Building a Value-Added Organization

Tonight I had the opportunity to hear Carine Clark, Symantec's Chief Marketing Officer, speak at the American Marketing Association Utah Chapter Event. Carine is responsible for global campaign and field marketing, partner and product marketing, branding and marketing communications as well as public relations and analyst relations for Symantec.

Building A Value-Added Marketing Organization

Carine shared six ways to build a value-added marketing organization. It was awesome to spend 40 minutes hearing from one of the world's best marketing executives. There was even a Q&A at the end of the event where we asked Carine questions.

Here are her six suggestions:

1. Make sure you build an awesome team: Hire talented and smart people who will give 110% to your organization and the team. Carine said, "It is important to grow people in your business."

2. Make sure you focus on growth: As marketing professionals it is important to focus on marketing activities that drive revenue, strong revenue growth. You need to make sure that every dollar counts and delivers significant ROI.

3. Make sure that you're are aligned with sales: You need to develop a strong partnership with Sales, enable them to do what they do best, sale. As a marketing professional you need to do what you do best, drive pipeline and shorten the sales cycle.

4. Be willing to lose to win: As you build a value-added organization you sometimes need to give up something now, to win something better later.

5. Be a master of the math: There is power in numbers. You need to know your business and metrics better than anyone in your organization. You need to understand ways to drive the needle and make money that drives business forward.

6. Have fun: You need to have fun, take moments to enjoy what you do and celebrate with your teams.

It was inspiring to hear from Carine Clark tonight at the Utah Chapter AMA Event. I look forward to more great events from the Utah AMA Chapter.

Develop Value Propositions that Resonate

A value proposition is a carefully crafted, clear, and simple statement that reflects the essence of the value your business provides to a target market. It should answer the question: “Why should I choose to buy this product or service, and why now?”. It’s a key element of developing a powerful marketing strategy.

The value proposition has three main parts:

1. Who is the target customer?
2. Why should the customer buy our offering?
3. What are we selling?

A value proposition is also called a positioning statement. Accurately positioning your product in the mind of a prospective buyer is one of the most important apects of marketing your offering. Importantly, your value proposition needs to show not only why your product or service should be chosen, but needs to also pass the "So What?" test with your target audience.

Build Value Propositions That Resonate

Here is template that can be used to build a two-sentence value proposition. Try filling in the blanks in the template with your own product or service.

There is No "I" in Team Blog Series 3 of 3

This is the final post of the blog post series, "There is No "I" in Team. You can read the other blog posts in the series below:

1. Develop Roles and Responsibilities

2. Facilitate Synergy

The Final Post: #3 Enable Greatness

Once you have developed roles and responsibilities for each member of your team and reaped the benefits from creating an environment where strong team synergy lives, you will have positioned your team for greatness. The kind of greatness that confronts challenges and obstacles with smiles and projects with big milestones with passion. The kind of greatness where team members contribute maximum value and are recognized for their efforts. The kind of greatness that makes the impossible, possible.

Impossible, Possible

Think of a project that may have seemed impossible, but with teamwork, determination, and tenacity was made possible. What do you think made the seemingly impossible, possible? List the top 3 things that contributed to your successful outcome. You will find that vision, clear roles, and teamwork might have been some of the keys to your success.

Greatness Enabled

In 2010, my team and I conceptualized, planned, and executed our companies 2nd ever user conference. The event included detail logistics plans, program development (breakouts sessions and keynotes), company-wide resource allocation, and a big product announcement. Each member of the event team was given a role and responsibility. This ownership provided synergy as we set forth to make the conference a success.

Event marketing team with Jonny Moseley

The conference, like any major event, carried with it a lot of moving parts, there were some obstacles and challenges we had to overcome. As a team, we confronted each challenge with determination to succeed.

The "Triumph" Feeling

After the end of each day at the conference, we gathered around as a team and talked about the successes that each team member had for the day. This created a "Triumph" feeling, a feeling of success as we recognized and celebrated the wins of the day. The success of the conference was because of teamwork. Our team in marketing and across the company worked in tandem to make sure that our clients and prospective clients were well taken care of during the conference.

AtTask 2010 User Conference results included:

1. YOY 133% increase in paid conference attendees.
2. 90% of all conference attendees said they would return next year
3. 92% of conference attendees would recommend AtTask to a friend
4. 9.1 out of 10 overall conference rating
5. Over a million dollars in business

Conference Highlight Video

Scott Johnson, Jonny Moseley, Fraser Bullock

Scott Johnson (AtTask CEO), Jonny Moseley (Olympic Gold Medalist), and Fraser Bullock (COO, 2002 Oylmpics) keynote speakers at the 2010 AtTask User Conference.

Attendees networking with industry-leading professionals

Fraser Bullock during his keynote address at the conference

Fraser Bullock was COO of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and is currently the co-founder and managing director of Sorenson Capital.

Jonny Moseley signing autographs for AtTask clients

Stream product announcement

AtTask experts helping clients maximize the use of AtTask in their organizations

There is No "I" in Team Blog Series 2 0f 3

Facilitate Synergy

This is blog post post #2 of the blog series, "There is No "I" in Team". This blog post discusses how to facilitate synergy among your teams. So once you have developed clear roles and responsibilities, you will reap the benefits of facilitating team synergy. Team synergy occurs when the interaction of team members produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual team members or contributions.

Team synergy occurs when the vision is clear of where you want to go and what you want to achieve. The vision along with defined roles and responsibilities creates a dynamic team environment where productivity, creativity, and excellence produce positive results.

Here is a real world example of the team synergy that produced positive results.

The Challenge

Develop a new website in two months that includes a brand revamp, better UI (based off of research), and strong targeted messaging.

The Obstacle

Everyone on the website team has to keep other top marketing initiatives moving forward while also achieving the website project goals (defined above).

Synergy Enabled

With the vision understood and roles and responsibilities clearly defined, we created important milestones and worked together to achieve our goal of launching our new website in 2 months. As challenges arose, we solved them quickly and made sure that our project progressed. To help facilitate synergy among our team we used the strengths of each team member to design the brand, create the content, build the website, and launch the website in 2 months. The results or total effect of the website team were greater than the sum of the individual team members or contributions, which was true synergy.

Before and After:

Old Website

New Website-New brand, enhanced UI, strong targeted message

New Website Results:

1. Decreased website bounce rate
2. Increased website conversions
3. Increased leads

There is No "I" in Team Blog Series 1 of 3

Teamwork and team synergy have always played a big role in success I have had in life, business, and sports. I thought I would share some thoughts on teamwork in a three part blog series called "There's no "I" in Team". The blog series will be divided into the following posts:

1. Develop Roles and Responsibilities

2. Facilitate Synergy

3. Enable Greatness

Here is blog post 1 of 3 - Develop Roles and Responsibilities

There's No "I" in Team

You have probably heard the saying there is no "I" in Team. You may have also heard the acronym for team, which is TEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More or even the team quote, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Vince Lombardi, the most quoted NFL coach, said this about teams, "People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society." For a minute, think of successful teams you have been apart of in life, sports, or business. What would you say was the key to your success? I would guess to say that one of the keys to your success was that everyone on the team had a clear understanding of their role and responsibility.

Develop Roles and Responsibilities

The singular most important principle to facilitate success with your teams in life, business, or sports is to make sure everyone has a clear understanding of their role and responsibility. By doing so, you will create an environment where passion, focus, and precision drive winning results.

To help you do this, first write down the names of your team members. Then ask yourself, "How does each team members' roles and responsibilities align with the big picture, the vision or outcome of where you want to be? Once you understand how each team member aligns with your overall strategy. Bring each team member into your office and explain to them their role and responsibility. Make sure that each team member understands what a winning day looks like. To help you do this exercise, I have provided examples of the roles and responsibilities of a football wide receiver and a product marketing manager.

Roles

A role is the part played on the team.

Wide Receiver
For example, a role is wide receiver. A wide receiver's goal is to help the team move the ball down the field to score points.

Product Marketing Manager
For example, a role is product marketing manager. A product marketing manager's goal is to help a company develop go-to-market strategies that increase sales and drive revenue.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities are the actions, activities, and events performed by a specific role.

Wide Receiver
For example, a wide receiver's responsibilities are to consistently run fast and accurate routes, catch the ball, and gain the most yards. A wider receiver is measured by pass completion percentage and average yards gained to name a few.

Product Marketing Manager
For example, a product marketing manager responsibilities are to do develop go-to-market strategies, messaging, competitive positioning collateral, sales presentations, and product launches as a few examples. A product marketing manager could be measured by effectiveness of go-to-market strategies, initial projected vs actual revenue generation from product launches and sales training and preparedness to name a few.

By defining, the responsibilities and measurements for each role of your team, you will enable each team member with a clear understanding of what is required for winning. You will also develop an environment where performance, productivity, accountability, and success reign.

Powerful "There is No "I" in Team Quotes"

Below are a few of my favorite team quotes the embody the powerful results of teamwork:

Individual commitment to a group effort-that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
- Vince Lombardi

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.
- Babe Ruth

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
- Andrew Carnegie

Synergy - the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously.
- Mark Twain

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
- Henry Ford

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed. It is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead

Anyone can support a team that is winning - it takes no courage. But to stand behind a team to defend a team when it is down and really needs you, that takes a lot of courage.
- Bart Starr

Team guts always beat individual greatness.
- Bob Zuppke

The main ingredient in stardom is the rest of the team.
- Unknown

Commitment to the team - there is no such thing as in-between, you are either in our out.
- Pat Riley

I have seen that in any great undertaking, it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.
- Lone Man

What are some of your thoughts on teamwork? Comments are welcome.

Vision + Teamwork = Success

In a previous blog post called "Video Production - Three Lessons Learned", I discussed the lessons I learned on set while making our new Work Management Vision videos. The purpose of these videos is to help explain our vision of the fast developing market called Work Management. After the video shoot, we followed the following formula to arrive at our desired outcome.

Vision + Teamwork = Success

There was a lot of teamwork as we moved into post production, where we edited down the interviews to match the exact vision message and added screen captures using SnapzPro to provide context. Then music and graphics were added which really gave the video some personality and brought it to life. Below is the final version of the video.

To help you understand Work Management a little more, I have provided a definition below

What is Work Management?

Work Management recognizes that a person’s workday consists of more than simply working on structured activities related to formal projects. A full understanding of workplace activity also considers activities that come from repetitive processes, peers, multiple bosses, from self, and from higher-level goals and objectives. Work Management is a common platform for work that comes to people from a variety of sources and systems.

Work Management provides a space to collect, prioritize and manage your entire work life and provides tools to help people organize and communicate about their accomplishments and priorities. This gives leaders and managers a better understanding of their people’s priorities accomplishments, and status.

10 Beatitudes of a Leader

I was reading a business leadership book and came across the 10 beatitudes of a leader. I thought I would share it because of its simple but strong advice.

Beatitudes of a Leader

1. Blessed is the leader who has not sought the high places but who has been drafted into service because of ability and willingness to serve.

2. Blessed is the leader who knows where they are going, why they are going, and how they are going to get there.
3. Blessed is the leader who knows no discouragement, who presents no alibi.
4. Blessed is the leader who seeks for the best for those he serves.
5. Blessed is the leader who leads for the good of the majority, and not for personal gratification of his personal ideas.
6. Blessed is the leader who develops leaders while leading
7. Blessed is the leader who marches with the group, and correctly interprets the signs on the pathway that lead to success.
8. Blessed is the leader who has their head in the clouds and their feet on the ground.
9. Blessed is the leader who considers leadership an opportunity to serve.
10. Blessed are leaders.

-Author Unknown