Crop Rotation
March 25, 2010
Since I grew up in the Bronx, I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little first-hand knowledge about farming. But there is one aspect of farming that I am familiar with: the concept of crop rotation, where you grow different types of crops in the same area in different years to prevent the buildup of pests and pathogens that can occur when you plant the same crop every year.
It’s fundamentally the same reason you have to vary your workout because your body gets used to what you’re doing and doesn’t respond with the same level of performance and improvement.
And that’s why I was intrigued by an interview I recently read featuring Joni Mitchell. She is one of the most prolific and talented performers of her generation, and, along with Carole King and Carly Simon, basically defined the female “singer/songwriter” genre of the ’60s and ’70s.
What you may not know about Joni Mitchell, however, is that she’s also an accomplished artist, responsible for the art on several of her album covers.
When asked about the relationship between her music and her art, she replied, “Any time I make a record it’s followed by a painting period. It’s a good crop rotation.”
Meaning that if you do just one thing all the time, it becomes boring, routine, and stale. And that’s why it’s essential to mix things up in your work and in your life. It’s the reason teachers take sabbaticals, some college programs include co-op work programs, and most people take vacations.
It’s important to mix things up so you get exposed to a wide variety of inputs and influences that can help make you more productive, more effective, and more interesting.
Which of your “crops” can you rotate this year?
Still Rockin’ After 45 Years!
March 25, 2010
We might as well continue our “musical theme” this issue, since we went to a concert last night. It was the Moody Blues, the ground-breaking pop/blues/orchestral group responsible for 13 Top-40 songs, and 14 Top-40 albums, including two that reached the #1 spot: “A Question of Balance” and “Seventh Sojourn.”
Originally formed in 1964, after a few personnel changes, the classic lineup (Justin Haywood, John Lodge, Graeme Edge, Mike Pinder, and Ray Thomas) was responsible for all of the groups hits between 1966 and 1978.
Okay, not that we’re done with the history lesson (don’t worry, there won’t be a test) let’s talk about the concert last night, and see what we can learn that will help us in our businesses…
1. Of the three original band members still performing with the group (Haywood, Lodge, and Edge) the first two were still in great form – their voices and technical abilities showing no signs of wear, despite their respective ages of 63 and 64 years old.
Good news for some of us for whom 60 is a lot closer than it used to be, and good news for you, since it means you can continue to do things you love to do a lot longer than we used to think possible.
2. Graeme Edge had, unfortunately, slowed down quite a bit. Just a year away from 70, his performance on the drums was a shadow of the manic, out-of-control style of the group’s earlier days. Still, he was giving it everything he had, and was a crowd favorite. But just so you don’t think the music suffered, there was a second drummer: the talented and energetic Gordon Marshall who has toured with the group since 1991.
In this case, it’s important to make sure you have backup plans in place in case something goes wrong in your organization, or someone isn’t able to work up to par for a while.
3. The audience was interesting to watch – I would say the average age was about 50, which meant there were people in their 60s and even 70s up out of their seats and dancing in the aisles. I know, that’s kind of a frightening image, but it’s also a joyful one: that a particular song or group can connect with people on such a personal level is a cause for celebration, and the band members seemed to both enjoy and appreciate the effect their music was having on the audience.
You may not be “A Singer in a Rock & Roll Band;” the very sight of you stepping around the corner may not get everyone in your office standing and cheering, but you do have an impact on the people around you by what you do and how you interact with them.
Whose life have you touched today?
How’s Your Back?
March 18, 2010
We just got back from visiting my brother- and sister-in-law who are staying on Hutchinson Island in Florida for a few months. On Sunday, when the weather down there had finally turned nice, they took us to a really nice craft show in Vero Beach, about 20 minutes away.
As always, I’m on the lookout for creative marketing ideas – even ones the people using them don’t quite understand themselves.
For example, I’m always wary about going to craft shows. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely enjoy seeing fine work and precision in any endeavor, but too often, these craft shows have three or four basic styles that are repeated – with little variation – at every booth throughout the conference.
But at this one, there were nearly as many different types of media, styles, and interpretations as there were individual booths. (Can you say, “Unique Selling Proposition?”)
The one that caught my attention, though, had nothing to do with any of the artists or craftspeople at the show. It was a booth at the far end of the show where they were offering free chair massages and free screenings for neck and back pain.
Of course, this was nothing more than a lead-generation mechanism for a chiropractor’s office, but still it was reasonably well done.
You filled out a brief questionnaire, spoke briefly with the chiropractor, and got a quick five-minute chair massage. If you indicated on your form that you had even one of a wide variety of symptoms, you were invited for an office visit with free X-rays, for only $20.
There were a few things they did right, and a few others they missed, and I’ll share them all with you here so you can have a few things to think about from my field trip:
1. The concept itself was great, especially in an area with an overwhelming majority of senior citizens with various aches and pains who generally have medical insurance that includes chiropractic coverage – a good message-to-market match.
2. An enticing offer: an office visit and X-rays worth over $100 for just $20 – such a deal!
3. Potential patients were required to pay the $20 right then and there to reserve their space and lock in the appointment – an extremely powerful approach to help ensure that people actually show up for the appointment. After all, you can’t sell a treatment plan to an empty chair.
So with all of this done right, what was the problem? They weren’t measuring. When I pulled the assistant aside and asked her what her “show rate” was, (the percentage of people who book an appointment and then actually show up), she didn’t understand the question. Once she did, she said that they paid their $20 at the booth, so naturally they would keep the appointment. If she checked her records, she would certainly discover that wasn’t always the case.
When I asked her what their conversion rate was from the “report of findings” meeting, and what their average case value was, she didn’t understand those questions either, much less have the answers.
Not measuring key performance indicators can derail great marketing strategies just as easily as bad service can. And not knowing how your marketing is working can be a real pain in the neck.
Please Call First
March 18, 2010
Listening to everyone moan and complain about the economy, you might expect that businesses are pulling out all the stops and doing everything they possibly can to attract new customers and keep the ones they already have. I certainly expected this to be the case. But some recent experiences have led me to believe that exactly the opposite is true.
We recently completed a project in our house: we converted our dining room into a “wine room.” Since many of you know that we enjoy wine, this probably doesn’t come as a big shock to you. What we had to go through to successfully complete the project might surprise you though.
Here is a quick summary of just some of the problems we encountered during the process:
1. We were supposed to be called by the delivery person bringing a coffee table and serving unit 30 minutes in advance so we could leave our office and meet him at the house. We got a call from the guy who said he had been waiting at the house for five minutes and wanted to know where we were.
2. The company we bought our wine-storage unit from entered the wrong e-mail address in the order so we didn’t get the message with the tracking number. They also entered our phone number incorrectly so the delivery person wasn’t able to call us to schedule the delivery. We only found out any of this because we finally called to get the tracking number. No link mind you, just a tracking number and the name of an obscure shipping company which we had to track down ourselves.
3. We couldn’t get a salesperson to tell us if a particular bistro table we were looking at was in stock, and, if it was, when we might expect it to be delivered.
Ultimately, we did get everything straightened out (except for the bistro table which we ended up buying elsewhere) and the room looks great.
But it might come as a surprise to you that sales impediments like these might be occurring in your own organization. Now may be just the right time to “mystery shop” yourself. Visit your web site and try to place an order. Call your main number and see what happens when you have questions. Call with a concern about a product or service you’ve purchased and find out how cleanly the situation is resolved.
Too many people blame their difficulties on ineffective marketing, when many times, it’s actually bad service that’s causing the problem.
Interesting People
March 10, 2010
There’s a finite amount of time in a given day, and as I enter my 50s, I’m becoming acutely aware that the “end of the line” is not some distant destination, but something that has more and more effect on the decisions I make.
And that means I have to be very deliberate in deciding where to spend every waking minute, and with whom. So let me offer you a suggestion on one characteristic you may want to consider.
We have very close friends we’ve known for about 20 years. We’ve traded stories and strategies about raising our kids as they’ve grown up, enjoyed many great home-cooked meals together, and been successful in getting together despite both moving from the “old neighborhood” to new homes nearly an hour apart.
Whenever we meet for dinner now, alternating between their house and ours, we spend hours getting caught up on what’s happened since the last time we were together. And it’s not like we haven’t seen them for years or even months – on average, we see them every seven or eight weeks.
So how is it we have so much to talk about? I think it all comes down to a comment our friend Dale made over one of these dinners: “I like hanging out with interesting people.”
He went on to say that interesting people visit different places, try different things, and interact with other interesting people, and that these experiences make for great stories.
Think about the people you hang out with – are they interesting to be around? Do they have stories to share about their adventures and experiences?
Do they have a positive upbeat outlook on life? Or do they just bitch and moan about how horrible everything is and how miserable their lives are?
The people you surround yourself with have an influence on your attitudes, on your disposition, and on your life in general. Why not surround yourself with interesting people?
Service Recovery Done Right
March 10, 2010
As I’m writing this, I’m on my way home from speaking at a conference in Colorado Springs. It was held at the Broadmoor Hotel, which is a fantastic property with great service from everyone from the front desk clerks to the hotel operator.
So last night, when I was finished with the program, I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner, figuring that it would be a great experience. And since I had to be on a 4:30 a.m. shuttle to the airport, I really wasn’t up for a late night with a lot of people.
I made a reservation at the Charles Court restaurant for 6:00 p.m. and was seated at a nice table with a view of the lake. The waitress came to the table, greeted me by name and described the evening’s specials, including a grouper dish that sounded great. As it turns, out, I really like grouper – when it’s cooked right, it just kind of flakes apart when you take a fork to it.
Well, that one had my name on it, so that’s what I ordered. And when the dish came out, it looked great. Unfortunately, there was a problem: the grouper was tough and chewy: it had been overcooked.
So when the waitress stopped by to make sure everything was fine, I mentioned this to her. Without missing a beat, she apologized, and offered to bring me something else or have the chef prepare another order of grouper. I asked her to bring the menu so I could take a look, and decided on something else.
When she came back, she apologized again, and told me that she had spoken to the chef and he agreed – it had been overcooked. She was actually a bit worked up about this herself, since she had just recommended it – and placed six orders for the grouper for another table she was working.
That would have been enough, but the restaurant manager came over to apologize himself, confirmed that, or course there would be no charge for the grouper, and all but insisted I have dessert on the house.
Even at a first-class hotel like this, there will be occasional missteps – because of the sheer size of the place it’s unavoidable. And it’s probably the same at your company. Problems are going to happen.
But if you address them quickly and definitively, you can build a level of customer loyalty even greater than if nothing had gone wrong in the first place. Make sure you have “service recovery” procedures in place to handle these situations when they occur.
Computer Overheating?
March 2, 2010
Like most of you, I spend a good deal of time working on my computer. Whether it’s in my HTML editor writing this newsletter, on MindJet working on mind maps for upcoming programs, or in QuickBooks dealing with the mundane details of business finance, most of what I do in any given day has my fingers on these keys.
So when my laptop computer started making a new strange noise, I noticed it immediately. The noise was the cooling fan. Every computer – desktop, laptop, or room-sized mainframe – has them. They have to, because the CPU – the “brain” of the computer – generates a lot of heat, and if not cooled properly will quite literally start melting the components around it on the circuit board.
That’s why all modern computers have built-in heat sensors that will increase the speed of the cooling fan to reduce the heat of the CPU, and when there’s no more speed to give, will step in and shut down the computer – immediately, and unceremoniously, causing you to lose any unsaved work.
Okay, so much for the computer hardware lesson, now on to the marketing lesson!
My computer wasn’t getting so hot that it had to shut down, but the fan was running at a high enough speed that the noise was, well, annoying. At the normal speed, the fan is so quiet that it’s barely a whisper and tends to get lost in the normal background noise of an office environment. But when it’s working overtime, it sounds like there’s a constant gust of wind blowing through my office.
I looked for an explanation (and a solution) on several different tech support sites. I called a friend of ours who fixes computers for a living. I downloaded utility software that showed me the CPU temperature and fan speed.
But nothing seemed to work.
Then I started noticing something interesting. Whenever I restarted the computer, the fan ran normally. Whenever I put the computer into “sleep” mode by closing the screen to pack it up in my case, upon awakening, the fan would kick in after about three or four minutes.
When I put the computer into “hibernate” mode and then closed the screen, when I started it up again, it ran fine.
I’d like to know why putting the computer to sleep made the fan kick in when I started it up. I really would. But my primary objective throughout all of this was to get the noise to stop so I could get my work done without the constant distraction of the noise and worry that the computer might spontaneously shut down in the middle of something important.
There are things in life, and in marketing that are unexplainable, and yet undeniably and observably true. You can spend hours of time trying to understand them; you can bang your head against the wall trying to change them; or you can accept that they just “are” and use that knowledge to your advantage.
In any case, the third option will probably keep your own CPU – your brain – from overheating and shutting down!
The 24-Hour Rule
March 2, 2010
I get angry sometimes. I try not to get angry over the little stuff; but some days it just seems like there’s a global conspiracy of stupidity that somehow finds its way to my doorstep, complicating my business life and spilling over into my personal life.
If you’re looking for a specific example, I don’t have one in particular this week – but I’m sure if you think back over the last few days, you’ll almost certainly come up with an experience of your own that fits the bill.
And that’s actually sufficient for our purposes, since what I really want to talk about is not the frustrating situations themselves, but rather our reactions to these experiences. Our tendency is to respond with a knee-jerk reaction, lashing out at the source of the irritation with the full force of our disappointment, dismay, and outrage, and doing so immediately.
I’d like to suggest an alternate approach that has proven successful – if not always in resolving the situation, then at least in helping me relax a bit in the face of the problem, and, as often as not, get a better resolution.
It’s a simple strategy I call “The 24-Hour Rule” and it’s as simple as the name implies: when something has you so angry and upset that you feel the need to do something about it right now, stop, take a deep breath, and wait 24 hours. Here are a few examples:
A friend reveals to others something you told her in confidence? Wait 24 hours.
A client completely rewrites an agreement you sent for approval? Wait 24 hours.
Lines at the airport security checkpoint almost make you miss your flight? Wait 24 hours.
Sometimes it’s difficult to allow yourself that cooling-down period, but there are three reasons you should at least try:
1. You’ll be thinking more clearly when you’re not in a blind rage
2. The time will let your brain come up with more creative solutions to the problem
3. You won’t get yourself so wound up with consuming rage that you damage your health
Of course, not all situations need this kind of deliberate approach, and, in fact, some situations do require immediate action. But in most cases you’ll find this a good strategy that delivers surprisingly positive results.
