Are you settling for convenience or embracing competence? Do you position your events and programs to be first to market and easy to duplicate or high quality and difficult to replicate? Are you one among many or the benchmark by which other enterprises measure themselves?
Many causes can tell me which organization they wish to duplicate- few tell me about how they want to expand upon their lead.
Who is your organization’s walking billboard- that individual who represents you in almost every action of their life? The person who the community associates with your cause. How do you keep them informed and energized? How do you help them represent your best?
Has your organization created an image that draws people from beyond the inner circle? Some place draw an audience just to take-in the vision and majesty of the environment. Remember, you are competing for attention- how are you going to capture it?
How satisfied are your clients and members? What type of scores do they give your organization when you performs a satisfaction survey? Are they somewhat satisfied, mostly satisfied, extremely satisfied? What if I told you that there is zero correlation between the results of a satisfaction survey and predicting the future growth of your organization? Said differently, just because a customer is satisfied with your cause does not mean they will patronize your organization next week, month, or year. Tracking satisfaction provides no value when predicting future growth. In my consulting practice we have stopped performing satisfaction assessments.
What is useful? We are measuring advocates. Ultimately we are looking for individuals who will risk their reputation to recommend an organization or cause. An advocate is an individual who believes strongly enough in a brand to put their personal stamp of approval on the anticipated future experience a friend or colleague will experience.
Real world example- list five or more local eating establishments you have dined at in the past year or less. How may of these dining places would you mark as at least satisfied if I surveyed you today? Now, if I came to your community and I asked you which restaurants I you would recommend, how many from your satisfied list would you include? How many would you recommend with a qualifying statement? What is the difference between the satisfaction list and the recommendation list? Usually there is are significantly fewer establishments an individuals is willing to recommend than those that they are satisfied with. Satisfaction is an easy statement we use to cover a lot of situations (it can be a polite way to say I am never coming back or I am a fan of your enterprise).
If you knew who your enterprise’s advocates were what would you do differently?
Have you had the opportunity to tour the Sistine Chapel or summit the Eiffel Tower? How about viewing the Grand Canyon or the Statue of Liberty? Have you seen the Great Wall of China or the Great Barrier Reef? The common denominator for each of these landmarks is that it takes a journey for most of us to reach any one of these. Once you get arrive in the general proximity of the landmark it takes an additional investment of time and money to see the actual site. There are often crowds and additional obstacles to navigate. The cumulative experience of the journey makes the adventure to a landmark more memorable.
How many New Yorkers have never taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty? They can do it anytime they wish since proximity makes for a low barrier. If you are visiting Rome you are more invested in a visit to the Sistine Chapel and enduring the lines, entry fee and the endless galleries that take you to the actual chapel.
Sometimes convenience does not draw more customers and clients? Most of us go out of our way to find the top rated specialist who does knee replacements. Usually getting an appointment takes effort and patience since the leading specialists are often booked months in advance.
What do you produce that may accelerate its return on investment by increasing the barriers? What would thrive if you promoted scarcity? Opportunities that are not omnipresent cause potential customers to become less transactional.
Simple changes to a know practice can result in rewarding results. Walking the streets of Italy, I saw parked cars with leaflets placed under their rear window wiper. The fact that most of the rear windows were more vertical than a front windshield made them visible to pedestrians. The audience for the advertisement suddenly included those walking past. The potential audience was significantly higher for advertisement placed in the rear window compared with those left on the front windshield.
A European train station in action is a marvelous example of efficiency. There is an endless swarm of activity. Arrivals and departures being coordinated by timetables. Large boards announce the pending schedules. The arrival of the Eurostar from Napoli to Roma becomes the departing train for Milano. Within 30 minutes the passengers have disembarked and the outbound passengers loaded and departed.
On the road seeking new concepts. Postings promise to be memorable.
I find the results of this survey to be enlightening. Jim Joyce is a baseball umpire who missed a call at first base that would have been the final out in a perfect game. Armando Galarraga the pitcher is seen in the picture below making the play that resulted in the mistaken call.
The poll at the top of the post shows that despite a mistake, it was the integrity with which Jim Joyce dealt with the blown call that did not cause a major backlash to his reputation. Once Jim saw the replay of the call he went to the locker room and apologized directly to the pitcher who accepted his apology. He addressed the error by making a very honest and emotional statement to the press.
Mistakes happen. How you address missteps and take corrective action says a lot about an organization’s values. How does your organization deal with errors? Do you enhance a relationship or create a greater divide?
What is the primary function of a World Cup soccer telecast? One station in the UK found out when it ran an advertisement during England v. USA game.
Apparently there was little sympathy for a poorly timed commercial. For the TV station the primary function may be about generating revenue. For the viewers the primary function of the TV station is to provide an uninterrupted live feed of the game. One of these functions took priority over the other with significant consequences.
