The attitude of the wolf can be summed up simply: it is a constant visualization of success. The collective wisdom of wolves has been progressively programmed into their genetic makeup throughout the centuries. Wolves have mastered the technique of focusing their energies toward the activities that will lead to the accomplishment of their goals.
Wolves do not aimlessly run around their intended victims, yipping and yapping. They have a strategic plan and execute it through constant communication. When the moment of truth arrives, each understands his role and understands exactly what the pack expects of him.
The wolf does not depend on luck. The cohesion, teamwork and training of the pack determines whether the pack lives or dies.
There is a silly maxim in some organizations that everyone, to be a valuable member, must aspire to be the leader. This is personified by the misguided CEO who says he only hires people who say they want to take his job. Evidently, this is supposed to ensure that the person has ambition, courage, spunk, honesty, drive – whatever. In reality, it is simply a contrived situation, with the interviewee jumping through the boss’s hoops. It sends warnings of competition and one-upmanship throughout the organization rather than signals of cooperation, teamwork and loyalty.
Everyone does not strive to be the leader in the wolf pack. Some are consummate hunters or caregivers or jokesters, but each seems to gravitate to the role he does best. This is not to say there are not challenges to authority, position and status – there are. But each wolf’s role begins emerging from playtime as a pup and refines itself through the rest of its years. The wolf’s attitude is always based upon the question, “What is best for the pack?” This is in marked contrast to us humans, who will often sabotage our organizations, families or businesses, if we do not get what we want.
Wolves are seldom truly threatened by other animals. By constantly engaging their senses and skills, they are practically unassailable. They are masters of planning for the moment of opportunity to present itself, and when it does, they are ready to act.
Because of training, preparation, planning, communication and a preference for action, the wolf’s expectation is always to be victorious. While in actuality this is true only 10 percent of the time or less, the wolf’s attitude is always that success will come-and it does.

• 571% gains in operating earnings
• 471% higher returns in investments
• Stock prices increased 383%
as reported in “The New Corporate Culture: Deals and Kennedy, 1999.”

According to an article published in the September 03 issue of Professional Services Journal, “Organizations with adaptive cultures increased net income 756 percent over an 11-year period compared to a one-percent increase for everybody else.”

The impact of culture on the bottom line is clear. Harvard Business School professors John Kotter and James Heskett studied over 200 companies for several years and found that culture has a significant impact on a firm’s long-term economic performance. The role of culture in determining financial performance is becoming even greater in today’s fast-changing, more competitive business environment.

Organizational culture is a powerful force. It significantly impacts profitability, sets the climate for innovative ideas, and determines an organization’s capacity to change. The power of culture is perhaps best seen when organizations are forced to adapt to change, resulting in either success or failure of initiatives. Executives know they must get their organizations to seek and embrace change, but often feel challenged with cultures that resist change, causing dependence on the leader or defensive attitudes that inhibit collaboration, threaten innovative initiatives and reduce organizational effectiveness. The greater the degree of change required, the more important it is to examine the existing culture to determine whether it will serve as a catalyst in moving forward or whether it will act as a deterrent in support of the status quo.
Organizations that have not yet successfully made the connection between strategy and culture have yet to realize the benefit, which culture plays in an organization’s growth and performance. Leadership is centric to establishing the vision and values that foster the culture within an organization. Often, in organizations where performance is declining and employee morale is low, the senior management’s view of its current organization’s culture is based more on hope than a view grounded in objective fact. It is difficult at best to be objective when you are your own sounding board.

Until recently, accurately assessing organizational culture and readiness to change has been virtually impossible. Peer Synergy Group has several tools that enable organizations to see and understand their present state of culture without biases and we provide the experience and expertise to assist in developing effective and adaptive cultures. Cultural alignment initiatives can be very concrete, with measurable goals and clear return on investment. Additionally, the ability to leverage the creative capital in an organization through continuous innovation can yield tremendous economic benefits. Aligned and dynamic organizational cultures drive effective idea exploration and the willingness to seek change. Peer Synergy Group believes an organization’s future success is dependent upon the ability to continuously innovate.
Corporate culture is often ill defined and misunderstood.

“Culture is the cornerstone of today’s corporations. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the creativity, and the values of the employee.

Culture bonds and motivates individual behavior, both internal and external relations; it impacts a company’s values, how it processes information, and how it functions at all levels from the subconscious to the visible. Regardless of how you view culture in your organization, it should emphasize what’s really important and directly support your vision and strategy. People and the culture within which they exist are the driving determination behind every great leader. Together they are what drive a company to greatness and they can also drive a company to failure. Leaders who make this connection understand that culture models corporate values, generates motivation, innovation, drives performance and builds company reputation. As Lou Gerstner said, “I came to see in my time at IBM that “culture” isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”

Imagine how successful you could be if your organization had a dynamic and innovative culture where employees continuously demonstrated passionate engagement amidst their work and in support of your customers. Peer Synergy Group, Inc. is passionate about helping our clients develop strategic roadmaps and processes for developing leadership relevance, vision, values, dynamic culture, and continuous innovation to build company reputation and market share. We have the tools to help you see and understand your organization’s present state of being without biases, and we provide the experience and expertise to successfully help you deliver your organization into the 21st Century global marketplace.
How important is culture to your company’s bottom line? It could make the difference between success and failure in today’s ever changing business environment.

Roger Blackstock is Founder & CEO of Peer Synergy Group (www.peersynergygroup.com), an Atlanta based organizational leadership and executive performance enhancement firm. Roger also serves as a Group Chairman for Vistage International (www.vistage.com), the world’s leading chief executive organization with more than 14,000 members in 16 countries. Blackstock is a U.S. Army Veteran, business executive, and trusted advisor to CEO’s with over thirty years experience. For more information you can reach Blackstock at roger@peersynergygroup.com or 770.530.2383.

What are you doing to develop relevant leaders within your organization? Today’s leaders must develop the wisdom to identify with today’s employees who span four different age generations, come from diverse and multi-cultural backgrounds, possess a wide-ranging work ethic, and varied thinking style from what most are accustom.

History reveals wisdom is the most valuable component of leadership. It is the other extreme from arrogance and autonomy. Much of wisdom stems from our desire to understand our true self, our strengths and weaknesses. This is the right first step, but leadership relevance requires that we demonstrate a continuous commitment to excellence, a caring attitude, noble character that earns the trust of others, and a calming responsive demeanor in adverse situations.

Wisdom is often viewed as the cumulative knowledge attained from a leader’s years of experience in his/her chosen field of expertise. So what is a young leader to do who doesn’t have the years of experience? Successful leaders learn what they need to know. The young leader must understand that wisdom is a character trait, which must be painstakingly developed as the leader expands his/her perspective on life. Never underestimate what you already know, or refuse to act on what you know is right. Gut instinct is critical to the success of every leader. When wisdom calls, listen. Never refuse the wise counsel of others or the opportunity to discuss elusive issues amongst your peers. These are traits that distinguish you as a relevant leader and one who is committed to your people.

When Wegman’s Food Markets of Rochester, NY, was recognized in 2005 as the number one company on FORTUNE Magazine’s list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” Robert Wegman received accolades for his understanding of leadership relevance and building a great organizational culture. It is noteworthy that Wegman’s motto is Our Employees Come First.

In their book, The Service Profit Chain, the authors (Heskett, Sussa, and Schlessiger) make the case that, “no matter what your business, the only way to generate enduring profits is to begin by building the kind of environment that attracts, focuses on, and keeps talented employees.” Unfortunately, during the “dot.com craze” many corporations became focused solely on the shareholders and lost focus on their employees and customers. I contend if you focus first on your employees, they will take care of your clients/customers, who in return will tell many others just how awesome your company is, and your shareholders will be most pleased with the outcome.

Data from the business schools of Emory, Stanford, and Harvard further supports this philosophy noting that for every 1% improvement you make in service climate you drive a 2% increase in revenue. Of course, it’s the leaders who must create the right emotional climate.

Your ability to demonstrate leadership relevance resonates your values and vision throughout the organization and is a driving force in building a dynamic culture, which will sustain creativity, innovation, and profitability for years to come.

Roger Blackstock is Founder & CEO of Peer Synergy Group (www.peersynergygroup.com), an Atlanta based organizational leadership and executive performance enhancement firm. Roger also serves as a Group Chairman for Vistage International (www.vistage.com), the world’s leading chief executive organization with more than 14,000 members in 16 countries. Blackstock is a U.S. Army Veteran, business executive, and trusted advisor to CEO’s with over thirty years experience. For more information you can reach Blackstock at roger@peersynergygroup.com or 770.530.2383.

Google Analytics helps you understand a user’s experience on your website. By using this information, you can make changes to your website that will help your website rank higher in search engines and thereby help you gain more qualified website traffic. Google Analytics not only gives you information about the number of visitors to your website, but it also gives a lot of useful information about your website including: individual spends on the website, pages visited in the website, where a person left your website, bounce rate, and much more.

Google Analytics and how it helps with SEO

The question here is how does Google Analytics help  with my SEO? Here are some of the ways in which Google analytics can help your SEO campaign:

• Visits: This is the most basic of all of the information you are given. Visits tells  you how many visitors to your website you had in a one month period. You can then compare this with past months to see if your traffic is increasing. You will be able to identify trends and if there are seasonal spikes to your website. In turn, this will help you refine your marketing efforts to coincide with period when visitors to your site are the mximum.

• Top referring keywords: This lists the relevant keywords that brought visitors to your website. Based on this information, you can see where your website ranks for these keywords. In turn, you can make changes that will help your website rank higher for the keyword. The end result is that you can tweak your SEO campaign to rank higher for keywords that are bringing visitors to your website. Many times, you will find that there are keywords people are using, that you have not optimized for.

• Referrers: This is another important metric as it gives you an insight about the source of the traffic to your website. If a website is referring visitors to your site, then it tells you the kind of websites you should be present on, which sites the visitors to your site are likely to visit and this can help you refine your link building strategy.

• Click Path: This helps to judge how user friendly your site design is, how people navigate your site and where they are most likely to exit your site. This helps you refine your website navigation and maximize conversions on your website.

• Bounce Rate: This shows how many visitors left your website and which pages they left the site from. This helps you analyze what could be causing people to leave your site and you can accordingly modify the content of your site.

There’s a lot more useful information and data that web analytics provides. The items listed above are the very basic. A proper tracking of your website traffic can provide you with a wealth of information that you can use to refine your SEO campaign and attract more traffic to your website.

Let’s see how Google Analytics helps you track the above details of your website. Google Analytics is a free solution from Google and it can provide you with data that helps you refine your SEO campaigns and attract more traffic. Here’s an example:

In the above image, you can see the details that Google analytics provides about a particular website. You can find that it mentions about number of visits, bounce rates, pageviews, etc. This is a top level view. You can explore details of each of the above metrics, decide refinements to your SEO campaigns and track the impact of the changes you make.

If you do not know the impact of your efforts, it becomes next to impossible to know if your efforts are working. Analyzing the information available through Google Analytics, you can take informed decisions and make changes to your SEO campaigns to drive more website traffic.

About the Author
Chip Curle is the owner of Charles Curle Design, a North Georgia web designer that develops and manages web sites and drives companies to the top of internet search engines through search engine optimization. His work has earned Chip 14 ADDY (American Advertising Federation) awards including 8 Gold, 4 Silver, and 2 Best of Show.

What is the point of business networking?  It is the process of building relationships with complementary businesses, business owners, and business managers to increase your influence and position within a specific market or industry.  There are two points to take away here – building relationships and increasing influence and position.  Relationships will naturally increase your influence, and influence creates opportunity and improved market position.

The most important value in business is the relationships that are built.  Customers, clients, vendors, and colleagues all shape the relationships within a business.  Like any other area in life, the quality of the relationships can have a huge impact on the outcome of your interactions with existing and potential clients, vendor/reseller relations, and every other aspect of your daily operations.  Focus on building and maintaining positive relationships with your contacts (both within and outside of your company) you will quickly begin to increase your influence with your contacts.

How do you practically build good relationships with new contacts?  There is balance and communication to work on. All relationships tend to follow a similar tract – introduction, follow-up, acquaintance, interaction, commitment. There is room between each stage for varying degrees of influence, but most relationships in business tend to fall somewhere in these five categories.

In the introduction stage, you first meet the contact, give some overviews about yourself, find out who they are, exchange contact info, and independently decide whether or not the person is worth a follow-up action. If there is the potential to have a mutually beneficial relationship, or the new contact can possibly benefit you, request permission to follow-up with that person. If you can benefit them, let them know that you would be open to a follow-up communication.

The follow-up communication is where most individuals drop the ball.  It is difficult to make time in a busy schedule to get in front of your computer with the intent to follow-up on potential lead or new contacts.  If you don’t follow up correctly, a few things can happen: 1) you can loose out on a potential referral, 2) you could loose out on a potential client, 3) you loose out on a opportunity to get connected to a whole different network of contacts, and 4) you can loose credibility by not following up when you expressed an interest to.  If networking for increasing influence and position within a market is important to you, then follow-up opportunities should be created – not missed.

If you can get through the follow-up process, your hope is for a favorable response from the people you contact. When favorable replies are made (either by phone or email), you gain an opportunity to create an acquaintance with the contact. This is the real first step in developing a relationship. At this stage, you have made a favorable enough first impression to engage someone a second time, so use this opportunity to win them over.  This third step is usually the opportunity to give out some usable information, such as potential leads for each of you, or a request for proposal (or a request to offer a proposal) for services.

Once you have had a few interactions with your contacts, you begin to develop an acquaintance with them.  At this point, you both know each other and each others businesses, but you aren’t close with them yet. You may or may not have had any business dealings with them, but they are at least on your radar for future deals, or as someone who you can send referrals to.  Most business relationships don’t grow past this phase, but if you continue to follow up with them and remain in contact, often times you will either get a lead or be able to give a lead to someone you stay in contact with.

The final step in the business relationship process is developing a commitment with the new contact.  This doesn’t have to be any formal commitment, but typically means that you both agree to continue interacting with one another.  Hopefully the commitment comes in the form of a new customer or a referral that turns into a client, but either way, you have built a new business relationship that will only grow from here.  It is important to not loose contact with individuals in this stage of the business relationship because they can often be the most influential people in your growing network.

Most business-savvy individuals are always looking to grow their network, which means that follow-up and continued interactions are welcomed.  It is your responsibility to bring value to the relationships that you build – don’t just look to your own interest, but to the interest of your new contacts.  In doing so, you will begin to increase your influence and position within your industry.

SEOTERIC is an Athens and Atlanta website development and marketing firm specializing in building business websites that generate sales and leads through powerful SEO and marketing strategies.

Common Networking Mistakes

Networking is a term that didn’t exist (academically) until almost 40 years ago. It’s a word uttered in and around the business world every day, yet is unclear to most as to how it actually works. Still, it’s a fundamental tool to the success of any business. By definition, the term networking is the development and maintenance of mutually valuable relationships. It’s not schmoozing; it’s not just handing out business cards, selling, marketing or small talk. Those activities are part of networking, but unfortunately, many people’s misunderstanding of the term causes them to network ineffectively.

The following are some habits of unskilled networkers, and they can stand in the in your way of developing mutually valuable relationships. So, next time you attend your Chamber or Association meeting, keep these ideas in mind so you can offer the most value to your fellow networkers.

Habit #1: Attitude Much like the development of any skill, networking begins with attitude. Unfortunately, unskilled networkers have the wrong attitude. If you’ve ever attended a networking function before, perhaps you’ve encountered businesspeople who act in the following ways:

The hard sell – they believe networking is about one thing and one thing only: selling products and services to everyone in the room.

Business only – they’re not there to make friends. They’re not there to have fun. And they’re certainly not interested in developing mutually valuable relationships.

It’s all about me – they don’t take the time to help and share with others, but rather focus on their own needs. In other words, they can’t spell “N-E-T-W-O-R-K-I-N-G” without “I.”

Attitude is fundamental to effective networking. In fact, it’s the most important habit to understand.

Habit #2: Only Dig Your Well WHEN You’re Thirsty. The key to successful networking is making your friends, establishing contacts and developing relationships – before you need them. Getting what you want by helping others get what they want first. Networking should be a big part of your marketing plan!

Enter the unskilled networkers, who only network because:

a) They need new customers

b) They have a new product or service to sell

c) Their boss forced them to do so

Take my friend Bill, for example. He’s quite successful in the insurance business; however he recently approached me about using networking to obtain some hot leads.

“My numbers are down. My manager is on my back. I gotta get out there and start networking…or else! What do you suggest?”

“Networking takes time,” I explained, “and you can’t expect to come into loads of business or dozens of potential clients without developing the relationships first.”

As you already learned, networking is the development and maintenance of mutually valuable relationships…over time. If you try to dig your well WHEN you’re thirsty, you may never find a drink.

Habit #3: Dealing Out Business Cards is a terrible habit, and it happens all the time. Have you ever seen people distribute 173 of their business cards during the first 5 minutes of the event? They move as quickly as possible from one person to the next. They don’t make eye contact, they don’t ask to exchange cards – they just deal them out. This is guaranteed to make people feel puny and insignificant. Notice these unskilled networkers don’t spend time actually meeting and establishing rapport with new people; but rather concentrate on giving out as many cards as possible. Your business card has no value when they are dealt out without conversation.

Habit #4: Unskilled networkers don’t wear professional looking name tags. When you wear a name tag it makes you much more approachable and helps people remember you and your name. Remember that when you wear a name tag you will always be able to measure the benefit by the conversation that results from people that approach you. When you don’t wear a name tag you will never know what you lost as a result of not being approachable!

Habit #5: Unskilled networkers not only attend meetings with their friends and/or coworkers, but they talk and sit with them the entire time! These are people with whom they’ve worked 5 days a week, 8 hours a day for the past 3 years! This is not a good technique to maximize your company’s visibility.

This habit creates an elitist, unfriendly attitude. And think how uncomfortable this makes the one or two people sitting at the table who don’t work for that company! It’s unfair to them because they’re unable to meet a diverse group of people with whom to develop mutually valuable relationships! Remember: If you’re sitting with YOUR company – you’re sitting with the WRONG company.

Habit #6: Unskilled Networkers believe there is only one specific time and place for networking. It’s called “A Room with A Sign Posted Outside That Says So.” In other words, they only network when someone forces them to. They don’t believe networking opportunities in places like elevators, busses, supermarkets or parks. That’s it? A measly half hour for networking? Doesn’t give you much time, does it? The truth about networking is that it can happen anytime, anywhere. There is a time and a place for networking – it’s called ANY time, and ANY place. Network to win in 2010!

Here are 5 reasons why SEO should be implemented into your marketing strategy before your competition beats you out.

Absence of risk
Search engine optimization is free of any risk. In many cases, paid advertising (banner ads, pay-per-click) is subject to click fraud risk. There are people that that use software to click on their competitors ads, which cost you money each time it is clicked. Google AdWords has protection against this, but it isn’t 100%. Nothing can stop a competitor from clicking your link a few times, costing you money.

Reliability
Banner ads and pay-per-click campaigns work great until the marketing budget for these campaigns depletes for the month. When this happens, your website is no longer listed and customers can’t find you anymore. SEO obtains an organic listing and your company’s website will always be found by your customers. Consumers are more likely to purchase from a site ranked high in the search engine results rather than from a pay-per-click ad.

Brand Awareness
A website that is ranked high means that more people will see the name of your company and become familiar with it and it’s products or services, even if they haven’t made a purchase. Consumers recognize businesses ranked in the top 3 in search engine results compared to those appearing in banner ads. With so many people using pop-up blockers and banner blockers, many people don’t even see the banner ads that are being displayed.

Targeted Traffic
SEO brings those paying customers to you. When a consumer is looking for a specific product or service and you rank high, they will enter the key words/phrases that they are looking for. When they find your site, they are a target lead and more likely to purchase from you. How much money do you spend on sales people getting you targeted leads and sales?

Affordability
In comparison to banner ads and pay-per-click advertising, SEO is a much more affordable service. With banner ads and pay-per-click, you set a budget and when that budget is met, the ads are gone. This could happen a week into your campaign. This means you would go three weeks before your ads appear again. With SEO, your website will stay listed on the search engines and won’t drop off.

As you should be able to see, search engine optimization is vital to your business. If you have a website and people can’t find it when entering keywords of the products or services that you sell, then why did you pay all of that money to have the website built? Remember, your website is a sales person that works day and night and has a global territory. Can you afford to pay your sales person to work day and night?