Your systems

If you want to be successful in marketing (and business) you need a replicable system and specific processes and policies, but your clients should not feel they are cogs in the system's wheels. This is basic stuff, but too many contractors either fail to understand what needs to be done to make their systems effective, or how to design their systems so they don't offend the people who count the most.

Here, for example, is part of our client feedback/follow-up system. We invite feedback and response from our clients not by structured surveys, but through follow up thank you cards (handwritten) or when we produce features, free copies of PDF files of the features. Then we listen. Most of the time the clients are happy (even enthusiastic) or at worse, remain silent. But sometimes things aren't quite right. Then I get involved -- VERY involved.

Around here, even the simplest indication of customer dissatisfaction is like a clanging fire alarm with red lights flashing. Crisis, crisis, crisis, pull out all the stops, drop everything, make it right. We won't permanently change all our processes because of one complaint (but we will make every effort to resolve it), but if the complaints are happening with any frequency, we'll look into our systems and change things.

So, for example, you have a great service, and rely on referrals. That is great. But what is your system for managing, encouraging, and serving referrals? Do you have routine processes for follow ups, do you have an incentive program to encourage referrals, do you have a system to thank the clients who refer you, and do you have measurement resources to track and assess the value and source of your referrals?

If you are playing these things by the seat of your pants, take a step back, and figure out your systems. You don't need a bureaucracy, you don't need to make things excessively complex, but you need rules in the game.

Then, periodically, stretch yourself, go out of your comfort zone, visit another city, try something different, and plug it into your processes. That's the innovation stuff.

P.S. If you think these observations are right out of Michael Gerber's E-Myth materials, you are right, though I don't recommend you spend large sums of money on his programs (I did). I firmly believe that your consultants, while having their own systems, must be much more connected to your own business -- and responsive to it -- and Gerber's cookie-cutter approach is of relatively limited value. But his books are good, and so is the underling philosophy he encourages you to adapt.)

The hidden part of marketing

An important challenge/opportunity in marketing is standing out from the crowd. Sometimes the language is "What is your unique selling proposition?" -- but this belies the issue, to some extent. Some say you need to "break through the clutter" to get your marketing message out there, but do you?
So, why is it that, when you go to meetings of your local home builders' association, you can sit with successful contractors who say their biggest problem isn't finding enough work -- it is scheduling things so that clients who must wait months for service aren't too frustrated by the process.
Or, when you meet a successful local general contractor, their marketing materials are, well, out of the stone age. Worse, because of their apparent lack of marketing sophistication, they appear to be suckers for marketing 'garbage' -- overpriced advertising in "police journals", trashy pseudo charity telemarketing solicitations, and the like. (Of course, even better, these suckers have money -- and retained earnings -- to suck because their overall businesses are so successful.)
One answer -- and a good one from a marketers' perspective -- is these contractors have a great brand. They are so in tune with their market that it responds favourably, with powerful word-of-mouth recommendations, and an abundance of business. (As I noted earlier, you could argue these businesses simply need to look at pricing and operating systems -- if they get these parts right, as well, they can grow to huge enterprises or, if they wish to remain small, become even more profitable for their owners.)
So, does "standing out from the crowd" simply mean doing your work so well, and to such high quality, that your clients -- knowing all the crap and risks out there -- simply must have more? Maybe.
But what if you chose to evolve this quality standard into your employee/sub-contracting recruiting process, developed your marketing resources effectively using inexpensive services or truly high quality consultants, and build sustainable operating/management systems so you can liberate yourself from day-to-day headaches; instead doing the work you enjoy while having plenty of vacation and personal time?
Then, follow this strategy:
Read one of Michael Gerber's E-Myth books, and read it again. Just don't rush to sign up for any of his expensive programs. I'm not convinced they are of great value. His concepts are -- but he is so into systematization that he must use junior employees for the work. You will get McDonalds-type food/service from his organization -- it is "edible" but you can do better.
Review the free resources out there, looking at the marketing/entrepreneurial style of Seth Godin. This is the "give without worrying about receiving" philosophy; setting the stage for Permission Marketing.
Join relevant industry associations and participate in their chapter activities. This may be SMPS, your local home builders' association, or affiliated professional group. Look especially to the associations that link you closely to your existing client base.
Contract with a good consultant to help you. When we get our website redesigned (I'm using high quality but not overpriced local consultants for this) you might wish to use some of the ones I will recommend in a new permalink section -- and no, the recommended consultants won't be paying me for the recommendations! Alternatively, find a general local business consultant who you can work with. The challenge in choosing a consultant is to be sure that you are getting value -- not easy, there are a lot of BS artists out there! Finding a good consultant is much like finding a great general contractor or renovator -- you know you have it when you see the results! And that will be the topic for another column.

Micahel Gerber's free resources

You'll need to register for this information, but you may find it useful.
Be aware, however, that the full services are expensive and while business process systematization makes a lot of sense, you may wonder how much systematization (rather than custom adaptation to your needs) you want with consulting services.
Here is the link: http://www.e-myth.com/cs/community/view/ms_a/249

Above: The Red Sea at Eilat, Israel. See the Exploring Israel blog.

The story beneath the story

Somewhere over the Atlantic ocean on Friday night, after watching two movies and being saved from a terrible special-order dinner (the Alitalia flight crew thankfully found a 'regular' meal for me), I started reading Michael Gerber's E-Myth Mastery, a book I purchased just before leaving on vacation.

I skimmed through most of the book -- Gerber advocates systematization and I have previously observed there are both strengths and limits in his approaches -- but stopped to read closely a few passages where he put aside his general observations, or dialogues with his imaginary "Sarah" business owner, and talked about himself, and his real-life experiences.

Most tellingly, he described the crisis he encountered when he supposedly was achieving great success and recognition through his first E-Myth book; when he had set up a franchise organization to market his business consultancy services. After returning from a vacation, when he thought all was well, he discovered the business actually was in deep crisis -- with angry franchisees, angry creditors, and self-serving employees and consultants sucking the life-blood out of his business.

This story, of course, he can only share safely now -- I'm sure when the crisis was 'live' the last thing he wanted to do was let the world know all was indeed not very well -- in fact, he was living through hell. He obviously survived; largely with the help and loyalty of his wife, and through hard work and determination rebuilt his business. This included giving up the franchise concept and bringing the operation back in-house. (This is an interesting point, because Gerber says he obtained his greatest discovery at a MacDonald's franchise; when he saw how systems and organization -- the franchise model -- represented the change that many struggling business owners need to emulate -- they need to put processes and systems in place so that the system, not an individual employee (or group of employees) controls the business destiny.)

Gerber's second insightful remark occurs near the book's beginning. I'm going to stretch the fair comment rules under copyright and quote extensively (then send you over to Amazon.com to buy the book, if you wish). In his early 30s, Gerber had moved from selling encyclopedias to insurance.

"Some time after I said yes to the elegant,white-haired elder of insurance and no to the gentleman in the black shirt and checked jacket, I found myself sitting alone at a counter in a coffee shop somewhere on Webster Street in San Francisco, early on a sun-drenched crystal clear morning, trying to boost myself up to make a warm insurance call at Presbyterian Hospital next door on a doctor who had been referred to me, having a third cup of coffee to get my nerve up, to bolster my complete lack of self-confidence, finding myself in the strange early-morning world of insurance sales rather than the early night of encyclopedia sales that I had grown so perversely accustomed to. Still on straight commission, more visible at this time of day, unable to hide in poetry or my saxophone, and suddenly, just like that, it happened. One moment I was sitting on the stool at the counter and the very next I woke up with my face pressed to the cold hard concrete floor of the coffee shop looking at something that seemed like a guy's shoes planted directly in front out of my face.

I had passed out!

Cold.

And I came face-to-face with that place that I have found myself in too many times in my life where I've discovered, to my surprise, that a choice I thought that I had already made was really a step towards a collision with the fact that I had not made a choice at all. I had simply done what was apparently next. The choice was still there to be made. And if I made it, the right decision, my life was never going to be the same again.

And that's when the blessed moment occurred.

Right there on the floor, I came to the realization that I was marking time, that I was living in a closet of my own making, a small, tight, breathless closet called My Life, and I had closed the door behind me, thinking at the time that I was living in the real world.

I was living in a closet and I had just run out of air!

And suddenly, G0d opened the door!

That's what it felt like to me. God opened the door and I was called.

Right there on t he cold floor in a coffee shop in San Francisco, I was blessed. First, I wasn't and then I was. Blam. Just like that.

And that's what set me on fire.

In one moment there was no fire, and in the next moment there was.

In one moment I was burned out, and in the next I was burning up.

They told me at the hospital next door that I had had a panic attack.

Get some rest, they told me.

I didn't go home to rest. I didn't need to.

I sold the doctor some insurance instead."

A few paragraphs later, Gerber observes:

"I had the good fortune not too long ago to talk with a rabbi who had read one of my books and was inspired by it. We talked about Judaism and miracles. He offered many, many examples of how the miracles spoken of in the Bible are not just biblical in nature, but happening around us every single day. Our problem, he said, is we just don't see them for what they are. He went on to add, "If the Messiah were to appear on 42nd Street in New York City tomorrow in the plain light of day, it's probable that only a handful of people would even see him! And everyone else would think he was mad!" The rabbi said to me, "I have come to think that the Red Sea has parted for each and every one of us in our own singularly unique and miraculously unpredictable way, over and over again. The tragedy is we don't see it."

"If we saw it, our lives would be transformed."

Miracles happen, the blessing comes, the Red Sea parts, but then it's up to us. Are we ready to see it, are we moved by what just happened, are we open to the possibility, are we ready to catch on fire?

If not -- and my life has shown me in countless, tragic ways how often I'm not open, not available, not willing to let go and jump -- nothing will happen except more of the same. We'll continue to sell our metaphorical encyclopedias. We'll just drag our weary butts up off the coffeehouse floor and go back to doing it, doing it, doing it some more. the insufferably walking dead, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, in a small, airless closet we call Life.

Being available, that changes everything."

Wow. This stuff caught me cold, in part because just a few week's earlier, I had been IN the Red Sea -- in the underwater viewing area at the Eilat marine park, marveling at the biodiversity at that border point between Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

I had decided last December to take the trip to Israel even though we were in a state of business crisis -- just digging out -- and (not surprisingly!) things didn't work 100 per cent perfectly while we were exploring the Negev and Israeli south.

Like Michael Gerber, I've had my own life-changing insights; one when I was 26, in Africa and learned that the greatest constraint in life is fear, often unfounded; the other, 12 years later, at 38, when I realized I would need to be responsible for my own life do what needs to be done to make it right. In both situations -- but especially that first flash of insight, in Tjoloto, Zimbabwe, on Good Friday in 1980 -- I also appreciated the greatness of God and recognized the combination of humility and strength in the Greater Power.

Gerber reminds me that we are truly responsible for our own destiny; we can seek the advice and counsel of others, we can read, we can learn, we can apply common-sense principals and approaches to create new experiences and dreams, but ultimately we need to think for ourselves, and have the courage to act on our convictions, even when they seem uncertain, and things are not 100 per cent perfect.

Think for yourself. Dare to dream. Be prudent, responsible, rational, and thoughtful. Nevertheless, most importantly, don't be afraid to take risks and experience the things you really want in life. You may not be able to see the parting of the Red Sea, but you may be able to dip your toes into the Red Sea itself.