So you want to launch a business...

The Simple Secret of Strong Brand Identity

"Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble."

     Samuel Johnson

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."

Judy Garland

Branding expert, Alina Wheeler, relates those personal exhortations to corporate branding. 

"In psychology, authenticity refers to self-knowledge and making the right decisions for the right reasons. In branding, companies who know they are, what they stand for, and how they are different, have a competitive advantage."

The secret really is a simple one.  Nobody remembers the imitator.  They remember the original.  Be original, and make your originality obvious to the world!

Three things to know about salespeople

"No computer network with pretty graphics can ever replace the salespeople that make our society work."

                                                                                         Clifford Stoll

My friend and fellow blogger, Anne Clelland, reminded me recently that I had asserted a universal truth about salespeople.  She challenged me to post it so others might refute me, so here it is (Rule Number Two, below), and more.  Comments are open.  I'd love to hear your opinions.

There are exceptions to the following rules, I'm sure, but not very many IMHO.  I'm willing to risk stating them in boldface type; but I've done dumb stuff before.  Here goes...

Number One:  For purchases that involve personal risk of any sort, people prefer to buy from other people.  Personal risk takes a variety of forms, of course.  The cost of the item relative to the financial resources of the buyer is almost always a discriminating factor.  The look and feel of a publicly visible item as compared to the buyer's self-image also plays a part.  And so on.  The point is this.  Buyers want to trust an actual person to be selling something that will not harm or seriously disappoint them.  And they want someone to blame if the deal goes sour.

For most prospective entrepreneurs this means that you probably have a human sales force in your future.  Given that, I recommend that you pay close attention to the other two rules.

Number Two:  Commission salespeople are perfect optimizers of dollars per working hour.  They all adopt behaviors that maximize their income for whatever time they choose to invest.  If they sell multiple products, they will bias their energy toward the ones that have the highest potential return to them.  Salespeople who do not act in this manner commonly find it useful to make fresh career choices.

The bias of the sales force is useful information for you, the business owner.  If your sales force ignores one of your products, it is probably a dog, or at least badly priced.  Or the commission rate is too low.  Or the sales cycle is too long.

By the way, any salesperson who is not on some sort of commission is really just an order taker, and should actually be replaced by a "computer network with pretty graphics."

Number Three:  Commission salespeople typically do not maximize their total income.  Unlike teenagers at a pizza buffet, they stop when they are full.  They do follow Rule Number Two and maximize dollars per hour invested in selling.  But when they have made "enough" money, they take off and play golf.  The definition of "enough" varies widely, of course; but the phenomenon is real.  They want the time on the golf course more than they want the extra money.  Behavioral psychologists call it satisficing.  They are maximizing their happiness per hour.

Some companies fight the golf option by increasing the commission rates at higher levels of sales.  Others simply accept it and hire additional salespeople. 

So - what do you think?  Have you observed these same behaviors?

The power of principle

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."

             Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Back of every noble life there are principles that have fashioned it."

    George Lorimer

A few days ago I was reflecting on corporate vision statements.  At the close of that post was this sentence, "Of course, that brings me face-to-face with what-should-come-next.  But I'll tackle that one later." 

Later has arrived.

What-should-come-next simply has to be corporate principles.  At least I think so.  It turns out, however, that searching on "corporate principles" delivers only a hodge-podge of anecdotal references to specific statements by individual companies.  There is no clear evidence from the engine-of-all-knowledge that there exists a coherent sense that a business should be "principled."

"Well, well," he said sarcastically. "Isn't that a great big surprise?" 

Corporations are carefully designed to limit the personal liability of the people who own them.  The very same mechanisms that protect investors from undue business risk, also nicely protect them from inconvenient responsibilities.  When Union Carbide managed to kill thousands of people in Bhopal, India, none of its actual owners lost a single penny beyond their loss in the value of the Union Carbide shares they had purchased on the New York Stock Exchange.

Here are two examples of public statements of principle by corporations.

RTI International - Corporate Principles

As we pursue our mission of improving the human condition, we adhere to the values that have served as RTI's foundation throughout our history: integrity, excellence, innovation, respect for the individual, respect for RTI, fiscal responsibility, and objectivity.

Balfour Beatty - Guiding Principles

    * To fulfil our responsibilities to shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees and the wider community.
    * To treat all groups and individuals engaged in or affected by the business with the highest standards of integrity.
    * To conduct all aspects of our business at the highest level of excellence and professionalism and have regard to the traditions and practices of the markets in which we operate.
    * To pursue our financial performance goals without losing sight of longer term objectives or of the wider context in which our business operates.
    * To seek continuous improvement in all aspects of the way in which we operate and do business.
    * To ensure we conduct our business and make our decisions within a clear ethical framework.

Call me crazy, but I just don't believe that these go far enough.  Mentioning a clear ethical framework is good; but what, pray tell, are the specifics of that framework?

Tim Ferris, in his bestseller, The 4-Hour Work Week, speaks proudly of winning a kick-boxing championship by circumventing the spirit of the rules of the competition.  His triumph denied some other kickboxer a trophy.  Loosely-regulated financial institutions, in a frenzy born of unfettered greed, precipitated a global economic disaster.  Union Carbide killed people.  The only difference among these three events was the scale of the unfairness.

As an entrepreneur, you are preparing to launch your own company.  Perhaps you have already launched.  In either case, I encourage you to weigh in heavily on the side of broad responsibility for future corporate actions.  Here are some principles to consider, tweaked for appropriateness to the business context:

• The fundamental importance of honesty, integrity, and responsibility;
• The inherent worth and dignity of every single person;
• The importance of justice, equity, and compassion in all relationships;
• The enlightening power of a continuing, free, and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right and the responsibility of each individual to act in good conscience in moderating behaviors, both personal and corporate;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence upon which we all depend for survival.

By the way, upon reflection, I would have to say that a clear statement of principles should precede composition of a vision story.  I had the order wrong.  And this time I know what comes next - commitment.  More later.

The story of business

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will."

                                                    George Bernard Shaw

I've been trying to figure out the "corporate vision" thing. 

It's trendy.  And it certainly makes sense as a way to communicate the Motivation behind the Moxie.  But making it real, and useful, is no mean feat, I think.

Being a faithful member of the global internet community, I started my figure-it-out quest by invoking the world's favorite search engine.  That proved to be an interesting and time-consuming exercise, but not very helpful.  My wanderings turned up lots of "vision statement" references and a few "methods" for creating them - both corporate and personal.  But I did not locate a definitive path to a tight grip on the process or on the presumed outcome of the process.

Abandoning the search engine method of intellectual inquiry, I decided to test a pre-electronic alternative.  Reluctantly, I admit, I concluded that my only hope was to turn away from the screen and to think about it, alone.

Upon reflection, it now seems to me that a presumed requirement for a good vision statement is verbal conciseness.  It has to be tweetable. That obviously places arbitrary boundaries on the opportunity to deliver a rich description of a preferred future state. The greatest writers of all time have routinely agonized over the inadequacy of even the most well-crafted prose to capture the fullness of what can be observed, let alone what might be imagined. Where, therefore, could an entrepreneur possibly obtain such linguistic wizardry as might evoke corporate inspiration in only 140 characters? 

Where, indeed?

So - now I'm thinking with my keyboard.  Somebody once told me that extroverts often think with their mouths.  I guess a keyboard qualifies as a mouth, of sorts.  This is fun, actually.

Suppose I get crazy and switch from "statements" of vision to "stories" of vision.  If I were to wake up inside my company three years from now, what would I see?  A vision, after all, is what I see.  Is it OK to add what I would hear, what I would feel?  My sources say yes. To tell the story of my future I'll still have to write excellent prose, but at least I can break the single sentence barrier.

OK, I'll search again - this time on "corporate stories." 

Visualize me typing madly right now.  I think I may be on to something, and I really want to see the outcome of my search.

Bingo!!  Success on the first un-sponsored entry.  And I quote...

Help me hire a hit man...

Reads the sign of a panhandler outside a subway station in San Francisco. Apparently, she does quite well.

In Olympia, Washington, a guy gets similar results with motorists by holding up a placard that says: "Why lie? I need a beer."

A man in Times Square offers this only-in-New-York service: "Tell me off. One dollar."*

These three entrepreneurial panhandlers succeed (in their own way) because they know something many business people have yet to discover: Nothing's more powerful than a good story. 

Bingo #2!!  And I quote...

Reading Bruce Temkin's "Use Storytelling To Define Your Culture," I found this article useful because Bruce suggests telling stories about corporate achievements will have more success in cementing employee passion for customer service than management telling people not to do something. I believe stories are so important because when attempting to motivate people to follow an idea its less about pure facts, and more about how people relate to those facts.

I, Jim Flowers, am now a happy man.  I can post this little dissertation feeling comfortable that I have, at least for myself, moved past the "vision statement" roadblock.

Of course, that brings me face-to-face with what-should-come-next.  But I'll tackle that one later.

Truth in advertising

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."

                                                                            - Mark Twain

Business, like most of life, is all about relationships.  And, as many sages have noted, strong relationships are built on mutual trust.  I hate to bring this up, but it has to do with one of the biggest mistakes an entrepreneur can make.

Never, never, never lie about your product or service - or about anything else, for that matter.  You can only lose your reputation once.  If you lose it early, your startup will likely never recover.

"Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended."

                                                                                       - Benjamin Franklin