Office Move

The Net Promoter Score is obtained by asking customers a single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale, where 10 is “extremely likely” and 0 is “not at all likely”: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” Based on their responses, customers are categorized into one of three groups: Promoters (9–10 rating), Passives (7–8 rating), and Detractors (0–6 rating). The percentage of Detractors is then subtracted from the percentage of Promoters to obtain a Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS can be as low as -100 (everybody is a detractor) or as high as +100 (everybody is a promoter). An NPS that is positive (i.e., higher than zero) is felt to be good, and an NPS of +50 is excellent.

RSW undertakes a Net Promoter Score audit each quarter. Our NPS for Q1 of 2012 was +36.

My wife has a little Fiat 500. The horn is very sweet and almost apologetically “peeps”.

I was in my Volvo the other day and was sat behind someone at some traffic lights. He was obviously searching for something and hadn’t noticed that the lights had changed, so, after about ten seconds, I gave him what I wanted to be a little “pip pip” to wake him up. Not a big deal, we’ve all missed the change and when I do it, as long as the person behind isn’t aggressive, I don’t mind and wave to apologise.

Sadly my Volvo doesn’t go “pip pip” it went ”BEEEEEPPP!!!!“. The other person was OK, but I was rather embarrassed and it COULD have caused a bit of road rage if the other person was of that disposition.

So, here’s my point. Why don’t car manufacturers install two horns. One that goes ”BEEEEEPPP!!!!” for emergency situations and another that goes ”pip pip” for less urgent ones, one’s where you just need to make someone aware of a non-critical situation.

As they started the presentation, the CEO stood up and said “I don’t need to know all this, does it pass the door test?” The PR firm looked a little confused. The Comms Director sighed, picked up the press clippings book and walked to the door.

She opened the door (which was a fire door) and used the press clippings book as a door stop.

The door stayed open.

The CEO said “Fine, retain them” and walked out.

Now, before laughing TOO loud and thinking what a ridiculous thing to do, answer this question. How do you measure the success of your new business agency or manager if you have an in-house resource?

Anyway, sorry, that was just an aside. Right, back to SALES. Remember the acronym, M.A.N. It stands for Means, Authority and Need and is how you should qualify a prospect from a suspect.

Means – do they have a marketing budget. Easy to ascertain.

Authority – is THIS person either the main decision maker or a major influencer. Again, pretty easy to determine with the right question.

Need – ah, now this one can be a little trickier. Let me explain further how RSW works – this is, after all, my blog, so hey, cut me a little slack for a plug!

We make email and telephone contact with targets with a view to identifying the prospects from the suspects, qualify these prospects and arrange a meeting for you to go and see them when their position in the need spectrum is aligned to your pre-determined position at which you have told us to do so.

What do I mean by ‘need spectrum’? Well, at the one end, you have someone who uses agencies, isn’t contractually tied to put all work through them, has ongoing projects that crop up every few months but hasn’t anything specific they want to discuss with you, but are interested in meeting so that they can then consider you for the next project they have. That’s a ‘need’, but a pretty tenuous one; however, if that person is senior enough, close enough geographically and the company is a priority for you, meeting them could be a good idea.

At the other end of the spectrum is someone who we speak to who says … “Wow, am I glad YOU called – you sound perfect! My agency has let me down, I have £150k to spend and need this doing within the next two months – can you please come and see me on Friday so that we can talk about how you can help me”.

So, what we  do is agree, for each company, where the cut off point on the need spectrum is and segment them accordingly so that every meeting, no matter what, is one that you are delighted with.

She said that although one of the agencies had really grabbed her attention, she would find it very difficult to use them because they had pitched themselves as an integrated agency and had provided an integrated solution; I said, “well, what’s wrong with that! surely that’s a good solution!”. She went on to explain …

She had been tasked with finding an ADVERTISING agency. There were other people within the organisation who were responsible for the other disciplines; there was an online marketing manager, a DM manager and a PR manager. All these people had their own agencies and were very protective. If she chose the integrated agency, it would cause just too many political problems for her. So she discounted them. Shame really.

So. What COULD that agency have done? Her’s my view.

When asked to answer an advertising brief, pitch an advertising solution that would take up the budget you have been told to work to. Then, show them examples of how that big idea could work across other disciplines “if you decided to get your other agencies to follow our suggestions, or indeed, were to ask us to take the idea further”.

This way you are not encroaching onto any areas you have not been asked to explore but are showing your integrated thinking.

This isn’t actually a shock to me. We arranged for one of our clients to meet with them in December, the meeting was due to take place in January. Sadly, our client decided that the meeting was going to be a waste of time and asked us to cancel it.

His exact words were, if I remember correctly, “why would I want to meet them? They do everything in-house these days and are unlikely to be changing, so can you please call them back and make an excuse for me.”

I’ll bet he’ll be on the phone any minute now asking if we can resurrect the meeting!

What’s the moral of the story? Simple; if your RSW account manager arranges for you to meet someone, there is a reason. They are trained in how to pick up on what is NOT being said as much as what IS being said.