September 2008

Board List

Michael Anderson
Brett Axelrod
Mark A. Cenicola
Diane Dutton
Bill Granda
Bob Olson
Pamela J. Ring President
William J. Stieren Treasurer
Patrick Wisman

Welcome to "The Workout"

Welcome to the September issue of TMA Nevada's The Workout. We continue to make this newsletter a valuable tool where TMA Nevada members can share their expertise; keep up-to-date on industry trends; meet TMA new comers, and learn something interesting and useful in the process. The Workout will be TMA Nevada member-driven through such sections as "Members' Bylined Articles" and "Members in the News."

*Breaking News

Please check the Calendar of Events at http://www.tmaofnevada.com/calendar/ to see what's on the agenda!

Next Meeting

CASE STUDY: PORTRAIT OF A MAJOR LAS VEGAS STRIP PROPERTY FACING BANKRUPTCY: An Exercise in Restructuring & Analysis of Financial Options Presented by a Panel of Experts with First-Hand Knowledge & Access

Date:	April 29th, 2009
Time:	5:30 pm
Location:	Ruth's Chris Steakhouse 3900 Paradise Road Las Vegas, NV 89101
» Read More...

 

President's Letter: Letter from Pamela Joy Ring to TMA Nevada Members & Guest Attendees of March 25 Breakfast:

Dear TMA Nevada Members and Friends,

I write to you because some very positive events have occurred since we met on March 25 of which I wish to share with you and which may be of benefit to you (your board is always thinking of ways to enhance you and your business prospects!). Read More...

Past Letters from the President:

September 2008

May 2008

Article: Maintaining Good Reputation Will Help Companies Weather Trouble

by: Liz Gamble, CKpr Reputation Management

According to some economic experts, Las Vegas is about one-third of the way through the recession. Companies, large and small, are learning to navigate through these rough times so they may come out the other side unscathed or, in some cases, reinvented.

Therefore, it's not surprising that areas such as reputation management or crisis communications are not atop an executive's to-do list. Heck, they may not even be on the list. But they should be a top priority; reputation can help keep you afloat in bad times and spur growth in good times.

Unfortunately, the phrases "reputation management" and "crisis communications" have become buzzwords. To make matters worse, they have become too closely associated with the Internet and products based on an out-of-sight, out-of-mind strategy.

The threat is real. A company's reputation is invaluable, and it is vulnerable. In the blink of an eye, a company's hard-earned reputation can be unfairly and deeply damaged, causing business interruption at best and irreparable damage at worst.

What do you do about it? There are ad hoc steps you can take, such as signing up for an Internet monitoring service. Or you can put together a communications action plan for when negative issues, such as product failure or industry turndowns arise. Or, you can take your already excellent reputation and make it more resilient.

You do this by building a more productive relationship with all of your corporate audiences, from customers to vendors, from employees to the community, from your bankers to your attorneys.

It is about cultivating loyal allies who understand you, trust you and will stand by you in times of need. It is about doing a top-notch job of communicating your company's strengths, values and contributions.

It is that simple.

But wait, you say, "My customers know how good our products and services are, our vendors appreciate us, we communicate with our bankers and investors and we give back to the community."

No doubt.

Larger companies have individuals specifically responsible for these key audiences, such as sales managers, purchasing managers, investor relations managers.

But by doing a more purpose-driven job of analyzing and addressing these audiences -- what you are telling them and how you're communicating with them -- you can create a stronger company that is in a better position to weather a bad economy and set the foundation for profitable growth.

Inevitably, a discussion on crisis and reputation management turns to protection of the "brand" and "brand attributes." A strong brand leverages a company's ability to generate increased sales and higher profitability.

The same is true with a company's reputation. Your reputation is your corporate brand. It puts you on a higher plane. It generates greater respect and loyalty.

Also, a company that is well understood and appreciated is better prepared to withstand trouble. My colleagues and I have handled a broad range of "crisis" situations, ranging from reporting disappointing earnings to situations where children were hurt. If we have learned one thing, it is that companies with strong stakeholder relations fare much better.

So what specific steps could a company take?

Stronger reputations are built through a combination of strategic communications and marketplace insight. How is that for a couple more buzzword phrases?

In simple words, the first step is to list all your stakeholders and their "true" relationship to your company.

Then determine their impressions of and attitudes toward the company. Do they really understand what your company stands for, its values?

Next, you should develop a plan to communicate with and build loyalty among every stakeholder. Remember to include preparation for trouble, you know it's always lurking around the corner in one shape or another. One helpful exercise is to think of anything that could go wrong and who among your stakeholders would be directly affected and tangentially involved.

Keeping your eye on your reputation creates a bond of understanding and mutual support between your company and its stakeholders. This investment builds loyalty among customers, employees, investors, vendors, bankers, your industry, government and the community, providing a high-potential base with which to keep your business on solid ground.

Liz Gamble is owner of CKpr Reputation Management and a member of the Turnaround Management Association. She can be reached at lizgamble@ckprrm.com.

Article: Growing Your Business Right: Three Core Tips for Making Your Website Work for You

As part of TMA Nevada's Series of: Growing Your Business Right: Three Core Tips for Making Your Website Work for You
August 2008

Article by Cenicola-Helvin Enterprises and first appeared in the BannerView.com Newsletter under the title It Takes Money to Make Money, Even on the Web.

Want to be successful with your e-business Web site? Expect to make an investment to drive traffic to your Web site and generate revenue. Especially in this tough economic climate, now is the time to sit down and budget for your online operations. Here are a few areas in which you can spend money in order to position your Web site to make money.

1) Usability - If you are going to spend money on your Web site, the first thing you want to do is make sure that it's user friendly. This means that visitors can easily navigate throughout the site and all links are working. The easiest way to see if your Web site is user friendly is to compare your Web site to a Web site which you found easy to use. Does your site have the same characteristics? Can visitors purchase from your Web site? If so, having an e-commerce system that makes it easy to add items to a shopping cart and gives visitors an easy method for checking out is mandatory. If you have trouble navigating your Web site, so will others. If your site is difficult to navigate, this means it's time to invest some money into redesigning your Web site or upgrading your e-commerce software for a better visitor experience.

2) Focus - The focus of your Web site should be well defined. If the point of your Web site is to get visitors to contact you, make sure contact information is prominent and that you have an easy to fill out contact form that gets sent to the correct person at your company. If the point of your site is to get people to buy goods directly from your Web site, make sure that your most popular products are displayed, drawing visitors into your online store. Setting the focus of your Web site takes only an investment of your time, but is one of the most overlooked factors in getting the best return on investment.

3) Marketing - Once your site is user friendly and focused, it's time to get visitors to your Web site. This is the third step as there's no point in spending money to get visitors to your Web site if the first two points, Usability and Focus, are not implemented correctly. Once you are ready to market your Web site, it's time to determine where to spend your marketing dollars. There are a number of options available to get visitors to your Web site. In a previous BannerView.com Newsletter, Three Inexpensive Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Web Site, we covered a few ways, however, that is only the beginning. Other avenues include traditional marketing methods such as direct mail or print advertising in addition to online avenues like banner advertising, bidding on content specific keywords and email marketing.

The bottom line is that you need to invest a little money on your Web site if you want to have a chance at being successful. With any business venture, online or off, it takes money to make money.

Article: Just in Time

by Max Gregorich

How many times have you heard: "But we've always done it this way!" "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" "Here comes management with the flavor of the day!" Ah, the resistance to change is alive and well throughout industry.

So what do you do if you must bring needed change to a company? Change that can help you prosper or perhaps survive the next rough spot? Well, I can tell you from experience that if you try to force change, you might as well be trying to take the mask off the Lone Ranger. Pure force breeds pure resistance. Take heart my friends, there are techniques to eliminate resistance. One is simply to ask for ideas from those in the trenches. If the questions are posed properly, you can get the changes you need and the assurance that the ideas will not fail. Have you ever made a recommendation to your boss and gotten the approval to implement? Is there any way you would have let that idea fail?

Why do we need to change? Simply because the competition is ready, willing and eager to eat your lunch. And the competition is growing ... or should I say ... has grown. This may highlight the urgency for change: Last month Secretary Evans noted, in a meeting here in Las Vegas, that while the cold war was going we had about 400 million free market workers in the world. The fall of the Berlin Wall essentially doubled that number within 2-3 years to 800 million workers. Many didn't have jobs but wanted to work. The path of adoption of free market principles in China and India has added roughly 1.2 billion free market workers in the time since then ... 400 million to 2 billion in the space of about 15 years. Every free market country is focused on job creation with the possible exception of the US. I think he ended with a comment like: "we have a problem."

Max Gregorich is the Senior Business Analyst and Project Manager for the Management Assistance Partnership (MAP), a federally and state funded non-profit consulting organization and Nevada's Resource Center.

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