the other information about your business valueless. What I’m talking about here is your mission statement: your message, what you stand for, the core reason your company exists. It is the distillation, in just a few words, that conveys the value your company offers. You see, if you fail to focus intently on the value you provide, someone else, your competition, will and you will end up losing your businesses most valuable asset: you customers and clients.

How does that work? It doesn’t matter what sector of the market your business is involved with. You can be a manufacturer, distributor, retailer, service provider, or professional. No matter what its is your provide, someone, somewhere must buy it before you receive the benefits of your labor. And no matter what it is you do, what service or product you provide, there is almost always someone else in the market that can provide the same thing. Even if you have no apparent competition today, tomorrow you will. No patent, no secret, nothing can keep competition away, especially if your business is successful. As a matter of fact, the more successful you become, the attractive your business becomes to potential competitors. It may even be that your competition, if they are shrewd, has taken the time and spent the money to figure out what your business is not providing that your customers want, or think they want or need. When they do, all the expertise you have, all the infrastructure investment made, all the time you’ve spent, all the hopes and dreams you have will quickly become worthless.

Why? because you have ignored the one essential ingredient, the one thing that will keep the competition at bay and virtually give a lock on your market that no can ever open. With that ingredient in place and carefully maintained, your business will remain secure even if you give away all the secrets to your processes, procedures and practices that you now think have taken your business to where it is today.

Where your money comes from

Money, revenue, earnings, what are they and what do they mean? Money, according to N. Gregory Mankiw, author of “Macroeconomics” and former chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and among the most influential economists in the world, is anything that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, its main use being a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. So money, as a store of value is also the measure of value of your product or service. Money is the meter that measures value. Money is received as revenue or the income a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. Earnings refer to income, generally to net-profit or what remains of revenue after expenses have been subtracted. So money is a measure of value, revenue is a measure of the total value provided and earnings are what you get to keep. Simple, right? Just basic economics.

So let’s work backwards for a moment. Earnings are measured in money. Money is a measure of value. Revenue is the total sum of the value delivered. So, then aren’t earnings then, an expression of the value you’ve added above and beyond your cost of materials, manufacturing, marketing? Don’t earnings measure precisely and effectively what the market, your customers and clients, perceive as the value of what you do?

So now you must ask this: what is the value my business provides? This question is the key ingredient. Understanding it is absolutely essential. This is actually what you are selling. It does not matter if you clean carpets, collect trash, write software, perform neurosurgery, design missile guidance systems or design dresses, what you are actually selling is the value you provide. If you cannot answer the question of what value your business provides then you business is off track. I can say this with absolute certainty and eventually the market will deliver that message to you. When it does, it may be too late to do anything about it.

Can you see why knowing what the value your business is providing is the most important piece of information you control? If you haven’t taken the time to do so, sit down now and think about what value you are providing. Ruminate over it and refine it until you can state it simply and effectively in language anyone can understand. That is your mission statement, your raison d’être, your distinction, your value proposition

What is your competition thinking and saying?

Here’s a big surprise: many businesses have no idea what value it is they offer. How do I know this? I looked it up in a book. This book is a marvel because it contains information on just about every business in existence, not just in America, but the world. This book (its not just one volume, it’s more like an encyclopedia)has on its pages the exact conception that every business owner has about their business. What they do, what value they deliver and how they see themselves in the market. The information in these volumes so precise its like having your mind reader or spy. Would you like to have access to this set of books? What would you pay to know exactly and clearly not only who your competitors is but what each and every one their strategies? What is it worth to you to know how they view their market? Go ahead, think of a number. What is the value? Well now, for a limited time only, I can offer this priceless resource to you for only… STOP.

What book am I talking about? Well, you probably have one or more copies of it already. Its the phone book! The one with yellow pages where just about very business in the world has a listing and an ad and yes, they even have them in Siberia and Pago Pago.

Now you’re probably asking “how is all that information in the phone book?” well, I just got mine and opened it randomly to the locksmith yellow page. I picked a local phone book so it only has 350 yellow pages. In it there are nine listing for locksmiths. Of them two have large full color display ads, two have plain black box ads and the rest just have a name and phone number. The ones with just a phone number may smart the smart ones. The first display ad is for a company named “Ace Locksmith”, well at least they get top bill in the listings. According to their ad they’re “your first choice” and the offer evening service, all type of locks installed, they’re bonded and insured and they have two locations and they’ve been in business for 26 years. Great. The next ad, directly below that one is for “GM Locksmithing”. They’re also bonded and insured (I think here in NJ they have to be), they also list some services they provide and they also serve the local area. They however, list their email address and web page. Let’s leave the other two black ads alone since they of offer essentially the same service and they didn’t blow a lot of money on a fancy ad that says nothing. Look, every locksmith, every single locksmith does more ore less the same thing. Here, in New York, Las Vegas, Fiji, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur everywhere they all do the same thing. They sell and install locks, the open locks and safes and they come to your location. And yes, they are all bonded and insured.

If you happen to be in the locksmith business, does this give you an idea of what the competition is thinking? What reason has any of them given me that would make me want to turn to any particular one for help. What value does any of the m offer that the other doesn’t. What is their message? Here’s what I get. We are all the same. So, let’s say I just broke the key off in front door lock and I can’t get in. I need a locksmith. I go next door and borrow a phone book. What would i do? I’d start calling from the A’s, so “Ace” would be my first call, and call until someone answered the phone. Remember I NEED a locksmith. “When can you get here” I’d ask. If they say that my wait won’t be long, the deal is sealed. It did not matter who I called, they are all the same.

Now what if I’d seen this ad: “Fortress Security: Speedy Security Service, We’re waiting for your call. We’ll be there in 30 minutes or less or don’t pay” Who would I have called first? That’s the guys I need. I’ll probably make my next call to order a pizza from Domino’s so I can have something to eat when I finally get in my house. I’d also be counting the minutes hoping for free service and a free pizza! So what is the value they’re offering? They’re there waiting for my call, they’ll be here right away. My problem is solved, my need has been addressed. Why would even think about calling any of those other locksmiths?

Put your mission to work

So again, in the example above, what is the fictional Fortress’s value, what are they really communicating, what are they selling? They’re communicating that my needs are important enough to them that they’ll be there for me when I call and I won’t have to wait long for service. Besides if you found their ad, who else do you think knows about their value proposition? Well, my neighbor does because he was there when I made the call, but who else? How about everyone that now works or ever worked at Fortress Security.

You see whoever runs that company thought about me and my problem long before I ever had it! He knew that what he did could be duplicated by any trained locksmith. He asked, what do my customer’s want, what do they need and how can I make that happen for them. And then he had to put the plan to work. How did he do that? We’ll for starters he had to tell everyone that worked at Fortress. They had to understand, everyone, the receptionist, the technicians, the book keeper, his secretary, everyone had to know that their mission was to answer the phone on the first ring and dispatch a tech to a location immediately so that Fortress could deliver on their commitment. He worked with his people to develop systems that would make that happen. Then they tested them, reworked and refined them, bought new equipment, radios and phones and soon they, together, could make the 30 minute guarantee something they would never have to fulfill, their system was so good.

So imagine what response you would get if you asked Ace’s or GM’s owner or employees what they do. Most likely they’ll say “We’re locksmiths”. How about Fortress’s? I think you’d hear something like “We service your security and locksmithing needs within 30 minutes of your call”. I don’t think they’d even say that they’re locksmiths because they don’t think of themselves that way, they only see the the value they provide. That’s called alignment.

Alignment is when everyone in a business knows and understands the value the business delivers. They are clear on the role they play in the delivering that value and are vigilant that the value is AT WORK at ALL TIMES, BY EVERYONE involved in delivering it.

Where your money comes from: communicating your value

“Nothing happens until something is sold” observed George A. Kozlowski in a book of the same name. What is sales? It is an interaction in which goods or services are exchanged for money or other compensation. Who are involved in sales? No matter what is being sold, no matter who pays or who creates an item or who performs a service, a sale must be concluded by people. No animals or machine conduct sales. No steer has everyone sold itself to a butcher, no car has ever driven itself into your garage. Only people can conduct sales.

So where does your revenue, your money, the perceived and accepted value of your goods or services come from? It comes, without exception, from other people. It doesn’t matter the size of the buyer or the seller, even if the buyer is the US Government, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, GE or you and I, in every step of the way, people are involved. If you just buy a can of dog food or a bag of chips, you’re involved in the transaction. If your company purchases 1,000 metric tons of Gypsum or a ream of copy paper, someone had sell and someone had to buy.

Why do you buy the things you do? Somethings you really need like food, clothing and shelter or, as in our earlier example, a locksmith. Somethings you think you need because they make your life easier or better like a car or an air conditioner. Somethings you think you need because they’ll help you live longer like vitamins or gym equipment. Somethings make your life more enjoyable like an iPod or a large screen TV. Somethings your buy just for the experience like a vacation or a trip to an amusement park.

The dollar value of your message

Can we measure the value of a message in the terms we’ve elected to use, money? No matter what goods or services you part with your money for, you must chose between many products and providers. How do you do that? On what criteria is you choice made? Sometimes its just the lowest price. If two items are essentially the same, hwy not buy the least expensive? The value you expect is no different from a can of more expensive DelMonte peas or the supermarket’s cheaper private label brand and its highly likely they were both packed on the same production line the real difference being the label itself. So if you choose DelMonte why? What makes you think that there is more value in that can? Obviously DelMonte has spent a fortune building their brand. Their message: “Nourishing Families, Enriching Live. Everyday” Even though their mission statement is a whole paragraph in length it mention two things, value to consumers and value to their shareholders, precisely the markets they need to sell to! And, even though it is so long the message, what they deem essential to convey is “Nourishing Families, Enriching Live. Everyday”. What value is the store’s label conveying? Most likely its lower price. DelMonte’s message, their value, is worth 5¢, 10¢ up to 85¢ more per item than equivalent private label canned goods.

So, if the goods are virtually identical, what do those five words mean to DelMonte. Here’s an example from my local supermarket: store brand 15oz. Sweet canned peas are normally 67¢ but were on sale for 4/$2.00 when I checked. The same size DelMonte brand was 99¢ so without the sale price DelMonte sell at a 47% premium over the store brand. When you consider that if you buy 4 cans the price would be 25c, DelMonte sells at a whooping 98% premium. Now considering the actual cost to manufacture and market the can of peas (yes, I said manufacture) is the same or close for either brand, who is taking the lion’s share of the earnings here? Even if you consider the cost of sale for DelMonte has to be higher since their marketing expense is for that item is likely 400% higher the the supermarket.

Follow me here. Let’s say each can costs 32¢ to make and put on the the grocer’s shelf. Now the grocer still has some promotional costs. They have store flyers, in store promotion and shelf space and yes, supermarkets sell the shelf space positions. So the grocer may put 10% of the cost of the item into marketing it. That brings his cost to 35.2¢ he then can mark it up 42% to get a final selling of 50¢ or a 14.8¢ profit. DelMonte on the other hand is putting 100% of the cost of the can into promotion. That’s 32¢ for the item and 32¢ for promotion; advertising, shelf space, coupons, etc.. Wait, its costing them as much to advertise as it does to make. Yes, and perhaps more. You see, DelMonte is marking up their product by 35% bring the cost to the grocer to 86.4¢ leaving 22.4¢ for DelMonte and 14% or 13.6¢ for the grocer. So the grocer is making 14.8¢ on his own brand and 13.6¢ on DelMonte but DelMonte made 22.4¢ or 51% more than the grocer! So, which brand would your supermarket rather you buy? Think about this, what would happen if they raised the price of the DelMonte can just 2¢?

So back to the message, “Nourishing Families, Enriching Live. Everyday” means 35% ROI for DelMonte. The supermarket, whose message is essentially, “Its the same thing, only cheaper” is looking at a 42% even at their sale price of 50¢! No wonder you see so many store brands. Good thing DelMonte makes much higher margins on their pet foods which account for a majority of their earnings!

But wait, I forgot one thing. Remember that the can of peas was manufactured on the same production line as the store brand. DelMonte is making a small margin there, plus there are utilizing their infrastructure asset at an optimal level.

Which message has more pull? “Nourishing Families, Enriching Live. Everyday” or “Its the same thing, only cheaper”? Which is of more benefit to you? Which do you buy.

So when I started, you thought DelMonte was making money hand over fist while the supermarket was just getting a little. Now you see that its DelMonte that may be struggling while the grocer is looking for more ways to optimize his store brand with a messages like “We’re better than the name brand at half the price!” and his stores proclaims “Low prices everyday”.

Now ask this, if DelMonte did not spend what the do getting their message out, could they ever even dream of competing on the supermarket shelf? For DelMonte their message means that they’re in the game. Its what makes them competitive. Its is, or should be what every DelMonte employee, from the board room to the factory floor brings to work with them everyday. In order to maintain their position in the market they must maintain not only the quality of their product, the efficiency of their harvesting and distribution systems but also and most importantly their message. Their name and their message in your mind, you, the person taking their goods and putting them in your cart and into your bodies is THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS THEM IN BUSINESS.

The grocer too must, in addition to running a highly sophisticated and extremely fast paced business, must maintain his message just so that you walk in the door.

In addition the grocer faces another alignment challenge. He must communicate another clear message to you and his staff must live by it. That is appearance. Just as DelMonte has spent millions on their brand, logo and label or appearance, the grocer must do the same with his. And that includes having a clean well lit store that’s properly laid out, with enough checkers to keep checkout time to a minimum, with the right goods on the shelf and employees and that helpful and pleasant.

How can he do that? It seems like an almost insurmountable task. He does that with alignment. By making sure that every employee knows exactly what the store’s mission is, for example, “a clean cheerful store where grocery shopping is a pleasure and an adventure, and the customer is king”. In fact without such alignment and dedication to the core values and message of the store, the store would fold when faced with competition in their marketing area. That’s why you may have noticed dirty and unattractive stores in very rural or poor urban areas. If the people there had another, better choice they would most assuredly spend their money there.

Misalignment: Your chiropractor is right

If your business is like most, it is probably some type of corporation. What does that mean. Well you as a person, a living breathing human being are corporeal which refers to your physical body. A corporation is defined as any group of persons united or regarded as united in one body. In other words a corporation is kind of a super body or being.

The health care approach known as chiropractic is most commonly associated with neck and back complaints although it has been found to be beneficial for a whole range of conditions, from headaches and allergies to asthma and stomach complaints. The central premise of chiropractic medicine is that good health is dependent upon optimal functioning of the spinal and nervous systems, the telegraphic system that relies messages from your brain to the rest of your body. The belief in the inextricable synchronicity of these two systems means that chiropractic is a holistic approach to well being. According to the philosophy of chiropractic, misalignment of the spinal vertebrae called subluxation, interferes with the flow of neural message across the nervous system affects not only your bones, nerves, discs and ligaments, but ultimately your entire body. They believe that if the misalignment’s are long lasting and serious enough that they may well lead to disability and even death.

So it is with any business. When the brains of the operation, that is the business owner, board of directors or executive team cannot agree on the business’s message or fail to communicate that message clearly, effectively and continuously to everyone involved with delivering the value the company espouses and creates, disasters are imminent.

The smaller the operation, the easier it is for it to be clearly aligned since the message has a shorter distance to follow. If I have one secretary who is also the receptionist and, let’s say one or two office or field workers, or if I am a solo professional, my message is easy to communicate. I can state it everyday to every employee and make sure they know and understand what it means. When someone acts in a way that is off message I can easily speak directly to the person bringing them back on message. correct the error, counteract the damage. If the offender still doesn’t speak or act appropriately I can even replace that person with someone better suited to represent company values.

The problems in alignment come as a company grows and, as in the human body where each organ performs a particular and highly specialized function, departments or teams dedicated to producing parts of the product or aspects of the service are created. Each department or team must understand the value that the company as a whole delivers. They must know and understand how they all work together to deliver that value and be constantly on the lookout for problems and failures. When they begin to see only their small part as independent, a system in and of itself, problems for the business quickly emerge.

Here’s a great example of how things get out of hand. I worked for many years in the IT business. Most products, hardware and software and combinations of both, are extremely complex. Almost without exception they are so complicated that no one person completely understands precisely how each and every piece of the product or service works but everyone thoroughly understands the piece that they work with. In fact they are all experts in one particular thing.

The GO Computer Story: how misalignment happens

Let’s look at a fictional company called GO Computer, a small lean and focused firm with a few great but specialized IT products. At GO Computer the hardware engineers know how the hardware works each engineer is a an expert on their part, the software engineers know their code, the system architects understand how everything should fit together, the test team makes sure it all works as planned and quality control makes sure errors and bugs are fixed. The sales team knows the benefits the product will bring to their customers. They understand the customers needs and wants and are versed in demonstrating why any business that could use systems theirs would be nuts not to own their equipment or software. The sales team listens to the customer and reports back to the production team about what features the customer desires that can be incorporated into the product that will make it more attractive. The accounting and finance department know how to make the cash flow work and even how they can help the sales department offer attractive terms to the customer that’s on the fence about the purchase. The service and support team know how to help customers use the product and how to fix problems easily, what to report to engineering and what to sales and accounting. The executive knows how to make all it all work together, they’ve even crafted a statement that’s part of all their marketing materials, a statement of the values and the mission of the company “Seamless Integration, Simple Migration with World Class Service”. When it all works everything is great and although it costs many thousands of dollars to sell each unit, not unusual for high end IT hardware/software that can sell for $100,000 or even $1,000,000 or more, the cost of the sale is easily recouped.

But then something happens. Its usually something minor. Sales has been talking to potential customers and are hearing that customers want feature X that’s not now part of the product offering. Executive and engineering meet and decide that feature X is really just industry hype. They see that feature X adds no real value to their product. Sales pushes. They’re seeing your competition, the guys that thought up feature X, which by the way adds no real value to their products either, they can just say they have it and you don’t, taking their sales. It kills them because they know your product is better but their commission checks aren’t were they used to be last year.

The executive team decides its time offer feature X. To head off the competition they tell sales that your implementation of feature X is coming any day now. Sales announces it to the world. Everyone pushes engineering. Engineering tries but X will take time since they have to do some significant redesign. Finance doesn’t like what engineering is allocating to R&D for feature X, they see margins suddenly dropping what with sales down and the R&D expense. Something has to give. The executive team looks at ways to cut costs. Someone gets the idea that, hey, why do we have 46 trained techs manning our tech support call center. They’re costing us over $6,000,000 a year. Let’s get rid of some and have engineering field some of those calls. Great idea. The few million you cut in support just put you back into the black.

Then it happens. A technician from your best customer calls with a critical problem. Because your support center is understaffed, his call is placed on hold for 22 minutes. His users are breathing down his neck. As far as they’re concerned he designed, built and then broke your system. The guy is desperate and you put him on hold for 22 minutes, every minute of which is surprising you, wondering where your “World Class Support” went and whether he is going to have a job tomorrow. Finally a person picks up the phone. “Hi this is Steve, sorry you were on hold so long but we’re kinda short on staff here today. What’s your customer number?” OK, now the tech is beginning to become unraveled. He just spent 22 minutes sitting on hold while constantly being barraged by users wanting to know why their reports won’t and their production orders aren’t being processed and Steve wants to know his customer number and he doesn’t know it. “Listen, I’m Paul from Acme, we’re you’re biggest customer. Look you gotta help me out here, your system is down and I’ve got a horde of angry users that just want to get their jobs done”.

“Hold on a minute Paul”. Paul waits another couple of minutes. Then Steve comes back “OK, found you but there’s no one named Paul listed as a technical contact”
Paul, the customer is now loosing it. He doesn’t know what to do. He has no idea who the ‘technical contact’ is supposed to be. He’s the customer, he’s the technician responsible for their hardware and software, HE’S THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM. “Great Steve” says Paul exasperated. “Why do you think I called you? Because I had a flat? Do you think I thought I was calling “triple A”? I’m calling because your company’s system, which my company paid god only knows how much for, has melted down and I have 300 angry users wanting to get their work done. Get it? For every minute we’re working on YOUR PROBLEM, we’re not working on mine. Get we please get us up and running and we’ll worry about customer number and technical contacts later”? “I’m sorry Paul, my manual says that I can’t offer any help without speaking to the named technical contact”.

Where do you think this ends up? Paul’s company loses almost a day of production due the GO Computer’ product malfunctioning for whatever reason. Paul’s boss calls him on the carpet. Paul, blames the inability of the supplier’s technical support to identify resolve the problem quickly, after all he wasted more than an hour getting them to even begin to help. The Boss verifies Paul’s story. He then tells his boss, the CIO what happened. The executive team at the client has calculated that the time lost to the failure of the GO Computer product is about $800,000, almost equal to what it costs to acquire that technology to begin with. The CIO and the rest of the executive team of Paul’s company fumes. What happened to “World Class Support”? The damage at this point is probably done and it could be worse than anyone at GO Computer ever imagined.

Here’s what really happened. The values of the company were never communicated properly and continuously to Steve, the GO Computer CSR (Customer Service Representative) who fielded Paul’s panicked call. What was communicated to him was that he had to follow a written procedure when handling requests for support. He didn’t understand what the company leaders meant by “World Class Service”. He only knew that he was expected to follow a procedure. The Brain failed to make sure the hand knew what it was supposed do. The result is that after spending many thousand dollars landing their biggest account, the one that made the business go from the red to the black, one well meaning guy in a call center who didn’t understand the company’s message, threw it all away.

Don’t think it happens? Do you rhink this story is far fetched? I’ve seen it happen. More than once. Just like that. Its more common than you think. Your business may doing the same thing right now. Years of trust building, thousands invested in the marketing and a key goes relationship down the drain by one big failure to communicate a simple message: “World Class Service”.

The sad thing is, it never had to be that way. The brains of the operation, the GO Computer executive team could have effectively parried their competitor’s feature X ploy with just a few words. Perhaps something like this could ahve done the trick. “We promise that GO Computer product is so much better than our competition and deliver so much more value than you’ll ever see from our competitor’s feature X that if you buy our product, we will buy our competitors product for you, install it and let you run ours and theirs side by side in your business. At the end of 30 days you can keep the one that works best for you”. One idea, one sentence completely aligned with their message of “World Class Service” renders the feature X ploy impotent. Who would have the guts to make such an offer? Only a company the understood the value of their product and the meaning of “World Class Service”.

And what if Steve, the GO Computer CSR had understood what his company meant by “World Class Service”. After all, its only three words. His team would never have experienced debilitating cutbacks. The phone would have been answered promptly and the resolution of the problem would have been quickly achieved, the customer would have experienced only minor losses and GO Computer support would have appeared to be heroes.

The opportunity

“So you know Paul” said Steve, “GO Computer has two new products that can go along way towards eliminating the type of problems we just experienced. By adding our new fail over product downtime due to failed firmware updates, corrupted caches and communications errors can be a thing of the past, saving your company headaches and unnecessary expenses. I know you and your users will really appreciate 100% up time. Why don’t you talk to your boss or even to Mr. Brody, your CIO about this and I’ll Dave Constantine our Sales team leader call Mr. Brody as well.” “Thanks, Steve” said Paul “I could live without another day like this one”.

Look, while this is all fiction it is based on reality. This is exactly what does happen everyday. Your company, my company, every business everywhere falls down on the job by not constantly being vigilant about the message we send, by not being clear on the value we offer. It should be our first job and part of everything we do. when we allow ourselves to be sidetracked from our message things can fall apart quickly and minor obstacles can debilitate us.

Keep in mind too, that every person in your business that has any contact with your customers, potential customers or anyone for that matter, should always be on message, on target about your company’s value. Even a CSR guy can be your best salesperson. Even your receptionist, your book keeper, your truck driver can and should be communicating your message and making your sales. Every interaction they have is an opportunity to deliver your message, your value.

As a matter of fact, when people interact with your business they interact with other people. The people in your business, in the view of those they interact with, ARE YOUR BUSINESS. They are not sales people, Drivers, Support or Service people, Account Receivable or Marketing people, theyare the faceand personality of your business. They are your business. Simple as that. To everyone they interact with, they are your business. When they act badly, the world perceives your business acting badly. When they ignore a customer, the world perceives your business as ignoring them. When the message they send is not the message you want to send, the world perceives business as sending that message. If they had a bad nights sleep, are angry at their spouse, are feeling hostile about their job, the world perceives your business as tired, angry and bitter. Is that what you want to project?

So how do you get everyone to send just your message? Communication is the answer. You must continually send the same message to them. You must reinforce the message daily and you must develop a culture of vigilence where everyone makes sure the people they work with remain on message. So you must think I’m a graduate of the Stalin School of Management. Well, I’m not suggesting you send anyone to the gulag. Instead continously reward those who embody your message and convey your value. Everyone in your organization is your sales force. Make sure they know the value you provide and communicate it at every opportunity. They will do more for your business than millions spent on advertising and marketing. People talking to other people is the most effective form of advertising there is. From the factory floor to maintenance department, the board room to the delivery, strive to communicate your message clearly, consistently and continously and make every employee your sales person.

Conclusion

When the brain communicates effectively with the body result can be a beautiful dancer. When a choreographer puts talent dancers together with a brilliant composer the result is a ballet. That is what our businesses should constantly strive for because as Walt Disney said, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see you do it again and will bring their friends to see you do it”.

Money always comes from people, either individual consumers or buyers that represent large companies or even governments. The message the company sends makes the buying decision for you. A business’s message either it speaks to your wants and needs and you part with money or its fails. The company, that carefully crafts its message to highlight its unique value and lives by it through the actions of all its representatives wins.