Why do marketers fail to deliver on what they promise?

 Since most marketers have positive intent, its a shame when the customer feels shortchanged. The Citibank ad is a great example of polite first date promises where both people don’t seem to want a second date. Disclaimer: This post is not about credit cards but the general question on why marketers fail to deliver on promises. Credit cards are used as examples only.

Marketing is about providing “value” to the customer and the American Marketing Association definition makes that quite clear.

You have a product that you develop and offer to the target market. The offering is communicated through your website, online advertising, off line advertising or sales calls.  Before the customer buys – she expects a certain “value”. This perceived value is a personal thing and is not necessarily what you say quite clearly (you hope) on your website and other marketing materials.  Open any of the numerous credit card direct mail offers you receive and you would see that the marketers have tried to explain the terms. Okay , sometimes the terms are in small print.

Between your perceived promise and delivery, customers experience a gap that causes dis-satisfaction.

And today dissatisfied customers do not hesitate to post on social media and do great harm to your brand.

Here are two questions to ask to ensure that you have happy customers:

  1. What is the perception of your offer? The easiest way to do this is to check the customer calls and questions. If they did not realize that a “0%” balance transfer offer involves a “3%” balance transfer fee you have several options. These include making the 3% in larger font on both the web offer and the direct mail piece. Or at the time the transaction is put in through the web having a pop up that reminds the customer about the fee. Towns do a good job of these extra costs on their web transactions as do gas stations that spell out the gas price for credit card transactions. Avoid negative surprises.
  2. Is this perceived value being delivered? Before launching an ad campaign try to test internal systems to confirm that customers “get what they see”. Sometimes it is a small software issue or a communication issue between various internal people. A few rehearsals don’t take time and the kinks are sorted out.  In new product development (NPD)  this is called “product use testing” where you test from customer perception of the value offered to the experience of the value delivered. Its surprising how very large organizations skip this inexpensive test just because the “launch” date is coming up.

These two questions should help in increasing customer happiness and more positive social media feedback. About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.

Why are sales force incentives so seductive for businesses?-Understanding attribution

Attribution of the sale closed-incentives-StratoServe
The total US sales force incentives paid out to sales people is probably over $240 Billion/year. This compared to about $60 Billion spent on digital advertising according to the IAB. That works out to sales person commissions and bonuses that are four times the digital marketing spend. We exclude sales force salaries and benefits for this estimate.

In other words, businesses cannot resist the idea of giving out an incentive upon concluding a deal. You hope that the dangling commission of a carrot will keep the sales team motivated. On the face of it, it makes great sense because you pay for results – no results – no pay … how can you go wrong?

In contrast, its hard to pinpoint the particular ad view that “caused” the sale. Or to what would you attribute a particular sale.  Attribution is a difficult idea to grasp in the context of business and marketing.

Consider the attribution challenge in business generally. If you are a builder and are required to complete a home delivery by fall – you know that you need to put more worker resources. Now. If quality of work is important to you, you will involve highly skilled workers. For keeping on time you could get a project manager. All of this will mean increased costs.

If your customer is very happy at project delivery the attribution problem is:Is the customer happy because of timeliness ? (your project manager), Great quality of materials and work?( your skilled worker team, your quality suppliers) or your regular communication and updates ? (that’s you, keeping the customer informed). Probably all these factors had roles to play for a happy customer and you can’t really attribute customer happiness to just one factor.

Similarly, while you feel “in control” giving out a commission on a completed sale – the salesperson’s effort is not the only thing that is working. The customer who signs up has done her research, potentially talked with your other customers and that is why the sale occurs. These other inputs that the customer relies on , before deciding together makes up the marketing effort. Hence both marketing and sales work together. Marketing messages help in smoothing the difficult challenge that salespeople face everyday. If a customer is already aware of a brand(through marketing) , she is much happier to listen to the sales pitch.

And then there are downsides to relying only on  sales force  incentives as this Harvard Business Review piece suggests. Commissions and incentives are a great motivator, except that the sales force becomes short term oriented. Salespeople are not entirely committed to customer satisfaction over the long term, they just want to make the sale. Since rewards are tied to signed contracts and there is really not much incentive in uncovering customer priorities. Perhaps some of these priorities are not met by your offering. There is every chance of “dropping the ball” between sales and the rest of the organization when sales is incentive driven.

In summary, sales force incentives do motivate salespeople. However, attributing the sale entirely to the sales person is an error. Your offline and online advertising,website,social media,current happy customers are all making the sale possible.

About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.

Pokemon Go for location based marketing with millenials

 It’s summer and you see lots of young folks (millennials) busy on their cell phones as they vigorously and purposefully seem to be rushing to a destination. Where are they going? you would tend to ask yourself, if you are not familiar Pokemon Go.For a quick overview watch the NBC video on this post.  The amazing thing that the augmented reality Pokemon Go game has been able to do, is to engage millennials with the physical world. For as we know:

Millennials are hard to “engage” in the physical brick and mortar world. They much prefer digital engagement on their digital device.

This is a big reason that political marketers are worried about millennial  voter turnout on election day. Despite all sorts of social media engagement from their loyal millennial supporters. Loyalty is not what is lacking but it is the unwillingness to physically move and engage with the real world.

The great thing about Pokemon Go is that it has got younger people out in the fresh air from being cooped up on a screen indoors. We believe that getting the kids out to play is the best thing since the cell phone took off. Hopefully, Pokemon Go will be able to fix the driving-playing-accident problem. You are supposed to walk and if you are at above 20 miles an hour you don’t find any “new eggs” as the game goes to sleep.

The marketing opportunity for all brick-and-mortar businesses with Pokemon Go is huge as people walk around to find the Pokemon creatures. Here are some questions to consider depending on your business:

  • What if we are a local or mobile stores- (low unit value- quick buy)?: If you have a local store (eg. pizza) or a mobile business ( eg. Food or Ice-cream truck) putting out “lures” to get about 30 walk-ins spending 60 cents on advertising via “lures” or  2 cents a walkin, is a marketing no-brainer. Your product or service needs to be low-unit price and quick buy decision(eg. pizza slice, sandwich lunch,ice cream). Even if you have a service business like a nail spa or a hair salon and you really can’t do 30 haircuts immediately, try to sign up the Pokemon Go traffic for your newsletter, get their phone numbers and names and request them to like your Facebook page. For more details on Pokemon Go for local businesses  read the Walter Chen piece in Inc. Magazine.
  • What if we are local businesses that are high value and/or long sales cycle:High and/or longer sales cycle businesses includes car dealers, insurance agents, apparel stores, electronics stores etc.  People tend to check out things more than once before they can decide because of the expense and commitment involved. For such prospective customers it is important that you capture the contact details of the Pokemon Go traffic. Have a signup sheet to get name,cell phone number, email address so that you can keep up contact.
  • Is Pokemon Go something that will continue?  It may seem like a fad but Pokemon Go and the augmented reality industry has arrived. It helps that Nianticlabs the creators of Pokemon Go is a Google venture. And they should be able to deploy their massive learning from AdWords into marketing opportunities for this new channel. Pokemon Go and the augmented reality genre is surely going to evolve and change. But then marketing is constantly changing as newer opportunities to engage audiences arrive.
  • Is the effort and distraction worthwhile? If your business needs to engage with millennials, this is a great channel and the effort is certainly worthwhile. Remember that Gandhi quote (1890)  “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.” Pokemon Go is able to literally get a customer to your premises. How can having a potential customer at your business be a distraction?

Beyond more foot traffic for local businesses, augmented reality that encourages people to move around and be more active, is great news for better health. About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services

Are they looking for an answer to a problem, a specific service or your business?


Business owners tend to be fighting so many battles that they don’t seem to have the resources to figure out how their customers find them on Google. This post helps you understand your customer’s journey.

[Thank you, dear readers, for your interest in this post from July 14, 2016. We updated the post on October 30, 2022].

The biggest thing to know is if someone Googles’something – there is a marketing opportunity around the corner. Why? because unless we have interest, we are unlikely to Google anything!

Here is a simple way to visualize how your customers think when they Google something related to your business:

  1. Unsure of the problem: Metaphorically, the night is dark, and there is a sliver of the moon, as depicted in the new visual with this post. The problem might be simple, like you are hungry at 3 pm. Lunch is over at many restaurants If you are a restaurant and have a free Google my Business listing. They might find you if it says “open ” at 3 pm. If you are running a Google AdWords campaign scheduled to run at 3 pm – they will find you as well. It’s even better if your ad is structured to appear on mobile. You just got that lunch order! For more complex problems like how to install a window AC, the searcher heads to YouTube, and your ad for HVAC services shows up as the person is watching the YouTube video. Remember, if you are in the HVAC business, you are just advertising on YouTube and not creating the video that a helpful person put up. Incidentally, if your business is that helpful person- you can expect huge returns. Their returns are by way of great SEO rankings, low cost of advertising is much higher credibility in your market.
  2. Know what they want: If someone is clear that they do not want to go through the trouble of installing a window AC then they are looking for “window AC installation services,” and if you advertise your central air-conditioning business, you will be able to reach those folks who are getting tired of the window AC installing exercise every summer. A nice pipeline of business to keep your crew busy over the fall for the next season.
  3. Know the brand they want: People rarely know your business by name unless you are Coca-Cola or Apple. Try this simple test: Name 5 brands (Without Googling!)  of soda, cell phones, computers, or whatever. Unless you have recently been in the market buying these things – it’s hard to come up with five brand names for anything without Googling or visiting physical stores. We are getting programmed to ignore advertising unless we 1) are unsure of our problem and need to define it more clearly and 2) We are clear about what product or service we want or 3) we know our problem, have researched vendors and have decided on the vendor. We don’t even Google stuff unless we “need” to!

The point is that no one thinks of your business unless they have a need. And once someone really needs something, they start with Internet searching around the problem your business solves, or a specific service you offer.

If your business shows up when they are searching (they are qualified prospects), it helps you get at least a qualified inquiry.

About StratoServe.

Five tips for screening sales leads for high value products and services

Screening Customers -StratoServe


Screening sales leads for the digital age has become even more important. Here is why:

You start a Google AdWords campaign and you start getting leads. Lots of leads. But as you start talking with the leads they don’t seem to pan out. Worse, down the line after signing up many of the customers are really unhappy with the customer experience and tell their friends, post on social media and do great damage to your brand. Your brand that you built literally brick by brick or byte by byte- if you are a digital only brand.

You are in bigger trouble if your product or service costs in excess of $10,000, a pop,  that we define as high value. And cost is about not only what the customer pays but the perceived cost of trouble or time in sorting out issues. Issues could be a perceived defect in a car or home remodel at the B2C end and troubles with machinery or services in B2B contexts.

The trouble is that you have been over eager in converting leads to customers without screening them well. Here are five tips on better screening of sales leads:

1. Does the customer really need your product/service?

Just because it has become so easy to find your business on the Internet, does not mean that the sales lead is a perfect fit for your services. Ask how they found you. If it is through an existing customer, you can expect that the prospect has a better sense of what to expect when signing up with you. If it is through your advertising spend more time on upfront consulting with your prospect.

2. Never forget that if the prospect is hiring you- you are also hiring a lifelong customer

The value of a satisfied,happy and loyal customer is truly great. The happy customer will buy again,will refer others and become your advocate. There are detailed ways of calculating customer lifetime value (CLV) but you get the idea. Frequently as sales people, we are too eager to close the deal. If you are the CEO, think about how the sales people are compensated. Commissions on closed deals drive the eagerness to close- at any cost.

3.Have a meeting with the implementation folks and the qualified prospect for setting up expectations and measures of success

Heard about  how to get out of a real estate contract?  The legal processes have developed for good reasons. (Disclaimer: we don’t offer legal advice). For your qualified prospect now in discussion with your implementation consultants, make it easy to walk out.If your implementation folks think that it’s really hard to make this customer really happy. If you take deposits, consider a refund and request for referrals. A qualified prospect that you could truly not satisfy will appreciate your integrity and talk about it.Remember you want “happy” talk from everyone you are trying to serve.

4.Ask your implementation folks only one question: Will we be able to make this customer happy?

The discussion with implementation folks should be around trying to make the customer happy. Your implementation folks will find many cases where the sales team promised something that they can’t deliver. Being very clear about expectations that are in the contract and that are implied because of earlier sales conversations need to be sorted out. So implementation consultants need to explicitly explain that “we are not able to do this- right now” and “we are trying to look at options of offering this,” if other customers have been asking.

5.Make sure you deliver- have a satisfaction survey at the end of the process

Finally, try to deliver more than you promised. And always have a satisfaction survey to understand where your customer experience can be improved.

In summary, its as important to screen prospects as it is for prospects to screen you.

About StratoServe .

3 questions to ask and decide how much to spend on Google AdWords

Three questions for AdWords Spending -StratoServe
Our readers ask

How much do I spend on Google AdWords?

An earlier post provided the strategy answer and this post presents three questions to ask for coming to a better decision. Here are the questions to ask:

  1. What were your inquiries before AdWords? Before AdWords you were getting inquiries. These inquiries could be from customer referrals, email campaigns, social media, yellow page listings, traditional media like direct mail, phone calling,  billboards or whatever. The first step is to have some estimate of inquiries by marketing channel. We are talking only inquiries here and not sales closed. Make a table for this month along the lines as pictured above.
  2. What is the difference between inquiries and closed sales? : Google AdWords or any type of online or offline advertising cannot close the sale for you. They can only get the conversation started.And that is why we compare inquiries across marketing channels. It can be a waste of your time and energy if people who are unlikely to qualify (say for their budget reasons) keep calling you. Some channels have high closed sales to inquiries. That is why you  hear  ” We get most of our business through referrals.” If you think about it, that makes sense. Current customers have experienced your product or service and if they are happy they tell their friends. When those friends reach out to you they already know what to expect. If you just match expectations you get their business.
  3. How did you hear about us? It’s really important to ask first time callers- “How did you hear about us?”. Many people will say we “found” you on the Intenet or we “Googled” you. If you are running a Google AdWords campaign effectively, its very likely that they saw your ad and found you.People will also report that they saw your coupon in a flyer and that’s very important to note down.In other words,only the business knows who is contacting them and tracking leads is important. Start with a notebook or word/excel  file and then go to software for lead management. Whatever works and is comfortable for your business. At the end of the month you should be able to provide a data based source of leads.

Once you have some kind of system to track your leads, do the following:

  1. Switch on Google AdWords for a month: If you have a well crafted AdWords campaign that understands your business strategy you should see clear results in one month. You might see some increases in other channels as people start with other channels (like your flyer) and then Google your product or service and see your ad. They click on the ad and call you and when you ask them “How did you hear about us?” they say “flyer” but the flyer really worked because near to the decision of calling you- they searched online and saw your ad. You might also find some things that you did not expect. For example, one of our clients found that incoming calls on the advertised phone number took a caller over two minutes to get to ….. the voicemail prompt!. There was 1 for Accounts, 2 for HR ….. 9 to leave a voicemail  on the telephone prompts. The business appreciated that someone calling from the commuter train on their cell phone , from clicking an ad, was unlikely to wait for 2 minutes to leave a voicemail. Changes in the welcome message helped to reduce the wait time to less than 15 seconds. Lots of website tweaks will become apparent that are easy to implement.
  2. If you can’t decide switch off AdWords for a month: If you cannot decide whether your results justify your expenses stop for a month. But continue the “How did you hear about us” lead source data collection in question 3 above.If the AdWords was working for you you should see a clear difference in the number of leads for the month that the campaign was running. Don’t worry if other channels are also down- because the Internet works with other channels Without online ads, someone who saw your flyer and can’t remember your business name will Google your product or service and when they see your business name they remember your flyer (sometimes unconsciously).

You might wonder why you should switch off your campaign if leads will probably come down. This is required to build your own comfort on how well AdWords works for you and your business. You should feel energized  to make changes in your processes (eg. get an answering service) and change your website (eg. make it mobile friendly) as you re-start your campaign with new hope. AdWords should be clearly helping your lead pipeline, from all sources, and your own numbers should speak louder than the Google AdWords and Analytics  metrics.

About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.

7 Questions for your Business Model

Seven Questions for your Business Model-StratoServe

If you are a small business, you rarely think of your business as having a business model. But it does. It does because the moment you have a single paying customer, she is paying for the value you create. It is another matter, if your business makes a profit consistently over the long term. Sustainable profit is why it is important to understand the business model concept.Here is a definition based on the highly cited article by David Teece.

A business model is the manner in which you provide value to your customer that is paid for (by whom – is considered in the questions below). You cover your costs and make a profit on a sustainable basis.

ADAPTed from David Teece (2010).

If you are wondering what is my business model, answering the following 7 questions will help:

  1. What customer problem are you trying to solve? The customer tries to solve a problem when she uses any product or service. Key to this idea is that there are different segments of customers who think of problems differently. For example, car buying is highly stressful for some segments of customers while some others seem to enjoy the process. A famous marketing example is that customers don’t buy drill bits, they need to drill holes! So if you are a drill bit manufacturer you need to take the time to understand all about what kind of surfaces (wood, baseboard,metal) that the customer might be working on.This understanding will go into the kind of material used in the drill bit and its design.
  2. Who will pay you? Traditionally the user was the customer who paid you, the supplier. With the Internet things have changed radically in many industries. We search Google for free and Google sees the searching people as their primary customers. The money comes from businesses  who pay Google for AdWords to put out their message right when someone is searching. In Airbnb and Uber a small percentage is taken from the transaction cost as revenue. A popular joke about Silicon valley business models is about the bar that has a million people coming in who do not buy anything and leave. Yet the bar’s valuation is sky high as the business hopes to gain advertising revenue from bar visitors!
  3. How large is the target market/addressable market or market segment? Target markets and total addressable markets are also called segments, that have certain characteristics. These are:
    • Measurable: You should be able to numerically estimate the number of potential buyers.
    • Substantial: The market must be of a minimum size so that it can support all your costs including a profit margin.
    • Be accessible: You must be able to access that market both for delivery and advertising. If the authorities do not allow a store to be set up or do not allow you to advertise- you can’t access the market.
    • Be distinct: The people you are trying to target must have common but unique needs that are not being fully met by existing offerings.
    • Be somewhat stable: Markets change all the time, but at least at the time of planning you should expect that things will remain stable for your business to establish.
      • Initially narrowly defined target markets allow great marketing focus. For example, if you are trying to market an online music tutoring service for school children, market geographically to one town, parent ages between 25-55, interested in sport and music you can get a pretty good idea of who these people are. And then you have easy ways of reaching them through advertising on billboards at the town, through flyers in the mailbox, through Google and Facebook geo targeted ads, the local newspaper etc. Initially such kind of focussed narrow target market definition is important to get all pieces of the business streamlined. This includes the product, pricing, delivery and advertising. However, the total addressable market/market segment must be defined at the outset keeping the above characteristics in mind.
  4. What is the customer doing now? Who are the competitors? The customer is doing something. If you supply lawn mowing services – homeowners in your target market must  have  lawns and apartment homes are naturally excluded. The target market homeowners might be a) mowing their own lawns or b) having competitors doing the work. Each of these markets will need a different value offering and marketing approach.
  5. What will it cost to deliver? If you are a new business it pays to be conservative in estimating costs. Assume that it’ll cost more than you imagine. If you are already in business carefully accounting for your own time will surprise you. You don’t get paid even minimum wage– many business owners tell us. Remember (Sales – Costs)= Profits and is a great way to think about costs. You find that reducing costs (via technology, outsourcing) or increasing a) sales price or b) adding customers are  the only  ways to get the profit equation to work.
  6. What is your marketing message?  What you say to customers at least initially has to be carefully crafted to encourage a response. Your marketing message needs to be just right. If you think about it, in developed markets deodorants are rarely marketed with the message that you stink. In contrast, in emerging markets that is the message that works as the market is in the early stages.
  7. How easy is it for you to stop imitators from snatching market share? No matter what your business model or market share if your business model can be easily copied – you do not have a sustainable business. Constantly refining “what’s special” about your offering is the key here. Imitators can be disrupters that are  new business models based on technology. The neighborhood travel agent has disappeared to online travel sites like Expedia and the average tax preparer has tough disruptive competition from TurboTax. Today change is so rapid that patent protection is not enough and is not common in many industries.

Business models are never static and need constant refining to keep up with changes. Asking these seven questions on a regular basis and working on better answers can help your business stay ahead.

About StratoServe.

The disconnect between your web content and what your customers really value

Disconnect between web content and customer value- StratoServe
“Value” is central to marketing. And different segments of your customers value different features of your product or service. Unless they saw the value in what you offer, they would not be buying from you. At all.

So right off the start of this post , let us assure our dear readers that you do offer value to the market, its just that its not clear on your web pages.

And we see this challenge from Fortune 500 websites to the neighborhood small business website. There is an astonishing disconnect between

What your customers value and what web content appears on your website

Broadly, the idea is to try and match up content to the stage of the sales funnel that the customer is in as pictured above. Here are some thoughts on how to reduce the disconnect between what your customers and prospects value and what is really up on your website:

  1. Segment your customers by what they really value: Customers may buy the same thing but for very different reasons. Our favorite example is from a fast growing medium size business in a high growth foreign market. This business wants an ERP system that costs $100K just to appear “cool” and “hip” among his business friends at the next party.  “A great thing to boast about, even better than the similarly priced Mercedes AMD-GL,” confided this business person. What the ERP might actually be able to do for this business is really not very important at least till the “buy” decision for this customer.
  2. Value requirements do change after purchase: After buying the ERP system (for bragging rights)  the business owner will look for the huge potential benefits in operations. Educating the current customer personnel  becomes crucial. In one set of organizations inventory management might be drastically improved, but another group of organizations might benefit in tracking and reducing waste in manufacturing. Specific web pages that talk about inventory and manufacturing waste reduction can thus be a boon for these two different sets of organizations.
  3. Why its important to speak to evolving customer needs and questions: After using a product, different segments of customers have different questions. Take the case of the iPhone with millions of customers across age groups. Because the “senior Apple user” segment is sizeable there is a highly regarded book “My iPhone for Seniors” in its second edition by Brad Miser and co-branded with AARP. The book is available at regular bookstores including warehouse stores like Costco.  Going by the Amazon reader comments on the book, readers appreciate the large font and the ability to figure out the iPhone without always having to look for the kids or grand kids!
  4. What if you are nor the iPhone?: If you are not the iPhone that makes it viable for a publisher to try and develop a book, you have options. If you have for example,a sizable “senior” segment of users, it makes sense to present some of the content online specifically targeted to your  senior segment and their needs. It only involves adding a page or link to your website and involves practically no additional cost. And this applies to all kinds of consumer and business products and services.
  5. Relevant content helps improve SEO and bring Google AdWords and PPC cost down: Aligning your web content to what your customers value has two great spinoffs. The first is increase in SEO and decrease in PPC keywords if you decide to advertise. Search engines like Google are constantly try to match the content to the user’s “search intent.” And rewards come in the shape of better search rankings and lower PPC cost.

As soon as you gain some insight about a customer FAQ (Frequently Asked Question). It’s a great way to enhance your web content, page by page. About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.

Why its safe to put out most of your market research as web content

Market Research Reports for web content-StratoServe
Businesses large and small seem scared of putting out their market research on their websites. Common concerns we have heard are:

  • Our competitors will know how we think about the market

  • Our market insights  are our “secret” – sauce- why share the recipe

  • And the one we like best: Speech is silvery but silence is golden- and silence on the web is golden

Here is why silence on the web is not golden, when it comes to most of your market research.

  • Information asymmetry is the idea that the seller has more information than the buyer and “information is power”. This is no longer true with Google and other search engines. You have a question? Google has several pages of answers. Some of these answers are good and some may directly answer a general question about your product. For example, a car buyer might want to know whether you should use regular or premium gasoline for a particular car. The answers are out there right from the brand website to owners forums.
  • Consumers can and will get their information-online: You can be sure that consumers will do their research online.  These include serious expensive elective surgeries as discussed in an earlier post. They also include shopping mall purchases. One reason why Mall retailers like Macy’s have to close stores is that consumers search online and are willing to wait for delivery from online stores.
  • You did do your research before introducing a new product or starting a business: All new products or businesses are based on market research. That research might have been done formally through a market research agency or informally by the entrepreneur. Since the business needed funding and estimates of market outlook – even financial proposals would have sections detailing why the business has a need and what value it hopes to provide its customers.
  • Explaining why your product from earlier market research makes great web content: The reason you launched a new product or business was because your research suggested that there would be demand for certain reasons.  Explaining this on the web is no big “secret” revealed!
  • Anyway, you are explaining the “why your product” in your marketing, sales and advertising material : If you think about all the content of your sales pitches,marketing materials and even social media outreach- you are trying to convince customers about why your product. That is you are expanding on what your market research told you in the first place.

To summarize, market research got you into a particular business. And all your other marketing efforts are building on that initial market research. There is really no harm for you to explain the “why” on your website… It just helps your SEO, PPC like Google AdWords and your overall marketing effort.

About StratoServe Digital Marketing Services.

Why forward looking performance “previews” for business are better

Michael Phelps
Over the last week there were two speakers who influenced this post. The first was the famous goal setting expert  Gary P Latham who spoke at Yale University. And the second was Bob Bowman, (Michael Phelp’s coach) who was interviewed on NBC for his new book  “The Golden Rules.”

It also turns out that our blog posts relating to Jack Welch 4P’s and 1E relating to HR performance reviews are very popular. But there is one big problem with performance reviews:

By definition, performance “reviews”are backward looking

Think of any test you have taken (including blood tests!) and have waited with some anxiety for results. Tests in academia are seen as “learning assessment” a very much backward looking approach. Similarly, performance reviews whether in HR or monthly operations meetings talk about the numbers from the previous month. And whether sales looks better or worse than budget. If the sales forecast was suppressed to start with- the marketing and sales folks pat themselves  on the back. If the sales forecast is missed, the finance folks relish in the discomfort of the marketing folks. And so it goes on…

Based on research by Gary Latham and colleagues, here are some thoughts on performance previews and better performance going forward:

  1.  A preview approach puts the candidate in a “learning ” frame of mind. Instead of focusing on defending shortcomings or gloating over successes in the prior period, the person looks to the future. In doing so, the person reflects on what has worked in the past and what has not worked in the past. The learning being that you do more of what has worked for you with a focus on the “process” of improvement.Here its important to differentiate from the Jack Welch 4P’s and 1 E approach where the majority of employees are neither fired – nor engaged. They are simply made to feel bad and de-motivated. If you fire the employee or vendor it’s one thing. But if the employee or vendor is going to continue to work for the organization, there is too much to lose by just pulling the person down for sub-par performance in the past.
  2. Joint goal setting tends to result in higher goals. Compared to goal setting on an individual basis or decreeing goals ( eg. we need 10% sales growth next year) people set higher goals when they are jointly set with the supervisor or appraiser. So if you are asked to set goals for next year on your own – you will set lower goals than what you would set in consultation with your boss. Surprisingly, the joint goal setting will be higher than if the CEO or Board sent out the goals down the organization.
  3. Achievement pictures prime higher performance. Shantz and Latham (2009) used the picture of From Shantz and Latham 2009Sonia O’Sullivan –   pictured here-in a series of experiments. At a University call center for alumni fundraising, the researchers found that those employees who simply had the “winner” picture in their materials performed much better at fundraising than those who did not.

It’s quite a coincidence that Gary P Latham, one of the great experts on motivation and goal setting, used a picture that was about winning a race. And when you think of Michael Phelps’s coach Bob Bowman – you think about winning as well!

Clearly, beating up your employees about sub-par performance of the past is a bad idea. Instead joint goal setting, with a backdrop of winning visuals, might lead to both higher goals and achievement.

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