Earlier this week I attended a sliver The CMO Club’s latest event. The focus of my time there was to learn about the results of the Club’s recent survey, “Marketing in a Recession.” Founder Pete Krainik took attendees through the findings; attendees weren’t shy about adding their opinions and commentary.
Hey, I just returned from a week in Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. In Singapore I heard that when a mobile phone company in that region removed the upper limit on what their call center reps were allowed to spend to satisfy a customer, it actually reduced the average amount each rep spent! You can hear about that, and some fascinating facts about Singapore, in my latest "Peppers Unplugged" video diary entry.
Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of hearing John Maxwell deliver an engaging keynote on leadership at the Sage Software Insights partner conference. Maxwell is the author of several best-selling books on leadership, as well as the just-released Leadership Gold: Lessons I've Learned from a Lifetime of Leading.
I was especially drawn in because of two things Maxwell said that, to me, directly apply to customer strategy: 1) when your ability to lead grows, so does your business; and 2) leadership is all about engaging people—and without engaged employees customer centricity is not much more than big talk. “Your ability to lead will determine your effectiveness,” he said.
Maxwell discussed the five levels of leadership. Here’s an overview.
While the Feds are busy cutting interest rates and deficit spending to quell the current recession (or mild downturn, depending on who you ask)—companies may feel the pressure to start cutting valuable programs such as marketing or customer service, at the detriment to customers. These areas should remain in tact in the coming months because they will not only help companies weather the mounting storm, but will give them the edge they need to emerge on top.
Here are a few suggestions for surviving the recession.
I’m doing a presentation next week for Gartner’s CRM conference in London on the incompatibility of innovation and operations. That is, the characteristics that make for a highly innovative company – experimentation, trial and error, creativity, diversity of opinions and resilience – are fundamentally at odds with the characteristics of a company that is capable of conducting its operations in a highly efficient manner – fixed routines, process invariability, and attention to detail.
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