When Your Customer Is Ready

November 4, 2009 by · 10 Comments

Perfect follow through

Your customer is rarely ready now. They may be ready in time if you remain relevant; however, this takes work and care. Work is in the way you communicate and deliver what is valuable with your prospective buyer. Care comes in the way you own the problems your buyer has. It has much less to do with your desire to sell and everything to do with what is important to your customer. There is an old saying, “A carpenter doesn’t buy a drill. They are buying a quarter-inch hole.” That is results-thinking not features and benefits.

Assume that most people you first engage with are not ready to buy. You are out of phase with where they are at today more often than not. There is a setup which has to be addressed to prepare them to buy. This setup fosters trust and increases your value proposition. It is made up of the following:

1. Promotion: The marketplace is a super-highway of choices. There are too many good choices out there, and it is hard to distinguish what is valuable and what is not. Value is continually changing based on what is needed by the buyer. If it is not needed, then there has to be promotion to increase desire. Promotion largely focuses on the quarter-inch hole and driving home the message that you are the best way to make the hole.

2. Profiling: You get the wrong messages all the time. When you are marketed with cat food as a dog lover or junk food as a Whole Foods shopper, the seller missed big. They are selling on hope. They are hoping you are the one they are looking for. There are too many available and appropriate systems to make connecting the right message at the right time with the right person happen. If you invest in these systems and make them work, you are connecting. If you are ok with luck and knowing that 95% of your mailers, emails and impressions won’t work, then keep following the masses and keep wasting your bullets. You may not get a second chance to make a true connection.

3. Pain: This is where sellers make the biggest mistake. They have bad manners and start selling. Who cares what you have to offer if you don’t understand my pain? Did you bother to ask, and have you articulated? You must describe the pain concretely and specifically. This is both for the benefit of the buyer and the seller. The buyer feels you know their situation. You need to know their situation to be of value and service. Amplify the pain and spend 90% of your energy understanding and communicating this to the buyer. It makes selling a formality.

4. Proof: If you are telling the world how great you are, your credibility is low. If someone else is saying it, then you are positioned with a stranger perfectly, especially if it is the same pain story. Package the medium to share the story. Make the story the same as each of your prospective customers. It will go a much longer way investing in the stories made alive than puffing up your image.

Your prospective customer wants to buy. The question is whether it is from you or someone else who establishes trust by dating them and helping them become ready. Too many businesses misstep by how they approach and court the buyer. With so many choices, not doing your homework and setting up a one-to-one buying process only helps to strengthen your competitors’ appeal. Help your customer pick you by making them ready. It is all about buying. Leave the selling to the other guys.

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Stopping the Insanity

September 17, 2009 by · Leave a Comment

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After thousands of hours of consulting with clients, I am convinced. Most people and organizations continue with insanity. They do the repeatedly ineffective things and expect a different result. They keep saying silly things like, “I need more sales.” and “I want more customers” without thinking through why a person buys. They are thinking about how they can sell. Perhaps narcissism has ruled our lives so thoroughly that the disease blinds us. They are not thinking about the customer, the process, the experience and the logic for how a buyer buys.

It is a truly human condition. It takes people of character, humility and candor to be able to rise above the insanity. Of course everyone wants more customers. Of course everyone wants to be an overnight success. Insisting on this in a world of too many choices is insane. It is much like talking with a child who insists on having what they want and being completely oblivious to the responsibilities adults and caretakers think through.

You are likely in a place which could be better. You wish you had more customers or you wish you had different customers. Reality has a way of denying your wish until you understand how life works. Your business is subject to laws which transcend any juvenile insistence and rants for more when you have not paid the price. Here is how life and business work:

  1. There Is A Price To Pay: While you are busy trying to find a way around the work, the expense or the time, your competitor who pays the price gets ahead. They don’t circumvent. They go through that door of opportunity and reap the rewards via hard work, persistence and sacrifice. It is how success happens.
  2. Not Everyone Is Talented: If you surround yourself with sub-par people, guess what the result will be. Teams that are not talented do not win championships. Being on such a team is demoralizing. If you will hold a high standard of performance and deliverance for yourself and those around you, the ball moves forward.
  3. Creativity Is Critical: We have seen it all. Seeing it a second time is boring. We are not interested in boring. If you want to be like every other attorney, Realtor, salesperson, financial advisor, and the myriad of other types of people in your field, you lose. Nothing stands out. The lack of risk and the promotion of convention only blends you in in the eyes of the buyer. Push the envelope and expand your guild, practice or industry. Those are the winners today. The buyers are voting this way.
  4. Execution Is A Premium: We are continually hired and retained as a consulting team not just for ideas, but because of execution. There are a lot of idea people out there who feel important because of jargon. Show me people who can cut through the clutter, identify what is of importance and deliver. Execution takes work and focus coupled with passion. Everyone else is a talking head without feet and hands to make dreams happen.

Some people feel more comfortable in the coma. They don’t have to wake up and engage reality. I feel sorry for them. Their life is predictable, scripted and destined for insignificance. Markets, change and speed overtake them.

If you are able to stop the insanity, the very things that are not and will not work in your business and life, then you can engage the opportunities the new economy affords anyone who is willing to see with clear eyes and act. Tricking people or hoping in good things is not enough. Too many people and companies have access to the same tools, social media and resources. It’s not a time for gimmicks. It’s a time for substance which will reap the rewards fairly due for those who will pay the price and implement the systems towards change. How about stopping the insanity and getting real? It’s how winning is done today.

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The 20 Hour Workweek

September 4, 2009 by · Leave a Comment

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It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.” – Henry Ford

“I have always felt that America is the land of unlimited opportunities for those who will ‘pay the price.’” – J.W. Marriott

In the next week you will have between 20 to 60 good hours at your disposal. I say 20 for those who sell their time to an employer at a fixed cost and 60 for those who are looking for work. With this time, you get to choose whether you will use it to get ahead or just waste it.

Have you ever noticed something about all the literature of successful people we read? They work hard. They love what they do. They work hard. Imagine if you worked just as hard as Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln or Dale Carnegie. They understood what J.W. Marriott understood as a hard working American, “The price of success is a hard workout – not just 8 hours 5 days a week, but nearly all our waking hours. At least that has been my experience. When I started, it was about six and a half days and nights for many years. It paid off. I set an example for others and gave many who were willing to pay the price an opportunity to grow and have the good things of life.”

It’s amazing how we are fooled by laziness. Words like “balance” or “someday” or “can’t” are code words for laziness. It is an epidemic. The truth is that there is not much stopping people from getting what they want if they are willing to work, especially in an age when things are easier to do and cost less to get going.

If you really can stop fooling yourself and realize what laziness looks like, then here are some things to do with the time you can turn into gain:

  • Read more and share it. To teach is to learn again.
  • Learn how to become a master of web tools. Then get a customer.
  • Look at the areas of your business that deliver a mediocre experience. Start thinking of the customer rather than yourself.
  • Make a difference in a personal way with a new person. Think creatively, personally and put some sweat and thinking into making an impact.
  • Study your competition. This may also be the people that can replace you in your job.
  • Study how to present yourself. Learn to master the first impression – how you look, speak, behave, and make someone feel.
  • Make your knowledge systems work better and better. Always optimize.

Think of all the 20 hour weeks you have let go of. That’s 80 hours in a month. That’s a thousand hours a year. If you cannot turn a thousand hours a year into something profitable, worthwhile and exhilarating, then what are you doing? Maybe the wake up will come when your competitor who is willing to work displaces you in opportunities, status and rewards. How about beating them to the punch and get harder on yourself to perform and work? Those that are willing to work hardest and be the best get their reward.

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A Resolution To Remember Your Customer

January 6, 2009 by · Leave a Comment

Resolution

Happy New Year!  It is a time of reflection and a time of looking forward.  I know there are many who want to forget the last year and many also who have much to be grateful for.  Whichever part of the economy you are in, there is still nothing which prevents you from going after your dreams.

I wanted to offer a resolution that is tangible and will benefit you greatly.  You want more business and you want more relationships.  We are living in the thick of the new economy.  How we connect with each other is completely different than twenty years ago.  How about having  resolution to remember your customer.  Here is how:

Make your business and yourself the EASIEST to do business with.

If you will focus on this one thing, your relationships will grow. Strangers will become friends and opportunities will abound.  If you do not do this one thing, then a nagging feeling should gnaw at the back of your mind of all the missed opportunities you have not heard about.

Think about it.  You have done it as a customer as well.  If you have to thumb through a phone directory, you may leave it altogether and find another vendor.  If the wait is too long at a restaurant, you will leave and go elsewhere.  If a person has to call you to start the buying process rather than interact with your intelligent e-commerce site, then you have likely lost to your competitor who does.

Every year, we are all getting less patient.  It is indeed the age of speed.  Our society is continually thinking in soundbites and moving with rapidity.  Try taking three days to get back to someone looking for information.  Your probabilities of gaining new business is inversely proportional to your responsiveness.

Our team consults with businesses on how to connect with the customer through sales and marketing systems.  A large part of most business failures in this area stem from the inability to think in terms of “them” (the customer) and only in terms of “us” (our company).  Here is the rub – your customer is not thinking about you.  They are thinking about themselves and their pleasant experience or their inconvenience.

Try something today.  Pretend you want to move some items and need to rent a moving truck.  Go to www.penske.com and see if you can get this done. Next go to www.uhaul.com and do the same.  Who would you do business with? Why?

Now, which one are you more like in terms of making the buying process for your customer as easy as possible?  There are many examples of competing businesses which have the same contrasts in how they help the customer buy.

The systems you have in place determine how easy it is for customers to reach you, connect with you and make a decision.

If you can look past yourself and see your customer, then here are five things you can do to make it easier to do business with you:

  1. Let your customer get answers at your website. Make it functional, not just a bunch of pretty pictures.  People are on sites for less than 40 seconds.  Again, we are impatient.  Make it easy to get in and get out.
  2. Build a knowledge base. Ensure it is searchable and accessible.  Keep growing it.  Take the answer you give and leverage it for the masses.
  3. Put your BlackBerry on speed. If you don’t have one, then you are disadvantaged.  Get your calendaring, email, database and information synced and accessible in real-time so you can do business anytime, anywhere.  Make appointments on the spot, respond in five minutes, and keep it in your system rather than your head.  Your head is for making decisions.  Your system is for managing data.
  4. Use collaboration systems. Document management which lives on the web and is able to be used for projects with your customers is increasingly critical.  All data is temporary.  It is brought together and molded for a temporal purpose and then disbanded.  If you are emailing, you are in the old economy.  If you are sharing, you are engaging your customer in the experience and process.
  5. Refine, refine, refine. Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”  An unexamined business falls behind every day.  Think like a FedEx engineer.  They are looking at every micro-step trying to shave off seconds on a delivery process.  They put in props like ramps for walking and better driving routes and more effective tools to make their team’s work go faster with ease.  Do the same for your customer.  Their buying process can likely be streamlined.  Make it happen and watch repeat business happen.

It is becoming less of an option to do business the old fashion way.  You are demanding.  You are a product of our society.  We expect empowerment and to make purchases with ease at midnight.  You are competing with Amazon, Kinkos and Marriott.  Because everyone is a consumer, they have been exposed to multiple businesses that get it right.  Then they run into your business and judge whether it measures up to their collective experience of excellence.

If you don’t get in the game, then you have to manage the customer’s expectations.  Management of expectations is not bringing value.  It is a cover-up of irrelevance creeping in.  Resolve in this year to make yourself the easiest person to do business with.  Put the foundation in and watch your business scale.  It takes talent to implement what I am talking about here.  If you want to gain this advantage, start your year by taking this next step.

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Serving Your Customer Well

September 18, 2008 by · Leave a Comment

Serving Your Customer WellIf you can slow down enough to listen, if you can focus on something outside yourself, you will see that people are carrying immense burdens. Everyone is trying to solve some problem. Everyone has problems, whether rich or poor, struggling or successful. The problems merely change forms.

Your customer has problems. Have you ever thought what your customer is spending 40+ hours a week doing? They are thinking about the things which matter in their world. They are consumed with their problems. They are trying to sell more, be more efficient, make payroll, develop a new product, manage staff, stand out, and have a life. You are likely thinking about doing these things as well. [Read more...]

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