Government and Corporations: Process Is More Than Politics

Many people have been distracted by the ultra-cynosure factor of recent ceremonies. Keeping our minds looking forward, realize that it doesn’t take much analysis to see how aspects of common corporate nomenclature as well as company processes apply to typical government operations across industries, sectors and regions. Recent articles about business apply to the functions of government, too.

As many government employees and those interested in comparative politics are looking at “what comes next,” it may help to consider that these two seemingly disparate private and public organizations have quite a few similarities in certain aspects.

• Both entities (government and corporations) are focused on progress, though they take different routes to achieve their missions (such as public benefit versus profits). 
• A large population determines success: democratic governments have voters, corporations have consumers.
• Jargon of industry experts is typically only understood from the insider’s club (think of acronyms in your own sphere).
• A well-tuned machine has a routine maintenance schedule, seen in annual reviews for employees and elections for governments, with various levels of “intensity” depending on “miles travelled.”
• Everyone answers to someone, and it can be changed when it doesn’t work. 

These two groups also have organizational similarities.  In corporations, stockholders/shareholders vote on board recommendations (who may have committees) that select leaders to guide or direct management teams to coordinate resources that create products to resolve a consumer’s complex problems. For government, people vote for an elected leader who serves on committees to lead a democratically formed management team by participatory governance in order to coordinate taxes and resources to resolve the community’s complex problems.

Last week’s article showed the sales funnel’s six stages to convert buyers. Government processes utilize this same stepwise action—public officials are voted into office (or not) by using (or ignoring) the same corporate sales funnel nomenclature and internal promotional opportunities resulting in make-them-or-break-them outcomes.

Read these stages verbatim from last week this time with a government lens in brackets, and consider how internal operations of a government department or program apply the same benchmark principles:

• Awareness -  this opportunity [for a candidate or program] may be achieved through organic or paid email marketing, search engine placement or social media messaging where you are identifying prospective consumers out of the entire client opportunity
• Consideration - once the connection has moved to interest, consumers [voters or civil servants] begin searching for information to evaluate how they can meet their identified needs through website research and eCommerce reviews
• Preference - this stage cultivates relationships and can influence perceptions on the value of your solution, where informed consumers [voters or supervisors] make a well-timed decision for the best product or service for their [interests or departmental] situation
• Purchase - once the conversion has been made for the consumer [voter or supervisor], using a systemized follow-up methodology that doesn’t rely on human memory improves opportunities for touch points and increased positive interaction
• Loyalty - repeat business is essential, though if ‘forced’ or achieved via lack-of-choices, your business [job] is contingent on satisficing needs
• Advocacy - leading to increased revenue [votes/support], the best funnel is supported by word-of-mouth endorsement

The same word “satisficing” applies in government processes, too.  You aren’t satisfying everyone all of the time (except - again - maybe a short-sighted manager who is short-term), but in many ways working for the good of many.  Undoubtedly, you won’t be listening to your constituency if you are elected or acting on the mission of your department if you are always having budget cuts or hiring freezes or making deals to scratch multiple people’s backs and hitting the Doorway Effect (“forgetting what you came for,” as an old song goes).

This is satisficing — it makes the citizenry pick something they don't 100% want to get an option they don’t necessarily want, where they are not being totally satisfied with the process or prospects even if they voted for a candidate or work as a civil servant for you as a supervisor. 

In the government realm, here is when your government team could be satisficing (again, nearly using the verbatim corporate sales funnel process to apply to the government processes):

• Awareness satisficing - providing a limited opportunity [i.e. limited time for staff or voters] for learning [and research] about your products [programs] or (perhaps worse) giving the right message on the wrong channel where your future loyal customers don’t listen [not only voters, but those interested and active on a grassroots level in your realm of expertise]
• Consideration satisficing - having inventory [staff or resources] available immediately, though it doesn’t meet the specifications the future loyal customer [voter] wants (this is a needs-based miss), or having gaps in your communications strategy for web research
• Preference satisficing - frequently involving delayed or delinquent responses to inquiries [from constituents], or involving a top-heavy sales pitch [campaign] without reliable facts and outside endorsements
• Purchase satisficing - shoddy packaging, generic (or absent) thank you messaging, or not having the right suggested complementary purchases [additional community steps] that exceed expectation stop your sales funnel [voter recruitment] dead in the water
• Loyalty satisficing - a one-time customer [voter] will not return to your company [specific candidate] for future needs 
• Advocacy satisficing - the [largest] impact here is negative if you’ve failed in any previous step [and negative governmental results are heard much louder than supportive ones - just like corporate reviews you can find on Yelp, Glassdoor, Twitter and more]

Even for government personnel as well as corporate programs, strong strategic branding addresses the first three errors. Do not confuse branding with spin factor, though, or you will suffer a whirlwind of your own creation.  Remember that you are your own competition with respect to government process; the quicksand is created by setting your own expectations high and not working hard to follow through on the right steps in the process.  Continue to set your expectations high and keep growing - it’s the way we achieve progress!

As a closing observation and return to the title of this article, you know that politics plays strongly in all realms of work, regardless of the “type” of employment. Merriam-Webster provides a definition of politics as “competition between competing interest groups or individuals for power and leadership.” Emphasis is added because the process of getting the job done still occurs regardless of government, corporation or non-profit organization as the employer; it’s the competition among people and groups that stirs the pot. 

Make a conscious decision to either be someone who stirs the pot or grow as a thoughtful leader that solves complex problems wherever you work every day.

Heather M. Hilliard is Principal and Chief Strategist for R. Roan Enterprises, LLC, a professional services consulting firm supporting businesses in pointed areas of expertise as well as with individuals for targeted projects or career development. For more articles like these, visit her posts on LinkedIn or on G+. 

#seizetheday, #makeithappen

Get It Right and Satisfy Customers, Not Satisfice a Situation for the Sale

Recently, I’ve written about two aspects of the sales funnel that are typically overlooked though they directly contributing to revenue.  However, you’ll never reach the right customers without a successful branding process and you won’t be able to sell products (or services) if you don’t understand your competition from a shifted perspective.

Now that you know what your potential purchases aren’t getting from the marketplace and have identified who your company truly serves, the next best step is to capture how you can satisfy the right customers.

There are all sorts of acronyms for the sales funnel.  TOFU, MOFU, BOFU… AIDA… ARC… SPIN — you get the point (even if you don’t get all the acronyms).

A robust sales funnel has six stages:

• Awareness -  this opportunity may be achieved through organic or paid email marketing, search engine placement or social media messaging where you are identifying prospective consumers out of the entire client opportunity
• Consideration - once the connection has moved to interest, consumers begin searching for information to evaluate how they can meet their identified needs through website research and eCommerce reviews
• Preference - this stage cultivates relationships and can influence perceptions on the value of your solution, where informed consumers make a well-timed decision for the best product or service for their situation
• Purchase - once the conversion has been made for the consumer to become your customer, using a systemized follow-up methodology that doesn’t rely on human memory improves opportunities for touch points and increased positive interaction
• Loyalty - repeat business is essential, though if ‘forced’ or achieved via lack-of-choices, your business is contingent on satisficing needs
• Advocacy - leading to increased revenue, the best funnel is supported by word-of-mouth endorsement

Wait.  What’s that word satisficing? It happens after sales, after all the interaction and research, so you must have done things right, right?

Wrong.

If you’ve put the wrong effort into getting any sale, then you aren’t satisfying anyone (except maybe a short-sighted sales manager).  What you’ve been doing is throwing spaghetti on a wall to see what sticks and gets you to your target number.

That’s satisficing — it’s taking a “sales suspect” and giving them most of what they want rather than fulfilling all that they need with your solution.

Here’s an example.  You sell two microwaves (one at 1100 cubic inches at 700 kw power and the other at 900 cubic inches and 1000 kw power).  A consumer needs a microwave, and he likes to reheat leftovers quickly.  This means a higher power machine.

Mr. Consumer comes to your website and sees the two options. But the higher power microwave won’t fit his current leftover dishes.  So he will either have to shop for new dishes after buying your smaller cubic inch microwave or he will have to wait longer to heat his meal evenly.

This is satisficing — it makes the consumer pick something he doesn't want to get an option he does want, where he is not being totally satisfied with the process or prospects even if he purchases from you.

While easiest to describe in the purchase and post-purchase phase as its easier to quantify, this may occur in every and any phase of the funnel.  

This is when you could be satisficing:

• Awareness satisficing -  providing a limited opportunity for learning about your products or (perhaps worse) giving the right message on the wrong channel where your future loyal customers don’t listen 
• Consideration satisficing - having inventory available immediately, though it doesn’t meet the specifications the future loyal customer wants (this is a needs-based miss), or having gaps in your communications strategy for web research
• Preference satisficing - frequently involving delayed or delinquent responses to inquiries, or involving a top-heavy sales pitch without reliable facts and outside endorsements
• Purchase satisficing - shoddy packaging, generic (or absent) thank you messaging, or not having the right suggested complementary purchases that exceed expectation stop your sales funnel dead in the water
• Loyalty satisficing - a one-time customer will not return to your company for future needs 
• Advocacy satisficing - the only impact here is negative if you’ve failed in any previous step

Strong strategic branding addresses the first three errors, which is why you spend time before pushing a product to answer the right questions.  Beating the competition before you get started addresses the last three errors thereby avoiding quicksand.

Don’t just set the target numbers and hope to make monthly sales, or you won’t have very many months to make sales. Fix it.  Do the right thing at the right time by identifying what people want and then giving them more.

Remember, there is a human behind the curtain even in the new “fake news” filters, a future topic in these articles where we’ll discuss the importance of real reviews versus the rumor mill affecting your business.

Heather M. Hilliard is Principal and Chief Strategist for R. Roan Enterprises, LLC, a professional services consulting firm supporting businesses in pointed areas of expertise as well as with individuals for targeted projects or career development. For more articles like these, visit her posts on LinkedIn or on G+. 

#seizetheday, #makeithappen

Strategic Differences Between Branding and Marketing Are Important (It Brings You More Money)

You want to do all the things that the “new year articles” encourage for businesses - new advertising, improving messages to increase sales, open business through more channels, viral advertising…

But too many people get caught in hype without understanding the importance of the alphabet.  Yes, remembering to do things in alphabetical order will improve your return on investment.  You can’t sell without marketing, but you can’t market until you define the brand.

What is branding?

It’s much more than a catch-phrase, and often times successful sales staff think their pitches are branding — they’re not really, but those pitches are based in what the strategic branding teams have tested for the marketplace and how great companies break through the noise in culture.

Branding is like the smell of freshly baking cookies when you walk into a home. It’s what lures someone to come closer in an attractive way (not as in the wicked witch with a poisoned apple technique).  It reveals the essence of what you want people to experience with the five senses.  

When you consider the things necessary for a great response to your product and company, it’s generated through branding — the strategic step communicating identity and solution-offerings.  This is the process by which the lifestyle associated with your product is articulated, the attributes of your offering is delineated with pinpoint accuracy, the crowd will be charged with excitement over your solutions. 

Like last week’s article relayed, you need to shift your approach.  Understand that B - branding - comes before M - marketing, or you will miss clarifying your image and offerings to customers.  When you’re ready for that stage, that’s marketing.

So how is marketing different than branding?

Many people get these areas of expertise confused.  If you have in the past, too, then you are in the majority.  But who wants to be lumped with the crowd (especially when the crowd is wrong)?  Here’s your chance to be better.

Marketing identifies the “who” behind your “what” in the world.  The marketing experts look at The Four Ps - product, price, position, promotion - and the Five Forces the influence the success - power of the customer, bargaining power of suppliers, new product rivals, substitutes and industry rivalry - in order to create clear concise purchase messages for the market. 

Sales teams then can use these messages because there is a lot of science in the art of marketing to generate sales. You can’t just “whip something up” in the kitchen or throw something into the marketplace expecting to be successful.  It takes time and experience to know how to make the upper-level themes useful for the gut-driven and data-crunching sales teams — this is how everyone working together makes money for the company.

What do I need to do for my company first?

Thoughtful assessment and consideration, similar to “Game Theory” in economics, are required with both branding and marketing to get the most for your dollars as a customer and as a company.  And true, while Peter Drucker identified that innovation and marketing are the only things that make money, the cost associated with branding is returned many fold when completed by those who are trained to let you be both seen and heard in the best light.

You may have to contain your excitement for getting out there and selling your concept right away or getting boots on the street to sell your new entrepreneurial idea, but having the strongest return on investment is what counts. 

The after-steps of great marketing are the launch of the sales campaign in a variety of channels using carefully crafted messaging.  Just apply patience to follow the alphabet - Branding, then Marketing… 

Next, you’ll have to consider if you want to satisfy or “be satisficing” - that will be next week as we cover another aspect of the sales funnel for services and product success.

Heather M. Hilliard is Principal and Chief Strategist for R. Roan Enterprises, LLC, a professional services consulting firm supporting businesses in pointed areas of expertise as well as with individuals for targeted projects or career development. For more articles like these, visit her posts on LinkedIn or on G+. 

#seizetheday, #makeithappen

Four Steps to Beating Your Competition

The economy is growing, so logically there are more people doing business.  More competition is still competition (even if it’s bad competition) — you end up distracted by figments instead of attracted to substance.

In this new year, on this day of “manifesting the best” in each of us, we should each focus on revelations that make us better.  Today’s topic is competition.

This isn’t a B-school SWOT analysis or a social media storyboard.  It’s a fundamental shift in your approach.  Buzzwords like schema, perception, analysis are great only when you take these small details and incorporate them into large game-changing practice.  See the trend about you and your application of knowledge rather than checkboxes or scorecards.

It’s day six of the new year (the fourth business day), and here are the four things you should have already done this week:

• Make sure you understand the industry tomorrow.  There are direct, indirect and substitute types of competitors, but that’s only looking at what exists today.  Don’t look at the gorilla in your sector; instead, look at the tiger cubs.  There are resources focused on VC recipients and patent registrations - use them.  Don't be shocked when a truck you didn’t see overtakes market leaders.  Look beyond the easy answers (like Silicon Valley players falling to hype) to those with a hunger to get ahead (like Syrian girls in new industries).

• Learn how language is shifting, both at companies and by consumers. Though you may read a lot, if you aren’t in the trenches at some point on a regular basis you will lose your communication edge.  Don’t leave it to an agency to tell you what keywords matter!  You should be defining the topics that will resonate in the market that position your brand as the solution.  Trends don’t matter in and of themselves; trending topics occur because there are people looking for solutions to problems. 

• The Internet of Things is still a function of human design.  The electronic web is still fueled for growth by people making decisions.  While cars may drive themselves, they are not free from human monitoring, programming or intervention.  Design is attractive and what draws business.  Consumers may be irrational, but if you figure out a new way to use the box or build a better mousetrap, connecting via the internet remains a tool for consumers rather than a limited decision tool.  Figure out how you use what you know in the next 18 months. 

• Scope and scale are critical to success.  Like the introductory paragraph notes, your business isn’t competing with everything; it’s only taking on those organizations which you identify as worthy of effort.  Typically, this is the big pitfall of new managers and established leaders — emotional decisions to protect turf override common sense.  This isn’t saying ignore a “gut feeling.” Don’t confuse an ocean with loyal customers’ purchasing habits; know who you are before you pick fights with insignificant non-competitors.

It was 2016 when we were reminded to understand who you are before you decided where you are going.  As you finish with the fourth business day of the new year, if you haven’t truthfully considered your strengths and direction, complete a cram session this weekend so you don’t miss out on next week’s deliverables.  

The next few weeks of articles will address core topics for improvements to focus time efficiently and sort through the noise  — stay tuned for more ways to improve the things in your world.

Heather M. Hilliard is Principal and Chief Strategist for R. Roan Enterprises, LLC, a professional services consulting firm supporting businesses in pointed areas of expertise as well as with individuals for targeted projects or career development. For more articles like these, visit her posts on LinkedIn or on G+. 

#seizetheday, #makeithappen