Business and Football: Do Businesses Experience the Super Bowl Hangover?
NFL Football is back! And am I happy! I bid adieu to my family (brother, sister) last Sunday for all future Sundays. Told them the next Sunday they would see me without a TV screen in front of my face would be next February. Super Bowl Sunday is my annual Super Bowl/Birthday Bash for Family, and we will happily stuff our faces with wings and birthday cake.
Speaking of Super Bowl, I finally found an advantage of business teams over football teams. Since the first game this Thursday night features the Super Bowl Winners of the last two Super Bowl games, pundits are talking about the Curse. NFL teams experience the Curse– what they call a Super Bowl Hangover: both teams that played in last year’s Big Game experience the Challenge of Repeating.
The stats bear this out: since 1993, few winning teams have followed up their Super Bowl successes with a second Super Bowl appearance, or even advanced to a conference title game in the subsequent season. Some have attributed this to the target on their backs—“you become the biggest game on everybody’s schedule,” said former NFL manager Charley Casserly.
Well, folks, we in the non-NFL world don’t experience such a Curse. . . or do we? When we do well, we expect to do even better the next year. Our top “players” don’t get traded away; they are more motivated than ever to stay with a winning team. But, from my experience as an entrepreneur for 26 years, working with big, successful companies, you need to do 2 VITAL, NECESSARY things to keep your winning streak going:
- Stay IN TOUCH with the customers who MADE you successful! Reach out to them at least once a month, giving them something useful that will continue solving their problems. I have given items from an inspiring written article or report, to a $50-dollar gift certificate to a wine site on line. (remember—problem-solver. . .)
- Keep your employees HAPPY! The 2 things that keep great employees motivated are things you are TOTALLY responsible for doing: full appreciation of their work done, and making them feel “in” on things.
If you fail to do these two things, you are in danger of losing Impact Players. So DO IT!
To see more of my business management and communication tips, check out my new book Necessary Roughess: New Rules For The Contact Sport Of Life!