Tuesday May 19 Creative Employees: Good to Great

Do your employees live up to your expectations? Do they fall short? Or are there simply fewer of them to do more work? In either case it is important to move employees from an attitude of compliance to an attitude of commitment. In this workshop you will learn:
• The tools you can use to move from compliance and commitment motivation.
• The four elements of empowerment and how to use them.
• How to move to and beyond delegation and transfer power to others.

TIME: 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
WHERE: Nevada County Contractors Assoc. 149 Crown Point Court, Grass Valley, CA
COST : $45

You must reserve a seat: Contact High Performance Advocates at 288-0180 or buy online at www.http://highperformanceadvocates.com/events.html.

Credit cards and checks accepted

Thank fellow NSA member David Newman for this list. I am preaching the gospel of creative change. My network can get as much reinforcement as possible.

Small business marketing in a recession

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
– John F. Kennedy

He who learns but does not think is lost.
– Confucius

Small business marketing has a lot of moving parts – even more so in a recession and it’s often up to the CEO or business owner to keep all the parts moving all the time. That can be challenging, to say the least. Here are some ideas to keep your momentum up.

Never stop learning. Go back to school or read books. Get training and acquire skills. But never think of learning as learning for its own sake.

Take what you’ve learned and apply it, modify it, expand it, develop it, share it, teach others, and boil it down to its essence in real, concrete business terms that you can use in your immediate environment.

In any learning situation, focus like a laser beam on application, application, application! Learn from every source, think, and then translate that learning into appropriate, useful, meaningful action.

Don’t just focus on learning – focus on unlearning, relearning, and learning differently. With the economy in a meltdown, financial markets undergoing tectonic shifts on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, and everything else up for grabs as giant corporations stumble, falter, and collapse – it’s an understatement to say “the rules have changed.”

Stay alert for small business marketing ideas that you would have never considered before. Scan the horizon, see where your customers and clients are going, and then as the great Wayne Gretzky advises, “Don’t skate to where the puck is… skate to where the puck is GOING to be.”

more: http://www.doitmarketing.com/blog/bid/18559/

Small-business-marketing-in-a-recession

It is like he read my mind. All week I’ve been harping to business owners about outsourcing to make things happen. I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve sent to Elance. I’m eating lunch when I see this article blogged by Alex at Elance :

100 Jobs You Can (And Should) Outsource

In the dog-eat-dog competitive business jungle where digital-ubiquity transcend time and space, the fundamental ideology underpinning business operational efficiencies are changing so fast it’s enough to make your brain’s CPU crash.

Translation: If you’re not getting work done online, you better get on it, pronto.

http://www.elance.com/p/blog/2009/03/100_jobs_you_can_and_should_outsource.html?

rid=1HN94

Now if we can only find an outsource for house remodel bids…. we’re set. Elance?

Which way do you go?

Stop looking for customers that aren’t there.
It is not an illusion. People have stopped buying a lot of things. If people aren’t buying your product of service (or not buying enough of your product or service) , there is a reason and it may not be you. Builders aren’t building. Cars aren’t selling. Printers aren’t printing. Some things aren’t holding the same value they used to. People are picky about spendng. Whatever the case, if you think it is just a matter of selling and marketing more, you may be solving the wrong problem.

Develop your Expertise.
You are an expert. So are millions of others on the internet. The great part of democratic communication ( AKA:  the bolgosphere.) is that everyone is welcome and everyone is an expert.  Get used to your expertise and find a way to let others know about it.   Today.

Start a Blog and let your social network grow.
Make sure your website has a blog. Make sure it is linked to your networks on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. At a minimum, create company pages on LinkedIn and Facebook. Invite everyone on your email list. This is a method for you deliver your message once you figure out what it is. If you are an expert at building, tell people about what you know. If you are an expert at hair design, same thing. Keep in mind that those people who get followed online and move successfully on to selling products and sales on the internet  give tremendous value for free. Give away your expertise as much as you can. Then figure out what you can to sell.

Figure out what people are buying.
This may be a brainstorming activity of the greatest magnitude. This suggestion infers that you need to look deeply at your expertise and discover a new way to package, deliver, size, price, design or explain your product or service. I understand that your pride may be on the line or that you are using the method that has always worked in the past. But we are all sophisticated buyers and we have have choices.  Meet your buyer where they are. Don’t expect them to come find you or bend to your specifications.

Create new revenue streams.
Once you figure out your expertise, and your product, now you can figure out how else to sell it. Information has incredible value these days. Leverage your information. Out of that you can find that programs, books, podcasts, products and services sold online- anywhere in the world, is a unique new revenue stream for you. And you may realize that it is less work than your prior method, product and service. You may never want to return. Think deep and broad. Look at the hundreds of examples already working for others online.

There are people buying stuff all over the world. They don’t have to be in your neighborhood. It might not require you to be in theirs. You only have to package yourself to attract them authentically. Stop weeping in your cup. Grab the challenge and let this economy force you from good to great.