McDonald’s – the secret is branding and bad buns

February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I am not a regular at McDonald’s. (Of course, I suppose no one is regular at McDonald’s.) But to silence my 5 year old grandson, I recently made a visit. After wailing and gnashing my teeth through a grilled chicken sandwich, three thoughts came to me:

  1. This is a real nasty sandwich;
  2. If I started a chicken sandwich business and this was my product, I wouldn’t have a chance; and
  3. It’s all about the bun.

The first thought requires no further discussion, so let’s focus on 2 and 3.

Brand trumps product

Culinary critics are not driving traffic to McDonald’s with their high ratings for the grilled chicken sandwich. And McDonald’s is not striving to produce the best grilled chicken sandwich (or hamburger). But how are they selling sandwiches – at all? Answer: Brand. McDonald’s proves that brand strength can overcome poor product/service.

But here is the paradox: How did the brand become so strong if the underlying product that built the brand is so weak? Answer: Because the product is not the brand. McDonald’s does not sell a quality food product – that is not their intention. McDonald’s sells an experience. McDonald’s sells confidence, convenience, and entertainment:

  • Confidence: You get the same product (quality aside) everyday at every McDonald’s
  • Convenience: Rapid caloric ingestion in a drive-thru, playground or dine-in environment
  • Entertainment: McDonald’s is your kind of place – a hap-hap-happy place

Lesson: First, know what you are selling. It may not be your apparent product or service. Second, build brand along the way because, if you’re lucky, it may eclipse the value of your product.

It’s all about the bun

My sandwich bun was more clam shell than bread. Even for restaurants emphasizing a quality food product, I have always been amazed at how little attention is given the bun. They treat the bun as an afterthought, a way to scrimp and save cost. But the bun is critical to the  sandwich. The bun can enhance or ruin the sandwich. Imagine a Porsche wrapped in tin. How stupid is that?

But this lesson really isn’t about fast food. The bun illustrates the importance of how we present our product/service – and the dramatic effect poor presentation can have on a quality effort. How you wrap, deliver, explain, portray, reveal your product/service is a critical part of the complete customer experience. No product/service is good enough to overcome a failed presentation. Are you delivering your prime beef in stale bread? Is your Porsche wrapped in tin? It’s all about the bun.

Filed Under: Customers, Marketing, Strategy, Tips

Everybody wants Sales but nobody wants to Sell

February 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is the business version of the popular phrase, “everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.”

For the vast majority of people, selling is the emotional equivalent of death, divorce and public speaking. In fact, selling shares many of the same requirements as public speaking, so they share the same anguish: fear of rejection, fear of embarrassment, fear of judgment, fear of messing up  the pitch, fear of fear.

Reality Check

Still, reality demands sales, and that means someone has to sell. If you own a small business, you are likely the lead salesperson, in addition to lead producer, marketer, manager, janitor, etc.  Watching so many people struggle with this challenge over the years, I recommend putting the word “selling” out of your mind – literally. Don’t use that word anymore – ever again. It is a trigger word that causes too many negative reactions.

You are generating leads and creating buyers – not “selling.” By taking selling out of sales, you avoid the negative emotion that you have hard-wired to the word. Without these fears and reservations, you can move with confidence and peace.

Express the process in language without the psychological baggage. Rather than selling, you are educating, sharing, guiding, leading, instructing, providing, supporting, assisting, solving  .  .  .

  • “I would like to share some ideas with you .  .  .”
  • “Our company provides some excellent solutions in that area .  .  .”
  • “Would like me to guide you through that process so it is easier for you .  . .”

The business community spends billions every year trying to train non-salespeople to get over their anxieties about selling. Knowing that we can’t re-create the nature of a person, doesn’t it make more sense to use our nature to achieve the same end – i.e., making sales?

Make sales, but never sell again

Match your personality with your style. If you like to teach, then guide and instruct your buyers. If you are nurturing, then share your ideas with them. If you are a technician, then provide valuable insight. These are a just a few examples, but in each, sales will be made and no one is “selling.”

Because you are no longer using that trigger word, you will be free of the fears it triggered. You will have more success being yourself and doing it your way.

Filed Under: Customers, Marketing, Skills, Tips

Friday Quotes (Confidence)

January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

People who ask confidently get more than those who are hesitant and uncertain. When you’ve figured out what you want to ask for, do it with certainty, boldness and confidence.                     -   Jack Canfield

 

You have to pretend you’re 100 percent sure. You have to take action; you can’t hesitate or hedge your bets. Anything less will condemn your efforts to failure.                                                        -   Andrew Grove

 

Even if you haven’t encountered great success yet, there is no reason you can’t bluff a little and act like you have. Confidence is a magnet in the best sense of the word. It will draw people to you and make your daily life . . . and theirs . . . a lot more pleasant.                                                              – Donald Trump

 

I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.                                                                                                                      – Brian Tracy

Filed Under: Quotes

The Mother of all Business Viruses

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It has destroyed nations, killed millions, cratered economies, broken families, bankrupted companies. It can even turn love into hate. It is probably degrading your business right now.

It is not evil. It is not negligence or incompetence. In fact, it is usually accompanied by good intentions. What is it?

Misunderstanding.

Look at the news headlines on any given day and you will see the result of misunderstanding. Just today, the crisis continues  surrounding the friendly fire incident between NATO and Pakistani forces last November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Had both sides understood each other – location, intentions, activities – there would have been no firefight, no deaths, and no crisis.

Need more evidence? One branch of our government was established for the sole purpose of resolving misunderstanding – the Judiciary. (We could argue successfully that the other two branches were established to create misunderstanding).

At an interpersonal level, I believe the vast majority of human conflict can be attributed to misunderstanding – not evil, negligence or incompetence. Examine your own life and experience and see if you agree. But how can something so manageable still be such a disruptive force in our lives?

In business it is especially exasperating. Over the years I have watched businesses (clients’ and my own) spend most of their energy resolving misunderstandings: between employees, between the company and vendors, between the company and employees, between investors and owners, between banks and the company, etc.  .  .

We spend vast resources to mitigate negligence and incompetence. For these culprits we have insurance, training, vetting, reporting, accountability, etc. But how much do we spend to prevent misunderstanding? Ironically, it is probably the easiest to resolve but the most costly to ignore.

The Cure

As long as there are humans involved in an endeavor, there will be some misunderstanding. The greatest mistake is to accept this fact but decide only to deal its consequences. The wisest response is to accept this condition and work to minimize its existence and effect.

The obvious cure to misunderstanding is communication – at all levels. If both parties to a conversation are absolutely clear on the content of the communication, there will be no misunderstanding. Within your business, this means the business is communicating clearly with the team and the team is confirming its understanding of the message.

“But we have regular meetings and an open door policy to make sure there is communication.” That may be the case, but the existence of a communication infrastructure and passing of content doesn’t guarantee there is understanding.

It really begins at the individual level, expressing ourselves with completeness and accuracy, then confirming that the other party has received and understands the content we delivered. Without turning your business into a group counseling center, you can adopt practices that achieve this – at the individual and business level.

The Four C’s

Here are my Four C’s to understanding (for individuals and the enterprise):

  • Clarity – Articulate what you mean without assuming “everyone knows.”
  • Completeness – Avoid leaving gaps that require people to fill in the blanks.
  • Context – Perception is rooted in context – where the message fits and why.
  • Confirmation – “Do you understand what I am saying?”

So much of what we do in business reflects simple human behavior. Consequently, when we fail as humans, we fail in business. Misunderstanding may be the most pernicious and damaging virus your business can get and the easiest to ignore.  But the great news is that it is also the easiest to cure.

Please share your experiences and thoughts.

 

Filed Under: Customers, Employees, Leadership, Life, Skills

SOPA PIPA, Good Questions, and One Key Aspect of Peering Into the Future

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There are too many great topics running around in my head to get a coherent bead on any one thing to write about. So herewith are a few highlights that merit a look today:

SOPA and PIPA

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Today both major and minor players are participating in a blackout to highlight SOPA and PIPA and their opposition to the bills. This is something that affects us all. Take a look at the summary here if you want to catch up on the issues.

Asking the Right Questions

Often we seek the right answer when the better course of action lies in finding the right question. I never used to believe this. Then I decided to try out solving things by framing the right questions. We worked exclusively on the questions we should be solving for. What happened was nearly magical. The answers slid right into place, agreement from the parties involved happened without a struggle, and we collaborated on the tasks at hand seamlessly. So when you’re faced with a set of problems try taking a look at the questions you are or should be asking. To get your thinking started try Michael Hyatt’s The Power of Asking the Right Question. 

A Time and Place for Seeing Into the Future with Gusto  — Project Bids 

A lot of us don’t like peering down the road to conjecture what may or may not happen. We are the pragmatic realists who like to live in the moment. But … this is a fantastic skill set to develop that often has a profound impact on our businesses. And this is in all kinds of different businesses. Successfully estimating the price to charge a customer for a project, be it an article you are going to write or kitchen you are going to remodel, blends both art and science, and it takes hard work, discipline and focus to develop this skill along with a systematic process.

Check out this article in Small Business Trends on What to Do When You Underbid a Project and consult your own history of how your business fares in this area to jump start your thinking in this crucial-to-your-success area.

Among other things, a good system will have strengths in these areas:

  • Developing the project scope
  • Making sure you and the customer agree on the scope, preferably in writing
  • Defining who has what responsibilities between you and your customer
  • Identifying and handling project scope changes
  • For people who handle multiple or all aspects of the project, bifurcating your mind so you can clearly be both the project manager and the salesperson/doer-bee so the project is adequately managed as opposed to just doing the project or, in other words, make sure you can pay attention to setting the scope, managing the scope and keeping the project disciplined and on track from a business standpoint instead of just jumping in and doing it
  • Allowing for adequate after action reviews so you can incorporate what you learn from the latest project into your next gig.

All the best.

Filed Under: Opportunity, Planning, Skills, Tips, Tools, Trends

Mind vs Motion

January 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Some years ago, a business partner commented to me, “Mike, you’re driving around with your brakes on.” He wasn’t talking about how I drive my car. He was talking about how I live my life.

His words gave me insight into a problem I had sensed for a long time. My decision making process was highly evolved, addressing everything – except decisions. There was plenty of analysis, thinking, cogitating, considering, conjecturing, and contemplating. Lots of could-be, might be, may be, and what-if.

If the term had been vogue at the time, I would say I was mind fracking – injecting high volumes of information deep into my mind to crack open every bit of understanding that might make my decisions a sure thing (Mikipedia).

In this way, the mind can be a terrible thing.

Pay no attention to that man behind your cranium

I really enjoyed Peter Bregman’s recent post on the HBR Blog Network, Your Problem Isn’t Motivation. He writes:

Here’s the key: if you want to follow through on something, stop thinking.

Shut down the conversation that goes on in your head before it starts. Don’t take the bait. Stop arguing with yourself.

Make a very specific decision about something you want to do and don’t question it. By very specific, I mean things like: I will work out tomorrow at 6 AM or I will only point out the things my employee does right or I will say at least one thing in the next meeting.

Then, when your mind starts to argue with you — and I guarantee it will — ignore it. You’re smarter than your mind. You can see right through it.

As Eckhart Tolle skillfully explains in A New Earth, you are not your mind. Your mind will constantly argue with you to  assert its importance (the ego). And too often we make the mistake of listening to it – thinking rather than acting.

Do something, anything

On another occasion, the same partner said something that stunned me at the time. But, as I have aged and seasoned, it made sense. He said, “We need to do something. Anything. Even if it is the wrong thing.”

It sounded foolish at the time. The message is now clear. Only by doing something can we accomplish anything. We are absolutely guaranteed of achieving nothing by doing nothing. Doing at least gives us the chance to succeed, even if we are not sure of our decision.

You have to be in play to make a play.

Filed Under: Change, Life, Motivation

Friday Quotes

January 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

… on Saturday.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects the wind; the realist adjusts the sails ~ Unknown

You can do what you have to do and sometimes you do it even better than you think you can. – Jimmy Carter

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. – Carl Jung


 

Filed Under: Quotes

Making the Most of Your Business Tools

January 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

If you want to manage your time, improve your knowledge.*

I don’t know about you but on my laptop computer I probably have 50% more firepower than I ever use largely because I don’t know about it or I don’t know how to use the software to full capacity. Like a lot of people, I use a core of applications and the others not so much. But even with my favorites, I suspect I don’t use the full capacity and as a result I end up hobbling myself.

Take Microsoft’s Office suite of applications as an example. I use Word but I also have other writing tools that fit better what I need to do. Right now I’m typing this blog post up in nvAlt/Simplenote, a plain text note taker that lets me organize my writing and notes a lot better than I could ever do in Word. Simplenote and the add-on nvAlt are (a) free and (b) a lot easier to use than Word. But I still use Word to read stuff others send me, do more complicated documents, like flyers and such, and … well, because it’s the ubiquitous standard for business use. However, in my own assessment I do not use Word all that well and I am grossly inefficient at times. I tend to frustration when I’m trying to do something more complex than banging out a letter in Word because what I see as the path to completion is not the same as what Word allows.

So what if I knew more about Word or Excel or Powerpoint? Almost assuredly I would be more productive and I would most likely approach task, problems, and adventures I seek to solve with more clarity about what is available to do what I need done. Mostly I just hack my way through like almost everyone else I know does.

A while back I had several people who could use getting more deeply into some commonly used programs and we sought various ways to beef up their knowledge and skills. It was tough sledding and we never found a really great solution. It wasn’t really easy to access good learning tools and there was a premium on available time to work. And we struggled a bit with some people in that area. We also had much, much more complex software for which training was more crucial but again we found the most effective solution was to use on-the-job training. We generally got proficient, but the path there was not always pretty.

There are always those people who have dug in deeper than the rest and who really know how to use the company’s tool chest. How do they do it and how can you leverage what they know?

How are you going about unleashing yourself and your people to use the tools at hand be it software, hardware, processes, or anything you do in your small-medium business operations? What have you found that works the best so everyone is a top flight performer? How do you make choices of where you want to focus?

 

*paraphrased from The Management of Time by James T. McKay

Filed Under: Skills, Software, Tools

Friday Quotes (Struggle and Encouragement)

January 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Gautama Buddha

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

Neither fire, nor moisture, nor wind can destroy the blessing of good deeds, and blessings enlighten the whole world.

Helen Keller

If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

Yogi Berra

You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and if that isn’t enough in the second half you give what’s left.

It ain’t the heat; it’s the humility.

You should always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t come to yours.

Filed Under: Motivation, Quotes

The Parable of the Bait Ball

January 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I cringe every time I hear somone using the terms “marketing” and “sales” interchangeably. They are very different concepts – even opposites in some respects. When I think of Marketing, I think “push.” When I think of Sales, I think “pull.”

Marketing is the act of pushing the audience toward your business, qualifying them as prospective buyers. Sales is the act of pulling these prospects into the business, making them buyers. While both are directed toward the same ends, they are very different functions.

Predator/prey behavior is a great metaphor for Marketing and Sales in business. One of my favorite
visuals portraying the difference between marketing and sales is the bait ball. Click here for a cool bait ball clip.

Bluefin tuna and dolphins drive prey (mackerel or sardines) together and toward the surface into a large group called a bait ball. Once these prey fish are pushed together, isolated, and “cornered” at the surface, they become easy pickings for the tuna and dolphins as they pull them out of the bait ball for feeding.

Let’s Go Bait Balling!

You can see the parallels to Marketing and Sales – pushing and pulling. The goal of your Marketing program is to create a bait ball – isolating a group of interested prospects together, pushing them toward your business. They form as a group of potential buyers, interested in your brand, product, or service. They are then gathered to be pulled out of the bait ball – your Sales process pulls them through to become buyers.

With this metaphor, it is also easy to see where mistakes are made getting Marketing and Sales out of  balance, or poorly executing one or both processes.

Sales eclipsing Marketing – Emphasizing Sales at the expense or exclusion of Marketing will make the Sales task insurmountable. Without Marketing to gather and qualify prospects, it will be an exhausting effort to pursue and pull individual customers out of the vast sea of the marketplace.

Marketing eclipsing Sales – It is also common for businesses to rely too heavily on Marketing – lots of push but little pull. The audience gets pushed to the door, but without Sales, they aren’t being pulled through and converted to buyers.

Pulling too soon –  Imagine the bait ball forming only to have one dolphin strike too early, dispersing the prey before they are trapped at the surface. That is trying to close the sale too soon.

Pushing apart – Now imagine the bait ball gathering then the tuna and dolphins start pushing the prey different directions, breaking up and dispersing the bait ball. This is what happens when you have a mixed Marketing messaging.

I hope this visual strikes a chord with you as it did with me. Each business faces unique marketing and sales challenges. But all businesses operate from these same pushing and pulling principles. As you develop your business plans for 2012, focus on the unique nature and purpose of Marketing and Sales, and most importantly, don’t make the mistake of believing they are the same thing.

 

Filed Under: Customers, Marketing, Planning, Skills, Tips
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