JumpbyDesign

Please see JumpbyDesign to find my recent and current posts and follow me @davidpachter .

The last mile: "Customer Centricity"

For many young companies the first sign of success and confidence is "sales traction". Successful companies turn sales traction into customer satisfaction. As companies mature (or experience exponential growth as we are) they need to swiftly become customer-centric and deliver on the promises made by the sales and marketing teams. 

The connection I made from the quotes excerpted below (from a long blog post by Maz IqBal), struck me as very consistent with the biggest challenge and opportunity – To provide the type of insight and knowledge to our clients that will influence their success and behavior:

 “No matter how good you look, no matter how good you’ve gotten your family to look, and no matter how much wealth, fame or power you have amassed, (you will at some point) experience a profound lack of fulfillment….. expressed by the commonly asked question: Is This All There Is? Dealing with the crisis of “Is this all there is?” lies in having a commitment to the realization of future (a cause) that leaves you with a passion for living… 

...A point about discipline, about sticking to one’s stand. Why does this matter? Because we swim in a culture that is about ease, convenience, comfort, finding the short-cut and focusing on the short-term...You might be wondering why I have dived into leadership given that this is The Customer Blog. Because the move to customer-centricity requires leaders to show up as leaders and exercise leadership… And without this kind of leadership organizations can talk as much as they like, put in as much technology as they like, redesign processes etc and they will still not show up as customer-centric as experienced by the customer.  

The shift to customer-centricity requires a genuine shift to being a company that stands for creating superior value for customers: enriching their lives, improving their welfare, helping them with the issues that they are grappling with… As such it requires a commitment to something bigger than one’s need to make the short-term numbers to collect the bonus cheques. It requires integrity – keeping one’s promises including those that customers can reasonably expect you to keep even if you have not explicitly promised that promise. And it requires authenticity.” 

Link to the post http://t.co/iK45BOZ1 - about the Author: Maz Iqbal - Dynamica Consulting Group: I define myself as a ‘customer based strategist’. My focus is on helping organizations to generate-define-design-execute customer based strategies that create superior value for customers and competitive advantage for the enterprise. You can access my thinking at The Customer Blog (www.thecustomerblog.co.uk).

Personal Branding

"Who we as leaders are - and how we're perceived by just about everyone - is our personal brand."

Your opportunity to make greater organizational impact is certainly influenced by the value of your personal brand as recognized by your peers. I often think of an entire career as a personal narrative and plan to expand on that. In the meantime, here's a link to a post from Management-Issues on the subject that resonated with me.

Embracing Risk and Creativity

Really thoughtful talk by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert. In the process of finding herself by leaving home and writing the memoir she recognized that society links "creativity" and "suffering" much to the detriment of achievement. Her thoughts captured at the TED conference are worth the 19 minutes.

My best take away: Creative genius is not something bestowed on an individual for a lifetime but more likely something that passes through so... If you don't keep at "it" you won't ever be able to attest to the possibility of success.

www.ted.com rocks.

"Two Weeks Notice"

Chris Dixon's post "12 months notice" reminded me of an experience I had a few years back. Dixon writes about the two ways todo business - He calls them "legalistic based or "trust" based. I prefer to call it trust or not.

We had hired a very talented young exec a few years out of school. I enjoyed having him in the office, appreciated his dedication and helped him develop his business. Regardless of his future career choices, I considered our relationship a nice addition to my network.

I always expected he would either go back to graduate school or want more industry specific experience. We had discussed this and I was prepared to help him in either of these endeavors. I anticipated that when he was considering his next steps that we would discuss his options openly. It was a very surprising to me when he came to tell me that he had accepted a position with a client and was giving his 2 weeks.

I don't know where/when "two weeks notice" became a status quo expectation but when you as an exec/manager are entrusted with client relationships and ongoing long term projects "two weeks notice" can be a fast way to damage your credibility. If you are not on your way to a competitive position, and you value your relationship with your co-workers, then consider that giving only "two weeks notice" can be a very effective way to damage those relationships and your professional reputation.

Adapt Evolve Succeed

Jennifer McClure wrote a post for Fistful of Talent about recruiters that is equally applicable to many careers and industries. In good times I would often consider a business that is not growing a dying business. Lately, I prefer to suggest that businesses and executives that are not adapting to the changes in the economy, technology and the changing demands of the markets, will go the way of the dodo bird.... read on at Fistful of Talent

Business in Context

A few weeks back I hosted a 2 round table discussions among owners and executives of recruitment firms. The level of candor and honesty was more surprising than the widespread level of hardship. It’s oddly reassuring to hear from other people sharing the same hardships. Most of the 20+ business owners did also have stories of people in their organization who have had continued success but all had been forced to downsize and significantly reduce costs.

I had no inspiration to post over the past months and then I found myself back in the pediatric ward at NYU Hospital on Friday night. The opportunity in being here far exceeds any level of reassurance in mutual hardship at a professional conference. In the past 2 days we shared a room with a girl suffering from kidney infection, we played with a little boy recovering from his 3rd brain surgery in the past months and learned about Jasmina, the five year old girl in the next room with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia who needs a bone marrow donor and transplant to survive.

We will be home later this week, the kids we shared the weekend with will fight on and until this weekends memory fades, business will be approached in the context more important struggles.

The Collapse

Michael Lewis, (Liar’s Poker) succeeds at explaining what went wrong in his article on portfolio.com link here. He walks in the shoes of the guys who saw it coming and made a bundle on the crash. Their revelation and explanation of how CDO market grew large enough to bring down the house is stupefying.

Collaboration & Systemic Change

Peter Senge has had a big influence on my understanding of leadership and ability to impact change. The book he is most closely associated with is The Fifth Discipline. I found a review on You Tube . The book was updated in 2003 and is still is required in many graduate programs. (If you get bored - Chapter 3 starts at the 5 minute mark of the video.)

Companies are living organizations constantly changing based on the actions of people who impact them. Collaborations between people and organizations bring new opportunities for both the individual and the organization to learn, grow and improve. In concert with the collaborations and communication tools and processes the allow sharing, there is always an opportunity for those who are open to reach higher, grow and achieve more.

I have always found opportunities to achieve more appealing and rewarding in difficult times. Today's environment presents the biggest and most challenging opportunity for people to show their potential than at any other time in my career. The Fifth Discipline in all its irony does not address discipline itself. Whether you choose to read the book or not - discipline, determination, extra effort and respect are traits shared by successful people. In the face of Systemic Change that requires Collaboration it's easy to forget what you need to do to achieve. Don't let it happen to you.

using email when prospecting

Gavin Ingham says "People are really good at ignoring email" - A truism as far as I can see. The people you are trying hardest to connect with are probably the best at ignoring email.

Of course, this assumes you are prospecting... if you are in a client facing sales role and are succeeding without prospecting then let me in on the secret. If you set the bar high, then you prospect all the time and are likely to have already figured this out on your own. Regardless, Ingham's post linked here, is worth a read.

When to build your network: All the time

Jeremiah Owyang's blog discusses how web tools enable companies to connect with customers. He is a Forrester Analyst focused on the social computing industry.

In a recent post Build Your Network Before You Need Them raised a prescient point that you can't expect to become a great networker if you only reach out when in need

"It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just joining the network purely to take –not to give."

Click any of the links to read the entire post.

"Consistency is critical for sales and business success"

Gavin Ingrham has a rather obtuse post that I thought applicable to a number of scenarios in (the staffing) business. I'll leave the links for you to draw from your own experiences but as he says (in reference to the BBC changing the air time of The Apprentice: Consistency is critical for sales and business success.

Your clients need to know what to expect from you. People thrive on certainty. If you give your clients a coffee one time, you should give them a coffee every time. The BBC might be thinking that they won’t lose any Apprentice viewers over this but they almost certainly will. It may be a slash of the pen for them but for some of their customers this will be seen as sacrilege.

I have a “friend” who runs a café. She is supposed to open at 9am. I went down there the other day for a business meeting and she was shut. No reason, no apology, no excuse… just shut. I won’t organise another meeting there again… ever. Not a lot of lost business just from me admittedly but I am not her only customer. How many other customers felt the same and will not be going back?

Sales training tip: If you want to be seen as a reliable, professional and trustworthy business partner for your clients you need to set yourself sales and business standards and stick to them.

Say What you Mean, Mean What you Say

If you have something to hide, people are likely to feel it before you tell them and tacitly question your authenticity before you realize it. Many people struggle with Saying What They Mean (whether for fear of being candid or intent to mislead)and are not so good at concealing their thoughts. This is something that's likely to be impeding their ability to achieve.

The most successful people I know are easy reads. You don’t need to de-code what they mean. They are just naturally adept at saying what’s on their minds. It sounds silly – and it reminds me of Peter Senge .

Senge founded the Organizational Learning lab at MIT – wrote The Fifth Discipline, a cognitive approach to business, and invented the concept of a Learning Organization. To summarize a 400 pager; it about expanding your capacity to create the results you desire. It's probably the most influential applicable concepts to management I have come across. If you prefer Cliff Notes to Books start here: http://www.rtis.com/nat/user/jfullerton/review/learning.htm

If you have never heard of Senge it might be because he was a huge advocate of controlled growth. He believed there was a maximum annual growth rate beyond which an organization achieved diminishing returns. He had the unfortunate distinction of writing this just prior to the growth of the Internet in the mid 90’s. The overwhelming majority of this thoughts hold up very well – If you manage or aspire to manage people the book is a must read.

CONTENT IS (NO LONGER) KING?

In his post on The Warshaw Curve, my friend Douglas writes

What percentage of the time do you think people are spending on Facebook and MySpace ingesting "content"? That's not what's driving them there, or driving them around and around the sites once they get there. They're showing up and sticking around for activities (i.e. utilities).

On the money comment. Douglas continues....

Instead of worshiping their own content they (ie traditional media properties-newspapers and the major magazines) need to be relentlessly figuring out how they can integrate it with compelling utilities and service offerings, both on their own sites and by syndicating their content in a branded manner through widgets, gadgets, trinkets and toys that can be shared.

True today but not necessarily true when looking at tomorrow. Parsing content for a specific audience has become the most valuable content at the moment (the top 4 sites in the 18-34m demo google, yahoo, microsoft and msn)...But those guides have to push people to actual content somewhere. When people find content they like the best way by far to ingest content is to use an RSS reader and subscribe to what you want. At that point... there is then little reason to start the quest for content with a search.

The question is when will people adopt RSS and the standard when to ingest infotainment. When the tipping point comes content will once again take center stage.

Are You Making Your Life Easier By Using RSS?

if you are not using an RSS, it's a good post. with good comments

also...

follow up post:

How I Use RSS To Make My Life Easier

"So I’ve tried my best to explain what is RSS and why it’s important to learn how to use. And as I said I find it hard to explain probably because the power of RSS is really something you need to experience first hand."

When to fire your clients

In many services businesses and certainly in the Recruitment and Staffing business, the customers you choose determine the level of success you achieve. In the search business we are always looking to add clients who are responsive to our efforts (we only get paid if we are successful) and in the temporary staffing business we are always looking to add clients who pay their bills on time and treat our temporary employees well.

A post on the HBS blog titled "The New Math of Customer Relationships" by Harvard Business School professor emeritus Jim Heskett articulates this better than I can:

When we observed a number of organizations ... we found a common behavior among the most successful ones. In various ways, they "fired" customers who either were abusive in their relationships with employees or were just difficult to serve, perhaps because they fell outside the core constituency (target market) identified in the organizations' strategies. In some organizations, this is a way of expressing support for employees. In others, it is a way of preserving the organization's strategic focus. This is typically not something that an organization advertises. But it is standard practice in a number of organizations today.

For example, at ING DIRECT, the fastest-growing financial services organization in the United States over the past seven years, the company, in as personal and amiable a way as possible, asks 10,000 customers to close their accounts every month. It's important to point out that this is out of a current base of about 6.5 million customers who give ING DIRECT the highest marks for satisfaction out of all U.S. banking organizations. The company fires customers who are especially "high maintenance" because they are unusually high users of the time of its support center personnel. This both preserves a low-cost base for its targeted customer base and, by the way, reduces a source of frustration for employees.

Do you agree with this concept? I do... The assumption being that your business does not depend on a small number of clients. If it does, you probably don't agree and/or regardless if you do, you can't consider this strategy until you land some more clients. So sell more so you can fire your clients too.

Turn Off Distraction

When I was in high school I had cable tv, 2 phone lines and my stereo in my bedroom. Not to go without mention, I also had a bench press/place to hang my pants and a chin-up bar/place to hang shirts. When I needed to study, I would first try to do so while on the phone and watching the Knick game but after my first test scores would come back I would need to turn off the tv and avoid the phone in a desperate attempt to retain all such privileges in the wake of intervention level test scores.

The only difference 25 years later is that my computer (and/or smartphone) is always on and information and entertainment I am interested in is constantly being pushed to me while I am trying to be productive. This highly stimulating and at times satisfying habit allows me to satiate my ADD by juggling a weeks worth of meetings and phone calls, maintaining blogs, subscribing to 20+ feeds while sending and receiving 1000+ emails a week. It does not however, lead me to perform my most important tasks with the required diligence or productivity.

One of the blogs I subscribe to recently suggested (sorry, can't recall which) that limiting to 2x per day the sessions during which you reply to email drastically improves productivity. I get it, but don't think that would be beneficial due to the real time nature of transactions related to managing a recruiting company. But, I do think that turning off elements of distraction are working for me. In a recent post titled "Not productive enough? Turn off the Internet" Robert Scoble writes:

Want to get something done? Turn off Twitter. Turn off Facebook. Turn off blog comments. Turn off FriendFeed. Turn off Flickr. Turn off YouTube. Turn off Dave Winer’s blog and Huffington Post. Turn off TechMeme.

and it makes sense to me...

Digesting Media post AOL, Yahoo, Google and You Tube

Why the hype about Digital Media? If you are still bookmarking your favorite web sites please read on.

The way media is being created, digested and monetized is undergoing dramatic change and is why venture firms are investing in media start-ups. Also developing rapidly are specialty services firms to support the industry.

For the past few years the digital media buzz has been driven by User Generated Content. The most notable places to find popular content today: You Tube, Facebook, MySpace and the blogs. Anything that was called Social Networking yesterday is now called Social Media and will soon just be called Media again.

To understand the hype you have to use an RSS Reader (a user controlled media guide: "tv guide" for the digital age ) the most commercial are Google Reader and My Yahoo but the competitive field is growing and the stakes are high.

Once you have set up your feeds you receive new content from your favorite sources as they are published to the web (and they are then pushed to your reader).

Today, your feed will likely consist of some newspaper topics and blogs you discover. Tomorrow they will be episodes of your favorite tv show, evening news clips and entirely new set of micro-publishers (bloggers) who are creating content (video, audio and written word) on subjects of interest to you. Finding and subscribing a feed is made easier by the RSS Reader. The opportunity for publishers for content is large - as feeds increase the number of "subscribers" (viewers, visitors etc...) they monetize the content by selling ads on the page and in the streams.

When the tipping point is realized the ubiquity of the Internet and the power of digital media will be fully realized.

The B to B service providers like Feedroom, and Kickapp's will see their business grow at an rapidly expanding rate and more importantly the B to C providers like Motionbox, Oddcast's Voki and their competitors who are struggling to monetize the services in the face of free offerings from... You Tube, Google etc... will realize their full potential through their ability to share in the advertising revenue stream.

Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch's inspirational "Last Lecture" has inspired millions of people. He was featured on Prime Time Live last night and was an ABC person of the week some months back.

"I've never known anger to make any situation better"
--Randy Pausch

more links to Randy Pausch

Negate the Recession Impact - Outperform the Competition

Over the past weeks I have met with 3 industry professionals in our office and received unsolicited compliments from all on Bond’s front desk operations. I am glad our first corporate impression is such a positive one and am hopeful we are sustaining that level of excellence throughout our clients’ experiences. Thank you Martha for making our clients and candidates feel welcome. There is no greater compliment in business then one paid by a competitor

Two questions will hang over all services companies trying to succeed in the current economic environment:

1. How do we improve the level of service we provide?
2. How do we increase the number of clients we are providing services to?

In a slower hiring market we can’t afford a lapse in services and we also have to sell to more clients to generate similar results. If we provide great service to more clients, we can at least guarantee we will outperform our competition. If we do not then we place ourselves in a high risk position.