What Blinders Are You Wearing?

The Hospital

I recently asked a group of people to describe the worst new product launch and the lessons they learned from it.

One of the people worked in a hospital with an in-house clinic. He described how they had decided to test keeping the clinic open on a non-working day to see how many people would come in on their day off. They chose to test on Veteran's Day (a bad choice in the first place, because probably only 20% of the people had work off that day...)

The clinic was filled. Success!

Wrong! Because it was a holiday, all of the clinic's support functions, like x-ray, the lab, and the pharmacy were closed. People who came in had to come back again the next day to get the other services required to fill their needs.

The organization's conclusion was that the test was a failure because people had to come back another day, terribly inconveniencing those patients, many of whom complained vociferously.

When I asked what the major lesson he learned from the experience, he said that people should visit their doctor more regularly so they wouldn't have emergencies that would require them to have to come back during non-business hours.

I literally laughed out loud. How could a business become so blinded from the needs of their consumers to miss something this obvious?

Real marketers, those who realize that the absolute core of every company's success is the identification and fulfillment of consumer needs, would have a totally different thought process.

A real marketer would say "this test was a resounding success. All we need to do is to open up the ancillary functions next time and we'll run thousands of additional patients through our clinic every year, make tons more money, and reduce the stress on our overworked emergency room, with its average wait time of between 3 and 8 hours!"

But what was really telling was his conclusion that the solution was for people to take more time off work to see their doctor on a more regular basis, so that they won't have to stress the hospital's system by asking hospital personnel to work during non-standard hours.

What a great example of the major problem with so many companies, and other organizations (especially those with monopolies / oligopolies like government operations, medical facilities, airlines, utilities, universities and auto manufacturers)? "We exist to fulfill our job descriptions. Don't do anything to make that job tougher," instead of "what are your needs and how can I fulfill them for you?"

Remember the last time you went to renew your driver's license? Oh yes, I tried to forget that one too...

The Truck

My neighbor is the manager for a number of radio stations. She knows that I love marketing, so the other night when I answered a knock on the door, she was there to show off her company's new truck.

It was one of the coolest trucks I've seen. It was one of those remote broadcast trucks, but this time, instead of being decorated like a boom box, the whole side of the huge truck was a back-lit sign featuring the radio station's logo. It was basically a lighted, moving billboard. Then what was really cool was that after a few seconds, the signage moved, changing to another message. (She told me that the signs were on big rolls of paper that periodically rolled to a different position.)

What a great advertising / publicity tool! She's launching a new station, so she's planning to send the truck out each evening and have it drive around during rush hour, in the restaurant areas and even neighborhoods to bring attention to the new station.

It will clearly catch attention - in fact, my wife commented to me that she passed it on her way home - thinking "hey that truck is glowing!"

So where were the blinders?

Not one of the signs showed the station's web address (their URL)! Now I know that this is a radio station, but anyone who knows anything about radio today has seen that those stations who actively and aggressively tie their broadcasts to their websites, get better listener loyalty, increase advertiser revenues/loyalty, and build market share.

So why didn't every one of the signs at least include the URL? Because whomever designed the sign didn't think of it. They're wearing blinders!

Isn't it interesting that radio, the very medium that lives and dies by its ability to predict and even steer fads and trends, is still focused on marketing techniques from the 70's and 80's?

The Biggest Blinder

What's the biggest blinder in business?

Tradition.

"We do it that way because... well, because that's the way we do it."

How many of your company's systems / functions are wearing blinders? How much are those blinders costing you, either directly or in opportunity cost?

A simple change can oftentimes make a huge difference in costs and your company's ability to serve the needs of your customers.

Potential Solutions

1. Do a zero-based systems check at least once a year, focusing on every method, every system, every tradition, every product, every service, every point of customer contact, and ask questions like:

"Is this _________ helping to identify and fulfill consumer needs?
Does it add value to the consumer?
Would the consumer care if it simply went away?"

If the answer's "no" and it's not mandated by law or GAAP, kill it. Clearly it that loss won't hurt anything.

2. Hire a consultant to come in at least once per year to question how you do business. This consultant should be someone from outside of your industry, not steeped in industry norms and practices (be aware that if you do an history of where blinders originate, many of them came from somewhere else in your industry.) The consultant will be a pain, but if you're humble enough to listen, you'll learn all kinds of things you didn't know about yourself already.

And don't bring the same consultant back more than 2 years in a row...

3. Use every new employee as a blinders consultant. On their first day of work tell them that you'd like them to quietly keep a record of all the things that your company does that seem strange, frustrating, destructive, or that add little value. Then interview them weekly to find out what they've discovered.

4. Form a mastermind group with people outside of your industry and share your issues and challenges there.

5. Take a lesson from the old suggestion contests - start a contest to identify blinders in your own company, paying an incentive to whomever points them out first. $100 here and there can make a real difference in your bottom line!

6. Watch other companies to see how they handle similar issues - there's much you can learn from Land's End's return process, Donald Trump's PR machine, Amazon's website marketing tools and WalMart's inventory handling systems even if you're not in any of these businesses. This requires you to spend time reading publications not specific to your industry, talking with others in the know, and generally paying attention to the world around you, even when you're not on the clock.

In other words, learn the best practices for each key *job function*, *not* for your industry. Tradition says that best practices in your industry should adopted by all industry players and used as their own. Unfortunately, industries become so steeped in blinders-itis that best practices rarely do anything but turn the horse's head for a moment to see something outside of the normal range of vision. This is especially true in the area of marketing. They're really not best practices, they're just slightly less bad than everyone else in the industry. But if you study best practices in marketing from a wide variety of industries, you'll pick up new techniques that could easily double your business in the next 12 months.

Try these techniques, get rid of those blinders, and make more money in the process!

Are you interested in knowing the techniques used by those who define the best practices in public relations? Pick up a copy of Media Relations Power, our collection of over 199 different ways that you can build your public relations presence and success.

Tags: