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Will You Add? - The Four Questions That Can Help You Focus Your Advertising
A stakeholder is a person who has a legitimate interest in a company or organisation. Stakeholders are usually effected by company's decisions and changes. Stakeholders influence decisions made by company's for example, customers could recommend products and the business would take action accordingly. Some Stakeholders such as Shareholders have a share in the company and would be interested in performance of the company to get a good return on there investment.Examples of Stakeholderso Managing Director - The Managing director or a company or a organisation would be interested in how the business performs.o Employees - A employee would be interested in how well the company is running, they would want to know if the company was successful or not, if the company was not performing the employee could lose there job.o Trade Unions - A trade union would have a interest in the conditions and their financial background of the company so they can protect the employees.o Customers - Customers would have a interest in the company's products, price and quality not forgetting there future plans.o Local Community - Traffic and deliveries would effect the local community. The local community could also be interested in future plans for the company and job vacancies.o Competitors - Competitors would be interested in pricing and quality to place there products accordingly. For example if Tesco's was selling milk at 39 pence Sainsburys would try to under cut Tesco's so customers would go from Tesco's to Sainsburys to buy there food.o Suppliers - Suppliers would want to know if a company can afford to pay them on time. Some companies would not want to supply certain companies for example, Gucci would not supply Marks and Spensors with there products because they feel that Marks and Spensors would damage the product identity.
My favorite project management mantra is “Validate Critical Data”. I don’t remember what wise teacher I learned this from but it is one of those sayings that rings through my head when I’m jumping into a new project. After many years it continues to be an important part of my project management success (when it is done right) and an unfortunate contributor to my project failures when it is neglected. Below are some keys to correctly validating critical data.The word critical is not excess flab in this phrase. You shouldn’t try to validate all information – just the information that has been handed to you that effects your project approach. Usually it involves getting the right information about the project deliverables (scope), budget, and schedule. This can not be soft data.Often a project manager will inherit much of their project information. This second-hand information is highly suspect, because just like the old children’s game where the story changes a little bit each time it is retold, until it is far from the truth. The information you inherit is always worthy of validating. Other times, even when the information was correct initially as time passes the project environment or facts change. And the added benefit of this practice is to cause the sponsor to think a bit deeper about the issue than they did initially, and have the opportunity to change their answers.I’ve had many initiation meetings where, when asked to validate the project schedule, stakeholders admit they are not really ready to do the project yet because it is dependent upon other projects that have been delayed. The process of having a friendly discussion involving the validation of all the critical data is usually quite productive and valuable. It can feel awkward the first time you do it. Don’t you already know the information? Shouldn’t we be beyond this point by now? Don’t you trust the people who gave you the project description?Later as the people you work with start
Jack was the Director of Advertising and Sales Promotion at Remington Arms Company and his four questions have helped me get my ideas focused in every advertising challenge I have ever faced.
After all, some say 85% of all advertising does not work. But when it does, it is pure magic. Let’s see if his four questions are your magic wand.
The Mitchell Four Questions.
Question 1: Who is your best or prime prospect?
The surest way to put your new business in the bankruptcy court is to think everyone is going to beat a path to your door. They will not. You will have a small group of customers who will account for most of your bread and butter business. That is what is meant by the 80/20 principle. Eight percent of your business will most likely come from twenty percent of your customers. Start to think and plan with that key fact in mind. If you do not, you will not have a clue who is bu
In order to succeed at Building a Better Mousetrap the first thing we have to do is go back to beginning. Forget about what you wanted your site to be, all the plans you made, everything you have done. Well don’t forget about it totally just don’t make it your focus. Instead start with a clean slate.Take out a piece of paper and pen, fire up your favorite word processor, get a slate and some chalk, it doesn’t matter. The tools are not the important thing here, the process is what is important, that and the final outcome of course. The process we are going to do is build a business from the ground up.It doesn’t matter if you are building a business to sell widgets (not sure why that is such a popular example), promote a rock band, or build a website it all starts the same. With an idea. Spend some time writing down all the great ideas you have for a site. All the things you would love to do if you could do anything in the world. All the plans you would make. All the networking you would do. Take a few minutes and write down everything. Then when you are done come back here.Done? Great. Now take that long list of everything and put it away. Yep put away all those great ideas, all that wonderful planning. You can look at it later but right now we have something much more important to do than work on all those plans you have for taking the world of commerce over. What could be more important? Simple. Preplanning.Before you can build a better anything you have some serious questions to ask yourself. The building is often the fun part, but if you don’t know why you are doing it or what you really want to accomplish then you are wasting your time. Time is money and we don’t want to waste either so we are going to preplan. Since everyone here is mainly interested in building a better website, this will be geared towards that end.Write down the following questions on two separate sheets of paper. Once you have two copies, put one away and fill the ot
Jack was the Director of Advertising and Sales Promotion at Remington Arms Company and his four questions have helped me get my ideas focused in every advertising challenge I have ever faced.
After all, some say 85% of all advertising does not work. But when it does, it is pure magic. Let’s see if his four questions are your magic wand.
The Mitchell Four Questions.
Question 1: Who is your best or prime prospect?
The surest way to put your new business in the bankruptcy court is to think everyone is going to beat a path to your door. They will not. You will have a small group of customers who will account for most of your bread and butter business. That is what is meant by the 80/20 principle. Eight percent of your business will most likely come from twenty percent of your customers. Start to think and plan with that key fact in mind. If you do not, you will not have a clue who is b
Pallets are platforms that are used for transporting or storing things. They are used especially in industries like factories, warehouses, retail, food storage, grains, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, etc. Pallet racks are the stands where pallets are stored. Each rack can effectively hold hundreds of pallets, depending on the size. Pallet racks are excellent for managing space within a warehouse or store.There are different kinds of pallet racks: pushback pallet racks, selective pallet racks, pallet flow racks, reel racks, double-deep selective, carpet racks, seismic racks, bolt connection racks, boat racks, empty pallet storage racks, mezzanine racks, custom/combination racks, die storage racks, structural racks, drive-in pallet racks, and drive-through pallet racks.Used pallet racks are also available from most suppliers. They can be found in all shapes, sizes, models, colors, and configurations. These racks are obtained from warehouses, are refurbished and repaired according to quality specifications, and are then resold.There are several advantages to buying a used pallet rack as opposed to buying a new one: the low cost, the tax advantages of buying used equipment, and lowered interstate freight costs. The main aspects to be considered while buying a used pallet rack are the age of the rack, the condition of the rack, whether or not it has been inspected, whether or not the supplier will give a guarantee in writing, the integrity of the dealer, the available repair records and the type of environment in which the rack was previously used.Make sure that the rack is in good condition; get it checked by a specialist if possible. Find out if the price is worth the equipment because price of used equipment is generally negotiable. Check for several models and styles before deciding on a particular one. Be aware of your needs and requirements.Newspaper classifieds, dealer’s advertisements, and internet websites are generally not good sources fo
The Mitchell Four Questions.
Question 1: Who is your best or prime prospect?
The surest way to put your new business in the bankruptcy court is to think everyone is going to beat a path to your door. They will not. You will have a small group of customers who will account for most of your bread and butter business. That is what is meant by the 80/20 principle. Eight percent of your business will most likely come from twenty percent of your customers. Start to think and plan with that key fact in mind. If you do not, you will not have a clue who is b
If you use business cards, you've probably thought about printing your own. After all, you own an inkjet printer, a computer, and some graphics software. How hard could it be to save a few bucks?To check out how well this works in practice, my employees and I conducted a small experiment. We created 3 batches of business cards, using 3 different techniques.The first technique was fairly straightforward: We took the business card down to our neighborhood print shop, and asked them to print up some more. We brought a blown up copy of our logo, which served as “camera ready artwork.” The copy shop took care of the typesetting, proofreading, printing, etc. It was fairly painless, although it did involve physically getting to the print shop. Next time we'll email them a TIF file. We had planned on getting 500 cards, but the price for 1,000 was only a little higher, so we went with the larger quantity. The cards took 5 business days, apparently because they were not printed on-site, but rather outsourced to a wholesale printer.The second technique may sound unorthodox, but it worked. We used a custom made rubber stamp to create the cards. This was fun, though it took a while. We also wrecked a few cards by stamping carelessly.Finally, we created some cards on our inkjet printer, an Epson Stylus C84. There's special software available for placing the images 10-up on the page, but we opted to use Adobe PageMaker, since that's what we're familiar with. We printed the cards on Avery #8871 Clean Edge Business Card paper.All three methods have their proponents, and none of the methods was clearly the best choice for everyone. The rubber stamped cards were definitely funky looking. If you work at a bank, don't even think about it. On the other hand, if you just need a few dozen cards for your part time cookie baking business, rubber stamped cards might be just what you need to convey the “home made” impression. Art stamp enthusiasts often have fun with m
The surest way to put your new business in the bankruptcy court is to think everyone is going to beat a path to your door. They will not. You will have a small group of customers who will account for most of your bread and butter business. That is what is meant by the 80/20 principle. Eight percent of your business will most likely come from twenty percent of your customers. Start to think and plan with that key fact in mind. If you do not, you will not have a clue who is b
Talking and circling to see if there is any business out of a new contact is all part of the game. Sometimes it takes several meetings either in person or over the phone to discover whether the relationship will go anywhere. Once that examination of discovery is over, business should be conducted or it is time to move on. The ideal, of course, is that business is conducted. The question is, "How long should you keep the discover phase going before cutting off the conversation?" Many sales managers suggest cutting it off after a couple of calls before it becomes a big waste of time. I tend to agree. You should have a process in place (or a check list of items) to qualify potential business and through the meetings and discussions, compare notes to the list. I have worked on potential projects that never materialized for far too long. When I think back, I realized that I was concentrating on the potential and not looking at the real facts. I had not used a checklist and was not qualifying my contacts. Therefore, I was losing business in other areas because my time was spent chasing and talking to the potentials. It seems that there are many cases where the potential business simply wants to discuss business without any action. It could be they are not at the right level within the organization and really have no authority to hire you or use your products. The answer is qualifying the customer according to your own criteria and not theirs. Talk is not really cheap, it costs a lot of lost business in the form of production and servicing paying clients. Your actions in cutting off the relationship cost nothing, but they do reward you with gaining time which cannot be replaced.
To paraphrase President Abraham Lincoln, you can reach all of the people some of the time; some of the people all of the time; but you cannot reach all of the people, all of the time.
Not even the giant Wal-Mart attracts everyone but you can bet they know who their prime prospects are and aim most their approach, right at them.
So where do you start? How do you find out who is going to be that best or prime prospect?
Start at the same place your business idea started. Why in the world did you want to start your business in the first place? Who encouraged you to take that giant step? What did you plan to do dif
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