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People and Culture Don’t Change

October 5, 2016 //
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It’s really hard to change the culture iof an organisation. It’s even harder to do it quickly.

This is because culture is made up of people, who themselves find it particularly hard to change their engrained behaviour, as you might expect. You’re expecting people to change who they are. Not gonna happen, at least not without a ton of effort, time and patience.

I remember working with a company in the last 2o years where we worked hard on establishing the mission and values of the organisation, those important things we stood for. The difference, however, between what was on paper and what was exhibited by people, from the CEO down, was considerable. The value statements looked great on paper, but that was not how the company behaved.

This is why culture eats strategy for lunch, and why it’s so important that, once you’ve genuinely established the culture of your organisation, you hire people who are true to that culture. It’s easier said than done.

People and culture don’t change. Sometimes people join a company and find the culture is different to their experiences of it before they joined. Other times people join a company thinking – or more likely hoping – that the prevailing culture there is a good fit for them. In either situation, if you find yourself in a business either where the corporate culture is not your culture, it’s a good idea to consider trying to find a company where there is a fit, preferably as soon as possible.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Sales, Strategy, Technology

I Died

September 30, 2016 //
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These days, you hear kids say ‘I died’ all the time. Not as in ‘I died laughing,’ like my generation would have said, but as in ‘oops, I died,’ from losing their virtual life in a video game or anything that simulates real life.

It got me thinking about how seldom you would have heard kids saying that before video games like Pac Man, Space Invaders and the like. After all, to actually die – well, it’s a pretty horrendous concept for those of us who feel we haven’t accomplished much yet.

What a poor memory I had, and what a classic example of falling into the trap of judging everything from today’s perspective.

Of course, kids have been role-playing and more specifically playing war games since the human race has had toys, and they must have killed other soldiers or been killed themselves on many occasions. It’s all part of growing up.

Maybe it was mostly boys that played war games. I don’t know or remember, but it still sounds odd to me when I hear my daughter say ‘oops, I died.’

I recount this story not for its own intrinsic value but as a reminder to you and me that we often make decisions based on our own current context, when that can be the wrong context. It pays to think out of the box, and in the box of the person we’re trying to influence.

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Categories Customers, Language, Marketing

Product Descriptions

September 21, 2016 //
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In the world of high tech, the product description is a vital document. It’s the link between inside and out. It connects the worlds of product management and product marketing, like the bridge between the left and right sides of the brain.

The product marketer has the job of enabling the sales force and partners to sell the new product, and customers to buy it, with the right messaging and assets to support the buying process.

To do this well, the product marketer relies on a good product description. A well-written product description is the base document that feeds internal enablement documents, the data sheet, website content and more detailed pieces of collateral.

Despite this, it’s sometimes hard to get a good product description. Perhaps this is because the product management function is more internal and technical, and being able to translate this into something that resonates with the customer is more external and business-oriented. When you don’t get a product description, it tends to make your job as a a product marketer very difficult, and it tends to compress the timeframe for generating the content.

The product description needn’t be a huge document; in fact, the simpler the better in my opinion. Here’s my suggested outline of what a good product description should cover:

  • What the product or product enhancement is
  • What it does (feature/function)
  • Which customer and prospect audiences it’s for
  • What it can and can’t do
  • How we should message it 
  • How we will sell it (including customer fit and pricing if relevant)
  • How it stacks up against the competition
  • How it will be implemented and supported
  • What success looks like for the product

Not too difficult, and key to success.

Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Single Point of Signal Failure

September 19, 2016 //
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As I’m sure you’re aware, a single point of failure is a bad thing. If the single point fails, the whole system fails. That’s why we try to build in contingencies.

I was reminded of this – and if you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that transportation and travel are recurrent themes – on a recent train journey into England’s capital. I was joining the train at Didcot, a 45-minute run into London and favoured as a daily commute by thousands of residents in the Didcot area.

The trains to London run every 15 minutes, and so they need to, to get the volume of people to London for work. A signal failure in the west of country cancelled one of these services and delayed another. This led to passengers being 5- and 6-deep on the platform edge. Because of the delay the train then had to drop anchor at another platform, which necessitated about a thousand people having to change platform.

Not for me. I stayed where I was, took a later train and was able to sit down and get some work done.

It seems amazing, though, that in 2016 a network and thousands of passengers can be compromised by a single point of failure, on this occasion a single point of signal failure.

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Categories Communication, Customers

UK M6

September 16, 2016 //
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Whenever I come back to the UK from Ireland for work I suffer a mild form of culture shock. Perhaps cultural adjustment is a more appropriate term.

I know you’ve read it before on this blog. The sheer volume of traffic is a problem.

This time I found myself on the M6. Not the Irish M6, that glorious, blissful, never-packed stretch of motorway that speeds folk between the midlands and Galway. No, the UK M6, the 50-year-old main artery from the middle organs to the upper left ventricle in England’s complex circulation system.

How do the Brits get anything done? The traffic was nose to tail, with warnings of 45 minute delays further up the track. I took a diversion, got back on the motorway and discovered the ball of congestion had simply moved further up the road, to where I was heading.

Add to that is the fact that you are in roadworks situations and lane closures for mile upon mile, and even after you turn off and thread your way into Manchester, jewel of the North, the roadworks keep coming.

Of course, the signs had not caught up to the fact that there was a broken down coach in one of the available lanes, which we spent time crawling past.

There are people that spend every day in this. What happens to the national productivity as a result of the cumulative loss of productivity of thousands of individuals? Nothing happens, because the rich and powerful have people come to them or they’re working from a yacht with an impossibly gorgeous view, or else, like the heads of government, they’re being driven around the place so they can get stuff done as they go.

The person that suffers is the rank and file, the regular Joe and Jo who form the labour backbone and who have their commute times lengthened and their free time with their families compressed, all in the name of progress.

Sometimes, I’m glad I can do some of my work at home and on the phone. It keeps the wheels of productivity greased, in case of the occasional roadblock.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing

Start-up, Upstart

September 14, 2016 //
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I was walking past a sign the other day. It said ‘Stressed is desserts backwards.’

Have there ever been truer words, in more than one sense?

It got me thinking about other types of palindrome-type anagrams. A start-up is the reverse of upstart, if you’ll allow me the license of a rogue hyphen. Yet, strangely enough, this is exactly what a start-up needs to be in order to taste lasting success.

A start-up has to do things differently, approach the market in a different way, and offer a new way of doing things. It has to disrupt the status quo, the accepted, established way of doing things, and become the new accepted, established way of doing things. it’s the new kid on the block. In short, it has to be the upstart.

I guess this is why you sometimes hear start-ups referred to as upstarts.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Technology

The Genuinely Charitable Soul

September 7, 2016 //
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Many people are drawn to a charitable concern or cause because they are personally affected by it, or they know someone who is. Obviously there are degrees of interest and commitment, from following a cause on Facebook to actively campaigning and fund-raising for it.

People sometimes, sadly, are responding to a tragedy within the circle of friends or family – often in an area that they had no knowledge of or interest in – and can go on a crusade, putting all of their efforts into helping lessen the burden of others who fall victim to same poor hand of cards that they’ve been dealt. This might involve setting up a fund or a charitable cause in the name of the person affected, or it could be contributing to a cause or body that already exists. It is as a direct reaction to the events that people get involved, when they come face to face with the perspective of others who have had to endure the same fate.

This is, of course, laudable, super worthy and to be applauded. I’m not trying to denigrate the intent and the effort in any way. They are personally invested in the cause. Would they have got involved if someone they knew wasn’t affected by this condition or set of events? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter. They’re involved now.

Then there is what I call the genuinely charitable soul. The genuinely charitable soul volunteers on a regular basis and devotes their time into something that is unrelated to their own catalogue of personal experiences. They work for a cause they believe in because they feel it is worthwhile, not because of something that happened to them. They see an area where the playing field isn’t level, and they work to level it.

In this case it’s somewhat similar, though not the same as that of people who work in – ie are paid do deliver – the caring professions. To me the genuinely charitable soul is an extremely rare breed, and one to be cherished.

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Categories Customers, General

The Network Effect

September 5, 2016 //
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As a business term, the network effect is an interesting one, explaining that the more people are on a network, the more valuable the network is itself, due to strength in numbers and the critical mass to make it work.

This explains, I think, the value of webs like LinkedIn. If there were a few people in it, as opposed to a few million, it would service virtually no purpose other than that of a small, private, dwindling club..

The network effect means a slightly different thing to me. For me it symbolises the power of who you know over what you know. If you’re looking for a job, or a new contract, or a supplier of some kind, your network is your first point of call. ‘Who do you know who’s looking for or can provide ABC?’ If they can’t help you directly, they might know of someone in their network who can, or they can put out feelers into other networks, rippling out your original request in ever farther – though ever diluting – waves. Added to that, when you look for a new role or contract, knowing someone in the company, especially if they’re recommending you and they have a high perceived value in the company, gives you an almighty leg up on the competition.

It seems to me that my version of the network effect – who you know, not what you know – is still very much in effect, repetition intended. I think it hinges on comfort and trust. It takes some of the guesswork out of finding a new person, short-cuts the process and de-risks it. I guess that’s why so many companies in competitive industries, or industries where supply of quality staff is outpaced by demand, offer finders’ fees for employees who successfully refer in a new recruit.

It’s a smart policy to keep your network up to date. Your diligence will pay you back and you’ll benefit – perhaps many times over – from the network effect.

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Categories Communication, Customers

B2B Marketing Banana Skin no 10

August 29, 2016 //
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So here’s the last post in my series on B2B marketing banana skins to avoid, learned the hard way from my career so far. There are many more than 10 of course. These are the ones that came to my mind when I conceived the series. I may return to it another time, but, for now, I think 10 things to worry about not doing is more than enough.

B2B marketing banana skin no 10 to avoid is this: thinking your product or service will get there. It won’t. Ever.

There aren’t enough resources to develop a product or service into something that you and your customers think is complete. If there were it would be unaffordable and unsellable – if that’s even a word. It’s never complete. In fact it will probably never be close to complete. That’s the nature of things; there are too many competing and conflicting demands.

That’s why the golden rule of B2B marketing and sales is this – SWYG. Pronounced ‘swig’ and standing for Sell What You Got. For us marketers, it’s OK to allow for a marketing lag and promote something we don’t have yet, as long as the typical demand and sales cycle is not much longer than the time you have reasonably allowed for the new product/feature/service to be available for sale.

The word ‘reasonable’ is of course etched with uncertainty, so be careful with the claims you make, or you’ll end up with that most hated of products, the phantom.

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Categories Customers, Marketing

B2B Marketing Banana Skin no 9

August 26, 2016 //
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We’re almost at the end of my series on B2B marketing banana skins that I failed to avoid and that you can sidestep – if you haven’t already. One more after this and it might be time to park the series for an unspecified period :-).

My B2B marketing banana skin no 9 to avoid is this: don’t think that you have the perfect marketing team. You don’t.

How could you have? You may have what you feel is a pretty stellar assemblage of team members, each complementing each other brilliantly. But that, in my opinion, sets you on the road to complacency – yours and theirs. A truly excellent marketing team is often a fleetingly short notion. After all, these people are good, right? That means they’re often approached by other peers or companies. It also means they command a certain standard of projects that challenge them and develop them.

If they’re really good then they might be ready for a tilt at your job, or a similar job at another firm.

Always keep you ear close to your network. Always be keeping an eye on really great people to add to your team. Before you know it, you might be back-filling an empty role rather than looking to budget for an additional head.

When someone good from your team pulls you aside for a chat and says they’ve been offered a great new job, let them go. Encourage them to go. They’ve probably checked out emotionally and if they’re trying to use you for leverage with a new job or get you to improve their package and stay with you – well, they’re not as great as you thought.

You might think they’re irreplaceable, but they always are, and often with better yet people. No, never think you have the perfect team.

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Categories Customers, Marketing
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