The People Principle

T A B L E     O F     C O N T E N T S
Time for the People Principle Leadership Is Job One Sharpening Customer Focus with the New Marketing Integrating Corporate Functions: No More Silos The Key to Performance: Motivating Employees People Performance: The Payoff Case Studies	Where to Start Associations Trade Shows Books Online Services Sponsoring Companies

TIME FOR THE PEOPLE PRINCIPLE

People are an organization's greatest asset, and enduring success comes only to organizations with farsighted leadership, inspired employees, and motivated customers. That's not pie-in-the-sky; there's a wealth of experience to support it. Put it all together and you've got the People Principle, a force that has prevailed through business cycles, mergers, downsizing, and other forms of corporate restructuring.

Today, a strategic combination of leadership and cutting-edge external and internal marketing strategies can give even the smallest company an unassailable competitive edge against the largest, best capitalized companies. In fact, the integrated strategies required to implement the People Principle give the advantage in many industries to small, entrepreneurial companies. Another helpful factor: the low cost of Internet and database marketing technology.

The People Principle is based on the age-old wisdom that customers and employees hold the key to sustainable growth for shareholders. Thus all organizational efforts should focus on how to maximize the loyalty of customers and dedication of employees. While the People Principle in no way negates the need for traditional strategies, it holds that organizations that have mastered the fundamentals can do even better by integrating those basic business functions so that they serve the cause of maximizing employee dedication and customer satisfaction. The People Principle demands an integrated approach to sales, marketing, and management. Logical as that might seem, it is often missing in a business world where most disciplines operate side-by-side in virtual "silos."

The People Principle has given rise to a new discipline, known variously as performance-improvement management or people-performance management, and signs of this new direction are everywhere. Seminars and conferences by groups ranging from WorldatWork, the International Society for Performance Improvement, and the Forum for People Performance Management & Measurement are currently exploring opportunities for improving individual and organizational performance by encouraging employee satisfaction and engagement. Traditional incentive companies are transforming themselves into "performance improvement companies," providing whatever services are necessary to help organizations attain their goals, rather than simply incentives and meetings. Leading consulting companies, such as Andersen Consulting, Towers Perrin, and Watson Wyatt are repositioning themselves as companies that focus not only on the processes of business but on the people who make them work. Equally important, the underlying need for and strength of the People Principle is confirmed by ongoing research and by a quantity of well-respected books on the subject (see Books).

The goal of implementing the People Principle is long-term sustained growth, and while it doesn't necessarily guarantee success, there's a good chance it can help your organization. It's only logical that companies that have sound, sustained leadership, committed and empowered employees, and loyal customers will outperform those that don't. This article demonstrates how organizations of all sizes can gain a competitive edge by committing themselves to the People Principle.

LEADERSHIP IS JOB ONE

Like any other major movement in business, the People Principle demands strong leadership. It needs people who grasp the principles of performance improvement at all levels of their organizations and then apply them to get results. It takes strong leaders to unlock the untapped potential in an American workplace that is experiencing growing levels of dissatisfaction. Consider these findings from a 2005 study of  U.S. worker job satisfaction by the Conference Board:

• Only 50 percent of workers today say they are happy with their jobs, compared with 60 percent 10 years ago. And among the 50 percent who are content, only 14 percent say they are "very satisfied."
• 40 percent of workers say they feel "disconnected" from their employers.
• Two out of every three workers say they don't identify with their employer's business goals and objectives.
• 25 percent of employees say they are just "showing up to collect a paycheck."

When workers say they're not satisfied with their jobs and not working as effectively as they could, that is a call for stronger, more effective leadership and a workplace that offers more fulfilling work.

Effective leadership is the key to performance-improvement management. It's the linchpin for leveraging the People Principle in all areas of your business and using that principle to effect the transformation from a workforce that is complacent, uncommitted, and working at half-speed to one that is committed, goal-oriented, and largely self-directed.

The strong leader isn't afraid to empower others, isn't afraid to give workers at all levels the tools, skills, and authority they need to bring about change. The effective leader is able to create a vision that gives workers the feeling of being part of a common cause. That shared vision, say Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus in their book, Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, makes it possible to distribute decision making more widely:

"A shared vision helps individuals distinguish between what's good and bad for an organization, and what it's worthwhile to want to achieve....People can make difficult decisions without having to appeal to higher levels in the organization each time because they know what end results are required. In a very real sense, individual behavior can be shaped, directed, and coordinated by a shared and empowering vision of the future."

Another key function of leadership is to create leaders at all levels of the organization, not only through a shared vision and effective communication, but through training. According to Hal Rosenbluth, CEO of Rosenbluth International and coauthor of Good Company: Caring as Fiercely As You Compete, training is a commitment that companies have to offer their people the "opportunity to advance and ... provide them with the training and tools necessary to follow through."

The critical characteristics found at any company with strong leadership apply to any executive in the organization from the CEO down:

• Vision grabs people's attention and gets things started.
• Effective communication gains support for the leader's vision and gets others to join the effort.
• Trust holds the effort together for the long term, endowing the vision, and hence the entire organization, with integrity and a sense that "we're all in this together."

SHARPENING CUSTOMER FOCUS WITH THE NEW MARKETING

Just as leaders derive their power and ability from those they lead, companies derive their health and wealth from the customers they serve. Smart companies are customer-driven, applying their resources--and their employees' attention--to meeting customer needs. Hence another dimension of the People Principle: High quality and superior service are basic requirements, not extras.

The importance of listening to customers and incorporating the information into a company's product and service offerings is supported by research from a variety of sources:

• Nearly 70 percent of the reasons customers give for leaving a particular supplier have nothing to do with the product. The prevailing reason, says Forum Corp. research, is poor quality of service.
  
  
• In two of three cases in which a customer had a complaint about a product, the problem arose from the customer's not knowing how to use the product rather than from the product itself, according to a study by the Technical Assistance Research Program (TARP) in Washington, DC.

Companies that understand the need for customer focus also understand that listening to the customer builds customer loyalty. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, coauthors of Enterprise One to One, explain how this works:

• The customer tells the enterprise what it wants, with interaction and feedback.
  
  
• The enterprise meets these specifications "by customizing its product or service to meet the needs of that particular customer, and then it remembers these specifications."
  
  
• In the course of a continuing relationship, the customer teaches the company more and more about its particular needs.
  
  
• In order to get the same level of service and customization from a competitive firm, "the customer will have to reteach the competitor what it has already taught the original firm."

That ability to listen to customers and respond quickly to their changing needs is at the core of what is coming to be called the New Marketing. In fact, fulfilling customer needs or, even better, anticipating them before they are vocalized has become much easier with the development of database marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), Internet marketing, and other tools that enable companies to listen closely and respond quickly to the customer. The New Marketing also gives companies the tools they need to reach prospects initially and maintain them after they have become customers. With the New Marketing tools like Solata and others, marketers can determine when prospects are in a buying or planning mode and begin to build a relationship with them. Because they generally are able to respond more quickly to customer needs, small companies may have an advantage over their larger competitors when it comes to taking advantage of the technology of the New Marketing.

At this point, it should be apparent that the New Marketing's relationship-building strategies, aimed at best prospects and customers, yield a much higher, more measurable return on investment than traditional mass marketing. There are three main reasons for this:

• New Marketing works because it emphasizes informing and helping customers rather than selling to them. It fosters a consultative, problem-solving relationship.
  
  
• The Internet enables marketers to target people searching for information about a product or service category for much less than traditional marketing.
  
  
• New Marketing lowers costs in three ways:
  
  
  1. Inexpensive database technology, including sales-automation software, makes it possible for companies of any size to focus marketing resources on the people or businesses most likely to buy;
     
     
  2. It helps track the results of every sales effort, including the source of new business and the potential value of each customer or prospect;
     
     
  3. The New Marketing emphasizes retaining customers rather than continually spending money to replace them.

Under the New Marketing model, incentives are given a new role. Rather than merely encouraging repeat sales, their primary purpose is to get people to give their permission to receive targeted marketing messages. Thus they enable marketers to build a database of serious prospects over time. The challenge here, of course, is to provide people with useful information rather than simply self-serving sales material.

Becoming Customer-Driven

In The Customer-Driven Company, Richard Whiteley offers this advice for making a company more responsive to the voice of the customer:

• Create a customer-keeping vision. Organizations that develop well defined and widely shared aims wake up their sleepy bureaucracies and truly begin to serve their customers well.
  
  
• Saturate your company with the voice of the customer. Find new ways of listening to and responding to the voice of the customer-and make sure your entire organization is listening.
  
  
• Study the winners. Look for companies that have built their success on a commitment to serving customers, and study how they do it.
  
  
• Liberate your customer champions. Most employees want to serve customers well. So let them. A lot of the barriers to serving customers are built into a company's systems. Train your employees to look for ways to eliminate them.
  
  
• Measure everything. You can't tell how well you are doing or how much you are improving until you can say precisely what you are doing.
  
  
• Walk the talk. Managers who carry out these customer-focused principles are creating a new view of leadership. They build customer-focused teams, encouraging collaboration and celebrating successes. They lead by example, personifying the organization's purpose.

INTEGRATING CORPORATE FUNCTIONS: NO MORE SILOS

Many organizations have built-in barriers to internal cooperation and doing what is best for the customer. One of the most important discoveries by Michael Hammer and James Champy in their benchmark book, Reengineering the Corporation, is that "many tasks that employees performed had nothing at all to do with meeting customers needs--that is, creating a product high in quality, supplying that product at a fair price, and providing excellent service. Many tasks were done simply to satisfy the internal demands of the company's own organization."

American businesses were built on the notions of specialization of labor and organizational silos, an approach that might have worked in the early part of this century but which no longer works in today's marketplace with today's customers and today's competitors.

By integrating functions and processes, companies have found that they can increase productivity, reduce errors and misunderstandings, and make their operations more responsive to customer needs. The integration process takes many forms and may include creating cross-functional teams, combining several jobs into one, empowering workers to make more decisions, and performing the steps of a process in a natural order rather than in a fashion dictated by management decree.

In Reengineering the Corporation, Hammer and Champy say that, by breaking down departmental barriers, a company can expect that:

• Work units will change from functional departments to process teams.
• Jobs will change from simple tasks to multidimensional work.
• People's roles will change from controlled to empowered.
• The focus of performance measures and compensation will shift from activity to results.
• Advancement criteria will change from performance to ability.
• Managers will change from supervisors to coaches.
• Organizational structures will change from hierarchical to flat.
• Executives will change from scorekeepers to leaders.

THE KEY TO PERFORMANCE: MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES

People, of course, are the main element of the People Principle, and inspiring the best possible performance by people should be part of the mission of every forward-thinking company. But getting the best out of your work force involves more than setting up a system of standards and rewards. Individual and group performance can be affected by a company's leadership, its customer orientation, its organizational structure, and any number of other things that go beyond the requirements of a particular job. It's also important to recognize that organizational improvement requires a cooperative effort from everyone in the organization from top to bottom.

In fact, adopting a customers-first policy will backfire unless companies understand that employees are their first customers. "Let's get things in the right order by treating employees the way we'd like employees to treat customers," says Lance Secretan, author of Reclaiming Higher Ground: Creating Organizations That Inspire the Soul. By selling employees on a customer-focused vision, companies can fully harness the power of the People Principle, enlisting the commitment of all involved in delivering the marketing promise.

But employees don't become leaders by magic, and empowered employees who lack the necessary skills to take on decision-making responsibilities are likely to do more harm than good. Thus employee development is a key factor in applying the People Principle. Smart organizations recognize that helping workers develop marketable skills is something they can offer in place of job security to a new generation of workers.

Performance measurement, performance feedback, and positive reinforcement are necessary ingredients of any employee development program, of course, but employees also need to be sold on the importance of performance improvement both to themselves and to their organizations. It is management's job to let employees in on how they are being measured and how changes in their behavior can affect their performance. Rewards and recognition will help, but those rewards will have a greater impact in an enlightened workplace committed to helping people grow.

Feedback, in particular, is important to all employees, not just the top performers. Progressive companies also recognize that feedback is important to management as a way of improving leadership skills and overall management performance. A number of leading companies have instituted a "360-degree review" program for managers whereby they get feedback from employees and peers about their leadership qualities, communication skills, and interpersonal skills.

Maximizing performance through people requires an understanding of human motivation rarely considered in most business boardrooms. For example, it helps to know that the more employees earn, the more they respond to recognition as opposed to cash. Tangible recognition, which might include merchandise, travel, debit cards, gift certificates, invitations to special events, trophies, or jewelry, provides a way not only to thank major contributors dramatically but to send a message throughout the organization that outstanding performance is highly valued.

The ultimate goal, of course, is loyalty--on the part of employees as well as customers. "Loyal employees have greater opportunities to learn and to increase their efficiencies," says Frederick F. Reichheld, author of  The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value. "The money that these employees save their employers in reduced recruiting and training costs can be invested somewhere else-for example, in measures that will increase customer satisfaction. And the same business philosophy and operational policies that earn employees' loyalty and boost their morale is likely to work for customers."

Five Steps to Better Motivation

• Foster alignment: Provide employees with clear goals and an understanding of their role.
  
  
• Empower: Give people the training and autonomy to perform their tasks.
  
  
• Involve: Get employees to help remove obstacles to performance improvement and find new ways to do things better.
  
  
• Reward: Provide meaningful recognition that is clearly distinguished from cash compensation.
  
  
• Understand the role of tangible rewards: Merchandise, travel, tickets to special events, debit cards, and gift certificates provide powerful publicity that supports corporate values.

PEOPLE PERFORMANCE: THE PAYOFF

The People Principle is based on the belief that customers and employees hold the key to sustainable growth for shareholders and that all organizational efforts should focus on how to maximize the dedication of employees and the loyalty of customers. In other words, it pays to put customers first while recognizing that employees are a company's first "customers." In addition, the People Principle maintains that an investment in employee skills, job satisfaction, and morale, combined with a comparable investment in customer satisfaction will yield a handsome return on that investment.

For example, Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, presents convincing evidence that giving employees more say over their work, encouraging the development of skills, and placing more responsibility in the hands of people well down in the organization has a direct impact on profitability.

Pfeffer points to studies of survival rates for initial public offerings (IPOs) and reports that the survival rate for IPOs that showed a measurable investment in human resource development was nearly 20 percent higher than for companies with less of an investment in human resources. In addition, IPOs whose reward systems included stock options, profit sharing, or other incentives extended to all employees showed a survival rate that was 40 percent higher than those that limited rewards to executives.

Looking at it from another perspective, Frederick F. Reichheld reports in The Loyalty Effect that customer loyalty, measured in terms of customer-retention rates, can have a significant impact on profitability. A simple 5-percent increase in customer retention by a credit card company, for instance, can increase total lifetime profits from a typical customer by 75 percent. Every increase in customer retention contributes directly to the bottom line. In addition, loyalty helps inspire positive attitudes and practices that reinforce one another, says Reichheld. Some examples:

• Revenues and market share grow as the best customers are swept into the company's business, building repeat sales and referrals. And, because the firm's value proposition is strong, it can afford to be more selective in customer acquisition and concentrate its investment on the most profitable and potentially loyal prospects, further stimulating growth.
  
  
• Sustainable growth enables the firm to attract and retain the best employees. Consistent delivery of superior value to customers increases employees' loyalty by giving them pride and satisfaction in their work.
  
  
• Loyal long-term employees learn on the job how to reduce costs and improve quality, which further enriches the customer value proposition.
  
  
• Spiraling productivity coupled with the increased efficiency of dealing with loyal customers generates the kind of cost advantage that is very difficult for competitors to match. Sustainable cost advantage coupled with steady growth in the number of loyal customers generates the kind of profits that are very appealing to investors.

For many companies, the commitment, sense of direction, and improved productivity and morale that come with a customer-focused culture are reward in itself. What a pleasant surprise it is when they discover that investing in the People Principle will also yield a significant contribution to long-term profits. Managing people effectively is being recognized as a factor in company performance. Financial analysts are taking a hard look at its impact, and companies generally are paying more attention to human resources.

If a company's financial performance can be improved by modest advances in this direction, imagine what will happen when a company makes the People Principle part of its mission, enlisting its employees and customers in the commitment. The possibilities are limitless!

CASE STUDIES

Profile: School for Leaders at Rosenbluth International

Rosenbluth International's leadership training program is designed to ensure that, as the company expands, it has a pool of employees who share the firm's core values and have the skills and experience to take on leadership roles. It starts with a six-month program open to all employees that is designed to introduce participants to leadership responsibilities in the organization. It provides training in communication skills, such as business writing and making presentations. It also requires participants to identify a quality-improvement opportunity within their own business unit, collect and analyze data, and suggest a solution. An advanced program is offered to those ready to fill key leadership roles.

Profile: Eastman Chemical Puts Customers First

At Eastman Chemical Co., customer focus contributed not only to the company's financial success but also made it a Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award winner. Putting the customer first, in fact, is built into the corporate philosophy, which declares that "Customers drive us to the right solution," and "If we don't do the best job possible with the minimum amount of waste in our system, the customer will go somewhere else."

In a business where high-quality products are a given, Eastman's customer focus raised the level of service to the point where it is one of the key differentiators between the company and its competitors. A customer-friendly attitude permeates the organization because management has taken specific steps, including the following:

• Eastman's sales training requires salespeople to learn to use the same equipment that customers use to process its polymers, additives, and other chemicals.
  
  
• The company has developed a quality-improvement program aimed at improving the processes that link the company to its customers.
  
  
• Management measures customer satisfaction on an ongoing basis and has developed a complaint-handling system designed to analyze complaints and uncover their root cause so they can be eliminated.

Profile: An Integrated Strategy for American Greetings

Putting customers first may be the first step toward eliminating internal barriers or silos. That's what American Greetings found as its relationships with large retail customers, such as Walmart and Target, evolved. In its effort to be more responsive to customers, American Greetings, which was cited for superior service by CIO magazine, discovered that manufacturing, distribution, and sales had to work closely together. Management just couldn't afford to make customers wait while it sorted out internal differences.

Communication is the key to getting different departments to work together. Every year-and-a-half, the company has a sales meeting to help forge closer relationships. In addition, at its corporate offices, sales, scheduling, product development, and finance people are all in close proximity, facilitating a lot of back-and-forth over an account in a relatively short time.

With a smaller number of customers commanding a greater and greater market share,  the company believes that it's important to have better communication between these groups and a willingness to get together anytime, anyplace to figure out what it needs to do for customers.

American Greetings also has cross-functional teams calling on key accounts, creating a partnership that erases departmental boundaries. Marketing, transportation, and logistics people as well as salespeople are assigned to the company's largest accounts. It beleives that's what It takes to be responsive to those accounts on a day-to-day basis.

Profile: Why 3M Lets Customers Dictate Training

3M Corp. found a way of wedding customer orientation to its sales training by giving customers a big say in how its salespeople are trained. Believing that training is wasted if it's not focused on the customer, 3M uses a customer survey to evaluate its sales force and identify training needs in terms of such specific skills as negotiating, interpersonal selling, problem solving, internal influence, and teamwork. Customers are asked to assess the importance of each skill to the business relationship and rate the salesperson's performance in each area. A feedback report for each salesperson summarizes customer perceptions and indicates the gap between customers' expectations and the salesperson's performance in each area.

Once the results are in, the salesperson goes to his sales manager with the survey in hand to work out an individual development program. The program might include a combination of self-study, corporate training, and outside training to address the salesperson's weaknesses.

WHERE TO START

Performance improvement begins at the top, with management committed to attaining the ROI of a long-term effort. Without top management support, it is difficult to implement the cross-functional, interdisciplinary practices that the People Principle calls for. After all, a people-performance driven company needs harmonious cooperation among sales, marketing, human resources, and operations. It also requires an understanding of the interrelated functions, including:

• Leadership
• Management
• Meetings
• Training
• Incentives and recognition
• Target marketing
• The Internet
• Account-based management.

The integrated aspects required by the People Principle go beyond the methods of traditional management. Recognizing the need for such integration, a number of incentive and consulting companies have broadened their focus to provide an objective, goal-specific strategy using the complete spectrum of modern marketing disciplines. (A selection of these companies is included in the list of sponsors at the end of this article. (See Sponsoring Companies.)

ASSOCIATIONS

For related associations, go to the Industry Association Listings page.

TRADE SHOWS

For a list of Industry Events, go to #9510, Calendar of Industry Events.

BOOKS

To order any of the highlighted books through Amazon.com, click directly on the book title.

The Customer-Driven Company: Moving from Talk to Action, by Richard C. Whiteley, takes a hands-on approach to building a customer-centered organization. 

Enterprise One to One: Tools for Competing in the Interactive Age, by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, looks at how new marketing techniques enable companies to build closer relationships with customers. 

Good Company: Caring as Fiercely as You Compete, by Hal F. Rosenbluth and Diane McFerrin Peters, looks at how companies can profit from a commitment to a corporate culture characterized by collaboration, innovation, and joy at work. 

The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, by Jeffrey Pfeffer, examines why much of the current conventional wisdom is wrong and asks us to re-think the way managers link people with organizational performance. Pfeffer builds a powerful business case for managing people effectively--not just because it makes for good corporate policy, but because it results in outstanding performance and profits. 

Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, provides a blueprint for revitalizing organizations through strong leadership.

The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value, by Frederick F. Reichheld and Thomas Teal. The authors examine what they feel is the link between employee, customer, and investor loyalty.

Reclaiming Higher Ground: Creating Organizations That Inspire the Soul, by Lance H. K. Secretan, suggests that work can be empowering, inspirational, and profitable at the same time. 

Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, by Michael Hammer and James Champy, looks at how traditional business practices can be reengineered for greater efficiency. 

The Service Profit Chain: How Leading Companies Link Profit and Growth to Loyalty, Satisfaction and Value, by James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, and Leonard A. Schlesinger. Drawing on their years of management consulting experience and academic research, the authors provide compelling evidence that profit and growth can be directly linked to both customer and employee satisfaction. They also provide a macro recipe for "capitalizing on the service profit chain," including management, marketing, operations and measurement strategies.

ONLINE SERVICES

In addition to this article, the Sales Marketing Network carries more than 100 articles on all aspects of incentives, meetings, destinations, promotion, sales, and marketing, including several that deal with important aspects of the People Principle and performance improvement:

• Incentives. Click on #3010, Incentives Overview; #3020, Strategies for Success; #3025, Incentive Checklist;#3027, Incentives Online; #4010, Incentive Travel, and a host of other incentive articles.
  
  
• Meetings. Click on #5010, Meetings Overview; #5020, Plan a Great Meeting!; #5021, How to Plan an Overseas Meeting; #5310 Golf Meetings, and many others.
  
  
• Other aspects of the People Principle are covered in such articles as #6020, Frequency Marketing; #7020, Inspiring Your Sales Force; #7045, Targeted Business Development; #8010, Trade Shows; #9010, Training; #9200, Employee Recognition; #9201, Recognition vs. Compensation; #9202, Motivating Your Middle 60%; #9300, Motivating Women; and #9105, The New Marketing.

SPONSORING COMPANIES

The following companies have provided critical support for the publication of “The People Principle.” Start with these industry leaders when looking for help in developing effective performance-improvement, incentive, and meetings programs.

BI Performance Services
7630 Bush Lake Road, Minneapolis, MN 55439. Call 612-844-4208; e-mail  schneider@biperf.com; Web site http://www.biperformance.com. Contact John Jack, senior vice president, innovative resources, or Craig Hathaway, vice president, innovative resources.

BI Performance Services is a full-service marketing company that combines communications, training, measurement, and rewards into performance-improvement solutions for corporate customers. A leader in the performance-improvement industry, BI provides a variety of services consulting, communications, meeting services, training, measurement, research, analytical services, rewards, merchandise, recognition, travel, client mailing center, and packaged solutions.

Dittman Incentive Marketing
2015 Lincoln Highway, Edison, NJ 08817. Call 732-248-0707; fax 732-248-1411; Web site http://www.dittmanincentives.com. Contact Dave Dittman.

Dittman Incentive Marketing is an innovative leader in the field of incentives, motivation, and performance improvement. It’s an award-winning company with a 22-year history and a proven track record as a creator of original, one-of-a-kind motivation and education programs targeted at end users, distribution customers, direct salespeople, and nonsales employees to achieve critical corporate goals.

Don Jagoda Associates, Inc.
100 Marcus Drive, Melville, NY 11747. Call 631-454-1800; fax 631-454-1833; e-mail info@dja.com; Web site http://www.dja.com. Don Jagoda, president.

Don Jagoda Associates is one of the oldest and largest promotion/marketing agencies in the U.S., and is a national leader in merchandise and travel incentive programs; promotion strategic planning; development and implementation of sweepstakes, contests, and games; database marketing programs; loyalty programs; individual and group premium offers, and the entire range of commerce-related and traffic-generating programs on the Internet.

EGR International, Inc.
271 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Call 212-949-7330; fax 212-949-2294; Web site  http://www.egrinternational.com; e-mail mailto:grismore@egrinternational.com. Contact Jeffrey G. Grisamore, president, Anne Wold Graham, senior vice president, or Rena Crisp, director of national accounts.

EGR International is a performance-improvement and meeting-management company serving Fortune 500 corporations and their performance-improvement, loyalty-management, and meeting-management efforts. For over 28 years, EGR has been recognized as one of the industry’s most innovative and creative companies, pioneering the use of leading-edge technology that provides tangible real-time benefits to both its clientele and program participants.

The Incentive Group, Inc.
399 Knollwood Road, Suite 214, White Plains, NY 10603. Call 800-416-2090; fax 914-948-0908; e-mail dougpress@incentivegroup.com; Web site http://www.incentivegroup.com. Contact Doug Press.

The Incentive Group offers customized solutions specific to your organization’s requirements. Products include marketing communications, customer loyalty programs, sales promotion, incentives, meetings, and consumer sweepstakes. Turnkey marketing services include customer research, design, graphic creation, copywriting, program structure and rules, database with individual performance statements, award fulfillment, and 800-number customer service.

ITAGroup
4800 Westown Parkway, West Des Moines, IA 50266. Call 800-257-1985, ext. 3470; fax 515-224-3552; e-mail mailto:jmilefdhik.com; Web site http://www.itagroup.com. Contact Joel Milefchik, marketing manager.

ITAGroup is a full-service performance-improvement company, providing custom-designed, measurable marketing solutions utilizing communications, program administration, tracking and analysis, incentive travel, merchandise award services, and purchasing cards. Let ITAGroup be your Resource for Results.

Maritz Performance Improvement Co.
1400 South Highway Drive, Fenton, MO 63099. Go to  http://www.maritz.com.

Maritz Performance Improvement Co. helps its clients achieve their business goals by improving the performance of the people in their work force and in their distribution channels. To do that, MPIC employs the Maritz Performance System—research and assessment, communications, learning, measurement and feedback, and rewards and recognition.

Marketing Innovators

9701 West Higgins Road, Rosemont, IL 60018. Call 800-543-7373; fax 847-696-3194; e-mail info@marketinginnovators.com; Web site http://www.marketinginnovators.com. Contact Rick Blabolil.

Marketing Innovators International, Inc. is a people performance management and measurement company.  We drive improved business results by designing, communicating and managing highly-effective incentive, recognition, marketing and loyalty programs for Fortune 1000 companies. Signature award platforms include gift certificates/ cards, travel, debit cards and merchandise.

MyPoints, Inc.
Call 800-890-9351; Web site http://www.mypoints.com.

MyPoints.com (Nasdaq: MYPT) is a leading developer of Internet direct marketing services and loyalty infrastructure serving consumers,advertisers, and partners through database-driven direct marketing service, MyPoints, and custom-branded loyalty programs based on proprietary rewards technology--the Digital Loyalty Engine™. Rew@rd Yourself!

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

American Express Incentive Services
1309 North Highway Drive, Fenton, MO 63026. Call 800-259-0422; e-mail meinermd@aeis.com; Web site http://www.aeis.com. Contact Mark Meiners, vice president, marketing.

American Express Incentive Services offers a full range of American Express-brand incentive, promotion, and loyalty-award products, including Corporate Gift Cheques, Persona selective-use, rechargeable debit cards, Persona one-time-use debit cards, and Incentive Funds open-use debit cards that are good wherever American Express credit cards are accepted.

PRODUCED BY

Selling Communications, Inc.
One Bridge Street, Suite 77, Irvington, NY 10533. Call 914-591-7600, ext. 230; fax 914-591-7699; e-mail selling@info-now.com.

Selling Communications, Inc., is an integrated new-business development company that uses telephone sales, Internet and print communications, and people-performance strategies to help organizations significantly lower the cost of obtaining and retaining customers. Selling Communications, Inc., publishes the Sales Marketing Network (SMN) information service at www.info-now.com.