“Two hours. I just need two hours.” Then there was a pause and I realised that the CMO I was talking to was making a plea for help. Generally our conversations cover everything from where to find the best skills, how to develop the marketing organisation and drive value, through to how Brexit might challenge recruitment.
This time however, as companies started to unleash their Christmas campaigns, there was something else top of mind, namely, how could they compete if they couldn’t test and execute new marketing ideas?
The list was long: ‘We want to use Instagram to boost loyalty… we want to be more clever about the way we run email campaigns… our retention model doesn’t seem to be working as well as it used to’.
Two hours was what they thought it would take to determine a plan that would get ideas off the white board and into action.
Two hours isn’t that long really when you consider how many days we spend at work. However, the conditions of trading meant that reactive marketing and campaigns were taking priority. Rightly so, but the argument was nagging away in this CMOs mind: “would I be in this position of firefighting if we’d spend time earlier in the year getting to grips with doing things differently?”.
We agreed the answer was probably no. So why hadn’t it happened before? The argument came back that this CMO had breadth of ideas but not the depth of knowledge, and the team was in a similar position.
So what did I do? I offered two hours of my time with them, and their senior team, to pick through the ideas, identifying the blind spots and establishing a plan – including a review of the skills, cash and resource it would take. Of course this required the use of my favourite tool, the whiteboard.
It turned out to be the best two hours they’d spent on planning in months, and it was most certainly the most energizing two hours I had spent with a business in a while. It was exciting to see how new ideas can spark creativity and a drive to make things happen.
So we’ve decided to offer every client, and those who aren’t working with us but are in a similar position, two hours of our time. It might not be with me, as I’m not always the expert, but it will be two hours with a specialist who can help with your specific pain point.
If you think your customer value, retention or base management plans could use an outside critical but constructive eye then call me or my team on 01256 638080 or contact us here https://www.cvmpeople.com/jenga to arrange a free session.
After 20 years spent creating and delivering successful customer value projects for globally recognised brands, Alan is an expert on using CVM to achieve P&L optimisation and business valuation growth.