Aug 04 2010
MARKETING FROM THE EDGE
Businesses balanced on
the brink of bankruptcy
have only truth to sell!
Regardless of how you explain it or how you think you got there, businesses that teeter-totter, balanced on the brink of bankruptcy got there through poor management.
Not enough capital, not enough sales, the wrong personnel, the underestimated expenses, the increased cost of raw materials, the lack of bank loan support, weak operational planning, bad press . . . it’s ALL poor management!
But no need to bury your head about that.
- First: You have company. 9 out of 11 new businesses reportedly fail within the first five years, and a best guess is that probably half that many fail after the first five years.
- Second: Every (Right, “Every”) highly successful venture of the many thousands I am keenly aware of has its success roots traced back to major failure. Forest fires create new and stronger trees.
Not unlike cutting and running on the battlefield or in the sports arena, the choice to fold up the tent is of course always available and, for some, it can gallop into position rather abruptly and become a choice that is no longer a choice.
For many, however, the moment of truth can breed heroics! It has a lot to do with courage, gumption, spunk, resilience, stick-to-it-iveness, passion, and drive.
It also has more to do with common sense and authenticity than most who face the threatening storm typically would care to admit. But facing the consequences with your business on the line — especially where the increasingly common issue of bad press is involved –requires more of one ingredient applied thoroughly and consistently than any other: truth.
Recent bad examples abound on the big business side of the coin with brokerages, mortgage companies, automakers, and scores of big-name corporate product recalls, with the over-exaggerated media hyperbole in oil leak containment effort reports.
Many see the same kinds of mismanaged and basically DIShonest accountings of activities surrounding sinking hospitals, banks, the post office and, sadly, many small business ventures.
There lies deep within these complex business failings a desire to save face at all costs, to cover one’s butt — a desire that is actually stronger than the desire to succeed.
A sizeable hospital has disavowed it’s attachment to an affiliated and approved and endorsed physician who is alleged to have literally destroyed a community that the hospital has thrived in and nurtured its whole life.
Instead of going to the great lengths and expense and repeated hand-wringing it did to deny a relationship with the person in question (a tragically mentally sick doctor is the only way to describe what the evidence appears to point to), the hospital needed only to:
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Step up
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Own up
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Tell all
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Admit past screw-ups and negligence
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Ask forgiveness, and
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Act immediately to bring the public to the truth of it.
Resistance to speak the truth in trying circumstances because the consequences are imagined to be humiliating, inevitably ends up making the dynamics and repercussions of the act itself far worse than when it started out.
Toyota’s response to failure was to smother it with marketing dollars. But peoples’ memories can’t be bought off! The hospital referenced will likely fold or be bought out for a monumental financial loss – all because the administration lacks backbone!
When the going gets tough, speak the truth. Sweeping the mess under the carpet only makes cleaning harder.
www.TheWriterWorks.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US
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“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]
