Turning frontline employees into brand ambassadors / Five components of effective sales and marketing communication / Tips for a smooth employee merge after an acquisition / Legacy costs a problem for Ford / Energy beers / Make nutrition information easy to understand

TURNING FRONTLINE EMPLOYEES INTO BRAND AMBASSADORS
One of the biggest touchpoints that your company -- and hence your brand -- has with the public comes in the form of frontline employees. Clerks, salespeople, and representatives typically have far more interaction with customers than brand managers ever will. To get the most out of these people, pay attention to the following "four S's" and turn frontline employees into effective brand ambassadors.

Storytelling: Telecom equipment-maker Avaya created a movie for its annual sales meeting, in which an account rep is told on the first day of working on an account that the customer had already decided to take its business elsewhere. As the movie progressed, the audience was polled as to what they would do next. Eventually, the story unfolded with the sales team winning over the client.

Simulating: Some successful companies have begun placing their prospective and current employees "in the cockpit" to practice virtual customer interactions on computers. This sort of hands-on practice allows them to hone their approach in a quasi-real-world setting.

Selecting: Given that frontline employees will comprise much of your company's "face to the world," selection of solid, positive, competent employees is paramount. Keep the integrity of your brand message in mind while screening new hires.

Surveying: Marketing research is usually focused outward, but consider turning a percentage of your research inward. Employees often have a wealth of ideas about what customers are requesting, what they like, and what they don't like.

The promise of your brand will either be upheld or squandered by the people who interact with your customers. Teach them well, and your brand will be communicated effectively across "the last three feet" of customer contact.

Source: Communication World

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FIVE COMPONENTS OF EFFECTIVE SALES AND MARKETING COMMUNICATION
How do you make your sales and marketing efforts stand out? The key is overcoming obstacles to communication. Follow these five tips to optimize your customer relationships.

1. Custom-tailor communications: A CEO and a CFO have different concerns from one another. Different industries vary in their needs. It's important to show each audience that you understand their unique needs and can help them.

2. Get personal early: Sales representatives should be introduced in the first communication by name, with a short bio and a picture. Because of the relationship-oriented nature of sales and marketing, establishing a personal relationship from the get-go is key.

3. Hit 'em often: Response rates are much higher when marketers communicate multiple messages to multiple touchpoints in multiple ways. Try starting with an email, then leave a voicemail, and then have a sales rep follow up personally.

4. Move quickly: Timelier communication is better. If you collect business cards at a trade show, have a rapid email distribution system ready. You can have an email sent to your prospect right away -- keeping you fresh in a his short memory.

5. Show that you know what they're interested in: If your website sends an autoresponse to visitors who request information, don't just use the autoresponse to thank them. Instead, personalize it -- if the visitor clicked on products or expressed interest in a certain area, the email should contain attachments or links to those products or areas of interest.

Source: marketingprofs.com

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TIPS FOR A SMOOTH EMPLOYEE MERGE AFTER AN ACQUISITION
When one company acquires another, new team members may not be thrilled about the change -- especially if it requires them to relocate. The following tips on making the transition as easy as possible will help to smooth the merge.

1. Enlist the help of current employees. They can help the new employees find out about neighborhoods, schools, and local customs and conventions. As a bonus, this sort of teamwork will build relationships between employee groups.

2. Disperse transfers among departments. Leaving a transferred group intact will foster a "they" and "we" mentality. Instead, try to indoctrinate transfers into company mission, values, and strategies -- as well as easing them into changes in pay and benefits -- so that they'll feel like members of the team sooner rather than later.

3. Provide opportunities for both groups to work together. Assigning projects that require collaboration between transferred employees and local employees will help to develop friendships, as well as build respect and credibility.

4. Ideally, cross-group projects should be solution-oriented and creative. Working toward developing a new product or finding a new solution to a problem fosters a forward-thinking mindset rather than thoughts of "the company way" or "how we used to do it."

5. Check in with transferred employees, rather than just merging and forgetting. During the first year, ascertain through speech and behavior just how well the two groups are melding and how transfers are adapting to the new corporate culture.

The goal is to build an employee base the functions as one unit instead of two. If you plan well and monitor carefully, transferred employees should make the change with a minimum of discomfort and disruption, and will be "on board" in no time.

Source: Kevin Herring, Ascent Management Consulting

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LEGACY COSTS A PROBLEM FOR FORD
Like many large corporations with a lengthy history, Ford Motor Company has a financial problem that it's unsure exactly how to solve -- that of "legacy costs," comprising the financial burden of retiree pensions and health benefits.

The trend in recent years has been away from employer-centered benefits like pensions and toward employee-directed plans like 401k's. More and more companies are switching from defined benefit programs ("the company will pay you X when you retire") to defined contribution plans ("the company will contribute X now toward your retirement fund"). The benefit to the company is significant, with retirement expenses remaining clearly in the here and now, bundled in with today's benefits and pay. The burden of planning for retirement now rests with the employees themselves.

With a rather large and unionized workforce, with many retirees, and with the costs of healthcare rising, the "hire now, pay forever" philosophy of pension-era retirement programs is coming back to bite Ford and Detroit's other automakers. Hard.

In 2001, Ford spent $2.5 billion to provide health coverage for 560,000 employees, retirees, and dependents. Retiree spending made up 66 percent of that dollar amount, even though retirees and their dependents made up only 44 percent of those covered. And healthcare costs have continued to rise. It's estimated that foreign competitors, who don't have legacy costs, can sell similar cars for $2500 less than Ford. $2000 of that is attributable to the drain of legacy costs.

Ford has gotten some concessions from the UAW and may soon turn to the federal government for assistance, but this is a legacy that will prove difficult to overcome.

Source: workforce.com

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ENERGY BEERS
On ABC's The Drew Carey Show, Drew invented a caffeinated brew called "Buzz Beer." The idea apparently isn't just for sitcoms anymore, because in 2003, McKenzie River Corp. introduced "Sparks" -- credited with being the world's first energy beer.

The idea of caffeinated beer is catching fire, experiencing triple-digit annual growth and already thought to constitute around one percent of the nearly $9 billion beer industry. Earlier this month, SAB Miller announced it would buy "Sparks", a caffeinated malt beverage containing ginseng, guarana, and taurine. Anheuser-Busch introduced its energy beer "BE" (B-to-the-E) in early 2005. Like "Sparks", "BE" is also infused with herbal stimulants. Anheuser-Busch later introduced "Tilt", a malt beverage with caffeine and fruit flavors. And in May, Miller launched "Mickey"s Stinger", a malt liquor with more caffeine than a cup of coffee.

Unsurprisingly, brewers are targeting "entry-level drinkers" with the new energy beers, making this another twist that Gen-X has brought to a traditional industry. According to beer experts, young drinkers are seeking flavor and variety. Energy beer is the beer industry's answer to creative vodka and rum concoctions.

Source: ABC News

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MAKE NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION EASY TO UNDERSTAND
Watching the parade of food trend buzzwords like low-carb, whole grain, probiotic yogurt, and organics, you'd think that people knew more than ever about nutrition. Not true, says the International Food Information Council Foundation. The Foundation's findings were that consumers don't know how many calories they should consume in a day, and that despite the recent buzzworthiness of the term "trans fat," people don"t know what differentiates a trans fat from a "healthy" fat.

The FDA similarly advised that restaurants disclose nutrition information and make more of an effort to add healthy fare to their menus. And then the same FDA added that there's little evidence regarding how and why consumers use nutritional info. It"s a case of wanting information, but then being overwhelmed by it.

Some manufacturers are attempting to bridge this interest/overwhelm gap by becoming consumers' partners in the mission to "know what to eat" by boiling information down into a form that they can relate to. Wegmans supermarkets, for one, lists its ingredients in two ways: in the wording required by federal regulations, and also in "kitchen-friendly terms." The latter simplifies, qualifies, and explains the federal wording, so that purchasers will actually know what it means.

Consumers want to eat healthy, and they seem to be interested in what comprises the food they eat. They just don't know what to make of all of the information they're given. By forming a partnership -- interested consumer and forthright provider -- the puzzle is one step closer to being solved.

Source: Iconoculture