One of my colleagues here at the Geehan Group is a whiz at engaging with people via LinkedIn, blogs, discussion groups, etc.  I have learned several of the tricks of the trade from her, and am amazed at the amount of knowledge to be gained just by paying a little bit of attention to these social media sites.

This morning the thought ocurred to me -- What if you were able to get all your customers and prospects into one room, for an indefinite amount of time, and listen to and document every word they said.  What if you told them they could discuss anything with you and with each other:  the market, their challenges, your company, your products, your services, their vision of the future, their expectations of a trusted advisor vs. that of a vendor, and any other topics that were top of mind for them.  How valuable would that information be to you as you plan your strategies? Your product portfolio? Your communications? I dare say it would be immeasurable.

Now translate that same experience to that which you can have by engaging the market through online media.  Not only can you listen to what is going on "out there," you can also contribute and become a known entity to the most vocal and passionate among your targets.  There's no better place to carve your niche as thought leaders in your space that these communities.  But more importantly, there's an amazing opportunity to LISTEN to what's going on as well. 

Let me be clear -- this is not to take the place of developing in-person relationships and engaging with the market on a face-to-face, consistent basis.  But for added insight, try jumping in a conversation or two online.  I think you may be surprised at what you will discover.

"Wow, this isn't as easy as you would think." 

That was one of the comments I overhead many times last week when our client asked the members of their Advisory Council to participate in an Innovation Workshop at a recent global meeting in Mallorca, Spain.

Members were walked through the process of innovating new products and services using a series of notecards that contained the various building blocks needed to take a product from concept to completion.  The building blocks included product specifications, business models, distribution, value proposition and marketing.

Members were divided into small groups and began by defining the problem that needed to be solved.  They were then given time to address the various components critical to developing a product/solution that they would then "pitch" to the remaining members as well as the host team.  After the pitch, each team would allocate their play money to the newly-developed product that they felt would provide them with the most value in their respective organizations.  Based on the total dollars allocated per product, the host team annointed the winners and presented them with lovely gift baskets.

Some comments from members included:

"Wow, I have a whole new appreciation for what goes into developing a new solution."

"This wasn't as easy as I thought it would be."

"There is so much more that goes into this - no wonder these things take time."

Most of the time, these meetings are about assuring that the host team leaves with market insight.  But every now and then, it's not so bad when the council members leave with a little insight of their own.

Today I read an article from Business Week about the recently released IBM study, "What Chief Executives Really Want."

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109596/what-chief-executives-really-want?mod=career-leadership

The part that jumped out to me the most after reading the entire study, (no doubt a testimonial to my frame of reference), is the following:

"The most successful orgnizations co-create products and services with customers and integrate customers into core processes."  

It goes on to say, "They are adopting new channels to engage and stay in tune with customers.  By drawing more insight from the available data, successful CEOs make customer intimacy their Number One priority."

It's very exciting to see this priority come to life in the Customer Programs we implement with our clients.  Syed Hasan, President of Sales - Americas at Springer had this to say with regard to the co-creation of products:

"Having pre-validated ideas from our Advisory Council members helps accelerate acceptance within our organization, and that in turn, helps us go to market faster.  Beating out the competition can be seen as a direct result of getting market insight at a very early stage."

The IBM study further confirms the priority noted by CEOs of reinventing customer relationships.  "CEOs said that ongoing engagement and co-creation with customers produce differentiation.  They consider the information explosion to be their greatest opportunity in developing deep customer insights."

The sheer power of engaging customers is obvious.  Working with those who actually commit to it is nothing short of inspiring.
 

I just returned from an inaugural meeting with a well-known tech company that engaged select CIOs and CTOs from the large enterprise customer segment of their organization.  It was a hugely successful start to their Advisory Council initiative and the feedback from both the client execs and customers was among the best we have ever seen with regard to first meetings.

The overwhelming feedback from the CxO's was that the host organization did a phenomenal job of listening to their input.  But more specifically, council members commented that not only did they listen, the host team reiteriated many times that they wanted open, honest feedback and despite some things that were probably not what they wanted to hear, it was received without any defensiveness or counter points.

Members also commented that it was a sign of true commitment that the leadership team was there, fully engaged and really open to honest feedback.  When asked on a post-meeting survey what the members valued most about the advisory council meeting, comments included: