PoolHouseRed

Here is a little video I shot of 5:00 traffic in Tulsa today:

I actually sat and watched this for a while and its really interesting to see that patterns that develop. So, the left lane is an exit only lane onto a surface street, the exit is perhaps 2/3 of a mile from where the two streams of traffic merge. The next two lanes go through and marge with the intrance ramp to the right.

The most interesting pattern is up in the top left of the frame

Most interesting is the top left of the video where the two streams of traffic merge.  It is sort of hard to see, but as soon as the two lanes come together people pull out of the exit only lane and into the through lanes, or into the exit lane from the through lanes. People seem to feel the need to pull in right away within the first 100 feet. I actually saw several people stop for 10 or 15 seconds to get into the other lane even though they had over a half a mile of empty lane in front of them to use to merge. I really think traffic would flow faster if people would just spread there merging out over the entire length of the exit only lane. I wonder why they don’t? A couple possibilities:

• my observation might be wrong. There could be something im not seeing. Most of the people driving in this video drive this every day. They may know something I don’t.
• Bad drivers, It could just be that all these people are bad drivers. They are on their cell phones and not paying attention. I don’t really think this is it. None of these drivers are dong anything wrong. They are just trying to get into the lane they need to be in.
• Bad design. I think this is part of it. There might be something that could be done to help people not feel like they need to switch lanes immediately. Something to indicate that there is plenty of room to merge.
• But, I think it has more to do with something people are really good at: getting tunnel vision and not seeing the big pictures. Or another way to think of it is that we focus so much on the detail right in front of us (i need to get into the other lane) that we never step back to see what is really going on (i have plenty for room, I don’t need to stop here until i can get over).

I do this kind of stuff all the time. I focus so much on the project I’m doing right now that I don’t make progress on the big picture of what I want to do and make progress on the big picture. And you can see this everywhere, politics, business, churches, non-profits, environmental debates, water wells, aid, development, money, economics, everywhere. I hope we can learn to think about the big picture, to think more then one step ahead.

Facebook is of course changing, more sharing, more info, the news ticker…you know all about it. I have been thinking and reading about this some. Partly its of course a personal question. I’m on Facebook, at what level do I want to buy into these changes? I don’t do a lot on Facebook really, its a communication tool for me, so the answer is…not much at all. You probably wont be seeing a stream of music im listening to from me on Facebook. I think its more interesting though to consider the big picture. The noise level is about to go way up. If we choose to pay attention we are going to be flooded with people telling us what they are consuming, and thus in some way recommending those things to us.

This is going to cause me to tune a lot of people out, and seek out the people who are willing to regulate their own noise and only talk about truly interesting things. It seems like the ability to gain the trust of people by being discerning is going to be more valuable then ever.

I have not blogged in a while…i miss it. Ill continue the guest service marketing series, but I have something else on my mind right now: dusruptive.

We hear about things being disruptive in an industry often (the iphone, google, threadless, wii, etc). I am not sure what all it takes to put yoursef in a postion to be disruptive, but I have noticed a couple of things that happen to people who are trying to do things in a new and different way.

Recently I went to the dentist. Mint Dental is a small dentist office near our house. They are trying to do some things different from how normal dentest do things. Some of this is about limiting waste (no paper, recycling, etc), some of it is about serving customers well. I had an intersting conversation with Dr. Avery about building their new office as she cleaned my teeth.

Think back to the last time you went to the dentist. Imagine sitting in the chair. Look to the left and right, do you see the cabinets? Probably. There are also some cabinets behind you, and there is a specific amount of space between your feet and the wall. Apparently almost every dentist office is built to the exact same specs.

When they built Mint they decide to change the layout. No cabinets on the left and right, a central storage space for tools to eliminate duplicates, and bit less space at the foot of the chair. Not big changes really. But the entrenched industry did everything they could to keep them from. The cabinet company told they they could not get just the cabinets for the head of the room, they had to get the side cabinets as well, because “you would need them.” Never mind that they did not need them. The cabinet company also said they had to make the room longer or they would not have enough room. Now, I am a bit taller then average and i had plenty of room.

Dentistry is an old industry, and everybody does it basically the same. Because of this the people who supply the dental industry with their tools are convinced that there is only one way to do things, and even little changes are seen as wrong.

What is interesting about all of this to me is how powerful the need for sameness is among big established organizations and industries (churches, governments, schools systems…). It’s a bad place to be when your client is asking for a new and better way to do things, and your telling them it can’t be done for no better reason then “that’s how it is”/

If we are going to think of marketing in terms of meeting peoples needs there is something really important you have to do: Understand people’s needs. In this case we are taking about understanding a retreat group’s needs, but this can be applied to any client relationship.

I would like to propose that there is a big rule you have to follow to understand needs: Don’t assume you know what people want and need. You don’t know best.

As soon as you stop assuming you understand peoples needs you end up with a blank slate. On your own you can’t know what they need, so you have to fill the slate up. The best way to do this is of course to ask. There are lots of ways to ask groups about there needs, each has its strengths. Here are a few and some thoughts on each:

Participant exit surveys: The idea here is that everybody who comes to your camp fills out a short survey before they leave. It will ask questions like “Rate the food on a scale of 1 – 5″ or Rate the cleanliness of your cabin on a scale of 1 – 5″ or “Rate the friendliness of staff…” you get the idea. It can also ask open ended questions, Like “what was your favorite meal”, or just have a place for more comments. The big strength of these surveys is that you get a lot of data and can start to see patterns If, for example, the cleanliness of cabins is constantly rated low then you know you have a problem with your housekeeping procedures. Of course the opposite is true, you get to see good patterns as well, if the cabins are rated very clean then you know that your housekeeping procedures are working. The disadvantage is that each individual data point is not very valuable. Take a question about food for example. A foodie who normally eats $50 a plate meals an the finest restaurant may rate your food very low. But, a 5th grade boy who loves pizza may rate your food very high because he really loved your pizza. And both of these people may have been eating the exact same meals. So, you cant just look at the foodies card and decide you need to revamp your entire menu, but you cant look at the kid’s card and decide everything is perfect. You have to look at the data as a whole.

Noticing Patterns: This is all about taking notes and personal debrief, and the patterns can show up anywhere. A few examples to make the point: Lets say you have great sleeping facilities for 150, great activities, and a great location. Lots of groups call and you talk to them and they are really excited. Then they ask about meeting spaces, you tell them you have a little chapel that seats 25, and it does not have any AV gear. Soon you start to notice a pattern: nobody is booking, and the conversation seems to end when you mention your little chapel. A big extreme as an example perhaps, but the point stands: if there is a consistent point of need or frustration it needs to be addressed. This could be little, if every single retreat your host ends up running around trying to find a 5th mic for your meeting space then you probably just need a 5th mic. Or big, if every group feels the need to bring in their own sound system to supplement a sub-standard system in your meeting space then perhaps there is more of a need for quality sound gear then you realize.

Just ask: Really this is the most important one. At every stage of your retreat process you should be taking the time to talk to group leaders about what they need. While they are there having the retreat this is more immediate (is there anything I can get for your upcoming game), but at other times it is more long term and strategit. A couple weeks after a retrate would be a great time to call or take a group leader out to lunch and ask them how the retreat went, what went well, what can be better, and what they need that you are not providing. This is a great way for you to get information, but it is also (and perhaps more importantly), a great way to build and maintain real relationships with retreat leaders.

I have not gotten back to this guest services marketing series very quickly. So, here we go.

The first part of of the workshop was about matching the abilities of your camp with the needs of potential groups.

Let’s start with some definitions.

When I say “your abilities” this relates to what your camp is capable of, as well as what is efficient. So, to evaluate your abilities you should look at physical things like capacity, dinning room space, activity space, meeting space, breakout rooms, and location. But you should also look at some less concrete things, for example how good is your food, are you willing to and capable of responding to last minute requests, how flexible is your mindset and policies? You have to consider the complete package of your camp, not just the buildings that you can see.

“Their need” is of course the needs of the groups. Again, this is about more then just how many beds a group needs. For example, what are their AV and meeting space needs? Do they need the ability to change their schedule on the fly or do they stick to a schedule they planned a year ago? What time of the year do they need to come? What is their budget? Do they need help planning or are they experts already?

Once you have evaluated your abilities it seems like there are several ways to go about matching them up with your market, and in truth it is going to be a cycle. The place to start is to determine the potential market. It does not matter how great your facilities are, how good your food is, and how friendly your staff if there is no one to come. So, for example, if your camp is in the middle of nowhere, and there is one church of 50 people in a 1500 mile radius, you’re probably never going to build a sustainable guest services ministry focused on serving churches with youth groups of 500. An exaggeration for sure, but the point is that you can’t develop your abilities in a vacuum. You must be relevant to the potential market.

I want to keep these posts bite sized, so we will stop their for now. Up next, some thoughts on how to evaluate the needs of groups.

I just got back from the CCCA Ozark section. It was fun to get to connect with some people, hopefully help some people out, and hang out at New Life Ranch. A taught a workshop called Marketing for Guest Services. I want to write a bit over the next few weeks to get a bit deeper into some of the stuff I talked about, but, a summery is probably a good place to start.

Basically we talked about three things:

Your Abilities Meet Their Needs. The idea here is that any given camp has a set of things they can do well. This set is defined by a lot of things, size, staff, location, culture and more. Potential guest groups have a set of needs defined by size, program type, group type, and more. So, any given camp needs to figure out how to get connected with the groups they can service well based on ability. Now, there may be some gaps in what a camp can do that need to be filled or less people will come. If a camp, for example, has no beds, they probably wont get any groups. To do this you have to understand what groups need and constantly adapt to changing needs, but you also have to recognize that you wont serve everyone well. You have to define your market and figure out how to be great at serving them, but you don’t have to be great at serving every possible group.

Relationships – Friction vs. Smooth. We talked about how you relationships in a key to serving groups well, and to increasing the number of groups who will return. Relationships are also key to impacting peoples lives, so if you are about more then money building relationships is a big part of having impact on people. I tried to think about what it means to say “we are about relationships in how we handle guest groups” Im not sure i really figured that out or explained it well in the workshop. I guess the first thing is just to see people as people who have value. A spirit of servanthood is part of this as well, thinking of serving people as on honor goes a long way. How you define success is also part of this. If you see success as helping a group be successful then you will do everything you can to make sure they have what they need.

The next part of relationships is friction vs smooth. This is one way you can evaluate your processes and camp, in every interaction there is potential for friction or smoothness. So, if you think about everything that happens in the course of booking, planning and hosting a retreat and evaluate its contribution to friction or smoothness i think you are going to learn a lot about places that can be improved.

Filling Capacity or Getting People to Come. This is about filling beds. We talked about 3 ways to get people to come to your camp: returning groups, word of mouth, and connecting with people with influence in your target market.

Returning groups kind of take care of themselves if you are doing a good job. If you serve people and meet their needs in ways that exceed expectations a lot of them will come back.

For word of mouth it seems like one of the big things to do is identify your fans and ask them for help. They may really like you a lot, but it has never crossed their mind that they can help you fill unused space. I think though that it is important to equip them. Give them ways to spread the word about you.

Connecting to people with influence is just a way to think about networking. A camp has a target market, and there are people with influence over that target market. basically the idea is to fend hose influencers and connect with them.

More on all of this later…

Hello CCCA people. Thanks for coming to my workshop. I hope you found it helpful. As promised here are the documents from the class:

Notes

Worksheet

Slides

As I mentioned I will be blogging some more in-depth thoughts about a lot of what we talked about, if you are interested check back and join the conversation. If you want to be notified about new posts there are two great ways to do it.

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Feel free to e-mail if you have any questions about what we talked about today (or other stuff…). I would love to talk to you.

I am working on a class I will be teaching at the CCCA Ozark Sectional Next week. I will be talking about Marketing for Guest Services, which is kind of a big topic, there are lots of angles to approach it from. So, I opened up a google doc and started planning. But I was stuck. Just a page with lots of random disconnected ideas on it. So, I turned to a blank page in my sketchbook. Five minutes later the ideas are connected and there is an outline. It’s amazing how much good getting out of the linier confines of a word processor does me! There is something good about being able to draw, make random lists, and connect things with lines. I have to remember when I am stuck to change settings. It helps a lot.

I want to keep writing about my experience as I try to build a viable business as a designer/consultant/whatever. Right now I have a few big things I am trying to work through:

• I don’t have my stuff done. Like a web site, portfolio and business card. I really need to get them done, but it’s hard to put off client work to do your own stuff. Yet, if I would take the long view then it should be easy to see that they are more important. It’s easy to tell others to take the long view, not so easy when its you.
• Nothing moves as fast as you want it to. There are lots of projects I though i would have started and finished by now, but instead I am still waiting on people to decide if they want to do the project. Which is fine, but I have to learn how to schedule this sort of uncertainty
• There are three option yes, no, later. I told a lot of people I could not do their projects because I had two many projects going. I need to learn to asses timelines before I say no. There may be some of those projects that I could have done because they did not need them until later. I have to keep conversations going.

I saw a tweet recently (sorry, i dont remember who it was and can’t find it…). The basic gist was “i find it annoying when online news site editor does not have a twitter accounts.” I don’t really care if an editor has a twitter account or not, I think you have to choose your tools, and twitter is not for everyone.

But let me tell you a short story. Recently I tweeted that I liked a particular article in a local newspaper. I included the papers twitter name, so if they are paying attention to twitter they saw it. But they did not respond to it in any way.

I really did like the article, I would have tweeted about it no matter what, but there was a bit of change in how I see the magazine now. If you put a twitter badge on your site I see that as saying something; open, conversational, accesible. Obviously this is not always true, but it is the hope. When you don’t respond to tweets it sort of dashes the hope, the change in perception is slight, but important.