What motivates your employees?

While reading the most recent issue of Quirks Magazine, I came across the article of “Job satisfaction, focus on research steady.” It discussed job satisfaction within the research industry. According to the annual corporate researcher salary survey, job satisfaction data for the research industry is similar when compared to years 2013 and 2014. In 2015, data shows that 21 percent of respondents are very satisfied with their current job, 34 percent are satisfied, and 20 percent are somewhat satisfied. An improving economy and salary increases may have contributed to the high levels of satisfaction; however, it’s not the sole factor. The survey found that those who were very dissatisfied with their job also reported making the second-highest average salary of $131,000. As a side, one commentator offered a suggestion for all businessmen and businesswomen: “knowing what you are worth can be powerful leverage during raise negotiations.” Presenting survey data from research studies on compensation can help serve as an aid when discussing salary.

Employee satisfaction is a culmination of numerous factors. It can be affected by compensation, bonuses, non-monetary benefits, company culture, opportunities for advancement, etc. When asked what benefits accompany a positive company culture, one respondent in the research industry said “weekly on-site massage therapist, weekly on-site counselor, sick rooms, a gym….” Another respondent asked for intangible benefits, such as dogs at work and workplace flexibility. While all companies may not be able to physically or financially achieve those exact benefits, it’s important to listen and to respond to employees’ needs that are practical and feasible. When you feel like your voice is heard, you feel more valued, thus strengthening your commitment to the organization.

Now, let’s say you’re not in the research industry. How do you know if your employees are satisfied with their current job, as well as the company as a whole? What do you look for? What, not to mention how, do you ask? How do you know if they’ll provide you with honest feedback? By having a clear understanding of employee perceptions, it offers you opportunities for performance improvement and new business idea generation. An employee perception survey helps you identify what motivates and constrains your employees, as well as the overall health of your organization. It provides employees with an avenue to contribute detailed, unfiltered feedback to a third-party, giving your organization actionable data to help determine where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.

To uncover how your employees really feel and to learn how our employee perception survey can help you KNOW MORE so you can DO MORE, contact Tweed-Weber, Inc. at  toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

* For the full article, click here: www.quirks.com/CorporateResearchReport

How Satisfied Are Your Customers?

We have in our “interesting read file” a great article highlighting five important things you need to know about customer surveys. The article was written by Julia L. Rogers of The Huffington Post. She wrote it so well that we wanted to share the main gist of it with all of you. Julie hit it right on the mark, so we figured we wouldn’t reinvent the wheel. Here’s a bit of what she had to say....

Surveying your customers regularly and in a variety of ways is a critical part of running a successful business, regardless of your industry, product or service. Surveys measure satisfaction -- or dissatisfaction -- with your offerings, determine critical needs and offer an opportunity to effectively communicate and build truly personal relationships with your customers. And when you take both praise and criticism to heart in order to fulfill the true needs of these customers, you build invaluable loyalty that can create buzz around your business and bring in enthusiastic, highly qualified referrals.

Still, many business owners don't use regular surveys as an opportunity to reach out to their customers and really get to know them. For some reason, they fail to realize that satisfied customers are the key to staying in business for the long haul.

What's the best way to get started? Here are five things you need to know.

1. Focus on the narrative, not the number.
The most valuable part of any customer survey is the narrative. Make sure to include open-ended questions in any survey you launch that allow the customer to give you specific, actionable feedback.

2. Don't stack the deck.
Objective feedback from your customers and clients is more useful than good feedback. Therefore, you should make sure the structure of your survey, as well as the distribution method, promotes the flow of truly candid customer opinions. The point of surveying is to get honest reactions.

3. Choose survey methods that garner real information in real time.
Getting real information from real customers in real time is the best way for small-business owners to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their businesses, especially as their businesses grow. Many other types of self-serve and full-service survey solutions can be integral to helping businesses quickly build their email lists and businesses that meet their customers' needs well.

4. Close the loop by reaching out and following up.
The most enlightening customer feedback often comes from just picking up the phone and having direct contact with customers. Your survey feedback is worthless if you don't take action on it. You need to put plans in place to resolve issues revealed by surveys. Also, the mere act of surveying a customer can increase satisfaction.

5. Marinate in the survey feedback.
As someone trying to build a solid business, you need to immerse yourself in customer feedback. Don't stick survey results in a binder and forget about them without analysis. Share the results -- including verbatim customer comments -- and what these results have taught you with your entire staff. Take time to thoughtfully review survey responses and consider their implications.

The five points Julie Rogers outlined in her article are definitely worth thinking about relative to customer surveys and feedback. If you would like to know the level of satisfaction among your customer base, give us a call. We specialize in customer satisfaction surveys. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

What's your objective?

Working in the consulting industry and preparing client’s strategic plans, I have come across numerous strategies and objectives a company wants to fulfill in that given fiscal year. Some clients may have three or four objectives, while others have ten or twelve or even more. But being able to achieve these objectives is the challenge for each company. “You can always tell how important a goal is by how much time and money a company invests in it,” says Kevin McConville and Jeff Durr, writers of Six Ways to Make Customer Programs Work.
 
This quote sums up the importance of setting objectives for a company, and their want and need to achieve them is based on the company itself and how much they invest – money and/or human resources – into each objective. We have to remember that the goals a company is setting is for the benefit of the company in either the long- or short-term, or both. According to McConville and Durr, there are six factors that play an important role in the success of companies’ objectives – belief, credibility, actionability, accountability, systems, and human capital. In order for a company to be successful in the implementation of the objectives, these six factors MUST be present.

Belief
We all have something that we believe in or have beliefs that we instill in ourselves and others, so how is it any different from the corporate world? Beliefs in the corporate world are instilled in employees from the top-down, and one must follow the company’s beliefs because it is their “golden rule” per se.

For example, if a company has poor customer service, but says “the customer always comes first,” and doesn’t instill this belief into its employees, then nothing will ever change. A company can create objective after objective for its company about its customer service issue, but they have to be willing to put in the effort to accomplish it.  

Credibility
Credibility is defined as the quality of being trusted and believed in and the quality of being convincing or believable. These two definitions are extremely important to a company because it is what drives a company to success. If a company isn’t credible in its processes, how does one believe in them to stick to their word?  

Actionability 
Lights, Camera, ACTION! This is even true in the business sector as well. With every objective or strategy that is put in place, the company needs to have the initial set up (lights), along with a plan in place for how it will work out (camera), and then ultimately make that plan come to life (action).
 
Accountability
To be held accountable means to accept responsibility or to account for one’s action, something most of us have been instilled with since birth. Imagine a world where people didn’t take responsibility for their actions, especially in the business world. How could businesses thrive? Most businesses thrive on being the number one in something – whether it is customer service, packaging, delivery, etc. – but being accountable for their main goal is something else entirely. In order to make a real change, it requires real change. How can you do this?
 
Imagine you are playing a basketball game, and each time your team has the ball, they do the same play each time, but without much success. After some time, you begin to realize, “This isn’t working for our team. Something needs to change.” And after some careful thought, the next play is different, and WHAM! a basket is scored. To make a real change, the behaviors or events have to change to create a new, better outcome. Just like in the basketball game, change is beneficial to anything in life, even in business.
 
Systems
A system, in essence, is what makes the world go round. Everything revolves around some sort of system, so it only makes sense for a program to work that a good, solid system should be in place – no matter what it is. Having a bad organization-wide system can inhibit growth and send a message that customers are everyone’s responsibility except leaderships, according to McConville and Durr. A good balance is needed between the top leadership and the workers. If top leadership doesn’t follow by the rules they mandate, how can they expect the workers to as well? Find a balance, and practice what one preaches. 

Human Capital
We all know that a person can’t really change. As hard as we may try to change them, they will always remain the same. The same holds true for those who interact with customers. If the person has an attitude problem, then the customer experience will be bad. No policies, procedures, or rules will change the outcome because, ultimately, it’s how a person is that makes the experience. McConville and Durr stated that based on their experience, companies that focus on natural talents and strengths do better. 

Teams with managers who received strengths feedback have 8.9% greater profitability and 12.5% greater productivity compared with teams with managers who received no strengths feedback.
Turnover rates were 14.9% lower among employees who received feedback on their strengths.

These six factors go hand-in-hand. If one is missing, the others will suffer. With the start of the New Year, it’s time to look at your company and see what is and what isn’t working, and to implement these six factors into your everyday, business life. To find out how we can help you achieve this goal and how we can help you KNOW MORE so you can DO MORE, contact Tweed-Weber, Inc. at toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

To read the whole article, click here: Six Ways to Make Customer Programs Work

About the author: Gretchen Koch has been with Tweed-Weber, Inc. since 2012 and serves as Operations Manager. She oversees office processes and provides quality control on all market research reports and strategic planning documents

Answers to Your Burning Questions...

When doing online customer and/or employee surveys, our clients often ask, “How much time should we give for people to take the survey?” Our standard answer is two weeks, unless there is an unusual circumstance that requires a longer time frame.

When the survey first launches, you will get about 80 percent of your respondents completing the survey in the first week, and most of those folks will take it within the first few days. The second week is basically to send out reminders about the survey. There will be an instant flurry of responses the second week from people who intended on taking it, but just didn’t get around to it the first week. Keeping the survey open for more than two weeks will only extend the time period of the survey activity; it will not garner a notable batch of additional responses. In a nutshell, if someone wants to participate, they will do so within two weeks. After that, they lose interest.

Just a quick hit Q&A in case you were wondering!  

If you would like to know how effective your current online customer and/or survey process is, or if you’d like to be proactive in starting a new survey initiative, give us a call. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

Employee Surveys = Involvement and Empowerment

Ongoing customer satisfaction is a result of a focused and well-managed process for continuous improvement. Design your products and services to meet or exceed customer expectations, and you'll enhance your ability to grow your market share. Design the processes that provide those products and services to be performed in the most effective, efficient, reliable, and consistent manner possible, and you’ll enhance your ability to meet your organizational strategies. Proactively involve and empower your people in the previously mentioned steps, and you have the elements for gaining and sustaining long-term competitive advantage.

Even in organizations where there is a demonstrated understanding of this logic, many efforts to succeed in implementing strategies to achieve a more empowered workforce fail. Many times, this failure can be attributed to a lack of understanding regarding the nature of empowerment and the four basic elements required for successful implementation.

Involvement and Empowerment

One of the foundational principles of continuous improvement is “respect for employees demonstrated by employee involvement and empowerment.” The goal of this principle is respect. It involves genuine respect and the understanding that employees have the ability, based on their knowledge and experience, to add value to the organization’s success. While most organizational leaders intellectually and emotionally buy-in to this principle, the positive results of involvement and empowerment are sometimes elusive. To help understand why this occurs, let’s look at how the words “involvement” and “empowerment” are defined and used in a business environment.

Involvement is the ongoing process of informing employees and gathering input from them. This process results in a workforce that continuously thinks of ways to improve performance and acts in a manner consistent with that thinking. Involvement takes the form of information-sharing and can be accomplished in a number of ways. It can be achieved in state-of-the-company meetings, informal group sessions, one-on-one discussions, the Intranet, etc. Whatever the method, the objective must be to provide employees with an ongoing understanding of what is happening within the organization (and why), and how their actions impact the success of the organization.

Empowerment is the ongoing process of providing anyone in an organization with the ability to address anything that stands in the way of doing the right thing at any given time. It means that an employee is given the ability to solve a problem or improve a condition. It means that, at no time, does an employee feel ‘trapped’ in a situation. If something is standing in the way of a quality result, the employee can contribute to correcting that situation. Successful empowerment can be achieved by addressing four basic elements or “tools.”

Four Basic Elements of Empowerment

Belief
Employees need to genuinely believe the company’s leadership sincerely intends for them to be empowered. An employee also needs to believe that he or she has the capability of performing in an empowered manner. Rarely will an organization experience successful empowerment if employees do not believe management is supportive of their individual ability to solve a problem or improve a condition.

Information
Employees need to have information regarding the results of their actions, as well as information relative to the processes they are performing. In order to determine the need to solve a problem or improve a condition, employees need to receive feedback on these measures. If employees are unaware of the conditions that surround them, the chances of developing empowered actions are minimal at best.

Skills
Employees need the skills necessary to act in an empowered manner. These skills fall into two areas; technical skills and interpersonal skills. Technical skills involve those skills specific to an employee’s job. Acting in an empowered manner requires that an employee be trained and consistently updated on the technical skills needed to perform in their area of responsibility. Interpersonal skills involve the skills required for an employee to effectively work with others when acting in an empowered manner. These skills include effective communication and respect for themselves and others, as well as understanding personal styles and how they affect individual and team performance.

Opportunity
This element involves providing employees with the time, tools, and resources necessary to act in an empowered manner. Expecting empowered actions while neglecting the required time, tools, and resources will result in employee frustration. Additionally, it is extremely important to provide employees with the process and guidelines for being empowered. Employees need to understand the steps they can take to solve a problem or improve a condition. Without clearly defined guidelines and processes, many well-intentioned empowerment initiatives bring unsatisfactory and, in some cases, disastrous results.

How involved and empowered do employees in your organization feel? 

There is one way to find out – ask them. Conduct an Employee Perception Survey. Putting in place an effective employee feedback program is the responsibility of strong and confident leaders. In order to develop an involved and empowered workforce, an organization’s leadership team must provide the necessary coaching, guidance, and facilitation to foster its development. Identifying the areas employees feel are in need of special attention and focus will help direct those development efforts.

If you are trying to ensure a culture of employee involvement and empowerment, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). Tweed-Weber can provide you with a proven method for obtaining employee feedback that can serve as the foundation for the elements of genuine employee engagement.

Are you providing unrivaled customer service?

Because the business climate in virtually all industries has become increasingly competitive, and the marketplace continues to change, it is even more important for all employees of an organization to demonstrate responsiveness and respect toward their customers. This means developing a whole new orientation toward customer service.

Business in general is becoming much more customer-focused in this new era of ubiquitous technology that allows for instant personal contact. Companies are recognizing that the degree to which they meet or exceed their customers' expectations will dictate their relative success in the marketplace. In order to be customer-oriented, it is important that your people understand these expectations and perform accordingly. It is also important that your people develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable and empower them to demonstrate customer responsiveness and respect.

Two Points of Focus

Unrivaled Customer Service begins with two points of focus, customer expectations and organizational outcomes. Customer expectations fall into two areas: needs and wants. When a customer's problem is solved, his or her needs are met. When a customer is made to feel good, his or her wants are satisfied. Providing unrivaled customer service means that your people understand both your customers' needs AND wants.

The first step in identifying what customers want and need is to ask them. Conducting a Customer Perception Survey to identify exactly how your customers view you is essential to understanding how to satisfy them in the future. Annual customer surveys are a best practice among the top organizations that taut unrivaled service.

Organizational outcomes fall into three areas: quality in fact, process outcomes, and final results. If your organization is not getting the outcomes it needs to survive and succeed, then you risk being marginalized in the market, or worse yet, going out of business. It is critical that you are able to balance customer expectations with organizational outcomes.

The Internal Customer/Supplier Chain

Experience shows that most external customer disappointments are created by internal process problems. Often, people within the organization are not working together to serve the customer. An effective way to deal with this is to clarify the internal customer/supplier chain. Every employee in your organization has other employees who are their internal customers. Everyone also has internal suppliers, people they depend on for support to do their jobs.

Organizations with a focus on unrivaled service work hard to clarify this internal customer/supplier chain. Every person needs to know precisely who his or her internal customers are, and what they need and want. Imagine everyone in your organization focusing on their internal customer, and working together to serve your external customers.

Knowing what your customers need and want and delivering it are two different things. The critical ingredients in are people and processes. First, your people must have the knowledge and skills to serve your customers effectively. Second, your internal processes must be designed for unrivaled service.

If you are trying to differentiate your organization through unrivaled service, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). Tweed-Weber can help you identify what your customers need and want, not only today, but in the future, so that you can be the consistent market leader.

Secondary and Primary Research – What’s the difference?

Any individual or organization that requires any data or knowledge about themselves or their market will use some form of secondary or primary market research. Some of the main reasons to conduct market research are as follows:

• Identify industry trends (consolidation, GPOs, e-commerce)
• Identify market statistics (demographics, sales forecasts, industry stats)
• Identify market perceptions (receptivity to new products/services)
• Identify customer needs (wants, needs, expectations, opinions)
• Identify competitive landscapes (who else is out there?)
• Protect resources – time, money, energy
• Support the organization’s overall strategic plan

Secondary research lays the foundation for primary research. Simply put, secondary research is information/research that already exists somewhere in the marketplace that can be accessed with excellent “sniffing-around” skills. It is a great starting point for any business initiative pertaining to market research. Information can be free, or a fee is required from some information sources. Secondary research sources can include (just to name a few): 

• Internet
• Libraries 
• Local sources 
• Chambers of Commerce 
• Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) 
• U.S. Department of Commerce 
• Small Business Administration (SBA) 
• Trade and industry associations 
• Specialized market research firms
• Census Bureau 

Primary research fills in the gaps left behind by secondary research. It is tailored to a company’s particular needs, and by customizing tried-and-true methodologies, you can gain invaluable information about your customers and target markets. Primary research obtains information directly from the source and offers more specific results than secondary research. It also involves statistical methodologies via targeted sampling, and is typically more expensive than secondary research because of its customized nature. Primary research methods include (just to name a few): 

• Telephone interviews 
• Personal interviews 
• Focus groups 
• Internet surveys 
• Intercept surveys 
• Field tests

Both secondary and primary research are extremely important to an overall market assessment initiative. If you would like to learn more about how to utilize secondary and/or primary research to get the information you need, feel free to contact Tweed-Weber. We will help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at

mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber)

Women2Know Profile: Sharon Danks, Vice President, Tweed-Weber, Inc.

Sharon has been with Tweed-Weber for 23 years, and is profiled in the current Winter 2014 Edition of Women2Women Magazine, published quarterly by the Hoffmann Publishing Group, Reading PA, and released in January 2014. The original magazine profile can be found at www.berkswomen2women.com.

Women2Women, launched by the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce & Industry, encourages women to create connections, gain knowledge, open doors, and build strategic alliances. Their goal is to create more women leaders in Berks County by providing a forum where women from diverse backgrounds can learn, share ideas, and mentor each other.

The following are the questions asked of Sharon in the magazine’s Q&A interview style.

W2W: Why is your position unique to women in our community?

Sharon: At Tweed-Weber, we do strategic planning and market research (customer surveys, employee surveys, market assessments, nonprofit board of director assessments, etc.). Our mission is to help our clients build and implement strategies to gain and sustain competitive advantage in their markets throughout the world. I think doing this kind of consulting work is unique in Berks County. The market research side of our business, where I spend most of my time, is extremely interesting. We work with a wide range of for-profit and nonprofit organizations to help them identify what internal and/or external research will help them make important, strategic decisions with clarity and confidence. One day we are working with a human service organization, the next an engineering firm, the next a candy manufacturer, the next a library system, etc. The list goes on. Although our client base varies, the research process we use to obtain the information they need remains the same. Using the research data to help clients increase sales, grow a product line, better understand employee perceptions, engage nonprofit board members, and/or gain more visibility in their markets, is exciting and very rewarding.

W2W: Would you wish to acknowledge a mentor or friend who helped you aspire to this point in your life’s journey, and why?

Sharon: I can instantly name five mentors that have had a huge impact on me. Two are people I worked for over 25 years ago before Tweed-Weber; Lori Wood (Noll) and John Pachuilo. One is my current business partner at Tweed-Weber, Al Weber, and the other two are my parents, Tom and Adrienne Danks. Lori Wood instilled in me the desire to work and achieve the professional goals I set for myself. John Pachuilo instilled in me the importance of being committed and dedicated to your work, and Al Weber instilled in me the value, meaning, and integrity that must be the foundation for your work. My father taught me at a very early age that being a responsible person who contributes to the world around me will always result in something good. And my mother always taught me to stay true to myself and to know that God is the only one I need to impress; that way, I’ll never have a need for a big ego. There are so many other people in the Berks community I would consider mentors that I work with today (too many too mention), and I feel truly blessed to be gifted in my life with such wonderful people.

W2W: What do you do to set work & play boundaries?

Sharon: A lot of people talk about “having balance” today.  I think there is an unrealistic view of what defines a healthy work/life/play balance. I subscribe to what one of my mentors taught me years ago. It reshaped how I view my life. He believes a better way to think about it is through “integration.” How are you integrating, instead of balancing, everything you need to do and want in your life? For me, different aspects of my life take over and require more attention at different times, and I’m ok with that. Sometimes I need to work like a maniac, and other times my home life shouts a little louder and I need to answer the call. It’s much less stressful when you take the pressure off yourself to achieve a complete balancing act and, instead, stay flexible realizing that an always fluctuating integration of work and life actually IS balance. It just looks different sometimes. I think it makes for a happier life.

W2W: What’s your mission?

Sharon: Gratitude. My personal mission is to acknowledge and be grateful for, every day, the many blessings in my life. I try to remind myself often that what I may take for granted, someone else is praying for.

W2W: Is there a philosophy that you live by?

Sharon: My philosophy is a basic one – learning is never over. Every day is a chance to learn something new. I believe anyone, from newborn to 100, can impart great wisdom if you pay attention to them. I also believe strongly that animals are the best teachers of what humans need to learn most. 

W2W: What do you consider to be the main asset of women?

Sharon: On a personal level, I think the answer would differ depending on the personality, beliefs, and talents of each individual woman. On a professional level, I believe a few common assets would be confidence, empathy, humor, graciousness, and the ability to work collaboratively with others. 

W2W: What do you consider to be the main threat of women?

Sharon: I believe, man or woman, there is no greater threat than yourself. As the quote says, “A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch, but on her own wings. If a person believes in himself/herself, opportunities can be endless.

W2W: What words of wisdom would you offer to other women?

Sharon: The greatest words of wisdom I can share is something my father used to tell me and my sister all the time growing up. He would talk to us about “the glass ceiling” and how to approach it. He said if we ever ran into barriers, we should always look at it as “a mirrored ceiling,” not glass, because it would require us to look back at ourselves to get beyond it. I have been very lucky in my life. There have only been a few times, early on in my career, that I felt the pressure of the “mirrored” ceiling, but I realized my father was right. Getting beyond an obstacle, for a women or man, is all about your attitude towards it and how you take personal ownership of it.  

 

If you would like to learn more about Tweed-Weber, feel free to call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). For more information about Women2Women, go to www.berkswomen2women.com.

Understanding Customer Perception is Key to Increased Opportunities

What do you know? Or more important, what should you know? Hearing and clearly understanding the voice of your customer in today’s competitive environment has become an essential and fundamental requirement to future planning. It is ultimately your customer’s voice that matters the most. Successful organizations hear that voice and effectively use it to guide their activities. You may have heard rumors about what your customers are thinking, or even whispers from them along the way, but it is up to you to clearly understand the thoughts and opinions of your customers in order to compete effectively. Your market, and the business environments of your customers, likely have changed significantly over the past few years. The following are just a few examples of crucial information that can be obtained from your customers to see how you can increase your sales volume today.

 

Your organization’s strengths and weaknesses. Does it really matter what you perceive as your organization’s strengths and weaknesses if your customers view them as something entirely different?

 

Competitive information. Recognizing your customers’ opinions about your organization is paramount. Knowing what your customers think about your competition is even better.

 

Unmet customer needs. Your customers are connected to your industry from different angles.

 

Future trends. The state of the economy over the past number of years has been unprecedented. You may have found your industry changing at a pace so fast that it is almost impossible to keep up.

 

Take a moment to consider the importance of customer perceptions on your business and the impact their reality has on your organization. Think also of your organization’s current actions with regard to customer perceptions:

• Can any of the performance issues you face today result from inaccurate awareness of customer perceptions?
• Are your organization’s improvement efforts targeted at addressing critical performance issues as prescribed by your customers?

Many well-run and well-intentioned organizations fall short in these areas. As a result, many improvement efforts target issues that have a relatively low impact on improving customer satisfaction and, therefore, competitive advantage. Management-generated improvement ideas prove effective, but often, and especially in the ongoing stages of organizational improvement, general feelings and intuitions are inadequate triggers for positively affecting customer satisfaction.

  

Many organizations have learned the importance of consistently measuring customer perceptions and satisfaction through a formal customer survey program. A formal process allows customers to share their views about an organization’s performance in a way that is timely and objective, and in today’s market, it is a requirement to staying ahead. Many organizations have expressed a desire to go it alone, but eventually find it challenging to do it in the most effective manner. We have found organizations often ask: 

• Where do I start?
• What method(s) should I use?
• Who should I survey?
• How often should surveys be conducted?
• Who here should implement the surveys?
• How should results be communicated to management?

Our response is simple: we’ll handle it. With nearly three decades of combined experience in market research, our professionals have seen it all and can guide the development and implementation a customer perception survey that will provide an organization with numerous opportunities such as:

• Significant improvement in an organization’s ability to target improvement efforts that will have a real impact on their overall success.
• Improved insight for management and employees into the effects of their actions on customer satisfaction.
• Opportunities to strengthen relationships with key customers.
• Increased business opportunities.

Overall, customer perception surveys can help organizations make strategic decisions, and they provide organizations with a clear understanding of the market’s awareness and perceptions of their products/services. A customer perception survey helps an organization keep its finger on the pulse of a rapidly changing marketplace. 

 

If you’re wondering if a formal customer research program is right for you, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at

www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). The result will be the knowledge you need to make the right decisions to guide your organization into the future. In a world of uncertainty, the ability to clearly focus your organization creates a distinct competitive advantage. No one can guarantee certainty, but market research can guarantee clarity. You will Know More, so you can Do More. 

Creating Long-Term Sales Growth

Whether you make widgets or sell a service, sales growth is always a major issue affecting your company's long-term success. But if you are like many other organizations, how you go about creating long-term sales growth is a daunting challenge. Sell harder? Advertise more? Modify your product or service? What's the most effective path to take, AND how can you do it without spending an inordinate amount of money?

In order to understand how to go about creating long-term sales growth, it's best to get back to fundamentals. The first fundamental understanding involves general market dynamics. If you want your market to buy more from you than your competitors, you need to give them a reason to do so. Is your price consistently lower? Do your products/services better meet their needs? Do you provide better service during and after the sale? Do you understand their business better, or have you established better relationships with their people?

The market is very difficult to predict in many areas. But one area that is predictable is that the market will, by itself, vote for the company that is perceived as meeting their needs the best. And the market votes for the winner with dollars. 

The second fundamental understanding is more specific to your market(s) and your company. What is the nature of your market, its current and evolving needs, and what is your company's perceived ability to meet those needs relative to your competition?

The reason to gain this fundamental understanding is undeniable. As is common with most of us, our perception of the forces and trends affecting our markets and our companies is based on a combination of issues. It is based on our interpretation of various events and situations over time, as well as our many experiences in dealing with those events. Sometimes our interpretations closely match our market's interpretations, but many times they are off base, either by a little or by a lot. If you believe your perception of the market is closely aligned with the market's perception of you without testing that assumption, then you may be in trouble.

Setting sales growth strategies based primarily on subjective perceptions will probably result in something less than what you desire. Furthermore, if you want to get your people behind a strategy, you need to support it with something better than just your good thinking and intuitive prowess.

Obtaining that information is critical. It will serve as the fundamental basis for a strategy to create long-term sales growth. But how do you go about getting that information and what do you do after you've gotten it? That's where research strategic planning comes in and the use of an outside, integrated consulting firm proves its value in helping out.

Research/Information Gathering

Determining market dynamics and your company's competitive advantage is a result of learning your customers' perceptions of their industries, their current and evolving needs, and their interest in companies that are vying to fill those needs (including yours). Normally, this is accomplished through intensive surveying using a number of proven methods. This is best done by an expert, third-party consulting firm. By combining this information with internally generated data, (e.g., sales history, financial performance, etc.) the dynamics of the market and your position within it can be viewed and discussed objectively by your management team. As a result, a consensus can be achieved as to the starting point for determining the sales growth strategy that is right for your company.

Long-Term Sales Growth Strategy Development

Determining the correct sales strategy for your company is the result of combining the work done previously with the fundamental understanding of general market dynamics mentioned earlier. The market embraces the company that meets their needs better than the others. Determining your company's long-term sales strategy will involve defining what those needs are and what you can do to stand-out in meeting those needs in the marketplace.

Think about the affect the activities described previously would have on your company's ability to create long-term sales growth. Your people would see the logic that was involved and be more enthusiastic in supporting and contributing to the company's new and/or revitalized direction.

If you are trying to establish long-term sales growth, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). Tweed-Weber can help you include your market(s) and their perceptions as a foundation for your continued success.

A Tipping Point for Libraries

By Al Weber, President, Tweed-Weber, Inc.
 
At a meeting in the summer of 2012, the chair of the board of a county library system made an observation that fundamentally changed my thinking about libraries. She said (and I’m going to paraphrase here, but only a little), “The Internet is having the same impact on libraries today that the Gutenberg press had on libraries in the 15th Century.” It turns out this individual, whose intellect and insight I am growing to admire more and more with each additional interaction we have, sent me down a thought path that’s worth sharing.

First, a little history. In 1439, Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, known to us as simply Johannes Gutenberg, printed 180 copies of the Bible, in the first production run of his invention with mechanical moveable type, what we now call the printing press. Prior to this time, all books were manuscripts, hand-written one at a time, taking months, if not years to produce. Availability of these “books” was to say the least, limited. To make the point, in 1300, 139 years prior to Gutenberg’s world-changing invention, the Vatican Library listed 443 “books.” It is thought to have been the largest library in the world at the time. By 1500, 61 years after those first Bibles came off the press, that number had grown to over 3,500 volumes. By today’s standards, that would be a small community library. By the standards of the time, however, that number kept the Vatican Library solidly in first place.

Libraries throughout the world began to grow. In 1598, Bodleian Library at Oxford University, one of the larger libraries outside of the Vatican at the time, contained 2,500 volumes. Over the next 250 years, Bodleian’s collection grew to the size, where by 1849 the library housed 220,000 books and 21,000 manuscripts. It took only 65 more years for Bodleian to pass the one million volume mark (in 1914).

1981, 67 years after Bodleian reached its historic, seven-figure level of books, marks the year in which IBM brought personal computing, one of the earliest versions of electronic information machines, to the non-expert masses. This represents yet another “disruptive” technological moment in history. Since then, information technology has become faster, smaller, cheaper, and dramatically more user friendly. Knowledge and information has become available in massive quantities to enormous numbers of people. 

The degree of change in available reading material created by Gutenberg’s press pales in comparison to the proliferation of reading material available today. In 2010, less than 30 years following the introduction of the IBM personal computer, 2.7 million titles were self-published in the United States and electronic books (e-books) have enabled over 295,000 publishers to bring even more books to the e-market. Learning, once the province of the privileged, can be experienced by virtually anyone who wants it.

Add to this, the growth of access to the Internet. Wikipedia (which I accessed on line of course) says of the Internet, “There is no consensus on the exact date when the modern Internet came into being, but sometime in the early to mid-1980s is considered reasonable.” Which makes it reasonable to say that in 1983, just 30 years ago, there were virtually no Internet users. Wikipedia also reports that, “As of June 2012, more than 2.4 billion people—over a third of the world's human population—have used the services of the Internet. To make things even more exciting, the Pew Research Center reports that as of August 27, 2013, 70 percent of Americans have high-speed Internet connections at home.*

What does this mean for libraries? At the risk of repeating the title of this posting, they have reached a tipping point and having done so, will never be the same again. There will certainly be a continuing demand for printed books. Libraries will still need to provide printed copies of best sellers and other books to the millions of people who enjoy reading them that way. (In a recent survey of over 1,700 library patrons, 71.7 percent of respondents reported they believed books would be very important in five years, while 57.1 percent reported that e-books would be very important.) But I think the writing is on the wall (as well as this posting) that library leaders will be faced with the continuing challenge of learning what their communities need and finding innovative ways to meet those programs, services, and resources.

*Kathryn Zickuhr and Aaron Smith. "Home Broadband 2013." Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. (August 26, 2013) http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2013/PIP_Broadband%202013_082613.pdf, August 29, 2013.

Problem Solving and Continuous Improvement

The most important tools you will use to improve the total quality of your organization are the problem solving and continuous improvement process that your organization has adopted. Notice that there is a clear distinction between problem solving and continuous improvement. Each process has a specific definition and a specific application, and it is imperative that you use the right process in the right situations.

Problem Solving Defined
Webster's defines a problem as “a question, matter, situation, or person that is perplexing or difficult.” That definition is fine for grammatical purposes, but it doesn’t help us much with problem solving in an organizational environment. A more functional definition of a business-related problem is “a deviation from the normal or expected for which the cause is unknown and for which one would like to determine the cause and find a solution.” Let’s look at an example to clarify our definition. Suppose, at the end of work today, you get in your car, you put the key in the ignition and turn it. The normal or expected result would be that the engine would start and you would be able to drive home. Today, when you turn the key, nothing happens. That’s a problem. A deviation from the normal or the expected. Do you want to find the cause and determine a solution? Of course. Something happened to cause the problem. Some kind of change took place. By finding what changed, you will find the cause of the problem. The cause of a problem is always found in some kind of change. Find the change, and you have found the cause. Put the situation back to the way it was, and you have solved the problem.

Continuous Improvement Defined
Continuous improvement is defined as “the ongoing process of making small changes in order to improve output or performance.” Continuous improvement is the opposite of problem solving. You are purposefully trying to change the normal or the expected in a positive direction. You are trying to make a change in the system that will cause a change in the outcome. Let’s use the automobile example again. Let’s say you are averaging 19 miles per gallon of gasoline, and you want to increase the fuel efficiency of your car. You begin to look for ways to improve your mileage. Each time you come up with an idea, you make a change in the process of how you maintain or drive your car. This change causes improvement. A series of small changes can result in a big improvement and give you increased fuel efficiency.

There are many different models for problem solving and continuous improvement, but the following are examples of the seven-step processes that your organization can choose to adopt, which are highly effective.

The Seven-Step Problem Solving Process

1. State the problem. What is the deviation from the standard?
2. Specify the problem. Describe what the problem IS and IS NOT. The more specific you make your problem description, the closer you will be to finding the cause.
3. Find the differences between the IS and the IS NOT.
4. Brainstorm possible causes. What are some changes that could have caused this problem?
5. Test the most likely cause. Which of these possible causes is most likely to be the cause of this problem?
6. Validate the cause. What can we do to prove that the most likely cause is the real cause of the problem?
7. Develop the solution. What action(s) can we take to undo the change that caused this problem?

The Seven-Step Continuous Improvement Process

1. Select the condition to improve.
2. Define how to measure the condition. Before you can improve a condition, you must be able to measure it.
3. Set a target.
4. Gather facts to define the condition as it is now.
5. Generate improvement ideas.
6. Select, test, and adopt improvement ideas.
7. Establish, document, and discipline new procedures.

Problem solving and continuous improvement are very similar. In both cases, you are trying to understand how change affects results. In problem solving, you are trying to find the change that caused a negative deviation from the standard. In continuous improvement, you are trying to cause a positive deviation from the normal by introducing change. In either case, it is essential that these processes become standardized or “institutionalized.” When these processes are institutionalized,

• everyone on your team is taking the same approach to solving problems and improving processes;
• everyone is speaking the same language;
• anyone from your organization (even if they are not members of your team) can study the solutions or improvement steps you are planning and understand how you arrived at them; and,
• people feel empowered because they are using a method that has been sanctioned by the organization.

Most importantly, you will give your business a competitive advantage when the people in your organization genuinely recognize that problem solving and continuous improvement are simultaneously opportunities and obligations. The opportunity is the empowerment that comes from having a tool, recognized throughout your organization, for solving a problem or improving a process. The obligation is the requirement that the tools be used to improve the total quality of your organization.

If problem solving and continuous improvement could benefit your business, our research and strategic planning professionals can help you. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). We’re ready to work for you in a way that will enhance the way your business operates today and in the future.

What You See Is Not Necessarily What Is Real

By Al Weber, President, Tweed-Weber, Inc.


Less than two years ago, two events coincided to deliver a learning point that might be worth sharing.

At a planning meeting for a pretty sophisticated manufacturing company, someone made an off-hand comment about the local library. The CEO of the company, a guy who is well educated and extremely good at what he does, was instantly dismissive. “Libraries,” he said, “who uses them anymore? With the Internet almost everywhere, who needs a library?”

Knowing a little bit about libraries, I responded almost immediately. “Let’s start with tens of millions of people every day and work up from there” was my reply. The CEO was surprised, you could even say shocked, to learn there was still an essential need for libraries in this time where the Internet was “almost everywhere.” We took a short diversion from the agenda of the meeting and discussed the continually evolving role of libraries in today’s diverse world. We talked about the fact that many millions of people use the library to access the very Internet he wrongly assumed came to everyone like it came to him. We talked about the role of libraries educating children and adults, providing paper and electronic books to those who love to read, serving as a “third-place” for people looking for a neutral location to meet up with friends, and delivering non-book resources such as CDs and DVDs to people without other access to them.

At one point, he declared defeat on the point saying, “I guess because I don’t use a library, I just never saw that.” The point here is that what he saw (no current need for libraries) was not real.

Less than a few weeks later, I was rolling out the results of a patron survey to the management team of a library system in Pennsylvania. As we walked through the demographics of the respondents, I reported that their patrons were: more married, better educated, and wealthier than the overall population of the county they served. And, in a statistic that was just dripping with irony, given my CEO’s earlier comments, they were extremely well connected to the Internet. This conclusion was based on the fact that 94% of the respondents had completed the survey from their homes.

One of the key library managers, who was well educated and extremely good at her job, instantly rejected the sample (and its resulting conclusions) saying it was not representative of the people who use her library. Knowing a little bit about sampling, I explained that with 848 respondents we could report the data at a 99% confidence interval, +/- 4% error rate. She could deny the results of the survey all she wanted but if the system were to repeat the survey 100 more times, in 99 of those 100 surveys the results would be the same, plus or minus four percent. Her follow up comment was, “Well, we don’t see those people in our libraries, that’s for sure.” That may very well be, I responded but the respondents felt strongly enough about their library to take the time and complete a survey that I would hardly call “short.”

Further discussion concluded the people they actually recalled seeing in the library were a relatively small number of “frequent flyers.” They were voracious readers who appeared regularly to pick out new books. They were people without a computer in their home who used the technology in the library to check email and search for jobs. They were students who gathered with their friends after school in a place they found safe and fun. They were retirees who came in almost daily to read the newspapers and magazines. They were folks who came in out of the cold or heat to get warm or cool off in the library.

At one point, she declared defeat saying, “I guess I just don’t see those married, educated, affluent people as much because they are not here as regularly.” The point here is that what she saw (her library regulars) was not reflective of all of her patrons, but rather a very small subset of them.

People who lead organizations regularly have to make decisions about and set direction for those organizations. It is easy, and dangerous, to make those decisions and set direction based on individual impressions, opinions, and anecdotes. Good data, whether secondary data from public sources, or primary data from research like the patron survey referenced above, can help you make better decisions based on what is real, not just what you see or hear. In the end, the cost of gathering this data is much less expensive than the price you'll pay for a less-than-good decision.

How do you give yourself an advantage in the marketplace?

Market differentiation. Have you ever wondered how to create that? There are five commonly recognized sources of market advantage. It is not necessary to use all of them in order to distinguish your company in its markets. Any one is enough. However, by achieving differentiation in one source and superiority in another, you further ensure your business's continued success.

No one source is, in and of itself, better than another. Let's explore each of the five sources and their relationship to your company.

Low Price
A company can gain and sustain market advantage in its markets by focusing on and achieving a low price strategy. In order to do this, however, there conditions must be present:

• The company must be a low cost provider. The reason is simple: any company that tries to be low price without being low cost for any extended period will eventually become unprofitable and run out of cash.
• The company must always be low price. This is essential because the market must come to rely on the low price the organization charges for its services. If the organization is only low price with particular programs, when it needs to generate sales, or when it is trying to capture market share, the marketplace will be confused and will not respond.
• The company must position itself in the market as the low price provider. It must consistently and repeatedly tell the market through its promotional mix that its prices are the lowest it will ever find.

Product Differentiation
A company can gain and sustain market advantage by clearly differentiating its products and services from those provided by its competitors. There are several ways in which a company can differentiate its products:

• Innovation/Unique Characteristic: by providing products and services that are highly innovative or possess characteristics unique to a market.
• High Perceived Quality: by providing products and services with high perceived quality.
• Availability/Response Time: by having its products and services readily available to its customers, thereby demonstrating a significantly shorter response time than its competitors.
• Promotion: by promoting its products and services in a way that the market perceives them as being noticeably different than other comparable products. 

Unrivaled Service
A company can gain and sustain market advantage by differentiating, from its competition, the way it sells its products and the support services it provides. Some specific examples of service differentiation include:

• being highly and consistently responsive to customers and their wants and needs.
• delivering products with an unexpectedly high degree of reliability.
• treating the customer with respect...all of the time.

Niching
A company can gain and sustain market advantage by focusing on a very narrow market and becoming recognized as the provider within that market. This focus can take place on a "macro" basis or on a "micro" basis. When a company decides to pursue a niche market on a macro basis, it focuses its organizational resources on:

• a specific geographical area
• a particular customer type
• a highly defined line of products or services

When a company decides to purse a niche market on a macro basis, it focuses its resources on selling its services to specifically targeted prospects and/or increasing its penetration within deliberately chosen key customer accounts.

Relationships Leading to "Partnering"
There is a general rule in business that says, "All things being equal, people would rather buy from a friend." There comes a point, though, when that is no longer true--when other performance factors (e.g. quality, service, price) are not adequate to justify continuing to give business to the friend.

With this rule in mind, you can gain and sustain market advantage by building superior relationships with your customers (and prospects). These relationships can exist on two different levels. At the first level, you have worked hard to identify and meet the needs of your customers. This trust and familiarity has enabled your customers to view you as a "friend," a friend with whom they have a great relationship.

At the second level, you have been able to leverage your relationship into a true partnership--not in a legal sense, but rather one in which the customers view you as being essential to their lives. When a partnership level has been achieved, you are capable of not only meeting your customers' needs, but anticipating them to a point where you are able to create mutually beneficial business opportunities. When this level of partnering occurs, your competitors are at a significant disadvantage because they experience a "barrier to entry" that is all but impenetrable.

Tweed-Weber's research makes it easy to get the information you need to give yourself a clear advantage in the marketplace. You can call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and on Twitter (@TweedWeber). Whether your research project is large or small, you can be assured that Tweed-Weber has the resources, skills, and experience to provide the information and results you need.

Are you thinking strategically about your business?

1. What is strategic thinking or “innovative” thinking?

Strategic thinking is about analyzing opportunities and problems from a broad perspective and understanding the potential impact your actions might have on others.

2. What is the process of strategic thinking?

Strategic thinking is, quite simply, the process of asking questions on a continuous basis.

3. What makes you a strategic thinker?

• Is it your intelligence level? No.

• Is it the number of degrees you have? No.

• Is it how cultured you are? No.

• Is it your job position? No.

• Is it the fact that you are in a management/leadership position? No.

• Is it your ability to understand detailed, technical information? No.

• Is it the ability to have all the answers? No.

You are a strategic thinker if you possess the ability to ASK QUESTIONS without immediately judging the answers.

4. What kind of questions does a strategic thinker ask?

• “Why are we…”

• “How can we…”

• “What would happen if…”

• “What can I do differently?”

5. How does someone begin to think strategically if it does not come naturally?

• Focus on becoming more curious.

• Observe in more detail what is going on around you, and really think about it.

• Do not be embarrassed to ask questions – especially the ones you think you should already know.

• Do not be judgmental or confrontational when asking questions.

• Learn how to probe beyond the first question.

• Accept all answers.

• Be willing to express thoughts and ideas that might be wrong or overruled.

• Be secure enough to recognize a better idea from someone else, and give them credit for it.

• Think ahead – anticipate the most likely results from specific actions.

• Develop a comfort level with uncertainty.

• Become more at ease with taking risks.


Conducting market and/or customer research offers an enormous opportunity for you to think strategically about your business. Asking questions is what it’s all about. Learning about what your customers and prospects are thinking is invaluable; their needs and expectations, their most important purchasing factors and habits, their depth of loyalty, their insights into future trends and sales opportunities (just to name a few areas of interest). When you gather and consider the opinions of the people most crucial to your business, your current and potential customers, when setting your business goals, your success will be greater because you have their voices at your planning table.

If you would like to think strategically about your business, feel free to contact us today. You call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). We can help put market research to work for you in a way that will enhance the way you think about your business priorities today.