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What You’ll Learn
Clever marketing campaigns are fun, but they are ineffective unless staff and sales processes are aligned behind them.
Guest Speaker
Vernon Johnson
Show Notes
Transcripts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Intro: A production of Pioneer Utility Resources. StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers.
Andy Johns: What are some things you can do to make sure your organization stays in alignment? That’s what we’ll be talking about on this episode of The StoryConnect Podcast. My name is Andy Johns, your host with Pioneer, and I’m joined on this episode by Vernon Johnson, who is the marketing and sales manager at CLtel. VJ, thanks for joining me.
Vernon Johnson: Thank you, very happy to be here.
Andy Johns: So we are here at the epicenter of rural broadband providers at the Calix ConneXions Conference in Las Vegas. It’s been a good couple of days for us. I’ve learned a lot. I hope you have too.
Vernon Johnson: Definitely, without a doubt. Just a lot of eye opening information and a lot of stuff I can take back and immediately start implementing.
Andy Johns: Definitely. Now the session everybody is talking about, or at least some people are talking about, is a session that you’re doing tomorrow talking about alignment and new product rollouts. So go ahead and let’s define it kind of. When we’re talking about being in alignment for an organization, whether that’s a rural broadband provider or whoever, what do we mean when we’re talking about alignment?
Vernon Johnson: Well, I mean, the way that we’re thinking about it here at CLtel would be when we’re going to market with a product as an example or a service, just ensuring that throughout the company, throughout the company and throughout the organization, everyone’s in lockstep understanding. You know, the messaging that’s going to go out, how we’re going to share the information, ensuring that if necessary, if needed, that we have meetings and/or presentation just to ensure that, again, everyone understands the expectations behind this. And it’s the scary part also from a marketing perspective is, you know, what are our goals? You know, the number of “widgets” we might sell as an example. What kind of penetration we might expect if we’re going out into a new area, those kinds of things. And what will we do, or what is the backup plan, if for some reason we’re hitting the mark after two weeks, three weeks or so?
Andy Johns: Yeah. Both in the positive direction and in a negative direction, I guess.
Vernon Johnson: Correct. Just to make sure all those bases are covered.
Andy Johns: Got it. So, you know, as we’re talking through, all the topics there, when you’re looking at alignment, and you guys have rolled out a few new products. There have been a few over the years. I guess that’s the part that folks don’t realize about marketing. I know that’s the thing I didn’t realize about marketing communications when I first got into it is, is you get excited about the external stuff. The things that go out into the, you know, the very clever things that you’ve designed to go out into the world and get people to buy your product. But it’s so important. The number one way that we see people stumble a lot of the time is when people aren’t brought on board. That’s not necessarily obvious, but it’s so important to do that.
Vernon Johnson: Yeah, I agree. In fact, when I first started at CLtel, and I don’t traditionally, I don’t have the traditional broadband background. So I came from a B2B environment, and I came into CLtel thinking, “All right, I’m gonna wear this Superman cape, create this magnificent strategic marketing plan specifically for the product that we’re trying to push out,” at that time. And I remember I didn’t include the CSRs.
Andy Johns: Oh, okay.
Vernon Johnson: They let me know immediately. “Hey. Sorry. You gotta let us know, because the great thing, we’re getting some phone calls about this. But unfortunately, we’re unable to truly explain the benefits or, you know, we’re missing out on some potential sales.” And from that point on, they have been included in this process. So I agree with your statement there.
Andy Johns: Yeah. The thing that I always try to say at the beginning of a marketing campaign is, “Okay, what if this works?” You know, what if we do get the calls, just like we’re expecting. What’s the next step? And then what’s the next step, and what’s the next step?
Vernon Johnson: Correct.
Andy Johns: So, and we’ve seen it before. I’ve used this example on the podcast. There is a rural broadband provider, a telco who will remain nameless. But they were rebranding, and they put up a billboard and kind of like a big fanfare. The new name of the company, and they had staff reach out to the marketing people and say, “Hey, have you heard about this new company that’s coming into town? We got, we better be, they sound pretty good. We better worry.” That’s kind of the nightmare scenario, but obviously you’ve got employees who are busy. You got folks that are in different departments, different priorities. I imagine when you’re making sure to talk to those folks, it takes a few different efforts and a few different channels when you’re talking, trying to get your coworkers and fellow employees to know what’s going on. What are some of the ways that you reach different people in different ways internally?
Vernon Johnson: Yeah, I mean, you’re spot on with that. One of the major things that I do is I try to pull people from different areas of the company, bringing them in early, and then ensuring that they’re, whatever the crazy idea that I may have or that someone has given me, I’m sharing it with others who either have had experience with the audience we’re going after to tell me, is this the right path? Has this been tried before? What was the success that we had with that, or what didn’t work? And then I’ll go back and, you know, replay that or reframe it. And again, bring it back to that larger audience. I mean and when I say larger audience, it’s probably 3 or 4 people. From that point on, massage it a bit, and then share it with the management and leadership team. And that at that point, that’s when we start implementing it within the company, testing it as an example with employees, and then from that point, getting feedback from them and moving it into, you know, a live scenario.
Andy Johns: I think that was an important part that you touched on. And I believe you said this is part of the presentation for tomorrow. But getting that feedback, getting that information back, not just as a one-way pumping this information out. But you guys are doing some stuff too both through surveys and sounds like listening to folks internally to kind of get that feedback and improve the process even as you’re rolling things out, right?
Vernon Johnson: Yes, that’s correct. In fact, one of the things that we worked with Calix with was, and I mean plug for y’all too, this is something that we work with y’all as well. They meeting Calix. We worked with them for a survey, a loyalty analysis survey. They brought back just probably an 18 to 25 page document of nothing but metrics and statistics.
Andy Johns: Wow.
Vernon Johnson: Broke it down for us. We sat back and looked at, you know what of these measurements are truly important to us that’s going to move the needle for us? And from that information, we decided to update some of the images that we’re using for speed upgrades and for new customers. We created, you know, an additional landing page, a shorter form. And I remember this was 30 days after, again working with the team from Calix, working with Pioneer as well. I’ll give a plug to Julie and her work in pushing some of this stuff through.
Andy Johns: Yay, for Julie.
Vernon Johnson: Yes, but it turns out within 30 days, we reached subscriber and speed upgrade levels that we hadn’t seen since Covid times.
Andy Johns: Oh, wow.
Vernon Johnson: And when I remember, when I first started, everyone said, “You know, no matter what we do, it’s going to be difficult for us to recreate any of the magic that happened during Covid times.” And I’m going to attribute a lot of what we did from the metrics that we received and from the work that was done by y’all to that success that we had. I mean, we’re talking it’s a top ten month of all time for CLtel, and CLtel has been around –
Andy Johns: For a long time.
Vernon Johnson: Yeah, very long time. So very proud of that and very proud of the work that we did internally and working with y’all on that.
Andy Johns: I appreciate that. And when we’re talking about the magic of COVID, because you don’t hear that phrase very often. I think all the broadband providers probably know what we’re talking about when, just because there were so many sign-ups. Everybody working remote. Everybody learning remotely. Those were, yeah, like you said, kind of all time months for sign-ups and everything there.
Vernon Johnson: Yes.
Andy Johns: I did want to ask you, and I may be putting you on the spot here, but when you’re talking about looking at that study, you know, looking at the survey results, what were some of the metrics or the benchmarks or what were some of the particular items, if you remember those key performance indicators, maybe that you all were looking at as, okay, this we have, I think you said 18 pages. We can’t process all 18. But what were some of the really key ones that you all were looking at to determine success in where you were?
Vernon Johnson: Yeah, sure. I mean, one was a bragging moment. Just we had a score of 86 for the NPS score.
Andy Johns: Net promoter score?
Vernon Johnson: Yes. Net promoter score.
Andy Johns: That’s fantastic.
Vernon Johnson: Yeah. It’s amazing. We were told that that’s out of this world fantastic.
Andy Johns: Yeah.
Vernon Johnson: So we’re very proud of that. And the other aspect that really puts us – and I hate using the term unique – but in a unique spot is anyone that’s been a customer of ours for over 30 years. Everyone that again, has been a customer for CLtel for 30 years, gave us a Net Promoter score of 90.
Andy Johns: Wow.
Vernon Johnson: Again that’s unheard of. Ten years, you know, is decent, but 30 years for us to have that kind of loyalty from customers and for them to think of us that way, incredible. Some of the other –
Andy Johns: That means you’re doing something right.
Vernon Johnson: Correct. And I mean, part of that is the DNA, the culture, that’s been at CLtel for, you know, all this length of time here. The other things that we really focused in on. So here at Calix, they’re really talking about, you’re not going to differentiate on speed. And I totally agree with that. So from what we ascertained, from the feedback we got from customers was what they appreciated about us was that we were a local business. We support the community. That was one. Another one was our reliability, where they felt that we were more reliable than any other carrier in that area. In fact, for our local area of north central Iowa, there’s an annual survey that goes out to, I think, about 20,000 people for seven straight years. CLtel has been voted favorite, most, you know, liked internet subscriber. And then the last thing was customer support. I’ve heard, you know, anecdotally, I’ve heard customers walk in and say, “You know, I love you” to our CSRs. I’ve seen our CSRs hugging folks.
Andy Johns: That doesn’t happen everywhere.
Vernon Johnson: No, no, not at all. And so I think it’s, you know, those kinds of things married to what, you know, we found in the analysis that Calix provided us. So, yeah.
Andy Johns: So how do you think you will use. Because I know you well enough to know that every, every campaign, every new effort, you’re looking to get better, tighten things up, tweak things here and there. Are there some things that you’ve learned these last few rounds of new products or new initiatives that you’ll use next time? What are some things that you hope to implement to even refine processes and get even better next time?
Vernon Johnson: Yeah, I mean, we both are big on writing. One of the things I want to do with our writing or our communication is to tell more customer stories. So I think we’ve done a great job of telling stories in general about how you can take advantage of your internet services, explaining how to do these types of things. But we haven’t told, in my opinion, enough of the customer stories, and we have enough customer comments to be able to do that.
Andy Johns: To start building that together, yeah.
Vernon Johnson: Exactly. And I think that will drive more interest and people wanting to visit the website. I do feel that that’s going to be a trigger for people to truly understand who CLtel is, especially from out of town markets for people that move to Clear Lake because that is one area that I do want to focus in on. Most people that come from out of the area, like Des Moines, which is about roughly an hour and a half away from us, they don’t know about CLtel. So how can we tell customer stories? How can we share content that they’re going to be able to get when they’re doing their research, as far as an internet service provider?
Andy Johns: Perfect, and that can help you out in a lot of different areas. So it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well let’s close here. Let’s wrap up on this question. And it’s how I end a lot of the podcasts. But what advice do you have for somebody who’s listening to this and is like, oh, you know, we don’t do some of those things, but this is something we can do better. What advice do you have for somebody who’s kind of where you were a few years ago and starting to think about, “Okay, to do this, right, I need to implement some of these processes.” What advice would you give them?
Vernon Johnson: A former boss once told me. Progress over perfection.
Andy Johns: Yeah.
Vernon Johnson: And I have taken that to heart here. And it started just because I was afraid to actually publish something or send it to him for a review, thinking, “Is this going to get red ink to death? And I’m going to be so embarrassed.” You know what? Just move forward with it. I mean, get your idea on paper. Share the idea out. Get it to where you know you like it, even if it’s not perfect. If it’s close to perfect, get it out there because you’re going to get feedback.
Andy Johns: Right.
Vernon Johnson: And then you can make changes off that and build off that. I mean, this is a tiny plug for us. We’ve started podcasting like you have. And do I think the podcasts are great? No. Absolutely not. However, I think there are things that we can do differently, and we’re going to do that.
Andy Johns: Oh, sure. Tell us the name of the podcast so that anybody who’s out there is listening, who wants some of it, they can go find it.
Vernon Johnson: Well, thank you for that. It’s called “Show and CLtel.” “Show and CLtel.”
Andy Johns: I like it, I like it. Well, VJ, thank you so much for for joining me on this episode and for taking the time to share your story with the folks at the panel here at Calix ConneXions tomorrow.
Vernon Johnson: It’s been a pleasure, Andy. Thanks a lot for the opportunity.
Andy Johns: He is Vernon Johnson with CLtel in Iowa. I’m Andy Johns your host with Pioneer. And until we talk again, keep telling your story.
Outro: StoryConnect is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources, a communications cooperative that is built to share your story.