Thanks to everyone for turning out for our webinar yesterday. It was a great session and we particularly enjoyed all of the follow-up stories and questions. It really helps us stay connected to the topics and issues you are finding most valuable. We appreciate it!
One of the key areas we've been investigating is providing a simple action plan for moving an organization's culture from being one that is primarily tuned out to one that emphasizes being tuned in. You all seemed particularly interested in two summary topics we presented on this subject--our Resonator Index and our Top Ten List of Tuned In Strategies for 2008. We'll review the highlights of the top ten list in this blog and talk about the Resonator Index in our next post.
Top Ten Things to Do to Get Tuned In for 2008
1. Increase the time you spend in research -- tuned in businesses and leaders spend twice the amount of time researching the market as followers. Schedule time to increase both qualitative and quantitative studies.
2. Build plans around the top 5 new unresolved problems in your space -- instead of focusing only on incremental improvements to the things you have, identify new growth opportunities by aligning to the new market problems you've identified.
3. Develop one-page proposals for each -- simple communications that explain what problem you are solving, who they impact and how much 'incremental value' you can create.
4. Refine your buyer persona profiles -- to ensure that you have an accurate, up-to-date view of the needs, preferences and value criteria for each potential purchaser of your offering.
5. Prioritize investments -- based on how they rate in the categories of urgent, pervasive and willing to pay. Are they 'nice to have' or 'got to have' solutions?
6. Benchmark experience breakthroughs -- to identify the quality of the total picture the customer evaluates you on ... from discovery to buying to packaging to using to servicing.
7. Publicize your distinctive competence -- by making it the centerpiece of everything you do internally and externally, particularly in new marketing communications.
8. Communicate through 'new rules' -- by emphasizing thought leadership over promotion and referrals over leads. The key aspect of the new rules of marketing is an emphasis on publishing.
9. Eliminate tuned out programs -- any aspect of your organization that is emphasizing pushing themes that sound like 'buy my product' or 'me, me, me' to your customers.
10. Schedule time for culture and team alignment -- quarterly to refresh and recharge so that you can keep your team in the right frame of mind to act positively as real-time issues surface.
These activities align very well with the cultures, strategies and execution philosophies of the successful companies (and leaders) that we studied. We're confident that if you made these a foundation for building your 2008 plan, best-in-class results will follow.
