Great marketing is invisible. Not the results – of course, a business wants visibility to connect with its customers – but the activity itself shouldn’t be noticed.
We’re so tuned-in to brands and communications and media that most of the time it’s the campaign that gets remarked upon, even if the product stays on the shelf. But once in a while someone pulls a stroke that is so bold, so embracing, that we don’t know it’s happened, and just accept its premise as the norm.
At some time over the Holiday Season millions of us will crack open a bottle of champagne to celebrate something. It may be a Bucks Fizz on Christmas morning or to bring in the New Year a week later. A bottle of bubbly – as much a part of the warp and weft of life as carving the turkey or singing Auld Lang Syne.
Well, sorry to disappoint you – but it wasn’t always this way. Indeed, the fact that we think it so is testament to the genius (and I choose the word carefully) of Eugene Mercier, founder of the champagne house that still bears his name, and father of modern marketing promotion.
Mercier wrote the rulebook.
Think Deep, Think Big
Before Mercier started his business in 1858, champagne was, in today’s terms, a niche product, the preserve of the gentry and available in only the most select venues. But Eugene had other ideas; he wanted to reach as many people as possible because he saw an opportunity to build a mass market. All he needed was the capacity to deliver, and to give his customers a reason to buy.
He solved the first problem by creating the world’s largest champagne cellars– 18km of tunnels carved into the chalk 33m beneath Epernay, the champagne region to the east of Paris. Such was the scale of the endeavour, he even built a 800m long rail link to the Paris-Strasbourg line to transport millions of cubic metres of chalk from the site.
When the work was finished, he used the service to transport visitors to the site, to see the results of six years labour. Mercier created one of Europe’s first commercial visitor attractions.
But while receiving the great and the good at his cellars may have cemented his relationship with his existing customers, it wasn’t going to reach the masses. For that, Mercier had another, even grander design.
In that first year of trading, he commissioned Monsieur Jolibois, one of the finest coopers in the wine trade, to make him a cask. There were two extraordinary things about the project:
Dimensions: it was 6.2m long, 5.5m high, and had a capacity of 215,000 bottles. (You can still see it today, at L’Espace Mercier. It’s like a section of an Apollo rocket).
Duration (quarterly-driven executives and investors had better be sitting down): from commission to completion, the cask took 23 years. It was unveiled in July 1881.
And the question of everyone’s lips was ‘Why?’ Digging enough storage space for 18 million bottles of champagne was one thing, but taking 23 years to make a barrel that was big enough to house a family of four seemed, well, slightly mad.
The answer came 8 years later.
Roll out the Barrel
Mercier was playing a long game. While the cask proved to be an attraction at his headquarters, he had a much wider public in mind: the 1889 Paris Exhibition, a sort of World’s Fair and Expo rolled into one.
There was, however, the slight problem of getting it there. When it was full, the cask weighed over 29 tons. It was enormous. Ever the one to turn a problem into an opportunity, Mercier morphed the transport challenge into an event.
At the end of April 1889, a team of 24 oxen (with a support party of 18 horses) pulled a specially built cart with specially built wheels from Epernay to Paris. En route, they destroyed several houses, had to strengthen several bridges, and even removed part of the fortifications around the capital city.
Mercier was on the front page of every newspaper, every day, for over a week.
On the 7th May, the cask made its triumphant entrance into Paris. Hundreds of thousands turned out to cheer it on its way. During the show, its popularity was equalled by only one other exhibit – a tower built by an engineer called Eiffel.
For the next 20 years, Mercier continued to build his mass market, and create the association between his brand and the celebration of achievement. He was giving his customers a reason to buy.
¶ He paid for (aka sponsored) the century’s largest hot air balloon which, during its lifetime, gave 20,000 people a flight over Paris while drinking his champagne.
¶ He commissioned the first-ever publicity film, called ‘From Grape to Glass’, which was made by the Lumier Brothers.
¶ In 1905, at the Liège Exhibition, Mercier built an arch of 15,000 bottles, representing the daily sales of the product. Nothing succeeds like success.
¶ Mercier sponsored Blériot in his first powered flights. The company was the first to advertise at the Tour de France, and to send out branded vehicles along the route, so creating today’s ‘Caravane du Tour’.
Do you have the Bottle?
Mercier’s marketing nous wasn’t limited to grand gestures. Sometimes it’s seeing the small things that make a difference. Like noticing that people watch the bottle almost the whole time a waiter pours a glass of champagne. This led the company to run its name horizontally along the length of a bottle, and so reinforce its brand at every opportunity.
The business results of such inspired thinking and commitment to the big picture still stand today. In a world where there are over 12,000 brands of champagne (and you thought you had competitor problems!), Mercier is still the best seller in France – a market that consumes 175 million bottles a year.
It’s a classic case study in seeing things differently, making a market and differentiating a brand. While there are others that have found a niche or certain cachet (Patsy’s bottle of Bollinger in ‘AbFab’; Moet & Chandon in ‘Killer Queen’; Winston Churchill’s daily bottle of Pol Roger), it’s thanks to Eugene Mercier that we’ll be raising a glass of sparkling white to toast friends and loved ones in the days ahead. That’s the power of marketing.
Wishing you a very prosperous 2010.
Popularity: 19% [?]
The first casualty of a downturn is the marketing budget. Despite the best of intentions and the Board’s “commitment to the long term”, it’s seen by many as low-hanging fruit that can be pruned easily.
There are three ways to handle this:
a) go to a seminar on ‘how to protect your budget’ (and spend some of it in the process);
b) go into mourning, tell everyone how your hands are tied and that the company just doesn’t “get it”;
c) think. Necessity is the mother of invention.
When you are down to your last dollar, don’t complain – create. An absence of spend doesn’t mean an absence of marketing. It just calls for a different kind of marketing.
I thought this while walking down High Street Kensington in London. Among the bling-based cacophony (the gaudiness of the Christmas windows is deafening) one shop stands out.
While everyone else has zigged, Terra Plana has zagged.
Its display is a model of modesty, and how marketing will look over the next few years; simple, creative and impactful. It works for six reasons:
1) Product as hero: the store’s reason for being is at the heart of the communication. It’s a very direct way of communicating a proposition;
2) Communication congruence: stylish and innovative, it reflects the values and positioning of the business – a new kind of shoe company with a new kind of shoe;
3) Understatement: it stands out in a noisy market by being quiet;
4) Call to action: rather than a bland, meaningless ‘Merry Christmas’, it empathises with the passers-by, and offers a remedy to their current discomfort;
5) Specific and achievable: the selling will happen in the shop: all the marketing wants you to do is come in;
6) The human factor: there’s a personal scale to this – it’s not hard to imaging someone sitting and threading the laces through the holes. There’s a very clear people component to the story.
As you finalise your marketing plans for 2010, I suggest this is a good checklist with which to judge the quality of your campaigns and programs.
Less can be more.
Popularity: 7% [?]
According to Wired Magazine, the average American spends 8 to 9 hours a day in front of a screen. Based on the premise that information consumption should be as healthy as food consumption, the magazine suggests this as a ‘balanced diet’ in this information-overload age:
Now, I’m reasonably media-savvy, and the very existence of this blog indicates how much I’ve embraced Web 2.0. But there’s one thing about the research findings and the pyramid that has me perplexed:
What’s happened to work?
Popularity: 8% [?]
As well as being an interesting data set in itself, this New Scientist graphic is a master class in information design. A rich source of facts and a joy to read:
Source: Exploring the Exploding Internet. New Scientist, April 2009
Popularity: 8% [?]
Sergio Zyman, the former Marketing SVP of Coca Cola tells a salutary tale in his book The End of Marketing as We Know It. Coke had a new, feel-good Christmas ad featuring a kid, Santa and a grizzled old baseball player.
Everybody loved it.
The CEO of the company loved it; his wife loved it; Zyman’s neighbour loved; the security guard at the front desk loved it. It was going to win awards.
After two days, Zyman pulled the ad. It was having no impact on sales.
B2B OR NOT B2B?
I often mention this story when interviewing Marketing candidates or discussing Marketing strategies with Clients. It’s the kind of decision that true Marketers dream of making – where creativity, strategy, metrics and market performance meet, to directly impact the revenues of the company and ultimately the share price.
After more than 20 years in the Tech sector, I’ve come across no more than a couple of examples that really make that kind of link between ‘Marketing’ and business results.
B2B Tech Marketing has lost its way. The reason is part geographic, part the mind of the customer, part structural:
Geography: In The Hands of the Gods
Like it or not, the vast majority of tech companies are either American or Asian. So that’s where the big, strategic decisions are taken. The current buzz about the Apple Tablet – a wonderful piece of market destabilization – is a strategic play driven by California.
And that means that an entire company is dependent on the person at the top ‘getting it’. Steve Jobs certainly gets it: that’s why he’s Fortunes’ CEO of the Decade. When you think of great marketing in Tech, it’s always Apple – from design and user interface, through pricing and channel, to communications and impact.
Lou Gestner at IBM is the other great Tech marketer. Who’d have thought that boring Big Blue would create the most memorable campaigns to support its strategic play into services? But Gerstner – dismissed by some as a ‘biscuit salesman’ – brought insight from Nabisco about the importance of communicating during times of great change.
The company is still reaping the benefits of that today, some 7 years after his departure.
The Customer: Just the Facts, Ma’am
B2B customers tend to be better informed than individual consumers. They are specialists in their niches, with a clear grasp of their subject, and the requirement to justify their decisions to their superiors, so facts are imperative. They rarely buy on impulse.
Account managers may have a vital role to play – and even in the ruthlessly logical world of the corporation, relationships do matter – but the imperative is to provide facts to help support a decision, and that’s the role of the Product Manager.
There’s also the issue of credibility. Tech has a sorry history of over-promising and under-delivering, to the point where the trust agreement may have been damaged beyond repair. Vendors want to be cautious because they think that equals credibility.
Structure: Make It and Sell It
In the Tech sector, Philip Kotler’s classical 4P Marketing bundle has divided into two main camps: Product and Place.
All that goes with Product – product management, product development, product marketing – tends to sit in a separate function, reporting along its own line. This is especially true in the software sector, where – in the apocryphal words of Larry Ellison of Oracle- if you not selling it or not making it, what are you doing in my company?
For ‘Place’ read ‘Channel’ which is usually run by the sales function. Channel isn’t a marketing decision; it’s all about sales execution. And no amount of dressing up of the Channel Marketing function can hide the fact that it gets driven as a tactical sales support role, providing sweeteners to distributors, VARS or retailers to shift more units.
(Interestingly, Kotler’s own website has a section on Tech Industries, in which two out of three service offerings are specifically related to the sales function).
MARKETING LITE?
So that leaves Promotion, or, as it’s now known in most Tech circles, Marketing.
Marketing in Tech B2B is about messaging and communicating. It’s about putting tech people on platforms, and about getting column inches in the trade press or tweets in the mediasphere. It is about enabling conversation.
It could be – should be – energising and challenging and setting the agenda. Not just for technical debate, but social, economic, artistic and educational issues. Indeed, there aren’t many aspects of public and private life that technology doesn’t touch.
So why is so much of B2B Tech Marketing so underwhelming?
Because B2B Tech companies are risk averse. Hence, every marketing program from every Tech company is exactly the same. There may be nuances of audience or twists on the Channel programme theme. But at heart, all B2B Tech marketing is a copy of all other Tech marketing. Because it is what is known.
But when everyone is reasonably competent, the playing field is very level, and the view across to the horizon is very bland.
No one puts their head above the parapet, and no one takes a risk.
The role will always be needed – someone has to run the PR agency and create the lead generation programs – but this isn’t big, brave Marketing with big, brave ideas.
LONG LIVE TECH MARKETING
So is this the end of the road for Tech Marketers – to be consigned to a backroom, writing press releases and sending out invitations to seminars?
Only if Marketers let that happen.
The truth is that Marketing has an infinite opportunity to take the reigns and change the game. Because they sit at the heart of a central paradox: the people who run Tech companies don’t understand the beast they have unleashed.
Many senior Tech execs don’t really understand the Web.
Sure, the company has a website, maybe some e-commerce, perhaps the CEO even has a personal LinkedIn account (although not a fair number of the SVPs and CEOs I know). But many still seem to regard it as just a Comms channel - a cheap way of issuing press releases and cutting down on sales collaterals.
So if you’re a Marketing professional in the Tech sector (or anywhere else for that matter), your opportunity is to fill that knowledge gap. We have only scraped the surface of how the websphere impacts our relationship with customers, partners and influencers. What it means to your company and its business model.
Dive deep and drink long. Now is the time for Marketing to reclaim its seat around the table.
Popularity: 22% [?]
Christmas: the time of year when people who don’t like music buy music, and people who don’t read books buy books.
If you’re a music buff (I mean the sort of person who has Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoyos on vinyl, or who thinks the Rolling Stones blew their credibility with the 1966 ‘Aftermath’ album) then you’ll watch the TV ads promoting the new Boyzone covers of Westlife (or vice versa) and weep into your cushions.
Well, here’s the truth. They’re not aimed at you. The target is people who buy records twice a year – usually for Christmas and Mother’s Day.
Similarly with books: Despite the mind-boggling statistic that the UK publishing industry produces 4,000 new titles a week , book buying is a minority activity.
According to Nielsen Bookscan, 20% of all book sales happen in the run up to Christmas. While the literati may be out in giddy force looking for the new Herta Muller or Elizabeth Strout, the majority of sales that happen in the next six weeks will be to people who usually go into a bookshop for a coffee and to shelter from the rain.
THE LAST HURRAH?
Added to this, the book trade is going through the same radical shift that the music business has experienced over the past ten years. The arrival of Amazon changed the game (much as I try to support independents, for at least five years the majority of my book buying has been online), as did the entry of the supermarkets. So trying to complete with that shift in models has become increasingly difficult.
But, to misquote Bachman Turner Overdrive, they ain’t seen nothing yet: the Amazon Kindle and Sony e-reader – plus other lesser-known platforms – are about to change the whole paradigm of the industry, in the same way as the MP3.
So the booksellers are having to work doubly hard to wring the most from their peripatetic customers at this time of year – because it might be their last oturn on the swings.
Deep discounting is common, best known as the 3-for-2 offer which has almost become the standard now in the sector (in the same way that furniture stores have an annual sale. Not once a year: ALL year.)
So hats off to my local Waterstone’s branch for this moment of genuine merchandising insight:
Not sure what to buy your husband / son / uncle / nephew / brother this year? But know that he likes watching all those BBC re-runs on that blokey channel.
Well, Waterstones have made it a straightforward purchase. Here, in one place, are all the celebrity brands and TV tie-ins that you might have heard of, and you feel pretty sure that he’ll enjoy.
Don’t scoff; it may not be the high culture or specialist niche that interests you – but it is a triumph of customer understanding and sales promotion. Helping a customer base that isn’t quite sure about the market, doesn’t quite know what’s acceptable now to buy for a 17 year-old grandson (“they grow up so fast don’t they?”) but who recognise that nice young man off the telly.
It’s a superb example of Sales 101: Selling is making buying easy.
Popularity: 17% [?]
In August 1997, Fast Company magazine ran a landmark article by Tom Peters. In his usual breath-of-fresh-air style, he encouraged readers to think not like a ‘worker’ or ‘manager’ or ‘employee’ – but as a microbusiness engaged in interesting projects. His big idea was that the continuing flow of customers for that business-of-one (You, Inc) would be dependent on its brand.
Peters extended that notion by stressing the importance of taking initiative, participating in interesting projects, life-long learning, networking through association, personal growth, added value through going the extra-mile and the delivery of results.
In short, he talked about how businesses function and grow – and the lessons that an individual could learn from that. It was a rallying call for knowledge workers at the edge of an economic abyss to make themselves more employable in an increasingly fluid job market.
And it opened a Pandora’s box of flim-flammery and snake-oil promising the easy way to a ‘personal brand’. Most of which is twaddle.
THE COLOUR OF MONEY
I’ve just been reading an article in a recruitment magazine from the senior consultant of a personal branding consultancy. Aside from a series of platitudes about brands adding-value and how ‘popular iconic figures tackle the secrets of human nature’ (including Martin Seligman and Robert E Thayer – yes, those popular iconic figures) her schtick is about dressing for success.
Successful people (quote) “adapt beauty and fashion trends, and manage their body language to enhance their physique. They also develop a unique positioning strategy to enhance their career prospects by harnessing the power of colour, clothes, body language and posture. In short, they develop a unique personal brand.”
To put it another way: ‘Haircut your way to promotion.’ Or ‘Power handbags – the secret to breaking the glass ceiling.’
Basing a personal brand strategy on what colour jacket you wear is like basing a nation’s economic policy on the colours in its flag.
(For the record, I accept that some people need advice of how to dress – including me, before anyone else leaps in with that suggestion. A well-cut suit can make all of us feel like a million dollars, but that is to branding as the front elevation is to a building; it creates a first impression, but it does not make an entire house.)
ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?
Branding is NOT about colour. Branding is NOT about look. Branding is about EXPERIENCE. In the same way that a product brand (the logo) is a visual mnemonic – a shorthand for a myriad of other factors – so a personal brand is another way of saying reputation, which is based upon events, not earrings.
A brand is a complex, multi-dimensional construct that exists nowhere other than in the minds of your customers. Consider the following, and what they mean to you:
- Innocent – iPhone – Amazon – Prius – Luis Vuitton – Caterpillar – Duracell – The Rolling Stones
See? I haven’t shown you a logo, a colour swatch, a brochure or even a product, and you already have an opinion. Values, associations, impressions, memories, understandings, data, stories; they may have been formed through direct consumer experience or come second-hand through the intermediation of the press, the internet or other third party recommendation.
Very little – if anything – is to do with look and feel.
The anglepoise lamp in the Pixar logo has some connotations of its own; if you saw the studio’s first-ever short, it’ll bring a smile to mind. But the values of that business, and the ‘meaning’ of that brand aren’t on display here – but your experience of Buzz and Woody and Mike and Scully and Edna and Wall*E bring deep and rich feelings to the name.
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Design has a place, but it is not a replacement for content – which in the case of a personal brand, is the experience created by you delivering results. As Peters said in his original article:
Ask yourself: What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forget your job description. Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget about the standard rungs of progression you’ve climbed in your career up to now. Burn that damnable “ladder” and ask yourself: What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about?
There’s a deep truth expressed and implied in every word of this paragraph: that the building of brand is based on work. Old-fashioned, time-consuming, sweat-breaking work.
It can be augmented by customer/colleague recommendation. It can be promoted through comment and the sharing of insight. It can even be leveraged through association with other brands.
But it cannot be created by a new wardrobe.
CLOTHES MAKETH THE WO/MAN?
Peters made it clear that the development of your brand should be a conscious, planned, considered activity. And there is plenty of scope for advice and consultancy here – how you network with third parties and influencers, how you express your core proposition and values, how you attract new business opportunities. All of this needs work, care and attention. (I have sat with many senior people who have achieved extraordinary results in their careers, but who just can’t see the wood for the trees).
And, of course, the current minefield : using social media and the internet to ’spread the word’.
The reason is straightforward – the internet never forgets. Every comment you make, every photo you post will be out there, forever, waiting to be found. That can affect the perception of you in the same way that an indiscretion at the Christmas party can hang a big question mark over you for a long time to come.
None of this is a simple process. Your brand (reputation) is a complex thing, influenced by many factors, including the people you work with, the projects you work on, the results you deliver, the company you keep and the recommendations you attract.
Changing your wardrobe might make you feel better, but as with all ‘outside-in’ activities, it’s a short-term fix. Your brand – your reputation – is a long-term project.
Think deeply. Act wisely. Manage it with care.
Popularity: 15% [?]
There is a wonderful clarity to street markets. Amid the hustle and bustle, the brown paper bags and the downtrodden vegetables, the crockery seconds and the dodgy CDs, you can see commerce being transacted in its most naked form.
You could call it ‘Business Unplugged’; no PowerPoint presentations, no glossy brochures, no excuses of ‘couldn’t get past the secretary’ – street traders have had to perfect the sales cycle and compress it into a real-time transaction.
The man who sold me my most recent set of ‘brush-free paint applicators’ (I am a sucker for this stuff) has been in my thoughts a lot this week. In the past seven days, four different people have said they were worried about the lack of sales awareness in their businesses.
‘It’s not our sales people; it’s everyone else.” They mean the finance director raising investment, who can’t sell; the professional services consultant in front of customers every day, who can’t sell; the engineering director creating technology, who can’t sell.
Selling is Life
At least, they think they can’t sell, or they think it’s someone else’s responsibility. Well, if you are one of these people, I have some good news and some bad news. The good is that you can sell; the bad is that you must. Because, whatever your function or discipline, selling is life.
This post is a non-sales introduction to the sales cycle – the principle steps that ALL sales go through, some in minutes, some in months. Whether you’re launching a complex software product or selling an idea to an investor, follow them. Even if you don’t win – and you won’t every time – the steps will help you identify what you need to change.
And the reason I think we all have so much to learn from street vendors is that their business is pure theatre, and a sale is a 5-act drama:
Act 1 – The Hook
(aka ‘the bar stool test’ or ‘the elevator speech’. Timeframe: minutes) For street vendors, the Hook is their advertising. They know they have to break through your indifference and, in a few moments, open a crack of interest in your mind.
Think that your business is more complex, more sophisticated, than selling tea towels or camcorders (last year’s model)? ‘Probably is – but you still need to grab the attention of your customers. And not just any attention; it must be relevant attention. In those first few moments, you set the stage for everything that’s to follow. You have to be relevant, timely and specific to your business.
You have to make it quick, memorable and utterly compelling. Test it, and keep testing it, to see what combination of words gets heads nodding and pupils dilating. Get a positive response now, and you’re half way to the sale
Act 2 – The Pitch
(aka ‘the presentation’ or ‘the lunch’. Timeframe: hours) The pitch is when you begin to set out your stall, describing the problem you solve, the way you solve it and the benefits you deliver. Think about that for a moment. That’s three slides. Everything else is just padding.
Beware of a major pitfall here. Make sure that the problems you outline are not too generic.
I learned this the hard way. A few years ago I pitched to the editor of a major publication. My first slide began with a list of MAJOR INDUSTRY ISSUES.
“Hold it right there. Let me guess. Your next slide says X, the one after says Y, and the one after that says Z.” Er, yes. How did you know? “Because every vendor in the space says exactly the same thing.”
The answer? To frame the problem in terms unique to your solution. Don’t lose sight of the fact that the purpose of the pitch is to take the customer further down the path towards your solution, not a solution. One of the mantras of professional selling is ABC – always be closing. You should be thinking about how to get to the close when you’re on your first slide.
Act 3 – The Paper
(aka ‘the business plan’ or ‘the proposal’. Timeframe: days) Yes – street vendors do go through this step. “Look darlin’; this is pukka. It’ll cost you FORTY FIVE paaahnds in Selfridges.” He’s not asking for money yet – just putting a stake in the ground to set expectations.
In B2B this isn’t the final proposal, but it is when you document how you’ll fulfil the expectations you set in the pitch. Outline your processes, numbers, activities, list prices, and all variables. Move in from the generic to the specific, marrying the two sides of the equation: the parameters of the customer’s pain, and value you expect for resolving his/her problem.
When there are a lot of opportunities coming your way, it’s tempting to cut and paste from other proposals. Don’t do it. Customers have in-built antennae that spot generic text at a hundred paces. At each paragraph, keep asking yourself: Does this reinforce my Hook and Pitch? Does this take the customer further down my path? Does this offer greater value than anyone else?
Act 4 – The Proof
(aka ‘due diligence’, ‘free trial’, ‘product evaluation’, ‘2nd opinion’. Timeframe: weeks)
There is only one purpose to this stage of the cycle. Make the customer comfortable. De-risk the risk. Every purchase is a gamble – your product may not work, your business may not survive, the tea towel pattern might run in the wash. You have to prove that you can deliver what you’ve promised in the first three acts.
Show proof, don’t tell. Show, show and show again. B2B buying is a team event; you’ll have to show multiple actors. Have it ready and lined up before you take your Hook to market. You’d be amazed by how many businesses aren’t ready to show Proof when it’s asked for. Do you have your happy customers lined up? Your live product demo? Endorsements from third-parties? Evaluation copy and licence ready to be signed?
Act 5 – The Deal
(aka ‘term sheet’, ‘order’ or ‘contract’. Timeframe: months) There aren’t many variables when you’re buying tea towels. It’s different in B2B, so it takes longer. But street basics still apply; you have to ASK FOR THE ORDER. And as you’ve come this far in the drama, it’s time to haggle how not if.
* * *
Professional sales people hone their craft over many years. They are the leading lights of the 5-act drama, and deserve their ovations when they bring in a full house.
Your stage may not be so visible. You may be playing a ‘supporting’ role. But for the good of your career and the success of your ‘company’, take a couple of hours to watch the sales workshop at a street theatre near you.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Another in an occasional series of good practices for interviewers and interviewees
A Client recently told me that a couple of the candidates I’d put forward had said that their meeting with me was an especially tough interview*. Not because I’d put splints under their fingernails or shone bright lights in their eyes (tempting as it was):
They said they were forced to think about and examine their answers.
In other words, they’d been taken off the pre-programmed tape that each of us carries in our head: The one that goes “then I did; then I did; then I did…”
There’s a lot that an interviewer can learn from drama. Playwrights, screenwriters, directors and actors will tell you that in daily life – in the comfort zone - we see personality. It is in times of stress you see character. Throwing a candidate a little off-balance enables you to get beneath the surface and find a little more of what the person is really like.
The 5-Point PARKA
Here’s a simple technique to do that. Of course, using it rote fashion throughout an entire session would be rather predictable (not to say a boring), but once you’ve mastered the structure, you can play with the form.
I call it the 5-Point PARKA drill:
1 What PROBLEM did you solve? It might be a customer problem, a technical problem, a staffing problem. Any sort of problem relevant to the role and the skill set that it requires. But even at the first innocuous stage, this can give pause for thought – because many people haven’t considered what they do in those terms. The usual frame of reference is outcomes or responsibilities. By asking about problems, you’re asking them to examine their activity from a new point of view.
2 What APPROACH did you take? Just as there are many ways to skin a cat, there are many ways to solve a problem. Even doing nothing , chosen consciously, is a strategy. You’re looking to see if the person considers more than one option – indeed you might ask the supplementary ‘what choices did you have?’. No choices can mean that there was only one answer, or that the company’s systems were very rigid, or perhaps a paucity of imagination. Which, depending on the role, might be just what you need or a warning signal about coping with change.
3 What were the RESULTS? Here you’re looking for a focus on tangible outcomes; or rather that the candidate thinks through to the end of the line. What impact did the results have on others involved in the project? Did it meet, exceed or miss expectations? Did you anticipate the outcome, and what did you do further to shape that? Outcomes are more than just numbers; as Robert Kennedy once pointed out, we can measure everything except the things really worth measuring.
4 What KNOWLEDGE did you gain? In other words, what did you learn? For every 20 people who can do the job that you’re looking to recruit, 19 will have a fixed set of strategies and tools with which they approach all problems. That may be enough for you, but in an increasingly changing environment, adaptability becomes a key behaviour. If a person isn’t learning from their experiences, are they in danger of becoming a stationary shark?
5 How did you APPLY that knowledge elsewhere? This will take you a lot deeper into what makes the candidate tick. Not only asking what’s been learned, but how it effected future behaviour. One of definition of learning that I especially like is “insight transformed into behaviour”. The lessons may have been about the outcome or the process or the individuals involved – but how did they use it again? The answer will tell you a lot about the way the person views and processes the world.
There are no absolutes here – no right or wrong. Each answer must be viewed in the context of the role definition, the team, the company and the market.
But when you’re running out of things to ask in a interview, and you realise that you still don’t know much about the person in front of you, PARKA can really open up the conversation.
*they both went on to receive job offers
Popularity: 12% [?]
Another in an occasional series on best practice for interviewers and interviewees.
The interviewee calls ahead
There is no doubt that phoning the interviewer when you’re in traffic is good form. We all get stuck in traffic from time to time, and no matter how much leeway you give yourself to arrive for an appointment, events sometimes conspire against you.
It happens. No-one should get upset – indeed, the interviewer may secretly thank you because it gives him / her an extra few minutes to visit the bathroom, write up notes from the previous interview or even – and this does happen – re-read your CV for extra information and insight.
But today I was on the receiving end of a variation on this theme which is not so smart: Phoning the night before to say that you may be delayed in traffic the next morning.
You might think that it is courteous and that you are giving the interviewer as much notice as possible. But actually the message you’re giving is: I may be late getting out of bed.
Not a good place to start. If you think you’re going to be late, rather than give advanced warning I’d advise a an alternative tactic. Get up earlier. It’s a simple technique, but one that may not seem obvious to you in the heat of the moment.
“Ah,” you’re thinking. “But what if I leave early and there’s NO traffic? What should I do then?”
If you do find yourself being early for your appointment, go find a cup of coffee and read a paper. Or review your CV. Or read the role description / job spec again. Anything to settle your mind on the task at hand. The activity isn’t important; what matters is the location. Around the corner, across the street, in the campus coffee franchise. Somewhere close.
Under no circumstances should you decide at the last minute to drive to the other side of town, park your car at the office because you’ll get a better space if you arrive early, then try to get a cab through the morning rush hour. Not a good idea.
All in all, if you think you’re going to be late, do all you can to be early. And if you are early, stay early and read the paper. Under no circumstances forewarn the interviewer that bad traffic in your town may cause you to be late, and then go out of your way to sit in bad traffic.
If all of the above does happen through no fault of your own (although I’m struggling to imagine a set of circumstances where you are forced to take the above actions), under no circumstances whatsoever should you phone the interviewer from the cab and tell him/her everything. Especially the part about parking spaces.
The job description may say ‘open communication style’, but common sense will probably also be a requirement for the role.
Popularity: 13% [?]
Second Thoughts