"In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back."
~Charlie Brown

One of the things that I think is hilarious about Charlie Brown is the voices of all the adults (Teachers and Parents). When they speak, you can’t understand what they are saying. Now that’s great for a cartoon, but when you’re among your peers in other parts of the organization, it can be very frustrating.  This is a common complaint I hear from functional heads as well as Presidents and CEOs about the marketing department.

Let’s face it: Marketers invent words to describe things that could be expressed simply. The only group that invents more words than marketers are consultants. (Oh yes, we consultants have acronyms and buzz words for everything. Now that’s a self-inflicted wound.) While inventing and propagating novel phrases gives you street credibility in the marketing circles, industry and in the web 2.0 world, if you want to be taken seriously by your CEO and peers across the organization, markets need to speak in common-language business terminology.

Sound familiar: “We can drive share by leveraging our value proposition downstream to maximize our brand equity in the cloud. This will provide a boost in RSS and incentivized traffic and ultimately new logo acquisitions. We’ll supplement this all with virtual eZine programs. We can also engage power bloggers that follow netiquette protocols to boost our CTRs.”

I guarantee that most of the heads of sales, service, strategy, finance, IT, and development do not - and have no desire to - translate, interpret or decipher jargon like this. It’s like when you visit a foreign country. Everyone appreciates it when you make the effort to speak their language. The more you communicate in common business terminology, the more you’ll be accepted and respected by your peers and your boss.

Bottom line: The great thing about this last critical success factor is that it’s so simple to implement. Speak in a language that your colleagues and customers will understand and it will be easier to bring them on board with your initiatives. You’ll be in a much better position to have real and effective conversations.

At the CustomerAdvisoryBoard.org 2011 Conference in Boston I recently presented “Eight Building blocks of World-Class Customer Advisory Boards.” We received many follow-up questions about various aspects of these eight areas:

1. Executive Involvement
2. Connection to Strategy
3. Membership Design
4. Member Recruiting/Commitment
5. Content Design
6. Meeting Experience
7. Follow Up Actions
8. Results

So, over the next few months, my team will be posting a series of articles addressing the best practices and key elements for each of these building blocks that lead to world-class customer advisory boards.
 
If you have any specific questions or situations you’d like addressed, simply post here or shoot me an email (sean@geehangroup.com) and we’ll be sure we respond. Who knows, we may even write an article about it.

I recently posted a tweet “Apple unveils iCloud storage, new operating systems...let the games begin”. I received this tweet back from a Finance leader at a F500 firm:

"OK, Sean for us finance dorks - what does this mean to my bottom line and those of my customers?" - John H.

Here’s what’s happening:  Apple is trying to cut off Microsoft and Google before they make serious headway at the device level (phone and tablet), and drive up switching costs before the equilibrium in the device occurs (which will happen). This will also help differentiate them against Amazon. While Amazon can provide cloud storage, there isn’t much to store at this point that consumers would actually buy from Amazon so it will simply drive the cost of doing business without driving much incremental revenue (little or no music, photos, videos, etc).
 
These four companies are colliding in a huge way. And in almost every market, only two major players can last profitably. It will be an interesting war, especially since all are too large for one to actually acquire one of the others.  And the battleground will be in the cloud, at your device (tablet and Smartphone…RIP laptops) and the offerings (apps, services, etc). Of course the first casualty has been Blackberry. While mine is not yet a Beast of Burden, sadly, its days as a leader are fading quickly as its market share has been cut in half over the last two years. Every day they wait to make a bold move will move them from tattered to shattered.

Here’s what it means to you and all consumers:  Accelerated innovation, heightened customer experience, stable technology, choice, flexibility, accessibility, and simplicity all for less money. This will be a really fun time for the consumer. Once people try it, wild horses couldn’t drag them away.

What does the cloud mean for your company and its customers?  This innovation will provide small, mid and large customers the same benefits along with agility, operating efficiencies, easier collaboration between suppliers, partners and customers if you are quick to adopt and apply a point of differentiation. I was recently in a meeting with CIOs discussing the cloud – two companies in the same space. One company is launching a three-year plan to move to a cloud configuration. This will drive 40% of the cost out of the IT organization, and they are re-investing this back into new offerings (development and acquisitions). The other company is simply trying to improve short-term cost and only yielding 8-10% savings. Most of this saving is being pushed to the bottom line (shareholders). It’s a pure low-risk, short-term return. All other things being equal, in three years a clear point of separation will occur. That should give finance leaders some satisfaction.

And while you finance dorks can’t always get what you want, I hope this time, you get what you need.

Earlier this year, the Geehan Group team gathered 45 top B2B C-suite executives to participate in the 2011 B2B Executive Summit, Navigating Growth and Transformation. The main objective for this highly interactive Summit was to share best practices from leading industry thinkers and practitioners while providing peer-to-peer networking. We purposely kept this event small so CXOs could talk directly with the speakers and with each other.  Our event highlighted two best-selling authors influential to leadership and growth: Peter Luongo, The 10 Truths about Leadership and David Thomson, Blueprint to a Billion.

At the conclusion of the 2 days in Arizona, attendees commented on the value of attending the Summit:

“When you can get executives of the quality you had from such a variety of industries who are working on really big and important things for their own companies to be that attentive for two days, talking about issues facing their business, you must have really, really rich content. You did it and created a dynamic environment where people have stayed in touch. That’s rare.”
            - Joe Morgan, CEO Standard Register

“This far surpassed my expectations.  From the quality of attendees, to the value of the presentations, to the opportunities to interact, it was all superb.”
            - Jeff Tinker, SVP Wells Fargo

“It was the best investment of my time I've ever made in a business conference as a CEO.  The content was exactly what I needed to take my skills as CEO to the next level.  There was great collaborative learning and networking opportunities.”  
            - Margie Traylor, CEO Sitewire

“Rarely do you find an approachable business environment that invigorates your social senses with intriguing conversations, collaborative exchange of inventive ideas, fascinating speakers with applicable war stories, and the urge to network well beyond the two days.”
             - Greg Jorgensen, CMO Verisign

What I relished most about this experience was that everyone was completely engaged throughout the entire 2 days and everyone was given a chance to contribute. The level of interaction, sharing of experiences and openness was unmatched by any event I’ve attended. Checkout the highlight video of the event: click here.

The social elements were just that, social…getting to know each other as people, smiling, laughing and even riding motorized scooters. When everyone departed it was as if we had known each other for years. I can’t wait to gather my new friends again soon at the next Summit!