Delivering Value. Abandoning Extortion.

Two great annoyances in my life are air travel change fees and the pricing strategy of replacement printer ink cartridges.

I will confess to being frugal, but I am not cheap. I will gladly and cheerfully pay for value. However, I am infuriated every time I hand my credit card to an airline ticket counter agent for four minutes worth of work to confirm my standby seat on a flight with empty seats. I am equally, if not more irritated, every time I replace a printer ink cartridge and pay nearly as much for the ink cartridge as I did for the printer.

Why do I find these costs so annoying? Largely because I am trapped. The airline and the printer companies are treating me like a rat in a maze, not a valued customer. If I want to print, if I want to go home, I have to play the game by their rules.

The companies in both the airline and the computer printer industries act in concert with one another leaving me, as the customer, essentially powerless. It is the sense of powerlessness, the feeling and the reality that I am paying a hefty price because “they have me” that I find so unpleasant.

Every company needs to make a profit in order to survive and thrive. I want my preferred suppliers in both my business and personal lives to make a fair profit so that they may continue to provide the products and/or services I procure from them. However, I want to feel valued, not manipulated. I know that I am not alone in this desire.

I have been thinking a lot about this dynamic as it relates to my business (publishing) and we continue to strive to build value into our programs and offerings. In the publishing business we used to have a number of high-profit, low-value revenue centers. Or, areas where the price was out of line with the value being delivered. Nearly all of these revenue centers have been squeezed out over the course of the last several years, which I think is a good thing.

Are there areas in your business where you change customers a lot of money just because you can? Low-value, unfairly high-profit revenue that irritates your customers? If so, it makes sense to me to think about reducing or eliminating these areas. I do not mean take a voluntary revenue reduction as few of us can afford that especially within this economic climate. But, perhaps look at ways to turn annoying, low-value fees into a high-value deliverable.

If an airline offered me no-charge flexibility when they can, they would have a customer for life. I am not asking an airline to secure a seat for me that they could sell. But, it would make me really happy if they offered me flexibility when they have empty seats available. Twenty empty seats are not going to be sold 50 minutes before take off…great opportunity to make me happy and build value rather than forcing me to pay a fee. Maybe they have the opportunity to increase their revenues by selling “jump seat passes.” Not for consumers to literally sit in the jump seats, but an annual pass that would offer more flexibility to pass holders.

Could a printer company charge a fair price for their printers, a fair price for their replacement ink cartridges and perhaps keep their revenue flowing by offering feature add-ons or software downloads for a fee that would enhance the functionality of the printer? If the add-on or download adds value, I will gladly pay for it.

Within previous posts I made a number of recent comments about the book “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis. In his book, Mr. Jarvis points out a fascinating aspect of Google and some of the other very large internet players like Craig’s List and EBay. Many of these internet players operate on a model of charging as little as possible rather than the traditional approach of charging “what the market will bear.”

To me this is a fascinating idea and one that I am thinking a lot about. Most of us have and need to have business models much different than that of Google or Craig’s List, but what does apply is that most of the current internet giants have built value into every aspect of their businesses. I don’t believe that the same can be said of many more traditional businesses/industries…at times, even my own.

4 Elements of a Successful Business Website

A really great Mashable.com post that outlines in an easy to digest way the very basics of a business website.

What’s the most important piece of your business’s web presence? Your website, of course.

Creating a website requires a good deal of thought; it’s important to plan what information you want on the site, what the layout will look like, and how you’ll connect each piece together.

Think of your website as your hub; it’s what people will see when they look for you. Here are four elements of a successful business web presence that can help ensure that your first impression is a good one.

Click here to read more

Is Saving Children’s Lives Just Another Business Opportunity?

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing does several surveys and research studies over the course of the year to track pharmaceutical industry trends.

It is common market research practice to offer an incentive to survey respondents and for several years we followed the fairly uninspired practice of offering the chance to win one of three $50 gift cards, the chance to win an iPod or fairly conventional offers of this nature.

This year we decided that rather than standard survey incentives. we would donate money to a charitable cause in honor of survey respondents.

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team selected St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as our charity of choice. We felt good about the idea of helping to support, in at least a small way, St. Jude’s important work of “Finding Cures. Saving Children.”

In addition, based on our knowledge and coverage of the industry, we know that St. Jude is doing some outstanding work.

In December 2009 we deployed our first research study in which we notified our audience that we would make a donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in honor of survey participants.

In fairly short order we were contacted by the Corporate Affiliates department of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (I did not even think to call them in advance). Great I thought! One less phone call I had to make to determine where to send the checks.

We would not make huge donations ($150 - $200 at a time which is our typical incentive budget per survey—$1500 – $2,500 over the course of the year), but I believe every bit helps when you are working toward something big and important.

Although I certainly did not expect to be given V.I.P treatment, I did expect that our donations would be politely received and perhaps we would even enjoy some level of feigned gratefulness.

I was informed that St. Jude was not interested in “our opportunity” and that the minimum donation for their corporate affiliate program was $250,000.

As a highly specialized information source, I don’t even believe that Pharmaceutical Manufacturing benefits much from offering any kind of incentive for the completion of our surveys. However, I view our research incentive budget as a small opportunity for us to do a little bit of good.

The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital does outstanding and important work, but their “business,” their “brand,” is not interested in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s “opportunity.” I am O.K. with that. Non-profits have been hit hard by this recession just as businesses and individuals have. Plenty of organizations are seeking donations of any size.

Maybe this situation worked out for the best. CharityNavigator.org, a resource I find to be quite helpful, features some interesting information that points to the potential need for St. Jude to improve fund raising and administrative efficiencies. Click here if you are interested in reviewing CharityNavigator.org's ALSAC-St. Jude Children's Research Hospital profile.

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing brand is not ours, it is yours. Without our loyal audience and advertising supporters, there would be no Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. In this spirit, please e-mail me at tbecker@putman.net or post a blog comment naming the organizations you would like us to support. We will maintain a list of organizations we donate to on our website PharmaManufacturing.com.

Because we made a promise to the respondents of our 2010 Career and Salary Satisfaction Survey that we would donate to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a donation of $150.00 has been sent.

Please understand, our donations will not be huge. But as Mother Teresa so beautifully said, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”

Harvard Business Review Names Top 100 CEOs

Very interesting. Harvard Business Review just released its list of the world's top 100 CEO's.

Click here to read more.

As a side note...of the world's 2,000 top performing companies, only 29 of those companies are led by women CEOs (1.5%). On the global political stage, the percentage of women heads of state is even smaller.

I have my theories on this. My theories are not laden with victim thinking or sentiments about how unfair the world is (I have never spent my energies engaging in that type of thought).

However, the lack of balance is concerning as I do believe men and women (as a generalization) tend to think differently. The business world and the world at large could use more of a balanced approach.

How to Fix Marketing in 2010: 6 Steps

An interesting piece. Some points you may agree with, other points you will not, but worthy of thought.


Now that it’s a new decade, it’s time to wean the marketing group away from their delusions of strategic grandeur. Here’s a simple, six-step program to ensure that your company’s marketing is successful and productive in 2010:

• STEP #1: Correctly define marketing. If your company’s marketers think that they’re doing something “strategic”, they’re wasting money. Marketing is a tactical function whose sole purpose is to provide qualified sales leads. In a productive marketing group, all activities serve that goal.

• STEP #2: Make marketing subservient. In most companies, there’s often a total disagreement about basic issues, like the intended market and the target customer. The only way to prevent stovepipes and infighting is to fold the marketing group into the sales group. Do it now.

Click here to read more.

The Brave New World of the Engaged Web : MarketingProfs

It goes without saying: The Web is very different from what it once was.

CNN and other "old media" stalwarts such as NBC, ABC, and the New York Times are no longer the top-ranked, most highly trafficked websites. Now, the darlings of Web 2.0 and beyond are Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter.

It's clear that Web habits are changing fast. In terms of clicks per minute, the world's attention is dominated not by traditional content-based sites but by a set of radically different, interactive, community-based tools and services. Read More.

Marketing Communications Talent Needed Now More Than Ever

I recently finished reading “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis (I really do not read ultra slowly and I did start reading this book a several weeks ago-other reading temporarily usurped this book’s place in the queue).

As I read this book. I had many “ah ha” moments. I do not believe Mr. Jarvis’ book contains all of the answers—it is a book designed to stimulate thought, not a Ouija board.

The seeds were planted for the changes we are now experiencing 15 years or so ago, but it has really been the last handful of years that the world of media has been turned on its head. Every type of media from television, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, music….the list goes on and on, has been forever changed.

B2B media has been far from immune. And an improving/recovered economy will not bring new life and prosperity to a forever changed and constantly changing landscape. Those merely waiting for the economy to recover so that we can return to “the way things were,” will be sorely disappointed.

However, in a media landscape that has radically changed, I find comfort in the reminder that as long as there is more than one supplier for a given product or service (in other words, as long as there is competition), marketing, marketing communications and advertising will exist. As long as competition or choice exists, product, service and solution providers will work to establish themselves as the products/solutions of choice.

In other words, as long as choice exists, marketers will strive to change the behavior of non-customers. And, changing behavior of non-customers or motivating continuation of desired behavior amongst existing customers has been the core goal of marketing and advertising for decades. If we are Coke, we want to change the behavior of Pepsi drinkers. If we are Thermo Scientific, we probably want to change, at least to a degree, the behavior of Bruker customers. If we are Emerson Process Management, we certainly want to change some of the behaviors of Rockwell customers.

So as marketing, marketing communications and advertising professionals, we can rest assured that there is an ongoing need for our craft. However, the question is, are we going to update our thinking, strategies and tactics to take advantage of and to survive in the new marketing and media landscape? This is the magic question in my mind.