Copyright 2014 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
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Often, there's little or no difference between randomness & a mess - except what is learned, then what is done with the results.
Definition from the Free Dictionary: randomness - the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan
unregularity, irregularity - not characterized by a fixed principle or rate; at irregular intervals
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Randomness
Long ago, before electricity was ever used to send & receive messages, some people had pigeons to carry notes to other people. Here's an example - A military outpost was far from the headquarters. The distance was too much for 1-2 birds, so 4 birds were used to relay messages with villages in between HQ & the outpost. Messages weren't being sent or received along the whole route, so an officer investigated the problem. He told the bird trainers/keepers in each village to bring the birds in.
When the officer looked at those birds, he said, "I see the problem now. There are 3 carrier pigeons & a swallow."
Your business systems may SEEM to be setup effectively & efficiently, but you need to look closely at each part.
Everything may go according to your plans until a swallow is activated. Be sure each part is designed to do what you need it to do. Swallows could carry messages, but they're designed differently, so they probably wouldn't be as dependable as pigeons. Yet, if you have a problem with insects, you need more swallows than pigeons.
I advocate testing variations of marketing methods & business practices. You should be alert to notice variances because many things can disrupt or disturb a system.
My connotation of variance: an unplanned influence changes the result (which may be quite different than your desired effect).
My connotation of variation: adjusting a cause to produce a different effect
Another explanation is based on modules & interdependencies: A modular system is setup to produce a consistent result. Depending on the environment a system is in, fluctuations can cause variances by influencing the quality & quantity of results. Adjusting or replacing a module affects everything downline. Putting an interdependency in the system would cause a bigger difference.
How Much Difference Is Enough?
It's often safe to get incremental improvements gained by iterative changes. Yet, what if you need more than an increment (slight augmentation)?
When you know which cause leads to your desired effect, you may be able to repeat the cause & get more of what you want (if it's available).
Increasing the size or frequency of a cause won't always bring you more of your desired effect.
Example: If a promotion successfully sold your whole inventory of a certain product, the demand may be satisfied. Ordering more inventory (especially if it's a rush order to catch a perceived demand wave) may result in unsold inventory. The profits from the successful promotion could be negated by the cost that inventory & storing it, plus the expedited shipping. Even if suppliers accept returned/unsold inventory, the return shipping & possible restocking fees may negate some or all profit.
Despite using your best judgment, you could still wonder if a decision (you made) is better than an option you didn't use. Maybe you'll never know, yet you should realize you need to keep moving on instead of succumbing to paralysis from too much analysis.
To change your results, you'd probably need to test something you haven't used before or maybe what you used long ago. It may mean you'd have to make a bigger investment & take a bigger risk, but you can still do a small test to limit your financial risk.
To get a different & bigger result, you should consider how well you can afford to add more random elements &/or a bigger change of one element (in effect a bigger randomness).
Limited Randomness Or Controlled Chaos:
No matter what you do to control complex circumstances, you can't control (often can't predict) each aspect. Each aspect can be an effect that leads to another cause or potential cause. Potential causes may be preventable, yet when multiple things are happening at the same time (every second), nobody can pay attention to every cause & prevent or influence each effect.
This isn't a defeatist attitude, it's life (business & personal). If you try to control everything, your results will be almost as if you controlled nothing. Like the importance of marketing differentiation (you won't be all things to all people), you need to consciously differentiate what you can control & determine how much realistic control you can have.
You also need to determine urgency & importance (Stephen R. Covey's Quadrant I & Quadrant II), so you can prioritize & use your resources accordingly. How important is a potential result? How good/bad is its potential positive/negative consequence? Of all expected potential positive results, which results can you realistically expect? If one potential positive result has more upside potential, what can you do to assure that result? If one potential negative result has more downside potential, what can you do to assure that result is avoided or at least mitigated?
Example- You have a successful promotion that draws in many consumers. If you try to persuade a difficult prospect, you may miss your chance to serve one or more prospects who know what they want & need you to run your cash register.
That difficult prospect may leave without a purchase also. You should determine, at which point, you should suggest that difficult prospect needs more time to think & mention you need to serve others.
When the results start coming in during or after a promotion, here are some things to ponder:
What is making or has made the biggest/bigger difference(s)
Which difference(s) are/were mostly/totally positive/negative?
Which positive difference(s) can be replicated/improved?
Which positive difference(s) should be replicated/improved on high priority?
When should the replication/improvement be implemented?
It may seem positive results should be a high priority.
Which negative difference(s) might be repeated if remedial action isn't done successfully?
Flint McGlaughlin & other MECLABS/MarketingExperiments crew members often advise learning as much as possible from all results. (MECLABS - http://www.meclabs.com/) (MarketingExperiments - http://www.marketingexperiments.com/) Even if some results are all negative, you can get value from what you learn. So, even when you don't get a lift in sales or profit, you can get a learning that'll help you succeed in the future. (http://www.marketingexperiments.com/site-optimization/negative-lifts.html)
Your investment may seem lost in what seems like a losing effort. Yet, it can be like "tuition" when you learn all you can.
Even when it seems you learn nothing, your study of results may build your future intuition. You may think/feel something will succeed or fail based on what you don't even consciously remember since your subconscious still records & recalls results.
Losing a lot of money ("a lot" is relative depending on circumstances). A big corporation could invest thousands of dollars & get negative results which saves millions of dollars an ineffective rollout would've cost.
A decision to invest more in implementation after a breakeven may be tricky. Yet, sometimes a small change in circumstances can make a big difference in results.
Can you identify what/why didn't work? Did you learn enough to know how to avoid negative results? Did you learn enough to know what to do & not do?
Jim Collins strongly advises people to develop "Stop Doing Lists" because nobody can afford to try everything. It makes no sense to deplete resources by doing what makes little or no sense. When those resources are needed for something else, it'll be too late.
Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.
Copyright 2014 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/
Subject: Reducing Randomness With A Promotion/Method Planning Template
Since we can't predict everything, we can't prevent some things. We're unlikely to ever have enough resources to control everything we can predict.
We can spend money to prevent some customer frustration - A) Spend more on payroll to increase customer service on days when we expect a lot of traffic. B) Invest more of our inventory budget to avoid being out-of-stock when customers want products.
But randomness will still happen in business methods & advertising results.
If we use mass media advertising, an offer may be received by people who aren't in our niche. As a result, some buyers may buy only the advertised product, though we figured only niche members would want the product.
Niche members, who respond to offers like ours, would realize other products would enhance the value of the advertised product. Niche members could afford & would buy these other products.
We expected that much needed sales revenue would've covered our expenses & generated some profits. But now, we have more inventory, more unpaid bills & less money than we planned.
Now there isn't enough money to buy that 3 Stooges DVD set you want. That DVD set that features all 6 of the 3 Stooges! Plus, what's worse is, I don't have the money I planned to use ... Oh, never mind!
Too many people think because a promotion or method didn't bring their desired results, that promotion or method doesn't work & never will work.
I won't advise anybody to persist just to be persistent because it's possible to persist at the wrong things. I don't have the space here or time now to explain how to evaluate results for every possible promotion or method.
What I wrote below is a general template to determine if persisting may be wise or foolish.
No matter how well anything is planned & implemented, randomness can cause a random MISS even for a potential popular HIT.
Rejecting a random miss means losing the effort & other resources you've invested. But if you do your best to learn from the results, some of your previous planning & other efforts will still be useful.
Maybe you think it isn't worthwhile to try to recoup the little bit of planning you did. If so, it may indicate you didn't do enough planning. But I'm not reproaching you personally. Just saying ...
What Just Happened Here?
We can learn what to do & what to avoid if we review & document what we observed. When we expected something that didn't happen, we should document that. We can discuss differences in our expectations & observations to get a more complete report.
OK, now what did you & I expect to happen? Yes, I also wanted to watch the 3 Stooges, but let's not document that.
Let's focus on what we did to achieve our promotional goals & results of the methods we've developed.
While we test & use methods, we should evaluate our results often enough to determine if we should make adjustments. (paradox) Though if we adjust too much too often, i.e. before we have enough information to evaluate, we could skew our results.
Time For You To Step Up To Template
Depending how long your promotion is, you could adapt this template [below] to evaluate your results soon after you start receiving enough. You may be able to adjust your efforts & improve your results.
[Note: You can copy this template & paste it into a word processor/text editor document because I've already done some work for you. It's great working with a consultant!]
These templates are 'interactive'. Some are fill-in-the-blanks statements. Blanks are indicated by putting (parentheses) what I figure you should write.
Promotion/Method Planning Template
We want to (write our main action), because we hope to (write our main expected result)
We expect (sales revenue amount) as our goal, we plan to (fulfill a purpose) with some of the money.
To do it, we need to sell (number of) units.
What are we basing our expectations on? (Examples - our experience/what we did before, our observations of what others did/are doing, case study we read/heard)
What's different about our current situation & our experiences?
What's different about our current situation compared to what we observed?
What's different about our current situation compared to what happened in the case study we read/heard?
Why do we think this concept will work for us?
What were our mistakes during similar situations?
What did we correct when we realized a mistake? How well did that remedy work?
What/How can we plan to avoid that kind of mistake?
Which results were good, but yet not what we expected?
(Example - We got the expected level of customer traffic since people responded to our offers. Customers bought a lot of older inventory, though it hadn't been promoted lately.)
Did the display or its location seem to make the most difference? Did customers buy older inventory instead of the promoted inventory? Is the promoted inventory different than what they believe we offered? How can we be more successful with our next promotion of our new inventory?
What are the most significant mistakes we've made before?
What are possible mistakes we might make this time?
What/How can we plan to avoid those kinds of mistakes?
In the future when one of us notices a mistake, should s/he take corrective action immediately or should we discuss it before taking action?
Evaluating Current Or Past Promotions/Methods
You can start with this template (below) during or after your current efforts.
This is for determining what went well & what didn't. Though you won't ever determine each cause & effect, hopefully you'll find reasons for the most important good & bad results.
These evaluations should NOT be used for blaming & shaming. The purpose should be learning what to do more of or less of (or to totally stop doing). You can learn what to improve & how to improve it more easily when people aren't feeling defensive.
When people try to defend their reputations/egos, they're less apt to think how to improve results. They may think mostly about how to avoid embarrassment.
It's possible to make good faith mistakes. People can do some good things in the wrong ways or do the wrong (moral, yet mistaken decisions) things for the right reasons.
People may misunderstand because of how words are pronounced or used. (Examples - Did you see that book? When you're in the store, be sure to look & go by/buy it. Don't refuse to dispose of the refuse.) Especially in English, there are a lot definitions/denotations for some words in addition there are many connotations & slang meanings.
This template is similar to the template above, but oriented to the past.
Promotion/Method Evaluation Template
We did (write our main action), because we hoped to (write our main expected result)
We expected (sales revenue amount) as our goal, we planned to (fulfill a purpose) with some of the money.
To do it, we needed to sell (number of) units.
What did we base our expectations on? (our experience/what we did before, our observations of what others did/are doing, case study we read/heard)
What's different about our current situation compared with our experiences?
What's different about our current situation compared with what we observed?
What's different about our current situation compared with what happened in the case study we read/heard?
Why did we think this concept would work for us?
Of all of the results, which results are the most puzzling?
Which results were good, but yet not what we expected?
(Example - We got the expected level of customer traffic since people responded to our offers. Customers bought a lot of older inventory, though it hadn't been promoted lately.)
Did the display or its location seem to make the most difference? Did customers buy older inventory instead of the promoted inventory? Is the promoted inventory different than what they believe we offered? How can we be more successful with our next promotion of our new inventory?
What were our mistakes during this period?
How did we correct our mistakes? How well did those remedies work?
What/How can we plan to avoid that kind of mistake?
Do we owe anybody an apology? If so, to whom should we apologize? How should we apologize? Who among us should apologize to them?
Goal? Objective? What's The Difference?
This next section is for reviewing goals & motivations.
I'm defining a goal as the beginning of a plan/journey.
I'm defining an objective as what we want/need. It's the reason for setting a goal & making plans.
An objective is the object (benefit) we get from achieving our goal/reaching our destination.
When we get to our destination we'll fulfill our ambition & we'll get our intended objective - the prize we desire so much, we're willing to work for it.
If a goal still seems achievable & worthwhile, is our motivation the same & just as strong or is it stronger now?
Based on what went right & wrong, what are the opportunity costs?
Though we hoped we could (implement a previously planned activity), we can't because we don't have (which necessary resources) & because we have (unresolved obligation).
Of course that's what it means. Yes, you won't get that 3 Stooges DVD set yet because you ... Oh, never mind! ... Let's just focus on business.
What can we do now &/or in the future to be sure we set good goals & objectives?
Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.
Copyright 2014 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/
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