10 Uncommon Annual Planning Actions that Drive Customer and Employee Growth

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Chief Customer OfficerToday’s post is by Jeanne Bliss, author of Chief Customer Officer and I Love You More than My Dog (CLICK HERE to get your copies).

Annual planning is the Achilles heel of driving a united customer culture. Every silo or department determines how much money they have to spend, then each creates their individual plans and correlating score cards. Activities frequently focus only on the money – not on the behavior of the organization and what they want to stand for and show up as in the marketplace – based on their decisions and actions.

As you begin your annual planning cycle, here are 10 actions that business leaders and their organizations should focus on first – before the financial planning cycle – to increase customer loyalty and drive profitable business growth.

1. Believe in the integrity of your customers. The majority of business policies and rules are created to protect business from the minority of customers. Be bold, like Connecticut Griffin Hospital, which began sharing hospital records with patients and saw claims against the hospital drop by more than 43 percent. Take a leap of faith and believe that trust is reciprocated by customers when they feel that you trust them.

2. Invest in employee trust. Show your employees that you believe in them. Beloved company Wegmans invests in its employees by training them in the skills that remove rules, regulations, policies, and procedures that pen employees in. This enables Wegmans to throw away the rule book and live by this one edict: “No customer goes away unhappy.” As a result, its margins are higher and profitability more steady because the grocer’s turnover is only 7 percent of employees versus the 19 percent average in its industry.

3. Practice democratic decision making. Give good ideas a chance to prosper no matter where they come from in your organizational chart. Innovation and marketplace differentiation come when employees are respected as part of achieving a mission greater than their set of tasks. W.L. Gore has become a $2.7 billion dollar company, and earned a place on Fortune magazine’s best companies to work for list since its inception, because of how the company unleashes its employees’ spirit and ideas.

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Grow Your Business by Not Charging for Your Services

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Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili PeppersWant to grow your business? Give it away.

I love the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Great tunes especially at 3AM on a Friday night. They’ve also got an incredibly relevant message for how you can grow your business: Give it away, give it away, give it away now! (I’ll spare you the repeats).

No. I haven’t fallen and hit my head again. I routinely give away our stuff. Our services. Our content (ummm… yeah, you’re reading a FREE blog full of our intellectual property and the only price I ask is comments and telling your friends – you are telling your friends, right?). But I give it away deliberately and with purpose.

Have you ever been in that “free seminar” that was nothing more than a disguised sales pitch? Infuriating, huh? Did you buy the speaker’s stuff? Didn’t it grate on you when they’d say “so those are the first two steps in our secret ten step process. Buy the other eight steps for just $999.99!”

Those folks aren’t successful long term. They need to learn how to give it away. So do you. Allow me to explain. Read more

How Partnering with Your Competitors Can be Good for Business

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Two Dogs Fighting Over a ToyToday, Erin Schwartz of 123print.com discusses the benefits of cooperating rather than competing with your competitors.

The traditional approach in business is to regard competitors as enemies. In keeping with that philosophy, when a competitor succeeds, wins a customer, or lands a deal, the result is lost business opportunities for you. However, that old attitude toward competition needs an adjustment if you’re going to adapt to the realities of the modern business world. These tips will shed light on how working with your competitors can actually enhance your business.

Distinguishing Yourself

If you are competing with another company for the same customer and you’re both offering the exact same goods or services, you’re likely stuck in the dog-eat-dog mentality. In that kind of business culture, it’s difficult to partner with competitors, and success usually means lowering prices. No business owner wants to slash revenue in order to succeed and there are things you can do to avoid getting caught in that kind of uninspired business model.

Rather than offering identical products or services that others already offer, aim for specialization. If you differentiate yourself and find a unique niche, you’ll ultimately improve your business because you’ll have an easier time focusing and striving for improvement. By concentrating on your strengths, you may appeal to a smaller market, but you’ll have that market cornered. And if your would-be competitors adopt the same approach, you can easily refer customers to one another.

Referrals from Competitors Carry Great Weight

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How to Pursue a Balanced Growth Strategy

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Elephant BalancingGrowth is the lifeblood of your business. A leader’s job is to take that business to bigger and better places. The dilemma lies in how to get there.

You’re often faced with a simple choice: keep growing your core or expand into new arenas. It’s a challenge of balance.

By growing your core, you’re building what you’re already successful at. Customers have validated that product or service. It’s likely very profitable. And as you’ve heard me pontificate on before, strategy is inherently about saying “no.”

On the flip side, your core can only get you so far. The ideas behind it might get stale or run their logical lifespan. Cool new opportunities and ideas spring up all the time. Many of those new opportunities are untested and unproven though therefore they’re riskier.

Your job as a leader is to balance between strengthening and growing what you already do well while simultaneously finding new growth opportunities for your business. It’s challenging because you have resource constraints and can only invest so much time, effort, and money into building the core and expanding beyond it. You have to make this tradeoff effectively. This applies to you whether you’re a small business or a monolithic one.

So how can you strike that balance?

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The Importance of Collaborating with the Right People

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The Power of ConvergenceToday’s post is by Faisal Hoque, author of The Power of Convergence (CLICK HERE to get your copy now).  Here’s Faisal…

I have come to believe that to survive and ultimately thrive we must effectively create partnerships with everyone around us, from family to colleagues to society in general.

The word partner conjures up many connotations, such as collaboration, equality, teamwork, trust, alliance, support and reliability. These are qualities that we look for in both personal and professional relationships. The people we surround ourselves with can often make the difference between failure and survival. It’s not only who we surround ourselves with that matters, but how we interact with them that makes the difference.

The Partnership Principle

Every partnership involves two or more parties who work together to achieve a common purpose or undertake a specific task while sharing risks, responsibilities, resources, competencies and benefits. It’s a voluntary collaborative agreement that must evolve to meet the needs of everyone involved.

Partnerships are powered by synergy, enabling two or more parties to leverage their assets, such as resources, capabilities, expertise, and client base, for the mutual benefit of all.

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Best of thoughtLEADERS 2012: A 55 Gallon Drum of Awesomesauce

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Mike Figliuolo TrophyThis year is almost over so it’s time for the year in review list of the BEST posts we’ve published in 2012.  It’s time for the 2012 edition of The Figgies (here are the 2009, 2010 and 2011 editions).

This is an annual event here at the thoughtLEADERS Blog.  Here’s how it goes: this list is comprised of our most viewed, most forwarded, quirkiest, most provocative work as judged by you the readers. There’s also a kicker bonus post on the list just for good measure.

Enjoy. Share. We’ve loved writing them. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading them. I don’t ask a lot of you folks so I have two small requests as your holiday gift to me (you are getting me something, right?):

1. Invite all your coworkers, friends, and family to come check out the blog and become readers. The only way we get better is by raising everyone’s game. I’m not asking a lot here.  If you found this blog helpful at all this year, here’s your chance to return the favor for all our hard work. Just email folks and tell ’em to come take a look.

2. Pick up a copy of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful Personal Leadership (especially if you’re looking for last-minute holiday gifts for bosses, team members, or your mom – she’ll love it).  Yes – I know I talk a lot about the book but it’s not for the money (I would have made more money if I worked in a sweat shop in Asia making sneakers).  I talk a lot about it because I’m evangelical about the topic.  Buy it.  Read it.  In the words of Roland Smith (CEO of Wendy’s) “It could change your life.”

Thanks for your incredible support in ’12 and best wishes for ’13! We hope to be a part of your future success!

Enough preamble. Here’s the best stuff we’ve written all year:

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5 Answers to 5 Key Entrepreneurial Questions

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Entrepreneurs have a ton of questions.  Sometimes it’s hard to find straight answers to them.  To close that gap, below I’ve shared five of the most common questions I hear from entrepreneurs.  I’ve also shared my thoughts on some direct answers to those questions.

So whether you’re thinking about starting a business, already run a business, or help advise people who are doing either of those two things, I advise you to check out these questions and ponder the answers.  And if you’re wondering what’s up with the monkey, I simply thought it was funny.  I mean, really – who wears wide pinstripes these days?

1. When do I talk to the venture capitalists?

Five years from now. Seriously, entrepreneurs need to get an understanding of the funding ladder. Typically it starts with your own cash. Then friends and family. Then angel investors. Then hopefully cash from the operations of your business. And eventually seek out venture money.

Along the way you should also be seeking out non-dilutive capital like loans, grants, etc. Spend some time getting smart on how money is raised, deployed, and the equity/ownership implications of each choice. Venture capital is much farther down the line for your business than many folks think.

2. I’m a first-time entrepreneur. When should I launch my business?

You shouldn’t. I highly suggest getting some experience both in corporate environments as well as with other entrepreneurial ventures. You don’t know what you don’t know. Spending some time in an existing startup or young company will be a wonderful education on what to do, what not to do, and will also help you assess your personal fit with the entrepreneurial lifestyle. It’s not for everyone!

If you spend some time in corporate, you’ll learn how big companies make decisions, how they work with/buy from startups, and how they think about value creation. Once you’re armed with that knowledge, you can build a much more successful startup company because you’ll better understand your prospective customers, given most startups sell their products and services to larger corporations.

3. Where do I meet people who can help me grow my business?

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3 Keys to Business Success from 80s Hair Bands

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Electric GuitarToday’s post is by Kristin Woodman, author of 24 Hours of Life and Leadership: The Marine Corps Way (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

I’ve been everywhere
Still I’m standin’ tall
I’ve seen a million faces
And I’ve rocked them all
– Bon Jovi, Wanted Dead or Alive

Driving home with the top down after a long and tiring day at work, the radio is turned to Hair Nation. The day falls away as the chords come over the speakers, and a sense of rebellion has me belting out the lyrics as I drive down the road. I’m immediately taken back to the days of mullets, torn jeans and concert t-shirts.

In my youth, I embraced the loud music, big hair, and crazy antics of 80‘s hair bands in resistance the rules and discipline of my “high and tight” Marine father. Decades later, I’m still a fan.

Love ‘em or not, they were successful. Take a walk down memory lane to learn three things the hair bands reveal about success today, and how you too might rock a million with your products and services…

Be Different

“I’ve seen ‘em come and go, the kind that do it all for the show” – Cinderella, If You Don’t Like It

All the 80‘s hair bands followed a general formula: big hair, tight clothes and power chords. Yet, despite their general commonality, successful bands each had their own distinctive something that set them apart.

For example, Cinderella whipped their guitars around their bodies while playing (which is harder than it looks by the way). While they followed the formula of their peers, they did something no one else did. The guitar trick got them noticed long enough for screaming kids to pay attention to their music.

The bands that enjoyed success followed the formula first, and then differentiated themselves.

This holds true for businesses as well. Even if a company’s product or service is similar to others, focusing on – and celebrating – something different is what it takes to get noticed. And while the bands focused on gimmicks, professionals can focus on unique approaches, features or service.

Have Fun

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How Nothing New Can Be the Right Strategy

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Apple CoreStrategy sounds like a complex subject.  It isn’t.  It boils down to one word – no.

Strategy is about saying “no” to things that will distract you from reaching your destination.  Too often we become enamored with the latest cool new idea when it would actually be best to say no to pursuing it.  Why?  Resources (including focus and energy) are limited.  If you go chasing every new initiative you can think of, the core of your work is likely to suffer unless you’re adding resources to continue running that piece of your business well.

You can avoid the distraction trap though.  It’s merely a question of focus and will power.  Allow me to illustrate.

I have a lot of wonderful contacts in my contact list.  I try to be pretty rigorous about staying in touch with them on a regular basis.  Sometimes I’m not always successful and the interval between conversations is longer than I would like it to be.

Recently I arranged a bunch of calls with people I hadn’t spoken with in a while (many of them clients or prospects).  During the opening introductions on every call, there are the compulsories: “How are you?  What’s new?  What have you been working on?”  After I listened to all the new events in their lives since we last spoke, I found myself saying something oddly similar to everyone:

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What Zappos Can Teach You About Competing and Winning

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Dr. Joseph MichelliIt’s an honor and a privilege to bring you some thoughts from bestselling author Dr. Joseph Michelli (author of The Zappos Experience and The Starbucks Experience) on how to reduce the risk of becoming a commodity. Enough of me… here’s Joseph.

Every business is at risk of becoming a commodity. So how is it that some travel agents still thrive after the advent of Priceline and Travelocity? Why do some companies maintain premium pricing while similar businesses have to resort to discounting to attract price sensitive consumers? And the most important question of all, how can YOU assure that YOUR business doesn’t fall into the commodization trap?

The Zappos ExperienceThe recent recession has only reinforced the economic truth that brands that “wow” customers – thrive and survive! Conversely, brands that simply satisfy consumers are at the risk of extinction! While the lessons, I’m sharing here could’ve just as easily been drawn from my books about Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, the Pike Place Fish Market, or the UCLA Health System, I’ll offer insights and tools courtesy of Zappos (The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage and WOW).

Zappos is an online retailer who defied the odds and built an Internet empire, initially as a virtual shoe store and now expanding its inventory well beyond shoes alone. Zappos has always charged top dollar for its products and has succeeded primarily because they innovated an experience that consistently exceeds the expectations of customers, vendors, and people who simply encounter the brand.

To help you appreciate how Zappos might serve as a provocative benchmark for your customer experience, let me cover the 5 principles outlined in The Zappos Experience:

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Organizational Change is Like a Wet Diaper

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Marty StanleyToday’s post is by Marty Stanley, author of Get Out of B.E.D. and the newest member of the thoughtLEADERS team.

The question: “What do organizational change and wet diapers have in common?” may not be a question that organizational leaders would consider asking themselves or their teams. But it is a question that could truly provide a thought provoking discussion and result in some changed behaviors, if they are willing to think differently.

So what do they have in common? (insert drum roll): both organizational change and wet diapers are uncomfortable! The difference is that most people in organizations hate change and babies love it… and babies like to be changed frequently!

But most good organizational leaders and corporate soldiers will say they “embrace change,” “foster change and innovation,” or “champion change.” Unfortunately, their day-to-day behaviors, operational processes and reward structures often times support the status quo. I’m going to suggest that organizations need to remember the wet diaper and act like an adult and take action to change things especially when it’s uncomfortable.

Thinking inside the box, following long standing, established organizational protocol and chains of command are often what gets rewarded. And in some organizations, the mere mention of change can be a career limiting move. So why would someone rock the boat? Why would anyone willingly champion change that will most likely, be met with overt or passive resistance or good old fashioned lip-service? Read more

The Proper Definition of Transformation

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Thomas Butta, CEO of 21 WeeksToday’s post is by Thomas Butta, Founder and CEO of 21 Weeks. You can read more about him at the end of the post. Here’s Thomas:

I recently read an article in The Economist about Jim Collins, the author of Built to Last, Good to Great, and, most recently, Great by Choice. The piece reviewed the merits of Collins’s overarching point of view – that greatness is largely a matter of choice and discipline – relative to other approaches including a transformative one. What surprised me wasn’t the comparison of disciplined and steady versus an aggressive agenda, but rather that transformation was painted with a ‘trash and burn’ brush. It got me thinking: What do we know about transformation.

What is your experience with transformation? What do you think of transformation? What exactly is transformation? My research tells me that transformation means different things to different people in different roles.

For some of you, perhaps in functional positions, transformation is consultant speak for change that is often uncomfortable. You know this kind of change. It’s strategically unclear, politically charged, and haphazard in execution. Good luck with that.

For others in non-management roles, transformation is one of the words ‘management’ hides behind when driving down costs and/or driving up profits. You’ve seen this, too. “As part of our efforts to transform (insert company name) into a more competitive entity, it is necessary to immediately cut non-essential operating costs and reduce redundancy in our work force.” Right.

For others in executive management, transformation is seen as the way to break through the status quo with a powerful strategic agenda focused on achieving an organization’s fullest potential. This is the camp I fall into. This is where sustainable value and momentum get created.

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