Be Different or be dead

August 20, 2010

Why the right customers to target should not be a marketing decision

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Why the right customers to target should not be a marketing decision.

An interesting Seth Godin blog postulates that the marketer’s choice of which customers to target is determined by the marketing toolset.

“Yes, you get to choose them, not the other way around. You choose them with your pricing, your content, your promotion, your outreach and your product line.”

The implication is that the the marketing toolset determines where the organization invests its scarce resources, and I have a different perspective.

In my view Seth doesn’t go far enough.

Customer selection is much more than a marketing task. It is a fundamental element of an organization’s overall business plan. And the targeting selection decision needs to be integrated with the overall direction the company intends to take.

My strategic game plan process is the way organizations can make the decision on which customer segments to target.

The process involves answering these two questions which are inextricably linked and work hand in hand to decide who you choose to serve.

1. HOW BIG do you want to be?

Start with your overall growth goals. Do you want to grow top line revenue by 10% over the next 12 months or 25%? It makes a difference. A 25% growth target is more aggressive and more risky and will require a different strategy than a 10% growth goal.

2. WHO do you want to serve?

This is the customer selection decision. And it needs to b made within the context of the HOW BIG question. This is where Seth oversimplifies the issue.
The customer choice needs to be made within the context of HOW BIG. It can’t be made on its own using micro-marketing tools. A 25% growth goal requires a customer group that has the latent potential to deliver that type of growth.

Selecting a group of customers based on any other criteria will result in missed financial targets.

Choose a group of customers that has the inherent capability to satisfy your growth goals

THEN use marketing tools to attract and keep them.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 8.20.10 at 12:00 pm by Roy Osing
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August 18, 2010

12 proven ways to fix a colossal service mistake

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12 proven ways to fix a colossal service mistake.

Mistakes are a way of life in every organization notwithstanding the attempts to achieve an error-free working environment. Mistakes, however, can be a source of opportunity — enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty — if the right steps are taken when a screwup is made.

Dazzling service recovery = (Fix the OOPS! within 24 hours) + (Surprise the customer with something they don’t expect)

It’s a leader’s responsibility to put in place these 11 elements necessary to execute an effective recovery system and make it a way of life in their organization.

1. Service strategy — amazing service recovery doesn’t happen through serendipity. It requires a comprehensive strategy defining the outcomes expected and the way to achieve them. Focus on execution;

2. Togetherness — the relationship between the customer, the breakdown event and the organization must be tight. Seamless recovery demands all teams in the organization working unbelievably well together;

3. Connectivity — hyper-communications is essential to enable the recovery process: customer contact when the disaster event happens, follow up, status reports and final resolution;

4. Secrets — you need to know the secrets of the person being screwed over if you want a recovery that will blow the customer’s mind;

Find out what would the customer would NOT expect. Remember, a Dazzling Recovery = Fixing the mistake + Doing the Unexpected: the surprise factor;

5. Problem solving — service recovery isn’t about applying the rules and policies of the organization to make things right for the customer; rather it’s about solving the problem that the mistake has created. Make sure your recruitment process looks for proven problem solvers;

6. Celebration —to reinforce the behaviours expected of people in recovery, make sure that you recognize and reward service recovery ‘heroes’ consistently and that you make a big deal of what they do to recover from a blunder and and how they do it;

7. Story telling — further to #6, use storytelling as a way of making explicit the actions that employees must take to affect a successful recovery. Storytelling is an effective way of ‘painting a picture’ of what an expected recovery process looks like. Establish a recovery storytelling channel in your organization and make it a big deal;

8. Training — give employees the skills to execute dazzling recovery as a high priority;

9. The right to act — empower people responsibly to ensure that the earth is moved to enact the recovery process. This is a critical point. Recovery is successful and customer loyalty enhanced only I’d the process is completed within 24 hours of the mistake. Speed is required which means that traditional approval processes must be circumvented by allowing people involved in the recovery to make decisions to get it done. Waiting for a manager’s approval to proceed will not only render the recovery useless, it will also demotivate the employee and the overall strategy will be compromised;

Empower people to act and trust they will do the right thing

10. Measurement — service recovery must be seen as business as usual throughout the organization and in order to support this objective, recovery objectives must be set, monitored and displayed throughout the workplace. For objective setting, set a target for the % of mistakes recovered in 24 hours or less and over time move the target close to 100%.
For the surprise factor, ask your victims if they were blown away by something an employee did that they didn’t expect; move this target to 100% as well;

11. Accountability — to make service recovery matter to the entire organization, put recovery expectations into every leader’s performance plan and make it equally important as other balanced scorecard categories such as financial performance and Human Resources;

12. Recruitment — Finally, make sure you have people in the recovery process that ‘like humans’. Employees who innately care about others and who are passionate about rectifying the breakdown event and going the extra mile to blow the customer away are needed to make your recovery strategy come to life.

These 12 steps are not only essential in building a successful service recovery process, they are also instrumental in creating a service culture that really does exist to serve customers.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 8.18.10 at 10:36 am by Roy Osing
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August 9, 2010

An easy 6-step checklist to be different from your competitors

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An easy 6-step checklist to be different from your competitors.

Every business plan deals with how an organization intends to differentiate itself from their competition.

The ONLY statement should be the way to express your distinctive competitive position in the market. If you can declare yourself as “We are the ONLY ones that…..” the blur of non-unique competitve claims will fade away and your organization will stand clearly in focus to thrive and survive!

Your checklist to being the one and ONLY.

Your ONLY statement must:

✅ Address the high priority needs, interests, desires, secrets of your target customers. Being the ONLY one on something that doesn’t matter to your fans will achieve nothing. If it doesn’t matter to them you will talk about it at your own peril.

✅ Be true. Claiming you are the ONLY one at something that your customers don’t believe is deadly. Make sure you test your ONLY with your customers. In addition to getting feedback on it’s believability you are likely to get input to make your statement even better.

✅ Express value creation. Product flogging has a limited life. Unique value creation has longevity that is difficult to copy by others in the herd. Focus on the solution that is being provided and you are getting closer to the element of value.

✅ Be brief. If it takes you 2 pages to explain your ONLY position you’ve missed it. ONLY is a ‘nano-statement’ that shouldn’t require you to take a second breath.

✅ Be compelling. It has to have some WOW! emotional appeal to capture the hearts of your customers. Avoid being pedantic and terribly intellectual.

✅ Get employee juices flowing. ONLY is a war-rallying-cry of sorts. It defines the hill you are claiming and dares the herd to climb it.
Your employees have to FEEL what it says. What it requires of each and every one of them to win the battle.

The ONLY journey.

You need to be on it.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 8.9.10 at 12:00 pm by Roy Osing
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August 7, 2010

Why no one notices you if you’re trying to be perfect

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Why no one notices you if you’re trying to be perfect.

Linchpin by Seth Godin has this nugget on perfection.

He declares that “... asymptotes are sort of boring” and asserts that successive improvements made in an organization get less and less noticed as they approach the state of perfection.

Makes sense.

The first 50% is noticeable and maybe even the next 25%. But as the improvement process continues over months (and probably years) you will eventually get to the stage where 1% improvements are made and are not noticed.

Who notices 1%? Very few if any. Certainly not enough people to warrant the investment to achieve the 1%.

Seth’s observations have these very specific implications:

▪️ If you’re not noticeable you will be ignored. Being ignored in a hungry herd of competitors is a deadly place to be. How do you get NOTICED? Make big changes in your organization that capture the imagination of your fans.

▪️ Beware of benchmarking. By its very nature, benchmarking encourages incremental change over time. Noticeability Factor = low; BE DiFFERENT Factor = low.

▪️ Focus on creating remarkable and ‘gaspworthy’ change that distinguishes your organization from the competitive blur. The quest for zero defects is laudable but who notices things that actually work the way they are suppose to?

▪️ Get more comfortable with making the odd mistake. Seth argues that creating anything remarkable is an art form, and ‘Art is never defect-free’.

The reality is that organizations will never eradicate mistakes and defects; people and technology aren’t capable of it. So why covet error-free if it is the impossible dream? And no one notices your progress along the way!

▪️ Put our energy into getting Distinctive, Unique, Remarkable, Unbelievable and Take-their-breath-away stuff that is almost right.

Appeal to the emotions of your customers with services and solutions that blow them away. If you do, do you think they will be ok with the odd mistake or error?

Remember, you don’t have to be better, best or perfect but you have to be remarkable and different. 

Spend your time seeking noteworthy change rather than increments of improvement.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 8.7.10 at 12:00 pm by Roy Osing
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