From the monthly archives:

July 2005

Let Me Caution You, Please …

July 27, 2005

Got a couple of nice emails about yesterday’s post, but if I may, I’d like to offer you two cautionary explicitisms:

1.  Should you take the advice to heart and decide to hold such end-of-day recaps, resist the urge to start a round of wincingly-fake clapping at the end of each story.  They see through it.  Can’t you?

2.  Perhaps you read yesterday’s post and thought, quite eloquently, "[Your expletive of choice] Morale!  They can get [expletive] morale at home!  If they want [expletive thricely] feelings, they oughta go work for the [once more for a frequency of four] Red Cross!"

Did that sentiment cross your mind or your mouth?  Yeah?

Well, you’re an idiot.

But do let me know how it works out for you.

Thankee.

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Moraleity

July 26, 2005

Prism04

After a ten-day recharge, I returned to the office yesterday to find it colored a pallid grey.  Morale felt worse than frustration … it bordered on the indifferent.  Sometime last evening it occurred to me that it may have been more than my absence that put my fellow day-jobbers in such a stupor.

I may have been swallowed up in the belly of the beast as well … but I had the luxury of an absence that lent itself to perspective.

Through the prism of my partner Steve’s blog, I hope this post sheds a little proper light on the subject:

Positive Attitude Review Exercises

Want your reps to improve their service attitude? David
Freemantle, author of The Buzz, a book on "little things that make a
big difference in customer service," offers these end-of-day review
practices.

  • "At the end of every day, spend five minutes with your
    colleagues and share stories about how each of you has cared for
    customers in the last 24 hours."
  • "Sit down for five minutes or so every evening to reflect on the
    positive choices you made at work that day. List them if it helps, and
    review them with your teammates the next morning."
  • "Be curious about things you don’t know and don’t understand. Ask 10 new questions every day and put the answers to good use."

Contact: David Freemantle, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, www.nbrealey-books.com

This is from the ICSA Fun Facts website http://www.icsa.com/news/FunFacts.cfm as is this tidbit:

What Demotivates Service Staff

There are a number of ways in which you can demotivate
your customer service staff without even realizing it, says Peggy
Morrow, author of Customer Service: How to Do It Right! (Southern
Mountain Press). They include:

  • Rewarding the wrong things. For instance, when you say you want
    behavior that pleases customers, yet give promotions and bonuses to
    those who push through the greatest number of customers regardless of
    service.
  • Signaling right and turning left. That is, when you say you want to
    put the customer first and then create workplace rules and procedures
    that make it difficult to follow precept.
  • Implementing unnecessary rules, processes, and procedures. In
    general, when a service rep doesn’t understand why a rule is in place,
    it will get in the way of good service to customers.
  • Introducing constant change. If there’s constant downsizing,
    reorganization, or reengineering, reps will quickly turn off their
    discretionary effort and begin to deliver the minimum performance to do
    their jobs.

Contact: Peggy Morrow, Peggy Morrow & Associates, www.peggymorrow.com


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J.D.'s Power

July 25, 2005

Hello in there.  Hope you had a goodly ten days.

I’m back, albiet merely dipping my toe in the shallow end of the scuzz:

Did you know this?

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Class? Dismissed.

July 15, 2005

Unplugging for 10 days.  Be safe.

From: Tim Miles
[mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 11:43 AM
To: Pendulum Class

Subject: Class Dismissed …

 Welp,

I’m
100% grateful for and 90% satisfied with yesterday.

Thanks
for making the effort.  Pretty good lookin’ group, if I may say …

So,
your homework:  What would you want done differently next time?
How can we make it more worth your time?

 We’ll
plan on doing another in the fall.  Hope you’ll join us then.  In the
meantime, everyone’s – with the exception of guests – email address is
here.  Feel free to reply to all if you have any particularly weird
thoughts from or about yesterday.

 Now,
go rent Napoleon Dynamite.

 Off
to vacate.

 Thanks
again.

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Fear of Flying

July 13, 2005

From the Associated Press this morning:

Hf_rtf_discovery0630_01CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA managers put a brief but embarrassing
setback behind them as the countdown to the first space shuttle flight
in 2 1/2 years entered its final hours Wednesday, with only predicted
thunderstorms posing some concern.

A temporary window cover fell
off the shuttle and damaged thermal tiles near the tail Tuesday
afternoon, just two hours after NASA declared Discovery ready to return
the nation to space for the first time since the Columbia disaster.

The mishap was an eerie reminder of the very thing that doomed Columbia _ damage to the spaceship’s fragile thermal shield.

Discovery and its crew of seven were set to blast off at 3:51 p.m. EDT on a flight to the international space station.

"It should not impact the launch time right now," said David Mould, NASA’s assistant administrator for public affairs.

So, if you’re afraid today of not having time to get everything done, or that someone might say "no" to you, or that your owners are going to be among the crowd watching you teach tomorrow, I only ask that you realize that maybe there’s some inspiration for bravery today.

I get ick-nervous flying for 90 minutes to Austin.

The Discovery Seven have had years to think about riding the bullet these next several days.

Heroes?  Yeah, sure … to some folks - their moms and little kids and dreamers everys where.

But, moreover, they top the y-axis marked "Guts" to follow their dream.

Next year my cousin, Lee, will be one of those seven.  My mom’s going down to the Cape.  She says she wouldn’t miss it for this world or any other.

I want to take my son.

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Is Market Potential Your Handicap?

July 11, 2005

In honor of British Open week, let me address the golfers in the house:

You’ll get this.

Remember when it was relatively easy - with effort - to go from shooting 120 to 100?  Then, you blew past 100 and hovered around 90 for a while?  Then, breaking 90 was pretty easy and your goal was to break 85?

Then, it got tricky.  Progress slowed.

Your business will progress along the same course - with effort - as routed along through this week’s Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams:

             
             

             
             

             

Marketplace Realities
~ Is There a Limit to How High You Can Climb?
Last
week a client achieved 42 percent of his market potential. Never before
had I seen a business break the 40 percent barrier. It was kind of like
seeing someone run a four-minute mile. I knew it was possible in
theory, but I never thought I’d actually see it.

Ben had come to Austin for his annual marketing retreat. After the
usual pleasantries, he said, "Traffic is flat, sales are flat, and I’m
not happy."

"Ben, you’ve done everything that can be done. You’ve trained your
staff, created a tantalizing compensation structure for them,
advertised relentlessly, added every conceivable product line that
might increase your attractiveness to your customer, refined your
purchasing methods so that your prices are visibly better, built a
fabulous new store f…
continue with this issue…
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Ideas till Death Do Us Part

July 8, 2005

Deeandtimkiss_copyAbove others, one question I’m asked is, “where do all your
ideas come from?”

Life, silly.

Open your ears, your eyes, your moods, emotions, memories, and
noses to the world around you and simply start bumping into the ideas all
around you.

 Do you remember how she looked when she opened the door that
first evening of that first date?

 Do you remember how you felt waiting for him to arrive?

 Did you wonder what she said to her friends after it was
over?

 Do you remember the first kiss? Did you happen to notice that 80-year-old
couple walking hand-in-hand down the street?

 When you went to that last ballgame, did you notice the
8-year-old with the sticky-outy-ears and the big hat covering his head and the
even bigger glove on his hand?

 Did you ever see your own face in your father’s? Remember the moment
you realized your parents were human?

 Ever curious what your pets are thinking?

 It always strikes me as funny that people act as though I’m
some magician because I can continue to keep coming up not just with clever
little ideas, but ideas that resonate with the ability to persuade.

 It’s so easy. Just be
curious. Be aware. Listen.

 Ideas are everywhere around you. Start getting in their way.

 So, there are some idea starters for you.

 Unless you’re slightly more daring and decide to get in the
way of your own experiences.

My greatest began two years ago today.Dsc02637

 You see, I still remembered how she looked in that black
dress, how she smelled, how she smiled, how I felt, how she didn’t seem to care
I was a little bit odd and a lot bit nervous. I remember the first kiss, the first movie, the first bottle of wine,
the first concert, the first quiet moment,
the first fight, the first make-up, the first …

 So … I asked her to marry me.  Incredulously, she said "yes."

Happy Anniversary, Dee.

Thanks for believing.

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The Syphilitic Culture of Cheapness, Part Deux

July 7, 2005

From John Moore at Brand Autopsy … any resemblence to persons or companies or blog posts, living or dead,  is purely coincidental …

Toetag
I cannot argue with the success of the EDEO program. However, all GM
has done is trade the deep discounting of low financing and big rebates
for a different discount with a different, albeit more compelling name.


For long-term vitality, General Motors and the entire car industry must
overcome their addiction to discounting. Profit margins will continue
to suffer, the equity of brands will continue to erode, and worst of
all … consumers will continue to be trained to only buy a car on deep
discount.


Seth Godin said it best in PURPLE COW, “Cheap is the last refuge of a product developer or marketer who is out of great ideas.”


No matter if you sell a car under an EDLP or EDEO pricing strategy …
it’s still going the cheap route to motivate people to buy it. Aren’t
we, as marketers, too smart, too savvy, and too damn creative to fall
for this low price trap?


(Please say yes.  Otherwise, I may have to change my livelihood.)


Did you hear Chrysler may bring Mr. Iacocca in from the bullpen to pitch their version?

Will the circle … be unbroken?  If you can find a better idea …


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Mixed Magic Bullets

July 6, 2005

In 1910, according to my friends at Wikipedia, bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich desperately sought to find a drug with no harmful side effects to human tissue that would combat a ravaging disease.  He dubbed Salvarsan (arsphenamine) the "Magic Bullet."

Turns out Salvarsan wasn’t the magic bullet due to deleterious side effects.

And syphilis ravaged on …

In 2005, according to the General Motors Fast Lane blog, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz desperately sought to answer criticism on his company’s general underwhelmingness (emphasis added):

Gmchina_lutzThe second and more important issue I’ve seen asked repeatedly is, "What is GM’s strategy for fixing its issues?"

A
good and fair question. Let’s start by saying there’s no magic bullet
for our issues, at least none that we’ve uncovered. The truth is we’ve
spelled out in several forums and in several media interviews what we
intend to do to address the challenges we face. What we won’t tell you
is exactly how we intend to do those things.

I can tell you this: First and foremost, our recovery is riding
squarely on the back of our new product programs. There has never been
a turnaround in this industry that didn’t happen because of hot-selling
cars and trucks. There never will be, either.

 No magic bullet, Mr. Lutz?  Just a plain ole’ bullet, then?

After searching their archive for a few minutes I was unable to find any mention of their well-publicized Employee Discount program.

Yesterday, GM decided to extend that program through the end of this month.  Ford and Chrysler announced similar programs as well.

My question, and maybe David Lidsky’s question, to the big three would have to be:  What happens in, say, September?

What happens when you’ve re-cultured consumers to your replacement drug for zero-percent financing? 

What happens when you roll out your 2006 models with few willing to pay a penny more than employee discount prices or family savings plan prices or whatever pretty bow you put on it?

What happens to all the used inventory clogging your dealers’ lots?

What’s the magic bullet come September?

Will you put not one, but two in the chamber and point them squarely at under-performing brands like Pontiac and Buick - brands that have underwhelmed in spite of your pricing program?

Will you figure out what companies like Hyundai are doing right without cutting margins?

Or will you lock some guys and gals in a room and come up with a phrasey new gimmick that feeds the jones in this syphilitic culture of cheapness?

What are the deleterious side effects, Mr. Lutz?

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Preparing for Battle? Look Behind You.

July 4, 2005

Maybe someone in your company has brandished a copy of The Art of War as referenced in this week’s Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams.

Someone I know keeps and uses (and occasionally even threatens to throw at his troops) a book about a famous American General. 

Same theatre, different foxhole.

As you choose your tactics on the road to independence, you must ask yourself:

Are your troops behind you?  Are they willing to take one for you?  Are they lining up in ranks because they, too, share your strategic plan for dominance?

Or are they just following orders?

Maybe it’s time to mix metaphors …

             
             

             

Will He Read The Art of War?

If
you want to glimpse the inner forces that drive an organization, you
need only observe their methods and listen to their words. Especially
when they’re not paying attention.

Words and methods reveal motives. Listen to a person carefully and you
will hear the beating of their heart. Do what they do and you’ll become
who they are. So be careful whose advice you take and whose methods you
adopt.

You cannot use the tools of another without placing your hands where
their hands have been. Desire their outcome, adopt their methods, and
you embrace the values that are hidden beneath.

Advertising in America got twisted and bent when it became fashionable to read The Art of War.

The most commonly used words in marketing today are "target…
continue with this issue…
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