Month: July 2013

How To Make Your Shop Findable in the Business to Business (B2B) Space

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My mentor, John Sonnhalter posted these three points on B2B search on his blog Tradesmen Insights.

These were gleaned from  just released research from Google:

  • Search – Still big and this should be no surprise. Internet usage among the B-to-B sector jumped from 71% to 88% over the last year.  Even more enlightening is when asked about how they used search to research business purposes; there was a 23% increase over last year from 67% to 90%.
  • Videos – More companies in the B-to-B space are creating videos. They range from how-to videos to thought leadership topics. Here’s an interesting stat – the C suite indexes very high on using videos to find info.
  • Digital marketing to reinforce the sales force – By the time a B-to-B purchaser actually engages with a company or sales rep, they’re 57% of the way through the decision process.

The trend continues to grow for companies to find other companies- suppliers and customers- online. And that almost always means via search- where “almost always”  is 88% according to the first bullet above.

We  here at Speaking of Precision have lost count of how many topics we have that are page one on Google.

Page One Number One Google- Photo Too!
Page One Number One Google- Photo Too!

Here are 5 tips from my experience to help you be findable: 

  • Post regularly– it increases you visibility and Your “trust factor;”
  • Provide compelling facts and information- not just promotional text. SHARE REAL VALUE;
  • Always include a photo– often the photo gets to page one on Google images  even when the text doesn’t;
  • Tag. Tags should be relevant and include combinations of terms, not just single words. Think, “search phrases.”
  • Share on LinkedIn Groups

I can tell you that folks aren’t calling in from seeing advertisements in the phone book these days. And they aren’t seeing salesmen or returning your voice mails.

They do connect when they find what you have posted online.

Be findable!

How about you? Do you have any tips to share to increase your “findability?”

Where Is The Critical Thinking In The Jobs Situation?

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Am I the only one missing the optimism in the employment situation these days?

glass-half-full-575 pogo

The New York Times headlined “Jobs Data Is Strong, but Not Too Strong…”

REALLY?

The Commissioner of the BLS stated that the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 7.6 percent.

The real unemployment rate (U-6) actually rose from 13.8 percent to 14.3 percent.

u6 fred graph June 2013

No optimism there!

The economy needs to add ~360,000 jobs per month for three years to get the unemployment rate to 6%

Last month, it added 161,000.

That isn’t even half of what we needed!

Part Time Employment is Becoming the New Normal

In actuality, last month the economy added 322,000 part time for economic reasons workers, making the total almost 8.2 million for June. (Economic reasons means “These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they could not find a full time job.”)

The employment population ratio is down to 58.7%, and the civilian labor participation rate is down 0.3 percent for the year.

The New York Times calls this Strong Jobs Data?

What are they thinking?

The Economic Populist Blog sums up the situation like this:

A huge problem with today’s labor market is the gross number of working part-time generally.  There are a huge number of people who need full-time jobs with benefits who can’t get decent career oriented positions.  Those forced into part time work is now 8,226,000, an increase of 322,000 from last month.  Those stuck in part-time has increased 16,000 from a year ago, not a good sign of the labor market.  This is a hell of a lot of people stuck with part-time hours who need full-time work.  Of those considered employed, a whopping 27,270,000 of them are in part-time jobs, for whatever reason.  That’s 18.9% of people employed are in part-time jobs, a very high ratio.

What about the people that are not counted in the official statistics?

Up 2.2 Million since BEFORE the recession!
Up 2.2 Million since BEFORE the recession!

‘Not in Labor Force, Want a Job Now’ numbers 6,580,000- over 2.2 million more than prior to the recession.

Hopeful jobs report?

Not if one actually thinks about it thinks about it.

Photo credit

Time Management-5 Tips for Identifying Your Catalyst Project

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I saw  this post originally last December and found it relevant. Now that we are midway through the year, I thought that we might want to recalibrate.

Guest Post by Babette Ten Haken

Time Management-5 Tips for Identifying Your Catalyst Project

Where has your work week gone? Does this year seem like it’s only been 10 months long? Somehow, two months went AWOL at some point. In case you are looking at a desk which resembles an archeological dig, or a calendar that has you triple booked, or design deliverables and sales quotas which you never were going to meet anyway, stop flailing away at everything that’s creating chaos and confusion on your professional radar screen.

Where has the time gone?
Where has the time gone?

Here are five tips for keeping your head focused on what’s important, instead of what’s not.

  1. Take a deep breath. Look towards the horizon. (I am not kidding, do it – unless you are driving and reading this message, in which case, please pull over to the side of the road!). What do you see on the horizon? That’s your  professional goal. That’s where you are supposed to be heading. It’s in your grasp. How much of it is under your control, or not? What can you change to exercise more control over your professional destiny?
  2. What’s the one thing that you need to accomplish before tomorrow,  in order to clear the way to completing all of those other projects? Think about it. There is one major project that needs to be accomplished which will get the rest of the dominoes tipping and clear your path.
  3. Does the work you do in accomplishing that priority project lend itself to your work output for all the rest of the stuff cluttering your desk, calendar, and your mind? I thought so, too. This one project actually has spin-off potential and impacts all the rest of the stuff you need to accomplish to reach your professional goal. This one project is your catalyst project, isn’t it? It’s not an obstacle at all.
  4. How can you leverage your output from your catalyst project into: a) recommendations, b) referrals, c) prospecting, d) branding, e) promotion, f) compensation? That’s the power of understanding the role your catalyst project plays in fulfilling your professional goal.
  5. Is this catalyst project tactical or strategic? You know the answer to that one. You’ve been letting all the short-term stuff clutter your desk, to-do list, and calendar when, in fact, there’s been this strategic project swimming along in the undercurrents. It just won’t go away because it can’t be dismissed: it’s that important to everything else you are trying to accomplish. Stop ticking off stuff on your to-do list, thinking you will “get to” that catalyst project. It’s the one project that provides value-add to all the short-term deliverables on your plate. It’s that powerful.

Identifying a catalyst project is a way of finding the common denominator running across your workload.  It may be a way of changing your professional habits, as well, so that you stop being myopic and start focusing on the bigger picture of what it takes to get from here to there.

Take that deep breath today and give yourself a few moments to refocus and re-prioritize. Find that common thread to all that you do. Then, do it well and leverage your output throughout your entire project load, as well as your career goal.

You’ll find it’s time well spent, and time that is far more efficient and rewarding as well.

Clock

June ISM PMI Report-Resumption of Growth in Manufacturing

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Good news/ bad news: Manufacturing growth resumes, but Employment shrinks in Manufacturing  for first time since September 2009…

“Manufacturing expanded in June as the PMI™ registered 50.9 percent, an increase of 1.9 percentage points when compared to May’s reading of 49 percent. June’s reading of 50.9 percent reflects the resumption of growth in the manufacturing sector for 2013, following the only month of contraction for the year in May.”- Bradley Holcomb, Chairman of the Institute for Supply Management Business Survey Committee.

Graph Courtesy Calculated Risk Blog
Graph Courtesy Calculated Risk Blog

Precision machined products are widely used key components used in a host of manufactured and durable goods. Precision machined products are a submarket of Fabricated Metals, which is tracked in this ISM Report on Manufacturing.

“A PMI™ in excess of 42.2 percent, over a period of time, generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy. Therefore, the June PMI™ indicates growth for the 49th consecutive month in the overall economy, and indicates expansion in the manufacturing sector following one month of contraction. Holcomb stated, “The past relationship between the PMI™ and the overall economy indicates that the average PMI™ for January through June (51.5 percent) corresponds to a 2.9 percent increase in real gross domestic product (GDP) on an annualized basis. In addition, if the PMI™ for June (50.9 percent) is annualized, it corresponds to a 2.7 percent increase in real GDP annually.” (PMI™ stands for Purchasing Managers Index.)

ISM’s Production Index registered 53.4 percent in June, which is an increase of 4.8 percentage points when compared to the 48.6 percent reported in May.

How do your  June shipments compare to this benchmark?

The ISM report showed  11 industries reporting growth in production during the month of June — listed in order —  Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Furniture & Related Products; Paper Products; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Wood Products; Fabricated Metal Products; Primary Metals; Petroleum & Coal Products; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; and Computer & Electronic Products. The three industries reporting a decrease in production in June are: Chemical Products; Machinery; and Transportation Equipment.

We are glad to see manufacturing back in growth mode, however, we were not pleased with this month’s first sign of contraction in employment.

“ISM’s Employment Index registered 48.7 percent in June, which is 1.4 percentage points lower than the 50.1 percent reported in May. This month’s reading indicates contraction in employment for the first time since September 2009, when the index registered 47.8 percent. An Employment Index above 50.5 percent, over time, is generally consistent with an increase in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on manufacturing employment.”

Dollars-2-donuts-image2

We are betting dollars to donuts (remember when there used to be a real difference between dollars and donuts?) that the  slowdown in hiring is related to employers’ concerns over Affordable Care Act.

Dollars to Donuts

Calculated Risk