At Crossroads Communications, LLC (the “official” name of my business, although you probably found me by searching my name; it’s just the way the Google search bounces) we essentially are a message company. We discover the stories of our clients and share them, whether through PR, marketing, advertising, social media, content-creation on blogs, videos, etc. The tools are less important than the focus on the messages. Before we can find and authentically help brands, businesses, and places tell their story, we have to really, and I mean really, get to know them. You can’t effectively market what you don’t understand.

I use a set of questions to help get that process started. They’ve evolved over the past several years, but not as much as some might think… because they are focused on the business goals and objectives rather than the tactics. I hear often that just going through the process of defining the business and its profit centers, challenges, goals and marketplace in the way that we do is valuable to business owners. I also hear that answering the questions we ask is hard work. Until we have a solid idea of where your business IS, why that’s true, and WHERE you want to go… how will we all agree we’ve reached “there?”

While I won’t share the whole set of questions here (I do have to feed my family, after all), I am going to share a few of them with you, and then share some additional thoughts in upcoming blog posts. I hope they’ll be valuable conversation starters for you and your business supporters, partners, or even that little voice in your head who pushes back whenever you want to go try something new.

Defining the Business

Current Challenges

1. What is the biggest obstacle, in your opinion, to purchasing one of your top profit-generating services for most of your potential customers? When you hear “No…” what is the “why?”
2. How much time must you typically invest face to face and behind the scenes to close a sale? Please list face to face separately from behind the scenes. How much of this time is spent explaining what you do, the benefits of using you or of having the service, and generally in educating your prospects?

Looking forward

1. Thinking about the future, what would you like to be different about your business in one year? In three years? What kinds of clients do you want to be serving? What services do you want to sell them?
2. Considering your profit-generating activities of today, what do you see changing, growing, fading over the next 1 to 3 years in those activities? Do you see an increasing demand for what currently drives your profit or a declining demand? Why?
3. If the demand for today’s profit-driving activities may decline or remain flat, what other activities or products are within or adjacent to your current expertise and offerings which might be increasing in demand over the next 3 years?

Did anything above make you stop and think for a minute about your business? How do you keep your business “on-track”?

Go for WHY: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oberazzi/318947873/

List posts have their place, and I know they are good for traffic. I’ve written them, too. But our super-connected world and the constant flow of information seems to be driving us to oversimplify complex subjects and interactions. By creating lists. Lots of lists. In some cases, lists of lists.
I’m not against all lists… I believe in a to-do list, a grocery list and have tweeted & retweeted helpful design tip, font and how-to lists. But not all things can (or should) be reduced to a bulleted list.

If it’s a complex subject, treat it with the depth it deserves. A marketing communications plan, encompassing goals, objectives, strategies, tactics and metrics should be more than a list of items. A public relations plan should be more than a list of ideas or publications and an editorial calendar. When we start to work with a new client we ask a lot of questions about their business… not just about what they sell and who they sell it to, but about things like:

Where does your money come from? Revenue? Profit streams and margins?

What is the recent history of the market segment you inhabit? Near future changes or evolutions you expect? Long-term future or potential?

Adjacent markets? Competitive markets?

What factors in the market and within your company’s revenue map do you control or influence?

We augment with our own research and then we tackle goals and objectives, clearly grounded in the business case for what we’re doing. The marketing communications plan addresses how the goals and objectives fit the larger picture of the business and where it wants or needs to go. When you start with a good WHY, all the WHATs and HOWs become much easier to define and later on to sell to the people who have to sign the checks to see them implemented.

It’s Halloween. Part of a three-day celebration (at least, in the Catholic church) called Hallowstide. All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows Day, is November 1st. The eve before is therefore All Hallow’s Evening… All Hallow’s e’en… Hallowe’en. The day after (in case you’re curious) is All Souls’ Day, or Day of the Dead.

Before you start wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into with this post, I’m not writing about theology… this post is about communication and its meaning. Over the past 25 years many Christian denominations have systematically tried to rename and reframe Hallowe’en into a celebration of Fall to avoid demonic overtones. The crazy part of that process is that it brings Hallowe’en much closer to its likely original origins in a dim, dusty, pre-Christian past as a harvest festival and pagan celebration of plenty before winter’s grip took hold.

It amazes me that many of the same people who decry the secularization of Christmas blithely remove the “Hallowed” from Hallowe’en and don’t see it as a similar reframing exercise. Communication, at a basic level, is about the understanding between two people, a sender and a receiver. What is sent (intended) and what is received (perceived) are immaterial… it’s what is understood between them that defines what was actually communicated. Before you decide that a concept, product or message needs “reframing,” be sure you understand its essence and meaning… sometimes what needs reframing isn’t the message, but rather the mindsets of the participants.

And the best way to change mindsets is not through push messaging, but through education and open, honest dialogue.