Smooth Move Marketing

Business Cost Savings Through Safety

Setting a health and safety program in place will reduce costs. Having a program will reduce accidents and will lead to lower company worker’s comp premiums; further business insurance companies prefer their customers to have health and safety programs. These insurance companies might even discount the premium if a program can be proved to exist. The average cost of an accident is $68,000. Direct costs in accidents such as worker’s comp and fines levied can close a business. Indirect costs such as low morale of employees, legal fees, and retraining can be as costly if not more.

A working program will:
1) Improve employee morale – Shows care in their well being
2) Reduce revenue loses – Fewer accidents keeps all employees at work
3) Give a boost to the customer – Makes sure business is operating optimally

Small businesses that have a voluntary health and safety program in place have fifty percent less accidents and reported insurance claims than that of their counterparts according to OHSA stats. Most small businesses fall below the legal requirements for having a formal health and safety program in place due to number of employees on staff. Sixty eight percent of reported accidents are in the service industry which shows even businesses such as retail establishments are not free of accidents.

A health and safety program can be started by writing a health and safety policy; this is simply values that a company wishes to convey in its work processes. Secondly, is how communication between all employees and owners will function. And lastly, put procedures in place to ensure safe practices.

To find unseen hazards and unsafe practices, an audit needs to take place. Take a hard look at the workplace and record all factors that may lead to injury. These hazards might be dangerous chemicals or as simple as a letter opener. Identifying these hazards will lead to procedures to controlling them. Controls such as “Don’t run with scissors in your hands” are effective. Write all procedures in a manual.

Implementing these health and safety procedures will be done with behavioral change. Some programs become weak and non effective because of:
1) No definition of safety practices – No written processes
2) No teamwork – Safety is communication from the top to bottom and vice versa. A well written plan will describe what roles everyone plays in safety policies. Read the rest of this entry »

A growing number of community banks are recognizing that new and more aggressive competitors are taking new business they “believed” they would or “should” have. To help combat this they no longer accept the practice of “business as usual.” They are taking the time-proven actions it takes to train, coach and reward their key business development team members to get them out on the street. Program results are showing ROI’s of up to 30—to-1!

This isn’t easy, to say the least. A major culture change is required for most community banks when it comes to selling. Bankers have long been of the mindset that banking is a business built when prospects come to the bank and request the service they want. Unfortunately the consumer has developed a slightly different mindset lately.

“Yes, my banker and I have a good relationship but that doesn’t mean I will only consult them for financial needs and services. There are lots of other options. ” Friends are friends but when money is involved there is a different emotion involved……greed.

The CEO of First Bank in Ketchikan, Alaska, Bill Moran, decided something new must be tried when he started planning for this new year. “I realized that to meet our growth goals we must be more aggressive about taking business from our competition and improve our “unfair share” of our market. There wasn’t sufficient  market expansion to maintain our historical growth and profit levels.”

First Bank launched its’ new effort with a 120-day action plan in January 2006 for its’ six branches. The intended focus was to be solely on gaining new customers and establishing new relationships.

“Some of the participating officers found it very difficult to break away from the familiar clients to concentrate only on prospects that had no prior relationship, “said Eric Bjella, VP and Program Manger.

The first step was to assess the sales strengths of each team member. It was important to know who were likely to make calls and build relationships easily (Hunters) and those with good processing and service-related skills but less confidence in their abilities to communicate with prospects (Farmers).  This was followed with a professional sales skills training session which included each member identifying from 5-10 prospects.

“The individual assessments and audience reactions to the training were very informative,” said Bjella. “Some of our people felt they never could be successful at making cold calls to strangers. But were they surprised!”

The training showed how to: qualify prospects, make impossible appointments, start building respect and trust from the first appointment, getting to real pains/needs and overcoming objections for desired actions.

The First Bank team met every 10 days in groups of 12 to report progress against their specific targets. While slow at first, calling activity grew and success was gradually achieved. Through coaching and confidence built on successful experiences, sales meetings progressed from a reluctance to report to lively dialogues between members, sharing helpful prospect insights with each other.

One member reported being devastated on her first call, to the point of tears. Executive Vice President Jack Vaughn reported this prospect had also called him to complain, only to contact him later, inviting him to attend a competitor’s bank sponsored business owners meeting. ”Wonders never cease to amaze me, Jack said. I didn’t think we would ever get any where with this prospect and then she did a complete turnaround.”

At the end of the 120 days First Bank captured several new customers, representing over $300,000 in new income to the bank’s bottom line. Less the training expenses that gave a 30-to-1 ROI, income vs. expenses. Other contacts made during this period are expected to move to First Bank in a few months through continued follow-up activities.

A different success story comes from a bank holding company in Iowa. Bank Iowa Corporation felt it was time for a sales culture to be started within at each of its 6 independently chartered banks, serving 17 communities.

“We never had any sales training in our Company’s history, said Michael Thompson, VP and Program Leader. Our CEO, Stan Honken, challenged our presidents to have an officer calling program in place by year-end. I contacted some firms who might help us start a sales culture. After reviewing four, we selected Wemmers Consulting Group from Atlanta. Their program impressed us with its’ accountability factors, experience in bank training and real world application following the skills training.”
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Please feel free to publish this article and resource box in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website. A copy would be appreciated at bobkelly@TNI.net. Word count is 1245 including guidelines and resource box. Robert A. Kelly © 2005.

What Are We Teaching PR Students?

How to do brochures, throw parties, talk to reporters and write press releases? Or, are we teaching them what PR’s fundamental premise says we should be teaching them?

In so many words, whether they go to work for a business, non-profit, government agency or association, students will soon discover that people act on their own perception of the facts before them, which leads to predictable
behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization the most, the public relations mission is usually accomplished.

Which is why, after public relations students digest THAT basic touchstone, they should be made aware that, as future managers, their core public relations mission will be to pull together the resources and action planning they need to alter individual perception leading to changed behaviors among their most important outside audiences.

But that’s not all! Then PR students should learn that they will have to persuade those key folks to his or her way of thinking, then move them to take actions that allow their subsidiary, division, department, group or office to succeed.

What we want for our new crop of PR students is the knowledge that the right public relations planning really CAN alter individual perception and lead to changed behaviors among the very outside audiences who will help them succeed as managers.

Should you find yourself explaining the role of public relations, you must ask your audience to remember that their PR efforts will demand more than the use of special events, news releases and talk show tactics if they are to receive the
quality public relations results they deserve.

As to the results they can expect, tell them how glad they’ll be that they took your advice when capital givers or specifying sources begin to look their way;
customers start to make repeat purchases; membership applications begin to rise; new proposals for strategic alliances and joint ventures start showing
up; politicians and legislators begin looking at them as key members of the business, non-profit or association communities; new bounces in show room
visits occur; prospects actually start to do business with them; and community leaders begin to seek them out.

Discuss with your audience why it’s SO important to know how your most important outside audiences perceive your operations, products or services. Above all, be sure they really believe that perceptions almost always result in behaviors that can help or hurt their operation.

Go over with them the need for monitoring and gathering perceptions by questioning members of their most important outside audiences. Have them ask questions like these: how much do you know about our organization? Have you had prior contact with us and were you pleased with the interchange? Are you familiar with our services or products and employees? Have you experienced
problems with our people or procedures?

They should learn that the cost of using professional survey firms to do the opinion gathering work will be considerably more than using their PR colleagues who are already in the perception business. But whether it’s their people or a survey firm asking the questions, the objective remains the same: identify untruths, false assumptions, unfounded rumors, inaccuracies, misconceptions and any other negative perception that might translate into hurtful behaviors.

Public relations students need to know that here they must establish a goal calling for action on the most serious problem areas they uncovered during their key audience perception monitoring. Will that goal be to straighten out a dangerous misconception? Correct a gross inaccuracy? Or, stop a potentially
painful rumor before it really gets started?

An equally important lesson is this. Setting a PR goal requires an equally specific strategy that tells you how to get there. Only three strategic options
are available to you when it comes to doing something about perception and opinion. Change existing perception, create perception where there may be none, or reinforce it. The wrong strategy pick will taste like mushroom gravy on your pumpkin pie, so be sure your new strategy fits well with your new public relations goal. You certainly don’t want to select “change” when the facts dictate a strategy of reinforcement.

Most students of public relations already know the importance of good writing. Explain to them that now is the time that good writing comes to the fore. They must prepare a persuasive message that will help move their key audience to their way of thinking. It must be a carefully-written message targeted directly at their key external audience. They must come up with really corrective language
that is not merely compelling, persuasive and believable, but clear and factual if they are to shift perception/opinion towards their point of view and lead to the behaviors they have in mind.
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