The Secrets of
Business and Marketing Wizardry Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 7, Date 7/17/2002
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THE SECRETS OF BUSINESS AND MARKETING WIZARDRY
Volume 6 Issue 7 July 2002
Publisher: Joe Trevison, BS/MBA
Co-Publisher and Editor: Cheri Carlson
Articles:
Guest Miss X
How To Succeed In Business by Doing Everything Wrong
Behind the Door of an Advertising Agency
HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS
BY DOING EVERYTHING WRONG
I am an Accounting student of Mr. Trevison's, and have worked as an Independent Contractor for several Multi-Level Marketing companies. Over the past seven years I have seen many of the plusses and minuses of MLM.
I am currently employed as an Independent Contractor for a small home based company that could easily and successfully go MLM, but the owner wants to remain manageable and be in control. This company is continuously growing, and could become a GOLDMINE if the owner had the business sense to take the ball and run with it.
BUSINESS MISTAKE #1:
Have no business knowledge, and no desire to acquire any! Why start a business then shoot yourself in the foot when it skyrockets? With a small, reliable workforce of trustworthy veterans already, the framework of a successful management team is already in place. We currently have no sales or recruiting quotas.
BUSINESS MISTAKE #2:
Do not have an accountant because you don't want to pay for one, even when it has been obvious you need the expertise! Besides continuing to run this $200,000 business through your personal checking account, you have inventory overload. Ok, the owner has finally hired an accountant and they are working on the six plus years of no financial guidance and lack of personal control when it comes to overbuying. Almost forgot to mention that $60,000 worth of wholesale inventory is still squeezed into the basement between the washing machine and garden tools.
BUSINESS MISTAKE #3:
Have no way to identify the merchandise other than with a general description. We have no inventory or vendor numbers! Get a customer that wants to order several of something, and good luck trying to figure out the supplier, etc. We just got pricing guns at my insistence, and finally have everything consistently priced. Customers are more apt to buy when the price is visible on our product. Just think of all the sales we have missed because customers did not want to ask the price!
BUSINESS MISTAKE #4:
Don't let people know your name, don't advertise. The company has one six foot banner that eight of us share. We just got table covers with the company logo and an invalid web site address. The company provides us with generic business cards, and uses a crappy vendor to print blasé posters to tell the dates and times of our shows. We also hand out unprofessional show schedules to customers (each Contractor makes her own). The web site was very expensive and the owner is not web savvy, so she has lost interest in the project and the site is not up now. Hey, we recently got boxes for the product that is really nice, with nicely stamped logos!
BUSINESS MISTAKE #5:
The owner has admitted to me that her insurance policy does not adequately cover the business. I am the only Independent Contractor that carries her own liability and theft. The other women fraudulently use the owner's policy. Insurance gets you into the larger, nicer shows, and gives me piece of mind knowing that the $13,000 worth of retail product that I have is safeguarded. The owner trusts each of us (for a $500 security deposit), with that much of her inventory!
BUSINESS MISTAKE #6:
The owner, a type "A" personality likes to flaunt how busy and difficult her life is. The owner has blatantly told us that the business is paying for her daughter to go to college in Europe. I am a divorced mother of three children, working three part-time jobs and going to school. Some of our other girls are in truly tough financial situations too. We don't deserve the owner's abrasive, harried; my life is tough attitude, as she speaks to us from her cell phone, from her new sunroom addition, with leather sofa. You are turning off the workforce because we have started to tune out your pity party!
Why do I stay with the company? Am I the fool, putting the biggest percentage in the owner's pocket? Mr. Trevison and I are looking to find a product so that I can form my own company. If this company can be a success by doing everything wrong, I can only achieve greater success, because I see the mistakes. It was the late, great Earl Nightingale who said that if there are no successes to follow, just do the opposite of a failure…this case is just that type.
BEHIND THE DOOR OF AN
ADVERTISING AGENCY
I was employed by an Industrial Advertising Agency for many years, before being laid off last fall. Being laid off has been one of the best and healthiest things that has ever happened to me. You see, advertising is an extremely stressful business. Why? Because of the deadlines and lies.
I sound like a disgruntled employee, but actually truly feel that clients need to know what goes on behind the doors. Where I worked, a several million dollar business with fifteen employees, at least six of us were on some type of stress medication.
You see, that personable, clean-shaven Executive in a company Cadillac is actually a pathological liar. For example, the last year that I was there, we acquired a client that had been with their former agency for 20+ years. Our guys did a great presentation and we got the business based solely on lies. Our guys promised to produce an incredible number of leads. We all worked our butts off, but could not produce the leads to cover the false number.
Who did the Executives blame? The artists. The artist takes the fall for many of management's mistakes, as does the production department. I'm sure your Executive has pulled this one on you. Did you ever stop to think why he employs such boobs? The Executive will claim that his people screw up your every project. What about the terribly incompetent vendors that gets the blame? If the vendor makes all those typos, why does the agency continue to use them as a vendor? In our case, vendors were used because they were Country Club members with our Executives. Who cares about the quality of their work and trying to do right by the client?
The truth is that the deadline was not met because the Executive let your project lie on his desk while he was pursuing his affair with the receptionist or playing golf all day. He let your project lie on his desk to work on a larger paying client's project. Believe me, a small account does not get the attention it deserves, and is constantly put down on the priority list. We in fact had a client in which an employee drew a moustache and baby bonnet on a picture of that client, and everybody got a laugh. We also had derogatory names for clients and felt that a client was bothering us if he followed a project too closely.
Our guys claimed to write their own copy when it fact it was being written by a verbally abused assistant that had barely graduated high school. Remember the photo that had to be purchased to use in your brochure? The photo was pirated, and the agency kept your money! Your ohhhh so efficient Executive doesn't relay necessary information to the art department. The artist moves ahead with a project unknowingly incorrectly, or wastes valuable production time begging the Executive for information to complete a project. The list could go on and on!
The finger pointing, back stabbing, scapegoating, and lack of teamwork promotes terrible morale and is perpetuated by the Executives and their power plays. The employees were terribly unhappy and unnecessarily stressed, and productivity, aka the client's deadlines suffer.
I would recommend that a company form their own internal advertising department. Your own employees would care much more than any outside "Executive", and I use that term loosely, ever would. Your business would be taken much better care of. DO NOT BELIEVE ANY AD AGENCY'S LIP SERVICE. You and your company will be a target of internal crap behind your back that is totally unearned. The agency happily gleans your money and laughs all the way to the bank; don't allow this dishonor to happen to your company.
Note: The writer of both articles was indeed a student of mine. However because she is still working for one of these places she did not wish for me to use her name. I granted her wishes. But I hope dear readers you will agree these are some articles.
In the August Issue:
The Secrets of Dr. Lant and Paul Hurturnian
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| Copyright Joseph J. Trevison Not to be reprinted, resold, or
redistributed for profit, except with written permission, but may be freely distributed electronically provided that the entire
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