Barking dogs, crying babies, toddlers toddling, welcome to the reality of working from home.
Since our founding 3 years ago, our teams have been living this life. Here are 3 tips to help you make the adjustment.
Get used to and learn how to live with working odd hours. If you’re accustomed to a routine of “working hours” in the office, you can kiss that goodbye if your children are at home.
Channel your “inner Gandhi” for patience and flexibility. Work when you can find the calm. Early mornings, evenings, and quiet moments in between.
Managers be flexible on your expectations on deliverables and due dates. You may see your team disappear during a good portion of the day.
Count on technical issues, unplanned and spontaneous interruptions, and scheduling issues with conference calls.
In fact, you may be better off adopting the attitude that something will go wrong as the default.
Everyone on camera for video calls…except when someone feels like they don’t want to be.
I’ve seen some posts that organizations mandate it, but the reality of our situation is that you, and/or your home office, may be a complete sh*t show at some point during the day. It happens…and we can deal with you not being seen on a call.
Part II – Now that you’ve been at this for a couple of weeks here are a few other things to consider.
Wall clock to body clock work hours – You may be aware that your energy level and passion vary based on the time of day, now that you’re out of the office you can do something about it. Instead of reaching for another cup of coffee, go for a walk (and take the dog with you) change your work location — it’s spring now and the weather is great for working outside. Working will become more feel driven than time driven.
Listen to your body – also by this point you may have noticed that your makeshift office isn’t exactly ergonomically designed. Pay attention to how long you sit and/or have your head in one position. Don’t worry if you forget, your body will remind you the next day.
Reboot your modem and wireless router – you may have also noticed that your bandwidth has slowed. Consumer Reports recommends rebooting once a month, especially if you have added devices to the network.
Update your work office – now that everyone is out of it, how could you use this time to your advantage. It could be a great time to paint, reorganize the furniture, update the lighting, etc.
Good luck and stay safe!
Making Working from Home, Work…
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Given the popularity of our last video clip we are releasing another clip of Scott’s interview with Brent. In this slightly longer piece Brent addresses the question of what to do if the buyers felt like they had all the content they needed to make a purchase decision and all sales reps were trained on Challenger. How could you still compete?
To view the full interview with Brent Adamson please click here.
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Back in September of 2019, CEO, Scott Gillum, had the opportunity to sit down and interview VP, Brent Adamson. Brent is a distinguished Vice President at Gartner, and a published author with a lot to say about the case between sales and marketing.
During this interview, Brent dove deep into the idea of Challenger as a sales and marketing methodology. These newly released clips are a major highlight to what Challenger is, and isn’t, and how the idea of it has changed over the years.
In part 1 of the clip, Brent goes forth with debunking the idea of Challenger as a ‘sales methodology’, why it should be looked at as more of a ‘go to marketing’ model, and why sales and marketing need to be co-owning the idea of challenger marketing.
In part 2, Brent continues his dive into Challenger Marketing and how marketing and sales needs to focus on the customer in a different way.
Are the customers overlooking information, do customers know more than sales and marketers, or do we need to be telling them what they miss?
To view the full interview with Brent Adamson please click here.
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Just one month into 2020 and we already know that 50% of the sales force isn’t going to make their sales objectives for the year.
In fact, that number has been on the decline for the last 5 years, and one likely reason is that what customers are buying and what you are selling are not aligned.
Here are Scott’s top 3 tips that you can implement now so that you meet your sales objectives in 2020:
Get feedback from your team
Make sure you have 2 whys
Give the customer a vision of the future
Find out more on why these three things are so important to the success of your sales objectives here:
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LHH Rebrand. Is it enough just to give a company a new look? For Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH) the answer was no. After Landor (London) created the new brand identity, LHH engaged Carbon Design to give it life and help reposition the organization with buyers to sell a broader set of solutions.
For the past five months two Carbon teams have worked on new messaging, positioning and creative assets to give meaning to the identity.
LHH launched the new branding at an event in Dallas on January 22, 2020.
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by Katie Weisz Estimated read time: 1 Minute CEO, Scott Gillum, had the chance to be a guest on “AQ Blog and Grill” with host, Alan Quarry. As Alan states on his website, the show “dishes up food for thought on entrepreneurship, branding, startups and more in this video-based weblog.” In this episode, Scott shared more on the building of Carbon Design Co., how he has built consulting success around the idea of “working differently”, and how Carbon delivers value-based services thanks to the team and a “smarter not harder” approach. Follow the conversation here:
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It’s not unusual to find companies referring to their relationship with clients as “partnerships.” It’s common to find client logos on vendor websites. But how often do you see an agency or consulting firm’s logo on client websites? If you visit www.evepark.ca – that’s exactly what you’ll see.
Carbon Design, represented side by side with, a global architecture powerhouse, a world-class designer, and the project principal: the innovative green-tech engineering firm, S2E Technologies Inc. Under S2E’s leadership, these firms are inventing a new consumer category – one that integrates bold new ideas about housing and transportation – and radically resets the carbon footprint of both at the same time.
CASE STUDY
Did you know, that until recently restaurant owners only cared about the cleanliness of the food prep area? Most customers, and owners, assumed that if someone got sick after dining out it was because of food poisoning. That was until Carbon Design and Challenger Inc. helped “challenge” the norm by showing owners that half of the outbreaks in a restaurant were caused by people to people transmissions.
Now owners know where the “hotspots” are, and as a result, restaurant are cleaner than ever. Grab your face mask and enjoy a safe night out, but you may want to avoid the raw oysters 😉.
CASE STUDY
How do you do it? By giving clients and users what they want. Using the remaining budget that was to be used to update the site with the new branding we designed and built an entirely new site on a new platform. But audience needs are constantly evolving so the work never stops. Our team continues to audit performance and make improvements.
As a result, the two-year journey has paid off with the site being named #1 in the industry. Even more importantly, their key priority areas (site search, attorney profiles, etc.) were ranked in the outstanding category. Proving that excellence is a journey not just a destination.