Sep 13, 2012 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
In a chook-house, there are both chickens and eggs, all mixed up, and hard to tell which chicken laid which eggs. It is a bit like the web, full of sites that could belong to any number of businesses.
As a part of a project a while ago looked at the sites of a range of operators competing in the market category in which this particular client operates. Most spruiked the features of their products and brands, what they did, rather than talking about the benefits that usage delivered, what problem the product solved, and why that solution was superior.
Why is it that the designers of sites seem to think that the most important thing to be said is what their product does, rather than designing the site to offer information that relates to the reasons why a customer may be seeking a product?
The old habits of printing a brochure and shoving it into every letterbox in reach die hard, and are being replicated on the web. A real pity, when the real opportunity is to target the offer to the individual who is attracted to look at the detail of your proposition because it engages them with something they want to know
Aug 30, 2012 | Branding, Customers, Innovation, Strategy
Apple has beaten Samsung in the US court, protecting a raft of patents that apply to mobile devices, acquiring a pile of cash, and the probable withdrawal of a number of Samsung products from the market. Competitive nirvana.
Whilst it is understandable that Apple protect its commercial position through the courts, it is nevertheless a hypocrisy of vast proportions, and breaks the cycle of innovation that has characterised the mobile space over the last 5 years, and changed, if not enriched our lives, and is now turning into a legal quicksand that can only hamper innovation, whilst embedding incumbents into our wallets.
Tim Cook, Apple’s MD released a note describing the win thus: “For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It’s about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth.”
Excuse me whilst I throw up.
This contrasts to Steve Jobs 1994 statement that Apple had been “Shameless about stealing great ideas” then later reversing that position by saying Apple would go “thermo-nuclear to protect its position” when others sought to build on their innovations.
Copy, Transform, Combine.
This is the thesis articulated by Kirby Ferguson, that everything is a remix of what has gone before, creativity emerges from and builds on the efforts of others. In his TED talk, and outstanding series of short videos which expand on the ideas, he traces the source of our patent and copyright laws pointing out the purpose of the laws is no longer what they are used for, competitive forces have fundamentally changed them into something not intended.
Apple built on the ideas of others, adding remarkable creativity to them to bring us a series of innovations perhaps unequalled in their immediate impact on our lives, but now is using outdated legal interpretations of patent law to protect its position from others seeking to do exactly what they have done so shamelessly.
Hypocrisy for the sake of money, undermining innovation. Understandable, but very costly to the consumer, and to the march of innovation.
Aug 28, 2012 | Customers, Management, Marketing, Sales
Most of the best ideas are simple, as is the Net promoter Score (NPS) the brainchild of Bain & Co executive Fred Reichheld.
As it gained currency, its simplicity became blurred by unnecessarily imposed complexity, often added it seems, just to make a consulting job seem more complicated.
NPS is really just one simple question:
“How likely are you, on a 1-10 scale to recommend this product/service to a friend or colleague”?
What Reichheld termed “detractors” answer 0-6, “Passives” answer 7 or 8, and “promoters” answer 9 & 10.
A company’s NPS is the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of detractors. Simple.
The complexity comes often from the sample to whom you direct the question, and it is pretty easy to see how it can be “gamed” by those selections, which happens most often when some senior person reads about NPS, decides it makes sense, and just decrees to the sales force to go ask your customers, and that is exactly what they do, selectively. After all, their bonuses may depend on it.
Aug 25, 2012 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Social media is a jungle, full of vegetation that limits the view, poisionous flowers that look beautiful at first glance, small areas of bright sunlight that somehow finds its way through the foliage, nasty surprises of many types, and gems that can change your life.
Those who know the jungle can pick the nasties from the goodies with little more than a glance, when the reluctant wanderer can barely see any difference, and they seem to be able to find their way effortlessly through the undergrowth whilst we flounder.
That is the nature of our environment, get used to it.
There are many blogs out there that offer information, insight, and advice, use them. Jay Baer’s convince and convert, Mike Stelzner’s Social Media Examiner, and Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation, Jeff Bullas, being four of the best. All offer advice, insight and opinion via a range of means, and will throw a bit of light into the dark corners.
A client asked me recently why he should bother spending the time and money (it is not cheap, it just costs differently to the stuff on the P&L) on social media, and my answer was simple: “that is where your customers are!”
Aug 24, 2012 | Customers, Sales
I wandered into a car dealer a while ago, largely killing some time, but I do need a new car, sometime soon, so I was tyre kicking with a rough agenda.
One of the salesmen saw me get out of my old Pajero, and instead of sliding up with the typical opener, “got a few beauties here you might like to look at” he said instead, “great car those old Pajeros, don’t make them, like that any more”. A conversation was started, and I was engaged to the point where I will probably have another look when it actually comes to making the change.
Most sales programs I have ever seen are all about the “closing”, 101 techniques for a quick close, but the real opportunity is for an opening, the opening of a conversation.
Aug 21, 2012 | Customers, Management, retail, Sales
Without sales, all the rest of the stuff that goes on in an enterprise is irrelevant. All the lofty strategies, policies, and well intentioned platitudes are dependent on the delivery of sales for their oxygen.
As a senior manager in a large enterprise, I used to annoy, sometimes terminally, marketing personnel by insisting they all spend periods of time, particularly during the annual peak sales periods, out in the field, carrying a bag, talking to the retail personnel of our customers, and interacting with consumers in the retail space.
Most came back energised, engaged and motivated, some did not, and they usually found their career prospects better elsewhere pretty quickly.
Often other functional management also benefitted greatly from seeing how the product they made, counted, delivered, or engineered lived in the sales environment.
50 interactions with intelligent customers and consumers, and those who preferred our competitor products may not be a statistically significant sample, but you will learn more from those interactions than you will from reading expensive research reports behind a desk.
