During our webinar this month, “The Seven Deadly Sins of Community Marketing”,
Roger Brooks taught us that one of those sins is overlooking the “why” aspect of our marketing efforts and instead focusing too much on the “what.” Often, we attempt to sell features and benefits before we ever convey our beliefs and values to our audience.

Ironically, I also watched Simon Sinek deliver a similar message in his TED Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, in which he describes the communication style of great leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Wright brothers. Great leaders inspire and motivate us by focusing on the “why” and using the “what” to teach a new concept. Sinek said that most selling starts and ends with what we are selling. What if, instead, we shared the beliefs of our organization and the opportunities for our client in joining us in those beliefs?

As we are all struggling to make sense of this crazy world that we have helped to create, it might be a good idea to step back and reflect on both our personal and organizational values and beliefs. How are we communicating those in the way in which we do things? Asking why is an important question to give some thought.

As Dean discussed in his article, when it comes to business relationships, it is important to ask the question, Why?  Why do we do what we do? How do our core values influence the way we do business? Successful companies almost always know the answers to these questions.

When we base our products and services on our company’s values, we gain a competitive advantage over other firms offering the same benefits. If a customer can identify with a company’s beliefs and values, it builds trust and loyalty.

For example, let’s focus on Whole Foods Market. The company’s core values are spelled out on their website and include such values as selling the highest quality natural and organic products and promoting healthy eating education. Although other local grocers may offer a selection of natural and organic items, chances are that shoppers who value an organic lifestyle, sustainable agriculture, and healthy eating will frequent Whole Foods Market to meet their needs.

Another example of a company who holds true to their core beliefs is Starbucks. Their values include ethical sourcing, environmental stewardship, and community involvement. Customers who truly identify with their causes and appreciate their values are willing to pay a premium for their beverages as opposed to purchasing coffee from a less expensive vendor.

Imagine working for or doing business with a company whose values are not clearly defined. This could present many challenges. The employees may know what their company does and how they do it, but if each employee and executive puts their own spin on why the company does what it does, there is no consistency within the business and no differentiating factors to their potential customers. When company’s have a clear purpose for their existence, it infiltrates every aspect of their business (i.e. operations, leadership, hiring decisions, marketing, etc). This basic philosophy guides them through both the peaks and the valleys, and creates the opportunity for the firm, its employees, and customers to work together for a greater good.

Have you recently considered attracting food manufacturers to your region?  If so, you may want to alter your traditional approach.  The truth of the matter is that growing companies in the food industry aren’t focused on building new production facilities in order to expand their operations.  This isn’t to say that they aren’t expanding, they’re just not expanding through new building projects.  This conclusion is based on recent interviews conducted with executives of high potential expansion companies in the industry.  The way that most food manufacturers are currently looking to expand is through mergers and acquisitions.  From their standpoint, this is a safer and less costly approach that often allows them to diversify their product offering without having to start from scratch.  Consider for a moment the single biggest driver in increased food production, population growth.  Unfortunately, in a developed country such as the USA with a .7% population growth in the last year and an established middle class people, there simply isn’t a need to speed up food production.  Consider also that Americans are becoming more aware of how much and what kind of food they are eating as obesity numbers are frequently published, and nutrition information becomes mainstream.  This leads to less, not greater, food consumption.  So how do we grow the food manufacturing presence in our region?  Let’s consider what we can focus on with those companies in our own backyard.

Trivia question: What expenditure equals out to roughly $445 per American Household per year?  That would be the U.S. pet industry expenditures coming in at a total of $50.84 billion in 2011.  Of this total, the largest single contributor is pet food at $19.53 billion.  When I look at this number, I think about all the families I know that don’t have pets and then start to wonder what the real annual expenditure is per pet-owner household.  It is no surprise that Americans spend a lot of money on their pets, but do they care more about spending on their furry friends than they do themselves?  From 2008-2010, when the American retail economy saw a major decline, spending on pets increased 11.9%.  One could argue based on this fact that the pet industry is recession proof.  Enough of the fun facts, how does this relate to you?  Food manufacturers are making a major push to expand their operations by adding pet foods lines to their overall product selection. When you think of Del Monte Foods, what comes to mind?  I think of the canned vegetables and fruits in my cupboard not of brand names like Kibbles n’ Bits, Milk Bone, and Meow Mix.  Half of Del Monte Foods’ $3.7 billion sales came from pet food in 2011.  The reason why this is becoming an easy transition for food manufacturers is that they often have all the raw material needed from their “people food” production.  All they have to figure out is how to take the leftover material and package it into a product that your pet will enjoy (and if you’ve ever been a pet owner, you know it doesn’t take much to please your dog’s taste buds).  As the industry moves in this direction, pay attention to those food companies close to home that have yet to expand their operations in this direction.  All it may take is a little brainstorming session and some packaged incentives for your local companies to expand into this market.

Another area of interest I was struck by in spending the last 3 weeks studying the food industry was the rise of ethnic food manufacturers or divisions of food manufacturers dedicated to ethnic food.  Some of the fastest-growing companies are focused in these specialty foods, and it makes perfect sense.  In the past decade, the total population in the U.S. grew by 9.7% while the Hispanic population grew by 43%.  As mentioned earlier, food production increases based on population growth, so we should be focused on what demographics are fastest-growing in our society and focus our effort there.  At the local level, this again may mean brainstorming with your local companies on how to expand into these markets, or make an effort to approach ethnic food manufacturers that are up-and-coming and persuade them to open a plant in your region.  If you have the market research to show that your demographics can accommodate their production, you may have a leg up in drawing new business.

So remember, the majority of the food industry is focused on expanding through mergers and acquisitions, so you may have to shift your efforts to a new direction.  Don’t ignore the staggering statistics of pet food expenditures or Hispanic population growth, and determine whether your community is the right environment to take advantage of either of these market trends.

As 2011 draws to a close and we look ahead to 2012, we begin to wonder what the New Year will bring. Here are a few collective observations from friends, colleagues, and clients engaged in economic development and commercial real estate.

1. Work – becomes more complex, requiring higher skill levels with far fewer workers needed to achieve the same level of output. Thirty percent of work will be done in home offices. Work moves to the people. The focus will become having meaningful work to do that can be done in a globally competitive way.
2. Talent – those with in-demand skills will determine where companies locate based on their choice of where to live (or in other words, living first, working second). The zero-sum talent pool becomes obvious to all as the demand for skilled workers goes through the roof. Education gets “called to the principal’s office.” Business demands education to be reinvented, not just reformed with more of the same.
3. Education/Training – knowledge vs. skills – college degrees decrease in value as the return on investment is questioned and importance of certification of skills grows. Training and Education move on-line, driven by demand, convenience, and lower cost. Those with degrees go back to school to learn skills to be employable.
4. Communication –– social media’s one-way broadcast approach to communication will be used for personal communication with email and discussion groups used for professional connections.
5. Transportation – consumers shift toward “buying it local” as that movement gains momentum. Internet retailing may cause an expansion of warehouse distribution and a reduction in retail space. There will be an increase in retail vacancy. The electric vehicle gets off to a slow start, disappointing battery manufactures.
6. Energy – inexpensive, abundant natural gas from shale shifts the location of chemical manufacturing and cost and location of electrical generation, therefore, increasing environmental concerns over the impact on water resources.
7. Finance – money moves globally using text messages, cell phone NFC payment, PayPal, and other bank alternatives as they grow in transaction volume. Micro loan and crowd funding begin to have an impact on startup funding pending authorizing legislation currently blocked by the investment banking industry. Banks become re-capitalized and can now afford to foreclose on non-performing assets. Europe remains a mess. China bails out Greece and Italy.
8. Technology – cloud computing and storage becomes the norm rather than the exception. The iPad, and iPhone lead the drive for ubiquitous mobile computing. Websites become data-driven web apps. Cyber-warfare becomes an increasing concern with data security and vulnerable financial and communication networks at the top of the list.
9. Entertainment – YouTube and Social Media begin to max out as they hit the limit of our discretionary time available, and television viewership continues to decline.
10. Others – Cultural influences shift from the U.S. to China and India. Relevance advertising becomes more frightening in its profiling accuracy of us. The information bubble envelopes us as we become more homogeneous in our thinking.

So, it’s on to 2012. Thank you for your readership. If you find our newsletter of value, please tell your friends by passing it on. May the New Year bring you prosperity and joy.

With Generation Y (those born between 1980 and 2000) making up a larger portion of the workforce each year, the culture of companies and the way we work are constantly changing. In a recent article on MSN, writer Amy Chulik identifies ways in which this sector of the workforce views work, and how that is re-shaping the workplace.

Chulik points out that while past generations showed their work ethic by working their way up the corporate ladder and sticking with the same company for years, Gen Y workers tend to show their job loyalty by working hard and being creative, even though they have a tendency to job-hop.

As Gen Y workers infiltrate the workplace, more companies will jump on the social media bandwagon. Gen Y has grown up with technology, and Chulik writes that they are not only comfortable with it, but dependent on it. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets will be used in addition to more traditional methods of marketing, and the latest gadgets will keep workers connected regardless of where they are performing their work.

Further, Gen Y workers look for a workplace with flexibility. While some people might view this as an entitlement issue, this younger generation seeks a work-life balance that allows them to have a fulfilling job without sacrificing their home life and hobbies. Therefore,we will see a rise in companies allowing flexible working hours and remote office options to their employees.

Lastly, Gen Y workers are big on social issues. So whether this revolves around diversity in the workplace or support of green initiatives, Gen Y workers want to be employed by firms that actively embrace their values.

Do you see changes in your company’s culture or policies as a result of Generation Y workers?

Source: Chulik, A. (2011). Gen Y’s impact in the workplace. Retrieved from MSN Careers.

With Dustin Moskovitz (the first CTO of Facebook) as its CEO and $10.2 million in cash from investors, Asana launched its web-based task management solution in early November (the company calls it a “collaborative information manager”). I have been using Asana since its launch, and it surely is collaborative and easy to use. Having unsuccessfully tried to use Basecamp a couple of times in the past, I have liked the tool enough to still use it and amrecommending it to friends (and now write about it in this blog).

The name of the company was the first thing that struck me. Growing up in Nepal (a small mountainous country in South Asia tucked in between two giants, India and China), I became familiar with some Sanskrit words (in fact, Sanskrit was part of my school’s curriculum until my eight grade). The word Asana means sitting down, typically a body position practiced during Yoga. The founders of Asana were so much into this Eastern form of relaxation (or exercise) that they named their company after one of the first things you learn doing Yoga.

In my opinion, Asana’s two main selling points are its speed and intuitive layout (the third seller is that it is FREE for up to 30 users in each workspace). With Basecamp and some other web-based project management tools, it felt like I lost time moving between tasks, assigning tasks and getting updates. But, with Asana it does not even feel like you are on the web. Yes, it is that lightening fast! The ease with which I figured out the tool was another seller. The way the tool separates into three columns (workspaces and projects in the first; tasks in the second; details of specific tasks in the third) is great. That makes switching between projects and specific tasks simple.

The other seller for the tool is the way I can manage various activities through one single tool (or login). I have Whittaker’s work, my company’s business, my volunteer work, and my personal to-do list all in Asana. They call this grouping workspaces. You can share these workspaces with your co-workers, friends, or family separately but still be able to work on all the tasks together in the same platform.

Next, Asana makes it very easy to assign tasks and keep an eye on all on-going projects. It does not pester you with emails every time someone changes something or adds a comment (you can choose to do so if you like your inbox flooded with notices). It sends a daily digest via email in the morning, which serves almost like a to-do list for your day. Once you create a task or someone else assigns a task to you and creates deadlines, you can sync them to your Outlook or Google calendars.
I think Asana is the best “collaborative” task management tool available on the web today, but it does have some deficiencies or negatives. First, I wish Microsoft or Google had come up with it so that I could use it right within Outlook or Google’s Gmail eco-system. Though, it is not that hard to open a new tab on the browser, it is an added step. I use Google for email and calendar (and sometimes Google Docs for collaboratively working on documents). I use Dropbox for back-up and document sharing. I really wish, all this work can come under one single platform.

Next, every time I create a new task, I have to assign that task to myself by clicking a button for it to appear on my daily task list. I wish there was a setting with which I could make it a default function. Also, an inbuilt calendar is missing in Asana. If I could look at tasks based on deadlines in each workspace (or even multiple workspaces), it would add to the tool’s utility. It does sync with my Google calendar, but it does not really cut it yet.

Obviously, Asana has been live for just a couple of months so there will be new features to come. Just a week back, the company launched its iPhone application. Having used it for a month now, I am truly impressed. The question now is how quickly it can bring new features and bring those larger paid clients to keep the company sustained (and hopefully profitable). I am sure they will offer better features for paid users like many other web applications do. The fact that one of Facebook’s co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz, decided leave the company in October 2008 to start Asana should say something about the business opportunity at which he is looking. I wish that Dustin’s gamble will pay off.

If you are interested in growing your local economy, drawing Aerospace companies into your city or region may be appealing considering the big dollar contracts firms often obtain as well as the employment opportunities that they are able to provide to your workforce. However, before considering an attraction campaign or putting together an incentives package, here are a few points you may want to consider. These points came to light after conversations with aerospace company executives over the course of a recent project.

Aerospace companies live and die by government contracts. This probably comes as a surprise to few, but nevertheless, it’s an important rule to remember. Often, these contracts go through a bidding process by multiple companies after which only one is typically awarded the contract. Many times, companies are engaging in multiple bids at once not knowing which contracts they will win and which ones they won’t. This leaves a lot of uncertainty for a business as they try to project future growth. An executive made the comment that while he doesn’t see the need for a new manufacturing plant now; this could change next week if they obtain a new contract that requires new production and more skilled labor. As an economic development group looking to attract aerospace companies to your area, consider how short-term focused these firms can be as well as how quickly their business can change. If you are serious about attraction, it is necessary to follow these companies on a frequent basis.

In addition to the challenges companies face surrounding if and when they will be awarded contracts, aerospace companies also face the unknown of the changing political landscape. One CEO I spoke with recently mentioned that they have 200 customers that are waiting to pull the trigger on new contracts, bringing in much desired revenue for him, but they are uncertain about what the government is going to do in the near future. If taxes change or defense spending is cut, these larger firms will be hesitant to start new projects. When the larger aerospace companies are nervous to start projects, the effect trickles down through the entire industry. The fear of what government will do is always present as our political landscape changes so quickly. We have the federal budget reviewed every year with the potential for defense spending to be cut, congressional seats changing party lines every few years, and potentially, new presidential agendas every four years. Perhaps no industry is as affected by changes in government as the aerospace industry.

While the U.S. government is the aerospace industry’s biggest customer, many contracts come from foreign governments and their defense departments. Here is the kicker when it comes to international sales; U.S. aerospace companies’ only work with foreign governments that are on good terms with our own government. Whether or not a U.S.-based aerospace company wants to expand into international markets depends on how nice our government plays with others. This is an obstacle that other industries rarely need to overcome when expanding into international markets. Our government has a lot to say regarding what happens within the aerospace industry; therefore, it is recommended to pay attention to how the two interact when considering opportunities for your community in the future.

Another general rule that applies to many industries, but again is magnified within aerospace, is that aerospace companies are located where their customers want them located. This is why you see aerospace industry clusters in regions like New York, California, Kansas, and Connecticut. The aerospace market is such that the 20 largest aerospace companies account for 90% of the industry revenue. Among these, the “Big 5” (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics) produce many of the larger contracts that provide work for the mid- and small-size companies. This creates a trickle-down effect as alluded to earlier where a large contract for a major player like Lockheed Martin becomes multiple contracts when Lockheed Martin hires suppliers to fill its order. Therefore, if you are company “X” with 100 employees, and much of your work comes from Lockheed Martin, and Lockheed wants you to be located in Maryland, you move to Maryland. Conversations with industry executives echoed this sentiment. When asked what would be their primary driver to change geographic locations, the answer was often “We go where our customers want us.” Therefore, if you are a local economic development group seeking to attract aerospace firms to your area, consider working in coordination with industry leaders to increase your chances of success for drawing in other businesses.

Does your town have unrestricted airspace? The U.S. military is moving in the direction of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) to meet the needs our nation’s defense. This allows our government to keep more American men and women safe by using remote controlled machines to carry out potentially dangerous missions. This is a rapidly growing area within aerospace that brings other considerations into play regarding where to locate a manufacturing plant. These UAVs need to be tested, and in order to test them, unrestricted airspace is needed. For many companies producing UAVs, it can be a deal breaker if airspace isn’t available. Be sure to research each company’s specific needs before creating an incentives package.

The potential benefits of a growing aerospace industry in your backyard are something to be desired by any economic development group. However, every industry presents its own challenges, and the aerospace industry is no different. Remember to watch the industry relationship with government, understand the role that big customers play, and be sure to know the unrestricted airspace in your area. If followed, your attraction campaign will be more successful.

In Mark Lautman’s new book, “When Boomers Bail: A Community Economic Survival Guide,” he focuses our attention on a looming issue of a “zero-sum labor market” for qualified workers and how it will impact all of us, especially those engaged in traditional economic development. Mark describes the challenge most communities are unaware of and that has been masked by the current recession which is that we are about to have the largest exodus out of the workforce in history as our aging workforce can no longer meet the labor needs of an expanding economy. The Baby-Boomers did not have enough children to replace themselves, therefore, creating a demographic “Baby-Bust” throughout the industrialized world.

He goes on to refute many of the mitigating factors such as increasing productivity, immigration, automation, and several more to show that we have entered a “zero-sum labor market” in which the power shifts from the company and community to the worker. As communities vie to attract and keep talent to staff their economic-base companies, we will have entered the talent wars.

Lautman points out that all the workers in the workforce are already here. He breaks down the workforce into four quadrants of a pie: 1) Qualified workers, 2) Unqualified workers, 3) Too young to work, and 4) Too old to work. The segment of the qualified workers is shrinking as the boomers grow too old to work (even if they wanted to do so). The unqualified worker segments grows as we “drop our kids in the academic dirt” through our failing school systems. The too young and too old segments become dependent on a shrinking segment of qualified worker as the tax supported services cost go through the roof. Not a pretty picture to be sure.

At the risk of becoming a doom and gloom book that no one wants to read, he describes an effort through the newly formed Community Economic Laboratory that looks for solutions and innovative approaches to economic development to address the issues he raises. While it is still early in the game, some glimmer of hope has appeared. However, there will still be community winners and losers in this new paradigm.

Those communities will prosper that develop tools, tactics, and techniques to monitor and adjust their economic development approach to address the ever-changing workforce needs and demographics.

They will need to create an infrastructure that attracts and supports talent including “third bedroom” basic income generating “gold collar workers” that export their services outside of the local economy. They will need to better match the work to the worker as the sophistication of the work escalates, creating the need for life-long learning opportunities. They will need to provide bandwidth as a critical piece of the utility infrastructure, and they will need to provide third places to work such as community business center with shared services.

As Bob Dylan has said, “The Times, They Are A-Changin’.” How we respond to these changes will determine our future.

I can hardly believe that the holidays are upon us once again. For many, the time between Thanksgiving and New Years brings a welcome change of pace as we focus on family and begin winding down the year. But for others, this time of year is far from relaxing as we try to balance work, social events, last minute gift shopping, etc. Too many years, I’ve been caught off guard by how fast the weeks fly by between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So this year, I’ve been actively trying to manage my time in order to reduce stress, maintain a work-life balance, and keep myself from being overextended.

Here are a few time management tips to ensure a peaceful holiday season at the workplace and home:

1. Learn to say “no” - whether it’s a holiday event or an extra work project, politely decline if your schedule cannot handle the obligation. Team up with productive coworkers to complete essential assignments.
2. Prioritize tasks - make to-do lists for both work-related and personal tasks. Complete the most urgent tasks first, followed by the tasks that are the least appealing. Clearing your plate of these important and daunting tasks will leave you more time and energy to focus on other matters.
3. Stop talking, start doing – it’s great to make a plan, but thinking, worrying, or talking about the plan won’t get you anywhere. Take action to work towards your goal, and modify your plan as you go. Getting started can be harder than actually carrying out the plan.

Wishing you a relaxing month ahead!

As a budding entrepreneur, I have just begun to understand the value of tracking and analyzing the traffic to my website. You may even wonder why it is necessary to monitor web traffic. Well first, it is the primary way your customers will find you. It does not matter if you are an economic development organization, a real estate broker, or a freelance consultant. Making it easy for people to find you on the web, for visitors to contact you, and staying engaged with your prospective customers is critical for any business in the 21st century.

So how will tracking your web traffic help your business? First, you will need to understand how many hits (visits) your website gets and where your hits are coming from. If you are a small retail outlet targeting customers locally in Holland, MI, receiving traffic from Atlanta, GA is not worth much. You may ask how many hits per day or per month is a good number. Some large corporations like Ford or Microsoft probably get hundreds of thousands of hits every month. But for a small business, getting to 1,000 hits every month may be a big deal. The key is to make sure that the trend is always increasing. If you have 600 hits this month, your target must be to increase traffic by at least 10% every month to continue to grow your business. Obviously more is better.

I use Google Analytics to monitor traffic on my company’s website. The best thing about Google Analytics is that it is FREE. Who can beat that right?! But it is a powerful tool as well. Not only does it monitor traffic coming to the website, it also tells you where all the traffic is coming from, how many times each page is viewed, how much time a user spends, on average, on a particular page, which device (mobile, tablet, pc, etc.) the user in on, the browser the visitor is using, and a whole host of other variables.

So how best to use this information you may ask. Here is one example: I recently added a new mentorship service in my consulting business for start-up companies based in Kathmandu, Nepal. I created a page dedicated to mentorship services. But after a few days online, I realized 80% of the visitors who landed on the page where leaving my website. Looking at the page, I quickly realized that there was no call to action on the page. It contained basic information about the service we provide, but the visitors were not asked to sign up for any service or go to any other page on the site. With that fact, I added a couple links at the bottom of the page. The very next day, the exit rate (the percentage of visitors leaving the website in that particular page) decreased by more than half!

Another useful way I use Google Analytics is monitoring what percentage of the hits come directly (i.e. people typing www.biruwa.net on their browser), what percentage comes from search engines, and finally, from referrals. While search engines may have been a major source of traffic for most websites until a year or two ago, referrals from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin have become a major part of the traffic. For my company’s website, more than 50% of the hits come through referrals. Of the referrals, Facebook is contributing around 80% of the traffic, or 30% of the visits to our website. This number alone goes to show the importance of having a strong presence on social networking sites. The picture below shows the page analyzing the traffic to our website.

In terms of monitoring traffic from search engines, it is important to keep track of the search keywords that visitors are using to find you on the web. If you are a social media marketing consultant and none of the top 10 keywords relate to social media, you may want to consider adding more of such keywords across your website. There is a whole industry based on offering search engine optimization (SEO) services (which is the topic of my next blog post) that can help you do that if you are not savvy on doing it yourself.

In conclusion, analyzing your web traffic can be critical for your business’ success. The smaller your business, the more critical it is for you. Most small businesses have a limited marketing budget, thus making the best use of your existing website will be a wise investment for your time. So if you don’t track your web traffic, start doing it today!

To learn more about how to install and properly use Google Analytics, read the following blog post on Mashable Business.