In 1779, the great Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to Madame Brillon. In this letter, Mr. Franklin recounts a mistake he made as a child. It seems that when Ben was seven years old he had his heart set on a whistle in a local toyshop. His friends had filled his pockets with “coppers” and he went right away to the shop and laid down all his money for the whistle. He took his whistle home and delighted himself with it while causing quite a frustration for the rest of his family. His siblings and cousins learned of the bargain that he had made for the whistle and proceeded to educate the young Ben of the reality that he had actually paid four times for the whistle was worth. Ben was the laughingstock of the house, so much so, that Ben was driven to tears. He never forgot the grief that pricey whistle cost him. As he grew older, however, Ben saw adults who were often paying too much for their whistle.

In marketing, I have the opportunity to see a lot of organizations paying too much for their whistle. Sadly, they work so hard, pushing sales goals, raising unprecedented bars on their marketing efforts, and cracking the whip of overtime on their staff in pursuit of the next big thing. They don’t realize the real cost of their whistle.

I’ve seen sales staff of organizations getting caught up in the glitz and glamour of schmoozing a client for their business. They treat their account with such high attention that they fail to take into account their own personal affairs. They sometimes do rather unscrupulous things to win accounts. To that end I think they’re paying too much for their whistle.

I’ve seen firms overwork good people without a single thought of offering even a small bit of gratitude. They view those who serve them as disposable commodities; nothing more than brute oxen hired to carry the weight of the firm’s world on their shoulders. Yet these employers ponder why the revolving door to their offices is constantly spinning with talent coming and going. They don’t see that they are paying too much for the whistle.

I’ve experienced organizations that have hired our marketing expertise only to question our wisdom in the suggestions we make to achieve their goals. They change course several times, unable to zero in on a clearly defined objective for a campaign. Aimlessly they walk like an unaided blind man in a china shop unable to see the strategy for the planning committee. They find themselves handcuffed to their own perceptions, interpretations, and assumptions that have no real basis or research behind them. They truly are paying too much for their whistle.

Near the close of his letter, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles.” Ben learned a valuable lesson that many intellectually superior adults to this day haven’t learned. So, will you learn the lesson or will you continue to pay too much for your whistle?

Until next time, keep your pulse strong…

While reading the August issue of HealthLeaders magazine, I ran across an article in the Leadership section titled “Focus May Be the Future.” Its premise is that most hospitals can’t continue to be all things to all people in both the current economic environment and as healthcare reform evolves to incentivize providers based on demonstrated quality measures. Dr. Stephen Newman, the chief operating officer of Tenet Healthcare, states, “In only the rarest incident does a general hospital have the financial wherewithal to be all things to all people.”

We often get asked at Talstone why we specialized in healthcare. Like Dr. Newman’s statement, we realized almost from the beginning of our firm that trying to be all things to all people in the marketing world was a big task. Maintaining an understanding of the specialty nuances of multiple industries such as hospitality, healthcare, golf, or the many aspects of consumer goods was both time consuming and at times hard to do at the level we prided ourselves in.

Having personally spent almost 20 years in the corporate healthcare arena, our firm’s growth and focus had naturally evolved and gravitated to that industry.

So in April 2008, after an extensive evaluation of our strengths, experiences, passions, and successes, we decided to turn our firm’s focus completely to healthcare.

Much like Tenet’s experiences, specialization allows us to do more with less. It allows us to be more knowledgeable about the challenges our clients and their target audiences face. Specialization allows us to quickly assess the landscape of each one of our clients so that we can develop strategies to meet their objectives in a timely manner. On more than one occasion clients have told us how nice it is they don’t have to “spoon feed” us like firms they have used in the past.

Dr. Newman goes on to say in the article, “You can’t be an A player in all the services.” That’s certainly true, and we see the benefits of that every day in our firm. It’s a lesson that resonates throughout our industry.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” That’s certainly a warning that everyone using Twitter would do well to heed. Research conducted by Pear Analytics bears evidence of that fact when they found that 40% of what gets posted to Twitter is ‘pointless babble.’

But what does this mean to you as an upstanding citizen of the Twittersphere? It means you need to consider what you’re posting to Twitter if you’re trying to increase your influence on your given target. There’s probably no better categorization of your tweets than those created for the Pear Analytic report. So, think about your latest tweets. Which category do they fall into?

News

Do you find yourself becoming one of the many Twitter news anchors ready with the latest and greatest news story? Are you quick to give traffic updates to weary travelers in your area? If so, your tweets will likely fall into the news category. Out of the number studied by Pear Analytics, 3.60% of all tweets fall into this category.

Self-Promotion

Are your tweets plugging your latest service, book, or philosophy? Do your tweets read like a weekly grocery store flyer complete with coupons for Twitter followers only? If so, you fall into the self-promo category. This category accounted for 5.85% of the tweets studied.

Conversational

Some Tweeters use their tweets as a near-instant messaging service. Their tweets come across more like, well, a conversation between two or more individuals. If your tweets fall into this category then you account for 37.55% of all tweets conducted in the study.

Pass Along Value

If your tweets start with “RT” then you’re likely a candidate for the Pass Along Value category. These viral tweets spread interesting links, ideas, quotes, and general knowledge to other followers. This category accounted for some 8.70% of those tweets studied.

Spam

If you actively engage in showing people how they can “learn to get 400,000 followers in an hour” with some revolutionary concept then you’re likely in this dreadful category which accounts for 3.75%.

Pointless Babble

The Pointless Babble tweets are those where you are tweeting just to be tweeting. They include comments such as “I just sharpened my pencil” or “I just drank my second cup of coffee.” While these tweets have no value they account for a whopping 40.55% of the tweets Pear Analytics studied.

Pear Analytics admitted that they felt if the study were conducted over a longer period of time the Pointless Babble and Conversational categories would trade places or at least even out. Regardless, you have to be aware of what sort of communication you are doling out through Twitter. If you don’t understand that the tweets you post do a great deal to build or tear down your reputation as a trusted resource then you are tweeting ‘pointless babble.’ Winston Churchill said it best when he said, “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” You need to take inventory of your tweets and see if you’re demonstrating the excellence of an eagle or simply tweeting like a parrot with its foot hung.

Until next time… keep your pulse strong.

I’m not a huge baseball fan. Sure, I played Little League growing up but really only because I lived in a very small town where there wasn’t much else to do in the summer months. When I played, my preferred position was second base. Outside of the occasional line drive, most of the balls that came my way were grounders that if I kept my head down and eye on the ball I usually could snatch up and easily get it to the first baseman in time to get the batter out. Pitching – that was a job I left to others. It was definitely not one of my talents.

Its funny how life works. I haven’t picked up a baseball or softball in a few years; however, one of my favorite activities as I grow older is pitching. The type of pitching I love is sitting down in front of a prospect and delivering a message on how and why my firm fits into their needs.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an opportunity to “pitch” Talstone to a rather large prospective client that was putting its marketing work out to bid. Sure, I get to routinely pitch our services to prospects; however, this one was a little more formal and to a larger group of executives than normal.

So what made this so special that I took time to write my very first post on The Pulse? The process we went through to prepare is one that every organization should do to make sure they always put their best foot forward in their sales efforts.

The Warm Up
As every pitcher does in pre-game preparations, before our big pitch we took time to research the other firms that were going after the client. We evaluated everything from how big they were to what type of capabilities they touted. We then looked at our prospective client and determined how our capabilities met their needs as they looked to position themselves in a unique specialty marketplace.

The Right Pitches
Fastballs? Breaking balls? Change ups? Once the research was completed, our team strategized on what we needed to say to build on our strengths and differentiate us from our competitors. Was it size? Specialization? Experience? Knowing who we are and conveying that clearly is key in a sales setting.

The Motions
Overhand? Sidearm? As we developed our key messages, we realized very quickly that our method of presenting had to be different than the expected. We ditched the traditional PowerPoint and created an innovative way to display our capabilities in a manner that addressed some of the needs of this prospect. As well, we looked at our printed materials/leave behinds and made sure they reinforced our brand and what our prospect needed to know about us to make a good decision.

The Delivery
While anticipating every dynamic of a pitch is impossible, we walked through the presentation and prepared back up plans for the audiovisual needs as well as thought through potential questions that could be asked about our firm. Fortunately, no technical problems occurred and the questions asked were ones we had prepared to address.

Every healthcare organization has opportunities to “pitch” their services every day. It’s important to step back routinely and take time to work through a simple process to make sure you are putting forth your best foot when you step up to the mound to deliver the messages necessary to put your team in a position to win the game.

Off to the next pitch … Play Ball!!!

During a recent writer’s conference, the instructor gave us a good tip for getting into a character’s head. The problem that arose was how to find a character’s “voice” if you’ve set a story in the third-person point of view. When you write from a third-person point of view, as in “John felt scared,” you’ve got a bit of a distance between you and your character.

But when you switch it to the first-person point of view, “I shook; I was so scared,” you get right into the character’s head and see the world through his eyes. Sometimes writing from that perspective for practice, even if you don’t use it, can help fine tune a character.

That’s when it really hit me that in marketing we ignore this point of view often.

Yes, we constantly try to craft messages and themes and solutions that meet a targeted audiences’ needs and perform research to figure out what compels them to act in a certain way, make a particular decision, and move them closer to choosing your solution.

But too often that research is outwardly focused on a potential audience. We court them and search for them and believe our one-on-one conversations are yielding a rich mine of information.

But we quite often neglect one of the best resources we have at our disposal – our own clients. Whether it is something as formal as conducting primary, qualitative research with a telephone interview, or more simplistic with an e-mail survey asking for their feedback, we need to constantly be aware of the reasons why someone chose us, why they continue to stick with us, and especially why someone would decide to leave us.

That last point is important. Regularly taking your client’s pulse – checking out things from that first-person point of view – can prevent departures that come as a shock to the company later on. Don’t just ask your client if they are satisfied and would they refer you; try to dig deeper than that.

If you are in an ongoing relationship with them, ask them why. Would they do it all over again if they could? Regardless of how you got them on board to begin with, ask them what spaces they are occupying now – what media they read, what has changed in their habits, what magazine or Web site do they no longer find value in? What new challenges are they facing? Could you help them with those?

It gives you a chance to walk around inside their head and view your service or solution through the eyes of the people who use it every day. And in checking out that first-person point of view, it helps you develop the right “voice” your marketing messages need.