Morningstar Communications Luminary Blog

“Hi, you have reached Erin Gregory at Morningstar Communications. Today is Wednesday, June 30 and I am in and out of the office today. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back with you as soon as possible. Or, if you would like immediate assistance, please dial ‘0’ and someone else on our team will be happy to help. Thanks so much and have a great day.”

For more than two years now these have regularly been some of the first words I speak every day. When I started at Morningstar Communications in January 2008 I had no idea what was in store for me, and through the ups and downs I wouldn’t change a moment of it all.

As family, friends, colleagues and clients know, I am leaving Kansas City and my job to head for Boston University to pursue my MBA in Public and Nonprofit Management. This next phase of my life is exciting and promises a new host of challenges and opportunities. But there’s no doubt in my mind I’m ready to make this next move thanks to the many things I learned in my professional life.

I’ve worked with clients in a variety of industries – nonprofit, healthcare, telecom, retail, construction, professional services, education – and performed an even wider variety of tactical and strategic roles. I have written press releases, web copy, collateral materials, byline articles, TV commercials, full-on Integrated Marketing Communications programs and much more. Alongside my amazing colleagues we’ve hosted events, conducted proprietary research, executed social media campaigns and experienced great success.

It’s bittersweet to try and recall all the wonderful opportunities I had while at Morningstar Communications. From working in-house for a client, to presenting at industry conferences alongside our CEO, Eric Morgenstern, I’m convinced I had the broadest, deepest expanse of first job experiences anyone could dream of. So, while I want to do a quick shout out to a few people I will forever thank wholeheartedly, my ‘goodbye’ post is getting long for that. To those I have worked with during the past two years, you’ve made this a fantastic journey.

Thank you!

I’m not sure how it worked out that my first full day on the team at Morningstar was also “back-to-school” day in our area, but the coincidence wasn’t lost on me.   I was always one of those kids who actually liked going back to school.  As a student then (and a part-time college instructor now), I always equate back-to-school to opening day in baseball – everyone’s in first place and the future seems as bright as it can possibly be.

As I depart from almost a decade spent in corporate America and return to the agency business, I’m excited about helping our clients identify what makes them excellent and then using the power of cross-platform strategic communications to add value to their businesses.

After more than 20 years in marketing communications, working with small and large local companies, huge multi-national corporations, nonprofit associations, etc., I was looking for a team that was already a proven success and that would allow me to apply my skills in the most creative way possible.  I’ve found that home in Morningstar Communications and can’t wait to get started.

So, I’m happy to be embarking on another fresh start this fall season.  Now I’m just toting a much bigger backpack.
 

I had the pleasure of presenting at The Central Exchange yesterday to a sell-out crowd of roughly 50 great audience members.

You can see my slides on my LinkedIn profile.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be discussing some of the questions that came up at the end of the presentation. We had a lively group, so it should make for some great posts!

Congrats to Eric! The Kansas City chapter of International Association of Business Communicators (KC/IABC) hosted its annual Bronze Quill Awards Gala on Friday, May 8. Eric Morgenstern, was presented with the Arthur E. Lowell Award, which recognizes excellence, achievement and civic involvement of area business communicators. We secretly helped (along with Justin Goldsborough of Sprint) put together this video tribute to Eric. It explains why he's deserving of this high honor. Our team also took home a Bronze Quill Award for our work for Nonprofit Connect and an Award of Merit for our work for Arrow Truck Sales.

The last question we asked our Luminaries was about customer service in an always-changing world. BusinessWeek recently observed, “Just as companies are dealing with plummeting sales and sinking employee morale, skittish customers want more attention, better quality, and greater value for their money.” We asked: How do we meet this challenge head-on in both B-to-C and B-to-B environments?

Here are the key thoughts from our Luminaries.

1. Know your audience -- and what they want. Several Luminaries spoke about the importance of segmenting your audience. Just because the Millennials who buy your products or services want online customer service doesn’t mean the Boomers do. Know what your customers want…and give it to them.

“You have to segment your base,” said Rich Witaszak, Staples Promotional Products. “You have to let your customers make the choices. If they want handholding through the entire sales cycle, you have to give it to them. But only if they want it. Because only the minority actually need and want that service.”

“Despite technology, you need to segment your audience,” said Jeff Xouris, Perceptive Software. “Face time is critical. You have got to maintain relationships in person, whether that’s breaking bread with someone or breaking wine bottles.”

2. Know what you should be doing, not just what you are doing. As we’ve seen in many of our Luminaries’ responses, a recession is a great time for businesses to stop, slow down and carefully consider what’s being done, its effectiveness and improvements to make. Customer service is no different. Take a close look at how you’re reaching customers and evaluate whether it’s effective.  You can also take the opportunity to look for small changes that will mean worlds to your customers.

“You have to go back and listen to the customers you have,” said Bo Fishback, The Kauffman Foundation. “Are you meeting their needs? Are you really hearing them? Companies who take that as a serious to-do have a better chance of surviving the recession.”

“Standards of customer service excellence have gone up,” said Eric Morgenstern, Morningstar Communications. “So ask yourself what else you can do to meet those standards. Is it a regular wellness visit with your top customers? What other new things can you try to meet your customers’ changing needs?”

Paying attention to customers is always important, and recessionary periods are no different. Nurture relationships carefully. After all, “People with money know they have it,” said Chris Kuehl, Armada Corporate Intelligence. “They don’t want to be overlooked. You have to give maximum attention to the people who deserve it right now.”
 

Question three for our Luminaries brought up a popular subject. With new research indicating spending on social media and conversational marketing will outpace that of traditional marketing by 2012, we asked: Does new technology call for reinvention of traditional business practices? Is there still a place for tried-and-true business strategies? Here’s what we learned.

1. Hybrid solutions are best. The Luminaries overwhelming agreed that technology and new innovations, used in combination with trusted business practices, will be the answer to successful businesses now and in the future.

Chris Kuehl, Armada Corporate Intelligence, said, “We’re going to see a need to integrate more traditional techniques with the new technology.”

“As marketers, we have to stay current,” said Jeff Xouris, Perceptive Software. “There are people who still want print collateral, just as there are some who only want consumer information via the Web. There are emerging technologies, and we have to be smart, but tried-and-true methods still play out. Tradeshows are a great example of this.”

2. Harness the speed technology can bring to traditional practices. Our Luminaries also brought up many examples of how technology can speed up traditional sales generation times or R&D processes.

“Speed always wins,” said Rich Witaszak, Staples Promotional Products. “The first to market often wins, and technology increases the speed of doing that.”

“It’s also the concept of the Fast Second,” said Sam Johnson, Argus Health Systems. “Many ideas get started fast, then fail. The key is to watch this, then improve the failures and be a Fast Second idea to market. Look for the low-hanging fruit – what are things customers can’t afford, don’t want or couldn’t get? Use those answers to generate new, better ideas and succeed.”

“Technology is an enabler of other things,” said Bo Fishback, The Kauffman Foundation. “Where social media leads is that it allows you to either grow or fail faster. The technology just greases the skids and makes things happen instantaneously. We can use technology as an enabler to use the old-school model to build businesses.”

As with our discussions on innovation and management changes, the need for using new tools in a strategic manner was clear. So was this: technology isn’t going away. So adapt your business now to make the most of it.

Question two for our Luminaries started a conversation about changes management must make to help businesses continue to grow.

Fast Company contributor Billee Howard identified “reshaping” trends including “A rising premium inside organizations on people as opposed to technology – and a new crop of market leaders who value agile and sleek entrepreneurialism, as opposed to complacent and bloated former market dominance derived from sheer heft.” So we asked our Luminaries: What changes will we need to see in management for this trend to take hold?

Our Luminaries gave two key pieces of advice.

1. Stay up-to-date. Keeping people in mind is important, but keep in mind that as technology advances, especially social media, your people can help guide your business through the changes and find new solutions to better reach customers.

“It’s a challenge,” said Rich Witaszak, Staples Promotional Products. “In the service-oriented industry, it’s difficult to keep up. It can be hard to stay service-oriented with the new mechanisms and media like Facebook and Twitter. Our training must change so our people know how to make deals in this ‘new world.’”

“Find a microniche market,” suggested Chris Kuehl, Armada Corporate Intelligence. “Use social media to identify micro markets – something that might justify two weeks’ worth of production, for example. Since social media gives immediate interaction with people, throw your needs out into that world. See if you can meet a need for someone in a smaller market.”

“Use reverse mentoring,” said Sam Johnson, Argus Health Systems. “Senior management has to understand the value of concepts like using Facebook. You must have examples. So go up the chain. Use younger employees to help bring ideas to the senior management team. Help management understand you realize the risk and know some things will fail, but that you’ll keep going and learn from mistakes.”

Which leads to the second tip:

2. Accept risk and embrace failure. In order to gain anything, you will have to risk something. Use slower times to test concepts. As Chris said, “Fail. Fail fast. Then learn from the failures.” But our Luminaries also cautioned against chasing down every new idea that comes in front of you. Instead, have a strategic plan in place, supported by senior management, that helps you quickly determine which new ideas are worth trying and which you should let pass.

“You have to find the balance between being nimble to respond to new ideas and focusing on the task at-hand,” said Jeff Xouris, Perceptive Software. “It can be a challenge for management to do both. We have to get behind the things that are cool, but can’t forget the overall mission of our business. And you have to instill a value for risk-taking in your culture.”

“You have to decide what is an acceptable level of risk. Some would say this recession was caused by too much risk, so the pendulum may swing the other way for a while,” said Rich.

“But you have to accept failure,” said Eric Morgenstern, Morningstar Communications. “You have to risk something. You can’t have innovation if you can’t accept failure.”

And again, the Luminaries agreed that it’s important to keep people in mind, no matter the situation.

“Where management teams make money is where there’s a culture people want to be part of,” said Bo Fishback, The Kauffman Foundation. “Some people in really boring businesses love what they do because it’s so much about the culture. It’s the soft side of management, but an important side.”