Poisoning an employee? What does that mean? I’ve never hurt anyone anytime in my life! Deliberately yes – likely what you think is the case may not be true! Why? Because poisoning an employee means you’ve removed one or more employee’s sense of empowerment and ability to positively impact the efficiencies/effectiveness of what they do for the company.

What is the typical result of “POISONING AN EMPLOYEE”?

Keeping existing customers happy and finding new ones has always been difficult. Today the marketplace is seeing more aggressive competitors, often “ridiculous” pricing and deteriorating service levels as competitors reduce overhead by cutting staff. What do savvy business people do to replace customers who drop out and/or move to another competitor? Do they roll-over and pretend it’s not happening? Or, to put it another way, they’re asking themselves, “Do I wait for the economy to return to ‘normal’ or begin to be as aggressive as some of our competitors?”

“I don’t care how many degrees you have on the wall, if you don’t know how to sell, you’re probably going to starve.”—George Forman

A lot of business owners think they are selling, when really all they are doing is marketing. Do you know the difference between the two? It will cost you a lot of time, energy, and money if you don’t.

An Article by Karen Whitman, SPIA Partner: There is definitely a risk to business owners with a “wait and see” attitude. Just to name a few:

Loss of market share
Lost customers
Loss of profitability
Loss of cash flow
Loss of liquidity
Inability to keep up with technology
Loss of productivity
Loss of key employees
Panicked employees
(Worst scenario)—Loss of your business

The greatest risk is the fear induced by the thought of the above happening in your business. This kind of fear can actually paralyze a person’s thinking, and it is the thoughts that control actions. Disabled thinking equals immobility in your business. Even though your business may not be at risk, this thinking makes you feel threatened. It goes back to the old adage, “If you think you can, you will, and if you think you can’t, you don’t!”

In Y2011, we find ourselves striving to take advantage of Social Media Marketing (SMM). Today its all about looking for the “best” marketing strategy to connect with a company’s target audience. So, recognizing this flow of progress, we might ask ourselves, really how much has marketing really changed in the last twenty-five years? From the beginning, the basic objective of every successful marketing strategy has been the same – establish or develop stronger connections or relationships with people.