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
Showing posts with label market perception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label market perception. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Are You the Leader of Your Pack?
by Al Weber, President, Tweed-Weber, Inc.
As a research company that does strategic planning, we view all of our research design and reporting activities through the lens of “what does this say about our client’s degree of differentiation.” Good strategy directs an organization to leverage its strengths to mitigate its weaknesses to capture market opportunities. However, in the long run, none of this matters if it doesn’t enable the organization to gain and sustain a measureable advantage over its competitors.
To identify the competitive point from which our client is starting, we regularly go to our client’s customers and ask them to assess our client relative to other similar organizations. These organizations are frequently direct competitors. It’s at this point we are able to determine if our client is competitively differentiated or just one of the pack. Because we are a non-threatening third party with good interviewing skills, we find our survey respondents are surprisingly candid.
In our survey design process, we will identify a number of performance areas that our client believes are important to their customers. These areas can include customer service, product quality, innovation, relationships, reputation, value for price, overall price, etc. We will then ask those customers to evaluate our client as either the “market leader,” “one of the pack,” or “market follower” in each of those areas. The results speak volumes, and it is often the first time our client has statistically valid confirmation of how differentiated they are (or are not) in their market.
In a recent competitive assessment for a logistics company, for instance, their customers unambiguously declared they were the market leader in all areas except price, where they were rated as competitive or one of the pack. It was exciting to congratulate them for developing a competitive advantage that enabled them to not have to rely on price to sell their services. In another assessment of an apparel manufacturer, we were able to tell our client they were perceived as a market leader in value. This, to the dismay of some sales folks, shot holes in their “our prices are too high” complaints.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to have to tell a new client that they are completely undifferentiated. Worse yet is telling them they are negatively differentiated. That is, they are a market follower, best known for their weaknesses. While this is certainly undesirable news, isn’t it always better to know the bad news than simply suspect it based on declining sales or increasing customer flight?
Any company that invests in data that can reliably define it as a market leader can plan to capitalize on the opportunities that come from that competitive differentiation. If the company is merely one of the pack or a market follower, it can focus on improving its performance and moving the needle on its market position.
If you would like to know if you're leading the pack, 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).
As a research company that does strategic planning, we view all of our research design and reporting activities through the lens of “what does this say about our client’s degree of differentiation.” Good strategy directs an organization to leverage its strengths to mitigate its weaknesses to capture market opportunities. However, in the long run, none of this matters if it doesn’t enable the organization to gain and sustain a measureable advantage over its competitors.
To identify the competitive point from which our client is starting, we regularly go to our client’s customers and ask them to assess our client relative to other similar organizations. These organizations are frequently direct competitors. It’s at this point we are able to determine if our client is competitively differentiated or just one of the pack. Because we are a non-threatening third party with good interviewing skills, we find our survey respondents are surprisingly candid.
In our survey design process, we will identify a number of performance areas that our client believes are important to their customers. These areas can include customer service, product quality, innovation, relationships, reputation, value for price, overall price, etc. We will then ask those customers to evaluate our client as either the “market leader,” “one of the pack,” or “market follower” in each of those areas. The results speak volumes, and it is often the first time our client has statistically valid confirmation of how differentiated they are (or are not) in their market.
In a recent competitive assessment for a logistics company, for instance, their customers unambiguously declared they were the market leader in all areas except price, where they were rated as competitive or one of the pack. It was exciting to congratulate them for developing a competitive advantage that enabled them to not have to rely on price to sell their services. In another assessment of an apparel manufacturer, we were able to tell our client they were perceived as a market leader in value. This, to the dismay of some sales folks, shot holes in their “our prices are too high” complaints.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to have to tell a new client that they are completely undifferentiated. Worse yet is telling them they are negatively differentiated. That is, they are a market follower, best known for their weaknesses. While this is certainly undesirable news, isn’t it always better to know the bad news than simply suspect it based on declining sales or increasing customer flight?
Any company that invests in data that can reliably define it as a market leader can plan to capitalize on the opportunities that come from that competitive differentiation. If the company is merely one of the pack or a market follower, it can focus on improving its performance and moving the needle on its market position.
If you would like to know if you're leading the pack, 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).
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Brand? Humph... What is it Good For? Absolutely Everything!
Brand is a simple five-letter word that holds the fate of a company in its hand. When shopping, we tend to gravitate towards those brands that have the most recognition and deem them as being worthy of time/money (no matter how much cheaper the generic version may cost). Does the name-brand version have different ingredients that make it better than the generic version? In most cases, it doesn’t. It comes down to being psychological, because as a society, we are engrained with this brand is the best, while the other ones aren’t in the same arena.
The idea for the importance of branding dawned on me while I was conducting phone interviews for a client for a perception survey. About almost half of the stakeholders had little to no knowledge of whom or what the exact purpose/mission of the organization was, and most times got it confused with another organization in the area (with a somewhat similar name). This lack of knowledge can simply be defined as a lack of brand recognition, which only takes a simple fix – creating more awareness!
I asked myself, why does branding impact the fate of a company? If the company has a good product, shouldn’t that make it profitable (even if it isn’t name-brand)? Somehow, it all comes back to the brand… but why?
I found this interesting quote by Scott Goodson in his article, Why Brand Building is Important, and it helped shed some light onto this subject for me:
The idea for the importance of branding dawned on me while I was conducting phone interviews for a client for a perception survey. About almost half of the stakeholders had little to no knowledge of whom or what the exact purpose/mission of the organization was, and most times got it confused with another organization in the area (with a somewhat similar name). This lack of knowledge can simply be defined as a lack of brand recognition, which only takes a simple fix – creating more awareness!
I asked myself, why does branding impact the fate of a company? If the company has a good product, shouldn’t that make it profitable (even if it isn’t name-brand)? Somehow, it all comes back to the brand… but why?
I found this interesting quote by Scott Goodson in his article, Why Brand Building is Important, and it helped shed some light onto this subject for me:
No branding, no differentiation. No differentiation, no long-term profitability. People don’t have relationships with products, they are loyal to brands. In a movement strategy, brands have a purpose that people can get behind. Brands can inspire millions of people to join a community. Brands can rally people for or against something. Products are one-dimensional in a social media enabled world; brands are Russian dolls, with many layers, tenents, and beliefs that can create great followings of people who find them relevant. Brands can activate a passionate group of people to do something like changing the world. Products can’t really do that.
After reading this quote several times, it all started to make sense. No matter what a brand sells, and no matter how good that product may be, the brand is the ultimate selling factor. Like Scott Goodson said, “brands are Russian dolls, with many layers,” they have “beliefs that can create great followings.” In the news, we saw what happened with Chick-fil-A, A&E, etc., when a person’s beliefs were not what the public-at-large believed. Boycotts were started and “loyalties” were hampered for a couple of weeks. But should a brand’s reputation be on the line for one person’s beliefs? In today’s day in age, a brand’s message is what sells the products, and if their message goes against a group’s message, it creates a conflict of interest. It is how a brand can “activate a passionate group of people to do something,” like national movements.
Even with the national movements I just talked about, we will still always go towards something that is more familiar and we know has a good track record, no matter what the product or message may be. Take for example, Sony. We all know it is a reliable brand, plain and simple, but take another electronics company, let’s say Acer, and we double-think about how the product will be because it’s unfamiliar to us. This occurs in every industry, with people gravitating towards the familiar. It’s all about how you can set yourself apart and become the name-brand in your industry.
But how can you tell if you’re the name-brand in your industry? For starters, a perception survey could be greatly beneficial to your company because not only do you get strategic feedback (either negative or positive, or both), but you get your name out there and draw awareness to those who may be unfamiliar with your company. With designed-personally-for-you surveys, you get the chance to showcase your company – mission, vision, areas of expertise, etc. It’s the “simple” fix your company just may need.
To find out more about our designed-personally-for-you perception surveys and how they 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).
Even with the national movements I just talked about, we will still always go towards something that is more familiar and we know has a good track record, no matter what the product or message may be. Take for example, Sony. We all know it is a reliable brand, plain and simple, but take another electronics company, let’s say Acer, and we double-think about how the product will be because it’s unfamiliar to us. This occurs in every industry, with people gravitating towards the familiar. It’s all about how you can set yourself apart and become the name-brand in your industry.
But how can you tell if you’re the name-brand in your industry? For starters, a perception survey could be greatly beneficial to your company because not only do you get strategic feedback (either negative or positive, or both), but you get your name out there and draw awareness to those who may be unfamiliar with your company. With designed-personally-for-you surveys, you get the chance to showcase your company – mission, vision, areas of expertise, etc. It’s the “simple” fix your company just may need.
To find out more about our designed-personally-for-you perception surveys and how they 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).
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.
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