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What's new: saying no and meaning it |
"You need the support of a champion at the highest level
within the business - your managing or marketing director/partner" |
| Professional services marketing, like
many other sectors, follows a cyclical pattern. For the
past year or so budgets have been tight, recruitment has
been frozen and staff, if not being made redundant, are
not generally being replaced. Yet, because of the increased
need to maintain market share and generate income, marketing
department workloads have never been higher. So, how to
cope? |
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Prioritisation is essential. You need to be able to
deliver effectively on key initiatives, rather than
hoping to tackle all that is thrown at you… badly.
A case of under-promising and over-delivering maybe!
To prioritise effectively, you need a business and/or
marketing plan and you can then demonstrate to the person
requesting the service that it either is or isn’t
in line with the plan.
But saying no is difficult and this is where your second
line of defence comes in. You need the support of a
champion at the highest level within the firm - your
marketing or managing director/partner - who will support
your decision and step in, if needs be, to smooth any
ruffled feathers.
And finally, if you can’t get the budget for
full-time, in-house support, don’t despair. It
may be that your bosses are amenable to funding short-term
projects if they are business critical, well-defined
and well-costed. If so, help is at hand from various
external consultants and locum marketing services providers
- Implementor being just one!
This month's 'Top Tip'
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Meetings, meetings
If time and people resources are scarce, the last thing you want to do is tie them up in unnecessary meetings. Modern-day business encourages meetings. Indeed, it is a sad fact that holding or attending them gives some business people a feeling of self worth.
So, before you plan a meeting or, more importantly, if you are asked to attend one, use the following mantra (if only in your head) - it works! |
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"Is it necessary and do I need to be there?"
Meetings are often called to justify a role, to make it seem that a project is progressing, or through laziness - it can be easier to call everyone together than to have to communicate with them individually. But how often have you attended meetings where the purpose is obscure, the attendance sparse or the majority of the meeting doesn’t relate to you?
And do you need to be there? This follows on from above. Often more people than necessary are invited to meetings for political reasons or to avoid hurt feelings. |
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"The meeting mantra: is it necessary and do I need to be there?"
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The solution
So, ask politely what are the purpose and aims of the meeting, is there an agenda and can you see it beforehand, together with any supporting materials? As a result, you may decide that you don’t need to attend and can send your input by another means or be kept informed of progress by a verbal debrief or action report following the meeting.
If you do need to be there, it may be that you only need to attend in part and you can be called in when the relevant point on the agenda is reached.
If you are organising a meeting, lead by example and put these tips into practice. In summary, here are the 12 top tips on chairing meetings:
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Only meet when it is absolutely necessary - consider telephone, email and written reports first |
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Plan exactly what you want to achieve beforehand |
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Let the attendees know what the meeting is about at the time of organising it |
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Invite only those people who really need to be there and who have the authority to make decisions. Don’t accept ‘deputies’ as substitutes if they don’t have this authority |
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Prepare a fairly detailed agenda and circulate it (together with any required supporting material) beforehand |
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On the day, introduce everybody if they are not known to one another |
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Stick to the agenda and beware of others hijacking it |
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Start and finish on (or, better still, ahead of) time, even if not everyone has arrived |
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Don’t recap the meeting content to date if latecomers do arrive mid-meeting |
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Do manage egos and control each individual's ‘airtime’. Don’t be afraid of interrupting politely to bring people back to the agenda |
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Allow time to finish the meeting by summarising - agreeing who does what and by when
Follow up promptly (within 2 days ideally) with a brief note summarising action points only, rather than a full minute of the meeting’s discussion |
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