Fulcra Solutions - Leverage blog

On the matter of leadership - The 6 elements of leadership

2011-05-31T10:12:00.000-07:00

As I was walking my dog, Cesco, this morning, I noticed our well-rehearsed interaction, and unspoken language, and thought of its subtle but clear meaning.
Cesco is undoubtedly a well-behaved dog: his leash is loose at his side and he trots next to me, tongue hanging as he enjoys the morning breeze.
What caught my attention is how, every so often, Cesco looks up to me, to make sure he’s still headed in the right direction and that I’m OK with the pace he’s keeping.
Being the leader of a dog can be a very rewarding task or it can be a harrowing experience, as some of the owners at our dog park will confirm.
What I find amazing, however, is how being a leader is actually a universal task. It is obviously harder to be the leader of an entire country than it is to be the leader of a 70 lb, 10-month-old puppy; the basic traits, however, are the same.

There are six traits that are needed to be an effective leader, whether our audience is our family, our employees, our customers or our puppy.

1. First and foremost, all leaders have a dream, or a vision. I should probably number this element “zero,” instead of one, because it is really a condition of existence, rather than a building component. Just like the dog owner who wants his puppy to be a hunter, a guard dog, a companion, a service animal, or any other asset, leaders have the ability to clearly see what’s not (yet) there. I know this great kid, who is now an Olympic champion, who would get up every morning and visualize himself accepting the gold medal. He did that every morning. His vision was clear, and his dream was solidly implanted in his head. He once told me that all of his senses were part of this vision. He could see the glimmering gold. He could smell the grass and the sweat. He could hear the crowd cheer and feel the metal bouncing against his chest. He could, literally, taste victory. A leader without a dream is impossible to imagine. There’s a difference between a wish and a vision. A wish is something that surfaces to our consciousness. A vision is present in every strand of our body, and never leaves us.

2. A dream or vision without a clear objective, however, is just a generic hope. The vision must have a “finish line,” a distinct place of arrival. This is why every training course for dogs has tests: to measure the interim achievements on the way to that final goal. A dog that’s trained to hunt should not run away at the sound of a shotgun going off, or eat the prey before it’s returned to the hunter. The same goes for any other vision. Think about Dr. Martin Luther King's “I have a dream” speech: the power of the speech was not in the fact that the dream was a generic dream where racism is overcome (as the song implies.) The speech contained a finish line that every man, woman and child who listened to it could visualize clearly. When you asked my friend, the Olympic athlete, what his vision looked like, he would tell you under no uncertain terms that he wanted a gold medal in his specialty. Anything else would be short of victory. A clear objective helps us focus more than anything on what we need to do, and allows our followers to form a symbolic “single line” behind us (more about this later on.)

3. Everyone knows that the road to victory is littered with flat tires, abandoned vehicles and puddles of tears. Nobody ever said it would be easy, right? If you look at leaders throughout history, the third common trait to each of them was conviction. A dog will follow your command only if she knows you mean business. When I taught Cesco about the concept of getting in his crate, I didn’t force him: I didn’t grab him by the collar and shoved him in there. I brought him in front of the crate, opened the door, pointed at it, and said to him “Crate!” I didn’t look away from him for a second. We stood there, in a game of “crate chicken” for a couple of minutes. He sat and looked at me. He wanted to get up and go chew on his bone, but knew that I wanted something else from him, and I had the conviction to stand there until I got it. After a few minutes of this stand-off, Cesco got up, walked in his crate, turned around and plopped himself in there. He got a clear “good boy!” from me, followed by a biscuit. People are not that different. Everyone’s attention is pulled in many directions and, though they want to naturally follow something and someone they believe in, they look at the leader for a clue as to whether their efforts are well-invested in that particular cause. A leader who balks at difficulties, hardship and unexpected roadblocks shows shaky conviction, and can count on losing followers. Following your objective is different from hard-headedly staying the course: one is the overarching path to your goal, while the other is the blueprint to arriving there (the “plan” we’ll discuss next.) The latter can change according to the circumstances but, stop walking the path of the former, and your credibility will tailspin.

4. Only the fools lack a plan. I have so often talked about the need to have a plan in business, that I will simply refer to my previous post, without harping on the subject. Suffice it to say that a vision without a plan, without a blueprint to go from “now” to “dream” is like driving in a foreign city, for the first time, without a GPS. You might get there, eventually, but nobody in your family will ever let you drive again. Cesco often wants to go his own way (usually to inspect something squashed in the middle of the road, or a squirrel climbing a tree,) but he knows that I have a plan to get us wherever we’re going. All I have to do is remind him of that. He knows I won’t change my mind and knows I will continue on my path, because I know where I’m going. So, he falls back in line and runs back to my side when I call him, lest he risks to get lost.

5. Leaders are called that because, well, they lead someone. Be it a family of four, a company of four-hundred, or an army of forty thousand, a leader has a responsibility toward those who follow. Inspiration is not transmitted by osmosis, and people need to be told why they are doing what they are doing. For this reason, all leaders display another common trait: the ability to communicate clearly and unequivocally. A leader will first need to convey her dream or vision to someone. Conviction is infectious and people want to follow: when the vision is conveyed clearly, those who hear it will tell others, who will be automatically predisposed to hear more. I have shown this video before, but I want to show it again, because it explains, in under three minutes, how communication and “followership” work! A leader will convey the plan in a manner that is clear and actionable: anything short of that and some may stop following, or try to achieve the same goal through their own means, making it difficult to create that cohesive group that is necessary to achieve the vision.

6. The last trait common to all leaders is stamina: the ability to remain focused on what’s important. We’ve touched on this subject while discussing conviction, but stamina requires a long-term commitment in the face not only of challenges, but also of victories. Stamina is obviously what's needed in order to continue working on achieving our vision, but it offers something more: when a leader starts to be recognized as a leader, it’s easy for him or her to shift the focus from the vision to the role itself. People will emerge from time to time to try to usurp that power; others will come with gifts and compliments, trying to extort a favor, or simply to bask in the glory of second-hand leadership. Promising leaders have fallen hard and fast when their focus shifted. Mother Teresa and Gandhi, to name two of my all-time favorite leaders, started movements that changed the world. They died poor and shy of cameras and offers for personal gain, and today embody the concept of leadership. Others didn’t follow suit, and thought that the movement they led was “them,” or shifted the focus. This is how revolutions become dictatorships, and leaders become tyrants. Sooner or later they fall, usually at the hand of the very people who once followed them.

BONUS! This brings me to the “bonus” point of this post: many have asked the question “Can leaders influence without authority?” and some complain that the reason for their inefficiency is lack of authority. I offer a different viewpoint: throughout history, and in everyday’s life, true leaders achieve authority. They’re not given a business card or a title and make their success with that. Authority is achieved, not handed down.

Make sure your leadership skills measure up to these elements every step of the way, and you will not let your constituents down.

Lead me to success...

2011-05-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, I received an email from one of the list-leasing companies with the title "What would you do with 1,000 FREE leads?"

Catchy taglines aside, the subject made me think about one of the most overlooked resource that companies have: leads. Often, an organization doesn't even stop to think about a lead-collection strategy. Worse yet, they don't even stop to think about the leads they are currently collecting without even planning the process.

It's literally like having a hen that lays golden eggs and looking at it, wondering if you should roast it or boil it.
The process known as lead management is usually not contemplated by many companies, though it's a very basic flow, and it is the foundation to a strong opportunity funnel (the representation of how much business you could theoretically be doing vs. the business you are doing vs. the business you will foreseeably be doing.)

There are four steps to lead management:

1. Collection

2. Qualification

3. Contact

4. Follow up

Each step needs to be properly planned and perfectly executed. This will allow you to convert as many leads as possible without wasting resources.

The Collection phase should include all touchpoints with prospective clients: online, offline, through promotions, through referrals, at trade shows, etc. How you collect leads is heavily dependent on your customer profile. If your target audience is CEOs of Fortune 5000 companies, your process will be very different than if your audience is retired individuals, or college students.

Lead Collection must be easy and offer an immediate advantage for the person whose information you want to harvest. Just because you are asking for name and email address, does not mean people will give it to you.

The Qualification process is the filter that allows you to wade through a sea of individuals and identify those that you should push through the rest of the process. Whenever you offer a bait for people to provide you with their much-sought-after information, you will attract some (at times many) individuals who are simply hanging around for the freebie. Believe it or not, there is an entire category of consumers that spend a considerable amount of time signing up for anything free, sending in for any sample, and entering anything that even remotely resembles a sweepstake. Those people are usually not interested in what you have to offer, but it's the nature of the beast, and the best you can do is accept them and filter them out, so you're not investing any follow-up resources on them.

Once again, how you qualify people varies based on your audience and your offer. Qualification elements will also dictate what information you collect: if you are selling durable business equipment, your qualification might be budget and purchase timeframe. If you operate a restaurant or bar, you might decide qualification based on the age or the distance of the respondent from your place of business.

Contacting the lead is the place where most companies fall on their organizational face. Though it is obvious that leads in a hard drive on neatly placed in a folder are useless, that's exactly what happens. The reason for this is not self-sabotage or laziness, but a lack of planning.

The most important phase of lead management is the follow up but, in order to be effective, you have to know what you will do once you interact with the leads. Skip this step and you will be like the guy who goes hunting, buys his gear, drives to the woods, camps overnight, tracks the deer down, puts it in his crosshairs and... freezes. Now what?

The whole process must be mapped out ahead of time.

Are you going to offer him or her an in-office presentation? Do you have a promotion that will speed up the conversion? Do you have an event to which you are going to invite your qualified lead?

Capturing the lead requires one bait. Converting it requires another one.

This is no time for improvisation! Your plan must provide for a pitch of what you have to offer and an element that will entice your lead to try you out.

And if you think one call, or email, or letter, or visit is all you need, think again!

Assume that it will take several attempts to convert whatever lead you will convert, which brings us to the fourth step: follow-up.

This last step usually take out many of the organizations that made it through steps #1 through #3.

You should allow for at least three contacts, and each one of them needs to be planned in detail. What you offer and say in the first communication cannot be what you offer ans say in the second and third, or you will limit your success.

The good thing about it is that the only thing that is mandatory, here, is planning. How you do it is up to you. You can test certain types of communications and promotions and see how they work, then move to others and find out how those stack up against the previous. Have fun with it, and you will see your business grow while you're smiling.

Last but not least (it would be insane for me to close without mentioning metrics at least once!) make sure you measure your success.

How many leads did you bring home with process "A"? What was the cost per lead? How many of those were qualified? How many did you close with one contact? And with two? And with three or more? What promotion worked best to convert leads? What is the lifetime value of a lead captured through one process vs. another?

Start small and increase the size of the net you cast.

Most importantly, make sure that the promotions and communications reflect who you are. You will ensure the right relationship from the onset and prosper lead after lead!

If everyone twitted off the bridge, would you?

2011-05-16T09:51:00.001-07:00

I'm a big fan of technlogy as a means of automating processes but, sometimes, technology can be a hindrance more than a benefit.

Twitter is a wonderful platform, designed to allow individuals and organizations to dialogue about matters that are of common interest to the group (be it branding, management, finance, cooking or any other subject.)

When using Twitter for business and marketing purposes, an organization is doing two things: communicating with its followers and listening to those it follows. When one of these two promises is broken (actually or apparently) communication ceases to exist and the trust can be damaged.

I know how important it is to appear popular in many of life's venues. It starts in Junior High and snowballs from there. We want to have many friends, as that allows us to project an image of authority and likeability.

Or so it seems.

When it comes to Twitter, it is no different: countless tools have been developed to allow an account holder to rack up as many followers as possible. The most popular of these tools is the "auto-follow" feature, once available directly from Twitter, now offered only by third-party developers.

For the handful of people that do not know how auto-follow works, here is an easy way to describe it: an automated process finds out when people are following you, and follows them back automatically. Alternatively, and even more twistedly in my opinion, an account holder can set preferences that will allow the auto-follow system to pick individuals with that profile and follow them automatically. This is often done in hope that most of these users will also have an auto-follow feature that will cause them to put an extra notch on the "Followers" counter of the account holder.

What's wrong with all this? Primarily the fact that this approach undermines the principle upon which Twitter was created: it is a race to the highest artificial follower and not an effort to communicate. I often receive a "new follower notification" from users who have 20,000 or more followers and who follow 20,000 or more people. This is a clear indication that "auto-follower" techonology is afoot.
Does anyone really think that a single user (or an organization, for that matter) can follow thousands of users? The answer is obviously not. If most of my 20,000 users are obtained through auto-follow, they, too, are auto-following me and I'm therefore spending twitsources (a word I made up just now) to speak to no-one at all. Why bother?

Additionally, users who have thousands of followers and follow thousands back are sending a disingenuous message to the world: I want to talk, but I have no interest in listening, and I do things in bulk. I will send out the loudest message possible and hope that someone hears it.

I have news for them: nobody will hear you, because nobody's listening.

Twitter has stopped offering auto-follow features in 2009 because, it decided, it went against the very reason Twitter was founded. It was an "anti-branding" tool for them.

Yes: auto-follow can be a form of politeness (thanks for following me; I'm following you, too) but does not help anyone do what Twitter was intended to do, and its 'abuse' is often more prevalent than its other uses.

The ultimate machiavellian tool in the auto-follow world is that which was developed to follow users for three days and then drop them. In this case, in addition to projecting the false image of one who wants to follow you, these individuals are adding malice, by tricking you into giving them a follow-back just to drop you later on.

A great way to approach this is, in my opinion, to follow someone who is following you for a few days, and to see if their posts are relevant and interesting to you. If they are, you just made a new friend. If they're not, it wasn't meant to be. Will he drop you later on, because you're not following back? It's ok: you can't be interesting to (and friend with) everyone.

I've always been a big believer that "you are who you are," whether your actions are performed at work or at home. What kind of ethics are you projecting to your potential constituents, when the way you communicate to them is tainted by the simple desire to appear, or you tell them that you're listening when you're really unable to do so, or - even worse - you are tricking them into lending an ear so that you can stop listening to them but still count them as "interested party" to everyone else?

The beauty of social media technlology is its transparency, but that can be a double-edged sword.

I'm not saying that auto-follow has no legitimate purpose, but I'm saying that Twitter is becoming like one of the trees I see at the Mount Vernon mansion, near my house, in spring: full of blackbirds, crammed on every branch, squacking away at nobody in particular. Everyone has something to say and nobody is listening.

Make sure you are not only saying things that matter to your followers, but that also that you are following the right people.

The result will almost always be a filtered kind of communication that is free of much of the pollutants that make interaction difficult; in the meantime, you might become regarded as one worth following and listening to in his or her own right. And that, my friends, is worth all of the deaf listeners in the world!

How to power a brand

2011-05-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

Last month we said good-bye to Norio Ohga, former President and CEO of Sony.

Ohga was certainly famous for making of Sony the electronics giant we know today, and for promoting much of the innovation we take for granted, but he was also (and maybe more importantly) the creator of the great memory platform innovation known as the CD.

Ohga (whose dream was to become an opera singer) started his career at Sony by pure coincidence, when a letter written to the company about their need to improve the fidelity of their records to help singers improve their skills, like a balerina uses a mirror to improve her posture, landed him his first job there.

Why is that important in a blog that focuses on branding and marketing, and not on technology?

From where I'm standing, Ohga's career shows us the great and awesome power that is unleashed when two elements of leadership collide:

1. The creation of a differentiator - Ohga had decided that Sony would be known for its technology. It wouldn't be 'another technology company,' like many others in Japan; it would be the benchmark by which all technologies are measured.

2. The nurturing of the differentiator - Ohga's mantra was that Sony would obsolete its own products. He would not simply stand by and be challenged by other companies in their quest to dethrone Sony as "mayor of technologyville." This approach also forced everyone at Sony to continue working on innovation. There was no time to enjoy the laurels of one particular victory, lest you start seeing your competitors fast approaching.

3. The embodiment of the differentiator - It wasn't enough for Ohga to know that Sony was living their differentiator; the consumer had to believe that, too. That's why Ohga insisted on the slick, black finish that is synonimous with Sony product to this day.

As important as these elements are, Ohga strengthened these cardinal leadership rules by adding his own brand of passion. The CD, which is today a universally recognized silver disc, the size of which is as familiar to our hands as the cup we poor coffee in when we first wake up, was decided by him when he insisted that this new medium be large enough to fit Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

No focus group had asked or would ever ask that. There was no economic or demand reason to make it "just-that" size. Ohga wasn't responding to a specific demand of the marketing, and wasn't even fulfilling a latent need. He was just injecting his passion into that product.
Now... I'm not saying that the CD would have not taken off had it been a quarter inch shorter. What I am saying is that Ohga proved that success is made of objective steps and subjective decisions, which create a powerful brand of differentiation that becomes palpable and drives our desire to succeed.

The slick black finish and the size of the CD resoundly speak of Ohga's passion as much as the technology they represent, as much as the elements that the name Sony conjure up, and as much as household names like the Walkman are indelebly connected to his brand.

Your conviction is as unique as your DNA. Make it shine through and drive your decisions. The result will be an incredible symphony for your business.

The 11 most common mistakes in social media

2011-05-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

So, you have decided to dive in the social media world. With so many possible interactions (see previous post on the Conversation Prism,) all you really have to do is create a user profile and start interacting, right?
No so fast!
Before you take that first step, you should know about some of the most common and dire mistakes businesses make when using a social media tool.
The fact that social media is seemingly so simple to use also means that anyone can participate. And anyone does: you are competing with hundreds of thousands of companies vying for the attention of the same customer.

When an organization starts using social media tools, it can fall in many traps, but there are eleven specific mistakes that I see time and time again, and can spell disaster for a company.

You should use this as a checklist, to ensure that your interaction is not simply white noise.
These mistakes include:
1. A lack of plan and strategy.
Let’s face it: there are only so many hours in the day and so many marketing activities you can be engaged in. Like with any other marketing activity, if you don’t have a clear objective, you will never reach it! (You can read more about how to create a strategy and plan by reading this post.) Having a clear social media objective allows you to clarify which social media activities you should focus on (see point 11, below) and whether or not your efforts are successful (see point 7)
2. Communicating inappropriately
That amounts to not communicating at all. Remember that there are primarily two reasons why anyone will interact with you through social media vehicles: to get a specific resource (information, answers, solutions, education, free products, etc.) or to be entertained. Failing to provide content that is relevant to your audience and their relationship with you, fresh so that the relationship is maintained, and valuable to the need it is trying to satisfy by connecting with you, will result in your being voted off the social media island.
3. Communicating inconsistently
This is one of the most common mistakes that corporate or individual communicators alike make. Imagine you’re at a cocktail party and someone approaches you to ask you where you bought that great tie you’re wearing. You tell him, and he responds that it’s great, and is wondering how long ago you bought it. As you’re about to respond, he gets up and walks away, without saying a word, only to come back forty-five minutes later to pick up the conversation. Would you feel there is genuine interest on his part in having a conversation?
When you create a profile, you’re making an implicit promise: I want to have a conversation with you, my constituent, and ask for your time and interest. If you break that promise, it will be hard to pick up from where you left off. An example of this baffling behavior is Maytag Cooking, on Twitter (@Maytagcooking.) They set up an account in June 2008 and racked up 867 followers, who expressed an interest in conversing. After four tweets, @Maytagcooking fell off the face of Twitter, on October 14, without a word of explanation. Was he kidnapped? Did his computer break down? Is he even related to the Maytag brand?
4. Using social media tool to sell, sell, sell!
Social media (and inbound marketing as a whole) is not an advertising poster, and people expect that the communication that follows be respectful of that. If your followers or readers engage with you expecting valuable or entertaining information and all you give them is a hard sell on the feature/benefits of what you’re selling, they will lose interest faster than a three year old listening to the periodic table being listed.
5. Assuming that social media is free
The fact that you can set up most of the accounts for free does not mean that social media is free. Social media is a required investment and, as such, needs a dedicated budget, in terms of both time and cost.
If time and cost weren’t an issue, social media would be the great leveler, and most companies would do it right (when the reality is that most companies do it wrong!)
6. Failing to listen
Social media offers the single greatest opportunity that has been often missing in traditional marketing strategy: a two-way communication. If you blow that opportunity on always talking and never listening, you are using only 50% of the power it offers. Listening also requires the publication of content that elicits a conversation. Without that, you’re just publishing noise. If you act as if it were all about you, that’s exactly what your audience will think: a very unattractive marketing trait…
7. Not measuring it
The old adage “Fifty percent of my advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which fifty percent” is a thing of the past. I have been around the marketing block enough times to have heard all of the variations of ad agencies’ excuse on why traditional advertising is immeasurable. Social media interaction is immediate and immediately measureable. There is a host of tools to monitor all sorts of data points about your efforts. Obviously, in order to measure your successes, you need to define what you’re trying to obtain through your strategy. Measurements must include key performance metrics and actionable reviews, to ensure constant improvement.
8. Expecting instant results
Nothing happens overnight. You are not going to have thousands of followers from day one, you are not going to experience crowds of consumers lining up outside your door willing to spend cash, and you’re not going to be the #1 voice in your segment by simply opening one of the many accounts available. Social media success requires focus, dedication, consistency, technical understanding and time. You just cannot succeed without any of these traits and you simply cannot give up because you're not seeing results after one tweet.
9. Using the wrong human resources
If you allocate the wrong resources to your social media strategies, you will end up with very little to show for. Just because social media is a relatively new way to communicate, it does not mean it should be managed by a 20-year old intern. In other cases, companies will hire individuals whose qualifications are to simply be active participants of social media environments. This is a major mistake, because it assumes that those people also understand the marketing rationale that goes behind social media engagement. I love Ferrari, but would make a terrible mechanic!
Social media is serious business. The human resources allocated to its deployment must know and understand the objectives and tactics that are being used, as well as how to use them to the greatest advantage for the company. They also need to know what to say and how to say it, so that the voice that comes through is that of the organization. They need to know what language is appropriate and what language must be avoided, how to engage participants even when they are angry or critical of you, and they need to be able to manage the communication process consistently, having a clear understanding of your company as a whole.
It is also important to engage other people in the communication process: salesmen, engineers, experts, etc. but always in a way that is controlled, planned, and responds to the requirements of your social media strategy.
Leave any of these things to anyone but a social media professional and you will pay a price!
10. Treating social media as a the answer to all marketing questions

No company does only television commercials and no retail marketing, or only trade shows and no promotion deployment. The same is true of social media and traditional marketing. The former is a vital touch point for any organization, but the latter still exists. Consumers (B2B or B2C) aren’t drones; they have not changed their synaptic processes to respond only to social media stimuli. We still live in a world where we respond to traditional messaging: we still watch TV, salivate at a good bargain, enjoy dropping by at the electronics store to watch how clear the image of that particular television set really is. Developing a social media strategy without incorporating it in the traditional marketing strategy creates an experience gap that consumers will notice, making both efforts less effective.
11. Using every tool available
Just because MySpace exists does not mean you have to use it. If you sell piercing services, LinkedIn might not be an ideal vehicle for you. Make sure you select the social media tools that are good for your brand, audience and specific objectives. Using too-broad a spectrum of tools is dispersive, costly and sometimes counterproductive, since your message gets diluted.
Make sure you have this “check list” handy as you develop your strategy. You will reap the benefits of social media success and ensure a long and prosperous relationship with your customers, current and potential.

The secret of branding (it's counterintuitive!)

2011-05-04T19:11:00.001-07:00

A quick post about brands.

I'm always amazed when I hear people talk about brands as if they were this artificial construct, developed for the purpose of convincing people to buy a product or service.

Brands are not that. What I just described is a slogan, or a catchphrase.

A brand exists before its name is ever uttered.

Great brands all share the same ingredients: a great idea, a passion to fuel the fire of that idea, hard work to bridge the gap between idea and concrete event, and a differentiator, as simple as it may be.

After that, it is the marketing process that spreads the idea, and the structure behind its communication strategy that makes it bigger. But at first, a brand in its simplest form is an idea that makes a difference.

The ability of a great communicator is to engage the audience primarily in those attributes that define the brand: those few, precious elements that distinguish a brand from all the others by shedding the right light on the idea, the passion and the work that make that brand unique.

Communicating a brand is not about "dressing it up." Whenever I work on branding, the toughest thing is to chip away at all the layers of "non-brand:" those attributes and characteristics that have been added or that were picked up over time, but aren't part of the original "essence of that brand."

The work of branding is often like the work of a director in the cutting room: it is hard and compelling, because it requires to give up things, rather than adding them. In the end, you have only so many minutes of movie; anything that does not fit must be cut, as hard as it is to do.

Branding is about shaving off until you get to the essential: that which makes one brand completely different from any other.

Once you've done that, and you look at the floor, littered with clippings of what your brand is NOT, you will feel a sense of renewed energy: your brand is now leaner, and can move unhindered through the maze of competition.

Integrate this!

2011-05-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

I have a dog, Cesco, who is only 9 months old. Cesco is a Goldendoodle who loves to dive, especially if the water is below -15 and, run in the woods, especially if they are muddy and filled with bugs. Needless to say, during the summer I have to give him his flea medication twice as often.
That's how I ended up at Petco, the chain of pet stores, wondering if their marketing strategy is a coincidental debacle, or if they actually put some thought behind it. But let's start from the beginning.
Like most conscientious buyers, I spent a few minutes online to compare prices, before setting off on my journey. I quickly realized that Petco's pricing for Cesco's anti-flea medication was really good: $41 for four doses versus the average $53 in most other places. I called the Petco store closest to my house and they confirmed that they had that particular brand in stock.

When I got to the store, I quickly noticed that the parking lot was completely empty, though it was prime shopping time (Saturday afternoon!) The inside of the store confirmed my initial assessment: people were not lining up to buy any Petco product.

I self-assuredly moved down the aisle, armed with the knowledge that I had done my due-diligence work with pricing.

When I reached the cabinet containing the anti-flea medications, I was baffled by the difference in pricing: the advertised price was now almost $60 - hardly a bargain.

After a quick check, I was told that the price I found was for online purchases, because that's what the Petco.com site shows.

Really? Are they aware that they are running a business that has both online and brick-and-mortar (BnM) sales? I could tell I was not making breach in the 16-year old clerk's business savvy.

I quickly pulled up the price on my Blackberry and showed the clerk the pricing, the website (their own) and the fact that nowhere on the site did it state that pricing was for online purchases. I asked if they could honor that pricing, and pointed out that I had gotten in my car and drove to their store, which was apparently more than 99.99% of Washington DC had decided to do that day.

"Sorry..."
That was the answer.

I don't blame the clerk, who was doing his job. I blame the strategy, or lack thereof.

Companies need to understand that - if they decide to run an online and BnM business together - the two are two sides of the same coin. The objective of the BnM is to allow the customer to experience the product first-hand, in an environment that is conducive to building loyalty, and to generate sales. The objective of the online store is to provide a quick and convenient method of transacting, and to generate sales.

When companies lose sight of the fact that the two environments must complement each other and work together, you get in jams like the one I experienced. When companies feel that they want to focus on their online business alone and (pardon my French) 'screw the walk-in customer,' they create a disadvantage for themselves online and off.

The two realities coexist.

It's like going on a first date with a girl and dressing up and being knowledgeable of wines and philosophy, but, when she comes to our house for the first time, we show up in our underwear, with Cheetos all over our stained shirt, with the "Three Stooges" blaring from the TV and pizza boxes all over the house. And our answer is "Well, yeah, but that was 'out of the house Matteo'"

A brand promise is a brand promise, no matter where. It realizes itself also in the pricing.

It's ok to offer "online only" discounts and promotions, but not distinctive pricing or differential treatment of any sort.

Integrating your business also means integrating the promises your business makes.

Do that, and people will think of your brand as consistent and safe.

Don't do that and I can promise your parking lots will always have plenty of parking space. And your online presence will soon follow.

Photogenic marketing (QR codes are your friends)

2011-04-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of QR codes: the square, 2D (using lines that are vertical and horizontal, as opposed to the traditional, 1D barcodes) graphic that acts as an image portal to web-based or other content.
Quick Response (QR) codes were first introduced fifteen years ago in Japan and are slowly making their way into the life of marketers across the United States.

The adoption of these codes has been rather sluggish in the USA (many smart phone owners have yet to download the software that redirects QR codes to web content,) but the possibilities for an out-of-the box approach to social marketing are certainly there.

Before we delve in the missed opportunities, some basic info might be helpful.

What is a QR Code?
It is a digital design that looks like this:

This is a relatively "vanilla" code, but you can find embellished versions that include that company's logo in the background or some other graphic.
When you take a picture with your smart phone camera (and provided you have downloaded one of the free applications that interact with the code,) the QR will tell your smart device what to do (usually to a website or other online environment.) The action is embedded in the QR code; all you have to do is snap that bad boy.

How difficult is it to create a QR code?
If you can read this blog, you can create a QR code. There are plenty of online applications that will let you develop your QR code. I personally use Kaywa's code generator, but that is a personal choice.
Why a QR code?
Communication has become a very immediate and fast-paced thing, and people expect to interact with you brand and organization in a way that is unobtrusive and on their terms. A QR code allows exactly for that. Web addresses might be hard to remember, and can only take the user to a page. That is great, but it's not the only way to interact with your customers.
A QR code will allow you to do things like:
- Connect the user with a live operator by phone
- Record an event on the user's calendar or an email address
- Give the user directions to a place
- Download coupons or other material

No matter how you use them, QR codes are the ideal bridge between printed and online media.
Who has used QR codes successfully?

The most common use of a QR code is available every morning, while you stand in line waiting for your mocha: Starbucks has made QR code use as widespread as their ubiquitous stores, when they introduced the application that lets customers pay for their caffeine fix through their smart phone.

There are many case studies of successful marketing use of QR codes, but I especially like an Austin, TX company that used QR codes for a scavanger hunt. The promotion made full use of the flexibility and trackability of this technology. Another great idea I have read about is a car wash fundraiser where all of the washers wore t-shirts that had a QR code for donation printed on them. No cash needed!
I use the Metro a lot, here in Washington DC, and I'm amazed by the opportunities advertisers miss by not publishing some actionable QR code with their ads.
With this said, I would caution people to use QR codes wisely. Like all the other weapons in your marketing arsenal, the use of this specific tool should be used only when it makes sense. The reason why these codes were developed is to get information on the run. Before you include one of these in your campaign, make sure that their use is a benefit and not a hindrance. You should also make sure that the action that the QR performs is appropriate to your audience and the context of your communication piece: if you are running an ad campaign on an in-flight magazine and your QR code tells the smart phone to open a web page at 32,000 feet when there is no connection, you’ve got a lemon. Opt instead for an automatic email contact, which can be stored and sent as soon as the flight lands.

Another common pitfall of QR users is linking the code to flash-rich or otherwise mobile media unfriendly content. Remember that the #1 users of a QR code will be the customer "on the go," who snaps a picture from an iPhone or Blackberry. If the result of this interaction is a frozen phone that must be rebooted (it's happened to me on a number of occasions) you've got a rotten lemon.

As always, first make sure your objectives are clear, and then opt for a QR code, if it makes sense.

The future of QR codes
Experts have conflicting opinions on where QR codes are going. The recently-unveiled iPad 2 offers two cameras, one of which, some say, was designed also to make QR codes easy to scan. If that is the case, there is no better vehicle than the iPad to make the sluggish use of QR codes pick up.

New iterations of the QR code allow for a smaller graphic that is rectangular instead of square, and compressed to contain more information than before. The possibilities become even more appealing!

There are those, however, who maintain that QR codes are not going to ever be big, since there have been technologies (Bluetooth, for example) that came after the QR code and are a lot more prominent today.

Whether you believe the former theory or the latter, the reality is that QR code technology offers great opportunities that many marketers are missing.

Let’s take the example of political advertising: since QR codes are easy to come by, imagine how easy it would be to create voting zone-specific codes and an ad campaign where a message is embedded in the QR code, along with location ID of the ad. When people snap a picture of the code, they get the message, which is in and of itself exposure for the candidate. At the same time, the candidate has a map of where most of his/her constituents are located, and where he/she might need to focus efforts in order to win the race.

Look at the whole non-profit industry. How easy is to increase conversion and donation value by making QR codes available for specific donations?

The bottom line is, as always, that you need to understand QR codes before using them, and you must insert this technology in the context of a larger campaign. Certainly, simply slapping the code on your ad and sending people to your homepage can be a good thing, but is it really that hard to remember your web address? If so, you should think about buying another domain name!

The cornerstone of this technology, in my opinion, is that it allows your brand to interact with your customers in a way that used to be impossible. Most importantly, it allows your customers to take an immediate action, a specific one, engaging in your brand on your mutual terms. Make sure that the action ensuing from scanning the code is relevant to the customer and represents a true conversion for you; in other words, make sure you monetize your efforts.

The best plans...

2011-04-21T14:28:00.001-07:00

The more I look around, the more I see no plans.

Most business people understand (on a purely logical level) the importance of planning. If you talk to them and discuss the benefits of planning from achieving goals, staying focused and all that, they will wholeheartedly agree with you.

So, what is it that keeps most (not many but most) small businesses toward reaping the benefits of a solid business plan?

The answer is riddle-like: it is, well, planning.

And what is the first step to planning? Setting an objective.

Seneca, whose wisdom won him the trust of emperors and senators alike, in ancient Rome, once said: "Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind."

Most small businesses don't have their sites on any objective. They really exist, rather than grow. They strive, instead of thriving.

Years of "doing it the same way" has resulted in a two-headed monster of hum-drum whose aim is to simply survive: its final objective is to make it to the end of the day, or week, or quarter, and marvel at how well it has grown or, in the sadder cases, how much it has lost.

Words like post-mortem, return on investment, gap coverage, and critical success factors are never uttered, when they should be part of the staple diet of any small business.

Leadership expert Paul J. Meyer talked about plans as means of crystallizing one's goals.

There are three easy steps to organic growth:
1. Set an objective - don't run into analysis-paralysis, here. Just set a goal. Make it challenging, but not impossible. Don't worry about odds of achievement and variables. Just set the goal.

2. Set course - make a plan. Now is the time to look at variables and possible roadblocks. Your plan must have timelines and measurable deliverables. A well-laid plan should also include who is in charge of what.

3. Measure your results. Don't wait until the end of the plan to find out if you won or lost. Set intermediate measurement points and objectives, so you can benchmark your results often and take corrective measure, if necessary.

4. Rinse and repeat. Along the way, you will find out what works and what doesn't. Make note of that, so you can repeat what works and eliminate what doesn't.

Any good plan requires a basic set of traits, without which your success will be severely limited.

1. The ability to dream big. If you picture it, you can achieve it, so the ability to visualize what could be is paramount.

2. The ability to play like you mean it. If you have to fund your plan (with time, money or other resources) make sure that you have those resources available.

3. Tenacity. The draw of everyday pressure will beckon at every turn. Keep your eyes on the prize and don't let go until you've reached your goal. Persist, no matter what. You will encounter hurdles, and at times even failure. Even then, persist.

4. Discipline. Don't take that first step unless you are committed to taking the last. Respect yourself and your goals.

5. Support. Sometimes it is just moral; other times it is more practical. Either way, make sure you understand what you need and make it available.

6. The ability to shift your approach, and think of your objective as a purpose, not a dream.

I want to leave you with one final phrase, by writer Robert Heinlein -
"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it."

When you get up, tomorrow morning make sure hope you have your goal clear in your mind, your path to it clear in your heart, and your desire to reach it, strong in your limbs.

Now go get 'em!

kə-myōō'nĭ-kā'shən (it’s pronounced ‘communication’) or... 'The seven most common mistakes a communicator should avoid'

2010-04-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
George Bernard Shaw

Let’s face it: technology has made the potential for communication a rich and powerful element of our business strategy mix.

The use of the word “potential” is very important here: a potential is not money in the bank, but something that requires some degree of effort to be realized.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email blasts, websites, snail mail… the list is truly endless and it is an indicator of how fast and efficiently anyone of us can say something, nowadays.

And yet, while we look with wonder at what technology has done for us, we must ask ourselves “is this truly communicating?”

The answer, from where I’m standing, is a resounding “Maybe.”

The simple fact that we send out messages or fill a screen with text, as individuals or corporate entities, does not necessarily mean that we are communicating.

Carl Buechner said it best: “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

Communication makes sense when it is purposeful, planned and relevant. Anything else is just chit-chat, and there’s plenty of that already.
One of the definitions of the word communication is “a connection allowing access between persons or places.” That access is often overlooked, making communication a moat, rather than a bridge, between business and constituents.

There are seven common mistakes made by companies when communicating. Some are more prone to certain mistakes, while others sprinkle a mix of them all throughout their communication. No matter what, remember that lack of true communication can hurt. A lot.

Regardless of which ones apply to you and when, make sure you never, ever…

1. SAY THINGS THAT AREN’T RELEVANT
This one may seem like a no-brainer, but how many times have you read a blog, a mail piece, or some other communication piece and simply wondered: “uh?”
This blog is mostly read by individuals engaged in the business of marketing, branding, etc. I may be very excited about some other issue, one day, or may be very tempted to broadcast a special training session that my company usually reserves for a different sector, but I have to wonder: is it relevant to my audience? Just because I have an audience, does not mean that it wants to hear everything I’m saying. Make sure you calibrate your message and content to the people who will be hearing it. Is the message something that they will be interested in hearing? Is it enriching, or valuable, or in some way actionable?
If you have a varied audience, it makes sense to segment it, based on their interest, or geographic location, or demographics. There are online tools, like ConstantContact.com, that allow you to create neat “buckets” in which broadly-labeled names can be placed, so that you can pick and choose who is going to receive your message based on who is going to consider it relevant.
Your audience will forgive the occasional slip, but communicators beware: say irrelevant things often enough and your communication will become white noise, easily tuned out by your audience.

2. SAY TOO MUCH/TOO OFTEN
There are those who like the sound of their own voice. The ease of communication that comes with technology means that it is easy to over-communicate. It also means that it is as easy to block an incoming message, if it starts to seem too insistent. Make sure that you’re not talking too much, and that you’re not broadcasting too often. A company’s message needs to be sent out like a neighbor, asking for a cup of sugar: if you do it too much or too often, Mr. and Mrs. Smith will stop answering the door, and pretend they’re not home.

3. SAY TOO LITTLE/TOO SELDOM
Just as it happens in the case of over-communication, there is such thing as too little of a good thing. Remember that you’re not the only one communicating, and that any one of your customers is offered a plethora of options to the products or services you offer. If your message comes around too seldom, your audience will have to become accustomed to your values and advantages all over again, with each communication you send out. Each piece of communication is a plug in the mosaic of your brand: it builds loyalty and trust. Communicate too seldom, and you’ll need to start the mosaic all over again with each message.

4. TRY TO LOOK SMART BY TALKING OVER YOUR AUDIENCE
If you like to be talked down, raise your hand! No takers, right? Trying to show that “you know what you’re talking about” by using uncommon words or technical jargon is usually a boomerang tactic. People like to understand what they’re reading and, when presented with copy that resembles that college-level physics book we hated to even look at, they quickly get the impression that you’re not worth doing business with. Remember: you’re a guest in your customers’ brain. Don’t act obnoxiously!

5. BE INCONSISTENT WITH COMMUNICATION PACE (GOING OFFLINE FOR LONG PERIODS)
We learn at a very early age that we deal best with fulfilled expectations. There is no rule that says that you must have a newsletter, or that it should be sent out every week, or every month. But, if you commit to communicating, you will reap great results from communicating with consistency. Sending a small flood of newsletters for a few months and then going ‘offline’ for an entire season sends imperceptible but damaging ripples of doubts through your audience’s brain. Some may not notice, some may forget you, and some may outright wonder if you’re still in business. In any case, you will often run the risk of failing your customers’ expectation, even when that expectation is implied in the pace with which you’ve communicated until that point. A great solution to the inconsistency blues is to create a schedule ahead of time, and sticking to it. Communicate at regular intervals, and at key times during the year. If you run a tax accounting business, you’ll increase your communication between February and April; if you’re in the chocolatier business, you might want to intensify your voice around holidays like Valentine’s Day or Christmas. No matter what the schedule, the important thing is to develop one and commit to it.

6. FAIL TO MAKE A POINT
This includes cases of ‘talking for the sake of talking’, saying things that are not actionable or provide value, and any variation thereof. The ultimate reason why your customers listen to you is for the improvement value you represent. Whether it is for the advice you provide, for the thought-provoking concepts you offer, for the coupons you invariably give them, or for the tips that make their life easier, your customers hang around with you because you better an aspect of their life. If you fail to make a point, by promising something in the title line or elsewhere, that you don’t deliver, your audience will start thinking of your communication as a nice container of hot air: maybe pretty, but with very little value inside.

7. FORGET TO EDIT YOUR COPY FOR ERRORS
The last mistake is both the easiest to avoid and the most common to encounter. If you’re taking the time to think about what to write, about your target audience, about how relevant the information is, how often you should write, and when to send your communication, why do you trip over silly spelling mistakes or incomprehensible statements at the very end? Sending a piece of communication out with spelling or grammatical errors sends one of two signals to your audience: you don’t care (in a best-case scenario) or you don’t know (in a worst-case scenario). Not everyone can afford a professional copy editor, but the spell-checker in your software should prove to be a valuable starting point. After that, make sure you get an extra set of eyes (or two) on the piece. Do they understand what you’re telling them? Did they notice spelling errors, run-on sentences or grammatical mistakes? Only send out your piece when you feel strongly (not just reasonably) convinced that there are no errors.

So, today, when you pick up that pen or crack your knuckles to get ready to type your next newsletter, ask yourselves if you’re building bridges to your customers with each word you write, and if your audience will feel enriched by what you’re about to tell them.

In other words, ask yourself if you’re communicating or just talking.

Organizational chart... we hardly knew ye!

2009-12-31T12:11:00.000-08:00

Organizational charts are visual representations of an organization’s structure. In addition to the obvious use (a way for outside and internal personnel to understand hierarchies, responsibilities, relationships, core competencies, and work flow), organizational charts are essential in evaluating process efficiencies, in understanding and planning complex work paths, and in improving costs and achievements. The absence of an organizational chart, or of a well-planned organizational chart, can lead to confusion, redundant work, and inefficiencies.

USE OF ORG CHARTS IN AD-HOC PROJECTS: Organizational charts are also important tools when planning for a particular purpose. Though they are often used to ensure ongoing organization, when properly developed and managed, organizational charts can be used to “tweak” the organization to achieve specific objectives.

USE OF ORG CHARTS IN GROWTH PROCESSES: Often, organizations fail because inappropriate human resources are allocated and planned. An organizational chart can be used to plan growth, to map resource allocation, and even to simulate structural changes.

STRUCTURAL REALITY VS. SOCIAL REALITY: The power of an organizational chart, however, is maximized only when it is not considered “cast in stone” (that is: when it is not the only tool by which decisions are made) but, instead, accounts for social relations (including informal relations, leader behavior, etc.) and maps those relationships to harness their power. The fact, for examples, that specific individuals are “equal” according to the org chart, does not mean that they are necessarily identical in life: leadership and communication skills, learn curves, and other factors can dramatically influence an individual’s effect on the organizational structure and its ability to achieve specific objectives.

Finally, a “by the book” look at and use of an org chart can narrow the view of employees, by creating the expectation that they are only accountable for the tasks indicated in the org chart.

AN ORGANIZATIONAL CHART THAT WORKS: In light of this newfound understanding, traditional organizational charts (those depicting only up-down relationships) need to be improved, by requiring their creators (top and middle management, human resources, and other executives) to gain a deeper understanding of the official and unofficial relationships within the structure and how to use them to the organization’s greatest advantage, by assuming nonlinear structures, and by providing sufficient flexibility to adjust to outside changes and requirements, while maintaining enough rigidity to provide its members an understanding of how the organization functions. An organizational chart’s greatest achievement is the ability to create structure while not constraining members to that structure only. The use of matrix reporting structures and cross-functional teaming, along with cross-participation programs, can strengthen the ability of an organizational chart to do what it is supposed to do: harness the power of human and knowledge resources to achieve the organization’s short and long-term objectives.

The Conversation Prism

2009-11-29T15:26:00.000-08:00

So you think you're a savvy communicator... You think you've got it all down...

I know what you're thinking: "I do blogs, and I have a decent following; I Twit just right, not too much and not too little; I send email updates, press releases, notes, mobile marketing messages, and Facebook updates. I even have a YouTube Channel!"

Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble but, unless you are knee-deep in the "Conversation Prism", your might be missing out on a lot of communicative opportunities.

I'm not saying that you have to be proficient, or even dabble in ALL of them. I'm just saying you have to be ready to know what most of them are, and test them out, and experiment with them.

After all, communication is as experiential as it is empirical. Try out some new forms of communications, look at how your constituents respond, and expand (or contract) as needed.

How are you conversing with your customers and testing responses?

Think about it, and FilckR me back!

How to lose a customer in one day...

2009-11-05T12:16:00.001-08:00

Have you ever hung up the phone with a vendor or service provider and stood there, puzzled, wondering why do some companies go to such lenghts to lose you?

I have been a customer of a large cell phone provide for over a decade, and so has my wife. My wife's contract happens to be expiring in the next week, while mine has a full six months to go. Both of us are ready to upgrade to a better phone.

Like clockwork, the carrier calls me last month, to warn me that one of our contracts is about to expire, and to try to entice me to renew it for a full two years.

"This is a perfect segue", I tell myself. I proceed to inform the rep that I am not insterested in free minutes or a free Scotchguard(c) of my phone, but only in a deal whereby both of us could upgrade to the same phone, so as to take advantage of a "two for one" deal. Mind you: this would mean not only another two-year contract for my wife, but an extension (albeit six months early) for another two years of my line.

After being on hold for five minutes, the rep comes back to me, letting me know that they can't do it. Subscribing to the doctrine of Carnegie on negotiation, I point out that we could go two ways: they could spring for the early upgrade of my phone, and would get the cash from the sale, plus two more years of guaranteed service for both lines (approximately $5,000 over the next two years), or could opt to say "no", and would receive the early termination fee of my contract ($100 in their pocket) and the loss of two decade-long customers.

So, what did they say? You guessed it! After another five minutes on hold, the rep came back to let me know that they would be able to do this if my wife's phone were the one not eligible for an upgrade, but - since it was mine - they could not bend the rules (they must have been written by the same guy who writes the tax code!)

They lost me and my wife, and probably some of the ones that will hear this insane story.

So... whose fault is it? Not the poor rep, who was obeying orders. Probably not even the rep's supevisor, who is paid to foster customer loyalty.

The culprit is probably the process.

Someone along the way decided that it is more important to set clear rules for "go-no-go" (when to give in to the customer and when to not), rather than spending money and resources to explain to their customer service representatives to think on their feet, and always size up an opportunity. When the latter happens, it's easy to see how $5,000 over two years (plus anything else after that and along the way) is much better than $100 now and never again.

Often, companies abandon their brand promise and - with that - their customer focus. The metamorphosis from brand to corporate machine is always as unattractive as that episode of the Brady Bunch where Peter hits puberty and his voice changes right in the middle of a recording session. The company becomes driven by rules and logics only, and not by common sense and vision. Customers leave and flock to the competition, always ready to pounce on them and make them see how much greener the grass is on their side.

In a best-case scenario, it will take the carrier a mass exodus before realizing that things have to change. In a worst-case scenario, they will never know, until they get gobbled up by someone else.

Between porting rules and new-customer incentives, changing carriers is going to take me 30 minutes over the internet. It's going to take my current carrier hundreds of dollars to replace me, and even more to recapture me.

When you look at your company's strategy, do you stop to think how each department plays a vital role in the health of your business? Do you ask yourself how much information each employee shares with the rest of team? How empowered are your employees to fulfill the brand's promise, while constantly evaluating the financial consequences of each decision?

If you strip your staff of their ability to make decisions that are in the best interest of the customer AND the company, you will soon find yourself in a deep, dark tunnel.

And we all know how good the reception is there.

If you build it, will they come?

2009-10-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

“If you build it, they will come”. That’s the whisper Kevin Costner heard, while walking in a cornfield, about building a baseball field. And he built it. And they came.

Unfortunately, that’s the stuff Hollywood movies are made of.

In the world of business, it’s a whole different ball game. Building “it” is only the first step. And the same applies to websites.

I’m often asked what makes a successful website. This is indeed the “million dollar question”. As an inherent part of a solid marketing plan, and just like any other part of the plan, there are many factors that contribute to the success of a website.

Visual appeal is an important but overall minor component of a successful website. All-too-often I see websites that are visually well developed and balanced, but do not fit the three main Commandments of web development:

Know your brand
Know your audience
Know your objective

Know your brand – Your brand will determine a lot of your site’s look and feel. It will determine things like colors, fonts, and the overall “feel” of the site. If you don’t have a clear idea of you’re your organization’s brand promise is, your website can be vehicle for confusion and frustration, instead of loyalty and increased brand share.

Know your audience – This will determine how you say things, and where. If you’re talking to college students and are trying to get them to redirect their coveted disposable income from other brands, you’ll have to make a strong case with imagery as much as, if not more than copy. Knowing who your audience is will also determine the navigation you choose. Though I’m a big believer in the “three clicks and you’re out”[1] philosophy for any target market, different audiences will establish whether your website contains a lot of media, distributed across many pages, easy access to downloadable manuals, clear and evident testimonials, or a portal format.

Know your objective – This will determine a host of factors, including where you are going to direct your visitors, what you will display on your homepage, and what the contents of your pages be: if sales are important, give your visitors plenty of chances to buy your product; if collecting leads is your primary objective, offer resources that requires your visitors to give you that information before downloading; if your main intention is to present your organization, you might focus on images, profiles, videos, etc.

So, let’s say that you have thought about the three Commandments, and have a website that is graphically pleasant, in line with your branding message, responsive to the needs and expectations of its visitors, and geared to solicit the ideal response from them. For some, the waiting game begins at this point. And for those ones, cloudy days are ahead.

I speak to so many organizations that have invested time and money to make sure that their website was done “just right”, but are still disappointed. They may have spared no expenses in developing their online presence, and contracted with the most high-tech web developer to ensure a top-notch site. Yet they complain that they see no return on investment. “What’s missing?” they ask.

Imagine for a moment developing the most amazing print ad in the world: you hire the number one ad agency, convince Helmut Newton to shoot the piece, develop a tagline that is truly award-winning and copy that should win a Pulitzer Prize. Then imagine taking this ad and hanging it in your garage. How much success will the campaign have?

Assuming that a website can successfully exist just by developing it, and even by keeping it up-to-date is as shortsighted as hanging that beautiful ad in your garage.

Web success is made or broken through exposure, which means developing a structured series of actions designed to actively recruit visitors to come to your site. How your site is developed (based on the three Commandments) will decide how long your visitors stay and whether or not they act, once they land in your online world.

The vast majority of potentially eligible consumers do not know about your website. The best opportunity you have to “make contact” is to intercept them in places where you’re most likely to find them: search engines. What position your website obtains during a specific search will determine how many people you will be able to send to your website.

Obtaining strategic position within online searches requires a blend of science and art. It requires knowing how search engines work from a technological prospective, and the most efficient series of actions to increase search engine position. This series of actions and the resulting increase in search engine positioning, website visibility, consumer traffic and objective obtainment is known as Search Engine Optimization and Marketing, or SEOM. You may be familiar with the term SEO, which includes all of the actions aimed at increasing search engine rankings; the additional “M”, for marketing, broadens the strategy of the project to include actions that position your website and its message within other online areas, and not just with reference to search engines.

But let’s start with search engine portion of an optimization process.

First, a word of caution: I’m sure that at least some of you have received solicitations from companies that promise to bring your site from wherever it is today to the number one position in just a few days. These statements are not only unrealistic, but are often illegal. Search Engine Optimization as a process is a marathon, rather than a sprint. It takes time for a website to float to higher positions because the internet is an organic reality, where, for every action I take, there are millions of other actions that help and hinder. There is virtually no way to ensure a number 1 position with any major search engine. Some outfits will try to talk about special relationships with key search engines, or promise “priority submission” of your website. In fact, there is no such thing: search engines are mathematical algorithms that cannot be “convinced” of any priority ranking. The only way to increase one’s ranking is to operate within the confines of how a search engine works. There are countless tales of companies that promised the moon, for varying fees (like the one published in the Seattle Times), or promised that, by creating “doorway” pages filled with keywords, the site would immediately shoot to the top of many search engine rankings.

Finally, there are companies that will actually get you to very high positions in a very short amount of time by using techniques like “shadowing”, where visitors are essentially hijacked to your site by means of deceptive redirects. This is an illegal technique that will undoubtedly get your website shut down by Google and referred to the Federal Trade Commission.

With that out of the way, let’s find out what it means to “rank high” on web searches. The concept is easy to grasp: when someone conducts a search online, I want my website to appear in the first page. The application of this concept, however, is more complex, because there isn’t only one type of search that can be conducted for any given question.

For example: let’s say that I run an organization called “Seryal”, that sells organic cereal and teas online, and is located in Portland, OR. The organization imports some ingredients from South America, only buys from Fair Trade certified growers, and re-invest some of its revenues in international fair trade projects. The organization has experienced a 3% conversion rate for the past few years, and has concluded that – by tripling its monthly visits – it can double yearly revenues in two years. For this reason, it has decided to engage in some SEOM.

How does the organization rank currently? That question doesn’t have just one answer: if my search includes words like “Seryal, organic cereal, teas, Portland OR, Fair Trade, investment”, I can be pretty sure that the results will include Seryal’s website in the first position. But how many people who are not familiar with Seryal are going to enter these keywords in a search?

On the other hand, a lot more people across the United States might enter the keywords “online tea” when conducting a search, but Seryal will probably show up somewhere in the third or fourth page. Ranking is relative to how the search is conducted, and that’s where SEOM processes come into play.

The amount of “SEOM muscle” (that is: time and money) required to elevate the ranking of any given company is relative to the current online brand equity of the company, the keywords against which I am conducting my search and the position I want to achieve (it takes less effort to go from #100 to #50 than it does from #5 to #1).

An effective SEOM project will evaluate these elements beforehand and make recommendations as to the most efficient balance between cost and benefit: for some, it is imperative to be among the top 10 results in relatively broad searches, while others might be best served by appearing in the first page of more specific searches. SEOM projects are as unique as the brand that carries them out.

So… what does SEOM projects require?

Primarily, a SEOM project involves reviewing and adapting web contents, including images, image tags, HTML contents, page coding and copy, to increase the overall relevance to specific keywords. What these keywords are must be decided at the planning stage of the project.

There are four key phases to an SEOM project, which link to one another in a circular pattern:

Analysis
Technical Deployment
Creative and Tactical Deployment
Evaluation and Improvement

The objective of Phase One is to understand how the website currently behaves, its ranking and performance against specific keywords and competitors. This phase determines the most efficient path to achieve higher ranking and the most efficient keywords to work on. Finally, phase one requires a link strategy development, to encompass the most beneficial combination of link types.

Phase Two addresses all technical SEOM issues needing improvement, before moving to the other aspects of the SEOM Strategy Campaign Plan. Issues can include non-optimal code, which makes it difficult for your page to be read by a search engine, keywords and contents that is not optimized, contents that was developed without the target keywords in mind, incorrect or otherwise weak contents, and page address flaws.

Phase Three brings the internal actions carried out in the previous two phases to the world of Internet. The Tactical Deployment further develops on keywords and contents, exploits the power of extraneous environments like blogs, articles, social sites, etc. to increase the visibility of your site and, subsequently, its ranking and traffic.

But SEOM is a marathon, right? One should not expect that phases one through three will immediately and inherently bring your site to its top ranking position. Because SEOM is as much art as it is science, it is vital to have a phase that focus on analysis of the results, evaluation of previously-deployed actions, and improvements. Phase Four should bring into play what’s known as Keyword Family Tree (KFT). The objective of KFT is to take your most successful keywords and allow them to “mushroom out” into meaningful variations. To continue the Seryal example, let’s say that their original keyword cluster had been identified as “organic, teas, cereal, and fair trade”. Through the KFT process, new keywords might emerge like “cereal helping developing countries”, or “fair trade organic beverages”, or “certified fair trade beverages”. These variations imply a strategic advantage that will efficiently grow your website’s traffic by appealing to a well-defined group of people: your ideal target audience.

Phase Four should also maximize the power of links (both incoming and outgoing) and the organization’s web presence in social spaces where its target audience gathers. At this stage a well-planned ad campaign can also dramatically increase site ranking and traffic. Only now, however, does an ad campaign make sense, since it harnesses the power of the first three stages, and the knowledge you’ve gathered along the way. Phase Four is where the “M” in SEOM really comes alive. It is as vital as the previous three phases and – unfortunately – the phase most often overlooked in SEO projects.

After walking through the maze of SEOM processes, and understanding how web crawlers and spiders work, let’s rethink our original question: if you build it, will they come? The answer is simple: “maybe”. Do you have an answer to your three web Commandments? Have you developed a site that answers each of them? And, as importantly if not more, have you taken the time to create a checklist for each of the Phases of SEOM? Do you have predefined objectives and strategies for your SEOM campaign? Are you committed to investing effectively and efficiently in a solid SEOM project, and following up with improvements and enhancements to that project? If you answered no to even some of these questions, you’re selling your organization and brand’s online success short, and inefficiencies are often expensive propositions in the business world.

If you answered “yes” to all these questions, then congratulations: your audience will indeed come, ready to hear what your brand has to promise and to partake of what you have to offer. You’ve done what most organizations stop short of, and the rewards are sure to come.

And now, play ball!

[1] Most visitors will allow three clicks to get to whatever information they’re looking for, or to take the action your website wants to elicit, before leaving the site.

The pits of Teamwork

2009-05-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

I’m a lucky guy. My job takes me around the United States, sometimes around the world, to experience events from a very close-up perspective.

Recently, I had the luck of going to Miller Motorsports Park, a state-of-the-art car and superbike race track in Salt Lake City, UT, during the American Le Mans race weekend.

One of the activities took me down to the track, going from garage to garage to look at the pit stop crews working at this Formula 1-style park.

If you’ve never been to Miller Motorsports, I suggest you plan to. And if you’ve never experienced the thrill of sports car racing, you’re missing out on one of the cooler experiences in life.

Imagine finding yourself shoulder to shoulder with these futuristic-looking men, dressed in fire retardant suits and wearing race helmets, waiting for their car to zip into the pit lane, engine revving and earth beneath rumbling.

Without talking, almost as if guided by a force that tells them exactly where to be and when, these men literally jump the vehicle. Two of them prop the car up via a hydraulic system, two on each side remove the tires, slamming the rivet gun with surgical precision and lightening speed to the center of the wheel, one fills the tank, while another downloads vital data from the on-board computer and a few others stand to the side speaking into their headsets and to the driver. Tires are literally flying, people are running, hoses are zipping overhead and on the ground. And – through all this – nobody is even grazed by the flying equipment. They might be looking one way, but they’re very well aware of the heavy machinery flying five inches from their head. It’s all over in less than 15 seconds: the holder gives the driver a signal, moves out of the way and the car speeds off, leaving burning rubber on the pit track. One mistake and the driver is going to waste enough time to lose, or – worse yet – someone is going to get seriously hurt.

As I’m standing on the side, admiring this carefully-designed act, where each person knows exactly what the other one is doing, what is expected of him, and what is going to happen in the next few seconds, I am inclined to think of how this – after all – is a business. And I think how those very elements that make this business run smoothly (awareness of the ultimate goal, of the expectations of each team member, and of the surrounding environment) are translatable to any competitive environment.

The most successful companies are the ones that plan their strategy from the very first block, and follow key steps to maintaining their teamwork advantage.

Hiring the right talent - This is not just a matter of technical knowledge, but a much broader issue of company culture, open mindedness, and understanding of the company’s goals and objectives. Companies that hire based solely on technical knowledge are going to find themselves at a disadvantage, since technical capabilities don’t account for teamwork.

Training the right talent - Even the best talent isn’t “brand ready” on the day you hire them. Each company (we have said it many times before) is unique. With this uniqueness come a set of identifying elements that need to be learned. A well-planned training program ensures fast brand absorption which, in turn, will save you a lot of time during a pit stop!

Fostering communication - What is expected of one and all? What are the responsibilities of one vs. many? One of the most common sights in modern business is that of a company that works in “silos”. Individuals working on projects that might benefit others but of which many are unaware, or duplicating efforts and “reinventing the wheel”: these are often the outcomes of an organization that does not foster communication. Communication must happen between team members and between groups. A company that fosters intra- and inter-departmental communication will allow the creation of synaptic connections that will serve the company very well during creative, productive, and structuring times.

Fostering trust - Frank Crane once said “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you’ll live in torment if you don’t trust enough”. Office politics have no place in the office. Each team member must act knowing that the rest of the team is there to support and respect him/her. Ideas should be received in the spirit of cooperation, evaluated and approved or rejected not based on individual goals, but based on the best interest of the organization. Without an environment that fosters trust, decisions become half-hearted, second-guessed, and sometimes even looked at with distrust. Trust and communication go hand in hand. Just like Gorbachev’s Glasnost aimed at breaking the barrier of distrust between the people of Russia and its government through a system of clear communication, so it is within any organization: when the organization communicates honestly and clearly, its members react by trusting it. Communication breeds trust. Trust breeds speed and efficiency.

Fostering awareness - we often think that what we do is more important than what others do. It’s natural: each of us is consumed with and committed to our task. We want to succeed. Unfortunately, this often triggers “tunnel vision”: we become unaware of what is happening outside our office, and start producing very diligently but sometimes inefficiently. We become unaware of what others in our team or organization are doing. We then become unaware of our competition or constituents, of how they are changing and adapting to their own environment. We “change our tire” with great artistry, but forget that there’s an entire other team trying to make the pit stop as fast as possible, and end up backing right into the guy refueling. An effective team is one that maintains focus and peripheral vision at the same time, and does not forget what is expected of them as individuals and as an organization. Walking in someone’s shoes for a while allows the individual to understand group and cross-functional dynamics

Fostering accountability - With all this said, let’s not forget that we are individuals before we are team members. What makes us valuable is first our ability to contribute, and only then our ability to assimilate. This concept is often lost in business processes. In order to be effective, an organization must have in place a system of accountability. The old adage “do what you say and say what you do” is only seldom implemented in many organizations. Accountability is often equated with the idea of punishment, and has acquired a negative connotation. Accountability works when developed as a framework of checks and balances: not so much as a means of “keeping tabs”, but as a tool to ensure that programs and projects yield the expected results, and that the resources (human or otherwise) employed are enough but not too much. If I know that my organization needs to complete a pit stop in 13 seconds in order to remain competitive on the track, I must ensure that each team member is working in exactly the right spot, with exactly the right cadence. I must tell them what to do, train them in how to do it, and follow up, to ensure that they are doing what they’re supposed to, and that what they’re doing is working as expected. Without accountability, organizations often find themselves chasing numbers and “trying” things rather than “testing” things. This is counter to the concept of continual improvement.

Training “group muscle memory” - The beauty of team work is that – when properly deployed – the sum of all is greater than the sum of each. When working in true unison, teamwork creates a series of efficiencies, group dynamics, and exponential momentum that one would never achieve by taking each individual team member’s effort. The reason why brainstorming sessions must happen with more than one person is rooted in this group dynamic, which cannot be recreated in any non-team environment. One of the best ways to harness this power is to develop “group muscle memory” within the team. What is expected of a team is different than what is expected of an individual: in order to function properly, teams must often exercise this ability to circulate ideas, to foster respect and trust toward others, to feel accountable to the group, and to be aware of what’s happening in the peripheral field of vision. Teamwork in the pit stop is almost like a ballet: even when the environment changes (an unexpected stop, a particularly stubborn wheel lug nut, or a change in the weather condition), the team must perform flawlessly to remain competitive. Pit stop teams perform endless runs, training sessions, and simulations, in order to be at their best on race day. Meeting once a quarter, or even once a month, is often not enough: you have to re-learn everything and everyone and, before you know it, it’s time to go back to your office. This breeds inefficiencies, rather than speed.

Rewarding the right teamwork - We all know that rewards are part of an organization’s life. Whether it’s a cash bonus, a commendation, or a “lunch on me”, recognizing teamwork is always a winning strategy. The important thing is to recognize “the right” teamwork. What constitutes the right teamwork? It’s simple: what gets the best job done most efficiently: by doing it quickly, more economically, using resources that are already available, applying never-before-used ideas, and without anyone getting smashed in the head with a wrench. Rewarding the “right” teamwork before any other teamwork is a sure-fire way to foster the development of a pit-stop crew within your organization.

Overall, what is really needed is some solid leadership, to guide an organization or a group to cooperation and teamwork. In truth, building teamwork is not a hard job, but it requires planning and commitment. It should not be undertaken as a “pet project”, but as a serious endeavor, vital to the growth of an organization.

Does your organization have a pit-stop crew program in place? How would your team score in each of the eight fundamentals outlined above? Are you measuring your teamwork results, to ensure that they are not only achieving what’s expected, but improving constantly? As my good friend Patrick Rummerfield always says “the will to win means nothing without the will to work”. How hard are you focused on the right kind of teamwork?

Implementing a serious teamwork plan, one that fits within your organizational objectives, that performs how and when you need it, and that exists to improve your bottom line, will spell the difference between a Formula 1 pit-stop performance and, well, just the pits.

Customer Disservice

2009-03-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

For the past several years, my wife and I had been subscribers to a major newspaper; that is: until the delivery became spotty at best.

Rather than putting up with weekly missed deliveries, we decided to do what most fed-up consumers do in these cases: we cancelled our service. For the next few months, the Recanatinis would get their news from other sources, since the newspaper in question didn’t show too much interest in providing a service we paid for, in advance, every month, through direct debit.

Fast forward seven months. Last December I received a notice from the newspaper letting me know that they were discontinuing service because I had not paid the subscription for the past few months. After picking up my jaw from the sidewalk, it took some simple sleuth work to realize that the newspaper had received my cancellation notice (and discontinued delivery of the newspaper), but continued charging my card, unbeknownst to me, until I cancelled the card.
I called the person that – according to my bill – was in charge of delivery. After several unreturned calls, I decided to call the newspaper directly. After profused apologies, the customer service rep told me a check was in the mail. I’m sure nobody will be amazed, when I tell you that no check came, and it took several more calls to reach anyone who could give me an answer. Through the twelve-week ordeal, I spoke to half a dozen different representatives, who gave me a variety of answers: a credit would be issued to the card (though I explained the card no longer existed), I would only get a portion of the credit back (because the delivery service who never called me back said that what I was saying wasn’t true!), I would get a call from a supervisor (who never called me back), and “someone would be with me in just a minute” (when the length of the wait peaked at 35 minutes, at one point).

Needless to say, I vowed to never again peek at the front cover of the newspaper, even as my eyes wander to the glass-enclosed vending machines.

After a caustic letter to the VP of sales and to the editor and three more calls, and much to my joy, I finally received my check in the mail, last week.

What does this experience teach me? And what can I teach others through it?

For one, it reinforces the value of customer service (CS), especially at an age where newspaper readers are less common than a positive day on Wall Street, where holding a job as customer service representative is a miracle, not an expectation, and where there are more options than there are buyers willing to take them. But we all know that.

It also teaches the need – as a company – to understand that “good customer service” is not a concept to be developed in a vacuum. Customer service is defined by the customers, and is not an objective notion: it varies on the basis of the value perceived in the purchase, the cost of the product or service acquired, the transferability of that value to other products or services available (in other words: “how much do I lose by not using this brand and going to another one?”).

Companies often make the mistake of deciding the definition of “good” customer service on behalf of their customers. Some think that giving 24/7 live telephone support is what they’ll call good; others think that offering email communication replies within 24 hours is the pinnacle of customer service; others decide that a self-help state-of-the-art, artificial-intelligence, knowledge-base electronic system will suit their customers perfectly.

What if the live operator is available but lives in a different country, and does not understand when a specific inflection in the American culture underlines a specific unspoken feeling? What happens if the email I receive in response to my complaint does not really address my issue, and now I have to take more time to type up an answer to the answer? What happens if the knowledge-base system touches upon the answer, without answering it completely, and I find myself looking for a phone number to call a live human being? Any of these scenarios (based on the company’s desire to provide “good” customer service) ends with an upset customer, who will sometimes do whatever is in his or her power to fire the brand, often taking with them a number of other customers.

Another serious issue arises when the operator does not properly represent the brand. When interacting with customer service, the American consumer has developed a keen sense of whether the representative cares or not. How long have I been on hold? How many people have I been “handed off” to? Is the representative listening to what I’m saying, or repeating the script he or she reads off of a monitor to keep me at bay?

In reality, the problem with customer service is more complex. It cannot be resolved by looking only at the product sold, or only at the customer served. The winning approach must be “holistic” in nature, and the solutions to it must be sweeping in impact.

The truth is also that companies cannot be sure that they will hold their customer base and market position through a flawless product or service only. As we have said many times before, the strength of the brand is found well beyond the deliverable of the business transaction, but expand to the experience that becomes part of the customer expectation. This experience includes the brand’s ability to provide “good” customer service.

There are ten necessary steps that must be followed when re-priming your customer service organization.

#1: Understand your consumer
Ask them to define customer service in an ideal world. We came across a B2B company that was puzzled by the fact that customer satisfaction rates were abysmal, though the company had installed a system that allowed customers to leave a message that would be automatically routed to the most knowledgeable representative in that particular area, who would return the call within an hour. When we dug deeper, we found the missing link: by asking customers what they thought of the system, they almost unanimously agreed that – while the system allowed them to talk to the most knowledgeable person – their business was about giving answers to walk-in customers who didn’t have an hour to wait for a return call. That resulted in the company’s customers focusing on other brands, that didn’t require a hold time of one hour in case of a question. Before implementing any new CS system, the vital perspective is that of the customer. Ask them to define ideal CS conditions, and to rate your performance in those key areas. The results might be sobering, but necessary to improve brand experience.

#2: Understand your brand and what it wants to tell consumers
As we have said before, the uniqueness of each brand is the very element that gives a company an edge against the competition. A brand represents a promise: the promise of an experience. What is the promise that your brand makes? The basis of this promise is the foundation of your customer service experience. The promise a brand makes is what puts a certain taste in your customers’ mouth. If you promise chocolate and deliver lobster, when they bite down, your customers are going to be disappointed, no matter how succulent the lobster is. What is the promise you make within your brand? If it’s a technological promise, your CS must address your customers accordingly. If it’s a wholesome, natural promise, your CS must deliver a different experience. If your brand promises nurturing, technical lingo and computer-generated TTV (text to voice) technology will miss the mark. Remember: the promise your brand makes will attract certain people and not others. Treat your customers the way the brand promised they’d be treated. Miss the mark, and you’ll get a lot of returned lobsters.

#3: Train your representatives in empathy, active listening
Are you sure your representatives really “get” your customers? Do they know why they call, and what type of service is important to them? Training in areas like empathy and active listening are as important, if not more, as polished telephone etiquette: they go to the root of the experience, creating a connection that implies the person at the other end cares and – by proxy – that the company they represent cares as well.

#4: Empower the representatives to solve problems
Regardless of the product or service, the consumer or customer, the industry in which the organization operates, and the alternatives available to the brand, most customers recognize that one-call resolution policies are usually synonymous with a caring organization. In order to establish a powerful one-call resolution structure in customer service (one that is fair to the customer and to the company), the organization must first empower the representatives to solve problems. Caring about the customer is one step in the process; the second, important step is to provide representatives with the right tools and the authority to solve the problem. Organizations that advocate one-call resolution but require the representative to get written authorization from a supervisor before sending a 2-cent piece free of charge are usually not looking at the problem from the right angle. What processes are in place in your organization to ensure that one-call resolution is a promise to your customers and a profitable proposition to your stockholders?

#5: Help your customer service through technology
Whether it’s about helping your representatives give the right answer through knowledge-base systems, your customers get self-help through voice-activated software, or consumers quickly and easily navigate information online and offline, technology must be one of the pillars of your CS change. Investment in technological infrastructure pays for itself, when properly implemented and developed in the context of a true CS structure. We helped a company develop an interactive CS system that freed enough time from the representatives to allow the company to repurpose those resources to outbound profitable calling, and to offering pay-per-use premium service beyond customer service. An obvious win-win situation!

#6: Understand consumer-centric bottleneck and develop processes to solve them
To implement an efficient customer service process, it is important to understand where the system slows down or stops. We worked with an organization that was experiencing problems with the cost of process management. We found out that some of the representatives had to physically walk to a different area of the building to receive status information on certain repairs. Additionally, each day, several man hours were spent in hand-processing credit card sales. We also found that the hours of operation of the CS office forced customers in certain time zones to flood with calls at the beginning and the end of each day, creating spikes in demand that caused backups, and demand voids during the middle of the day creating inefficiencies that cost the department serious cash.

Understanding how the processes currently work and redesigning them in a way that fits with the business model and the customer needs is a necessary step to increasing customer satisfaction and saving money.

#7: Create a solution funnel
Obviously not every problem can be resolved by a customer service representative. Issues arise, from time to time, that require the help, expertise, or decision of a supervisor or manager. Those instances should be mapped out and planned. A “solution funnel”, a process that every CS issue undergoes, ensures that only certain problems are escalated. Problems that require a higher authority might include credits or compliments (free-of-charge disbursement of goods or services) above a certain amount, particularly complex problems that require, for example, cross-functional help or might have legal ramifications, and specific requests to talk to a supervisor. Whatever the reason, it is important to “map” these events out, to allow the customer service department to decide whether they can solve the problem, or whether the issue needs to be escalated. An escalation process that is not written often results in the representatives flooding the upstream flow, or creating inefficiencies that prevent the customer service experience from being controlled and – therefore – positive.
A few years ago, a customer service department felt that they were doing their very best to address customers’ needs, and felt proud of the fact that management and supervisors were right there “in the trenches” with their employees; yet, the company was experiencing low satisfaction rates and a very expensive bill at the end of the month. By implementing a solution funnel, the upstream rate was reduced, allowing supervisors to divide their time between supervising, training, and helping customers, while managers were involved only when absolutely necessary. The introduction of the funnel reduced problem-resolution time and hold time, while improving satisfaction rates.

#8: Create KPM and monitor
I have discussed the importance of satisfaction rates throughout this paper. That’s because satisfaction rate (typically a number between 1 and 5 that quickly and simply defines how satisfied the customers are with their experience) is a vitally important element in the evaluation and improvement of the CS experience. Every time your organization interacts with a customer, you have an opportunity to gain insight on their experience with your brand. How to do it? There are many ways, from auto-callback features on your phone system, to auto-generated emails that contain a quick survey, to a traditional paper survey mailed to the customer, to simply asking a few questions before hanging up the phone. The thing to remember is that this important feedback must be part of your overall CS strategy, and must be built into your system as you develop it.

Many companies make another mistake: they think that, by simply asking customers to rate their experience and commit to a number, they have all the information they need. Remember that CS experience is a very personal thing. Once you have complete step #1 of this process (understand your consumer), you should have a set of parameters that, in your customer’s mind, represent what’s important in a CS experience. To gain a solid understanding of the customer experience you must be aware of how the customer feels about each of these elements. The creation and monitoring of Key Performance Metrics (KPM) will allow you to “fine tune” your organization to achieve the highest possible rating, and to make the experience rich, rewarding and consistent with your brand promise.

#9: Proactively make the organization aware of what is going right and what is going wrong in the CS process
I once interacted with a CS division that took a lot of pride in what they did: they had metrics in place, strived to improve their customers’ experience, and, mysteriously, could not achieve their objectives. We found out that the division operated in “stealth mode”. Employees had no idea how they were fairing against the metrics, and some didn’t even know what the metrics objectives were. Worse yet, senior management had a vague idea that customer service was an important element of the organization, but could not name a single KPM or problem faced by customer service. Out of tune and out of sight, the customer service division did not receive the proper resources, while the representatives did their very best while “flying blind”.
Only by ensuring that everyone is on the same page, when it comes to customer service, can an organization thrive even when customers are dissatisfied with the occasional goof-up of your product or service. Additionally, understanding what your organization is doing right allows you to duplicate that and increase the effectiveness of your brand promise.

#10: Poll your customers and representatives and start the process all over again
The last step in this process is to poll, poll, poll. Ask your customers how they felt about their interaction with your CS organization, what they would change, what they liked about their experience. Ask your representatives what can be improved and why, what are new trends emerging and bottlenecks developing. Analyze the data, make decisions on improvements and updates, and start all over again.

This cyclical process is a fail-safe recipe to ensure that your organization’s brand promise is kept, that your customers will continue to come back and, hopefully, will bring some friends with them.

In the end, I hope I made a case for how just “providing customer service” is not enough: everyone can provide some type of service; only real brands provide an experience that is positive and consistent with its promise. Providing “self-defined good customer service” is even worse, as it presents the risk of allowing the organization to lull itself in a false sense of security, only to wake up one day to discover that its newspaper has no readers!

Here’s the good news: consumers are begging to be proven wrong. They are investing their time to ask you to make it right by them. The ball’s in your organization’s court and – in a way – the customer’s yours to lose. When you do make it right, they forgive easily. I will deposit my shining new check from the newspaper next week, and am considering forgiving them: they eventually owned their mistake and made it right by me. There’s a way, in business, to make lemonade out of your customer service lemons: it’s called customer service experience.

How’s your organization fulfilling its brand promise, by providing a customer service experience that is in line with your essential brand traits? Do you have a true CS structure in place, or do you have some people by the phone, hoping for the best? Do you know your customers and their expectations, when they interact with you? Is your representative going to pass the buck, when he receives that irate call, or is he going to deliver on the promise and retain the business?

These questions are more important than one would think. They defy sales, product quality, lean manufacturing practices, and the latest issue of a software update because they deal with the power of human emotions. The newspaper organization that lost my business didn’t spend too much time answering them, and that’s a lesson that cost them my dollar a day.

And if all this is unimportant to a company’s long-term health, that’s news to me.

The difference between nonproft and noncompetitive

2009-01-07T11:56:00.001-08:00

If you, like me, are the owner of a shiny mailbox in front of your house, or of a slot in your door, used by the Post Office to slide pounds of paper each day, you have probably received your share of requests from a plethora of non-profit organization.

Whether it’s about children in Africa, the local fire department, or a special interest group that wants us as members, each of these causes is both worthy and needy of our contribution.

Now, let’s look at the way we sort through our mail (and we can assume it is a pretty typical way): clearly, consumers only take a few seconds to decide whether to open an envelope or not. If it looks like “junk”, it hits the “junk” pile. If it looks like something for me, I set it aside.

What makes us decide what is junk and what is not? There is no single answer for this question. Typically, anything that seems mass-produced and does not look like a bill or an IRS audit, we will quickly throw away.

A bulk mail stamp instead of a paper stamp, a generic addressee (“Our neighbor at”, “Resident”, “Generous Family”, or the likes) are usually subconscious clues that the envelope belongs in the “junk” pile.

And so, 80% of all worthy causes do not even see the light of our kitchen (or wherever we open our mail), but go from mailbox to trash can.

Let’s assume, for a moment, that a fundraising letter actually makes the “open” pile. The next step entails convincing the reader that the cause is worthy enough to 1. continue reading, 2. remember it, and 3. take the ultimate action (that is: reach for the wallet).
Unfortunately, research shows that an additional 80% of those letters that are opened do not end in a donation (yes: that’s 80% of 80%!).

So, if the cause is worthy, the recipient acknowledges it, and has the few dollars to spare, it would seem that all planets are properly aligned for a donation. Why does the donation not happen in 96% of the cases, then?

The answer lies in two major items that plague nonprofits: the ability to market oneself and the ability to market to others. The two items seem one and the same, but they are not.

Marketing oneself
This process, which is second-nature to for-profit organizations, is actually not so immediate for many nonprofits. When it comes to marketing themselves, many nonprofits usually do not tell a story at all, or do not tell a story properly. If they say anything, they will tell you who they are and what they do, but with what purpose? Any time an organization (for- or not-for-profit) communicates, it must do so with one purpose in mind: convince its audience of its uniqueness and worthiness.

Let me give you a quick example: can you name three organizations that help less fortunate children? Can you name even one that operates in the community in which you live? Ok, now: can you name three brands of beer? How about one brand of diaper? Chances are you can answer the last two questions even if you are not a beer drinker, or have no children. For-profits are just better at communication commitments (i.e. ensuring the communication increases the audience's call to action).

The problem of communication plagues especially nonprofit NGOs. It seems that – since they do not really deal with “Joe Sixpack”, but with the Federal Government, they don’t feel the need to talk to him. What they don’t understand is that the Federal Government is nothing but a public office of Joe Sixpacks. It is made of people, whose minds, interests, and preferences are shaped by communication, whether for personal or governmental business. Lockheed Martin is one organization that understood this. Everyone knows who they are. My wife knows Lockheed Martin, though she won’t be in the market for a C-130 for at least several years! Lockheed understood early on “who they work for” (this is actually their slogan) and decided to communicate to them, and to establish a brand in the mind of those people who might not be directly in the market for Shuttle parts, but vote for the representatives who do, and might be part of the group of people who shape the interests of this nation.

Local coverage is also a challenge, especially for trade organizations, special interest groups and organizations with a more limited geographical reach. Simply put: if you don’t ensure people talk about you, nobody will. Trade and local organizations often rely on word of mouth. Though still a pretty solid communication tool, word of mouth is not capable of withstanding the growth of an organization that relies on donations and membership dues to stay afloat. An organization’s business strategy must include a solid communication strategy, but many nonprofits neglect this area.

Marketing to others
Whether you like to admit it or not, a consumer will act only if there’s some sort of return for his or her action. It is human nature: nobody acts with complete selflessness. Of course, when we’re talking about donations, feeling like we’ve participated in the betterment of others, or helped those in need, is a good enough return. But this motivation only puts your organization on par with all other nonprofits, right?

Many nonprofits (especially charitable ones) approach their strategy from the assumption that their cause is just “worthier”. In the mind of the consumer, there’s often just a blur of causes. How does yours stand out? What’s the lever, for the consumer? Again, this is an area that the for-profit world has mastered, but where nonprofits lag behind. In marketing, this leverage is called “value proposition”. This is not an explanation of what the organization does, but it’s an offer of what the organization can do for the customer (donor, member, or other participant). Let’s face it: in the age of email, a pack of free address labels can only go so far. This is an important element in the positioning of the organization; it allows the organization to separate itself from the sea of other requests for money, and create a true relationship with the customer.

A charitable organization that has broken away from the traditional way of telling (or not telling) a story is World Vision. Their catalog tells a story in a very different way: it is laid out like a mail-order catalog, it is fun to thumb through it, and tells stories that are relevant and engaging for the reader. There is no doom-and-gloom, but the sense of urgency is certainly present. Most uniquely, the donation is consumer-specific: the catalog literally shows different ways to donate; donors can buy a chicken, or a chicken coop, a share in the building of a school, or the funding of an entire school, a share of a deep well for fresh water, or 12 soccer balls. It is hard not to be moved, as you “walk” through the ways your donation helps others.

When communicating with customers, nonprofits should plan their strategy using what I call the “three legs of the stool”:

I talk to you in your home (in a way that is immediate, relevant and defines a relationship),

I talk to you in complementary places (through partners, in a way that the message becomes unexpected and welcome), and

I let others talk about me (through a solid, regional PR strategy).

Take away one leg, and the stool starts to quiver.

So… what do Pampers, World Vision and Lockheed have that many nonprofit organizations lack? A gargantuan budget might be one of the elements, but also a go-to-market strategy that includes, among other things, brand awareness, a key communication strategy (that talks to Joe Sixpack), a diversified marketing playbook, and value-delivery strategies.

Make sure you answer these questions, before your next plan implementation.

How strong is your brand? Are you neglecting to let Joe Sixpack know what your brand stands for?
How are you letting your customer base decide between contributing and belonging to your organization, or investing their resources elsewhere?
Are you building relationships or one-off donations?
And, most importantly, how solid is your marketing, communication and business plan?

Treat your nonprofit like a for-profit, and watch magical things happen for you and those you serve.

Is it branding or clowning around?

2008-12-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

Recently, my wife Lenoure took me to my first “Cirque du Soleil” show. I must admit that I didn’t literally embrace the proposal at first, but I had heard so much about it, and had so often run in some type of ad or review, that I finally agreed to go.

For those readers who do not know what “Cirque” is, the best way to describe it is “Ringling Brothers on steroids”. Though the ring is slightly smaller than I expected, the creators of Cirque took the basic premise of the circus experience and added a few, key elements to gain a competitive advantage.

There isn’t just one show. It seems that every year Cirque comes up with a new, unique show. Each show tells a story and has a plot. Each show has unique acts and a distinct feel, making it inviting for visitors to come back again and again.
The show has live, modern music. It has no relationship to the music we associate with circuses. It also uses lasers and lights to heighten visitors’ experience.
The overall feel is obviously tailored to an older audience, but without losing site of the appeal and mystique that the circus experience has on children: short sketches full of slapstick comedy and goofy behaviors are interspaced to breathtaking high-flying, acrobatic and contortionist acts.
Cirque is a traveling act with permanent roots in Las Vegas and Florida.
The show and Cirque’s communication efforts overall aim at letting viewers experience its world in a very personal way.

As I walked back to our car, I began to think how, while staying true to the world of traveling circuses, Cirque has successfully pulled away from the crowd by creating an experience that exceeds that of other circus shows. Today Cirque is a true brand, and not just a show. When one says “Cirque”, the term invokes a set of specific ideas that are a mix of mystery, special effects, class, and unique acts. Cirque is a gateway to another dimension, where anything is possible. In the age of virtual reality and high-technology, one would think that such a mission would be hard-lived under the cover of a traveling tent. In other words: most would disagree that Cirque is, well, just circus.

The reinforcement to this conviction is all around us, when we interact with Cirque:

Their website is interactive, contains streaming videos, images and colors that force us to be imbued in the brand. It isn’t just an informative site. It is a tour of the experience.
Their email campaigns are carefully crafted and aim at re-proposing the experience in an attempt to sell a ticket during a personal interaction between someone at Cirque and us.
Cirque actively invests in social media, to allow its customers to interact with the brand on a very personal basis. This reinforces the experience contact, which renders the brand real and relevant to “me”.
Cirque makes it clear that it is a global proposition. It spans the continents and takes from each something, presenting it to its public with a unique spin, in the context of an experience that exists only within the confines of the yellow tent and the round platform.

Every aspect of the Cirque experience is a reminder of what the brand stands for. Every element is carefully crafted to be a contributing piece to this “different experience”. Does one go to Cirque for the trapeze artist? For the contortionist? For the clown, or the juggler, or the acrobat? My guess is not. So, what is it that makes the traditional circus a dying breed of entertainment, and an enterprise like Cirque flourish, adding permanent venues, world tour cities and show titles on a monthly basis? The real answer is one: the experience. The experience delivers on the promise made by the brand. Each element contributes, in the end, to justifying a $125 ticket.

And it all started with an activity that finds its roots in the traveling artists of the middle ages: the circus.

As I’m walking back to my car, I am reminded how the Cirque rule applies to any product or service we’re marketing: people are looking for experience, before they settle on a purchase. It does not matter if the widget we sell was invented yesterday or eight centuries ago. I’m not just selling the widget. I’m selling the promise my brand made, when it showed you that widget. That promise is personal and unique.

Are you selling a product or an experience? The former is subject to objective, one-to-one comparison with the competition, while the latter is entwined with the brand, brings the offer to a completely different plane, which fulfills more deeply than the immediate benefit of the product or service as we use it, and almost transcends the object itself.

What does your brand tell people? Do your customers aspire to be a part of your brand? Will it deliver on this promise through each of the touch points that interface your company with all potential consumers, from introduction to purchase?

The answer to these questions will spell out whether you’re destined to be the next Cirque or just another traveling show.

Politics and Marketing

2008-12-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

Anyone who tells you that political life and marketing do not mix, might have not been paying attention to modern politics. Through the recent campaigns, politics have shown us the essence of marketing.
Politicians need to understand two truths that could make or break a campaign:
1. voters are indeed consumers, displaying the same behaviors and preferences in the polling booth as at the store;
2. there are segments of these consumers that have been ignored for years and, if and when energized, can make the difference on the campaign trail.

The Obama campaign has used this knowledge, as everyone knows, by maximizing marketing efforts through new media like podcasts, YouTube postings, Facebook and MySpace, email campaigns and other viral tools. Bill Clinton actually started the trend of “modern political marketing” when he lost the tie and played his saxophone on television, and when he answered the “boxers or briefs” question on MTV, during his first bid for the White House. The decision to understand their constituents and engage with them in a manner that resonates made the difference for the forty-second and forty-fourth president of the United States.

The McCain camp, on the other hand, seemed to do too little, too late, with an appearance on Saturday Night Live, the cancellation of his appearance on the Letterman Show until their concession, at the end of the campaign, and a MySpace page that seemed insincere (i.e. not really controlled by him) and a little forced.

Both candidates had in common the passion for the issues they brought to their platform; they had a clear understanding of who they were and where they stood on issues. Both believed very deeply in what they said, and in working for the better good of the American people. Both, in essence, embodied the passionate, selfless character we look for in a leader, political or otherwise. So, how did one fail and the other win? One of the answers is marketing. True marketing is about taking a fact we believe to be true and communicating it to a specific group of people, or segment, in a manner that resonates with that segment, and that can be understood at that time, in that place, by the individuals that make up that group. If done right, marketing works. Every time.
But the touching points between marketing and politics aren’t confined to the recent past: in 1948 the Chicago Tribune published the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline on the front page of the issue printed on the day of Truman’s victory. Why? The poll that was conducted by telephone to come to that conclusion was skewed, having polled (obviously) only people who had a telephone in their home, which was the more affluent population, historically voting for the Republican Party.

What does all this teach us? Marketing is a vital, living process that must take in consideration what we’re selling, who we’re selling it to and how the people we’re selling to live, think and operate. It is not enough to have a conviction; we need to know how to communicate that conviction in a manner that makes other take notice, first, and action, immediately after.

Preparation for the deployment of a marketing campaign is as important as the deployment itself. Each marketing program must learn from previous programs, but must also and always answer the questions “what, who, why, and when”. Unless we have a clear understanding of what those answers are, we’re gambling with a headline that, when read, tomorrow morning, will not make any sense to anyone.

How do you start your marketing programs? How will you prepare for today’s campaign, and how will you speak to your constituents, to ensure that (in the privacy of the polling booth) the consumer will mark your box?