I am a survey researcher and what I just saw should make everyone in my industry a little sick. My wife had a great experience at Toys R Us and therefore decided to take them up on the survey invite attached to the receipt (a little adverse selection). Being curious, I sat through the process with her. 

First of all, she couldn't reach the survey page using Google Chrome, but since she really wanted to take part, we switched over to Internet Explorer. She was asked to input quite a few pieces of information from the receipt, but it was so small and poorly printed, that it was a huge hassle. Still, we carried on. 

She proceeded to go through what seemed like an endless battery of questions on a 10 pt scale, often asking the same question from a number of directions. Very often, the layout was so poor, it was hard to tell where the next question began. Still, we carried on.

Every few questions, she was asked to provide open-ended comments. At one point, when she was about 66% of the way through, her "yes" answer prompted a comment box. This caused her to change her response to "no" to avoid the comment box (UGH!!). 

Question wording...not very straightforward when my wife had to ask me, "what do you think they mean by this?"

The survey continued to roll on, moving her away from questions about the recent store experience to broader questions about shopping habits, competitors, etc. With each subsequent screen, we laughed at how ridiculously long the process was (OMG, another screen! When will this end?).

Soon, a battery of driver questions presented themselves - most of which had already been asked earlier in the survey (the likelihood of conflicting answers was pretty high at this point as she rushed to get finished). 

Finally, after 30 minutes, the end. All so that she could give a little customer love to a very helpful associate - who unfortunately will only be identified by a first name because no employee number was on the receipt.

What are the odds that my wife will take part in another ToysRUs survey...not likely, in fact I bet this experience ruined it for every other retailer who'd like her feedback. What are the odds that my wife's feedback will be helpful? Up to a point, very...but because of the length and poor structure, I'm feeling that her answers aren't too reliable. 

As an industry, we lament the fact that we can't get people to cooperate. Perhaps we should survey some of our respondents and ask them about their survey experience, take a little bit of our own medicine, and make our interface one that invites feedback instead of pushing it away!

I motion that all surveys should be graphically appealing, fun and easy to take part, and last no more than 10 minutes! Who's with me?

The other week, my SIM card in my Blackberry went kaput. Timing was ideal, as I had volunteered to chaperone 13 year olds on a trip to Six Flags…all day with no contact, ugh. Upon returning home, I was anxious as I went to review the days collection of emails…what did I miss? Actually, nothing. After deleting the 30% of emails that were some form of marketing, I saw that most emails didn’t need an instant response and that my team was ably handling most things. The world didn’t end, in fact, it went along just fine without me. 

Now that the BB is back in working order, I’ve shut off the the vibrate that announces each email and hoping that I can be a heck of a lot more productive. First victory is I’m productive enough to write this post.

I was astonished to read this blog post in HBR after my last post on my adventures with the airline mentioned. I agree that firms have become slaves to their metrics and the consequences are incredibly damaging. How often have you worked for a company or consulted with a client where the strategic goals have become the movement of a particular metric ("we need to get our NPS score up") as opposed to using the metric to address and diagnose particular business problems ("how can we increase customer loyalty"). 

Does anyone see this trend reversing?

Last week, my flight back to NYC was cancelled.

Well, it wasn't cancelled right away...first I had to go through the typical dance of rolling delays until it became so late, that the flight had to be cancelled. Of course, there was no one at the gate that could help, but they conveniently left a stack of little red cards with a phone number that I could use to rebook (how thoughtful!). When I called, there was a human on the other end. I was instructed to give my confirmation # and was told that I could be rebooked the following morning. I asked, "why was the flight cancelled?", and the reply was something along the lines of "not, sure...I can't see that information". I then asked if a hotel voucher was available and was told, "I can't do that...it has to be done by the gate agent, just ask them." When I did find the gate agent, she replied that I couldn't have a hotel voucher and that the customer service agent shouldn't have told me that.."If I give you one, I'd have to give everybody one." She then proceeded to book me on a flight that night, that would take me first to Detroit, and then to NY LaGuardia airport. Unfortunately, my car was at NY JFK. I then asked, would you provide transportation from LGA to JFK? Again, "I can't do that, you have to talk to the people in baggage claim at LGA." Of course, when I got to LGA, being the fact that it was past midnight, there was one harried person working in baggage claim, with a long line of disgruntled passengers waiting to ask about missing luggage. I jumped on the cab line, waited 30 minutes, and took my cab to JFK. Overall a thoroughly frustrating experience.

I travel all of the time and have dealt with delays, and poor responses to delays many, many times. But in this case, I was more frustrated than usual. Why?

Upon reflection, my issue was that I interacted with human beings throughout the process, but their response to me was programatic. There were certain pieces of information that they had, and no more. There was a narrow scope of actions that they could take, and no more. It mattered not what I said or did. They could listen, they might even sympathize, but their hands were tied. They could not act in a way that would make me feel like they were trying to solve my problem. They were human, but acted like an automated system...And THAT is why I was so frustrated. 

This airline has, I believe, tried to make their process better by inserting the human element anywhere they could in the customer experience. Unfortunately, they have removed each person's ability to think about a situation and ACT accordingly. While I clearly prefer dealing with humans over automated response systems, my EXPECTATIONS for a human are much higher than for an automated system, and my satisfaction is driven by expectations. I EXPECT a human to hear my issue and help me deal with it. I EXPECT a human to be able to leverage their understanding of their organization...to be able to build on past client interactions to help me. In the end, I would think that if a company has invested the dollars to put a human in a position, they have EMPOWRED them to solve customer problems, not just follow pre-defined steps. I would EXPECT that when there is no variability in a process, the airline would automate the process because it saves me and the airline, time and money.

My lesson learned here is that, perhaps, companies have heard frustration with the shift to more and more automated customer experiences, and have responded by injecting the human element back into the equation. Unfortunately, the frustration people have with automated systems doesn't always have to do with the method of interaction, it is the lack of flexibility in the process, the inability to go "off script" to solve problems. Adding humans back into a process that doesn't allow for human creativity, can potentially be self-defeating.

"We're not even talking about real numbers..."

How often have you uttered those words? Or had them shot back at you during a meeting? So much of what looks like planning, is really just wishful thinking. So often, our discussions regarding campaigns or even strategies depend upon looking into the crystal ball, to see what cannot be seen. We all want to be viewed as 'forward looking', to believe that we can materially influence outcomes by the sheer majesty of our strategic planning, but is this the best use of our time? 

In sales, especially for a publicly traded company, reps are asked for guidance on what will sell in the current quarter and to estimate a figure for the fiscal year. At some point, reps are asked to assess what next year's revenue will be. How often are these figures merely an educated guess? How often is this process really just a thinly disguised administrative exercise, a "check-the-box" activity?

Well too often, I see organizations overly focused on outcomes. Yes, I believe that outcomes may not be the best metric to focus on if we want to drive success (whatever your definition of success is). People cannot control outcomes...but they can control the activities they undertake that drive outcomes. The reality is we need to understand how our processes impact outcomes. Instead of looking forward, more effort should be placed on looking backward, diagnosing what aspects of our process were responsible for outcomes (and perhaps it is not process, but activity that is the issue - lack of activity or activity that does not follow our process; in fact sometimes it is our lack of process that is responsible for outcomes). 

In sales, looking at and continuously improving the sales process - the inputs - is the key to improving outcomes.

As a market researcher, I see this issue arise in tracking studies (for instance customer satisfaction studies or brand health tracking studies). I often get the feeling that reporting scores/metrics is more about the sport than the improvement. I am always impressed, and gratified, to see organizations that truly want to understand why the metrics moved the way that they did - that is if the rationale for understanding goes beyond having an explanation ready when questioned about "bad numbers". The real, strong organizations use their understanding of the metrics to drive improvement. They take the time to uncover why they get the outcomes they did, and look for ways to change their processes and activities.

Growing organizations are those that have an emphasis on continuous improvement. While continuous improvement is often thought of in the same breath with Six Sigma or Lean Manufacturing (looking to reduce process imperfections, mistakes, or waste), the basic analytical framework (DMAIC) holds true for any organizational process and for any goal, whether that is a reduction of cost or an increase in revenue (or brand awareness or customer satisfaction). 

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The DMAIC Methodology

Improvement teams use the DMAIC methodology to root out and eliminate the causes of defects:

D Define a problem or improvement opportunity.

M Measure process performance.

A Analyze the process to determine the root causes of poor performance; determine whether the process can be improved or should be redesigned.

I Improve the process by attacking root causes.

C Control the improved process to hold the gains.

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The growing use of marketing (and sales) analytics sets the stage for application of approaches like DMAIC to drive success. But, the metrics are not enough. Your organization must be prepared to actually ACT.

Just read a great article from McKinsey  on Organizational Health, where I stole this:

Performance and health can be viewed through five frames.

I think the idea of organizational health could not be more timely. Employees are struggling with financial pressures and workload pressures. Managers are hesitant to spend funds, hesitant to hire staff, seemingly cautious about strategy. During times of stress, it seems that managers want to focus on the tangible, and people strategies (the soft stuff) get pushed aside. The reality (at least to me) is that it is the 5 A's discussed above that should be the primary focus of any senior executive. These are the critical guideposts that team members seek. Ensuring that these questions are adequately addressed enables a manager to fully leverage the talents of his/her team. 

As I see it,  sitting in the world of professional services, these 5 A's are even more essential - as it is the people that are your most important, and sometimes only, asset/product. 

After a few drinks and some dinner, a colleague of mine and I chatted about sales. In particular, how to do it well, in a B2B environment. Sales books, articles, trainers...they all talk about the need to understand the organization that you are selling into, to examine the financial impact your product/service will make, to underscore the ROI. Today’s salesperson, they say, needs to be a strategic partner to his/her clients, etc....

This may all be true, but what is REALLY true is that selling is person to person. Organizations don’t make decisions, people do. Regardless of the corporate org chart, outside the desire to map out decision makers and influencers, what you really need to do is find out what people need (one at a time), and try to give it to them. 

Sometimes, your service will help them get promoted. Other times, buying from you is just really easy for them – and they have so many other things to do, this purchase can’t be a problem. Sometimes people buy because they like you and making the purchase extends and deepens the relationship. Sometimes, purchasing from your company gets them into an exclusive club of like minded colleagues. Sometimes they buy because they know that working with you gets them home on time each day so they can pick up their kids from daycare. 

Don’t get me wrong. You can’t have an overpriced product...one that doesn’t meet corporate goals...one that you can’t deliver on. But there are a lot of really smart people and lots of very strong companies that do good work. Many times, the deciding factor is that one contact that really feels good about you.

For consultants that have sales as part of their goals, make sure you don’t lose sight of just getting to know people.

There are a lot of reasons why people buy...and I’ve found, most of them are personal.

Although I've read quite a bit of literature in my time, I've never actually read anything by Hemingway. Now I'm reading The Sun Also Rises. About half way through and came upon a passage where the narrator speaks to his relationship with Montoya, the bull-fighter loving owner of a hotel in Pamplona:

Aficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Montoya's hotel; that is, those with aficion stayed there. The commercial bull-fighters stayed once, perhaps, and then did not come back. The good ones came each year....We often talked about bulls and bull-fighters. I had stopped at the Montoya for several years. We never talked for very long at a time. It was simply the pleasure of discovering what we each felt. Men would come in from distant towns and before they left Pamplona stop and talk for a few minutes with Montoya about bulls. These men were aficionados. Those who were aficianados could always get rooms even when the hotel was full. Montoya introduced me to some of them. They were always very polite at first, and it amused them very much that I should be and American. Somehow it was taken for granted that an American could not have aficion. He might simulate it or confuse it with excitement, bu he could not really have it. When they saw that I had aficion, and there was no password, no set questions that could bring it out, rather it was a sort of oral spirtitual examination with the questions always a little on the defensive and never apparent...Montoya could forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion.

As a consultative salesperson, are you Montoya? Are you the hub for activity in your space? Do you attract the "good" clients?

As an organization, do your people have aficion? Do clients feel it when they interact with your organization? 

My Mom frequently forwards me jokes that people have emailed her. I'm sure you all get these. I thought that this one had special relevance for salespeople:

Last year I had all the windows in my house replaced with that expensive double-pane energy efficient kind.  Yesterday I got a call from the contractor who installed them.

He was complaining that the work had been completed a whole year ago and I still hadn't paid for them.

Hellloooo?  Just because I'm blonde doesn't mean that I am automatically stupid. 

So, I told him just what his fast-talking sales guy had told me last year ... that in ONE YEAR these windows would pay for themselves!

Helllooooo? It's been a year! I told him.

There was only silence at the other end of the line, so I finally just hung up. He never called back.  Boy, I bet he felt like a real idiot!

Lesson: BE CAREFUL. YOUR CUSTOMERS MAY ACTUALLY BELIEVE YOU.