DAEMON QUEST - Juanjo Peso-Viñals

The Passion of Frank Maguire

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:05:02 +0200

There are people that stand out for their professional quality; there are people that stand out for their human quality… But those that leave a truly indelible mark usually stand out for both virtues combined. This is the case of the venerable Frank Maguire, one of the most important American entrepreneurs and executives of the 20th century, whose invaluable lessons on how a business works and how it should be lead applies passionately to the directors of the 21st century.

I had the privilege of sitting down at length with Frank Maguire, on his recent visit to Madrid, where he attended the High Performance Forum; an event during which he was able to get the attending executives on their feet and connect with each other, extending handshakes to one another.

Passion is one of Maguire’s favorite words. Passion is what this man put into the founding of FedEx, whose birth and brutal growth he was witness to and protagonist of; passion is what he put into the expansion of American Airlines, as one of its top leaders; passion is what he lent to the consolidation of Kentucky Fried Chicken as one of the largest fast-food chains in the world; passion is what led him, before joining the business world, to advise first-hand presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson… Frank Maguire continues to be pure passion, and it is that passion which keeps him so alert and energetic still, despite his seniority.

My obsession with Customers, Marketing, and Sales caused the conversation with Maguire to go in these three directions. So, Frank told me that the word “customer” is derived from the word “custom”, which makes clear how much the relationship with the customer is based on trust, which becomes habit, and which generates even further trust, in such a way that a solid, long-term relationship is created…

Maguire is rightly obsessed with the long-term. He claims that in Japan he has seen with his own eyes strategic plans that cover 100 years, and he declares his preference for this vision over the “dictatorship of quarterly results” that clouds the vision of companies today, depriving them of clear strategies and causing the customers to pay for that improvised management. Maguire’s devotion to the customers is such that, when he founded FedEx along with the legendary Fred Smith, he decided to christen the company with the name of its first customer, which was none other than the Federal Reserve in the United States, aka “Fed”…

Maguire is a firm defender of the team, who he believes should be loyalized above all else, “because only loyal employees make loyal customers”. Since he believes that companies not only have a head, but that they also feel and transmit just like the human beings who give them life, Frank believes that every company should not only be focused on the customer, but that it should be permanently “sensitive” to the customer. “They feel like we’re one of them, each one in a different way… We have to do the same”, he declares.

I learned something from Frank Maguire that I will never forget and which I am beginning to apply with great results. When I asked him what a humble director like myself can do to improve his customers’ satisfaction, he told me: “You see, I limit myself to three top-priority meetings in my schedule. In the first, I gather my people and ask them what we are doing that we should no longer be doing. In the second, I ask them what we are doing well that we should do better. And in the third, I ask them what we are not doing, what we should do. I only ask and shut my mouth. I listen. Because no one knows more about our company and our customers than our own people”. I hear you, Mr. Maguire, and I absolutely agree.

THE CREATION OF NEW MARKETS

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:52:27 +0100

How to Discover “Blue Oceans” and Lead in Growth Strategies

Abstract

The majority of companies are submerged in “red oceans”: saturated spaces where the order of the day is obsession with market share and the tyranny of the competition.
In order to create a “blue ocean” it is necessary to discover new market spaces, expand the existing demand, and guarantee the commercial viability of the new project.
The creation of “blue oceans” demands the design of a long-term Growth Strategy and an overall view of the company and market, beyond numbers.
A “blue ocean” is not discovered by “hyper-segmenting” an already existing market. On the contrary, it demands the incorporation of a new, mass demand.
“Blue oceans” can be copied. Customers cannot. For that reason, it is necessary for each company to reinvent itself with a clear vision of the environment, of its customers, and of its “non-customers”.

In 2005, INSEAD professors Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim launched what has today become one of the biggest best-sellers in the business world, translated into almost 40 languages: “Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant”. Mauborgne and Kim compare the markets in which the majority of companies work to “red oceans”, stained by the “blood” from the war waged by thousands of competitors for the same space. Faced with this scenario, they analyze how close to 150 companies from more than 30 different sectors throughout the last 100 years have been able to create “blue oceans”: new markets that they have discovered alone and which have caused a strategic and definitive shift in the company’s path.

While the companies that “sail” on red oceans compete in already existing markets, the ones on blue oceans create the markets themselves. The former devote themselves to beating the competition, while the latter are not affected by it. The losing side exploits an existing demand; the winning side creates a new demand. The companies submerged in “red oceans” are submitted to the tyranny of “cost-value”, while those who enjoy “blue oceans” have been able to break from that conditioning element. A company fighting for survival in a “red ocean” is faced with the permanent strategic dilemma between differentiating itself or fighting to keep costs at bay; the company that finds a “blue ocean”” is able to align the entire company towards the achievement of the “differentiation + low costs” combination.

Made-to-order Companions

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:20:43 +0200

Airline companies are the most sensitive to the need for loyalizing their customers, and they are also the companies that have invested the most in this objective. However, an American entrepreneur, completely outside the sector, just literally robbed them of the loyalty of 10,000 passengers, and it looks like it’s only the beginning of a great business adventure.

His name is Peter Shankman, and until last year he had no ties to the airline sector, except that he was sometimes a passenger himself. One day on a plane he had the great fortune of sitting next to Miss Texas herself, and he was so happy during the trip that he had an idea: Why not offer airplane passengers the possibility of choosing the person sitting next to them?

When I grow up I want to be a customer

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 11:11:52 +0200

It’s hard for me to imagine what I’ll be like in 30 years. Perhaps I’ll be unwell, or age will leave me with one or two loose screws, or maybe I’ll even be retired and have all the time in the world to do those things that I’ve had to set aside over the years due to lack of time. I’m not sure what my situation will be, but what I do know is that my preoccupations and interests will still be the same. However, will they allow me to behave as if age weren’t an insurmountable obstacle?

Those of us with a road ahead of us before they classify us as “old people” don’t usually think about what the future holds. But look closely around you and begin to tremble. For many companies, the useful life of their customers ends at the age of 60, when one ceases to be a productive worker who pays insurance and generates an income. However, age can open a new path of advantages and sales opportunities if the proper segmentation and analysis is carried out.

Choose what you want to be

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 11:44:33 +0200

It doesn’t have centuries of history behind it, like law or architecture. It doesn’t enjoy the prestige or popular admiration that other disciplines such as Fine Arts of Medicine inspire. The names of its great masters are scarcely known beyond its particular and small universe. It doesn’t promise to move the foundations of human evolution, like technology does. It doesn’t command the respect that other courses do in the field of study it’s included in. Not even in the heart of companies is it an especially venerated department.

So why did I choose Marketing as my passion and profession? What brought me to opt for a discipline that doesn’t even have a commonly accepted translation in my own language? My answer is simple: today, absolutely everything is Marketing. What to tell a young reader on the verge of deciding his or her future about the greatnesses of a profession? The answer is simple: pure Marketing. All the pages that have gone before me and all that follow are full of Marketing; packed with people engaged in Marketing for their respective trades. The clothes we wear, the car we drive, the house we live in is Marketing. Silently and intelligently, Marketing impregnates our lives.

The right price - Price Strategy

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:52:07 +0200

I published an article yesterday in my column in MY CUSTOMER in Expansion about Price Strategies. To me, the key is to follow 7 simple rules in which the key is to segment the price.

"Nothing is more useful than water, but very rarely is what we receive in exchange for it. On the other hand, a diamond has little usefulness, but it can be exchanged for an infinite amount of assets”. It was the master Adam Smith who pointed out this paradox in his classic The Wealth of Nations. Since then, rivers of ink have been spilled concerning the best method of fixing the price of products and services. Currently, price is the subject of a hot debate. While it is still a key factor in a product or service’s success, it is no longer by any means the only one. Today more than ever, price is a subjective element; it doesn’t lie as much in the provider’s more or less accurate calculations as much as in the value the customer establishes in his or her head, according to extremely complex mechanisms.

The Marketing Intelligence Review

Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 +0200

The Marketing Intelligence Review is a quarterly that deals with professionals who have the responsibility of making strategic decisions in their companies. The pages of this publication intend to become a forum for debate and, above all, for analysis and investigation concerning the customer as a figure, and that figure’s repercussions on business management.
From these pages, we want to bring our customers closer to the current World of Marketing and Customer Strategy, a discipline in which Daemon Quest is a pioneer in Spain. Since its creation, the company has filled a large gap in the field of information analysis and business management, and it has demonstrated how important customer knowledge is to any company’s success.

Amena: preventing abandonment in order to better loyalize

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 14:13:10 +0100

The mobile phone operator Amena has begun an important successful project aimed at retaining and loyalizing their residential clients.

Technical Data

Company: Amena.

Objectives: define client profiles and predict
their tendency to cancellation (scoring).

Solution: create a client retention model in
the Residential Business Unit.

Result: adjust marketing and loyalization
campaigns to each client profile.

Knowing client’s behavior and preventing the risk of abandonment has its benefits. Not only can it translate in terms of economic performance and increased income, but it can also improve spending and optimization of available resources. In fact, for Amena, it was an opportunity to face this problem with the goal of launching an appropriate portfolio policy, adjusting their marketing ingredients according to the type of consumer the campaigns were aimed at.

Customer Winback - Author: Jill Griffin y Michael Lowenstein

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:07:36 +0200

Title: Customer Winback

Author: Jill Griffin y Michael M. Lowenstein

Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Client loss is an inevitable reality in the majority of companies. However, the impossibility of reducing this process to zero should not lead to resignation or conformism. In “Customer Winback”, Jill Griffin and Michael Lowenstein make an in-depth and exhaustive analysis of the reasons why the feared client abandonment occurs, and they propose detection and prevention mechanisms, as well as ways of recovering the lost client ( service recovery).

Citizen Intelligence or Sophisticated Espionage

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 13:16:24 +0200

They say that he who forgets his own history is condemned to repeat it, and unfortunately, there are many events we would not like to go through twice. The history of each one of us is written day-to-day, in each of our acts, and it is increasingly common for these acts to remain in written form or on a database. It happens when we pay with a credit card at the supermarket, when we make a transfer on the Internet, or when a Police camera photographs us driving over the speed limit.

The tragedies of September 11th, March 11th, and the July 7th attacks in London have once again raised basic questions about citizen information and how to use it properly in order to prevent similar situations, or to re-construct the events to find the culprits. Governments around the world have seen the benefits to be gained by applying intelligence to data analysis. The business world has been a pioneer in the application of these Customer Intelligence techniques. When a company is capable of storing and accurately managing data generated from its daily relationship with the customer, it will be able to in a more optimal way towards them, offering customers the treatment and attention they demand, and anticipating their future behavior.

The end of Mass Marketing?

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 13:29:22 +0200

A few days ago, I had the chance to eat lunch with Duke University Marketing Professor Dr. Martha Rogers, who was once again visiting our country. Martha Rogers is one of the top worldwide authorities on modern Marketing, author of the revolutionary concept of “one to one”, which basically presupposes different treatment for different customers. At one time in the conversation he used an entertaining phrase to refer to companies that are determined not to know their customers, when they have everything in their favor to know who they are. She referred to these companies as “Dory companies”, alluding to the female fish that accompanies the well-known Nemo on his adventures, and who lacks memory. These de-memorized “Dory companies” ask their customers time and again for their tastes, preferences, needs, and challenges, when they already have enough information to know what each customer wants.

Marketing One To One. Individualized Marketing Strategies

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 12:10:08 +0100

Abstract

Personalization is treating different customers in different ways. This focus demands meticulous knowledge of the customer, based on his or her value and potential lifespan in the heart of the company.
Personalization is a very fashionable term in the marketing world, but to apply it is a complex thing, since it demands a previous capacity for segmentation and very refined profiling.
Personalization strategies are directly related to Marketing One-to-One theories, which entail an entire organizational shift towards the customer, instead of the product.
The four basic pillars on which One-to-One Marketing rests are: identify high-value customers, differentiate proposals for different customers, interact with the customer, and customize the business culture.
Not all personalization strategies are profitable: every company must predict the return on investment in this type of strategy, before they go into it.
We should not offer excessively personalized products and services.
“A la carte” Marketing must satisfy the customer’s need to be individualized; in no case should that be confused with an excess of proposals.
It’s not the customer who must define him or herself to the provider, personalizing their demands. It is the obligation of the provider to know these needs and anticipate them.

“Treating different customers in different ways”. This is the premise underlying One-to-One Marketing, a new concept of sales and marketing management, whose philosophy puts the customer at the center of the company. Derived from One-to-One Marketing theories, personalization strategies and Individualized Marketing opt for exhaustive knowledge of the customer and his or her needs, in order to provide them with what they need, when they need it, and differentiate them clearly from the rest of customers. However, One-to-One Marketing techniques have limitations, which can only be overcome by an accurate Customer Intelligence strategy.

1. Individualized Marketing: treating different customers in different ways

Sales has traditionally been an assisted process... When someone goes to a dealer to buy a car, the salesperson acts as an advisor, steering the customer towards the product that most fits his or her tastes and needs. It is up to the salesperson’s intuition to figure out what impulses move that potential customer and play with those purchasing impulses and habits in order to close the coveted deal. Intuition is an excellent sales tool, but it relies on factors as arbitrary as they are subjective. The skills of the people monitoring a sales process must be supported by empirical and provable information, and that only exists if a Customer Intelligence strategy has been implemented in the company.

Fundamentals of New Customer Marketing

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 10:26:00 +0100

Abstract

Consumers have become more and more reticent towards advertising and traditional Marketing techniques. The market is more and more demanding and experienced. Companies must adopt strategies capable of overcoming this resistance.
The old traditional Marketing techniques, which have proven relatively effective in the last few decades, are not up to the current challenges.
Internal and external errors also cause Marketing to not be highly valued within the very companies themselves. It arouses suspicion in financial directors and, on numerous occasions, in the Board of Directors.
It is necessary to apply a new Marketing paradigm that places the customer at the center of the business strategy.
This new paradigm must facilitate the transition from relational Marketing models to dialogue-based Marketing models in collaboration with the market.
The development of a new high-tech Marketing, capable of effectively measuring results and adopting strategies from reliable information, is the foundation of the New Marketing.
Marketing directors face the difficult task of transforming this discipline into a measurable and respectable asset, comparable to any other asset of the company, which contributes to creating a sustained growth in results.

Traditional “Old Marketing” techniques have been useful for many years, but they are not up to the challenges of the current market. New paradigms are prevailing that are capable of meeting the needs of demand, and that combine imagination, intelligence, appropriate assignment of resources, scientific rigor, and the customer as the primary focus.

1. A hostile context for Marketing

More and more competitive environments; consumers that are more and more prepared and demanding; progressively more complex markets…Traditional techniques of old Marketing are not up to the new challenges presented by scenarios that are difficult to understand and attend to. It is time to take a step forward and lay the foundations of a New Marketing, one that places the customer at the center of its activity and combines imagination with scientific knowledge in order to achieve the best results and contribute to companies’ sustained growth.

Seeing with the client’s eyes

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 12:09:53 +0100

Advertising and marketing campaigns, whether they be direct or mass, are inundating our lives. E-mail inboxes have become a new bottomless pit where every day hundreds of unrequested sales offers land. And these offers don’t even respond to our needs. The cinema and television constantly broadcast images that invite us to consume, sometimes in a veiled way, sometimes eloquent. In the sports world, sponsorship even includes the bodies of athletes and swimmers, which is living proof of the triumph of the new commercial aesthetic that rules in this young century. But the efficiency of these strategies is more than debatable.

DAEMON QUEST - Juanjo Peso-Viñals

The Passion of Frank Maguire

THE CREATION OF NEW MARKETS

How to Discover “Blue Oceans” and Lead in Growth Strategies

Abstract

Made-to-order Companions

When I grow up I want to be a customer

Choose what you want to be

The right price - Price Strategy

The Marketing Intelligence Review

Amena: preventing abandonment in order to better loyalize

The mobile phone operator Amena has begun an important successful project aimed at retaining and loyalizing their residential clients.

Technical Data

Company: Amena.

Objectives: define client profiles and predict their tendency to cancellation (scoring).

Solution: create a client retention model in the Residential Business Unit.

Result: adjust marketing and loyalization campaigns to each client profile.

Customer Winback - Author: Jill Griffin y Michael Lowenstein

Citizen Intelligence or Sophisticated Espionage

The end of Mass Marketing?

Marketing One To One. Individualized Marketing Strategies

Abstract

1. Individualized Marketing: treating different customers in different ways

Fundamentals of New Customer Marketing

Abstract

1. A hostile context for Marketing

Seeing with the client’s eyes

Objectives: define client profiles and predict
their tendency to cancellation (scoring).

Solution: create a client retention model in
the Residential Business Unit.

Result: adjust marketing and loyalization
campaigns to each client profile.