What can you be the Best in the World at doing?
September 7th, 2010
Think about strategy and marketing when you look at the following model:
What enables some companies to command the respect and loyalty of their customers, while others can’t find their niche and must continuously cut costs and retrench in their business? What are the dynamics of the market that let a company be a star for years and then suddenly slip from its leadership position?
“Value Disciplines” is the term used for three dynamic business leadership strategies – operational excellence, product leadership or customer intimacy – that companies effect to differentiate themselves and provide unmatched value to their customers. A Value Discipline strategy provides the context for a company to set its corporate vision and objectives, target its most profitable customers, and focus and align its functional departments.
Value Disciplines force a company to look outward and listen to the voices of its profitability: customers. Traditional marketing segmentation strategies group customers by geography, product mix or demographics. Value Disciplines, however, segment customers according to the product and service benefits which are most valuable to them. Based on research done by Treacy and Wiersema (the creators of this model), customers have three distinct value preferences:
• Best total cost
• Best product features
• Best total solution
Customers richly reward suppliers who they believe are uniquely positioned to provide the benefits that are most valuable to them. For example, customers who value the best total cost, no-hassles service, and speed of delivery will be most loyal to an Operationally Excellent supplier. A customer segment demanding state of the art product features will pay a premium price to a supplier who demonstrates Product Leadership. Finally, a customer segment that values a Customer Intimate supplier requires customized products, highly personalized services and will be less price sensitive.
Which one defines your business?
Stop!!!!…Way Too Much!!!
July 7th, 2010
Have you ever attended a meeting where you wanted to stand up and scream STOP TALKING! You’re wasting our time! Have you ever been part of a meeting that a few people at the meeting analyzed everything to death and no progress was made as a result? Have you ever wanted to move forward in a positive direction to help others but were slowed, if not stopped, because someone needs to stir the hornets nest…just to stir the hornets nest?
We have and it was brutally painful, BUT eye opening and educational about the types of people we want to work with and the types of people that hinder our progress. We are all in favor of gaining clarity and understanding at a detailed level and in fact it is critical. We enjoy when companies define and understand terms, assignments, and strategies because it creates more clarity moving forward. But, there is a point where you can start diving too deep in the minutia and all forward progress stops and the group is left dealing with microscopic details. And once the deep detailed conversation is completed, everyone looks up and says…now where were we?
Exactly! There is a point of too much detail that will hinder progress and you as a leader/manager need to be able to recognize when that is happening to push the meeting past it verses letting it take you and the attendees down the rabbit hole.
Moving Forward>>>>>>>>>
The 1st Step in Increasing YMCA Member Retention
June 7th, 2010
Many YMCA’s suffer from low member retention rates. This is due to many reasons: poor customer service, bad procedures, competition, and lack of understand of how retention is calculated. Many Y’s use Daxko or Trinexum software as their point of sale and CRM software and the retention rates are all calculated on an annual basis.
YMCA CEO’s have to report member retention numbers to the board of directors and many of these numbers are wrong. These Y’s should be using their CRM software to compute the member retention by comparing apples-to-apples, but what is happening is that they are comparing apples-to-oranges.
If the software computes member retention on a 13 month basis and all memberships are used in the calculation such as 3 month, 6 month and month-to-month memberships, then apples are being compared to oranges.
For example: If a member signs up for a membership at their local YMCA the softwares will compute if that person is still a member at the beginning of the 13th month. The applications will track all the members on an annual basis to see how many are still members after a year. So what about those memberships that are under one year mixed in the calculations?
A 3 month, 6 month and other customer short term memberships will have a 0% retention rate measured on an annual basis. If the members sign up 2-4 times you may capture a 5-10% retention rate on short-term memberships, but it will not be much higher than that.
So if your YMCA is measuring retention on an annual basis then you can only compare it to annual memberships. If you include any memberships on a time frame less than that then you are not using the same units of measurement in a mathematical formula. For example: 5 Inches +4 Centimeters = What type of unit? You need to convert the units to one single unit of measurement before solving.
Before you assume you have a low or high retention rate, make sure you and your YMCA are comparing apples to apples! Contact us for the 10 steps any YMCA can take to increase member retention: info@theoctopussolution.com
Positivity Leads to Production
May 7th, 2010
Setting a POSITIVE CLIMATE
Climate and culture are the context in which leaders and followers interact. Each element has an effect on the other. Research in business organizations shows that a positive environment leads to workers who feel better about themselves, have stronger commitments, and produce better work. If leaders set the tone for a positive climate, others will respond in kind.
Good leaders are concerned with establishing a climate that can be characterized as fair, inclusive, and ethical. Fairness means that treatment is equitable and no one gets preferential treatment for arbitrary reasons. Inclusive means that everyone, regardless of any difference, is integrated into the organization.
The Bear Hug Strategy
April 7th, 2010
Did you ever have a strange dog come up to you and act like your best friend instantly? There is nothing wrong with 
wanting to bear hug your customers or have them want to bear hug you! If your clients do not feel a strong connection to you then why would they stay with you when competitors try to silicate them?
The Bear Hug Strategy is about developing a solid relationship with your customers. People want to be in relationship with other people and want to feel that bond of trust, commitment and loyalty. Do you care more about the customer or their wallet?
So how can you Bear Hug more clients? Simple, you need to look at both your sales and marketing strategies at the high level and see where they can be changed from a process standpoint to allow you to develop relationships. In previous blogs we called this dating your customers. It takes time to build a marriage. It is difficult, if not impossible, to go from 1st date to marriage in one meeting and one night stands don’t work. So think of the steps and commitment involved in developing relationships and now take that same process and apply it to your sales strategy and marketing messaging and brand.
As you become a relationship driven company and not a transactional one you will find that customer loyalty increases and maybe you become lucky enough to experience a Bear Hug from some of your customers! You want Bear Hugs!
Get your Ducks (Customers) In A Row!!!
January 7th, 2010
If you have more that 2 customers you may want to consider organizing their information into a database so that you have all their data in one central location. Here is a story: We went to work for a client that was trying to launch their products and had some success with local retailers, etc. We were contracted to help the business with sales and marketing and the fastest way to boost sales (mentioned in our earlier blog posts) is to go to your existing customer base. Repeat customers cost 5-10 times less to get to acquire then a new customer and spend on average 67% more! Great statistic, but the issue with this client was that all the customer records and data were kept on pieces of random paper or disorganized in Excel. Disaster! 
Why is it important to have a well organized and clean customer database? mailers, newsletters, phone calls, billing, note taking, alarms for when to call customers/vendors, last contact, demographic analysis, purchasing behavior, pipeline reports, past communication review and recording, and tons more!
If you want to stop dealing with the mess and organize your business to be more productive with customer data then get a database tool. We would suggest using a web-based solution so that you can access it remotely (web-based) and will be automatically backed up. These types of databases are not expensive…They Are FREE! Zoho has a great Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that is Free, web-based and powerful! Here is the link: http://crm.zoho.com/crm/ShowHomePage.do
Check it out and start to get your ducks in a row to become more productive. Oh by the way, our client that had the stack of papers with customer data all over it, thrown randomly around the office; organized all of it in ZoHo and started a sales campaign to past and new clients and saw an instant return the same week when a past customers agreed to carry their product…Sweet! Organization works!
There are many CRM solutions out there: Act!, SalesForce, ZoHo, etc. All these are good, but ZoHo is good and free (up to 3 users). try it and comment!