I did a webinar today for the NATB, the trade association that represents ticket brokers.
Not necessarily a group that you associate with being popular in many instances, but a group that is often vilified because the primary market needs an enemy to cover for some of their worst excesses.
Because I was talking to a group of industry professionals, the topic of how to improve their businesses came up.
This generated a pretty good discussion about service, communications, pricing, revenue models, and other things.
And, what I found myself reflecting on over and over as I spoke was something that comes up when I talk to almost every association and every industry…and that is a need to really solidify and focus on the basics.
You see, this is what is happening right now. As we look around, there is a lot of discussion about things that are tactical in nature and that may add value at some point, but which all too often actually just distract from the main challenges that a company might face.
Case in point, the rage about big data.
A marketing colleague of mine, Martin Lindstrom, has a fantastic book out that was published this year called Small Data. The premise of Martin’s book is that by focusing so much on big data buckets, we miss the obvious and meaningful stuff that is right in front of us.
We saw that play out in the presidential election where the Clinton team had their modeling software that played out the race some ungodly number of times each day, guiding every decision.
And, on the other hand, we had the Trump campaign that ran their operation off of gut and personal interaction.
Customer feedback, if you will.
This is just one example, maybe slightly tortured, but one example of an organization distracted from the main blocking and tackling that should represent the majority of your focus.
Think about this: can you characterize your business in a sentence?
What value do you create for your customers?
How great is your service?
Are you reaching the right customers?
Start with these things. Once you have them lined up, move on to the other stuff. But not before.