As part of documenting their sales and marketing strategy, EOS teaches companies to document who their clients are in great detail. It asks them to describe them in many ways. Three of those ways are,- geographically, demographically and psycho-graphically. In other words, you should document where they are, who they are and why they buy from you.
This last is the most challenging. Do you actually know why your clients buy from you?
In Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper when they create widespread empathy, Dev Patnaik, with Peter Mortensen, provides some interesting insights which might help you answer that question.
In this book Dev Patnaik makes the case that one of the ways you can answer that question is by turning your company into an Open Empathy Organization. The idea is that you have to walk in your client’s shoes to truly understand them and their often unclear buying motivations. Unclear perhaps even to them. It’s this last conundrum that explains why focus groups are sometimes insufficient in answering this question.
Dev offers many examples of companies, not surprisingly many of them clients of Jump Associates, his firm, who have done a good job in empathizing with their employees and their clients. Among the most well known are Nike, Target, NetFlix and Harley-Davidson. He also suggests that the turnaround of IBM back in the late 1990′s by Lou Gerstner was based on the fact that Gerstner, who was an IBM outsider and client, empathized with the challenges of IBM clients and turned IBM into an Open Empathy Organization.
If you can use some help in understanding why your clients buy from you or how to increase the amount they buy from you, then you might find this book useful.
PS: You can learn more about the book and Dev at Dev’s website. Dev is also the Managing Associate of Jump Associates. You can also find Dev in LinkedIn.
PPS: Once again Seth Godin was the source of this book for me.
Graphic credit: Amazon
When we work in EOS sessions with our clients, we neither require, nor desire, Internet access. We do all our work together on white boards or easels with paper.
Further, we provide Leadership Team Manuals for each leader, which are 3 ring binders with paper documents we distribute and generate.
We are often asked why we still use paper and why we don’t encourage the use of laptops or iPads for everyone?
The reasons we use paper Leadership Team Manuals are several:
- They foster face-to-face interaction, which is best for building team trust and for ensuring people are “present” in the meeting.
- They provide a place to take hand written notes which often, but not always, reinforces learning.
- They provide a convenient place to store materials that you develop.
- They are a reference place for EOS principles and tools.
- Eyeball to eyeball is the most effective way of building trust.
How frustrating is it for you when you are in a meeting and everyone is glancing at their phones, tablets or laptops checking email, or worse, typing?
The first and fifth benefits above accrue to meetings which use whiteboards, or paper easels, instead of PowerPoint. Don’t you agree?
Graphic credit: EOS Worldwide
Last week I mentioned a simple EOS tool called the People Analyzer which our clients use to provide feedback to their employees on how well they are living the company values and how well they are doing their jobs. Both pieces are important. EOS calls it having the Right People in the Right Seats. You can find last week’s post here.
The People Analyzer provides for feedback on whether the employee is the Right Person – meaning that they share your values.
By adding three more columns to the people analyzer – G, W, & C – you can provide feedback to the employee as to whether they are in the Right Seat.
Specifically, do they Get It – do they understand the requirements of the position as spelled out in your company. Do they Want It – or have they just drifted into this job and are holding onto it for dear life? Do they have the Capacity to Do the Job. Do they have both the hard and soft skills required for this position? Do they also have the time and the energy?
The rating method here is even simpler than for the company values. There are only two possibilities,- Yes and No. An employee must have three Yeses or you have an issue. The seat may be too big or too small. Make sure all your employees are in the right seat. If the issue can’t be fixed by changing seats or training, then you owe it to all your other employees to allow this one to pursue their career elsewhere.
The People Analyzer is simple and consistent. It can and should be applied to all your employees – from the CEO to the receptionist. You can download a free copy here.
Do you have something this simple and consistent in your company which is used regularly?
Graphics credit: EOS Worldwide
