Tuned In: Uncover the extraordinary opportunities that lead to business breakthroughs.

Classic Tuned Out Software

I have this really annoying problem with my new PC and with some Googling, I find that it is a well known problem. I love the tuned out response from Microsoft on the issue from Emily Price's blog post on downloadsquad.com:

Microsoft speeds up Outlook 2007
Posted Apr 14th 2007 5:00PM by Emily Price

Yesterday Microsoft released an update to Outlook 2007 to help speed up the downloading of messages and reduce the annoying and highly criticized freezing associated with moving or deleting messages. Microsoft indicated that the problem stemmed from RSS feeds, email, and calendar files all being stored in the same .PST file which as one might imagine could grow in size rather quickly depending on the user. The problem lies not with the software, but how users are using the software. Jessica Arnold Outlook's Program Manager told ComputerWorld "Outlook wasn't designed to be a file dump, it was meant to be a communications tool...There is that fine line, but we don't necessarily want to optimize the software for people that store their e-mail in the same .PST file for ten years."

Hey there Jessica, maybe your customers want to save all their emails. Quit being a snob and get tuned in!!!

Authenticity vs. "messages"

For decades, tuned out companies have focused on two ways of getting noticed: buy your way in with expensive advertising or beg your way in by courting the media.

These methods rely on one-way interruption with "messages" that consumers increasingly ignore.

How about you? How many 30-second TV commercials spur you to action? Are you one of those people who can't wait to get home and tear through all the wonderful offers in your postbox?

The tuned in company is different. When you understand your buyers and their problems, you communicate to people in an authentic way using the precise language that they use and in the media that they consume. Your buyers want to hear from you.

Have you recently used Google or another search engine to research a product or find an answer to a problem? Most people do.

Your job as a tuned in marketer is to get in front of the people who are searching, right now, for the products and services that you sell.

Your job is not to dream up clever ways to interrupt people.

A better mousetrap? When was the last time you bought your company's product?

In the late 1960s, Woodstream Corporation, parent company of The Animal Trap Company of America announced that it had built a better mousetrap. With great fanfare, the company launched the new product into the marketplace saying that it was even better than their own classic Victor brand spring based wooden mousetrap. At the time, the Victor model had sold over one billion units in the nearly 80 years since its introduction way back in 1890.

Alas, the world did not beat a path to the company’s door. The new, "better" mousetrap was a flop and the company had to revert back to its "old fashioned" wooden model.

A company spokesperson said: "We should have spent more time researching housewives, and less time researching mice." Today, the product that people want to buy—the Victor mousetrap—is still the most recognized brand name in rodent control.

Executives, product development people, and marketers all want to believe that they've got all the answers. They're like the guys at Woodstream Corporation who thought that they could make a better mousetrap because they're the experts.

The entrepreneur wants to go with her gut. The product manager wants to re-create a past success. The marketer wants to rely on expensive advertising to buy market share, or to gamble on a huge Wall Street Journal, Today Show, or Time Magazine media hit.

But these seat-of-your-pants approaches involve much more risk. Going on intuition, buying your way in with expensive advertising, or begging your way in with the media coverage simply does not work as often or as well as being tuned in.

Tuned In Strategies Webinar on December 7

We're hosting our first webinar on the Tuned In model on December 7th. It's being hosted as one of series of events we put on through the Pragmatic Marketing community. You can sign up for this one by following the link from the home page at www.pragmaticmarketing.com

The webinar will focus on the top six strategies for getting your business, product and marketing strategies tuned in for the new year. We've learned a lot from our interactions with all of you in 2007. Through several surveys, more than 100 interviews and a recent round of 'fireside chat' calls we hosted with the advisory board that has grown up within the Pragmatic Marketing community ... a pretty clear picture has emerged about what your needs are. The top priorities for improvement include:

* Leadership strategies and team alignment.
* Change management and living in an agile world.
* Market postioning that provides a sustainable edge.
* Prioritizing new investment optons.
* Increasing the relevance of marketing programs.
* Business transformation and process acceleration.

The webinar will focus on these issues and put them into the context of the new tuned in process framework we'll be launching with the book. Put it on your calendars. We'd love to have you participate.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center - a tuned in hospital

Paul Levy is President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School) and he writes the popular Running a Hospital blog. Recognizing that hospitals have many constituents (patients and their families, doctors and staff, and the communities they serve), Levy uses his blog as an important communications and management tool. Among many other things, Levy posts about clinical data that the hospital sees in virtually real time—things like quality and safety. Running a Hospital has about 10,000 visitors per week.

"As an academic medical center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a high cost part of the medical system," Levy says. "The public has the right to know what they are getting for their money. So what better way to make a case that we're adding value to our public, and to the government agencies that support and regulate us? Why not show what we’re doing as a public institution through the blog? This is an exceptionally useful tool as part of the public debate and to hold our own people accountable."

Levy says the blog makes it easier for doctors and employees at the hospital to work together. For example he posted information gathered at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center about Ventilator Associate Pneumonia that helped to save more than 90 lives. "People in hospitals are caring and they want to eradicate disease. The blog creates better work because we are not afraid to say what we're doing and how we’re helping. We put ourselves under the microscope."

Tuned Out - Parking at shopping malls

When customers arrive at shopping malls in the morning, they often find the lots already filled with hundreds of cars crowded around the entrances.

Why the customers wonder? The stores aren’t even open yet!

It turns out that many shopping malls allow employees of the many stores and restaurants to park in the choice spots.

How easy would it be for mall operators to create a policy that encourages store employees to tune in to their potential customers’ problem of finding a decent place to park?

Treat every patient as if they were the President of the United States

Dr. Connie Mariano wonders everyday what our health care system would look like if doctors treated every patient like they were the President of the United States. She tuned in to the quality-of-care differences between presidential care and the average person’s care and setup a service to bridge the gap.  In the process, she created a simple but powerful idea in which to center her practice. 

 

Mariano knows first hand about caring for US Presidents. While serving as a general internist in the United States Navy, she was selected to serve as the head of the White House medical unit, a position she held through three administrations. As the primary care physician for presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, Mariano oversaw all aspects of the president’s care. This included everything from yearly physicals (and the briefing of the world press on their results) to routine check-ins and check-ups to the mobilization of specialists as needed (such as those she assembled on 24 hours notice to travel with then President Bill Clinton to Helsinki for a summit with Boris Yeltsin less than two weeks after an operation to repair damage to his knee). 

After leaving the White House for the Mayo Clinic, Mariano experienced a small dose of the other side of patient care.  Despite working at one of the best facilities in the country, she found herself administering medical services as part of a machine that had standardized care.  Doctors like Mariano could see dozens of patients a day but the interactions were brief, impersonal and largely limited to packaged set of services that delivered the bell curve of care.  While at Mayo, she began a study of physician practices, meeting with hundreds of patients to tune in to their needs and preferences.  Four and a half years later, she broke away from the Mayo Clinic to create her own practice around the premise of providing the same kind of care the President receives using the same kind of resources that a clinic like Mayo can mobilize. Some key aspects that she built into her practice include:

·                          No waiting – the president’s time is valuable and he/she never waits.  Walk into Dr. Mariano’s Center for Executive Medicine, patients are greeted at the door, offered a cup of coffee and escorted immediately to the doctor who is waiting for the patient.

·                          No paperwork – the president doesn’t have time for it and certainly shouldn’t have to go through the excruciating re-entry of data for each visit.  Mariano’s practice is fully automated and paperless.  Patients never have to stop for payment nor have to provide written updates. Their credit cards are retained on file and charged for services provided at the time of the visit.

·                          Always respectful – the president expects to be treated as important and Mariano ensures that she and her staff are always on and always attentive to their patients.  They know them by name, they know their histories, and their families.

·                          Pleasant experience – the president can pick any doctor he or she elects. Mariano knows the quality of the experience is a key determining factor. She mixes diagnostic questions with questions like ‘what would make your life better’ and ‘how can we help you achieve that goal’.   

·                          Flexible service – when the president wants a doctor they are on call 24x7.  Dr. Mariano is as well, only a cell phone call away whether you are local, on the road or overseas.

·                          Establish a relationship – the president expects to talk to one and only one person on their issues.  Mariano enables the same for her patients, working as the quarterback of a distributed medical team that might include hospitals, specialists and even pharmacies. Patients make one call, Mariano takes care of the rest.

Mariano's practice is now one of 250 in the United States offering a concierge service where patients pay as little as $5-$10 a day to have a doctor on call to support their needs. With more than 310 patients, she has built one of the fastest growing, most profitable practices in the Phoenix metropolitan area.