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If your business is looking for a great way to relay important messages and create a favorable impression of your company, consider a "message from the owner" (or president, CEO, etc.). Here are a few tips to create a "message" that speaks for itself:

• In addition to creating a standard "mission statement" message from the owner, consider offering regular messages via a company website, newsletter, blog, sales letter, Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc. to communicate new initiatives, announce new products, or simply offer an insightful perspective on a relevant subject.


• Include a photo of the owner/president/CEO. Readers feel more of a connection when they can put a face with a name.


• While the messaging is most effective when it comes from the owner him/herself, consider help from a member of your communications team for message ideas, editing, and wordsmith help.


• In addition to sharing a message with customers, a message from the owner is also a great way to create a sense of community within an organization and narrow the gap between the owner and coworkers.


• Encourage feedback and open lines of communication whenever possible. A forum where customers or coworkers can ask questions and receive a response from the owner can be a powerful marketing tool. Consider highlighting questions and responses as topics for the messages.

If sales of your products and services have been diving off a cliff or are just plain flat, there are other paths to improvement besides simply reducing prices. To find the clues that lead to those answers, you will need to do a little detective work.
 
Good detectives don't typically rely on just luck and good fortune to solve a crime. Neither can you when you're looking for answers to the crime of slow sales. Detectives follow a certain protocol to try and find the criminal. You must also follow certain steps to find what you are looking for.

Gather the evidence.
The first step that a detective takes is to carefully collect evidence. A clever detective tries to recreate the crime scene and see it through the eyes of the suspect. Slow sales leave a similar trail of clues which can be collected and analyzed. Look at your business through the eyes of your customers and prospects. What unnecessary obstacles and hassles are you unwittingly creating that stop a prospect from doing business with you? Work to remove any unnecessary conditions and restrictions that are making your customers jump through hoops to do business with you.

Good cop, bad cop
You have undoubtedly heard about or seen on TV crime dramas the technique known as "good cop, bad cop." After the suspect is brought in for questioning, a "bad" cop tries to intimidate the suspect while the "good" cop tries to gain his trust so he spills the beans and admits to the crime. In a business setting, you must be able to present your company as the "good cop." If you can become the trusted source for your customer, sales leads will begin beating a path to your door.

Persistence is key.
Detectives with long and successful careers typically have one common trait -- they don't give up easily. In tough economic conditions, offering great service and products is no longer enough. It is expected...and only the starting point. The slow economy has undoubtedly played a role in slow sales for some companies. But there are companies that have experienced continuous sales growth, even during the recession. What is the difference? These companies have a very good understanding of their customers. By staying close to their customers, these companies have learned to adapt as needed and stay ahead of the curve by offering what their customers need and want.

Don't overlook the details.
Detectives solve crimes by doing their homework first and then completing all the nitty-gritty, unglamorous tasks that the TV crime dramas don't show. Great companies survey their customers to find out what they need and then over-deliver on what they promise. When you can do that, you will be able to lock up slow sales forever and throw away the key.

We've all been there. Something we write in an email, letter, or casual tweet gets misunderstood. Or perhaps, we're the ones who have misinterpreted something a friend or colleague wrote. No matter how clear we think we are in our writing, misunderstandings happen. When they do, open communication is vital to resolving the issue as quickly as possible.

But how can we keep misunderstandings to a minimum?

Context is key. When you compose an email or tweet, the recipient can't see your face or hear the tone and inflection of your voice. They must rely on your words alone to guide them in interpreting what you're trying to say. If the recipient knows you well, they may be able to infer meaning more easily, based on previous interactions, but even then, misunderstandings can occur. To minimize miscommunication, keep your writing concise.  Stick with the facts, and move on.  Use humor cautiously, particularly dry humor that may be seen as being flip, curt, or rude.  Save the jokes for face-to-face situations, when your body language and vocal inflections can help in interpreting your words. And try to craft questions that cannot be accidentally read and interpreted in a different way than you intended. A humorous example of this occurred around the turn of the last century. William Randolph Hearst made a bid to purchase a competing newspaper. He asked his rival for a selling price, to which the man replied, "Three cents daily. Five cents Sunday." Obviously, the rival knew what Hearst meant by his question -- and by answering the way he did, basically let Hearst know the paper was not for sale -- but this does go to show that the same question can have more than one meaning if interpreted differently. Of course, it's not just what you say that matters; it's how you say it. When communicating in writing, it's important to know the subtleties of the medium you're using. For example, most people now know that writing an email or Facebook post in all caps is often equated with yelling. For a medium like Twitter, with its 140 character limit, the challenge often comes in trying to say too much in such a confined space. When composing a tweet, it's easy to inadvertently gloss over some of the details, in an effort to save space. Make sure you're not losing meaning -- or raising confusion -- for brevity's sake. If you can't adequately say what you need to say in the space provided, choose a different medium

Joe Gass @ Printing & Graphics  _  5900 Harris Technology Blvd, Suite G, Charlotte, NC 28269  *  704-551-0700  _  www.heritageprinting.com  _  22725 Washington St., Leonardtown, MD 20650  *  301-475-1700 _ Wide Format signs, banners & banner stands, displays, posters, wall and window graphics, vehicle and floor graphics, decals, backlit signs, point of purchase, end caps and toppers, on-site installation and fulfillment Offset and Digital newsletters, magazines, publications, catalogs, conference and meeting materials, brochures, rack cards, presentation folders and direct mail Veteran Owned and Operated