This article from Advertising Age is somewhat geared to consumer goods categories. While it does not directly address the role of the intermediary, or face to face sales rep, often key to financial services sales, I agree with most of the concepts.

Our consulting practice has seen strong demand from clients asking us to help them build best practices multi-channel marketing models.

I like how Circuit City blends the on-line experience with an in-store experience. The hand-off across channels, and synchronization of the consumer experience is difficult, but when you pull it off, you have a very satisfied consumer. Most of our financial services clients need to synchronize across the web, a call center, and a branch-based or local agent of some type. E-Commerce continues to evolve…


Ring Up E-Commerce Gains With a True Multichannel Strategy

    Bring Together Online and Brick-and-Mortar Shopping Experiences

By Michael Stich and Jim Leonard
Published in Advertising Age: March 10, 2008


Even the most forward-thinking CMOs don't know what they don't know when it comes to e-commerce integration, as they struggle to overcome a forced divide between virtual and real-world retail. As more than 50 million households in the United States regularly shop online, e-commerce strategies now face a strategic inflection point. By avoiding channel conflict, the biggest and brightest suppliers and customers today confront declining combined share. In response, they are increasingly courting core shoppers and struggling to retain them in an effort to retain channel leadership.

It's important to recognize that your shopper is already "multichannel." For some products and categories, online distribution has fundamentally changed retail (think Amazon or iTunes). For other products, the touch and feel available through brick-and-mortar retail remains king (think organic produce or luxury apparel).
 
The right distribution theater depends on the shopper, who shops across channels and discovers brands across media. Regardless of shopping mode, CMOs must address both need states and trip modes -- for example, time of day -- to seamlessly integrate the "distribution divide."

Forward-thinking CMOs are teaching their peers about the benefits -- indeed, the necessity -- of treating the physical retail environment as a relic of an offline world. They recognize a closing window of opportunity to secure strategic advantage over pure-play or single-channel retail. The web continues to be a gold mine of consumer research: More than 80% of Americans have researched products on the internet before purchase, according to a February 2008 Pew internet survey. These trends undermine the divide-and-lose strategy in favor of unify-and-win.

Category stewards at vendors and retailers are constructing a new working partnership. They create new experiences based on consumer habits and deliver both greater choices and tightly tied checkout across multiple channels. The road to relevance entails mastering e-commerce not as a discrete channel but as a source of killer shopper insights that fuel innovation across all distribution channels.

The first step begins with creating a distinctive e-commerce business model. E-commerce success results from jointly experimenting with four fundamental strategies: sell to a niche consumer, create a compelling business model, create a compelling product and dramatically improve the purchase experience. These strategies work consistently across categories and extend to models back in the offline world.

Sell to a niche consumer
(Think Williams-Sonoma, RadioShack, Wine.com, Zappos.) This approach offers certain consumers access to items they are unable or unwilling to find in local retail. It can be driven by product scarcity or by desire for discretion when buying items such as lingerie, for example. Stores can also push out from their limiting walls by using their websites as online catalogs for niche consumers. Some retailers have long used the model of a small footprint but huge product selection. That integration extends deeply into the multichannel world.

Create a compelling business model
(Think eBay, Amazon, Orbitz.) Online-enabled marketplaces, exchanges and direct distributors have proven enormously successful and promise fruitful outcomes for those committed to extending them to physical retail. At-the-counter experiences could build community among shoppers or provide a means of comparison shopping without leaving the store. Online recommender systems also might cross the channel divide, delighting consumers with new ideas they can act on immediately in the store.

Create a compelling product
(Think Dell, M&Ms, Nike, Nespresso.) Companies succeed here by delivering build-to-order or upgradeable products uniquely enhanced by the web. Several traditional companies are implementing this approach, delighting consumers with newly customizable choices without diluting the value of the core brand. Companies also deploy this strategy to create ongoing relationships with consumers by offering a razor-and-blade models of upgradeable features to a base product.

Dramatically improve the purchase experience
(Think Netflix, Target, Blinds.com.) Leading companies deploy this strategy to overhaul the offline consumer experience. The web is a great enabler for new payment options, a simplifier of complicated pricing schemes and a channel for giving back to the community while shopping. Recommender systems and the wisdom of crowds also reside on the web and need to find their way into the offline store. This strategy also results in integrated offerings, such as the ability to buy a product online but pick it up at a store to avoid the delay and cost of shipping.

Once CMOs develop the right collection of e-commerce strategies, they also must successfully manifest them in the store. The web's ability to capture data on purchases, shopping behavior and history is just the start. To persuade skeptics, the CMO should commission a fresh look at consumer behavior and how the brand engages consumers where they are in their lives. The moment-of-truth occasions are proliferating, and their requirements are shifting.

Some early examples show just how well an integrated approach can work. An early leader in shopper segmentation and retail integration, Best Buy has reported encouraging results from its multiyear commitment -- involving budgets, people and IT resources -- to better serve its core shoppers. Preliminary results show a 25% to 50% sales lift in segmented stores from 2004 to 2007. Beyond traditional data mining, Best Buy derives insights from shopping patterns and basket analyses -- both in store and online. The retailer uses these insights to improve assortment, merchandising and formats to meet the needs of its shopper segments. The next generation of shopper segmentation will enable near-real-time, in-store innovation, guided by online user preferences, behavior trending, increased interactivity and product customization, and secure personalization. The brick-and-mortar redesigns, powered by digital "fact-sets," have produced compelling and profitable dividends, all led by Best Buy's desire to better know and serve its core shoppers.

Not to be outdone, Circuit City has improved its multichannel retail offer in a variety of practical ways: Online shoppers can conduct research (including product reviews) and purchase online while opting to pick up the purchase in store within an hour of online payment. Once the shopper arrives in the store, trained associates offer relevant cross- and upsell options, such as accessories, warranties and services, pleasing the shopper and working to drive up loyalty and total basket ring. Brick-and-mortar shoppers, in turn, are enticed to visit the retailer online to redeem store coupons, and associates are rewarded for promoting multichannel -- store coupons are encoded to track users' origination points.

The takeaway for forward-looking marketers: You can increase strategic alignment with key customers by speeding up the "channel-less" evolution. Start by knowing your customers' priorities. Serve up only relevant products or services and improve the in-store experience (virtual or real-world) -- all while entertaining and educating shoppers or saving them time, money or both.

Winners in the next phase of e-commerce will delight consumers in every channel, tailoring a single brand experience to the channel chosen by consumers in any shopping moment or occasion.


Robert Rudy      Paradox Advisors
 
Strategy, Operations Improvement and Technology Consulting

I saw this article recently in the Wall Street Journal. The topic is customer loyalty and building solid customer relationships.

My firm, Paradox Advisors, recently completed a strategy project for a leading global brand on how to cement strong relationships, across multiple products, with their customer base.

Even though the our client's brand is extremely strong, and customers actively seek out their products as part of their lifestyle, there remains significant upside growth potential.

Check out what Capital One is up to. It is similar to the ideas gleaned from the customer research we conducted...

------
(I've edited and shortened the original story from the WSJ)

In a novel move to lure bank deposits, Capital One Financial Corp. is introducing a money-market account...that offers rewards points based on customers' average monthly balances.

The Rewards Money Market account -- which the company says is among the first to offer miles based on balances held in savings accounts -- offers an annual yield of 4.65% and hands out one mile for every $20 of average monthly balance, including interest. Miles can be redeemed for airline miles, cash or merchandise. In exchange, customers earn a slightly lower rate than Capital One's standard High Yield Money Market account, which pays 5%.

While many financial institutions have built rewards programs around their credit and debit cards, some banks are looking at ways to build loyalty around their deposit accounts. Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank and National City Corp., for example, have introduced rewards programs in recent years that allow customers to accumulate points based on the number of accounts and services they sign up for and their transaction levels.

Traditionally, most banks have competed for customers' deposits by offering teaser interest rates or cash rewards. Now, some banks are looking at rewards programs to lure more of their customers' business. In July, Citibank expanded its ThankYou Network program to include clients of its Smith Barney business who use cards linked to their brokerage accounts. National City also recently expanded its rewards program to include mortgages and auto loans; customers can also earn points for automatic transfers into a savings account.

For banks, the programs are a way to develop "stickiness" and make it harder for customers to switch to a rival bank. Banks may also be using rewards to get customers to carry larger balances. "If your balance is maintained at higher levels, they're less likely to lose you as a customer," says Kelly Hlavinka, director of Colloquy, a loyalty-marketing firm in Milford, Ohio.

Lesson from this story: Give your customers a reason to do more business with you!

Robert Rudy      Paradox Advisors
 
Strategy, Operations Improvement and Technology Consulting

Alan Greenspan, Ph.D.,
former chairman of the
U.S. Federal Reserve,
will keynote the 2007
LIMRA Annual Meeting,
which will host the leaders
of major life
insurance and financial
services companies
to Boston from
Oct. 28 to 30, 2007

You may get more out of this address than reading his book...

Alan Greenspan is an American economist and was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. Following his retirement as Fed chairman, he accepted an honorary (unpaid) position at HM Treasury in the United Kingdom.

Greenspan now works as a private advisor making speeches and providing consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC. On May 16th 2007, Greenspan was hired as a special consultant by PIMCO and he will participate in Pimco’s quarterly economic forums and speak privately with the bond manager about Fed interest rate policy. He is also working on a memoir.

"LIMRA has established a record of presenting the most distinguished speakers at our annual meeting," said Bob Kerzner, president and CEO of LIMRA. "We're pleased and proud to be able to have Dr. Greenspan share his experience and wisdom of global economics with our audience."

In addition to Dr. Greenspan, the program will include a panel of CEOs discussing their strategies for results. The panel will feature Thomas M. Marra, president and CEO of The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.; Scott F. Powers, CEO, Old Mutual (USA) and Old Mutual Asset Management; and Stuart H. Reese, chairman, president and CEO, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.

The meeting, which will take place at the Sheraton Boston Hotel, typically draws more than 500 top executives from LIMRA member companies in the U.S., Canada and abroad.

CONTACT:
Howard S. Drescher, (860) 285-7875, hdrescher@limra.com
Catherine Theroux, (860) 285-7787, ctheroux@limra.com

 Robert Rudy      Paradox Advisors
 Strategy, Operations Improvement and Technology

 

   

At Paradox Advisors, we are a management consulting firm
with a unique approach.

I thought I would add something to the blog about the firm I manage, a somewhat unique model in the consulting business. This is from our company website at www.paradoxadvisors.com , which I invite you to check out.

"Instead of employing a permanent staff of consultants with a static skill set, we assemble a distinct team for each engagement. We draw from a deep network of experts and consultants, pre-qualified to meet our demanding standards.

Before you hire us, we work with you to agree on and specify the critical issues. Because each client has different needs, we design a tailored problem solving approach with practical plans for accomplishing your goals.

We have been in business since 2001 and serve firms in many industries; including Fortune 50 firms, mid-sized companies and start-up ventures. The industries we have served include:

• insurance: property & casualty, life, reinsurance and brokerage
• healthcare
• banking and credit cards
• retail
• media services and advertising
• information services
• technology; software, services and e-commerce

We deliver equivalent or greater value than the 'name brand' consulting firms. Most of our people have worked at these great firms. Paradox Advisors, however, has low overhead, affordable rates, and is flexible in how we assemble resources to meet your needs. For example, we can:

• provide interim leadership to help launch new lines of business
• field a traditional consulting team of 2 to 8 consultants
• create, manage or staff PMOs (program management offices) for large scale transformation initiatives or IT projects
• conduct strategic or annual planning sessions for senior management teams, or
• provide ongoing coaching for executives managing significant change initiatives

Core Values

• We staff projects with best-in-class talent from multiple disciplines, providing clients with unbiased, objective, fact-based analysis.
• We don’t recommend change for the sake of change, nor do we hesitate to recommend aggressive actions when appropriate. We tell it like it is.
• We consider and leverage your organization’s strengths and work with your team to implement a practical plan with a high probability of success. It's all about execution and being practical. It's not about fancy charts and graphics.

 Robert Rudy
 Paradox Advisors
 Strategy, Operations Improvement and Technology

The amount of free information and tools available today online is mind-boggling!  And through my various research projects, I come across a lot of useful information that  is worth sharing.

Hey, I went to Wharton, (which is consistently ranked higher than Harvard on many measures), but the HBS folks do publish lots of great material.

I hope that this blog becomes an information resource you will refer to on business management leadership and strategic planning. 

Harvard's - 'Doing Business Effectively' outlines 10 strategies for success in business. It covers strategic planning, marketing plans, market research, competitor analysis, branding and much more.

It's a free e-book well worth reading. 

   Robert Rudy      Paradox Advisors
   Strategy, Operations Improvement and Technology

I have mixed feelings about what many companies call strategic planning, but creating an overall direction for your company or work group is necessary for success. People need to feel as if they are part of something bigger than themselves. At the same time, they need clear direction to know what "bigger thing" they are part of.

My mixed feelings result from the fact that strategic planning is rarely strategic and most frequently results in pages and pages of plans that sit unused in desk drawers. I have watched a number of clients fail at implementing their strategic plans over the years. I think many companies fail to implement their strategic plans for these reasons.

• In a fast moving, fast changing industry, you can create an overall compass for your direction. You can put together operational plans. You can set goals. But things can change fast, so you can't 'do strategy' once per year. Some form of strategic thinking and assessment should be part of the monthly agenda. Can you really wait until next year to have a management discussion of what higher interest rates, market volatility or a recession could mean to your business?

• I often have witnessed strategic planning meetings that felt a lot more like a prioritization of to-do lists. I met with participants a week later to find that their manager had agreed that the prioritization of objectives as was great. However, "all of the stuff" was important and had to get done. Thus, priorities were wiped out and each employee made baby steps on each of the too many objectives. And, when everything is a priority, nothing is really a priority.

• When strategic planning sessions are facilitated by consulting companies, the consultants frequently recommend and request pages of research about competitors, markets, and current company performance metrics. While such a systematic approach is to be lauded, companies rarely have all of this data collected nor do they have the ability to utilize it effectively. Sometimes less in more. What are the 2 or 3 key factors or issues that we simply must address? It should not take a lot of consultant hours to surface these issues.

• Many companies lack the ability to execute strategy. For whatever reason, they make great strategic plans and then fail to create the specific framework necessary for strategic planning follow-up. Without a follow-up framework and accountability system, execution of the strategic plan won't happen.

      From Susan M. Heathfield,
      Your Guide to Human Resources.

Business news....
without it, no business can compete today.

It has become the oxygen to the business system. You can’t seem to get enough of it.

A few years ago business news was ruled by the magazines, and one often subscribed to two or three professional journals, a daily business newspaper annd a magazine or two. The Internet changed all that.


Today, business news can be instant, tailored to your exact needs, and easily accessible wherever you are or whenever you need it.

The Internet:
With the power of search engines, especially the big three (Google, MSN, and Yahoo), you can discover information about your industry, keep abreast of developments in your industry and keep up with and ahead of your competition. Google alerts keeps you up date on who is saying what about you and your company. Set up an RSS Page and track all your favorite sites in one place.

The Professional Blog and Forums:
Both of these peer to peer services can be valuable sources of information. When the presidents of large companies are blogging and you can read their views on a daily basis, your own sources of news and business data are greatly enhanced.

The forum lets you ask questions and your peers can reply, and usually do. You can end up with a far wider point of view than you could have a few years ago by just reading the industry journals and Business Week or Forbes.

Live sites: like Reuters and Bloomberg and can bring you instant business data of a general type.

Other services are industry related, and video reports are available from industry experts.

Technology is changing everything - news is delivered faster and you don't want to caught driving in the slow lane!

 Robert Rudy      Paradox Advisors
 Strategy, Operations Improvement and Technology

 

 

Managing a Sales Staff Means Understanding How Your Workers Communicate

Bob Rosner from ABC News did a great article on this topic.

"Recently, I learned an amazing trick that many women have turned into an art form. When asked a question they don't want to answer, women might pause, smile and ask a question. Most guys' egos immediately kick in and they answer the question and forget all about the unanswered question.

Salespeople, especially the really good ones, can be equally adept at controlling a conversation. That's why it's important as a manager of salespeople to get your own ego out of the way and really focus on what your people are saying. I've included some questions below to help you to do this.

Do you ask more than tell? I remember once asking someone on the street in China a question. He nodded his head and I kept thinking he understood what I was saying. After a few minutes of this I finally realized he was just being polite and didn't understand a word I was saying. That's why it's so important to ask challenging questions that force people to reconsider their assumptions and then to listen intently to the answers. It's also very important to always let them suggest solutions before you start offering your own.

Do you adapt to their style? I had a boss who never wanted to visit my work space; we always met in his office. Are you like that? It's important to make your coaching more about the workers. Find out how they learn the best and what topics they think are the most important to discuss. The more you make it about your people, the higher the odds that they'll start improving their performance.

Do you provide specific, fact-based and practical feedback? Specific, fact-based and practical -- what a concept. Many bosses talk in riddles!  It is often really hard to sort out what they are really trying to say. That's why it's so important to make your feedback relevant to the issues that your sales people are struggling with.

Do you filter the demands on their time? Salespeople make money when they are selling. Yet so many companies drown them in meetings and "admistratriva" (don't look that up in the dictionary, I just made it up). Do everything you can do to focus their efforts on making you money and eliminate everything that doesn't.

Do you model the behavior you'd like to see from them? If you want a customer-focused sales team then model that behavior. Ask a lot of questions, focus on their concerns and be responsive to their needs. People learn by example, so set a good one.

Follow these tips and your sales force will answer your questions the right way -- with huge sales." 

   Robert Rudy   www.paradoxadvisors.com

STRATEGY: With any business you need a strategic plan.

Maximum, sustainable, long-term growth is a result of planning, not accident. You want to build and sustain a competitive edge, set up an ongoing process for assessing markets and trends, and develop a vision for their business's future growth. Customers and Marketing are a big piece of that pie.

Marketing Sherpa provides practical case studies and know-how. MarketingSherpa is a research firm specializing in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing (and what does not.)

They are  not an agency, consultancy or other vendor seeking your business. They are  not even available for private research -- all of their research is published for the entire MarketingSherpa community to benefit from. Their goal -- to give marketers of the world the stats, inspiration, and instructions to improve their results.

Their site is a wealth of knowledge. Free reports, you may download and read as many of these resources as you'd like. You may also share these hotlinks with your colleagues and in blogs or email newsletters. You may also use the charts and data contained herein for your own articles and/or presentations with proper attribution.

Business-to-Business Marketing Resources

Landing Pages, Ecommerce & Web Design

How to Sell Online Subscriptions

Wisdom Report - Annual Reader-Written PDF

Latest MarketingSherpa Free-to-Read Stories

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They offer lots of useful inforamtion and case studies on strategic planning, leadership and management. MarketingSherpa is praised by The Economist, Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge Site, and Entrepreneur.com   

Robert Rudy      Paradox Advisors
   Strategy, Operations Improvement and Technology

       

A successful company always has a great leader!
Here are some inspirational quotes from great leaders-

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." --Lao Tzu

"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." --Ken Blanchard

"Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile." --Vince Lombardi

"Leadership rests not only upon ability, not only upon capacity; having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it. His leadership is then based on truth and character. There must be truth in the purpose and will power in the character." --Vince Lombardi

"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born -- that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born." --Warren G. Bennis

"All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership." --John Kenneth Galbraith

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." --John Quincy Adams

"The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization." --Fred Fiedler and Martin Chemers in Improving Leadership Effectiveness

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." --Ralph Nader

"Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy." --Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control." --Tom Landry

"The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes." --Tony Blair

"Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish." --Sam Walton

"Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not 'making friends and influencing people' -- that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." --Peter F. Drucker

"Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning." --Warren G. Bennis

"You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership." --Dwight D. Eisenhower

"A good leader is not the person who does things right, but the person who finds the right things to do." --Anthony T. Dadovano

**********

And here's my contribution. I picked this up from a McKinsey Director during the Firm's orientation program for new consultants.

"You are a leader if people are willfully following you."

That one always stuck with me, because it puts the focus on behaving and communicating in such a way that people will listen and respond via action.

- Robert Rudy
  www.paradoxadvisors.com