When Fred Reichheld wrote The Ultimate Question, he argued that the best way to drive strong revenue growth and return on equity, was by using the simple question “How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague”? This question, goes right to the source of your business, the perceptions of the customer. According to Bain & Company analysis, “NPS(Net Promoter Score) leaders outgrow their competitors in most industries—by an average of 2.5 times” (1).

Do you know how likely your customers are to recommend your product or service? Recommendations from friends or colleagues are much more effective than almost any company marketing message. What does your company do to encourage recommendations? Do you have a remarkable return policy like Zappos which allows returns within 365 days and provides free shipping both ways? Does your product’s unique selling proposition blow the competition out of the water, like the BlendTec blender which can turn an iPhone into dust within seconds? People usually don’t tell their friends, family, or colleagues if they are satisfied with their purchase. They usually recommend products that are exceptional, or provide over the top value.

Social technologies like Facebook or Twitter are empowering customers to be able to communicate faster and easier than ever before.  The Ultimate Question, was written in 2006, before almost everyone had a Facebook account and before Twitter started. Rather than having to be physically with a friend or on the phone, to recommend or detract a brand, anyone can now go on Twitter and Facebook and send a message instantly to hundreds of people. If Net Promoter Score was important before, just imagine how social technologies are affecting the influence of promoters and detractors. I can send a text message from my mobile device, and my Tweet will be sent out to 200 followers. This has scary implications for companies – if your product is average or worse. But if your offering is exceptional, this can also be a great opportunity to engage your customers to market your products for you.

The Companies With the Top Net Promoter Scores (Mar 30, 2009 Brandweek)

1. USAA
2. Apple
3. Amazon.com
4. Costco.com
5. Google
6. Facebook
7. Wikipedia
8. eBay
9.  Craigslist
10. Barnes & Noble (bn.com)

1. The Ultimate Question Website

Photo by ninjanoodles

What do you offer that is unique in your market?

We frequently hear the statement ‘what was successful last year isn’t working anymore, so what can we do to find the magic again?’ There really is no easy answer, but there is a process that will enable you to find success with your marketing initiatives.

1. Analyze the market
The better you know your industry, your customers, your competitors and yourself, the better you will make good decisions that give you leverage in your marketplace.

Some of the basics include knowing your S.W.O.T. – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses are internal to your organization and Opportunities and Threats are external to your organization. Find places and ways to leverage strengths and to minimize weaknesses.

Another key is understanding where you earn your the greatest profits, as a percentage and in total dollars.

2.Target the best prospects
You have hundreds if not thousands of different target options for finding new prospects. The most important step in finding the right prospects is to ask the question ‘Which prospects are easy to acquire, difficult to steal, provide significant margins, in sufficient quantities and that will be loyal to you over the long run?’ These are your best prospects. And, they really do exist.

Identify them by industry segment, size, commodity, geographic region and any other means to clarify where you will spend your sales time and effort. For example, one of our transportation clients targets the shipping of eggs throughout the mid-west. They have found a market where they can be highly targeted, very profitable and in a space where they can be ‘the best’. And, their results are exceptional.

3. Focus your strategies for best leverage
The three key strategies commonly identified are a) market focus, b) pricing and c) differentiation. Unless you are the very biggest of companies where economies allow you to dramatically lower your operating costs, we recommend focusing on specific markets (market focus) or differentiation as your primary strategy.

Make your company strategy to be your defining mark and match your special capabilities to those prospective companies most needing those capabilities. Maybe you are ‘experts’ at designing special engineered solutions for your customers, concentrate on making that be the focus of your business.

4.Match the marketing elements to your strategy
Most everyone has heard of the four P’s of Marketing – Product/Service, Price, Place and Promotion. We don’t have space to go into detail here, but suffice it to say that these four marketing elements need to be consistent with your overall marketing strategy. If you are following a differentiation strategy then your marketing elements must match that strategy.

5.Develop a Unique Selling Proposition
This fifth step is simply developing a more refined definition of your primary strategy. The Unique Selling Proposition is the identification of one or two key things that make your company stand out in your customers’ minds. What makes you ‘unique’ to your targeted prospects? Examples of these include things like exceptional communications, simplified ordering process, ability to deliver products more quickly, or any number of other ‘special’ or ‘unique’ capabilities.

One key thing to note, your Unique Selling Proposition must be something your prospects really want from you. If not, they will look right past you to someone else.

Once identified, make sure that everything you do supports your unique selling proposition and let everyone you serve know what it is.

6.Create actions to deliver results
The next step is to list key initiatives and actions you need to take to make your marketing initiatives work for you. For example, maybe you need to review your pricing to see if your ‘extra services’ justify a price increase. The key to successful marketing is clearly identifying those actions that enhance your impact with customers.

7. Execute your plans relentlessly
The saying ‘a mediocre plan executed relentlessly will always outperform a perfect plan imperfectly implemented’ is absolutely true. More times than not, we find one of the key differences between a good company and a great company lies in their ability to execute on their plans.

8. Evaluate results
If you have executed your plans well, it is time to measure your progress. Evaluation of results is imperative if you are to improve. And, don’t just look at the numbers, also look at qualitative results. Talk to customers, vendors, prospects and even employees to see how well your plans are working with them. They will tell you.

9.Make adjustments to your plans
Finally, don’t just sit on your successes. Continue to refine and adjust your plans and actions in a continuous effort of improvement. The marketplace is in constant flux which means that today’s solutions won’t necessarily work tomorrow. Keeping a constant vigilance on your customer reactions and your competitor adjustments will help you win in the face of competition.

Nine simple steps will make all the difference in being an exceptional marketing organization with a consistent flow of new customers.

Interim management executive, Scott Philips, is a C-level executive based in Portland with over 30 years of diversified experience in enterprise wide leadership. He is recognized as an action-oriented leader with strengths in strategic management, business assessments, global brand building, business development and enterprise selling. Scott’s experience in analyzing market data, developing solutions and effectively executing plans have resulted in significant revenue growth in a number of companies in a wide variety of industries. He can be reached at 503.913.2705 or scott.philips(at)oneaccordpartners.com

Image by kozumel

Paul Travis, Interim Marketing Executive

Often in life, we hear people wonder, “should I be doing X or Y?” I like to use my kids as examples — only because they are so clearly reflections of ourselves.

The question is not, “should I take out the garbage OR brush my teeth?” It is: given that we cannot let garbage pile up in our house, and we will lose our teeth — over time — if we do not brush… how can we get both done? It’s BOTH-AND rather than EITHER-OR.

Prioritization becomes easy, when we consider how much more expensive cost-of-sales is for new customers than existing customers (see my video). Most businesses do NOT regularly monitor this.

Back to your question, companies should have both a RETENTION and an ACQUISITION strategy.

Especially if they haven’t done so recently, leaders should analyze their customer base. SOME (usually ~10%) are customers we’d just as soon lose to the competition! They’re unprofitable, not a good fit from the start, etc. Nudge them to find a good home and get good karma points in the process.

Talk to the other 90% and learn what you can do to keep their business. NOT EVERYONE is jumping ship, so you’re likely to find that ~30% are solid. Another ~30% are unable to pay and you’re likely to lose them — proactively help them with a payment plan. The remaining ~30% are on the fence; maybe a “lighter” product/service offering would help them remain “in the fold”.

ONLY THEN should you consider how much energy/resources/investment to put into new customer acquisition. As always, metrics against controllables are best (that is, # calls made — rather than # new accounts).

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.

In case you didn’t notice your customers are buying differently today than they did last year. The differences could be subtle or obvious, but if you observe closely you’ll see that the process they follow to make a buying decision–the buyers’ journey’–has changed.

If your selling process and sales funnel structure haven’t adapted to the buyers’ journey the efficiency of your sales and marketing efforts will be down and so will the accuracy of your revenue forecast. This is what I call the new “Funnel Economics”.

Here are the major variables in a sales funnel (which I am now going to refer to as the revenue funnel because it should be co-owned by marketing and sales).

1. Stages of the buyers’ journey
2. Lag time between stages
3. Leakage rate at each stage
4. Advancement rate at each stage
5. Number of meetings required in each stage
6. Number of meetings that each sales person can expertly handle in a week
7. Number of available sales people
8. Average revenue per order

Any change to any of these variables has an impact on how many deals get closed in a period of time. The marketing and sales effort required to generate a level of revenue last year is very different from what it takes this year.

If you’re still trying to plan and forecast based on last year’s funnel structure, you’re not just flying blind you’re flying with the wrong instruments.

Reset your revenue funnel by analyzing and observing the customer’s current buying process and behaviors. Dial in the new metrics into your revenue funnel and monitor carefully over the next several months. The accuracy of your revenue projections will improve. What’s more, you’ll have a more realistic preview of what type and level of activities are necessary to achieve a certain revenue outcome.

Chuck Besondy is a principal at One Accord Partners and is co-author of Leadership on Demand: How Smart CEO’s Tap Interim Management to Drive Revenue. You can read more about Interim Sales and Marketing Management by Chuck Besondy at his blog The Sales Funnel Fanatic.

Photo by Jake Rome

I’ve never liked being in the commodity business, because someone can always come along and unseat you on best price. The places I love to play are in differentiating from others by defining a new category.

E.g., when in the late 90’s I was heading up product management for a product competing in the “log file analysis” business (to understand where visitors were going within a web site) we repositioned ourselves as providers in the “e-business intelligence” category.

What about when you cannot define a new category, such as wine in a bottle? How do you get your product to stand out from the crowd?

You cultivate an appreciative customer by engaging them in a compelling story of the background of the land the grapes are grown on, the quality control processes, the craftsmanship, the physical path it takes to market, the farmers themselves, awards that have been won, and anything else that creates appreciation (and therefore willingness to pay more than “Two Buck Chuck” — a fascinating example in itself of urban legend story that swirled success for Trader Joe’s!).

What if the bottle of wine came with its own sommelier? That is the idea behind a print technology that Italian company, Modulgraf, is set to roll out next month at Milan’s wine fair. The innovation is a system for embedding micro-chips into paper labels that transmit information via RFID (radio frequency identification) to handheld devices. Through your PalmPilot or perhaps a grocery store’s loaner Walkman (”Wineman”?) buyers will be able to listen to information about the vino and perhaps even some Italian mood-setting music.

Can you differentiate your products or services by defining a new category? If not, how can you differentiate within your category? “Facts tell and stories sell”.

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.

Good question. Up until recently I thought the proposal conversion rate belonged to Sales and therefore Sales performance should be based, in part, on the rate of proposal wins.

After attending a FunnelAcademy(tm) workshop lead by Hugh MacFarlane, I have changed my way of thinking.

The percent of proposals won is directly related to the quality of the buyers that marketing places into the revenue funnel and advances through the early stages of the funnel.

Yes, Sales should still be measured, in part, on their effectiveness in closing deals, but so should Marketing.

What better way to put Markeing and Sales on the same page than to have both evaluated for the same key business metric?

Chuck Besondy is a principal at One Accord Partners and is co-author of Leadership on Demand: How Smart CEO’s Tap Interim Management to Drive Revenue. You can read more about Interim Sales and Marketing Management by Chuck Besondy at his blog One Riot-One Ranger.

• Establish “customer listening posts” and visit them daily. Not entirely sure whether John meant that companies should create places where their customers can voice their opinions (e.g., American Express’ Members Project community, OPEN Forum), that companies need to tune into online conversations wherever they take place, or (I’m guessing) both. He did talk about having personally sat down with top tier financial bloggers, which is obviously a sound first step, although the conversations Amex really needs to be listening to no doubt happen outside the personal finance blogosphere. Interestingly, a Black Cardmember stood up following John’s presentation and complained that, even as one of American Express’ highest tier customers, he was unable to get satisfactory customer service. John was very gracious and offered to help rectify this Cardmember’s issues.

• In tough times, resist the urge to hunker down and stick with the tried and true. Instead, seek out opportunity and take steps to keep moving forward.

• Innovate constantly. The marketer that stops innovating in tough times is “carving their brand’s own tombstone.” It strikes me that this point and the previous one are, more or less, the same thing — so maybe I missed something or took crappy notes (although it looks like other bloggers got more or less the same points.) Regardless, whether we’re talking about one point or two the message is an important one for marketers — don’t use the recession to justify inertia. Financial uncertainty doesn’t negate the fact that the world has changed and that the consumer behaves differently (and expects different things from brands) than they once did. If anything, financial uncertainty raises the bar. Consumers are more likely than ever to award their hard earned dollar to those brands that provide the greatest value, build the strongest relationship and connect in the most meaningful way. Be one of those brands — but don’t think you’ll get there by blowing your budget on Super Bowl spots (ummm – what’s the value proposition there, again?)

• Be equal parts consumer advocate and visionary. Understand where consumers are now, what their needs and concerns are today, but also be the voice of hope and deliver on the promise of a brighter future. Clearly, consumer advocacy is an outcome of taking the time to truly understand your customers and their needs. Companies that aren’t doing this already are heading for a world of hurt. But being a visionary is the difference-maker. During tough times, there is enough bad news — the consumer knows and lives that every day. As a brand marketer though, you can help the consumer see beyond the near term crunch, provide assurances, and demonstrate a real commitment to helping people survive, thrive and come out the other side. In other words, nobody knows better where we are today than the consumer; it is the brand’s obligation to help the consumer see where they can be tomorrow.

These concepts are hardly new and some (the last point, most of all) seemed more than a bit like empty marketing boosterism — but maybe that’s exactly what marketers need to hear during a recession. And I suspect that, when delivered by the CMO of one of the world’s preeminent brands, the points hit home for a lot of the people in the audience.

This article was originally posted on Greg Verdino’s Blog and is licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 license.

Photo via Flickr.

Paul Travis, Interim Sales Executive

In a recent speech, I quoted Steven Covey’s profound line, “The environment you fashion out of your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideals, your philosophy is the only climate you will ever live in.” What if C.N.N. (Constantly Negative News) reported that the overall economic climate was going to perk up in 2016 or 2026? Would you be willing to “stay down” for decades because someone else says so?

The “leading” questions I ask company leaders who are struggling are the same I ask those who are succeeding:

• Are you communicating more value than you ever have?

• Have you revisited your go-to-market strategy? (Either keep it or reinvent if not sound).

• Are you measuring where you make investments? (Cut back on those that don’t generate a return).

• Have you addressed your customer pain by segment? (There may be ways you can identify solutions at lower price points, or even higher price points providing much higher value).

My old friend Mitch Tarr shared this story that he heard from his sales manager at IBM: There was a man who sold hot dogs from a stand by the side of the road. His son came back from college and said, ‘Dad, don’t you know the economy is in a recession and wall street is worse.’ The man said to himself, ‘My son must know what he’s talking about, he’s been to college’. So he took down his sign and stopped yelling, ‘hot dogs for sale!’ and sure enough, his sales dropped off.

This is the time to market and sell whatever you have developed before. Monetize those assets you have already developed so you can survive to see the brighter day. Get confident in your ability to rise above those who aren’t willing to ask the hard questions, and your staff will feel and follow that confidence.

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.

Rich Hennessey, Interim Marketing Executive

This may be simplistic but the good companies offer confidence. Confidence not only to customers but to their employees, business partners and supply-chain. Anyone who they come in contact with, its a central part their culture.

Webster’s definition of confidence is: (1) a feeling or consciousness of one’s powers or a reliance on one’s circumstances or (2) a faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way.

So confidence is a feeling, or better yet, faith that one’s actions will produce a predictable result every time. Much like the law of gravity or the winning tradition of the Boston Celtics.

A confident company starts with a good leader. One who is engaged in the selling process, speaking regularly with customers. He or she is not afraid to make tough decisions, “Absolute Truth,” but more importantly, makes sure he or she understands the full impact to those involved, “Absolute Compassion.” In addition, the leader must be genuine or the “real deal.” Having integrity both in public or private.

A confident company is very much aware of its customers fears or concerns and finds the means to address them head-on with optimism. They quickly modify a brand message or sales strategy to alleviate any concerns and maintain perceived or real market leadership. The process also includes having marketing and sales functions meet regularly to communicate to quickly address new opportunities or issues.

A confident company takes advantage of the unstable environment to communicate to their customers: trust, dependability, and reliance in all their communications. They also achieve delivery deadlines, project milestones, quality and craftmanship in their products or projects. Customer service is not a catch phrase but is central to the organization’s business strategy. Customer service is proved by their actions.

Finally, a confident company offers hope to their customers when all they see is despair. Those who are positioned with this resolve will succeed in this economy and build a solid foundation for future growth.

Rich Hennessey is an interim sales and marketing executive at OneAccord with over 25 years of experience. Mr. Hennessey has successfully developed and implemented business development plans for both the Fortune 500 and business start-ups in the high technology industry. He can be reached at Rich.Hennessey(at)OneAccordPartners.com or 772.473.1439.

As my co-author and I showed through case study after case study [in Leadership on Demand], interim management specifically focused on revenue represents one of the quickest ways to innovate.

Innovation doesn’t have to be in your product line or your technology – it can be in new thinking about how to use your CRM (customer relationship management) system. It can be in going direct where previously you’ve relied on the channel. It can be in looking at your product offering and customer base a new way.

For example, a few years back I helped a software company that had a product line ranging from $295 to $11,995. After spending a couple months with the salespeople and in the trenches with customers, I stratified the product line for efficiency. The low-end products could be freely test-driven on the site and upgraded to paying versions by talking to the support technicians. The high-end products could no longer be obtained via the site, but rather began with a sales conversation to qualify buyers. Prices were no longer published but quoted custom. Within 9 months, the average selling price increased ten-fold and the company got acquired by a publicly traded competitor at an extremely healthy multiple.

Management guru Peter Drucker predated the advent of interim managers but his philosophies support them wholeheartedly, especially: “Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center.”

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.

Presidents, CEO’s, COO’s, and even CFO’s of companies should consider an interim executive if they have:

• Stalled or unacceptable levels of revenue

• An “empty chair” in the CMO, VP Sales, or VP Business Development roles

• Competitors growing and/or taking market share

• Tectonic shifts in the market without a strategic response.

Leaders should not hire an interim executive if the organizational culture has demonstrated a propensity to worship a high-end consulting firm who will write a beautiful report to adorn your desk – because an interim is going to roll up his/her sleeves and make things happen.

Another time leaders should not hire interims is when the culture suggests there is so much defensiveness that failure is unavoidable. One COO we interviewed for our book, “Leadership on Demand”, put it this way, “If you’re an interim, your staff looks at you just like the child looks at the stepfather: ‘You’re not my daddy’.“

Seasoned interims, who have been on these battlefields before, are boldly direct with their questions – in order to sniff out organizational resistance in advance. It can save a lot of energy all around if the horse isn’t ready for a jockey.

Paul Travis is an interim marketing executive at OneAccord. Mr. Travis is based out of Seattle with 25 years of experience in high technology, marketing, and consulting. He can be reached at Paul.Travis(at)oneaccordpartners.com and at 206-910-2222.