The path most travelled and the path of least resistance are often the same.
On a recent supermarket trip I was at the check-out. I saw the usual chewing gum, cooking magazines, batteries and chocolate on display. High profit items that customers impulsively buy as they wait to pay for the rest of their goods. I wonder, if supermarkets had to rely on people only buying what they came to the shop to buy, would they actually make a profit at all?
On this occasion, I had to deal not only with the persuasion of my inner self ('hmmm, I really fancy some chocolate right now') but also with the persuasion of my kids who were asking for lollipops and magazines with free plastic toys. To avoid giving in to my kids I felt it necessary to not yield to myself as well. In the process, our local supermarket missed a few extra pounds profit and our family saved some unnecessary expense.
Marketing folks have of course always understood that to generate a customer response they need to place the goods and services as close to the customer's existing path as they possibly can. The supermarket checkout is a classic example and has been taken to new extremes these days by almost every retailer. If I try and buy a bottle of water at the airport at the newsagent or chemist I will inevitably meet with a queuing system that sees me waiting for the next available checkout whilst I have a chance to view almost all the high profit impulsive purchase products that the retailer has to offer. Chocolates, crisps, suncream, ear-plugs, travel pillows, tissues....the aim is to convert paying customers to higher paying customers.
Marketing folks online also get this. Why do you think Google Adwords has been so successful at generating results for marketeers? Because the potential customers are already there. In this case the challenge is not to convert an existing customer, the challenge is to acquire a new customer. As we know that potential customers are already on Google (and we know their intentions from their keywords) we can take advantage of their existing path and offer them our products and services.
Likewise with TV advertising. You wouldn't ask parents to 'please come downtown tomorrow to view the new home cleaning product advert on a big screen'. No, you'd probably put the advert on a kids TV channel hoping they'd see it whilst they watch TV with their kids.
The best way to make change happen is to find and use the path most travelled.
Managers in businesses however don't quite get this. If they have a program of change that they want to achieve, they need to think marketing and they need to think about distribution channels, paths and existing behaviours. So many don't.
It's essential to start thinking about internal comms in the same way as external comms. Who are my audience? Where can I reach them? How do I integrate my message into their existing behaviour? How can I get the results I want from their existing environment?
In a previous job, our tech team were trying to figure out how to build knowledge and awareness within the customer support team about how our products worked. Their solution, although commendable for the effort put in, was ineffective. They decided to create blog and wiki where they would explain how things worked. New posts would be available by RSS feed.
What needed to happen for this to work was that all the customer support people needed to have a separate login for the wiki. Then, they all needed to configure their email client to pick up the RSS feed. Then they needed to remember to check the RSS feed folder in their inbox on a regular basis and read the articles. Sounds dead easy if you work in tech. It failed.
Imagine if our supermarket had a separate room for all of their high margin add-on sales. You had to go there specifically in order to see the product offerings. And you needed to pick up a separate basket in order to carry these products to the check-out in addition to your main trolley. They wouldn't sell anything would they? Of course, not.
The path most travelled is why the supermarket check-out system works for the add on sales. The path most travelled is also the reason the tech wiki failed.
For the tech wiki project to work it needed to use the systems that the customer support staff were already using on a daily basis. There were three; the company back office system, the CRM database and email. Anything outside of these three systems was irrelevant because support staff were busy enough dealing with these three systems to think about adding another.
So, when trying to introduce a change to an organisation, focus on making your change happen using existing pathways. Making change happen is hard enough. Having to create new pathways at the same time makes it even harder.
As a bonus, not only is the path most travelled the easiest place to introduce your change, it's also the path of least resistance.
No matter what their discipline or function, the more a manager thinks like a marketeer, the most likely he or she will succeed. Be where people are and be where they are receptive.
Find and use the path most travelled. It could be your yellow brick road.
No comments:
Post a Comment