Now that content channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook are combining forces with blogs, community forums, SEM, specialty IT help sites and news sources specific to the Web 2.0 and Social Media space (i.e. Mashable, TechCrunch, Slashdot, GigaOM), the power and reach of long-known ROI delivering activities like trade shows, sponsorships, advertising, and networking are growing more worthwhile with a much longer, more powerful tail.
Where this can be dissected is in the role of what historically would be called an “individual contributor” in an organization. The term often used to describe non-revenue influencing employees, “individual contributor,” no longer exists because of the integration of all the above tactics that help yield increased revenue and higher profit. Every person nowadays influences revenue and has the ability to drive it, whether they want to admit it or not.
This is especially true at a small, nimble company like Dyn Inc., where engineers and operations staff use LinkedIn and attend CloudCamps, NERD events, Velocity online webinars, and programming courses put on by other technology companies. Where the client services group named, the DynDNS Ninja Squad, Tweets, produces videos, posts pictures and attends social media workshops, young professional mixers, start-up CEO panels and engage four million users everyday, while researching the coolest new applications or websites on the Internet.
Is someone who analyzes our DNS network performance to make sure we stay true to our 100% uptime obsession influencing revenue? Is the accounting and finance group who crosses the t’s and dots the i’s on our revenue and expenses ensuring our profitability? Is the administrative assistant who ensures our CEO and CTO make it to the big partnership meeting on time contributing to the eventual dollar value we’ll see from that relationship? Is the client services rep that helps an upset customer and turns them into a blogging advocate impacting retention and future business? Heck yeah… how could you argue that?
Our sales team is lean, our marketing budget is modest, so we turn to non-traditional, guerilla and grass roots efforts, and a company-wide commitment to spreading the gospel and awareness of Dyn Inc. and the important services we offer. Each valued person on staff is a key ingredient to this approach and its revenue driving outcomes.
Organizations need to continue to realize that the real value of a company is in its people and the way it operates, from the bottom up. The way its users and customers feel about the place and if they’re willing to tell their friends about it. The way in which its employees approach their jobs – are they having fun, do they rise above expectations, and are people chatting around the kool-aid cooler? Every single person should account for an ROI that translates into monetary returns for the company overall, beyond simply their core job responsibility.
Once you have that, the rest is gravy and the “individual contributors” begin contributing big time to the dollars in the door. You can now call them “revenue contributors” and bring the focus back to why we all have jobs in the first place.
