Return on Revenue

Return on Revenue (ROR) is used to determine the profitability of a company by taking Net Income/ Revenue.  It is a financial tool used to year to year profitability performance.  But, you can take this same formula and apply it to marketing projects as well. 

 

Essentially what the ROR does is tell you the impact expenses have on the marketing project.  So it will help to tell you if the project is truly giving you a better return or not.  If you know the impact then you have a better ability to say if the project is worth keeping or not or how those expenses need to change in order to maximize your ROR.

 

This formula is also helpful to bridge the gap between financial tools and marketing tools, something that has been hurting marketing for years.  With this tool, finance knows how to use it (if your finance department doesn’t, they you might want to shine the light on their cost activities).  It’s simple, takes 5 minutes and can help in many situations to improve marketing’s position as an investment center rather than a cost center.

Hiring the Next President of the United States

The US elections are upon with the primaries well underway.  I don’t normally indulge in politics but there was an aspect to the election that did catch my attention because of questionable the practices are, yet it is done and nobody seems to care.  The elections are essentially one big job interview, and anyone in the US who does any hiring knows you can not take into account, gender, race or religion in the hiring process, yet these seem to be the main themes of the election.

 

Hiring in the US has come a long way in the last few decades; you need to focus on the skills and experience of the candidates and focus solely on those skills and experiences, for the most part.  Personality fit does come in to play for some job as well as communication skills.  Now lets say I’m looking to hire a new CEO of a company, I can’t focus on gender as the Clinton supporter and campaign are doing, that would be discrimination and bias and I would get sued and rightfully so because gender plays no role in a person’s ability to be CEO.  I can’t focus on race either, which would rule out Obama as many of his supporters and some in his campaign like to play the race issue.  Again, race has no bearing on performance.  Then there is religion such as Huckabee and Romney are play, I just heard many voters in NV voted for Romney because they are Mormon and so is he.  Again, that would not work in a corporate setting, you can’t hire based on religion or lack of.

 

The interesting aspect is, one of these candidates has the potential to eventually win the job of president of the US.  How can we listen to them or even take them serious when they talk about how companies should not take such issues into account when hiring, when they themselves benefited greatly from using such issues to get the job. 

 

I’m all for taking gender, race and religion out of the decision process, as in business, to focus on such issues is to take away from where your real focus should be, that is on the ability of the person to perform the job at hand.  The reason’s why we focus on these issues are many, in an over simplified way, I would place it in three camps, the parties, the press and the people. 

 

The parties for the most part are run by consultants that look at polls and like to focus on flash not substance.  The press is horrible for the most part, they don’t report news anymore so why would they focus on the substance issues like what a candidate’s economic plan is and does it make any real sense according to economists?  Or what is their experience, I hear Hillary say she has 35 years of experience, of what I have no clue, she’s only be in office 8 years, being married to a politician doesn’t count in my book, maybe in hers but not mine.  If that’s the case than every spouse of a fortune 500 CEO can claim they can run those companies too, anyone want to, some how that argument never seems to work in the corporate world so why in politics?  If we really were talking about experience, most of the candidates who have already dropped out would still be in the race.

 

I don’t expect these first two groups to do any changing but the people, don’t let me down guys, think and vote real issues.  I run into women saying they will vote for Hilary because she’s a woman, what’s the difference between that and KKK member saying they will vote for the Anglo protestant guy?  You know what, there isn’t any, please think about that before voting.   I know some who say “girl power” but what’s the difference from someone saying some other form of bigotry, we are hiring a president lets keep such things out of the process.  Same with anyone else who uses these issues of gender, race or religion as their primary reason for voting for someone.  Substance is what is important in such a job, if you don’t demand substance, you can’t complain when you get none from the eventual winner.

Glorifying Information

We live in the “Information Age” where we are flooded with information.  We have more information than we know what to do with and it seems that this has created a situation in many circles, where information for the sake of information is given high importance over actually doing something with the information.

 

In almost any subject or organization, gathering information is much like a false idol.  People spend their days gathering information on the belief that, the more information they have the more of an expert they are on a subject.  Our information age as created a buffet of information for many, they can spend all their time feed on information, gathering more and more, once they have finished one piece, just get up and grab another and tell everyone around you about all the cool facts and figures you know which you feel makes you sound smart.

 

The problem with this is that, it creates a buffer from what really allows a person to truly understand a subject.  At some point, the serious student of any subject will have to take the information and apply it via action.  It is only through disciplined application do you truly experience the importance of information.  To just gather it, is selling yourself short of the value that information can bring.

2008 New Year Resolutions

It’s the new year!  I hope the new year brings positive benefits to all, at least those that deserve it.  😉  To help make 2008 a better year, I have a few suggestions I would like to put forward to help make the year go more smoothly for all of us, so that we may have less stress in our lives.

  

Everyone should take a stress management course

I think people are way too stressed out; everyone should sign up for Tai Chi, yoga, meditation or whatever and learn to relax!  I’m all for the government subsidizing free 1 hour massages every week!  Sign me up for the deep tissues hot rock massage please!  But seriously, people are way to serious about themselves, relax, if you can’t, learn.

 

Ignore special interest groups

Aren’t we all human beings, in the same boat?  So why even bother with these snobby people who think their group is “special.”  Lets ignore them, hell lets ban them as lobby groups, maybe we can actually have a real presidential debate that way.

 

Keep the planet clean

If you do or do not believe in global warming, doesn’t matter to me.  We have one planet, can we all agree to try and keep it clean?  There isn’t some cosmic dump we can send our garbage and pollution to, we are stuck with it, so lets not make a big mess.  It’s like your home, generally if you make a mess, you have to clean it up.  Lets not make the mess in the first place, that way we won’t have that much to clean up later.

 

Buy Consciously

Can this be the year, we as consumers decide we are not just going to buy what is on the shelf because it is there?  Demand quality in product and services and ditch those who don’t offer, if we all do this, companies will actually have to do what they claim they do to ensure quality, won’t that be a new concept after the year of recalls.