TheBusinessCommandos.com

Retaining team members in the 21st century is a large problem for a lot of businesses. Business owners are required to be more entrepreneurial in this area and embrace out of the square creative thinking to retaining team members and maintain an entrepreneurial culture.

In this segment we will cover some keys to retaining and attracting quality team members. It really comes down to marketing, but on an internal basis, rather than an external basis as the case with clients.

Start with the basics:

• What are your target markets (teams) needs and wants?
• How do they currently feel about the organisation?
• What can the organisation offer them?
• How can the organisation translate what they have to offer into benefits for team members?
  And finally the big one…
• What is your team marketing USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? – Why are team members going to want to work for you rather than someone else?

Richard Branson’s Virgin Blue are a great example of what we are talking about (at the time of writing). Generally Qantas staff get paid substantially more than Virgin staff, however Virgin have created a fun and happy environment to work in, that people want to be a part of and are happy to be paid less to be a part of that culture.

The truly great Entrepreneurial organisations satisfy the 3 key attributes to attract and maintain team members, which is summarised as GEL;

GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES – Growth is one of the 6 human needs, hence their must be growth opportunities for team members within your organisation to keep them happy. Everyone wants to grow in one way or another.

ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE – Team members want to work in a fun, happy and healthy work environment with good conditions and be a part of an entrepreneurial culture.

LEADERS CHARISMA – Team members want to work for charismatic leaders. If team members respect and like who they are working for, they are more productive. The days of the army sergeant major type of leadership are long gone.
Make some notes on how you can improve in making your business the work place of choice for team members.

Yours in success,

Aaron Parsons
http:/www.BusinessGrowthGuru.com

Viral marketing is an extremely effective internet marketing strategy. It’s called viral because it spreads like a virus. With the each new person it comes into contact with being a host and on it goes from there.

It works pretty simple, you tell 2 people, then they tell 2 people and so on until it gets out of control.

It doesn’t take many levels to result in exponential growth for those who employ this powerful strategy. The example below demonstrates the results with each person telling 4 people and what happens after just twelve levels;

1. You - 1
2. Your Friends - 4
3. Their Friends - 16
4. And on it goes… 64
5. 256
6. 1,024
7. 4,096
8. 16,384
9. 65,536
10. 262,144
11. 1,048,576
12. 4,194,304

Note the compounding effect that takes place towards the end.

To send your product viral it must have the ‘WOW’ factor that creates street talk and gets people talking about it. It must offer outstanding value and you will need to offer an incentive for people to want to share it. It must be useful to people to make it spread.

Submitting articles to article directories is a viral strategy, which involves you supplying some good quality content – usually around 1 page in length and submit it to directories like www.ezinearticles.com or www.articlemarketer.com and at the bottom of your article will be the author box with your details so those who like what they read can find you at your website. Some of your articles will get picked by ezine publishers too, which helps them spread.

Don’t expect overnight results when submitting articles, it’s like planting lawn seed, the grass doesn’t grow straight away. You plant the seeds today to reap the rewards in the future and the beauty of the internet is you will continue to get a trickle of business years down the road as your article continues floating around in cyber-space.