It is that time again: college visit season.

This spring my daughter, who is a junior, and I made it to five colleges for overnight campus visits.

A campus visit is no small thing. It involves time off school (and work for mom and dad), travel, and the expense of accommodations. You don’t do them on a whim. And you certainly don’t visit schools that your child is only mildly interested in.

By the time a prospective student visits the campus, that student is a “hot” prospect.

Schools foot a big bill to get them there—purchasing names for search mailings, sending admissions staff to college fairs, conducting email marketing and advertising campaigns, and designing glossy view books. Add to that the expense of the visit weekend itself – more mailings, tours, free meals and tee shirts and Nalgene bottles, and the herculean efforts of admissions staff, administrators, professors, and student ambassadors to make it all happen.

Why leave any element of the visit to chance?

Since my son was searching for his ideal college fit two years ago, I have been a proponent of overnight visits, thinking the best way to get a feel for a campus culture is to experience the campus. But not every school allows overnight visits.

Now I may know why.

Twice now my daughter has been picked up by her student host, brought back to the dorm, and told, “I have to go to the library to study for a big exam tomorrow. You can go and do the stuff they’ve got planned for prospects. Here’s my cell phone number – call me when you want to get back in the room.”

Huh?

You are leaving your hottest prospect to fend for herself for hours on end during a visit that could seal—or break—the deal?

At one school I learned that the student hosts aren’t compensated for their efforts, they aren’t trained, and they don’t even volunteer to be hosts. The admissions office sends them an email telling them they’ll be having a prospective student stay with them.

A prospective student is a potential paying customer – more than $120,000 for four years. A campus host is the closer.

Would you entrust the best leads in your sales pipeline to someone who isn’t ready, willing, and eager to engage in the sales process?

Would you allow your $120,000 prospect to feel lonely, bored, and annoyed during the most critical moments of the sales process?

By Bernice Mirrilees
Account Executive
CZ Marketing

Some of the folks you really need to be listening to aren’t talking to you.

I once used a local dry cleaners for my shirts and did so for about 5 years. One day, while the owner waited on me, a young, pretty woman walked in. I was handing him my credit card to pay for my shirts when he turned and helped her. He made me wait. After 5 years of loyalty, I walked out and never returned. The dry cleaners was about a half mile out of my way, and that day he gave me a reason to leave. I never told him about how I felt. I never said good-bye. Poof! I was gone.

A friend recently was driving back from vacation on the East Coast and decided to drop in on a college that was on their son’s “maybe” list. The school made their list only because the daughter of a family friend attended the college and raved about it. A personal referral ranks high on my list as a high value prospect.

So the family popped by the campus and got the standard tour with a current student dressed in blue jeans with her hair pulled back. The family then headed back on the road. The school never contacted them. Never followed up with a phone call to the prospective student, asking, “How was your visit? What did you like? What questions do you still have?”

You wonder if the private liberal arts school had such an overabundance of smart male applicants that their lack of follow-up was a tactic to keep enrollment low.

Consequently, the school will never know why my friend’s son will not attend in Fall 2009. I’m not saying that he would have attended had the admissions folks cared what he and his parents thought. But my guess is that at the next marketing meeting, the enrollment team evaluated their plan and creative based on what they prefer or what some of the current students and faculty declare as acceptable. Most likely it reflected the cheery perspective of folks in love with their decision to attend or work at the school.

The next time you pat yourself on the back and say, “Look, these existing clients (current students, current members, etc) really like this or that,” remember this: The most important folks may not be in the room. Who will speak for them?

You can’t trumpet something you’re not. Or, rather, you can, but good luck. You won’t have much of it. There’s no befuddling your potential clients.

According to Harry Beckwith, author of, among others, Selling the Invisible, and You, Inc the positioning of your organization demands authenticity. CZ President Dave Goetz interviewed Beckwith on why consumers buy into “true stories” and how to position yours:

CZ: What does positioning entail?

Harry Beckwith: To establish your position successfully, you must consider two things—how you are seen and how you want to be seen. From there, you measure the gap between the two. Then you can determine how to get to your end goal. Positioning is about moving that perception.

How do you obtain the best position?

There’s no such thing as an inherently superior position. The tendency is to reach to be “the best.” The superior product. The superior service. You can’t because “the best” doesn’t exist. However, each position has strengths and weaknesses. Part of positioning is being mindful of your inherent weaknesses.

Take cell phones, for example. What’s a superior cell phone? To some people, it’s the iPhone, because it’s colorful and does a lot of stuff; it’s even prestigious. To others, the iPhone’s features represent a whole lot of things that can screw up their work. They don’t even want a camera in their cell phone.

So it’s about staking a desirable niche, in which people will catch something really positive—and giving up on this notion of superiority.

Can you change an established position?

Yes, but you can’t position yourself as something you’re not or cannot be perceived as. It’s a waste of energy.

The most vivid example is when Gerber tried to market adult food. The mind didn’t allow it. Frito Lay tried to do lemonade. They produce salty and crispy snacks, so your mind won’t allow you to drink Frito lemonade.

The stronger your identity and the stronger you’re identified with something, the less able you are to be perceived in any way different than that. So it really depends of how flexible your brand is. How far does it stretch?

How does branding relate to positioning?

Positioning is about your message being perceived in a consistent way—like “sexy,” “fast,” “reliable,” or “safe.” Branding reinforces that single message as well as the nuances and subtle sub-messages that come within that.

I always use branding to describe all of the activities you engage in to reinforce your message. And an enormous part of this is your internal activities. Your staff activities create a sense of authenticity. For instance, if you’re a wealth management firm and the assistants are cold and ruthless, then chances are a warm, friendly service message will hurt you rather than help. It will raise expectations, and you won’t meet them. You have to deliver that position—you have to do what you promised.

How often should you change your position?

Re-positioning yourself demands real changes, not just cosmetic ones. You need confidence in your investment so that you will stay with it for a long period of time. When that position succeeds, you continue to build on your investment.

Take, for example, a University with a well-established School of Optometry: “Okay, we are known for optometry, how might we grow from that? You start to consider adding specialties closely related to optometry—audiology, for example, or other subspecialties in health care. You might offer health care administration in the general university—in short, growing from your strength into closely related areas that expand your offering. Whatever you do, you must begin your strategy by asking, “For what are we known?” And then ask how you can build on that, add to it, and grow.

Good marketing is rooted in good communication: It is concrete, not general. If you’re general—a little of this, a little of that—you’re not strategic. You don’t have a bona-fide, authentic position—and people will perceive it that way.

If your market has ever ignored a product, a concept, or a message you thought was genius, then you know the pain of figuring out what your consumer really wants. B&S recently interviewed John Winsor, author of Beyond the Brand, who says the place to begin is a deep conversation with your customer.

B&S: You suggest that organizations must innovate to thrive. That’s hard for institutions with a long history.

John Winsor: Innovation is about having deep conversations with your consumers to find out if the product you’re delivering is what they really want.

Take Harvard, for example. Recently, they re-evaluated their financial aid program, because they realized that its college costs were driving away low-income and middle-class students. Though largely viewed as an elitist institution, they have increased the number of low-income students by 33 percent. This move is causing other universities to rethink their financial aid models. There’s cultural pressure to change. And it’s scaring a lot of people.

I’m always surprised that more universities don’t take the perspective of “Let’s do something unique!” Not enough universities go out and really listen to their consumers—students and parents—to reinvent what the university should be … or could be.

What kind of leadership do you need to innovate?

There’s a new president, Richard Celeste, at Colorado College. The trustees elected him not for his university experience, but for his life experience and leadership skills. He was the two-term governor of Ohio and the ambassador to India. He brings to the university an eclectic, interesting point of view as well as great leadership skills.

From big consumer companies to universities to non-profits, the prototypical manager/CEO—a guy with an MBA—usually gets hired. But these people have a trained way of thinking about organizational growth and management, which gets in the way of any kind of creative thinking or creative solutions.

One marketing strategy for innovation has been to identify and recruit “Influencers” to carry the ideas into the market. How do you view the power of Influencers?

In the February 2008 edition of Fast Company, Duncan Watson authored an article entitled “Is the Tipping Point Toast?”

In it, Watson refutes the idea that Influencers are largely responsible for the success of a product or trend. Of course, we all want to pin down Influencers, because it seems easier to reach only a small group of people—and not the entire market. But, it doesn’t wholly work, because you have to know how an Influencer actually influences.

So if not solely Influencers, what else drives good ideas into the market?

I think culture does. Watson uses an analogy of a forest fire to explain his point: There are thousands a year, but only a few become threats; in those rare occasions, the environment is ripe.

Or think of it like this: You can send somebody with a tanker full of gas into a forest and blow it up—that person driving that truck has a lot of power to influence. Or you can send somebody into that same forest with a single match, and if the conditions are right, it, too, will start a huge fire.

Influence can come from anywhere, but the cultural conditions determine what will spread. You have to understand your culture.

That sounds abstract and hard to control.

For a lot of organizations it is really hard. It feels like you’re throwing everything to the wind and saying, “Well, influence is really random.” But if you continue having real conversations with your consumers, you can predict intuitively where things are going. To understand the bigger cultural issues, you need to ask: What’s really happening out there? How are things really changing? Then you have to connect the dots to get the full picture. To do that, you’ve got to get out of your office and interact with your customers.

How do social media enable deep conversations?

Social media gets you inside the conversation; you’re not observing from the outside.

You can sit outside the door of a restaurant and analyze the quality of the food, service, and ambiance, or you can sit down and experience it. I think blogging is the same thing. You’ve got to jump in the stream. You’ve got to be a participant. You’ve got to be a part of the conversation—and people will find a way to connect to you and have a conversation. From there you’ll be able to identify key voices and cultural trends.

Marketing strategy is really competitor strategy.

Tim Barg, our vice president of strategy, and I sat down and rattled off a couple principles we’ve learned over the years:

1. Competitor strategy is counter-intuitive. Your intuition says, “We need to parrot what the leader in our industry is saying, because it’s working for them.” Jack Trout, co-author of Positioning, once said to me, “You always avoid the strengths of the leader.”

I would say that most leaders of organizations do the opposite: they parrot the leader.

2. Instead of messaging specifically, most organizations message generally. They say the same thing as every other organization in their industry.

There seems to be a “fear of the niche.” There seems to be a built-in resistance to focus narrowly on a message. Or becoming good at one thing. They fear being different.

All educational institutions, for example, say they specialize in high academics – which, unless you’re Harvard or Stanford, means essentially nothing. All management consulting firms say they deliver results. All business intelligence software firms say their software deliver better analytics.

All this is confusing to prospective clients or students or donors. If you’re general with your message, you have no hook.

So if you’re having a hard time growing, begin with your competitors. What are they doing? What are they leading with in terms of their messaging? And how are you different?

My next blog topic: “The Myth of the Silver Bullet.”

Recruiting high-achieving, high school students to colleges continues to pick up speed and sophistication.

In the nineties, many universities implemented admissions call centers: current students phoned high school juniors and, especially, seniors. It was an attempt to create a more personal relationship with those who had inquired or, mostly, applied to the school. It worked and continues to work. It’s tough to create a meaningful, lasting relationship with a brochure or two, a viewbook, and a web site.

Technology has its limits.

Today, some universities recruit parents of current students to call parents of prospective students. Other parent-to-parent strategies include boutique events, such as coffees in targeted communities with boatloads of high achieving applicants. Again, parents of current students speak to parents of applicants.

After one such event, a mom of a high school senior said to me, “When I talked to the parent of a current student at this university, it made the whole process personal for me. I began to envision my student attending the campus.”

I suspect that one of the most overused movie illustrations comes from City Slickers, the 1991 movie starring Billy Crystal and, among others, Jack Palance.

Remember that movie?

It’s the one in which Curly Washburn (played by Palance), the flea-bitten cowboy, raises his index finger and croaks about the “one thing” that the three “city slicker” characters must discover to find life’s meaning.

Marketing strategy folks often preach the gospel of the “one thing” or “your point of difference” (a phrase I borrowed from marketing genius Harry Beckwith) for organizations, as they attempt to grow in today’s highly competitive climate: You need to be known for one thing, especially if you’re not the leader in your space.

Knowing your “one thing” gives you focus for your marketing communications and serves to position you in the minds of your prospects. It gives them a mental hook.

The problem is that the “one thing” is not one dimensional. Often it’s not merely one thing; it’s a matrix of things that creates the focus.

For example, universities often try to distill their point of difference to one strength: Value; or Academic Rigor; or, Class Size.

But you never own only one strength; it’s often a combination of strengths that make up the One. To make it even more complex, that combination of strengths has meaning only as it relates to your competitors. Your context or environment shapes your point of difference.

We recently assisted a university with their messaging strategy. The university has a combination of strengths: affordability, academics (in relation to its competitors), and size of enrollment. All three formed the foundation of the school’s unique position in their competitive space. There were other layers to the school’s messaging strategy, such as location, but the three dimensions gave the school’s marketing program focus and power.

So, what are the different dimensions to your point of difference?
And how do your competitors’ positions shape yours?

You “win” in today’s global community if you think primarily with your left brain. Take Hedge Fund traders, for example, who make millions. Quant-Heads, they are called.

But times are changing, according to Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind.

Right-brain qualities (R-directed thinking) are becoming the cornerstone of thriving businesses. In this interview with CZ, Pink says R-directed thinking, such as the capacity to tell stories and a design sensibility, is needed more than ever and will transform your organization.

B&S: What is the big idea of A Whole New Mind?

Daniel Pink: It’s about the broad set of abilities individuals will need to thrive in today’s business world. Today you have to be able to do things that are hard to outsource, hard to automate, and that satisfy the growing nonmaterial yearnings of a very abundant age. Some of those are emotional capabilities—particularly empathy—but others are a design sensibility, a capacity to tell stories, and the ability to put the pieces together.

You indicate that the world is ready for this, but we certainly don’t see elementary, junior high, and high schools preparing students for R-directed thinking. Standardized test scores still rule.

Pink: Many of our schools are fighting the last war. They’re overemphasizing routine and left-brain skills at the expense of those abilities that matter most: empathy, artistry, and invention. It’s legislators, many who haven’t set foot in a classroom for years, who are to blame for the slow progress.

However, it’s surprising how receptive teachers and educators at all levels are to the ideas I propose. They get that left-brain skills aren’t all that matter. There are some inspiring whole-minded schools out there.

Can you give an example?

Pink: In the book, I profile the Charter High School for Architecture and Design (CHAD), in Philadelphia, PA. At CHAD, students spend 100 minutes a day in a design studio, and they learn their core academic subjects through the lens of architecture and design.

But this is not some hoity-toity art school for children of the elite. These are largely poor, inner-city kids, 88 percent of whom are racial minorities. Eighty percent of these design students go on to two- and four-year colleges.

What advice do you give to executives about R-directed thinking?

Pink: Hire people with whole-minded abilities. Do what CEO Sidney Harman does: hire poets, whom he calls “our original systems thinkers.” Hire empathizers—people in tune with the often non-verbalized interests, needs and desires of others. Stock your teams with a variety of people who have different perspectives, because it’s at the collision of ideas that innovation occurs.

At a basic level, why do you need these right-brained thinkers on a team?

Pink: Because these people have abilities that are hard to outsource or automate—and they will keep your business alive.

What prevents leaders from organizations from hiring more holistically?

Pink: I think you can attribute it partly to inertia and partly to fear. People are worried they don’t have right-brained abilities. That’s wrong. The abilities that now matter most—design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning—are fundamentally human abilities. They’re part of what makes us human. In the SAT, spreadsheet, right-answer age, they weren’t in demand. They’re like muscles that have atrophied. Now we just need to work those muscles back into shape.

In this exclusive CZ interview with marketing expert Seth Godin, internationally bestselling author of All Marketers Are Liars, Free Prize Inside!, and, among others, Purple Cow, he suggests the world has changed, but our organizations haven’t changed along with it. Good enough won’t cut it anymore in a world of noise, clutter, and overblown expectations.

B&S: Are there any common characteristics among those who achieve remarkable, as defined by the contributors to your latest book, The Big Moo?

Seth Godin: I think the biggest shift is this: once you realize that being safe is the riskiest possible strategy, being remarkable is pretty easy.

How do you go about awaking people to how the world has changed, especially if the bottom line isn’t all that bad at the moment? How do you teach the need to be remarkable?

Seth Godin: How do you teach people to show up for work on time? To not steal office supplies? To not forge expense reports?

It seems to me that once you decide it is important and you reward people for it, it’ll start to happen.

What do people “miss” when you talk about being remarkable? That is, what do they overlook or not really get?

The giant thing is that they think they get some sort of say over whether someone thinks a product or service is remarkable. You don’t.

Can people inside an organization even recognize when something is remarkable? Can you train people to recognize remarkable?

Seth Godin: This is much harder than it sounds. Mainly because it doesn’t matter if YOU think it’s remarkable. It matters what the person you’re selling to thinks. My best advice is to try and try and try and sooner or later, you’ll make something that works.

Think back to a time when someone tried to change a belief (worldview) that you felt strongly about.

B&S: In All Marketers Are Liars, you talk about worldviews. How does one go about snooping to identify the soft spots in someone’s worldview? Any tips on how to listen and gather valuable information from one’s client list or student body?

Seth Godin: What a great question! I don’t think a worldview has “soft spots” though. Instead, I think there are hot buttons, places where people really want to tell themselves a story. The easiest way to do this is to watch which OTHER stories are appealing to this audience. People are very bad (and very ornery) about talking about an irrational worldview. But you can watch them all day and see what they choose to believe.

Colleges often use the storyline, “We’re ranked 23rd in U.S. News & World Reports Best Colleges in the Midwest” as the basis for their plot. Is that compelling?

Seth Godin: I’m not sure that this story is ineffective for the worldview of typical high school senior. The challenge is to identify a unique story that can find room in a brain that’s heard the “top college” story since 1652 at Harvard. One way is with sports. Another more productive and ethical one might be to obsess about a particular department.

In your book, you mention your Purple Cow concept. What if an organization doesn’t really have anything that spectacular to showcase—something that turns people’s heads?

Seth Godin: I’m saying that a Purple Cow is just a stand-in for the phrase “something about your product or service that your users will decide is worth talking about in a positive way.” Your story can be very compelling and it might sell me, but that doesn’t mean it will spread. That’s okay. You can use other techniques to get attention, as long as your story is compelling enough to get people to change their minds.

How does storytelling integrate with branding for smaller firms?

Seth Godin: Branding, it seems to me, doesn’t mean much any more. By obsessing about the story, an organization (of any size) can augment and leverage their brand.