ASIL, Inc. and Logistics Marketing Advisors Sign Agreement

ASIL Inc. is pleased to announce the penning of a joint marketing agreement with Jim Bierfeldt of Logistics Marketing Advisors. "Jim's team brings Marketing Expertise which is another value added service that our Clients have been seeking" said ASIL's President and CEO Pete Pazmany.

"I have known ASIL's team for many years and they will help us bridge our value proposition by developing Strategies and enabling Execution" said Jim Bierfeldt President of Logistics Marketing Advisors.

Both companies have had years of experience working together and have decided to formalize the relationship in order to bring more value to their customers.

The Logistics Marketing Advisors link is www.logisticsmarketing.com and ASIL, Inc. is at www.asil-inc.com. Come and visit to see how we can help you increase your profits.

ASIL Marketing

Marketing Logistics Services

Should You Use a Shotgun or a Magnet?

There has been a shift in how high-value products and services are purchased. These days, big-ticket items like logistics outsourcing agreements are bought, not sold.

What does that mean? Before contacting third-party logistics providers (3PLs), a logistics executive with a problem will first leverage the internet and personal contacts to research and learn about potential solutions. This research leads to the creation of a short list of providers truly able to solve the specific problem at hand.

Marketing messages aimed at grabbing the attention of these executives fall flat because they are full of generic features and unsubstantiated claims. In reality, prospects don’t care about the size of your fleet or how automated your warehouses are. They care about their own problems – the things that are inflating their costs or preventing them from providing great customer service.

In this environment, the marketing challenge is less about finding prospects and more about being found. It’s about going beyond sales-oriented, chest-thumping messages and instead sharing knowledge and ideas that credibly position your company as an expert.

Metaphorically speaking, it’s the difference between choosing a magnet or a shotgun as your marketing instrument of choice. The shotgun blasts out unsolicited promotional messages, hoping to hit a company that happens to be searching for a service provider. The magnet creates content that draws the best prospects toward you.

What changes does such a “content marketing” strategy suggest for your marketing efforts?

• Think about your genuine areas of expertise and innovation, then stop SELLING and start EDUCATING. Write an article, make a video, do a blog post, deliver a speech at a conference. By providing helpful, substantive information, you will draw people to your message, position your organization as a thought leader, and generate more leads.
• Stop INTERRUPTING prospects and start ATTRACTING them. When’s the best time for a prospect to encounter your company for the first time – while fielding an unsolicited phone call at her desk during a harried morning or while she is researching solutions to a vexing supply chain problem and happens to come across an article you’ve written on precisely that subject?
• Spend less to create one-way advertising that BUYS attention and more to create and market content that EARNS attention. Brand recognition is important to marketing success, so don’t turn off the advertising spigot completely. But ads that pronounce your expertise should be supported by valuable content that demonstrates your expertise.

Shifting from a shotgun to a magnet approach will require time and effort. Content creation requires thoughtful input from your best minds and may pull them away from other important activities. In the end, it’s a choice: invest in the content magnet that will lead your best prospects to you, or load up the shotgun and fire away.

The author, Jim Bierfeldt, is President of Logistics Marketing Advisors, a specialty consulting firm that helps logistics companies increase revenue and profit through improved marketing strategy and communication. Email Jim

Organizational Performance

Helping Your Employees Peak

When considering how to improve organizational performance, many managers look broadly at business operations and believe the answer lies within changing the current structure of the company. While these business operations and processes are vitally important to the company, they can yield only so much growth. The key to being able to harness and unlock new organizational potential lies in being able to help employees work at their highest capacity. Creating conditions for your employees to “peak” with their various skills and talents will make for a much higher performance return than adjusting only the company processes.

Chip Conley brings this idea of employee “peaking” to the table. This term comes from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and puts the focus on reaching the highest needs for self actualization through one’s everyday work. He discusses it through his personal experience and analyzes the effects of helping employees versus just having your employees live up the status quo. This concept of self actualizing through work allows employees to be intrinsically motivated to perform because they see how it fits into the underlying picture of the grander organization. This is contrasted with just living up to the status quo which can only produce status quo results.

Peak performance can be achieved by understanding your employees’ needs and concerns. Letting them know that they are the most important resources in the company will put a focus on having them work at their highest potential. Releasing the true talent of every individual in the company will create more opportunities than can be fathomed. Then, by combining these individual talents, the company can increase its performance greatly because of the synergy created through this collaboration.

Reaching peak performances in organizations is derived from infusing individual abilities in a collaborative environment to function as a community that is tied together by a web of complex relationships throughout the entire company. “Brain power and teamwork have surpassed brawn and individualism” which illustrates the need for thinking individuals who can work flexibly within teams (Conley, 2007, p. 16). Creating opportunities for peak performances is contingent upon the employees being in an environment that allows for learning and growth. This environment can take a number of shapes, but the main emphasis is that the employees can experiment and try new ideas in order to both help the company externally and satisfy their needs for creativity internally.

In the words of Conley, “companies that cultivate an environment that allows for peak individual performance are rewarded with peak company performance” (Conley, 2007, p. 26). It is no longer just about how to organize employees or streamline processes, rather it is no about unleashing the potential of every individual in your company. If you or your company is looking for suggestions regarding how to engage your employees in a way that allows them to “peak”, contact ASIL to discuss a consultation.

Reference: Conley, C. 2007. Peak: How great companies get their mojo from maslow. Jossey-Bass; San Francisco, CA.

Contributed by Joe Pazmany

Click on the links below to view ASIL, Inc.'s MAX Partnering® self-paced software demonstrations:

Strategies and Execution - This demo depicts the tools that organizations can utilize to embrace change effectively and implement it successfully.

Partner Selection and Management - This brief demo displays the tools available to define, select, and implement outsourcing and partner selection.

Scorecards and Corrective Action - This vignette provides visibility to measure and manage the performance of your organization, partners and company.

Self Assessment Sample Questionnaire - This demo will enable you to respond to a small sample of self assessment questions focused on change management and create a Heat Map of your responses to see areas that may need attention. The Driving Complex Change® methodology addresses the six areas of Direction, Ability, Incentive, Resources, Structure, and Action that can impact your effectiveness of change management.

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