Pajunas Hosts More Than Your Website

Like a midwestern version of Gate 3 Work Club, Allie at Pajunas is offering monthly office subscriptions.

That’s right, for a couple hundred dollars a month, you can move your start up out of your house and into downtown St. Paul’s fantastic Renaissance Box.

I spoke with her at the Pajunas open house tonight. We had a great conversation on the value of community, quiet, and internet access in getting a business off the ground.

If Pajunas doesn’t have the right space, check out the $50/month writer’s refuge elsewhere in the building. Perfect for your great american novel (breaks down to $1 / word) .

Find Failure Fast

“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” – Thomas J. Watson Sr, founder of IBM

“…fail faster so [you] can succeed sooner.” – David Kelley of IDEO

I’ve got any number of projects in the works at any given time (current count is north of 20). Last year, there was a different twenty. Some of the same, and I’ve found the sign of a good project is one that sticks with you for years. Some of the projects I started last year worked out extremely well (VINE360, MNteractive.com) others were obvious (in retrospect) failures.

Ultimately, my work is to capture and apply feedback to business strategy. Failure gives clear feedback – and it will persist until you listen. The usability evaluations and ethnographic studies I conduct are about listening for failure early. When it’s easiest to accommodate.

Failure will occur, whether you like it or not. As the earlier quotes illustrate, it’s better to find failure fast than procrastinate. For procrastinating failure only puts off success.

Best Buy Focuses on Personas

Best Buy has taken the first step in their persona-centric model. According to the Wall Stree Journal’s Analyzing Customers, Best Buy Decides Not All Are Welcome, the sales associates have received training to briefly interview customers to determine if they are a Barry, Jill, or Ray Buzz.

In an effort to keep their store relevant in an increasingly e-commerce industry, Best Buy is also reducing rebates, promotions, and sales. Others may disagree, though I commend them in that decision.

This was also picked up by iaslash.

A Systems Thinking Overview

As an introduction to the perspective Working Pathway’s brings to your project, I present this excellent overview of systems thinking from the late Donella Meadows: Dancing with Systems.

Here are some highlights to get you started:

“Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.”

“Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself.”

“Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.”

“The way you learn is by experiment—or, as Buckminster Fuller put it, by trial and error, error, error.”

“A decision-maker can’t respond to information he or she doesn’t have…”

“Look for the ways the system creates its own behavior.”

Here’s an additional link to Dancing with Systems. Yes, it’s that good.

Thanks to Willem Van den Ende for bringing this seminal work to our attention.

Cost of Stolen Towels Comes Out of Marketing Budget

A couple years back, Amazon attempted two things:

  1. Advertising in print and on television.
  2. Charging for shipping.

They found little return on the first, and a found a huge backlash against the second.

Amazon now finances their Super Saver shipping with their advertising budget: NY Times – Amazon Tries Word of Mouth

Holiday Inn just took a page from Amazon’s playbook.

About the Towels We Forgive You, documents guests’ stories of ‘borrowed’ Holiday Inn towels. An excellent idea, capturing the enthusiasm of their most brand-passionate guests and giving the proceeds to charity.

Yet the idea is only being half-executed.

I agree with David Paul at Perceptional Analyzer when he says:

“I think hotels should encourage guests to take a towel or robe anyway. They take it home, use it, see the logo all the time. What better way to stay top-of-mind for when people are making their next travel plans? Sure there is a cost involved, but it’s called the marketing budget.”

I see a similar phenomenon in talking with clients. They want to proceed with a project, and aren’t able to support it in their discreet budget. While other, related budgets have a surplus.

Should redesigning a website or software product come out of product development’s, customer service’s, training’s, or marketing’s budget? Yes.

As should the customer research driving the redesign. As all those departments are intertwined in your customer’s mind, building a passionate customer base will help all those departments. In this cooperative environment, to paraphrase Seth Godin, everyone gets a Free Prize Inside.

Sales Clerk Shops Competiton With Customer

Until now there were only 5 responses you’ll receive when asking a store clerk about an item:

  1. “Yes, we have it. Allow me to get it for you.”
  2. “Yes we have it. It’s in aisle 4, I’ll show you.”
  3. “Yes we have it. It’s in aisle 4.”
  4. “No, we don’t carry it.”
  5. “No, we don’t carry it. Try my competitor.”

That was before Jhanice Nelson.

Nelson introduced a whole response. It’s a response that understands how shopping fits into a customer’s life goals and how their value to a store can be measured in customer evangelism and lifetime purchases.

“You came to me with a wardrobe problem, and I wanted to help you solve it,” she said. Just because she didn’t have anything to sell me shouldn’t stop her from helping me, she said.

Read the entire article by Jackie Huba @ Church of the Customer.