JephMaystruck.com | A Regina Marketing Consultancy

There Are Only Two Types of Companies

Jeph Maystruck — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:11:55 +0000

First are the companies that make bad profits and are still in business in spite of themselves. They may have a monopoly, they may have an oligopoly, they may have been around for years, they may have a government mandate that keeps them in business. They force people to pay with long-term contracts, hidden fees and short-term incentives. They don’t care about your business, they care about the invoiced amount, the automatic withdrawal, the credit card swipe, that’s all. The goal is to make more by doing less.

The second are the companies who are trying to grow. Companies trying to grow can’t afford having people spreading bad word-of-mouth. These companies care about what every customer thinks of them and tries to continuously reinvent themselves to exceed customer expectations again and again. They want to know when they screw up, so they can fix it. Because how else will you grow?

If you know people are unhappy after they’ve signed a contract or bought what you’re selling do you think your company is setting itself up for long term growth?

Hint: Not all organization need to grow or have happy customers, that’s of course if external pressure doesn’t force the entire industries to change.

Never Ever Say “I Should Have…”

Jeph Maystruck — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:42:03 +0000

Many people throughout their life will make a rendition of the statement “I should have done that!” or “I should have invented that!” or “I should have went to that!”. Stop it. You didn’t, so don’t dwell on the past and what you didn’t do. It’s not very productive to analyze what you didn’t do and telling others that “you should have” makes people think you’re not very good at making decisions.

How does the saying go? Very few people on their death beds say they wish they didn’t do so much throughout their life. Inevitably when we’re old we will regret the things we didn’t do.

If you haven’t watched “Yes Man” yet, watch it, and seriously consider taking on a ‘Yes Man’ philosophy.

Act Before You Think
Advice No One Will Ever Tell You

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Episode #19 – Judging a Newspaper By Its Cover With Dan Nicholls

Jeph Maystruck — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:47:04 +0000

Episode #19 – Judging a Newspaper By Its Cover With Dan Nicholls

I met Dan Nichols when he was working at Squareflo a long time ago, we have a lot in common and think the same about a lot of things so we’ve been great friends ever since. Dan has since moved to the fine offices of Oh! Media (a division of Phoenix Group Advertising), a website design and development company in Regina, Saskatchewan. Dan does amazing things with websites, he’ll be an asset to any company that he works with. A programmers mindset with the humor of Jack Black crossed with Ashley Schaeffer around the office (yes, quite the hilarious combination). Dan is a great friend to have.

Besides “work” Dan’s a great guy to party with. He’s been known to blow an amp or two while singing Kareokee (because of the magical sound) and frequents music shows on the regular. Also, Dan does have one of the best Twitter bio’s around, check it out.

Follow Dan on Twitter – @dannicholls

We have some wonderful conversations, here’s one we recorded.

Running time: 20:20

Meet Dan Nicholls.

What do you think of all the print publications popping up all over Regina?
The nine print publications in circulation in Regina (Leave a comment if we left one out): Metro, Verb, Prairie Dog, City Slicker, QC, The Sunday Post, Fine Life Styles, Business Regina, LeaderPost
How do you filter out the good from the bad content?
Judging a book by it’s cover, or an article by it’s headline.
Will people who can write a catchy headline or convey a lot of mean in 140 characters increase in value to companies?
Will we see a change in creative departments of adding more creatives that can think in Tweets and headlines?
Why Twitter is replacing many uses of print publications as a news source.
What is the future of the younger generation? How will older generations keep up with the speed of society?
As a side note, I do not believe ALL people over the age of 50 have no specialized knowledge other than experience in their field, please don’t take my comments to heart, of course there are exceptions to the rule.
Do we believe the misconception of the always connected, always on world is making our children dumb?
I’m pretty sure my parents told me as a kid that TV would make me dumb, are we going through the same phase? Parents think the internet will make kids dumb because they don’t understand it?

The Ultimate Question

Jeph Maystruck — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:59:36 +0000

The Ultimate Question is one of those books you want every manager, CEO, VP or anyone remotely interested in making their business better to read. It really will change the way you think about customer feedback and the absolute best way to measure how you’re doing, not financially but by what your customers think about you. For decades we’ve had financial instruments to measure how a company was doing financially but never a gage on what your customers actually thought of you. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a method of using quantitative measurements to understand what your customers think of you in comparison to past results and even other competitors in the market place.

Here’s the Ultimate Question (and the follow up question) that will replace your traditional boring customer survey:

On a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague? One being “not at all” and ten being “absolutely”.

The followup question: What’s the primary reason for the score you gave us?

From asking just those two questions you get a lot more participation amongst customers and with more feedback from customers, management can use the data to make better decisions.

Here’s how it works:

The people who rate you a 9-10 are you Promoters. They love your company and talk about it any chance they get.

The people who rate you a 6-8 are neutral. They will probably buy from someone else that offers a cheaper product or service. Don’t spend a lot of time chasing this portion of your customers.

The people who rate you a 0-6 are your Detractors. These people don’t like you. They don’t have anything nice to say about your company and will spread negative word-of-mouth given the chance. You must always try to decrease the number of customers you turn into detractors.

The book is based on the concept of the “Net Promoter System” where by collecting data from asking the ultimate question you can begin to benchmark you NPS (Net Promoter Score). Here’s how you determine your NPS. Take the total percentage of customers who are promoters and minus the percentage of customers who are detractors. The remaining amount is your Net Promoter Score.

(% of your customers giving you 9-10) – (% of your customers giving you a 0-6) = Net Promoter Score

“NPS ultimately is a business philosophy, a system of operational practices, and a leadership commitment, not just another way to measure customer satisfaction.”

Some of Apples retail stores will score in the high 80′s and 90′s for their NPS, Zappos has always had a relatively high NPS as well as Enterprise Rent-a-Car. The list of organizations that use the NPS is long and for good reason. The NPS defines the purpose of customer feedback. Ultimately if your customer doesn’t want to recommend you to a friend of family member then you have failed. Using the NPS you can identify where you fail when you do and develop a systems to remedy mistakes quicker and more efficiently over time.

Reichheld talks a lot about good profits and bad profits in the book.

“While bad profits don’t show up on the books, they are easy to recognize. They’re profits earned at the expense of customer relationships.”

If you’re forcing people to pay with contracts, hidden fees, unexpected costs, over-charging, or just not providing a valuable service, you’re making bad profits. No company can make bad profits in a sustainable manner.

On the contrary, if you’re making good profits you’ll create loyal customers, and loyal customers are the best customers.

“Why do we want loyal customers? Answer: because loyal customers come back more often, buy additional products and services, refer their friends, provide valuable feedback, cost less to serve, and are less price sensitive.”

I highly recommend reading The Ultimate Question 2.0 it’ll make you think about measuring your customer service in a different way. The best book on Customer Service I’ve read. Ever.

Buy “The Ultimate Questions 2.0″ on Amazon

Episode #18 – A Canadian Storyteller, Roger Currie

Jeph Maystruck — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:22:53 +0000

Episode #18 – A Blogger For Hire – Roger Currie

I met Roger Currie on the set of Access Communications “Talk of The Town” program. Roger had talked to Jack Shaw (President of Crown Shred & Recycling) he just so happened to tell Roger about the new style of marketing Crown Shred has adopted by using Social Media (they were a client of mine last year). Roger then invited me to talk Social Media on his show and a beautiful friendship was born.

I had a lot of fun on the show so I begged them to have me on again. Since then I’ve done several more shows and even shot a pilot to a show I can’t tell you about. HA!

Roger could keep a conversation on with a def blind mute if he had to. Seriously though, this guy has skills, you’ll hear. I’ve learned a lot from Mr. Currie in the short time I’ve known him. I do believe he is one of Canada’s legendary story tellers.

Click here to visit Roger Currie’s Website.

Follow Roger on Twitter here.

Running time: 14:10

In this episode:

Where is Roger Currie from?
What is the Roger Currie story?
How he just started a blog
The original Social Media, a story about Rotary
Who the most awe inspiring interview Roger ever did
Who was the biggest jerk to interview

I think Roger’s awesome, he’ll go down in history as the guy who gave me my start television. All the best in Winnipeg Roger.

What Has Changed About Marketing?

Jeph Maystruck — Thu, 03 May 2012 03:30:23 +0000

Customer service > Advertising

Word-of-Mouth > Promotion

Engagement > Awareness

Permission > Interruption

Relevancy > Frequency

Actions > Impressions

Niche > Mass

Start marketing smarter.

Permission Based Marketing
3 Reasons Why I Hate Text-Message Advertising
Casestudy: How a Babyboomer Buys a Vehicle

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Guest Podcast – RadioLab: Choice

Jeph Maystruck — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:30:52 +0000

WNYC’s RadioLab Podcast – Choice

Every month I want to share a podcast on here that I learned a lot from, this week is probably the best produced podcast out there. You’re going to love RadioLab.

The first podcast I ever listened to was RadioLab. It’s the podcast that actually made me enjoy listening to podcasts.

This episode is about choice. The hosts, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich talk to many different guests on the theme, “choice”. Every week they pick a different topic and discuss it was the top minds in the chosen field.

In this episode they talk to Malcolm Gladwell(author of Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers), Jonah Lehrer(author of How We Decide), Dr. Oliver Sacks(professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center), Barry Schwartz(author of The Paradox of Choice), and Baba Shiv(Marketing Professor at Standford University). Not your regular talk radio program lineup. You learn the most amazing things listening to podcasts like these.

I hope you enjoy RadioLab as much as I do.

Running time: 58:51

It’s a bit long but you’ll love their style of story telling.

How Do You Create a Visionary Company?

Jeph Maystruck — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:45:03 +0000

In the summer before my final semester of University, we had a Business Students Society retreat one Saturday. I’ll never forget the presentation we heard over lunch. The guest speaker, at the time was a finance prof from the faculty, Mr. Lorne Schnell. The message was based a lot on the book Built to Last (1997) by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras. It was about building a foundation, digging deep down to the core of why you’re doing what you’re doing (why were we on the business students society, and what did we want to create). Start with a foundation, set BHAGS and ensure you get the right people on the bus (from Collins next book, Good to Great).

After that presentation, it led us to the create of our motto for the year, inspire. It turned out to be a changing and very rewarding year on the BSS.

Sadly I didn’t read Built to Last until this year, after I read Jim Collins’ second and third installments in his business strategy book line, Good To Great (2001) and Great By Choice (2011). Built To Last does not disappoint, like all of Collins’ books, it’s jammed packed with myth busting research on how to actually build a visionary company.

Core Ideology, Vision, Core Values. This is what drives a company. Companies that are on a mission, who are in business for more than just making money. Business that have a purpose thrive.

One master strategy almost never works. Successful companies had more of the “try a bunch of stuff until something works” mentality. Understand your market, know what you can and can’t get away with and experiment, but only if you’re willing to act upon the result, no matter what happens.

“Those who built the visionary companies wisely understood that it is better to understand who you are than where you are going – for where you are going will almost certainly change.”

Sounds strikingly similar to Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why“ idea in the book by with the same title. I like how he assumes where a company is going will change eventually (like a Pivot?). If you assume you must change to stay relevant in your industry, you can prepare much easier.

“We found that the concepts in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species to be more helpful for replicating the success of certain visionary companies than any textbook on corporate strategic planning.”

The “evolution of business” as we’ll call it. Adapting to your surroundings, embracing change for the greater good. To stay ahead in your industry you must continue to evolve your competitive advantage. It’s never massive shifts in practice or ideology, it’s small adaptations as technology propels industries into the next generation of business.

“In short, we found a negative correlation between early entrepreneurial success and becoming a highly visionary company. The long race goes to the tortoise, not the hare.”

Focusing on determining your “why” isn’t easy and but it makes sense that the visionary companies start off slow, they know exactly what they want to create even when there may not be a market for it just yet.

“Never, never, never give up. But what to persist with? Their answer: The company. Be prepared to kill, revise, or evolve an idea (GE moved away from its original DC system and embraced the AC system), but never give up on the company.”

I love the never give up. That must be your attitude. Kill, revise or evolve any idea but ensure the company stays intact. you can see change is beginning to become redundant by now. Must mean something….

“The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

“Putting profits after people and products was magical at Ford. -Don Peterson, Former CEO, Ford, 1994″

“Our research indicates that the authenticity of the ideology and the extent to which a company attains consistent alignment with the ideology counts more than the content of the ideology.”

It doesn’t matter what your company believes in as long your actions are consistently inline with your beliefs.

“Core ideology = Core Values + Purpose = The organization’s essential and enduring tenets-a small set of general guiding principles; not to be confused with specific cultural or operating practices; not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency. Purpose = The organization’s fundamental reasons for existence beyond just making money-a perpetual guiding star on the horizon; not to be confused with specific goals or business strategies.”

This is the core strategy that every visionary company (in some form) has.

“”Failure is our most important product,” R. W. Johnson Jr.(co-founder of Johnson & Johnson), understood that companies must accept failed experiments as part of evolutionary progress.”

You can’t have success without failure. The sure fire way to not succeed is to not fail whatsoever.

Phrases that guided 3Mers throughout history.

“Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it might sound at first.” “Encourage; don’t nitpick. Let people run with an idea.” “Hire good people and leave them alone.” “If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.” “Encourage experimental doodling.” “Give it a try-and quick!”

“Indeed, the discipline of self-improvement stands out as one of the most clear differences between the visionary and comparison companies.”

Ahh, here’s a very important piece of knowledge learned in Built To Last. The discipline of self-improvement was a clearly the most differentiating characteristic out of everything that was measured. One could reason that one of the most important attributes companies should focus on is that of a mantra/philosophy/belief in consistent self-improvement over time. If it’s the most defining attribute between the two sets of companies you want to ensure you’re on the side of the visionaries if you know what I mean.

No related posts.

Episode 17 – The Living Sky Media Conglomerate

Jeph Maystruck — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:21:01 +0000

Episode 17 – The Living Sky Media Conglomerate

I’ve known Riley for a while now and have been working with him for at least three years. Riley has always struck me as a different kind of character. Wait, how do I put it….. Riley’s weird. He’s an extraordinary individual, I’ve always said he’s a brilliant artist. You won’t know exactly what I mean until you do a video with him and begin to understand why he so passionate about telling a story with film.

Riley’s been running his company, Living Sky Media since he finished University several years ago. He’s filmed at the Olympics in 2010, did a tour of Saskatchewan with Scott Schultz last summer and last fall put together a very moving documentary on the housing problem in Regina.

I look up to Riley as an entrepreneur and an artist. A very unique combination in the business community, and a reason that I believe Riley stands out. He’s not like other companies and he’s an all around fun guy. You can learn a lot from this young James Cameron.

The Living Sky Media Website

@LivingSkyMedia on Twitter

@AdamBurwell on Twitter

Running Time: 24:35

In this episode:

How did Living Sky Media start?
He has a film degree from the University of Regina
Why he wanted to do his own thing
Living Sky Media began in 2009
Where the idea of Living Sky Media came from
He was slow to get into HD
What is Living Sky Media doing these days?
Riley partnered with Adam Burwell
They just acquired a “Red cam”
What Living Sky Media actually does
What they’re working on currently
“Bridging The Gap” documentary
A couple of the fun projects he’s worked on. Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and touring Saskatchewan with Scott Schultz
I ask him about the Saskatchewan Government taking away the film tax credit
What advice he’d give to someone starting out in the industry
What will come after HD

You Don’t Have To Agree With Me

Jeph Maystruck — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:50:04 +0000

I think there’s a major fundamental flaw in the way the majority of us think about our opinions. When we disagree with someone, we assume they are wrong (they very well may be) but to assume other things about that person based on their belief is the problem.

One of the most important lesson children (and most adults) must learn, is that just because you have a differing fundamental opinion or set of beliefs than someone else, doesn’t mean you can’t respect them and get along them just fine.

Just because someone doesn’t believe in your religion doesn’t mean they’re unintelligent.

Just because someone doesn’t believe in your new doctor you go to, doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

Just because someone doesn’t live your same lifestyle doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

Many wars, feuds, and grudges have been the result in two differing sides not being able to see the world through the others eyes. Don’t make the same mistake.

Remember, you don’t have to agree with me, that’s your choice and I don’t want to assume you have the same opinions as I do. So have your own opinion, it’s okay to disagree with people, but try as hard as you can to respect someone who has a different opinion than you. Those are the people you can usually learn the most from.