Let them rant, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the criticism
Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. And sometimes the best defense is letting people bad-mouth you.
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Like a recipe for failure?
But that’s just what Barack Obama did, and many experts are saying that’s one reason he got elected president last November. Obama allowed his critics to come to his own social network site (MyBarackObama.com) and blow off steam. Whether these critics were nudged into the Obama fold or stayed upset with the candidate is almost beside the point. By coming to one site, the candidate’s site, rather than working behind his back to stir up a movement against him, the critics were largely neutralized. In many cases the complaints were countered by Obama’s staff or, better yet, by his grassroots supporters.
The point is, the debate was contained within a defined forum, on the subject’s home turf. The door was open, grievances were aired, and the world went on turning. And in the process the target of the criticism gained credibility.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve accepted the fact that some people are going to criticize me, my family, my business, my clients, my political heroes, my favorite entertainers, my beloved sports team, or my hometown – no matter how much I wish otherwise. Disagreement and conflict are part of being a human. Google “criticism of Mother Teresa” and you’ll get 227,000 hits, for heaven’s sake.
By the same token, if you’re active and visible, people are talking about you. And you know what? Let them talk. In fact, encourage them to talk. Set up a forum or a blog about your product or service and engage them. Maybe they’ll be defanged by your – sorry, guess I’ll use that word everybody else uses these days – transparency. Your supporters might well come to your defense, or at worst, they will make up their own minds about the validity of any criticism and, if they already have a good opinion of you, they’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Most people who have spent a significant amount of time online realize that the Negative Nellies of cyberspace tend to be quite vocal – but not always reliable.
Responding is tricky. If the criticism is isolated, hysterical, or not directly related to your product or service, in most cases you should just let it go. If the same criticism pops up more than once, you should acknowledge it and, if plausible, pledge to look into it. When appropriate, offer to work one-on-one with the critic to resolve the issue. If you do respond, do so with a respectful tone, even if deep down you think the critique is out of line.
Keep in mind that the most valuable lessons in life often come from our critics. Constructive criticism might help you learn how to build a better mousetrap, or how to improve customer service. And in the process, your customers just might become even more loyal than before.
Build market share
We’ve been preaching about how this is an excellent time to pick up market share, and NOT the time to cut back on marketing efforts.
Here is another example, in the form of an excellent article in “Media Daily News” on Procter and Gamble’s aggressive advertising strategy. This is from that article:
“CEO A.G. Lafley said marketing outlays have remained at their traditional levels, and P&G is looking to take advantage of the turmoil in the ad market to build share of voice.
In a call with investors, Lafley said the marketer of Tide and Crest is “absolutely not” trimming ad dollars. In fact, what’s really going on is that “the advertising markets are softening–and for the same dollars, we’re buying more delivery.” That, in turn, has led to “improving our shares of voice” in multiple categories, he said. “
How do you handle your business during a crisis?
I just finished an article for our most recent e-newsletter, The Point, offering suggestions on how businesses can prepare better for both natural and man-made disasters.
We in Kentucky have suffered a double whammy in the past 6 months. We’ve had both hurricane force winds that knocked out power to some for two weeks, then an ice storm from which we are still recovering.
We have helped a variety of our clients create and follow crisis plans and, without fail, they’ve told us how much better they felt being able to follow a plan, rather than simply running from one crisis to another.
How did we at New West weather the crisis? On the worst day of the ice storm, our office was open and we had power, but many of our employees could not get in. In anticipation of the bad weather, we asked employees to refresh themselves on the emergency office closing policy in the company handbook and download active projects on jump drives so they could work from home. Unfortunately, too many homes were without power so some projects were put on hold for a day or two.
Since our staff size is relatively small we created a “phone tree” to tell our staff of our plans the day the storm hit with a vengeance and we also sent out an e-mail as backup. Most of our employees have BlackberryTM service.
Frankly, we need to work on the no power, no phone, no cell, and no access scenario.
I am interested in determining how your company communicates with employees during an emergency, so we have set up a short survey you can take. We will share the results in a future e-newsletter article and/or blog post.
In the meantime, I’ll stress it again. We’ve already had a hurricane and an ice storm in the last few months… what other emergency is lurking out there? How will you deal with it?
