6 management mistakes that will kill employee motivation
I was talking to an elementary school teacher the other day who works for a major school district. While there are many things she likes about her job, her list of complaints was pretty long. It made me wonder how many small business owners are making these same type of management mistakes. She told me that a couple of years ago, the leaders of her district said they wanted to put power back into the hands of local principals. That sounds like a great idea, but it didn’t really seem to make any difference in the major aspects of her job duties or how situations are managed. Many of her complaints centered around overly strict rules or the lack of flexibility. See if you would have to plead guilty to any of these 6 management mistakes that will kill employee motivation. A simply silly dress code. Teachers can only wear jeans on Fridays. This is probably related to a student dress code of some kind. I remember a time when girls were required to wear dresses to school. That started to change when they were allowed to wear pants on Friday. Here’s the problem: Once you say jeans are okay on Friday, you’ve said that jeans are okay, period. There is nothing magic about Friday. It’s a fact today that dress and grooming norms have changed. For example, I often see major television hosts with no tie and having gone a day or two without shaving. That would have been unheard of five years ago. Don’t ask for more than is truly required. Too many mandatory tasks that no one pays attention to. You probably know that public school students today are subjected to all kinds of mandatory tests. I’m told that many serve no educational purpose; the results don’t get back to teachers so they can use them to help students. They are just used as a hammer to hold over the heads of districts and principals. Do you require your employees to do things that don’t make your business better? Are there required forms being filled out that never get looked at or followed up on? Too many approvals required. Committees and principals are required to sign off on a wide range of rather ordinary activities teachers would like to do with their students. When an employee has to go to others to get approval, it slows down the process, creates frustration, and leads to lost opportunities. Employees stop asking to do innovative things when there are too many hoops to jump through. Too many strings attached. Education funding comes from a variety of sources. Most of the money is local or state money, but there is federal money as well. Sadly, strings are attached to the money that put very narrow limits on how it can be spent; it’s a symptom of government’s myopic vision. I see a similar problem in many small businesses where the owner or manager will have an idea, begin to implement it, then refuse to adapt and change as others make suggestions. Too many unproductive employees. In education, bureaucrats will often “throw money” at a problem in unproductive ways. For example, if a school seems to be struggling they will fund “coaches” to supposedly work with the teachers. By strict rules,...
read more6 key areas for improvement if you want to be the industry leader
Are you a sprinter or a marathoner? It’s one of the most important questions you can ask yourself, because becoming a local or industry leader – and maintaining that position – is like running a marathon. via GIPHY You may sometimes feel that you’re on a treadmill and not making any progress, but that’s simply […]
read more21 lead magnet ideas to pull in your top prospects
If you aren’t optimizing your lead magnets, consider yourself guilty of gross mismanagement! But before we toss out 20-plus lead magnet ideas for you to test out, let’s quickly define what we mean by the term “lead magnet.” A lead magnet is an offer you make to prospects in exchange for their contact information. Before the Internet took over our lives, these would often be contest entry blanks or sample offer signup forms you snipped from the bottom of a magazine or newspaper ad. Today they are more often online offers given in exchange for your email address…and maybe other contact information. At the top I suggested that you need to optimize your lead magnets. As you will see from our list, they come in a variety of forms, so there’s always a chance that the next one you test will outperform the one you’re currently using. Template libraries, including spreadsheets. Graphic art templates and templates for all the Microsoft Office apps make good lead magnets. They can be used in both B2B and B2C settings. Checklist. A simple checklist can work well and they are not difficult to create. Also, they prove that your lead magnet doesn’t have to be as big as the Gutenberg Bible. Swipe file or cheat sheet. A step away from a template, these are files/plans/graphics that have been created by others and proven to work. A swipe file is usually a collection of these, while a cheat sheet is shorter and more of a guide than complete examples you can use. Web app. These are fantastic if you can find one that works for your industry. A real estate broker might create one that calculates home mortgage payments. An online marketing professional might create one that gives you all the keywords on a competitor’s website. Calendar, planner. One of the big retail organizations puts out a planner each year that clues users about special dates throughout the year. You can probably think of one that would be handy in your industry. This could be an Excel file that helps someone work through a common financial scenario. However, in some situations, it could be a document the user prints out. Freebies and discounts. Everyone likes to save money and money-saving offers can be shaped in many ways: discounts, free shipping, free sample, free consultation, free introductory lesson or session, or discount coupons, just to name some of the most popular freebies. Written content. This? can be white papers like case studies, reports, and guides. You may already have this content created. However, you might want to dress it up with better graphics to be sure that prospects think it is valuable. Private Facebook group. There can be many benefits to creating a private Facebook group and offering membership as a lead magnet. The members themselves, if you do a good mob managing it, will create excellent content and value within the group. It might later serve as a springboard for other ventures. Trial membership. You’ll note that education is involved with many of these lead magnets, so membership is often in some kind of online course or service. But, you could also have a buyers’ club or some other scheme. Quiz. You’ve seen the quizzes where you have to give your email address to get...
read moreHow negativity can overpower your good intentions
Be honest with me now: Do people see you as approachable and easy to talk to? As you considered that question, I bet some of you started to think about friends or family members who fit that description; somehow they just make talking to them easy. These are the people you go to when you need to discuss your aspirations, your problems, or just want to enjoy a pleasant afternoon or evening. People can also have these kinds of feelings about businesses and you want to create an atmosphere and relationships that make your business approachable and easy to talk to. You might think that simply making it technically easy to reach your business will accomplish this, but that’s not the case. In fact, that can almost serve an opposite goal. Let me explain. Go beyond ‘help lines’ If you don’t proactively hold “conversations” with your customers and prospects, you can’t set a good tone for your communication. If your customers only use your communication channels to deal with their problems, then they will associate communicating with you with negative thoughts. While you certainly should do a great job handling your customers’ problems and make your communication as easy, efficient, and pleasant as possible, you want most of the communication between your business and your customers to be edifying and enjoyable. I think most of us went to high schools where there was a vice principal in charge of discipline. You didn’t want to talk to the discipline vice principal because you knew it was never good. Don’t let your communication channels turn into the vice principal in charge of discipline. It’s easy to do this with your social media. While social media can be a wonderful channel for customer service, don’t let it devolve into a “complaint box.” Condition your customers to view your communication channels as positive attributes of your business. Use them to share useful information on a regular basis. Personal engagement Further, this doesn’t start and stop with your social media. If your business handles larger clients, be sure that your reps engage with these clients on the phone or through other touch points. And in this case, there’s another benefit. You don’t want clients to only hear from reps when they’re trying to sell something. That will eventually cause communication to break down. Imagine the benefits you would experience if your clients all viewed their sales reps as that approachable individual I mentioned at the top – the person they go to when they want to discuss their aspirations or problems. That would put your business in a powerful position. Lastly, being approachable is something everyone on your team needs to work at. It’s very important in local businesses and it’s often the reason a business will become a “landmark” in a community and be successful over several generations. Finally, no matter how focused you are on helping your customers when they get in a jam, don’t let that dedication distract you from doing a stellar job communicating with them when they aren’t dealing with...
read more3 lesser-known online advertising platforms worth trying
Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. – Robert Frost Small business owners can use the inspiration of that famous Frost quote and apply it to their approach to business in a variety of ways and I’m sure that some of those ways will make “all the difference.” One way in which taking the road “less traveled by” is in online advertising. I previous posts, I’ve extolled the virtues of advertising on Bing rather than Google. There are also some overlooked social media sites where you can advertise that are worth exploring. Here are three that could work great for you. Quora. I’ve discussed Quora before when suggesting ways to get topics for blogs or for new products or services. However, Quora also accepts advertising and it you’re company is B2B, it might be one of the best places for you to advertise. I believe that it could payoff for B2B companies for many of the same reason it’s a great place to go when you’re mining for product, service, or blog ideas. Quora is a magnet for business leaders and entrepreneurs. They ask probing questions and offer insightful answers. If you want to get in front of their eyeballs, Quora is a great place to be. Stumbleupon. Strategies on how to create viral content is always a topic of discussion on the Internet. Frankly, “Try advertising via Stumbleupon” may be the single best strategy to make your content go viral. Stumbleupon is a social networking content “discovery engine.” Stumbleupon users – via its browser plugin and mobile app – vote up content and then the popular content gets suggested to other Stumbleupon users. If you have created a killer piece of content, try promoting it through a Stumbleupon ad. It might strike a nerve with users and achieve viral status. Reddit. Companies as huge as Coca-Cola and Toyota have advertised on Reddit, yet you can get your foot in the door for as little as $5 a day. Reddit is essentially a discussion or conversation platform that is segmented into all kinds of special interest subreddits or “communities,” which are supervised by an editor. With some more than 50,000 communities, you are certain to find one or more that would be interested in your product or service. By the way, when you find the communities that you’re interested in, participate in the discussions. Once you’re established as a legitimate voice – not a spammer – feel free to post valuable content from your website. If you feel like a microscopic fish swimming in the ocean when you go to advertise on Facebook or AdWords, you should explore these three platforms and see if they might help you realize a better return on your online advertising...
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