Be Different or be dead

March 8, 2021

How the best business plan is made for high performers

Source: Diggity Marketing

How the best business plan is made for high performers.

Every organization is faced with the challenge of creating a business plan that will result in high performance and growth. Where do they turn for help? Business planning templates are plentiful and can easily be found on the internet.

They are all pretty similar in content and format and generally follow accepted principles of academics and consulting pundits.

A good business plan should be built to execute.

But I think most traditional planning approaches miss the mark because they don’t recognize the common challenges facing most organizations, that:
— are not able or willing to invest substantial financial resources (as is often the case when hiring strategic planning consulting firms) in building their plan;
— have good ideas on what a good strategy looks like, but have difficulty implementing it;
— are under pressure to create their plan quickly or risk losing their market position to the competition.

A business planning process must recognize these realities and should meet these critical requirements; my strategic game planning process does.

1. It must be simple — Long winded strategy documents may satisfy the academics’ thirst for exhaustive analysis and theoretical completeness, but it won’t enable professionals to implement their new ideas very quickly.

I have seen people spend way too much time grinding out a plan just to feed the prescribed content and format rather than produce a simple strategy that tells their story with only the relevant chapters in it.

So, toss out the parochial planning boilerplate and adopt my proven strategic game plan process that produces the right business plan by answering three critical questions:

— HOW BIG do you want to be?
— WHO do you want to SERVE?
— HOW do you intend to COMPETE and WIN?

More detail on each of these three questions later…

2. It must be inexpensive — My strategic game plan can be created in just 3 days or less because of its simplicity. Time is not wasted on feeding the template with information you don’t require to produce a business plan that will perform well in the markets you serve.

The strategic game plan is created in a workshop mode with the leadership team responsible for launching the new idea. It generally involves the leadership team including other players who have an important role in implementing the plan. In under 3 days your game plan is produced — with minimum paper damage to the environment — at minimal cost.

3. It must be action oriented — You won’t produce any results if your plan is theoretically pristine, follows all the prescribed planning rules but doesn’t drive action; nothing happens, no value is created, potential customers won’t notice you and you will fail. It’s as simple as that.

The reason I call it a ‘strategic game plan’ is that it is totally focussed on what has to be done to achieve the inches of progress needed to move towards your strategic goal.
It’s the appropriate balance of strategy and tactics which results in the right stuff getting done to progress your new idea.

4. It must be focused — This is where the discipline of the mandatory replaces the art of the possible. You don’t achieve real progress by chasing a myriad of possibilities.

The strategic game plan uses Roy’s Rule of 3 to focus energy and priority on the critical few (3) things that are likely to determine 80% of the outcome you intend to achieve.

Trying to achieve ‘the possible many’ will waste your time and energy and will likely kill the success of your plan; Roy’s Rule of 3 as the filter, is effective at controlling scattered thinking.

It is in this area that most planners fail in the development of their strategy. They have too many things to accomplish in order to succeed. The opposite is actually true: the more you attempt, the greater the likelihood you will fail.

5. It must define your uniqueness — If what you have to offer the market isn’t different from others competing with you, why should you attract interest?

If your offers can’t be distinguished from competitive offers why would potential customers be interested in them?

This is the most critical element of your business plan and I have developed a concept called the ONLY statement (more on ONLY further on) to address how to declare the distinctiveness of your organization, product or service.

“This is the ONLY product that…” is a claim that is binary: it is either true or it isn’t and it is backed up with proof points that legitimize it.

Most strategists love to use words like ‘better’, ‘best’, ‘leader’ or ‘number 1’ in their differentiation claims but they don’t work; no one believes these words and they can’t be measured and proven in any event.

The best business plans produce early financial returns which depend on how fast the plans can be implemented to grow revenue. My strategic game plan process was designed with speed, simplicity, cost effectiveness and competitive advantage in mind.

Now let’s explore in detail each of the three questions that will create your strategic game plan.

HOW BIG do you want to be? — HOW BIG is the first question to answer in building your strategic game plan.

Traditional strategy-building methodology has definite limitations. It typically begins with an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It then moves on to developing an overall strategic direction.

Objectives and action plans are struck. Finally the expected financial results are produced. They are the output of the strategy-creation process.

In my experience, the financial results get scrutinized by the top executive and often get modified because they simply aren’t aggressive enough. For example, cash flow doesn’t turn positive soon enough so revenues and expense assumptions are revised to produce positive cash flow earlier in the planning period. Sound familiar?

As a result, higher growth and a better financial projection are driven out of the strategy by changing input assumptions to the plan, rather than by adjusting the strategy to deliver more aggressive financial results.

This is a huge mistake. Assuming that the drivers and assumptions behind the plan are reasonable and acceptable, forcing more aggressive numbers from a strategy without changing the inherent nature of the strategy is a fool’s game; the improved financial performance will not happen.

The strategic game plan process treats growth and financial expectations as inputs to the strategy-building process. Do you want to grow top line revenues 25% over the next 24 months? Or would you be satisfied with growing at 10%?

This is the first question the planning team addresses after considering all underlying factors such as the economy, market growth, competition and other variables influencing how quickly you may be able to ramp up revenue.

Your growth expectations should determine the character of your strategy.

Clearly a 25% growth target would require more resources and would entail greater risk than the more modest 10% growth scenario.

In addition, the character of the strategies would be different. The 25% growth strategy would require a different set of actions than the 10% incremental option.

For example, bolder growth expectations will incur higher expenses to fund them in order to increase awareness of your product or service and create demand for it as opposed to a more modest growth plan — advertising and social media costs increase with higher revenue expectations.

Declare up front the growth and financials you intend to achieve and THEN develop the strategy to deliver them. And if you have been growing at 10% don’t expect doing more of what you have been doing will be good enough to deliver on a 25% plan.

It won’t happen. You will have to be more creative, more aggressive and be more accepting of more risk. If not, suck it up and be prepared to stay with your 10% strategy.

Source: Pexels

HOW BIG rules — Creating HOW BIG is a challenging task. Here are the guidelines to keep in mind as you do your work.

▪️ Your growth goal should be bold enough to drive you to be innovative and creative. If you don’t have to stretch to create the tactics and programs to achieve your revenue target, your growth goal is too modest.

Think about HOW BIG as your declaration of intent without knowing specifically how to achieve it. A good HOW BIG should force you out of your comfort zone;

▪️ Use revenue as the growth metric as it is the best expression of how the market is responding to your new idea. And it’s easy to measure.
Avoid using other higher level financial measures like EBIT and net income as they are ‘too far from the market’ and are too easily manipulated;

If you believe your HOW BIG is ‘realistic’ — which means you already think you know how to achieve it — it’s not bold enough. Pick another number;

HOW BIG should make you perspire; yes, it’s risky but worth it;

▪️ Your growth goal should disrupt market trends not continue them; it’s the way of reflecting the amount of innovation your new product is bringing to the market and the way you intend to sell it.

If the general market for the type of solution you are providing is growing at 5%, for example, your HOW BIG target should disrupt that rate and be somewhere north of that rate. If not, you’re fooling yourself by believing your growth goal requires innovation.

And furthermore, trend lines imply predictability, and who thinks performance and goal achievement can be predicted in a world of uncertainty and unpredictability?

Trend line thinking has no place in an uncertain world. HOW BIG detests extrapolation.

▪️ Choose a 24-month business plan period. It better aligns with execution and allows for faster response to unforeseen events.

The problem with long planning periods is the mistaken assumption that you can put off action to the later planning years and not have to worry about doing something now.
It’s the classic ‘hockey stick’ mentality that suggests that you will be able to make up for underperforming in the early years of the plan by overachieving in the latter periods of the plan.

HOW BIG is the lynchpin of your business plan; it describes the risk profile of your plan, and the amount of innovation required to achieve it. Everything in your plan is connected to it.

A successful plan requires action NOW, in the moment, not 4 years from now.

WHO do you want to SERVE? — The second question to answer in building your strategic game plan is ‘WHO do you want to SERVE?’ — which customers do you intend to target to deliver your growth goals — the HOW BIG?

Your challenge is to select customer groups that have the capability to generate the top line revenue you are expecting.
You may have the products and services your current customers want, but if they don’t have the latent potential in the longer term to get you the revenue you need, and the wealth you expect, you shouldn’t be chasing them.

HOW BIG you want to be should determine WHO you choose to SERVE.

If you have existing customers and decide to stay with them even though they can’t deliver you growth, they will suck up your precious resources with little return.
Don’t get caught in the trap of staying loyal to old unproductive customers; it may make you feel good, but it won’t deliver the growth you want and will jeopardize your entire plan.

There’s no such thing as a bad customer; it’s just that some are better than others.

WHO to SERVE rules — Choose customer groups that have these characteristics:

▪️ They are groups where your customer share — wallet share — position is low but growth potential is high. If you currently have a small percentage of their total business there is good growth potential for you if you are easily able to gain a better foothold in it.

▪️ They are currently growing in the double digits and where you have an advantage over others. Look for clusters of customers who are already showing the desire to buy your products in healthy volumes.

▪️ They can be sold quickly. Customers you can get to fast with your current selling methods. If you have to build new sales channels, it will consume energy and precious time that you can ill afford without generating additional revenue.

In addition, as I’ve said elsewhere, it is critical to focus your efforts on the things that matter; those activities that you believe have a good chance at helping to grow your business. Stick with what you know. Bear down on what you’re good at. Concentrate on customers you know. Ask yourself ‘Is this consistent with fast-and-easy?’ when considering chasing new stuff.

Look for fast-and-easy opportunities that will give you the revenue run-rate you need.

▪️ They can give you quality referrals. Again, a short planning period requires closing as many high value deals as possible which generally means getting to deal closure without a lengthy sales preamble. High quality referrals should mean that your brand comes recommended and you can get to the solution presentation quickly.

▪️ They don’t need much selling. Where closing a sale can occur relatively quickly and revenue realized soon thereafter. An opportunity requiring a 12-month sales cycle won’t be terribly productive when you only have less than half the 24-month plan period left to enjoy the revenue. Work with clients who will give you at least 18 months of revenue if you want to hit your revenue targets.

And avoid customers who ask for proposals. Responding to the request and waiting for a decision will gobble up precious time you don’t have. The formal sales process is a time consumer; focus on people who are willing to deal you their business based on trust and past success with you.                   

▪️ They are ‘close to home’. In a geographic sense, explore the territory immediately around you before trying to exploit distant ones. If you have a good online presence, stay with the market focus you have. Exploring new virtual or physical markets — probably with the need to establish new sales channels— can gobble up your time with questionable short term results. Penetrate and dominate your current markets before you wander afar.

This is an area where I’ve seen small business leaders fall flat on their face. They spot something new to do that is interesting and at least theoretically is a good idea and they decide to chase it, reducing the energy that is applied to fast-and-easy activities. They lose on both accounts: the new stuff doesn’t materialize and the current stuff suffers.

▪️ They represent high lifetime value to you. These customers show a propensity to pay higher prices in exchange for good value, so resource investments in them will likely provide healthy returns.

▪️ They have been loyal to you in the past and will likely continue to buy from you with less effort than those who will have to be convinced of the value you offer.

▪️ They are segments where your competitive position is strong and where your advantage is clearly defined. This is the nirvana WHO to SERVE tactic. If you are fortunate to have customer segments with high growth potential and where you dominate in the market, pour your resources on ‘em.

▪️ They are few in number. Choose the minimum number of customer groups that will generate the revenue you want.
The more you choose, the more diluted your efforts are likely to be. Choose the critical few groups rather than the possible many.

What do you do with customer groups you currently serve but who are unable to generate the revenue growth you need? Be prepared to walk away from them. You have to let them go.

Source: #RoyOsing

How will you COMPETE and WIN? — The third and final question to answer in developing your strategic game plan is a critical one and the answer to the question drives a stake in the ground in terms of how you will differentiate yourself from your competitors and beat them handily.

HOW to WIN follows the WHO to SERVE question. Just as the choice of which customers to target follows the revenue goals you have, the competitive strategy you develop must follow your selection of customers to serve.

Your objective in this question is to create your competitive uniqueness relative to the customer groups you have chosen to target and as opposed to the market generally.
You may have capabilities that stand out from your competitors in the mass market, for example, but the challenge now is to focus on those strengths that relate to the particular customer groups you have chosen to serve.

Your task is to extract goals from a selected number of discrete customer segments, not the broader market.

This is extremely important and critical to having a successful strategic game plan. If you have chosen customer groups ‘A’ and ‘B’ for example, then you need to differentiate yourself from others vying for the attention of these two groups specifically.

You will be searching for ways to deliver what these two groups want in a more compelling and special way than anyone else attempting to attract their attention.

Answering the HOW to WIN question involves in-depth competitor analysis: Who are they; what are their strategies? How do they differentiate? What is their value proposition?

The most practical and compelling way to determine your one-of-a-kind competitive position is to create what I have tagged the ONLY Statement for your organization.

‘We are the only ones that…’ will definitely separate you from the herd If you can complete the sentence!

You don’t want merely to be the best of the best. You want to be the only ones who do what you do — Jerry Garcia, former leader of legendary rock band, The Grateful Dead

This is not a task for the faint-of-heart. Engage your team in the task. It involves looking at every nook and cranny in your organization for opportunities to separate yourselves from the pack: brand, service, product, product support, and how you leverage technology are some examples of where you can look.

Here’s an example of an ONLY that I helped create for a client. It’s simple, clear and compelling and makes a hell of an elevator speech.

‘We are the ONLY team that provides integrated safety solutions that go beyond the needs of our customers ANYTIME, ANYWHERE. We are committed to growing our customer’s business. We ONLY serve safety.’

ONLY rules — Your ONLY must speak to the experiences and benefits created by a product rather than on the product itself. Declaring, for example, that you are the ONLY ones who offer the XYZ product says little in terms of what unique value you are creating for people which is the key for any differentiation statement.
And don’t include low prices in the statement or you will have a rude awakening;

Never use a comparative word like ‘better’ or a superlative word like ‘best’ in your ONLY. They are lazy, subjective words that you can’t prove — how can you prove you have the ‘best’ communications network in Canada? — and customers don’t believe them in any event;

Keep it brief. Your ONLY is a sound bite that consumes a few lines, not a narrative consuming a page. If it looks like an essay it isn’t a viable claim;

As stated earlier, your ONLY must speak to the specific customer group you are targeting not the market in general;

Test your ONLY with customers and employees to ensure it is relevant — does it address the high priority wants and desires of the WHO — and true — do they believe you actually deliver on the statement consistently?

Consider your ONLY a draft; it is highly unlikely you’ll get it right the first time. Take your almost-there only statement and start working with it. Refine it as you go. And stay alert for a response by a competitor who may suddenly come awake when they see your move.

Strategic game plan statement — Once your team have answered the 3 questions you are now ready to pull your answers together into your overall strategy statement which is unlike others which tend to be general and helium-filled.

It could look something like this:

“We will grow our top line sales revenue by 3% over the next 12 months (HOW BIG) by focusing our scarce resources on the retired couples segment of greater Seattle (WHO to SERVE). We will compete and win by providing personalized transportation services to assist them in getting around the city. (HOW to WIN)”.

Once you’ve crafted your ‘elevator speech’ business plan statement, the even tougher work starts, building an action plan with specific objectives and accountabilities to execute your new plan. Take the time required to get this piece right, otherwise you won’t achieve your strategic intent.

Here are a few execution planning points to consider:

▪️ Select as few objectives as possible. Avoid the brainstorming tactic where the tendency is to define as many things to do as possible. All brainstorming does is dilute the number of resources available to do the real work necessary to advance your plan.

Find the critical few objectives that will yield 80% of the result you’re looking for and get them done.

▪️ Assign accountabilities for each objective with a specific timeframe to deliver the expected results.

▪️ In the objectives portfolio, emphasize marketing, sales and customer service more than other more internally focused functions like finance and business development. Customer-facing objectives are critical to revenue generation and loyalty and should be given the priority.

▪️ If your plan includes building customer loyalty, have a specific objective to create a service recovery strategy.

▪️ Include a Cut the CRAP objective to free up resources from unnecessary work to the new tasks required to execute your new plan.

If you follow the methodology I’ve described here, you will not only have a business plan like no other, your organization will also have the superior market performance that goes along with it.

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

• Posted 3.8.21 at 05:43 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

March 1, 2021

Has the marketing profession really improved over the past 10 years?

Source: Pexels

Has the marketing profession really improved over the past 10 years?

I wrote this piece originally on Oct 28, 2010 under the title of ‘Marketing is an absolutely boring bust’.

And the reality is that in 10 years, some things have definitely changed in terms of how marketing is practiced but equally, there are many things that remain unchanged that I expected and hoped would change.

Marketing has been victimized by momentum thinking, comfortable with traditional marketing practices and satisfied with applying new digital tools to old thinking.

This is my current view of marketing.

#1. New product and service development

Marketing continues to provide what technology offers; the cool things technology can do via the features inherent in its platform.

There continues to be little new product innovation and invention driven by what people want and crave; the focus remains on trying to match customer needs with current products and services available in the marketer’s kitbag.

People do not buy goods and services . They buy relations, stories and magic. — Seth Godin

New product marketing — discovering people’s secrets, creating value packages and personal offers — hasn’t arrived to any significant degree yet; marketing existing products occupies 90% of what marketers today do.

The answer to the question “Where is the customer in all this?” remains a mystery. They should be the main input to the marketing process but they’re not.

AI tools are touted as the ‘magic’ solutions to improve the customer web experience.

Typical AI applications include:
— consumer behavior forecasting.
— product recommendations to individuals based on previous browsing or purchase behaviour.
— personalized advertising.
— marketing messaging.
— customer service via telephone or chatbot.

In addition to applications that involve behavioural algorithms such as these, it is important that AI technology development be channeled to provide input to the new product development process.
Gathering behaviour information on individual’s questions and purchases should be used to gain insights that feed product innovation and to create new personal holistic packaged offers for each of them.

#2. Flogging products and services

The infatuation with pushing products at people continues to dominate mainstream marketing even though new web personalization tools are now available, all claiming to make web experiences more personal and relevant for visitors to entice them to buy.

This is, however, a disguised attempt to present the flogging agenda in a more acceptable light.

ME marketing has progressed very little as marketers are content to continue flogging existing products and worrying about conversion rates.

These new digital tools — which leverage previous browsing and purchase behaviour — are intended to increase the productivity of flogging products.

Further, tracking an individual’s browsing habits and feeding products back to them in subsequent browsing sessions (or sending them email offers) under the guise of personalization is misleading because it assumes I’m interested in what I’ve clicked on or previously bought, ergo it’s contributing to a more personal experience.

Curiosity shouldn’t be confused with interest.

Pushing products on me based on my behaviour yesterday may produce some positive results but I find it intrusive and annoying. When my screen is literally pasted with ads based on what I’ve clicked on in the past and my rudimentary demographics, it’s anything but a pleasant experience; in most cases the experience is frustratingly irrelevant and takes away from the advertiser’s brand currency.

Under the guise of creating personal experiences for people, marketing has chosen the path of using technology to do a more efficient job at flogging products at them.
And now, a person’s screen is barraged with numerous suppliers all trying to do the same thing. How can this enhance one’s overall experience? It can’t.

#3. Price

Price continues to be the prime element of the marketing marketing and selling proposition; it dominates the marketer’s reasoning as to what motivates someone to buy.
And the irony is that this price focus adds very little — if anything — to the strategic positioning of the organization; price is easily copied by the competition and therefore no competitive advantage is achieved.

The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven’t given them anything else to care about. — Seth Godin, marketing genius

And so you see a myriad of special pricing and promotion deals with giveaway incentives to attract new customers (and increasing acquisition costs in the process), discounted product and service bundles, and points-based loyalty programs on the marketing agenda.

Marketing has a long way to go to pivot from price to value; to market distinctive and unique value created by their products and services rather than the prices paid.

#4. Differentiation

Market players continue to look alike for the most part with little differentiation among them even though the intensity of competition continues to grow.

The irony is overwhelming. This is exactly the opposite to what you would expect. When competition increases, you would expect the players to get more competent in terms of differentiating themselves from others. But this has not happened. In fact the opposite is true; competitive differences are declining and sameness is proliferating.

The same old platitudes and competitive claims that pervaded the media a decade or more ago continue to live on:
- We provide the best network.
- We have the best people.
- We exceed customer expectations.
- We create memorable experiences.
- Our goal is to delight you.”

In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible. — Seth Godin

Marketers today seem to be willing to let the innovators of the digital toolset do their thing, but they are unwilling (or incapable) of defining a new relevant marketing context (based on striving for uniqueness and remarkability) to make these tools relevant.

Relevance today should be based on carving out an edge that is pure and unique, not vague and bland.

Where the hell is marketing leadership?

#5. Benchmarking

Google “Why is benchmarking so important” and this is some of what you get:

Benchmarking helps organizations overcome complacency. They continuously strive to improve their performance standards in order to stay relevant in the market. ... Benchmarking helps organizations to identify the areas where the gap between their standard and that of the industry is the largest.

Ok, so the objective is to improve, to get better, to incrementally move forward and to get closer to the ‘best’; striving to copy them.

Hmmm… I’m not sure that being the same as someone else is the marketer’s end game.

Surely you want to be unique and remarkable with the ability to capture their imagination and forever gratitude. Right? Of course, because it’s the only way to guarantee a sustainable position in the marketplace and stay healthy.

Benchmarking is the antithesis to achieving a long term strategic advantage, and unfortunately it’s still alive and well. I’m witnessing more of it than 10 years ago.
Organizations tag best in class copying as innovation more today which implies that the rate of true marketing innovation is on the decline.

There has been literally no progress in using benchmarking as a baseline tool to create distinction and separation from the competitive herd.be different from.
Truly disappointing that marketing is still stuck in the benchmarking rut.

#6. ‘Creeping incrementalism’

The priority for marketers continues to figure out how to incrementally improve, rather than take bold action to be different and stand out from other players.

Increment rather than invent; change rather than create continue to be the marketer’s priorities.

WOW! power to separate market participants still takes a back seat to product augmentation based on what others do and what new technological capabilities are currently available.
With every marketing organization doing this, it’s little wonder that no single organization stands out.

A main component of the incremental marketing mindset remains the need to ‘round-the-corners’ on products that are introduced; small compromises made by the marketer to try and make a product appeal to a wider audience.

Unfortunately, taking the edge off a product in an effort to try and satisfy more people reduces any uniqueness it may have had and increases its blandness.

Marketing priorities for the next decade

Yes, marketing has definitely made some improvements in the past decade but there are specific areas that marketers need to keep working on as we look forward to 2031.

▪️ Set the objective of being different as the context for all marketing activity. If it’s not different then don’t do it.

▪️Stop bundling and start packaging.

▪️ Create the ONLY statement as the way to express your distinctiveness in the marketplace and define your competitive advantage.

▪️Focus on keeping current customers not on acquiring new ones.

▪️ Refocus AI to help identify insights in people and organizations; use the intelligence gained to create personalized packaged solutions.

▪️ Shape web personalization tools to do more than just increasing the effectiveness of pushing products. Use them to perform functions the individual has demonstrated they want.

▪️ Add customer learning as a critical marketing value and core competency.

(Hopefully) see you back here in 2031 for another report.

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

• Posted 3.1.21 at 06:59 am by Roy Osing
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February 26, 2021

Why ‘bait marketing’ is a crazy way to attract new customers

Source: Unsplash

Why ‘bait marketing’ is a crazy way to attract new customers.

Bait marketing is crazy; it’s intellectually dishonest; it makes no sense.

I think one of the travesties of today’s marketing is the special promotion designed to bait or attract new customers. I believe it’s a dishonest marketing tactic which works against customer loyalty.

Most companies use special offers or promotions to bait or attract new customers with the belief they will kick sales up a notch and increase revenue.

For the most part, special deals use price as the hook and are time based to encourage people to make a fast purchase decision.

“For the next three months subscribe to our wireless service and get a free LED TV” is a common promotion offered by many as a way to acquire new wireless customers.

These offers are dangled in the face of a potential NEW customer; THEY receive the free TV.

On the other hand, someone who has been a loyal wireless customer for 10 years gets NADA even though they have supported the company to the tune of thousands of dollars.

This is crazy.

There are two main issues I have with this bait marketing approach.

Lazy marketing

First, it’s lazy marketing. The easiest thing to do is to give stuff away with the mistaken belief that if you do, the recipient of the gift will somehow feel obligated to enter your loyalty tent and remain dutiful henceforth.

Not true.

Despite the studies marketers trot out, people value what they pay for, and if they pay nothing to move from another supplier to you they laugh under their breath and wait for the next juvenile marketer who comes along and makes you a better offer. And when they find one, bye-bye.

Intellectual dishonesty

Second, bait marketing is not only an insult to the loyal customers who have given themselves to your organization for years, it’s also intellectually dishonest.

Existing customers rarely qualify for the bait deal. The free TV is NEVER offered to the customer who has been loyal for 5 or 10 years!

They have steadfastly paid their bill on time every month. They have put up with the odd price increase and policy change but their loyalty has been resolute.

And they have rarely been offered a deal on anything. They may have been thanked for their loyalty with words or an annual free calendar, but certainly nothing as substantial as the person being baited.

And when they discover that a special promotion is being offered to new customers and ask for the same deal they are told “I’m sorry you don’t qualify for this promotion”.

How do they feel? Second rate? Third rate? Don’t rate?

Special offers should be placed at the feet of your loyal customers fIrst. Reward or retention marketing may not be as sexy as its bait cousin, but special deals should be extended to existing customers FIRST!

It’s an awesome way to thank people for their ongoing support and return the favour with a token of your appreciation. Think about it as re-investing (in them) some of the revenue they have generously given you over the years.

But companies rarely use promotions this way.

They’re afraid of losing money

They actually believe that if they offer the new customer deal to an existing loyal customer they will lose money; they don’t want to take the revenue hit from current customers taking advantage of the savings.
They don’t feel it is necessary to offer the promotion it to loyal customers to encourage them to stay. And if an exiting customer takes the deal they don’t believe it stimulates new sales.

These are bogus arguments for a number of reasons:

▪️Offering something special to your loyal fans will surprise and delight them.
They will stay loyal to you as long as you serve them well. And they will act as your best advertisers by telling the story to others about how great you are. Revenue will grow as a result.
Ever done a Net Present Value calculation on a customer who has been with you for 10 years? Is it a big number or small number. Right!

▪️If you don’t include them they will find out.
They will know that they are not included in the deal and they will be angry and feel neglected. They might leave you, but for sure they will talk you up to their friends and family as a selfish organization that does not care about their loyal customers. They will slander your brand; shouting out your lack of integrity and honesty.

▪️If your special deal attracts someone because of their thirst for your low price, what makes you think they won’t leave you for a better offer? A special targeted at ‘switchers’ is also fuel for more switching. Then you have realized zero return on your promotion investment and you have given your current customers reason to leave.

▪️Investing in your loyal customer base always makes sense.
You’re not reducing your margins by offering them the special deal, you’re reinvesting some of your margins in them to maintain their loyalty. Why do companies buy back their own shares?

Read the fine print. This offer is for ‘new subscribers only’!

It’s time organizations re-think the strategy behind ‘the special deal’ which is unethical and dishonest.

Any way you cut it, the deal strategy for new customer acquisition is risky.

Baiting people to become new customers for you is crazy.

Show customers why they should stay with you; invest your resources accordingly.

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

• Posted 2.26.21 at 10:37 am by Roy Osing
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February 22, 2021

5 proven reasons benchmarking won’t give you a competitive advantage

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5 proven reasons benchmarking won’t give you a competitive advantage.

Benchmarking is viewed as a necessary process for most organizations as they do their business planning. There are benchmarking consultant experts and courses you can take to learn how to benchmark proficiently and gain the maximum benefit.

In my view, benchmarking is a simple concept as is its process:

▪️Identify the organization that excels in some aspect of your operations that you believe requires improvement — customer service, business planning, customer engagement, sales management, accounts receivable, advertising planning and so on;

▪️Map (understand deeply) their system or process to understand exactly how they perform the operation;

▪️Define the actions you must take to incorporate their operating system into your operation with the objective of replicating their level of efficiency.

Benchmarking might help you improve your operations efficiency but it won’t make you stand-out from your competition.

Benchmarking can be problematic on several levels:

1. Benchmarking is nothing more than copying someone else’s ideas

It’s ‘sucking up’ to an organization or individual recognized (by someone presumed to be the thought leader) to be the best at performing a particular function and is therefore the organization you should aspire to be.

It doesn’t make you special. It may help you improve your position in the crowd of hungry competitors by being more efficient at something, but it won’t help you stand out from them by being more relevant or unique.

Copying is the enemy of being different. The maximum benefit you can achieve by copying is best in class levels of performance which may return better operating results than previously obtained but unless you vault beyond these levels true differentiation won’t happen.

2. Benchmarking won’t make you unique in any way

The herd is a place where organizations go to blend in with others; to conform with what others do and to lose the DNA attributes that make them special.

Even if you are the ‘best of breed’ you’re still in the herd. It’s just that you execute a process better than any other herd member; you’re still rubbing shoulders with your sameness brethren.

And because you’re tagged ‘the best’, you have no motivation to break away from the herd; you find consolation in it.

The world is becoming a home for best practice addicts and as a result it’s boring and benign.

3. Benchmarking makes you conform

Benchmarking results in conformance; it sucks any unique thinking you may have out of your system and replaces it with the need to capitulate to the leader of the herd.

Rather than look for a unique solution to your problem, you look for another herd member that has put in the work to create a solution that works for them and you assume you can boilerplate it and it will work for you.

When you copy someone or something, you relegate — subordinate — yourself to them. You roll over, put your ‘paws in the air’ and subsume yourself to the leadership of someone else. Looking up when you’re lying on the ground isn’t a very liberating place to be.

4. Benchmarking won’t make you special and differentiate you from your competitors

It has no strategic value in moving the organization to a position in the marketplace that ONLY you occupy.

“What are our competitors doing?” is often asked when organizations are thinking about improving how they conduct business, and the benchmarking process ensues — adding zero space between them and their competitors.

And, of course, if you’re chasing another organization, you’re adding nothing to the kitbag of things that make you ‘special’ in the eyes of your customers and encouraging them to spread your word to others and attract new business.

If you copy someone, all you do is lower the bar.

5. Benchmarking prevents you from trying new things

If you’re a copycat, you’re not an innovator. Benchmarking does little or nothing to stimulate innovation and creativity which seem to be values organizations covet in today’s world of uncertainty and constant change.

In fact benchmarking kills real innovation because it has performance improvement using the standard of another as its end game as opposed to revolutionary changes that determine new strategic outcomes.

We need to get our thinking straight.

Few organizations today stand out, which is sad; few are deemed to be really special by their customers.
Being remarkable isn’t a strategy on the radar of most, or if it is, it’s an elusive goal because leaders allow people to use traditional tools — like benchmarking best of class — to do their jobs.

Uniqueness, remarkability and being special come from being different than your competitors, not copying what they and others do, even if they perform certain functions more efficiently than you do.

We need to change our ways and stick copying where it belongs.

Let’s:
— Start thinking about being different than best in class, not copying best of breed.
— Covet being ‘different than breed’, not best of breed.
— Think about doing what others are not doing, not looking to other’s successes.
— Go in the opposite direction that others are going, not following in their footsteps.
— Define best in class to be the highest bar to be different from, not emulate.
— Purge boilerplates from our toolbox and break new ground (and maybe be the author of a new boilerplate).

Copying is the enemy of being special and remarkable.

And as leaders, let’s change the conversation in our organizations; purging the notion of benchmarking and copying as ways of achieving strategic progress by asking these types of questions of our teams:

▪️”What can we do to be different from the crowd of competitors?”;
▪️“How does what you’re proposing make us stand out from the competition and be special to our customers?”.
▪️“What crazy ‘insane’ thing is a different business to ours doing and how can we use the basics of the idea to morph it into a special idea for us?”

Benchmarking is absolutely the wrong thing to do when the end game for most organizations seems to be uniqueness and remarkability, but there are ways to ‘bend the curve’ and go in the right direction.

Start the change now, though, because time is not your friend.

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

• Posted 2.22.21 at 05:26 am by Roy Osing
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