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Is Internal Competition Giving Your External Competition the Win?

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A Guest Post by
Natasha

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Taking care of the internal competition to compete better with external competition

Think of an organization, having different departments competing with each other, to the extent that they wouldn’t mind sabotaging each other’s work, or bringing a project to a total halt, just for the sake of jeopardizing another department’s reputation, without even thinking of the loss that the company has to suffer.

Sounds quite absurd? However, this seemingly absurd contention exists in more businesses than what you can imagine (and the chances are that it exists in your own company as well).

Many resources get wasted, brilliant ideas never get implemented, and the businesses fail to take off, just because different departments fail to collaborate with each other. And it’s not limited to large businesses, when the business is too small to have different departments, this tussle might exist between individuals.

So, how to make sure that the company’s resources are not getting wasted, just because some workers are focusing more on getting the better of each other instead of trying to outperform the real competitors.

Organizational Culture:

If probed, nine times out of ten, you will find that the organizational culture is the root cause of the problem, so the blame should be placed on the higher-ups who are responsible for influencing the culture of the company. At times, lack of collaboration between different departments can be a direct result of the higher up trying to use “divide and rule” policy, and encouraging people from different departments to come and share negligence or slip-up reports of other departments or fellow workers. When the managers’ start taking interest in such stories, the employees will try to make some on their own, and instead of focusing on their core duties, they’ll be trying to find some “material” to feed the higher-ups with more and more negativity about other departments.

Needless to say, if you are looking for better synchronization, you must not encourage, or approve of any such immature behavior.

Emphasis on common goals:

It is the leadership’s responsibility to get across this message to each and every department, that no matter how significant or non-significant the job seems to be, each and every department is in it together. So, when someone tries to disrupt or interfere with another department’s work, it will eventually hurt the organization benefits, and when the organizational benefits get hurt, the damage will ultimately come back to hurt each and every department, pretty much like a circle … together you rise and together you fall.

Rewards and Appraisals:

If not handled carefully, rewards and appraisal system often ends up adding fuel to fire, especially when different departments have goals or targets that coincide with each other. In such scenarios, departments will naturally try to take the credit for each and every accomplishment; this “credit war” is quite the same as the “turf war” (and we know the consequences of turf wars). Not only they’ll try to take the credit, the departments will go to the extent of hiding their successful strategies or techniques from other departments.

Enhance collaboration:

There are many ways to enhance collaboration, for example you can conduct joint meetings, training sessions, or recreational activities, where manager and employees from different departments can mingle with each other. But more importantly, at these joint sessions, meetings, or trainings, you can discern some tension going between two specific departments, you can call them up in person later on, and resolve the issues ASAP.

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Author’s Bio:
Natasha is an internet marketing expert by profession. When she’s not working, she likes to work out, read, and even draw (though she shares her paintings with very few people who are good at containing their laughter). Currently, she’s working for Loft conversions London that provides the services like Loft conversions in Hertfordshire .

Thanks! Natasha!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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12 Blog Posts that Tackle the Problem of Self Promotion

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No Need to Be Shameless

A while back, Mack Collier, raised the question Is ‘no self-promotion’ the great unwritten rule of social media? I don’t believe it is.

Though promoting the great work going on around us is the fastest way to get positive recognition, sometimes it’s we’re called upon to let people know what we do and how well we do it. A solid business person, especially someone in social media, needs to be fluent and facile in discussing the skill with which he or she can get the job done.

What follows are some articles I’ve written on the subject that you may missed if you recently tuned in to my blog.

  1. Branding, Self-Promotion, Selling: Are You OverDoing?

    2. We know those times well, when we try too hard to convince others of our brand, apologize for our writing, ask links instead of earning them, or quote text when we should analyze.

  2. Branding: A Tagline Is Not A Brand — How to Build a Positive Brand in 3 Steps

    3. Everyone has brand.
    Your brand may be as simple as You are unknown.
    Not everyone has a unique and positive brand identity.

  3. Two Important Ideas in a Brand Identity and Why We Have to Live Our Brand

    4. People have a way of letting us know we forgot to consider them. They do that by redefining what they think of us and telling each other the new definition.

  4. Shameless Self-Promotion: What Makes It Shameless?

    5. Shameless Self-Promoters see only the game — not the relationship or the other person’s needs. Shameless self-promoters are focused on getting, not giving.

  5. Self Promotion: A Winning Answer Every Time — Why is That?

    6. No one got tied up in the confusion that usually hangs around self-promotion.

  6. Self-Promotion: How I Learned to Stop Shooting Myself in the Foot

    7. As a result we often shy away from any attempt to talk about what we do — fearing we’d be mistaken for the opportunists that we’re not. I used to be the poster child for thinking about self-promotion like that, and it found me getting myself tangled in knots

  7. Self Promotion: Telling Stories for the Painfully Shy

    8. People looking at me make me very self-conscious. Many folks find that a surprise. I write this post for everyone who is shy.

  8. How Too Much Thinking Used to Screw Me Up

    9. I said something about the “ME” in self-conscious. I’ve always thought about it. RK came back and put to words in a pair of comments that said exactly what I always had wondered about . . . am I shy or am I egotistical?

  9. 3.3: Three Steps to an Intriguing Answer to “What Do You Do?”

    10. Many folks would tell you this is the time for your “elevator pitch.” I suggest that term might not be the best way to look at a relationship. Why don’t we say that an authentic conversation is our goal?

  10. Social Media and Promotion: How to Get Your Network Pulling for You

    11. A friend emailed me asking if I would pass along information about a product just coming out. The email was a sale pitch I could pick up and pass on. The rest of the message was over the top for me — kind of pushy and kind of “wink, wink, nudge, nudge — you help me and I’ll help you later.”

  11. Talking Decisions and Self-Promotion with JenChicago

    12. see video

  12. Mind if I Ask Your Network to Help Me Beat Your Car with a Sledgehammer?

    13. Just because you say you’re going to do it,
    doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t make it any more appealing.

Self-promotion is important to a business. If we don’t tell the world we exist and what we do, soon enough we won’t. Hope you find this helpful.

Let me know if you think a favorite is missing from the list. Thanks!

What do you find is the best way to promote your business?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Be Irresistible: Find the Unique Opportunity that Is Yours in Any Moment

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Ack, What Do I Do Now?!

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Let’s just say it was in the last few years …
My life already had become all about working with corporations and individuals on simplifying their strategic goals. Daily I asked people questions. Sometimes the situation was about an immediate problem. Sometimes it was about far-ranging visions and goals. The questions were the same, the answers were sometimes easier to find than other times..

Five types of questions can get anyone to the best view of the opportunities in any moment:

  • Mission – Know where you are going. What is your specific and ultimate goal? Can you see it. What is your commitment to it?
  • Position – Know the unique place where are you alone are now. What is unique about where you stand in the situation? What do you uniquely bring to the table? How can your perceived weakness be turned into a strength? (if your back is against the wall, no one can come up behind you.)
  • Conditions – Know how change offers you unique opportunities. What has changed that offers an opening, an opportunity, that uniquely suits you?
  • Command Decisions – Know how to focus and sort which decisions move you toward your ultimate goal. Which opportunity moves you toward your ultimate goal? How does your response work toward making more opportunities? Which decisions will build a foundation for stronger opportunities tomorrow?
  • Networks and Systems – Know who will help you execute and how you will keep your process going. Who can help? How can you align your goals with another to make the movement faster, easier, and more meaningful for both of you? Where is the process so strong it’s invisible or so weak that it stand out?

Strategy is a framework for claiming the opportunities that uniquely our own to move forward toward a specific goal in realistic ways over time. Keeping an eye toward our end game — our mission — is only the beginning. If we recognize the unique opportunities inside every change — when we move, when circumstances move, when the people around us move — we can see a clearer way to that ultimate, specific goal.

Have you analyzed your unique opportunities lately?

Be Irresistible

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Dear Big Company: Why Your Best Customer Offer Doesn’t Cut It!

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The Wrong Kind of Attention

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As I checked my bulk email, a subject line stood out to me. It read …

Only For Our Best Customers > Charisma Now On Sale!

I thought. there’s an “almost clever” idea meant to get me to look inside.
Charisma is the name of a bedding product line the company sells. I’ve bought it in the past and I am a fan. So the email ad should have made positive points … right?

It had the opposite effect. Here’s why.

Dear Big Company: Why Your Best Customer Offer Doesn’t Cut It

From the moment I read the subject line, my mind was brought to the offer not to the product. I was thinking What makes me a best customer and what’s so special about this best customer offer? That’s a doubly dangerous line to walk. After all, something ONLY for best customers really should be something exclusive and highly rewarding.

  • A “Best Customer Offer” Needs to Be Exclusive If they call me a best customer, I need to know what got me there. Am I truly a member of that exclusive best customer club or do they “say that to every girl’? I was doubtful about my “best customer-ness.” I haven’t bought from this big company for over two years.

    I found my doubt confirmed by the words under the ad.
    This offer “only for our best customers also said …

    If you received this email from a friend and would like to subscribe to our email list, click here.

    and something like …

    You received this email because you have subscribed to promotional emails from [The Big Company]

    So everyone on their list and anyone they pass the email onto is a best customer?

  • A Best Customer Offer Should Be Best Customer Rewarding If you call attention to my best customer-ness, I would think you’re trying to encourage best customer kind of behavior. So the next “best” requirement would be a Best Customer offer that seduce me into being a Best Customer — an unforgettable sale of such value that I not only stocked up for my own home, but also encouraged my friends to do it too. Unfortunately, the sale prices I discovered matched every other sale The Big Company has sent me.

    • Dear Big Company:

    Your “Best Customer” offer backfired on me.

    If you want me to read your ad and buy your product, don’t lie to me. It shows no respect for either one of us and takes the focus off the value of your product. In fact, it gets me wondering about things like these:

    • Is a best customer anyone with an email address on your list? Would you include the guy on the corner flashing open a trench coat saying “Hey look at this!”
    • Is your company in trouble that you have to resort to this? Are you like the guy who’ll say anything to get a date and doesn’t care who it’s with?
    • Did you think about who would read this email? Or were you so busy trying to sell me that you forgot that I might actually want to trust what you’re saying?

    “If you’re going to lie to me, at least have the decency to be convincing.” If this is your best truth, you need a better plan to get “best customers” to fall in love with you again. Because saying the equivalent to …

    You’re my best girlfriend and I offer you the same thing I give every girl even the ones I don’t know yet.

    just doesn’t cut it.

    If I’m a best customer, I want to feel like you care about me. A better subject line might read …

    Wake Up with Charisma! Sweet Dreams and Savings Sale!

    then don’t tell me … show me.

    Be irresistible.

    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Work with Liz on your business!!

Selling to People: How to Be the Value Not a Necessary Evil

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Guest Post
by Doug Rice

I am in an interesting position as a sales professional. I see things from the rather optimistic perspective of a salesperson. I see myself as a value creator and a problem solver for my customers. I help them achieve their goals. I make their lives easier and more fulfilling. I believe that I am valuable to them. They don’t just need a product or service. They need ME. I make a difference to them.

But, then again, I buy stuff too. I am a consumer and a businessperson as well. And I have to ask myself, “Do I view other salespeople in the same way?” You see, when I take off my sales glasses, and come back to end-consumer reality, I realize that I may be a little delusional. It seems that most people have quite the opposite view of salespeople. They see them, not as value creators, but necessary evils.

When people go shopping for a car, they rarely want the salesperson to help them. They tolerate it because they have to in order to get the vehicle they want. I recently read an article about an increasing number of doctors refusing pharmaceutical reps from making unsolicited sales calls. “If we need something,” reads a sign on one doctor’s door, we’ll call you.” We hate shopping for furniture because we don’t want to be “hounded” by the salesperson. We find the house we are interested in and THEN contact the real estate assigned to it to see if we can negotiate a better price. We send out an RFP to decide between suppliers.

We want the car. We want the house. We need the drugs. We need the supplies. But the salespeople? They just stand in the way of us accomplishing our objectives. They just make the buying process more difficult for us. We don’t want them and we don’t need them. They are necessary evil.

How to Be the Value Not a Necessary Evil

If you are a salesperson, you are probably feeling rather indignant right about now. I know the feeling. I hate admitting this to myself. But let’s face facts. This is the perception that most buyers have of us. The question is, “what are we going to do about it?” You see, it really doesn’t matter if we truly are value creators or simply sheisters trying to squeeze out profit. If customers perceive us as barriers, that’s what we will be. We can create all the value in the world but, if it goes unnoticed, we are just exhausting our efforts in vain. So, how can we change perceptions? Well, it isn’t easy, it won’t happen overnight, and it will take a lot of upfront effort before there is any payoff. But it is possible to transform your image from that of a necessary evil to that of a value creator. Here are a few tips:

  1. Never fail to qualify. Asking open-ended questions signals to customers that you care about helping them find solutions. Never talk features and benefits until you know what the customer needs. If you do, you may offer a benefit that is irrelevant to the customer. And customers seem to view benefits as mutually exclusive. If it works in one way, then it must not work in the way they need it too. Always know your customer before attempting to sell your customer. If you don’t learn about your customer, you are going to be irrelevant. And value that is irrelevant isn’t really value at all.
  2. Never emphasize price. It doesn’t matter if you have the best price in your market, bragging about it will commoditize you and make you unnecessary. And an unnecessary good is just as bad as a necessary evil. I’m not saying to hide your price. Be upfront about it, but present it in a matter-of-fact manner, as if it really isn’t important. Your customer is trained to seek out the best price but really wants the greatest value. Sell the value, not the price.
  3. Always have a reason. Whether you are sending an email, making a call, or giving a presentation and whether it is your first, second, or third attempt, always have a reason for contacting your customer. Never simply “check-in.” This kind of activity says to the customer, “Hello, you haven’t bought from me yet. Are you going to do it or not?” Newsflash for salespeople: they probably haven’t bought yet because you haven’t yet convinced them. Pestering them with calls basically asking them to hurry up is not going to motivate them. Have something valuable to say every time you contact them. If you do, you are reinforcing to them that you actually have something meaningful to contribute.
  4. Always follow up. Nothing says that you were merely an obstacle to overcome more than the customer never hearing from you after the sale. When you turn the sale into the beginning of the relationship, you are signaling to the customer that you are in it for the long haul. Make sure they don’t just have your product or service after the sale. Make sure they have you. Closing is the new opening.

    5. These tips aren’t guaranteed, of course, to turn you into a knight in shining armor for your customer. But they do send the signal that you are not merely a transactional salesperson. You do not sell businesses a better service but rather a better business. You do not sell consumers a better product but rather a better life. If sales is your career, you’ve got to start working on changing your perceived role. Commoditization is all too easy in today’s world. You’ve got to stand out if you want to stand at all. Soon, “necessary evils” won’t be necessary at all.

    ————————————

    Doug Rice who writes for How Does that Make You Buy? You can find him on Twitter as @dougricehdtmyb
    Thanks, Riley

    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Work with Liz on your business!!

7 Key Steps to Being Seen as the Best in Your Field

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What Good Is an Expert No One Knows?

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Whether we’re part of a large organization or working at home, to be successful and recognized, people have to see the quality of our work, know its value, find it relevant and worth coming back to. Without that we won’t be working long. It’s not enough to have knowledge, know-how, and be able to deliver extraordinary value, if we’re the only ones who know that’s what we can do.

To succeed in business, we need to share our expertise in ways that are relevant, real, and understandable and the more quickly we do that the faster we’ll be able to get on with the real work. These are the 7 Steps to becoming visible as the best in your field, the expert worth knowing, the first trusted source.

  1. Debriefing your successes to find your unique expertise. Inside your successes you’ll find your natural strengths and how they are best used. Capitalize on your strengths and match them with your deep interests — those things that you talk about and do even when you don’t have to talk about or do them. Your unique talent and experience differentiates your expertise — makes it uniquely your own. Know your strengths and play to them.
  2. Chose ONE key area of expertise. Find ONE niche that fits your strengths. With the noise of a crowded market, one niche, one offer, one specific expertise is a clear, easy to share message. People like a “go to” person for a specific need. Having ONE key area of expertise makes it easy for people to share what you do. It makes it easy for the people who want that expertise to find you. Once you’re working together, they’ll discover the other wonderful things you know.
  3. Network online and off to find people who need your expertise. Get to know the groups offline that attract the people who want to know someone who does what you do. Use tools like Listorious.com and Twitter search to find people to follow on Twitter and talk with them. Make friends on LinkedIn one by one. Align all of your profiles to showcase that one area of expertise that is your strongest suit. Introduce yourself with your best true story and a build your powerful personal network systematically.
  4. Share Your expertise as content. New customers and clients want information about how to run their businesses and their lives better — top-notch, quality, relevant content. Find opportunities to write, speak, or teach for your business. Share wht you’ve learned in contexts that are appealing. When you speak, write, and casually answer questions give them information, answers, AND analysis that shows them how much you love what you do. People can get news anywhere, but they don’t want to do what you do. What they want is your experience and the expert opinion, analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and predictions.
  5. Use online tools to curate relevant content around your expertise. Make finding interesting content tidbits your expert quest. Get to be friends with Google Alerts and similar services. Follow terms around the Internet. Choose several publications, blogs, and writers who stay on top of the areas that your customers and clients care most about. Retweet their articles on Twitter. Share them on Facebook and LinkedIn. Add a comment to the article as you send it out. Use popurl.com or alltop.com to locate
  6. Learn as much as you can about those who do what you do. Get to know the other experts in your niche. Talk with them. Visit and comment on their blogs. Ask them for an interview. Share war stories. Discuss ways of working together. Discover the ways that your expertise is the same and different from theirs. Volunteer to guest post on their blogs and determine who you might want to invite to work with you on larger projects and referrals. That’s a great way to build the base of people who know what you do.
  7. Go deeply into your area of expertise. Saturate yourself in the trends and the traditional ways of doing things. Find out what researchers are thinking so that you can offer clients and customers the perspective they don’t have the time to gather on their own. Be the first trusted source of the highest quality and most relevant information so that people begin to look to you for an analysis of their situation.


    8. PLUS ONE: Love what you do. . Nothing is more appealing than an expert who is fully engaged in what he or she is doing. It’s easy to trust that someone who is so engaged will be upbeat and easy to work with when problems come. Share the joy of your niche with the folks who come to see you. They’ll want to know more about what it is that you do.

    Focusing in on your expertise gives customers and clients insight into who you are and why they should keep coming back to see you. It becomes a key centerpiece of your offer — quality, knowledge, and credibility as promotion. Now, you’re ready when that person comes to look with the reasons founded in the relevance and the results that you represent. Just keep counting to seven — seven key steps to being seen as the best in your field.

    What has been the single most useful strategy you’ve found in building your own business expertise?

    Be irresistible.
    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Work with Liz on your business!!

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