Recession Retreats for Management

Where Eagles Soar Inc has always encouraged its clients to undertake regular executive/management strategic development retreats designed to build a cohesive team, personal improvements and greater customer impacts and results.The current recession actually magnifies the need for such events which focus on critical catalysts for a customer centric culture.
Some key topics should be as follows:
1) Customer Affinity/Knowledge- everyone needs a reality check periodically to move away from personal perceptions of customers characteristics to learning real segment and individual decision preferences and drivers. Management 'gut feel" has to be replace by knowledge based on research and continuous control pilots.
2) Competitive Readiness- retreats are fantastic venues for experimenting with competitive warfare games based on pre-retreat research and group sharing. Nothing is static and a recession has everyone re-thinking their competitive strengths and vulnerabilities. For example, tactics which have demonstrated a lack of customer sensitivity during these difficult times do open the door to future competitive attacks. WESI actually runs a confidential, competitive readiness index amongst the management team prior to retreats so that everyone can target weak areas and protect their strengths.
3) Value Added Propositions- "marketing hooks" are promoted in the media daily by financial institutions with the resources to do so but in many cases the actual customer experiences at delivery points can be quite different. Segmented value propositions are foundations for sales success. Remember when mass promotion kits were send to all branches so rural units could be displaying posters of red Corvette loans rather than John Deere tractors.
Every retreat can be customer centric and focus on the 3 or 4 key topics for improvement rather than taking a shot gun approach at all performance variables with not enough team time and depth of thought available on the major issues of today and tomorrow. Make the time you invest in customized retreats exciting and refreshing for all involved with greater potential dividends for all customers and prospects.

Pat Palmer | Sunday, June 28, 2009 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink