Customer Service King

Here's a timely post, How to Get Your Marketing Budget Approved, from Nancy Sagar with Marketing M.O.:

If you’re a marketing manager, you’re probably swamped with next year’s planning and budgeting process.  Hopefully you find it exciting to create a marketing plan filled with new programs and campaigns to build your business in the year ahead.  (If not, it may be time for a new job!)

And as you know, it can be a tough process to get your ambitious marketing plans and budget approved.  So what happens when you have to sharpen your pencil so often that it becomes a stub?

If you’re struggling to get your budget approved, try treating the planning process as a sale.  You have a potential customer – your boss or CFO – who has a problem:  lofty revenue goals and a finite pool of money to spend on line items including marketing, personnel, technology, services, benefits, etc. 

Your mission:  Help the CFO solve his or her problem.  Show why it’s most valuable to invest in your marketing plans versus all of the other line items in the company budget.  After all, marketing is an investment that should produce revenue and customers.  Show how your marketing plans drive company goals and your CFO will have a far easier time approving your budget.

So what do you need to show the CFO to connect the dots between your marketing programs and company goals?  Again, use your marketing skills and put yourself in his or her shoes.  What would YOU want to know?

1.  What specific, measurable goals have you built your plans to achieve?  For example, identify the specific number of highly qualified leads, new customers, retained customers, average order size, number of referrals, etc.

2.  What additional goals do your plans support?  You know that branding and PR campaigns can be difficult to measure.  But if you can show why your initiatives are critical elements for both short- and long-term goals, it will be easier for your CFO to justify these expenses.

3.  Have you truly figured out the most cost-effective ways to reach your goals?  If you were spending the money out of your own pocket, would you be able to find a few expenses that you can scale back?  Take ownership of your budget as if the money is your own – you’ll find incredible motivation to spend less.

4.  What’s the projected return on investment (ROI) for these initiatives?  These calculations can be difficult, but even a rough attempt shows the CFO that your marketing plans are investments.  (Here’s a post that takes you through a general ROI calculation. Be sure to include your assumptions as well.)

With this mindset, you’re not just asking for money … you’re showing your CFO an investment opportunity.  And when you tie your programs to projected outcomes, your budget requests and role within the company start to take on an entirely different meaning to upper management

Check out this Marketing M.O. post for additional marketing articles and tips on this subject.

When Capital Magazine editors asked Dr. Ellen Weber for a feature article for their November issue,  she decided to explore how companies today compete for those hard to land places at the top. Winners tend to champion brain based problem solvers.

"They get remarkable results, from most of their workers, against the backdrop of shifting horizons."

Here are highlights from Dr. Weber's feature article, titled … "Keeping the Brain in Mind – Boosting Your Problem Solving Power," which she posted in her Brain Based Business weblog:

“Could Your Workplace Benefit from More Talent? New spurts of human brainpower follow whenever you move worker’s multiple intelligences into increased productivity.

Diversity works here as your greatest asset. For the concert pianist, things will come together at work differently than for the top hockey player. Look around your organization and you’ll find both these experts - and many more. 

If one worker is weak in a skill, organizational performance need not suffer. Not when you draw from multiple intelligences to bring the complex pieces of each project together. The key is to negotiate roles and reward quality results. To use multiple intelligences is to help workers put forward their unique strengths as tools for productivity, and to help companies increase their productivity as a result of hidden or unused talents that emerge.”

I challenged business leaders in Capital Magazine to drop the notion of  training –for a  brain based business that relies more on skill development, since it is important to reframe hard and soft skills to what I call smart skills that get more creative juices flowing:

Here are 10 Smart Skills of the 66 smart skill sets that replace traditional hard and soft skills, for brain based problem solvers.

1. Outcome Based – Do you take solid steps toward doing your ideas?
2. Make Abstracts Concrete – Do you see and work for specific results?
3. Approachability – Do others come to you for advice and for fun?
4. Boss Relationships – Does what you say to the boss show support?
5. Business Acumen – Would others describe you as skilled at work?
6. Career Ambition – Have you upgraded your position lately?
7. Caring About Direct Reports – Do you develop and grow from direct reports?
8. Comfort Around Management -  Do you share ideas and learn from management?
9. Command Skills – Do you take and give productive commands?
10. Compassion – Would others at work describe you as compassionate when in need?

Could you see how integration of skills could transcend traditional hard and soft skills, for better problem solving tools where you work?

Let's laugh today, shall we?  Enjoy!

A Telemarketing Technique
Contributed by Daddy Mike 

TSR: Good day Sir!
Furious Customer: Why are you calling me?! Stop calling me!
This is where the customer keeps on babbling, perhaps stating the reasons why telemarketers should stop calling.
TSR: Sir, stop.  My nose is bleeding! Help! Help!
Lo and behold, the customer calms down, saying "Oh dear! Oh my!"
TSR: Anyway, the reason for my call is.....

The Daily Grind in Tech Support
By Legion of Doom

Tech support: Okay Bob, let's press the control and escape keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Now type the letter "P" to bring up the Program Manager.
Customer: I don't have a P.
Tech support: On your keyboard, Bob.
Customer: What do you mean?
Tech support: "P".....on your keyboard Bob.
Customer: I'M NOT GOING TO DO THAT!

Tech support: What's on your monitor now, ma'am?
Customer: A teddy bear my boyfriend bought for me.

Customer: I can't get on the Internet.
Tech support: Are you sure you used the right password?
Customer: Yes, I'm sure.  I saw my colleague do it.
Tech support:  Can you tell me what the password was?
Customer: Five stars.

Guess what!  There is a list out there of audio phone calls that a typical tech support agent receives.  The Disgruntled Tech's Tech Support Calls website is funny, rather educational and well...amusing.  Do take note that some calls might just a bit too much for an average person. 

Telemarketing calls.  We’ve received it, we listened and they persisted and now you dread the phone ringing at dinner time. 

Thanks to the government, there is a Do No Call Registry available for us to submit our phone number, or better yet get unlisted.  But, have you ever received a political phone call, especially when elections are near?

This type of call is used by candidates and prefers it than using the traditional methods because not only do they get their team or hire a company to do the work; they tap into a bigger population with a smaller cost.  They can call for several reasons:  a fund raising effort, getting opinions on current issues or the candidate's opponent, push polling, or even persuading citizens to vote for their candidate.  The call usually takes about a minute or even more than 20 minutes, depending on the respondent and the purpose.

Here are the past week's most interesting CRM marketplace news items:

• Salesforce.com succumbs to rising costs
• Entellium Announces Rave CRM
• NetSuite Announces Major Japanese Partnership
• Microsoft Readies Dynamics CRM Update
• Microsoft Debuts New Forefront Client
• Open Source CRM Provider SugarCRM Unveils Sugar FastStack
• Maximizer Software Promotes ACT! Migration Program
• Oracle to Deliver Real CRM to Asian SMBs
• CRMSoft Announces a 60-day Trial Period
• Using CRM on the Go: Six Tips for Success
• Want to be a sales genius?
• Visible Results Poised to Launch Into Entertainment Industry
• Brainshark’s Latest Release Offers Unmatched Capabilities for Consistent, Compliant Communications
• Forrester Examines CRM Industry
• Two New CRM Apps Target Banking Industry
• Clickpoint Software Releases New Mortgage CRM Software
• Oracle On Demand Surpasses 1.7 Million User Milestone
• EDS Will Acquire GEMS
• Sage pays £20m for payment processing firm Protx
• SAP Sinks Its Teeth into Rich SME Pie: Q&A
• CDC Corporation Announces Private Offering of $168 Million
• CK-ERP (Open Source ERP/CRM/MRP) v.0.21.1 released
• Adobe Launches New Hosted Service: "Adobe Document Center"
• Jadu Launches Web 2.0 Content Management Products
• Customer Data Quality Platform Announced by Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software
• DataFlux Accelerates the Path to MDM and CDI
• Avaya Acquires Traverse Networks
• Start-Up Offers Cell Phone Mapping Service
• iPod Comes to the Friendly Skies
• Top Three Engines Adopt Same Web Indexing Tool
• Google Apps for Your Domain: Good for Your Business?

In Making Knowledge Sharing Easy, Ardath Albee offers up an excellent approach for improving collaboration between marketing and sales organizations.  Here is her post in its entirety:

In March, a survey conducted by IBM found that 80% of CEOs see collaboration as being critical to growth. Yesterday, I wrote about how difficult it is to get salespeople to buy in and use a sales portal managed by Marketing. Yet, if the two departments continue the standoff, the ability of companies to meet their strategic sales objectives will stall.

I see part of the problem as "ownership."  Salespeople "own" their knowledge and they are resistant to sharing because they see allowing their knowledge to become a company asset means (to them) they are expendable. Salespeople are competitive.  By their very natures, they are driven to be the best at what they do. For the sales portal to be effective, it has to give them tools that make a difference in elevating that perception.

Marketing is charged with providing the messaging, value propositions, information and presentations that sales is supposed to use to sell. But sales says it doesn't work. Marketing says they ask Sales what they want, give it to them and still, Sales turns up their collective noses.

Salespeople probably don't know what will help them be more effective in a way they can articulate. At least not when they're asked directly and they aren't in the midst of experiencing a frustration. This is why it's critical to have the sales portal be a collaborative zone that connects the two departments.  But, in order for it to be a bridge, contributing to it has to be easy and it has to come from both sides.

Sales needs to be allowed to contribute without much effort. Their contributions will aggregate and provide marketing a better idea of what's missing and how to deliver tools Sales can actually use to be more effective at selling.

Some ideas are:

• comment boxes that allow portal users to add notes and reactions to contentrating systems that allow them to quickly check a box that says "this content is worth a 1 - 5 in my sales arsenal
• a WYSWYG content editor for them to post sales success or loss stories that are tied to the materials they used (your system can be smart enough to know this)
• discussion threads with company experts around competitor objections
• suggestion boxes that post the suggestions to the portal and make marketing accountable for responding (not necessarily doing them, but acknowledging the suggestions and saying what they can do and by when)
• notifications to sales when something new is posted to the portal so they don't have to search. And for heaven's sake, put it out there prior to the free world getting knowledge of the latest campaign. Sales should always know what's going on before they hear about it from outside.
  

It may sound like this is putting a lot on Sales, but Marketing doesn't get a free ride here.  What they do get is feedback on what value their materials are providing to sales. They are able to see usage rates for content and know if something is falling flat or not being utilized.  If the CRM system is hooked in to track the materials salespeople access when planning for a phone call, email, meeting, demo, presentation, and proposal, then marketing can track which content is used and how often. 

Marketing can also produce metrics about how strong a roll they play in contributing to the company meeting it's overall sales goals. The materials used by salespeople to close a sale will be tied to the lead.  Marketing can start to see trends by segmentation as to what's effective and what's not working.

Important to remember that collaboration is conversation between people, not something tossed over a wall. Response is important and it needs to be constructive.

The key is that Marketing has to modify and adjust content that doesn't work and they need to do it quickly. They need to be responsive to whatever knowledge the salespeople share. If they are not, then this whole collaboration thing is for naught. There will be no bridge and marketing and sales will continue to work at cross purposes.

Sales will find out their knowledge becomes bigger and better when used collaboratively and their success will increase demonstrably through having better tools and messaging that works. They will spend less time researching for every meeting and sell more.

The company's brand will become stronger through consistency.

This isn't an easy process and it may not be particularly pretty at first, but as Marketing strengthens their relationship with Sales through collaborative work that provides better tools, the respect will grow.  Being able to produce metrics that tie it all together for the C-level will give Marketing the credibility it needs for that seat at the executive table.  And for bigger budgets that have demonstrable ROI.

Be sure to visit, Ardath's weblog, Marketing Interactions; there's lots of great content on this site, much of it being her own writings.

I looked at this piece of furniture that is being marketed as the next best thing for call center managers.  It’s called the Traveler Mobile Desk from Interior Concepts.  It’s pretty nifty but it took me some time to visualize having this desk in a call center environment.

If we consider having supervisors use this, it’s a bit funny and awkward to see them lagging the desk to go to agents and work at their stations.  So, however hard I try, I can only see this in a training environment.

A training room has to be flexible and layouts shouldn’t be the typical classroom set-up.  There are situations when you need to share your room with 2 different clients and they would have different requirements.  This poses a problem.  Another one would be getting a lot of PCs in the room due to the size of the class, yet there are only a number of sockets available, ending up with wires all over the place.  This is a horrendous sight!