A major challenge facing many businesses, both small and large is how to make a great employee, a supervisor, manager, or leader of others, and do it successfully. You both begin really enthusiastically but then it goes south. Your employee doesn’t quite achieve your expectations. How could you have been so wrong? Most times it’s not the employee who hasn’t cut the mustard, but it is you, the employer, who forgot something to help lay the foundation for the employees to succeed in their new role. You simply didn’t train him or her to become a manager.

You have to give promoted employees the tools and training they needed to be successful and it is not just up to you, it is up to the whole senior leadership team. You have to  invest the necessary time and energy to give them the training they need and if you do, you will more than likely get great results.

It’s a terrific idea to promote from within, but it is idiotic to promote without being prepared to provide the correct preparation. If you don’t have the resources available to train these potential leaders, then it is necessary to either find the company who provides this training outside your business, or more preferably hire someone who can train your next generation of leaders on your premises.

If you’re going to commit to advancing the careers of your best workers, and one of those opportunities moves them into a leadership position for the first time, these are the minimum things that you must do:

• Give them a mentor for a period of time.
• Invest in either internal or external training.
• Guide them in how to be an example to others.
• Teach the difference between management and leadership.
• Consult with them regularly to help them with new issues they’ll deal with.
• Give them plenty of support and respect in front of all your staff
• Make sure they enjoy the new role.

Remember middle managers or supervisors have tremendous influence, and you can’t underestimate the importance of their roles. Equip and empower the employees you promote, and it will pay big dividends down the road.

Customer service has always been critical to the success of business, irrespective of what industry you’re in. Research by a whole host of people, including  PriceWaterhouseCoopers have clearly demonstrated that outstanding customer service was a greater contributor to company growth, return on investment and customer loyalty than either advertising and promotion or new products. However, despite this irrefutable evidence, the customer service provided by most bricks and mortar businesses is far less than acceptable.  In the future, as relationships become more and more important in business anyone that doesn’t provide awesome customer service is really putting their company at risk.

It is at least as important, if not more important for online businesses to develop customer loyalty and word-of-mouth through outstanding customer service than it is for bricks and mortar businesses. BI Intelligence reported this week that not only is customer service online not improving, but it is in fact getting worse. But on the positive side, they do report that there are a few companies that are working hard to be customer centric organizations. They also found that social media was a great tool for companies who are facing crises or PR disasters.

BI reports that great examples of excellent social media customer focus include Dell, who opened up their social media command center to all employees, irregardless of their function. Dell trained over 25,000 of their employees in social listening. These employees now monitor over 25,000 social mentions of the company every day in 11 languages.  This provides tremendous insight into the thinking of customers and potential customers.

After the disastrous YouTube video a few years ago.  Dominos Pizza launched a massive campaign to analyze public opinion across all social media. They very aggressively reached out to customers on social media and launched a marketing campaign promoting a better product. They saw an immediate 14% increase in sales as well as a significant jump in their stock price.

After Super Storm Sandy when American Airlines had to deal with a near systemwide shutdown, they turned to social media and now American Airlines ranks ninth amongst all US brands with a response rate of 94% on how attentive they are to customers on Twitter.

There is no question that one of the products that will have a dramatic effect on the future business and how we manufacture and distribute goods is the 3-D printer.  Gartner has announced that it expects about 57,000 3-D printers at a cost of less than $10,000 to ship in 2013, a jump of about 50% over last year. Expect 100,000 units to sell in 2014 and 200,000 units in 2015. Now these are the $10,000 units, there are now fairly basic units are available for $500 and one would expect that most businesses, dorm rooms and even homes will have a 3-D printer next to the 2D printer.

Also claims that the 3-D printing industry will grow from a $288 million business to more than $5.7 billion by 2017. As I said, I believe that 3-D printers will have the most dramatic effect on the manufacture and distribution of a very wide range of products since the advent of the assembly line and the truck.

Bobpritchard “the business leaders advisor”

One of the World’s Busiest Business Consultants and Speakers.

Welcome to the April Newsletter, read by over 15,000 business executives in 53 countries.

This month we address two topics:

• How to market using mobile
• Results require persistence

Before we get into those topics we remind you of the services Bob and the team offer:

• Business Consulting. . . . change your business fortunes. . . contact us now
• The Bob Pritchard Radio Show. . . 246,000 listeners. . .listen or be a guest.
• Speaking . . . .  One of the most in demand speakers in the world.
• Raise capital… for your business.
• Kick Ass Business and Marketing Secrets. . . global best seller.

Bob gets donation of 5 buses for Kidney Health

Bob has obtained a generous donation of 5 buses from the Grenda Corporation

which will be converted to Mobile Dialysis Units for Kidney Health

Article One . . . . . How to market using mobile

There are 5 billion mobiles looked at on average of 197 times a day. There are less than 1 billion computers. So Mobile is the hot new marketing tool.

Some tips:

• Limit word count. Small screens so minimize scrolling
• Highly targeted. Small screen, maximize relevance and laser targeting.
• Know your platform. This will alter whether on phone or tablet. Scrolling or clicking links.

• Link to additional content. Link directly to website or email link.
• Call to action. Sign up, link to newsletter, feedback option.
• It is important to realize that since there is limited screen space you need to focus on transactional content. People are more likely to read blogs, twitter, short videos or listen to blogs rather than read articles.

Article Two . . . . . Results require persistence

Too many of us are not persistent enough when trying to sell to a customer. We think no means no. No doesn’t mean no, it just means not at this very second.

RH Macy failed 7 times before his department store idea caught on. Colonel Sanders knocked on 1008 restaurant doors before someone said OK, I’ll try your secret formula for 1¢ a piece of chicken.

Too many businesses rely entirely too much on hoping one advertisement, or one office visit, or one direct mailing will get the desired results.

Success is not an event…it is a process. Processes take time. Therefore you should never put your faith in one ad, one mailing campaign, or one TV spot. You must commit to connecting with your prospects a minimum of 8 times. If you are not willing to do this and be this dedicated, then you shouldn’t even start to promote to those potential clients.

You need to decide that you are willing to connect with your prospects time and time again and hit them with the same benefit packed points over and over again – from every conceivable angle – in a determined attempt to motivate your prospects to take action!

Remember that no single business or marketing event will generally produce outstanding results, not in today’s competitive market. It used to be true that you could make a fortune off  one ad, one promotion. But today, it’s just not going to happen very often, and you should NEVER plan on it. You must know precisely who you are targeting, what their desires are, and you must commit to connect with them again and again and again, until they either prove they are not a prospect, or until they see that you have the best solution to address their problems.

Any area of business requires persistency to say the least. You must work at it on a daily basis. Some days will be downright discouraging. But, you cannot give up. If you have done your homework, and you realize that you have the solution to your prospects problems, if you have focused precisely on your target, then you must not get discouraged. It can keep you from succeeding. If your prospects are not responding then you need to refine your approach. You may need to reassess who you are trying to connect with.

You may need to approach them from several different angles to find the approach that works the best… you will need to test constantly, always trying to improve your performance. In short, you must persist so that your prospects never have the opportunity to forget who you are, and what you can do for them.

The only way to discover your prospects hot-buttons are to test and to test continually. You can’t predetermine what your marketplace wants, what the best price is, the best selling packaging, or the best approach. You have the obligation to find out from your market what it is that they want. The way to find out what they want is to have constant dialogue to narrow down their specific needs and then test one marketing approach against another, one ad concept against another, one headline against another, one TV or radio commercial against another, one price against another, and the list goes on and on! Testing is an ongoing process. The point is that you cannot guess what your market will buy.

Remember, Thomas Edison left school because the teachers said he wasn’t capable of doing the work. Michael Blake who wrote Dances with Wolves was rejected for 26 years before the book was finally published.

We hope you enjoyed our newsletter.  Please go to our website www.bobpritchard.com and sign up for our newsletter, listen to the “Bob Pritchard Radio Show” on www.voiceamericabusiness.com on Tuesday 5pm Pacific, 11am Sydney, follow us on twitter @TheBobPritchard and also on Google+ and connect to us on LinkedIn.

If you take into account the diminishing numbers for cable and network television, the huge nightly Facebook usage, Netflix winning three Emmys, new studios set up by Apple, Google, Yahoo and Amazon, the huge numbers being generated by You Tube and Hulu then you have to reach the conclusion that traditional television as we know it is in real trouble. Variety this week lists 16 original productions that are being produced by Amazon, both for adults and for children and the Publicis Group, the gigantic ad agency holding company,  has reached a deal with Google to purchase tens of millions of dollars in YouTube advertising over the next year. This is just a few months after Media Vest made a similar huge deal with Twitter.

A note to all TV execs; Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, Hulu and the like, all have massive and rapidly growing audiences, while yours are diminishing, and they are coming after your ad dollars and fast. Add to that the fact that Canada will soon allow the public to buy their programming from cable distributors à la carte, which sooner or later will happen in the US, which has the potential to decimate the industry.  Wow, big changes are on the way.