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Watching Carefully - On the Road to Profit

I was raised with dogs. One of the first black & white pictures my parents took of me was with my grandparents and Gypsy, their white spitz. In my early years in Africa where my father built and ran a hospital, there was Buck, a German shepherd with a real ability for hunting wild game. There still remains in family lore the story of how Buck stole a rare, canned ham that had been shipped from the United States over months and months of travel to reach us. Buck ate the whole thing. Not only was he “sick as a dog,” my father always ended the story with “I thought your mother was going to kill him.” Buck was inadvertently speared by one of the African hunters while chasing a large antelope through thick underbrush and died.

The first dog that my brothers and I claimed as our own was in Africa as well. Ahab, a basenji, was as consummate a hunter as Buck had been. I watched him run down rabbits on open ground. One day he tackled a wild boar that was three times his size. He was ripped to ribbons in the effort to pull the boar down. Being a hunting dog in Central Africa was a rough job.

When we came back to the United States, my parents had Shelties; skittish, high-strung dogs that could focus so completely that they lost track of what they were actually doing. Once, I watched one spinning madly on a dock in her excitement over something. She fell over the side of the dock and had to swim to shore. There’s a lesson in that somewhere.

During the early part of our marriage, my wife (who was also raised with dogs) and I did not have a dog. Then we decided our kids needed one. There was the sweetheart border collie-mix Daisy to begin with. My young son named her after the pretty woman character in the TV show, “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Then there was the lean, long-legged black and tan hound. We named her Missouri after my great-grandmother. I’m not sure how the good lady would have reacted to being remembered in that fashion.

A completely black husky-lab mix we found wandering in the country near our farm came next. Our kids were up and gone by then. Jude proved to my wife and me that we had dogs because we wanted them, not because our children needed companions.

My most recent rescue is a red border collie. Cooper is more intense and high-energy than any dog I’ve ever had. All she wants is a job. Since I don’t have a herd of sheep, we go to the park each morning to run. And to throw sticks. Time after time, I throw the stick. She takes off with every bit of energy contained in that lean red-coated body. Her job, which she does with every fiber of muscle and canine focus, is to bring the stick back to me and drop it at my feet to be thrown again. Time after time after time until I’m the one that tires and stops.

During those “work sessions,” I can be in the middle of a field, cock my arm to throw the stick and, before I release it, Cooper will take off in the direction I’m going to throw the stick. If I turn 90 degrees or 180 or whatever for my next throw, she’s off in the right direction before the stick leaves my hand.

I realized the other day how she knows in which direction I will throw the stick. In that flash of a moment when I cock my arm (which tells her that the stick is going out), she follows the glance of my eyes and heads in that direction. She never fails to be in the right place at the right time. Just as with the dog spinning off the dock into the water, there is a lesson in that.

For many years I worked as a vendor for a large national integrator of material handling systems. They were a tough, demanding customer that did really fine work for the end user. Their core strength lay in contract administration. Whether you were their customer or their vendor the only way to survive a project profitably was to understand the contract for that project and the integrator’s intent to make money in any legal manner possible. That intent wasn’t wrong in any sense. It just meant I always had to know the contract as well or better than they to avoid “project creep” for which I did not get paid. In many years, I never had a project with this customer in which I did not make a reasonable profit and, in some cases, a really fine profit. Across those years we maintained a friendly and viable relationship as well.

I see a lesson about this in my dog Cooper’s way of doing her job. She knows what is supposed to happen...I intend to throw the stick. She stays on target by watching the nuances of my actions. She knows the direction I’m headed with that stick in the same instant that I do. She always grabs the stick the moment it hits the ground. If the stick bounces (sticks do not bounce well or often), she is ready and catches it on the bounce.

We owe that to ourselves as businesses that survive and make a profit from our actions and products. Focusing intently on every written and spoken word from our customers, on every glance and nuance, allows us to know what they really want, insure they get what we’ve agreed to sell them and to make a profit for our company. That is the entire basis for business.

New Life

My granddaughter. How else can I say it? I'm in love. It's a good time to be a photographer...

From Ad Cat Media...

From Whence Comes the Magic At Apple Retail?

Earlier this year, the WSJ had a good article on "Apple's Retail Secrets." It's pertinent as a "read" since the architect of the Apple retail success, Ron Johnson, has been tapped as the chief executive of J. C. Penny (he moved from Target to Apple in 2000). Unfortunately, unless you're a subscriber to the WSJ (print or on-line), you won't be able to read any more than the tease. However, you can go to Business Insider's Link to the Article On Apple's Retail Success. The fact that I have to send you there for a good article instead of sharing the WSJ version is a nuisance and highlights my fundamental disagreement with WSJ's strategy of making articles difficult to share. But that's another topic for another day.

A number of people with whom I work are involved in retail and Apple presents some interesting ideas about how to control the experience people have in their stores to insure it is a good one. I deal with enough retail stores of all pursuations to know that many really haven't figured out how to maximize each customer's visit the way Apple has.

Beyond Apple's magic formula though is some very basic ideas that we can all take away and use for our very own. First, it's important to insure that customers walk into the store and immediately feel welcomed. Second, and this is where Apple took a different approach than many retailers, it's important to help solve customers' problems, not just to make a sale (obviously that has to come later). This is a key difference from the experience I have walking into a lot of stores. The subtly of this approach is that it forms the relationship with a new customer that will last whether they buy on the first trip or later.

That's one of the major take-away's of the article. We all have to sell to make a living. But it's the relationship we foster with our prospects that makes them customers. And keeps them that way.

Core Value? Or Eye Candy?

30 years is a long time. That's about how long it has been since I saw my first examples of inspirational posters. Beautiful pictures adorned with words such as “Courage” and “Communication” hung in corporate offices. The idea was to use them to motivate employees. I always thought they were eye candy; once hung they might have as well been pictures of flowers or snow-capped mountains. Certainly no one has ever told me they came up with a product that saved the company after studying a poster with the word “Imagination.”

Recently this came to mind when I read about an idea of how to take a motivational concept, put it in front of everyone and get each person in the company to use that concept in a way that drove the company forward to growth and greatness.

The New York Times Sunday Business section had an interview that caught my eye. In Corner Office, Adam Bryant interviews Lars Bjork, the chief executive of the data software company, Qlik Tech.

Asked to describe the culture at Qlik Tech, Bjork describes five core values that everyone in the company lives by:

• Challenge. “Always challenge the conventional” is the mantra of the principle. Why? He describes that “if you follow others, you can at best be No. 2.” His other point is to challenge other people in the company “because if you're complacent, you're not going to survive.”

• Move fast. Bjork points out, “It's O.K. to make mistakes” when building a “hypergrowth company...just don't make the same ones.

• Be open and straightforward. It's important to say something, Bjork says, when you sense things aren't going right. Plus it's important for everything to be on the table for the group to make the right decisions.

• Use teamwork for results. This ties in with the previous core value. Speak up “and you learn a lot from other people that way.”

• Take responsibility. Not only does Qlik Tech expect people to use their authority. It expects them to take responsibility beyond this basic authority.

Having “core values” is typical of many companies' approach to motivating their workforce. But Bjork's approach is to take the statement of these core values one step further. Under Bjork's guidance, Qlik Tech takes preaching about core values an important step further. This is my point here.

Bjork describes how, at each annual company meeting, awards for these five categories are presented to five people, or five teams, whom employees nominate as embodying a particular core value. To nominate someone for an award, you have to understand the basis for the award.

Tying each principle to an award is the extra step that makes the values a real part of the company culture. The annual awards take the core values from being a poster on the wall that employees pass by without seeing (or using) to being part of everyone's day-to-day consciousness.

Want to have everyone in your company respond to a set of values that will help your company succeed? Don't just put those values on the wall. Put them in everyone's daily consciousness. Put those values in people's hearts. Take an approach that will make them a real part of the company culture.

A Time To Learn, A Time To Heal

I've spent the last week in Africa. Africa is a place with which I'm very familiar. I was raised there. 
When I returned to the United States for high school, I was thirteen. I was more African in those days and not very American. There were many tough times over the years as I re-assimilated those traits and habits that helped me become an American. That included fighting in Vietnam. Over time, and without realizing it, I packed away so many of those habits, memories, abilities and understandings that had served me all my young life in Africa.

Then, after all these years, I went back. This past week reacquainted me with whom I had been in those early years. It also illuminated how much has changed in that time away.

I went back to teach nurses and other medical personnel how to use the Internet to communicate with their supporters. About how to magnify their efforts to reach further into the consciousness of people and organizations that are responsible for supporting the nurses' efforts to bring healing and disease prevention to people who often have never had any, much less adequate, health care.

I was the only non-medical person on the teaching team. The point of the entire week was two fold; first to educate these people with the newest developments in medicine and provide them with CEU's that allow them to remain certified in their host country. Then CEU's also allow them to practice medicine if and when they return to their home country. Secondly, it was a time of nurturing, respite and camaraderie for people who live with disease and illness, fear and deprivation, bureaucratic bungling and outright hostility towards them. They face all of this regardless of their value to the local community or the gratitude of people whom they heal and whose lives they touch. These nurses also live with the very real threats of their own illness, harm from thieves, and opportunistic officials. Often they live in barren circumstances far away from family, friends and familiar ways of going on with life.

The other lecturers brought lessons on STD's, Hardiness (for these people's own psyches), Traumatic Brain Injury, Typhoid Fever, HIV, CPR, Pediatric Development, Parasitic Infections, Care of the Muslim Patient, TB and Support System Failures for those facing the bureaucracy of NGO staff “back home.”

These people profoundly touched and impressed me by their example. There are some from very straight forward hospital situations in which they work. Others work in a war-zone type environment with many physical and emotional hazards as well as extreme deprivation when it comes to living conditions, support, medical facilities and companionship.

I am a photographer. I take pictures. As part of my agreement with the organization fostering this symposium, I'm documenting it in pictures. I also tell stories with words.

One woman talked to me about her concern with the possibility of posting pictures of the participants on the Internet where they could be found by officials she fears would expel her. She operates in a clinic for women in a country supported by this symposium. She's has been doing this for years. Four years ago, just before this same conference, the clinic where she works took care of an abused wife who had been badly beaten and raped by her husband. He came to find her, brought his AK47 into the clinic and shot four of her fellow workers dead. The gendarmes captured him but not before he wreaked his havoc. This woman was not in the main room; she was delivering a baby. She emerged to find the floor slick with blood, the walls splattered and her close friend who was the pharmacist gasping her last breaths from a chest wound. Two months later she was at this symposium. She then returned to the tiny clinic. One night, we talked about her job. She told me how fulfilling and satisfying her work is. There was no mention of the horror of four years ago; that story came from someone else.

Another woman works with street kids in a large city in middle Africa. These kids were sold by their parents, escaped and are now living on the streets. This woman has a shelter and tries to talk them into where they can be safe. They'll stay a while, disappear for days and then come back. The kids have learned to trust her because she shows up on the streets in the quiet hours of the late nights and early mornings where they hang out. She always comes alone. She is often the only person they know they can trust.

David Brooks had a recent article in The New York Times entitled "The New Humanism." In it he defines the meaning of “limerence.” He writes, “This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.”

The people with whom I spent last week are the perfect examples of people possessing limerance. They also possess courage and hardiness and love and so many other worthwhile traits. I'm returning the better for having been with them.

Read it? Blow It Away? Making People Want to Read What You Send.

I subscribe to every email newsletter I can find. I'm in the business; I like seeing what other people do.
That's how I learn.

What is the most important thing I've learned about email marketing? At least one of the most important lessons is how  essential it is to make each and every email I send interesting.

Not all my clients agree with me, at least on at the beginning of our relationship. I've had retail clients, for instance, who want to broadcast numbers. “20% OFF EVERYTHING IN THE STORE!”

Interestingly enough, my experience has been that type of approach is attractive to someone who has done a lot of advertising with TV spots and newspaper ads. Show a flashy panel with stars, exclamation marks, bold colors and an excited person jumping in the air to get the message across.

Why does that work? It works on TV or in newspapers because people are watching their favorite program or looking for sports scores, not because they are looking for a your latest ad. They keep skimming over the ads because they are still interested in their favorite show. The ad is not the reason for watching. Rather, it's like a suckerfish clinging to the side of a shark; the ad lives through the advertising cycle until, hopefully, someone is ready to buy.

That's not the case with email advertising. We all start off with what is really a gift to each of us. We start off with people's names and addresses who have done business with us or decided they would like to be aware of what's going on in our business. We want them to read our emails, month after month, year after year, until they are ready to buy. So how do we maintain their interest so they don't opt-out? We do it by making each email interesting without the reader needing to be interested in the deal that month. People will open our emails, scan them, find something of interest, and read it. They open subsequent emails because we have shown them they will find something of interest in each one.

Think about it. If your clients and customers (I need to write an article about the difference between those two people later) are on a long-term buying cycle, they don't want to just see 20% OFF! every month. Say you're a real estate agent. How interesting is it to your past clients to only see advice on how to get a home ready to market, what the latest interest rate is, or which part of the country has the highest housing prices? Month after month after month? They love you and they are immensely appreciative of the way you shepherded them through the purchase of their home (or they would have already opted-out). But how do you keep them reading your emails year after year? Use content that goes beyond just real estate.

Or think about a retail furniture store. If I purchase a new couch at a fantastic price, it gets delivered on time and the delivery guys (without tracking in mud or scraping the wall) are kind enough to put my old couch on the back porch until the Salvation Army can come by to pick it up, I'm really pleased. But if I'm happy with my tables and my recliner, how many months go by where I really, really want to be shown just the latest, greatest deal of the month on tables and recliners? There has to be something else in that email that keeps me coming back.

Are you seeing declining open rates in your own email campaigns? Have you been concerned about the number of people opting out each month? You and I need to discuss how to effectively counteract those issue. Drop me a line. I'll be glad to correspond or call you so we can talk. And I would love to hear about your own ideas.

Merry Christmas!

 

You? Me? It's About Us.

I've been at managing companies, parts of companies and people in companies for lot of years. Early on in my career, management was taught to me as a very autocratic discipline. With the responsibility to make sure things went right it was essential to make sure people did things right. I demanded that people do as I said. It was a rule-based environment with praise for people who followed the rules and special-step guidance procedures for those who did not.

Over time, I learned better. I learned I had to create an atmosphere where people could thrive, not just work. That was harder to do than just make sure people followed the rules. I had to help them understand that there was something in the success of the effort for them, not just for me or someone higher up or the “Company.” And I had to insure that there really was something in the success of the effort for them. How? By being really and truly interested in them as individuals and by my willingness to learn from them about my own effectiveness. I had to do my part to develop a firm, trusting relationship.

Recently I came across an interview ("Defensive? It Leads To Destructive") with Bob Brennan, CEO of Iron Mountain. In it he discusses the importance of setting the tone at a company. He emphasizes the importance of attracting, hiring and keeping the people that make it possible for a company to excel in the competitive environment in which all of us work. He defines “the biggest organizational challenge” for companies as being defensiveness.

“It's a natural, reptilian kind of response. That defensiveness over-amps corporate cultures. So you try to get it out of the system so people focus on achieving, learning and bonding. The point is, can I really take an interest in you, and you in me, because it's meant to drive out the defensiveness...”

The interview did for me what all good business reading should do. First of all, it makes it obvious why Mr. Brennan is where he is. It also made me reflect on my own skills and approaches to helping companies, and the company's people, thrive. And it reminded me how important it is, if a company is going to be successful, for people to get the most from their company as well. Each employee has to be assured that will really happen at the end of the day.

My jobs these days tend to be as a consultant, not as someone who has organizational chart power within a company. It becomes even more important for me to get the buy-in from the company's people. If they don't see me as relevant to their needs in particular and not just the company's needs, I can't do what I'm hired to do. So what I do has to been understood, by everyone, as being done for all of us. And whether I went back to managing a department or a company or a division, my managerial approach would have to be in the same vein.

Holiday email campaigns - Now is the time to get started! (FREE)

There are two things that people often don't realize about email campaigns.

First, they're an essential part of keeping in touch with customers. They must be a part of your media mix.

Second, they simply are not difficult to make up and send out. Simply follow the basics.

 

Ad Cat Media focuses on email campaigns for small businesses, individuals and non-profits.

• Business to Consumer

• Business to Business

• Non-profits to Community

 What do you do with email campaigns?

• Use email to build relationships. Don't just promote specials or events. Success with email requires that you engage readers and build trust. The consistency of your message, including getting it out regularly, is essential.

• Emails must provide value for those people who aren't ready to buy. Especially if you're in a business sector involving long buying cycles, you want to keep your audience's interest. Don't concentrate only on special offers, donation requests or product features.

• Keep it simple. Put your main idea into the first panel that pops up on the customer's screen when the email is opened. Put other details in the scroll-down but do the attention gathering in the first part of your email.

None of what I've described above is difficult, is it?

What kinds of email campaigns should you consider?

• Business to Consumer

  • How To's

  • Thank you cards

  • Drip campaigns

  • Case studies

  • Product / Service reviews

• Business to Business

  • Advice

  • Case studies

  • Drip campaigns

  • Selling points for prospects

•   Non-profits to Community
  

  • Re-engage with recent success stories

  • Fund raising

  • Activism

  • Sense of community

What is the common denominator? My grandmother's wisdom prevails. “It pays to keep in touch.”

The Holidays are upon us. Time is short to maximize your bottom line for the Holiday Season. It's easy to get started on an email campaign. Sign up to try Email Marketing for free (FREE Trial - Email Marketing) with Ad Cat Media and Constant Contact. Through the middle of December, I'll offer this. Give it a try (FREE) and I will help you set up your first email (FREE). What is the ROI on (FREE)? Call me. We can talk.

Problem-solving 101 (and the results to show for it)

A piece in the New York Times Op-Ed page caught my eye earlier this week. It was an OP-CHART on Lunch Line Design (that may not strike you as exciting but keep reading). Written by Brian Wansink, David R. Just and Joe McKendry, it provides an interesting look into the problem solving process. The link provides access to the entire article.

 

The writers acknowledged the difficulty with getting kids to eat the right things at school. Force the issue or put tofu on the line and the kids can just skip lunch. Or they bring in fast food. So these gentlemen came up with a smarter lunch room. Here are some of the changes and associated results:

 

• Put the nutritious foods, such as the broccoli, at the front of the line, not the middle. Results? Students purchased 10% - 15% more than before.

• Give healthy foods more descriptive names. “Creamy corn,” for instance, not “corn” Based on how my server at a restaurant describes the daily special this seems like a no-brainer. Results? Sales up by 27%.

• Offer a salad. When asked if they wanted salad, the students bought a salad. Results? Sales of salad increased by 33%. (Remember the old sales lesson? “Ask for the sale.”)

• Encouraging the use of trays increased the consumption of vegetables. Without trays, students ate 21% fewer veggies but the same amount of ice cream.

 

There's more that you can read about via the link above.

 

Two things in the article enticed me to read the article in the first place. First, I wanted to understand how they solved the problems they were facing. Second, they quantified the results. The article doesn't say but I suspect that many cafeterias have tried heaping vegetables on lunch lines and wondered why the kids didn't eat the good stuff. And I suspect that even if they had some success, they couldn't quantify it.

 

It's a reminder of how important deliberate, structured problem-solving is. And how important it is to use real numbers to quantify the results. Those are points everyone of us can use to make a difference in our companies. In this day and time, we can't afford not to.

 

If you would like to explore Wansink, Just and McKendry's methodology, there is a lesson plan for developing problem-solving skills on the NYT's “The Learning Network.” It's by Sandhya Nankani and Holly Epstein Ojalvo. Whether you're a teacher who wants a real-life lesson for your own students or you run a company and want your employees to think about problem-solving in a new light, this is a very well developed educational aid. Take a look at "No Quick Fix? Developing Problem-Solving Skills".

 

Want some help implementing something such as this in your business? Drop me a line at dstewart@adcatmedia.com.

 



Taking the Time for Being a Champion

Gina Kolata has an interesting article in the New York Times on “How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/health/nutrition/19best.html?_r=1&ref=science). It was the last part of title that caught my eye; “...as the Champions Do.” How do champions push past the pain?

 

Kolata describes a situation in which an elite runner, Kim Smith, known for records, was suffering in a half marathon in Philadelphia. She kept going and finished fifth.

 

I've been a competitive cyclist and runner. I don't have any particular talent for either sport so I substituted enjoyment (of the sport, not suffering) and tenacity to train and compete to the best of my ability. Kolata (also a runner) quotes Mary Wittenberg of the New York Runners on the matter of tenacity, “Mental tenacity — and the ability to manage and even thrive on and push through pain — is a key segregator between the mortals and immortals in running.”

 

Competitive sport is, for me, a hobby. Business, for me, is very serious. It's how I make a living. The parallels between sports and the rest of life are often brought up in business with reference to a whole range of positive attributes from team work to perserverance. The importance of tenacity in both sports and business is what speaks to me.

 

Kolata quotes her coach, Tom Fleming, as saying, “I was given a body that could train every single day...and a mind, a mentality, that believed that if I trained every day — and I could train every day — I’ll beat you.”

 

“The mentality was I will do whatever it takes to win,” he added. “I was totally willing to have the worst pain. I was totally willing to do whatever it takes to win the race.”

How does an elite athlete or a successful business person prepare themselves to be “totally willing to do whatever it takes to win the race?”

The desired results come from the motivation to push ever harder. Rather than focus on fatigue or pain and the need to ease up, the focus must be on increasing the intensity of the effort.

There's even more to it than that, though. Increasing the effort can push you until you blow up short of the finish line. That's no good. It takes practice to understand how to push, when to push and how to maintain the motivation to push.

Being in business in different than being in a bike race. The effort lasts longer. Since I'm not a professional cyclist, losing a bike race may have meant disappointment but not damage to my livlihood. Losing a client has an immediate and lasting effect on my bottom line though. So the willingness to persevere, the tenancity to see each job through to success, is imperative.

So, I train hard every day. I scour papers – both those delivered to my door and online – for information and knowledge. I meet and correspond with people whose knowledge, ideas and insights on a wide array of topics I trust and respect. I spend time reflecting and studying on solutions and opportunities. I meditate, examine my soul and keep peace with myself. I take the time to define my sense of urgency and to direct it.

Ultimately, talent and ability are important in whatever we choose to do on a serious basis. But it's the tenacity that makes us a winner. And constant practice.