Tag Archives: advice

April 12, 2012 · 6:16 am

Getting Engaged

I’ve been married a very long time (33 years and counting, thank you) but I still remember getting engaged.  I have no clue what it’s like today, but it used to be a big deal and there was a ritual to be followed (I still thank my lucky stars that her father was way easier on me than he should have been…).  I spend a fair amount of time these days talking about getting engaged except it’s not with my daughters (statement of fact, not a complaint!).  Instead, clients and I talk about “getting engaged” with their consumers.  The thought struck me that it’s not all that dissimilar.

Three stone engagement ring - in yellow gold -...

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An engagement is a commitment in either sense of the word (marriage or otherwise).  The only way one partner can figure out if the other is worth spending a lot of time with is to engage one another in dialog.  You know –  appropriate questions, thoughtful, honest answers – a dialog.  Obviously, you can’t spend your time telling your prospective partner how great you are.  Things go a lot more smoothly if you spend a fair amount of time telling them how great THEY are.  While it’s important to keep your own goals in mind, you can’t be a crazed egomaniac if an engagement is your objective.

The hard part is listening.  As marketers and content producers, we tend to put out a lot about ourselves and don’t take in enough about our potential customers.  As an aside, we do the same as managers in a lot of cases – “jobs” are often known as “engagements” after all.

We need to woo our customers, our users, our clients  – whatever you want to call those who pay the bills – as we would a potential spouse.  That’s the only way to get engaged.  Hey – who says romance is dead!

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April 9, 2012 · 9:09 am

Taking An Unplayable

The things we learn from golf!  I know, I’ve written about that before, but yesterday’s conclusion to The Masters provided such a great example as to why the lesson of the golf course apply to the world of business.

I’m talking, of course, about Phil Mickelson‘s decision-making on number 4. For those of you who didn’t see or haven’t heard about it, Phil was at the top of the leader-board when he hit an errant shot on a par 3. His error was compounded by the fact that it hit a grandstand and bounced further away from the hole. In fact, it wound up in some thick brush. This piece provides a good overview.  For you non-golfers, when your ball winds up in a place like this, you can do one of four things:  Play the ball as it is or take a penalty stroke and use one of three options under the “unplayable lie” rule.  In Phil’s case, two of the three options weren’t available to him – it’s too long an explanation for this space – but the third one – replay the last shot from the previous spot certainly was.  That would have been back on the tee, hitting your third shot (on a par 3) into the green.

San Diego's favorite son pitches one of only a...

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Phil elected to play the ball as it was and ended up making 6, and given where his ball was that was about as good a score as he could have expected.  His decision-making process is a great business example.  Phil elected not to cut his losses (take the penalty and start over) and I think it cost him the golf tournament.  This is the same guy who lost the U.S. Open a few years ago making exactly the same decision – try to hit an impossible shot instead of cutting your losses.  Obviously he won The Masters a couple of year back trying and making a difficult shot onto a par 5 from the trees (no, golf is not played in the woods – some of us just go there a lot).  In some ways, that just reinforced what is generally not the best course of action.

None of us like to admit that we need to take the hit and start over.  Most of us talk about “throwing good money after bad” as a negative.  The hard part is stepping back and assessing the situation without emotional involvement about all you’ve invested so far.  You need to build in decision points and discuss where you are with others and adjust the plan.  The caddy is out on the course not just to lug the golf bag and whether it’s in-house staff of consultants like me, someone needs to help make the decision to take the unplayable and live to fight another day.

What do you think?  How do you know when it’s time to go back to the tee or when trying to stick it out is the best course of action?

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March 16, 2012 · 9:07 am

Blind Tasting

Friday at last and while you might be expecting a lengthy piece on the history of corned beef for our Foodie Friday Fun approaching St. Patrick’s Day, I couldn’t really find any great business points buried in there.  Oh sure, we could have a chat about multiculturalism since corned beef is a food staple in many cultures (and strangely it came late to the Irish culture and it’s really more American Irish than it is native to the Old Sod) but that seems a bit forced.

LOS ANGELES, CA - JANUARY 24: Wine made by Dr...

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So for today’s Foodie Fun I want to think about blind tastings, specifically wine tastings.  There have been many examples of unexpected results when all the trappings of a wine are taken away (big name, fancy bottle, vintage year, even what grape).  The most famous of these if the Judgement of Paris which one could claim was the birth of the modern California wine industry and was commemorated in the movie Bottle Shock.  In 1976, California wines were rated higher than many top French wines in a blind tasting held in Paris and judged by mostly French wine experts.  Of course, these same judges believed it would be easy to spot the “inferior” California wines and had any one of them conducted the tasting and written the results on their own, they might have been laughed out of their profession.  Which is, of course, the business point.

There is an old saying that no one ever got fired for buying (pick one – IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, etc.).  It means no one gets fired for making the safe pick and choosing an industry leader. While there are other companies out there with better products or offer similar quality as the market leaders at lower prices, they come with the risk of ridicule should there be a problem.  Speaking as an independent consultant I can tell you that bigger companies, where decision-making is often a group matter, seem to feel most comfortable hiring other big companies – you all know the top consulting firms.  It’s an easy decision to justify.  Too bad – if they were to taste us blind – have a telephone conversation with the people doing their work as well as to look at our fees – the might get the same or better outcomes at better rates.  That’s not just in my field of consulting – many businesses overspend and get inferior results because they don’t do a blind taste test.

If you’ve got concerns about using companies other than the big guys in any field, raise those concerns directly with the firm that rated more highly even thought they’re not the brand name.  Build the answers – service levels, delivery dates, etc. – into the contract.  Ignoring your business palate when it’s telling you something is better – even if it’s a brand with which you’re unfamiliar – is silly.  Who knows – you just might find a $10 bottle that puts the $50 swill to shame.

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