Steve has a new newsletter out today, Opps. vs. Ops. Just don’t make an oops and forget to read it, okay? It’s all about the opportunities for your company in the upcoming year and contains some very practical advice.
And if you have any comments after reading the newsletter, please make them here!
And, don’t forgot to sign up for Steve’s free 2009 Readiness Teleseminar, on January 9 at 1EST. It’s free, and all who sign up will have access to a download, so you’ll be able to listen after the event if you can’t make it for the “live” call.
Update: If you would like to listen to Steve’s teleseminar, but you can’t make it on January 9th, sign up anyway! We’ll be sending a recording of the event to all those who signed up.
Is your company ready for the challenges to be faced in the upcoming year? Yastrow & Company wants you to do more than just survive 2009. We want you to thrive! And we want to help you do it. Consider this your invitation to Steve’s free 2009 Readiness Teleseminar, Friday, January 9th at 1:00 P.M. EST. Sign up here.
Space is limited, so sign up soon. Procrastination will definitely not help anyone thrive in 2009. Before the teleseminar, read Steve’s newsletter the 2009 Readiness Test.
The 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (often called the first existentialist) distinguished between two ways to travel by horse: Riding a stallion or riding in the back of a hay wagon.
Both get you somewhere, but riding a stallion requires you to take responsibility for your situation. Why this is relevant today: Riding the stallion, as much effort as it takes, represents being in firm control in tough times. The back of the hay wagon may be more comfortable, but you have no control where you end up.
The end of the year is a good time for reflection and, in this case, mental preparation. How will you approach 2009? Will you ride the hay wagon and let it happen to you, determining your fate for you?
Or, will you do whatever you can to make it happen as well as possible, live it fully, and get whatever you can from it?
We are not only living in a time of great economic uncertainty, we are living in a time of tectonic economic recalibration. We didn’t ask for this, and we’re not happy it is here, but, since we do have to live through it, we shouldn’t miss the opportunity to experience it.
Although you are about to live through the strangest, and probably most difficult, economic climate in your life to-date, this situation will expose you to things you have never thought of or experienced, and you will learn things that you could never otherwise have learned.
Don’t miss the opportunity to live through this time as a life-changing, life-learning, help-you-think-in-a-whole-new-way set of experiences. It won’t be fun and it won’t be easy, but it will be with you for the rest of your life. Make the most of it.
Remember. Your grandchildren will learn about this in school. Pay attention. (Be able to help them with their homework.)
Selling and marketing will be tougher next year. We are in a period of economic uncertainty unrivaled for more than 70 years, and your customers, no matter who they are and what you sell, will buy differently.
Here’s a very important question for you: What conversations do you want to have with your customers? What do you want to talk about?
To answer this question, ask yourself this: What do your customers want to talk about?
This is a healthy place to start, because you quickly realize that your customers don’t want to talk about you. They are much more interested in talking about themselves than they are in talking about you.
So, the first thing we know about your 2009 customer conversations is that they need to be about your customer, not about you. (Yes, that means that the features and benefits of your product are only indirectly important in this conversation.)
If your customers are businesses, what they really care about is improving the state of their businesses, or of their personal jobs within those businesses. If your customers are consumers, they are interested in improving the state of their lives, whether those improvements are quotidian and mundane or profound and life-changing. The point is still the same: Don’t talk about yourself.
After recognizing this, you are now free of the constraints of feature-dumps, chest-beating, advertising promises and elevator pitches. You have enabled yourself to think about what your customer really wants to talk about, and center your conversation there.
Once your customer is engaged in a conversation with you, it will not be hard for the conversation to evolve and include elements of you, your products and services. (Unless, of course, your products and services can’t really help your customer.) Once the conversation is focused on what your customer cares about, you will find a natural way to migrate the conversation to where you want it to be. A flock of birds takes off in one direction as they assemble into formation. Once they are all flying together they can turn in the direction of their destination.
I’ll write more in the future about how to change the conversation you are having with your customer. For now, I encourage you to focus on this fundamental question: What do we want to talk about?
Don’t just talk about the tough economy. Be ready for it!
Today’s newsletter, The 2009 Readiness Test, outlines the most important questions you should address to ensure that you don’t just survive, but thrive, in 2009.
Just about every one of my consulting clients, prospects and audience members is asking me questions that revolve around the economic situation. Virtually every answer and every conversation I’ve had with them involves one or more of the topics covered in the newsletter.
Here are the six questions outlined in the newsletter:
Do you know where the latent profit is in your business?
Which of your current customers can help you unleash that latent profit?
How does the economic situation help you focus your new customer acquisition efforts?
Is your brand strategy right for the times?
Are you communicating effectively at all customer touchpoints?
How clear and compelling is your internal brand?
Please have a look at the newsletter and share your comments below!
I spent Tuesday and Wednesday at the 800CEOREAD business authors “Pow-wow,” where I got to learn from and connect with other authors, along with top publicists, publishers, thought leaders, designers, et. al. Very inspiring.
Wednesday night I flew out of Chicago to Zagreb, Croatia, arriving Thursday. It’s now Sunday morning, and I’ve had a powerful three days here. My speaking events on Friday, hosted by Josip Basic and his team at MPG Southeast Europe, included people from Sony Ericsson, P&G, Nestle, Phillip Morris, LG, among others. Since the events were followed by a 7-hour Christmas party, I had the opportunity to interact with many of the audience members. Joe and I spent the day yesterday exploring Zagreb, sharing ideas, brainstorming and learning from each other.
So, with the past five days devoted to great conversation and interaction, interspersed with time alone to write and think, what has crossed my mind? Here are a few highlights:
- Downturn notwithstanding, we all have untapped opportunities in our businesses. In fact, I’m convinced that most of our businesses have ripe opportunities, that have not yet been developed, which are of a scope greater than the negative effect of the downturn. Think about that for a second … it’s like losing a quarter, but instead of worrying about the lost quarter you go find the dollar bill that you know has been lying under the couch.
- marketing is dead. Long Live Marketing. I’m here in Croatia to talk about Brand Harmony and We Relationships with local representatives of global brands, many of which were built on old-school, brute-force marketing techniques. MPG, my host, is a BTL (“Below The Line”) marketing company that helps clients engage 1-to-1 with customers at events, with sampling, in-store, etc., diverting marketing spending from one-way advertising to multi-faceted, integrated programs that tell a richer story about the brand. Marketing success is contingent upon jettisoning the old advertising-based techniques, and recognizing that your challenge is to create a strong sense of Brand Harmony across many (all) touchpoints. MPG is thriving, and their clients are reaping great benefits by focusing on Brand Harmony instead of Brute Force. These people “get it.” (Croatia emerged from communism about 20 years ago, and emerged from war just over 10 years ago … maybe quick post-war development enabled creative marketing thinking, unburdened by decades of institutionalized advertising budgets.)
- The downturn is a great opportunity not to waste resources. You know, all of those silly ideas you’ve wanted to pursue, that are even more likely to fail in this environment? Guess what? Now you have a great excuse not to pursue them!
- Customer loyalty is your best, highest-potential, asset. Ok, I’m sounding like a broken record on this one. But are you focusing your biggest investments on building customer relationships? Let me repeat: For most companies, the best investment they can make in these times is in developing their existing customer relationships.
It’s not my style to write in lists, without summing those lists up into a theme. (More a personality quirk than a philosophy) But, hey, I’m enjoying my breakfast at the Hotel Allegra in Zagreb, thinking about the past few days. I’m in the mood to ruminate. (Thoughts, not food) I’m planning on developing some of these ideas a bit more, starting with my newsletter on Tuesday.
In the meantime, please share your comments. (I love comments)
Here’s short video rant on taking control of your company’s future, inspired by a conversation with Mats Lederhausen of Be-Cause. Mats is very interested in helping companies define their purpose, and this conversation, led me to a late-night eye-opening.
There is no destiny that you don’t create! 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard distinguished between riding a wild stallion and riding in the back of a hay wagon. They both get you somewhere, but the first, while more challenging, requires much more responsibility. Ride the stallion, especially in tough times!
- Death Cab for Cutie, Your Heart is an Empty Room, from the album Plans
Isn’t it frustrating when you fully commit yourself to an interaction with someone, but you can tell that they aren’t fully engaged with you?
This happens all of the time – people’s eyes wander while you talk with them, their answers to your questions betray that they have lost the thread of the conversation, you hear them clicking away on their computer keyboard while you talk on the phone. Ugh.
Don’t feel like you’ve done something; it’s usually not your fault. As Eckardt Tolle said, the present is a place most of us visit only infrequently. Non-engagement is a symptom of our over-scheduled, over-saturated lives and the myth that we are able to multi-task.
But, it’s a big problem: The first requirement for a relationship-building encounter is that you and the other person are both fully-engaged in the moment. Without full engagement, you will have a relationship-diluting transaction.
Here’s my challenge to you for the upcoming week: Call people out when you see they are not engaged.
Ok. It’s a bit uncomfortable. But think of it this way: You are devoting valuable moments of your life to an interaction with someone, and they are not equally willing to commit to the encounter. You are there, and they aren’t. What a waste of your time. What a waste of a slice of life.
Go ahead. Say it. “Are you here with me?” “Do you want me to wait until you finish whatever it is you are typing, and then we can continue talking?” “Is something else distracting you? Do you want me to wait a minute while you take care of it?”
You are not the one who should feel uncomfortable. My associate, Caroline Ceisel, and I work together most every day. Caroline has no trouble telling me if she thinks my mind is elsewhere when we are talking about something. The result? I am especially conscious of giving her my full attention when we talk.
Do it. You will have an opportunity today. You will be speaking with someone and you will discern that their mind is wandering. Call the other person out. And then, watch what happens. They will not only engage more fully in the present moment, they will also engage more fully with you in the future.
Today we heard official news that we already knew: We are in a recession. So what are you going to do?
My newsletter today, It’s Time to Invest, encourages us to invest in our most valuable asset, the loyalty our customers have for us. There are many things that we should cut back on, but our customer relationships and the loyalty that comes from those relationships are worthy of more attention – and investment – than ever.
"When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention" - Tom Peters
"I had to buy two copies. The first one is so dog-eared and underlined I couldn't read it any longer." - Seth Godin
Steve is the author of Brand Harmony and the newly published We:
The Ideal Customer Relationship. Learn more and order direct from our Products
page, or from Amazon.
In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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