Delivering Bad News
Feb 6th, 2010 | By Patrysha | Category: Marketing
Being the bearer of bad news is never fun. But it’s worth the brief tinge of guilt for dashing visions, if it brings a better potential result.
I know because I often have to bust a few myths about web design with new and prospective clients. I don’t like saying that splash pages don’t work and music is a bad idea, but those are facts. Tested. Allowing anyone to proceed with proven obstacles to good marketing without letting them know of the risk they are taking and the challenge they are building for themselves just wouldn’t be ethical as far as I can figure.
Just because something is possible, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.
That pretty much applies to every potential marketing option you have as a small business owner.
Yellow Pages, Newspaper, Radio, Direct Mail, Publicity and Online Marketing – they all have right ways and wrong ways. The right ways generate leads and motivate sales, the wrong ones provide high cost branding which can easily be overpowered. I have studied them all, but can only claim more than a passing knowledge in three of them so far. (Radio, Publicity & Online Marketing).
Of course I do know reliable mentors and resources for expertise in all my weak areas, and even a few in my own areas of expertise who are even more effective due to specialization. (In other words…they’re specialists and charge accordingly…because that is the nature of business…more of the bad news that I often have to share and why cousin Jeff might not be the best designer for your small business websites)
Which gives me an idea…
Would you be interested in a presentation on learning the truth behind common myths in small business marketing?
Let me know in the comments section…and if not, what would interest you and be relevant to your small business marketing including publicity, in-store promotion & display, radio advertising, customer service and staff training and online advertising (and all that entails!)
Last week my boss was out on vacation, and our labor relations guy discovered something that made him go ballistic. Part of my job is to forward along personnel actions, but I received an approval report that was labeled incorrectly.
I think the bearer of bad new should come with beer, or other soothing beverages when delivering bad news.
I think my husband would agree with you. Of course, I was just talking about mild bad news where I have to tell clients that the ideas they have in mind might not work from a marketing perspective. One of the benefits of the new age of information is that we don’t have to make the same mistakes or errors in judgment about ideas we want to put into our marketing because so much has been tested and tried before that case studies and overviews are abundant and easy to find.
Here i want to know that as a manager how would you deliver bad news to your workers?
The last time I was a manager (and I was only ever an assistant manager) was over 13 years ago. Everyone I’ve worked with in a supervisory level since has been an independent contractor (or one of my kids). So…any advice I would give would be purely theoretical and based on how I would want bad news delivered. And that would go back to the type of relationship I would want with employees and what the bad news was.
You might want to try checking out the videos on BNET http://www.bnet.com/2422-13722_23-269952.html