The Map is a quarterly newsletter of useful information in quick-read format for business people seeking ways to improve their bottom line.

This publication is produced by Gail Finger of Finger Consulting, Laurie Breitner of Breitner & Associates, and Jeanne Yocum of Tuscarora Communications, Ltd. Drawing on decades of professional experience, these business owners and their guest authors target their message to the needs of other business owners and leaders.

The goal of The Map is to provide information that will help you:

• Become more competitive and profitable
• Work more effectively and successfully
• Create harmony and energy in your organization
• Manage significant change

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The Map includes information appropriate for a general audience. However, use of these opinions is no substitute for legal, accounting, investment and other professional services tailored to your specific organizational needs.

COPYRIGHT © 2003-2004

Inspire Business Success in 2004 by Laurie Breitner

I hope you have exciting plans for this new year! Whether you want to shape a more effective organization or significantly expand your business, here are tips on what you can do to refocus your organization and change its cultural habits.

Establish a climate for change.
People in organizations resist change; change is facilitated when the status quo becomes uncomfortable. What can you do to encourage transformation? This may seem odd…let your organization feel pain. Encourage dissatisfaction with those things you’d like to be different.

Clearly communicate your vision for the future.
Create a compelling vision of how things could be better; inspire your organization to take action. Meet with everyone whose help you’ll need to be successful - your employees, suppliers, vendors, advisors and selected customers - to talk about your plans. Encourage frank discussion of their perception of your organization’s relative strengths and weaknesses. You may learn about hidden problems and avoid potential pitfalls that could derail your plans. Don’t overlook your banker, business and legal advisors and accountant; getting them onboard early may smooth the way when inevitable stumbling blocks arise and you need their help.

Build a strong alliance of people committed to your goals.
The role of this alliance of internal and external resources is to help articulate a vision of the future, eliminate obstacles, generate short-term successes and change habits in your company culture. Find individuals whose opinions are respected, who agree on your vision and are committed to the process for "the duration." With their assistance, develop realistic, measurable plans. Encourage quick successes; early achievements help to get doubters behind your program. After all, everyone likes to play on a winning team. Identify important milestones and the dates by which you expect to achieve them. Evaluate progress at regular intervals and make mid-course corrections.

Align your organization for success.
Ironically, complex changes can be easier to accomplish than small, incremental shifts. In making systemic change, organizations are forced to confront the larger issues of culture and management style that exist in every organization – systems that make incremental change difficult to accomplish. Here are examples of things to consider:

• Compensation policies
• Leadership styles
• Job descriptions
• Technology and infrastructure
• Policies and procedures

Look at all the different ways that current cultural habits are reinforced and revamp those systems that encourage people to resist change.

Laurie Breitner helps businesses on the road to success through strategic planning, organizational development, project management, operational improvement and technical and process documentation. www.breitnerandassociates.com

As the economy improves, you may find yourself facing new challenges from an unexpected source. CNNmoney (Nov. 12, 2003) reported that "eight in 10 workers plan to look for a new job when the economy heats up." With more options available, employees will no longer be happy just to have a job. They will be looking for challenge, an environment that uses their core talents, and a place where they feel appreciated.

In the Fall 2003 Towers-Perrin Study "Working Today: Understanding What Drives Employee Engagement," the authors outline what is most important to employees, why employee engagement matters, and what you can do to improve employee engagement in your organization. The study involved 40,000 full-time employees and highlights the following crucial points:

• Employee engagement is defined as an employee’s willingness to put discretionary effort into his/her work in the form of extra time, brainpower and energy.
• The statistical data shows that engaged employees do out-perform others and are less likely to leave the company.
• Engaged employees are more willing to focus on customers and the operational performance of your organization, and that makes employee engagement a critical success factor.

The top two factors that improve employee engagement might surprise you:

• Senior management’s interest in employees’ well being.
• Challenging work.

Pay and benefits didn't even make the top ten! Pay and benefits help to attract employees, but they don't help to engage employees or make them want to stay.

It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of good leadership and management in an organization. Employees surveyed for the study cited the following qualities/behaviors as positively affecting their motivation and willingness to put that all-important discretionary effort into their work:

Sadly, half of the 40,000 employees surveyed rated their managers as fair to poor on the qualities listed above. Employees who rate themselves as highly engaged say they have no plans to leave their current company. Those who were only moderately engaged or completely disengaged said they were either seeking another position or would consider another opportunity.

If there is one thing you should do to improve the odds that you have an engaged workforce and low turnover, it’s this:

Be sure your managers and executives have the "people skills" necessary to motivate and engage employees. Management know-how doesn’t come naturally to most. If your managers are people with technical training who have moved up through the ranks to management positions, you should be doubly concerned.

Take a look at the manager leading your most successful group, and the manager leading the least successful group. What’s the difference? It’s very likely that the difference is in their ability to exhibit the 10 qualities of successful managers described earlier.

The good news is these skills can be developed, and it’s not too late. You would do well to consider a management development program for your organization very early in 2004. Your managers will gain confidence, they’ll be able to engage their employees, and productivity and customer service will improve.

The complete Towers-Perrin study (PDF).

Gail Finger is an organizational, leadership and management consultant with over 20 years of experience in the areas of human motivation, performance, and the psychology of change. She offers a wide array of services and programs that result in a highly motivated and productive workforce. They include leadership and management coaching, team development, succession and promotion planning, pre-employment assessments, and a variety of educational and experiential seminars. www.fingerconsulting.com.

Few business activities are as exciting—or perilous—as launching a new product or service. Over the years, research has consistently revealed alarmingly high failure rates for new products. Compounding the challenge, the number of new products being launched each year has skyrocketed since 2000, making it even harder to get attention for your new pride and joy.

Yet with high risk comes the potential for high reward. So if you "built a better mousetrap" that you plan to introduce in 2004, make sure you do the best job possible in planning and executing your launch. Below are five classic mistakes that companies make when developing new product launch plans. Avoiding these pitfalls will increase your odds of success.

Mistake #1: Plan the launch just before the release date. Nothing is more disheartening to a PR consultant than to have a client call and say, "We have a great new product ready to launch next month. Can you come up with a plan by next week?" Sadly, this happens all too often. Companies spend months—even years—developing a new product only to think about the launch plan at the last minute.

In a market where literally tens of thousands of new products are demanding attention, you need a truly outstanding launch strategy. That’s not something you can create overnight so start your launch campaign planning as early as possible.

Mistake #2: Carve your launch plan in stone. Few new product introductions go exactly according to plan. Manufacturing snafus occur. Distribution gets delayed. Be sure to build flexibility into your launch plan. Keep the launch team in daily communication with the people who are actually getting the product out the door so that the launch campaign calendar can stay in synch with the actual availability of the product. For instance, there is no use wasting your advertising dollars touting a product that won’t be on the shelves for another month due to production delays.

Mistake #3: Keep your employees in the dark. Your employees are your most important word-of-mouth ambassadors. Get them on board with the launch plan and ready to talk about the product with everyone they meet before the news goes public in the trade, business or consumer press.

Mistake #4: Use the same forms of media you’ve always used. The number of potential media outlets that can talk about your new product grows daily. Don’t just dig out the media list your cousin used for his last launch. Get up-to-the-minute information on each media outlet to make sure they’re communicating with your target audience. Don’t overlook Internet media outlets that might not have existed when you did your last launch.

Mistake #5: Skip the crisis plan. The number of things that can go wrong when a new product hits the market is limitless. Brainstorm the possibilities and then make sure that your existing crisis plan covers them or, if it doesn’t, develop a launch crisis plan.

Make your 2004 new product launch a success. Plan well, execute with great care, and be ready for the unexpected!

This information offers a sneak peek at a book I’m currently writing with Boston PR firm owner Joan Schneider on how to make your new product stand out in today’s crowded market. Launch: 10 Proven Strategies for New Product Success will be published by Stagnito Communications in September 2004.

Jeanne Yocum, president of Tuscarora Communications, Ltd., has over 20 years' experience in planning and implementing corporate communications and public relations programs. She has worked with clients in a wide variety of fields, including commercial and residential real estate, retailing, health care, financial and legal services, manufacturing, IT analysis, management consulting, architecture, and banking. She also writes book proposals and ghostwrites business books. www.yourghostwriter.com

Search Engine Rankings - The Internet Trend to Watch in 2004
by Silvana Gravini

If your business depends on customers finding you on the Web, this is information you'll need to be successful. In 2004, savvy business owners will likely wrestle with the big question…how to gain high rank positions with the most popular search engines.

Everyone's favorite search engine - Google - receives roughly 100,000 requests per day from sites seeking inclusion. Compounded by the existing 3 billion pages currently catalogued, it's clear that winning a position on the first three pages can be difficult to achieve, which explains why an entire industry has sprung up to help Web site owners win the search engine "race for placement."

Many smaller businesses and organizations may not have the resources to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, so they take on the task themselves. Regardless of whether you're a "self-promoter" or outsource the work, here's some of what you need to know. There are three main ways to improve your Web site's rankings.

1. Pay search engines for results.
2. Get quality sites to link to your site.
3. Develop strong content focusing on your top keyword phrases.

The Pay Per Click (PPC) Model.
When Overture started the Pay Per Click ("PPC") model in 1998, many considered it not much more than a gimmick. Six years later, Overture has thrived for one reason: quality of results. PPC search engines can help target specific audiences, potentially offering one of the highest returns on marketing investments on or offline.

The following are seven powerful reasons to use PPC search engines:

• Do they compete with you?
• Does their site relate to your content?
• How does Google rate their site?
• Will they require a reciprocal link?

Build a content rich site.
Many Web sites are actually company brochures that have been adapted to the Web. They merely describe a bit about the company or service and then add some contact information. Such Web sites usually have about 5-10 html files. If these pages have a good amount of text it is possible to optimize them for several keywords.

However, if these sites are in highly competitive fields, it may be difficult to build traffic because search engines try to find the most important sites that can answer a search query. Search engine robots look for keywords in the metatags and in the text on the pages to determine what the site is about. They also look at the links on various pages. If your main page is about bicycles, for example, and you have links to other pages on your site relating to the cycling theme, then the search engine will conclude that the site is about bicycles. Further, if your site has many pages on this theme, it should rank higher than a company brochure site of just a few pages.

Using these three methods to improve your Web site's search engine rankings should make 2004 your best ever for attracting customers to your online business!

Silvana Gravini, principal of Silvana.Net, is a Web site designer and SEO specialist located in Northampton, MA. Since 1996, Silvana.Net has successfully assisted a broad range of clients to realize growth and profitability objectives through applied Internet technologies. www.silvana.net