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Day: February 5, 2021

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Growth Management Personal Development Women In Business

The New Path to the Top: 4 Reasons CMOs Can Be Great CEOs

The road to the top position in a company, the Chief Executive Officer, is shifting from a decade ago.  The types of skills that today’s CEOs need to cultivate in order to excel include: strong communication skills, the ability to collaborate closely in a team, the ability to operate with genuine empathy, and the ability to build high-performing teams.  The skills that will be of foremost importance for today’s CEO are to listen carefully and communicate openly in order to elicit public trust as the face of the company.

We know that as times change, and the marketplace evolves, navigating a successful course requires new leadership skills.  So, when it comes to managing your own career, how do you prepare yourself to move into the top position?  What abilities should executives focus on developing as they choose companies, functions, and jobs?  And, what path should executives follow as they strive to reach the next level?

Those aren’t easy questions. The trends vary by function, geography, and industry – and of course, by company.  But, once a leader reaches the C-suite, technical and functional expertise matters less than softer leadership skills and a strong grasp of business fundamentals.  In other words, the skills that help you climb to the top, won’t suffice once you get there.

To thrive as a CEO, a leader needs to be an astute student of business, but also an exceptional leader, adept at the “softer” leadership skills. Requirements for today’s CEO have shifted with the value being placed on being a team player, a collaborator, a good communicator, and a strategic thinker.  The CEO of today needs to be capable of multitasking continuously, leading in a team-oriented style, successfully coping with stress and pressure, and carefully managing the performance of their team, protecting them from burnout.

Marketing has not typically been a route to the top position in an organization. However, marketing is often the area that is responsible for crafting the company’s brand, communicating their values, creating a sense of identity, and connecting with customers in a tangible, but personalized and authentic way.  And, with the ability to track, measure, and report performance in every aspect of sales and marketing now, marketers are now able to show tangible evidence of their ability to accelerate profitability and growth. And, in the new digital-first works, marketers are expected to be tech-savvy and have a deep understanding of, and connection to, the company’s customer base. That’s a powerful combination in today’s complex business environment.

Today, with the increasing importance of digital and social connection to the customer, CEOs that rose to the top through marketing have not just become a possibility, but an imperative in many companies.  Here are four reasons that a CEO that rose to the top through a marketing career is now a significant competitive advantage:

  • Experience in a position of listening, learning, and engaging – Marketers have developed unique expertise to ensure that all customer touchpoints help the company learn about customer expectations, needs, and preferences to create and communicate a vision and roadmap for meeting their needs – whether it’s products, services or values they can relate to. And, marketers have developed sophisticated practices of ensuring that those customers who have purchased good and services become their advocate and champion, engendering their loyalty.

 

  • Experience with produce innovation that supports sales – Marketers have the ability to provide a pathway for cycles of product innovation that are more and more aligned with customer needs. CMOs are in a perfect position to facilitate this since they sit between sales and product development teams. They also enable sales to execute effectively with key messaging, support materials, lead generation programs, and appointment setting programs that relate to the problems customers are trying to solve.

 

  • Experience with sales enablement and driving revenue through new sales channels – Marketing has now broadened in scope as new consumer channels and touchpoints have emerged, and e-commerce initiatives are now typically falling to marketing. Marketing is now expected to drive revenue through direct and digital channels – often becoming the primary sales channel.  The lines between traditional marketing and sales functions are continuing to blur with social technologies, digital interactivity, and mobility becoming integral to consumer and business connections.  Because marketing and sales must respond seamlessly to new opportunities, marketing leaders now often serve as the CEO’s single point of contact for revenue generation.
  • Experience owning and managing the customer relationship – From start to finish, the customer lifecycle, which is comprised of hundreds of touchpoints across a number of platforms over time, yield a wealth of valuable data. These data-driven insights can, and should, influence overall business strategy, powering strategic business decisions. Marketing leaders also have experience establishing alliances to extend customer lifecycle across all touchpoints, using the data to leverage the resulting insights.

Overall, the ability to promote transparency and manage customer communities and public conversations are increasingly critical, all while leaders manage a workforce that has grown up in the digital age and expects immediate access to information. Technology, and in particular digital channels, will continue to dominate marketing and sales strategy in the future, catering to a customer base that has an ever-increasing desire for speed and easy interaction.  The demand for segmentation capabilities will grow as companies address a more diverse population of customers who expect ever-higher levels of service and increasingly tailored and personalized products and solutions.

For all these reasons and a dozen more, marketers are now able to show tangible evidence of their ability to accelerate profitability and growth and compete for the top position in the company. What path should executives follow as they strive to reach the next level?  Marketing seems like a really good choice.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

Are You Worried About Having Your Book Manuscript Critiqued?

You think your book manuscript is wonderful—or you think it’s awful. Wherever you fall on the spectrum of confidence in what you’ve written, you need feedback.

Does that sound like frightening news? It’s your book. You care about it. You may have suffered and struggled through writing it. How can you trust someone else to competently and fairly judge it?

It’s because that other people aren’t emotionally invested in your writing that they can read it with objectivity and fairness. You need that kind of reading.

The Dreaded Red Pencil

While that pencil may be electronic these days, some of us remember when it was literal. We’d turn in school papers and get them back riddled with circled words or phrases, underlining, marginal comments, and exclamation points. It may have been an overwhelming and discouraging sight.

The sad truth is that many teachers, underpaid and overworked, had little interest in encouraging hopeful writers. They plowed through piles of papers, usually at night, with the sole intention of finishing them before they fell asleep at their desks. They didn’t worry about breaking your heart and helping to establish a life-long fear of criticism.

If you’re not sure that teacher’s criticisms have lasting impact on students, read this.

When feelings of self-doubt arise, remind yourself, “I am no longer eight years old.” If you need more self-encouragement, make a list of what you do well.

Because sensitivity to criticism doesn’t vanish overnight, give special thought to choosing your beta readers.

Who Should Read Your Book: The Beta Reader

Some people claim that no one who cares about you should critique your book because they’ll be too nice. You need a tough, no holds-barred critic.

If you’re feeling vulnerable even before you ask someone to read your work, a tough critic is exactly what you need to keep yourself from ever writing again. You’re not copping out by asking someone nice to read your manuscript.

A friend may say the same thing a stranger will, but they’ll wrap up the truth in a much more sympathetic package, and you’ll be better able to take in what they say and make the needed changes.

In “Why Use Family and Friends as Beta Readers?”, Paul Kilpatrick elaborates on this theme.

Small Humiliations Now Can Prevent Bigger Ones Later On

Be aware that even a critique couched in kind language can sting. When that happens, think of this analogy. You might feel embarrassed if a friend tells you that you have a stain on your garment. You’ll feel much more embarrassed if no one tells you, and you go on a stage to speak in front of hundreds of people.

Beta readers perform the invaluable service of pointing out aspects of your work you can fix before publishing it. If you give them an outline or a first draft, their recommendations can make writing the second draft or doing revisions much easier. This will boost your self-confidence and make you more calm about receiving a new round of critiques.

You Can Return the Favor

Someone who does a beta reading for you may ask you to reciprocate. This is a common and mutually productive practice among authors. I recommend that you welcome this opportunity. You’ll have an invaluable chance to see how another person’s writing mind works. You’ll probably learn something.

And consider what one of my Writing to get Business Podcast authors did. John Saunders asked about 250 people to serve as beta readers. They committed a small sum to buy the book. John gained advance money he used to pay for the publishing and he had a core of people who helped him launch the book.

Best of all, as you thoughtfully evaluate someone else’s reading, you’ll find yourself wanting to be helpful and to make useful critiques. You’ll realize that beta readers aren’t out to get you. They’re not that teacher who waved the deadly red pencil. As you learn to willingly (gladly will come) their recommendations, you will become a better writer.

Pat Iyer is a book coach and editor. Blind reviewers and beta readers gave her valuable feedback on many of her 49 books.  Connect with Pat on her website at patiyer.com and request a free consult by using the contact form.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

Book Design: An Inside Job

Writing Your Book is Only the First Step

https://www.steubenpress.com/blog/posts/124-what-a-book-designer-wants-self-published-authors-to-know

I’ve published nearly 50 books and had a role in designing many books I’ve ghostwritten and/or edited. From this experience, I know that the interior design of a book plays a huge role. It can even determine whether a reader will close your book and never read it again.

Some self-published authors want to do everything, including design. If you’re among them, you need to know as much as you can about this vital area. If you’ve decided to turn design over to a professional, know enough to evaluate the designer’s choices.

I also recommend that you look at a lot of book interiors. See what design styles appeal to you.

This blog post won’t answer all your questions about interior design, but it will provide some essential basics.

Keep It Clean

R. Hegnauer, who has designed over 250 books, says in “What a Book Designer Wants Self-published Authors to Know,”

“With prose, you want to keep the text clean and easy to read. This isn’t a place for experimentation with fonts. Once the reader notices the font, they’re getting distracted from the content and not really enjoying the book. The reader shouldn’t even notice the style of the text, like if it’s too small or strange.“

Keep It Elegant

Jeremiah Shoaf of typewolf.com, compiled a list of top 10 favorite body text fonts. If you take a look at this, you’ll see the possibilities.

Handy as this list is, I have one disagreement. He shows two sans serif fonts. A sans serif font looks like THIS. It’s straight up and down and it gets boring fast.

For text—as distinct from headings and subheads—always choose a serif font like the one you’re reading.

Another factor in choosing a text font is that some fonts have wider characters than others. The Times Roman family is narrower than Palatino. That means you’ll get more words per printed page.

If you want to end up with more pages, choose a wider font. You can research this, or you can simply try out an average page of your manuscript with different font choices. A designer can also help you here.

Keep It Honest

You’ve probably seen self-published books with very large type and very wide margins. These authors (or, less likely, designers) have decided to blow some air into their books. Maybe they don’t have enough pages for the book to have a spine.

They would do better to write more. A book that has been deceptively designed to look bigger than it is in terms of content gives independently-published books a bad name.

The same is true of the opposite approach: cramming as much type as possible into a book in order to keep the price lower. Such a book looks unattractive and cheap.

I also urge against extra leading, which is the space between text lines. Two to three points of space has been the industry standard for decades. That means if you use 12-point type, which is a highly readable size, the space between lines should be 14 or at most 15 points.

Some self-published authors use double spacing between paragraphs. This happens more commonly in non-fiction books, and its proponents say that it makes the information easier to absorb.

It may, but it may also look like more air blowing into the text to expand it. Putting a half-line of space, 6 or 7 points, between paragraphs is a more subtle way to provide white space.

Other ways to make the text more readable include:

  • Bulleted and numbered lists
  • Frequent subheads with space above and below
  • Boxed quotations that capture important points

Get Feedback

Whether or not you intend to design your book, design a few pages, or ask your designer to design a sample for you. This should include a chapter opening page and two facing pages. If your book will have design elements such as extracts, boxed materials, tables, numbered and/or bulleted lists, design or ask to see samples of these, as well.

Show these pages to friends, and get their feedback. Incorporate their suggestions into any revisions.

Major Caveat: Finalize your design choices before you format your manuscript or have it formatted. Otherwise, you will face either a time-consuming or a costly process.

The time you spend on designing your book marks one more essential stage in preparing it—and you—for success.

Pat Iyer is a book coach, editor and ghostwriter. She works with layout artists to help her clients create an independently published book of which they are proud. Contact her here.   Her website is patiyer.com

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

 Do You Have to Suffer to Write?

In popular culture, there’s a notion that writing, or the production of any art form, means suffering. You might have seen a movie in which a writer is crouched over a manual typewriter, pounding the keys, with an ashtray full of smoldering cigarette butts beside him. His teeth are clenched, and he squints in agony as he reads what he’s written.

It’s not a tempting image.

We know the legends about tortured artists. Van Gogh immediately comes to mind, as does Sylvia Plath. Some artists turn their lives’ suffering into art, using it as a healing process that may also heal the reader or viewer.

The odds, though, are that you don’t aspire to write a great book or become a great writer. You want to write about how to reach more customers or help a business survive pandemics and other upheavals. You may have gone through some suffering and hard times to arrive at your conclusions, but you’re not Van Gogh, and you don’t want to be.

This article will help to fracture the mystique of tortured artists.

But Writing is Hard Work, Isn’t It?

Maybe. This is a big subject, and I foresee that I’ll write several blogs on how to make writing easier.

Here I’ll make the transition from genuine suffering that arises from one’s life to self-inflicted suffering. Many writers are skilled in this form of torture.

Using the Stick to Write

I know too many writers who believe that beating themselves with a symbolic stick will drive them to goal achievement.

They agonize if they didn’t meet their daily minimum word count goal or for skipping a writing session. If they abandon a writing project, they say, “If only I’d stayed with it . . . I’m so undisciplined, lazy . . .”

They can also use the stick during a writing session. “Finish this chapter, or you’ll feel like a failure.” “You have a deadline to meet.” “You told everyone you were writing a book. Finish it, or they’ll know what a failure you are.”

There they are, fulfilling the stereotype of the writer who stares with hatred at the typed page.

The sad thing about this scenario is that many writers probably started out enthusiastically. They ran into trouble. An outline failed to jell. They finished a first draft and realized they left out something important. Someone gave them a discouraging critique.

Maybe they didn’t quit, but the idea that writing was hard work grew in them, and tapping the keys of a computer keyboard became as difficult as pounding those stiff typewriter keys.

“Writing is hard work” became their groove.

Replace the Stick with the Carrot

The most constructive thing you can do if you fall into this negative groove is to stop. Instead of pushing through in a joyless way, think about what you can learn from a mistake or a damaging critique.

Maybe you’ll realize that you should have put the outline aside for a few days or weeks and read more on your subject. You could have shown your proposal to an expert. You could have pretended the critique was for someone else and read it more objectively.

If you decide you need outside help, take a course or hire a writing coach.

Set rewards for yourself: for finishing a chapter, a first draft, for being brave enough to ask someone to read your manuscript.

 Here are 15 specific ways to reward yourself for writing.

And each time you end a writing session, say, “Good job.” Thank yourself for persisting.

You deserve that praise.

Pat Iyer serves entrepreneurs as a writing coach. She loves to help her clients finish their books. Connect with Pat using this contact form.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

Write With Your Own Voice

Many beginning writers make one mistake that dooms their books to failure.

They avoid putting themselves into their writing, thinking that an objective, personality-free tone will make them sound more professional. Instead, they end up producing a dry, lifeless manuscript that readers will put aside.

What Does Voice Mean?

Voice isn’t the same as style. Developing your writer’s voice doesn’t mean that you try to develop a unique way of writing like James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway. It means developing the voice that’s uniquely yours.

In “4 Ways to Start Writing Like an Expert,” Tamara Powell writes:

“One of the best writing tips I’ve ever received came from my writing group. A fellow grad student sensed that a member of the group felt he needed to talk about a concept in the same way as its originator, and the student encouraged his friend by saying:

‘Don’t surrender your voice to talk about other people’s ideas on their terms. Tell your story and use it to illuminate the ideas of others.’

As an apprentice in your field, it can be tempting to hide behind the voice and vocabulary of someone more established. And yes, it can be helpful to try others’ techniques while you’re learning, but eventually, you have to start speaking for yourself. If you don’t adopt your own voice, you’ll never add to the ideas of others—you’ll stay stuck trying to sound like everyone else.”

How I Use My Voice

I have never written my autobiography or a memoir, but every book I’ve written has personal anecdotes.

I write about my children and my husband, which tells readers that I, like many of them, have had to juggle family and career.

I describe my challenges in starting and running a successful business. I’m candid about my mistakes, which teaches my readers that missteps don’t have to be fatal.

I share how I felt tense, embarrassed, and vulnerable when opposing lawyers questioned me as an expert witness and what I’ve learned about staying cool under pressure.

Basically, I say, “I’m a human being who has concerns, who fails at times, and who keeps going. So can you.”

Help the Reader to Identify With You

This is the ultimate point of writing in your own voice. You don’t want the reader to think, “This person is an expert. This person never made a wrong move. He/she would never understand what I go through.”

You want that reader to feel that you’ve been through what they are experiencing, that you’ve made mistakes, and that you will no doubt continue to make mistakes.

You want them to feel that you’re on their side and that you’ve written this book to help them through their rough spots.

If you succeed in doing that, you’ll be speaking to them with your voice—loud and clear.

Pat Iyer has written or edited 49 of her own books. As a book coach and editor, she loves to help her clients finish their books – in their voice. Go to PatIyer.com to connect with Pat.