October 10, 2022

Why the best way to grow your business is to ‘say yes’

‘Saying YES!’ is a great growth strategy.

Not much attention is given in business plans to how policy and rule systems can be used to foster growth.

Rules, policies and procedures are, in most organizations, tools used as internal control mechanisms to put boundaries on what people can do and what they can’t do — rules for performance planning, rules governing productivity targets, rules on decision making to minimize risk, rules for time reporting, rules for hours of work and rules for how the organization engages with its customers.

In addition to satisfying these internal requirements, rules and policies need to be looked at as tools for enabling the behaviours necessary to successfully execute the organization’s strategic intent — particularly when it comes to making it easy for customers to get their needs met.

As any consumer is aware, sometimes it’s extremely frustrating dealing with some organizations to the point where we are so annoyed we just move on.

For proof, just look behind most negative customer experiences in an organization and you will most likely find a rule, policy or procedure that has infuriated a customer because it stopped them from getting what they want.

And what do infuriated customers do? They tell all of their friends and family about your rotten customer service and look for another organization to do business with.
Any way you look at it, an infuriated customer doesn’t serve the strategy of an organization and it’s growth imperatives.

Narcissism makes you smaller — A complicated, bureaucratic and customer unfriendly system of rules carries with it a narcissistic brand; an organization that cares only for itself.

Lack of an external facing rule system communicates that you really don’t care about the customer experience; that you really are more concerned about meeting internal efficiency targets than you are about creating exceptional and memorable experiences for people — definitely not a good thing to tell a highly competitive market where customer choice and buying power is greater than ever.

Rules, policies and procedures should serve the customer; not the internal auditors.

They should empower and liberate customers to do what they want in a way that is agreeable to them and not as a mechanism to control them.

The time has come to look at the rule system as a driver of growth where the end game is to make it so easy for people to do business with us that they keep coming back again and again (and give us their money) and tell their friends and family how amazing we are (and they give us their money).

A policy should be looked at as a tool of strategy; if it enables the customer to fulfil their dreams then it’s a good one.

Policies and procedures should be conceived with the objective of creating memorable moments for people. If someone doesn’t say “WOW!” after having just experienced the wait time in your call center queue, then your process is flawed (you’ve probably outsourced it to some remote place in the world and you’ve given cost a higher priority than speed of answer) and you need to fix it fast.

If your customer doesn’t say “BRILLIANT!” after trying to return your product, your return policy doesn’t cut it and it needs to be changed.

Here are a few of the amazing things that will happen if you ‘say yes’ and use your rules and policies to deliver memorable moments.

Growth — revenue will grow as a result of liberated customers who can buy from you in a free-and-easy way. They like the moments they have with you; they buy more and they refer you to friends who do the same.
Furthermore customer retention rates increase; customer loyalty provides more stability to the revenue line.

Productivity — the effectiveness of your frontline is improved. Rather than having to spend copious amounts of their time with customers trying to explain and enforce dumb rules that make no sense to them and that they refuse to comply with, frontline employees can spend their time enabling customers to complete their transactions. Revenue per frontline contact goes up.

Employee engagement — frontline job satisfaction and engagement with the goals of the organization increase as the anxiety and stress of dealing with unhappy customers is reduced. Amazing things happen when you are allowed to comply with what the customer wants rather than constantly trying to get them to accept an internal policy that the customer refuses to accept.

An employee who is empowered to ‘say YES!’ is the most effective growth engine an organization can have.

Customer service results — the customer experience metric in the overall results of the organization improves dramatically as the rules of the organization now please the customer as opposed to annoying them beyond belief.
If a customer sees that the organization is trying to bend over backward to satisfy their needs, they are not only pleased, but they are very willing to provide service accolades when the service measurement dudes call.

Market share — customer loyalty increases as a result of the more memorable moments; saying yes over and over again creates strategic value which is measured in the share of the market your organization holds. Say NO! too often and watch your market position plummet.

Competitive advantage — the organization distinguishes itself from its competitors who continue to treat rules as vehicles to control behaviour.
In fact rather than being viewed as narcissistic and inward focussed, the ‘say yes’ organization becomes the benchmark for others who want to improve their customer service — their way becomes best in class.

In order to start ‘saying yes’ focus on finding out what the main policy pinch points are in the organization, like the top 10 policies that make your customers go postal on a regular basis.

And engage your customers in a conversation on the topic; they will have no difficulty telling you which rules are unreasonable, dumb and just outright stupid. And they will love you for asking!

But beware of the momentum managers in your organization who want to stay with the ‘say NO!’ philosophy of rule setting. The people who will try and argue that dumb policies are necessary because of some regulation or law preventing them from being changed.

Challenge every claim like this; you will find — as I did when I launched a Dumb Rules Program in my organization — that there are, indeed, some policies that can’t be changed. But I assure you that you will discover more policies that can be changed than can’t so doing the work will pay off handsomely.

And hold your managers accountable for killing the stupid policies you uncover; put it in their performance plan to show them that cleansing the internal environment of policies that suck from a customer’s perspective is the highest priority.

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

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 10.10.22 at 06:52 am by Roy Osing
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October 3, 2022

Why claptrap and copying will never make you audacious or unique

Why claptrap and copying will never make you audacious or unique.

There are many challenges facing leaders who are in the hunt to grow their business.

Some are beyond the leader’s direct control, like economic fluctuations and specific competitor attacks.

But there are other challenges that are under direct leadership control that, if successfully met, make a HUGE impact on the growth trajectory of the business.

I pay attention to the actions organizations take to grow, and through my blogs and podcasts I share what worked for me as a leader of an early stage business that we amazingly grew to A BILLION IN SALES.

But there are two tactics businesses continue to employ on a regular basis that drive me crazy, despite the fact that in my 4 decades of leadership experience they detract from creating competitive advantage and adding strategic value.

#1. CLAPTRAP COMPETITIVE CLAIMS

There is an extreme lack of clarity in organizations in terms of how they declare their uniqueness over their competitors, i.e. their competitive advantage.

And the answer to the question “Why should I do business with you and not your competitors?” is lost in the fog of aspirations and good intentions.
The customer is left to their own devices to filter through the CLAPTRAP to discover what’s real and what’s pure fabrication.

Everyone declares who they are and how they are different from their competitors using words—CLAPTRAP—like:

“BETTER, BEST, #1, LEADER, PREMIUM, MOST COMPELLING, MOST RELIABLE, GREAT TASTING, FIRST EVER, LOWEST COST”

But how can these words be believed? What do the words even mean? And if everyone uses them, how can they benefit any of the users?

It’s business obfuscation at play and it drives me nuts!

I would say—based on observation—that literally 99% of businesses these days use expressions like:

- “We offer the best coffee and espresso drinks for consumers who want premium ingredients and perfection every time.”
- “We work hard every day to make us the world’s most respected service brand.”
- “Canada’s largest and most reliable 5G network.”
- “We are on a mission to make neighborhoods safer. Our suite of affordable solutions make smart security accessible to all.”
- “We provide premium, real ingredients for customers looking for delicious food that’s ethically sourced and freshly prepared.”
- “We are the market leaders in communications technology.”
- “I develop sustainable business models and marketing strategies to fuel small business growth.”
- “I help manufacturing organizations improve their processes to reduce waste and grow profits.”
- “Helping you build a big brand with your small business.”

These CLAPTRAP-ridden statements may have some redeeming value to leadership who want to advocate and promulgate organizational values for employees to model and exhibit, but they do little to declare to customers the unique value proposition an organization has over its competition.

And many also take CLAPTRAP up a notch and use ASPIRATIONS to further contaminate the work of distancing one organization from another:

- “We’re in business to save our home planet.”
- “To inspire humanity – both in the air and on the ground.”
These are at best helium-filled statements that don’t separate companies and add little to meeting the challenge of differentiation.

CLAPTRAP and ASPIRATIONS need to be expunged from the leadership tool kitbag.

My solution, one that has been successfully used in our journey to A BILLION IN SALES is The ONLY Statement, my way of applying ‘precision to the promise’ of what separates you from your competitors.

“We are the ONLY ones who…” is specific, understandable, binary and measurable

ONLY examples:
✔️ ”Kimberly Lebbing is The ONLY High-Performance Success & Mindset Expert Helping Business Owners, Entrepreneurs, and Their Teams Get Mind-Blowing Results in as Little as 4 Hours.”
✔️ “ONLY TELUS PureFibre has upload speeds as fast as download speeds, and a 100% fibre optic connection that runs direct to your home—so you can binge without buffering.”
✔️ “The North Delta Business Association is the ONLY team that: Links you to other businesses, connects you with experienced & knowledgeable people to help you lead & grow your business, and constantly challenges you to do things differently.”
✔️ “St John Ambulance is the ONLY First Aid Advocate that provides safety solutions anywhere, anytime.”
✔️ ”We provide the ONLY permanent solution that prevents biohazard contaminants (such as used syringes) and all other debris from entering manholes.”
✔️ ”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.”
✔️ ”Roy Osing is the ONLY author, entrepreneur and executive leader who delivers practical and proven Audacious Unheard-of Ways to build high performing businesses and successful careers.”
✔️ ”Roy is the ONLY coach and advisor who offers The ONLY Statement as a practical and proven tool to create a competitive advantage for organizations and individuals.”

#2. BENCHMARKING

The second thing organizations do that keeps me up at night is benchmarking, landing on ‘best in class’ and copying them.

Benchmarking is problematic on several levels:

#1. Copying sucks. — 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 to your customers.

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. Being in the herd sucks. — 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. Conforming sucks. — 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. Being like your competitors sucks.— 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 and increase the herd by one.

#5. Not trying new things sucks. — 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 put copying where it belongs.

Let’s:
▪️Start thinking about being different from best in class, not copying best of breed.
▪️Covet being ‘different from 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 audacious 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?”

I can’t sleep at night when the world continues to be infatuated with CLAPTRAP, ASPIRATIONS and COPYING.

Do me a favour and STOP! doing these two things so I can get at least 4 hours of ZZZ’s every night.

Thanks.

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

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 10.3.22 at 05:01 am by Roy Osing
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September 26, 2022

Why the best competitive strategy is to ‘dominate and mute’

Source: Pexels

Why the best competitive strategy is to ‘dominate and mute’?

Words describe strategic intent and I have a real problem applying soft or incremental words to the critical business function of sustainable differentiation and survival.

Seeking a competitive edge implies that the intent is to be slightly better than your competition.

Is that really good enough?

I think not.

A ‘slightly better strategy’ leads to things like:

— more price promotions and price cutting.

— PR campaigns based on lofty visions of what organizations aspire to be.

— products that break down less frequently.

— the sporadic introduction of more customer appreciation days to show customers how much they are cared for.

— more smile training for customer service employees with the intent to improve customer service experiences.

— passive technology adoption based on its availability from suppliers.

— aspirational claims in the market like ‘the best network’, or highest quality services.

The driver of a ‘slightly better’ strategy is what the competition is doing, and you spend all of your time looking to one-up them incrementally. You are constantly in a reaction mode thinking inches with no long term ‘leap’ strategy and everything gets done incrementally.

In addition, predicating your strategy on the actions of the competition to the exclusion of your customers is survival limiting at best. Your organization will die, the only question is when.

Dominate and Mute

Let’s start to use words that compel us to do something truly great for our organization; success and survival demand us to do so.

Strategic concepts like these provide the motivation to create a bold strategy that will assure long terms success - dominate the competition -  prevail over them - stop their efforts in their path.

A ‘dominate and mute’ strategy has outcomes like these:

▪️benchmarking ‘best in class’ organizations is NEVER used.

▪️imprecise planning with order-of-magnitude new targets in mind.

▪️competitors are observed, but action is taken to satisfy what customers crave.

▪️unmatched value packages that create excitement among those destined to buy it.

▪️refusal to outsource call center operations because it is critical to building customer loyalty.

▪️ a primary focus on keeping existing loyal customers not acquiring new ones.

Competitive edge?

NO!

Dominate and Mute will drive out a strategy to survive in unpredictability harsh times.

The road-kill of those that didn’t think this way are unfortunately too numerous to mention.

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

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 9.26.22 at 12:07 am by Roy Osing
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September 19, 2022

3 magic and proven moves you can make to have an audacious career

Source: Unsplash

3 magic and proven moves you can take to have an audacious career.

For those of you looking for the ‘Magic Formula’ to succeed, these are the 3 Audacious Career Moves that worked for me in leading an organization to A BILLION IN SALES.

#1. Have a Career Game Plan.

Success requires a plan to define what you covet, and what you need to do to achieve your end goal. And it should be a 24-month not 5-year view to require you to take action NOW, rather than procrastinating with the belief you will get things done 4years from now (which rarely happens).

The career business is highly competitive with most job applicants highly educated.
Your challenge is to break through the clutter of success seekers and win.

If you don’t have a specific plan, you’ll wander aimlessly looking for opportunities and hoping you’ll win a few.
You might, but then again you likely won’t.

#2. Create your Personal ONLY Statement.

Success demands uniqueness. Special people rise to the top in whatever they do, crowd ‘indistinguishables’ don’t. If you don’t stand out in some compelling, relevant way, you will forever struggle to be the chosen one for roles you seek.

Craft your ONLY Statement to declare what YOU do that no one else does.

“I am the ONLY one who…” is the leverage you need to stay out of the herd, be noticed, get chosen and win!

#3. Gather Mentors who have an MBA—Master in Business Achievement.

The ONLY mentors you need are those who are master rafters at DOING STUFF! Getting things done.

These incredible humans are the antithesis of intellectual procrastinators.

Find them. Befriend them. Listen to them. Follow them.

And you will outlast the crowd seeking to win.

The crowd won’t win.

You will.

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

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 9.19.22 at 04:00 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink