Clear the Clutter

This weekend as I was doing our weekly (yeah right!) house cleaning I found myself picking up a lot of items to dust around that I really don’t like, but had almost forgot were there. I then went into each room and really looked at what was stored and on display and gave each a litmus test, “Do I love this?” and/or “Do I need this here?” If the answers were no, I collected them from their dust gathering spot and got rid of them.

This got me to thinking—are there things within my business that are collecting dust or are causing me to work around them. I don’t mean physical things that are on my desk (that goes without saying), but services that I continue to promote, but don’t love doing, clients that are sucking the life out of me, or processes that no longer work.

By looking at your clients, service offerings, standards and practices, employees, etc. with a new light and a few analyzing questions, you can see areas that just aren’t working or are getting in your way. I challenge you to do some “decluttering”.

Pick Your Own

One of the “summer favorites” in New England is the ongoing “Pick Your Own” season at the local “farms”, which are a far cry from any farm I grew up near! But in any case, families come out in droves to pick their own strawberries, raspberries (my husband’s favorite), peaches (my favorite), apples, etc. A few weeks ago we headed out for strawberry picking and trekked out to the field, which was like a million miles from our car, to pick two quarts of strawberries for a rate two times that of what we could have bought them in the store. While we bent over in the heat (the one warm day that we had in June) and picked our strawberries, we got our great family photos for our “memories” and gladly paid the outrageous cost—because we do it for the experience.

It got me thinking—how can I retool my service offerings to provide a more enriching “client experience” that gets the clients more involved, lessening my workload and allowing me to charge more for the said services? I’ve always been a proponent of getting my clients involved in the planning of their events and promotions—as involved as they want to be, so that the day of the event, or when the promotion goes out they can take all of the credit and feel like they accomplished something great, but I’ve never charged more for this.

I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but I would be curious to know if you have been able to achieve this “Pick Your Own” model within your own company, or have seen it used in others.

Life Beyond the Pen

Look in your pen cup sitting on your desk or in your kitchen junk drawer (I know you have one!) and what do you find? If it’s anything like mine, it’s a random menagerie of pens from your bank, accountant, local pizza place, etc. It is a functional promotional item and we are less likely to throw it away—we can always use another pen right? But when you are using it, or storing it away in your junk drawer is it calling out to you to make a call to that vendor? Does is scream “creative”? Probably not. So why do so many companies opt for this type of promotional item? It’s easy and cost effective, but so are so many other items!

When you are selecting a promotional product to promote your company start with your goals:
· What am I promoting? A new product or service, tagline, the company as a whole, etc.
· What is my message or hook?
· How do I want to distribute? Something handy to give out as you go, accompany a direct mail piece, give away at an upcoming tradeshow, etc.

And what is your budget:
· How much do I have to spend?
· How many do I need?
· What is my cost per piece?

Based on these criteria, go to your favorite promotional products website or call your favorite vendor. Two of my favorites are Evie Whitten of Promocentric and Joanne Crispin of Geiger Products. Brainstorm potential ideas and have fun with it.

Some examples
One client was attending a large industry wide awards event and had purchased several tables. As a “table favor” for all of their attendees they wanted to provide a favor that was in keeping with the event theme, “A View of Things to Come” so we did custom silver kaleidoscopes that were neatly wrapped and placed at their place setting.

This same client had fun with that theme, so at another industry event that was honoring their Chairman they wanted another favor for “A View to the Future”, so we did custom view finders (like the ones you had as a kid) with a custom reel of their current project shots and fun facts.

Two holiday seasons ago, Celebrate sent out holiday cards with a “snow angel” impression on the front with the inscription, “You Have Left an Impression on Us This Year” and we accompanied it with individualized name stamps and blank stationary for them to make their own personalized stationary.

We did a large event for a client’s 100th anniversary and did a “Casino Royale” theme and did custom dice as the favor/promotion.

Regardless of what you decide to do the goal is to have it remain at the recipients’ desks—something fun and interesting that not only will be seen by them on a daily basis and bring a smile to their faces, but will also be seen by their clients and colleagues—a viral marketing campaign of sight!

What Does Your Brand Say About You?

One of our many great clients is Maugel Architects Inc. which is located in Harvard, MA and specializes in corporate architecture and interior design from retrofits to out of the ground construction. When we met Maugel just over a year ago, they had just celebrated their 19th year in business and had an established brand identity that was developed over time. In preparation for their 20th year celebration and in response to a renewed marketing effort, they wanted to update their existing brand, which is a challenge that we love to take on! Their existing brand incorporated a rectangular box with a positive and negative “MA” and their tagline was “Service + Commitment + Communication + Design Excellence”. They used both very consistently and had very professional marketing materials, but neither gave you the essence of who they were or gave you a compelling reason to inquire further.

We spent several brainstorming sessions—or as the client called them “couch sessions” to get to the root of who they were as a company and establish their differentiator (listening and project approach), their mission (to design for a better world), values, etc. With this information, we were able to design a brand that not only refreshed the look and feel and paid tribute to their existing brand, but related to who they were. We established their tagline as “listening is our leverage” and recreated their logo with an abstract fulcrum to represent that “leverage”.

What story is your brand telling about you and your company? Is it aligned with what you do and how you want to be perceived?

There is No Room for Perfection in Marketing…or Anywhere for that Matter!

When I first started my business I was co-authoring cookbooks with my mother, teaching cooking classes, baking up a storm, facilitating craft parties, and helping families host great home parties. In other words, I was a Martha Stewart want to be! So when it was time to create my first website I was paralyzed. Martha and the likes had beautiful sites that had so many features and great ideas, and with my resources, I didn’t even know where to begin—so I didn’t. I kept drafting designs with the help of my “people”, but they were never perfect, so I kept pushing it aside. My company was evolving through the process and so it never seemed like the “perfect time” to implement it—what if I needed to change it? My husband (the web developer) was my scapegoat. I told everyone that he just hadn’t made the time to work on it, when in reality; even if he had I had nothing for him to do! This went on for YEARS and it’s amazing that I have as many great clients as I do in spite of only recently launching a website—one that is just right!

Many non perfectionists have the belief that perfectionists get everything done better and faster, which is an outright myth! As a recovering perfectionist I will attest to the fact that if I couldn’t get it done perfectly then it didn’t get done at all. One of the tools I used in my “recovery” (which is ongoing) was the FlyLady, which many might recognize as the guru of home organization and housecleaning, which is exactly what she is. But her philosophy that perfectionists can’t get out of their own way and get anything done, be it laundry or decluttering, holds true in the workplace as well. With her help I realized that getting it done is much more important than getting it done perfectly. I also am now hopelessly addicted to my timer, which is a topic for another day!

Is the need for perfection getting in your way of updating your Facebook status, coming up with witty exchanges on Twitter, launching a blog, or getting a direct mail campaign together? Take it from me—let it go! Be yourself and just do it…I promise you, it’s “just right”!