Yesterday with one of our clients, we hosted a virtual whiteboard session, a fairly standard practice for how we run meetings now. It’s amazing how much more effective those virtual whiteboard meetings are than your standard “go around the room” Zoom meetings.
With a small group of 8 people from across the department, we started the meeting by framing a few very specific challenges…
- “How might we excite fans after they purchase a Football Season Ticket for the first time?”
- “How might we educate fans after they purchase a Football Season Ticket for the first time?”;
- “How might we continue to educate fans after they renew their Football Season Ticket?”
You may be tempted to combine these questions into one. But by separating them out, distinctly different suggestions arise. With the virtual whiteboard session, we put a silent activity timer on the screen, and the virtual post it notes start flying.
Since everyone can contribute at the same time, and removed the ability for people to ramble on about one idea, we get a high quantity of ideas. We can expand on quality for only the ideas that really catch our attention. Though it might be counter-intuitive, the constraints in this session serve to create MORE ideas. The timer creates a sense of urgency, and limiting the idea to a post-it notes forces clarity of thought.
After just 15 minutes of brainstorm, we had over fifty distinct ideas across the three questions. That speed allowed us to quickly move toward mapping when in the customer journey they should get that communication, moving us towards building a larger communication calendar.
Creating deeper emotional connections with your tribe often starts by looking within. Do your current systems & processes empower your employees to engage with customers, or are they roadblocks for your employees to overcome?
If you even thought to answer “roadblocks,” we’re here to help. Pro sports teams and college athletics departments around the country use us as a guide for connecting deeper with the people they serve. If you’re on a journey to better engage your customers and employees, drop me an email at davidm@engagemintpartners.com and we’ll see if we can help.