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

The enemy of the entrepreneur is clutter, we are all bombarded by marketing material everyday, don’t quote me on it, but I believe the number is around 4,000 messages per day we’re exposed to.

Attention is what everyone is fighting for today. Your job as an entrepreneur is to attract the Attention of your market place to Stop them in their tracks and take notice of what you have to offer.

Some of the basics includes your USP, what makes you unique in your market and with your marketing pieces your Attention grabbing headline. Depending how far you want to go and how bold you want to be, you could pull stand out stunts like the great Richard Branson, they certainly get everyone’s attention.

Maybe you have some stand out achievements to display or you’ve partnered with celebrities that your market place respect or speaking from the platform is a great media for gaining the attention of your audience.

Crazy guarantees, stand out track records and even authoring your own book are all effective attention grabbers.

Attention is the new currency, in Japan they have vending machines where you can get free drinks or snacks just for watching some advertisements. So the advertisers are paying for your attention

A good strategy in direct mail is to use Lumpy Mail to get your prospects attention, which is covered in detail in my ATTENTION Marketing Program, which will be released for the first time very soon, so stay tuned.

Don’t fall for the plain vanilla, ‘me-too’ strategy, focus on what you can do to stand out and own the Attention of your audience.

Yours in success,

Aaron Parsons

www.TheBusinessCommandos.com

www.BusinessGrowthGuru.com