Graduating to a Best Customer Focus

This weekend, I had a chance to celebrate my wife’s graduation from the Master’s Program in Holistic Health Studies from St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN.  After 4 years of hard work, she now has a chance to bring her skills and talents to teach people about the many facets of Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  I am so excited and proud of her.

As I sat there at graduation listening to “Pomp and Circumstance” (what would graduation be without it?), I thought about transitions.  The transition from graduate work to working in the “real world” is the difference between analysis and action.  You can study all you want, but it only counts if you can make a difference in the world afterwards.

And you are never done studying and learning.  But just as in data-driven marketing, you have to make the tradeoff between analysis and action and decide that you have learned enough and that it is now time to get some customer-centric pilot programs into the market.  My wife did so with an internship during her study. She knew that she did not know enough yet, but had to get her “feet wet” and test the theories in reality.  As marketers we have to do the same thing.

As we transition from 2009 to 2010, let’s all make a resolution — a resolution to get pilot programs that focus on our Best Customers out in the marketplace NOW.  Enough thinking — it is time to put aside the reasons why a program won’t succeed and test some theories in the real world.

We are often overcome by worries that keep us from testing new concepts, worries such as:

1. How to scale the effort? Figure that out once you have gotten in the pilot and begun to identify what works and what does not.
2. Who will lead the rollout? There is no rollout without a successful pilot; find an “entrepreneur” in the company who can make the pilot work and then you can transition the program to a rollout specialist after having good results.
3. Who can do the work of the pilot? Leverage your partners (printers, agencies and consultants) to help you do cheap work fast with their arms and legs.  Many groups will help out if there is an opportunity to help with a larger scale initiative if it proves successful.
4. How do I get other departments to buy-in? We have found that buy-in is not so hard when the pilot is limited in scope, budget and time requirements.  Even if you are not sure about buy-in for the rollout, do the pilot anyway.  You can worry about the rollout when you get the winning results and learnings.

The essence of Complementary and Alternative Medicine is that regular care of the whole person is critical to long-term health and wellness.  In 2010, let’s decide that a regular dose of new learnings and testings will be critical to the health of our customers, our business, and probably to the health of our careers.

As my wife would say, “Namaste.”

Tagged as: Alternative Medicine, Customer Centricity, data-driven marketing, Database marketing, Holistic health, new year's resolutions