You may have missed the first two days of my tweeting meaty and super-tight takeaways from Donald Keough’s Ten Commandments for Business Failure. No worries, I got ya covered.
Catch-up by reading and scrolling below. And feel free to play along by following me on Twitter this week. This experiment ends Friday.
Watch as Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, scoffs at Apple's iPhone because of its $500 price tag. Ballmer says it’s too expensive, it’s not a good email device, and it’s not going to appeal to business customers. Instead, Ballmer believes the $99 Windows-enabled Motorola Q phone is a better strategy for success.
RSS Readers, access the video here.
While Microsoft is satisfied with just meeting customer needs, Apple is ONLY satisfied by fulfilling consumer desires. There is virtually nothing desirous about Microsoft products (Xbox 360 excluded). Apple, on the other hand, is all about desire. Every product they develop is desirous. And by tapping into consumers’ desire, Apple transcends the need to price products cheap. Apple has mastered the art of producing products that people buy based on emotional "wants" and not merely on functional needs.
People will gladly pay more for something desirous. Apple has proven that, is proving that, and will continue proving that. Comprende Steve?
While reading Bill Moggridge's DESIGNING INTERACTIONS, I became aware of the "Ten Things Google has Found to be True." It's Google's corporate manifesto from the early 2000s and it's a very worthwhile read. [Maybe you've already read it and I'm just late to the party. If so ... then my laggardness is showing--sorry.]
Google's ten things it has found to be true are:
1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There's always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn't good enough.
You can (and should) read all the support prose in the manifesto as I'm just gonna share snippets from a few of the more universally meaningful tenants.
By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.
"[NOTE: I know what you're thinking ... Google is no longer supremely focused on search. Complexity creep has creeped into Google. I agree. And, Google has a notation explanation in their manifesto to justify why Gmail, Google Desktop, and GoogleMaps exist. Not sure I totally agree with their explanation though. I side more with Laura Ries' view of Google as "Octopus."]
Question ... does your company have a listing of truths it has found to be true? Does your company have a written-down list of three to five things it will never, under no circumstances, compromise as it grows? If not, why not? And, what are you going to do that change that!!??!!
This Thanksgiving weekend finds me in Dallas with family and friends. It also finds me reading a few buisness books including the classic business management book from Peter Drucker ... THE EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE. Lots of chewy money quotes to digest and act upon.
Below is another one of my Biz Book Money Quotes presentations uploaded to SlideShare. Enjoy.
According to Frederick Reicheld’s THE ULTIMATE QUESTION, there are bad profits and good profits which companies can earn from customers. Reicheld writes, “… bad profits are earned at the expense of customers, good profits are earned with customers’ enthusiastic cooperation.” In other words, bad profits result in creating customer detractors while the result of good profits is the creation of customer promoters. Detractors talk bad to others about companies while promoters talk good things to others about companies.
An example of a bad profit, which turns customers into detractors, is when an airline charges its customers $5 to use a blanket. Good profits happen every day at places like Whole Foods Market where customers gladly pay more for their groceries because they enjoy the shopping experience and the food quality enough to pay more for it.
In a special section on “Customer Service” (free access from AOL), the Wall Street Journal shared a few answers to why companies make the case for generating bad profits off good customers. One such answer involved rental car companies, who are notorious for finding ways to gouge its customers to earn bad profits.
For example ... if you fail to return a rental car with a full tank of gas, the company will charge you anywhere between 3 to 5 times more than the local price per gallon rate to fill the tank. I recently rented a car and noticed the refueling charge was $8.79 a gallon while the going rate in town was close to $2.75 a gallon. (Yikes.)
So … why do rental car companies charge such a high refueling fee? Here’s what the Wall Street Journal found out …
"You aren't paying for fuel," says Neil Abrams, president of the car-rental consultancy Abrams Consulting Group Inc. in Atlanta. Rental agencies set the price high to deter clients from bringing back vehicles with an empty tank and thus offset the steep cost of refueling.Rental agencies don't have efficient systems for shipping and storing fuel and gassing up vehicles en masse, says Mr. Abrams. Some companies don't even keep gas on site, so an employee has to drive the car to another location to fill it up. And a rental agency's goal is to get the car out to the next customer as quickly as possible; if the agency has to take time to refuel a car, the lost revenue and labor costs are huge, Mr. Abrams says.
Still, most rental agencies do offer a pre-pay refuel option at the time of rental so the customer can bring back the car empty and pay for a tank of gas at a price close to local market rates. Those few additional cents on each gallon can help to offset labor costs, since the average renter never brings back a tank bone dry, says Michael Kane, president of Vehicle Replacement Consulting Group Inc. in Royal Oak, Mich.
Hmm ... seems like an opportunity exists for a rental car company to distinguish itself from its competitors by solving for how it can profit by not charging customers such a high refueling fee. That’s what I would do if I was a marketer for a rental car company.
Bert Decker, communications coach, shares his takeaways from hearing Rick Warren, pastor extraordinaire, deliver several sessions at a recent conference. It’s a worthy read post.
One of Bert’s takeaways is going to linger with me for a long time. He paraphrases a point Rick Warren made by writing …
Celebrities vs. Heroes - Rick said we need fewer celebrities and more heroes. Celebrities sacrifice to gain success for themselves. Heroes sacrifice for others.
Ahh … could it be Celebrities are “Assholes” and Heroes are “Likeables.”
During our breakout session on "Growing a Brand. Growing a Team." at the 2006 In-HOWse Designer Conference, we discussed how to spot “Likeables” and “Assholes” during the job interview process.
We were working under the thinking that “Likeables” are friendly and helpful. They are the consistent performers on project teams. They always meet deadlines. They make others look good. They hold themselves accountable. They have a positive demeanor. They would rather solve matters face-to-face than through email exchanges. They are selfless.
On the other hand, “Assholes” are co-workers that no one wants to work with. These folks keep extensive CYA files. They cc: the world on inconsequential emails. They always have excuses. They would rather engage in divisive hallway conversations than actively participate during project meetings. They are selfish. Yet, every company has them and continues to hire them.
One participant in the breakout session chimed in that “Assholes” can front themselves as a “Likeable” in the interview process only to show their true colors later.
So, how can you distinguish between “Assholes” and “Likeables” during the job interview process?
Our breakout session devised a simple test called THE “I” EXAM.
When interviewing a potential job candidate, listen for how many times they say “I did this” or “I did that” when talking about their past project/group work. Sure, it’s natural for a job candidate to talk about themselves in an interview. But if they routinely say something like, “In the group I led, we did this … and we did that…” then you probably have a “Likeable.”
However, if the job candidate neglects to mention the “We” and only mention the “Me” … then they’ve failed THE “I” EXAM and are most likely “Asshole” material.
Right? Wrong? Any thoughts in-between?
Months ago I was asked to give a one-off presentation at the 2006 In-HOWse Designer Conference (being held this week) for session titled, “Growing a Brand. Growing a Team.” I didn’t struggle with the crux of the content but I did struggle with how to make the content compelling and relevant.
Lucky for me I received a galley copy of Bob Sutton’s to-be-published book, THE NO ASSHOLE RULE, last week. Bob's book inspired me to showcase how productive project teams have more “likeable” team members than “asshole” team members. From there, I infused the presentation with some Tim Sanders LIKEABILITY FACTOR thinking and voila … a richer presentation.
Thanks to SlideShare, you can sample the slides by clicking the ‘play button’ below …
RSS Readers ... click here to view the slides.
I bet you’ve never thought how the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors (a.k.a. Roshambo) can be applied to business growth. Marty Neumeier has. And brilliantly at that. In ZAG, the book I’ve been pimping all week, Marty explains how growing businesses go through the stages of SCISSORS, ROCK, and PAPER during its maturation.
According to Neumeier, small businesses and startups are SCISSORS-like in their sharp focus which allows them to carve out a niche to better compete against much larger companies.
A successful SCISSORS company will grow into being a medium-sized ROCK company.
ROCK businesses have lots of sales momentum going for them. To maintain and grow their momentum, ROCK companies expand their brand portfolio and thus, lose the sharp focus they once had as a SCISSORS business. ROCK businesses can crush SCISSOR companies who lack the resources needed to compete against the momentum of larger and broader-based ROCK companies.
Eventually, the momentum at a ROCK company slows and it then morphs into a PAPER company.
PAPER companies are typified by having tremendous size, a cadre of brands, and fleeting focus. Because of their size and reach, PAPER companies can smother ROCK companies.
As in the game, SCISSORS cut PAPER … ROCK crushes SCISSORS … and, PAPER covers ROCK. The business interpretation of this is … focus beats size, momentum beats focus, and size beats momentum.
SCISSORS cut PAPER | “focus beats size”
SCISSOR businesses are able to compete (and beat) expansive PAPER companies because of their sharp, niche-minded focus. Dollar General and Family Dollar are SCISSOR companies focused on selling inexpensive and close-out/odd-lot general merchandise. Because of their tight focus, Dollar General and Family Dollar are able to beat much larger PAPER companies like Wal-Mart and Target.
ROCK crushes SCISSORS | “momentum beats focus”
Starbucks is a ROCK business which trumps more focused, SCISSOR-like coffee joints. It’s not necessarily that Starbucks is better than smaller, upstart coffee shops. It’s just that Starbucks has tremendous momentum (convenient locations, adoring customers, etc.) and significant resources (stockpiles of cash, relationships with suppliers, etc.) which make it very difficult for other coffee shops to thrive against them.
PAPER covers ROCK | “size beats momentum”
Wal-Mart is a PAPER company that beats its general merchandise ROCK competitors (Sears, Kmart, Meijer) and its grocery ROCK competitors (Kroger, H-E-B, Publix). However, since it is a PAPER company, Wal-Mart is vulnerable and can lose out to SCISSOR businesses like Dollar General and Family Dollar.
Over on the Tribal Knowledge book companion site I received a worthy question. (Worthy enough to republish it here.)
Judy asks, “Can you tell me what it means to create an employee experience? How do the best companies ensure that the employee experience is aligned to the customer experience?"
The best companies, namely those listed as one of Fortune Magazine’s "100 Best Companies to Work for in America," spend just as much time marketing to its employees as it does to its customers. In other words, these companies realize that happy, knowledgeable employees will usually translate into happy, knowledgeable customers.
For example … The Container Store is a Dallas-based privately held company specializing in selling boxes, bins, and everything in-between to help consumers organize all their stuff. They have been highly successful with sales in 2005 topping $425 million with just 37 locations in 12 states.
New Container Store employees are given more than 240 hours of training in their first year compared with the industry standard of 7 hours of training per new employee. Employees are paid two-to-three times more than the industry average. And employees are given a generous 40% discount for anything purchased at the Container Store. The company is renowned by retailers and customers as delivering great customer experiences which helps to explain why the company is so successful.
With its focus on making the employee experience matter (tribal truth #33), The Container Store astonishes its employees who in turn, astonish its customers with great customer service.
Given this Container Store example, one sure-fire way to ensure the employee experience is aligned with the customer experience is to treat employees like you would want employees to treat customers. Sounds simple. But if it was so simple, more companies would be doing it ... right?
Kate Newlin, former Faith Popcorn cohort at BrainReserve, has written a book that strives to challenge consumers to stop being obsessed with buying stuff on the cheap from the Big Box retailers. It’s called SHOPPORTUNITY: How to Be a Retail Revolutionary.
SHOPPORTUNITY revolves around 21 steps consumers should take to get the best, most meaningful experiences from every shopping opportunity. I can’t say all 21 steps are on-target but a few of them are chewy enough for us marketers to gnaw on and over ... such as these two steps:
(1) Relearn Anticipation>
Newlin argues that a key ingredient missing in many of our current shopping experiences is the lack of anticipation. Meaning, there are very few retailers out there that customers truly anticipate going to and shopping at. For the most part, consumers no longer anticipate and retailers have lost the ability to elicit feelings of anticipation.
Newlin is onto something here. In a recent Starbucks Tribal Knowledge presentation, I touched upon this point by telling the audience that “Destinations become expectations when they lose the feeling of anticipation.” By being omnipresent and super-consistent, Starbucks is losing the ability to elicit feelings of “anticipation” from customers.
Which retailers are eliciting feelings of anticipation? Are there any businesses you look forward to doing business with? What must your company do to relearn anticipation?
(11) Shop Where the Staff Knows More than You
Newlin is spot-on. As shoppers we are more likely to find deeper, richer, and more worthwhile retail experiences from businesses whose employees are smarter about the products they sell then are the customers.
There’s a difference when buying a complicated a product high-tech gizmo from a big box retailer than from a specialty retailer. That difference should be the employee at a specialty retailer knows more about the high-tech gizmo than a part-time staffer does at a big box retailer. (Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.)
Last year I summarized a lengthy Wall Street Journal article on the challenges facing the woman’s wear retailer Ann Taylor. At that time, Ann Taylor was in a rebuilding process trying to shore up sales at its higher-priced Ann Taylor stores all the while continuing to drive the success of Ann Taylor Loft, its lower-priced, more causal off-shoot brand.
Part of the rebuilding process included developing specific customer profiles of which customers fits the “Ann” persona and which ones the “Loft” persona. Every marketing and merchandising decision for these two similar, yet different, brands was based upon the two personas.
Hopes were high back in July 2005 that this branding work would result in better sales for Ann Taylor.
Well, Ann Taylor’s 2nd Quarter financials tell us sales are definitely stronger in 2006 than 2005. Year-over-year sales at Ann Taylor are up 6.4%. And at Ann Taylor Loft, year-over-year sales have risen by 14.2%. Overall sales and gross margins at these two retailers have also increased significantly.
The Wall Street Journal recently followed-up on this story by running an interview with Ann Taylor CEO, Kay Krill. In this piece, Krill discusses the evolution of the “Ann” and “Loft” persona work. She also gives five tips on reviving a fashion brand:
# 1: Know your client—not only what she wears, but how she lives.
# 2: Have an action plan, and have total agreement from the senior leaders who need to execute the plan.
# 3: Evolve. Retail is not a static business; there’s great danger in staying still.
# 4: Constantly communicate with employees at all levels.
# 5: Stay positive and optimistic.
SOURCE | Wall Street Journal article | Sept. 15, 2006
John Maeda’s 4th Law of Simplicity says "knowledge makes everything simpler." Consider me more “knowledged” about all this Web2.0 stuff from reading this simplified definition:
SOURCE: InformationWeek
reSOURCE: Steve Rubel
Dan Pink, author of A WHOLE NEW MIND, recently shared his perspective with Advertising Age (Sept 11 issue) on creativity. He touches upon lots of interesting issues, but I found the most interesting to be his perspective on the challenges advertising/marketing agencies are facing in hiring talent that is skilled with both left-brained acuity and right-brain ingenuity. Here's the snippet I found interesting ...
AD AGE: So you say people are being trained in the right-brain, creative skills, yet every marketer and agency I speak to is struggling to find talent that has a sufficient mix of left and right brain to thrive in the businesses we cover. Why?
DAN PINK: ”That big agency or marketer needs you a lot more than you need them. I mean, what do you need now to reach potential clients? A phone, a computer with an Internet connection. Karl Marx said the revolution would come when workers can own the means of production.Well, you know, now workers own the means of production.
Marx was thinking of factories, which are too large for one person to purchase. But he was sort of right, because if the means of production are your brain and your computer, you don’t need an organization. It’s cheap enough for one person to buy, easy for one person to operate and small enough for one person to house.
Maybe that explains the talent shortage. Talented people don’t necessarily need the organization.”
Last week Jena McGregor (BusinessWeek reporter) and I chatted about “authentic marketing.” This was in conjunction with the article BusinessWeek ran in its Sept. 18th issue detailing the recent marketing makeover at Safeway. You can access the audio of our conversation here but you might wanna familiarize yourself beforehand with the BusinessWeek story we reference in our chat.
BusinessWeek subscribers can read the article here, others can read the gist below …
The same-store sales pendulum at Safeway has swung from a negative 4.5% 2003 to a positive 4.3% in 2005. Safeway insiders are crediting its major renovation efforts as the reason for the dramatic change in sales.Beginning in 2003, Safeway committed to spending billions of dollars to remodel all 1,775 of its stores. The remodeling efforts were more than just cosmetic as Safeway made a concerted effort to improve the quality of the food it stocks, as well as the quality of the experience it delivers to customers.
Perishables have been upgraded to include more organic offerings and exotic choices. Beef and poultry have been upgraded and the floral department has also undergone a significant quality upgrade. Additionally, Safeway enlisted the assistance of Orangetwice to remodel its stores to exude a much more authentic look and feel.
Safeway wisely waited until its stores were remodeled and its merchandise was upgraded before it began running its “Ingredients for Life” advertising campaign.
DOWNLOAD AUDIO HERE
[17:29 minutes | 8.3 MB]
Jena McGregor & John Moore chatting about Safeway, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and "authentic marketing."
Nearly every business prides itself on being an Employer of Choice, but we all know that isn’t the case. I’m sure the muckity-mucks at Radio Shack (owned by the Tandy Corp.) have spoken about being an “Employer of Choice” ... but we know otherwise.
In a recent BusinessWeek column (sub. req’d), Jack and Suzy Welch gave wise advice for companies wanting to become a preferred employer. Here’s the gist of their advice.
The Preferred Employer Checklist:
#1 | Preferred employers continuously offer their employees personal and professional growth opportunities from in-house leadership/educational seminars to outside training programs.#2 | Preferred employers consistently appraise the performances of employees and reward accordingly with merit increases and promotions.
#3 | Preferred employers foster environments where employees are encouraged to take risks and be innovative even though they may fail.
#4 | Preferred employers are enlightened and respect the need to be diverse, globally aware, and sensitive to social matters.
#5 | Preferred employers have rigid criteria for hiring the right people. These companies know that when they hire the right person, they will in turn, will hire the right people.
#6 | Preferred employers are healthy businesses that are growing in size, stature, and profits.
SOURCE: BusinessWeek | “How to be a Talent Magnet” | Sept. 11, 2006
”Product reviews written by real people are perhaps the most underappreciated slice of the consumer-generated-media universe, the explosion of which has captivated the advertising and media worlds. But as marketers fixate on getting their virals on YouTube and making friends on MySpace, these relatively unsexy product write-ups have quietly become the most common form of consumer content -- Forrester [Research] puts it as the most-used form of peer-generated content -- not to mention the one with the most direct impact on purchase decisions."[SOURCE: Ad Age article, August 28, 2006]
For a nice sum-up of the Ad Age article with sharp analysis, read T. L. Pakii Pierce’s take.
There’s been lots of chatter lately about Dell’s demise. The company has displeased analysts working on Wall Street by missing sales or earnings projections three times in the last five quarters. And Dell has also displeased customers living on Main Street by producing boring computers and by failing to give prompt, proficient, and enthusiastic customer service.
Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, Christopher Lawton breaks down the Dell breakdown (free article access here). One breakdown area I found most interesting is where Dell’s desire to gain financial efficiencies resulted in displacing full-time workers in its call centers with less expensive part-time and temporary workers. Lawton explains …
”As the tech downturn ended around 2003, Dell continued cutting costs and focused on being efficient. Around that time, Dell executives decided to hire temporary workers to man their five U.S. call centers, rather than recruit more-expensive full-time staff. By 2005, 75% of Dell's call-center staff -- those who take calls from customers wanting to buy a PC -- were temporary workers. Three years earlier, the majority of those staffers were full-time employees.The move backfired. By late 2005, Dell noticed its U.S. consumer sales were flattening. Ro Parra, a Dell senior vice president who was asked to look into the problem, pinpointed call-center problems as one cause. He discovered that the temporary call-center workers who wanted full-time jobs weren't being promoted. Turnover in the centers had soared to 300% a year from 30% in 2002.”
Oh my! Turnover rates jumped from 30% to 300% in Dell's call centers. Oh my, oh my, oh my!!!
Dell is learning the hard way that “The Employee Experience Matters.”
Last week I highlighted BusinessWeek’s COMPETITION double-issue and in particular, the oh-so chewy guidance of … “Obsess about Customers, Not Rivals.”
Today, Tom Peters has a great riff off a quote from new CBS Evening News anchor, Katie Couric. In the issue, Katie contributes this take on competition in television, "Television is one of the most competitive arenas anywhere. I think the only way to thrive and survive in that atmosphere is to have the love of competition in your blood."
Tom smartly and rightly says, “That quote helps me realize why I don't watch evening news. If your ultimate goal is to ‘compete,’ presumably for ratings supremacy, in my opinion you are/one is doomed to mediocrity.”
He riffs further by saying …
"Here's the sort of thing I dearly wish Ms Couric had said: "Ratings are the least of it. Evening TV news is stale, in the tank, even laughable. It doesn't need a 'cool' or 'refreshing' 'female' anchor. It needs to be blown up and re-thought from the ground up. If the program I anchor looks or smells or feels anything at all like evening news of the Cronkite-Rather era I will have failed miserably and horribly abused a golden opportunity, even if I do edge out the guys at the other networks."
Read Peters’ full post as its loaded with insight.
Don’t sleep on BusinessWeek’s summer double-issue—it is chock-full of great knowledge nuggets for us biz folk to gnaw on and gnaw over.The article on creating competitive advantage is particularly worthy of gnawing on and over. Snippets include:
“As hard as it has become to create an edge, some smart organizations are finding new ways to do it. Not for good, mind you -- maybe not even for the years that many companies and their investors have come to expect. But a few standouts are managing to do the next best thing: They keep creating new competitive advantages, over and over, faster and faster.”“They're organizations that have learned to adjust to rapid social, economic, and competitive changes with relative ease. The most successful among them don't settle for hunkering down in soul-depleting market-share wars to protect an increasingly fleeting edge. Instead they zig and zag with the zeitgeist to keep coming up with new ideas.”
“… in an era when the competitive playing field is constantly morphing, a few key guidelines have emerged for how to stay ahead of the pack.
The article goes on to share five guidelines for creating competitive advantage of which, I’m still gnawing on and over these three:
1 | Don’t Just Get Bigger, Get Unique
This guidance syncs up with my Starbucks Tribal Knowledge of “Make the Common Uncommon.” After all, who really wants to sell a common, ordinary, everyday, me-too product? More important, who wants to buy one?
Michael Porter, business strategy clairvoyant from Harvard Business School, adds the following money quote in the article. “There is no best auto company, there is not best car. You’re really competing to be unique.”
2 | Why Compete? Create New Markets
"Niches are nice, but inventing a new market is whole lot better." Ahh … "Blue Ocean Strategy" at play here. The article rightly touches upon Cirque de Soleil as a benchmark business which created a new market with no significant direct competitors.
3 | Obsess about Customers, Not Rivals
There’s lots of truth in that pithy statement. The by-product of focusing on meeting/exceeding customer needs/wants is the creation of a competitive advantage, while the by-product of mimicking competitors is the creation of a competitive disadvantage. Enterprise Rent-a-Car obsesses over its customers more than it rivals and success has followed. Same goes for Whole Foods Market, The Container Store, and Kimpton Hotels.
InfluxInsights succinctly breaks down five reasons why YouTube and Flickr are resonating with folks. Each of these five reasons played a major role in not just the success of high-tech businesses like YouTube and Flickr, but also in two high-touch businesses I’m very familiar with -- Whole Foods and Starbucks. In fact, I wish I could go back and add this list to my TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE book.
5 Reasons Why YouTube and Flickr are Successful
1| Do Something Better: Find a way or a better way …
2 |Believe in What You Do: Success is a by-product of doing good.
3 | Community is Everything: Listen to your community.
4 | Be Soulful: Even if you sell, like Flickr, don't sell your soul.
5 | Be Authentic: The lack of corporate polish adds to the feeling that there are real people behind the idea.
There’s a worthwhile sidebar column (sub. req’d) in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal where Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo’s product strategy vice-president, makes some interesting comments as it relates to the kinetic Web 2.0 activity. (As you know, Yahoo has added to this kinetic activity by buying Flickr and Del.icio.us.)
The article highlights that Horowitz’s Yahoo team looks at hundreds of proposals per week sifting through “everything from the ridiculous to the sublime.” Horowitz readily admits he’s tired of seeing business plans from companies saying they are the “Flickr for blank.”
Horowitz’s most interesting comments were in response to being asked, “What’s wrong with someone starting a company just to sell it to Yahoo?” Horowitz rightly says this is what’s wrong …
”You want people in it for the right reason. Selling to a big company typically isn't the right reason. We like people who are passionate about their product. If you have people with a pure financial motive, in my experience, the product suffers. Certainly, someone could figure out a way to scratch a user's itch and sell the product to us, and perhaps it would make great sense. But we are also looking not just for new products but also to be able to bring the world's best and brightest people into Yahoo.”
Horowitz closes the interview with built-to-last advice for built-to-flip focused entrepreneurs …
”Find something you would do irrespective of financial motive or whether it will be the next big thing. In that case, you win either way.”
Follow your folly. Now that’s great win/win advice for all us business folk.
“Many marketers view employee relations as a job solely for human resources—they see employees as tools. But employees—happy, rewarded employees—can work wonders for the company’s marketing efforts. There is no better spokesperson for a company, product, and brand than someone who is happy with his job and respected by his employer and peers. A happy employee will in turn, make customers happy. [Source: TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE (Kaplan, 2006)]
I jotted those words down after experiencing so many restaurants in Barcelona where the restaurateur has tight control of how customers experience his/her dishes. The most respected and sought-after restaurants in Barcelona have limited seating, limited hours, and their menus are limited to the ingredients the chef purchased that morning. But customers don’t seem to mind all the limits as all the dishes are right-on-the-mark in terms of tastiness.
For example, I had two superb lunches at Cal PEP during my trip. And as you can see from the image below, Cal PEP keeps very limited hours.
But the tight hours Cal PEP keeps doesn’t keep customers away. In fact, it all adds to the allure and to the story of Cal PEP where, on any given day, you’ll find customers lined up outside to grab a scarce seat once the doors open for lunch at 1:30.
But if the food wasn’t so delicious at Cal PEP, then its customers wouldn’t allow Cal PEP to dictate how and when they can enjoy the food.
These days, marketers are quick to point fingers at businesses clinging to top-down direction as opposed to bottom-up creation from customers. But if the product is right and their passion is right, then a business earns the right to be tight. Right?
Most grocery stores are open 24 hours/7days a week. Not Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods has limited hours but because their product is right and their passion is right, customers grant them the right to be tight. Can’t say the same for Kroger, Giant, or Vons.
Most fast food burger joints have seemingly unlimited menus. Not In-N-Out Burger. In-N-Out Burger has a very tight menu and a tight “hidden menu.” Customers willingly allow In-N-Out to get away with being tight because their product and passion are right. Can’t say the same for McDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy’s.
Those are just two RIGHT & TIGHT businesses. Many more exist. Feel free to add to the list.
You’ve seen the YouTube video version, now read the print rendition of my jumboSHRIMP Marketing presentation …
What started out as a whim ended up being ... what I think is ... a worthwhile endeavor. This weekend I decided to create a super-condensed version of my jumboSHRIMP Marketing presentation. Basically, I recorded my voice and synced it up to some of my jumboSHRIMP Marketing powerpoint slides and then converted it into a video. Since YouTube is all the rage, I uploaded the video to YouTube.
View for yourself—click below to watch the ten-minute jumboSHRIMP Marketing presentation.
RSS Readers click here to view the video
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During the same speech Carlos Ghosn delivered at the New York International Auto Show where he derided automakers for their reliance on discounts to drive sales, Ghosn challenged automakers to reinvigorate their businesses with passion. Ghosn believes passion, not rebates, will revitalize the auto industry.
Ghosn compared the auto industry’s current malaise to where Apple Computer was in the nineties. He said automakers should look to Apple and how its resurgence has been a result of an uncompromising focus on design. Ghosn wants automakers to become more passionate about the design of new cars and trucks and that passion will help reinvigorate the auto industry.
According to Ghosn, the reliance on discounts and rebates to sell cars has made the car buying process, “… less involving, less personal, and less emotional.”
Ghosen’s right on the money. Automakers must make the car buying process more involving, more personal, and more emotional. Just ask any Mini Cooper car owner and they will tell you just how involving, personal, and emotional their car buying process was.
”Dunkin' Donuts last year paid dozens of faithful customers in Phoenix, Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., $100 a week to buy coffee at Starbucks instead. At the same time, the no-frills coffee chain paid Starbucks customers to make the opposite switch.[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal article (sub req’d)]When it later debriefed the two groups, Dunkin' says it found them so polarized that company researchers dubbed them "tribes" -- each of whom loathed the very things that made the other tribe loyal to their coffee shop. Dunkin' fans viewed Starbucks as pretentious and trendy, while Starbucks loyalists saw Dunkin' as austere and unoriginal.
‘I don't get it,’ one Dunkin' regular told researchers after visiting Starbucks. ‘If I want to sit on a couch, I stay at home.’”
Take a look at the new prototype Dunkin’ Donuts … sure does resemble a typical Starbucks, right?
In addition to the new pastry case displays and granite-like countertops, Dunkin’ is also taking a page from the Starbucks playbook and playing music in its stores where previously it didn’t. While there will not be comfy chairs in the remodeled Dunkin’, there will be upscale sandwiches with a decidedly downscale name. Feedback from Dunkin’ customers was that “Panini” was too fancy a name to call a hot sandwich so instead, Dunkin’ will call this menu offering a “stuffed melt.”
And get this … Dunkin’ marketers are considering ways to allow its customers to text message their orders in. Wait! If “Panini” was too fanciful a name for Dunkin’ Donuts’ working-class customers to call a hot sandwich, then why would Dunkin’ marketers even bother with fanciful text messaging ordering ploys?
Furthermore, according to this Wall Street Journal article, internal Dunkin’ Donuts research also revealed just how uncomfortable Dunkin’ customers were inside Starbucks. Seems as though loyal Dunkin’ customers didn’t enjoy the atmosphere, didn’t like all the laptop-using customers hogging the tables, didn’t appreciate the tall/grande/venti lingo, and didn’t understand why someone would pay $4 for a cup of coffee.
Conversely, loyal Starbucks customers were just as uncomfortable inside Dunkin’ Donuts. Starbucks customers especially didn’t appreciate when Dunkin’ employees added cream and sugar in their coffee denying them the opportunity to customize their coffee as they desired.
Again I ask … given these research findings, why isn’t Dunkin’ accentuating the differences rather than blurring the differences between the two?
I’m reminded of what Rick Nobles said in a MarketingProfs article,
“If your brand is clearly defined enough to have the power to attract enemies, it also has the power to attract raving fans. And the raving fans of your brand are the ones who return again and again. They're the ones who will tell their friends about you. They're the ones who will wear your logo. They're the ones that almost enjoy the annoyance of your brand-haters and will keep coming back for more.So don’t fear the hate. Embrace it.”
Dunkin’ you’d be wise to fully embrace the differences that exist between yourself and Starbucks in everything you do. Why risk diluting the Dunkin’ difference by trying to be more like Starbucks? Your current customers want Dunkin’ to be Dunkin.’ So appeal to your raving fans by accentuating the hate. Dig?
Sunday’s NY Times has a way tasty article from Bill Taylor (co-founder of Fast Company) about how Rite-Solutions is insourcing ideas from all its employees rather than outsourcing ideas or relying solely on the ideation generation from a few big-brained internal executives to move the business.
Rite-Solutions has created an internal idea stock exchange where employees can suggest the company invest in new technology, enter into a new business channel, implement a cost-efficiency initiative ... etcetera. Submitted ideas become mock stocks and employees read an “expect-us” (not a prospectus) detailing how the idea can benefit the company. These ideas-turned-stocks are then listed in the Rite-Solutions “Mutual Fun” board where every employee is given $10K in stock market fantasy funds to buy, sell, and trade in the ideas they believe Rite-Solutions should focus on.
Pretty cool, huh?
Now, check out the congregation is smarter than the preacher sentiment from James Lavoie, one of Rite-Solutions co-founders:
"We're the founders, but we're far from the smartest people here. At most companies, especially technology companies, the most brilliant insights tend to come from people other than senior management. So we created a marketplace to harvest collective genius."
In another article, Lavoie explains the reasoning behind Rite-Solutions “Mutual Fun” idea this way …
“We believe the next brilliant idea is going to come from somebody other than senior management, and unless you’re trying to harvest those ideas, you’re not going to get them. That’s why we give everybody an equal voice, and a game to provoke their intellectual curiosity.”
The “Harvesting Collective Genius” reminds me of the Idea Revolution which Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder wrote about in the way worthy IDEAS ARE FREE book. In this book, Robinson and Schroeder make the business case for the internal insourcing of employee-generated ideas. Worthwhile snippets from this book include:
“Every employee idea, no matter how small, improves an organization in some way. It is when managers are able to get large numbers of such ideas that the fill power of the idea revolution is unleashed.””Ideas are free. Employees become allies in solving problems, spotting opportunities, and moving the company forward, to the benefit of all. And when managers decide to let their employees think alongside them – and no longer seek to go it alone – they will have joined the Idea Revolution.
”This empowerment starts a virtuous cycle. As employees see their ideas being used, they begin to feel valued as part of the team and become more involved.
”Small ideas are the best source of big ideas. A big problem or opportunity frequently manifests itself through a host of smaller signs or symptoms, each of which might be seen individually by different people in different places at different times. What might seem to be a small idea could in fact be addressing a facet of this larger issue. This bigger issue can often be discovered by probing with the right questions.”
Small ideas tend to stay proprietary, since there are no mechanisms for competitors to find out about them, and even if they do, the ideas are often situation-specific and so cannot be copied. Because of their proprietary nature, they accumulate into a considerable cushion of sustainable competitive advantage.”
Over at the Dig Tank blog, Howard Mann recommended the recently published LAWS OF LIFETIME GROWTH (Dan Sullivan & Catherine Nomura). Since Howard’s Brickyard thinking jibes with much of my thinking, I took him up on reading THE LAWS OF LIFETIME GROWTH.
Good book … lots of chewy statements to gnaw on which will help challenge/motivate anyone and any business to seek meaningful and continual growth. However, at times, the book gets a little too righteous in dispensing pious platitudes. Look beyond the triteness and delve into the “rightness” of each lifetime growth law.
Go ahead and gnaw on the following snippets from the book ...
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