Self-perception and identification

For any of you that have been traveling recently, have you noticed the signs that are popping up at airport security lines?  They are the green, blue, black "ski slope" type signs indicating lines for families, intermediates, and experts.  Seems like a great idea, right?  Finally, people that travel frequently can skip some of the roadblocks that arise due to those that don't, or need a little help.  The TSA did something great!

Ah, but the reality does not match the expectation.  Rather than zipping through security, what happens?  Inevitably you get in line behind someone that gets to the TSA agent and can't find their ID, so they dig through their purse, wallet, etc. trying to find it.  Then they finally get to the conveyor belt where they grab 6 different tubs and proceed to fill them up.  Finally they walk through the metal detector only to be stopped because they are still wearing a watch, have their shoes on, and their bag is being brought back because of that bottle of water still in there.  Meanwhile you, the expert business traveler who shows up about 52 minutes before your flight (the exact time it takes to get through security, stop at Starbucks, and get to any gate in the airport), begin to get agitated and nervous.

So, why does this happen?  Why does this seemingly good idea seem to flop so poorly so many times?  Disregarding the general TSA and airport processes (this could be 16 articles on it's own), the problem owes to one simple fact; customer self-identification.  As a traveler, when I walk up to this line, I have to identify myself as one of three levels.  Unless I'm traveling with children, what's the likelihood that I'm going to identify myself as anything but an expert?  I am obviously better at this process than most people, and therefore I am going in the expert line. 

Most people have a strong view of self, and there is nothing wrong with this.  Just remember that when you have customers self-identify.  It needs to be something that does not have a negative connotation for the customer.  The airport could classify you by number of bins needed.  If I have a few things, I could say, you know, I'm going to need 3 bins, and select the appropriate line.  I don't feel like I'm less of an expert in doing this. 

In all businesses is important to segment and target your customers to make sure that you get the appropriate offer to them, offer the appropriate level of service, etc.  But, you must at all times remain mindful of how your customers see themselves, and cater to that self-perception.  Otherwise, you end up bogged down in a process, and actually turnaway the customers that really should be there in the first place.

Be more of who you are

A couple weeks ago, I found out that I was lucky enough to be selected to participate in a leadership development program. And by lucky, I mean it sincerely. It's a program that I think will give me the opportunity to develop my skills, and help me advance in the organization. But, that's not what this post is about.

As part of the program, we were sent a book to read prior to the first class called StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. There is a line in the book that really stuck with me, and caused me to take a moment and think. In it he says "You cannot be anything you want to be - but you can be a whole lot more of who you already are."

The premise behind the book, and epitomized in this statement, is that we spend an awful lot of time working on things that we are not good at, and not enough time perfecting the things that we are. This can lead us to actually be more miserable when it comes to doing our jobs and going to work. We enjoy the things that we are naturally good at, and therefore want to do more of them.

I think that this idea is very relevant, especially in marketing. Marketing covers a very broad spectrum of tasks, requiring a broad skill set. Everything from marcom to pricing to strategy and even to logistics. Each of these requires a different skill set. Though too often, as marketing teams, and marketers, we organize around the whole, and not the skills of the individuals. I like using widget examples, and apparently my sister likes reading about widgets, and since she makes up more than 15% of my follower base, here we go.

Assume that your company manufacturers 3 widgets, the Tiny Widget, the Middle Widget, and the Big Ol' Widget. You have a 3 person marketing team to market your widgets. There are two different ways to organize around this. The first is to assign each marketer a widget. This is the easiest, and from my small bit of experience, a pretty common way to do it. But here's the problem. Not all of your marketers are going to have talent and skills in each area of marketing. Say the Tiny Widget Marketer has great marcom skills. She knows how to develop amazing collateral pieces. However, she doesn't like pricing, and struggles with numbers. So she either develops great marcom, but the pricing is off, or she feels frustrated about doing the pricing, and her marcom slips.

The second way to organize around skill set. You have marketer 1 focus on marcom needs for all 3 widgets. Marketer 2 is then responsible for the pricing and promotional strategy. Marketer 3 is responsible for figuring out distribution, or segmentation and targeting. Which of these methods is going to lead to the best results?

I know this post is getting a little long, but the idea really got me thinking. If teams are structured around talent, they are bound to be more effective. You have fewer people coming in and dreading working on a particular portion of a project. As a marketer, it is important to recognize where your strengths/talents truly lie, and develop those to become more of who you are. Then you can help organize yourself around those and deliver truly excellent marketing for you and your organization.

Healthcare Reform, My Take

Everyone has an opinion on the now completed health care reform bill, so I thought I would lend mine as well. But my take isn't on the bill itself, it's the process. What bothers me the most is that the entire thing was destructive, and honestly, it has been since the beginning. Maybe it's just because of the news that I tune into, or the bits and pieces I'm able to catch, but why are members of our own government actively trying to work against each other? Why is there a blatant disregard for any attempt to actually try and compromise, listen to someone else's opinion, and work toward an ultimately better solution?

Think about this within your own company. How would you move forward and be successful if you were constantly trying to destroy, or go against what your colleagues want to do? How often do you have to compromise on a daily basis? How often do things get better because you work together?

One of the biggest things that bothered me in reading the WSJ recap of the article is that congressmen are already looking for ways to try and repeal the bill, find it unconstitutional, file lawsuits, etc. How is this productive? How does this help me, the American citizen? Why can't we say, the decision has been made, now how do we take this and make things better?

This happens every day in business. Decisions get made by leadership, and it is up to the rest of us to make them work. Yes we provide our feedback, but ultimately someone decides on a direction and we go. We may not always agree, but we figure out how to work to make things as best we can.

Or maybe that's just me...

The Southwest Experience

I'm hardly the first, and probably won't be the last, person to blog about my experience with Southwest Airlines. The thing is, I'm continually amazed at how they deliver on their brand promise and provide the utmost customer satisfaction.

For me, I was catching a flight from Little Rock to St. Louis, and the plane was a little late in arriving. It's not a long flight, and it was in the early evening so I wasn't worried about getting in a little late if it happened. Though I'm sure there were some people that wanted to get home. Anyway, when the plane got in, the crew got to work. Passengers disembarked while the others lined up. The crew had everyone ready go, and not 15 minutes after it landed, the door to the plane closed. I have never been on a plane that taxied so fast down the runway. When we landed, a plane that was 20 minutes late to Little Rock landed right on schedule.

The thing that I really like and I really respect as a marketer is the way not only all of the employees buy in, but how the customers buy in. That plane only gets off the ground if passengers get on and off the plane quickly. The passengers have to line up, move quickly, and help out. But they do it because they know if they do their part, Southwest will continue to do theirs.

Southwest is one of those companies that just gets it. The TSA on the other hand is a different discussion for a different time...

Let the marketers market!

It's important to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, programs, etc. But when the measurements themselves and the process of acquiring the measurements start to supercede the programs, a problem is born. Especially if your marketing people are also your analysis people.

Successful marketers in a nutshell are able to take information from various sources, boil it down, discover a way to do something, approach a customer, and generate sales/leads/positive outcomes, look at the data and do it again. It's sort of a rinse, lather, repeat approach. Unsuccessful marketers never get to do this. Often this unsuccessfulness is born out of the marketer also being the one to collect, manipulate, sort and present the data. This is what I call the "Proof I'm Doing My Job Approach".

Rather than actually marketing, developing programs, and driving the business forward, marketers get caught up in a whirlwind of demands to know what is being done, how it is being done and when it is being done. Instead of talking about the upcoming program, the marketer talks about the past program to the minute deal. Words like "I'm going to" or "Next month we will" are replaced with "I'd like to" and "I would" and "I wish".

Let the results speak for themselves. Let the marketers develop programs and leverage analysts to pull together the results to share with management and marketing for evaluation to move forward. Don't dwell on the losses and failures, they are inevitable. Focus on the next steps, and how to improve. But above all, you hired marketing people to be marketing people. Let them do their job. If more than 25% of my time is dedicated to proving that I'm working, I'm probably not going to be doing as good a job as I'd like. And if you are pulling your marketing people out of their job more than 25% of the time for this, consider highering an analyst.

Tweets from my Trip

So, for the last two weeks I've been out on the road for a meeting and tradeshow, and had a few "tweets" pop in to my head. But, for some reason I never posted them. I don't have a good excuse, I have a Twitter application on my phone. Anyway, I thought that it would make a good blog post to start the week (not including # and @ because let's face it, I don't feel like looking them up), so:

The 12-year-old kid behind me just asked if we were flying over the ocean from Seattle to Orlando...should I be worried about the school systems?

Tom Peters just told me presentation skills are important as he is running around, going off on tangents, has unreadable slides, and keeps saying he forgot his glasses.

I have no idea what the takeaway from the presentation was...something about excellence which this was far from.

Very impressed with the new regime, and their strategy and approach. Hopefully it continues to trickle down.

Orlando has to be the minivan capital of the world...I hope that's not me some day.

Finally left Orlando for Cocoa Beach. I don't get why people want to go to a Florida city where the nearest beach is nearly 2 hours away.

Some big names at the SGR/SUR ARC 2010. This show is definitely one worth attending. Lots of great ideas being exchanged.

It's becoming apparent that as a vendor, you need people on the podium at the ARC.

Two weeks in Orlando are finally done. Just had lunch at a Chick-fil-A...kinda wish there was one in Seattle.

Trying to figure out why people waiting for the shuttle buses think it's a great idea to huddle around the crosswalk. The buses can't stop there, and your huddling makes it so they can't drive by.

I think that is a good flavor. Overall, I must say that Orlando has very successfully marketed itself as a convention destination even if it lacks one of the most appealing features of Florida (a beach). As a young businessperson without children, it definitely did not appeal to me, but ask me again in 5 years, who knows.

It was also a great awakening at the SGR/SUR Abdominal Radiology Course. This was word-of-mouth marketing at its finest. The attendees would drop by to check out some of the images we were showing, but when it really got down to it, they were there to see what their colleagues were doing. Having speakers that were talking about their research, and the equipment that allowed them to do it, was a huge indirect endorsement. All the great marketing in the world pales in comparison to the value that a highly respected luminary can deliver. I think I will have to have a follow up discussion here.

All in all, the two weeks on the road was not the worst thing ever. Customer exposure and in person meetings with colleagues are always beneficial. But, I'm glad to be home.