Today I received an email, from a raving fan of my team. Basically my team do the work so that’s who our customers love really.
He wasn’t always this way. Part way through this project, our first with him, a few road bumps occurred.
But we dealt with them and pushed through to get the result required. In most circumstances there are always two sides to problems. To me that doesn’t matter.
I want to see the end result. Blame gets us nowhere.
Sure we have to make sure we hold ourselves and our customers to being honest and responsible, but our job is to make sure we deliver on our promise. More importantly it has to work.
Not the obvious does a page load or does data get stored. That is mandatory. BUT.. does it work for our customer, does their business get better because of what we did.
One month in and a 43% improvement of conversions (what the whole project was about) is a bloody good start.
I love that sort of result. I want to see that get better or continue on before I feel the job is truly done.
That’s why I have an inbuilt hate for the current era of social media and other digital late coming gurus. Not because I want to own the turf after 15 odd years in the game.
No, just simply because for all the hype and self proclamation, all the ROI presentations,and repetitive talk about how this and that are a must do thing, business and industry are doing business. Not talking about it.
If their business needs a certain marketing / web implementation because it WILL IMPROVE their business, then it should be done. It should never be done because it is the supposed latest newest thing that every business can’t do without. It isn’t about a few lessons in twitter or a youtube video that will just viral itself.
Something doesn’t just go viral because you want it to or say it will. That’s like trying to catch the flu in a room full of healthy people. Great ideas or messages go viral because they have the right signal in the right breeding ground.
Crap ideas end up in the internet loo. More dirty by-product clogging up the passages.
In business you have to be able to show some form of return. Even intangibles like customer satisfaction can be quantified albeit not exactly, but in ways that matter.
My advice, learn about all the new technologies, methods and ways to do things. But when the advisor you are hearing plays a numbers game, of fans or followers, or doesn’t have real experience in making businesses quantifiably better, simply put them on a performance guarantee. Something that needs measurement to pay by.
Only the good will remain. Make them be part of a great result. Good people will take that challenge easily.
In my book it just has to help improve their business or our work isn’t done yet.
Well that’s what ireckon anyway.
