Blink or Think: Be Here now

Be Here Now: Blink or Think

A decade ago, while still consulting heavily, I entered the office of the President of a Billion $ business. The brass-plated desk-ornament in the middle of his desk gave one simple admonition: “Be Here Now!” This leader wanted everyone to be present. When I ask myself or you “Was heisst Denken?” I am, to begin with, asking myself to be here now, to be present. I am asking myself, and I am asking each of you as well, to locate that way, that path on the way to; and, to be here now, to be present and accounted for.

Our current situation is one that calls for thinking; it is one that calls for each of us to be fully present, to be engaged to be here now. If we believe Thomas Friedman’s presentation in That Used to be Us, we are a divided nation in decline, one that has brought itself to this precipitous predicament. We have failed our country, our citizen, our nation’s children - our own gift to the future - in that we have failed to invest in our future. We see it now in our dearth, in our unemployment; in our inability to generate meaningful, fully engaging work; in the homeless, the under-employed. We see it in this State’s decision to cut back on education; its decision not to invest in much-needed infrastructure and renewal efforts; in our ever-widening gap between those who have and those who have not. Rather than attend to the now, we turn away. We choose not to attend to what calls for thinking; instead we blink and we turn away.

It is not unexpected that we blink; that we turn our backs on what calls for thinking; that we turn back to our comfortable lives; turn on the Tube, and plug in un-thinkingly to what Thomas Pynchon referred to as “mindless pleasure”. In fact, a highly popular “pundit”, Malcolm Gladwell incites us to blink. His book Blink: the power of thinking without thinking admonishes us to “blink – don’t think”.

Whereas by contrast, in his 5th lecture, Heidegger begins: “What is called thinking? We must guard against the blind urge to snatch at a quick answer in the form of a formula. We must stay with the question. We must pay attention to the way in which the question asks: what is called thinking, what does call for thinking?” Our present now calls for thinking. We turn away, however. We blink.

“What does that mean? Blink is related to Middle English blenchen, which means deceive, and to blenken, blinken, which means gleam or glitter. To blink – that means to play up and set up a glittering deception which is then agreed upon as true and valid –with the mutual tacit understanding not to question…”(lecture VII).

While I see many of us trying to solve the issues of today, I see equal or greater numbers who turn away. Regardless of party affiliation, we no longer can turn away. We cannot, however, solve any of the current problems by blind adherence to party lines. Nor can we solve today’s issues neither through rancorous argument nor partisan paralysis. We cannot take Gladstone’s advice and decide what is important based on 2 seconds of ephemerality and what we knew to be true in that present-now, now long past. We must be present; we must be here now. We must understand and act knowing that “what is most thought-provoking in our thought-provoking age is that we are still not thinking.” We need to, we can and we must, get underway, unterwegs zu.

Unterwegs zur: Diagnostics, Facilitation, and Coaching for the B2B CRM & CEM Strategists

On the way to ....
As I walked in this morning, I saw a large horse fly resting on the sidewalk. Huge, not particularly attractive: it couldn’t possibly fly. When She (sic!) created flying creatures, people asked what God had been thinking to design the horse fly or the bumblebee. After all we know that God has a grand design and all creation fits into the plan according to Her design. In truth, however, God’s design of bumblebees and horse flies has come under question for centuries. As in: what was She thinking? Or, nothing designed that way can fly. Yet, we know that both creatures do fly and do so well. What works so easily for God does not work as well for humans when it comes to successful planning on how to get to there from here.

Getting from here-to-there is always on everybody’s minds; and, getting from here-to- there is always already a clearly visible destination. Truth is, however: often we get lost on the way. [And, no! I really do not just mean driving directions]. I’m thinking more along the lines of the transformation the US now faces as the Tea Party tries to hold the nation hostage and take its citizens back to the 1787-9 period; or, a lot more simple to solve, how to transform a business into a customer-centered, customer-based business.
The challenges are so immense as to risk hyperbole. The missteps made happen so frequently and predictably that there must be a better way.

We no longer can afford missteps in today’s hyper-competitive, always-on, flat world. No, what we need is a way to assure breakthrough performance and to assure creation of a roadmap that outlines our best chance to arrive at the destination, the desired end-state.
And it really is quite simple to effect best-planning and execution of these crucial transformations. The keys are diagnostics, facilitation, and coaching.

Plans, lucid, readable and comprehensible roadmaps are important, nay vital to success: whether it is a “simple” exercise, such as taking your family of 5 to [you fill-in-the-blanks] for a mini-summer vacation, or (more) complex such as planning for your 24 year old daughter’s dream wedding, or compound-complex as in establishing your firm’s new customer centered and customer focused strategy. (Thinking of plans as a type of sentence construction may be a helpful metaphor).

Distractions, unanticipated events, setbacks, life: all these “things” happen and so our best laid plans somehow end up producing horse flies rather than hummingbirds. Problem is our horse flies don’t fly. Our “success” at planning, unfortunately, does not translate into successful implementation and operational effectiveness.

And, so what?! What now? How can your B2B CRM & CEM strategy be implemented successfully, without a hitch? How do we plan for life to happen and keep on the path. As I began to write this paragraph these 2 phrases surfaced: “Seek first to understand.” “Start with the end in mind.” And, yes, both pieces of advice are apropos of this discussion. Do they give a way to find planning and implementation success? I think they do. And, I think they do because they un-conceal what has been hidden or that which may distract.

What is needed is diagnostics, facilitation, and coaching. The process will clearly define 3 critical areas: 1. Where you are starting from: the point of departure or your “Current State”; 2., Where you intend to end up: your destination or “Desired End-State”; and, 3., the stuff that has to be done, accomplished, solved, etc. so that you can, in fact, get from here to there: “the bridging tasks”.

Unterwegs zur…

B2B Resource Allocation: Optimizing your CRM investment and coverage effectiveness, prt 2

If you watch the kids, they seem to be able to do everything simultaneously and to do so 24/7.
The rest of us have limitations. In business there are resource limitations - we can't do or be everything for everyone.
We live and work in a time in which each of us faces allocation constraints pertaining to use of money, time, and people. Furthermore, the competitive arena we operate in is wholly unlike that of just a few years ago.
Consider this quandary: If you have a million dollars, where do you invest it to maximize your return? How do you approach solving the problem and answering the question correctly.
[Personally, I always liked Len Schlesinger's 2 X 2 matrix he termed "the Marketing Optimization Model"].

The marketer’s Holy Grail is to get the right message, product, and/or service to the right person, at the right time, in the format that customers have indicated they prefer. In fact, this is the primary goal of an optimal allocation model.
An optimal coverage model would also:
• Support a retention – and loyalty-focused, customer-based business design
• Make effective use of the organization’s limited resources
• Make investment decisions based on reciprocal commitment or mutual interdependence of your Ideal, Best customer and channel partners
• Establish integration and synergy across the three functional areas responsible for servicing the customers: i.e., product marketing, sales, and customer service.
Stepping Back: there are two reasons that customer relationship Marketing is so powerful when implemented properly. First, the firm focuses on acquiring the Ideal, best customer, and, second, the company manages its customers as a portfolio of assets – investing its limited resources proportionately to the level of commitment that customers and prospects make to the organization.
My contention is that there is a fairly well-defined path the enterprise can take when analyzing and assessing its allocation challenges. This path is mapped out through the use of the tools, templates, and planning by the data-based, relationship marketer.
Resource allocation must also bring to bear the relationship marketer’s theories about managing the point of contact, managing the customer across their lifecycle of interactions with the company, managing the value of the customer portfolio, and managing knowledge across the company and across the value chain. Fred Reichheld called it “the customer corrridor, graphically illustrated above. In effect, this metaphor illuminates the challenge of resource allocation relative to your customers’ lifecycle relationship with your firm.
Specifically, there is a spectrum, or “continuum of relevant customer contact activities,” that needs to be mapped to create an optimal and effective resource allocation model.
The first step many organizations will need to undertake is to conduct an audit of their marketing, sales, and customer service activities so as to surface the key interdependencies between them, as well as with site logistics. Think of it as “the programming” phase of dealing with an architect. The Master Builder will want to know how you want to live and function in the new space. This is a reflective exercise. The goal is to be in a position to produce cooperation and coordination across and between all functional areas that deal with customers and their issues. We need to:
• Make visible and apparent where integration between the functional areas is necessary
• Make apparent where non-discretionary accountability must reside
• Revisit the current account selection process
• Revisit key account management practices
• Objectively verify whether an account is relationship – or transaction-oriented
• Assess the skills, training, and behavioral components of the relevant customer contact people in each of the functional areas
• Assess degree of cooperative, cross-functional teamwork along with supporting account planning, communications, and contact management tools

on the way to language

When the salesman starts talking do your eyes glaze over; do your ears close a little; do you begin to daydream about your kids or... ? What happens when you listen, or watch, the news? Do you change channels; perhaps watch Veggie Tales with your kids, or even better: turn off the TV? Is Language alive. Do metaphors enhance our lives? Does Language reveal or hide? Persuade or do damage? Or , as always is the answer "It depends"?

My concern here, though, is the language of daily living.

I confess that I may have been pulling my own Rip Van Winkle. Driven to learn, to make money, to nurture my children, and to find balance, I find that i wasn't fully engaged with the world. Particularly the way in which we of the world communicate, use language to shape our world.

Never in my lifetime has the use of language emerged with such singular and dramatic force: a force for change; a force to bring about unification; a force for getting truth out to everyone; a force for lies, distortion, and manipulation.


Over the past two years, I've noticed that the level of disinformation and actual yelling has increased if one listens to cable and other news' outlets. The business of government has been forced to a sluggish, muddied, grimy cesspool more like paralyzed sewage rather than a fountain of living inspiration and truth.

I've gone back to school to work on a PhD - across a number of disciplines: literature, philosophy, and business (or, history & business). I wanted to build on my business acumen and successes while improving my own ability to create, think, learn, and lead. I have read quite a bit of Heidegger. There is so much more to read, digest, and absorb before I can begin to try to share it.

I have found out that Language is one part of what makes us human. I have learned that there is something called "Fixed English" another version called "Free English" and that there is a still newer version called "Words that Work".

I've tried to remain silent and listen over these last few months. I haven't wanted to pollute the public discussion by yelling, which in today's world seems to have emerged as the WAY by which communicators get their message across.

One thing I have come to realize is that Language is the key to unlock the potentiality of the world again. Language creates world. Language allows the unhiddenness of truth to become unconcealed. In order for Language to retain and have the full force of its power to create world, we must engage in authentic listening. Not something we American are good at.

Which takes me back to the salesman whose elevator speech has just made my eyes glaze over and my head to nod.

I really do wish I had answers. I know that I believe that I do - at least in the world of B2B CRM strategy, sales, marketing, and a few other areas try some authentic listening for myself and for all of us. We then can use Language to create world.

A 2010 Loyalty CRM Strategy Roadmap, prt 2

A Strategist’s Business Issues

A strategy can only be executed with focus and choice. It must operate with , what Rich Horwath in Deep-Dive calls, “the discipline to intelligently allocate … resources.” Whether the resource is time, money, or people, the optimal allocation of resources is a critical issue, a critical challenge, for almost every business organization that wants to execute its strategy successfully. Since no enterprise has unlimited resources, it is worth investigating how customer relationship marketing models can provide a critical key to unlock the answer to this problem.

In no functional area of business is this resource allocation problem more true than in sales, marketing, and servicing customers and/or prospects – a market-coverage model, if you will. In fact, the search for the optimal allocation of resources in these functional areas is something akin to the search for the Holy Grail.

In business-to-business marketing (B2B) the characteristics of the target customer group can commonly be depicted visually as the familiar pyramid. Largest accounts on top, smallest on the bottom. The shared, common problem of a target universe, the pyramid graphically shows how, in most mature, competitive industries, the sales function (together with service and product marketing) is faced with:

· Price and margin pressure at the top of the pyramid, where the size of the targeted accounts is the largest

· Margin (cost-to-serve) pressures at the bottom of the pyramid, where the largest number of accounts exist

· An eventual overabundance of competition – once all your competitors realize where you are making your money - in the middle, where the most profit is initially available

· A shrinking middle layer

More than a decade ago Adrian Slywotzky suggested in an article that we elevate sales to a strategic boardroom issue. There never has been a more critical time for many businesses to recommit to elevate Loyalty and CRM to the boardroom level.

I do not presuppose a cookie-cutter approach. But, simplistically, I do believe that building a strategic roadmap for CRM in 2010 should be much like the childhood dot-to-dot challenges, which captivated our imaginations for hours. Especially if we guide our thoughts with the words of philosopher, Jacques Derrida, namely “that the answer is always already there.” In other words, through analysis, diagnosis, business intelligence, customer insight, we can uncover the “dots” that we need to connect in order to drive our Loyalty CRM Strategy towards success. Loyalty CRM: doing business with the right core customer. The roadmap requires discipline, focus, choice, and selectivity. Customer insight, business intelligence, process optimization, communications, and training are the primary ingredients the relationship marketing executive adds to the traditional 5 Forces analysis. Judicious use of these tools together with our marketing imaginations will allow us to uncover the roadmap for our particular company and target universe.

This approach requires cooperation and coordination across the entire company and your “value chain”. As a Loyalty focused CRM strategist you can create great synergy and operational effectiveness to your Loyalty CRM Strategy by applying the models of customer relationship marketing and knowledge management together with a modified activity-based look at resource allocation – your customers as a portfolio to be managed.

The Thesis for identifying the 2010 Loyalty CRM Strategist’s Roadmap

The planning tools, operational models, feedback loops, and performance metrics of relationship marketing are templates that create optimal resource allocation and coverage models. What follows is a guideline for optimizing the allocation of resources, together with the attendant analysis and implementation.

Why do we need a roadmap?

In order to “keep our eye on the ball”, in order to maintain focus on the desired end-state of our strategy, is the simple answer. The 3 primary results executives should expect from a well executed, loyalty-focused CRM Strategy are: Increased sales Effectiveness and Efficiency; Increased Customer/Employee Satisfaction; Decreased cost-to-serve

In addition to the three key very desirable outcomes that result from a well-executed customer relationship marketing competence, other implicit problems can be remedied:

· Increased sales, both volume, margin, and breadth of offerings

· Increased service levels

· Increased customer and employee knowledge sharing

· Increased customer and employee retention

· Customizable coverage

· Faster product introduction, i.e., speed to market

· More controlled management of product migration by targeted segment

· Decreased cost of doing business as a percentage of sales, i.e., sales expense to revenue ratio (E:R)

Customers as “a portfolio of assets”

We live and work in a time in which each of us faces allocation constraints pertaining to use of money, time, and people. Furthermore, the competitive arena we operate in is wholly unlike that of just a few years ago. We have a rare opportunity in today’s struggling economy if we are disciplined in our choices, focus, and resource investment/deployment.

Consider this quandary: If you have limited resources, where do you invest them, and how, in order to maximize your return? Professor Len Schlesinger – who brought “us” the Service-Profit Chain – used to lecture using a 3 X 3 matrix:

Across the top: LOYAL SWITCHER COMPETITIVE

Down the left side: LARGE MEDIUM SMALL

Using this simple framework, that he called “the Marketing Optimization Model”, Professor Schlesinger would challenge his audience and students to solve the problem all strategists face, the resource investment and allocation dilemma. While a 9-box matrix perhaps overly simplifies the coverage and investment challenge, it gets the CRM strategist thinking in the right general areas.

Our customers represent a portfolio of assets that we must proactively manage in order to maximize shareholder and stakeholder value. A complementary truth is that virtually every organization has limited resources. So it is vitally important to invest those limited resource in direct proportion to the return we expect to receive from our investment in our primary assets - our customers.

The marketer’s Holy Grail is to get the right message, product, and/or service to the right person, at the right time, in the format that customers have indicated they prefer. In fact, this is the primary goal of an optimal allocation model.

An optimal coverage model would also:

· Support a retention – and loyalty-focused, customer-based business design

· Make effective use of the organization’s limited resources

· Make investment decisions based on reciprocal commitment or mutual interdependence of your Ideal, Best customer and channel partners

· Establish integration and synergy across the three functional areas responsible for servicing the customers: i.e., product marketing, sales, and customer service.

Stepping Back: there are two reasons that customer relationship Marketing is so powerful when implemented properly. First, the firm focuses on acquiring the Ideal, best customer, and, second, the company manages its customers as a portfolio of assets – investing its limited resources proportionately to the level of commitment that customers and prospects make to the organization.

My contention is that there is a fairly well-defined path the enterprise can take when analyzing and assessing its allocation challenges. This path is mapped out through the use of the tools, templates, and planning by the insightful, analytical, data-based, relationship marketer.

Resource allocation must also bring to bear the relationship marketer’s theories about managing the point of contact, managing the customer across their lifecycle of interactions with the company, managing the value of the customer portfolio, and managing knowledge across the company and across the value chain. Fred Reichheld called it “the customer corridor^”: it is really mapping the touch-points between your firm, your target universe and customers, as well as your value chain members. In today’s 24/7, always-on, flat-world seemingly driven by social media, just mapping these touch points and then aligning your company for total cooperation and coordination across the value chain is an immense undertaking. Creating the graphic, however, will serve as a powerful icon inside your firm and will illuminate the challenge of resource allocation relative to your customers’ lifecycle relationship with your firm.

Specifically, there is a spectrum, or “continuum of relevant customer contact activities,” that needs to be mapped to create an optimal and effective resource allocation model.

The first step many organizations will need to undertake is to conduct an audit of their marketing, sales, and customer service activities so as to surface the key interdependencies between them, as well as with site logistics. Think of it as “the programming” phase of dealing with an architect. The Master Builder will want to know how you want to live and function in the new space. The audit seeks to:

· Make visible and apparent where integration between the functional areas is necessary

· Make apparent where non-discretionary accountability must reside

· Revisit the current account selection process

· Revisit key account management practices

· Objectively verify whether an account is relationship – or transaction-oriented

· Assess the skills, training, and behavioral components of the relevant customer contact people in each of the functional areas

· Assess degree of cooperative, cross-functional teamwork along with supporting account planning, communications, and contact management tools

The Determinants

What is needed is a framework for determining how to allocate resources. There are a great many steps involved, yet, in some ways, creating this framework is much like connecting the dots.

A 2010 Strategy Roadmap for CRM, prt. 1

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2010 Strategy Roadmap for CRM, part 1.

Strategy is choice. Choice tied directly to Mission, Vision, Values, and Purpose. Choice, Selection, Focus and Differentiation are critical components to any successful strategy.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM), is a strategy based on customer focus, on customer knowledge, and on delighting the customer. CRM is real-time, actionable, customer knowledge management. The best CRM approaches are holistic, involving all facets of your business and demonstrating accountability for results. CRM becomes a guiding philosophy and framework for doing business and includes:

• differentiating and optimizing the customer experience
• building customer knowledge to provide value to both the customer and your business
• taking a portfolio management approach to customers –investing in direct proportion to the expected return from each customer, while realizing that not every customer is worth keeping!
• delivering “value “ as defined by the customer - at each point in the customer’s lifecycle and with all of your customer contacts

The single most important set of decisions any business-to-business enterprise can make are those involving selection - of the products and services you will provide, of the customers for whom you will provide them, and of the channels through which you will market them, of the strategy to differentiate your offerings from your competitors.

Sadly, “something like 90% of companies fail to execute strategies effectively.” Often, the failure to realize a strategy success results from taking your eye off the ball. (In other words, something came up and we paid more attention to that blip than to the strategy). Successful strategy execution will/should allow your business to create a sustainable competitive advantage, to optimize its market-coverage models, to optimize its customer portfolio, to anticipate the shifting nature of value, and to realize loyal customers.

One primary constraint to successful execution of your strategy is that virtually every organization has limited resources: time, people, and resources. Choice, focus, and selection are critical. With today’s business intelligence tools, your firm can easily achieve Optimization of the marketplace coverage models - sales, customer service, marketing and channels. The models and tools of the eCRM practitioner provide almost a dot-to-dot like template with which to assure coverage optimization and hence optimal use of the firm’s limited resources.

A second realization we must still embrace is that no company can be all things to all people. Your customers represent a portfolio of assets that must be proactively managed in order to maximize shareholder and stakeholder value. As strategists we believe that our best customer investment and market strategy would be to invest our limited resources in direct proportion to the expected return on investment

Again, choice, selection, focus, and purpose must serve as constant monitors. While CRM “implementations” still fail – at disappointing level - to achieve what executives expect, It’s no longer a secret, the evidence is compelling and is well documented, both at the academic level and in practice. A strategy of Enterprise-wide Customer Relationship Management – when successfully implemented , whether in the clouds or on-premise- can achieve impressive results.

The most easily measurable results include:

· Increased sales Effectiveness and Efficiency

· Increased Customer/Employee Satisfaction

· Decreased cost-to-serve

In fact, there are 8 benefits. The EIGHT BENEFITS of successful CRM implementations are well documented. With a well-executed strategic CRM program, you can experience and measure:

1. Increased sales
2. Increased profitability
3. Greater product penetration
4. Growth in customer satisfaction and loyalty
5. Increased employee satisfaction
6. Decreased cost-to-serve
7. Increased retention of the existing customer base during times of economic uncertainty.
8. Increased likelihood of new customer acquisition

These maxims are independent of the enabling technology. Successful strategy implementation has more to do with aligning people, processes, and information (yes, data) to the mission/vision/values/ & purpose of the business, to the strategy, than with what software package or cloud-computing platform chosen.

Help! how do you talk to your Waldorf 8th grader about "Food, Inc."?

[As I sat and tried to collect a few thoughts before writing this posting, I began to wonder whether there is something of Horace's "The City Mouse and The Country Mouse" underlying the American debate about food and agriculture].

Last week my 8th grade Waldorf educated daughter, Isabella, and her class sat through Food, Inc. As it's viewing did for so many adult audiences, the movie hit a nerve with her and her classmates. And, as I try to sift through her questions and emotional reaction to the questions raised by the book, I am forced to re-examine certain questions and decisions I have made myself.

I had spent the last year researching the emotional fall-out, and rising criticism that has pummeled the GMO movement (Monsanto in particular), the poultry, cattle, and hog industries. I thought I could sit with my 13 year old and learn a lot from that conversation.

Her first 3 remarks were along the lines of "I'm never eating chicken again" and "why does Monsanto fight with farmers" and "what if Monsanto has it wrong"?

I have written about how destructive the rhetoric and "the noise of the special-interest groups", calling for a return to civility, for using "words that work", and for creating metaphors that move us towards civility once again. My personal library has grown to include numerous studies about seeds, the climate, soil use, tillage practices, and the future. Every author has an answer or a gripe, or some combination of both.

Sadly, I do not have "the answer".

Perhaps there is not one, single answer. In fact, how could there be just one answer!?

I have come to realize, however, that the underlying complexity of safe food production and of how American Agriculture feeds, clothes, and supplies the world is not as widely understood as we Americans need. Moreover, i've also come to realize that this subject matter: feeding and clothing the world safely - will only grow in importance as the planet races to embrace 9 Billion people by 2050. We need to talk about food production and future without all the rancor that controlled the health care debate.

To begin to grasp the complexity of the questions surrounding food production, safety, and availability, I encourage everyone to adopt Peter Senge's view of systems (c.f., Fifth Discipline) so as to begin to understand that whatever changes we make in one area necessarily have an impact on another area of the system.

Tonight is Jamie Oliver night at my house: my daughters' choice of programming!

So : what did you tell your teenager after s/he saw Food Inc. ?

Did, in fact, s/he see it? Did it cause a visceral reaction?

CRM: it still is not a package or cloud Solution!

Effective CRM initiatives have yielded a gold-mine of profits, customer information, and competitive advantage. Yet, even a decade and 1/2 after CRM entered our business vocabulary, fewer companies succeed than fail. The artistry, the magic in successful CRM and Customer Experience Management comes from your company's ability to transform the data into relevant and valuable information, and then to again turn that information into actionable knowledge - again relevant, timely, and of value at each point across the customer corridor - a value that changes with each transaction or touch.

Sadly, many CRM & CEM initiatives have failed to achieve the "results" or the ROI that the sponsoring executives were told to expect. More alarming to me, however, is the fact that Customer Relationship and Customer Experience Management initiatives are believed to be technology plays: technology or package or cloud-computing solutions.

The failure to achieve ROI or to have "expectations" met could in fact be a result of failing to realize that CRM is not a package solution!

Loyalty-based, Customer Relationship Management is a strategy based on customer focus, on customer knowledge, and on delighting the customer. CRM is real-time, actionable, customer knowledge management. The best CRM approaches are holistic, involving all facets of your business and demonstrating accountability for results. CRM becomes a guiding philosophy and framework for doing business.

Successful CRM practitioners anchor the initiative in their strategy, as well as in their mission, vision and values not in the package, or point-, solution they choose.

Market-at-risk Analysis

The Quality movement in the US came to the forefront in the mid-80's. Satisfaction and loyalty became the next banners brought into the battle. Today it appears as though satisfaction and loyalty have slipped to a lower focus of attention. Corporate social responsibility, corporate reputation, and customer experience management are more "top-of-mind" than at any time in my career.
Yes, customer satisfaction is still important. In fact a new "standard" for reporting satisfaction has emerged. Borne from Fred Reichheld's ground-breaking studies while at Harvard, Net Promoter can be a powerful tool and quite a number of firms have chosen Net Promoter as their scoring mechanism.

If you want to find out exactly where to concentrate your efforts to improve and or fix issues ready to your company's product, delivery, and service issues: Market-at-risk analysis is the way to go!
Developed by John Goodman and brought to the marketplace and placed under its scrutiny and spot-light by TARP (quality firm, not asset relief), Market-at-risk analysis allows your firm to stack rank the 10 or so top reasons why customers will not buy from you or why they won't refer or why they will DEFECT as soon as they can.
Stack ranking by economic impact caused to your business : fix it and win big!

Thought-starter # 2, the calculus of loyalty

Thought-starter # 2: the calculus of loyalty

There is a calculus of loyalty. Experience, coupled with the latest findings published by Bain and TARP, now demonstrate this. In business, as in our personal lives, loyalty (etymologically related to the Latin lex or “law, faithfulness”) has definite rewards. The single most compelling reason for a business to exist is to create value for its customer community. If your purpose in life (for your business) is to create value, you’ll prosper and grow and loyalty will be the single largest contributing factor. If not, you’ll be out of business in the next five to ten years.

Until recently, the rewards of business loyalty were understood only intuitively. It made sense to us as marketers that loyal customers bring with them greater profit over time. In fact, the original frequency programs were designed to capitalize on, and are direct evidence of, this intuitive knowledge.

Frequency programs and frequency measures may be destructive, however, unless the economics of loyalty are taken into account.

Loyalty reliably measures whether superior value has been delivered. Most of

us now recognize that “value” is completely customer-defined. The equation might look something like this:

your customers’ expectations for the experience – “the actual”

VALUE = ____________________________

Cost

When our customers experience continuous, reliable, and increasing value we know that they will be Loyal. Loyalty brings with it a series of second-order economic effects, which cascade through the business system:

1. Revenues and market share grow through repeat sales,

purchase of other products and referrals.

2. Costs to acquire and to serve existing customers shrink.

3. Profits go up.

4. The company culture change.

A self-renewing, continuous improvement process installs itself. Employees have increased job pride and satisfaction. Employees stay longer while customers come back.

In achieving customer loyalty, the single most important decision any company can make is selecting its customers. We can neither serve every customer well nor be all things to all customers. It’s a costly istake, a diminishing of our resources and skills, to try to retain each and every customer because, quite simply, not every customer is worth retaining. In fact, we need to learn how to identify and disengage with customers who are not profitable to serve.

To wrestle with the subject of loyalty, it’s vitally important that we define who a customer is and then define their lifetime value, expressed in net potential value (NPV) terms.

Then, we must understand how much of the customers’ “share of wallet” belongs to us today and how much of their wallet we can earn. We can then make intelligent decisions about how to invest in our current and potential customer audiences based upon their reciprocal commitment to us (as demonstrated by their pocketbooks).

What Variables Do We Me a s u re ?

We define a customer by at least two variables; e.g., a customer is someone who buys X number of dollars worth of my products over Z period of time. We can add dimension to this definition by expanding the definition;

e.g., someone who buys X number of dollars of Y number of products over Z period of time. Finally, we would want to add the contribution margin of that customer and/or net profit dollars.

Share of Customer and Lifetime Value

While this is an important step in all forms of marketing, in the business-to-business environment we further need to understand how much our customer spends on competitive products That is, the share of wallet (share of customer). For example, if Sue Ann buys $400 of our widgets and a total of $600 of widgets, her loyalty coefficient to us is much higher than if she buys a total of $7,500 worth of

widgets. (Note, however, that some buyers may have constraints on having a single source for any product family; the realization of this “truth” and including this variable in our understanding helps flesh out the calculus.)

In addition to understanding the value of our customer, it is essential that we define the rate at which we lose customers — the defection rate — as well as how many customers we acquire during a given year. Caution is called for here: a greatly skewed picture of the value of our customer community will result if we average the defection rate out, e.g., over 10 years. That’s because most companies report their defection rate is highest over the earlier years of a customer’s lifetime. Any loyalty valuation must recognize this.

I know that many of us see the admonition to “define who a customer is” and laugh or belittle the maker of the statement. But keep in mind the fate of IBM — while IBM touted the fact that everybody was their customer, millions of dollars of replacement parts and add-on business went elsewhere.

A customer, then, is someone who buys X-number of dollars of Y-product offerings in Z-period of time. That is, we define a customer by the dollar amount, the penetration or depth of products purchased, and the factor of pertinent recency.

thought starter #1: define your customers & measure the value of your marketing database

Thought-starter #1: define your customers & measure the value of your marketing database

One issue organizations often struggle with is “how to measure the value of investments made in its marketing database”. Let’s see if we can build a simple, yet practical, evaluation framework for the marketing database in your company. This approach I believe focuses more on process, information management and outcomes, and this approach is more actionable than traditional ROI measures

In today’s business environment, the highest deliverable value of your contact marketing database is the ability it gives you to target, segment and grade[1] your existing customers. Ideally, this repository of facts, through efforts to enrich the data, is transformed into a customer knowledge platform. The insight given from studying the database then is used to direct our customer[2] loyalty and retention efforts.

In the 21^st century marketing world, cutting-edge business-to-business marketing database efforts will measure at least these four dimensions:

a. external service values: i.e., what are the 3,4, or 5 primary reasons customers buy

b. why we lose customers (defection analysis)

c. operational database performance

d. social interaction and customer insight

The best of the best marketing databases in the ’80s and’90s demonstrated their excellence when measured against operational deliverables and measurements. Today, the world-class marketing database looks at why our customers buy (external service value), where/how we stand to lose them, its operational performance, and, finally, real-time, actionable research into the customer’s mind-set and definition of value.

Today we have richer information: for many of us an overwhelming richness of data & information. Our data mining tools are incredibly sophisticated. Overlay upon overlay of data can give us greater insight than ever before. In general this approach is given the umbrella title of “business intelligence”.

Easier said than done? Not really. You can gather this information initially through investigative research, and then subsequently maintain it through the ongoing contact your customer management center has with your customers, prospects and defectors, using phone, email, and social media. You can then interpret this marketing data to target, to segment and to grade your customers, sharing the data synthesis both inside your organization and with your channel partners to ensure you’re making needed improvements.

In order to add the greatest power to these efforts, you first must define your customer. Yes, define a customer, your customer! The definition of customer is the touchstone upon which all else rests. Without the definition, none of the other steps can take place, and none of this theory can touch ground and add value to your operations and its success.

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[1] Grading does not refer to assigning customers “grades” as our teachers did; rather grading is a valuation process, which allows you to optimize your market coverage approach and to manage the limited resources your firm has in direct proportion to the expected returns on that investment. At its center, this approach looks at customer, prospects, & defectors as the portfolio of assets that must be managed proactively.

[2] Essentially the same holds true for partner management initiatives as well.

Marketing Madness : Steps to recover

Recovery in a world gone mad

For the last 40 years, B2B marketing professionals have created program rules intended to cause results. From steps-to-the-sale programs, to dealer-loader initiatives, to programs aimed at directing the behavior of the parts counter guy, to frequency programs: the list is seemingly endless. "Incentives" have brought a kind of destructive madness to marketing. Rather than creating a holistic solution, these programs - in the language of systems - have "shifted-the-burden", become "fixes-that-fail", and highlighted why our channel partners should be thought of as "the commons" in the "tragedy of the commons" archetype. it is time to create sustainability in our marketing programs. that will require a kind of recovery for marketers.

“Recovery programs”, in the form of the multitude of 12-step programs that have proliferated since Bill W. and Dr. Bob, made profound contributions to living and the wisdom literature of the 20th century, is a radical paradigm shift in attitude and in living. Its two primary drivers — powerlessness and acceptance — are characteristic thoughts counterintuitive to the marketing imagination.

The reality of marketing today is that we must acknowledge our need for recovery. Over the past decade we have watched the power shift 180-degrees into the hands of our customers. We must all realize and embrace our powerlessness, and understand that accepting this brings greater power. In marketing, as in life, we need to become focused outside of ourselves and allow that others —our customers — hold the power and the key.

The power in the marketplace is held by our customers. No one can doubt this in the twitter-age of social media. Many of us erroneously believe that we own this power. Many of our dealers believe they own it. The truth, however, is that the customers have redefined value and the ways they want to buy our products, and, as such, hold the power over us. Moreover, through the power of social media, our customers now “hold sway” over our reputations and the success of our customer experience management initiatives. To not accept this power and to ignore what our customers tell us is to guarantee that we will be out of business in the near future.

One of the most powerful and pervasive movements of the 20th century has been the movement to heal the individual. Wherever we turn we are confronted with healing the inner child, dysfunction, codependency, etc. In the business arena, we’re being told to listen to our customers, to empower our employees and to develop a sense of community in the workplace, and this whole process is a journey.

Suppose we were to take the wisdom of self-knowledge, responsibility, acceptance, doing things one day at a time, easy does it, etc. and apply them to our marketing lives. Where would these musings take us? Perhaps it will lead to a paradigm of healing to make up for the marketing damage we have done. Let’s call it “12 Steps for Marketing Recovery.”

The Twelve Steps for Marketing Recovery

Step 1. We admitted that we were powerless over people, places, things, and situations, and that our sales and marketing lives were unmanageable.

Step 2. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore our focus and us to sanity.

Step 3. We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of a power greater than ourselves: to our customers.

Step 4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our sales and marketing selves.

Step 5. We admitted to our customers, and to ourselves, the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step 6. We were entirely ready to remove all our defects of sales, marketing, and customer experience.

Step 7. We humbly asked our customers to guide us as we remove our shortcomings.

Step 8. We made a list of all those we had harmed and became willing to make amends with them all.

Step 9. We made direct changes to our treatment of customers and to our processes wherever possible.

Step 10. We continued to take an inventory of our sales and marketing practices and when we were wrong we promptly admitted it.

Step 11. We sought through a quest for continuous process improvement and purging of our database to improve our conscious contact with our customers, seeking only to assimilate, to cultivate, and to retain them.

Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Twelve-step programs hold many points of enlightenment for us as business people since their principles define behavior, communications and ethics in a world driven by openness, honesty, willingness and responsibility. The opposite behavior in

the language of “recovery” is codependency.

In agribusiness, codependency takes the form of entitlement programs, programs which rob our businesses of integrity, strength and self-reliance. Entitlements and the incumbent expectations of payments from manufacturer to their channel partners ultimately serve to destroy the marketplace and the covenants/relationships between manufacturer, dealer and grower. Entitlements hurt business because they cause loss. Loss of credibility, loss of price stability, loss of support, and loss of profit for all.

Reversing the codependency of entitlements is just one way the 12 Steps for Marketing Recovery can offer a road to marketing recovery. The solution requires detachment and tough love, but the end result is healthier, more profitable business relationships.

Words that work: inside the halls of your business

Our direct experience has shown that, in certain agribusiness companies, our workers are feeling the strain of the public debate over food. Has it hit your place yet?

We train our sales people about features and benefits, about how to overcome objections, and about how to close the sale. We guide and train these people but what do we do for the rest of our staffs? And even for our sales people, maybe we haven’t adequately prepared them as well as we could have on talking points and their behaviors. What are you doing to help them deal with emotions and to help them regain their personal confidence through “words that work”?

The words we choose certainly make a definite difference in our relationships with spouses, children, and co-workers. In our business lives, our choice of words can make or break a sales situation, cause a customer service moment to turn ugly, or strike a chord that conveys instant understanding. In fact, our words, in part, define our customers’ experience. Agribusiness companies have employees who take the brunt of the sometimes sensationalized debate home with them. It’s our job to seize upon this time as one of additional education and communication to relieve their stress and to help them use words that work when confronted.

The business model of agribusiness is self-contained, highly complex, and had been virtually hidden from public view until the last 10 to 15 years. The recent increase in public awareness, if graphed, would be up and to the right at a steep angle! How much clarity is there really for the public about agribusiness, farming, sustainability, and feeding and clothing the world? Agriculture cannot withstand a repeat performance of what we are witnessing in the public debate over Health Care Reform.

This is a very public example of what agribusiness is in for in the coming months and years. We’re living through a confused, and angry public debate over our nation’s true and real need for Health Care reform. After months of shouting, influence-led proselytizing, and raucous Town Hall meetings, where are we?

The next great public conversation will be about carbon emissions, global warming, and sustainability. This far-reaching, complex, and already highly fractionalized, conversation will include among its topics “cap and trade” versus “cap and tax”, agribusiness, emissions, the industrial food system, farming, and almost everything and everything related. The conversation, if we allow media to dictate it could become even more sensationalized than the one on Health Care Reform. The message gaining strength and credence, and the doubtless ongoing message will be: how we as “the people” must change past practices to create a sustainable future. Let’s keep that message constructive, educational and balanced.

This is a time to unite. Each of us across the value chain, from grower or producer to seedsman to corporate executive, needs to help shape the language of this conversation. For some of us, we need to start inside our very own businesses.