Archive for September, 2007
The ASIS security convention in Las Vegas provided a wonderful marketing tutorial.
It was a carnival of booths desperately shouting for attention. All trying to differentiate themselves. Millions were spent on trinkets, collateral and hospitality.
You should go to a large trade show if you get the chance. You’ll learn two important lessons.
Lesson #1: Attention is Short-lived
Exhibitors spent lavishly for a molecule of a buyer’s attention.
Like casinos in Vegas, tradeshow booths had to be larger and more fantastic than their neighbor to just get a look in.
Once attention was gained, then what?
The best you can hope for is:
- Increased awareness – nice, but not a sale
- Relationships furthered – nice again, but still far from hitting your numbers
- Appointments back home – nothing is sold at our trade shows, it all happens back in reality
Lesson #2: Communicating Difference is Hard
We believe our sales pitch is different from the competition.
But it really isn’t, at least not as much as we believe.
It’ll only take one second on a large convention floor to see that.
At the end of the day, although we feel our pitch is unique, to most buyers we still look like a room full of penguins.
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Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: communication, messaging, selling
September 28th, 2007
I’ve just completed a magnificent failure. It was an online training session for a client. From my view it was Rome burning. It was painful. Made me realize how we learn things.
If you’re trying to improve anything you’re likely doing post postmortems. After-the-fact reviews of what went wrong when everything was supposed to go right.
The problem is most failures aren’t painful enough. There’s not enough motivation to dig in postmortems. We want to put mediocre failures behind us quickly. Move on to the next chance for greatness.
Wins don’t teach us either. We’re popping champagne corks and looking for the next victim.
Learning happens best with magnificent failures. They stop us in our tracks – force us to see our assumptions were 180 degrees from reality. They’re so painful we’re ready to do anything not to experience that train wreck again. They force us to look back at what we did , and rethink how to do it better.
I’m not recommending a steady diet of magnificent failures. If we did, we wouldn’t have a business and we’d want to end it all.
But by focusing on the “magnificent” part, failures are gifts. Insights into the reality around us. As painful as they are, they give us the chance to make things better.
What’s your most magnificent failure? What did you learn?
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Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: improvement, learning, management
September 22nd, 2007
Imagine this hypothetical situation: A General Manager oversees three sites, each with its own Site Manager.
Each Site Manager has hired a different security contractor, and each is doing a wonderful job according to their Site Manager. Here’s the problem.
The General Manager wants to standardize security across her portfolio, consolidate to one contractor.
The question is which contractor should she choose. Remember, each Site Manager loves their contractor and is fighting for them to get the entire portfolio.
Theoretical Solution
What if there were a set of standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that were universal within the real estate industry?
Our General Manager could compare contractor performance against each other using these standard KPIs.
These KPIs would provide the General Manager a comparison she could include with the individual Site Managers’ recommendations, as well as other subjective factors. She’d still have a difficult decision, but it would be made easier with better data.
If these mythical standard KPIs existed, they would:
- Be specific to each service, i.e. janitorial, security, engineering, etc.
- Easily enable comparisons & benchmarking
- Identify top performers & promote sharing of best practices
Benefits to Customers If customers had standard KPIs they could use them as part of their contractor selection process, and in performance reviews.
In a bid process, customers could ask contractors for references and request their performance data via standard KPIs from each reference.
Of course, contractors would have to have their references’ permission to share that data. But standard KPIs wouldn’t divulge cumulative totals, which might be considered sensitive information. They’d show performance by percentage scores, or metrics by specific denominators.
For customers, standard KPIs would be an aid in comparing choices, but not the sole selection criteria. Contractors’ management, their values, work style, integrity and commitment would also enter into customers’ selection equations. And these components don’t fit into KPI metrics.
During performance reviews, customers could use standard KPIs to direct incumbent contractors to raise levels. They’d compare incumbents’ performance to other contractors the customer uses, or to other scores from other customer locations. In this arena, standard KPIs would serve as a goal for improvement, rather than a stick for termination.
Benefits to Contractors
All contractors believe they’re good, better than other contractors. Some believe they’re the best.
Standard KPIs could be part of their proof. Validating performance, and then sharing that data would put one’s money where one’s marketing is.
Standard KPIs would validate a contractor’s performance at one or more locations, for one or more customers.
Contractors could use that data to:
- Win more contracts
- Continuously improve site performance
- Motivate competition among their accounts
- Tie compensation to performance
Myth into Reality?
Standard KPIs would have to be developed by a consortium of customers and contractors. They’d have to be formally codified into an industry standard, and most importantly implemented.
Standard KPIs would include vendor management KPIs, such as invoice accuracy and timeliness. These could be common to all types of services.
There would also be service-specific KPIs, such as janitorial’s quality inspection scores, or security’s response to Service Level Agreements. These would be unique to the type of service.
Standard KPIs would have to be limited to the vital few, including only actionable metrics, instead of “nice-to-know” data.
Reality in the Making
Capturing and reporting of performance data would have to be entirely digital and easy. Handheld PDAs, wi-fi, bluetooth, web-based programs all make this a reality. Part of the technology would include standards for sharing data across platforms and systems. Again, this already available.
Developing standard KPIs, gaining acceptance and usage within the corporate real estate industry would be huge. It may seem an insurmountable obstacle.
But it’s not. It’s already being done for high-level processes in the real estate industry by the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) .
It’s Only a Matter of Time
It may be next year, or the next decade, but measuring and sharing service performance is the next frontier for customers and contractors.
As technology increasingly reduces labor-based services, those remaining will have to justify their value and customer spend.
Industry standard KPIs may be the next big thing.
How crazy is this idea?
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Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: KPIs, contracts, measurment, performance
September 15th, 2007
Contracts limit the exchange of value between customers and contractors. Let me re-phrase that: “contract relationships” prevent both parties from getting optimal value from their engagements. Who knows, possibly two to three times more value lies unseen below the surface?
Contract relationships, by their nature, are inefficient. The concept is outdated. Customers and contractors need much more from their engagements. And contracts, as they’re now managed, can’t deliver.
Think about it. Contracts are still closely tied to sticks and carrots. They have lots of baggage. To see how much, try a little experiment.
Ask someone to tell you the first words that come to mind when they hear the word “contract”.
You’re likely to hear “lawsuit”, “legal”, “attorney”, “penalty”, “court”, “fines”, “sued”, “death”, “adversary”.
Productive ideas for a relationship, right?
Yet these ideas are bound to contracts, and contract management. This is the guidance our minds give us.
Even when the term “agreement” is used, we all know it’s still a “contract”.
No wonder contracting services can feel like we’re doing business in the shadow of the courthouse.
Changing the Game
A new model is needed, one that exchanges more value, better, faster, and cheaper. In both directions, for customers and contractors.
That model may be a more fully engaged customer-contractor relationship that would deliver greater value through:
- Fully transparent costs & working together to reduce costs (not profits)
- Continually seeing improvements & innovations
- Greater flexibility to changing & diverse needs
- Increased responsiveness
- Rock-solid reliability & loyalty
This fully engaged customer-contractor model would benefit contractors as much as their customers. It would drive leaner, more efficient operations, force new innovations. As a result there would be more profit, and new capabilities that new customers want.
However, I’ve seen few fully engaged customer-contractor relationships. Those few lasted several years, then dissolved when the customer contact (the leader of the engaged relationship model) left for another company. The replacements were not enlightened, and the former high value disappeared like icicles in July. Eventually, lower quality, lesser service and minimal value became the norm. Customer and contractor had accepted sub-optimal performance. Because it was in the contract.
How engaged are your customer-contractor relationships?
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Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: contracts, management, service industries
September 7th, 2007
I’ve recently come across “sponsored” eBooks, and they caught me off guard. They combine concepts I hadn’t thought were at odds with each other. But together they’re like a tarantula on angel food cake.
Sponsored eBooks are free PDFs, promoted online, written by a Subject Matter Expert (SME) and paid for by a company trying to sell to the SME’s audience. However, sponsored eBooks feel honest and dishonest at the same time.
The sponsor’s brand is on the cover so we know there’s a pitch to buy something somewhere. That’s the honest part.
The pitch is subtle. SMEs write about an audience’s problems, which the sponsors’ offerings solve. The SME doesn’t mention the sponsoring company in the book or call out the offering, but the buying logic is there. That’s the unsettling part.
When reading sponsored eBooks I found I was looking for the pitch. I was trying to figure out what the SMEs tie in to the sponsor was. What they were trying to sell. As a result I missed some of the SME’s content. I was distracted, and suspicious.
What’s my problem? It’s just a book.
Idealism about Books
I believe books are special. What many books are, can be, strive to be, is important.
They’re containers for authors’ ideas and stories, and we want their authentic voices, feelings, thoughts, experiences, research, and opinions. We want to feel it’s coming from them, speaking for themselves, not as spokespersons.
Sponsored eBooks smudge that line between a SME’s authentic voice and sponsors’ marketing messages.
The confusing part for me is the nature of eBooks.
Idealism about eBooks
I love eBooks. They’re portable and agile, easy to create and distribute. They take the idealism of books and democratize sharing.
For marketing purposes, eBooks are great tools to gain audience visibility and credibility. Seth Godin’s Unleashing the Ideavirus
reached at least two million readers and it’s the #1 most downloaded eBook in history. Seth wrote something worth reading and then gave it away as a free eBook. His unadulterated ideas, beliefs, and vision.
Seth gained massive exposure and spread his ideas as a virus through his free eBook. And that’s what his book was about. Brilliant!
Idealism about Content
If SMEs feel strongly about their content and would give it away free to market themselves – why not do that? Under their own name, for their own purposes, marketing or otherwise.
However, if the goal is to make money, why not write content for their sponsors in a straight-forward way? Write in formats that are unambiguous (white papers, case studies, ads, etc.) Brand and promote it unambiguously.
But not all SMEs approach eBooks in the same way.
Idealism about SMEs
There’s nothing evil about being a corporate spokesperson. The Tiger Woods – Nike pairing works. But many A-list actors, such as George Clooney, only do ads and commercials outside the U.S. Why? Possibly to keep there reputation in their primary market as undiminished and undiluted as possible.
It’s a tricky road, reputation and leveraging it for gain.
I now think differently about SMEs who’ve written sponsored eBooks. Before, I imbued them with objectivity regarding their subjects. They are the experts after all. In my mind I’d made them a bit altruistic.
But now the lustre is off, their motives are in question, which is unfair of me. They’ve always been working to earn a living, trying the most effective and efficient ways to do that. The same as you and I.
It’s only my opinion of them that’s suffered. Seeing a little more clearly. A personal lesson learned.
I understand the arguments for eBook as marketing messages. Reaching a sponsor’s target audience by association with a respected SME.
It’s that sponsored eBooks tripped me up. I was confused by not having seen many of them. As a result, I wasn’t sure how I felt about them.
But when they become as common as other forms of corporate sponsorship, I’ll probably see them in the same light as:
- Product placement in movies & TV
- White papers, Case studies, Free webinars
- Infomercials
- Corporate sponsorships in sporting events
I wonder if the Louvre will be diminished by selling its name to the United Arab Emirates for $1.3 billion?
What do you think about sponsored eBooks?
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Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: marketing, sponsored eBooks, subject matter experts
September 4th, 2007
