How to Run Your Business (Into the Ground) – Part 1

At my age, it seems time to go ahead and say what I think. My thoughts are not meant to call anyone out; they are the result of 65 years of watching what’s going on. I firmly believe many businesses inflict practices upon themselves that hamstring their potential. It’s like they tie one hand behind their backs and it creates a drag on the whole economy. Here’s what I’m suggesting for businesses, including non-profits and really any organization. So there’s no misunderstanding, this is sarcasm. If you’re unsure of exactly what that means, better Google it.

Tip 1

Use acronyms every chance you get in all your communications, especially with promotional materials targeted to prospects. This creates a sense of curiosity, a game if you will, and people like games, so trying to figure out what you’re talking about with your sets of initials will be highly entertaining for prospects, not to mention customers.

Tip 2

Don’t forget this is sarcasm. Using acronyms in copy is approved by journalism authorities after first spelling it out, so it must be the correct thing to do. It certainly doesn’t matter if people have to keep going back to the beginning of your piece to remember what your acronyms mean. This improves comprehension by repetition. And of course people are definitely into doing a lot of reading these days. And most folks are infinitely patient in recent days.

Tip 3

Again…sarcasm. Make sure your name is meaningless. After all, what’s in a name anyway? Let people imagine what it might mean and then try to connect it to anything they care about. Nice mind game and, again, people like games.

Tip 4

Be sure to be as clever as possible with your name so people are curious about what it might mean or what you do exactly...more importantly what you might do for them. After all, having a name that is descriptive but dull, while it will tell people what you do, takes all the fun out of it.

Tip 5

If by chance your name explains what you do, as soon as possible turn your name into an acronym. After all, IBM is highly successful so there’s no question you’ll be successful if you follow their lead. By the way, what does IBM stand for?

Tip 6

Don’t be concerned if prospects get the impression from your use of acronyms that you are arrogant, exclusionary, special because you have the “code” and they don’t, uninterested in them by making it hard for them to understand you, and several other problems you create. Or maybe they’ll think you’re just too lazy to spell things out. That’s all helpful in establishing a productive business relationship.

Tip 7

Since almost everyone uses acronyms, you should, too. The key to success is to follow the herd. Be sure to communicate as you would with Twitter. OMG, u’ll b so cool. Even if your customers can’t figure out your gibberish you’ll still be so cool.

Tip 8

Use plenty of jargon in your customer communications. It makes you look really smart. And include plenty of the latest lingo being used by the young. It makes you look like you’re with it. So what if the most important thing is to be understandable and clear with your communications. Doesn’t matter if your customers aren’t as up on the latest stupid jargon as you are.

Tip 9

Be sure to make the first person to greet someone who contacts your company for the first time is your lowest paid employee. Their role is very secondary versus yours, for example. A receptionist or a telephone operator are menials at best. And certainly don’t waste money training them on how to do their jobs. So what if this person is the only one who can make the all-important first impression on a potential customer?

Tip 10

Better yet, let an automated voice system be a new prospect’s first contact. And make sure it has plenty of options because you never know why people might be calling. This is especially impressive if you are a small company because people will assume you must be big to be stupid enough to do this.

Tip 11

Another great money saving technique is robo calls. Why waste money using live callers when you can have a robot do it for pennies? Gee, I wonder how many people hang up immediately when they realize there’s no one there? Plus, maybe they’ll stay on long enough to figure out who the fool is who’s behind the call.

Tip 12

Don’t bother to consult the menials who actually use your equipment when making buying decisions on replacing it. They lack the know-how and mental capacity to make these kinds of important choices. You, of course, know best what they need. Don’t blame them when your choice turns out to be totally impractical and unusable.

Tip 13

Hire customer service people from overseas in order to save money. A good percentage of your customers will probably leave you since they can’t understand much of what these people are saying, but you’ll continue saving money until you’re out of business over it.

Tip 14

Another good way to cut expenses is to unload your older, higher salaried employees and replace them with young kids at much lower salaries. Who needs all that accumulated wisdom you’ll be unloading? Plus you’ll be going a great service to the young kids by letting them screw up so they can get as smart and experienced in several years as the old folks you canned.

Tip 15

Make money the key to your business success. After all, that’s what life is all about, right? And, of course, money drives people to do good work. So be sure to make all your motivational techniques revolve around money. And also make sure your motivational techniques are based on punishment, rather than reward.

Tip 16

In fact, make sure money is a major part of your vision statement so everyone knows how crucial it is to you. That way, their focus will be on that, even though it will be at the expense of any thought about customer service.

Tip 17

Be sure your vision statement is highly detailed so everything is covered. Don’t worry if no one can remember it when they are under stress, so they’ll know what matters when the chips are down. Those vision statements are mainly good for impressing potential investors anyway.

Tip 18

Ignore all the nonsense about differences between the generations in the workplace. They’ll just have to learn to get along or they can hit the highway. Besides, you’ll find it a lot of fun to witness the disagreements, arguments and resentments fester.

Tip 19

Treat everyone the same and hold them to rigid rules. Fairness uber alles. Eventually only those who like your one-size-fits-all approach will be in your workforce.

Tip 20

Never give employees the highest marks in their evaluations no matter how good a job they do. Gives them something to aspire to so they’ll try all the harder. Ignore the reality that many of them will say the hell with it, there’s no pleasing the boss, so why bother to do my best work.

Tip 21

Place top priority on profit and squeeze every last dime you can out of both employees and customers. You owe this to your investors. Who cares about the turnover you’ll generate.

Tip 22

In your marketing strategy, focus on a one-size fits all approach. This will be the most efficient way to go and will save you a lot of money on advertising. While you’ll miss a lot of targets by failing to focus on the wants and needs of different segments of the market, saving money makes it worth it.

Tip 23

Rely on your gut to make all your important business decisions. After all, who knows your business better than you? Just because your customers have the money you’d like them to give to you is no reason to pay attention to what they want.

Tip 24

If you decide marketing research might be a smarter way to go than relying on your gut, just use Survey Monkey or some other cheap method to do it. That stuff about random sampling is just academic nonsense. Same thing with low response rates and non-response bias. Doesn’t really matter if your results are accurate. Marketing research is mostly done to be able to say you did it.

Tip 25

Certainly don’t waste your money on advertising. If your organization is good enough at what you do, obviously those who need what you’re selling will come to you. People are plenty smart and are very well aware of what’s out there in the big old world. Anyway because people are exposed to hundreds of ads daily doesn’t mean they’d see yours anyway. So why bother? Just because no one ever heard of you doesn’t mean you can’t do good business.

Tip 26

If you do advertise, make sure you include everything you possibly can in your ads. There’ll probably something that’ll catch your prospect’s eye. Don’t worry if they are overwhelmed by the quantity of stuff in your ad and have trouble distinguishing your cluttered ad from all the other over-cluttered ads out there.