Nancy Hendrickson

For me, 2009 is the year of focus aided by the Kaizen Philosophy—a way of being that encourages small, continuous improvement.

Although generally associated with post-World War II Japanese industrial recovery, Robert Maurer, author of One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, noted that kaizen has its origins in Training Within Industries (TWI), a post-Depression era methodology of making continuous improvement.

As World War II hit America, factories were tasked to increase production, while at the same time losing factory workers to military service. Instead of making radical changes to the factory processes, workers were tasked with making small continuous changes. For example, if a factory line had 100 different processes, the goal was to make one small change per process.  The results of WWII factory production is legendary.

Kaizen and Your Business
We human have big goals. When we diet we want to instantly lose 20 pounds.  When we start an exercise program we want to run a half-marathon. When we start an online business, we want 10,000 people to sign up for our mailing list on day one.

What happens when the pounds don’t come off so easily, or a month goes by and only 5 people sign up for your mailing list? The natural temptation is to give up – - to reach for the Snickers, or to jump to another “instant success” business idea.

When meeting a client for the first time, I do my best to manage their expectations—for example, to let them know that they are not going to get effective articles for their article marketing campaign if they pay $5 each and have them written by a non-English speaker. The client may not like paying more for articles, but over time they have proof (through analystics and conversion) that the better content brings the better business result.

In terms of our own businesses, what do you think about mananging our own expectations but drafting a Kaizen-inspired blueprint for our businesses?  What would that look like? Maybe

•    5 new mailing list sign-ups this week
•    8 the following week
•    12 the following week
•    18 the following week
•    24 the next week

Not very sexy, but by following the Kaizen philosophy, you will experience steady, continuous growth.

How else to apply Kaizen?
What if you focused on the small continuous improvements that will bring in one excellent client this month.

Or, if you wrote an update to your last e-book and re-releasied it at a discount to everyone on your list?

Or what if you spent one hour once a week calling or e-mailing your existing clients? Or 15 minutes?

It’s these small continuous improvements in your processes that will bring changes of legendary proportion.

What 2009 Continuous Improvements Will You Make?
As we swing in

to 2009, my small continuous improvements will be in the area of article writing and high touch customer service.

How about you?  Please leave your comments -

I spent the last two weekends before the 2008 Presidential election in Florida, the state made famous by the 2000 “hanging chad” debacle.

While there, I had the opportunity to witness first-hand the grassroots organization built by the Obama campaign. I realized then that Obama was a master at relationship marketing.

Relationship marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on customer retention and satisfaction, rather than the “make a sale” transactional marketing. Relationship marketing recognizes the value of keeping current customers, versus the cost of constantly trolling the waters for new customers.

In Obama’s case, relationship marketing took the form of getting out the vote; specifically voters who fell within the target demographic, but who hadn’t voted for years. In effect, these voters were “current customers” in that they were registered Democrats, but in past years hadn’t made the relationship connection enough to cast a vote.

In 2008, the Obama team (at least the one I witnessed in Florida) used every campaign minute left to get out the vote; to encourage voters to take advantage of early voting, to give rides, to station attorneys in poor, rural areas where intimidation might be a factor. In most instances, the campaign was about reaching out person-to-person, not group-to-group.

So what’s the lesson here? As consumers, we want to be treated as individuals, not numbers. The big wave of e-mail list marketing that took over the Internet the last few years is on its way out the door in favor of relationship marketing.

All an Internet marketer has to do is look at Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, et al, to realize that the holy grail of word-of-mouth buzz is being fed through one-on-one relationships.

What Next, Marketer?
Pick the social network where your target audience lives. Then begin building relationships, not marketing messages. Build your fan base, be a resource, have a personality (brand), and make friends. Too easy?

One of the trends I’ve noticed is people who blog for a few days and then stop. The reason? “No one ever visits my blog.”

Guess what, you’re right.

No one IS reading your blog. At least not today . . . . and maybe not even next month.

In fact, it’s unlikely anyone even knows about your blog.

Building a reading audience requires some patience on your part, and a time commitment as well. Building a reading audience with a blog like taking the time to meet the neighbors – - it’s all about relationship marketing.

The first month I blogged, I had one visitor. The second month I had 10, the third month I had 71, and by month six I had 212 visitors. A year after start-up, I had 1,000 visitors, and then 3,500. What if I had stopped at month one or month two?

Scary thought, huh?

I’ve interviewed many blogging authors who have created such a passionate fan base that their readers can’t wait to buy the author’s new book. And I’m not talking about the reading audience for the NY Times bestselling authors of the world – I’m talking about authors you’ve probably never heard of. These authors blog almost daily, they build relationships with readers, and they have created a dedicated book buying audience.

No reason you can’t do the same in your industry.

What next? Keep blogging . . . even if no one is reading (today).