Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization 2008 – Chicago, IL

It was like a breath of fresh air, being surrounded by 1,400 young, motivated, big thinking, wealth aspiring entrepreneurs. This year the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization hosted its annual conference in the heart of the windy city and between the speakers, the company, and the city, it did not disappoint.

Speakers like Robert Kiyosaki inspired and motivated us with stories of triumph and failure and most importantly, overcoming failures to go on to triumphs. As first time attendees to the conference, the experience was an unforgettable one. Advanced workshops gave insight into specific issues like venture capital, internet marketing, and understanding the importance of bootstrapping (and how to do it effectively). It was a hub of unbelievable resources for anyone aspiring to start a business or take theirs to the next level.

Now back in Jacksonville, I’m more ready than ever to continue with my plans to create a multi-million dollar enterprise. But it’s not all about the money, and that was a point of emphasis that CEO illustrated. The success of business allows us to think bigger, change the status quo faster, and access the needed resources to solve the world’s problems. It’s our responsibility to create jobs, find better sources of energy, and end the disease and hunger that millions of humans face every day.

So here’s my challenge to you. Stop what you’re doing and just think for a minute. Where do you want to be in five years? Do you want to be a millionaire? Do you want to help people? Even better, would you like to be a millionaire helping people? The questions are a bit rhetorical, but I sincerely hope you consider that entrepreneurship is the key that can open the door into a new world of thought and freedom. Can you work hard enough to obtain that? Do you want to?

Managing a Marketing and Sales Transformation

Authors: Joel Claret, Pierre Mauger, and Eric V. Roegner

The marketing environment is unprecedentedly changing and becoming more complex. The result is a need to reorganize brand portfolios, rethink spending approaches, generate more fine-grained customer insights, overhaul pricing and segment management, and restructure sales, service, and channel strategies. Each change is a challenge in its own right, and some companies are tackling more than one: GE, for example, has been trying simultaneously to improve the way it approaches innovation, brand management, and customer care. This level of change represents a commercial transformation—that is, a transformation of the company's broad-based marketing and sales elements.

It's difficult to carry off change of this magnitude at a brisk pace: deeply ingrained habits keep employees from embracing new techniques, skill-building efforts break down, and leaders lose focus. To counteract these problems, companies have developed a variety of change-management approaches, particularly in operations, where techniques such as Six Sigma and Total Quality Management (TQM) have flourished. Making change stick typically requires both planning and action—centering change on a powerful aspiration, establishing systems and processes that reinforce the goals of change, modifying mind-sets by creating a sense of shared purpose among employees, conducting targeted skill-building efforts, and creating role models for employees.¹ While such change-management practices are useful, they are difficult to apply to marketing and sales. One reason is that these organizations—encompassing brand managers, market researchers, and segment and channel managers, to name just a few—are more diverse and complex than the shop floors where many improvement programs take place. Figuring out how to keep disparate parts of the organization working together is a key challenge of change. Second, the rationale for transforming a marketing organization is often to jump-start growth. That requires creativity, not just strong execution, so the change effort is more difficult and the related decision making more complex. Finally, the responses of competitors and customers to marketing changes are difficult to predict, so it is hard to eliminate variability (a goal of many operations change efforts); maintaining flexibility is essential; and the establishment of goals and metrics is complicated.

In our experience, five critical ingredients of transformation are key to overcoming these issues (Exhibit 1):

1. Leadership, aspirations, conviction, and clarity of purpose: committed leadership that can bring together disparate parts of an organization to achieve an ambitious and clearly articulated aspiration
2. New ways of working: a combination of improved processes and tools that help make sense of complex information, redefined pivotal roles, and performance management that drives the transformation forward; together, these serve as the foundation of a commercial operating system that, when fully developed, improves consistency, coordination, insight, and decision making
3. Capability building: on-the-job apprenticeship and high-caliber coaching designed to upgrade critical skills while delivering results
4. Changes in mind-sets and behavior: necessary steps such as removing cultural barriers to change and developing a tailored set of interventions to shape behavior
5. Transformation design: an approach that delineates the scope of the journey of change and the support needed to meet its objectives

You can read the rest of this article and others at http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com

Grant

How Retailers Can Make the Best of a Slowdown

Moving quickly to improve performance can help retailers to recover faster.

Ashish A. Kotecha, Josh Leibowitz, and Ian MacKenzie

September 2008

Downturns are tough on retailers. Recent McKinsey research indicates that during the last two recessions (1990–91 and 2000–01), growth slowed for nearly every retail subsector in the United States. Ninety-three percent of the retailers surveyed that existed during both downturns experienced slowing revenue growth in one of them, and 59 percent endured it in both.¹

Unfortunately for retailers, their position on the front lines of consumer spending doesn’t translate into a rapid turnaround when the general economy experiences a subsequent uptick. The average retail subsector growth rate during the first year of recovery following the 1990–91 and 2000–01 downturns was 0.3 percent. And 12 of 15 retail sectors lagged behind even that rate of growth during one or both upturns.²

These downturn dynamics—declining sales followed by a sluggish recovery period—mean retailers should move quickly to minimize performance deterioration. The challenge, of course, is that retailers have a large number of options to sort through, ranging from cutting costs by shutting stores or restructuring support functions, to increasing revenue by refreshing stores or overhauling promotions. Many make the mistake of focusing on what is easy or known to them and fail to tackle more challenging goals that might improve their competitive positioning during the inevitable upturn.

In our experience, some basic rules of thumb are invaluable for helping retailers rapidly sort through their options and set priorities for action—in particular, determining whether to take an offensive or defensive approach. Combining a tough self-assessment with a hard-nosed scan of the environment can help retailers decide on the relative importance of reducing costs, increasing investments, creating financial flexibility, and seeking near-term revenue growth (exhibit).

Retailers should start by taking a rigorous look at the health of their balance sheets, management teams, and overall operating performance. Companies with reasonable cash reserves and ready access to credit lines, for instance, have options—such as investing in stores, people, or acquisitions—that weaker competitors simply lack.

At the same time, retailers need to be realistic about the potential of their businesses. Do they operate store formats or play in a subsector with strong growth prospects? To what extent is the market already saturated, and where does the retailer stand versus competitors? Recent growth rates, market penetration figures, and a serious review of the strengths and weaknesses of competitors are all important factors to consider.

Companies with good financial strength in markets with significant growth potential should lift investment to gain strategic advantage over competitors. Big bets, such as doubling down on new stores or remodeling old ones, are one possibility. Equally important are smaller bets, such as recruiting talent from weaker players or investing in more precise local market execution. For example, when one specialty retailer began suffering from declining foot traffic in its stores, the company built an analytic tool to help merchants and members of the central marketing organization more effectively use data from customer-relationship-management (CRM) and transaction databases. This allowed the retailer to better predict local demand and decide which items should receive how much space in its advertising circular. Comparable store sales have risen between two and four percent in test markets employing the new promotion-effectiveness tool.

Retailers with good financial health in mature industries can also go on the offensive, taking actions to quickly grow revenue by driving traffic into stores through more compelling offers and ensuring that staff is ready on the floor for the assisted sale. For example, a North American soft goods retailer has reversed declining sales, improved customer satisfaction, and increased the frequency and average size of transactions by focusing on eliminating out-of-stocks, raising the effectiveness of front-line salespeople, and making small store-layout changes that help customers find the goods they want.

Companies with weaker financial health will need to focus more aggressively on reducing costs. Our recent experience suggests that weak performers have major opportunities to rationalize inventory stock keeping units (SKUs)—freeing up working capital—and to renegotiate terms on direct sourcing. These companies can also increase shop-floor efficiency, an area where they frequently lag. By applying lean operations techniques to redeploy labor, they can shorten the time staff spend on noncustomer-facing tasks and increase the time spent helping customers. The focus should be on getting more from existing sales resources, not just on cutting labor hours. Indeed, the key driver of economics is sales—not just cost as a percentage of sales.

More broadly, retailers should bear in mind that the least effective thing to do during a downturn is to simply “hunker down” and “weather the storm.” Though there’s no escaping some pain, moving quickly to improve performance can reduce the odds of a deep dip in sales and position retailers to participate fully in the inevitable upturn.

Original Article: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Retail_Consumer_Good/Strategy_Analysis How_retailers_can_make_the_best_of_a_slowdown_2188

Leverage Your Marketing Efforts

Today's economy is volatile and unpredictable. Markets feed off of each other like nothing before, and the world economy is one marketplace. Consumers today are smart. They research purchase options, talk with others, and can make or break a business. Understanding how to engage this marketplace changes is essential to being successful. However, complex problems tend to come with long complex answers and complex answer eat up precious time. So, for our purposes, I have shortened some simple small business recommendations into short, easy to understand strategies that every business should be actively engaging in.

1. Enterprise Branding - Many companies are doing an exceptional job branding at the micro level (product) but is missing the mark on creating an enterprise presence. Evolving your company's - not just product - brand is an essential part in growing the business and establishing a larger market presence.

2. Analytics and Email -

a. Leverage the internet by employing an email marketing initiative. You can use this to put your products in front of more people, more often while at the same time increase the availability of feedback and behavioral data from consumers. This will also help with enterprise branding, customer loyalty, and market exposure.

b. What are you currently spending on marketing and where is it going? Based on current pay per click (PPC) rates, what kind of turn over are you seeing. How leveraged are your key words respectively to the search volume of those key words?

c. Home Page - What is the click through rate on your home page? Bounce rate? Building high value content into your home page, such as product demo’s or a welcome video to captivate an audience will encourage a higher CLR and a lower Bounce rate. Ideally, to work in conjunction with enterprise branding, consider re-tooling your home page.

3. Economic Outlook - An economic slowdown will take a toll on businesses expecting U.S. retail to maintain its current pace. To hedge against losses, consider some of the following:

a. Inventory turn over - Has it gradually slowed? Keep less inventory on hand if so and more cash available.

b. International Markets - Consider putting your sites in multiple languages and buying country specific domain names (.cn - China, .se - Sweden, .uk - London). This can help you penetrate similar target markets in foreign countries. Be sure to do some thorough research to ensure you are marketing a product correctly given the cultural differences of foreign consumers. This is an ideal growth strategy (if done correctly) but can be even more rewarding when you need to find new channels of distribution due to economic slowdown.

These are some of the essentials that every business can employ with little real capital while at the same time seeing exceptional results.

Stocks tumble as bailout plan fails in House

Monday September 29, 2:26 pm ET
By Tim Paradis, AP Business Writer

Stocks tumble as financial bailout plan fails in House vote; credit tightens further

NEW YORK (AP) -- Fear swept across the financial markets Monday, sending the Dow Jones industrials down as much as 705 points, after the financial bailout package failed the House.

As the vote was shown on TV, stocks plunged and and investors fled to the safety of the credit markets, worrying that the financial system would keep sinking under the weight of failed mortgage debt.

"Clearly something needs to be done, and the market dropping 400 points in 10 minutes is telling you that," said Chris Johnson president of Johnson Research Group. "This isn't a market for the timid."

While investors had some worries that the vote would be close, many investors appeared to believe it would ultimately pass.

The markets were highly volatile, with the Dow regaining ground then falling backing again, trading down 577.37, or 5.18 percent, to 10,565.76.

Broader stock indicators also tumbled. The Standard & Poor's 500 index declined 79.35, or 6.54 percent, to 1,133.92, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 146.72, or 6.72 percent, to 2,036.62.

The Federal Reserve declined to comment on the market's decline.

With Wall Street in turmoil, the yield on the 3-month Treasury bill fell to 0.32 percent from 0.87 percent on Friday. That showed that investors were prepared to get meager returns on an investment as long as it was secure.

Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald, said investors are worried about the spread of troubles beyond banks in the U.S. to Europe and other markets.

"Things are dying and breaking apart while they sit there and vote on this thing," he said.

Sarah Palin: Qualified for Vice Presidency?

I think that everyone should know that if John McCain wins the election and dies, this woman will run the most power country in the world. What do you think?

Bad Break Causes United Airlines a Billion!

September 10, 2008, 12:09 pm

By Mike Nizza

From left to right, the journey of old news that would cost $1 billion. A Sun Sentinel story from 2002 resurfaced in an automatically generated area of the Web site, soon landed on Google News before getting posted to Bloomberg terminals.

What made a six-year-old article about a bankruptcy filing by United Airlines reappear on Wall Street traders’ screens on Monday as if it were fresh news, prompting a sell-off that erased $1 billion in the company’s market value in a matter of minutes? The path the article followed from forgotten archive entry to present-day stock-killer has begun to emerge, and it raises some interesting questions about how news rockets around the Web.

Both human error and far-from-foolproof technology seem to have played a role in the episode, which involved a 2002 Chicago Tribune report; the web site of the Sun Sentinel, a Florida newspaper owned by the same company; the Bloomberg News financial wire service; and Google, all apparently unwittingly.

The Tribune Company laid out the results of its preliminary investigation into the incident in a news release late Tuesday afternoon, beginning with a line that painted its newspapers as victims of circumstances beyond their control:

The December 10, 2002, Chicago Tribune article on United Airlines’ bankruptcy filing, along with thousands of others stories in the searchable database of the Sun Sentinel website, was accessible for years.

The trouble seems to have started on Sunday, when a link to the old article turned up on a page on the Sun Sentinel site that automatically lists the most popular business stories of the moment. Why did such old news suddenly garner enough attention to land it there? Tribune hasn’t offered an explanation so far, except to say that the story was not promoted elsewhere on the site. So one open question is precisely how many clicks it took to earn a spot on that ranking — dozens? hundreds? thousands?

Any effort to find out more would lead down the many roads that readers may follow before converging anyplace on the Web. Sometimes, there’s an obvious answer tied to the news. Sometimes, it’s seemingly random phenomena. Just one look at Google Trends, the search giant’s version of a most-popular chart, would yield both kinds of items.

Had the old article merely spent a bit of time on that Sun-Sentinel list before returning to the archive, no harm would have been done to United. But a second piece of software apparently stopped by to analyze the work of the first one, and it would call the article to the attention of a much larger audience.

Normally, Web sites welcome the arrival of Google’s “bots,” which “crawl” around the Internet, following links and cataloguing the content they find for users to search. Indeed, many sites have been optimized in recent years specifically to make it easier for Google’s bots to detect new material quickly and bring it to Google’s monstrous audience. Most-popular-articles rankings are one place where Google News bots find the headlines they aggregate for readers. Up it went.

And there lies a rather big catch, which constitutes the biggest disagreement between Google and Tribune. Google believes that the fact that the bankruptcy article dated from 2002 was not obvious to either robot or human:

It has been widely reported that many readers were unable to determine the original date of publication of this article, and our crawling was similarly unable to recognize that the article was old.

For its part, Tribune says that no one who actually read the story could have mistaken it for fresh news:

The December 10, 2002, story contains information that would clearly lead a reader to the conclusion that it was related to events in 2002. In addition, the comments posted along with the story are dated 2002. It appears that no one who passed this story along actually bothered to read the story itself.

Neither assertion contradicts the other, but Tribune seems surprised by a reading style that is commonplace in the age of Google. As Nicholas Carr wrote in an Atlantic essay entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” last month, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

As for preventing another similar incident, leaving sharper date cues for Google would seem to be far easier than changing the habits of millions of readers. In this case, though, it only took one reader to open the barn door for United stock’s shockingly swift decline — the one working at Income Securities Advisers, who saw the item on Google News and sent out a summary of it on Bloomberg News.

Stripped from its original context, the report gave traders who were already nervous about airline stocks just enough information — “UAL Files for Bankruptcy” over the weekend — to start them pounding the sell button, and not enough time to think twice about salvaging whatever was left of their stake.

Of course, software had a hand in the sell-off as well. “The damage was exacerbated by the growing use on Wall Street of automated programs that trigger stock trades without any human interaction,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

As the search for blame returned once again to something rather than someone, it appeared that United and its shareholders will have a hard time getting satisfaction after an astonishingly bad break.