Golden Practices

Istan-beauti-ful

Had an amazing week last week accompanying Ron Baker (VeraSage founder) to Istanbul for a presentation to the Turkish Advertising Association.

Ron introduced Value Pricing in a presentation called Creating and Capturing Value to a group of about 80 people. These were ad agency owners and executives and I was delighted to see that the average age was probably about mid-30s, and women outnumbered the men in the room. As such, the concepts were well received. Many international agencies were represented.

What impressed me most was that the group didn't ask all the "how?" questions we usually get. Instead they asked really good "when" questions.

Of course people always want to know who else is doing this. No matter how long or short the list is, the audience is never quite satisfied with the answer. I'm seeing Ron's point that it doesn't matter who's doing it or not. If you know in your gut that the approach makes sense, why be concerned with who and how many are already doing this?

I'd like to think this question is because they're keen to position themselves for competitive advantage. But the reality is most who ask this are waiting for the others to leap first.

As Ron spoke, the audience was inspired with new methods of increasing the focus on providing value to their clients through innovation and creativity, and through aligning their work with their clients' definitions of success. Perhaps ad agencies are more inclined to adopt value pricing sooner than accounting and law because their career satisfaction is more tied to their creativity and effectiveness than their hours billed. I think they are hungry to align themselves with their advertisers.

I'm encouraged by the spirit of interest I saw. And there were several publications represented each of whom interviewed Ron. One was the Turkish magazine Ekonmist, another the largest Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, and the third, a key sponsor, MediaCat (site in Turkish).

It was an honor to be Ron's entourage on this trip. And I thank our fabulous hosts, Aygen and Alev in particular, for their warm welcome and thoughtfulness in every detail of our trip. Alev, our tour guide and a delightful lady, took this shot of Ron and I at a coffee bar where we had amazing Turkish coffees.

Productivity

An endless number of tools exist to help individuals and organizations become more productive. Like weight loss "solutions," most are a lot more hype than help.

There is, however, one thing that I have witnessed that really does begin driving individuals and groups to improve in their productivity:

Understood and applied facilitation skills.

We all despise poorly run meetings.We all see projects—or parts of projects—fall apart, slip through the cracks, or consume exorbitant time and resources beyond reasonableness. And we see groups come together to accomplish something and struggle to formulate an approach, much less execute it.

My two-year term on the board of International Association of Facilitators, as the US Regional Representative, is coming to a close in April. I will miss the depth of interaction with expert facilitators who teach by example how to maximize results within a given period of time. This wasn't really something I thought facilitation would teach!

One can learn some of this through formal training (more on that below) but I've learned even more from working with volunteers who lead or participate in the various committees of the organization. These people KNOW how to plan and execute. 

I joined IAF to get better at facilitating leadership groups. But in the four years that I've attended conferences and become involved in the organization, I've also been gleaning core methodologies for:

• time management
• task management
• project leadership
• maximizing participation from even the toughest of characters
• managing dysfunction in a group

This was all something of an unexpected find for me.

I expected to learn how to most effectively lead groups in participatory decision-making and healthy dialog, but over the last two years, I've also observed some amazingly skilled project managers guide committees (of scores of crazy-busy volunteers, mind you) through some really complex stuff.

I cannot think of a single firm that couldn't benefit from some skill-building in all these facets of facilitation. In fact, I think these should be core competencies of all leaders in all organizations.

Consider joining IAF and attending conferences of IAF in North America or elsewhere in the world and join Project Management Institute, as well.

This isn't a magic pill. If you're serious about getting the most out of yourself and your team, you need these skills to do so.

The Trick to Proposals is Knowing if You Should Even Do One

Just got back from teaching our Marketing Courses in Texas. Last Tuesday's class was on Proposal Systems and Processes.

Attendees are usually surprised when my class starts off with all the reasons for not doing proposals.

Personally, I hate RFPs, but responding to them is an essential part of doing business for many professional service knowledge firms. If you've got to do proposals, you might as well do them effectively, right?

About RFPs, Ron Baker posted at VeraSage the other day saying:

RFPs have become more commonplace as competitive bidding has replaced negotiation for price buyers.  It is as if dysfunctional buying practices have arisen to counter dysfunctional selling practices. 

Honestly, I didn't know Baker and I agreed quite so much on the topic of proposals. His post "RFPs and the Dreaded Winner's Curse" is a great read. He encapsulates my own philosophy really well (I swear we didn't even talk about this!):

Another strategy with RFPs is:  No surprises. Your potential customer should know everything in your proposal before you submit it. Gaining an understanding of your customer’s expectations, business model—how they make money—and how your company can add value is imperative to increase your odds of a successful proposal, one that will not suffer from the winner’s curse. 

Search for the differences that will ultimately be weighed in selecting a new supplier. If customers are worth bidding on, they are worth spending some resources on in order to improve your chances. 

Baker adds a list of eight hidden costs of bidding, with comments, from the book Co-opetition, by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff. The first two really hit home. Some of the others don't trouble me so much...

1. There are better uses of your time. Keeping current customers happy may be a better strategic advantage as opposed to chasing after other company’s customers. Attracting a new customer can cost three to six times more than holding on to an existing one, and the existing one is most likely less price sensitive.
2. When you win the business, you lose money. A customer won on price alone is signaling they have no loyalty, and will leave you once they find a lower price. Do not fall into the trap of thinking you can start with a low price and raise it later; the evidence is overwhelming this will not work, as once you set a low price you are rewarding the customer for beating you up in price.
3. The incumbent can retaliate. 
4. Your existing customers will want a better deal. 
5. New customers will use the low price as a benchmark. 
6. Competitors will also use the low price as a benchmark. 
7. It does not help to give your customer’s competitors a better cost position.   
8. Do not destroy your competitor’s glass houses.

If you want to save a LOT of time and grief, get some good processes in place INCLUDING a process to decide if you even want to propose at all. If you're a firm that doesn't want to recreate the wheel, you should check out my class! ;-)

Referral Sources: There's Always a Way to Reciprocate

The greatest referral source marketing fallacy among professionals is the thinking that you can't reciprocate to some referral sources because you don't serve the same type of clients as your referral source.

Guess what? You can ALWAYS reciprocate. You probably just aren't thinking broadly enough. I'll explain.

Depending on your specialty area(s) you may not be in front of the types of clients that someone who refers to you might want to be in front of, but that is no matter.

Fact is, you probably know other people who know the types of clients your referral sources seek. Right?

All you need to do is connect people. They will take it from there. Especially if they are bankers, insurance or financial advisor types, and others who appreciate and "get" networking. You don't even have to pitch them or for them, they'll do all that. Just put them together.

Simply making the thoughtful introduction to another potential referral source will genuinely please someone who's referred someone to you. Of course, it's best when you think about personality types and consider styles that will mesh well, but if you're not sure, try it anyway. If you do it with good intentions, you will likely receive appreciation from both parties no matter what the outcome.

So don't get stuck thinking your clients aren't right for someone who has been good to you, so there's nothing you can do. Think deeper to determine who else you know and whom they know.

And don't forget the power of introducing clients to other clients, either. Especially when it makes sense for them to do business together or benefit in some other way from knowing each other.

Clients are your primary referral source and they will both appreciate you thinking of them and will probably be happy to reciprocate.

When you connect people together, you have done something very valuable. This is the essence of social capital. Give it whirl!

Image courtesy of Center for Technology Enhanced Language Learning (Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Purdue University).

Perks and Perils of Blogging

If you're thinking of blogging, you're trying to get your arms around all the pros and cons.

In addition to the ROB (Return on Blogging) benefits I listed out in my earlier posts here and here, there are a few other cool side effects that can be realized:

1. free books (from authors who want you to read their book and, of course, talk about it)
2. free software (same theory)
3. new friends
4. wider recognition as the expert you are
5. an infinitely useful collection of your intellectual capital over the years
6. frequent pick-ups if you're 'quote worthy'

But with all good things, there are usually some bummers. As a blog gains credibility and a decent following, some unwanted issues can occur:

1. getting pitched (see below
2. spam - both comment and trackback spam (from spam bots as well as shameless self-promoters)
3. content lifting, either by people pretending your work really is theirs or for purposes of a splog (spam blog)

Spam and Splogs are manageable and irritating at best. But getting pitched can be a real waste of your time. Don't get sucked in.

While receiving a pitch can seem flattering at first, don't believe all that you read when people tell you they value your work and because you are so "popular" they would like you to [fill in the pitch here].

Some pitches are really, really slick and would have you believe your stuff has been read when, in fact, the note to you is part of a mass communication. If you want to be able to identify pitches or are looking for sample "pitch policies" to post on your blog, check out these two great references for pitch-awareness and what constitutes a breach:

PR Meets Marketing's post "Pitching Bloggers" by Cece Solomon-Lee featuring a list of other resources.

And CK's Blog's "Pitch Practices" by CK (Christina Kerley).