Celebrating your team's Wins & Acknowledgements is a easy way to improve morale and performance

A couple months back, I spent an evening at a project management leadership meeting. Most of the people at that meeting, and most people who think of project management largely think about IT projects and new system installs. I go to these meetings thinking about sales and marketing, and I always seem to come away with applicable ideas. Sales and marketing is a project and a process. 

The subject at that meeting was team building and attitude. Jessica Soroky (Twitter: @jlsoroky) was the presenter, and she discussed how she starts meetings with what she calls "Wins and Acknowledgements". The idea is very simple: each meeting start with positive information, specifically that was a strategic win for the individual or the team, or an acknowledgement of an event, milestone or individual who helped out. These wins and acknowledgements can be personal or professional. 

Sales is so much about a positive outlook. Even the most successful hunters are getting told no or not now frequently throughout the day or week. Taking a moment to think about positive people and moments helps refresh the mind, clears out the negative thoughts and allows the individual to refocus on the outcomes that they want to see. 

Each sales meeting I hold with my team is starting with a wins and acknowledgement segment. Monday is usually a quick recap from the weekend. Each Friday, the group recaps the week and their highlights and accomplishments. Participation is not required, but nearly everyone every week is coming to that meeting with post it notes in hand to brag on their week, co-workers and everything positive going on.

Post it notes were an add on to the program to provide a visual reminder throughout the week of the positive things happening. It may look like a pre-school project, but the stained glass looking window to my office is a colorful reminder to my staff and everyone in the building that we are being positive in the department. 

The impact of such a small gesture has been very visible, beyond the window at my office. I genuinely see employees going out of their way to help each other out, more than before. They are making sure to say "thank you" in person and through this program for when someone goes beyond the norm. Visitors to our office and employees from other departments are seeing the collage and are asking questions and commenting on the morale of the people in the department. 

This is a no cost - high return project that anyone can implement and see results.

The Tiger Woods effect on TV ratings and the popularity of golf

Tiger Woods is killing professional golf!

No, this is not a Tiger Woods bashing column. I have written more than my share of sports columns over the years, but this remains a sales and marketing blog. But there is, or at least should be some concern as it relates to the future of professional golf and Tiger Woods.

"The Tiger effect" is directly related to the ratings of major golf championships on TV, comparing the ratings of a match with Tiger in contention vs. when he is not. This past weekend was the first Masters Tournament that did not have Woods as a participant since 1996. The results for the ratings were less than encouraging for CBS, The Masters and professional golf in general.

Yahoo Sports has the details on the tournament, and ratings information for Saturday and Sunday's telecast:  http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/golf-devil-ball-golf/masters-ratings-down-from-2013-154433616.html

Like him or hate him, people watch him. I do believe the lack of Tiger for the entire tournament, and Phil Mickelson not making the cut had an impact on the TV ratings. As exciting as Bubba Watson is for professional golf, he doesn't bring the mystique of Tiger Woods from back about 10 years ago.

Professional golf is very star driven. Even if Woods doesn't reach the championship totals of Jack Nicklaus, he is still the biggest star the sport has ever seen. The PGA needs to either develop the next megastar, or prepare a diminished TV audience, which means less marketing and advertising dollars for their broadcasts.

TV audience measurements can be deceiving however. Yes, a rating in 2014 of 7.8 is a 23.5% drop in audience from last year. But how does this all play out historically?

The match ups and the drama on the last day obviously play an impact on the ratings. For instance, when Tiger Woods won his first green jacket at the Masters in 1997 the TV rating was 15.8. That is by far the highest ratings ever for the event. How about 1996, which was the last year without Tiger Woods? That broadcast drew an audience rating of 10.2. That was the same rating as the year before, 1995.

Growing audience is a key to growing advertising revenue. The PGA does face an uphill battle of replacing the star power of Tiger Woods, and the draw he has on TV, merchandise, event attendance and participation in the sport. When I first heard the ratings, I was convinced the situation was worse than I think it really is.

Want to see the audience trends in TV ratings for the Masters? There is a great site, showing those details dating back to 1977 and Tom Watson's victory:  http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2008/04/17/the-masters-tv-ratings-1977-2007/3216/

Local radio stations struggle to maintain audience against a wave of digital disruptions

Local radio is dead.....or at least critically ill.

While I have sold against radio for nearly 25 years, in many respects I'm still an old radio guy at heart. I went to school for radio and television, had some amazing times working in the business and made some great friends along the way. A few are still working at radio stations; a place that I would hardly recognize from the stations I trained and worked at in the 1980's and 90's.

I hardly listen to local radio stations ever. My radio is cranking every time I'm in the car, but usually it is on Sirius-XM radio. On a rare occasion, my radio will slip over to WLW in Cincinnati but even that happens less and less.

The problems with the newspaper business is very well documented, as audience habits have changed and digital disruptions have taken over key segments of the business. Every bit of that last sentence is also true for the radio industry.

Pete Van Baalen playing the big band hits
on WFBM Noblesville, Indiana circa 1987

Radio's reaction has been similar as well, cutting expenses like crazy focusing on content. Instead of a local radio station having local programming, they run syndicated programming. To me, the beauty of local radio was that it was.....LOCAL! Programming was different up and down the dial, and from town to town.

Sirius-XM has captured about 99% of my radio time. But their influence is not that big in terms of audience size nationwide. But the audience they have is growing in size and more importantly in terms of influence.

The Wall Street Journal discussed the influence that satellite radio is exerting on country music. While their audience is smaller compared to broadcast stations with a country format, the music industry is taking notice. The typical listener of country music tends to be wealthier, better educated and much more likely to plug into social media compared with other music format listeners. Clearly, marketing and advertising people are always looking for that wealthier audience who can better buy the products and services of the customer. Add in the fact that satellite radio subscribers are going to score even higher on that wealth scale, since they are paying $200 a year for the service.

The full article from the Wall Street Journal can be found at:  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303847804579479631389940754?mg=reno64-wsj

Twitter offering up 15 new advertising options and a more robust ability to target consumers

When I look at local media competitors, more and more I believe you have to look global. That sounds like a misstatement, but hear me out. More and more money from local advertisers in small towns are going to Google and Facebook. And now Twitter is trying to get a taste of that money as well with their latest announcements.

Twitter will be introducing 15 new types of ads that they can deliver over the next 6 months. While they are certainly looking at major corporations for big buys, they will no doubt also focus on the localization of their message deliver and try to tap into local ad budgets.

Details of the story in the Wall Street Journal can be found at:  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441304579481614220149076?mg=reno64-wsj

This announcement from Twitter discusses their ever increasing ability to target Twitter users. The targeting becoming available will allow Twitter and their advertisers knowledge of what their consumers are doing beyond their time on Twitter. Twitter has partnered with third party data providers who can match up their database with Twitter users.