KISSIMMEE, FL — While database marketing companies must concentrate on the best and most efficient way to reach their customers and prospects, they also need to focus on their employees, and make sure they are poised for success.
This was the message given by Linda Keefe, founder/CEO of Shared Results International, a management consulting and training firm in Pittsford, NY, and the keynote speaker at the opening of yesterday’s Winter 2004 National Center for Database Marketing Conference.
A successful organization is one that has a “unified, entrepreneurial spirit, with every employee seizing new opportunities,” Keefe said.
In order to have this type of organization, companies must transform their staffs from a point of organizational indifference into a unified team with shared vision, relevant goals and a communications process that ensures accountability.
To do this, companies first must have a strategic vision. But many businesses don’t have one, Keefe said.
“People confuse vision with goals,” she said.
They also need to have a strategic plan, and employees throughout the organization — not just the few people who drew it up — must know the plan.
“Every single person in the organization has to be united together,” Keefe said.
The plan doesn’t have to be complicated. Once the plan is drawn up, companies have to keep communicating it to their employees … and stick to it.
“You’ve got to keep the momentum going, ” she said.
