1. Invest in Your Employees.
The most valuable, the most productive, asset for every company is the employee. The employee is the asset that creates the strategy and then executes it to deliver the brand that makes the customers happy who tell their friends who become customers who experience the brand who tell their friends...The employee finds innovative solutions to new challenges, works the long hours away from their family, finds new products...A company builds shareholder equity as it increases the value of its assets over its liabilities. An investment in your employees generates the best ROI.
I've shared 16 ways to invest in your employees, without spending a dime in free ebook Employees: Worth their Weight in Gold.
Future Action Step: Create incentives that are meaningful for your employees and that reward reaching the right goals for your company.
2). Invest in Your Customers.
- Reach out and call them. You, the CEO. Call your customers. Find what they need.
- Then go find a solution.
- Treat their every call like it’s an emergency. It will be if you don’t.
- Empower your employees to make them happy.
- Incentivize your employees to make them happy.
- You’re creating the most powerful and cost-effective sales force: customer evangelists.
3) Cut Costs.
- Open the kimono, as Guy Kawasaki has said. Show them the numbers.
- Show them how it effects them, why they should care and why they should believe.
- You've already incentivized them.
- Let them participate, now.
4). Keep Advertising.
No need to increase advertising. That budget is better spent with incentives for your employee’s reaching the right goals.
Keep advertising. Your message will naturally fill the void from the silence left by your competitors fading away.
5) Network, Network, Network
Now’s the time to reach out for partners, vendors, idea sources,
influentials, innovators, new products and services. Network, network,
network.
With social media tools like blogs, twitter, linkedin....all
free...your network of resources can quickly reach global.
And so can
your solutions. And so can your marketplace.
6). Broadcast Your Story....LIVE!
- Every small company has an unique story to tell.
- You solve unique challenges. You have unique products and services.
- Each employee can have a direct and personal influence on your brand, internally and externally. That differentiates you from those global, impersonal, brands.
- Use free resources like blogs and podcasts, digital videos and twitter.
7) Now’s the Time to Hire.
Refugees from faceless corporate brands are free and motivated to work for an inspired company. ( That's your company, right? ) They bring talent and training, also, which someone else paid for.
Upgrade your talent pool and hire these A-players.
Brad Smart from Topgrading shared this tip when we spoke together on BlogTalk Radio. You can listen to the full conversation here.
8) You. Manage Yourself to Lead by [Positive] Example.
Now, more than ever, your leadership skills will be critical to your organization’s success. People depend even more on their leaders in times of change.
Manage yourself so that you can lead by positive example every day, so that you can be there for them.
I blogged my list of tips to insure focus.
These are tips that work for me. You'll find others, more, less, that work for you. Use this as a starting point to define your own set of tips that let you lead with the right example: strength, clarity, focus, patience.
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