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Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, shared the business advice he’d received from Steve Jobs, Apple CEO at a Fast Company Innovation Conference, which was essentially:  “ Get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.”  (For more details, see this video from Fast Company.)

When put in the context of a product portfolio strategy, it may be the simplest yet most clear and concise message one could develop.  If it is such a sound business philosophy or strategy, wouldn’t it be logical to apply the same thinking to how we communicate with our customers, clients, and constituents?  Don’t they deserve to receive from us only our “good stuff”?

Take a look at the communications sent out by your firm.  How many of them fall into the “crappy stuff” versus the “good stuff” category?  How much of the crappy stuff lives within the day-to-day operational communications (bills, statements, policies, purchase orders, etc.) you deliver to existing customers and clients?  How much of the good stuff is contained within the subset of marketing materials, brochures, pamphlets, web pages, and offers? 

If your company is like most mature firms, your marketing materials have a much greater percentage of their content that falls into the “good stuff” category. Why is it that the folks with whom we have existing relationships get poorer quality material (“crappy stuff”) and the folks with the “prospective”  prefix in front of their categorization (customer, client, etc.) are the ones that get the “good stuff”?  Numerous studies have proven that keeping, maintaining, and growing existing customers is both cheaper and more profitable than chasing new customers.  

Perhaps it’s because few conclusive studies have been done that can specify the economics of poor communications.  The acknowledgement is usually something like “Sure, my statements are confusing and have a 20-year-old look to them, but I can’t prove that it has a material impact on customer retention or defection.” So the design dollars get moved to Marketing, which does a much better job of quantifying the results of specific campaigns and activities into top-line and bottom-line growth.

Add to this mix the rapid changes happening today with the younger generations’ communications preferences (texting, wikis, micro blogs, etc.), and we’ll soon see the IT and correspondence leaders faced with the demand and challenge of fulfilling the needs of these communication channels, while driving down cost and cycle time of the overall communications lifecycle.

There are many steps and paths to take to that will help you address the looming challenge.  But a good first step is to get rid of the “crappy stuff.” That’ll leave you more time and ability to focus on the “good stuff.”