No doubt about it in today’s economy companies are being forced to do more with less which means many are “cutting back” not only on frills (example: rather than redecorating the branch this year maybe we can get by “as is” for another couple of years) but on necessities as well (we need to reduce our customer service staff by 35% immediately!). So what are organizations doing to off-set the affects of laying-off or firing employees, freezing compensation and reducing spending on customer-focused initiatives?

Unfortunately, many company executives are merely crossing their fingers and hoping they’ll weather the storm. Their goal appears to be to maintain market share and hope that economic conditions improve soon – which is a legitimate management strategy. But what if a competitor was able to somehow rise above the fear and economic doom and gloom of the present moment? What if they saw current conditions as an opportunity to restructure, realign and in so doing gain new synergy within their company? How might that affect those companies that placed themselves into “hibernation?”

In my opinion, the smartest most effective managers have an ability to see both sides of a problem. Simply put, they’re able to see what Eastern philosophers have been saying for thousands of years – negative cannot exist without positive. So maybe now is the time to recognize the positive opportunities available in our negative economic climate by cultivating and integrating the limited resources or assets that remain within your organization. Maybe its time to create integrity like you’ve never experienced before between your employee initiatives, customer initiatives and brand initiatives, and in so doing actually increase your return on those precious assets.

Here’s an idea. It isn’t rocket science, and it isn’t cutting-edge … however, it will create greater job satisfaction among your employees and at the same time improve your customer experiences. Every company has a value proposition (a value proposition answers the question “why should I do business with you?”) – but less than 10% of all companies integrate their value proposition into position descriptions and performance reviews. And even fewer companies link their value proposition (sometimes referred to as a “brand promise”) into compensation and incentives. Now imagine the effects those tweaks will have on the performance and bottom-line results of your organization.

Asset-Based Marketing … maybe its time to take a look at what this new approach to business and marketing planning can do for your business, even during hard times – before your competitors do it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Marketing News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.