Putting Your Customers' Needs First

other steps in project development and if you don’t follow through with Feedback and Analysis…then your next endeavor will likely be no better than your last one!

This business model idea was originally introduced to me by John DeFazio, guru of Marketing Communications at Westinghouse, to measure our marketing communications effectiveness in serving our customers and prospects information needs as it relates to inquiry fulfillment. Our Trafford printing division handled the printing and literature distribution for most Westinghouse businesses. My tour of their vast literature warehouse with pallet loads of literature in storage as far as the eye could see left a lasting impression on me. Most divisions were spending more time and effort on generating the literature and monitoring its cost to produce it than making sure the subject material was being distributed effectively to their prospects and customers. I soon realized that I could apply this business model to virtually any business project by simply redefining step four as being either “Distribution or Implementation”. When you think about it…most things we do in business are repetitive in nature. We tend to do the same or very similar tasks repeatedly. So, it only makes sense that we develop a process for making sure that each succeeding time we perform a task that we can measure our ability to continuously improve our performance. Let me illustrate an example that we can all identify with…the TV commercial. The landscape of commercial TV has changed over the years but the commercials not so much…the commercials themselves range from 15 to 30 to 60 seconds in length but now appear more frequently on our screens…now often exceeding 15 minutes of ads for every hour of TV viewing. Take an NFL football game for example…the average game now lasts 3 hours and 12 minutes for a 60-minute game that only has about 11-minutes of actual football action! In fact, a single NFL football game often contains over 100 commercials! To make matters worse, often the SAME commercials are broadcast multiple times in the same program. Now, occasional redundancy may be considered “positive reinforcement” but perpetual redundancy can become a “turnoff’ and a downright “nuisance”. A company may have planned, put together the best resources, produced a sterling commercial BUT failed to make sure it was distributed EFFECTIVELY. Yes, they have selected a great TV show with good audience demographics BUT if you abuse your viewers by excessive exposure you can inadvertently create a negative impression for your product or service as well as for your company. That is why you must pay attention to ALL SIX STEPS of this Project business model! The advertiser might have been wise to have created multiple versions of their ad…a short version, long version, several variations on the same theme to keep their intended audience at least occasionally anticipating a little variety in the message being delivered.