It all begins with VISION. Please take time to explore what your vision might look like for your company, product, customers and yes, your employees and community as well.

Many businesses are embracing what’s called corporate social responsiblity to make sure that its operations harm no one and instead benefit everyone around it and involved in it.

Your company is part of the local community where it has its offices or manufacture facilities; this community includes neighbors, schools, other businesses, community projects, environmental and conservation projects, and hospitals. A truly green business makes sure that its actions in some way benefit as much of the community as possible. You can help come up with corporate social responsibility policies for the company.

If the wider community benefits from your business, the residents will be loyal to the business, meaning that the business benefits, too.

A company can contribute to the community in many different ways, some of which cost very little:

• Donate old computers and other equipment to schools or community, volunteer, or charity projects. Some charities even accept equipment that’s no longer working, saving it from cluttering up landfill sites.

• Send used toner cartridges to charities or organizations <http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/running-a-green-company-corporate-social-responsib.html#glossary-organic>  that collect them on behalf of charities.

• Campaign for office coffee and tea to come from certified Fairtrade and organic producers.

•Ask for permission to volunteer with a local community project during work hours on a regular basis. For example, you may be able to spend an hour or two a week assisting a teacher at a local school.

• Arrange for your company or just your department to adopt a local nonprofit organization or project, and encourage staff to donate money or time volunteering on the project for a day or weekend.

•  Inquire as to whether your company or department can take on a community service project on company time (with the understanding that all work will stay on track, of course). Consult the appropriate person depending on your company: If you don’t know who that is, start with your supervisor.

• Set up a situation in which someone from your workplace goes to local high schools to talk to students about business and working in your industry.

• Offer local young people work experience appropriate for their ages and abilities and beneficial to your workplace. Check with your Human Resources department or specialist to find out about any legal requirements that the company would have to meet.

Communicate. Whether it is an email newsletter, monthly flier, a reminder card for a tune up, or a holiday greeting card, reach out to your steady customers.

Customer Service. Go the extra distance and meet customer needs. Train the staff to do the same. Customers remember being treated well.

Employee Loyalty. Loyalty works from the top down. If you are loyal to your employees, they will feel positively about their jobs and pass that loyalty along to your customers.

Employee Training. Train employees in the manner that you want them to interact with customers. Empower employees to make decisions that benefit the customer.

Customer Incentives. Give customers a reason to return to your business. For instance, because children outgrow shoes quickly, the owner of a children’s shoe store might offer a card that makes the tenth pair of shoes half price. Likewise, a dentist may give a free cleaning to anyone who has seen him regularly for five years.

Product Awareness. Know what your steady patrons purchase and keep these items in stock. Add other products and/or services that accompany or compliment the products that your regular customers buy regularly. And make sure that your staff understands everything they can about your products.

Reliability. If you say a purchase will arrive on Wednesday, deliver it on Wednesday. Be reliable. If something goes wrong, let customers know immediately and compensate them for their inconvenience.

Be Flexible. Try to solve customer problems or complaints to the best of your ability. Excuses — such as “That’s our policy” — will lose more customers then setting the store on fire. Read our 60-Second Guide to Managing Upset Customers <http://www.allbusiness.com/management/customer-experience-management/2735-1.html>  for more information.

People over Technology. The harder it is for a customer to speak to a human being when he or she has a problem, the less likely it is that you will see that customer again.

Put a Face with a Name. Remember the theme song to the television show Cheers? Get to know the names of regular customers or at least recognize their faces.

A companys first customers are its own employees. If the staff understand and wholeheartedly endorse the companys marketing goals, they will take care of the external customers and ultimately the end users. Research suggests a close link between the happiness of customers and that of employees. For this reason your company needs to be interested in creating success in the external marketplace by first doing so internally. To some extent, the concepts of employee and customer are interchangeable. A well-ordered firm wants its external customers to consider themselves part of the family and its staff to feel that they are respected and their needs are met. Brand equity is the same but carried around in different heads.

Internal marketing is not more important that external but the differences arise more from the separation of the human resources (HR) and marketing silos than from what needs to be measured. The similarities and market driving potential of employee-based brand equity should encourage HR and marketing to swap notes, but such synergy is rare.
At ImagePatrol, we believe the process of employer branding is by nature holistic. It is not about tinkering with terms and conditions or corporate colours in the workplace, but about the total employment experience. Brand equity is synergistic, greater than the sum of its parts, and based on core values. If an organisation increases its employer brand equity it increases its high performing employees’ barriers to exit.

Monster has conducted a survey of more than 500 Human Resources managers and 1,000 workers to assess the use and effectiveness of employer branding as a part of a retention and recruitment strategy. By gaining a better understanding of how HR is using employer brands and how employees are responding to such communication, conclusions can be drawn regarding how HR managers can more effectively manage their own employer brands.

Monsters webinar provided key insights into finding the elements that define a successful brand and learned how to instill these characteristics in your recruitment strategy by:

• Communicating your company’s mission, values and the employee value proposition in an employer brand

• Differentiating your company from its competitors in the eyes of current and potential employees

• Attracting and retaining employees that best fit within your company culture

You must terminate those individuals who violate your values. The old adage one rotten apple spoils the barrel is absolutely true when it comes to the non-performance of your employees. Those employees not consistently demonstrating those non-negotiable behaviors are literally infecting all of your other internal customers not to mention the impact that they are having on your external customers. Stop the spread of that virus right now.

What was once central to corporations – price, quality, and much of the left-brain, digitized analytical work associated with knowledge — is fast being shipped off to lower-paid, highly trained Chinese and Indians, as well as Hungarians, Czechs, and Russians. Increasingly, the new core competence is creativity – the right-brain stuff that smart companies are now harnessing to generate top-line growth. The game is changing. It isn’t just about math and science anymore. It’s about creativity, imagination, and, above all, innovation. _BUSINESS WEEK

Some questions about developing your products that need to be addressed if success can be achieved:

How is your companies understanding emerging market needs, and converting that understanding into successful new products?

How can you predict if an idea is good?

What organizational factors lead your new product to success or failure?

What is the role of design in your new product success?

How can you measure the return on innovation?

This product vision model helps team members pass the elevator test — the ability to explain the project to someone within two minutes. It comes from Geoffrey Moore’s book Crossing the Chasm

* For (target customer)

* Who (statement of the need or opportunity)

* The (product name) is a (product category)

* That (key benefit, compelling reason to buy)

* Unlike (primary competitive alternative)

* Our product (statement of primary differentiation)

For any product, but particularly those with high uncertainty for which significant requirements changes are anticipated, creating a product vision statement helps teams remain focused on the critical aspects of the product, even when details are changing rapidly. It is very easy to get focused on the short-term issues associated with a 2-4 week development iteration and lose track of the overall product vision.

Visions are as varied as the companies that create them. Some focus on competition, others center on product and service, while still others concentrate on community contributions. Some visions articulate an ambitious goal, while others specify market share. We believe that without your own vision your customers are blindly finding their way around your company. They will develop their own vision of your company and take a path in different direction that can damage your business.

Communicating your vision

Developing a vision takes time and effort. Don’t waste that investment by keeping your vision a secret on a piece of paper tucked in your desk. Tell the world and get people excited about it! When people feel invested in a larger purpose, their individual roles become more meaningful. Your vision should not be articulated with just words on paper but with actions and visuals that can build on the emotional attachment.

Creating your own Vision by clarifying your company’s core purpose.

Why are you in business?  Dig deep to reach the value your company provides to customers. How are your customers better off after doing business with you? What specific problems/challenges/pain do you resolve for them?

Identify your company’s core values like innovation, creativity, integrity, social responsibility, education and service.

Think big picture.

Creating a company vision allows you to think big about your company. Let go of your objections and insecurities, listen to your employees’ ideas. Think optimistically and enthusiastically about the dream for your company. Are you open to changing the markets you operate in but unwilling to sell certain products? Firm decisions in this area will focus your vision.

Collaborate with your management team and key stakeholders.

Draft a few possible visions and get feedback on them. Brainstorm with key management, employees and other invested parties. Narrow down your choice and you’ve got a vision. By Developing an effective vision you keep everyone in the company united and moving in the right direction.