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Book review: “Switch – How to Change Things when Change is Hard” by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

July 20, 2011 //
6

A brilliant book on change and how to apply it in the real world. Over 250 real world examples and ideas underline the authors basic concept – getting people to change is like someone riding an elephant. Appealing to the logic of change is like appealing to the rider of the elephant. The elephant itself is the emotional connection to change. Finally, the path is the environment which can either help or hinder change.

Through numerous examples, the authors show that by appealing to the rider of a situation (the logical argument), the elephant (emotion), or the path (the environment) change can be effected by addressing these disparate elements individually, or together.

An excellent example of this is provided with nurses making errors in the dispensing of medications to patients. The hospital used in the example had an error rate of 1 in 1,000 – pretty good, but still a lot of errors. The nurses understood the need to not have errors, so the rider / logical part of the problem was not at issue. Likewise, nurses directly saw the effect of errors in medication had on their patients and so had a direct emotional connection – the elephant was on board too. The issue was in the environment or path. Nurses are constantly interrupted by doctors, and other nurses, while they are working and found it difficult not to help when asked, thereby distracting them from their main task. The solution? Tweak the environment / change the path so that nurses did not get distracted.

A bright orange vest was employed whenever a nurse was dispensing medications so that everyone else on the floor knew that they were not to be disturbed. The program was universally hated – the rider element thought it was unnecessary, the vests got lost all the time and hated that they could not help their doctors and colleagues. The elephant part of the problem felt that they might as well wear a dunce cap – the nurses felt demeaned and that the vest drew attention to the fact that they made mistakes.

This might have spelt doom for the program until the data came back. Over six months every department that employed the program saw a decrease in errors of 47%. Needless to say the change in the path / environment won over the rider / logical objections and the elephant / emotional objections because it worked.

The book is also a great champion of checklists which have gotten bad name precisely because they work so well. They can be seen as dehumanizing and giving rise to the idea the checklists mean “a monkey could do it.” Like most objections the book deals with this argument deftly. “Well, if that is true, grab a pilot’s checklist and try your luck with a 747.”

There are a number of other elements that I can’t do justice too here: black and white goals, precise clear instructions, the power of action triggers, and the how to harness the herd to improve culture. But these elements are really tweaks to the fundamental concept of the logical, emotional and environmental components of enacting change.

At the back of the book is, essentially, a manual for enacting change complete with a web link to resources and PDF of a one page overview that the authors encourage you share! It is here by the way. This alone is worth the purchase price of the book and will ensure that the book stays on my desk rather than on a bookshelf.

Wonderfully researched, well thought out, and very smart. “Switch” is essential reading for anyone who want to understand why change can be difficult and what it takes to implement change against the odds. It should also be a template for other business books – ditch the theory unless you can prove it I the real world and show how it applies to the real world. Authors please take note.

Can’t recommend this book enough and owe a huge favor to the person who bought it for me.

(Clicking on the cover above will take you to the book’s Amazon page and contribute to my book buying habit / problem.)

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management

Be Social and Get out of the Building

July 17, 2011 //
1

As big as the pile of paperwork on your desk might be, getting out of the building is an important part of any marketing strategy. Marketing is, after all, a discussion with your clients and potential clients about your business. It is not always possible to do that from behind your desk.

What do I mean by getting out of the building? Where will you go? Well that very much depends on your community, your business, and your marketing strategy in general. The idea is to engage with your clients on their own turf – so were is that? If you are a veterinary practice, you might find that there are pet oriented events in your community on a regular basis. Can you go along to them? Can you have a little information booth? Can you sponsor the event?

Once you start looking for events you’ll see them all over your community, and as long as you can come up with a connection to the event, the organizers will always be happy to have another booth. In retail and service industries, the businesses are often recognized just by their brick and mortar exteriors. Getting out into the wider community allows you to meet with your clients, and potential clients, on ‘neutral’ ground and for them to see the people who are in that building. It also proves your commitment to being more than just a business, but to actually being part of the wider community.

In addition to events, become a good corporate citizen. Join the local Chamber of Commerce, or other similar organizations, and actually go to some of the networking events and meetings. Yes, it can sometimes seem like an ‘old boys club’ at organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, but go anyway. You’ll be surprised at the wide cross-section of your community who attend, you’ll find out a lot about what is going on in your town, and how that might affect your business. You’ll also make connections with local officials, the media, and other business that may become useful. If you are in a larger metropolitan area, there may even be industry specific groups, or groups that relate to your daily tasks (like marketing) you can join.

It is easy to say “I’m too busy to go to that!” Make going to events just another part of your job – like doing payroll. You can’t say “I’m too busy to do payroll” – or at least I hope you don’t say that.

Before embarking out in the big wide world do have, for want of a better expression, and elevator speech ready. An elevator speech is basically a distilled version of your marketing strategy, and branding efforts, that only takes up a couple of minutes to recite. Why should someone come to your business in other words. The the good ones don’t sound like that is what you are saying, but at the same time they hit all the salient points. If you are going out and doing events you probably need a little more than that – a reason, beyond just self-promotion, to be out in the wider community. Of course, if someone asks about your business, that is when your elevator speech comes into play. In the veterinary field, zooanosis awareness (the transmission of disease from pets to humans) or the importance of vaccination are great examples of public information subjects. Fire departments, often do outside events with excellent themes such as the importance of emergency plans or checking the batteries in smoke detectors.

A booth for a vetererinary practice that includes a dog to pet, information about zooanosis and the promotion of a pet ambulance.

Whatever you choose, don’t try to do too much. Have a theme and stick with it. It is also important that this theme resonate with your strategy in your business as a whole. There is not point, for example, in having staff promoting the importance of zooanosis awareness out in the field if you also do not promote that in the veterinary clinic itself.

Social marketing and networking, which is effectively what this entire blog post has been about, is an excellent way connect with the community and promote your business without promoting your business. It can pay huge dividends in the long term, is inexpensive as long as you are sensible, but it is a long term strategy – don’t expect immediate returns. That way you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you get them!

Next week: Dipping your Toe Online

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Categories Business, Marketing, Veterinary

Marketing your Strengths and Overcoming Weaknesses

July 10, 2011 //
4

Marketing your business is all very well, but what are you marketing?

As we looked at here, developing your marketing strategy should have given you some ideas as to what your clients are wanting to buy. By marketing to what your clients are wanting to buy, as we looked into here , you are already defining certain things about your business. But what about your competitors? How are they marketing, branding,and running their business? You need some business intelligence – don’t just assume you know what is going on actually take the time to find out for sure!

Step one: Online Research. The great thing about the Internet is that you can now research a business to your heart’s content, for the most part, online. Look your competitors branding, how do they sell themselves? Are their hours better than yours? Do they promote how low their prices are? Do they have much of an online presence at all? Is their style very informal, or very corporate?

Step two: Physical Research. There is nothing wrong with sticking your head in, say hello to one of your local competitors, as long as there is not huge animosity between the businesses. You can learn a lot by just waiting in the lobby. There is nothing sneaky about this, this is the store front – essentially a public space. If you are in the veterinary business you can tell a lot if the building smells nice- you can bet the clients can too! Do the staff greet you as soon as you walk in the door? Is the waiting area comfortable? Is the waiting area well laid out? Does the office seem like a model of efficiency, or is everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off? Take the time to phone your competitors – not from your business, use someone else’s cell phone. How is the phone answered? How do their prices actually compare? They might say they are low cost but in reality…

Step three: Opinion of clients. Hopefully, when planing your strategy, you already figured a lot of this out already, but there is nothing wrong with talking discreetly some if your clients about why they like your business over your competitors. You might be surprised by the responses! What can this tell you about your business and your competitors?

Step four: Look at yourself and your plans. How does your business compare? How can you differentiate yourself? Maybe you need to be the low cost option in town? Maybe you need to be the premium option in town? How do your clients currently think of you? Are there simple things you can change about your business, now that you know all about your competitors, that will make a difference in the minds of your clients? These don’t have to be huge changes, but the more you can neutralize and respond to what your competitors are doing, the more you will begin to control the marketplace and define what it means to be in that market.

A couple of short examples:

Do you close for lunch? Do your competitors? Would your clients like to be able to come in during lunch? A staggered schedule could mean that you become the known as the business that is open and available at lunch time – that could be huge in the veterinary world, where if a pet is sick, and your client has to work, their lunch hour may be all the time they have! It is not a lot, but it is those little things that can start to differentiate your business.

Do you encourage communication? Do you make it easy for clients to come and talk to you? Do all the principles in your business have email addresses? Will they use them? Sounds strange, but the mere concept that businesses want to communicate with their clients – on the clients terms – can be seen as quite a radical concept.

If you have ideas along these lines feel free to add them in the comments section.

Next week: Get out of the building!

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Categories Business, Marketing, Veterinary

Book Review: “The Ten Commandments of Goal Setting” by Gary Ryan Blair

July 9, 2011 //
1

More of a pamphlet than a book, looked at in the wrong light ” the Ten Commandments of Goal Setting” can be used as an example of the worst kind of business writing: full of jargon, vague concepts and an almost pseudo-spiritual believe in goal setting. It is not all bad, and it is obvious that many people get a lot out of Gary Ryan Blair’s work; however being distilled in to this short volume, it sometimes reads like a speech made by Tyler Durden (the protagonist in Fight club.)

Purely a rallying call for goal setting, and very short on actual practical advice, this book is readable for someone already sold on the concept of goal setting (something I am) and painful, incomprehensible nonsense to anyone who’s not.

(Clicking on the cover above will take you to the book’s Amazon page and contribute to my book buying habit / problem.)

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Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management

Strategy to Branding and Back Again

July 4, 2011 //
10

Branding can seem like a dirty word – particularly to industries which seem to believe they should be above such things. But branding is simply a way of identifying your business to your clients, and more importantly, for clients to identify your business in their own minds.

Branding itself is neutral. Crass and badly implemented examples can certainly lead to customer confusion or downright rejection. However, the world if full of examples of businesses that embrace branding, find it a useful tool in their marketing strategy, and clients responding in an overwhelmingly positive manor. How else do we explain clients paying money to advertise brands on the clothes they wear rather than the other way round? The brand becomes such a powerful image that clients, and would-be clients, will pay to be associated with it because of what the client perceives that will say to other people about themselves.

As a business, excellence in branding is a key element in any marketing strategy; however, the marketing strategy itself is a critical part of that brand. The brand is method of communicating the goals and ideas contained in the marketing strategy to clients. The brand can’t do it all, but it is an important step and should re-enforce in the mind of the client these goals and ideals until they become synonymous (see last week’s post on creating a marketing strategy here for more information.)

Branding your business is about consistency and simplicity. Walk down the high street and look at the major brands you see there. It is highly unusual to see complex logos or extreme color palettes. By and large most chains use a logo that consists of their name, which ideally is short, and easily identifiable. Chilli’s, Subway, and Wal Mart are all good examples. Even target, which does use a separate logo, uses such a simple logo that is does not detract from their name.

Moving on from the name / logo of a business, other elements of the brand become even more apparent. In Target’s case it is the color red, which is reflected in color if the stores themselves both inside and out, the uniforms that associates wear, the carts, baskets, the carrier bags, the list goes on. Every item where a decision about color has to be made, or can be made, it is made with reference to the brand. But there are other more subtle color choices going on at target as well. There are two other colors that are being used – white and kaki. White is used as a secondary color wherever red is used. When it is not practical to use white, such as the color of trousers that associates wear, it is kaki a neutral white equivalent. Even the Target dog is white.

I find it useful when creating a brand to create a brand bible, or style guide if you prefer, which defines these types of decisions so that everyone can be on the same page when it comes to branding the business. Primary fonts, secondary fonts and general text fonts are all defined, primary and secondary colors are defined and most importantly the business name and / or logo is created in color and black and white and any additional ways if using the logo are defined in detail. Please also remember that when you are defining a brand: work with what you have. If you don’t work with existing elements the process needlessly expensive – unless a complete identity change is what is required in which case make sure that your budget is up to the task. For example, I once defined a brand’s color scheme, in part, because the business’s building happened to be painted those colors.

The web’s restricted color palette and choice of fonts, although becoming less of an issue as the web becomes more and more sophisticated, should still inform your branding decisions. To ignore them would be needlessly short-sighted and potentially very expensive.

Having photographs to hand which help define your business that are online with your brand are incredibly important. When you need a picture of your building, it does not necessarily have to always be the same picture, but it should have a consistent style so that potential clients know they are looking at the same building if they see two different pictures.

Your business’s mission statement may also be able to inform your branding choices. If not then I would argue it is time for a new mission statement! To use Target again the “Expect More, Pay Less,” tag line effectively distills their mission statement into four words, defines what they are about as a company, and even takes a pot shot at their competitors. Not bad for four words.

Finally, be intolerant of off message paperwork, business cards and even staff interactions. In terms of an
Animal hospital is your name ” X animal hospital” or is it “The X animal hospital?” Clients who are familiar with your brand should be able to spot your website, paperwork and even your building even if they forgot your name – because it will feel inconsistent with the identity you have created.

Clients ultimately control your brand’s identity because of how they perceive your business and the interactions they have with you and others about that brand. However, you can set the agenda and shape the discussion by having a consistent and identifiable brand that clients can latch on to and be proud to be associated with.

Next week: Marketing your Strengths and Overcoming Weaknesses

Categories Business, Marketing, Veterinary

Marketing from the Ground Up

June 27, 2011 //
19

So you think you need a marketing strategy?

Now what?

Marketing for a veterinary practice, any small business for that matter, starts with deciding what you should sell, or more appropriately what your customers are buying.

For example: Starbucks don’t sell coffee, they sell a daily luxury and a comfortable friendly environment to enjoy it in. They make coffee.

BMW don’t sell cars, they sell a status symbol that is tempered by a performance driving experience. They make cars.

You’re buying what?

Customers (or clients if you prefer) of veterinary practice are, in general, not buying veterinary services, they are buying the wellness and health of a family member. If you are looking to sell to your clients you need to understand what your clients are wanting to buy, or will want to buy, and then taylor both your marketing strategy and, ultimately your business to that need.

Business or Marketing?

Marketing can act as an adjunct to your other business operations, however, I believe that things work best when marketing is integral to every part of your business. Marketing is about the dialog you have with your clients. That dialog could them visiting your website, calling your office, dropping by, or receiving services. Who you are as a business, will define how those interactions are handled – why wouldn’t you want them to be informed by a consistent, and well though out, marketing message that is self reenforcing.

Having a clear understanding of what you are trying to achieve in business, and how you want your clients to perceive that achievement, will define everything else about your marketing program.

A final work of caution…

Keep in mind that you may not always be able to control how clients perceive and pigeon hole you. This is not necessarily a bad thing as your clients are claiming ownership of their relationship with your business. Google would be a classic example of one of the most successful brands on the planet, that can fail totally with product launches because their clients do not feel the new products fit in with how they perceive the company. The trick is to maintain, cultivate, and nurture the relationship with your clients without stifling it.

Next week: Strategy to Branding and Back Again.

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Categories Business, Marketing, Veterinary
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