Brickyard Partners

I recently received a catalog from Zingerman’s market in Michigan. They are renowned for their customer service… they teach courses on it and released a book about it.

What they also get right is making their marketing literature a fun and engaging read. It tells a story and becomes a bit of a page turner.

The description for their “Brownie Sample Gift Pack” from their catalog:

Evidence of Evolution

Once upon a time, we only made one kind of brownie. Connie made them in our tiny kitchen, they were Connie’s Brownies. Loaded with chocolate and toasted walnuts, we started shipping them across the country when customers moved out of town and called back to Zingerman’s, begging for a dozen. Their lure was magical, their name changed to reflect it—we started calling them Magic Brownies. Then, after almost two decades, we decided to expand our minds a little, try new combinations. Here’s the delicious result. These new delights rose from our original, primordial brownie and now, like their sire, fly all across America. Lately, they’ve also become a bit sassy—they know they’re nearly our most popular pastry and it’s going to their heads. Send them as a gift and you’ll find out why. The Deluxe version of this gift box has six brownies: 2 each of our original Magic Brownies with toasted walnuts, caramel Dulce de Leche Buenos Aires Brownies and Pecan Blondies. The Ultimate version adds four more: 2 each of our Orange Almond Magic and Genuinely Ginger Brownies.

Is your brochure (even if it is a simple corporate brief) a truly interesting read?

What if you turned it into something anybody would love to read?

I just finished re-reading Tom Kelley’s excellent book: “Ten Faces of Innovation.” It remains one of my favorite business reads. There is a section towards the end of the book that focuses on “the subject of waiting – an unavoidable element in most customer journeys- and I believe that the way you manage those critical wait times can make all the difference in how your company is perceived.”

Too few consider that the entire time your current or potential customer is waiting for you they are interacting with your brand and your company.

Mr. Kelley points out a variety of strategies to keep people informed, as they wait, that mainly center around music/messages on hold and that friendly voice that tells you your expected wait time. These options are certainly better than dead air but they have existed for over 10 years. It’s simply old news and really doesn’t dramatically change the experience of waiting. If I am waiting for you, I am already inside YOUR customer experience. So… make it an experience! There simply has been too little innovation in customer waiting time.

And there is an opportunity for you to seize.

If you do not know where waiting is occurring within your customer experience then that is the first place to focus on. Find out and write them all down. Figure out what they are doing while they are waiting. Are they on hold? on a line? Are they lost in the dark while waiting for a delivery? You don’t need to put together a task force for this or have a bunch of meetings. Grab a pad, call 10 customers and ask them.

What information could you be giving them during this time that would make that time truly valuable and memorable? Implementing innovation in just this area will make an enormous impact. Make it a goal to implement just 1 new tactic In the next 30 days. Repeat as necessary.

“What Matters Now” is an e-book that was created and curated by Seth Godin as he invited writers, bloggers, thinkers and doers to contribute 20-200 words about what they were thinking about as we head into 2010.

I was honored to have been asked to contribute to the e-book. My contribution, titled “Connected”, is on page 12.

More importantly, I think you will find an inspiring thought (or three) on every page. Writers include many of my heroes like Mr. Godin, Tom Peters, Hugh Macleod, Fred Wilson, Alan Weber, John Moore, Tony Hsieh, Guy Kawasaki and many more (over 70 essays in all).

You can download it for free here or view it online at scribd.com here. Or simply click through the Scribd document below.

It is free to share, post, tweet,etc…. and promotes a very worthy cause for those less fortunate than us. Happy reading and my thanks to Seth for inviting me to join in!

What Matters Now

Through careful analysis and clarity of thought Jim Collins always seems to cut to the core of what makes organizations grow and fail.  If you did not watch this already, his latest visit to Charlie Rose is loaded with useful insights for any business at any stage.

Video can temporarily be seen by clicking here

His latest book, How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In is a highly recommended read.

Do you remember when flying on a big airliner (and with a major airline) was exciting?

Only 10 years ago I was a very loyal United fan. I told everyone how much I enjoyed flying them, my frequent flier points often bumped me to business class and I generally felt that I was part of a club when flying United vs anyone else. Most importantly, I would not fly with anyone else regardless of price (as long as United was flying there). By treating me as a valued guest they created a raving fan.

Oh how times have changed. I now avoid flying United at all costs. My latest attempt to try to use up old miles bought me a first class seat to LA that had me enter the gate across a dirty red mat (Calling it a carpet would be insulting to all carpets), sitting in a seat that was falling apart, a choice of food that was not actually available on the plane and a portable DVD player that had me tangled up in wires across both sides of my seat. Not the experience First Class should be.

Growing up I used to always get dressed up when I would fly. If people stopped to think about what it took to “jump” from New York to Los Angeles perhaps they would realize the remarkable treat it actually is. What if the airlines did a better job reminding you of that story?

Now more than ever, we long for simpler times. Don’t get me wrong, the live TV and wi-fi at 38,000 feet is great, but the romance that delivered such a memorable experience has been lost along the way. An airline that can capture that would set it itself apart. Simple elegance in flight,etc…  There are no costs involved here.  This is about the culture of an organization.  At its most basic, it is about the love of flight.

The old guard airlines have to find a way to deliver that experience and romance again if they want the loyalty and word of mouth that will sustain them through these tough times. A big and fun challenge for an Airline ready to think beyond checked bag fees. The kind of purpose an entire company can rally around.

This was the first post I ever wrote for this blog back in 2005.  Given all that is going on in the economy and in your business world I thought it was appropriate to publish it again.  Now is the time to challenge your thinking, embrace a different approach and get back to the basics that give you and your business purpose and passion. Find your basics…. and rock them!

In a former life, I was running my own logistics company. It nearly killed me. Tears, fear and stress.

“Business is tough,” they say. “You were expecting it to be fun and rewarding? What planet were you on?”

I had lost the plot.  I was always working for “what will be” instead of enjoying “what was”.

Railing against my dumb competitors and how their cheap prices and poor service was ruining a once proud industry. Surely my clients would see that choosing a giant competitor was a mistake.  I knew why we were better…  My sales staff would tell people how we were the best of all worlds.  Why weren’t they flooding through the door?

But I wasn’t alone.  Scores of business owners wake up at, the proverbial, 2am wondering why they lost a customer to the supposed “poor service competitor”, wondering why their latest branding message or marketing blast isn’t making the phones ring off the hook and stressed at forces that seem outside of their control.

Looking back, experience tells me if your main purpose is keeping up with the competition, then you’re already halfway in the business morgue.

The competition is not the problem, YOU are the problem. Unless you are the CEO of Wal-Mart or of the same lowest-price-wins ilk, I would love to know why your competitors truly matter.

Why would you want your competition to dictate your actions?

If you knew what your ideal clients really wanted (what was truly meaningful), nothing more, and you delivered that to them perfectly… then suddenly…

Suddenly, there is no competition. Other people’s prices, other people’s products.  They’re not real. Like Bhudda would say, “just an illusion.”

What IS real is the people you care about and finding out a way to look after them better.

Keeping up with the Jones’ is never fulfilling in your home life, so why should it work in business? Critical point.

You don’t need to be the next Microsoft. You don’t need to find a cure for cancer. You don’t need to borrow millions of venture capital dollars with the hope to pay it back once you hit 1,000,000 members, visitors,etc… Every business has a meaningful reason for being. It doesn’t have to be connected to what you sell but it IS important that you connect to it. This connection makes all the marketing and sales really work… Without it, not so much.

Growing a solid, strong and sustainable business that takes care of the owners, the staff, their community and their clients is a superior result. Anything more is just vanity and needless suffering.

The journey of owning your business should be just as fun and exciting as the end game.

Believe. Innovate. Be Unique. Don’t spend forever on the dreaming part,  just start doing it. Make it fill up your cash account.  Enjoy the whole experience. The way to get there is not necessarily to “fight like hell” …rather to get the business to a place where you can be passionate about it and enjoy the 10-20 hours a day you will spend doing it.

When you arrive at this place it will no longer feel like a fight… just a great part of your life.

From Tim Sanders “The Likeability Factor.” In it, he paraphrases a line from Dale Carnegie’s “How To Make Friends and Influence People“…

“You will win more friends in the next 2 months developing a sincere interest in 2 people than you will ever win in the next 2 years trying to get 2 people interested in you.”

The Brickyard Partners version…

“You will win more new clients in the next 2 months developing a sincere interest in 2 prospects than you will ever win in the next 2 years trying to get 2 prospects interested in you.”

Q: What if you approached (and targeted) each prospect because you were truly interested and fascinated by their business and/or the type of people they are?

How would that change your entire sales and marketing approach?

Are you fascinated by your clients and their business? If not, why not?

EXTRA CREDIT: Apply the same standard to your vendors/suppliers.

Complaining is easy. In the end, it only provides some temporary relief from frustration. Figuring out and executing a smart solution is the hard part.

One shouldn’t come without the other.

I worked with a company a few years back whose President brought along a Super Soaker water gun to every staff meeting.

All meetings had 1 simple rule: Nobody is allowed to whine/complain about something unless they also propose a solution that fixes that problem. Failure to do the hard part resulted in a soaking blast of water.

Blogs (this one included) have made it even easier to throw out a rant about bad and bungled customer service, etc…

Complaining doesn’t change things for the better. Putting smart solutions into action does.

Ironically, in the long run, doing the hard part is far more fulfilling.

Everyone is obsessed and wrestles with delivering that Wow moment or idea. Whether it is to an audience, a customer or your boss, the quest for something that will make the sale, the promotion or simply that big “difference” is always pushing at the back of our minds.

Over time people have become numb to the Wow moment. Imagine what made your eyes light up as a child compared to what it takes today. When my son looks at a TV screen you can almost see in his face the look of total awestruck wonder. To us, it is a TV and the absolute magic of what is actually going on to allow us to watch it has become completely forgotten.

What does catch our attention is when all of those forgotten things stop working. The cable signal goes out or the sound is lost. The fits of rage we get when the cell phone will not work over a 90 mile stretch of highway while you are traveling at 65 miles per hour. When Twitter, a high cost service we all use for free, does not work for a few hours.

So perhaps the “Wow” has become reminding people of the magic that goes on to make it all seem so easy. Those that understood what it took to broadcast the Academy Awards live to the world would be awestruck by the technology and complexity. How many of us know what it takes to manage the tens of millions of Twitter messages that are posting every minute, hour and day?

As you ponder how to deliver your wow perhaps try thinking about why what you do, making the assumption that what you do is excellent, needs that wow on top. What has been forgotten along the way so the ‘magic’ you do everyday is not a wow moment anymore.

How can you do a better job of explaining that hidden magic?

Related post – “When you know how it is built”

Two of my favorite sayings are ..

“Big hat, big boots….. No cattle” and the similar… “All smoke…No roast”

It occurs to me that too many businesses suffer from my own variation:

“All Gas… No brakes”

The hurry to reach what realistically should be their 5-7 year goal/vision in 2 years (or less) has, among other ills, caused business owners to let their sales and marketing initiatives get so far ahead of their operational capabilities that they drown under their own new business success.

As military history proves, the speed at which an army can sustain an effective advance is directly related to the speed at which supply/support forces can follow up behind them.

While you spend a lot of time driving your sales efforts, quotas and marketing efforts forward… Do you have a plan in place on how you are going to provide the exceptional service to the new clients that you expect to gain this month, quarter or year? How much time, energy and money do you spend on THAT vs. your sales and marketing efforts?

Applying some brakes to your sales efforts to allow your business to take on new clients with care and attention will yield a superior first impression, promote consistently positive word of mouth and a sales force that can go out with greater confidence that they can absolutely deliver on what they are selling.

It also provides you with the time to hire at your own pace, train your team properly and make sure your existing clients do not suffer from your growth.

What’s more, slowing things down to a speed that can be managed with great control and care, ironically, creates a steady increase of speed that still allows you to enjoy the scenery along the way.