12 December 2012

How organisations can manage change in their staff’s subconscious


Most of my 20 year marketing career has involved managing change. In fact, I would go as far as to say that understanding change has been more important to my career than learning marketing theory.

Change means new processes, new metrics, different organisation structures, ground breaking technology, outsourcing part of the value chain and focusing on different customers or customer needs. Ultimately, change means we need people in our organisations to do different tasks (or tasks differently) because we are being forced to or because it will lead to greater success.


Every major marketing initiative from my first ecommerce website, through implement an automated dialler, several CRM solutions, social media and analytics right up until the IPad applications that I have launched have relied more on managing change than marketing. And not just technology based marketing projects, rebranding, putting customer insight at the heart of planning, establishing lead generation campaigns, all require major change management.

Of course customer insight is part of these developments DNA, but the initiatives success is comes from managing the change effectively. 

So we educate, explain, make time for stakeholders to question, we are open to shape the change by those most impacted. We produce robust documentation, governance and risk management. All of these ingredients are baked into most organisations change or project management processes.

Yet what nearly all firms ignore is that our behaviours are driven by our values and capabilities, and they live in our subconscious. Organisations rationalise change, just as they do redundancy. They say ‘it’s not you being made redundant, it’s your role.’ Which of course rationally is true, so why does it feel like bereavement to the majority of people affected. Because our subconscious has developed values and capabilities that have always worked for us and no matter how much we try to rationalise at a conscious level, our subconscious holds these values to be true.

So how do organisations manage change at the level of their staff’s subconscious?

Firstly they must recognise that continuous change is the reality of their business.

Secondly, they must ensure that change management is monitored among their leadership as a core skill on which promotion is predicated on demonstrating it.

Finally, and most importantly, they stop looking at branding, staff engagement, culture and their stated values as nice to haves, but essential to the firm's survival. They stop talking about these pillars of successful change management as fluffy, but hard edged measures that will ensure the sustainability of the business models to deliver shareholder value.

Change comes everyday, anyone that says otherwise is a kidding themselves. Any business that doesn’t embrace it is on borrowed time.

13 November 2012

The most fundamental role of social media for B2B is listening


Business marketers increasingly understand the value of a content led marketing strategy.

Engaging current and potential clients through thoughtful and useful content is now more powerful than any other form of marketing for establishing and growing sustainable commercial relationships.

I have found that an effective content strategy needs a clear picture of what content to publish where and when – and that’s needs insight. 

In my recent webinar for BrightTalk I spoke about two important activities for extracting that insight from social media, reporting and analysis.

Reporting is a regular time based activity – setting out volume data what topics, users, channels are most active?

Analysis goes beyond reporting, helping you to become conscious of the conversations about your brand that your organisation is currently unconscious of. An essential part of social media for enterprises; its power is going to help organisations that master gain a real and tangible competitive advantage in the 21st century.

I hope you find this rerun of my 8th November 2012 webinar useful. I love hearing your views on how to effectively collect insight to drive a B2B content strategy, please comment here or through Linked In.

06 November 2012

Pay sales and marketing people the same to get the best results


In my last blog I introduced the importance for marketing to have meaningful metrics in order to justify its performance. In short term sales driven cultures (yes they do still exist), marketing needs metrics to justify its very existence.

Effective marketing throughout the mix has a meaningful and sustainable effect on the long term sustainability of the business. Yet the outcomes we measure seem obscure to the rest of the business, especially the two axis of power in any enterprise, finance and sales. These functions measure their success and the success of the business using currency. ‘A Mark, a Yen, a Buck or a Pound’ are a lot more universal than conversion rates, share of voice and recall. ‘Money makes the world go around.’

But just as marketing needs to move the way that it measures to reflect what the business values, so sales has to evolve to recognise business is no generated at the point of sales but over months and years beforehand. Sales start when the product concept is tested and evolved or when the brand vision is planned and introduced.

Sales people generally believe all the hard work happened at the deal close. They choose to ignore there wouldn’t have been a deal to close without credible brand positioning and competitive products.

Interestingly, I was sent a video by a consultancy called Software Advice that shares my view. You can see the video at CRMSoftware.TV



When I led a sales channel of nearly 100 people, I worked closely with the product people to ensure my incentive schemes gave larger rewards for the most profitable products, or products that generated the most customer loyalty. Not a scheme to meet my phenomenal targets that rewards the bulk sale of the easiest to sell products.

My approach led to dramatic falls in customer churn within 6 months of its introduction and although I made new friends with the product managers; I disappointed the acquisition-marketing people. They wanted to lead on discounts and promotions to drive customer volumes, and not a sustainable share of wallet approach. Had we all shared objectives and incentives I have no doubt we would have been more focused on collaborating to deliver the overall business outcome, sustainable revenue generating customers.

Ever since that time I have been a strong advocate for product managers, sales people, marketers, and indeed fulfilment (operations) teams working to the same objectives with a shared bonus pool. Everyone across business development, including the teams that have to fulfil and service goods and services should put their compensation at risk and share in the success.

I predict that businesses that fail to grasp the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration will soon grasp the fact they are failing customers, themselves and their shareholders.

26 October 2012

Successful investment management businesses formula for social media

In my second blog for Visible Banking, following an event I chaired at London Social Media Week.

I share two shining examples of investment management firms that demonstrate their formula for achieving success in social media. Click here

23 October 2012

What gets measured by marketing gets valued.



One of my all time management hero’s, Jack Welch, often uses this quote from Peter Drucker “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two – and only two – functions: Marketing and Innovation. Marketing and Innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.”

Everyone in marketing recognises this to be true, but few follow through with the responsibility it places on us

I have relied on this quotation on more than one occasion to help protect mine or a client’s marketing budget with varying degrees of success. In each instance, my success came down to how effectively I could demonstrate the value of the activity produced to date.

B2B marketing teams must be able to measure the things that lead to sales, just as sales must understand they have a responsibility to marketing to provide valuable insight and genuine feedback on leads.

The most obvious (and I would suggest minimum) metrics that all B2B marketing functions should publish are:
The number of leads generated from marketing activity
The number of opportunities generated from marketing activity and
The number of revenue generated from marketing activity

Now I know this can be difficult for some businesses. Different lead times and buying cycles mean that a sale today can be from lead two years ago and reporting is rarely perfect at first attempt. But we can’t let these challenges become excuses not measure. We can all get bogged down in figures and statistics but we have to rely on some metrics everyone buys into to demonstrate the value being delivered. The process can crafted over time with input from both sales and marketing.

While this collaboration to report with sales is going on, marketing can get to work on benchmarking how many interactions or reach £1 can buy. This doesn’t measure the things that lead to sales, but does indicate the value for money on the volume of the activity being delivered.

I have done this for an entire marketing budget in the past by taking a base year of activity and budget to cost a primary lead, interaction and reach. It works something like this.

Let’s say you are planning to attend a major trade show that will cost £100k, excluding travel, subsistence and time. The event will have 10k visitors, of which you expect 500 to visit your stand over 3 days.

     £100k ÷ 10k visitors is a potential reach of 100 from a £1 unit cost.

     £100k ÷ 500 visitors is a potential interaction of 2.5 from a £1 unit cost

We can now bench mark this event against all activity in the previous period/year. Let’s say all the activity last year including direct mail responses, web visits over 3 minutes, social media posts and PR cost £600k. Let’s also say it generated reach of 900 and 2.8 interactions for £1 cost respectively, we know the event is in the ball park and is worth investing in.

I hope that helps. Of course the one thing that all B2B marketers know that the text books will never tell you. You only have to generate one lead per year that generates a big enough deal for you to have no trouble securing your budget next year. The trouble is, you have to rely on the sales team to admit it came from marketing.  Infographic

18 October 2012

What to do with ideas when you step out of the shower.


When we think about innovation at work, we most often start with the idea generation process.

The best ideas come when we let our subconscious run free. I find this happens most when I’m running, driving on the motorway and when I’m showering. My wife often finds me, much to her annoyance, sitting on the bed dripping wet and scribbling notes.

Indeed I provided two more ideas on how to generate innovative ideas at work in a recent blog and touched on successful innovation being mainly about delivery. In this blog, I want to explore the value of evaluation stage of innovative ideas that comes after we have the idea and before we start on making them a reality.

As the great actor Rex Harrison puts it better than me "exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realise what is wrong with it."

Being critical of our own ideas is essential, but if we find ourselves continually ruling out our new thoughts, this can lead to creative paralysis. So how do we carryout a meaningful evaluation of ideas without preventing our ability to go on to and create more. Well, here is a great model I recently learned about that not only addresses this dichotomy, it can actually lead to more sustainable ideas.

Any list of the great innovators of the last 100 years includes Walt Disney. Walt Disney by any measure was an extraordinary creator. Not just artistically, but commercially too. He understood the value of his art and how to present it in a way that we could all enjoy it most and he could build a business from it.

Academic Robert Dilts analysed Disney’s approach and modelled a clear separation between his state as a dreamer, a critic and a realist, called the Walt Disney Pattern

After having your idea in the shower, you need to see the process as a storyboard and then step back into it in 3 different roles, or mind states.

Firstly as the realist - think very realistically and devise a specific plan to put your new idea effectively into action.  Secondly, become the critic. Find out if anything is missing or needed and turn the criticisms into questions for the dreamer to address.

Finally, step back into the idea as the dreamer (take another shower if this helps). Think creatively to come up with solutions, alternatives and additions to address the questions posed by the critic. Repeat as many times as required until you go all wrinkly, run out of water or have a blockbuster idea.

15 October 2012

£1.65bn is the cost of denying customer choice.


I imagine that Santander is as disappointed as RBS, that their plan to acquire 318 branches and 250,000 small business customers from UK’s state owned bank has collapsed due to a technology issue; A technology issue that most utilities addressed almost 20 years ago.


UK telcos started planning for number portability in the mid 1990’s as they knew they would never grow with out it. After lengthy consultation by UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, all telcos, including the fledgling start ups and mobile companies had to offer customer portability of their telephone numbers from 19th January 2000.

The deregulation of gas and electricity regulators delivered a similar protocol, enabling customers to switch easily between providers within the terms of their contracts.

While telecoms and utilities companies have come and gone, customer portability being enabler of success or failure, not the root cause. Businesses with the best service and value proposition thrive, regardless of the industry.

Yet the UK retail banking sector has closed its ears to consumer group’s calls for account number portability, and now the whole industry is paying the cost; £1.65bn in RBS case. Had RBS enabled account number portability, the challenge they are facing today in preparing to transfer customers would have already been solved.

This is the ROI case for customer experience and brand. This is the case for delivering the best you can for customers to deliver shareholder value.

So isn’t it time, the new banking regulators take up the mantle for customer choice? Even if it’s just to save the UK retail bank’s shareholders from themselves.

10 October 2012

The meaning of communication is the response you get


Business to business marketing professionals are increasingly understanding the value of a content led marketing strategy. 

Charles Green, author of The Trusted Advisor says “Valuable content is the focus of all successful marketing today.”

Engaging current and potential customers through thoughtful and useful content is more powerful than above the line and direct mail. It can be delivered through channels that customers have opted into, removing its disruptive nature, and can much more effectively targeted.

I accept that writing a blog can seem like producing popcorn if are used to delivering more detailed white papers and magazine articles. I accept that a single blog can never give justice to a large and complex topic. I know that blogs are as transient as the paper we use to wrap fish and chips in.

However, I firmly believe the meaning of communication is the response you get, and one of the most effective ways to get an immediate response to a business idea is to publish it as a blog that will resonate with your customers.  

I am not for a moment advocating producing blogs for the sole purpose of provocation, but obtaining a response is a valuable outcome for blogging commercially.  Longer written pieces have their place, and sometimes anything less may seem vacuous. If you are writing to stand out and generate business, a series of regular blogs focused on the audience you want to engage with is powerful way to start. 

Blogs are low cost, fast to produce and an effective way to get some personality onto your business brand.

Don’t just take my word for it. Last week I attended a super seminar at The British library arranged by Kogan Page.

The highlight for me was two experienced and talented commercial content producers Sonja Jefferson and Sharon Tanton, who’s new book Valuable Content Marketing is much longer than this blog, and even more informed.

28 September 2012

The social media formula for a successful investment management business


In my first blog for Visible Banking, freshly back from a productive week and a successful event in Australia- I share with investment management firms my formula for achieving success in social media.  Click here

21 September 2012

My 3 tips for successful innovation


There are lots of blogs, articles, academic papers, seminars and conventions dedicated to explaining how enterprises should innovate. 

There are even experts, consultancy firms and people like me that have innovation in their job specification.

In fact, a whole industry has been built on the topic. Yet still it eludes most managers and their firms. So just to add to the noise, here are my top three, yes, just three tips on how to innovate in your department.

Innovate when everyone is at his or her cleverest.

We all know, without any shadow of a doubt that ‘we are all clever after the fact.’ So can there possible be any better time to innovate. When something isn’t working or has gone wrong, put your thinking caps on. I know this may sound obvious, but there is a subtle difference in thinking innovatively in this situation and just working out what the heck are we going to do to sort this mess out:

The milk has been spilt, so there is no point crying about it and it can’t get any worse. So let’s get creative, let’s ask whether we should be using milk in the first place.

Ask the people that know best what we should do.

I recently found an amazing piece of insight about a product my firm supplies through analysing unstructured social media data. I validated what I found with the last two years complaints records and found a correlation to inform a business case to change the product feature that caused all of the negative sentiment. Proud of myself I was telling a couple of colleagues in the contact centre about it, and instead of telling me how clever I was, they said ‘oh yeah, we knew that.’

We spend lots of management time and resources trying to figure out how what our customers are thinking, when those people that interact with them every day know. They understand how they feel about us and what their perceptions of us are – but do we ever ask them? Do we spend as much time asking our front line colleagues what they think our customers would think is pretty amazing instead of trying to figure out 40,000 feet from the front line?

It doesn’t matter how many ideas you have.

Successful innovation is not in having the ideas, the insight or data to support the ideas, the business case or the ROI models – it’s in the delivery.

Give the innovation task to the people that deliver. The best innovations in the world are the ones that get delivered; the ones that weren’t delivered are probably all OTE, overtaken by events.

They don’t have to be huge innovations; incremental change is the way of things. It works for Apple and Dell, 3M and GE, some of the greatest innovators in the world. Great leaps like landing a man on the moon relied on hundreds of small incremental innovations, like a pen that works in space (a pencil of you’re a Russian astronaut).

So innovation is simple:
Do it when it’s all gone tits up, ask the people closest to the most important people in the business, customers, and ask someone you know can deliver to do it.

16 September 2012

Making investment decisions from Twitter insight – Part Two

The next study in my review builds on using social media data to inform investment decisions. It is based on the assumption that sentiment towards certain brands and goods affect a firm’s earnings and therefore inform investment decisions.

A Dynamic Model of the Effect of Online Communications on Firm Sales. (Garrett Sonnier, Leigh McAlister and Oliver Rutz)

The McAlister Study found a strong connection between online chatter and a firm’s daily sales. Making social media chatter a valuable resource for investors open to making investment decisions using customer insight to make money in the stock market.

Now as a marketing practitioner, this paper really resonates with me.

Firstly, it speaks right to the principles for Value Based Marketing that the late Peter Doyle set out in his book of the same title. The book incidentally that motivated me to want to study an MBA.

The governing objective of management in all of today's leading companies is to maximise long-term returns to shareholders. Value Based Marketing defines marketing's role as contributing to the task of shareholder value creation.

Secondly, it quantifies what marketing professionals have always known, word of mouth is powerful.

If customers are saying good things about your brand to their network (friends, family, colleagues etc), more people will buy that brand’s products. If customers dislike your price, product, promotion, people, processes or place of business, they will not only not buy from you, but tell everyone too.

Thirdly, it puts customer experience of a brand at the top of the leadership team’s agenda.

McAllister et al found that there is a significant effect of positive, negative, and neutral online communications on daily sales performance. They make the case for executives to listen to customer insight and to act on it. However, one caveat on this final point, from my own experience - combine social media insight with all the other data you have collected into a single view of those topics.

Conclusions
Listening to what is being said in social media and twitter in particular is still a relatively new development. What we are finding out about an organisation’s performance from it is not.

The single biggest take away for the C-Suite is – there is no longer anywhere to hide. Your customers and stakeholders have a collective voice and they are learning how to use it.

Your investors will recognise poor customer experience in your share price.

Click here for supporting slide deck



13 September 2012

Making investment decisions based on insight from Twitter

Predicting individual shares and stock market movements is one of the oldest professions and there are people far better qualified than me to assess the validity of the models used. Automating this process is also not new.

Tech-savvy traders have been sourcing data from reports, press releases and corporate Web sites for years. Genuine advocates of automated predictive models use powerful computers to speed-read content and then letting the machines decide what it all means for the markets.

However, using Twitter is still a relatively new phenomena. In this and my next blog, I will explore how two studies I have come across can inform our thinking on social media and share price.

Twitter mood predicts the stock market. (Johan Bollen, Huina Mao, Xiao-Jun Zeng)

The Bollen et al study results indicated that the accuracy of DJIA predictions from Twitter can be significantly improved by the inclusion of specific public mood dimensions. They claimed an accuracy of 87.6% in predicting the daily up and down changes in the closing values of the DJIA and a reduction of the Mean Average Percentage Error by more than 6%.


The study investigated whether measurements of collective mood states derived from large-scale Twitter feeds are correlated to the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) over time.  They analysed text content of daily Twitter feeds with tracking tools that measure positive vs. negative mood and mood in terms of 6 dimensions (Calm, Alert, Sure, Vital, Kind, and Happy).

Now I’m not convinced by this study.

It seems to me, if the mood is being reflected in the Twittersphere, everyone probably already knows how it will move markets, so there isn’t a whole lot of competitive advantage. Unless of course, it’s insider information, in which case and putting aside the regulatory and moral minefield that comes with this hypotheses; Investors would need a high risk tolerance to act on it without verification and the opportunity cost of seeking verification would render the Twitter news obsolete.

If that isn’t enough to be wary of, as a researcher posted on Quora “There's also a paradox: once there are enough tweets about the inside information it's no longer really inside information. Twitter is probably best used for assessing the herd mentality. One strategy might be to look at all the dumb stuff people are saying and then bet the opposite.”

In my next blog, I will look at the sales effect of the volume of positive, negative, and neutral online communications captured by social media monitoring technology and classified by automated sentiment analysis.