Thursday, September 29, 2011

Social Power -and the Coming-Coporate Revolution

David Kirkpatrick09.07.11, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated September 26, 2011



Civilizations have clashed in an unexpected way this year, as ordinary people using Facebook and Twitter knocked down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—and are threatening absolute rule in Syria. A so-called Arab spring brought waves of liberation to a long-oppressed region. Something similar is happening in more democratic countries. In Spain throngs of young people, known as “the indignant ones,” occupied public plazas nationwide, protesting unemployment and exclusionary politics. In Israel ordinary citizens from both right and left united in massive demonstrations against high housing prices. And in India one man’s campaign against corruption went viral, bringing thousands to the streets in support.0907_social-revolution-pro-egyptian_390x220.jpgThis social might is now moving toward your company. We have entered the age of empowered individuals, who use potent new technologies and harness social media to organize themselves. A few have joined cause with WikiLeaks and its terrifying stepchild dren, upending the once secure corridors of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. But most are ordinary people with new tools to force you to listen to what they care about and to demand respect. Both your customers and your employees have started marching in this burgeoning social media multitude, and you'd better get out of their way--or learn to embrace them.
The institutions of modern developed societies, whether governments or companies, are not prepared for this new social power. People are changing faster than companies. "I don't think it's crazy to ask if your CEO is the next Mubarak," says Gary Hamel, one of business' most eminent theoreticians of management. "The elites--or managers in companies--no longer control the conversation. This is how insurrections start." Says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com: "This isn't just about Arab spring. This is about corporate spring."
In this new world of business, companies and leaders will have to show authenticity, fairness, transparency and good faith. If they don't, customers and employees may come to distrust them, to potentially disastrous effect. Customers who don't like a product can quickly broadcast their disapproval. Prospective employees don't have to take your word for what life is like at your company--they can find out from people who already work there. And longtime loyal employees now have more options to launch their own, more fleet-footed startups, which could become your fiercest competitors in the future. "Companies that have been around more than five years are having a hard time because this is so different from what they know" is the jarring observation of Doreen Lorenzo, president of design and consulting firm Frog.
But overall these changes suggest a bright future for business and society globally. The world is becoming more democratic and reflective of the will of ordinary people. And pragmatically, social power can help keep your company vital. Newly armed customer and employee activists can become the source of creativity, innovation and new ideas to take your company forward. A growing number of executives and companies are converts to this point of view.
It calls for humility of a sort most business leaders aren't used to. "Trust is built by sharing vulnerability," says John Hagel, a longtime author and consultant who cochairs Deloitte's Center for the Edge. "The more you expose and share your problems, the more successful you become. It's not about the top executive dictating what needs to be done and when, it's about providing individuals with the power to connect."
Benioff recounts his own epiphany about humility and transparency at Salesforce, which sells online software for salespeople. "In 2005 we had reliability problems with one of our servers. We weren't talking about it, and customers were upset. It turned into a p.r. problem. And my marketing leader Bruce Francis came in and said, ‘Marc, you need to expose everything. You need to have a website that is directly connected to the computers. If they are running, the website should be green, and when they're not it should be red.' I had to open up." Such a system has been in place ever since. "Social success is really based on trust," Benioff opines. "If you don't have transparency you will be eliminated by the system around you." He is now writing a book arguing that every company must become what he calls a "social enterprise."
The headlines abound with examples of the precariously shifting dynamic. Companies that show greed or insensitivity to workers or customers quickly find themselves on the defensive. Hershey looked Scrooge-like and clueless in August when 400 college students hired through a State Department-sponsored foreign-exchange program revolted, walking off their jobs. They didn't like their stressful work in a candy-packing factory, sometimes on all-night shifts. These kids from China, Nigeria, Turkey and Ukraine are facile digital communicators and used YouTube, Facebook and other tools to bring attention to their plight.
Adidas recently found itself under attack in New Zealand when fans of the hugely popular national rugby team were outraged to learn that Adidas team jerseys were being sold for significantly more there than elsewhere in the world. Fans went online to research comparative product prices in New Zealand and the U.S. and then to organize fellow fans in protest. Soon national news programs were focusing on the protest and Adidas' flat-footed response. People started returning Adidas clothing to stores in disgust, and employees felt so threatened they removed logos from company vehicles, reported the New York Times.

Executives can't hide from the outrage. In the Netherlands earlier this year a social media campaign against bankers' bonuses focused on Amsterdam-based ING. People began threatening en masse to withdraw deposits. CEO Jan Hommen voluntarily waived his upcoming $1.8 million bonus and ordered all company directors to do the same. British Prime Minister David Cameron recently proposed shutting down social media during riots like those that brought chaos to the U.K. recently. But Google Chairman Eric Schmidt replied to that idea in an interview in the Guardian with advice that applies equally to CEOs: "It is a mistake to look into the mirror and try to break the mirror. Whatever the problem was [that caused the riots] the Internet is a reflection of that problem. If you have a problem, use the Internet to understand what the problem is."
f there's a primary culprit for this changed landscape, it's Facebook. The social network's astonishing success in less than eight years has brought it more than 750 million active users in every country on earth, made it the world's busiest website--and the most popular tool for fomenting insurrection around the world. Why? Because Facebook gives all its users a personal broadcast platform. In the past only a select few had such power--Walter Cronkite, for example, or those at the BBC. People on Facebook, by contrast, usually just broadcast to friends, which seems only modestly impactful, at first. However, a peculiar new dynamic--call it a viral consensus--may develop. Say you post a status update, photo or video that expresses a view that your friends agree with or respond to; that message can spread like influenza. Friends click "like," or comment on the update, saying, for example, "Yeah, I think Mubarak has got to go, too!" or "I'm throwing out all my Adidas stuff!" That rebroadcasts it to their friends. The "meme," or idea, can go viral and spread almost instantly to vast numbers, if it happens to strike a chord with the zeitgeist.
LinkedIn is another central tool for empowerment all executives ought to ponder--and not only because they already maintain a profile there (along with more than 115 million others). At its heart LinkedIn is a way to maintain a permanent public work résumé. Many of your company's most valued employees now have CVs out on the street fulltime--searchable by millions, including your competitor's recruiters. Do you want to take a chance mistreating or ignoring such people?
Plenty of other social software tools are now in the hands of ordinary people as well. They live on mobile phones that are really powerful computers--broadcast terminals able to spew opinion or information at will, as well as receive it. YouTube, for example, provides endless hours of light entertainment--or can be used by anyone anytime to broadcast video. In 2009 one appeared showing a Domino's Pizza worker putting cheese in his nose while making a sandwich, among other abominations. Its stock dropped 10% in short order. One employee's bad judgment damaged an entire company's reputation. Twitter is a potent broadcast tool for anyone with a following; FourSquare, a way to coordinate in the physical world; GroupMe, just sold to Skype, enables you to send a single text or make one telephone call to a group of up to 25. All these services are basically free.
New incarnations of social power emerge almost daily from legions of entrepreneurs worldwide who see how rapidly success can come in a densely networked world. That ease of company creation is yet another example of individual empowerment. GroupMe's two founders--ages 24 and 29--sold their company in August for around $50 million just one year after it debuted.
o Fishback created his tool of social power with stunning speed. He's CEO of Zaarly, a location-based marketplace for buyers and sellers of both products and services; buyers post what they want, and people looking to earn money make offers to provide it. The company was born in February, when Fishback--a perpetual entrepreneur--attended"Startup Weekend"in Los Angeles. He pitched his idea Friday, had a working prototype by Sunday and says that Tuesday he closed $1 million in financing. (He already knew veteran investors, granted.) Two weeks later Zaarly launched in beta at South By Southwest Interactive in Austin, Tex. and did $10,000 worth of transactions. The service debuted in late May in several cities and by late August $3.4 million in transactions had been requested and 50,000 people had registered.
Fishback's whole life as a Net-centric businessman presumes social power."Empowered individuals are what drives Zaarly on both sides of our marketplace,"he says."On the buyer side it transcends typical marketplace dynamics where you can only buy what someone else is already selling. On the fulfiller [or seller] side this demand-driven market gives people a new way to work for themselves.”
If you want your company to tap into social power, a range of emerging software products can help you do so. Some aim to make it easier to conduct an ongoing dialogue with customers. But a thriving industry is also building tools to harness employee power inside a company. Four prominent businesses offer their version of a hybrid Twitter/Facebook for employees: Salesforce.com with its product Chatter, IBM with its Connections software, as well as startups Yammer and Jive, which just announced it intends to go public. The aim is to tap a company's internal social energy to speed collaboration and innovation. Craig Herkert, CEO of SuperValu, which owns or supplies over 4,000 U.S. grocery stores, is a convert to Yammer."With the old way, all information flowed via e-mail. Now store managers and support staff all over the country can post on Yammer what they're doing, what they're proud of, or say, ‘Hey, I've got a problem. Does anyone know how to fix it?' I have Yammer on my desktop, my laptop, my cellphone and my iPad. I can see what everyone is doing--that's radical transparency.”
A little Toronto startup called Rypple applies social thinking in a different way--for internal employee management. Its social evaluation tool lets everyone in a company rate everyone else and gives people continuous realtime feedback. It taps social and peer pressure to make job evaluation more effective at driving future performance. The product was largely developed in a beta installation at Facebook itself, whose internal organization strives to be flat and unbureaucratic. (At Facebook newly hired product engineers get a few weeks of technical training and then pick a team to work on.) Anne Benedict is senior vice president of Global Talent at MediaBrands, which has started rolling out Rypple to its 6,500 people."The highest-value employees are introspective enough to want feedback on themselves,"she explains."MediaBrands is a media agency, so the technology is perfect for us, because it promotes the use of social networking we preach to our clients.”

The humility and authenticity that social power demands of you can yield numerous benefits with customers and employees. Nadira Hira, 30, is writing a book to be published next year about at- titudes toward work in her generation, those who are roughly 16 to 32 years old today."What many companies get wrong when they think of ‘social' is they think of it as a marketing ploy, rather than as just a way of extending what you already really are as a company or a brand,"she says."If you do care about your employees and your customers, it allows you to show it and extend your reach."Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, used Twitter and his personal blog in late 2008 to announce and manage unexpected layoffs. He talked extensively about what was happening and how painful the process was for himself and others in the company. The layoffs went surprisingly smoothly, especially after he responded to feedback by, for example, extending an employee discount until after the holidays.
When confronting social power, you might as well jump in with both feet, because you just can't hide."One common mistake of old-school companies is to ban social media across the company,"says Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social, whose software helps businesses, mostly consumer brands, manage their social media."But at least in America our job is such an important part of our identity that most people want to talk about it. Passionate employees are going to talk about the brand and the company on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn."When her clients defend lock-down policies against social media, claiming they've successfully kept employees offline, Shih unleashes Hearsay's"rogue page finder."For one big company it recently turned up 60,000 different social media pages where employees mentioned or discussed company matters. (Not to mention the thousands of employee profiles on LinkedIn.) Hearsay's tools presume something elemental in a world of social power: that the empowerment of employees is directly tied to the empowerment of customers--because they will inevitably end up working, maybe even conspiring, together.
Ordinary people often seem better at managing and accessing information than the giant corporations they work for or buy from."Companies literally don't know what's being said about them,"says millennial maven Hira."They don't even Google themselves! But that's the first thing somebody will do if they're thinking about going to work at that company."This is a critical shift in power."In the old days the managers were on phone calls and in briefings. They had information,"says Chris Cox, who oversees product at Facebook."The underlings were just working away. But with technology that makes it easy to share and organize stuff, that imbalance goes away."Adds David Sacks, CEO of Yammer:" ‘Information is power' used to mean that hoarding information gave you power. Now we're seeing that sharing information is power. The more you can share, the more you can help other people--and the more it becomes apparent you're an expert and a valuable employee."Long before most of us saw it coming, Ray Ozzie, one of the software industry's most celebrated communications toolmakers, focused his product-development career on a shift toward social power. But he still doesn't think companies get it. Ozzie replaced Bill Gates as Microsoft's chief software architect after the company bought Groove Networks, which he founded. He left Microsoft last year."Individuals are elated with these new capabilities, yet corporations are as risk-averse as they always were. Many companies are hesitant to create a culture that permits self-empowerment because they are afraid of what might happen if people did things by themselves."Ozzie's creation of Lotus Notes back in the late 1980s aimed to arm employees with better information and allow them to collaborate in teams. But though it was a commercial success, Notes' potential to promote employee empowerment went mostly unrealized. Since then, however, powerful collaborative software--notably Facebook but also Skype, LinkedIn and other tools--has crept into corporations over the Net and in handbags and pockets, carried by employees bringing superior consumer software into the workplace. Companies are still scrambling to catch up, and most of them probably never will. Consumer technology will remain better and cheaper than what's made for business. The larger size of the consumer market attracts more investment and innovation, and economies of scale drive down prices--a formula at the heart of the relative empowerment of the individual over the company. David Stein, Co-CEO of Rypple, says that for ordinary employees"the expectation now is that the tools people use at work are as easy and fun as the ones they use in their personal life. If you use 1950s-based management systems, employees are going to revolt. They don't want to feel like ‘the man' is just telling them to do things."And at Skype, CEO Tony Bates isn't bothering to target the business market, because, as he says,"individuals are bringing it into business themselves. In many companies Skype is the number one form of communications.”
Shoshana Zuboff has been describing this fundamental shift toward individuals and social power since 2002. That's when the longtime Harvard Business School professor and historian co-wrote The Support Economy: Why Corporations are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism. She says the clash between empowered people and hierarchical institutions was set in motion in the 1950s."The mass-production economy provided existential security for many, many people,"she says."That, in turn, produced a new human mentality--of a self-determining individual. This mentality was once the unique precinct of the elite: the wealthy, artists, poets, philosophers. And it became the mentality of everyone.”
She now argues for an urgent rethinking of how all business is conducted."We're talking about a fundamental shift away from a mass production model,"she says."Value has been understood as something companies create: How do I take what I have and sell it to you? But in this new world value is not created inside the organization. It rests in the unfulfilled needs and desires of the individual. Now I have to come to you and say, ‘Who are you? Tell me about yourself. How do you want to live?'"She says the music industry notoriously failed at this in the past decade."It brought forward the value it had created--the CD. And if you didn't want it, how did they respond? Well, how about if they hunt you down and put you in jail?”
An increasing number of enlightened companies aim to turn social power to their own advantage by putting customers not in jail but on a pedestal. They become healthily obsessed with what's said about them online. Gatorade now operates a full-time social media command center where it not only monitors what's said about it on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and elsewhere, but also intervenes when appropriate to clarify or offer assistance. And Domino's Pizza responded somewhat brilliantly to that egregious employee video in 2009 with a self-effacing social media and advertising campaign that did not pretend the incident hadn't happened. By mid-2010 it had regained market share and dramatically boosted online reputation and e-commerce sales. Farmers Insurance uses Hearsay Social's software to help 15,000 agents nationwide maintain their own Facebook pages. It has even begun marketing itself, aptly enough, in the Farmville game people play inside Facebook.
Ford takes cues from young people immersed in social media in how it designs cars and how it communicates."Digital suffrage is upon us,"proclaims Venkatash Prasad, Ford's high-wattage leader of product social networking efforts, in an e-mail."Everyone has a right to a byte of the action, and we have embraced this might of the byte within Ford, through the use of internal and external social networks."Prasad brags that Ford recently sent a car across America, tweeting:"Not a human in a car, a car."Adds Sheryl Connelly, Ford's manager of consumer trends, in another e-mail:"If you want to reach a millennial, you have to go where they live, and that means online. Millennials want more than engagement. They want their contributions to be meaningful.”
Accepting social power as inevitable can significantly change the kind of products you design. Coca-Cola is installing machines in fast-food restaurants that allow customers to formulate their own beverages. No longer choose just a Coke or Sprite. Now you can come up with new flavor combinations and other customizations that your newly empowered heart desires.
If you ignore these forces, you will probably fail. Says consultant and author Gary Hamel:"The underlying principles on the Web of natural hierarchy, transparency, collaboration and all the rest-- those characteristics are going to have to invade management. The idea of a hierarchy that fundamentally empowers the few and disempowers the many is more or less dead."To demonstrate what's possible in this new world, Hamel helped spearhead an online forum for Web-influenced management ideas at www.managementexchange.com.

Don't think that the trends in technology, and resulting social power, will ever give you a respite from the tides of change. Says Microsoft and Lotus veteran Ozzie:"All this was unstoppable from the moment somebody installed the first network--this steady march toward reducing friction and reducing transaction costs faced by individuals. And you ain't seen nothin' yet.”
Additional reporting by Adam Ludwig.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Are You Ready to Be a Social Business? 10 Tips

There seems to be a mad rush to get on the social band wagon. Even though you and your business have been without Facebook, Twitter, a blog, LinkedIn or Google+ for your entire life and business history all of a sudden someone in your organization who has authority has decided you need to “get on social media,” by next Friday.
Whoooaaa horsey, slow down!
“Doing social” or “getting on social”  is far different from being a social business.
This is the first in a series of posts I will be writing about being social versus doing social.  For the purpose of this post let’s dive into the first question… Are you ready to BE social? Are you ready to BE a social BUSINESS?

10 Questions To Confirm If You’re Ready To Become a Social Business

1. WHY are you doing social media? Do not move to question two, do not pass go as you will not collect your $200 and will go straight to NO ROI jail if you can’t answer this question. Think about what social media can and will do for your business? How can it help you better meet your business goals? How can you better connect with your audience of clients, prospective clients, partners, media etc.? What benefits do you expect because of your efforts in social media? If your only answer to the “why” question is “my boss told me to” or “we have to because all of our competitors are doing it” then I challenge you to hit the pause button now. You are doing it for the wrong reasons.
iStock 000015742269XSmall 300x197 Are You Ready to Be a Social Business? 10 Tips for a Zoom Start! 2. Are you committed? Is your management committed? They need to be committed in both mind and wallet. Are you ready to put in the appropriate amount of resource, time and budget? Social media is not free. It will steal your greatest asset which is time. You must be committed to setting goals, objectives and building an integrated plan for success.
3. Can you put people before tools? This is critical. You must be willing to take a step back to take two steps forward. Stop focusing on learning every feature of every social network. Instead start with your business objectives, your audience and how you can help and connect with them.
4. Are you willing to invest in real people? Are you willing to invest in talking to people like they are human? In getting to know them? In learning what makes them tick? Learn what makes them happy, sad, excited, mad and inspired. The more you can learn about the audience the more you can develop and execute a plan that will deliver results.
5. Can you stop the random acts of social media? We call these rotten random acts of marketing and social media RAMs or RAMMIES. They are not good. They may feel good, taste good while you’re eating them. Hoewver, like a bad hangover they leave you feeling rotten, lifeless and out of gas when they’re done. They eat your bottom line and ROI for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Avoid them at all cost if you want success.
iStock 000016100478XSmall Are You Ready to Be a Social Business? 10 Tips for a Zoom Start! 6. Can you spell INTEGRATION? I know this is a word that has been used for decades in business marketing. Some say it’s a word we should remove from our vocabulary. However, until they can tell me a better word to use to help people understand then I will continue to use it. Bottom line, to eliminate the RAMs in your business, marketing and social media you must integrate. Business leaders usually think integration and planning takes more time and is expensive. WRONG! Yes, it may take some time up front. However, the results can be exponential. You must know where you are going before you can get there.  Integration is what helps you get there faster, more enjoyable and with far better return.
 7. Can you accept failure? This is a big one. You at one point in social media will fail. You will make a mistake. You will launch a social network page that nobody will “like” initially. You will post post on your Facebook wall and nobody will comment or like except you and your mom. However, you can’t let the failures stop you. When it happens go back to your “why”. Go back to your plan. Go back to the ”how” you can help your audience. Focus on your audience and helping them meet their objectives and you will fail far less.
 8.Are key departments in the game? The only way you are going to be able to deliver and execute an integrated plan that is focused on your audience that will help you meet business goals and objectives is if your key stakeholders and departments are in the game. If your customer service team is the main interface to the world outside of your office and they are not in support of the business doing social media then it is a recipe for disaster. We have worked with clients where we have spent the first year simply training them and helping them integrate social media into their business. We took 3 steps backward so we could help them take 10 steps forward. We have some case studies being documented but I can tell you the results and decision to do such has been exponential to if we would have rushed them onto Facebook. They now have an integrated platform with an internal team ready to zoom social media!
9. Can you handle the skeletons in the closet? If you properly integrate, work to eliminate the random acts of social media and focus on your audience I can almost guarantee most businesses there are going to be big skeletans that fall out of the closet. It’s okay. It happens to the best companies. There will be sales processes that fall out of the closet that are 100% broken, there will be customer service phone calls that are monitored that show where the bottleneck and black holes are for sales. The best thing you can do is throw the skeletons on the table and deal with them. Have a positive attitude and the rest of your team will too. You are taking a step to move forward. Don’t keep them locked in the closet as they’re bound to come out someday! Might as well deal with them now!
iStock 000004907201Small 300x241 Are You Ready to Be a Social Business? 10 Tips for a Zoom Start! 10. Do you have a social zoom agent? This is someone who is internal to your company. The person may or may not be you. It’s someone who will take on responsibility for the success of becoming a social business. If the social zoom agent is not an executive with authority then at minimum you need to have an executive social zoom champion who will support the social zoom agent. The agent will not pause until the job of becoming a social business is started in a really big way! They will own the success of the engagement, content, approach, strategy, integration. They will see to it randomness is avoided. There is only one result & that is success. This person must eat, sleep and breath a goal of becoming social business.

What you say? 

So are you ready? Or do you have some work to do? First step is to admit if you have work to do. Social media is about communication. It’s about connecting with real people. If you can’t talk about the above 10 things internally you are not going to succeed when you venture out into the open, viral world of social media. Be open. Be honest. If you are empowered, take the lead within your organization to achieve success.
What tips can you share with others for how to start social media in the right way? What did you learn the hard way? What would you do different if you had it to do all over again?
Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com

Friday, September 16, 2011

What’s Your Approach To Managing Performance

What’s Your Approach To Managing Performance?
by David Brock on September 11th, 2011

As leaders and sales managers, a key aspect of our jobs is to manage performance. I find lots of different approaches people use, but at the core the approaches tend to reflect two completely different views of performance. (Stuart Cross has an interesting perspective, looking at 4 views–we’re actually not far apart, I’d encourage you to watch his short video on this.)

I find managers who are problem solving oriented and others who are developmental oriented.

The problem solving oriented manager is focused on today’s performance issues and addressing them. They look for shortcomings in current performance—someone not making their number, a person not making the right number of calls, a person needing sales skills development, enabling them to close more business. They focus on addressing today’s specific issues and crises. Their goal is to find and eliminate today’s problems.

Some of these problem solving oriented managers are terrible in their approaches—they don’t coach, they tell. They berate the individual, sometimes telling them to shape up or ship out. Other problem solving oriented managers can be very good coaches. They sit with their people, seek to understand the challenges people are having, and work to solve or eliminate problems. They work with each person on their team, knocking off each problem as it comes up.

There’s another approach some managers take to performance management, it’s a developmental approach. These managers take a slightly different perspective of performance management. Their focuse is not just on today’s issues–though that provides a foundation, but rather on developing the person to achieve their full potential — both in their current role and in future roles. They actively look to develop the capabilities of their people so they can step into bigger roles, take on more responsibility. Managers focused on a developmental approach to performance management seek to avoid problems in the future. They try to find ways of coaching the person, getting them to develop themselves, to stretch, to learn, to grow.

Developmental managers are not just concerned about their peoples’ performances today, they want to see them reach their full potential–contributing in greater ways to the organization and to their own attainment. They have a proactive approach to performance management–not only focused on great performance today, but sustaining and improving that performance over time.

What kind of manager are you? How do you manage performance? Do you focus on today’s problems and address only the performance issues of your people today? Do you look at today, and tomorrow? Do you help your people identify and avoid problems? Are you focused on helping them achieve their full potential–both for themselves and for the organization?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:http://partnersinexcellenceblog.com

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

INSTANT MBA: Your Customers Own You

Karlee Weinmann Sep. 13, 2011 Business Insider 

Domino's has learned tremendously since an unfortunate YouTube video surfaced in 2009.
Its CEO Patrick Doyle says that the company is now completely customer-focused.
"They own your brand ... You have to make sure they know you're listening to them, and make changes based on their expectations. As we've shown, it can lead to pretty dramatic business results for you as well."
Consumers' perception of Domino's quality went from positive to negative in a matter of days after the video went viral, according to YouGov, which surveys 1,000 consumers daily about hundreds of brands.
In response, Domino's revamped its menu and launched a new social media strategy. Sales jumped 14.3 percent after the reworked recipe debuted.
So far, the company's newfound transparency has resonated with customers.

KB's notes;

Over the years I have witnessed what seems like countless small business owners who have great products and great enthusiasm for their products and businesses. What so many fail to acknowledge is that THE MARKET IS HOLY.  What does that mean? It means that you can think, feel and believe whatever you want about what people should do, how they should feel about your products/service or why your mousetrap is the best.  The reality is that is archaic thinking left over from an era of when people had fewer choices, minimal access to information (remember the Sears Roebuck catalog) and typically focused on single brands. Today we have more choices than ever before. We have instant access to product details, consumer reviews and even price comparisons all at the click of a mouse and available almost instantaneously.

Well what does all that mean?  It means that the MARKET IS HOLY.  The market will tell you, assuming you care to listen, what they want in product details, how they expect your marketing $s to be spent, how they expect your return process to work, how they expect your customer service to work and how you should package your products.  You have the choice Mr. Small / Medium businessman.  Will  you be customer centric or wonder why your business is struggling while you are continuing to do things  your way.  The Market IS HOLY and it tells us what & how they choose to be serviced.  9 times out of 10 if you won't offer them products and services the way they want it they will find someone who does.

Listen to the market, listen to your customer, listen to your customer facing employees about what the MARKET SAYS IS HOLY.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

How to Set Up Sales Territories

Deciding how to divide sales territories create the most efficient environment for your sales team is more difficult than just drawing lines on a map.
By Tim Donnelly |  @timdonnelly   | Sep 2, 2011 -Inc Magazine

When you're looking at the map and figuring out how to split up sales territories, how do you decide which salesperson to send to drive all up and down North Dakota and which one gets to just walk a few blocks around downtown Manhattan?
Deciding how to divide sales territories create the most efficient environment for your sales team is more difficult than just drawing lines on a map. The process requires a good dose of foresight that's needed to make sure you allow room for the company to grow.
Poorly aligned sales territories can cause low employee morale, lost clients and squandered resources. Experts from the fields of sales management and data analytics share these tips for setting up the best sales territories.
Keep Your Ultimate Goal in Mind When Establishing Sales Territories
Before you start carving up the map and sending your sales team out into the world, take some time to think about what you're trying to accomplish.
"Start at the top: what is the target revenue, the overall revenue goal?" says Marie Warner, president of Warner Professional Sales. "Given that goal, what are my targets? Once I have those targets, how am I going to sell to them?"
If you're a start-up, you can't come right out of the gate hiring a huge sales force. You have to start strategically by meeting revenue goals in small areas and then gradually growing the territories.
"It's like a chess game," she says. "Do not do point to point; try to think moves ahead."
By the time you've built up a base with a sales team and some clients, you can start thinking about how to allocate the sales staff.
"When you've got 10, 25, 50 salespeople in the field, that's when you start to look at how to create balanced territories that are matching your investment in salespeople," says Ralph Rothfelder, president of Mapping Analytics.
Doing some preliminary planning will help you identify the qualities that will help you set up all your sales territories in the future: what kind of clients you're going after, where they're located, and how much resources it will take to reach them.
Collect Lots of Data
Many companies these days use some form of analytics software to figure out the best way to establish their sales territories. But experts say the quality of the outcome is only as good as the data you can feed into it.
Most pros say they start by ranking customers or clients into different categories based on the percentage of revenue they generate vs. the time spent servicing them. The "A" clients might be the most reliable ones, the "Bs" and "Cs" might be promising but work-intensive clients, while the rest are require a lot of effort for little return.
Basically, you want to be able to distinguish what makes one account different from another, says Alex Machinis, president CEO and founder of Empower Geographics. Does geography matter at all, or can you deal with clients without putting your sales team behind a windshield?
You should collect data about the location of the customer (whether physical or virtual), how much time a salesperson needs to spend on the phone with them and their order history. Analytics programs can spit out a model to show you what each hypothetical sales area would look like in terms of size and profitability.
"After that it's a function of what data is important to you to look at with respect to making decisions relevant to territories," Rothfelder says. "What makes a good territory for you?"
More than half of businesses still use nothing more complicated than an Excel spreadsheet to split up the sales load.
"If it's complex at all, you really can't do a good job," he says. "It's amazing how many companies, even large ones, are not taking advantage of the tools that are out there to do a much better job."
Each company needs to decide for itself if it needs to hire an outside consultant to come in and establish the sales territories. But the option to do it in-house is easier than ever: sales territory alignment software used to cost up to $6,000 per company; now you can download it for $29, he says.
Review the Sales Territories Periodically
Sales managers make a common mistake of blaming the territory for a bad salesperson. While a certain member of the team may be better at locking down clients than another, you shouldn't be messing with the territory boundaries to help the weaker employee.
"One of the biggest helps I convince people of is to try to get away from the quality of the sales reps," says Phil Brennan, president of Analytics In Focus. "You can hire better sales reps. You want your territories to be balanced. Even if your sales rep isn't cutting it, don't give them a smaller territory; get a better sales rep for that territory."
In addition to undermining your sales team, messing with the territories too often could hurt your relationship with customers in those territories.
"Clients and prospects do not like to see a continuing stream of new faces," Warner says. "Looking ahead is so key. You have to monitor it but if you continually tweak it you are shooting yourself in the foot."
You should, however, perform regular maintenance on the territories and you may have to tweak them to make sure they are functioning properly.
Machinis says most companies shouldn't expect to get it right on the first try and should review territories once a year.
"It takes time to do it right," he says.
Brennan says when a company is first starting out, its goal should be to create sales territories that stay valid for about a year. Once established, you can go three to five years without having to touch the territories. But the key is planning ahead so that even if you can't start with the full sales staff you want, you are prepared for growth.
"It's better to design a year ahead and not fill them until you can afford to than to be realigning every three months," he says.
Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com