S&MM SoundOff

But Why Mom?

Remember when authority boomed "Because I said so" and no one asked any more questions? Well, those famous words uttered first by Mom and Dad just don’t cut it in business.

J.D. Power and Associates released a customer satisfaction survey in early November that polled UK electricity consumers. Though satisfaction was affected by price, companies could control fussing by informing people about increases early or by explaining the reason for the price hike. If only Mom had read the survey—you might have eaten the peas if she had just clarified the benefits of antioxidants.

The truth is, customers want to know why. And shouldn’t they get an answer? Company accountability keeps gas below $5 a gallon (for now), nuclear waste dump out of our backyards (usually) and the doctor from putting us through unnecessary testing (bloodletting would still be practiced if no one had questioned its real advantages). In a government with checks and balances, this is our right. We are corporate America’s check.

The New York Public Library’s exterior wall is engraved with, “But above all things, truth beareth away the victory.” And we want the truth. Honesty is the best corporate policy because consumers value truth more than price. A scene in the recent Miracle on 34th Street shows a woman talking with a Cole’s department store manager right after her son sits on Santa’s lap. Old Kris Kringle tipped them off to cheaper prices at another store, but his honesty convinced the mother to shop at Cole's for everything but toilet paper and bananas. The department store soon adopts the phrase, “If we don’t have it, we’ll find it for you.” Isn’t that a hook in real life too? Best Buy and Circuit City offer price guarantees, they’ll match the lowest price you can find anywhere else. And that keeps everyone honest. So let’s just tell the truth, after all none of us wants a big nose, right Pinocchio?

--Jackie Hunzinger

Holiday Tears

With the holidays already under way and festivity planning in full-swing, the all-too-familiar holiday stress begins to seep in.  The added strain of the season can not only ruin the Christmas cheer but can also overload those in already high-pressure job positions.

An MSNBC.com article investigates the research behind the occurrence known as “desk-rage,” a display of uncontrolled on-the-job anger that is becoming more frequent in the workplace. According to the study, stress is the cause for emotional displays at work, including screaming matches, tears, and even physical violence and assault.   What's shocking is that about half of respondents reported encountering these negative outbursts.

With tensions high during the holidays, and employees at the end of their fuses, the possibility for desk-rage can flare up as well. And it’s important to make sure you aren’t fueling your own burnout.  Take this quick and helpful quiz to see if you’re at risk for an office job-burnout.

And if you are having feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, fatigue, or frustration with your job, these tested stress-relieving products could help you cope.

Editor’s note: Try creating your own relaxing at-home spa with these Potentials-recommended products on ManageSmarter.com to combat some of the common causes of workplace stress.

Listen to Mother

This article in the Wall Street Journal perfectly exemplifies the correlation between employee satisfaction and profits. A small U.K. ad agency called Mother attributes much of its success to its egalitarian culture and employee perks. Its worker loyalty results in stable teams that have helped build solid customer relationships, to the point that clients arrive early for meetings just so they can hang out with the agency’s team members.

How can you boast the same type of relationships with your clients? When times are tight, many companies cut down on what they view as expendable spending on employees. Benefits are cut, holiday parties are scaled down, and bonuses fall by the wayside. Mother, on the other hand, has spared no expense to offer unusual perks like weekly massages, free hot lunches, a winter ski trip, three-month sabbaticals and days off for birthdays (and the day after Mother's Day, naturally). The result?

The Front of the Funnel

By Dave Stein, CEO & Founder, ES Research Group

There are a multitude of approaches, solutions and tools that if employed in an integrated fashion, can make a difference in your company's ability to generate quality leads. Some methods to consider:

* A dedicated in-house or outsourced telemarketing function.
* Monthly e-newsletters to a nurtured list of opt-in subscribers.
* Event marketing such as breakfasts, seminars, Webinars, etc.
* Media relations work resulting in press placements, raising your company's credibility and perhaps generating inbound inquiries.
* Partner and customer referral programs.
* Trade shows.
* Sources of leads for outbound calling, e.g., a purchased database for your target market.
* Targeted direct marketing (e-mail or snail mail).
* Advertising and other branding mechanisms.
* Web marketing, including SEO of maximum exposure, affiliate programs, downloadable value, e.g., white papers.
* An analyst relations function to get your products or services covered del parentheses positively by industry influencers.
* Cold-calling by sales reps.

Higher standards, but grass-roots efforts

Simply brilliant. That's what I would call a corporate celebration that became wildly popular on YouTube, a favorite on VH1's "Best Week Ever" and the clip of the week on E!'s "The Soup." You can't buy that kind of advertising, and the demographic is a gold mine.

I'm talking about the Bank of America employee who marked his company's merger with MBNA by singing his own rendition of U2's "One," complete with not only brand-specific lyrics, but competitor-bashing ones as well: "What's in your card? It's not Capital One."

Bank of America has hit the marketing jackpot for its 15 minutes, being in the enviable position of having thousands of consumers--many with bank accounts--seek them out. Maybe it's for a few laughs, but think of the brand awareness Bank of America is creating. It's feel-good press that doesn't look like marketing at all.

--Jacqueline Durett

Yet Another Sports Arena Goes Corporate

Here in the New York region, much ado is being made about Citibank's recent purchase of the naming rights to the Mets’ new baseball stadium for a hefty price tag of more than $20 million a year for at least 20 years.

As I listened to a man-on-the-street spot on the radio this morning, I found out that New Yorkers opinions on the future Citi Field were mostly negative. I wondered whether the banking conglomerate wasn’t hurting its brand by offending diehard fans with forsaking the original Shea Stadium name.

Of course, stadium-naming rights are nothing new, and as much as sports fans have lamented the big-business home-field takeover, in time they’ve become accustomed to calling their arenas the Staples Center or Invesco Field (though I can’t imagine the Houston Astros feel very masculine playing at Minute Maid Park).

Oops! I Did It Again

What do you do when your company makes a major blunder?

NYTimes.com recently reported a voluntary recall of about 11 million bottles of 500-milligram acetaminophen caplets made by the Perrigo Company. The pills, which the Food and Drug Administration reported as containing traces of metal fragments, had been sold at major retailers, such as CVS and Wal-Mart, for as long as three-years.  The company said the metal pieces were the result of premature equipment wear-out and an investigation discovered metal in roughly 200 pills of the 70 million it tested.

Big oops, Perrigo. What I want to know is how did it take the company up to three years to discover the contaminated pills?  What could have been done differently and what was overlooked?  And what are the consumer ramifications?

When any business makes a major, potentially preventable, mistake, the effects can be incredibly damaging to the bottom line –- new clients refuse to contemplate collaboration; existing clients question their current partnership; and previous clients go back and reevaluate the services they had rendered.  My question is, how does a company recover from a major blunder? Can it be exonerated for such an enormous mistake and its reputation restored –- or will the error indefinitely remain as an unforgiving scar?

* Editor's note: Read up on the latest management best practices on ManageSmarter.com to help prevent your own business "oops."

What Would You Do?

James Strickland has a culture clash on his hands. The director of sales for Quantum Inc. is an advocate of taking a chance on young salespeople, and has always been willing to develop training and mentoring programs to build up the next-generation sales force. But the past few years, he’s noticed more of a generation gap between the veterans and the newbies that threatens his team-selling model.

He’s been fielding complaints from both sides: The older account executives complain that the younger reps don’t take direction well, aren’t willing to earn their way to handling greater duties, and aren’t accountable for their work. The younger staffers believe that at times the veterans are condescending, don’t trust their work ethic, and don’t provide them with enough responsibility or ownership in the accounts.

The situation has become so bad that much of Strickland’s time is spent putting out fires and smoothing over intra-team arguments over how accounts should be handled. Though he hasn’t lost any business yet, one client commented to him that he's noticed tension between team members. Strickland is closer in age to the veteran sales staffers, but he can see both points of view—yet no matter how much he tries to communicate that pointing fingers isn’t the solution, neither side is quick to admit fault or make concessions.

Strickland has staged teambuilding activities and tries to celebrate team wins with dinners and social outings in hopes of getting his sales team to interact in an environment outside of the office. Though these seem to work temporarily, the same issues resurface and he often finds himself playing referee again. Strickland wants to avoid the “us vs. them” mentality that is becoming pervasive, but short of reorganizing—or admonishing—his entire team, he isn’t sure how to remedy the situation.

How can Strickland get all generations of his sales force to compromise and work as a cohesive team? Should he take a harder stance and force his reports to make nice? Should he implement more training or coaching to bridge the generation gap? Or is there another solution?

Help out us out readers! E-mail your response (for our Jan/Feb. issue) to [email protected]. And don't forget to include your name, title, company, and location.

Copyrighted Ads

On Tuesday I attended AdTech, the self-described #1 event for digital marketing. Even in New York, the supposed center of advertising, it’s easy to forget how many billions of dollars are spent to make me buy things. This conference certainly reminded me.

The conference also showed how little advertisers and marketers understand the youth demographic. As a 23-year-old, I’ve made some commitments, but I haven’t promised myself to a computer brand, type of beer or model of car. Advertisers take note—my spending money is up for the highest bidder, e.g. the one with the best ad campaign.

That’s why I was surprised to hear Peter Naylor, the Senior VP Digital Media Sales for NBC describe YouTube as a “frienemy.” That one word pretty much sums up NBC’s relationship with the site. The company posted this satirical video of “Bill the Promo Guy” on YouTube that encourages people to watch NBC shows while mocking the self-importance of its ad team (friend). But after the Google buy-out, NBC took down all of its copyrighted material that had found its way to the site (enemy). To me, this seems like a big mistake. Until YouTube, I rarely watched the Daily Show but after seeing illegal clips on the site, I became a real fan. Likewise, the clips I saw of My Name is Earl were certainly better pitches for the show than a picture of Jason Lee on the side of a bus.

NBC is being short-sighted to see copyrighted videos on YouTube as theft instead of as free advertising. What’s a better testament to your product than a free sample?

Marketing--It's More Than Just A Pretty Face

Reader's Sound Off
By Ron Hayes, Director of Marketing
Pacific Steel & Recycling

A previous post talked about how important personal appearance is to the success of the salesperson. The success of a business is no different. Regardless of your industry, the better you keep your store, office or firm, the more comfortable your customers will feel in coming and doing business with you.

But does it stop at neatness? If you really want your customers to rave about doing business with you, you must ensure that their experience is as user-friendly as possible. Signs and easy-to-understand directions go a long way. The less questions a customer has to ask, the more comfortable and less confused they will feel.

A colleague of mine once suggested to the owner of a small sandwich shop that he put a very readable sign on the soda machine indicating where customers could get water. Positive comments began pouring in and word-of-mouth soon increased his business. All because of a small sign that took minutes to create and place.

Look around your business space, whether it's a physical location or a stop in cyberspace. Be a customer for a minute. What questions could you answer beforehand with a simple sign or click of a button? Is your process for doing business easily spelled out and easily followed? Find ways to make it more convenient. Go through this process on a regular basis and you will be amazed at the loyalty you will build.