Be Different or be dead

March 29, 2012

How your brilliant business proposal can be a whopping success

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How your brilliant business proposal can be a whopping success.

Your business proposal has been approved. Awesome! Well done!

All your hard work has paid off. The many hours of analysis. Research. Economic study. Trade-off assessment. Lobbying for support.

Make no mistake about it though. All you have done is make the paper case that your plan will succeed.

You have in no way created a case that will actually win in the real world.

In fact most of the work that has to be done takes place after your plan has been approved internally.

Execution brings your proposal to life.

Whatever the number of hours invested in developing your proposal spend 3 times more in creating your detailed execution plan.

Critical steps in your action plan

— Assign the individuals who will be assigned to each;

— Set the completion dates for each action item;

— Establish the review process that will be followed to ensure implementation is moving forward as planned;

— Define the contingencies for when things go off track (and they will).

Your business case has given you the right to commit resources to a given course. It is a mere possibility and guarantees nothing in terms of success.

Put in the hard work into execution for success.

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

• Posted 3.29.12 at 08:03 am by Roy Osing
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March 26, 2012

3 important ways to power up your business

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3 important ways to power up your business.

Everyone is looking for the key to winning in business.

Problem is there isn’t ONE key. Winning in today’s intensely competitive world is all about doing a ton of simple things that create distance from the competitive herd.

But there are 3 things that, if done with passion and relentless tenacity, will turbocharge any organization on a winning path.

1. Have an ONLY Statement

Create a competitive claim that clearly establishes your distinctiveness. Your uniqueness. What makes you special compared to others.

“We are the ONLY ones that…..” is a practical way to create your position that is not aspirational, but can be executed in the marketplace. The ONLY statement is your elevator speech to describe what you do and who you are.

2. Do stuff for your loyal customers

Make them the center of attention. Build your business on the backs of the people who are loyal to you. Offer them the special deals first; don’t try and use promotions to acquire new customers until you’ve taken care of your loyalists first.

Make it easy for them to ‘sneeze’ you to others. Grow your business by trusting that if you leave your fans gaspworthy they will spread your word.

3. Make your game the dazzle game

Loyalty is created by delivering WOW! experiences not products that work according to specifications. People expect things to work the way you say they will. What they don’t expect is a mind-blowing experience when they get them.

Dazzle = powerful positive feelings = loyalty = word-of-mouth promotion = long term success. It’s just that simple.

Focus on getting started by creating this culture in your organization and it will yield the end-game you want

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

• Posted 3.26.12 at 09:53 am by Roy Osing
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March 24, 2012

Why customer complaints are an awesome way to grow your business

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Why customer complaints are an awesome way to grow your business.

Do you have a service strategy?

Most organizations look at complaining customers as a necessary evil and part of the job that needs to be done, but which is not looked upon with a great deal of delight.

Customers complain, frontline employees try and explain the company’s position in hopes to appease the annoyed customer and the customer goes away either satisfied or even more angry.

Remarkable organizations treat a complaining customer as first — a source of customer learning — and second, as a potential opportunity to recover and actually build customer loyalty

Customer learning goes beyond traditional market research and is a continuous process of learning from customers what works and what doesn’t in your organization.

It focuses on every customer contact and seeks to drain as much information from the experience possible in order to enhance market performance.

A customer complaint is an excellent touch point from which to learn.

It may not always be pleasant for an employee but it can provide rich information for you. Some companies treat complaint getting as a key strategic imperative, and honour those who do a great job at it.

Great employees attract complaining customers

Some organizations measure the number of complaints each frontline person handles successfully and they recognize the best complaint getter. Interesting cultural philosophy.

A customer complaint could be a service recovery waiting to happen. If the complaint is the result of a company blunder, handling the complaint the right way might be the difference between you losing the customer forever and enhancing their loyalty to you.

The recovery practice is about fixing the problem and then doing the unexpected for the customer based on what you know about them.

If you give ‘em what they DON’T expect, they will be more impressed than if the problem never occurred in the first place. And they will give you an ‘A’ for your efforts.

Let’s stop talking about complaints and start calling them recovery opportunities

Develop the process to turn complaint handling into successful recoveries and train your people on how you want it done.

Measure their performance and communicate it far and wide internally.

Honor those that excel in doing it.

Who are your complaint handling heroes?

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

• Posted 3.24.12 at 10:25 am by Roy Osing
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March 21, 2012

Why a focus on small groups will increase your relevance

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Why a focus on small groups will increase your relevance.

If you want to distinguish your organization from your competition, you must create VALUE that is RELEVANT (something they really care about) and UNIQUE (something that ONLY you provide)

So how do you become relevant?

Here’s a formula for you: relevance = 1/group size.

Relevance is inversely related to the size of the group the person is a part of.

Simply stated, the smaller the group you focus on, the more you can get to know that wants and desires of each individual in the group. And the more relevant you can be to each person in terms of the value you create for them.

If you are looking at a 1,000-person group, you will typically know less about each individual in the group than if you targeted a group of 10 people. It just makes sense.

The ‘average’ customer doesn’t exist; each person in the group is unique in some way.

Mass market myopia produces ‘round-the-corners’ marketing where products are designed to satisfy everyone,

But unfortunately these products end up being unremarkable, forgettable, common and lost in the blur of others in the market that we looking a customers the same way. Mass market mentality encourages customer irrelevancy.

Small is good. Smaller is better

They can be insatiable communicators. Small groups have effective and constant communication going on among the individuals in the group.

They have social power in the sense that together, because of their connectivity, they are able to create a powerful word-of-mouth ‘epidemic’ behind the ideas they like.

Think about the marketing opportunities in a small, cohesive group that cares about what you do and who are talking you up to others constantly. WOW!

Group power in a marketing sense is being better understood today.

Malcolm Gladwell in his excellent book, The Tipping Point, discusses the Rule of 150 which states that a group beyond 150 actually loses social power and tends to be ineffective in viral opportunities. So there’s a guideline.

Go find a group of 150 Fans who love you, are connected with one another and who communicate with each other on a regular basis. Go deep with each and every one of them and learn their secrets.

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

• Posted 3.21.12 at 11:03 am by Roy Osing
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