iEstates.com

I wasn’t at all surprised to see today’s Groupon promoting Shutterfly. I myself tried to get them to market Vino.com a while back but my site wasn’t big and famous enough for them. It had been a long shot all along but I had to try.

After all, Groupon is nothing more than a super affiliate in my book. It seemed inevitable that they would launch a nationwide CPA campaign for a web based product or service.

While the company has gotten its start promoting local businesses like restaurants, tanning salons and massage parlors, as a business person I’ve wanted desperately to find a way to get them to promote a product for me on a nationwide scale.

Unfortunately, It’ll be some time before I have something that’ll get them excited in the way that Shutterfly appears to have done. Groupon has been smart in only listing restaurants with great yelp ratings and reviews and its equally wise to carefully select the web based brands promoted on their network.

So, kudos to Groupon for picking Shutterfly. It was a great campaign to start with because it wouldn’t have helped your brand much to go with a typical CPA program like nutraceuticals or bizopps.

In an effort to subsidize part of my costs for my Philippine outsourcing operations, I’m going to accept three and only three clients. This is by no means my core business and I don’t intend on making it so. I’m looking for just a few small to mid-size customers who need writers, SEO people or graphics designers who want to share in my expenses.

The kind of customers I’m looking for need five to ten people to help them with the volume of work they need done.

Anyone who joins me will be able to visit my operations there and spend time with their team, if they chose to. Their team would report directly to them and they work during U.S. hours so using Skype, it’s like they are sitting in your own office.

Again, I’m only looking for three clients. No less and no more.

Please contact me if you are interested.

Someone asked me recently what my favorite website was. It’s an interesting question really because I rarely have time to use the web as entertainment.

To me the question implies that industry related sites don’t count. I’m also discounting the must visit sites like Google, Facebook and your favorite news site.

So my question to you is, what sites do you visit regularly that are off the beaten path?

Personally, I love the site lifehacker.com. I regularly use the tips and tricks that I learn from that site.

My two favorite blogs are Seth Godin’s and Fred Wilson’s.

Honestly, I could use some recommendations. After 15 years of starring into the net, I’ve really not done much actual surfing, crazy as that sounds.

This is my third post in my Lessons Learned series and my first about sales and marketing. I may come back to management in the coming days or weeks as I continue to work through these in my own head. As previously stated, this exercise is for my benefit as much as yours. I’m putting them in writing to remind myself of what is important.

Those that know me well know that I’m always spouting these same quotes that I’m basing this series on. I believe in fundamentals and that business skills are learned and need to be practiced like an instrument or a sport.

Today’s lesson learned isn’t one I need to remind myself of as often. It’s one I live by more than most others and one that I say often around the office.

No matter what product you are selling, there are only three ways to increase revenue. You can increase your lead count, improve your closing ratio or raise your average ticket price.

All activities should be designed to affect one or all of those three things.

It doesn’t matter if you are selling domains, timeshares, diamonds, watches, televisions, t-shirts, website memberships, software, or anything else. It’s always the same three metrics that determine your revenue.

Sure, there are other variables inside of those metrics. For example, there may be four or five metrics that you look at when determining your lead count. However, the top of the pyramid contains only those three. Always.

Yesterday, we finished our July goals and incentivized our management from top to bottom in our luxury watch division based on these three metrics.

Our marketing team has a specific July target goal for a lead count that we know if we get, we’ll hit our revenue target.

Our sales team which takes the leads and gets the packages to our offices has a specific conversion ratio as a target that we know if they hit, we’ll hit our revenue target.

Our closing team which sells the watches, has a specific average ticket price that we know, if we hit, we’ll hit our revenue target.

Their goals are structured in a way that we only need one of them to win for us to get to the level we want to be at by the end of July. If two or three of them hit their targets, we are off to the races.

This is part 1b of my lessons learned series. Part 1 is about managing techniques and philosophies.

As mentioned in part 1a, this exercise is as much for me as it is for you. I need to type this out to remind myself of what is important.

Today’s lesson:

Sometimes you hire the right person but have them in the wrong position.

I’ve seen it time and again through my career. You have someone you like, trust and know actually works when they are at work. You know they are loyal and dedicated to the cause but things just aren’t panning out the way you’ve expected.

Here’s a piece of advice that has carried me through the years. Move them to another department before getting rid of them. Often, they’ll excel and become an asset for you.

The key is to match the person to the role.

An obvious analogy would be sports coaching. As a manager, you have the right and responsibility to take a good pitcher out of the game if his arm is getting tired and put in a closer. Perhaps moving a player from short-stop to third-base will make him an all-star. Maybe he’s so good at hitting home runs that you throw him in right field where he can’t do too much damage to your defense.

American football coaches turn wide receivers into tight ends and tight ends into wide receivers if that’s what their game plan needs to succeed.

I’ve moved people from sales to support and support to sales. I’ve moved people from marketing to finance and finance to IT.

The more you get to know your staff, the more you are able to see where they fit in.

Just recently we moved a few people around in our company and the plan has worked great. Our old finance guy is now managing click campaigns and excelling at it.

Someone from the watch division is now bringing home big contracts for domain auctions.

I’m often asked how I have so many people that have been with me for ten years or more. The answer is that all of them are doing something different than they were doing ten years ago, just as I am and the company is. Times change and your business must be fluid.

You don’t hire salespeople, support people or IT people. You hire people. Your role is to find what position they can play the best.

I’ve decided to take my own advice.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reorganizing and repositioning within my organization. I’ve been basing many of my decisions on the same cliché‘s I’m always preaching.

The thing is, I don’t always listen to my own sermons. So I’m writing a new series based on those simple business philosophies which have carried me through the years. This exercise is as much for my benefit as yours. It’s therapeutic for me to put this down in text.

Today’s lesson that I’m teaching myself is my hiring philosophy which I’ve held onto for years but sometimes forget to adhere to. Here it is.

If you’ve hired the right guy to do the job, given him the tools he needs to do that job and removed all obstacles which could impede his success and it still doesn’t work out, repeat step one.

It’s a profound sentence. It’s a philosophy more than a rule.

It implies that you need to hire the right guy for the job. As a manager you should spend a great deal of your time recruiting and team building. Jack Welch once said he spent one third of his time recruiting.

As well it implies that you need to give the employee all of the tools that he/she need to do their job. You can’t hold it against them if you don’t give them the resources they need.

Recently we hired a new sales manager for our watch business. We immediately hit him with questions like “What reports do you need? What metrics do you want to track? How many sales people do you need to hit your target we’ve set for you? How many leads do you need?”

The final implication is that you need to remove all of the obstacles impeding their way to success. This means that it is your responsibility that you know if someone else on the team is causing them problems. There’s a litany of situations which could get in their way to succeed. It’s impossible to write them all down but you know they are there if you are looking for them. Perhaps you just get them better phones or computers. Sometimes its the little things.

Recently we moved our entire Filipino operations to the night shift to improve communications. The time lag was an obstacle that was keeping our manager there from being successful. It’s just an example. There are many of things to look out for.

This leads us to the conclusion. If you’ve done those three steps and the goals still aren’t being met, repeat step one. Think about it. The manager is now liberated from the difficult decision to fire or not fire. Don’t get rid of someone if you haven’t done your job first.

It’s your job to hire the right person. It’s your job to give them the tools they need to succeed. It’s your job to remove any obstacles that are in their way. If you’ve done your job and it isn’t working then it is their fault. It’s your fault until you eliminate those three items, not theirs.

You can’t say they haven’t done their job if you haven’t done yours.

That moment of clarity only comes if you’ve done your job first. Only then can you look at your staff and know if they are doing theirs.

Sorry for the lack of blog posts over the last two weeks. I plan on spending some quality time this weekend getting caught up on some posts and schedule a few out for the upcoming week. I also have plans to have Elizabeth over tomorrow to help me with this week’s news video. What have I [...]

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