Dodo Loves Marketing

Test your range

No large manufacturer of consumer goods ever invests in a product without testing it first. You must do the same. Show it around. Compare it to products already available. Get feedback from people whose opinions you trust. ..more

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Achieving global synergies

The concept of synergy is simple: the whole should be more than the sum of the parts. It is often described as the ‘2 + 2 = 5′ effect. The search for synergy is one of the main drivers of the trend towards the globalisation of industry, particularly in manufacturing and logistics.

It has often been suggested that there can be significant benefits if R&D, product development, manufacturing and marketing can be coordinated in order to avoid ‘re-inventing the wheel’ country by country, and also through economies of scale in procurement and production. ..more

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Developing a global logistics strategy

A number of issues arise when global logistics strategies are being considered. One key concern is the question of the appropriate degree of centralised direction as against local autonomy. Traditionally many companies have preferred to devolve decision-making to a local level, yet almost by definition it is difficult to see how global supply chains can be optimised in terms of service and cost if they are planned and managed on a fragmented, local basis. On the other hand the attractions of local autonomy are clear, in terms of responsiveness to the market and the ability to ’stay close to the customer’. ..more

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Level 3: At this level customers expect partnership. They want you to listen to them, to be responsive to them, to make them feel they are on the same side of the fence as you.

Service businesses have long realized the importance of this partnership expectation. That’s why Wal-Mart positions hearty senior citizens at their front door to smile a welcome and remember names. That’s why all airlines create loyalty clubs offering special treatment to frequent fliers. And that’s presumably why video stores offer a “staff picks” section: “We’re like you. We watch videos, too.” ..more

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Required steps only prevent dissatisfaction. They cannot drive customer satisfaction.

You, and every other employee worth his salt, want to do everything in your power to build a growing number of loyal customers. You want to take prospects, who have never tried your product or service before, and turn them into advocates. Advocates are customers who are aggressively loyal. They will not only withstand temptations to defect, they will actively sing your praises. These advocates are your largest unpaid sales force. These advocates, more than marketing, more than promotions, even more than price, are your fuel for sustained growth. ..more

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There’s a great deal you can learn from spending time with your strugglers. You can learn why certain systems are hard to operate. You can learn why initiatives are poorly designed. You can learn why clients become unhappy. And over time, you can become, as some managers are, highly articulate in describing the anatomy of failure and its various cures.

Ironically, none of this is going to help you understand what excellence looks like. You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure. Of all the infinite number of ways to perform a certain task, most of them are wrong. There are only a few right ways. Unfortunately you don’t come any closer to identifying those right ways by eliminating the wrong ways. Excellence is not the opposite of failure. It is just different. It has its own configuration, which sometimes includes behaviors that look surprisingly similar to the behaviors of your strugglers. ..more

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The language of “average” is pervasive. Reservation centers calculate the “average” number of calls a customer service representative can handle in an hour. Restaurant chains project staffing needs by estimating how many servers are needed to staff the “average” restaurant. In sales organizations, territories are divided up based on how many prospects the “average” salesperson can handle. “Average” is everywhere. ..more

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People often think of ‘networking‘ as something that is only done at high-powered levels. Not so. Letting mothers at the school gates know about your services, swapping information with friends at the rugby club is all networking. ‘I found that other mums were my best customers,’ says Sarita, a beauty therapist. ‘When my sons were invited to tea with their friends, they’d often mention that I ran a beauty business and I got plenty of of clients that way !’

You cannot afford to be too indirect about offering your services. On the other hand, old contacts may be put off if you continually pester them for work. It is better to engineer a meeting about another matter and then explain what you can do for them, rather than endlessly cold calling. Persistence may pay off — but it can also put people off. This is why ‘forums’ for networking are so important. ..more

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The end of a relationship can be accompanied by despair, despondency and even depression. You will probably know at least one person whose work performance plummeted after a relationship breakup—if you haven’t experienced this misfortune yourself.

William, a product manager with a large manufacturing firm had been seeing Caroline on a steady basis for nine months when she told him one evening that there just wasn’t enough in their relationship to warrant any further contact. This news came suddenly and unexpectedly and William was devastated. He did not arrive at work the next day and rang in to say he was sick and would not be at work for a week. When he did return, his colleagues remarked about how ill he still looked. William said he had a severe case of influenza and hoped to bounce back quickly. In reality, it took William months to overcome the trauma of his severed relationship. During that period, his work performance was most decidedly down. His confidence and general outlook on life were also at low ebb. Fortunately, he had the good sense to see a professional about his emotional state, a move which facilitated his recovery. ..more

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Now that we have examined some of the negatives of expansion from a very small business to a medium-sized small business, let’s give equal time to the potential benefits.

One of the most important components of gross profit is the degree to which you’re able to set your selling price. Your ability to set that price is largely a function of your control of the marketplace. At one extreme, you may have a patented product for which there is no substitute, and for which there is totally elastic demand (people will buy it at any cost). If that item costs you a dollar, you may be able to sell it for ten dollars, one hundred dollars, even one thousand dollars. At the other end of the spectrum, you may be selling wheat in Nebraska. In that case, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to command one-tenth of one cent over the market price on the day you sell. ..more

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The climate of some organizations is more conducive to informal cooperation than that of others. But, whatever the tone of relationships where you work, your job will go more smoothly if you build a trusting rapport with your colleagues and other employees. Here are some ways you can benefit from widening your personal network:

• Exchange of information. What’s the top brass thinking? How is a multide partmental project really going? What personnel changes are in the wind, and what implications does that have for your group? Who has been talking to whom? Answers to questions like these are often gotten faster through casual conversation than through official channels. ..more

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U.S. business spends billions annually to rev up workers. In the travel incentive business alone, there are now thousands of service companies that develop and/or run trips to reward employees, as opposed to a few hundred companies a decade ago.

What methods are most used? How can you choose and implement a motivational program that will match your needs and get results? Matt S. Walton III is a managing principal in Los Angeles for Sibson & Co. Inc. , a management consulting firm based in Princeton, NJ that develops compensation and incentive programs. He describes the most common types of programs and offers insights and guidelines:

• Rewards. Trips, televisions, cash—all can be powerful incentives to pump up performance and boost profits. “Reward programs are especially effective when used with sales and customer service representatives,” says Walton. He cautions that, for the reward to be meaningful, it should relate to specific performance measures established in advance. For example, bank personnel might be offered a reward for getting a certain number of customers to buy a CD within a 30-day period. ..more

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Many network marketing companies steer clear of the word ‘selling‘. The reason? Some 95 per cent of the population actually dislike selling. For this reason you will often read in the classified section of the newspaper an advertisement which reads:

Representatives of these companies invite prospects to ’share opportunities’. They couch their presentation in a way which suggests the business opportunity they are offering is simply that of sharing wealth. Let’s get one thing straight: network marketing involves selling.

The fact is, whichever way you look at it, a network marketing company only succeeds if its products or services are sold regularly month after month; in other words, through repeat purchases. ..more

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Use this technique every time you have to write, be it a thank- you card, letter, brochure, flyer or a company’s ‘address to the nation’. By having a clear picture of that one person you most want to hear the message, you come across as a genuine person — which you are, as you are not trying to communicate with the whole world, just with that one important person.

Your style is your own; your message is for them and they feel it, hear it and see it as a real communication.

I was fortunate to attend a Saatchi & Saatchi ‘creative week’ where we asked one of the stars how he created a global campaign. Andy replied that he certainly did not try to put in a black cow, a white sheep or a brown dog. Or a redhead, a blonde and a brunette. Or even a man, a woman and a child. ..more

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Networking is a people business. So you must continually work at developing good relationships, team morale and effective communication.

Effective communication is a two-way interaction between two parties and it implies both verbal and nonverbal communication. It is a vital skill for all distributors and network marketing leaders. Ask yourself whether you would like to listen to yourself at a presentation meeting. Who is the best speaker you know? What ideas, techniques and presentation methods can you copy from him or her?

Here are some ways in which you can improve your communications:

Rehearse what you are going to say Do you know what you are going to say, why you want to say it and how you will put your points across? ..more

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As I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, most entrepreneurs have a very specific purpose for their business plan and, once that purpose has been accomplished, the formal planning process is over. The People Express business plan is theonly written plan the company ever put together. The question of why the company never assembled another plan to guide its astonishing growth is one that prompts extensive explanation from founder Donald Burr.

Quite simply, he begins, the company didn’t really need an operating plan once it had financial backing. Not even for budgeting purposes?

“We felt budgeting was one of the things that stand in the way of customer service,” he explains. “The mind-set of budgeting is that it’s finance driven instead of customer driven.”

Burr points to Continental Airlines, which acquired People Express, to illustrate his point. “Continental Airlines lives by budgeting,” he says. “From the food to the uniforms to the people, it’s budget driven. You end up with a seriously flawed product as a result of such a process.” ..more

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The new market leaders know that the greatest constraint on today’s customers is time—more critical even than money. The broader choices, the constant stream of innovations, and the pace of contemporary life conspire to crowd people’s schedules. Whether you’re in the market for a CD player for home or a new supplier of components for your company, you don’t have time to evaluate every option, consider every shred of information, and explore every contingency—even though it would probably be useful to do so.

Time is a flexible commodity: We willingly spend more of it on some activities than on others. A busy manager for whom every minute counts will happily spend hours on thegolf course, but an easygoing person with time to chat will hang up angrily on a telemarketer who calls at dinnertime. ..more

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Imagine a modern Rip Van Winkle waking up from a twenty-year sleep, He would surely be amazed at how the world has changed: He would be bewildered by new technology, bowled over at the speed and clutter of life in 2001, dazzled by the sheer abundance being thrust at him. The torrent of new products, goods, services, ideas, and innovations vying for his attention would be shocking.

How would he react? I suspect, like people through the ages in suddenly changed circumstances, Rip would reset his bearings from his old perspective before cautiously testing the new water. Like a child who clings to a teddy bear well into adolescence, or a lottery winner who repaints the old house, he would cling to the familiar and be slow to embrace what is new. ..more

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With all the demands on our time, it’s not surprising that for the most part, most of us value our routines and aren’t about to embrace every conceivable new possibility that comes our way.

We’re willing to examine options when we’re excited about a new product or service, or frustrated by what we have. But if we’re enjoying our current condition (or disliking alternatives), we will be in no mood to change, much less spend any time listening to a sales pitch. “Give us more of the same, and don’t bother us with the newfangled stuff,” we say. Like the worker who prefers his familiar job to the uncertainties of promotion, we resist any unfamiliarity. We would rather spend our time preserving and building on what we have than exploring what we could be doing instead. ..more

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While press attention has focused on the achievements (and, more recently, the struggles) of Internet entrepreneurs in dotcom companies, comparatively little mention has been made of the increasing numbers of service workers who make up the bulk of the demand for labour in new technology industries. Leibovich, in an article appropriately entitled ‘Service workers without a smile’, provides an interesting account of employment conditions at Amazon, world famous for its ground-breaking policies of online customer relationship-building. He notes how staff are pressured to work as quickly as possible in order to achieve customer satisfaction targets, particularly those who earn low wages packing books at the firm’s distribution centres or answering emails from customers, and goes on to observe the irony of the Amazon geography: ‘Customer service employees work in a patchwork of cubicles scattered over three downtown Seattle buildings. The quarters have an old industrial feel, with gritty exteriors that belie the company’s sleek online identity’ (1999: 3). Many other ‘new economy’ employees work in call centres that have been dubbed ‘the new sweatshops’ because of pressure to work as quickly as possible under electronic surveillance that monitors, for example, the number of customer emails responded to per hour. ..more

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