If everyone knows your business, you don’t have one. Yielding to the cry for complete corporate transparency is the first step down a slippery slope that leads to your company’s failure. The question that needs to be asked in every boardroom is “how transparent do we need to be?”

The best response is that your business must have a “need to know” transparency policy. Providing people with the information they need to know at the time they need it is good business. Operating in a glass house with no boundaries is reckless endangerment of your company’s future.

What do people need to know?

Specific answers have to be defined by your executive board. The roles people play determine the information they need. In general:

Customers need to know:

• Buying and return policies
• Operating hours
• How to place an order
• Who to contact when there is a problem and how to do it
• How to use your products and services
• Where to find answers to frequently asked questions
• How to connect with your business online

Vendors need to know:

• What’s required to introduce new products and services
• Purchasing and payable policies
• How to submit invoices
• Who to contact if there is a problem and how to do it
• What’s acceptable in social sharing

Employees need to know:

• Hiring and firing policies
• Who to contact if there is a problem
• What’s expected from them (this includes a specific job description)
• How to improve their job position
• What’s acceptable in social sharing
• Everything that is required for them to do their job (including cross-departmental information.

Competitors need to know:

• As little as possible

There are different expectations for private and publicly traded companies. All legal transparency requirements must be fulfilled. Shareholders need to know how the company is doing and what to expect.

Transparency is good when it provides information on a need to know basis. Companies prosper when people have the information they need at the time they need it. Operating costs are lower and sales are higher. When transparency crosses the line to free-flowing information, company activity becomes an operating manual for competitors.

Getting to the finish line before everyone else feels good. You know that feeling. People are cheering. Your parents are smiling. The world is right at that moment in time. Every person needs to feel this at times in his or her life. It creates confidence and inspires hope for a better tomorrow. It is also addictive and can be counterproductive.

We are trained from an early age to finish first. The specifics might change but the goal was the same:

• Finish first in the sports league
• Finish first in your graduating class
• Finish first in the race
• And so on.

It gets so embedded in our thought patterns that we always want to be first:

• First to visit the hot new club
• First to know the latest gossip
• First to get the newest gadget
• First to adapt to the latest technology

There is a reason that the cutting edge is also known as the bleeding edge. Being first isn’t always best. It’s fun, cool, and gives you bragging rights of sorts but it rarely moves you or your business to a sustainable position. When you are first, there are always people studying your activity and learning from your mistakes. Their new knowledge is the edge they need to move them and their company past yours.

Steve Jobs was a master at this. If you go through his history, you’ll find that he wasn’t first at creating, he was best at adapting.

• He didn’t invent the computer. He made it accessible to the masses.
• He didn’t create mp3 players. He made them cool.
• Cell phones had a long history before he made one that was a bundle of music and apps.

Henry Ford was a master at adaptation too. He didn’t invent the car. He made it affordable using mass production. (He didn’t invent THAT either.)

History is filled with examples of people who learn from others, think about how it can be applied differently, and change the world. Stop a minute and think before you jump to the next social media platform, get the latest marketing gadget, or race to the finish line. Is this the best way to serve your customers, your business, and yourself? The answer may surprise you.

Where will your company be this time next year? Will you be celebrating record profits or planning a bankruptcy strategy? The answer depends on what you do now to prepare for tomorrow. Business as usual doesn’t exist anymore. Our marketplace has changed from a multichannel environment to a maze of channels and platforms that distract buyers and stretch limited resources. Maintaining a presence on all of the relevant networks is impossible for small businesses and fiscally irresponsible for large ones.

The economic downturn combined with an influx of new opportunities to connect with customers is overwhelming to even the most seasoned marketing teams. When faced with so many choices and dangers, running seems to be the only answer. Some dart from platform to platform hoping to catch a viral wave that will rain a revenue stream. Others run away from everything new seeking comfort in the tried and true tactics that have delivered past successes. Both strategies are fear driven paths to failure. When everything is said and done, a divided house cannot stand and those rooted in the past will be left behind.

Change is hard. People naturally resist it until the pain of remaining in the status quo exceeds the fear of the unknown. Vision of a better tomorrow shared with the passion of a believer is the only way to move some from the comfort of days gone by. The team responsible for the future of the company has to share the vision. They don’t have to agree on the path, but the final outcome is dependent on their ability to see a better tomorrow.

Maybe the real question is where do you stand? Are you so rooted in the past that the future will pass you by? Or, are you waiting with an open mind, willing to walk through the door of opportunity and do the heavy lifting? The tactics that got your business where it is today won’t take it to the next level. Change like you’ve never seen before is required.

Positioning your company for growth requires a solid plan that encompasses every corporate function, department, and person. The business has to work like a well-oiled machine where every gear provides leverage to the one next to it. The process won’t be easy but nothing worth doing is ever easy. Here are some steps to get you started on moving your organization to the next level:

Assemble

Start with an open mind, blank paper, and the people you need to make it happen. It is helpful if you do this at another location but if that isn’t in the budget, clear your conference room of everything that reminds you of the status quo. List your corporate strengths and weaknesses and then do the same for your competitors.

Analyze

Dig deep into your customer file so you have the best possible understanding of their behavior, buying patterns, and preferences. Keeping customers active longer is the best thing you can do for your bottom line. It increases the return on acquisition costs exponentially.

Brainstorm

Where can you improve service and satisfaction without significantly increasing costs? What do you need to do to offset weaknesses? How can you be more accessible to your customers? What channels are you missing that can make a difference in your business? What customer needs are unfilled?

Eliminate

There are always more ideas and opportunities than there are resources. Select the best and prioritize them by commitment and return. This will help you choose when and what to do based on available resources and potential return.

Strategize

Effective action requires planning. The survival rate of companies managed by knee-jerk reactions and seat of the pants methodology is extremely low. Having a plan provides vision and direction. There may be detours and rerouting along the way, but mapping out the strategy is the best way to keep your business moving forward.

Implement

The best laid plans are worthless without implementation. Executing your strategy inspires confidence and provides feedback that can be leveraged into growth and profitability. Don’t finish the year with a list of things we could have done. Finish it with a compilation of “this worked, that didn’t”. This is the foundation that supports sustainable growth.

Revise

Perfection is impossible. The very best strategy will have components that don’t work. Continuously monitor the progress, eliminating the things that don’t work and expanding the ones that do. In the end, everything may be completely different from the plan but it will be tested and successful.

Celebrate

People need wins to remain motivated. If you are constantly pushing your team to move forward without celebrating the progress, they will burn out. You’ll be left with a failed strategy because it didn’t reward the people who make it happen. Celebrations must be inclusive, crossing departments and divisions. It is only when everything and everyone works together for the greater good that your company will reach its full potential.

Remember

Moving a company to the next level is a process. Trying to plan it in a few days won’t deliver the results you want. Give it time to gestate and expand in your mind so you and your team have full ownership of the process and results.

Business is cyclical. Inevitably, there will be times where there is little to do except wait for the phone to ring or email to ping. During these periods, you can watch dollars fly out of the window in the form of lost productivity or you can position your company for growth when the cycle ends. Here are five things that will help you get ready for the next boom. They might even shorten the wait!

1. Read a good book.

   And, share it with your team. Require every team member to read a book and share the information with the group. Yes, you read that right, REQUIRE them to read and share. They can choose what they want to read, but they have to answer three questions when they share the information: What did they learn? How does it apply to your business? What is the first step towards implementation?

2. Clean house.

   Janitorial services clean surfaces. They remove trash, dust, and keep your space looking presentable. The roll-up-your-sleeves deep cleaning that brightens a room, clears out inboxes, and organizes files is best done by the people using the space. Make it a fun project by having a friendly competition where the best job wins a prize (gift cards, dinner out, extra vacation day, etc.)

3. Clean your company’s digital house.

   Managing multiple databases is a part of every business. Over time, records get duplicated, data becomes corrupted, and information loses relevance. Work with the people who use the data across channels, departments, and divisions to combine, repair, and streamline acquisition and management. Time invested will be returned many times over.

4. Cross Train

   Exchange team members with other departments and divisions so they can learn about the processes and the challenges. When possible, make the “borrowed” members responsible for working with their own departments without access to inside information. Eyes get opened when people are moved to the blind side.

5. Offer Earned Mental Health Days

   A business slow down combined with the gloom and doom that permeates every news channel can destroy corporate morale. People need purpose to be fulfilled. Earned mental health days aren’t vacations. They are the opportunity to work on pet projects that are lower priorities in busy times. Challenge your team to brainstorm ideas to improve sales and reduce costs. Give them the time and resources (within reason) to outline the implementation plan. And, if their plan has merit, implement it and reward them with a percentage of the revenue generated or money saved.

If you were expecting a hunker down and wait for the storm to pass when you read this post, I hope that you aren’t disappointed. It is impossible to move forward from a defensive position. Using the ideas listed above positions your company for growth and profitability when the slow period passes. Your team members will work better together, productivity and efficiency will be improved, and you may find the next big idea!

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single marketing tool that allowed you to reach all of your customers and prospects? Think about how it would affect your marketing efforts. You could invest your time in optimizing every aspect of the tool instead of searching for new ways to connect with the people most likely to buy your products and services.

There have been times that we have come close to finding this holy grail of the marketing world. When Montgomery Ward decided to mail catalogs to rural residents, he expanded his reach and created a new industry. He found a magic bullet that opened stores in individual’s mailboxes. It took over a hundred years for another magic bullet to appear.

The Internet was the next magic bullet. It expanded marketing’s reach from the mailbox into the home. More importantly, it changed the functionality of marketing from targeting to attracting. Successful advertising and direct mail campaigns were the result of extensive research to find the people most likely to buy specific products or services. The Internet was a game changer because it provided the opportunity for those people to find the companies. Instead of searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack, marketers could focus on making their website easy for the people looking for their products or services to find.

When social media emerged the magic bullet cry was heard around the world. The new game changer was supposed to replace traditional marketing, but it was missing a key component – the ability to stand alone. It turns out that social media doesn’t replace other marketing tools, it simply makes them better. Adding a good social networking strategy to a solid marketing program improves customer retention, increases sales, and reduces costs.

Marketing is continuing to evolve. Searching for the magic bullet that forever changes the way we do business is a waste of time. There are two many options available to confine a marketing strategy to one channel. The time people spend in one place is fractured. They shift from home to work to play to television to Internet to social networking platforms. There are multiple options within each of those places. Finding customers and prospects is much more challenging and expensive than it was five years ago.

Micro-marketing is the future. We have to implement strategies that economically create a presence for the company in every channel the customers and prospects visit. Doing it well requires vision, planning, and discipline. Doing it well also binds customer to company increasing sales and reducing costs.

Direct mail, ecommerce, bricks-and-mortar stores, and mobile are the most important channels today. Integrating them so customers have a seamless experience is a top priority. Adding social to the mix is next. If the foundation is solid with flexibility built in, creating a presence on new channels and platforms is simple. Customer acquisition and retention is natural. If the foundation has cracks in customer care, inventory management, employee morale, and any other aspect of managing the business, it will fail.

What are you doing to solidify your foundation?