David Freeman

Cultivating Distrust

As strategists and marketers one of our more complex tasks is to listen to customer feedback, probe market dynamics, understand competitive intent, divine replacement or disruptive technology and synthesize the varied inputs into actionable information for the business.  My experience has been, however, that even the least xenophobic teams trust too completely in their own data and their own framing of market and customer dynamics, which leads to numerous strategic and marketing errors of omission and commission.

Take for example the dutiful front-line marketing team which shares at company meetings first-hand accounts of deals they won and lost.  The stories are captivating and no doubt provide insight into operations, science/engineering and other teams who rarely have the chance to directly observe the real-world dynamics of their product deals.  We know, however, that there is bias in the selection of which deals to present to the audience and that a few instances of competitive dynamics is not data but mere anecdote, no matter how well intentioned.

What about the team that does more systematic sampling of wins and losses, convincing the sales force to document the final disposition of all deals from their funnel on a quarterly basis.  Can we trust this information?  While having more data points and in theory, not being selective which deals to include, is clearly moving in the right direction, the source of bias is the sales rep making the observations.  Anyone who has been through this exercise make recognize the top 3 reasons why “we” lose from this type of analysis:

  1. Customer relationship with the competitive account manager
  2. Lack of product performance/features
  3. Price

It’s not that the sales team is intentionally trying to skew the data, nor that marketing teams believe that this is necessarily the best method to collect deal dynamics.  Nevertheless, our not wanting to rock the boat by putting an objective, market research firm at the helm of collecting information directly from the customer trumps our own instincts to distrust the information we’re gathering.  Worse, folks further from strategy and marketing may end up feeling good about the collected data and be even less suspicious of their own plans and strategies which align with the “data”.

I am always mindful of the elementary school biology example of the frog placed in a shallow pan of water on the stove.  The frog does not jump to safety when gradual heat is applied to the pan.  So how do ensure we can take the mental leap out of our own business to think objectively about the opportunities and issues facing the company?

It’s a slight shift in focus, from trying to find the right data and answers to finding the right questions.  The right questions are always more valuable than answers.  Remember your inner three-year-old and follow your why!  A few other tips to cultivate healthy distrust:

    1. Seek out customers who purchased in the past but haven’t bought recently.  Ask them why they’ve stopped buying and if there’s anything the company can do to earn their business in the future.
    2. Stay close to technical support and customer service.  Repetitive issues, even at low levels, are the smoke that can sometimes lead to fire.  Remember that the customers that reach out to you are just a portion of your dissatisfied customers.
    3. Use 3rd party market research firms to conduct win/loss studies, surveys and focus groups.  Try to understand if your value proposition is still relevant, credible, distinct and positively impacts purchase intent.  Watch the win/loss trend line over the year.  Seek out unaided impressions of your firm vs. the competition.  Try using QFD to understand what the customers values most when selecting your product vs. the competition.
    4. Travel with sales on customer visits.  See if you can bring you to an unhappy customer, not just the best and brightest account.  Even better:  have them bring you to the customer who is a die-hard fan of the competition!

If you can sit with objective data and resist drawing conclusions for as long as possible, ask a lot of questions, listen and observe deeply, cultivating an outsiders mindset, you will always find new opportunities for improvement and growth….that you can believe it.

“Getting to Know David Freeman, Industry Thought Leader”

As it originally appeared on Schwartz Communication’s PRx Blog:

PRx Blog

Getting to Know David Freeman, Industry Thought Leader

Name: David Freeman
Title: President
Company: Freeman & Associates Consulting
My first job in healthcare was: My first job in healthcare was as a PR Specialist and Tradeshow Manager at HP Medical, in the headquarters operation.  I was 26 years old and I remember the feeling of awe when I first came to the company for an interview (the first of 9 interviews). HP was famous at the time for its open workplace environment (read low cubicles). As I rounded a corner I looked across a huge expanse of desks and people and computers on every desk!

It was a great start in healthcare because I had the opportunity to learn about HP’s entire portfolio as well as travel to conferences like the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, where I got to interact with clinicians, sales reps and marketing professionals from around the world.

What I like most about working in healthcare is: It’s of course trite to say that I work in healthcare to make a difference.  And that the industry attracts good, smart and caring people. All true. But working in an office, caught up in conference calls and cross-functional meetings, a challenging regulatory environment, demanding quality system requirements, it can be easy to forget why I feel so passionate about being in healthcare.

However healthcare has a way of stripping the business veneer away and reminding you of what’s at stake and how you make a difference in a way that I imagine few industries can. Every time I visit a hospital on business, suit and tie, folio in hand, there’s a moment when the environment breaks through and I realize that I’m surrounded by people in crisis and that I’m connected to assessing and preserving health.

I was a pediatrics product manager when the first Iraq war broke out. We were racing to develop a pediatric transesophageal ultrasound imaging transducer. The miniaturization of the electronics was pushing state of the art at the time but my clinical trial sites at children’s hospital in the U.S. and U.K. had conveyed how important this innovation would be to assess surgical repair of congenital heart defects from behind the heart, out of the sterile field, after the repair but before the chest was closed.

The European OEM firm we were working with to develop the transducer had a sister division that got caught up in the night-vision scandal and the State Department put the entire company on hold for business with the U.S. Six months in on a scheduled nine month project we scrambled to find an alternate firm to work with to restart our effort. Our schedules slipped and while we kept our clinical trial sites informed, one day the head of Pediatric Echocardiography from the largest of the U.S. children’s hospitals reached me by phone at my desk.  He proceeded to tell me about a patient they had lost on the table the day before and that the transducer might have saved the patient’s life.  He was upset and emotional and asked me what was taking us so long.

Similarly, I was involved with Schwartz to build awareness of sudden cardiac arrest from the early days when every new airline placing AEDs on board was still news. At each turn, as we worked with corporations, public places, schools and home users, the calls would come in…hi, my name is (pick a name)…and I’m just calling to thank you because my (husband, father, daughter…) was saved by your device.

It’s that vital connection to people, to saving and preserving lives, that keeps me loving this industry.

When I’m not working, I like to: We have four kids and I love spending time with them. Other interests include music (jazz and chill), taking nature photographs, writing poetry, and keeping up with the world and technology.

Who had the biggest influence on your career?: A woman named Cynthia Danaher, who was at HP, has been the most influential person on my career. She heard me interacting with customers on the trade show floor (when I was in my first healthcare job) and recruited me to work in the ultrasound business. She demonstrated a mix of three qualities as a manager that I admire to this day:  (1)  The ability to personally connect with people, (2) Passion for advancing the business, and (3)  Intellectual rigor of the work she did and asked of her team. I learned an enormous amount from Cynthia and HP about management, marketing excellence, and corporate ethics.

People would be most surprised to learn that I: Went to a canoe/survival camp when I was 15 years old in Northern Canada where I learned to portage wood canvas canoes for up to five miles and survived 5 days in the woods with nothing but a match and a knife.

If I wasn’t in healthcare, I would probably be: If I wasn’t in healthcare I would probably be an unknown writer.

You can find me at (email, Twitter, LinkedIn):
Web: www.freemanb2b.com
LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/26shj26
Blog: www.freemanure.wordpress.com
Twitter: @freemanb2b

Tags: David Freeman, healthcare, healthcare PR, medical device PR, public relations agency, Schwartz CommunicationsPosted by Jayme Maniatis on December 7, 2010 at 12:31 PM
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