Internet marketers have been telling us for years that content is king, well in my view the king of content is video.  Not any and all video, but really well produced, engaging video content.  A well produced video can tell your potential clients about your product and service and if it’s good enough, set you apart from your competitors.

In Ireland YouTube registered 2.4 million unique visits in January of 2012.  A unique visitor, a common measure of website traffic, is based on a computer’s IP address, not on individual people, and is determined by cookies. YouTube has changed the media landscape forever. Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 and in 2010 YouTube became the second biggest search engine in the USA, according to comScore.  Google’s long term plans for Google TV is to integrate YouTube into every television, via the internet, not surprising given that YouTube gets 4 billion video views per day.  Apple has similar plans for AppleTV.

Google is featuring more video content in its search engine results pages (SERP’s)and getting your video thumbnail in those search results could be really valuable and here’s why.  A recent eye-tracking study came back with some very interesting results.  The study tracked subjects’ eye movements on the SERPs to produce a heat map.  The search term “How to make pizza” produced video thumbnails in position #2 and #3 in the Google organic search engine results page.  The heat map showed subjects focussed on the first video thumbnail, possibly at the expense of the number 1 organic search result.  In general,  where the eye focuses is where the click happens. Getting your video thumbnail in the SERPs could result in more clicks than a number 1 organic listing.

Integrating video into your website has multiple benefits; it gets your message to your potential customers in a dynamic, engaging way.  Great videos means you can feature on the second biggest search engine in the USA, YouTube and getting your video thumbnail into the organic search results on Google could means more clicks, more traffic and ultimately more business.

Think you want that top management job?  Before you leap have a look at this article and make sure you’ve thought through what it really means to be a manager.  Here are 10 of the toughest parts about being the boss.  If you’re not ready to take on each and every one of these downsides, then I’m sorry, but management jobs aren’t for you.

1.         You’ll have to make decisions that other people won’t like: 

Whether it’s ending a favourite promotion, not hiring an employee’s friend, or scheduling people to work over a bank holiday weekend (Or worse a hurling match weekend in Kilkenny), you’ll have to make decisions that may not be popular with your team.

2.         You’ll need to tell people they’re not performing well:

Sometimes these will be people you like and who are trying hard.  Either way, it’s going to be a hard conversation that rarely gets easier, and you won’t be able to shy away from it because addressing problems head-on is a key part of a manager’s job.

3.         You’ll need to fire or lay off people: 

Can you picture yourself telling someone that today will be her last day of work?  If not, think twice before becoming a manager.  I’ve had to do it in the past and it never gets easier.  In fact, if you find it is easy, you’re probably not fit to be a manager.

4.         You’ll need to tell people no:

You’re going to the person who has to say no sometimes—to a request for a raise, or for time off, or for a promotion, or a plea for a new computer. (Of course, you also get to say yes too, which is one of the upsides.)

5.         When things go wrong, you’ll be the person blamed:

When things go right, you’ll give your team the credit. But when they go wrong, you’re the one who shoulders the blame. Even if the problem was due to an employee’s mistake, you’re ultimately the person accountable.  Even worse when you consider point 3 and see that when things go wrong, it may result in lay-offs and that my friend, is happening on your watch.

6.         Your decisions are high stakes:

If you hire the wrong person, release the wrong product / promotion, or make the wrong budget trade-offs, your decisions could cause the company’s ruin.  Even an offhanded comment could land you in court.  Every decision you make, even the smallest ones, could have unforeseen price tags.

7.         You may have to enforce rules you don’t agree with:

Disagree with your employer’s policy on promotions? Well, mention that to your employees and you’ve just undermined your own boss. If your company has a policy you don’t agree with, hard luck but it’s still going to be your job to enforce it.

8.         Friendships with lots of people in your office will be off-limits:

As the boss, you need to have professional boundaries between you and the people you manage. You can’t have the same types of office friendships that you might have had before you became a manager.

9.         You’ll be scrutinised:

Everything the boss says or does carries more weight. If you express particular enthusiasm for one person’s idea, people will assume that’s the idea they should back. If you’re out sick on the day everyone else is stocktaking or performing some other mind numbing task, people will talk about it for weeks.  If you’re in a grumpy mood, people will spend days wondering what they did wrong and parsing their relationship with you.  Also, they’ll think it’s okay to come to work in a bad mood because if it’s good enough for you….

10.     Some people won’t like you: 

If you’re a good manager, you’re going to make decisions that anger and upset some people.  You are going to tell some people their work isn’t good enough.  You are going to hold accountable people who may not want to be held accountable.  You are going to institute and enforce policies that may exist for a good reason but still irritate the bejesus out of some people.  You are going to have to fire people at some point.  You’ll need to make peace with the fact that there will be people complaining about that horrible person they worked for, and that horrible person will be you. So if you’re deeply invested in trying to be liked by everyone, don’t go into management.

These are some of the reasons to stop and think, but you know what?  If you are the type of person who looks at how something is done and thinks “I know a better way” or “Management have it easy” I direct your thoughts to an expression often used (Mostly in jest) “You are not entering the manager’s office, it’s hell, with fluorescent lighting.”

1. Check to see if you’re affected, and by how much. Do a quick search on Google for your brand name, domain name and for any high-volume head terms. If you find that you are not ranking on the first page for your brand name, or if other terms have significantly slipped in rankings, then it’s a likely sign that you’re suffering. Looking at your analytics will give you more insight into how your total organic traffic is looking. This will also help you find out when your site first suffered.

2. Don’t panic, and don’t make any sudden movements. It might feel like the sky is falling around you right now – particularly if your traffic for a really valuable term has just slumped to zero – but an immediate response isn’t likely to be helpful. Also, any changes you’ve made to your site in the last few days / week are unlikely to be the cause of your particular issue; don’t worry too much about them or try to ‘undo’ things. As discussed below, there’s a chance that Google has been overzealous and made mistakes here; if this is the case, then we would expect to see some of the impact reversed in the coming days.

3. Be prepared to clean up your SEO. If your company has benefited from ‘shady’ SEO techniques, then this is a perfect time to get your house in order and take a more honest approach in future. Now would be a good time to put the brakes on any low-quality link building practices, and to start cleaning up any poor-quality techniques you’ve been using, either on-page or off-page.

A Short Timeline / Background

During March and April, Google has been sending out a significant number of messages to webmasters (via Webmaster Central) – many were ‘Unnatural Link Warnings’, telling the site owners that Google recognised ‘artificial or unnatural links’ in their backlink profile. Google also issued warnings to the SEO community about penalties for ‘over optimisation’, but with scant details on what factors they were assessing. At the same time, Google has been aggressively trying to penalise large link networks. Sites that relied on using these kinds of services for link-building suffered from the drop in link equity to their site. On 18th April, Google tried rolling out an update to recognise parked domains (and presumably reduce their rankings or remove them from search.) It was publicly announced that there was a bug in this change, which mistakenly impacted some sites. However, it’s clear that some sites are still suffering significantly lower rankings, indicating that either this update’s issues haven’t been fully reverted, or that another algorithm change has come into effect.

Our Thoughts

The effects of these changes have been an update targeting exact match domains (EMDs) that got out of hand. If I launch a slew of domains such as CheapCarSalesGalway.com with thin content and a lead generating form, then Google is probably quite right in trying not to give the site much credit. Buying EMDs is a pretty cynical tactic, that’s definitely been used as a ‘quick and easy’ way into the top results.

One theory is that Google is not mis-categorising sites, but actually mis-understanding search phrases. There’s also a strong feeling (among SEOs talking online) that Google may well admit to a mistake here, and undo or dial-back the impact of some of the recent changes. (There is precedence for this: in the days after the Panda Update, some sites saw their rankings return to roughly their pre-Panda positions). It is with this possibility in mind that we made the recommendation above to not panic.

If you are confident that your site has a clean link profile, and there’s nothing murky or egregious in your site’s SEO history, then it might be best to lie-low and see what changes over the coming days. For sites that have used any questionable tactics in the past – particularly if you have any ‘grey’ links in your profile – now would be an appropriate time to take action on that. Better still, it’s an opportunity for people to take a closer look at what might have happened in your specific case, and try to plan so your site regains its rankings and traffic. If you would like to talk about some specific issues you are having, please feel free to email me on sue@ezsales.ie and I’ll offer whatever advice I can based on the information supplied.

What Is On-page SEO?

“On-page SEO” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. It could mean keyword research, writing good TITLE tags, internal linking and crawl architecture, even content creation has been dumped into this pile of options. For the purposes of this post, on-page is anything you directly control in the code or content of your site.  Simple, right?  As a rule of thumb, think of the analogy of trying to build a house on sandy foundations, in the rain.  If you don’t have good strategy and site architecture in place with a good base of content and relevant information – forget about driving more links, you’re driving links to a pile of blocks that have fallen down and are crumbling in the sand.

Case #1: The Elephant

70% On-page, 30% Link-building

The Elephant is an established site with a solid, trusted link profile and usually a good base of content. In many cases, it’s a site that’s evolved “organically”, which is a fancy word for “without a plan”. The Elephant could be suffering from any or all of the following:

• Keyword research is 5 years out of date
• Keywords are cannibalised across many pages
• Internal links have grown like weeds
• Site architecture doesn’t reflect business goals
• Page TITLEs overlap or are duplicated
• Old but valuable (i.e. linked-to) content is 404’ing

In many cases, no one notices, because The Elephant’s strong link profile and solid content keep it ranking well. The problem is that you’re sitting on a gold mine of untapped potential. Of course, The Elephant should keep building solid links, but a shift in focus (even for a few months) to really planning and focusing on on-page issues, from keyword research on up, could produce huge dividends.  They say elephants never forget and that’s positive but there’s an element of “What have you done for me lately” that cannot be overlooked.

Case #2: Perfect Pat

30% On-page, 70% Link-building

Perfect Pat often comes out in new webmasters. They’ve read 500 SEO blogs and are following all the “rules” as best they can, but they’ve become sooo obsessed with building the “perfect” site that they’ve hit the tipping point of effort versus results. Perfect Pat wants to know how to squeeze 0.01% more SEO value out of an already good URL by moving one keyword.  Ouch, it’s going to take hours to achieve that 0.01% and that won’t deliver significant enough a return to justify the effort or expense.  You’re not quitting, it’s a case of doing the things that will make most difference to your sales growth.

It’s time for Perfect Pat to remember the 80/20 rule (Pareto principle) – there comes a point where your on-page is good enough, at least for now. You have to get Google to your site to put that on-page magic to work, and that means building links. It’s important to develop content (which is why I’ve left on-page at 30%), but put almost every other on-page tactic to the side temporarily and spend a solid 6 months developing and implementing a link-building campaign

Case #3: The World of Pain

90% On-page, 10% Link-building

The World of Pain is a Google engineer’s fantasy (or possibly nightmare). She’s broken every single rule of on-page SEO, which worked fine for a while, but then came “May Day” and “Panda”, and now Google is even talking about penalising her for optimising too much. The World of Pain has let something (Likely a lot of things) spin out of control, including:

• Blocked crawl paths and bad redirects
• Massive URL-based duplication
• Excessive internal search, categories, and tags
• Aggressive advertising-to-content ratio
• Extremely “thin” content
• Nonsensical site architecture and internal linking
• Keyword stuffing that would embarrass 1998

In some cases, this could be “over-optimisation” and an attempt to manipulate the search engines (Inadvertent “Black Hat SEO” stuff), but in other cases the World of Pain is just that – a painful mess of garbage that has had every trick in the book fired at it without any strategy or structure whatsoever. Whatever the cause, put down everything and start fixing the problems now. Chasing new links without fixing the mess is like having your carpets cleaned while your house is burning down, or trying to sell the house to the fireman who’s putting out the fire.

Case #4: The Red Card

10% On-page, 90% Link-building

Finally, there’s The Red Card – he’s broken every rule in the Google link-building playbook, and they’ve finally noticed. This could be a large-scale devaluation or a Capital-P Penalty, including:

• Paid links
• Link farms, networks and exchanges
• Excessive low-value links
• Aggressive anchor-text targeting

If you’ve been naughty enough, you could be facing a serious ranking penalty or even de-indexation. At that point, all the on-page tweaks in the world won’t help you (I left 10% just to keep the site up and running). You have to fix the problem and address the problem links. Bare minimum, you have to stop doing what got you into trouble and show a pattern of positive link-building. You may even have to file for reconsideration. The fix can be tricky, and depends a lot on the situation, but until you fix it, The Red Card isn’t going anywhere.

But What About Social?

Before I get a tonne of comments, I purposely left social factors out of this post. I think the influence of social is growing and it definitely deserves your attention (and budget), but I don’t want to confuse an already complicated issue. Also, at this point, there are no major social “penalties” (small-p or Capital-P), so it’s hard to have an SEO crisis related to social media. Still, social should certainly be a part of any healthy mix in 2012.

One Size Never Fits All

I’ll try to keep the point short and sweet (Those of you who know me, will understand how difficult that can be for me when it comes to the right mix, there is no one-sized-fits-all solution. On-page SEO and link-building are both important, but how important each one is really depends on your current strengths and weaknesses. Long-term, everyone should pursue a mix of solid on-page structure, unique content, an authoritative link profile, and substantive social presence. Diversity is the best way to future-proof your SEO – if the algorithm changes or you hit a snag on one pillar, at least there will still be enough left standing to keep your roof up and your doors OPEN FOR BUSINESS.

First tip – be a good scout and arrive prepared!

Find out what the culture is within the group you are going to visit.  By knowing what’s expected, you will make a great impression.  See if you can identify any of the attendees and if any of them would be on your introductions wish list, perhaps you know a person who could introduce you to that potential contact while you are all in the room together.  Bring your business cards and a small notebook so you can write things down as you go.  Don’t use those moments after a new introduction to scour the room for your next prospect – write down as much as you can about that chat you’ve just enjoyed and make sure to write down what had been agreed as a follow up.

Second tip – know what you’re going to say

You know that people will ask you to tell them what you do, so have something interesting to say.  You’ll have about 30 seconds to impress or they’ll mentally check-out of the conversation so don’t start telling people what you are – it’s much more interesting to tell them what you do.  So in my case I could say:

A)     I’m an internet marketing and sales consultant who focuses on systems and service       OR

B)      I help people make more money in their business and have more fun doing it

Which answer above leaves the door open for more conversation?

Third tip – respect other people’s time

DON’T BE A BORE OR A STALKER!  If you know people in the room that’s great, but avoid them.  The point of networking is to make new connections with people.  Look out for new faces, read name badges and do not stick like glue to the first person who’s nice to you and follow them around for the night.  Remember that everyone is there to make new connections.  Establish if you can help the person you’ve met or if they could help you.  If they would like to meet, exchange contact details and agree to make contact and arrange a conversation over coffee sometime in the next five working days (Don’t let the grass grow under your feet).  This allows you to meet others but also allows them the same opportunity.  Like I said, respect their time.

Fourth tip – ask about others first

Everybody loves to be asked about themselves and to feel as though you are genuinely interested in them (Which of course you will always be) – nobody likes to hear a person rattle on for ages about who they are or what they do.  As a rule of thumb, if you are trying to develop a relationship with a person it starts with you showing them lots of attention and listening rather than talking – think about having two ears and one mouth, use proportionately please.

Fifth tip – follow up

If you have met a great contact and think that you could help them and they could help you, please follow up on the items you had agreed to.  Your great start could come crashing to a bitter end if you fail to call them when you said you would or by failing to carry out an action that you had promised.  That’s why it is really important to take notes and have a system in place.  Great things rarely happen accidentally.

Within BNI our members can avail of training and development in all of these areas.  This learning can be applied to other networking groups, your own business or even dating (But I wouldn’t recommend the latter).  People who get nervous about going into open rooms for networking events are normally suffering from the same type of anxiety that’s brought on by not being prepared.  Networking can be great fun and a massive source of dream clients.  Before your next event, have a plan, set a target for the people you would like to meet – even if that’s just a number and NO STALKING.  Keep moving around the room and be alert for new connections.

As a closing thought, networking should be treated in exactly the same way and any other marketing strategy.  You need to have a plan, know the desired results and measure your investment of time, energy or money.  It has never been so important to reach out to other local businesses and pull together so plan to visit networking groups and have a plan for what to do once you get there too.

• How to develop a great website
• What marketing messages are right for your product or service.
• How to integrate social media messages into your strategy
• How to reach your target audience and get your website found on the internet.

Staying on top of how search engines rank websites is a really important aspect of an overall internet marketing strategy.  Online marketing  is not the same as traditional marketing, you can have the coolest website, a great product and some cutting edge marketing messages but if no visitors come to your website, you are not going to sell any products online are you?

Google issues a very general monthly report that it labels ‘Inside Search – Search Quality Highlights’.  It gives a broad-strokes overview of where it is taking its ranking algorithms, allowing you to see where the trends are heading.  In February Google announced that it made 40 changes, the highest number to date, which shows that search moves quickly!  Here are the major trends in my opinion:

Local Search

More locally relevant predictions on YouTube:  For example a for the query [U2  in] performed on the US version of YouTube Google might predict [U2 in America], whereas the same search done on the Australian version might predict [U2 in Sydney]

Improvements to ranking for Local search results:  improves the triggering of local universal results by relying more on the ranking of main search results as a signal

Improved local  results: new system to find results from a users city more reliably, can now detect when both queries and documents are local to the searcher.

Freshness

Google continued its work on promoting ‘fresh’ content in the changes it made to its algorithms in February. Google disabled two old classifiers relating to query freshness, it also updated its algorithm for image search to surface fresh images when they appear on the web, they have also applied new signals which allows them to surface fresh new content more quickly when it appears on the web.  Google has also consolidated its signals for spiking topics, so they can rely on signals that they can compute in real time, keeping them ‘on trend’ for the spike in popularity of a particular topic.  They have also updated the data in the Panda System making the famous ‘freshness’ update more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes in the web.

Authority

Google likes authority, which means knowing that they are returning the user with a reliable source for their particular query.  In February Google adjusted it algorithm to more accurately detect official pages.

Cleaning up

Google has also updated its SafeSearch algorithm for both image and search to ensure that it is better at detecting adult content in image searches and also making it less likely that irrelevant adult content will appear for most queries.  Google has also worked on their auto-complete policy to make offensive and inappropriate terms less likely to appear.

Google also turned off a method of link evaluation that they have used for several years.  They didn’t say which one, or how it affected links, that remains to be seen.  I can be sure of one thing, having looked at the search trends over the past few months, you can bet that it prioritises high-quality in-bound links from authoritative sources and negatively affects anyone engaging in ‘black-hat’ SEO such as link-swapping or link – farming practises.

Evaluating Googles Search Insights it is apparant that engaging in a search engine optimisation strategy that focusses on great content that generates high quality in-bound links, combined with ‘fresh’ updates that engage your consumer, will reap long-term rewards. Google are trying to eridicate black-hat SEO techniques, by changing the way they evaluate links and promoting fresh relevant content. I’m certain I won’t be proven wrong on that one!

Take out your mobile phone and check how many contacts there are contained within your contacts folder. My guess is that it’s more than 250 people with the average being slightly higher than that.

Now imagine that I invited you to join me at a meeting with 20 other business people (All with their mobile phones / contacts in their pockets) where you will have an opportunity to request an introduction to a target client from a person in the room who your target client knows, likes and trusts.  If you call that target client after being introduced and your target client has heard how you add value for your clients, how likely is it that you will have their full attention?  That’s the difference between a qualified referral or introduction versus a “Cold call”.  I’m sure you love cold calling, right?

In a snapshot, that’s what BNI is all about, giving more business to it’s members and ensuring that qualified introductions are made When a BNI member calls a person to whom an introduction has already been made, they will have a genuine opportunity to do business.

When we examine the way in which we do business today, it has never been more important to build great relationships with your clients and within the local business community.  Word of mouth marketing is the most cost effective manner of promoting your business and typically produces either most of, or the most profitable type of, business conducted in any organisation.

BNI is the most successful organisation of its type in the world.  There are currently thousands of chapters in operation with tens of thousands of members.  Members of BNI have passed millions of referrals and this translates into billions of euros worth of NEW business being done between the members.  Of the worldwide totals, over half a million referrals were passed in the UK and Ireland, resulting in over €270 million worth of business for our members IN THE LAST YEAR ALONE!

In GALWAY, BNI has generated over €4.2 million for it’s members between our four Chapters and we continue to increase this figure weekly.

We follow a structured agenda that is proven to maximise the business that is passed in any BNI Chapter that has been developed by BNI and refined over the past 25 years, all around the globe.  A part of the process is that members have the opportunity every week to educate their fellow members on the type of business that they would like introductions for and how to introduce them successfully to meet a requirement from other members contact spheres.  If I told you that a good introduction for me was an business person who sells their products online, how many people within your contact sphere do you think you could introduce me to?

At BNI we use the philosophy that “Givers Gain”.  If you give me a referral, then I will want to give you a referral in return and thus we work in partnership to win new business for our respective companies.  Being a member in a BNI Chapter gives you the power of a twenty plus member sales team who all know what type of business you are looking for, how you would like to be introduced, how you add value for your clients and who will actively listen out for opportunities for you to do business within their contact spheres.

If you could handle some more business and would like to join us for a meeting, or if you would like to find out a little more about BNI, please give me a call, my number is listed below, and I can show you first-hand why we say that “Missing breakfast can be seriously bad for your WEALTH”

I get a shifty flick of their eyes followed by very similar responses:

• “I guess, it’s repeat customers….”
• “Well, I run ads in local papers sometimes….”
• “Hmm, the brand name above the door does it in most cases….”
• “I think, it’s probably the Golden Pages….”

They are fooling nobody – except maybe themselves

Straight away, I’m trying to work out what process is in place to measure sources of business because any business owner or manager that is focussed on those metrics can quote them off the top of their head.

I love to hear “30% of my business is repeat trade, 50% is walk-in business because I have a great location and the rest comes from different marketing and promotion campaigns that I run at different times of the year”.  There’s no sand slipping through those fingers.  Having spent a little time with them, that’s the level of focus that clients of EzSales develop throughout their teams.

Before we can establish the likelihood of your success in new promotional activities, we have to understand where your current business is coming from.  I do not want to start pushing your promotions away from a successful source.  In fact, the main reason I’m asking the question is to work out where you are spending your money and to see if we can take some of your current marketing spend and make it work more productively for you through other channels.

Sales ends up being a numbers game, so you have to be on top of your numbers.  You need a system that tracks every enquiry and qualifies the source of that enquiry.  This will drive your actions too.  If you see that most people are coming to you for goods or services because they were recommended by a friend, then the likelihood is that they have received a little bit of pre-selling.  They are already disposed to like you and your products or services because a trusted friend has recommended them to you.  If you’re not measuring the volume of business that you get through this channel, you could become complacent when it comes to customer service.

Equally, it has become expensive for businesses to continue to pay for premium listings with the golden pages.  If you were to stop doing that and spend the money in a different area it could be a risk.  If you assume that all calls you are getting for new business enquiries are coming from your Golden Pages listing, perhaps asking the question from a caller about where they heard about you could go a long way to establishing whether that it truly the case or not.

When building a cohesive sales strategy it comes down to a simple approach:

A)    Know where your sales come from (Measure and report)

B)     Identify if your competition are winning sales from you through other channels and if it is possible for you to compete in that space (I see no reason why not)

C)    Work out what business will churn of it’s own accord once your product or service quality remains consistently high – take that as a baseline of business in the bank (My guess is that any figure you list as business in the bank will be a fairly low one in current market conditions)

D)    Look at what costs will go behind driving business through other channels and break out your sales and marketing plan accordingly (This will make you focus on the return you get from the money you spend behind every activity)

E)      We’re back to Point (A) – Measure sales and report

F)      Rinse and repeat (Don’t lock your strategy in stone, but don’t change too often either.  Review the success of your activities and identify the impact in positive revenue growth)

I suspect that if you haven’t run this simple exercise recently in your business, then there’s a good chance that you are spending money from your sales and marketing budget without knowing what return it’s delivering to your business.  It’s money you’ve spent in the past and each year you pay it again.  Don’t get upset, get focussed.

By stepping back and looking at your sources of our success, we can learn what activities are fruitless.  Cut them out and increase effort and focus on the areas of your sales and marketing plan that give you the highest return and you’re well on the way to a successful strategy.

At EzSales we have simple, cost effective solutions.  We make it a priority to get the necessary systems and structures in place throughout your business to deliver measured results.  These bring focussed strategies that WILL increase your sales and will increase your PROFITS.

You’ll note that I begin with the intention of FOCUS rather than fire. There’s a good reason for this, most people fail to do it. They have a valuable (And costly) resource sitting within their business that will never be unlocked because of a lack of direction and motivation. To illustrate, I’ll fall back on my role within hospitality businesses where the logic is easy, but the practice can be slightly more complex.

I go back again to my previous article (Linked above) and remind you that we have to review our costs. You have to decide if there is sufficient staff resourcing to cope with the business volumes and in hotels this is an easy one to understand. You know how many rooms need to be cleaned from last night, how many breakfasts to serve to the people who stayed and how many people are staying with you tonight? They’ll need receptionists to check them in / out and people to take care of their lunch / dinner / rom service. It’s Groundhog Day – but the numbers change slightly daily.

The question shouldn’t be “How many staff do I need to cover the bookings for tonight?” – that’s reactive, not proactive. The real question will be “How many staff do I need to win MORE business today?” If the staff that you employ realise their importance to your sales effort, then the link between business and FOCUS becomes clear.

Set targets so that each person within each department knows exactly what is required from their performance on that day. Your team should know this and be working with you to help ensure that their performance matches your targets for them but it is your responsibility to empower them to do what it takes to deliver that result.

You MUST give them the necessary training and the benefit of your experience and guidance, but you have to trust them to come up with ways that they believe they can achieve better results. If they are not focussed on the Target, they will simply walk through the steps of their role – do simply what is required on a task basis, clock-out and go home. A focussed team work towards a target and know that their performance will influence whether or not the overall team will be successful – preferably for THAT DAY.

Setting targets as part of an overall sales strategy is a skill and I want to stay on point in this post – there are a number of givens now to be considered:
1. Your team are trained
2. They have the tools required to be successful in their role
3. Their performance has had a measure applied to it
4. Their performance has been linked to the overall business targets
5. The elements of points 3 & 4 above have been communicated clearly to your team

In this context, your team now have the skills and targets. You have to motivate them and each manager will have his / her own style for doing so. Now you can objectively assess individual performance to see if your team are giving you 100% effort. So it’s not completely down to the members of your team – you have your part to play in setting the stage for them and then you have to monitor their performance and communicate with them effectively.

If you have invested this effort into your team and still you have an employee who consistently underperforms, then you implement your own disciplinary procedures and either manage the employee back into effective performance or regrettably, you manage them out the door.

Keep in mind my original point on this. An employee who gives you 8 out of ten for effort is STEALING 20% of the productivity you require from their role. If we thought about lazy attitudes towards work in this context it would have a dramatic change in the way we approach it with our staff surely. If you pay a bar tender €90.00 for six hours work and he stole €20.00 from the till, you would fire him / her. If they take an extra 30 minute break or don’t bother going to greet guests who are stood at the door reading your food menu, why should this be treated differently. These things happen just as much because of a lack of FOCUS on YOUR part as they do when your staff are not focussed on the results that your business needs for success.

Keep your comments coming, I’d love to hear the feedback now that you understand a little bit more about my thoughts on this subject.

If you’re serious about your business then the reason you get up early and go to networking meetings, engage with other business owners and try to make things happen, is because you want to have a profitable business.

Take seven steps to take control TODAY so you can enjoy P.R.O.F.I.T.S.

1.    P – Print / Publish your goals:

Understand what your goals and objectives are for being in business.  Identify what success means to your organisation and focus on the tasks and actions that will deliver that success.  This will be the answer in your head every time you ask the question “Why do I do this” so make it a good answer that’s meaningful to you.  Print those goals and share them with your team – stick them on your wall and Practice what you Preach.  When you’ve written it and shared it, you’re more likely to succeed because you won’t want to fail in front of others.

2.    R – Re-structure your cost base:

Everything has boiled down to price in recent times.  Bad when you’re trying to haul in sales but surely it benefits when it comes to paying your bills?  See it’s not all bad news.  Identify what could be waste, what could be more efficient and whether you need the product / service at all.  In times when we can anticipate a shrinking market, our first responsibility is to live within our means.  Control your costs on all P&L lines.

3.    O – Organise and Orchestrate:

Look at your systems and structures and if you have a team around you establish that they are organised in their systems and thought process.  Sharpen up your interaction with your clients and build your reputation as an amazing service provider.  Interact with the business and those involved whether customer, supplier or employee.  We’re all in this together and you might be surprised where help comes from.  By being in the middle of things you can orchestrate and control the factors that will be most important in the system you have organised.

4.    F – Focus or Fire your staff:

Okay, so it’s a bit dramatic.  I’d prefer you focus your existing team.  However, at the end of each week you don’t sit down and decide on a scale out of ten for effort, that Mary only scored 7 this week so she gets 70% of her wage.  Who’s the fool?  It is YOUR job to set the rules of this particular dance.  You must give them an operating standard and the tools and training essential for them to complete the tasks.  I predicate my approach here on the understanding that as part of your cost-base restructuring you have agreed that every employee in your team is vital to your success.  It is THEIR job to meet that standard.  If they know what is vital for them to be successful in their role (Which is vital in some way to the success of the business), then it falls back to you to keep them focussed and motivated and to challenge poor performance.  Continued poor performance is denying you of a vital resource and this will drain your business and impact on morale of those who do perform for you.

5.    I – Implement your plans:

By this point you have now got a view of why you are in business, you have looked at how to achieve your definition of success (Making your business work for you), you have cut costs, established robust systems and structures and you have clearly defined what you need from every member of your team.  Great.  Who’s going to make sure all of that happens for you?  Simple answer is, nothing will happen unless you implement the plan.  Make it all happen every day and remember to place emphasis on the old saying “Customer is King”.

6.    T – Take advantage of your existing customers:

That comes in many forms.  The most obvious is to get them to buy from you more often, but there are other benefits to them already knowing you and liking you.  Get them to recommend you to friends, offer them a loyalty reward, ask them to follow your social media activity, send them special offers by email or best of all ask them to write you a testimonial.

7.    S – Secure those SALES:

Own your customers.  Deserve their loyalty.  Be great at what you do.  Most important, don’t forget to ask for the sale!  I’ve lost count of the number of times where I have visited a client at their premises who missed an opportunity to sell more items to one of their customers because they didn’t ask.  Bought a torch?  Maybe they need batteries.  It’s not rocket science and nobody knows your product range better than you.  See what other goods or services can be bundled together and have a strategy to sell them together wherever possible.  I’ll say it again. ASK THEM TO BUY, your customers will be delighted if you can solve more than one problem at a time.

If you can focus on these seven steps, then you will make a big difference to your sales in 2012 and the way your business is working to deliver those sales.  It comes down to one simple thing – is your business working for you?