Business thinker must have a million 2×2 grids for classifying things.  While chatting with my B-school advisor some years ago, I theorized that most business thinking has to get reduced to a 2×2 grid, because people can’t get their minds around anything bigger than what they can draw on a 2-dimensional piece of paper with six strokes of a pencil.  But I digress

I once read an article that said you could sort almost any business action into a 2×2 grid with these axes: Do You Want It? and Do You Have it?

I can’t remember the author’s labels, but they corresponded more or less to the ones I used above.  Preserve what you want and have, Create or Get what you want but don’t have, Prevent what you don’t want and don’t have, and Eliminate what you don’t want and do have.

Not that we should use labels to oversimplify, but they do make it easier to get a perspective on what kind of work you might be doing — whether looking at your company as a whole, or whether looking at a specific task or project you’re working on.

I’ve sometimes asked friends (and clients) whether they want their vocation to be about “adding good or removing bad”.  (I’ve never asked about “preserving good or preventing bad”, though now that I remember this grid, I should consider broadening my question.)

I think it’s an important question.  People are wired differently (or want different things at different times in their life), and someone who really wants to “add good” may well suffer in a career in which she focuses on “removing bad”, no matter how good she is at it.

For example: one of my clients opened a gift store after years of working as a child psychologist.  Her store is mostly about creating new smiles, and she loves the work, even if it doesn’t pay as well as her former job.  The thing that drove her out of child psychology was too many years of seeing suffering children.  Yes, she helped them many of them out of great misery.  But she eventually fatigued of seeing the misery, no matter how good she was at her job.

Of course many jobs and industries spend some time in all four quadrants.  Think of an internal auditor who works to prevent losses or fraud (”prevent it”) working for a toy company that wants to create fun (”create/get it”).  Or think of a sales exec hunting clients and opening up markets (”create/get it”) for a pesticide company (”eliminate it”).

In the end, it’s good to know that the way you spend your day and the things that you achieve line up with how you want to live.  And this grid is a nice reminder to ask the question.

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Please drop me a line if you know who created this grid and wrote the original article!

I just read an great article by online marketing consultant Donna Gunter: 10 Secrets to Asking for Effective Client Testimonials for Your Website. Her tips are more sophisticated than most free web advice on writing testimonials, and I think she’s generally spot on.* I especially like her Secret No. 9:

9. Create a system for requesting testimonials. If you’re selling information products online, incorporate a testimonial request and testimonial writing guideline into your follow up autoresponder system. If you work with clients on an ongoing basis, incorporate your testimonial request into the sequence of your regular correspondence and follow up with your clients. If you work with clients only on a short-term basis, incorporate your request into your invoicing process and provide either an email address or online form to make the process as easy and automated as possible for them.

Implicit in this system is the idea that you’re doing “regular correspondence and follow up”. And if you are doing those things right, not only will you get great testimonials, but you’ll also have a much better chance of keeping your client constantly happy — or at least knowing sooner rather than later when you need to change course.

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*I’d argue with a couple of her points — particularly her advice about short testimonials — but do read her article. You’ll be the smarter for it!

Something I was reminded of this week:

One overlooked bonus of keeping your marketing materials concise is that there are fewer opportunities for typos.

Three numbers you should know: the cost of customer acquisition, cost of customer retention, and  value of a customer.

Also, know the difference between your average cost/value and your customer-specific cost/value.  Average cost/value is useful for planning and projecting.  But for management and strategy, you’ll want to know customer-specific cost and value.  Why?  Because then you can try to find more prospects that look like them, for the most profit (and probably the most fun).

As part of your marketing or demarketing analysis, these calculations should turn into what your sales team calls “qualifying criteria” for evaluating leads.  A sales team that isn’t obligated to qualify its leads is a sales team that’s going to cost you real money.  But sales teams aren’t usually the kind of folks who like to spend time on analysis.  If you’re the boss, or if you’re the marketing chief, you need to make these numbers happen.  Get to it!

Gather enough data and do enough analysis to make a good decision. Then decide. Then act.

There are many famed quotes on the theme of “how much is enough”:

Lore has it that someone once asked Abraham Lincoln, “How long should a man’s legs be?” and that he answered “Long enough to reach the ground.” Einstein is credited for a quote something like, “Make everything [i.e. theories or models] as simple as possible, but no simpler.” And my 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Eleanor Ponder, would say this about how long our essays should be: “like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting.”

At their worst, executives have a bias toward either shoot-from-the-hip decision making, or paralysis by analysis. Better off are those who know what level of confidence they need before they can make a decision, and what amount of data and analysis they need to get that level of confidence.

If you know you lean too far in one direction, make a point to ask of your partners (or engineer for yourself) a flag or alert when you need correcting action. Expect that it will take a few tries before the new habit sticks.

“See what you can do with real data?” One of my clients’ other advisors said that to my client right after I’d presented some analysis of his marketspace. In the previous year, another marketing consultant had spent a lot of my client’s time (and money) on branding analysis. But he hadn’t taken the time to understand the size and shape of the market they were going to push that brand into. And that’s why they never got confident that the “brand” they were identifying and creating would have a real shot at longterm success.

Mind you, it’s not like I did a McKinsey binder’s worth of data analysis. But after about twenty hours of sifting through trade journals, pulling data into spreadsheets (with a +/- 15% range of accuracy), I could tell them with 95% certainty that they could do 500% of their current business volume in the market space they were already living in. And that this market space was growing. And that they really ought to focus their growth energy on further penetration, instead of exploring new sectors.

Twenty hours. That’s all the data time it took to nail down the biggest strategic decision they were going to consider that year. They might have made the same decision without the data. Then again, they might have pushed hundreds of thousands of dollars of effort into an unnecessary chase after new business. Under these circumstances, twenty hours of data time sounds pretty cheap to me.

Last week, one of my longtime business friends was kind enough to introduce me to one of his new colleagues over lunch. I was grateful for my friend’s effort, but a touch horrified when his words of introduction described me as still doing work that I quit doing at least two years ago.

When it comes to marketing my own business — letting good friends and colleagues know what I’m doing and what I want to be doing, and what’s different from what I used to be doing — I’ve clearly been falling down on the job. Talk about your cobbler whose kids have no shoes!

Step Number One — I’m adding “Marketing and Management Consulting” to my email signature.  Steps Two and Three will be to find some clearer words about what I want to do for my clients, and to actively spread the word. I’ll keep you posted on how this self-consult works…

Don’t print a testimonial that praises you for something you don’t want to do.

One of my clients occasionally works miracles for its customers.  When they feel they ought to, my client can pull off a rush job, manage a customer’s disorganized team, and do it all at a rock bottom price.  Sometimes the customer sends an effusive thank you note for the miracle, detailing everything and saying, “feel free to use this as a testimonial.”

My client is smart enough to leave the comments off their website.   That’s not the kind of business they want to attract.  So why would they want to advertise that they do it?

Everybody likes testimonials.  But what are they really for?

A testimonial’s number one job is to help you help you sell.  A good testimonial shows that your product made somebody else happy: by generating money, saving money, or taking care of some other need that they thought was important.  A good testimonial shows how you’re different from your competition.  A good testimonial from a credible customer shows that you’re a company that smart people are happy to hire.  All of these things help you sell.  And all of these things can help you sell at a higher price.

More subtly, a testimonial strengthens the relationship between you and your customer.  In a good relationship, both sides like to help each other.  And a testimonial is an opportunity for your customer to do something nice for you.  In the process, your customer may begin to hold you in even greater esteem, as they realize just how many ways you’ve helped them.  “Gee, I’d forgotten how good it was to get X product or Y service from you folks.  Thanks!”  And by formalizing their praise in a public way, they strengthen their commitment to working with you.

Meanwhile,  as you ask for and receive a few words of praise, you’re taking an honest look at the value you’re providing to your customer — finding out what’s really great, and forcing some honesty about what you might not have delivered.  And lastly, you’re giving your customer an important opportunity to be heard — not only by you, but also by everyone you’re going to share their words with.

Winning companies make a habit of doing things that are good for their health.  That means choosing work (whether they be projects and clients, or products and market sectors) that adds to the company’s bottom line, assets, and general happiness.

What do you need for a track record of smart choices?

1.  Knowing what works for you.

2.  Evaluating projects (or clients, or products, or market sectors) before you pursue them.

3.  Pursuing only the projects that make sense.

4.  Working the projects you win to make sure you’re doing what you intended.

5.  Measuring your results, during and afterward.

6.  Tuning the process to make it better each time.

If you don’t care where you’re going, it doesn’t matter where you go.  But I suspect you care where you’re going.  And please, remind everyone on your staff (including yourself)  — financial success is measured by net income, not gross income.  And if your staff don’t know how to tell whether their work is yielding red or black net income, think about how to change that.  Pronto.