Reputation to Revenue

New research and paper on "Four Steps to Solutions Growth"

I'm pleased to announce the launch of a new Point of View series with my partners at Solutions Insights.

Over the next several months, we'll release a series of short, research-based perspectives on how companies can improve performance in their solutions businesses.

Our first Point of View, Adjusting to the New Reality: Four Steps to Solutions Growth, is available now. It outlines four initiatives companies can take to accelerate solutions growth through the rest of 2009 while also repositioning their organizations for longer-term success.

Based on new research with our partner ITSMA, the Point of View highlights findings from a survey with more than 30 B2B solutions providers on four critical initiatives:

• Improving the solutions development process
• Reorienting value propositions and messaging
• Enhancing customer connections
• Better equipping the sales force to sell solutions

For example, we see that companies are looking mostly to develop more packaged and "mass-customized" solutions rather than relying mainly on fully customized, one-off solutions. Only 16% of the companies surveyed are looking to increase the number of highly customized solutions.

You can download the Point of View pdf here. I'd love to know what you think.

Learning from Gen Y

MediaPost, one of my favorite sources. launched a new blog recently, Engage: Gen Y, and the first few posts are already capturing my attention. Today's post suggested five simple rules for "snagging consumer 2.0" and they are well worth pondering even in the rarified air of high-end B2B solutions, where Gen Yers are still mostly consigned to support roles outside the orbits of purchase decision makers. 

The rules are these:

• Authenticity Trumps Celebrity
• Niche is the New Norm
• Bite-Size Communications Dominate
• Personal Utility Drives Adoption
• Consumers Own Brands

As the title says, this is consumer-oriented, but the application to B2B and solutions marketing should be clear immediately, and not just in thinking about Gen Yers. Consider the perspective of the buyers you're trying to reach in B2B:

• Authenticity: Let me speak with and learn from real experts, and get the real story. No hype allowed.
• Niche: Know my industry and my business; don't bother with your generic pitches and solutions. 
• Bite-Sized Communications: Don't waste my time! I will eventually dig into the details, but you've got to pique my interest pretty damm quick.
• Personal Utility: What's in it for me? You've got to pay attention to my personal-professional agenda as well as my company's.
• Brands: Personal and peer experience is what matters; I could care less about your carefully crafted messages and materials.

Maybe us boomers and Xers are not so different from the next generation after all. 

What do you think?

Carrotmobs make my night

Triple Pundit almost always brings a smile to my face, and for that reason is one of my favorite blogs by far. The group blog highlights the three "p's" of sustainable business -- people, planet, and profits -- and highlights a steady stream of optimism-inducing stories about both creative startups and long-established corporations doing well by doing good.

Tonight's read inspired an extra-big smile: the story of Virgance, "a venture-funded startup that calls itself a platform supporting Activism 2.0" What this means, in essence, is that Virgance is integrating social media tools and a save the world mentality into some really creative business opportunities. Jujst a year old, the company has already launched two interesting social power ventures:

• 1 Block Off the Grid (1BOG) brings neighbors together to purchase and install solar panels collectively, negotiating hefty discounts and keeping a share of the savings
• SunRun, another solar purchasing program, installs solar panels but retains ownership and lets homeowners pay a reduced rate for power

Several Facebook-centered initiatives are in the works as well, including one to help companies distribute social responsibility funds by encouraging Facebook members to choose the recipients.

My clear favorite, though, is Carrotmob, which actually predated and inspired the formation of Virgance. Triple Pundit calls it an "anti-boycott," and the idea is to convince people to shop at a certain store if that store agrees to invest some of the proceeds to improve energy efficiency.

Powered by Facebook and other social media outreach efforts, the first Carrotmob in San Francisco brought hundreds of people to a small market in the Mission neighborhood, and brought the market almost $10,000 in purchases which yielded almost $2,000 in green upgrades.

 

But the more important result, as Triple Pundit notes, "was the buzz this Carrotmob generated. Consumers are drawn to the notion that they can influence a business to become more sustainable, and not by boycotting it but by patronizing it--essentially giving it the funds to make sustainability improvements."

Along with San Francisco, Carrotmobs are now active in New York, Chicago, Kansas City, London, Helsinki, Bristol, England, and more.

I'm usually skeptical when people talk about "shopping for change," but Carrotmob brings a lot more to the table. And it sounds really fun!

What do you think?

Smarter marketing at IBM: Big Blue's latest green consulting launch

Pardon me for talking about IBM yet again, but the company continues to impress me with its ability to ride the green wave with intelligent and high-potential offerings. The latest example is last week's announcement of a new Sustainable Procurement consulting offer. 

According to IBM, the offer is designed to help companies set cost, efficiency, and sustainability goals and metrics for their entire set of procurement activities, including "all supplies, materials, ingredients, components, finished goods and services they purchase to run their operations and to develop, manufacture and deliver their own products or services." 

The potential scale of this is enormous, covering just about every aspect of the world's supply chain. And IBM is certainly thinking big, outlining coverage of six main Corporate Social Responsibility aspects of supply chain management:

• Environment -- reducing energy and water usage, minimizing waste and the use of potentially hazardous chemicals and materials, increasing recycling and recyclability, and improving efficiency;
• Community -- ensuring suppliers support and contribute to the communities they operate in;
• Health and safety -- promoting safe workplace practices as well as ensuring safety in products and services;
• Ethics and financial accountability -- ensuring suppliers practice appropriate business ethics and adhere to applicable standards for financial accounting and transparency;
• Diversity -- encouraging diversity and inclusiveness throughout the supply chain;
• Labor practices -- ensuring suppliers adhere to local, national and internationals laws, rules and standards for labor practices.

To back up the offer, IBM points to its own efforts developing Supplier Conduct Principles for its own supply chain, which includes some 30,000 supplier locations in 60 countries. 

If the practice grows, and I'm certainly hoping it does, the benefits for companies, communities, workers, and the environment can be enormous.

Marketing Lessons

At the same time, the initiative points to a powerful reminder for B2B marketers in today's challenging economy. At a time when so many companies and marketers are obsessing over which tactics are most likely to deliver short-term revenue, broader strategy remains absolutely essential. My own takeaways from the IBM launch including the following:

• Now is the time to identify new sources of revenue that leverage existing capabilities and assets
• Tap into the green wave; it's big and getting bigger
• Always reinforce the larger corporate brand and story
• Always back up the offer with credible proof points

In these ways, IBM's new offering reflects the best of strategic marketing -- focused on how to drive growth for the company in responsible and intelligent ways, with great potential for short- and longer term success. I'll be curious to follow the tactical side of the initiative, as well as the results, of course, but this is already another good example of how "big M" Marketing can and should the foundation for corporate direction.

Do you agree?

 

*For more on IBM's new offering, check out these resources:

• IBM podcast on the new offering
• IBM consulting and thought leadership resources on green and Corporate Social Responsibility
• The Challenges and Opportunities of Sustainable Procurement 
• Heather Clancy at ZDNet

Bank of America comes through with great customer service

We all love to vent about poor customer service -- long waits on the phone, overseas reps talking from a script, repeating the same story over and over again to every new person who fails to resolve the problem. It's pretty much my expectation, and it's why I dread making the call. And why it's worthy of comment when a company, especially a a big bad bank, confounds expectation.

Racing through Whole Foods yesterday morning, I was momentarily stymied at the checkout counter when my Mastercard failed approval. The clerk was confused; it wasn't an overdraft notice. I paid with (sigh) another of my handful of cards, and went on my merry way. At home, though, I had a voicemail from Bank of America requesting that I call. Figuring it relates to the non-approval (brilliant deduction, I know), I called, and here's where the happy story begins.

First, my wait time was but a few seconds until Juan picked up and tells me the card was suspended due to possible fraudulent activity. He read out a list of recent transactions on the card, and it turns out the main ones in question had just happened a few hours earlier: three "magazine subscriptions" within minutes of each other at about 5:40 am, adding up to less than $100 total. He also wondered about several over the last few days from California (where my daughter is in college). 

Juan is extremely nice and helpful, but now I have to hang up and check with my daughter on a few transactions just to be safe. 

After waking up said daughter in her dorm room (hey, it was only 9 am for her; she's a student!) and confirming that she had indeed bought the books, hats, and whatever else, I had to call BofA again.

This time Greg picks up instantly, quickly reviews my situation, double checks a few more recent transactions, finalizes the fraud investigation, and agrees to send me new cards overnight (waiving the FedEx fee although normal policy is apparently regular mail and 5-7 day wait). He updates a few more things on my account, points out a few service providers with whom I'll  need to update my card number once I get the new cards, and we chat briefly about Red Sox opening day and how great Boston is, and then I'm done.

So BofA flags possible fraud within a few hours, puts a temporary hold on it, and calls me right up with an alert. Juan is extremely nice and helpful on the phone, lays out the situation and my options, and gives me a more direct number to call back once I've checked with my daughter. Greg is equally friendly, helpful, and efficient. Total time on phone: 15 minutes. Inconvenience level: minimal. Satisfaction that BofA is on the case: Absolutely. I'll resist a cute line ending with "priceless," but this is how customer service is supposed to work.

Dell joins the health care discussion

About four years ago, "Dell Hell" entered the lexicon as both shorthand for the firestorm that blogger Jeff Jarvis whipped out by trashing Dell's customer service publicly, and metaphor for big corporations that didn't "get" the new power of social media.

Since then, Dell has made an enormous effort to take social media seriously, and has launched all manner of initiatives to listen to customers online, make the company more transparent, and take a more human and collaborative approach to doing business. Jarvis summarizes Dell's transformation nicely in his new book, What Would Google Do? (a great and provocative read, by the way, if you haven't yet picked it up).

Today's announcement that Dell is launching a new IdeaStorm specifically for health care and life sciences is a perfect example of why the company is so effective now in the social economy.

"As Dell participates in HIMSS this week, one of the largest global healthcare events, we are well aware that there are specific technology needs in the heathcare industry. IdeaStorm for Healthcare and Life Sciences has been created to start the conversation on what Dell can do to address those technology needs and simplify the healthcare IT solutions...Through collaboration, we can all determine the best ways to reduce complexity, save time and reduce costs." 

Self-serving? Of course. Healthcare IT is a huge market and Dell wants as big a piece of it as possible.

But it's enlightened self-interest in a participatory world, and that's what makes it worth comment.

• It's about a big issue affecting millions (billions) of people
• It's a hard issue: how IT can contribute to health care solutions
• It's humble: Dell does not pretend to have all the answers
• It's about facilitating conversation and being open to ideas from any direction
• It's credible, given the background of Dell's substantial efforts to create a more open and collaborative organization 

So kudos to Dell for another strong step forward. For companies looking to move ahead with social media and innovation, Dell has shown again why it's one of the leaders worth studying. 

What do you think?