AbleBrains

Enterprise 2.0 and Employee Passion

A recent Gallup poll states that 71% of employees at US organizations are not engaged in their jobs.  Oh man.   What's also fascinating about this poll is that highly educated and middle-aged workers are less likely to be engaged.   So how does a company deal with the intellectual and aged-based ennui that develops thru the course of an individual's career?

The national engagement data reveal that businesses in the U.S. -- and in turn, the U.S. economy as a whole -- might not be reaching maximum worker performance because of the high percentage of not engaged and actively disengaged employees. Increasing the percentage of engaged workers in the U.S. could spur a significant amount of job growth, as detailed in Gallup's latest book, The Coming Jobs War.

Why is it important to have engaged employees?  Well, its kinda like that customer experience thing I like to talk about -- you know, the one where you create an emotional bond between a brand and a customer? Only on the internal side. When an employee is engaged, he/she feels a connection to their company and they have passion for it, they become rabid evangelists for the brand.  Its got be a huge bummer to get up every day and go to work for a company that you don't feel passionate about.  And for the brand, they're not reaching near enough their productivity potential from their employees, hence are losing a critical competitive weapon.

Today's enterprise 2.0 tools offer solutions to help employees stay connected with each other and with the brand as whole but from the looks of things many enterprises aren't driving the connectedness that's needed to help drive passion. Now granted, unless you've got some Mosaic talents, you can't get water from a stone.  Some dogs just won't hunt.  Some fish you can't fry... and the metaphors go on and on... you just can't elicit passion in employees, there has to be something for them to get excited about... something for them to get hooked by. So before you load up on more E2.0 solutions, make sure you discover the passions that run deep in your company and surface them thru conversational tactics.

Deploying E2.0 tools can address a host of employee maladies and actually foster an environment where employees are:

• Inspired and productive
• Develop networks around their individual passions
• Gain needed support from other workers
• Create rather than churn
• Generate novel ideas that can help the organiztation succeed

E2.0 is not a panacea.  It won't address all the issues around a passionless, disconnected work force. But its a significant start.

 

Enterprise 2.0: New Tech, Same Old Marketing

Walking the floor at the Enterprise 2.0 conference today I was struck how after all these years the needle hasn't moved much in terms of how a technology company markets themselves.   There's the obligatory vendor pavilion with the obligatory hard copy collateral, obligatory demo stations, obligatory elevator pitches and the obligatory badge reading and card swapping.  

And I'm scratching my head asking myself "Why?"

According the the CMO Council only about 7% of a firm's leads comes from events.. just 7%, whereas 52% come from Customer Referrals.

So I ask again. "Why?"

Part of the answer lies in the conference circuit itself.  This is how its been done in the past, its worked and this is how future conferences are planned.  In-person networking events are an entire ecosystem of vendor, consultant and author promotion.  Business gets done because of these events. Education gets done. And these are good reasons to have them.  But looking at that 7% number and thinking about the Cost Per Trade-show lead, I gotta think from the vendor perspective, there's a lot of room for improvement.

Consider the following scenario...

Good Booth staff talk to many individuals.  They engage in conversation.  They have the opportunity to actually figure out whether or not the individual they are talking to is worthy of future conversation -- of lead nurturing. What if... what if, your booth staff were trained to ask a series of questions, say 7 in all. And based upon those 7 simple questions, you could predict what type of buyer your booth staff was talking to?  Or if indeed they are buyers or influencers at all?

"Hi, I'm Steve.  I am the VP of Biz Dev for Widgets Inc."

"Hi, I'm Joe.  What does Widgets Inc. do?"

"We make Widgets!  Can I ask you a few questions?"

"Sure."

"How large is your organization?"

"About 1000 employees"

"Do you have a large technical staff?"

"Nope. Pretty small in fact, that's why we don't do a lot of custom development work"

"Who makes purchase decisions for Widgets at your company?"

"Oh that's the Executive Leadership Team.  We have to prepare ROI business cases and present them at the Monthly Operations Meeting -- our MOM."

"How cute!"

Ding Ding... you're done!  In this hypothetical, Steve has determined that this company, in high likelihood has an ROI motivated buying style, at least in regards to its IT purchasing behavior.  Now this is a simplistic scenario and granted that it won't work in all cases but even just getting your booth staff to focus more on conversation generating firmographics rather than uni-directional broadcasting is a step in the right direction.

Now, each set of questions (a Question Tree) for an individual organization will be different based on their products, services and market space but you get the idea. And it will take some work to figure out ahead of time, WHAT ARE THE QUESTIONS which identify and predict what type of buyer you are talking to.  But if vendors at trade shows were to begin to take this type of scientific approach to how they talk to folks I guarantee that they will see an uplift in quality of time spent on these leads.  Meaning, the profile of the leads that the firm will follow up on will have a higher likelihood of being qualified to pursue.  Further, the firm can de-prioritize those folks that won't ever buy from them.

Many CMO's bemoan the quality of the leads or lack of leads found at conferences.   Providing some training around conversational rigor can go a long way to improving the value vendors get from trade show attendance. And that makes it all worthwhile.

Can Your Product Drive Word of Mouth Marketing?

In a word, "yes", but you have to ask yourself "will mine?"  Why do certain products have buzz and why are some just plain DOA?

1. Products that get used a lot get talked about a lot (OK Steve, brain dead obvious), what's the interesting part?). The interesting part is that when a product is referenced thru multiple channels, multiple avenues in a consumers' environment?  That drives conversation!!!! -- whether online ads, a tweetstream, a billboard, AN INTEGRATED MARKETING CAMPAIGN -- it doesn't matter.  If it leaves an impression in a consumer's mind, and increases the likelihood of a consumer mentioning it. Still not interesting enough?  Read on.

2. Your product doesn't have to be "interesting" to be talked about. Interesting products may be talked about more right after a person has an experience with that product but "interesting" products don't receive more WOM coverage overall.   Its what you say that's important!!!! Its the problem they solve that's important. Ok, so you're not working for Apple marketing the iPad.. GET OVER IT!!! And have some fun with your product. At the end of the day, its YOU who have to be the evangelical spark for your WOM efforts. You who have to go out there and become a conversationalist.  Don't sit behind your desk, craft your plans and let em rip! You have to actively take part in any WOM effort via the social media channels that make sense for your offer.

3. Do promotions help drive conversation?  Well, giving away product is associated with driving conversation. In studies we've seen and conducted ourselves we've determined that giving away products to consumers can boost WOM. In fact conversation can be boosted significantly but don't pile it on! If you send a consumer multiple free products you won't see a concomitant increase in buzz. Clearly WOM fatigue sets in and the excitement wears off.   Coupons and rebates won't do much either. (SAP are you listening?)

The Takeaway?  Take a "flanking" approach to your WOM marketing efforts.  When you are developing your product level marketing for a Word of Mouth campaign, don't deploy the campaign in a vacuum -- you will need to take a 360 degree approach and integrate that WOM campaign into your existing Demand Generation efforts.  And don't be discouraged that you're not marketing a cool app or device!  If you have a valuable solution that solves a real pain and you couple the avenues through which people can learn about your solution, there will be talk!!!

Oh.. and stay away from the hard offers.  They're not going to drive word of mouth.   They may drive conversion but that's a whole 'nuther story.

Evolution, Enterprise 2.0 and Integrating Conversations with Processes

Enterprise 2.0 is spurring the evolution of us business professionals.   Its enabling employees, no matter their role in an organization to engage directly on behalf of their brand - to advocate for their brand, products and services.  We all know the market talks about our brands - with or without us being present.  By integrating conversations with business processes, brands can not only tell their story with convication and passion but they can act on those conversations.

          Now, the ZDnet crowd as well as many of the Enterprise Irregulars and many others have weighed in on the SAP Business Suite launch and the Enterprise 2.0 functionality now found in the Suite.   As I've been lucky enough to be included in some of the discussions around this type of integration, I thought it'd be helpful to share a bit more of our thinking and perspective as we approached this new wave of functionality.

Lets start with a couple of assumptions:

1. Social Media is a HOUSE OF CARDS

Easy to Build and Easy to fall apart unless you tie it directly to your business objectives and hence the processes of your organization and use it to enrich the experience ca customer has with your organization

 

2. Conversations Can Impact Top and Bottom line Revenue Growth

When a customer or prospect has an experience with your brand--  "marketing" in any form (product experience, service experience or Big M marketing, conversation begins.  Those conversations may be with the brand or with other customers.  If customers find value in those convesations, they begin to develop not only an affinity for those value driven exhanges but relationships develop.  Out of those relationships and value exchanges eventually the customer not only comes to appreciate the intrinsic value of the conversation but affinity for the brand develops.  At this point, a buying cycle is likely to proceed to everyone's satisfaction.

You can think about people engaged in conversations as a non-linear process.  In any conversational dynamic, individuals take away nuggets of information and pass that information onto other groups and other individuals.

    

 

What we've done is integrate conversations into enterprise processes so that they are actionable on behalf of the enterprise.  These take 2 forms.  Conversation -> Process integration and Process -> Conversation.

A good example of Conversation -> Process integration was demonstrated yesterday briefly but to elaborate, by pulling Tweets into the SAP Business Suite and applying a sentiment engine to those tweets, a customer service rep can make those conversations actionable by identifying and emerging customer or brand issue. Someone may be complaining about your product or service.  With Sentiment analysis not only can an organization proactively address a looming customer crisis but they can initate corporate processes such as raising a Customer Service Ticket to initiate a problem resolution process.

 

Once done, SAP can then issue the results of those trouble tickets on Twitter itself!

Going the other way, a super example of Process->conversation integration is the deployment of Marketing Campaigns using Social Channels.  Using Business Suite functionality,  users can now design and deploy marketing campaigns which can execute over a variety of social environments, including Twitter.

And there ya go...

 

Enterprise 2.0 is the latest evolutionary pressure on businesses.  Those of us that adapt will survive this pressure and thrive as the new ecosystem comes to dominate our business dealings.  Those that don't will find themselves facing extinction pressures that will be hard to avoid. 

Creating Enterprise 2.0 @ SAP

Recently I was interviewed by our Corporate Strategy Team regarding taking SAP's Enterprise 2.0 strategy and execution plans to the next level.  It was an excellent interview with great give and take... some novel ideas and some typical SAP deliverables - heavy on the quantification, heavy on the analysis, Board level recommendations, but a little light on the execution, discovery and experimental paths.  The typical organizational reaction to enterprise 2.0 is to try to control it rather than let it blossom in its own right.  I think this is where SAP faces the most internal change management challenges. We know we need to get there, we have islands of great innovation happening currently... I think of Dennis Moore's Emerging Solutions team... but how do we NOT over engineer the controls and let it continue to grow... the company needs more of Dennis' ilk.  This post from the FASTForward blog sums up my personal view on how we can accelerate.. but I'd add to this is that we need some degree of organizational empowerment to seed innovation islands (or continents) in SAP. Its what will work in our environment.

Our colleague Euan Semple just posted what are perhaps the ultimate and most direct-to-the-point manifesto on how organizations can promote Enterprise 2.0:

1. Do nothing - your Web 2.0-aware employees will do it for you, but in an uncontrolled fashion
2. Get out of the way - don’t tamper with the innovation and energy of a very tech-aware incoming generation
3. Keep the energy levels up - perhaps this is best done by keeping the organization out of the way.

Euan’s message is that Enterprise 2.0 is a grassroots phenomenon that is inevitably sprouting across enterprises large and small. The knee-jerk organizational reaction to such trends is to attempt to control and overmanage the technology.