When only the best will do!

We are Delta Dallas

Be A Purple Cow

If we own a business today, we must find a way to stand out among the crowd.  We have to find a way to get noticed, discussed, and remembered.

Is “Good,” Good Enough?

Think of your last restaurant dining experience. Was the food good? Was the service good? Was the price good? Did you walk out and immediately call your friends? Of course not – good was expected! What if you went to a restaurant and the experience was so remarkable that you couldn’t wait to pick up the phone? What would you say?

You might say, “I just had an amazing dining experience! You need to visit this restaurant!” The word would spread, and the restaurant would have to work hard to keep up with the generated growth primarily from simple word of mouth.

I recently read Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin. The basis of the book is simple - a field of brown cows is boring; a purple cow stands out. People will notice, discuss and remember a purple cow. They will tell their friends about the purple cow, who in turn will tell their friends about the purple cow. Soon, everyone will go to the field to see the purple cow.

Godin begins the book by discussing the dated principles of marketing: pricing, product, publicity, packaging, etc. He believes that these principles are part of the TV-industrial complex in which consumers learned about products from mass media. Companies spent huge amounts of money to tell consumers about their products, and it worked. Consumers bought the products.

In today’s fast-paced, attention-deficit world, consumers have everything they need; they probably even have everything they want. They don’t pay attention to an advertisement unless it is something that piques their interest.

What does this mean for marketing departments and product developers? It means that they must find a way to stand out in a crowd. They need to be remarkable. They need to be risky. They might even need to fail in order to learn what will ultimately make them remarkable. What is remarkable today might be boring next year. To be true purple cows, products need to be reinvented on a regular basis to avoid being “very good” or “safe.”

Godin gives examples of purple cows that include discount furniture retailers, high-end stereo systems, family restaurants and expensive cell phones. All of the examples, while very different products or services, have one thing in common: they have come up with a strategy or product that sets them apart from their competition. People talk about them to their friends, and excitement builds. Soon, those products and services are seen as leaders in the industry, and others are striving to catch up!

When I finished reading Purple Cow, I immediately tried thinking of purple cows that have touched my life, either personally or professionally. Two came immediately to mind…

• For my favorite personal purple cow, I thought of Papa Murphy’s - the new pizza restaurant that just opened in my neighborhood (www.papamurphys.com). I had actually eaten these pizzas while visiting family on the west coast, and hoped that one day I would be able to enjoy one in my own home. What is different about this pizza chain? They build the pizza in front of me, and I take it home and bake it when I am ready. They don’t deliver, but that’s ok! I know that I am getting fresh ingredients, and my house smells incredible while it’s baking. It is the best of both worlds – the ease of a frozen pizza, but the taste and quality of a restaurant pizza. They have made themselves remarkable!

• For my favorite professional purple cow, I thought of recently added services at Delta Dallas. We have many competitors in the Dallas area, and we are constantly trying to set ourselves apart from our competition with new products and services for our customers. We have implemented new programs that benefit both our paying clients (an On Call team that results in less downtime for our clients when they have immediate staffing needs), our candidates (training sessions on interviewing, resume writing and other subjects) or both (roundtable discussions about the entire job/candidate search process). Many of these services are free of charge, but we market them in the same manner that we market our core services.  We know our customers have multiple choices when it comes to staffing firms, so we are doing everything we can to go above and beyond their expectations.

What did you do today to set yourself apart from your competition? Did you follow the same path as yesterday hoping for different results, or did you create something new and exciting?

What is your purple cow?

700 Resumes! Now What?

As the economy cycles, there are employment cycles as well. With economic highs, employers traditionally find it far more difficult to identify qualified job candidates. When we are facing a low in the economic cycle, there tends to be an abundance of job applicants.

In the past, attracting applicants could be accomplished by running newspaper ads. Today, most companies have resorted to advertising job openings on the major job boards. Access to information has resulted in much greater applicant flow for many employers, which ultimately results in an inability to efficiently process applicant data.

For example, there was an Ohio school that received over 700 applicants for one open janitorial position!  A common misconception is that because employers are receiving an enormous amount of job applicants that it makes it easier to find qualified candidates.

• Clear Job Description ~ Make sure that the experience required, minimum skills needed, and the salary range of the position are clearly defined.  Many job boards also allow you to add “screener” questions which will rank the applicants based on their questions and ultimately help you identify the most qualified candidates.
• “Thanks for Playing” Plan ~ Have a plan on how you are going to deal with the applicants that don’t meet your requirements.  I would recommend a standard email or letter thanking them for their interest, but also letting them know that he/she isn’t being considered for the job.  If you have ever been on the other side, it is much better to know you are no longer being considered than not to know!
• Interview Process ~ Clearly define the interview process once you have identified the stars.  Remember that the longer you drag out an interview process and the more steps you add, the more likely you are to lose a good candidate, and that is the last thing you want to do after picking them out of 700 resumes.

Those of us that were in human resources in 1999/2000 were dealing with an economy where running an ad, or posting a job resulted in little response and screening applicants was almost non-existent. Employers were increasing salaries, paying significant employee referral bonuses, and even paying sign-on bonuses to attract qualified candidates.

Now, employers will have to deal with the mixed blessing of an overwhelming response to open positions. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to address this. Human resource professionals will have to screen the applicant responses or hire someone to do it in order to fill open positions.  Most companies either have corporate recruiters to do this job, or they hire companies like ours to do it for them.

Delta Dallas offers a Contract Recruiters program as an area of specialty. Please contact us for more information if this is an issue for your company that is costing you time and money.

Delta Dallas Events Series 2009 Your Questions and Comments:

For those who were part of our first event of the Event Series 2009: Getting In The Game,  we would like to hear your comments and questions. We have asked our guest speaker, Don Dalrymple, President/Founder of AscendWorks if he would be willing to answer any questions pertinent to his speech and he has graciously accepted. So feel free to use the space below to post your comment or question.

Thursday, March 5, 2009 at Lawry’s

Getting in the Game could easily be called, “Whose going to do your job when you get laid off?” It is a compelling and thought provoking message by Don Dalrymple, President and Senior Business Advisor of AscendWorks (http://ascendworks.com)

If you are a business owner, a manager, an entrepreneur, or in the workforce you cannot afford not to hear this message. Those who have heard it say it is the most compelling message they have heard in years!

Delta Dallas has made it easy to attend. The first 10 who register will get in for free. That is you get a world-class lunch at Lawry’s The Prime Rib and hear Don Dalrymple, sought out speaker, entrepreneur, and business advisor.

To register click here. Don’t wait seating is limited!