It’s spring, and now is the time for the lawn service companies to line up customers so they can plan their season’s work and lay out their routes for delivering their weeding and fertilizer products. We get lots of calls and mail flyers soliciting our business.

Every year we get a call from a national firm, and since we have used them in the past with good results, and since they had a good deal for the entire summer, we decided to sign up with them. The deal was based on prepaying for the work and products they provided, which we agreed to.

So what’s my problem? I recently blogged (Making a Case for “Overhead”) about “the ‘money and time’ resources burned that’s attributed to everything a customer does - up to and after the buy - that isn’t related to using the purchase to achieve its intended goal,” i.e. customer overhead. What follows are three “minor” instances, from this company, which illustrate the kind of overhead I’m talking about.

Most management techniques include motivation methods and mechanisms, proselytized by training gurus and motivational speakers who tell us that in order to get the most out of our staffs, and ourselves, we need to develop “motivators.” I don’t agree. We have all the “self-motivation” we need to perform well.

What we need is an environment absent of de-motivators and - what we really are referencing when talking of management motivation - support mechanisms to allow self-motivation to flourish. The mechanisms that management uses merely serve as “connectors,” or re-enforcement, to those things that already motivate us.

Think about it. When was the last time a motivational speaker, manager, or colleague was able to, truly, get you fired up about something that you weren’t fired up about already? It’s rare.

Have you ever had to wait in an extraordinarily long line to make a purchase while there were unmanned purchase stations? How about returning a defective item either by going back to a store or via mail? When you get a product and read the instructions, do you find them either wrong or so unclear that using the product became self taught, improperly utilized (both extending the time for implementation), or just plain impossible (causing a product return)? Have you spent time with a salesperson who did not 1) know the products they were selling or 2) ask you questions about your needs or your intentions (actually, you did all the questioning), extending the time to make your purchase?

While there’s a good deal written about how to create a good value proposition, businesses’ embrace of the concept seems to be lukewarm at best. That’s probably because they overlook the total value behind developing and using the tool – which is what it is – throughout the organization; sales and product management just to name a few applicable (sub) process chains. There are several misconceptions that keep companies from realizing that value.

First (and the most written about), companies have a misconception about the definition of a value proposition and the guidance it provides to construct one. It’s mistaken to be, among other things, a list of company goals or some platitudinal statement about the company’s, for example, market position (“We lead the market in quality solutions.”).

Why have I been reading lately that while customer centric behavior is increasing in companies, it’s still more of an inside-out process than outside-in? Having thought about it, I came to the conclusion that one of the reasons is because words matter.

Take the word “management,” as in “customer relationship management” (CRM) or “customer experience management” (CEM); it has meaning and connotations. Several dictionary definitions include “the organizing and controlling of the affairs of a business or a sector of a business,” “the act of handling or controlling something successfully,” and “the skillful handling or use of something such as resources.”

But word connotations are often subjective. For example, “management” connotes, to me, an activity done internally to an organization, something that someone volunteers to be subjected to, and, as one of the definitions suggests, something that is controlled, but in a “I’ve got the responsibility and you don’t” sort of way. The most important connotation I get, though, is that “management” is a set of passive (someone else does the action part) and short term (I manage a project to completion, I manage “putting out a fire,” etc.) activities.

“Empowerment” is one business capability needed for successfully executing customer focused strategies. If properly defined and implemented, it enables company personnel to take customer focused action, feel a sense of ownership, take initiative, make better, timely decisions, and use their self-motivators creatively, all leading to better business performance.

Even though a lot of companies say they “empower” their employees, it seems there may be room for performance improvement or innovation. That’s why “empowerment” should be the subject of one the “non-product questions” used to find opportunities to improve or innovate the “small things” that companies do to complement and enhance the performance of their products and related services.

The conversation that such a question initiates could, at a minimum, identify the principles that, when followed, get the intended positive effects from of the empowerment capability. For example, empowered individuals:

• Have the ability to “make and break” rules that govern their activities, allowing them to make judgment calls performing their tasks.
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Companies spend a lot of time and money collecting, managing, analyzing, creating knowledge and applying data collected from customers, which is good news. Developing insight about customers helps create successful customers, necessary today because they’re increasingly looking for unique, high performing solutions to resolve their issues, problems, challenges and achieve their goals. If they don’t get the solutions they expect they are quick to search the myriad of competitors available and “switch.”

But the two major types of insight commonly developed aren’t enough to meet this customer powered, commoditization driven environment. Insight provided by “products and related services” initiated transactions that comes from sales calls, customer (or potential customer) inquiries, customers buying something or data acquired from other touch points (e.g. support) isn’t enough. Nor is the insight provided by vendors and customers collaborating on innovation and improvement projects (initiated either by the customer or the vendor), such as focus group interviews, questionnaires and data gathered from co-developing new products and related services.

As important as these insights are to business success, companies need non-product insight to make their entire organization the total solution customers demand.

What would you rather have, loyal customers or successful customers? Which group would be more valuable to your company? These questions are meant to point out that loyal customers aren’t necessarily valuable ones because loyalty usually means that customers buy from you when they buy - no matter how little.

Now, only successful customers can be valuable in every sense of the word. For example, customers who have success in generating revenue and profits make them financially valuable, which is attractive to potential and existing suppliers; or they are so successful they buy enough from your company to be classified as a valuable revenue source; or because they are successful in their industry, your company’s relationship with them creates marketing and branding value, whether it’s through general association or overt publicity on the customer’s part; or customers become valuable consulting partners because they successfully (and accurately) gather industry and market condition information. Notice that all of these valuable things are only something successful customers can provide.

So, the real goal isn’t how to make customers loyal, but to help them become successful and therefore, valuable. How can this be done?