WOW, I am really piling up those frequent flyer miles with trips to Chicago, Miami, Austin and Atlanta. While on the road, American Airlines let me know I had passed the two million mile mark. I’m not sure if they should send congratulations or condolences.
Here are a couple of the really great client projects we have underway:
- Education: I am teaching Critical Thinking, a completely revised Presentation Skills class, and The Architecture of Presentations — how to design high value/impact programs; all as foundation learning programs for over half a dozen of our clients. I am designing a very non-traditional approach to a Train the Trainer program around a unique way to facilitate small, dynamic groups.
Presentations: I have had the honor of delivering our ideas on sales strategies, building organizational community, fundamentals of planning and stress management as keynote addresses at both client conferences and as a value-add strategy to key clients.
Applications: We have our idea-generating Roundtable Platform working at five of my clients with a least a half a dozen others getting ready to launch. The RSA (Repeatable Successful Acts) Platform, now with key buyer behaviors, is being used as a core part of the sales process for many of our clients. Creating The Story Platform deals with the development of a true organizational story that really drives your company’s identity. We are working with three clients on story development.
Companies are moving forward by taking thoughtful steps that they know will be impactful and conscious of the market conditions, but not paralyzed by risk.
April will have me in Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Houston and New York.
The most valuable entity in today’s chaotic and volatile business world is the CUSTOMER. The economy seldom puts companies completely out of business, but a lack of customers will shut the door every time. You hear a lot about “customer centric” strategies; how companies are restructuring their energy around a total customer driven focus.
WRONG THINKING! In today’s market you have no hope of serving your customers if your team is not your number 1 priority. How can you hope to drive a customer strategy if your team is not ready to provide top quality service? When was the last time you did an in-depth strategic examination on the service you or your team provides? Do you know your points of contact? Can you define each with a level of excellence? Does your team know the company story? Can they speak to the impact and value of your products and services? Have you asked them, listened to them, and confirmed their understanding? Does the team that deals with the phone know what’s going on? Can they intelligently answer questions? These are TEAM issues and they drive customer issues.
Did you know that a study by the American Institute of Business showed that as much as 70% of customer loss can be traced to employee turn over, especially in sales where the relationship drives the success? Take care of your team, they are job 1 and are connected in every manner to the life of your company, the customer.
Think of a strategy that connects team focus with customer value.
- What Do Your Customers Really Want? Ask your team to define what they see as the answer. Take their input and compare it with what you know (and you better really know) your customers are looking for in the way of value and impact. This is a great barometer of the connection between your team and the customer.
- Relationship Awareness: Satmetrix recently did a massive study for the wireless industry, the results have universal lessons. Create a strong relationship and the value of a customer increases by approximately 48%. They buy more and they create the measurable impact of referral. Identify your top 3 customer relationships, and then run them through an opportunity analysis. Are there gaps in your current strategy? Are there opportunities that your team can help define? It is not just about customer retention, it’s about customer leverage, leverage understood by a well trained team. The leverage of + 48% can be found in this relationship.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify: No surprise hearing this from me. I recently worked with a large financial services provider and was knocked off my feet by the level of complexity in their strategy. I asked how it was going and they responded: slow. No wonder, I’m a pretty smart guy and it took me over an hour just to understand it, let alone be able to turn plan into action. Simplify your ideas to IMPACT. Use The Rule of 3 – no plan should have more than three parts in play at any time. If you want engagement make sure you have a plan that can be accomplished.
Think about how your team drives your customer relationships and focus your primary strategic push there. With a great team in place, “customer centric” plans will unfold before your eyes!
The Top Innovative Companies: Fast Company Magazine recently published their annual list of innovative companies. No surprise for the traditional winners. You will find Google at # 2, Hulu at # 3 (watch TV on line), and Apple at # 4. There are a few interesting companies making the list:
#1 – Team Obama: Perhaps the most innovative campaign ever created using media, social communities, cell phones, the web and a strong grassroots movement.
# 7 – Pure Digital Technologies: They have democratized video for the masses with the flip digital video recorders. In just 18 months they have sold 1.5 million one button camcorders.
#9 – Amazon: They had the best holiday season in their history despite the economy. They have spent $4 billion on R&D over the past decade resulting in the totally rad Kindle (love mine). See if this sounds familiar (see IDEAS above). Jeff Bezos said they did this by: “taking inventory of what we do well and extending the skills of our team members.”
Everybody Hurts, Sometime: The economy has taken a bite out of the traditional Forbes Billionaire Club:
- Membership shrunk by 30% going from 1138 members in 07 to 793 in 08.
- The collective net worth of the club dropped from $4.4 trillion (yes TRILLION) to $2.4 trillion.
- Warren Buffett lost his #1 spot to Bill Gates. Warren lost $25 billion where Bill only lost $18 billion.
This is an important piece of information, because these types of business people drive new ideas investment flow in the economy.
Web Impact: Despite all the stuff going on, here is a single, undeniable fact – the impact of the internet and World Wide Web will NOT slow down! Take a look at this:
- Over 105 million Americans use social network sites, a 93% increase since 2006. Do you have a Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace presence? You SHOULD!
- 48% of Millennials (1982 – 2001) joined BRAND SPECIFIC web sites. They do this to get new product updates, to access product promotions, to view product specific videos and to submit opinions.
Check your RICH MEDIA strategy. If you don’t have one, CALL ME! You are missing a very big boat.
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: Interested in these ideas?
You can contact Steve at steve@creativeventures.com or give him a call at 972-490-7717.
