Be Different or be dead

December 19, 2011

‘Putterers’ do these 7 simple things to be great leaders

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‘Putterers’ do these 7 simple things to be great leaders

Great leaders are are amazing putterers.

Leadership is about helping people. Making it easier for them to do their jobs. Bashing barriers so they can do what they want to do.

Remarkable leaders are also great putterers in terms of taking care of the basics for people.

What do putterers do?

▪️They pay attention to detail. Detail about what’s going on in their life. It’s about the “small picture” where things get done. Where people take individual actions to move the organization forward.

At the coal face. If a leader doesn’t know what’s going on where customer meets company, how can they help the people working there?

▪️They have an uncanny ability to remember stuff so they can take action later. Being able to remember what has been observed in the heat of the moment for future reference.

▪️They make the work environment comfortable for people. Clean. Tidy. Organized. A nice place to work. A Maslov factor I suppose.
A basic need that people have. If they are working in a pit, don’t expect them to deliver sterling results.

▪️They take action themselves based on what they observe. Putterers rarely delegate. They get on it. You can’t delegate small picture stuff that needs attention. No one other than you can deal with the situation as well because only you FEEL what needs to be done.
Furthermore, delegation of small picture issues sends the “I really don’t give a damn” message to all, and your currency with the troops takes a plunge.

▪️They are always on the move. Always looking for things to improve for people. Don’t forget The small picture has a high resolution and to be able to deal with issues requires a lot of movement on the Leader’s part. Keep your feet moving!

▪️They anticipate. Being able to apply what they’ve learned in other circumstances to a situation that is developing in front of them. And, as a result, either avoiding an unpleasant ending OR achieving something extraordinary.

▪️They smile a lot. Putterers love what they so. And it’s contagious. And it costs nothing. People around them catch the smile virus. It spreads. Imagine a workplace where everyone is smiling!

How many putter acts do you practice everyday?

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

• Posted 12.19.11 at 10:00 am by Roy Osing
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October 31, 2011

What is a customer ‘secret’ and why is it really important to business success?

Source: Unsplash

What is a customer ‘secret’ and why is it really important to business success?

Successful organizations know more about what people want than their competition; they use information — customer ‘secrets’ — as the power ingredient in their value proposition mix to separate themselves from everyone else and to achieve incredible levels of performance.

The winners are the insightful ones because there are two tiers of information available to organizations; the first tier is common, and the second one rarely gets used.

Tier #1 is the ‘needs-layer’; it consists of what people need.

Tier #2 is the ‘secrets-layer’; it consists of what people want.

A typical organization talks about the importance of determining what their customers need and delivering appropriate solutions accordingly.

The theory goes: identify what a person needs; build a product or service that delivers the needs and provide it. Simple enough.
The problem is that every competitor is doing it and no one in the market gains any sustainable advantage.

And the added challenge is that the needs of most people are already satisfied; most people already have the things that sustain their everyday lives.

So how can you be successful in attracting them if you and every other market player are using the needs-layer as the basis for your marketing efforts?

You can’t.

People are now more than ever doing business with organizations based on their wants and desires; products, services and experiences they ‘covet’ and ‘lust for’ as opposed to what they need.

And the successful organizations understand that it’s the secrets-layer of information on people that provides the insights they need to get and keep an advantage over their Tier #1 competitors.

So, what’s a customer ‘secret’?

A secret is an individual thing; it’s not a mass thing. Crowds don’t have secrets; individuals in the crowd do.

My secret is not likely to be the same as yours because we are different people with different backgrounds, different competencies, different lifestyles and, in organizations, different financial and market challenges.

A secret reveals itself as a habit, bias, dream, hope, skill, competency, lifestyle choice, family priority, ego drive, friendship affinity, recreation preference, entertainment choice, or in the case of an organization, inventory problems, cash flow margin challenges, employment equity concerns or product quality issues.

If we can discover the secrets of individuals or business decision makers, we will be in the enviable position to deliver something that they can’t get anywhere else (since others are still basing their offerings on what they learn from needs-layer information).

What does it mean to marketing?

A secrets-layer focus changes both the process we use to obtain information on people and the type of information we gather.

The focus of research must be to discover the secrets that every person has, with the trust and conviction that sustainable competitive advantage will result from using this information to develop products, services, packages and other offers (as an aside, packages solutions can only be created if we holistically understand what people desire.)

Marketing strategy must move away from periodic needs based research of mass markets to continuous secrets based learning of individual people

And the secret learning process must be continuous; information is constantly streamed into the organization as a result of ongoing customer engagement as opposed to conducting periodic studies which only provide a snapshot in time of what people are wanting.

What does it mean to customer service?

Secrets-layer information feeds the service recovery process — what the organization does in response to a service blunder that royally screws the customer. The objective is service recovery is to turn the service OOPS! into a loyalty building event where the customer is more committed to the organization after the mishap than they were before it occurred.

The service recovery process looks like this: fix the problem fast (studies show that a response is necessary within 24 hours) + surprise the customer with something they don’t expect.

If you can’t respond to an OOPS! in 24 hours you lose and chance of enhancing customer loyalty

And the essential ingredient of a surprise is the secret-layer; some fact or fantasy you have discovered about the screwed over person that they would be startled to learn that you know about them.

What is critical to get full value from the secret-layer in service recovery is that secret information is available to the service organization in real time.
When a mishap occurs, “What secrets do we know about this customer?” must be answered quickly so the recovery process can conclude within 24 hours.

Use the secret to personalize the process of apologizing for the mishap and ‘atoning for your sin’. Make it special. Show them that you put thought into what is the right way for you to make amends.

And they will quickly forget about the OOPS! and all they will remember is how amazing they felt when you recovered in a personal way.

What does it mean to sales?

A secrets-layer focus means that sales must be held accountable for gathering customer secrets, leveraging them as a customer engagement tool and reporting the information back to their colleagues (like marketing and customer service) who are then able to use them as needed.

Even though sales is in a great position to ask the right questions of customers, listen, take notes, and record what they discover, they are rarely asked to perform this function. They continue to be expected to perform their traditional — and commonplace — role of pushing products and services to their markets and hitting their short term quota.

And unfortunately, this traditional role contributes virtually nothing to enable an organization to stand out from their competition and gain a strategic advantage.

Notwithstanding the fact that the process exposes opportunities to grow revenue, secret gathering is an excellent way for a salesperson to deepen relationships with their customers.

The mere fact that it’s the secret discovery process is highly interactive means that relationships are automatically strengthened (with the caveat of course that fulfilling promises made is done promptly and to the customer’s satisfaction).

The way to get sales to be ‘secret agents’ is to build secret gathering into sales performance and compensation plans otherwise it won’t get done.

Sales bonuses should assign a material weight to this component to get sales attention - I suggest at least 25% of the sales bonus should be based on secret gathering effectiveness and that a customer report card be used as the measurement vehicle.

What does the discovery process look like?

The fact is that people are willing to give you their secrets every time you engage with them if the right approach is taken. 

All you need to do is to show that you are more interested in them than you are in pursuing your own agenda. By your actions tell them that you are a ’human being lover’, and that you are interested in their story.

The secret floodgates will open.

The secret gathering process looks like this:

Ask a question > listen > record what you hear > ask another question > ask another question > repeat.

The point is that we have all been taught to be in the transmit mode, anxious to tell the other person what we have been up to, what we have to sell and the attributes we possess.

To really learn about someone we need to make a right-angled turn from this behavior. We need to be open to others and focus on learning what THEY are all about.

As a way to get started, create a secrets manual on each of your high value customers

Have fun with the idea. How about a secret agent award to honor the person who discovers the coolest secrets every month?
Or an annual recognition award of someone who excels at continually maintaining and sharing their secrets manual?

A sustainable advantage is the most difficult thing for any organization to achieve in markets overwhelmed with intense and aggressive competition.

It’s ironic that most organizations look to the text books on strategy for the solution. They all look to technologies, products, services, branding and a plethora of other tactics to one-up their competitors, yet there is one rather mundane and non-sexy thing that can be done to attain incredible strategic success: discover the secrets that decision makers house and protect — and exploit them to grow business.

Secret gathering is strategic and it should be developed as a core competency in your organization if you want to standout and power up your business.

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

• Posted 10.31.11 at 10:41 am by Roy Osing
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September 19, 2011

Great leaders do this one simple thing to be successful

Source: Unsplash

Great leaders do this one simple thing to be successful.

If ever there were a silver bullet for the leader of an organization to focus on, it’s how to be different; how to carve out a unique and relevant place in an over crowded marketplace

It’s not only a life saver, it’s THE critical driver of success.

This is what the competitive herd looks like:

— flogging products is the main tactic employed by herd members;

— lowering prices is the main strategy herd members use to acquire and keep customers;

— everyone copies everyone else in the herd under the guise of innovation;

— ‘follow the leader’ defines the typical business planning approach of all;

— product features are incrementally changed to match a competitor; delivering memorable experiences is a major void;

— mass marketing methods are used to try and sell; addressing the specific needs of individuals still lags as a marketing focus.

What an opportunity for an organization to break out from the herd and differentiate themselves by the value they create for people

Leaders need to spend more time asking their people…

▪️ “How can we be different?”

▪️ “How can we be more relevant to our customers in a unique way?”

▪️ “Why do we copy others?”

▪️ “Why are best of breed and best in class even in our vernacular?”

▪️ “Why do we have to rely on price discounting to sell our stuff?”

If leaders don’t ask the right questions they will never get the answers they need to create a remarkable organization.

The silver bullet is about differences. Go create them. Now.

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

• Posted 9.19.11 at 09:15 am by Roy Osing
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