EPISODE 55

Welcome back to the world famous, Carolyn and Joe Show! This week on the show, it’s the triumphant return of Carolyn and Joe from conquering the wild west! Hear about some of the crazy adventures that the gang faced, like the stare down with mother nature, the battle with the ever lasting frost, a face to face with a red headed giant, meeting hostile flirtators and the harsh realities of the mirage city. Tune in, it’s a tale not to miss. Enjoy.

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Photo by the fantastic Naeema Zareef (twitter.com/naeema)

Two events have been the highlight of the last week of 2009 for me. One of them was my darling’s stiff resistance of the flu and the other was a live encounter with a typical Marketing Manager 1.0. And , eventually, yours truly got to celebrate the assent of the new year in bed with fever as well… making the lessons learned from these two encounters all the more vivid.

1)Ignore it, Maybe it’ll go away

Years of evolution have not killed the breadwinner’s instinct in men, which even stands above the instinct of self preservation. When your man falls sick, he would always keep on going to work, as usual, doing all his house chores in an exemplary manner, without admitting that something is wrong. I suppose in ancient tribes, the sick were isolated or cast out of the villages & left to die alone. So God forbid for your man to admit that something is wrong. But what goes in the manager’s 1.0’s head is beyond my understanding. M1.0 says that the marketing has not changed and that the foundations and underlying rules still remain valid, he has a moment of truth when he condescends to admit that advertising has changed, and then he switches back to denial by saying that advertising is only a part of marketing, he goes back to touching on changing customer needs, but breaks off at specifics… And, of course, in the same manner that prince charming audaciously refuses to take a sick day and stay in bed, M1.0 would say, – “We do not need a website now, we’ll start working on it in a couple of months, we’re studying our competition for now.” But by the time they are weakened and overpowered by their disease, the first would’ve plowed through a week of 20% productivity at work and then lying in bed for 2 days to recuperate and another week and a half of insane coughing, which is a significant trade off for staying at home for two days, as I did, and then going back to work a 100% recharged.  And our M1.0 Would greatly benefit said competitors by not having a significant online presence by as much as he will frustrate his prospects, who would be unable to find a way to contact them and find out more about their products. And no, a Facebook page is not as good as Corporate website (if you disagree with that, let me know, I’d be more than happy to share my views!).

2) Time Heals everything

Mon Beau will tell you that it takes seven days to cure a flu anyhow, so why bother and put your life on hold? M1.0 says that brand awareness will come with time, after my comment about missing opportunities 5 months after market entry. Well, in my dictionary, one week equals, on average, 70 tweets, 3 blogposts, and a possible email marketing or other online campaign. Multiply that by 5 and you will have thousands of touchpoints with your clients that come at a fraction of a cost of traditional media. Maybe our generation is too aggressive, but less than a month in my new job, I am already feeling unproductive for not bringing in more value and having to cram up on literature/research 50% of my time and that is precisely why, I use the remaining 50% to make actionable change NOW. In my eye, less is more in the long run, and little things done now, be it a greeting card, sms, news release… may not just prevent you from LOSING an existing client, but also get you a new client TODAY!

3) Expenditure = ROI

When hubby does reach a pharmacy, after 5 days, he’ll sweep off the shelves everything  that can remotely help him, or at least that is what he thinks. But by that time, the poles have shifted and all he needs to do is really wait, sip orange juice and rest to recover, instead of ingesting antibiotics which will further drain his life -resources. M1.o will also go to extremes, after 5 months, hiring top models, pampering them and doing runway shows, publishing ads in glitzy magazines… in two words maniacally spending!  But same-same, time would’ve done its thing, and that extra investment would’ve been too little too late! But that does not mean that you shouldn’t still take in your vitamins regularly. Don’t wait until you get a soar throat to take action. Act now, act always! Because,

4) Nobody Cares about YOU, as much as You!

Your boss is not going to give you a day off when you are saying you are a little sick but already came to work, and your clients are not going to run 20 google searches, searching for your coordinates if you landing page, facebook page, twitter handle or corporate website have not been SEO and keyword optimized. And if your marketing campaign does not relate to me, your target client, and if I do not find what I want about you, no money in the world would buy you my consumer’s sentiment and loyalty. And beware, I am too studying your competitors, and so far , they are ahead of you.

5) Birds do it, bees do it…

Men have this secret solidarity pact about enduring illness at the office, when I used to take a sick day at my previous job, I sometimes felt my boss took it as a personal offense. On the other hand, my spouse’s boss can call him while he’s sick saying, – “Aren’t you man enough, chuck on some pills and get on going!”. Bizarre and unacceptable, but, nonetheless true! But, even if denial is the trend, you should take advantage of it. While everyone is “hachooing” at the office, retreat and come back rosy cheeked and productive. And while your competitors are stuck in their old ways, you have the time to experiment, innovate and advance! Your mindset is your only handicap!

Post Approved for publishing by Prince Charming, M1.0 feedback pending. What about you?

It’s the time of year when many of the customers I speak to ask if we are disinfecting “touch-points” when we clean their office at night.   Touch-points are things like door knobs, door handles,  faucets, appliance handles, etc.  My answer is, WE DO!  But, do our efforts really make a difference?  Consider this scenario.   We come to your office at night and disinfect surfaces around 9PM.  Around 8AM the following morning a sick employee who has come to work uses the restroom and uses the restroom door handle as they enter and leave the restroom.  The door handle is now contaminated with germs or bacteria left behind.  A few minutes later an employee who is well touches the same door handle in order for them to use the restroom.

Well, it’s probably pretty obvious that any amount of disinfecting the previous night probably only protects the first person to use the disinfected surface the next day.  For this reason, trying to eliminate the spread of disease in a TEAM effort where all parties are washing their hands regularly immediately after using the restroom and open the restroom door when done with a clean paper towel.  Some folks choose to use their hand to open the door followed by an application of hand sanitizer to kill any germs they might have picked up.

The need for continuous hand washing and killing germs with things like hand sanitizer is about the best we all can do to stop the spread of disease causing germs, bacteria and viruses.

Besides washing hands and using hand sanitizer.  It’s a good policy to consider your face a NO TOUCH ZONE.  After all, germs primarily enter the body through the eyes, nose or mouth, so keeping your hands away from your face is a good technique to help yourself stay well.

Good luck in your own endeavor to stay well when there are so many sick people all around us.   Preventing disease like the H1N1 virus is a group effort.  We are all in this together!

Fred

October 21, 2009 – In today’s economy early admission is becoming more important as a way to commit HS students sooner in the decision making process. However, as part of that process, forward-thinking colleges are now using “webcam interviews” and podcasts to personalize and put more focus on creating an admissions experience instead of just a process.

What this means to printers is not just the opportunity to provide variable data catalogs, invitations, purls, etc, but to help universities understand and score the relative importance of how applicants interact and respond. The more touch points you provide besides print, the greater revenue opportunities you will have.

Marketing case studies are valuable, but only to a point.  They tend to describe the “user experience” from the outside, which is really just the given brand’s perspective (e.g., “Brand X uses influencers to launch a new product”).  As a result, we marketers may sometimes forget (or willfully ignore) how people actually behave, assuming somewhat narcissistically that they take linear, deliberate paths to our door, when in fact people may only happen upon our offerings incidentally as they follow their own zig-zag paths.

I was reminded of this Sunday morning when my fiancé HK described the process of baking her first apple pie with only the Internet as her guide.  As we shared one of the last remaining slices of her pie for breakfast, I asked her to recount her process in detail, just to see what her actual web trails had been.  It was a little spontaneous ethnography to determine how many potential points for organic brand engagement there might be.

Saturday, baking day, was a bleak and rainy day in Manhattan.  HK wanted a project and fortunately for me her choice did not require any heavy lifting or carpentry expertise.  Once she had decided to make the pie, her immediate next move was to go to Epicurious.com.  She says it is her first choice in these moments because nearly every recipe on the site has at least ten or fifteen comments from people that help her to evaluate the recipe, understand the directions or consider alternate methods or ingredients.  In other words, HK’s trusted resource for her cooking adventures is an authoritative media property with content validated by its own active community.  Social Media Gurus may now shout their We-told-you-so’s.

After reviewing three recipes and associated comments, HK chose one – and proceeded to personalize it with elements of the other two based on her own instincts.  Because she didn’t know how to make crust, she went to YouTube for instructional videos, where she found two.  When she needed to learn more about certain ingredients in the recipe and wanted to replace others, she turned to Google and found herself visiting other baking sites and blogs.  In the process she learned about things like shortenings and sanded sugar.  Did she learn about any particular brands in her research?  Did any catch her eye in the paid search results, for example?  (Of course I had to ask).  None that she could recall, except for the shortening she wanted to replace (which shall go unnamed) and two Recipe Gods cited in users’ comments:  Julia Child and Betty Crocker.  Marketers who had banners running at the time may weep at this; psychologists and Nielsen will probably assert that her exposure to all the display ads in her path probably still registered somewhere in her subconscious and will account for purchases she makes the next time she shops.  You decide.

But HK did not go offline once the pie went into the oven.  After it had been baking for a while, her instincts told her it might be time to take it out, which was much sooner than the recipe’s suggestion.  It was a time-sensitive decision–an edible dessert stood in the balance.  Where did she turn for support?  I was no help.  But in just a few minutes on Google and in Chowhound forums she found ample reassurance for taking the pie out sooner rather than later.  Dessert was a huge success, and a great prelude to watching Queen Latifah’s Beauty Shop.  (If you’ve seen that film, you’ll understand).

And then the next morning, there we were, eating what remained of the pie, when HK was once again driven online for related research.  This time she wanted to learn whether to store it at room temperature or in the refrigerator.  As before, HK made her decision based on a survey of online commentary, weighing the merits of each argument and how it aligned–or didn’t–with the majority.

Not to be overlooked here are things that made HK laugh along the way, and which ultimately prompted her to start describing the process to me in the first place.  In the course of baking her first apple pie, HK happened upon disputes about preparation techniques that prompted competing baking champions to flash their credentials when challenged, she found information on how regional climates can affect storage methods which in turn prompted us to reflect on life in Denver v. Manhattan, and she finally learned the identity of the recurring internet personage DH–as in “DH loved it,” and “DH thought it was too. . . .”  DH, it turns out, stands for “darling husband.”  (Irony TBD per context, obviously.)

So what can we learn from this?  In a sentence, baking an apple pie in collaboration with the Interwebs is never just a process; it is what academics may describe as a multi-textual, multi-dimensional learning experience.  And therein lie the opportunities for marketers.

Here are some quick summary observations on where those opportunities may be:

-       Triggering events: The triggering event for this baking adventure was not related directly to hunger or even the need to entertain guests, it was the need to find something to do on a rainy day.

-       Key resource locations and critical moments in the process: Online engagement took place at multiple sites, and possibly more significantly, at critical moments before, during and after the actual baking process.

-       Communities of the like-minded: Opinions and recommendations of baking aficionados were as valuable as the recipes and articles of Epicurious and other content sites.

-       The sharing impulse: Our online engagement will ultimately also include the impulse to re-live the experience with friends online, as both of us share photos and anecdotes via our status updates on Facebook and elsewhere.  IOW, the pie gave each of us “social currency.”

-       Portable (mobile) devices: Portable computing enabled ongoing, real-time engagement online.  HK brought her laptop into the kitchen so she could consult Google et al. as needed.  Not exactly a mobile phone, but still illustrative of the opportunity.

-       Special occasions: The pie played a role in one of life’s personal little events:  A cozy evening at home watching a video.

-       The larger context: The pie baking process gave us a glimpse into the lives of other pie makers, their egos, regions, heroes and domestic relationships.  We learned about people, not just pies.

-       The participant’s aspirations: Now that HK has successfully made her own personalized version of apple pie, she may enjoy sharing her own insights with others in that community, and hope to receive acknowledgement for them.

In this customer experience video tips episode Sonia Graham discusses how follow up is not enough for a great customer experience – to truly deliver a complete experience, you must also follow through.

Technology can and should be a great asset to any business. It should improve efficiencies, help your business run more smoothly and hopefully eliminate errors. Technology done poorly however, can hinder the customer experience and often cause more problems than it solves. We are not against technology – we embrace it in fact. However, we are against sloppy technology that disempowers your People and turns away your customers. Watch this short video tip on technology and decided for yourself: Friend or Foe?

Do you know what factors influence your customers emotions about and perceptions of your company? The first step in managing your factors of influence is to understand what they are – take a look at your organization from your customers’ perspective. Understand what your customer experiences as they work with your organization and make sure those experiences are outstanding each and every time.

On a weekly basis Standard Bank (to whom regrettably I am currently a customer of) phones me to sell me products that I am already a customer of, or that are irrelevant to my profile. Every time I ask them to exclude me from their spam marketing list, but they continue to phone me (read spam). In one week I even received three calls selling the exact same product.

Last week I had enough and tweeted on my negative feelings towards them. Samantha Perry (@samanthaperry) sent me a tweet suggesting I contact @standardbankgrp. Within about two minutes Brandsh contacted me via email to resolve my problem.

It’s a #Win that it took them two minutes from me tweeting to them having found my details and contacted me. However not all was kosher, Brandsh contacted me on behalf of Standard Bank on their own email addresses. My compliant is with Standard Bank, I want them to respond not some 3rd party. Also the issue should have been resolved the first time I asked a consultant to mark me as do not contact on the system.

This is where it starts to get dodgy

Brandsh asked me to give them my banking account number via email. Huh? Consistently my bank is warning me about phishing scams and reminding me to never give out details and now some other (random?) person not working for the bank is asking for my account details over email? Wanting to see what the bank was up to I willingly passed over my details .

About 30 minutes later I got a call from Standard Bank (did I just not complain about you always calling me?) asking me to explain what my issue was (I just did that via twitter and email, but I take it that the bank themselves never got that, sigh).

The next day

Standard Bank has recently been taken to task on the social media front with the start of the Standard Blank community

I got sms spam from Standard Bank, and took the same compliant route. The response from Bransh was that they didn’t know of any SMS campaigns that day (great). Got another call from the Bank, again they had little idea why they were calling me, so decided they would call back after I explain my problem. Later they called (again) back and said it would take up to a month for their system to update (you’ve got to be kidding me right?).

Key take outs

• Fix your traditional query resolution channels, customers will spam your online ones if it’s the only channel they get addressed on. This will quickly ruin your online reputation.

• The company should contact the customers, not a 3rd party. Not to say that a 3rd party like an agency should be advising the company the whole time.

• 3rd parties should follow the company they represents practices (in this case asking for  account details over email is surely not in the banks policies).

• I love the investment in social media, but brands should first looking at fixing their internal processes before spreading spend even thinner across more platforms.

• Make sure to pass all the facts along down the resolution chain, its highly frustrating consistently repeating the same stories

• Lastly set rules for the number of times a single customer can be contacted with marketing materials and communicate all brand touch points to all your agencies

A lot of power…intense visual influence and brand energy.

What’s a visual system? Well, in the identity world it’s a graphical element that replicates some or all of the logo. Think of it as a visual extension of your logo and brand. It may be a pattern or part of the shape, color or texture of the logo as shown in some of the examples below.

Near the end of the design phase, a visual guideline will be created that will show the do’s and don’ts in using the logo, name and visual system across all applications. Signage and wayfinding, stationary, banners, website, motion media, merchandise, trade shows, literature, and ads are just some of the few touchpoints in which the One World Trade Center logo will need to be properly addressed.

Banner Visual System

Visual system for interior

Key issue: Health care marketing isn’t consumer marketing. Patients don’t choose their provider out of desire; it’s out of need. It is therefore important to consider the emotional and functional needs of patients at each step of their journey.

A recent McKinsey study of over 20,000 consumers from around the world found that specific interactions, or touchpoints, matter in building loyalty. The study outlines the consumer journey and provides a clever interactive tool to illustrate the concept.

See the McKinsey Quarterly’s interactive consumer decision journey for yourself.

For the health care consumer, early touchpoints include conversations with family and friends, interactions with community physicians, advertising, hospital web sites, educational materials, and telephone interactions. As Len Berry cites in a 2009 Business Horizons article, these are service “clues” that establish expectations for the remainder of their experience.

Since marketers are responsible for many of these interactions, it is important to connect the dots using Experience Mapping. Employed by leading organizations such as M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Michigan Health System, this tool provides an in-depth look at the steps of a patient’s journey, identifying functional and emotional needs, and assessing touchpoint performance.

Using a holistic approach like Experience Mapping gives marketing organizations a voice at the clinical operations table. If you successfully generate demand, are the other touchpoint aligned to deliver on the promise?

For more information, visit http://www.gelbconsulting.com/en/art/?28 or contact John McKeever at jmckeever@gelbconsulting.com, 281-759-3600 x1022.

Sources: David Court, Dave Elzinga, Susan Mulder, and Ole Jorgen Vetvik (June 2009). The consumer decision journey. McKinsey Quarterly. Retrieved from: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_consumer_decision_journey_2373l; Leonard L. Berry (July-August 2009). Competing with quality service in good times and bad. Business Horizons, volume 52, p 309-317.

Customers want immediacy and they want to see that businesses are taking care of them.

This simple constatation should lead to a reflexion about how we improve the online customer service experience.

Recently I bought a digital reflex camera on a big french shopping site.

From me moment I clicked “purchase” and the moment the product was delivered at my home, I received four emails:

• your order has been recorded
• your order has been validated
• your order has been prepared
• your order has been shipped

And, in these times of spam, of 50 important emails a day, hundreds of tweets per hour… I must say I was happy to receive these emails.

Perhaps, I particularly liked these emails because it was a significant purchase (and I needed to make sure it was not going to get lost), but in all case, the customer is happy to receive emails in that particular situation.

It doesn’t only regard physical goods. If you are sending an e-card for Valentines day, wouldn’t you want to receive a communication that says: “your card left our servers”, and then “your card has been opened by the person you sent it to”…

It doesn’t only regard “purchase”. Wouldn’t you apreciate a customer service sending you a first email “your question was received, we will answer you in the next 10 hours” and slightly later “we have read your question, we are finding the best solution”….

From the moment you performed an action on the Internet (purchase, contact… anything), until your “problem” has been solved (the goods are in your hands, the bug has been fixed…), the more emails you receive the happier you are.

There has to be a limit surely, but I don’t know any site that sends so much customer service emails that the consumer gets annoyed.
What is genuinely interesting in this finding, is that the moment your problem is solved, we all happily ignore further emails from the customer service centre. That’s why it’s such an opportunity!

When you cannot offer “proper” immediacy, the need for emails is real, you have the consumer’s attention until the product or service is received. This is JUST GREAT, so do something about it!

Now, what it means practically.

Automate your email system!
Define which events can generate a new “touch point” with the consumer (I remember of an old Harvard Business Review discussion these “moments of truth” = each interaction you have with the customer, and how you can improve them).
Payment is one, shipment is another… Don’t you have more? Each one of them could be translated in a different.

Each email is an opportunity
Promote your business, as a brand, but also promote other products and services in the emails.
Don’t SPAM the customer, add value: you can truly enrich their experience.

The past two days has been a little bit crazy! After our brainstorming sessions we had 100’s of ideas to sort through, cluster into groups and then try to decided on which ideas to use as inspiration or develop further.  Our sorting process was a combination of setting aside any ideas that we didn’t think would bring value to a visitor to Copenhagen and the library, or any ideas that didn’t make us excited! After our initial first cut we categorized the ideas in clusters such as “user generated content” “services based on personal interest” “out of library services”

Clustering the ideas into categories

We then used 5 votes each to choose ideas that we would like to work on. Surprisingly all had similar interests in the direction we thought we should take.

Adam thinking about using his votes!

Some of our ideas!

After discussing why voted on our specific choices, we chose the three ideas to develop further…..creating a simple user scenario, a persona and looking at the user value and stakeholders involved in the service.  We then presented our ideas to the faculty for discussion. A couple of these were….

1. A service that promotes “wandering” around new cities and serendipitous learning and discovery. Location tracking would be used to inform you of when you were about to walk past something culturally significant in Copenhagen,a and a message sent to your mobile phone/Iphone/Blackberry etc. Further Related Information would then be sent your mobile. For example if you were at the opera house, you might be sent a famous danish opera song, or information on the performances that will be their soon, as well as telling you how to buy tickets for them.

2.”Book your books” In a nut shell a service that allows you to pre-order books from the library to the hotel you are staying in. Meaning you have the ease of traveling lighter and the option to find out more about danish culture by using the resources of the library.

After our group meeting with Simona, Ana Camila and Brian we decided to develop our idea for a library service for hotels further. So today we spent the day developing a service blueprint using a user scenario, thinking about the role of the service provider, the touch points needed, and the backstage operations necessary for the service to work. Tomorrow we will go on to develop further scenarios with different users, and think about the “worst case scenario” situations. Over the weekend we will then develop a further service diagram and a low-res video to show the core of our idea.

Working out the service touchpoints

Rough service blueprint starting to take shape

Part of the user scenario (illustrations by sid)

**photographs on this post were taken by Adam**

Jan 6, 2009 3:14 PM, By Mark Swedlund

“Companies that establish clear lines of sight to the metrics that matter and then make sure that employee behavior is aligned with those metrics can create enormous value growth.” Tony Siesfeld and John-Paul Pape

Over the past two weeks I have been discussing both financial and non financial metrics. They both have their place in helping manage businesses better. I find non-financial metrics fascinating and am inclined to look at them for guidance in comparison to financial metrics. Unlike financial metrics which are purely numbers performing in different segments, non-financial metrics provide much deeper insights into the inner workings of the business. They help understand why certain financial metrics turn out the way they are and what changes can be brought about to improve them. Some however find safety in numbers and are less inclined to rely on these relatively intangible measures. As entrepreneurs we have to look after the business on multiple fronts. We must have the ability to quickly assess several key components on a regular basis. Outlined below are five relatively generic key non-financial metrics. They can be applied to all sorts of business models to help you gauge the level of progress being made from a dashboard view.

1. Customer Satisfaction: Acquiring a customer is only the first step, providing value and satisfying the customer is where the actual work begins. It is a well known fact that acquiring a new customer is between 5-10 times more expensive than retaining your current customer base. To measure customer satisfaction comprehensively we need to take into account all major touch points where the customer will be interacting with our business. Subsequently we will need to choose several sub metrics such as perceived quality & value, trust and loyalty to accurately gauge their satisfaction levels. These can be measured through a variety of tools such as surveys, focus groups and observations. To learn more please click here.

2. Employee Loyalty: Employee loyalty has been directly linked to the customer’s loyalty and corporate profitability. Whether you are a new start up or an established one, this measure needs to be continuously monitored. From the very beginning employees must be told what to expect when they join the firm. They need to be made part of the inner circle to avoid alienating them. Growth and development opportunities must be presented to keep their motivation levels high and lastly they need to be compensated fairly for the work they are doing. Each one of these sub measures needs to be monitored along with several other key indicators such as burnout thresholds. To learn more please click here.

3. Innovative Index: Innovation is measured very differently in various organizations. I believe innovation relates to the ability of an organization to continuously improve on its existing product/service ranges as well as to develop complementary assets around them which will enhance their core products. This will help create multiple lines of business and will keep the business afloat when a core product faces strong competition or a recessionary pressures. To learn more about this metric please click here.

4. Market Share: There is substantial evidence which states that market share is directly related to ROI. With an increase in market share a business can expect to benefit from economies of scale that ultimately lead to better operating margins. A business therefore becomes stronger by gaining market influencing powers and equipping itself with quality management teams. To measure a business’ market, one needs to first understand the industry, competitors, customers and other market factors which have a direct impact on it. Through the understanding of these measures we can calculate how much the total market is worth and then determine our share. Accordingly we can then measure how we grow market share over a period of time. To learn more about this metric please click here.

5. Execution of Corporate Strategy: Business all comes down to execution. Without this critical component we can make all the plans we want and prepare for every possible scenario and achieve very little. As business owners we set ourselves targets and construct strategies to reach them. The next step requires one to implement strategies through a set of tactics. This is the step that separates the talkers from the doers. Don’t get me wrong, careful planning, thoughtful preparation and taking calculated risks is very important. However it should not restrict someone from taking action. To learn more about this metric please click here.

Listed above are a set of non-financial metrics which I believe can be applied to most business models. Apart from these metrics, a business needs to be careful of other measures which are critical to their particular business model. In the end these metrics should not be the end all and be all of the organization. Their purpose is to primarily provide management with the ability to look at several key segments of the business and get an idea about their performance. I believe the correct use of these metrics helps us not only to become better leaders but also impacts positively and dramatically on the business. I would really like to know what non-financial metrics you are using and which industry you are in. Feedback and comments on the metrics provided above will be greatly appreciated.

]]> http://usmansheikh.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/non-financial-metric-5-execution-of-corporate-strategy/ Mon, 24 Nov 2008 02:23:58 +0000 Usman Sheikh http://usmansheikh.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/non-financial-metric-5-execution-of-corporate-strategy/

“There is value in careful planning and thoughtful preparation. However, until there is execution, no plan is flawed; no preparation inadequate. Execution spotlights all.” Chip R. Bell

Business all comes down to execution. Without this critical component we could make all the plans we want and prepare for every possible scenario, but achieve very little. As business owners we set ourselves targets and construct strategies to reach them. The next step requires one to implement these strategies through a set of tactics. This is the step that separates the talkers from the doers. Don’t get me wrong, careful planning, thoughtful preparation and taking calculated risks is very important. However it should not restrict someone from taking action. When it comes to measuring how effective an ability to execute has been, we have to look closely at the following:

1. Goals: As mentioned many times on this blog, to be able to reach our goals they need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time specific (SMART). Many times when I have been unable to reach my target goals it has been due to the fact that I left one of these important components out. When this happens there is a complete break down in the execution process as the strategies we select will be flawed and thus will result in the use of inappropriate tactics. Therefore be very clear with the goals and targets which one creates.

2. Strategies: Good strategies comprise of objectives, scope and competitive advantages. Through goals we can establish what the business wants to achieve. For example say, our business wants to increase traffic on our website by 10% over the next quarter. The strategy for such an objective could be something like “increase traffic on our website by 10% over the next quarter by tapping into the the 18-25 demographic in Europe through leveraged relationships with our European affiliates.” If we were to leave the statement at tapping into Europe we would still be missing the “how?”.

3. Tactics: In the last statement we mentioned we would leverage our relationships with our European affiliates. Tactics need to translate this into reality by chalking out ways on how this can be achieved. For example, we could participate in some seminars next quarter in Europe, we could equip our affiliates with additional marketing material or we could even provide greater financial incentive to reach targets. What is important is that our tactics are aligned with our strategies which are aligned with our goals.

At the end if we were not able to reach goals then we need to go back and re-evaluate where we went wrong. This review process needs to take place on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. As a startup it is imperative that we continually evaluate how effectively we are executing and where we are facing the biggest impediments. When such a culture of accountability and execution is developed it turns into a huge competitive advantage.

“Failure to gain market share even with superior costs is failure to compete. This failure is also a failure to achieve even lower costs.” Bruce D. Henderson

There is substantial evidence which states that market share is directly related to ROI. With an increase in market share, a business can expect to benefit from economies of scale that ultimately lead to better operating margins. Therefore a business becomes stronger by gaining market influencing powers and equipping itself with quality management teams. Keeping track of market share is an important indicator in evaluating how business stacks up against the competition and how it progresses over time. In the early stages of starting out, a venture market research is a critical component of developing a business plan. This is usually a challenging exercise, because information regarding industries and markets is often not readily available. Listed below are some steps I use to evaluate the market and set market share targets accordingly:

1. The Industry: One needs complete information regarding growth rates of a particular industry. What are it’s historic trends? What were the revenue figures for the segment? Have any major technological innovations taken place in it recently? Is the industry very segmented? These are some preliminary questions of interest and importance when looking at an opportunity in a particular industry.

2. Competitors: This is an important segment, one in which you need to document as many direct and indirect competitors in the market place as possible. Look at their teams, products/services, pricing and any other marketing collateral which you can find. Remain constantly vigilant about your competitors, this is a must for any company regardless of size. Create document files which can be referenced easily, this will come in handy during later sections, when you are positioning and promoting your product as well.

3. Customers: Evaluate the target demographic that is going to be targeted. Is the segment growing? What are the current options that they are using in place of the product/service you will provide? How are they currently purchasing the product/service?

4. Market Factors: Are there any external factors which have a deep impact on your target market? These can be government policies, market consolidation and volatile raw material costs. The presence of these factors can have a substantial impact on your target market and must be taken into account.

Ultimately approximate size of market will be gauged. The most common metrics used for broad approximations are, sales by revenue & sales by volumes. Once we know an approximate size of the market we can set targets for ourselves. This metric can then be tracked periodically to ensure that we stay on course and alert to any fundamental market changes.

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