Shining Stars and Poison Pills

No business can be better than the PEOPLE that make that business happen. 

I've always struggled with this idea somewhat. We've been able to recruit some enthusiastic and dedicated people over the years but keeping them for the long term is difficult. We are often on the lower end of the earnings potential spectrum for these quality folks and the pace of work/work environment can also be pretty frenetic.

However, pay alone is not the prime mover of people. There are people, much like many of us, who are motivated by the mission and rewarded by the results. These are people who want to be treated well and will flourish in a supportive environment. For them, our culture is the attraction.

Learning this and coming to a fuller understanding of this has been part of my evolution as a business owner. When I look at our office staff, my partners, managers and sales team, I see project oriented team players. When I look at the drivers I see fewer of these types.

The applicant pool for delivery staff is very different than the applicant pool for all other positions. Often they are between jobs or looking to supplement their income. The delivery driver applicant can also be a serial delivery job jumper. I'd rather have the supplemental income applicant.

I think the challenge for all of us in the on-demand food delivery industry is to try to innovate around the driver team to create ways to attract and retain better help. I know lots of people that have a variety of performance incentives and others that guarantee income. 

Here, we tried to dig deeper and try to mine our historical driver data to build a profile of the driver that stays. Was it a man or a woman? A student or a senior? Someone who works 3 shifts a week or 6 shifts a week? Someone who lives far away? Someone who likes shiny buttons?

I'm not 100% resolved that building a great driver team is impossible, but most of the time I am not particularly optomistic.

The greatest lesson I've learned is to try to identify Poison Pills and Shining Stars as quickly as possible. In a group environment, the Poison Pill in the group can do more damage sometimes than any amount of Shining Stars. The Poison Pill talks a lot, and spreads their disdain quickly.

Ridding our teams of Poison Pills quickly is what lets the Shining Stars do what they do best -- infect others with positivity. These are the folks that work for more than money and truly love the small victories. They tell others about what they personally have done to make their work experience better and to maximize their earnings.

Give me a handful of Shining Stars, lock out the Poison Pills and it's a start to a great team and a great culture. For me, the frustration of building this and then needing to either refresh it or completely rebuild it over and over again wears me down. 

Either we keep hiring too many Poison Pills or we are just too slow identifying them.

Social Media Marketing? What about just being social!

Got You Spinning?

Today we were working on some Social Media details that, quite honestly, make my head spin. Just when I was getting sort of used to Facebook and Twitter, I now have to get familiar with Instagram, Pinterest, Google Plus and probably a few others that I don't know anything about.

Keeping up with our social media campaigns here includes postings, building "likes" and generally finding meaningful ways to actually interact with our customers and the community.

In the past we had hired a social media company and paid out a lot of money for relatively moderate ROI, so now we only have a small contract with a media company to do some stuff for us but we have taken a lot of this activity in-house. For many RDS's I think the debate over how to do "social" is in flux, but I see others bringing the general activity within their own walls.

Why Do It Yourself?

Although it's not for everyone, doing it yourself/in-house may be a better way to truly keep customers engaged. For those of us who may have found companies that are really good at building social media campaigns, great. However, I often feel like these posts and engagements are so artificial that the customers kind of know it.

Your people, especially all those young-ish CSRs are probably adept with most social channels AND they know and understand the RDS business (and, specifically YOUR RDS business) better than any outsourced provider.

Having the posts and engagement coming from within your walls will lead to genuine social interaction while also increasing the engagement of your own staff with your customers.

Guidelines are a Good Thing

Putting social media in the hands of your staff will mean that the staff needs to be in sync with the rest of the company's branding strategy, policies and goals. It doesn't take too much to get everyone on board, but having regular meetings, even once a week or so, to go over some of the details here would be helpful.

I like to know that everyone is aware of our promos, what is going on with restaurants, menu changes, etc. Beyond that we talk a lot about our "voice." There is a look, feel AND sound to our brand and our marketing and keeping our posts in that casual and fun tone that characterizes our brand is an important part of what we want to accomplish with social media -- because it simply reinforces our brand and image!

And remember -- being social means not just talking about yourself. It is extremely important to not turn your social engagement into a long string of commercials. We have a very tough time keeping from doing that, but are working hard at being ACTUALLY social with social media. 


Here's some more reading fodder:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232473#

Successful Marketing Starts With a Plan

SETTING SOME PRIORITIES

As I get back in the saddle each year after our RMDA convention I am always bursting with ideas and am completely re-energized. Then, it's time to figure out how to turn all of that into money.

This year I have returned to my desk with a few top priorities. Among them are getting our dashboard finished, hiring a new restaurant rep and re-writing our marketing plan.

Each year I update our marketing plan (which includes an advertising plan) and create a timeline and target dates for some of the specifics. Most small businesses do not have a marketing plan or for that matter know how to write one. So, I'd like to take a jab at an overview of this and share some links.

WHY A MARKETING PLAN?

If someone came up to me on the street and asked this question (which, by the way, would be a very weird thing, don't you think) I would answer, "because writing it forces me to think and to organize ideas."

The organize part is especially important to me. By nature I am not organized at all. I do, however, like most entrepreneurs, have a spinning brain. Ideas pop in and out all day. Sometimes I talk about them, sometimes I write them down, sometimes I spring into action on something so juicy that I just can't contain myself. The thing is, that's probably not a great way to run a business.

Putting the big picture marketing stuff in writing, collaborating with others, and laying out the plan and writing it all in such a way that CHANGING that plan if needed is easy, is a great exercise and an important step in propelling my business.

THE STRUCTURE I USE

While there are many templates available online to help you get started, over time the structure of your written plan may evolve and improve to better suit your company and represent what you can actually execute. I am sure that the marketing plan for Nabisco is a bit more complex than the one for Deliverynow.com, but here are the general elements I cover and the structure I have developed:

1. Mission Statement: this describes what I want this marketing plan to achieve in terms of brand identity,  sector growth (corporate, residential, hotel and pharma), and overall growth.

2. Sector Strategies: for each sector I list at least three bullet points that each represent a strategy to build that sector followed by detail for how we execute this strategy and a timeline by quarter. For example: Residential -- a) Build brand through social media...(and then list specifics), b) leverage database through email and direct mail (followed by specific deployment ideas -- both new and proven), c) Increase community involvement, ie. sponsorship of local events, local sports, etc.(followed by some specific opportunities). The timeline and goals for each quarter are spelled out with each sector strategy.

3. Advertising/Media Buys: this section is truly an advertising plan that outlines any print or mass media buys that we have scheduled or want to schedule. For each item in this list I cover message and creative bullet points plus target budgeting.

4. Budget Summary: Here is where, through lists and a spreadsheet, we lay out as much detail as possible of what we expect the execution of our marketing and advertising plan to cost. For our business this will include the costs of all e-marketing, print and media, direct mail, sponsorships and direct sales.

5. Marketing Calendar: this is exactly what you think it is. By seeing what's ahead, in a clear and easy to understand manner, we can manage the daily tasks that make timely execution of each element happen.

Number Crunching and Adaptation 

No good marketer lacks good analytics. Over the course of the year as our marketing strategies unfold there are things that are working and things that aren't. There are ROI's that we expected because we are doing something that used to return huge value that somehow is not returning the same results.

Tracking customer acquisition, sales movement in each sector and geographic drill downs for all of the above, is integral to understanding what works. The trick is knowing when to cut your losses and move OUT of a strategy that isn't working and potentially re-allocating resources to what IS working!

Big companies have lots of money to experiment with. We don't. If we are doing five things to build residential sales and two aren't working, then it won't be long before we are just doing three things or working on two new ideas.

Similarly, every once in awhile we sometimes stumble on something that works way better than our wildest dreams. Don't be afraid to switch gears on the fly and boost the program that's working!

This is also true of Big Business Marketing -- plans change. Having a monthly and quarterly marketing report is part of our process and reality will drive the changes we need to make. 

Below are a couple of links to articles written by better minds than mine. Check them out!


http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/competitive-analysis.html

http://www.inc.com/guides/writing-marketing-plan.html