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The Chief Outsider
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Recent Posts
Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions: The Cardinal Rule to Know
Sun, Dec 23, 2012 — While working with an executive management team on customer satisfaction survey questions, they told me every survey seemed to have declining response rates. They asked me what I thought about just asking one question: “On a scale of zero to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend our company to your friends and colleagues?” My response: Have you looked into the possible reasons why the customer survey response rates are declining? Too often I’ve seen companies want to ask the would-you- recommend-us question without doing enough follow-up to understand what it is they are doing right or wrong. This is where CEOs need to lead their companies and improve.
3 Ways to Drive Innovation – a CEO’s Perspective
Sun, Dec 16, 2012 — What makes some companies more successful than others? And what role does innovation play in this? I have always been fascinated by this topic, especially if the business is facing a turn-around situation.
Market-Driven Strategy Doubles Annual Revenue for ISTN [CASE STUDY]
Tue, Dec 11, 2012 — In this case study, see how a market-driven strategy helped a business consolidate sales and marketing programs, increase revenue growth, and expand into new geographic markets. As a management buy-out company of a Westinghouse division, IST produced instrumentation and optics used in the nuclear power, defense, safety and spectrophotometer markets.
Making our Mistakes Pay – Rather than Paying for our Mistakes
Sun, Dec 9, 2012 — No one likes making mistakes, but we all make our fair share of them. Humans are fallible, products and processes fail, and things slip through the cracks. Even the best-managed companies can go awry. Unfortunately, mistakes are not only inevitable; they can also be very costly. As a CEO you know that mistakes can cause operations costs to rise and productivity to falter—and most damaging of all, they frustrate our customers so that they start thinking about taking their business elsewhere. If we act quickly to fix our mistakes, however, we can make our mistake pay off. Losing and replacing customers is expensive. 91% of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with us again (Source: U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs). If they have the option, they will take their business elsewhere. When customers leave us, we need to expend resources getting new ones—and it generally costs a great deal more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. Think of the difference in the time, effort and money that goes into marketing and sales to bring in new business compared with how little effort it takes to stay connected with a customer you already have. Losing and replacing customers is expensive.
6 Ways to Turn Customers into Advocates with a Brand Ambassador Program
Sun, Dec 2, 2012 — Harley Davidson, Intel, Starbucks, Apple. We all know brands that have a loyal group of customers, brand ambassadors, who love to talk about the brand and recommend them to their friends and peers. And these recommendations drive sales. According to the Boston Consulting Group, 9 out of 10 consumers and over 50% of B2B customers trust recommendations from friends, colleagues and peers when making their purchasing decisions. You can invest lots of money in marketing campaigns, but for many companies the most powerful sales driver is a recommendation from a brand ambassador. And a strategic brand ambassador program may be the difference-maker in your bottom line.
Latino Marketing 101: “Niche” Rhymes with “Rich”
Wed, Nov 28, 2012 — Latinos Made a Difference Election night, as the race was called for Obama, the analysts for each network credited the Latino vote as the most nationally-decisive block. Subsequent data revealed a 70+ to 23 margin that voted with a clear preference for the platform and party that actually considered the wants and needs of Hispanics and reflected them. And like the Republicans, many brands in this country continue to either eschew or sub-optimize effective marketing aimed at the so-called “niche” of 50+ million Hispanics voting every day in America with their wallets. Usually I have found that my clients were either ill-informed about the marketing potential of this segment (comprising 16.7% of the U.S. population), or they felt that they could get by dabbling in it or just doing just a little Spanish language advertising, even though they were superficially spending at levels far below what was commensurate with the size of the segment and the reality of the opportunity. Most clients that I have introduced to effective Hispanic marketing have had a very quick epiphany as they moved from initially testing the waters to subsequently investing aggressively and stealing market share hand over foot over lazy, condescending or less savvy competitors. Then they are delighted as they learn that Hispanic customers tend to be far more brand loyal and difficult to dislodge than general market consumers, once brand preferences are developed. Do the Research
The CEO Is the Chief Team Builder
Tue, Nov 27, 2012 — The concept of team building has been around since the 1960s and continues to multiply as CEOs increasingly embrace developing people and teams as an indicator of their own leadership success. But, to be successful, effective team development for a CEO requires knowing when to do team building—and when not to do team building. I’ve seen CEOs insist on referring to their employees as a team and have pointed to how well their employees get along with one another as the metric of their effectiveness as a team. Calling a group of employees a team doesn’t make them a team, no matter how well they get along. They may just be a group of workers who really like one another—or at least have learned to pretend to like one another. When does a “Group” become a “Team”?
The Best Customer Service Uses Ritz-Carlton Radar On, Antenna Up Model
Sun, Nov 25, 2012 — Does your company offer the best customer service? Most every company claims to have the best customer service—but would their customers agree? When running a midsize business, you face an ongoing battle to effectively connect and engage with your customers. Employees constantly multi-task and resources are stretched. As a result, customer experience management often falls to the back burner.
8 Words to Help the CEO Create the Vision
Mon, Nov 5, 2012 — What would DaVinci’s vision be for three pieces of alabaster? Your most important activity as a CEO is to create the vision for success. I once worked for a CEO who was brought in to a struggling company and he only lasted 12 months. The team he was brought into manage correlated his vision to "arranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic." Was his vision flawed? If not, then what went wrong? Did he gain trust, agreement, readiness and shared consensus? Was there something wrong with his vision? How does your team rate you? Let’s think of some great visionaries and what they had in common. DaVinci, Edison, Einstein, Jefferson, Bell, Zuckerberg, Gates are considered great visionaries. They all focused on the result that their vision would achieve. They all created the vision. They all communicated the vision and they all kept trying. Once they created the vision they were single-minded in the mission and strategies to achieve their vision. Did their vision make them trusted leaders? Michael Gelb, NY Times best-seller list author and executive coach, writes in his Vision Crafting article (Executive Excellence Magazine, Jan 1996) on leadership techniques to create a winning vision. Gelb lists 8 key words to remember when crafting the vision. 1. “Juicy - inspiring, energizing, alive“ 2. “Original - a unique expression of you, your company or team” 3. “Succinct - every word packed with meaning” 4. “Inclusive - reflecting the concerns of all stakeholders” 5. “Positive-active - focused, and affirming” 6. “Memorable - everyone knows it by heart” 7. “Aligned - with universal principles and basic goodness” 8. “Integrated - into everyday behavior” Gelb goes on to recommend that the CEO use “Mind Mapping” techniques to craft visions, missions, strategies, and value statements, because the CEO must develop the ability to understand patterns of change and see the web of connections that underlie complex systems. Gelb goes on to state: “Outlining is a reflection of a hierarchical mind-set. Although valuable as a tool for presenting ideas in a formal, orderly fashion, it is useful only after the real thinking has been done.”