Company Playbooks

How much time and money did you spend last year to make sure your sales and marketing teams could articulate your value proposition?  Now, how much did you spend making sure the rest of the company could do the same? If you’re like most organizations, with the exception of what might be in an employee manual or on a corporate brochure, the remaining employees (often over 80% of the staff) have been ignored. And so what is the result?

If you go into most mid-sized businesses and ask anyone outside of marketing and sales what the company does, you will get a different response from each person. There is no cohesiveness or understanding across the organization. But these are the people who are interfacing with your current and future customers on a daily basis. Outside the company they are talking to prospects, future employees, potential investors, you name it! Wouldn’t it make sense that they have a clear understanding of your business? That is where the Playbook comes in.

The Playbook is for everyone in the company. It isn’t an employee manual. It isn’t a business plan. It is a key to success. The average Playbook is about 20 pages long, and it clearly articulates your brand, your corporate values, and the business you are in. It defines your target audience, the value you bring to your customer and your unique selling proposition. It may contain other elements, like customer testimonials, lists of competitors, and quick examples of customer successes. It also explains the company’s missions and goals and your vision for the future.

Here is a sample outline of a Playbook. It can be modified or changed completely to suit your needs.

• What is your company mission or goal statement?
• What do you sell and how do you make money?
• What are the company values?
• What is the brand and why is the brand important.
• A three to five sentence description of what your company does, written from the perspective of the problems you solve for the customer.
• Who are your top customers?
• What are some examples of products/services you’ve provided to them?
• What was the impact on the customer?
• What the future plans are for the company, what is your vision?
• What makes a good prospect?
• Why did you start the company?
• How does the company define success?
• Why are the employees important to your success?
• Who is the management team?

You can start by sending a survey out to all your employees. Let them answer anonymously but ask them to submit the one burning question about the company they’d want you to answer. Get everyone on the same page and watch what happens.

Logos & Entrepreneurs

At least once or twice a month I am approached by someone who is starting a new business and is looking for help with a logo design.   A lot of design companies would lead you to believe that without the perfect logo your business has little hope of succeeding.  That’s a load of crap.  Sure, its a lot more fun to think about your logo than it is to worry about the numbers, how you’re going to fill your pipeline, and how you’ll actually SELL your services.  All that stuff is a little scary.  So it is easy to start fixating on the logo instead.

I’m here to tell you that unless you plan on selling tennis shoes to teenagers or cereal to children, your logo is the least of your concerns.  Just make sure it fits the following criteria:

• It looks equally good in black & white as it does in color
• It is easy to ready (no fancy script fonts)
• It looks professionally designed (no clip art)
• You like it

That it.  Really.  Nobody will choose to buy your services or technology because of your logo.  They will buy from you because they have a need and you have the answer.

Thanks to the internet there are dozens of online logo design services, Logoworks.com and 99designs.com are just two that I’ve recommended in the past.  The quality of the work is excellent.  Sure, you get a few really lousy logo concepts but overall I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve seen.   One colleague used Logoworks to design his logo for an online social networking site for hair stylists.  It cost him $300 and this is what he got – he’s delighted.

As part of a case study I’m conducting I decided to get a logo designed for an online business I’m launching called Peace Happens.  The goal of this project is to get a business up and running on the Internet (including e-commerce) for less than $1,200.  It has to be generating revenue before I can spend more than $1,200.  I’m doing this because I see too many start ups and small businesses spending all their marketing budget on the wrong things — like logos and expensive websites — instead of whats important, like GENERATING LEADS.  There are too many inexpensive or free tools on the market (like WordPress) to use when building a website.  And services like Logoworks and 99Designs are an incredible resource for certain types of design work. Read more

Imaginary Competition

The September issue of Inc. Magazine has a great interview with John Kotter on strategy.  He mentioned an exercise corporate leaders sometimes go through that I think is brilliant.

Pull together a group of employees and create an imaginary company.  Then tell the team, “you are the management of that company and your job is to kill our company.”  So the team puts together a plan that leverages every single weak point in your firm.  That is the morning exercise.  In the afternoon, the team reconvenes and talks about how they are going to counter attack.  What a great way to look at your compay through a different set of eyes.  You also end up with a list of improvements to make to your company.  After all, your competition is out there already planning on how to win your market share.  You might as well beat them to the punch.