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?

“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game — it is the game.”– Louis Gerstner, Jr., in Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?

Corporate Culture isn’t a new idea any more.  But I think that its importance is on the comeback.  In 2008, many people are observing that “how we look at the world” is one of the most important things that shape how our lives go.  Add to that two other observations: (1) “how we see the world to be” is something we have to work hard to perceive, since it is so fundamental that we can have a hard time starting to grasp it and (2) “how we look at the world” is something we can change, if not easily.

Same goes for businesses.  “How your company sees the world to be” is a fundamental part of a business’s corporate culture.  It’s hard to grasp, and it is something that can be changed, if it needs to be, and if the company has people willing to do it.  This is true at every level of the corporation, and in every part of the corporation’s mind: strategy, management, and marketing.

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.

I’ll confess. I don’t have a system for backing up my files. Sure, I do make backups (offsite and onsite) at least every few months. And when I’m working on a critical document, I make constant backups by sending copies of my files-in-progress to an offsite mailhost. But I could do better. Odds are, you could, too.

Here’s a quote from and link to a PCWorld article on online backups, Back Up Your Files Online Without Even Trying:

I’m sure that by now all of you back up critical files weekly or even daily, and religiously refresh your full-disk-image backup once every few months, right? No? Well, you’re not alone. And while there’s no substitute for a genuine backup strategy, the move toward desktop-caliber online applications has made it easier than ever to get some degree of backup protection without even trying.

Happy easier breathing to you.

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.

Demarketing requires discipline: the discipline to decide what you’re not going to do, and then the discipline to stick with the decision.  Some people have this kind of discipline in spades:

Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century B.C. who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops’ cooking pots and burned their ships.
He explained this was to focus them on moving forward — a motivational speech that was not appreciated by many of the soldiers watching their retreat option go up in flames. But General Xiang Yu would be vindicated, both on the battlefield and in the annals of social science research.

In The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors (New York Times February 26, 2008), John Tierney discusses the work of MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely.  As Tierney describes, Ariely proves scientifically that brainpower is not a sufficient driver for discipline:

Most people can’t make such a painful choice, not even the students at a bastion of rationality like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Dr. Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics. In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy (and they weren’t even asked to burn anything).

The experiments involved a game that eliminated the excuses we usually have for refusing to let go. In the real world, we can always tell ourselves that it’s good to keep options open.

…Your child is exhausted from after-school soccer, ballet and Chinese lessons, but you won’t let her drop the piano lessons. They could come in handy! And who knows? Maybe they will.

In the M.I.T. experiments, the students should have known better…

But they didn’t act like they did.  Read the article and learn about the psychology.  Then remind yourself that discipline is hard, and prepare yourself for the effort.

More on demarketing:

In the mid-1990s, I read a book (title long forgotten) in which the author quoted an interview with the CEO of a large and venerable Japanese company. When asked, “what is the difference between Japanese and American businesses?” the CEO replied — after a long pause — “Japanese companies have a stronger sense of what businesses we will not do.”

– Thank you in advance to any reader who can point me to the original citation.

Elisabeth Sullivan at the American Marketing Association recently interviewed me for an article on Demarketing.  I’ll be writing more on this topic throughout this month.  Here’s a first brief entry:

What is demarketing?  As I think of it, demarketing is (1) about making a conscious decision about the things you don‘t want to do, and then (2) making your decision clear to anyone who might otherwise be interested in hiring you for them.

The first part is strategy.  The second part is communication.

If we do a good job of marketing (i.e., making a conscious decision about the things you do want to do and then making your decision clear to anyone whom you’d want to hire you for them), we don’t have to spend too much time on demarketing.

That said, the market is full of temptations, and we need a shot of demarketing every now and then to avoid several traps, among them:

(1) the “yeah, we could do that, too” trap — in which we see a market we might chase because it looks fun and because it looks like it could generate some cash flow, even if the opportunity costs of pursuing that market are too high.

(2) overeager (or poorly managed) sales staff who see only their commissions on any sales, rather than the company’s profits on good sales.

(3) poor-fit potential customers who might show up, take a lot of time and energy, and end up giving you no business or, worse, unprofitable business.

More on this topic all this month…

American businesses do all sorts of crazy things to prevent people from giving them money: they refuse cash, they refuse credit cards, they say “no” when people offer to pay up front, etc. And online — arghhh — how many times do eStores ask us to provide a ton of superfluous information before they let us buy something? (Even worse: some charitable organizations make us provide tons of registration info before we can DONATE with a credit card!)

But you’ve got to love this bathroom attendant I spotted on a recent trip to Mérida, Mexico. His job is to collect 3 pesos (~25 cents) from each person who visits the toilet. I saw him miss out on at least four customers (like the lady pictured above) because he was sleeping.

Nota bene: while he’s clearly violating the “don’t make it hard for people to give you money” principle, he may well be adhering to a higher economic ideal: “spend your time on the thing that returns the greatest value.”

Schmoozing is not Selling.

Sorry I can’t remember the source of this very smart quote.  And I’m even sorrier that I didn’t learn this lesson in my early twenties rather than my (late?) 30s.

In my first job as a consulting engineer, I worked with another twenty-something engineer whom I’ll call “Susan”.  Compared to the other young engineers at our office, Susan and I spent a lot more time visiting with our firm’s various clients, and I rightfully felt that she and I were a notch better at the business side of things than our engineering-only peers.

But when our firm moved to a new building, I couldn’t help but notice that Susan got assigned to a nice private office while I was relegated to one of the large shared spaces.  So why did she rate better?  Turns out that I was spending most of my “relationship” time getting to know our clients personally and building an amicable bond.  By contrast, Susan was spending her relationship time finding out what our clients needed to get done, and telling them we could take care of it in exchange for a large chunk of money.

Schmoozing is not Selling.

And when you get right down to it, while those clients may have liked me more, they were getting a lot better service from Susan.  I was getting to know them, personally.  She was solving their problems, professionally.

Stay tuned for a followup post: Selling is Helping.