Tips Guides Resources

Recently I helped a small business owner totally re-write his marketing and business plans. The owner was grateful for the new copy, but expressed a concern that he may have issues writing copy for marketing materials or responding to bid proposals later in the year.

He said,”It is so hard to start from scratch writing a marketing document when you have a blank piece of paper staring you in the face.” I understand completely and recommended how we could help him create “branded copy” quickly.

If you are a typical business owner, there are many times in the day when you must write about your business to inform, educate or communicate about your unique products and service offerings. Using this technique, you will no longer have to start with a blank page.

I refer to it as the Content Blocks writing technique. This method has personally saved me many hours of writing time as well has kept my marketing messages consistent and focused in proposals, company flyers and websites. It is a simple yet effective technique and here’s how to use it to build your business marekting campaigns. Here’s how to create your own content blocks document.

Start with a Word document and name it content blocks with a date in the title. Here is an example: abc_company_content_blocks_02152008.doc

You want to put a date in the file name because this is a work in progress, as your company grows and matures, the content will evolve. Keep this document on your desktop so you can easily click on it to retrieve information with one click.

Now it’s time to map out what to put into this important marketing reference document. You will want to write the information in a short paragraph format with a couple of spaces around each one to form “content chunks”. Take the time to write about three to five sentences in each paragraph. It is better to include a little too much information and be able to erase as needed, rather than having to think about and add additional information.

One of the easiest ways to add the best information to your content blocks document is to review a proposal and see what types of information they are requesting. Fortunately, over 50% of the information they request will be on the next proposal, therefore you have a competitive edge in getting proposals done quicker using this menthod.

Once your document is prepared, you can open it in a second window on your screen and as you are responding to a proposal you can quickly cut / paste information. Not only does this save time in preparation, you are able keep spelling errors to a minimum since your content blocks document has been run through spell / grammar check.

Think of the time you will save responding to proposals, writing article publications, and preparing other documents in a normal marketing business cycle.

Checking back with the owner, he has used his content blocks in several ways including sharing it with his webmaster to get the correct wording for extending his brand on the homepage.

Another important suggest is to revise your information regularly and as needed, so that your marketing materials are current and consistent in “voice” and terminology. Time marches on, your company flexes and grows - so does your need to refine your content blocks.

Here are the topics we included:
Board of Directors (and a quick description)
-Company Summary: include founder and founding date
-Competitive Comparison: what types of businesses do you compete with?
-Competitive Edge: what makes you different
-Competitive Landscape (includes five competitors)
-Contact Information: name, address, cell, fax, email
-Company Owner Biography (including professional memberships, patents, degrees)
-Executive Summary (break up into 1-2 sentences, easy to cut / paste in other docs)
-Market Segmentation: public vs private?
-Mission Statement: no more than three sentences
-Company Objectives (stating where business income comes from in percentages)
-Positioning Statement: contextual reference
-Promotional Strategy: how do folks hear about you?
-Sales Literature: include links to websites,PDF documents, audio files, video files
-Target Clients: describe who is your target client
-Technology overview: are you high or low tech?
-Testimonials (quotes from clients): audios are better

In addition to words that describe your company include visuals that “brand” as well including:
-Logos: website, products, affliate programs
-Pictures of company owner, business site, website, clients, processes, products
-Links to audio files with testimonials, music or the company owner telling about the business

Using content blocks is a simple way to organize the most current and important information about your company. Take time to create this simple Word document and save hours agonizing over attempting to create proposals and other important documents at the last minute.

V. Karen Miller is the founder of Design2Train Design2Train.com, an instructional design /training development company helps business owners prepare training and information products.

There is no argument that today’s executive is effective to the degree that he or she is able to communicate with other people.

The executive has to be able to speak to other people–one-on-one or one-on-many–in terms other people appreciate, in ways that move and motivate them, and in words and tones that are credible and non-menacing. The “exec” must present himself or herself as a role model, as well as convey the message of the corporation, company, or department.

Some people may be “born speakers,” others may have “learned on the job.” But everyone feels the need to do it better–examine the basics of public speaking and match performance to changes in the audience’s moods, expectations, and markets. Everybody can learn to make a better impression and communicate better. Our results prove it.

For the last dozen years I have been conducting a popular–and powerful–course for the Canadian Management Centre. It is called “Effective Executive Speaking” but I do not present all by myself. Originally I worked with Peter Urs Bender, Canada’s leading public speaker and the author of Secrets of Power Presentations.

Peter devised the course and then invited me and George Torok, a dynamic speaker and business consultant, to continue to deliver it. For the last six years, George and I have been holding forth. The three-day course is offered at various times throughout the year. (Customized versions are also delivered on site.) It regularly attracts company founders, presidents, executives, department and division heads, and mid-level managers.

There is an air of excitement when we first meet as a group. George and I review basic principles. Then we divide the group into two and meet in different rooms. Members speak on self-selected topics, assigned subjects, and issues chosen at random. There is immediate, hands-on feedback. Everyone speaks; everyone responds. We offer tips for immediately improvement and insights to ponder. Individual presentations are recorded on video tape for private viewing.

We believe there are two reasons why people enroll in our courses. First, prior to making a presentation, the men and women feel nervous, uncomfortable, child-like, or shy. They want to deal with this residual fear. Second, they realize that, however well they speak, they will have to speak more easily and more persuasively in the future than they have in the past for career advancement. So there is genuine incentive to improve.

“Effective Executive Speaking” has proven to be helpful on both fronts. Do you feel nervous when called upon to speak extemporaneously? Are you spending too much time preparing your presentations? Can you think on your feet? How well do you handle hostile questions? Do you overuse PowerPoint? Is your audience aware of your nervousness? How are you dealing with “the sweats,” thick tongue, beating heart, mental confusion? Do you feel there are more effective ways to present your ideas? How do professional speakers and communicators do it and how can I learn from them?

By the third day, members of the group speak with greater ease and increased confidence and effectiveness. They have learned techniques to use every time they speak. They know what to look for (in themselves and in others) and they know how to improve.

George Torok and I, as co-course leaders, offer general principles and specific practices to teach people the skills necessary to be effective communicators. George has extensive experience as a business consultant. With Peter Urs Bender he wrote Secrets of Power Marketing. My own approach is to recognize and capitalize on individual strengths of body, voice, and mind, and to suggest new and better ways to present information and to motivate listeners.

CMC Training offers professional Communication Training that will teach you important skills to help you stay current and move forward in your career.
http://www.cmctraining.org/communication.asp

There have been dozens of references about unique corporate cultures and why some of them work better in certain situations. There are names being tossed around, some of them seem to be made up on the fly. For instance there is the Work Hard/Play Hard culture or the Live and Let Live Culture. For every pundit there is a new buzz name for a social observance in business, and for every pundit they offer their own form of executive leadership training. Most of these philosophies, however, can be boiled down to specific components: trust, communication and inspiration.

History of Recognizing Corporate Culture

A closer look on how the corporation affects the individual was possibly first introduced by the author William H. Whyte’s book The Organizational Man. This work broke some ground in social analysis in corporations. He warned against the corporation turning into a bureaucratic stagnancy that stifled spontaneity. Corporations took away some main points from the body of work he produced and came up with agreements that:

- Employees are motivated or disillusioned in the workplace by prevailing corporate culture
- Corporate culture gauges the businesses’ effectiveness
- Corporate culture inevitably changes
- Power structure, interpersonal relations and human interchanges can be seen as unique to different types of corporate cultures

With that being established, other social leaders and scientists have made observances that are noteworthy. Geert Hofstede, a Dutch organizational studies professor, published, with his colleagues, six “dimensions” that distinguish separate characteristics in corporate culture.

1. Process oriented verses results oriented — A process culture will rely on keeping the risk low and using tried and true approaches, while results oriented are always in search of new methods and taking risks.

2. Employee oriented versus job oriented — Its simply distinguishing a work place that is placing more value on the comforts of the individual as apposed to making sure the work position is filled and is being productive in that position.

3. Parochial versus professional — Parochial cultures identify themselves with the business they work for while professional cultures identify themselves mostly on the individual’s work credentials.

4. Open system versus closed system — For open systems, the company is more transparent in communication. Management/executive levels talk to all levels of the company’s employees. Closed systems do just the opposite and are more open to seasoned high ranking employees.

5. Loose versus tight control — This is simply distinguishing corporate settings where the employer is either micromanaging the employee or not, it’s a degree of constraint from the top down.

6. Normative versus pragmatic — Similar to the process/results tag, it explains more about how the culture relates to the market or customer. For instance, a pragmatic approach in sales would be to make the sale if it includes bending the rules a bit. While the normative culture would adhere strictly to rules because of their ethic and moral implications as seen from the customer’s perspective.

And of course, there are varying degrees of each in most business models.

Companies Seeking Cultural Change

Culture in a company is important to maintain for proper business functions. Business and corporate leaders and CEOs alike often seek out guidance to change or bolster their corporate culture. The popular buzzword “coaching” has been tossed around in the corporate world, and many leaders seek executive leadership coaching.

Since many corporations have the time or money to train their employees, or more importantly, train their executives in coaching, they will seek out groups who specialize in executive leadership training.

Art Gib writes for Partners in Leadership (http://www.partnersinleadership.com) who specialize in corporate counseling and executive leadership coaching. They’ve assisted major corporations such as McDonald’s, Northwest Airlines and Best Buy.

Organisations are turning more and more to external training companies to develop the ’soft’ skills of their staff. With so much expertise available what do people need to look for to get the best from the training they buy in?

At Impact Factory we have evolved a way of working with our clients which produces truly effective training programmes that take into account different and changing needs all the way from the briefing process right through to the delivery of the training itself, and beyond.

There are three stages that go into the creation and delivery of effective training: it has to be specific to an organisation, the group of people to whom the training is available and most importantly the group to whom the training is delivered.

Here’s how we see these three objectives broken down

There must be a good initial briefing reflected back to the client in order to ensure that the objectives are understood.

The more detail the better, so that everyone is clear how the training will fit into the goals of the company. Companies who go to the trouble of providing well-detailed briefs, should be presented with something better than ‘off the shelf’ courses by the training provider.

There should be a period of consultation with the client and prospective participants whilst the training is being designed.

This is to ensure that there are a number of different perspectives heard, which can be taken into account when creating the training. Input from a variety of people helps present a broad picture.

Now most really good training companies achieve these first two objectives.

It’s the third objective, however, that truly sets excellent training apart from the good.

It is the function of the trainer in the room when the training is delivered. In the same way that training companies can provide off the shelf programmes, so trainers can deliver courses in a proscriptive and inflexible way.

In other words, they may be good trainers, but they follow their training manuals step-by-step even when something unplanned would be more appropriate.

Every Impact Factory training ever designed has a clear set of objectives and a manual which will include a series of processes, exercises and games to fulfil those objectives. Beyond that, however, Impact Factory trainers are rigorously trained to be able to create, develop and modify these processes to fit the needs of the people on the day.

For instance, after a series of tried and true communication exercises there might be a session given in the manual only as “An hour on Added Value”.

The processes for this session would be developed by the trainer based on the dynamic of the group of people in the room and what would most benefit them.

That level of flexibility keeps every training session we run alive and relevant.

Here’s an example

We ran a Team Event for a group of 18 software support and customer service staff.

There were eighteen people who were giving up their Saturday just before Christmas. We had created a one-day programme for them to include ‘team building’, creativity and a look at how the future of this department might develop.

They clearly said at the beginning of the day that they wanted ‘fun’, but didn’t want any ‘role play’, but they also clearly demonstrated during the day a desire and ability to play hard and well.

This resulted in a process where three natural teams, or groups, within the department created a tongue in cheek political manifesto for running the department. It was then followed by a party political gathering where each group electioneered, made promises, bargained and generally tried to get the others to vote for them.

It was tremendous fun, helped people deal with serious issues of agreements between the groups, but most important of all, suited this group of people down to the ground.

This approach may look dangerous and cavalier at first glance. Indeed, if attempted by untrained people it can easily turn into a disaster. However, when run by experts it is very safe, very effective and produces comments like “this is the best training I have ever done”.

Impact Factory trainers work hard to give participants a relevant experience as opposed to just delivering a training well.

Our skill is in providing the appropriate training to fit the group of people who are there at the time. When you think about it, if we took this training, which was developed on-the-spot for these software people, and made a reluctant, non-playful group go through the same process it would not produce the same result.

The experience is what is important. When you look at the reason that role-play is so universally disliked it’s because people have had, or fear they will have, a difficult or humiliating experience.

Impact Factory trainers and trainings don’t use set piece role-plays or inflict role-plays on unwilling people. We look for ways to introduce ‘real life re-enactments’ using situations or examples brought in by participants. They may well end up ‘playing them out’, but are likely to say afterwards things like ‘How did they get us to do that?’.

This way of working is entirely dependant on the ability of the trainer in the room being able to assess the people, create the processes and ‘bounce’ the participants into willingly taking part.

Our trainers will always deal with the experience that people are having rather than trying to give people the experience the manual says they are supposed to have. This is how Impact Factory creates effective training.

Jo Ellen and Robin run Impact Factory a training company who provide Public Speaking, Presentation Skills, Communications Training, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching for Individuals.

The majority of office employees use software applications from the Microsoft Office suite. Although they use such programs as Excel, Word and PowerPoint regularly it is common to find that they will have undertaken no formal training in their use. Due to the differing nature of each individual business, the way in which these applications are used may have become very company specific.

An increasing number of training companies offer consultancy services in addition to training courses based on the topics of standard course syllabus outlines. There are a number of pros and cons to these alternative approaches which need to be considered when identifying which type of Microsoft training is right for you.

Training Course Pros
Attending a training course offers an inexpensive solution to providing training. A training course provided by an authorised Microsoft training company provides a structured approach and ensures all the main elements of a particular program are adequately covered. The courses are easy to organise with fully networked, modern specification IT being provided by the training company.

Training can be undertaken on a public schedule course or on-site at your offices, with leading Microsoft training companies in the UK offering daily public schedule courses for popular programs such as Microsoft Excel. This means there is ample scope for employees to attend a training course at a time and location that is convenient for them without necessarily removing all users from the work environment at the same time.

Training Course Cons
As a training course provides a set syllabus to a number of trainees who may have vastly differing previous knowledge of the application, time may not be used efficiently with some delegates being taught techniques they are already familiar with or that do not apply to their situation.

The dates for such courses will not be as flexible as those available with consultancy, however, with many Microsoft training companies offering courses on each program as often as twice a week, finding a suitable date is unlikely to be a significant issue.

Consultancy Pros
Bringing in a consultant means that specific problem areas can be targeted without the feeling that time is being wasted going over unnecessary ground. It also allows company specific procedures to be adequately addressed and perhaps also updated and improved. This type of approach is ideal if the main requirement is to build onto an existing application e.g. spreadsheet redesign or development.

Consultancy Cons
If those employees being trained have very limited experience with the application then employing a consultant is likely to be a more expensive solution to provide the basic training than attendance at a standard training course.

Conclusions
Which of the two options provides the best solution to a company’s training needs varies depending on specific circumstances. If very standard, basic knowledge is required across the board then training courses are likely to provide the best solution. If more specific requirements or problems exist using consultancy services may be more appropriate.

In many situations it may be that a combination of the two provides the most effective solution. Employees can develop the basic skills through training courses and then use a consultancy agreement to build on these skills and deal with company specific issues and requirements.

Author is a trainer with a Microsoft training company, the market leader in its industry. For more information on training courses and consultancy, visit www.microsofttraining.net

Advances in technology and cultural responses to it mean that more people want to work from home and more companies want to outsource.

Here are just a few examples of opportunities for companies in taking advantage of virtual workers: reduced overhead costs, higher quality workers not available locally, often higher productivity per hour.

Opportunities for the telecommuter: comfortable work setting, more flexible schedule, less watercooler distractions, and no travel time or stress.

“If you’re a virtual team leader, a telecommuter, or anyone who works with someone from a distance, you need special tools to be successful. You can either stumble along and hope for the best, or you can take steps to insure success, says Debra Dinnocenzo, virtual workplace expert, author, speaker and educator.

What are the challenges when working from a distance, and how can you be successful?

Dinnocenzo takes the mystery out of the managing a highly productive virtual workplace by providing three important keys for success:

Trust: Establishing trust provides a special set of challenges for people working from a distance. When people are dispersed, we often don’t have the opportunity to get to know each other the way we do in the traditional workplace. We need to make a special effort to schedule time to develop three important qualities: Reliability, Integrity and Familiarity. With these qualities in place, worker and employer can build trust. If possible, schedule face-to-face time to get to know each other at the beginning of a project.

Communication: When communication breaks down, trust erodes and productivity suffers. Despite the plethora of cutting-edge communication tools at our disposal, the lack of visual cues from our co-workers presents special challenges in the virtual workplace. You have to be more assertive about reaching out. Dont rely solely on email. Pick up the phone and send thank you notes. Insure good communication by checking in, asking questions and soliciting input from your team members.

Performance: The bottom-line is: at the end of the day, we need to deliver results. Be proactive about managing productivity by defining expectations and establishing check-in milestones at the very start of the project. The skills for managing performance in the virtual workplace are the same as the ones you would use in a traditional office. They just need to be applied differently.

There are unique challenges for the telecommuter who works from home. While everyone agrees that telecommuting offers more freedom and flexibility, it also presents a special challenge by blurring the line between our work and our personal lives.

Dinnocenzo recommends being vigilant about setting boundaries. Are you going to answer a work-related phone call at eight o’clock at night? It might be appropriate to be on-call in certain situations, but it can seriously erode your private life if you’re not careful. Establish expectations and boundaries at the beginning of a project or work-relationship to avoid conflict.

When aked what they truly want in their lives, most people say they wish they had an extra hour in their day.

While that’s not possible on earth, it is possible to reclaim many hours. Decide what is truly important in your life and eliminate time-wasting, yet addictive things that aren’t important.

Dr. Proactive, Randy Gilbert, enjoys producing the “Inside Business Success” radio talk show, hosted by Jan Schleicher. Enjoy her interview with Debra Dinnocenzo for free by going to:
http://www.insidesuccessradio.com/Guests/Debra-Dinnocenzo