We’ve Got ‘Linked-In’!

We’ve got ‘Linked In’! We’ve set up a group on ‘Linked in’ for likeminded entrepreneurs and business leaders, and it’s called ‘Compete Or Get Beat!’

It’s got a simple aim: ‘to encourage the exchange of ideas, engagement and connections between like-minded thinkers on improving competitiveness, leadership and profitability’. If you regularly read this blog, then that probably means you! 

To be honest, it’s a learning exercise for me – not quite sure how it will all work, but I thought it’s worth a go.

Feel free to join, and if you do, please ‘contribute’ and ‘add value’ to it…..oh, and please tell other ‘like-minded’ people too!

Recession Over – Get The Champagne Out!!!!!

Brilliant News – It’s Celebration Time!!! We officially came out of recession today – doesn’t it feel good? It sets the pulses racing and ooooh I can just feel the confidence ousing around the country, can’t you? Yes, the official figures show the economy grew by 0.1% in the last quarter of 2009 – I’m just relaxing with my champagne as I write this!

Sorry, maybe I’m getting a bit carried away! Of course it’s good news I know, and I welcome it, but there are still tough times to come I’m sure. as things do pick up it’s the businesses that consistently strive to ‘differentiate’ themselves that will get ahead.  There’s a lot of research that shows that it’s at times like this that gaps between the best and the worst managed businesses grow. The best ‘maximise’ opportunities better than the others. It means ‘consciously’ working on their competitiveness and ‘dramatic difference’.

What are you going to do to expand that gap between your business and your competitors?

I’d get consciously working on that first before opening that champagne!

Human Bed Warmers? Now, that IS Customer Delight!

Goodbye hot water bottles! Here’s a great idea for ‘customer delight’ by Holiday Inn:  Human bed warmers! At the Holiday Inn Kensington, you can now request a human to ‘pre warm’ your bed for you before you get in it!

Dressed from head to foot in an all-in-one sleeper suit, a member of staff will jump in your bed and get it all nicely warmed up for you! Now that is ‘customer delight’!

Customer delight is all about exceeding customer expectations – it’s about going the extra mile, it’s often about the ‘little things’, and very often, it’s ’the personal touch’ that makes customers feel special and valued.

What do you do to ‘delight’ your customers?

Why not identify one or two ‘little personalised things’ that make them feel ’special’…. And, no, you don’t have to sleep with them!

Go Fishing…. In Different Ponds!

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always had”.

Although that sounds like something that David Brent from The Office would say, there’s a lot of truth in it, particularly if you’re talking about improving your competitiveness.

If a key ingredient of competitiveness is innovation which, according to the definition I like is ‘the successful exploitation of new ideas’, then are you guilty of  ’always doing the same things’ particularly when it comes to spotting, generating and developing ideas?

According to CNN, some research by Harvard Business School highlighted 5 ’secrets’ of successful innovators ((I’m always nervous about ’secrets’ – by definition, if you’re reporting them, they aren’t ’secret’ any more, but anyway, here goes!).

They are, apparently:

Associating – It’s about ‘connecting’ stuff (my interpretations are in italics)

Questioning - Asking ‘why?’ ‘what if?’ ‘ how?’ etc

Observing - Watching others do stuff

Experimenting – Trying things out

Networking – Meeting others

So, now the secrets are out, what does this mean for you? Maybe you do some, or all of these things, but do you do them in the same environment all the time? My recommendation is try ‘fishing in different ponds’ – that means doing the things above in environments you’re not so familiar with. The likelihood is that you’ll not ‘get what you always have’.

So, rather than always visiting the same websites that you always do, always listening to the same podcasts you always listen to, always attending the same conferences and trade shows you always do, always visting the same network meetings you always go to, always reading the same books, magazines and trade journals you always do, why not do something different and see how other industries, countries, even ‘cultures’  ’do stuff’?

Go on, it’s relatively easy to do and you never know what you might ‘discover’?

Every now and then when I’m travelling by train, I ‘fish in a different pond’  and make a conscious effort to buy a magazine related to a sector I know absolutely nothing about and see what i can ‘learn’. If you see me reading Hairdressers Monthly next time you see me, that’s why!

So, go on, get fishing …….in different ponds!

(And while we’re at this, please do share any ‘ponds’ you think are worth fishing in!)

Mixed Messages – An Arresting Situation!

Here’s an interesting example of the ‘new world we live in’. A man has been arrested for jokingly tweeting that he was going to blow Doncaster Airport up! The snow looked like delaying his flight plans to Ireland so he joked to his friends “Robin Hood Airport is closed – You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”

According to The Telegraph he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and banned from the airport for life! Apparently he had to explain to the police who came to his house to arrest him what Twitter was as they’d never heard of it!

I know, it’s all about context, and on the surface, it looks very ‘funny’, but there is a lesson there. What you send out there isn’t always heard in the way you say it! I’m not just talking about Twitter and all this ‘new fangled stuff’. I’m talking about core marketing messages – do your customers (and potential customers) ‘understand’ what you’re saying and how you’re saying it?

Stand Up And Out From The Crowd

We had friends up this weekend and we visited our local ‘tourist attraction’ (yes, we do have them up round here!), The Tropical Butterfly House, Wildlife and Falconry Centre , in Dinnington. It’s a great place  for all the family and one of their latest features is The Meerkat Mansion, where, yes, you’ve guessed it, there are some meerkats!

The meerkats themselves were very sweet, but that wasn’t the thing that made an impact on me. I was amazed as I watched them playing. EVERY SINGLE PERSON who came up near them sang or said something related to, or made reference to comparethemeerkat.com - and I mean ‘everyone’! Little kids, teenagers, adults and grandparents!!!!

Now, I know it doesn’t prove anything in terms of ’spend’, but if there was an ever an example of being ‘Dramatically and Demonstrably Different’, then meerkat Aleksandr Orlov is certainly up there. He’s got films, videos, a facebook page with 647,959 ‘fans’, he ‘tweets‘ and has a ‘real’ family history!

According to a report in the Guardian, the Comparethemarket.com website is now the 4th most popular price comparison website – way ahead of it’s ranking in the low teens in a very crowded market only a couple of years ago, so it’s certainly had an effect. Interestingly, when you do ‘lead the way’, others try to ‘follow’, but not always as successfully’. Go Compare’s response, the fat opera bloke was apparently voted as the single most irritating advert of 2009 by consumers in Marketing Magazine.

Marketing is not all about ‘hype’, but part of it is certainly about getting noticed.  Mr. Orlov has certainly ’stood up and out’ – and that’s a great start. ‘Simples!’

Wise Words On Innovation

Just preparing for a workshop I’m delivering next week for entrepreneurs in the North East called ‘Creating A Revolutionary Business’. It’s all about ‘Innovation’, and crucially, making innovation work. I came across these quotes that seem to hit the ‘right notes’:

‘”A company can’t outgrow its competitors unless it can out-innovate them” – Gary Hamel and Gary Getz

“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all” – Edward de Bono

but, as ever, Seth ‘nails it’:

“What’s missing isn’t the ideas…. it’s the will to execute them” – Seth Godin

Wise words…. what do they mean to you, and crucially, what do you need to do as a result?

Yo! Engage With Your Customers!

I made my own lunch yesterday. No, this isn’t another one of those blogs where I bore you stupid about what I ate and how I feel about Celebrity Big Brother. We went to a Yo! Sushi and learnt how to make the stuff!

The whole experience was a great example of ‘engaging’ customers. Richard, our chef, was a brilliant representative of the company’s brand and values, we learnt loads about the products, the business and much much more ( I never realised how big tunas can grow to, and how much some people in Japan are willing to pay for them!).

Of course, Richard ’sold’ to us – not in a heavy way – and reinforced the Yo! Sushi offer – much of that was done simply by entertaining and educating us. We had great fun and, by seeing what actually goes in to producing the stuff, we appreciate much better how impressive it all is, especially when you compare it to the bits we ourselves made!

The end result? An even stronger ‘buy in’ to Yo! Sushi from us, a definite willingness to go back again for some more, and of course to tell others about our great ‘experience’.

The key lesson for all of us is that we can all do more to ‘engage’ our customers. Why not ‘invite yours in’ to see your business, meet your people, find out what you do, how you do it – let them get to know you. Educate them, explain and reinforce your ‘Dramatic Difference’….. be ‘human’ (see below!).

Are You Human?

‘Your call may be recorded for quality control and training purposes’. Have you ever heard that? It’s one of those phrases that’s been around for years – you’d think by now that they’d have got the training right!  It can be worse – ‘your call is important to us’, then why are you keeping me waiting so long?

Of course, people are busy, of course we have to wait on phones sometimes, I completely understand that – that’s the real world. 

Wouldn’t be brilliant if a call centre said  ’sorry we’re tied up, leave us your number and a message and we’ll get back to you’, just like a human being would. ‘Humanising’ businesses is a great way to ‘delight customers’ and create real competitive advantage.

How ‘human’ is your business?

Happy Birthday Homer!!

The Simpsons are 20 years old this week! I think they’re a great example of 3D!

What can we learn from Homer and his family? Well, rather than hold them up as great role models, I’d like to focus on the shows themselves. In the early days, the shows completely ‘broke the pattern’  – there had literally been nothing like them. The great thing is that they’ve continually built on this over time and proactively evolved with time.  Here’s producer and writer David Mirkin on that evolution.

The shows have maintained their ‘relevance’ and reflect the changes in the ‘marketplace’ – you might even argue that they don’t just ‘reflect’ it, but actually ‘influence’ it?

The key is that they lead it through innovation, creativity and the result is that America’s longest running sitcom is a ‘benchmark’ to compare others by.

I know that not everyone likes them, but that’s another characteristic of Dramatically and Demonstably Different businesses – they create ‘raving fans’, but are not necessarily to everyone’s taste.  The challenge is to create ’sufficient’ raving fans – Bart, Lisa, Homer, Marge, Maddie (oops ‘Maggie’ – sorry!) (and of course ‘Santa’s Little Helper!) have done that brilliantly over the last 20 years.

Here’s to 20 more!

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