Conversions And Clicks

October 7, 2010 by · Leave a Comment

Try Googling anyone in your field.  Look at the results and see how similar everyone appears.  This is your buyer’s experience.  They have access to choice from a simple search and start the buying process far before you ever have the opportunity to meet with them.

Some companies understand that buying starts with search.  They spend much on clicks in hopes for revenue.  The strategy only addresses the top of the funnel – getting attention to your value proposition.  Once the lead clicks, their inattention is a powerful force which can draw them away from your value proposition quickly.  This is the common broken process for companies that understand a small bit.

However, the real challenge is not in clicks.  It is in conversions.  How do you build trust and credibility with a stranger?  You must provide timely, relevant and personal content within the buying process.  There must be a system to nurture and lead the buyer.  This system walks with the buyer in a one-to-one engagement with various decision trees to help them say, “Yes.”  It takes the stranger and makes them a friend.  This is known as the middle of the funnel.  It is essential to avoid wasted dollars and time on incomplete marketing strategies.

How do you track with your buyers?

 

Filed Under: Blog, Inbound Marketing, Sales Process · Tagged: , , , , , , ,

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.

Filed Under: Blog, Miscellany, Sales Process · Tagged: , , , ,

Are You A Dummy?

May 22, 2009 by · Leave a Comment

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“There’s plenty of money out there.  They print more every day.  But this ticket…there are only five of them in the whole world.  That’s all there’s ever going to be.  Only a dummy would give this up for something as common as money.  Are you a dummy?” – Charlie Bucket’s grandpa in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory

I watched this scene with my children, and it is a topic we discuss frequently in our home.  I want my little ones to learn it so that they understand the secret to business and success without having to unlearn bad thinking habits built by fear and greed.  Charlie’s Grandpa understood the secret. What is truly valuable is more important than money.

As businesses are forced to redefine themselves and employees are looking for jobs, they are too often focused on the wrong thing.  Finding money is not the issue.  Defining value – why you are valuable – is difficult.  Money comes and goes.  Value is what creates the money in the first place.  Fear and greed blind us from focusing on the right thing.  Admitting that you are fearful or greedy, well, that is often elusive for the guilty.

Your ability to increase your wealth and success is directly proportional to what Richard Feynman stated, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”  Your business can always be better.  You can always be better.  However, if you are a dummy, it may be hard to change when everything around you demands it.  Old ways of doing business miss the customer.

Ironically, we get a vivid illustration of why Charlie Bucket chose right in the story of visiting Willy Wonka’s fabled factory.  Here are a few reasons:

  1. Seeing The Secrets: The Wonka factory expanded his vision and helped him see possibilities.  If he had have just traded his ticket for $500, he would still be a person with small vision and some money that gets spent quickly.  Vision is a powerful thing that creates the realities that give us security, enjoyment and happiness.  Get in the vision business, and create your own reality.  Focus only on money, and there’s only the next dollar to look forward to.
  2. Benefits Thinking: It’s easy to beat most people in business.  Just put a cost in front of them.  Most people are focused on cost.  They want something for nothing.  They angle, object and maneuver towards this goal.  Accessing how value is delivered is extremely valuable.  All the raw materials the factory had were able to be purchased by anyone. Seeing how they work together for a predictable experience and exceptional product is what separates successful enterprises from failed ones.
  3. Get In Front Of Luck: The value of meeting a person who could change his life was what brought prosperity for Charlie and his family.  What if you keep missing opportunity because you don’t see the people who could change your life in the right frame of mind? Get lucky and realize it is the way you connect with people that will make the difference.
  4. Experience Transcends:  Charlie got to see that Wonka was not about chocolate.  The chocolate was just the deliverable.  He created a surreal experience that made people wonder and want what he had.  A business focusing only on the deliverable without the experience is facing a half-life where the customer gets to choose.  They will choose the experience when all else appears as parity.

Next time you ask, “What does it cost?” stop and think about Charlie and his Grandpa.  What leads you to the question in the first place?  That very question may be blinding you to the opportunities that abound.  The intangibles and the knowledge you would gain from both failures and successes builds the value you deliver.  Today, more than ever, desperate people will lose.  Those who step to the plate and figure out how to become more valuable and build more value are gaining access to new opportunities, customers and inheritances.  Don’t be a dummy.

Filed Under: Blog, Change Management, Miscellany · Tagged: , , ,

Customer Perception

April 24, 2009 by · Leave a Comment

It was 1969 and I was 9 years old. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was sitting in my bedroom reading one of my favorite comic books and then I saw it! The deal of a lifetime was right before my eyes (actual advertisement below)!

I could have my very own nuclear submarine for $6.98! Wow, I couldn’t believe it. A submarine that was over 7 feet long, seated two, complete with periscope and the ability to explore beneath the water surface! I was so excited that day. I remember selling my mother on the idea and getting her help to purchase this spectacular deal. I told her my ideas of parking this sub in the pond behind our home. As composed as possible, my mother did her best to temper my expectations but I was beyond return.

I remember mailing my order and waiting and waiting and waiting for my submarine to come in the mail. As I waited, I gathered in one corner of my bedroom all the the things I wanted to bring on the submarine, such as my books and baseball cards.

Finally seven weeks later, an eternity, the day arrived and the postman delivered a box that was my submarine! My initial thought is there must be more boxes. I was wrong, that small box was my submarine. I remember how hurt I was opening this cardboard box that contained a grey fold out cardboard submarine with two batteries, cardboard seats, and a plastic control panel that did nothing but flash a small red light.

It was from this personal experience that I learned that things are not always as perceived.

In our increasingly experience-driven world consumers crave what’s authentic more than ever. Because the buzz word today is “experience”, many companies claim they are offering “experiences” without actually staging experiences. In the book, Authenticity by James H. Gilmore and Jospeh Pine II they say, “This alone contributes greatly to being perceived as fake, and actually drives demand for experiences people deem authentic.”

Now more than ever, the authentic is what consumers really want. Companies today must learn to understand, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. To be blunt, when consumers want what’s real, the management of the customer perception becomes the primary new source of competitive advantage.

What is the customer’s perception of your business? Is it real? Is the experience well planned and designed? If not, you are quickly sinking, just like a fake cardboard submarine!

Filed Under: Blog, Inbound Marketing, Sales Process · Tagged: , , ,

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.

Filed Under: Blog, Miscellany · Tagged: ,