My friend Steve Rae regularly writes in this space on this day. He’s busy traveling Ireland with his friends playing some of the world’s most beautiful golf courses. Yes, yes, I hate him, too. Yesterday, he played Royal County Down. What’s that mean, exactly? Well, I’ll let my favorite golf writer and contributing editor to Golf Digest, David Owen, tell you:
If you could take just one golf trip, anywhere in the world—the golfer’s version of the Three Wishes Problem—where would you go? You might feel almost a moral obligation to choose the Old Course at St. Andrews, but there are other possibilities. I once told some golf buddies that if my wife ever threw me out they’d find me circling the West Links of North Berwick, on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, waiting for her to beg me to come home. But if I truly had a single-destination global golf pass I’d do what I did recently: I’d travel to Northern Ireland and lose myself on the course that native players call Newcastle and the rest of us know as Royal County Down. (It’s No. 4 on Golf Digest’s World 100 Greatest Courses list.)
Steve’s trip, along with a recent reading of Seth Godin’s The Dip, got me thinking…
How could you make the Top 5 at something?
First, you’d need to define the category as specifically as possible. Against whom are you measuring? Royal County Down is measuring against every golf course in the world and ranks #4. Golf Digest also ranks new courses, public courses, resort courses, courses by country, and courses by province in Canada and by state in the US. Into what category will you throw your hat into the ring?
Our company–Miles & Company–is throwing our hat into North American Marketing firms that help family businesses under USD$50mm.
Second, what are the criteria for measurement? What’s your scoreboard? Golf Digest takes into account a 10-point scale that includes history, beauty, and playability among others. If you’re a car dealer, maybe your measuring number of units sold during a certain time period. If you’re a marketing firm, you’re hopefully NOT measuring by the number of awards on your shelf.
Our company is using a two-point scale: How much are our clients’ revenues growing? How delighted are they? It’s easy to measure the former. To measure the latter, we use Net Promoter Score, the same metric used by Apple, Southwest Airlines, Zappos, and pretty much every company known for great customer service.
Now what?
Who’s in your category? How are they doing? What do they do well? What do you do differently and better?
What ideas and plans can you devise to ratchet up your ranking? Here are 21 of them for you.
It’s worth it. It’s soooo worth it. In The Dip, Godin writes:
With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top. You’re not the only person who looks for the best choice. Everyone does. As a result, the rewards for being first are enormous. It’s not a linear scale. It’s not a matter of getting a little more after giving a little more. It’s a curve, and a steep one.
Sure, it takes work, and no, an international magazine may not put you on a list, but you’ll know.
And so will your customers.
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