Engage Your People

It has been well documented over many years that the three main drivers of human motivation are fear, sex and money; something that the advertising industry certainly understands implicitly.

The real life 'human web' of friends family and colleagues; their own connections and advice are what will often set your career on track and in some cases land you that dream job. Once you are in post, the level of what you can and can't do to keep your job can paralyse you into inactivity and you will slowly close the door on those networks that opened the door for you in the first place.

In these austere times you could well be working in fear of crossing the line 

Fear of insider trading

Fear of nepotism

Fear of accountability

Fear of losing your job

Even face to face networking (or in other words, selling; the best form of capital raising you can get) is affected, I am sure that the following are topics on many management meeting agendas today:

1. Its too expensive to make the sales call if we don't know the outcome before we get there

2. We can't sell at that margin because we are committed to maintaining a margin of x

3. You cant accept or give hospitality in case you are placing the company in a difficult situation

When margins are squeezed and the sales cycles lengthen, many of our executive managers will start to micro manage the situation to such an extent that the brave, gregarious, motivated and committed sales team spend much of their day filling in forms and the rest of their day trying to find a new job; but their networking doors are closed; so even more fear and paralysis sets in; leading to even more pressure on the executive team and the business.

Some thoughts for both sales & executive teams:

1. Keep your networks open through social media

2. Give more importance to social and environmental drivers as they will add significant value to your bottom line. Finance alone is no longer good enough (its a triple bottom line)

3. Trust the people you have recruited, presumably they are better than you at doing their job or you wouldn't have recruited them

4. Be inclusive, making it through difficult trading times is a team effort

5. Look after and trust your people and they will look after your company and you; they will go the extra mile.

We can have as many check points, processes and systems as we like (and yes we do need them; but match them to your organisations size) but the tipping point for many customers is the personal relationship, the value's you stand for. Old fashioned, low tech, I know, but core values are what keeps relationships together once the courtship is over.

The interesting thing is that it takes an austere, faceless, virtual connection to demonstrate how we crave personal and visual contact. Facebook is here to stay; take a leaf out of their book and stay connected to your people.