Be Different or be dead

January 25, 2021

Why marketing needs to stop some old ways and start new astonishing ones

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Why marketing needs to stop some old ways and start new astonishing ones.

Success in today’s highly changing and unpredictable markets requires your marketing strategy to be more powerful; marketers to step up and leave their traditional tools behind in favor of new approaches made necessary by heightened competition and changing customer demands.


If your marketing strategy is to become a truly powerful and successful element of your business plan, certain practices need to stop; others need to start.

STOP!

— Stop the obsession with mass markets. Mass markets don’t exist because the underlying assumption is that people in the crowd all look the same.
There is no such thing as an average customer that looks the same as every other person in the crowd; there may be a ‘lowest common denominator’ but that’s about as far as it goes.

Every person is different in some way. The challenge for the marketer is to discover their differences and market to each one of them individually with unique solutions that meet their needs specifically.

— Stop using price as the main tactic to sell products and services.

It won’t; it’s lazy marketing and it’s not a viable long-term strategy. Price moves can and will be easily copied by the competition. Furthermore, price competition squeezes profit margins for every player and contributes nothing to building customer loyalty.


If you want to compete on price, you’d better have economies of scale and scope in your business where being the low cost supplier is critical.


— Stop benchmarking. Copying what the best in class marketing organization does is a catch-up tactic and does nothing to gain strategic advantage.
Again, it’s lazy marketing that sometimes gets referred to as innovation. It’s not. Being like someone else is merely an effective way to lose your identity.

Try coming up with an original (imperfect is ok) thought; you will be handsomely rewarded.


— Stop trying to be better; this incremental approach is neither effective nor appropriate. You can’t incrementalize your business to success. You need to make a move to stand out from everyone else — to be distinctive and unique from the competition.

Make competitive moves that create the ‘wow power’ to catapult the organization out of the herd.

— Stop trying to make small incremental changes to products to make them appeal to a broader market. So, the classic approach is to introduce a product intended to satisfy a specific need, and then to modify the product to try and give it a broader appeal.

The problem is that this ‘round-the-corners’ marketing dilutes the crisp value proposition that made it attractive in the first place and produces a boring solution that satisfies no one. Keep products edgy and vibrant.

Source: Pexels

START!

— Start looking for ‘stepping out’ opportunities that make the organization the ONLY one that does what it does in the markets it serves.

Rather than continually striving to improve your product and service portfolio exclusively, start spending time on answering the question, “Why should I do business with you and not your competitors?” as the way of creating a unique place in the marketplace.

My ONLY Statement has proven to be an extremely successful strategic tool for marketers to express an organization’s uniqueness: “We are the ONLY ones that…” is the elevator sound bite that cuts through the clutter and expresses how your organization stands apart from all others.

— Start asking the customer service team more for input on how offers are being accepted by customers, what the ‘pain points’ in operations are, and what the competition is doing.
Use customer service as a primary customer learning and market research source.

— Start focusing on creating experiences for your customers as opposed to flogging products and services at them.
Deliver happiness rather than push product features down their throat.
A product delivers happiness for a limited time only — a new SUV soon becomes a used car — a memorable experience stays with us forever.

Emotion marketing represents a huge opportunity so start delivering solutions that have emotional layers that surround your core offering. Make it more than just a product.

— Start discovering the ‘secrets’ and innermost desires of your target customers to unlock their marketing potential.
Needs-based marketing is passe because most everyone already has their needs satisfied.

Marketing to what people need (herd behaviour) is no longer sufficient to be noticed in the market and stand out from the aggressive competition.

— Start establishing customer learning as a core competency in your organization.
Be ‘always on’ to learn what customers desire every time they touch the organization, whether it’s a personal contact or a visit to a website.


AI isn’t the complete answer. Humans need to lead the way with customer engagement that probes what people covet.
Relying on technology to understand what customers want is an incomplete algorithm at best.

— Start developing packages — not bundles — for high-value customers rather than offer them individual products and services.

Learn their broad holistic desires; seamlessly integrate multiple products to yield a broad value proposition that is difficult for competitors to match.

— Start cutting the crap, the non-strategic and no-longer-relevant marketing programs that marketers are working on, in order to make room for new projects and programs aimed at creating long term value. Purge the old practices that have outlived their purpose.

Falling in the crap category could be: price promotions (produce no long-term competitive advantage), new customer acquisition programs (encourage churn and anger existing customers who are denied the same offers) and customer appreciation events (mostly satisfy looky loo’s who want deals rather than rewarding existing customers).



A powerful and successful marketing strategy is all about continually providing relevant and compelling value to people, and in order to do that, it must refresh itself, take on a new purpose and let go of traditional methods.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 1.25.21 at 06:29 am by Roy Osing
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January 21, 2021

Why fantastic leadership skills can be made in ‘the bear pit’

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Why fantastic leadership skills can be made in ‘the bear pit’.

Survival in The Bear Pit is a critical leadership skill; if you have the jam for it, this should be your happy place.

Amazing leaders have an uncanny ability to know what’s really going on in their organization. And one of the leadership skills they draw on from their toolkit is venturing into and surviving The Pit.

What’s ‘The Pit’?

It’s a people cluster where the leader invites people to provide their honest feedback and opinions on a variety of topics that matter to the leader. The Pit doesn’t have to be face-to-face meeting; it can be virtual and it works just as well.

The Pit consists of a group of individuals in the workplace who have a point of view on how things are going and are very willing to candidly share their feelings to the leader if asked.

The Pit is all about the leader subjecting themselves to the crowd in an effort to learn what will make things better for people. A leader who puts themselves at personal risk are endeared by all, and that’s what makes this skill so key in leadership development.

A bear pit session is managing by wandering around on steroids.

Venturing into The Pit is not for the faint of heart.

The Pit encounter is not a formal event, but a casual meeting between the leader and a group of up to 12 employees (larger meetings generally stifle the flow of conversation and the ability for everyone to be heard.

The leader enters The Pit solo; no accompanying entourage is allowed. He or she stands naked in the cluster to entertain their desire to want better things to do the organization’s business.

It’s a fundamental element of leadership by serving around where the leader seeks feedback on improvements required to increase organizational performance and make things easier for employees.

When the leader ventures into The Pit, it is a free-for-all, no-format session.

The Pit is an opportunity for people to tell it like it is to the leader without their immediate boss being in the room. When I started doing these sessions,

I had pushback from some of my direct reports who quite frankly were threatened by my being in front of their people without them being there as a filter. This spoke volumes about their worth as leaders. If they didn’t want their people to be able to speak freely to me, what did it say about how they were leading their team?

The type of issues I raised in The Pit for reaction, opinion and solutions included:

— What’s generally working in the organization and what’s not. What’s the number one thing people think i as the leader should be worrying about?

— How the business plan of the organization is being executed.

— How effective the leadership of the organization is at helping them do their jobs better.

— The barriers in the organization that prevent them from doing their jobs the way they want to.

— Customer service problems and opportunities to solve them and enhance customer experience.

— Ways to reduce costs without sacrificing service to customers.

— Information on what the competition is up to, and suggestions to counter their moves.

— The dumb rules in the organization that enrage customers and threaten customer loyalty.

I had a Bear Pit session organized every week on my calendar. It mattered to me and after I did a number of them, it mattered to the people in my organization. They came to expect the clusters and they looked forward to putting me on the spot.
They came to believe that their priorities and suggestions for improvement made a difference.

I made it a priority; it mattered.

It was one of the most important drivers of my effectiveness as a leader as long as the issues raised were followed up on and that the improvements people wanted were implemented.

Try it.

If you have honed your Pit leadership skills, you will stand out from others who will watch you with amazement.

The Pit isn’t for everyone, just those who want to pump up their career and leave others in their dust.

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

• Posted 1.21.21 at 06:23 am by Roy Osing
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January 18, 2021

Why is ‘line of sight’ a great leadership skill?

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Why is ‘line of sight’ a great leadership skill?

Having ‘line of sight’ is the leadership skill that will set you apart from every other leader.

A colleague of mine, Ron Cox, Founder and CEO of Tailwind Consulting in Tampa Florida says that “a staggering 95% of employees in a company are either unaware of or do not understand the strategy”.

No wonder execution fails!

One of the biggest issues in any organization is the lack of congruence between what the strategy says and what people do on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy says one thing and not only do people do another, they do different things out of sync with the strategy.

Massive inconsistency and dysfunction results.

This is a failure of leadership.

Leadership tends to place more focus on direction-setting rather than on determining how the strategy will be executed.
Precision is applied to getting the strategy exactly ‘right’ and less attention is given to how it will be implemented in the trenches where the real work gets done.

The gap between strategic intent and actual results is due to this skewed attention.
If only 20% of leadership’s attention is placed on the details of how the strategy will be implemented, the strategy will likely be hit and miss as employees find it necessary to execute the plan the way they believe it should.

Effective strategy execution occurs when there is clarity between the functional roles that employees play in the organization and its strategy.

It is about translating the strategy into what it means to each function involved in delivering it. What specifically should the call center rep do differently? The product analyst? The sales person? The internal audit manager?

If at the most granular level each employee in the firm doesn’t know how to behave and what results to produce within the context of the new direction change will simply not happen and improved results expected by the new business plan won’t be achieved.

Line of sight

Line of sight to the strategy means what it implies; each employee can ‘see’ the strategy from their position and they understand what they specifically need to do to contribute to the strategy.

If direct line of sight is defined for every role, flawless execution results whereas indirect line of sight results in people having a clouded understanding of what action the strategy demands.

Most leaders absolve themselves of ensuring activity and strategy are aligned. It generally gets delegated to functional heads to sort out by declaring their priorities that they contend are homeomorphic with strategic imperatives.

The problem with this process is that subjectivity is introduced at a very high level in the organization and is magnified again and again as teams are asked to do the same thing through middle and junior management levels.

And the tipping point, of course, is that leadership doesn’t approve detailed functional plans which would at least show whether they were bordering on out-of-alignment or not.

Any inconsistencies between activity and strategy at the highest level in an organization are multiplied by an order of magnitude factor before it reaches the frontline people.

Under these conditions it’s not difficult to see why strategy and organizational activity diverge and not converge.

What can leadership do about this problem?

First, ease the precision around the strategy creation and tighten it up around execution. Get comfortable with getting the plan just about right and applying rigour to implementation and adjusting the plan on the run.

Next, take ownership of aligning organizational activity to strategy.

Source: Unsplash

Alignment Plans

Institutionalize ‘Alignment Plans’ with functional heads; ask for sufficient granularity to the determination of whether or not a team has direct line of sight to the strategy or not. Make them work at it until they get it right and your leadership team approves.

Alignment Plans submitted to the leader should:

▪️ Define the key elements of the strategy that everyone in the organization must align with.

There are many dimensions to any strategy but it is critical to prioritize and focus on the critical ones. Greater alignment success will occur by focusing on a handful of the critical strategic imperatives rather than trying to ‘herd the cats’ around a dozen.
                         
▪️ Define what needs to change in every functional team with an action plan to achieve it.

If the organization is pursuing a new or revised strategic direction, there will most certainly be projects, company values, people skills and technology that will have to be re-vectored to enable the execution of the new plan. Details of everything that needs to change must be defined in detail.

▪️ Identify activities, projects and behaviours that have to be dropped in order to take on new activities required for alignment.

Leadership is just as much about what has to be stopped as it is about what has to be started.

If out-of-alignment activity is not stopped, additional unnecessary resources will be most certainly requested. All non-strategic activity must be isolated and resources removed and redeployed to new challenges that must be undertaken.

Personal initiative

If you’re an employee in an organization that chooses not to impose a process to explicitly align activity to their strategy, take personal initiative to align your own work priorities to what the organization wants to achieve.

Successful careers are built on the backs of the organization’s strategy and those that execute more effectively than others are quicker to reach their personal goals.

These personal actions will propel you forward.

1. Translate for others

Help others translate what the strategy means to them in the organization.

Once you have determined your own line of sight, help others through the same process.

Everyone needs to understand the new things they will have to do and the CRAP they will have to dispose of. Unless this translation for all employees is done, the organization will be frozen in momentum management and no progress in the new direction will be achieved.

Get involved in organizing and leading workshops with various departments in the company and explore a new blueprint for each that represents the new course for them to follow. 

The role of translating the new strategy for various employee groups is one that rarely gets performed. It’s a difficult task as it requires an intimate level of understanding of the strategy.
You can’t drill a strategy down into individual action if you don’t truly understand it at a detailed level.

If you’re a leader, you must dedicate much more of your time seeing that people treat this as a priority and hold them accountable.
Wander through the workplace asking people to clarify the top three things they are going to do to help deliver the new strategy and what dozen-or-so things they are going to give up.

And get the expectations hard wired into the performance planning process. It is the difference between an effective one where everyone is working in parallel to support a common purpose, and a dysfunctional one where people are working at odds with one another to deliver some things that are on strategy and other things that are not.

Synchronized outcomes release the power of execution - and competitive advantage; inconsistent outcomes zap the energy of the organization, encumber execution and impair competitive success.

2. Set your calendar

Let the organization’s strategy guide your daily calendar. The ultimate manifestation of direct line of sight is a calendar composed only of activities relating to the outcomes you have deemed necessary for you to deliver the new strategy.
If you can’t strategically relate a particular activity you plan to do on a given day, question why it is occupying your time.

Source: Unsplash

Zero base your calendar and build it through the weeks and months ahead in the image of your strategy.
If you are in a leadership position, ask to see the calendars of those reporting to you. Is each of them doing the things required of the new direction or are they continuing on as custodians of the past?

3. Communicate the strategy personally

Communicate face to face with others in your organization as the most effective way of injecting the emotional component necessary to get people to believe and act.
E-mail blasts to a broad distribution list, employee newsletters and other mass means of communication don’t work as effectively. Use technology like ZOOM if physical distancing is a challenge.
These mass communications vehicles preclude the ability for people to engage in a conversation to enhance their understanding of where the organization is going.

You need to press the flesh even if it’s virtual, and make it matter by showing up in person, explaining the strategy and answering the tough questions.

In non-pandemic times, I used ‘Infonet sessions’ to communicate the company’s strategy to all employees.

They required high levels of energy and were extremely time consuming, but what else could be more important?
People in the organization need to understand where it is going and they have a right to challenge it if they are not convinced it is appropriate. You can’t capture their hearts and minds if you’re a ‘no show’.

4. Use the strategy as the context for solving problems

When confronted by a business problem or issue, always assess it and talk about it with others from the perspective of your strategy.
Create the strategic context for the discussion and then assess your options. What does your strategy suggest is the appropriate action to take?

It’s an effective way to increase understanding and awareness of your strategy and establish you as a leader and the strategy hawk for your organization.

People suddenly forget that they have set a new course in motion for the organization and they look for solutions to problems in the old strategic context.

The opposite is also true; people often don’t relate the visible changes being made in their organization to the new strategic direction that has been put in motion. They don’t get that the cause of the changes they are witnessing is the new strategy.

Assume the role of connecting the dots for people in your organization. Reinforce that the changes that everyone is seeing are the result of your new strategy.

Line of sight leadership is necessary to build teamwork and commitment to the organization’s strategic intent. Take a personal role is making it an essential ingredient in your culture.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 1.18.21 at 05:58 am by Roy Osing
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January 11, 2021

What is the purpose of a successful business?

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The purpose of a business is to create a customer — Peter Drucker, Management Guru

Who In their right mind would even think about commenting on a Drucker quote other than verbally bowing to its pristine elegance?

But we need to have a conversation around the notion that creating a customer is the fundamental goal of a business. In today’s world with crazy competition, empowered customers and fleeting customer loyalty we need to extend our thinking.

We need to get more focused. ‘Go get a customer’ without some clarity and qualification could be problematic.

Not all customers are created equal; there’s no such thing as a bad customer, but some are better than others

This type of thinking should play a critical role in defining the purpose of a successful business.

A business needs to create the RIGHT customer. It needs to gather as many RIGHT customers as it can.

The RIGHT customer is one:

◾️ that has the growth potential to meet the organization’s financial goals. No use targeting a customer that doesn’t have the revenue potential you need to grow successfully;

◾️ who is a fanatic about what you do or what you produce. They care about your products or services;

◾️is a part of an extended group of fans who communicate regularly with one another and with others to spread your reach.

Organizations need to get more proficient at choosing WHO they want to serve.

Its not about the quantity of ‘casual consuming followers’ you get; it about attracting the quality ones who are ‘relentless-re-purchasers’ and who virally spread your word while they benefit from the relevance, quality and value you deliver.

Take the emphasis off the customer and put it on what consumption value is derived by someone.

The purpose of a business is to create unique experiences for the customers they choose to serve. If one-and-ONLY relevant and compelling experiences are created, customers will come.

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

• Posted 1.11.21 at 12:00 pm by Roy Osing
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