Here Comes Santa Claus...

It happened again yesterday.

On the phone with a prospect yesterday working towards a solution, everything is going well, we're open with each other, we're sharing, he likes us, we like him, "when are you ready to make a decision on this?" we ask using our newfound position as "trusted business advisor".

"Well...December is a busy month," says the prospect.

I've been thinking a lot about this...this....phenomenon of American business. I assume that businesses in other countries do not suffer from this malaise that sets upon us somewhere around the Monday before Thanksgiving and doesn't lift until sometime in late January.

Why is December a busy month? Is it any busier than any other month? Why not March? March has the onset of Spring, St. Patrick's Day, and the Easter holidays.

Budget is a possible explanation. People have either exhausted their budget for the calendar year, they are building their budgets for the next year or a combination of both. I don't believe it is as simple as a money issue.

Vacations are another possible explanation. But research is stating we don't take enough vacation. And I estimate that everyone who takes vacation is going to take it at roughly the same time. I'll grant you 7 days +/- a day or two for those 3 people out there that take their entire two weeks at the end of the year.

No, my friends, budget time and vacation days are not the root. They are excuses. This is a leadership problem. This is a decision-making problem. Decisions are made by committee. I think we need a Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (yes, I know I am dating myself) to send Marlin and Jim Fowler out into the corporate wilds. Marlin can sit safely in the Land Rover while Jim wrestles gatekeepers to find the elusive person with single decision making authority!

Is anyone else familiar with this phenomenon? Discuss!

Technorati Tags: business, sales, business development, leadership
Are you LinkedIn?

Sales and Marketing in the Third Age

Great article by Jeff Thull on recognizing trends in sales process/sales management and guidance on how to succeed in what he calls the "Era 3" stage in the evolution of the sales organization.

Let's jump right to Era 3....where business problems are more and more complex as are the solutions. Nothing is out of the box anymore. Era 3 is also rife with choice. The sales person's job is to analyze the customer's business and become a "trusted business advisor". To be successful, an Era 3 Salesperson (E3SP) needs to roll up their sleeves, live the customer's processes, figure out root cause problem areas and then solve for those unique problems. She has to go BEYOND the expertise of the customer as Thull says. The solution process is a collaboration. Their should be an on-going dialog. Theories must be tested and thoughts confirmed.

The E3SP must understand how to translate the value of her product or service. How will it solve the unique and complex business problems of the customer. You can't sell features and benefits anymore. You have to help the customer understand the root of his business process issues and SHOW him how you are going to solve for it.

So, how do you sell value? According to Thull, you must understand the 3 levels of value: Product, Process and Performance. Let's break them down:

Level 1 - Product: The salesperson is working with purchasing and maybe (maybe) operations regarding pricing and characteristics of the product. "The customer perceives that the value derived from the product is....available from multiple suppliers."

Level 2 - Process: The salesperson is working with operations and other relevant departments impacted by process problems we are solving for. The focus is on the process. This level is about productivity increases.

Level 3 - Performance: You are selling to VITO (very important top officer). You and your offering are working at the enterprise level. You are a strategic partner. Its about competitive advantage at this point.

When you operate at Level 3, your customer realizes that you provide a value leverage that no one else is. Your relationship is so; well, valuable to him that he sees a very high risk in switching to a competitor.

Make sure your sales team is engaging in conversations with your customers. Building relationships. Listening. Diagnosing processes and problems. Relating the problems other customers experienced. "Are you having similar problems?"

Make sure your sales team is talking to the right person. If you're talking to Angie in purchasing...well, you're dead. You're done. You are a commodity my friend. You are not a valued and trusted business partner.

At the end of the day:

You must think for your customers, creating revenue-building solutions that they don't have the time or the wherewithal to come up with and/or implement for themselves. And because the salesperson is the face of your company, he or she must be in the thick of the action, tirelessly working on behalf of those customers.

Technorati Tags: management, sales, marketing, Jeff Thull, Selling to VITO
Are you LinkedIn?

Peter Drucker - Tireless Chronicler of American Business

I know, I know. I am late to lament the loss of Peter Drucker. The man who gave birth to the field/study of "management" passed away on November 11th. He was 95 years old and left a legacy of theory and practice for us to consider as long as there are people doing work and someone taking note of their performance. He is arguably one of the most influential business leaders of all time. Perhaps even the top.

Link to the Wharton tribute/obituary. The article solicits thoughts from Wharton professors regarding Drucker's influence on management theory and practice. Something I didn't know was that of the 30 books he published, Drucker wrote a book on Japanese painting and two novels. Jerry Wind calls him a "true renaissance person". Wind goes on to say:

In his writing he bridged management as well as social and behavioral science, clearly demonstrating that no management problem can be addressed effectively from the narrow confines of a single discipline.

Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker"; he was a champion of managers getting out of the way of their employees and letting their expertise shine; and some consider him the father of marketing as well. He is quoted in this article as having said that "the role of business is to create a customer." His writings over the last 60+ years still ring true. He is a down to basics theorist. Simple yet not simplistic as one of the professors said. His teachings still ring true.

If there were ever a Saint of Management, I would have a little Peter Drucker figurine glued to the top of my computer monitor to watch over me as I reviewed spreadsheets and coached my teams.

Technorati Tags: management, Peter Drucker, Drucker

Seek Profit Not Revenue

Another great article from the CEO Refresher from Michael W. McLaughlin. When to Walk Away From a Sale: Nine Pivotal Questions goes beyong B.A.N.T. (budget, authority, need, timeline). This is the advanced course on qualifying your sales leads. Strap in because these are the hard questions. The ones that will make you break out in a sweat. The ones you aren't asking today. The one's that if you did ask you would be spending MUCH less time writing proposals for prospects that go nowhere.

1. Don't Use the Proposal Process to Define the Project. If the prospect can't articulate the goals, feel free to put on your consultant hat and help them frame the business problem. Don't start drafting proposals that they can hand off to someone else to implement.

2. Is This Bob's Super Secret Project? Does Bob have approval AND funding from higher up the mountain? Even if Bob is CEO, does the Board say he is good to go. If not, this isn't a real project. You can help Bob get approval for his project and make sure you are there when he pitches to his boss. Don't invest too much though....because the project still isn't real.

3. What is the decision making process? How will a winner be picked? Every prospect will tell you they have a process. Dart throwing is not a process. You say they don't have a process? Here's an opportunity for you to become a trusted business advisor and help them create one. Beware the apples to apples comparison. Fruits are not created equal for a reason. Your niche approach SHOULD NOT stack up against the competition. I mean that in a positive way. Wait....you do have a niche, right? If your offering is a commodity why are you reading this?

4. Who signs the checks? Figure out who this person is and engage with them immediately. Yes, you may have to ask your contact who the real decision maker is for the project. Proceed without knowing at your own risk. Use diplomacy. Position yourself as helping the prospect. While you are at it, find all the people influencing the decision. Talk to them. Get them to buy in.

5. Who is doing the work now? Is there an incumbent? Is the prospect out shopping for competitive bids to drive the incumbent's price down? You may want to know that before you start drafting proposals and generally wasting time chasing something no one is ever going to get. Yes. Prospects will deceive you.

6. Can your company deliver? You may not really WANT this project. As the author says,

Not all revenue is good revenue...

7. What are the opportunity costs? This goes with number 6. Are the projects in your pipeline more valuable than the new project? I understand that many of us don't have this luxury.

8. Why did the client call you? McLaughlin has this as number 8. I think it should be number 1. See number 5. Are you there because the prospect's boss wants 3 vendors to compare? Or are you there because your marketing is working and your message resonated? What does the prospect know about you? What they DON'T say is as important as what they do say. Listen between the lines.

9. Do you buy it? Trust your instincts. Weigh all the factors you are gathering. Is the project "real"? What are the politics on the prospect side? What probability of successful closure do you think exists? Weigh the risk-rewards.

This is a great set of questions to get you beyond B.A.N.T. This will let you dive deeper into your clients and help you through the discover and qualification process and get you to a winning proposal. McLaughlin wrote a book with Jay Levinson (Guerilla Marketing) focused on consultants but this list applies to anyone marketing or selling any kind of product or service.

Technorati Tags: marketing, sales, process, lead qualification, CEO Refresher

Apologies to My Two Email Subscribers

I switched from bloglet to feedblitz for email notifications. Sorry about that. Trying to consolidate everything down to as few interfaces as possible. I am trying to use this blog as a marketing and networking tool. And not necessarily in that order. So far so good. Sorry for any inconvenience. Feedblitz *should* import your records but I can't see where I can verify.

More on Hammering - Boxing Lessons

Raj Setty of 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself fame touches on boxing in a post from earlier this week. (I posted a comment - but you have to register.) Earlier, I wrote about our tendency to fit people in neat and tidy boxes. I talked about hiring managers but Raj talks to the fact that we all do this. Every day. You meet someone new and they begin telling you about themselves, our monkey brains almost immediately begin chattering away at us searching through the boxes in our brains to "fit" this person. We seek to find the relatioship points. What aspects of my life does this person intersect? Better yet, what aspects of this person's life can I help? The important thing is to differentiate yourself. Be a hammer.

Technorati Tags: Life Beyond Code, 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself, Change This

PocketMod (I Love the Internet)

Lifehacker flipped me to PocketMod. The ultimate is simplicity. Click on the upper right hand corner of the first page to "Create a PocketMod". This is for those of you that don't want to carry a laptop, a pda, a notebook or even a Hipster PDA is just too much for you. This is Getting Things Done origami!

This is going to be great for my daughter. 8 pages of DOTS! She's 4 and loves the game. I am not a GTD disciple. I am, however, fairly organized. I love my moleskine. Prior to that I have been a huge proponent of the index card. My wife has mocked me for years about my obsession with index cards. BUT THEY WORK! The PocketMod is big batch of convergence for me. Origami. Organization. Cool templates. And the genius of the Internet hive mind. I can't wait to see other templates they come up with.

Technorati Tags: HipsterPDA, PocketMod, GTD, Lifehacker

Lend a Hand(Shake)

FCnow, the blog for Fast Company magazine had an entry on shaking hands today. I posted a comment and effectively (I think) recycled a post I made last January on interviewing and making a first impression. See "Uncle Mike's Old School Guide to Interviewing" here.

Be A Hammer

Great link from Lifehacker today on how to apply for a job. It is really a link from craigslist. But I have to credit where I first saw it. Good article on resume and cover letter writing and a general approach. This is relevant to diligentia because I am going through a change of life or midlife crisis of sorts. Perspective is relative. Trying to determine what I want to be when I grow up, etc.

Had a great conversation with Harry aka Marketing Headhunter last week. He is sherpa-ing me through the "who am I" part of the journey. I've been doing a jack of all trades, master of none kind of thing for awhile. I have a varied array of skills sets. The problem is that when I start talking about them or putting them down on paper in the format of a resume, it comes out as noise.

And I am really just starting to wake up to that fact. I'm learning that a lot of people doing the hiring (of personnel or outsource vendors) don't really know what they are doing or dont have the time or dont think they have the time. They have a list of criteria worded in a very specific way and they set about trying to find someone that matches that criteria perfectly. They have a box of a certain size and they try to fit you in that box. If you don't fit, you're done. Discarded. Removed from the deck. It does NOT matter if you can fit in 10 different kinds of boxes.

Harry's advice. Be a hammer. Solve a specific problem for a specific market.

YOU have to be the one to control the box. So HELP these decision makers. Don't be a screwdriver when they need a hammer. Be a hammer when they need a hammer. The craigslist posting talks to all of this. Be specific. Tailor your responses.

[Note from the editor: Welcome to our new RSS subscribers. Thanks for signing up. Feel free to post a comment and introduce yourselves. - Mike]

Technorati Tags: hiring, resume, marketing, Lifehacker

25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself

Finally just got through reading Rajesh Setty's 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself manifesto on Change This. He positions this towards technology professionals but it will apply to anyone. EVERYTHING is becoming commoditized. This is a big foundation point of the start-up I am attempting to help launch. Add value. Don't just sit in a cube. Here are the highlights:

1. Care As If It Is Your Own. Take Care of people: customers, clients, teammates, peers.
3. Build Strong Relationships. Relationships sustain ONLY when there is mutual value.
5. Set the Right Expectations. "Underpromise and overdeliver."
6. Ask for Help. There is more help than you need out there. Be ready to give when it is your turn.
7. Celebrate Small Victories.
8. Set Higher Standards. Michael Jordan described the secret to his success as demanding more from himself that anybody else would or ever will.
9. Know Your Values. Get introspective. It SHOULD take a long time to figure these out. If you are honest with yourself and not copying something you read off a website.
10. Pursue Right Memberships. They can payoff big time.
11. Help People Help Themselves. Teach them to fish, don't just hand it to them.
12. Be a Reader. All leaders are readers. I think Tom Peters talks about the payoff from being able to extract just 1 idea from every book.
13. Plan By Outcomes. Not by activities. What do you want to ACCOMPLISH this week?
14. Think Long-Term.
15. Embrace Uncertainty With Ease. There are no guarantees in life. None. Deal with it.
16/18. Ask the Right Questions/Be Relevant. Pay attention. Listen. Look for signs that the person you are talking to is disengaging from you.
19. Get Back on Your Feet Fast! Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. Once more into the breach.
20. Lead a Volunteer Effort. Its not enough to just volunteer.
21. Balance Innovation and Continuous Improvement. Setty and I take the same line. Peters wants us to forget CI. I advocate balance.
22. Learn to Sell. EVERYONE sells. Get over yourself. Lose the stigma of being a "salesperson". Your not selling used cars. Your selling a product or service. Your selling yourself. Not selling OUT. Selling your UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION. If not, you're just another number if another veal fattening pen.
23. Learn Systems Thinking. Understand the system as a whole and the mutual interaction of the underlying parts of the system. The effect of changing one part needs to be understood. Oh...by the way...EVERYTHING is a system.
24. Influence the Influencers. Figure out who they are in the group you are talking to and talk to them directly. They move things. Go back to 16, 18 and 22. Rinse. Repeat.

New Links

Just added a couple of links to diligentia: D*I*Y Planner which got its start from 43 Folders and Lifehacker. Slacker Manager has a relevant, for me, post today on how to fast track yourself. I've been reading SM for awhile now. Check for his post on his "Murse" or man-purse as he calls it. It makes me feel a little self conscious. I brought the Murse to Rochester, NY (where diligentia is published)!

It started as a messenger bag which was a necessity while I was living in Boston. I commuted for an hour each way via subway and bus. I needed something to stash my Walkman (! Cassettes ! Which I painstakingly made myself, copy tracks from LPs!), tapes, papers, books I was reading, etc. Once I moved to Western, NY land of limited public transportation, I opted to keep the bag. It has since morphed into a bag from Lands End which is a cross between a map bag, messenger bag and DJ bag. I still keep a ton of stuff in it. A mini first aid kit, assorted pens, highlighters and mini tools (screwdriver and mini-Leatherman), an empty Altoids case which holds a usb drive and a compact flash card, assorted cds (data and music), my moleskine for work and my personal moleskine, index cards, my NASA calculator, sometimes my palmpilot which i have really gotten away from using and other related junk.

Death by Meeting

Just got through reading Patrick Lencioni's Death by Meeting. I've been meaning to read some of his books for awhile now. Picked this up at my local library. Loved it. A quick, easy and informative read. He conveys his message in the form of a story, a fable, as he calls it. It works surprisingly well.

I hate meetings. They suck the life out of everyone. It doesn't need to be this way. Agenda's are NOT the answer! I'll cut to the chase with relevant links:

The Meetings structures - the types of meetings.
The Tactical Meeting Guide - how to do it.

This is one of those read it, know it, live it kind of things.

Stop the madness! Put an end to bad meetings!

Technorati Tags: meetings, Lencioni, Death By Meeting

The Essence of Leadership

The latest Working Knowledge has an article on leadership by Jonathan Byrnes. I'm always a fan of insights into leadership. I am always on the never-ending quest for the best definition of leadership I can find. This presents problems when someone asks me to define a leader versus a manager. This article attempts to bridge the gap a little.

Byrnes talks about a few things: ambidextrous leadership; leading paradigmatic change; (this is Harrr-vahhhhd people, it just can't be called "change", we must use "paradigmatic" in front of it at all times); the 8 essential characteristics of paradigmatic change and then asks the age old question of are leaders born or created.

Ambidextrous leadership involves the capacity to execute within the current business model (in the article he used "business paradigm") or "the way we do business" [today] while reflecting on the model and finding ways to improve it and manage that change process to a beneficial outcome.

In order to implement change, especially wholesale changes in the way you do business, not, for example, changing the brand of copier paper you use, you need eight characterisitics according to Byrnes:

• Capacity for passion. You must WANT to make things better. You need passion to get you through the grinder that is change management.
• Perspective. You have to be able to detach and view what you are doing while you are doing it. I think Jim Collins refers to this as the balcony and the dancefloor. You have to be able to step off the floor and view things from above (the balcony) every once in awhile.
• Creativity. You need innovation and creativity to visualize new and more effective ways of doing things. Assuming you have achieved enlightenment while sitting in the balcony.
• Organization skills. You must be able to translate your vision into a step-by-step PLAN. No plan means you are just wandering around. Your people will not let go of the old on their own. You have to GUIDE them.
• Teamwork. duh.
• Persistence. Passion gets you started. Persistence gets you through.
• Open-mindedness. A good leader needs a high level of tolerance for ambiguity. Sometimes you have to make it up as you go. But if you have a good plan, this is OK.
• Integrity. Being genuine. Being motivated by your deeply held values to make your company and your team better off. This is where passion, persistence and teamwork come from.

Byrnes closes with the born or bred question. He does make a good point earlier on:

Can you be a good leader without being a good manager? In my experience, the best leaders are also great managers, and the best managers have strong leadership capabilities. To be successful, you must have both a passion for improving your organization and the capability to drive your efforts through to completion.

Byrnes takes the safe way out, which is good and is what I believe. Natural leaders have important CORE abilities. But Caesar just didn't wake up one day as Caesar. He trained. He studied. He learned. He developed. Most likely he learned how to convert his vision into an action plan.

The rank and file CAN develop their leadership skills by working at it as well. They have to learn to be ambidextrous. They have to be excellent at the day-to-day. They have to go beyond that and determine if they have the heart and the desire to be uncomfortable for prolonged periods of time while conceptualizing and leading the change.

Marketing to the Right Customer Type

Read an article from MarketingProfs.com about winning the budget battle with your CFO. There is a good digression in the middle of the article about understanding the different types of customers you may have and the revenue objectives you should (or should not) have for each type. Each industry is different, each company is different. Your mileage WILL vary. The important element is that all customers represent different revenue opportunities. You have to do the work to analyze which customers you have.

Who are your marketing dollars targeting? And why?

Existing customers - present 3 primary marketing opportunities:

Maintenance - do your customers provide a recurring revenue stream? (do you require a licensing or other kind of contractual fee?) As a marketer to these type of customers, you want to market just enough to reduce churn but no so much that you will erode your margins.

Loyalty - how are you preventing your customers from switching to a competitor? How do you keep your customers choosing YOUR products and services? Continued, on-going marketing can drive increasing loyalty and wallet share.

Up/Cross Selling - Whatever. Upsell. Cross-sell. Same difference. How you take exisiting customers from being a one item purchase and getting them to get the matching jacket to the pants they just bought or using analytics to INFORM the customer that other customers JUST LIKE THEM are buying a pair of shoes that complement the pants PERFECTLY. Increase your share of wallet this way.

Marketing to reduce churn and/or "save" a customer - customers have many choices available to them. They WILL want to switch once in awhile. Here's where you, as Marketing person have to get out your calculators and sharpen your pencils. How much was this customer worth? Do you want this customer as a customer? Sometimes the answer is no. I know this may come as a shcck to some. I am a heretic. Deal with it.

Marketing to Acquire New Customers - new customers are NOT the same as existing customers. There is a customer life cycle. It may be minutes long, it may be LIFETIMES long. What is your average customer life cycle? I digress. If you are a business needing growth, you MUST turn to marketing. In a highly commoditized, high churn business, new customer acquisition MUST exceed the amount of customer churn in order to deliver growth. Marketing is about math. Its not about being the guy or girl that comes up with the idea of guys in chicken masks thrashing out to fried chicken sticks.

Marketing to increase brand and start/advance the sales cycle - Brand awareness is a critical part of the sales cycle. You have a "touch" a customer x number of times before they are ready to buy (on high ticket items). (Everyone argues about the number of times). Marketings job is to deliver REVENUE OPPORTUNITES. I love that concept...revenue opportunities. Its an investment in future sales.

Experimental marketing - This is your Vegas bankroll. Trying out different approaches, different channels is important. You never know what will resonate with your customers until you TRY. Are you allocating some of your budget to blogging, podcasting, etc? You are MEASURING effectiveness, right?

Technorati Tags: marketing, customer, acquisition, loyalty, churn

"The Turnaround" on CNN

I've been turned on to an interesting show on CNN called "The Turnaround". The show takes a small business owner with a struggling business and pairs he or she up with a mentor from a similar field/industry. Usually at a much larger scale. This week, for example, a small general contractor was paired up with a multi-billion dollar home builder.

With the exception of the Kathy Ireland show, this has been a great series. The mentor usually brings his crew along to break down various aspects of the business. Usually, the big themes are marketing related. Are you priced right? Are your materials professionally done and up to date? What kind of analysis are you doing on your data? Are you even collecting data? Do you know your customers? How well? Are you surveying them? What does the survey look like?

The pareto rule plays a big part in this series. Each mentor usually makes the business owner understand the 80% of revenue comes from 20% of the customers. Niche! Big on selling to the niche! Big on making people PAY for your expertise/quality/level of service, etc. All things that we are ALL about here at diligentia.

I recommend using your Tivo on this one though. A LOT of filler. Lead-in and lead-out bumper filler material. Lot of re-capping that is not necessary. If you tivo, you only really have to watch about 25 minutes of show. Go check it out.

Technorati Tags: The Turnaround, CNNTV, marketing, small business

I Think The Top of My Head Just Blew Off

Harry over at Marketing Headhunter linked to a site that delivers a COMPREHENSIVE page of links on "management methods, models and theories." [Link to 12manage.com.] 12manage is an MBA-level management education portal that summarizes over 300 business methods and models while "applying scientific rigor while testing practical relevance." I ripped that last sentence from Harry. Sorry. How many different ways can you say it though? The site is hard on the eyes because it attempts to jam these 300 links into one page view. I will post a warning: BEWARE! You could get lost for days in there.

For those of you just wanting to dip your toes in the pool, I would recommend QuickMBA. No where near as comprehensive as 12manage but displayed and organized into tasty bite-sized nuggets.

Technorati Tags: managment, MBA

New Link and RSS Feed

Podcasting is next! :) Yesterday I got Diligentia hooked up with Feedburner. You can now subsribe to us with your favorite RSS reader. I also put a link over on the left to friend and colleague Meg Wier and her Ramblings of an Insomniac blog which focuses on her experience with search engine optimization (SEO). Which is a fascinating brand of sorcery if you ask me.

S.M.A.R.T.

I only learned about S.M.A.R.T. goals a few years ago. I'm not really a huge acronym/mneumonics guy but I find I use this one quite often. It would be fair to say that I use this every day. Every time I get in front of a client. Every time I sit down with someone on my team. Every time I go through a strategic session with my partners. We make sure our goals our S.M.A.R.T.

Lifehacker linked to an article/posting from Goal Setting Guide. S.M.A.R.T. - Specific - Measurable - Attainable/Achievable - Realistic - Timely.

Specific - keep it simple. Keep it focused, no rambling. CLEARLY define what you are going to do. What, why, and how are the questions that should be answered in this section of your goal. What do you ultimately what to accomplish? How are you going to get there.

Measurable - ahhh...my favorite part. What gets measured gets done. If you aren't going to measure it people, don't bother doing it. If you are just starting out using S.M.A.R.T. keep things simple. You can get fancy later by adding progress points into the goal. (Have a quarter of the lawn mowed by Monday, half by Tuesday, etc.) Don't feel pressured to go nutty with this though. Make sure that you have your measuring criteria CLEARLY defined BEFORE you start out towards your goal. According to the Goal Setting Guide:

When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goals.

Well...that and it can also show you where you are failing miserably and point to the specific points of derailment. Don't let that deter you though. Figure out where it went bad, fix it, redefine the goal (if needed) and hit it.

Achievable - Don't pad your goals. At the former company, we used S.M.A.R.T. goals except everyone padded. They didn't stretch. I naturally didn't pad and struggled mightily to achieve the goals I set for my crew. A goal needs to stretch you where you will have to COMMIT to it. If you have been producing 20 widgets a day for the last 20 years, don't come in with "21" as your goal. Come in with 30! And tell me how you're going to get there!

Realistic - doable. Not easy. See above. From the site:

It means that the learning curve is not a vertical slope; that the skills needed to do the work are available; that the project fits with the overall strategy and goals of the organization. A realistic project may push the skills and knowledge of the people working on it but it shouldn't break them.

Timely - every goal MUST have a timeframe. Putting an end point on your goal gives you a clear target. No timeframe means you are not COMMITTED to the goal. No time limit means no urgency.

Read it, know it, live it.

The 5 Customer Satisfaction Questions You Will Ever Need

The latest copy of the Mun's Report [link will expire but can be accessed if you register] from the Help Desk Institute has a great piece on choosing customer satisfaction (csat) questions to measure the performance of your service team. You ARE measuring the performance of your team from the eyes of your customers (end-users), right? HDI has been surveying various companies that provide service and support (tech support, help desk, other forms of customer or end-user facing service) to determine best practices.

The idea of a csat process is to determine the performance level of your service team. Are you meeting your customer's expectations? Are you failing to meet them which could and usually does mean your customers will dump you and find someone who will? Or...are you providing too much service which is just added cost for you?

The questions (in order of importance):

1. Courtesy of the Analyst - Your customer deserves and and expects to be treated in a courteous/professional manner. If you are scoring poorly here you need to make sure you have communicated the absolute importance of service and satisfied customers to your team. You may also need to specifically train customer service skills. I know this sounds odd, but people simply do NOT have a service mentality. Make sure you are hiring service oriented people as well.

2. Skills and Knowledge of the Analyst - While a courteous analyst is nice, it won't make a bit of difference if that analyst can't solve the customer's problem. Your customers want confidence in the analyst's skills and knowledge to resolve the issue at hand. This is the best way to measure your team's skill and knowledge level. (You do know their basic skill level, right? You benchmarked during the hiring and training process, right? You assessed them before they came on board and after they completed your training, right?). Weaknesses here go back to the hiring and training process. Don't have the money to implement a knowledge-base? Build a wiki. Find a way to get to best practices among your team. Everyone should be solving things roughly the same way. I personally hate scripting, but troubleshooting and solving problems doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation if you do it properly.

3. Quality of the Resolution - Again, courteous and (seemingly) knowledgable agents are good, if doens't matter if they don't actually SOLVE problems. Customers calling back to fix the same problem over and over again is a customer that is going to churn on you.

4. Timeliness of the Resolution - Time is money! Fix your customer's problem the first time they call. Two things happen if you don't: you drive up your total cost per incident (you are measuring cost per ticket/incident/case, right?) and you irritate your customer's...see churn above. This is a process problem. Break it down step by step. No step is too small. Trouble lies in the handoffs.

5. Overall Experience - This is really the weighted average of the first 4. Keep in mind that customers will weigh each of the above differently. If you have a low score (bottom two boxes out of 5), CALL THAT CUSTOMER AND BEG THEM TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU CAN DO BETTER!

6. Additional Feedback - always, always, always allow your customer to give you open ended feedback. Let them vent. Not only will they tell you what is wrong (and right if you are lucky) they will tell you how to FIX IT.

Feel free to add an additional targeted question if you must. But this is a great approach.

Situational Value Systems

The July 2005 issue of Business 2.0 has an article about Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management which is a book written by Bill Swanson, CEO of Raytheon. This book is unavailable in stores but you can get it direct from Raytheon. (Link.) "The CEO's Secret Handbook" lays out a couple of the tips/hints/ideas. One particularly jumps out at me. The rule reminds me of a friend and colleague (Jenn S.) because we have discussed the subject many times. It started with her telling me one day that she realized I was always nice to waiters/waitresses.

Like Swanson, I told her that:

A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter - or to others - is not a nice person. (This rule NEVER fails.)

I put the emphasis on the never but it is true. Swanson refers to this type of person as one that has situational value systems. These are people that can turn their charm on and off. You all know people that do this. You all know someone that is an absolute ass to anyone in a position of serving the public. These people will never make great leaders.

"There's a consistency in leadership that's greater than mere situational awareness."