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| Create Something New! |
T. Take what they give you.
L. Lend a helping hand to the added products and services you will initiate.
C. Create.
This post is part three, the final step of this three part series on business marketing. In review, as you develop these new business routines, make sure you spend time each day working on all three of these areas of marketing concerns.
A business leader has three primary functions to serve in the leadership job they perform. First of all, they must lead the business in its social sets of activities, the marketing department. In other words, the business leader must be the public relations leader, the top seller, the primary motivator of customer, community and interactive activities. They must become the key leader to the marketing efforts of the business model. That responsibility should command a good deal of that business leaders time and energy. The second primary function a business leader should perform is to manage and control the inventory movement. On an income statement, generally 68% of the gross sales include the cost of inventory and payroll combined. That means the business model has a high demand for inventory management and personnel, human resource management. If the second primary function is inventory management, the third one is human relationships with the staff and support personnel. These three functions should dominate the time chips a business leader expels; marketing (selling), inventory control and human relations.
Energy devoted to marketing creates the income flow. It is how the revenues are supplied to the business model. It creates the food that the business consumes. Managing both the inventory controls and the human relations takes care of almost 70% of the business consumption. These three areas dominate the business activities; sales, inventory costs and payroll. The rest of the multiple business duties become the 'paper clips' to these three areas of responsibilities. Try to 'see' your business in this kind of perspective. It will help you focus on the more important duties you need to perform. A lot of business leaders fail to devote enough time with their staff, training them, nurturing them and encouraging them to become better at what they do. While other business leaders fail to devote enough time to the effective study of their inventory sales rates, product mix, product presentation, proper buying, efficient storing, moving and supplier improvements of the inventories they buy and sell. The focus of this three part series has been devoted to the marketing part of the business leaders job responsibilities. To cover this series, we introduced the T.L.C. concept.
T. Take what they give you.
L. Lend a helping hand to the added products and services you will initiate.
C. Create.
In the first two parts we covered 'take what they give you' and 'lend a helping hand to the added products and services you already move and provide.' Now it is time to move on to the 'create' segment. This is the segment many business owners fail to address. Very few business leaders perform this hidden duty. Most fail to take the chances this duty offers. The level of high risk often times runs the business leader away from performing this activity. To "create" usually means to risk something that might not work. Most business leaders have a tough time managing the stuff that works well, let alone try out a bunch of new stuff that has no particular track history of success at all. To create is to try something out that has very little application history established. Usually, none. It is pure risk taking. That kind of work in this busy and complicated world is usually left alone.
This last part is the area that describes how business leaders work in areas of the unknowns. Creation. In the marketing world, creation is not exactly the same thing as creativity. Although similar, they can become very different. When you introduce a new display of towels and bathroom accessories next to the soap isle of a grocery store, that is marketing creativity. When you introduce a social program designed to help the homeless by setting up a small marketing display near the soap isle donating one dollar to the cause when each customer purchases a soap product, that is 'creation.' They are completely different marketing concepts. To create is completely different than being creative. There is a tinge more risk involved when you create something brand new.
In this part three, we are going to focus on the idea of creating something brand new. We are going into the area of business management that very few business leaders travel. It is a lightly populated territory. I am one of those business leaders who loves to spend some time in this area of my business career. I love to delve into the stuff nobody else thought about. It is an area of business marketing that often times gets left out. However, sometimes it is easier than most business leaders might expect. I think the obvious risks have a tendency to scare most business leaders away from performing this kind of duty on a regular basis. I am suggesting that every business leader begin to develop the courage to add a time slot somewhere into their busy schedules to work on this kind of activity as a routine part of their daily schedule. Most of this kind of work will require a good deal of thinking. That kind of work can be the kind of work that shares driving time, for example. I use my driving time to 'create.' It also takes my mind off the other silly driving behaviors I witness on the road. I can sneak in another great benefit. I am so busy thinking about creation that I do not notice the foolish driving around my vehicle. I become less frustrated with other drivers this way. It provides a nice 'plus' in my commute.
Let's get started, part three.
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| Create Something New! |
T. Take what they give you.
L. Lend a helping hand to the added products and services you will initiate.
C. Create.
Remember these things. In this three part series, we plan to change how you think. We are going to change your preconceived notions about your current marketing beliefs. We are going to change how you approach your daily marketing habits. We are going to add value to the business model you manage. We are going to drive your marketing methods with a different kind of steering wheel. Your business vehicle will look like the same business model but your methods will begin to appear differently. In the end, the direction your business model will be headed will eventually change its course.
We will begin the effort to try and steer your business model into the direction of a more successful path. We will change the way you think, the way you work on marketing efforts, the way you apply that work and we will test what kind of courage you may need to dig up. Every business leader will need to put their ego's on hold for this effort to work well. One of my business mentors once described it this way, "Try to unlearn everything you currently know. Then try to do the opposite of what you think you should be doing." He would suggest that when I tried to go the other way, pay close attention to all of the things that it produced. That is where my new lessons would teach me the most. Try it. You might become very surprised at what you discover. Our minds have a tendency to 'trap out' some very good thinking. We get very comfortable doing those things we are most familiar with doing. That does not always mean we are performing the best things, however.
For simplicity, I will give one example of how to think in the terms to 'create.' Let's say you lead a retail business model that is a non-profit cooperative. The business model you lead is a non-profit retailer of a cooperative organization.
Since you are a non-profit structure, you can do some different things in marketing quite well. For example, colleges and medical centers have established a very solid ground for producing economic foundations. These models are familiar with managing donations and benevolence in a beneficial manner. Why not develop that same kind of structure in a retail cooperative? Why not 'create' a working model to develop ways and means for users, families, friends and patrons to set up trusts for their estates to lend that cooperative a helping hand in its future operations?
Let's try this on for size. What if we set up a retail foundation that was designed to permit the estates of our patrons and their associate families and friends to contribute some trust funding to specific projects our retail cooperative performs. For example, if we handle hardware that the patrons commonly use in their lifetime of service enough that when they pass on from this life they have the designed and permitting structure to dedicate a small portion of their estate to the retail cooperative foundation and they can dedicate that portion to help improve the hardware division of products and services. Not everyone leaves all of their remaining estate to their families. Many donate large sums of their estate to small colleges, high schools and large universities. Some dedicate portions of their estates to medical facilities. Why not set up the structure to allow them to help protect the business viability of their local retail cooperative?
Maybe the retail cooperative can set up the estate funding to be applied to product purchases for the hardware division and with those funds, guarantee that this division can operate at a prescribed or dedicated lower margin of profit requirement, established by the trust. Why not? Mechanisms like this can ensure future success for the cooperative. The foundation can be managed by the ownership of the cooperative. They can become the stewards of the trusts and their specific guidelines set aside by the contributors. The cost of the cooperative retail operation can become subsidized by the benevolent contributions from the foundation. The lower cost off-sets can translate into becoming the catalyst for operating at a more competitive set of margins. All future patrons can benefit from this kind of arrangement. This is what we call, "Creation." As you can see, in the world of marketing, it is different than creativity.
Part three of the T.L.C. process is to "create." It is where the risk gets stronger. It is where the thinking gets more serious. For those who do not set aside some routine time to do this kind of business work, shame on you. Those who fail to do this kind of work are not true business leaders. Period. There is no doubt about that fact. If you prefer to establish a business leader's career, consider changing the way you approach your daily work. Get out of the employee frame of mind and begin to work on the leadership side of the equation. Start developing better ways to add T.L.C. to your marketing routines. Your business model will love and respond to your efforts appropriately.
Good luck on changing how you approach your business marketing.
Until next time...
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