Knee surgery?

Imagine you visit your doctor and say, "Doctor, my knee hurts. What should I do?"

The doctor says, "You need reconstructive knee surgery. See my staff on your way out to get scheduled."

Would you be ready to schedule surgery based on that?

What if she showed you glowing testimonials from dozens of knee-pain suffers whom she'd helped with her surgical procedure?

Now would you be ready to schedule surgery?

I'm no doctor, but something important is missing here: diagnosis.

And a good diagnosis requires gathering good information.

Before prescribing a remedy, you'd expect a good doctor to diagnose the cause of the problem. And before diagnosing the cause of your knee pain, you'd expect her to consider things like:

Age
Physical activities
Body mass
Recent injuries
Family history
Medical imaging results
Other test results
... or anything more than a mere report of pain.

So what does this have to do with CRM strategy and nailing your development goals?

Just this:

Symptoms are easy to see:

Your knee hurts.
Your membership renewals are tapering off.
Your recent attendance is down.
Your data is confusing and hard to analyze.

But the cause is usually not obvious — until you can gather more information. And not just any information, but the right information.

Even if others with similar problems have been happy with one solution or another, without a proper diagnosis there's literally no reason to think it would help you.

Notice the problem.

Gather relevant information.

Decide on a diagnosis.

And then you can start thinking about whether one solution or another is right for you. (Hint: There's rarely only one option.)

All the best,
A.