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You know, CEOs it is your responsibility to make sure that everyone in your organization knows your vision, your core values, and your mission.  No doubt you have spent a good deal of time preparing these parts of your culture, but have you done all that you can to communicate them to your people?  More important, have you made sure that your messages about culture have been clearly understood by everyone?  All too often we find that even though the CEO has tried to make sure everyone is on board, there are people in the organization who really don’t get it.

Here’s a tip:  Take every opportunity you can to communicate your culture to your team.  Whatever means you use to get the message out, be sure to craft that message with care.  It is important to think about how the people who will read or hear the message will understand what you are saying.  It is even a good idea to check with members of your team periodically to see if they are on the same page you are.  Remember, if you want to communicate clearly you need to make sure that your message is understood by the person who receives the message.  To make this happen, craft every message with care.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

Did you know our ancestors way, way, way back used to brand themselves with tattoos (Ouch!) so that when they went to battle they wouldn’t accidentally kill each other.  So branding has been around for a long, long time.  In our CEO Club classes we often do a little test.  Here’s the test:  Think of the word tree and tell me what comes to mind.  You may think of wood, leaves, shade, or you might think of nature.  Very few people, if anyone, ever come back with “I think of the letters T R E E”.  Why is that?  Because we don’t think in words, we think in pictures and we think in emotions.

Here’s a tip:   Look at your Brand Identity.  What picture are you using to build a connection to your audience?  Read your slogan again?  What emotion does it touch?  Now ask, do the picture and the slogan tie together?  And most important, do they speak to who it is you are and what it is you do?

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

Many of us trip over the definition of advertising vs. marketing.  This can cause real trouble since for most businesses advertising is an expensive venture.  Think for example, about how much it costs to conduct a radio campaign or take out a quarter-page ad in the newspaper or in a trade magazine.  This kind of advertising may be needed, but it is important to think about marketing differently.  One way to understand the difference is to think of marketing as low cost, high impact activities that increase the number of people who know who you are and what you do.

Here’s a tip:   Sit down with your sales team, and make a list of all the low cost, high impact marketing efforts that you have in place right now.  For example, you may have articles that are being written and submitted to newspapers.  Do you know how many newspapers get your articles or how many newspapers may run your articles?  How about E-Blast newsletters that you send out to your Suspect Pool?  Did you know that there’s a way to track how many people open up that e-mail and how many people actually read it?  This is true particularly if the e-mail is on your website and the E-Blast points them to your website.  Think of the number of free talks you might be able to give to your Suspect Pool maybe through Chamber’s of Commerce, free seminars and/or Association talks.  As you inventory these systematized, monthly reoccurring, marketing efforts you’ll find they truly are low cost but have a very, very high impact.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

CEOs, there are many ways to drive the results you seek.  We set goals for our people.  We hold them accountable to their job description. Sometimes we even give them a very specific list of things-to-do, like a task list.  All of those techniques are necessary and all of those techniques are effective to a point.  But how well are you driving results through communicating the vision?

Here’s a tip:  Send an e-mail to everyone within your organization. Keep it brief, but be sure that you have described your vision and exactly how you feel about it.  Most importantly, allow them to see your passion behind the vision.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada. Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

CEOs, this is a no-brainer.  Yet so often, so very often, in business I find myself working with a client that is having a hard time with the concept of creating “Customers for Life.”  You know the sales people are out there selling, but they simply don’t see it as their job to follow up on their past customers.  The people in your Customer Service Department deliver the product or the service, but they don’t see it as their job to talk about future sales or purchases with that customer.  The receptionist, who is answering the phone and doing well at it, just doesn’t see it as her job to ask that additional one or two questions:  How are we taking care of you? Do you know about the other products that we have to offer?  Your Production Department is doing their job by putting out product so the Service Department can serve the customer, but for some unknown reason there seems to be a big disconnection between production and the end user, your customer. In the most successful organizations I’ve seen, the customer is it!   Everyone in the company knows without a doubt that Customer Service is everybody’s job.

Here’s a tip:  Ask this question of every employee, in every position, and in every department:  How do you specifically, in your job, impact Customer Service?  More importantly, how do you feed our culture of creating “Customer’s For Life”?  If they don’t have a great answer, develop a training program and systems to make sure they understand and begin to live this culture.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

You know CEOs; we all get caught up at times in doing a whole range of things that are administrative in nature.  Some of the things that come to mind are managing our own calendars, scheduling our own appointments, and following up on tasks that we have delegated to others.  No doubt these are all important activities, but it is not necessarily true that we need to be the person to get them done.  In fact, it is probably not the “highest and best use” of our time to do some of these things.  Instead, I delegate these tasks to Linda.

Here’s a tip:  Every CEO needs a Linda.  Linda is that key person in your organization who is responsible for keeping the CEO’s administrative life in order.  They may be your Executive Assistant, or perhaps the Chief Administrator.  Whoever they are it is important that they work directly for you.  They need to be someone that you can entrust with sensitive company information, someone you can trust to keep your information confidential.  They should be someone that has your best interests in mind, or, as they say on the street, “someone who’s got your back”.  When you have your Linda you have that one person in your organization who can give you the freedom you need to make the best use of your time.

Next time you sit at your desk doing some administrative stuff; ask yourself the three questions that my mentor used to ask me:  What are you doing?  Why are you doing it?  Who do you have on your team that you could delegate it to?

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

CEO’s know that they have to be the coach to the key people within their organizations.  But sometimes when you think coach, you might start to believe that you are not the best person to do the job.  After all, you work hard to hire people that are better, smarter, more effective, more efficient, and often more experienced in certain disciplines of business than you are.  Still, even the best people in your organization need the guidance, direction, and focus that coaching brings.  Simply put, your coaching helps your people stay focused on the basics and motivates them to improve performance.  The bottom line here is, the CEO has to be the coach, and when you are coaching, you have to coach with a purpose.

Here’s a tip:   First, if you’re not doing one on one coaching with your key people, plan to get started right away.  If you are already doing regular coaching sessions with them, make sure you set a clear agenda for your coaching sessions.  Use a coaching journal that lists all of the high impact initiatives that they are working on.  Make sure to have them come to the coaching session prepared to review the list of items on their list with you.  When you coach, be sure that you coach with a purpose and have the agenda in mind.  Make sure that the agenda is focused on how to improve performance, accomplish key objectives, and increase efficiencies or effectiveness.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

I once had a mentor in life that firmly believed that if you didn’t effectively delegate to your key people, you were actually depriving them of opportunities to grow both personally and within the organization.  The tip for this topic comes from the way he used to manage me.

Here’s the tip:  When he would walk by my office he would ask me three questions.  He would say “Ruben what are you doing?  Why are you doing it?  And don’t you have someone else in your organization that can get it done for you?”  Try this with some of your key people.  Then sit back and watch them grow.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

CEOs, we all spend a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money acquiring new clients.  We have sales people, marketing brochures, and advertising plans.  All of this costs valuable time, money and resources.  Despite your investment in acquiring new customers, you could be growing by 15%, but shrinking by 10% at the same time.  When you do the math, you are actually only realizing a 5% net growth.  The problem is we often forget to measure our retention.  Retention is growth.  Statistics show that the cost to acquire a new customer is seven to ten times greater than the cost to retain a current one.

Here’s a tip:  Run a client revenue report for a particular period from last year and one for the same period from this year and measure your retention.  You may be surprised.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week

It’s no secret that a big part of our success is regular and consistent communication with the key people in our organizations through one on one coaching sessions.  These sessions should be very productive, but if we are not careful, we can make them less effective.  Quite often a CEO will go into a coaching session with a key manager or employee and unknowingly change the rules of the game.  We do this whenever we bring up items not on the agenda that catch the manager off guard.  By doing this, we actually end up setting traps so that they are unprepared to discuss the key issue.

Here’s a tip:  With each key manager that you coach on a regular basis, establish an agenda.  Use that agenda to build around the Obvious; the obvious needs of the organization, the obvious needs of their department, and the obvious numbers they should be tracking.  These are all Obvious growth areas for that individual.

This has been your CEO Rule of the Week.  I am Ruben Estrada.  Your Next Move

Please click here to listen to the CEO Rule of the Week