The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

How To Go From Bad To Booming

Jenny Schade's Making It Count

The six secrets to growing your business during a recession.

News headlines and experts are now cautiously optimistic about economic conditions showing signs of improvement. How about you? Are you ready for a rebound?

Or even better, are you ready to emerge from this recession stronger than ever?

Here's the secret to making that kind of success happen: Start right now.

Don't wait for economic indicators to signal that the recession is behind us. Begin right now to focus on growing your business (or internal department) so that the wheels are in motion when conditions have improved.

Specifically, here are six essentials to ensuring that your business stands out in the crowd.

1. Think Big

Notice that this article isn't called, "The six secrets to surviving a recession"? Instead, it's called, "The six secrets to growing your business during a recession." If you're just focusing on surviving, you're missing out on the big picture of what you can really accomplish if you set your sights high.

This reminds me of the old story of two bricklayers, working side by side, each adding layers to a wall. A bystander asks each one what he is working on. One replies, "I'm building a wall." The other explains, "I'm building a cathedral."

Focus on your cathedral. Think big.

2. Know What You're Really Selling

You may be under the impression that you conduct surveys, facilitate focus groups, or help clients measure their work. But that's only part of your story -- and I wager to say it's the least valuable part, according to your clients.

The truly valuable part of what you do actually impacts your clients and improves their condition. This has little to do with completing questionnaires or moderating discussion groups. It has everything to do with enhancing the way your clients are seen by their leadership or increasing demand for your clients among customers.

Check it out for yourself. Try asking your customers what they value about what you do. You're likely to hear things like: "Your surveys help me demonstrate my contributions to management," or "Your focus groups enable me to develop messaging that really resonates with employees."

This is the value you should be merchandising to your internal or external customers.

For example, a colleague who trains executives to make better presentations received the following feedback from a client: "Actually, I can go to numerous sources to get help with presentations -- and for less money too. What I value about your offering is that you have helped me to have a greater sense of ‘executive presence.' Thanks to your coaching, I confidently enter a room and others notice me right away. Now that's invaluable!"

In my own business, I'll never forget the presentation I gave to a room of Exelon Corporation executives in which a leader raised her hand and commented, "You mean you do research that we can really use to do our jobs better?" Bingo! Enough said.

3. Raise Your Visibility

I have a confession to make: I love helping my clients with their marketing, but I kind of hate marketing myself. I'm passionate about writing articles, but I dislike the business of placing them. I don't think I'm the only consultant who prefers to focus on my clients' businesses rather than on my own.

However, when this recession hit, I decided it was time to get over that and I began writing articles and offering my opinions on a myriad of subjects that I consult about. (You are reading one right now.) For example, I've interviewed more than a thousand employees in the process of guiding organizations through turbulent change. This expertise has proven to be of great interest to the national media -- much more so than if I described myself as a focus group moderator, emphasizing the mechanics of conducting effective group discussions.

As a result, JRS Consulting has been featured in scores of media appearances such as ABC News, Reuters, Crain's Chicago Business, NBC-TV, The Christian Science Monitor, Marketing Profs, Monster.com and numerous blogs. Last month alone, I wrote and placed seven articles. I just received an email from a potential client for a speaking engagement that began, "I've seen your name countless times and I find your articles and tips so very timely in this economy."

4. Expect to be an Overnight Success… in About Six to Nine Months

Not every effort of mine was successful. Sometimes I felt discouraged. I was interviewed by The New York Times and the reporter didn't use any of my comments in the resulting article. I had three conversations with a writer for a regional business publication who later decided to change the focus of the story and didn't mention my contribution.

Then my consistent, hard work began paying off. A client emailed to say she'd seen me live on NBC-TV providing advice about office communications and that I did a great job. My article about developing mission statements that motivate employees was published in Brandweek. My tips for talking with colleagues who had been laid off were picked up and syndicated by The Christian Science Monitor. Media began calling me, asking for comments about how organizations were handling the announcement of lay-offs.

Seven months of perseverance and hard work created success!

5. Invest in Your Personal Development

During tough times, it's more important than ever to develop your skills.

Invest in enhancing a competency at which you already consider yourself strong. After all, if you're already proficient in this area, just think how you will stand out with some good coaching!

During each of the past two years, I hired a writing coach even though I consider writing to be one of my strengths, am paid by clients to write regularly, and consider myself to be a very good coach. This turned out to be one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had and really took my writing up a notch. In fact, the editor at an international ezine for which I write a bi-monthly column commented on my improvement.

I recently returned from a week of public speaking boot camp.

6. Stretch Out of Your Comfort Zone

I've noticed an interesting trend in my management consulting. Employees who have a wide variety of experiences are most likely to survive the job cuts and even thrive in the midst of the turmoil. It makes sense -- if you have experience working in the pharmaceutical industry as well as in the consumer packaged goods business, you're twice as marketable.

Applying that same principle to my own situation, I've expanded our services. In fact, 50% of the work we're doing now was not part of our offerings two years ago. We're targeting our offerings to the needs of our clients. You should be doing the same.

The national economy may be in a downturn, but you can make your own business an exception to the negative trend. Just remember:

Jenny Schade's Six Essentials for Growing Your Business during a Recession:

1. Think big.

2. Know what you're really selling.

3. Raise your visibility.

4. Expect to be an overnight success…in about six to nine months.

5. Invest in your personal development.

6. Stretch out of your comfort zone.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers. Subscribe to the free JRS newsletter on www.jrsconsulting.net/newsletter.html Contact Jenny Schade at 847/920-1701 or jenny.schade@JRSconsulting.net.

© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2009

A Positioning Research Case Study

Jenny Schade's Making It Count

 

Gourmet Ice Cream Goes from Frozen to Hot in Four Steps

• What's the most meaningful way to describe your products or services to customers?
• How can you overcome the barriers that prevent your customers from buying from you more often?
• What are your customers' greatest needs?
• How can you stand out amongst the multitude of choices your customers encounter each day?

If you're unsure of the answers to these questions, you're in the right place. You also probably haven't done the right kind of research to understand the position your product occupies in your target market.

This article will explain how to get this kind of information and how to use it to develop an effective positioning for your products or services, using a case study for a frozen dessert product as an example. A positioning is your product's or service's identity in the mind of your customer. It differentiates your product from competitors and provides a clear reason why the customer should purchase. Conducting effective research to understand your customer's viewpoint is critical for developing a strong product positioning. After all, your product positioning isn't based on who you think you are. Your product positioning is based on who your customer thinks you are.

In our case study, the manufacturer of a gourmet ice cream wants help with developing a marketing campaign that will drive sales. The client explains that the product had been quietly surviving for several years but is "tired." The plan is to invest in a new marketing campaign that will heat up sales for this gourmet ice cream. But first, we need to understand how customers view the product and what the marketer needs to say to revive it. We arrange small focus groups among the target market to explore these areas.

Jenny Schade's Positioning Research
Step One:
Getting in the Customer's Mindset

We begin our focus groups with a general discussion regarding how consumers feel about dessert and the ways in which they choose what to eat. Understanding these emotions and thought patterns is critical to identifying the needs our client's product can meet for its customers. We learn that many people feel guilty about eating dessert that isn't fruit and that ice cream, in particular, creates anxiety in the eater who is concerned about fat and calorie content. At the same time, dessert -- and particularly rich, creamy ice cream -- is considered to be a special treat that provides the eater with a great deal of satisfaction. It's a balancing game in which the dessert eater weighs feeling guilty with the enjoyment of a special treat. "Ice cream is a guilty pleasure," notes one respondent.

Listening carefully, we discern the consumer's need to enjoy a special treat without feeling bad about the choice. The product that can occupy that space will be rewarded in sales.

Jenny Schade's Positioning Research
Step Two:
Overcoming Barriers

We're treading in emotional territory now and we keep going to identify the psychological barriers that prevent our target consumers from eating our product. To identify these obstacles, we engage consumers in an exercise in which they articulate the process they use to choose which dessert they will eat:

• How do certain desserts make it into the grocery cart?
• On what occasions do they choose ice cream versus other options?
• What -- if anything -- balances out concerns about the fat and calories of ice cream?
• How does ice cream stack up against other choices that consumers consider to be fattening?

We hear that consumers consider ice cream to be in a dessert category with other calorie and fat-laden selections such as frosted cakes. "Those are the bad things that taste so good," explains a consumer with a nervous laugh. But as the discussion progresses, a window of opportunity appears. In the minds of these "guilty dessert eaters," ice cream is different from other choices in the category because it contains calcium. "It's not just empty calories," says a respondent. "There's some nutritional value there," notes another.

Further discussion reveals that the calcium content of ice cream elevates it to being perceived as a "more natural dessert -- it has calcium and less additives and preservatives than processed cake or cookies." This is particularly good news for our client, whose gourmet ice cream can rightfully make claims that it contains "all natural ingredients."

Jenny Schade's Positioning Research
Step Three:
Determining Client Identity

With a clear understanding of how consumers view the dessert and ice cream categories, it's time to explore where our client stands within these sectors. A sorting exercise helps us crystallize exactly how target customers see the client's product. Asked to divide a range of dessert products into groups based on the criteria important in choosing what to have for dessert, consumers place our client in a group they describe as "better-for-you pleasures." Also in this group: Gourmet dark chocolate and sorbets containing real fruit. "I wouldn't call these ‘healthy,'" explains a consumer, "But they are better for you than other desserts and they feel like a real treat. That means you don't feel so bad about eating them."

This discussion shows that within desserts, our client's gourmet ice cream occupies a positive niche that satisfies the need for pleasure and provides some reassurance for the anxiety that frequently accompanies the decision to eat an after-meal treat.

Jenny Schade's Positioning Research
Step Four:
Identifying Meaningful Language

Now that we have obtained insight into how target consumers identify our client's gourmet ice cream, it's time to get practical. What's the best language to use in marketing our client's product? There's only one way to get this right and that's to hear it directly from the consumer -- or as I like to call it -- "Straight from the Source's Mouth."

"Tell me what you would say to a friend to get her to eat this ice cream for dessert," I say to the focus group respondents. And we hear:

• "There's real fruit in here -- you deserve the best."
• "This is a treat you can feel good about because it's better for you than other desserts -- it's not just empty calories."
• "The perfect reward -- good-for-you and good-tasting too."
• "Some of the flavors are made with milk and not cream -- a not-so-guilty pleasure."

Research mission accomplished! We've identified the customer's need for a special treat that he or she can feel good (or less guilty) about eating. We know the barriers for usage and know how to overcome them. We've determined the niche the product holds: "Better-for-you pleasure" makes a strong statement. And we've heard it all in the words of the consumer -- plenty of material to fuel a strong marketing campaign.

It's my hope that this four-step process can help you to identify and differentiate your product or service from competitors.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers.
www.jrsconsulting.net
© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2008

The Attraction Advantage

Jenny Schade's
Making It Count

 

Using research to harness the power of your brand's essence.

Barack Obama has it. So does Sex and the City. Starbucks was a pioneer.

All three of these "brands" developed a competitive advantage that significantly increased their likelihood of success. For example, even Obama supporters agree that his meteoric rise is not due to extensive experience; it's clear his consistent message of change struck a nationwide chord in a country ready for a new approach. Sex and the City took the pulse of American women and created an entire subculture of followers. Starbucks, with its wireless Internet and living room décor, identified an opportunity to transform a cup of coffee into a cultural experience.

Through poignant messaging, needs-based content and amplification of the customer experience, these brands attracted followers in a way that made it look easy. And once this kind of gravitational pull begins, attracting customers becomes relatively easy, because it is based on an underlying understanding of key stakeholders. What needs do they have? What's their experience of your organization? What's their bond with your products? By understanding the essence of what attracts people to your product or services and making sure your entire organization delivers on this essence, you can amplify this natural attraction.

A powerful connection with key constituents, a true understanding of your customers

I call this superpower "The Attraction Advantage" because it dramatically reduces your need to pursue -- and improves your ability to attract -- supporters/fans/customers. This unique quality, once understood and effectively harnessed, enables a powerful connection with key constituents that competitors can't duplicate. Simply put, you don't have to work as hard to attract customers because you are saying and doing things that actually draw them to you.

During tough economic times, such as a recession, this kind of competitive advantage is particularly valuable because it allows you to use resources wisely. It doesn't necessarily require drastic corporate overhauls or expenditures. The essence of your Attraction Advantage is already there – you just need to identify and mobilize it. Once you have developed a true understanding of your customers and their relationship with your organization, this understanding will effectively drive your operations, marketing and product offerings.

Use basic reseach to locate the attraction advantage

The key to developing The Attraction Advantage begins with very basic research about your customers' needs and their relationship with your product. Typical market research often concentrates on validating a hypothesis or measuring whether a tactic has "moved the needle." Research to uncover your organization's core essence, on the other hand, avoids foregone conclusions by focusing on the customer's experience.

For example, what needs do your customers have? What's their connection (or potential connection) to your organization? How can you and every employee deliver on this association? Using research to understand this basic essence will enable the development of your own Attraction Advantage.

Case Study Example #1:
Identifying the Essence of a Private Club

An exclusive metropolitan club called me because its membership had decreased significantly. "We need to do a survey of our membership," explained the club general manager, rolling out blueprints of potential club improvements. "We're losing members so we clearly need to make some changes -- let's find out what they want from us. We're considering expanding the bar. On the other hand, some of our competitors have added workout rooms and showers -- that might be why we're losing out. All of this will cost a lot, but we're willing to do whatever we need to do in order to turn things around."

"Sure, we can do a survey that asks members to rate these options," I responded, "But let's spend some time with your members first, just talking about their experiences at the club. I want to understand why they joined originally and whether their expectations are being met before we start exploring remodeling."

Our confidential interviews with club members focused on three core areas:

• "Why did you join this club originally?"
• "Has it met your expectations?"
• "What could make your membership better?"

The responses provided an insightful look into how members felt about their club:

• "I want this to be my oasis from the rat race -- my home-away-from home."
• "Belonging to this club tells me that I've made it. I'm proud to be a member here. But lately, I'm disappointed in the way I'm treated at the club. Half the time, they don't even know who I am. I want to feel like a VIP!"
• "When I bring friends to the club, I want them to be impressed that I'm a member here. I want them to see the general manager greeting me by name and the wait staff knowing my drink without my having to say it. But that just isn't happening."
• " Sure, expand the bar if you want -- it can't hurt. But first, make sure you're paying attention to me and getting my drink order right!"

An oasis from the chaos. A sense of belonging. Feeling successful in front of one's peers -- and ultimately to oneself. These invaluable insights gave the club clear direction that the repairs necessary for its survival involved its service and relationships with members rather than physical improvements to its facility.

The interviews also helped the club to avoid spending seven figures on remodeling that would not have resolved the problem. The research provided the club with insight about its Attraction Advantage that drove decisions on its physical layout, staff hiring and training, marketing and product offerings. As a result, membership and expenditures increased significantly as the club used its Attraction Advantage to draw members.

Case Study Example #2:
Getting the Organization on Board

Halfway through a study interviewing shoppers about their experiences with a major retail chain, I realized that we had left out half of the people from whom we desperately needed input: the store's employees.

Our interviews identified a significant opportunity to improve the store's customer service in order to deliver the experience customers sought from this retailer. We were at the point of determining how shoppers would know that service had improved.

We asked questions like:

• "How do you know you're getting good service?"
• "What do you expect employees to do for you?"
• "What does that kind of service say to you?"

The customers were quite articulate at defining what they sought in terms of good service:

"At the Ontario store, the person waiting on me was really very friendly. Not just the usual ‘thanks for coming.' The way he said it was different. It caught my attention and made me feel like he really cared. It made me want to go back to that particular store."

• "I want the employees to look me in the eye, smile at me, and ask me if I need help. I want them to come to me rather than me having to go to them. That doesn't always happen."
• "I want to be well-treated but I don't always receive that. It depends on how the employees have been trained. Some of them don't seem to know what to do. I notice some locations are better than others."

One-on-one attention. Eye contact. Friendliness. These behaviors convey that employees care and result in customers who want to return for more.

However, it's not enough to know that customers value these good service characteristics. Employees, too, need to value them in order to adopt and deliver them consistently. Why wasn't that happening and what was it going to take to fix it?

For these very reasons, we needed to get the perspective of employees. Quickly, we arranged to talk with them in focus groups.

These interviews proved to be particularly enlightening. We asked:

• "Tell me about how you typically interact with customers."
• "What prepared you to wait on customers?"
• "How does your experience with customers make you feel about your job?"

The employees told us:

• "They put me on the register right away during the holiday rush, and I didn't know how it worked. Customers were yelling at me…it was awful!"
• "My manager said there was no time for training. They put me out on the floor, and I didn't know anything. I looked stupid and I felt stupid."
• "I like getting to know my customers. Some of them even ask for me by name."
• "Getting compliments from customers makes me feel like a person. It makes me proud to get up and go to work in the morning."

Our interviews showed that customer service training varied dramatically between store locations because store managers viewed the time involved as lost income, creating a system that didn't encourage employee training. Employees who didn't receive the training felt embarrassed and ashamed that they couldn't be more helpful to customers.

On the other hand, employees who received training and engaged in good service behaviors reported feeling valued by their customers. Feeling valued, in turn, led to employees feeling proud to work for the store. The commitment and ambition of properly trained employees supported a system that encouraged further training.

Bingo! Having identified the experience the chain's customers sought, we were now poised to help employees live and breathe it. Contrary to our clients' original hypotheses that involved store remodeling and drastic renovations to the product line, delivery was within reach. The key was enabling the employees -- the touch points for customers -- to provide the right experience.

Successfully developing and implementing The Attraction Advantage involves both understanding what attracts customers to your organization as well as ensuring that your employees can deliver what your customers need. The foundation of this understanding and delivery is effective research that allows exploration of an organization's bond with its customers.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers.
www.jrsconsulting.net
© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2008

The Exorbitant Cost of Not Doing Research

Jenny Schade's
Making It Count

Salesgenie.com's $2.7 million mistake, and how a major retailer avoided making a similar one.

Note to Salesgenie.com's CEO: A little investment in research generates a huge return.

Vinod Gupta, the InfoUSA CEO who owns Salesgenie.com, learned this lesson the hard way when he had to stop airing his television commercial after its debut on Superbowl XLII because of protests about its culturally-insensitive presentation of animated pandas with Chinese accents. It was an expensive lesson: The cost of airtime alone for a 30-second spot on Superbowl 2008 was $2.7 million. View the ad here at YouTube: 

Gupta, who wrote and produced the ad himself, told USA Today (February 11, 2008) that next year, he'll test his ads with consumer focus groups. This year, he said, he only ran the ad by some friends. "None said it was offensive," he said.

A Major Retailer Discovers that Ideas are Beautiful, but Reality Is Something Else

Vinod Gupta isn't the only top executive to become enamored with his own creativity. The Salesgenie.com ad debacle reminded me of another marketing campaign developed by a retail chain leadership team. Fortunately, those executives had the good sense to test the materials before going public. I'll never forget the shock experienced by the campaign's creators when they saw the reactions of their intended audiences.

By the time I was retained, a seven-figure budget had already gone into the creation of advertising and internal communications materials that featured real employees. It was my job to test the communications with focus groups to determine if they were relevant and would produce the desired reactions and results.

The stores in the materials looked wonderful. Inviting. Immaculate. Smiling employees welcomed you. Salespeople exhibited pride in their work. Several mentioned their impressive employee benefits: health insurance, 401K plans and paid vacations. Others spoke of their aspirations to become store managers. These proud, joyful team members encouraged the public to shop at their stores and consider working with them.

I showed the employees in the first focus group the materials and asked the following questions:

"What's the main idea behind what you see?"

"Would you notice this ad if you were looking through a magazine?"

"How does this information make you feel about working there?"

Immediately I knew we had a major problem. The employees looked angry, confused and resentful. Sample responses included:

• "Those employees look way too happy. No one in my store smiles all the time."
• "These ads make me not want to go to work tonight... The benefits they are talking about don't exist. I've never heard of them."
• "These photos depress me. My store doesn't look anything like that. These are just pretty pictures. If it was really like this, I'd be proud to work there!"

The employees filed out. As I prepared for the second group, I popped into the adjoining room where a team of marketing and ad agency executives were watching through a one-way mirror. The creative director had a light film of sweat glistening on his forehead. No one looked at me. They were engaged in an intense discussion that absorbed all of their attention.

I showed the materials to the next focus group, which consisted of seven customers. I asked:

"Any immediate thoughts or feelings?"

"Is the ad clear?"

"How does this make you feel about shopping there?"

The customers were equally incredulous:

• "The ad looks is great, but the store I go to in my neighborhood always has stuff on the floor."
• "I like the way the employees seem to care about their customers. But if I go back to the store in my area and get the same shabby treatment I always get, I'll be mad. They're tricking me."
• "If the employees really receive all of these benefits, why do they look so miserable?"

Again I ducked into the next room to confer with my clients. Now the creative director was openly mopping his forehead and the marketing director had gone ash white. He whispered to his assistant, "Haven't these benefits gone national?"

The assistant whispered back, "Guess not."

Where the Reality Hits the Road

I said to the marketing team, "For now, the only thing we can do is to proceed with these focus groups and instruct the participants to react to the ads as if they are true. Our goal today isn't to poll them on their actual experiences in your stores; it's to get their responses to this campaign."

The team agreed that this was the best use of our time; however, it was clear that there would be some serious accountability checking back at home office.

I proceeded with the same questions to the remaining 15 focus groups. Then my team and I summarized our findings in a written report that we presented to the client two weeks later.

Upon reviewing the report, the client called me and said, "I must admit, this hurts. We spent a lot of money on those materials, but I'd rather know this now than after rolling out a national, multi-million dollar campaign."

As painful as the findings were, they served a valuable purpose.

• They spared the retailer from the embarrassment and potential liability of launching a campaign that promoted employee benefits only offered in certain regions of the country.
• They pointed out that the store chain had locations that were inconsistent with the quality, store appearance and service being advertised.
• They identified that this could indeed be a powerful campaign as long as the organization fixed these issues and got them right. After all, both the customers and the employees indicated that they liked real employees being featured in the campaign and they were attracted to the stores that were depicted in the ads.

The overriding benefit of testing your marketing communications is ensuring that your communications are meaningful to key constituents. In other words, the resources that you devote to research now will pay off in spades when you move forward with communications programs and materials that hit the mark. By ensuring that your marketing is compelling, you can stop pursuing – and start attracting -- your intended audiences.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers. Subscribe to the free JRS newsletter on www.jrsconsulting.net/newsletter.html
© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2008

How To Develop 20:20 Foresight

Jenny Schade's
Making It Count

To ensure marketing success, do some research first.

Research. Evaluation. These two terms often seem to go hand-in-hand. However, in my experience, when customer or employee input is sought only after a marketing program, it all too often becomes "justification" rather than "evaluation" because marketers then have a vested interest in supporting what's been done.

Have you ever considered that you might not have such a need for evaluation (or justification) if you had obtained input before embarking upon an initiative? If you have a clear picture of your customer and understand his or her needs when you're in the planning stage, you're much more likely to be "spot on" in the development of your products and services and in your marketing communications.

A Contact Lens Manufacturer Gains Insight

For example, a contact lens manufacturer, in the process of promoting its newly released colored contacts, asked us to help it understand how contact wearers viewed the new product.

"Is this a fashion accessory? Is it something people try for fun? We need to know how wearers view the product before we can know what kinds of marketing tactics will be effective," said the marketing director.

In focus groups of women who had tried colored contact lenses, we probed:

• How do you feel when you're wearing your regular contacts versus colored contacts?
• What would you say to convince someone to try colored contacts?
• Does wearing colored contacts remind you of anything else you do for your appearance?

The serious underlying tone of the responses surprised our client, who had envisioned positioning colored contacts as a fashion item.

• "Eyes are a serious business. You don't want to mess around with your eyes. Why take a risk? It's important to have your doctor's support even if you're doing this for fashion."
• "At first, I thought I wanted a dramatic change, but now I think of that as kind of a fad. I don't want people looking at me, trying to figure out if this is my eye color. I want to seem natural. I like to be noticed, but not too much."
• "Colored contacts are okay if they enhance the natural color of your eyes. Then they're like wearing make-up. Bold color changes are for people who aren't quite sure who they are and want to try on different appearances. Those are the kind of people who get cosmetic surgery."

Safety... Enhancing a natural look... Not being noticed "too much..." The disparity between the manufacturer's perception of its customers' desires and what the customers truly wanted was striking.

Overall, the focus groups showed that associating colored contacts with feeling confident and comfortable was crucial for effective marketing. As a result, the contact lens marketing director could clearly see that positioning the lenses as strictly a fashion item would be a definite marketing "faux pas." Instead, he emerged from the research with a strategy of integrating the clinical side of colored contacts with fashion appeal.

Customers Interpret Your Messages, so Test First

You may think that the example shared in this article is rare, but it is actually representative of what this kind of testing typically uncovers – the discrepancy between a company's perception of how its product is viewed and reality.

That's why this kind of research is non-negotiable. As the contact lens case study shows, getting customer input before launching marketing initiatives isn't a "nice to do," or "if time permits," or "if the budget allows" endeavor. It's a necessity to ensure the effective use of your marketing dollars.

The contact lens wearers sent a powerful message that applies to all marketing campaigns: Customers are not passive recipients of your message. In fact, customers are in complete control of how they receive what you have to say. They decide when and if they will give you their attention. They interpret their experience with you. They also determine whether they believe you and if your message is compelling.

The key to success is to tell your story in a way that is meaningful and that involves understanding your customer's perspective and needs before developing a marketing strategy and tactics. In other words, develop 20-20 foresight.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers. Subscribe to the free JRS newsletter on www.jrsconsulting.net/newsletter.html
© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2007

Hitting on Guys in Bars and Other Tools of the Trade for Obtaining Customer Feedback

Jenny Schade's
Making It Count

 

Research at the Scene of the Dime

In a sports bar in downtown Chicago, my colleague and I approach a twenty-something guy. I'm doing the talking and she's ready with her clipboard.

"Excuse me," I begin. "Can we speak to you for a few minutes?"

"Yeah, just a second," he responds. He leans over to one of his buddies and whispers, "I can't believe this, we just got here and already chicks are hitting on me!"

He returns to us. "Hi!"

"We'd like to ask you some questions about the video games here,"I explain. "It's market research. Our interview will take about 15 minutes and we'll give you $25 for making time for us."

"Oh," he replies. "Well, I guess that sounds okay. What are your questions?"

Our interview begins:

Q: "Why do you come to this bar in particular?"

A: "My friends and I probably come here two or three nights a week. I don't have to plan anything – it's all here for me. All I have to do is show up."

Q: "Do you ever play the video games they offer here? "Why or why not?"

A: "More often than not, we play video games. It's something to do and after playing one a few times, you can actually get better at it.

Q: "What do you look for in a good video game?"

A: "Something happens on the screen and I have to do the right thing. It makes me feel kind of good when I do well. A couple of weeks ago, I was winning and this one game made all sorts of noise. Pretty soon, I had a crowd gathered around me. It was this game right here – let me show you what I mean…"

His responses exemplify why doing these interviews on-site is so valuable for obtaining practical information for our video game manufacturing client. We've quickly covered a lot of ground in this interview and it's all very important to our client:

• The idea that this sports bar patron is a "regular" and looks to the bar he frequents to provide easy entertainment.
• The fact that he develops a sense of competency as he plays a video game.
• The emotional reward he receives when he interacts with a game and it signals to him and to others that he is succeeding.

When we multiply this single interview times the 30 video game players we will talk with this week, we start to recognize some patterns. Product innovation and marketing recommendations emerge almost effortlessly. For example, our research immediately suggests:

• Developing new games that offer increased interaction and lights/sound acknowledgment of winning players.
• Offering bar promotions that provide patrons with added entertainment and rewards such as video game tournaments and play-offs.
• Capitalizing on players' desire for feeling competent by publicly recognizing winners through a bar "Wall of Fame."

Research At the Scene of the Dime

By being on-site for these interviews, we are able to talk directly to our client's customers and observe them in their natural surroundings – their habitat, so to speak. We're catching them off-guard and encouraging them to share how they use our client's products as well as what they value about them.

This case study about interviewing video game players in sports bars is an example of going directly to your customers and conducting research in the field rather than having them come to a research facility to learn about their opinions. Traditional qualitative market research that takes place in a focus group facility can be very informative, however, it is invaluable to observe and talk with customers of certain kinds of products and services right where they make the purchase decision or, as I like to call it, "Right At the Scene of the Dime."

By talking with customers as they are pulling out their wallets to plug dimes – or dollars – into video games, we can capture their top-of-mind thoughts and emotions, gaining insights into their needs and connections with our products.

Jenny Schade's Three Questions for Determining Interview Location

So how do you identify when conducting research in the field would be advantageous over a more traditional setting? Ask yourself Jenny Schade's Three Questions for Determining Interview Location:

1. Is there a benefit to observing the people we want to interview in the setting where they actually use our products?
2. Would it be easier/more cost effective to go to our respondents rather than trying to recruit them to come talk to us?
3. Do others influence how our customers interact with our products?

In the case of our video game machine producing client, our responses to all three questions were affirmative.

1. It was tremendously beneficial to observe the bar patrons on-site and understand the other attractions that competed for their attention.
2. It was actually quite easy to recruit respondents in the bar, rather than paying for recruits that might not actually show up (probably because they were in the bar that night!).
3. Only by observing our respondents were we able to understand the role their friends and other patrons played in their choice to play video games and keep playing throughout the evening.

Following are examples of other research initiatives that we deemed more appropriate to conduct in the field rather than in a professional research facility:

• Interviewing construction workers at their sites regarding the qualities they seek in the truck boxes that house their tools in the back of their pickup trucks. Doing the interviews at the work sites enabled the workers to show us the truck box features they preferred and respond to product ideas under consideration.
• Running "rap groups"of teens in their after-school clubs to identify the program offerings they found most appealing. Holding the sessions at the schools greatly increased participation and allowed us and our client to understand the situational pressures faced by club members.
• Interviewing bakery employees right on the assembly line as they frosted and put together cookies and cakes. This setting helped us see directly the logistics involved in the workers' responsibilities and understand their reactions to corporate initiatives that they felt were insensitive to their needs. (This was also memorable as the only time I ever conducted interviews while wearing a hair net! Just picture the "The Lucy Show.")

When you really need to see your customers in action, there's nothing as effective as conducting research in the field. Whether that means putting on your construction hat or a hair net, you're sure to gain an in-depth perspective on what motivates your customers to invest financially – and emotionally – in your products.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers. Subscribe to the free JRS newsletter on www.jrsconsulting.net/newsletter.html
© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2007

How To Improve Your Employee Engagement

Jenny Schade's
Making It Count

 

Seven Steps to Ignite
Employee Engagement
How to overcome data doom and gloom.

It was a dark and stormy day at the retail giant's corporate headquarters. I walked into my client's office and sensed despair. Her desk was piled high with reams of survey data, benchmark comparisons, and ominous-looking charts.

"The employee survey results are in," she said glumly. "Engagement is really low – we're below the benchmark on almost every key measure. Now what do we do? It's my job to fix this!"

Employee engagement or commitment is obviously critical. I don't need to cite the countless studies linking employee engagement with outcomes such as productivity and retention. Common sense makes the case for desiring strong engagement equally clear. Obviously, if employees are not finding meaning in their work, do not understand how what they are doing contributes to the organization's goals and are considering leaving the company, something needs to change.

While surveys are very effective at flagging low morale, they are notoriously poor at identifying solutions for improvement. Having encountered this situation with my retail giant clients as well as others feeling overwhelmed by poor survey findings with no clear ideas about how to make improvements, I have developed the following Seven Steps to Ignite Employee Engagement:

Engagement Step One:
Get input from your people.

They know what's contributing to the low engagement and have good ideas about how to fix it. They just need to be asked – in the right way. I'm not talking about having your communications or human resources professionals run employee focus groups. For interviews with employees about a sensitive subject such as engagement, you need an outside consultant that employees feel they can trust to preserve their confidentiality. After all, how honest would you be about your intent-to-stay at your organization if you knew the interviewer represented the company?

You need a skilled interviewer who knows how to help employees speak openly while obtaining the input you need to move the business forward. In fact, our clients find that the benefits of the interviews begin as soon as discussions are being scheduled. Again and again we hear, "I'm impressed that they've hired you to talk with us. That tells me they do care." Of course, the interviews alone won't suffice. It's critical to acknowledge and follow up on identified issues. Failure to do so could lower morale even further.

The interviews are also an ideal opportunity to ask employees for their ideas about making improvements. It is very important to ask for specifics. For example, if employees feel bogged down by too many administrative processes, ask what specific processes are most troublesome and how they could be eliminated or improved. You will be amazed at the wealth of ideas generated across interviews.

Engagement Step Two:
Address the cause – don't blame.

As you seek to understand why employees are feeling so negative, you may learn about people and actions that make you angry and upset. Resist the temptation to confront individuals about specific events. That kind of confrontation will lead to a backlash of blame that will only make employees reticent about speaking up in the future. Instead, focus on what about your culture or system is spawning negative behavior. Address the cause to enable improvement.

Engagement Step Three:
Don't get hung up on survey benchmarks.

Your company is unique – with its own culture, strategy and goals. If your employee survey results indicate a pattern of low satisfaction levels, you know there is a need for improvement. Being five percent lower than the benchmark or seven percent higher doesn't change that. If 60% of your employees indicate that they intend to stay with your company and the benchmark is 52%, should you breath easily? If you do, you may miss an opportunity to reach an even higher level of engagement.

I can say this as a consultant who seriously considered creating a database about ten years ago so that I could compare client results with a benchmark. I realized, however, that this approach would eliminate my ability to focus on the uniqueness of my clients and force us to ask a series of generic questions that could be compared to the benchmark. More important than any benchmark comparisons are considerations of recent events within your company and industry. Have you just laid off 10% of your workforce? Is your industry facing a tremendous increase in global competition? If so, it would be unrealistic to expect employee attitudes to have improved during the past year and it's not particularly helpful to compare your company to other organizations and industries in vastly different situations.

Engagement Step Four:
Be honest about the findings with employees.

One leader of an organization struggling with low engagement announced to his employees after hearing about findings from our interviews, "I'm ashamed. How did we get here?" When I heard him, I knew he was going to triumph over the situation and get things back on track. He was willing to deal honestly with the issues and with his own employees to make improvements.

When communicating survey and interview findings, be straightforward. Resist the urge to package employees' input under a catchy theme, e.g. "The ABC's of Engagement." Every time I interview employees on sensitive subjects such as engagement, I get feedback that employees are talking to each other during the process and that they want to hear what comes out of the interviews. One employee told me, "I'm going to tell you what's really going on here because you've spoken with several of my friends. They said you're all right."

Employees know what they told the interviewer and if important issues are omitted from what is shared with them or packaged in a cutesy way, they will know it and distrust the organization. Obviously, this will not help improve engagement. It's important to candidly report the key issues that emerge in research and then announce an action plan to make improvements.

Engagement Step Five:
Implement interventions.

After the survey findings are in, and employees are interviewed to identify interventions, the hard part really begins. It's critical to make some changes. Does this sound obvious? Unfortunately, there are organizations that, upon completion of the research and identification of interventions, do not proceed with the most difficult part – implementing change. Some companies make plans to re-survey their employees one year after the original survey to gauge improvement, even though they have done nothing differently since the original survey. That is a recipe for disaster! If a company has identified engagement issues after a baseline survey and does nothing about them, I can guarantee conditions will be worse one year later.

While sharing the survey findings with employees is an important step in the process, it is not enough on its own. It is absolutely critical to commit to making changes and then to proceed with implementation before any follow-up research is conducted.

Engagement Step Six:
Involve senior leadership in the research and intervention process.

Engagement is a serious business. This is one of those subjects that employees need to hear about from leadership. Leaders need to encourage employees to participate in the research. Leaders need to communicate research findings. And leaders need to wholeheartedly endorse and participate in interventions.

In fact, leadership is most likely going to need to make and model new behaviors in order for change to cascade down through the organization. For example, we worked with one organization whose goal was to significantly increase innovation; however, employees felt their company's culture inhibited sharing ideas. For this culture to change, it was critical to work individually with members of leadership to provide them with input about behaving in ways that conveyed trust and openness to their teams.

Engagement Step Seven:
After interventions have been implemented, conduct follow-up research to gauge progress.

Give yourself a year to 18 months for change to be effective, and then re-survey employees and conduct interviews for further depth. Some clients are impatient with waiting this long, but we encourage giving the organization time to really make some improvements.

However, this guideline doesn't mean that employee feedback comes to a standstill until the next research phase. This is where conducting your own internal conversations becomes extremely valuable. Encourage leaders and managers to ask employees for input. Have leaders meet with groups of 50-60 employees at a time for updates and frank discussions. Ask managers to check in with their direct reports to learn how things are going. Overall, set a tone of ongoing dialogue to get feedback and make adjustments to keep the engagement process on track.

The news that employee engagement is low is always difficult to hear, but it is most definitely not a terminal diagnosis. Involving leadership and employees at every level in improving the organization is a revitalizing experience with a powerful return.

Jenny Schade is president of JRS Consulting, Inc., a firm that helps organizations build leading brands and efficiently attract and motivate employees and customers. Subscribe to the free JRS newsletter on www.jrsconsulting.net/newsletter.html
© JRS Consulting, Inc. 2007

The Personal Massager and Seven Other Bizarre Tales from the Consulting Frontline

Jenny Schade's
Making It Count

 

Strange But True Tales
"The Personal Massager" and seven other bizarre adventures from the consulting frontline.

Colleagues often tease me that I have more than my share of Strange But True adventures. I'm not sure if I actually attract more of these situations than other people, but I do acknowledge that I'm more open to finding the humor in unusual workplace events. I think you'll enjoy the following seven bizarrely humorous real-life adventures. (And a big "Thanks!" to my friends who contributed; you know who you are.)

1. The Personal Massager
...or, How to Generate Good Vibes in a Focus Group

One of the most memorable research studies that I have ever observed involved a female moderator, an all-male focus group and a "personal massager." The client had requested focus groups to explore perceptions of its line of sports massage products. At the end of the groups, the client wanted the moderator to casually and discretely display a "personal massager" to see how people compared it to its sports massage product.

At the end of the first group, the moderator walked over to the table with this product, tripped, and the "personal massager" shot out of its box, turned on and began loudly buzzing its way across the table toward the men in the group. They exploded in laughter, and one of them said, "Well, you certainly know how to operate one of those!"

This initial focus group project became an inside joke with our client for years to come, but it also served as an "ice-breaker" when we all laughed at the faux pas. It's a good example of how humor can relieve stress, help forge relationships and generally create a more positive atmosphere in which to conduct good business.

The Lure of Being "Just A Little Bit Bad:" How to Avoid the Seven Deadly Sins of Research

Jenny Schade's
Making It Count

 

The Lure of Being
"Just a Little Bit Bad":
How to Avoid the Seven Deadly Sins of Research

The research business can be precarious at times. Studies have to be completed at breakneck speed, clients push for particular outcomes and trendy colleagues promote the latest fads. Or perhaps it's difficult to muster enthusiasm for yet another presentation.

In such situations, it is critical to avoid the lure of being "just a little bit bad" and conducting mediocre research. The following are Jenny Schade's Seven Deadly Sins of Research:

The Three Critical Keys To Business-Relevant Research

Apr 11
JENNY SCHADE'S MAKING IT COUNT
The Three Critical Keys
To Business-Relevant Research
How to ensure that you conduct research that moves the business.

We're in the research business and we want to be scientific and precise. It's reassuring to follow procedures and generate lots of data. At the same time, it's critical to use common sense and make sure that our approach is going to give us information that improves business results. Based on our research over the past 15 years, we present three critical keys for conducting research that you--and your clients--can really use...