Driving to work this morning, I was listening to an oldies station (yes, I am middle aged) and heard an old Police song, “De do do do, de da da da”. These two lines caught my attention:
“Poets, priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their position”
They reminded me how powerful words really are. Love. Hate. War. Peace. Freedom. Respect. Charity. Kindness. All words that conjure up strong emotional images.
Our founding fathers certainly understood how powerful words are – they guaranteed our right to use them freely in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Advertisers and marketers know the power of words as well – they use them to incite certain behavior.
However, freedom of speech does not give a person the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater; nor, does it mean a marketer can say “free” or “the best” when either is not true or an un-substantiated claim. So, over the last 230+ years, we have developed cultural norms and codified rules and regulations governing how we say things and when certain words are appropriate. As our culture and language continues to evolve, the rules continue to change.
Sellers are another group who “have words to thank for their position” (see: “Seven words”). We use words to uncover hidden needs; we use words to describe our products; we use words to evoke images; and we use words to elicit behavior – moving prospects to buyers.
Again, the First Amendment does not give us the right to say what we want, whenever we want. Nor will our management let us. There are a myriad of reasons including: truth, safety, consumer protection, and brand to name the most important. These are dictated by government statute, marketers and legal advisors; all for good reason. But the key question is: how does one allow freedom while maintaining control of speech in the selling situation?
This is the “mountain range” we claimed when we conceived our platform. After we built and released the product, we sought the appropriate word to name our company – one that would evoke the right image in our customers’ and prospects’ minds. This was one of the most challenging exercises we have ever embarked on.
“Don’t think me unkind
Words are hard to find”
Luckily, Neil had an inspiration while on his morning run, and the creative agency agreed. Thus, Prolifiq was born. Over the last several years, we have used the platform to create a space of “controlled freedom” that ensures digital media is used appropriately on the front lines of the seller-customer interaction. One customer told us: “Prolifiq is a 1400+ SAT word!” Bingo. We evoked the right image. We make sellers better, faster, smarter communicators; in doing so, we make them more effective.
Recently the value of this was made abundantly clear – salespeople are going to jail. One of their offences: making their own marketing material. This offence is something the FDA and DOJ take very seriously, for good reason.
This should give you an idea of how we are applying our expertise to the healthcare industry with our entry into medical devices. Salespeople should be able to practice their profession; but, they have to follow the rules. Marketers need to provide the means to do so. Maureen has done it; and, she is going to share exactly how to go about it. Her first post publishes tomorrow.
“When their eloquence escapes you…..”
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My son Dylan and Cole met in the first grade and became fast friends. The two of them started sharing their fascination with chess by spending every free moment at recess and between classes playing the game. Seeing this, the Head of School (a small, academically rigorous private school) decided to foster their interest by establishing a chess club.
I was the President of the Board of Trustees at the time, and my Vice President and I decided that we would never be able to field an athletic sports team; so, we chose to field “brain power” by focusing on chess and Lego Robotics. All of this took place six years ago; and, over the last 4 years the chess team has rocked the Oregon chess circuit by coming from nowhere to being one of the leading chess schools in the state.
Well, Cole took to the game and established for himself a goal of becoming the individual state champion. He knew it would take time; so did his parents. It required: after school sessions, daily practice both on and off-line, private lessons with a master, travel, and many long Saturdays and Sundays in school gymnasiums around the state. Most of all, it required unwavering dedication and perseverance. Over the last several weeks, Cole has achieved his dream finishing 1st in the Oregon Chess For Success and placing 2nd in the Oregon Scholastic Chess Federation competition. Cole is all of 12 years old.
I write this to celebrate Cole and his victories. I also write to challenge all of us. How many of us have a “distant horizon” goal for our careers? How many of our companies have a distant horizon goal (Google’s founding mission was to “organize the world’s information) that is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)? In my experience, all too few. This is exacerbated by our, and our investor’s, need to reach quarterly and annual financial and strategic goals. What is the goal for the next decade?
As Lewis Carroll says: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
Congratulations Cole! You graduate from college in 10 years – please see that I get your resume as I’d have you on my team any day of the week.
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Neuro-linguistic programming is a form of psychotherapy espousing that people can be self-determinant by overcoming learned limitations. OK, enough of the mumbo-jumbo -- all this means is we can change what we achieve by how changing how we talk to and about ourselves.
If you observe sellers, you can see this in action by how salespeople trial close. An example: “Would you like to buy this today?” is a closed-end trial close that allows the customer to answer yes or no – with the most common answer being no. The primary reason for this is the salesperson has allowed “no” to be a possible outcome.
A better alternative would be: “Would you like to wear this home, or would you prefer that I wrap it for you?” In this case, the sales person assumes (the assumptive close) the prospect will buy; it is simply a question of delivery terms (wear or take). Which do you think is more successful?
When I was a child, my father spent considerable time coaching me on visualizing what I wanted in life. If you talk with successful athletes or entrepreneurs, you will find the vast majority spend considerable time visualizing their desired outcome. They are programming themselves for success. Neuro-linguistic programming is a verbal reinforcement of visualization.
The next time you embark on a major project, listen very carefully to how you and your team talk. Count how many times you hear “….if this happens, then….” and see if you can get the team to replace “if” with “when”. You will see very dramatic differences in performance, because the team is programming themselves for success.
I saw this recently with one of my own team. We were in a sales forecasting meeting discussing our “stretch goal” and I was going through different scenarios and said “…if they are successful…” and I was abruptly corrected by the team lead who said “when”. She visualized success, and is programming for victory. So, now it is not a question of whether this initiative will be successful; it is only a matter of when they will cross the finish line.
So, when I receive your comments on how this impacts your business, I will be sure to comment back.
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If these simple directions on the back of every shampoo bottle were software, they would be known as an infinite loop.
I lived through a human version of this Wednesday as we were planning our next step to incorporate social media within the company. We’re committed (or at least should be); however, how this manifests itself was “in discussion” (translation: was being heatedly debated) – see: “Learning from failure” for a refresher on the collaborative nature of our management team. What is contentious is whether we had the “right” to include a social media element in our product that allowed one company’s users to communicate with another company’s users. How would this affect the security and confidentiality aspects of our SLA’s; would the users unknowingly be sharing confidential information or trade secrets, etc.
Round and round we went for 45 minutes; with all sides weighing in with very cogent viewpoints.
Finally we agreed: “we’ll ask our customers.” Now, how do we do this and what is the specific question we ask. I think you get the picture.
If ever there was a case for the value of social media, this is it. Had social media been in place, we likely could have gotten qualitative feedback DURING the meeting and saved a lot of time. Charlene Li predicted we would ultimately face this, given the trajectory we are on, and tells me we are not alone in this conundrum; but, assures me the payoff will be huge.
So, Bridgett is now social media implementation leader -- and she and Lisa will make this happen, post haste. Our shampoo instructions will now be: lather, rinse, stop, dry.
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In the 1970’s Victor Kiam became famous because he liked the Remington Razor so much he bought the company. I don’t think there is a higher testament to a company’s products or services than when its customers want to work there, or in Victor’s case, to own the company.
Maureen Shaffer is a lot like Kiam – she joined Prolifiq at 8:30 Monday morning as our VP of Healthcare, see press release here. Maureen has an extensive and impressive resume in the Healthcare industry. It includes: a degree from Duke in Biomedical Engineering, and stints with US Surgical (now part of Tyco Healthcare ), Cordis (now part of Johnson & Johnson ), Heartport (now part of Johnson & Johnson), and Prolifiq customer AtriCure. In all of her industry roles, Maureen was responsible for managing new product introductions and marketing for some major players in the HUGE US healthcare industry.
Maureen first recognized the value of Prolifiq to a Medical Device sales and marketing team (see blog entry: Virgin Atlantic and Jonathan) after reading an article about what we were doing for GE (see: “Follow The Lead….Fast!” ). Thus began a three-year relationship that moved to the next level on Monday.
When we first started discussing having Maureen lead our efforts in Healthcare, I asked her if her career goals were to impact 5-7 more companies (the likely number of “gigs” she would complete before retirement) or whether she wanted to transform an entire industry. She chose the latter (evidence that she is motivated and has ambition—traits we covet). So, here we are.
Under Maureen’s direction, we will transform the lives of the 250,000 plus sellers and marketers of the US medical device, pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I am going to let Maureen tell you what we have (it’s BIG and transformative) and I am going to let her tell you how we are doing it. She starts blogging here within a week.
The key to why Maureen will be successful is because she has lived the life of our target customers and has the battle scars to prove it. Also, she has already deployed a solution (twice) that has solved the key issues. In this age of social media and peer experience, there is nothing like working with somebody who has DONE IT to help you solve the problem.
So, what’s next on MY list; stay tuned, I’ll be telling you all about it.
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I was reading the current issue of Inc. last night; one article talked about how a messenger company grew phenomenally as a result of the NYC Transit strike. The main conclusion: talk with your customers -- they will tell you what they want and are willing to pay for.
This is a very basic business concept, and it is soooo obvious it is very easy to forget. As I've said here before, this concept is so deeply ingrained within Prolifiq (see: "Don't Panic) that our org chart is actually structured to institutionalize the behavior. This is also not a new concept; however, people are so conditioned to seeing the "pyramid" and all the "C" level people at the top, that when they see an inverted pyramid with the customer at the top they can be perplexed.
While dining with Charlene Li (see: "Credit where credit is due"), she asked me about our org chart. So I sketched it out on the tablecloth. We discussed it at length and how we got here.
We gave Charlene permission to use it publicly -- and she did. You can see it as the closing slide of her presentation to SXSW which can be found here. She tells me it caused quite a stir.
Neil, the father of the structure, calls it "servant leadership" where the senior people "serve" those who serve the customer. When you see the chart, you will really see where our priorities lie, who works for whom at Prolifiq and that I am "at the bottom of the food chain". In my case, this is a great place to be because I work for some amazing people.
Please let me know how your organization is structured to serve your customers; I'd love to compare notes.
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