Archive for October, 2011

Something remarkable is something worth talking about, something that is noticed. When you take a look at your products and services or take a look at your brand and customer experience, are people talking?

In Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow,” he uses the analogy of cows to demonstrate the point of being remarkable. He states that if you were driving along a country road that was lined with cows, the first cow may get a reaction but after awhile the cows become boring. But in a crowd of cows, a purple cow would stand out and be something worth talking about.

How do you stand out or reinvent your brand to get the buzz going again?

When you have been in business a long time and competition in your space becomes fierce, you run the risk of your product becoming a commodity. When your product becomes a commodity, you find yourself either competing on price or brand loyalty. This is the time to do something different to stand out from the competition that makes people want to talk about it.

What is going to be your purple cow? Here are some tips to consider for transforming your product to be a purple cow.

1) Redefine your packaging
When Dutch Boy needed to stand out in a crowded paint market, they did something remarkable, they changed the paint can. Think about it, paint cans are heavy, hard to carry and difficult to pour so they created an easy to carry and easy to pour paint can with a handle. Remarkable!

2) Redefine your product
When Curad needed to gain market share against Band-aid, they did something remarkable…they put cartoon characters on their bandages and appealed to a niche market, little kids and their parents who wanted to make their child’s “boo boos” go away. When the kids went to school and the other kids saw them, a marketing frenzy happened. That’s remarkable.

3) Redefine your promotion

When Krispy Kreme donuts enter into a new market,they give away thousands of donuts to the local community to build a buzz and to get people talking about their donuts. Add a fantastic tasting donut and you created something remarkable.

So when you feel nobody is talking about your products and services or that you are blending in to a crowded marketplace, think about what small changes you can make to be remarkable.

According to Simon Sinek, the secret is in “The Why”. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Where most marketers fail is in the message. They focus too much on the features and the “what” and not enough time on the benefits and the “why”.

As the world mourns the death of Steve Jobs’, we start to also celebrate his life and his massive contribution to the world we currently live. His legacy will go on forever and inspire future leaders to blaze down their own trail. An impressive man filled with purpose and focus. MSN’s home page opens today to the headline “How Steve Jobs Will be Remembered”

So, this week’s tip encourages you to ask the same question of yourself. “How will you be remembered?” What is the legacy you would like to leave behind?

Think about the impact that Steve Job’s existence has had on the world… and think about the impact you strive for and live each day in pursuit of that dream. Success is NOT an accident… it is happens when you want it to happen.

Change your choices
Change your life

The average woman lives to be around 83 years of age. She lives approximately 4,316 weeks. So, if you are a 40 year old woman, you have 2,080 weeks left to accomplish what you want to out of life.

So what are you waiting for…. Live a life you designed, not one that was defaulted. You have choices and the decisions you make around those choices not only shape who you are but will shape the lives you also influence so choose Success and become a woman of action and make it happen!

Here are 5 simple tips:

1) Choose Success – identify what it is you want in life and decide to take action every day to achieve it. That simple.

2) Refuse to be the Victim – Remember success is a journey with risks, rewards and hardships along the way. If it was easy, there would be more than 1% of the population who are truly successful. When you find yourself moving towards whining, justifying or making up an excuse…stop yourself and ask how this is moving you closer to your dream.

3) Manage Your Time Commitments Wisely – No matter what we do, there will always be only 24 hours in a day. You will never be able to control time, add more minutes or change that fact. But, you can change your own commitments to using time. Choose wisely and eliminate time wasters.

4) Think in terms of abundance over scarcity. People with a scarcity mindset focus on the things that they do not have and the things that are wrong versus an abundance mindset that focuses on accomplishments, possibilities and opportunity. The universe has a funny way of sending us possibilities, unfortunately many are closed off in a scarcity that we fail to hear opportunity knocking.

5) Surround yourself with achievers – People feed off of others so surround yourself with other goal-oriented and positive people who will motivate and support you every day. Living a life of design requires you to overcome fears and uncertainty and the right support system can help your through it and provide you the confidence to move forward.

There’s no magic or sophisticated formula to succeed. It’s straightforward and something we all know how to do. You have to want it first in order to achieve it and be gutsy enough to go get it! So, go live a life that you designed and to help motivate you, I have included the link to Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford University Commencement address for you to watch. It is only 15 minutes, but really gets you thinking!

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are success metrics that help a business define and measure progress towards its established goals.   They are quantifiable measurements that the leadership team defines as the critical items that will move the organization forward and highlight areas that are not performing.

As quantifiable measurements, KPIs must focus on true numbers as a way to measure performance vs. the intangible “to be the best at customer service”.  Therefore, it is important that you first create a standard or baseline from which to measure going forward.  For example,

• A call center may have a standard on the amount of time a customer can wait on hold or how many rings a call must be answered by.
• A sales organization can measure against a sales quota
• Human resources can measure against profit per FTE and turnover rate
• Technology can measure against reducing labor hours
• Manufacturing can measure number of units rejected.

Bottom line, the target needs to be clear enough so everyone understands what they are being measured on but realize many things are measurable so you want to make sure to select measurements that are key to the organization’s success.  So I recommend no more than five for the overall organizational health and each department or area will have three to five under that.

When defining KPIs first think about:

• What specifically you want to measure – including baseline or standard
• The calculation to measure  in specific units or dollars
• Target you would like to achieve.

For example,

KPI:  Employee Turnover – The total number of employees who leave the company for any reason:  Termination, resignation vs. count at beginning of year

Calculation:    Total # of employees who left divided by the total number of employees at beginning of year

Target:  Reduce Employee Turnover by 5% per year.

Once you have good Key Performance Indicators defined,  you can use them as a performance management tool to drive performance throughout the organization.  KPIs give everyone from the leadership team down to the rank and file, a clear goal and picture of what is critical to the organization and what they need to do to make your business accelerate.  Create a culture around KPIs, train on them, engage employees in conversations about them and make them visible to the entire organization.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are success metrics that help a business define and measure progress towards its established goals.   They are quantifiable measurements that the leadership team defines as the critical items that will move the organization forward and highlight areas that are not performing.

As quantifiable measurements, KPIs must focus on true numbers as a way to measure performance vs. the intangible “to be the best at customer service”.  Therefore, it is important that you first create a standard or baseline from which to measure going forward. 

For example,

• A call center may have a standard on the amount of time a customer can wait on hold or how many rings a call must be answered by.
• A sales organization can measure against a sales quota
• Human resources can measure against profit per FTE and turnover rate
• Technology can measure against reducing labor hours
• Manufacturing can measure number of units rejected.

Bottom line, the target needs to be clear enough so everyone understands what they are being measured on but realize many things are measurable so you want to make sure to select measurements that are key to the organization’s success.  So I recommend no more than five for the overall organizational health and each department or area will have three to five under that.

When defining KPIs first think about:

• What specifically you want to measure – including baseline or standard
• The calculation to measure  in specific units or dollars
• Target you would like to achieve.

For example,

KPI:  Employee Turnover – The total number of employees who leave the company for any reason:  Termination, resignation vs. count at beginning of year

Calculation:    Total # of employees who left divided by the total number of employees at beginning of year

Target:  Reduce Employee Turnover by 5% per year.

Once you have good Key Performance Indicators defined,  you can use them as a performance management tool to drive performance throughout the organization.  KPIs give everyone from the leadership team down to the rank and file, a clear goal and picture of what is critical to the organization and what they need to do to make your business accelerate.  Create a culture around KPIs, train on them, engage employees in conversations about them and make them visible to the entire organization.