This nation was founded by optimists, and three centuries later, we’re still
optimists at heart. Years of war, economic hardship and political deadlock are
on the wane, and the country as a whole is eager to move on—to get out of
neutral and back in gear.  Uncertainty, though, still abounds.  What’scoming?  What path to follow?  What first steps to take?

We are, not surprisingly, hesitant to dive in. Whatever the decision, be it
personal, corporate or institutional, we want assurance that our investment in
products and services will be right for what’s to come. In such times as these,
we’re more likely than ever to turn to those who instill confidence. In short,
we want leadership. But given the prevailing mood, size and innovation—two
common characteristics of leadership—won’t play as well as expected.  We’re skeptical of large institutions, and leery of the bleeding edge.  No, we’re looking
for a different kind of leadership—we want to work with thought leaders—organizations with the experience, expertise and vision to chart the right path.

The time is ripe for small and mid-sized companies, associations and non-profits to come forward and share their knowledge, and in doing so, reap the rewards of
leadership.

It starts with vision.  Neither far-fetched nor prosaic, a well-crafted vision speaks to what is just over the horizon, why it’s likely to come, and how to get there. It’s inspiring and attainable. The right vision positions your organization as a leader and sets the stage for what will come.  It attracts attention and gets prospective customers hungry for more.

The right vision has immediate practical value—it gives prospects a reason to listen to you.  Instead of falling on deaf ears, all your communications—your blogs, tweets, emails, webinars, white papers and prospecting mail—will stand a chance of being heard. The underlying message is simple and compelling: you see a positive future coming soon, one they are yearning for, and you know how to get there. And this is the perfect set-up for your products and services. Well-conceived, forward-looking and dependable, they are squarely on the path to that future.

There are many topics that will help you build on the interest generated by your
vision through blog posts, tweets, emails and feature content on your website:

• How the future will emerge—what to expect this year and the next
• Opportunities and how to tap them
• Pitfalls to avoid/how to move forward safely
• What your organization has done to make this vision possible
• What you’re committed to, and what your customers can expect
• How customers have taken action and the benefits for them

Thought leadership is a small investment with a big pay-off—carefully integrated into your lead generation efforts, you can expect inquiries to grow significantly
and for prospects to be more receptive to your calls.

Milestone Partners is here to help you become recognized as a thought leader.  We understand what creates leadership, because we’ve worked with leaders for over 25 years.    We’ll help you create an inspiring and pragmatic vision.  We’ll identify topics and write thoughtful, engaging pieces that show how that vision can be realized. We’ll help you distribute them through digital, social and traditional media.  Your knowledge and our communication skills will feed an audience hungry for leadership.  Within a few months, perhaps even weeks,
traffic at your website will grow substantially, and yes, the phone will ring.

If you’d like to put your knowledge to work attracting new business to your company, or new supporters to your non-profit, please give us a call!

Watching them stumble from gaff to gaff this summer, it’s apparent now that Netflix, who I ghink we all assume does a lot of research with its customers, must have asked the wrong questions, or ignored what might have looked like an unhappy minority.  How else to explain their complete lack of a Plan B?

Let me start by saying I like Netflix—I’ve been a loyal customer for more than 10 years.  When Netflix announced their price increase, I kept the instant plan and just down-graded from four to three DVDs. To keep the flow of Fringe discs coming, my wife and I will have to turn them over a little faster. Not much of an inconvenience for us, and I think we actually saved $1 a month, so we weren’t all that upset with the pricing changes.  Breaking themselves into two separate companies, though, didn’t seem to offer us any benefits, and my guess is that a lot of other people felt that way too.  This is something Netflix should have heard from market research with customers.  Armed with this possibility, they could have prepared a Plan B in the event that enough of the market didn’t like the company’s new strategic direction to warrant pulling the plug on Plan A.

OK, so they didn’t have a Plan B ready to go, but with their customers and the Media up in arms, they could have moved quickly to prepare one. Recognizing that a good Plan B uses existing assets (in the case of Netflix, a history of good customer relationships) and can be implemented
quickly and inexpensively, their Plan B might have looked something like this:

• Develop service plans that relate to bundling or separating  DVD and streaming
• Let customers know the unilateral decision was a mistake, and that Netflix really wants to hear what they want
• Do informal  research to get a handle on what will fly, then present the best options to the whole customer base to vote on electronically
• Tally and publish the results, and then offer customers a choice of the winning plans.
• In all marketing, make explicit the benefits of each plan for likely user segments (“if you watch a mix of DVDs and streaming then the Anywhere/Anytime plan may be best for you—here’s why.”).
• Identify the best, vulnerable customers , and put a full-court press on them to stay.  Ditto with winning back the best lost customers.
• Publicize any good data about customer retention and winback.

Like all Plan Bs, this one wouldn’t have solved all of their problems, but it would have sent a clear signal to everyone that Netflix was listening and responding thoughtfully. The precipitous slide in customer retention and share price could have been arrested.

OK, this was our two cents on what Netflix could have done. We’d love to hear what your Plan B would have been—please post your thoughts on our site!

“The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.”

James Yorke, mathematician and author of the Chaos Theory

Are we coming out of recession, or going back in? Will consumer confidence pick up, or continue to spiral downward?  Can Washington agree on anything? What’s happening in Europe? Will China and India stay the course? These are unsettled times, indeed.  For organizations looking to grow, the terra under our feet is definitely not firma.

As optimists, we think in chaos there is opportunity.  Mr. Yorke did—his famous quote was based on experience.  He saw those who were open to change using changing circumstances to their advantage.  When you’re flying high, it’s hard to think about change, but if you encounter adversity—as most of us eventually do—the opportunity in chaotic times may be more apparent. Take one of these common situations we’ve all faced:

• Your budgets have been cut. Significantly.  Do you stay the course, and skinny everything down, or refocus on one piece of your original
  plan— something simpler and more manageable?
• You’ve been going months, full guns, towards your ambitious goal…except your plan isn’t producing the results you expected. Is it time for something different, or is there some part of your plan that is working—that could become the core of a new program?
• Your organization has had a big change of strategic direction—through purchase or divestiture, or external market change—and now you need to rethink everything.  Do you need a new plan, or can your old plan be repurposed to match that new direction?

If any of these sounds like what you’re facing, then you definitely may be at what VC’s call “the pivot point”. This may be the time to take your learning and resources and apply them to a new Plan B. If you go for one, you’ll join a long line of men and women who had the courage to change their minds and generate new success. Think about some famous pivot points that led to surprising results:  in battle after battle, George Washington lost New York and half of New Jersey to the full British army, but developed a Plan B that won the confidence of his troops and the Continental Congress when he crossed the Delaware that Christmas night and succeeded in capturing the British garrison through a sneak attack on Trenton; Coca Cola failed monumentally when it introduced New Coke (after millions invested in market research had told them this was what America wanted), then launched  Plan B, creating a tidal wave of support through the quick re-introduction of Coke Classic.

If you think your organization may be at a pivot point, and a creative Plan B is the way to go, your first instinct may be to bring in your team and ask them to come up with one.  At Milestone Partners we’re all for internal development, but we think the difficult economic environment in which we’re challenged to perform  warrants your tapping into some objective, dispassionate outside help.  To take advantage of your pivot point, you need an external resource that can lead your effort (and work off-line, if needed) through an objective review of your strategy, programs and
resources.  One that has the breadth and depth of proven successful experience to identify new, workable solutions, and the knowledge of how to implement them quickly and profitably.

A resource like us—Milestone Partners.  We’ve thrived through booms and busts.  We know what works and what doesn’t.  We’ve handled clients from mom-and-pop start-ups to Fortune 500 multi-nationals. We generate fresh ideas, and know how to apply them in proven ways.  Given our marketing and service experience, we can jump in, become part of your team, and get everyone to a more effective Plan B in no time at all.  We know what it’s like because life has thrown us each a lot of curve balls—and we’ve found new opportunity in every adverse situation.  We’re living our Plan B now, and ours is working.  Contact us and let us help you with yours.