growing and learning Archives - McLellan Marketing Group

Shhh, we’re secret shopping

January 11, 2017

If there’s one marketing tactic that we execute for clients that always yields incredible results, it’s when we secret shop their operation. Without exception, a secret shopping program will:

Provide insights that surprise you (good and bad)
Spotlight specific areas where your training and communication have failed and you/your employees are hurting your brand
Uncover sales opportunities that you are letting slip through your fingers
Identify employees who are brand ambassadors and those who are actually doing damage to your reputation

We secret shop some of our clients every year and even though we’ve done it before – each time produces new insights and results. We always modify some aspects of their customer interaction, marketing, and employee training based on the results of the effort.

Many times we not only secret shop our own clients but we include their competitors as well. This produces an incredible wealth of new knowledge – from vulnerabilities to what they’re saying about their competition (you!) to prospects. Depending on the study – sometimes we don’t tell our operatives who the client is but at the end of the process, we ask them who they would hire/buy from. That’s always an eye opener!

If you’re a B2B leader/owner and are about to dismiss this as a retail marketing tactic – think again. We’ve done it for plenty of B2B clients with the exact same results. No matter what you sell – you interact with people to market and sell your offerings. We’ve done secret shopping on the web, over the phone, via email and in person (usually a blend of more than one throughout the sales cycle) and the learning is huge, no matter what you sell.

Like all marketing – doing it and doing it well are two different things. There are some elements of a secret shopping program that you’ll want to pay special attention to if you want reliable results.

This is not a DIY project: There are some marketing elements that you and your team are perfectly equipped to do on your own. This is not one of them. You need to bring in experienced outsiders who understand your industry but more important – understand how to effectively secret shop and report back the results.

You want to choose a firm who has professionals that are experienced in handling the entire secret shopping experience from initial contact to the final report. They need to be privy to your key messages, brand and sales process or they won’t be able to help you identify how to improve.

Create a safe environment: Secret shoppers often have to share less than ideal results with their clients. If you don’t make it perfectly clear that you’re ready to hear whatever they discover – it may make it difficult for them to be as candid as you need them to be. Prepare yourself – no matter how good you and your employees are – you’re not going to get a perfect grade. There’s always room for improvement.

Consistency is key: For the results to be meaningful, the experience needs to be consistent – all the shoppers need to look for the same things, ask the same sorts of questions, and grade the experience based on the same criteria. This allows you to know that the reported results aren’t an anomaly and should be reacted to – good or bad.

Next steps: The most important part of the secret shopping experience is that the company you hire can help you identify next steps to correct the issues and accentuate the positives. This will probably include employee training, some tweaks to your sales process and it may even include some changes to your product/service itself.

If you want to start your year off with a serious boost – consider a secret shopping program.

Keep Up

November 2, 2016

I was recently asked to give a presentation on what students can do/learn so they can keep up with the ever-changing landscape of business and marketing today. As I was preparing the material to deliver, I quickly realized that my counsel wasn’t just for today’s students. It’s what all of us, whether we are a student or seasoned professional, need to be doing to stay current in this never static environment that we all exist in.

Recognize that your employer is not going to invest in your continuing growth. You need to do it for yourself: I’m not saying you won’t have the opportunity to attend a conference or take a class, but the reality is, no company can afford to provide as much continuing education as we need.

We have to be motivated to keep learning on our own or we will very quickly fall behind and once that happens, it’s tough to catch up. Regular consumption of podcasts, webinars, books, blogs, TED talks or whatever method works for you is critical.

Consume information wisely and quickly: We’ve all done it. You click on one online article and next thing you know, an hour has passed and you are far away from where you started. Today’s information overload can bury us in a blink if we’re not careful. We definitely need to consume information every day but we need to have a plan.

Use tools that help you sort and filter all the information out there to find what you need to keep up. An RSS Feed reader (I like Feedly) is an easy way to sort through huge volumes of data. You can also use customizable news apps like Flipboard to aggregate the latest news in the categories that matter most to your industry and career.

Learn to teach, write to learn: The linear nature of mentorships is evolving into a new model. We old dogs have a lot to learn from our younger, digital-native co-workers and we still have a few things to teach as well. When you know you’re going to be teaching others, you learn at a different level.

One of the best ways to teach is to write. As you do your research and fact checking, you will learn even more. A side benefit is that your writing skills will get stronger as well.

Be productive at the start: Most days, the distractions win. We rarely get as much done as we’d like, simply because of the interruptions and constant distractions that bombard us throughout the day.

But if you start your day in relative quiet and get the most pressing of your work done before you log into email, walk into a meeting or take that first call – you’ll feel less rushed and frenetic. If you include some of your media/information consumption into that morning routine, you’ll also feel more plugged into what’s going on in the world.

Surround yourself with other learners and thinkers: You can’t possibly learn it all. And even tougher – you can’t see it all from every angle. You need to create your own tribe of people who will share freely, encourage you, hold you accountable, challenge you and cheer you on.

Very few professionals make the time to create this sort of mastermind group of their own. But I can tell you from personal experience, it’s a safe place to admit you don’t know something, to ask someone you trust to hold you accountable to a goal or just to compare notes/experiences.

The world is not going to slow down. If anything, the speed of change is just going to accelerate even more. If we don’t master these habits now and develop this ability to keep learning and evolving – to keep up – we may never catch up.

Disruption – Are you the next Dodo bird?

September 14, 2016

Marketing is always ripe with buzzwords that may or may not have any traction. Part of our role as marketing professionals and business leaders is to recognize when it’s hype and when it’s important. One of the words/trends that seems to be the new darling is the idea of disruption. This is one we can’t afford to dismiss as hype. It’s a huge opportunity and a huge threat.

Many people misunderstand the term. Disruptive does not mean that your marketing tactics disrupt or interrupt your audience. Instead, what it actually means is that a new technology or product is going to disrupt an existing market or industry and actually create a new market or value proposition. Often this leads to the extinction of the original product or service by replacing it with something better. It’s the ultimate in creativity and destruction, all in one.

A great example is the point and shoot camera. The smart phone crushed the demand for inexpensive cameras and today; it’s tough to even find one in a store. The camera function wasn’t the primary focus of the smart phone, it was simply a feature. But that feature, coupled with technologies that actually made it superior to the original, ended up being a product killer.

Disruption isn’t about making a better mousetrap. It’s about making the mousetrap obsolete. Just ask Blockbuster or Kodak. They’re a great example of incredibly successful and profitable businesses that are now obsolete.

Disruption is fine and dandy, if you’re the one doing the disrupting, but how do you know if a new trend or technology has you in it’s sights?

Keep your perspective broad: Odds are, the disruption won’t come from within your own industry. It’s likely a technology that’s developing in a completely different field. It’s probably an innovation within it’s own category but runs the risk of being a game changer in yours.

Listen to your best users: It’s always a good plan to listen to your customers but if you’re worried about disruption – you need to step it up to a whole different level. Watch for an erosion of their usage or loyalty. Listen to their requests for product enhancements or add-ons.

Track trends: Disruptors don’t appear out of the blue. Typically they’re born from a broader trend or cultural shift. Watch for emerging trends, especially those that impact your super users/customers. If the trend is going to alter their lives, it could well alter yours too.

Explore and innovate: The best way to avoid becoming a disruptor’s victim is to keep evolving. You have to keep experimenting and exploring new ideas for the needs your customers have today and the ones they don’t even know they’re going to have tomorrow.

Measure and monitor: Part of surviving a disruptor may mean knowing when it’s time to pivot because you’re fighting a losing battle. You can’t afford to be caught off guard so now is not the time to get lax with your key performance indicators.

It’s important that we all recognize that we won’t escape disruption forever. It isn’t new and the world has always evolved over time. Think about the impact of the first cars, TV sets, and the personal computer and what they did to carriages, radio and typewriters. Disruption has always been around. It’s just that it’s coming at a pace we’ve never seen before. Technology is accelerating the disruption and that’s not likely to stop.

Your industry might have dodged it so far, but odds are – change is coming. You can brace yourself for the impact, you can see it on the horizon but most of all – you need to be thinking like a disruptor.

How can you evolve your offerings before someone makes you obsolete?