Last week I got two flyers in mail that made me wonder how well their senders know me and in general have a sense of their potential customers.  The first one was an invitation to the "Ocean Harvest Festival" by Elliott's Pier 56 Oyster House.  Everyone who knows me understands that I dislike seafood.  In fact, I dislike it so much that I would get sick if I tried.  The fact that people detest seafood may be extremely rare - at least here in the Pacific Northwest.  However, you can compare inviting me to a seafood festival to inviting a a vegetarian to a steak party.  Sorry, Elliott's Pier 56 Oyster House, but I will completely ignore your mailer.

The other flyer raised my eyebrows as well.  Legacy Roofing mixed up the last names of my wife and me.  This is not quite as unsuitable as a letter I got many years ago from American Express in which they addressed me with "Dear B Eckhart Hme".  But this mailer also made us wonder how much they value us as their potential customers. How much confidence in their quality standards did this kind of address quality create with us?

There can be at least two lessons learned from these two examples:
1. Know your potential customers tastes and preferences so you contact only relevant customers and maximize the ROI of your direct mail spend.
2. Think about what the quality of your address database tells about the quality standards of your company.

Yesterday, Dr. Andrew Abela gave a talk at our company about the importance of storytelling in presentations.  Dr. Abela developed the Extreme Presentation method as a way to develop effective communication of complex information, such as market research findings or solutions-oriented sales proposals.

He has trained hundreds of employees at our company on his presentation design methodology.  The workshop guides the learner through a 10-step process, a methodology that puts logic to the presentation design.  He also just published a textbook on his methodology: Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication that Drives Action. 

Think of the content as the main ingredients of your training class.  Like for a dish, the "quality" of the ingredients are of utmost importance. The first consideration is the content value.  Evaluate the content by these factors. It should be inspiring and provide break-through insights.  Does it contain the latest, leading-edge thinking in the content area?  Does it address the pain point of your organization?  Does it contain frameworks that effectively map to your organization's priorities. Does it use up-to-date examples?

Another factor to look at is the "interactiveness" of the content. Does it contain exercises to help the audience to internalize it?  Do the attendees get a chance to apply the concepts taught?

Last but not least the material quality should be in a way that it is designed in a way so it appeals to the eye and has didactical value.  Does it pass the squint test?  Does it use appealing visuals?

A description that gives the potential audience a clear idea is also useful when you offer the class as an open enrollment training.

If your training program relies on training vendors (e.g. business school) or other groups (e.g. group that regularly provides Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)) within your company this aspect may be important.  The most crucial question in my mind is wether you have the right training vendor.  Working with a vendor that is not a good fit may not enable you to have access to leading academics or be able to integrate cutting-edge learning techniques.  Once you selected a vendor, benchmarks should be set and a regular evaluation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be the norm.  Should the KPI drop below your agreed upon goal it is time to have a conversation with the vendor or look for a new one.

Any learning vendor should be regarded as a long-term partner as it takes significant time for the vendor to become familiar with your company's culture and values, your formal and informal power structures, business issues, etc.  Similarly for internal partners, which may not recognize the effort in supporting a training program, it is important to understand the training department's objectives, roles and standards.

Mutual accountability for the training success should be a key driver of the relationship with your vendor or internal partner.  Expectation setting via SLAs and key performance metrics should be done and results reviewed on a on a course-by-course basis.  Your partners should commit to constantly evaluating their instructors performance and to managing their quality. 

Due to the strategic nature of a learning partner relationship the partner account management becomes an important aspect of your training program.

Anyone who speaks at your training class (instructor, guest speaker, panelist) has a crucial role in the success of your training - perhaps this is the single most important factor for training success.  The following should be present:

a) speaker should have instructional skills, like ability to address different learning styles and reading and reacting to the climate in the classroom,
b) speaker should have a dynamic, inspiring, and engaging personality,
c) should be recognized as a SME in the area of instruction,
d) be familiar with your company (knowledge of culture, pain points, challenges, and objectives),
e) day of teaching preparedness (physical and mental state), and
f) a clear value proposition for the guest speaker (what does the speaker get out of speaking?).

Like following good marketing practice, when setting up a marketing training you should start with the audience.  My experience is that the following factors should be considered when designing and executing a training.  Comments are welcome!

1. Needs and expectations: ensure that your audience has similar needs, expectations and is facing similar challenges.

2. Demography: your audience should have a similar skill and knowledge level, background and/or experience.  Other factors like formal seniority or job titles are less important.

3. Attitude: the audience should have a positive attitude towards the training and feel good about their time investment.  In addition it should be motivated to learn, be respectful towards the instructor and other attendees, and be mature.  Some of these factors are difficult to control but there are actions that you can take to start off on the right foot.

4. Networking & community: no training should be without the opportunity to network.  There are even things that can be done for extending the networking beyond the classroom.  Ask your audience to rotate seats during the day if no other networking opportunities exist.

5. Learning preparedness: often attendees come badly prepared to learn which negatively affects their own learning effectiveness and the effectiveness of the entire class.  Attendees should be committed to taking the time out of their schedule, be able to focus on the content, and be able to engage. The attendee's manager should respect their employee's time in the class; pre-class assignments should be completed, and last but not least the attendee should arrive in time so they don't miss the kick-off of the class.

As I am planning our training program for next fiscal year I am taking the opportunity to document the elements of a successful marketing training program.  Planning and running a classroom training is a complex undertaking; there are many parts that can positively and negatively impact the training outcome.  Many of these elements also can be applied to e-Learning or other more innovative training delivery types. 

From my perspective the elements of marketing training excellence fall into six categories:
1. Audience
2. Instructor and guest speakers
3. Training vendor or internal training partner
4. Content
5. Instructional Design
6. Execution supporting infrastructure

In the coming weeks I will describe each of these elements.

 
Andy Sernovitz giving a class on word of mouth marketing

Last week I didn't host any marketing classes.  Instead I went to Whistler, Canada, on a five day family skiing trip.  We enjoyed the great snow, the sun, and the friendly INTRAWEST staff.  Intrawest ULC is a majority owner of the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort. 

When I traveled to Whistler for the first time several years ago I was impressed by the the service orientation of their staff.  In addition, the service experience was noticeably consistent.  I was so impressed because I never experienced this kind of customer orientation at ski resorts in Europe.  From the lift operator to the restaurant worker - everyone was friendly and helpful.  Intrawest hires people from all over the world - perhaps that's a key ingredient of their secret service excellence "recipe".

Lift worker "John" from Wales

Maybe not ... but an interesting concept with practical application to marketers who want to better understand and respond to their customer's behaviors.  John Rosen and AnnaMaria Turano, marketing consultants with MCAworks, recently published Stopwatch Marketing.  They stopped by at our company on their book tour and presented their methodology.  The book is based on the insight that customer's willingness to spend time on purchasing decisions varies.  The behavior isn't fix for each product.  It rather changes based on the personal situation of the shopper.  E.g. you buy wine for different reasons and are willing to spend more time in the selection process when the stakes are high.  In some cases you may want to slow down the purchasing process and in other you want to accelerate it.

Rosen and Turano identified four different consumption behaviors: Impatient, Painstaking, Reluctant, and Recreational.  Each cluster is based on a distinct patterns of behaviors.  What's the practical application of their concept?  It helps marketers better understand customer behavior so they can more effectively align their marketing strategies with their customer's needs and expectations.

Without doubt storytelling is one of the hot marketing skills these days.  Last week we hosted a class for in-tact groups led by "Made to Stick.  Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die" author Chip Heath and a consultant.  At the start of the class a few brave attendees told their stories in front of the audience.  The sad fact: when the audience was asked nobody remembered what they said. 

There is a reason. Somehow their wealth of knowledge got in the way of telling stories that stick. And they didn't apply the principles effective storytellers use. The "Made to Stick" authors came up with the SUCCES template that help to make a story memorable.  The elements of the SUCCES framework can not only be used for creating messaging for speeches but also for print ads, branding, sales pitches, web pages, and internal communications.

Last week we had the first delivery of our revamped "Customer Insight Leadership for New Product Development" class.  It was taught by Lisa Fortini-Campbell and Mohan Sawhney.  The class now includes lectures on gaining customer insights and translating them into products as well as overcoming orthodoxies and mental models.  Overcoming of the "mental barriers" that exist in organizations help greatly creating innovations.  Attendees did an exercise on identifying orthodoxies (accepted view), coming up with "unorthodoxies" (contrary version of the orthodoxy), and the resulting insights.  This exercise was truly eye-opening.

Christian's example reminded me of a conversation I had with Mohan Sawhney last week. Mohan was dissatisfied with the “welcome” he usually receives from the hotel he regularly stays in when teaching at our company. He stayed there for many years and does it many times a year.

 

However, he always gets greeted with the question “have you stayed with us before?” No “Welcome Dr. Sawhney. We are glad you are staying with us again.” or so. In my mind nothing is worse than not being recognized as a regular and valuable customer.

 

My wife and I felt the same frustration after years of traveling to Germany and staying usually 4-5 weeks per year in same hotel. We expressed our frustration to the hotel staff that we were treated like “normal guests” and asked if they would be able to provide some kind of “frequent guest” benefits like free parking in the hotel garage or a room discount. They declined. So we provided our comments in writing.

 

Everything changed suddenly last year. Coincidentally the hotel organized a frequent guest appreciation dinner during our visit last summer. We attended and had a long conversation with the hotel’s general manager. He got it. In fact he was very customer minded. When we visited again last Christmas we were pleasantly when we entered room...