Search Results: one of the few
The Three Steps To Articulating Value
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
It’s tempting to begin with product and service descriptions when you are communicating the value your business creates. Of course, it’s easier to start with what we know for sure. We list features, benefits and specifications—telling the customer as much as we can about ‘the what’.
And all the while we’re doing it backwards.
Intead of starting with our ‘what’ we need to begin with the customer’s ‘why’.
How To Articulate Value
1. Why does the customer need your product?
Reflect the customer’s challenges or desires back to him.
2. How will it work?
Describe the change the product will create.
3. What is it?
Finish with the facts.
Very few of our buying decisions are led by reason and logic, so why seek to persuade by starting there?
Image by Mike Melrose.
Optimising For Customer Delight And The Peak-End Rule
Jody and Jim (not their real names) run a small web design studio. Their initial pricing strategy was to keep base prices low, putting time caps on every deliverable during the website design and build. New clients were informed about this policy up front. Things like design time and content population were included in the original quote. If the project became more complex or the client wanted changes, the design team let them know that they would incur an extra charge and got their approval to go ahead.
Despite this, when clients were presented with a ‘higher than expected’ bill at the end of the project they were very annoyed. They were thrilled with their website but not at all happy with Jody and Jim. The result was unhappy clients, negative reviews and fewer word of mouth referrals.
Something had to change. The priority was to leave every client delighted at the end of the experience. A smart move on Jody and Jim’s part when you consider peak-end rule.
The team decided to simply increase prices to reflect the fact that every single web design project goes out of scope. Now at the end of a job, the client is delighted with both their website and the company—all as a direct result of this firm pricing strategy.
The ability to truly empathise with the customer along every step of their experience is what separates great businesses from good ones. How are you doing that?
Image by Leo Hidalgo..
The Power Of Promises
“You’ll have it by Friday.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“We’ll be there by 3pm.”
How many times have promises like these been made to you in the past few weeks, only to be casually broken and replaced by a fresh set soon after?
Doing what you say you’ll do is the fastest route to building credibility, trust, and loyalty.
The ability to keep the promises you make is your new competitive advantage.
The Importance Of Customer Cues
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Ira’s cafe is tucked away at the bottom of a narrow city centre laneway. Without regulars who live close by Ira’s place is dependent on converting tourists and weekend shoppers into diners. Every neighbouring cafe stations a host in the small doorway waiting for passers-by to make a decision. Ira takes up his post in the cafe doorway too, but he approaches the problem a little differently.
Because his cafe is at the end of the laneway he can watch people approaching. He sees them stopping to look at how busy a cafe is or to glance at the menu only to move on in search of a better option. Ira knows that once they hit his place they are running out of choices and also beginning to question their original decision to wait or walk on. As each group approaches he watches their cues, makes an assessment, then acts. Families fearful of not finding room are asked if they’d like a table for four, and shown that there is more room inside. Couples are asked if they’d like to see the breakfast menu. Lone tourists wheeling suitcases on the way to the station are offered takeaways.
At every turn, Ira comes across as empathetic, in contrast to the usual way sales conversations are handled on the street in a ‘can I have a few moments of your time?’ fashion because he is constantly assessing the prospective customer’s cues and anticipating their internal narrative.
If we want to become better marketers and brand storytellers we need to pay attention to what people want but quite possibly haven’t yet articulated. When we do our actions are seen as good service and not an inconvenient interruption.
Image by Linh Nguyen.
The Shortcut To More
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s probably safe to assume that at some point in the past few months you’ve wondered how to get more traffic, customers, subscribers, Facebook likes, retweets, awareness, sales, exposure and on and on. Because the job of traditional marketing is to convince and convert, we are used to beginning our marketing journey there.
What if you flipped your thinking on its head? Now instead of beginning your internal marketing dialogue by wondering how you might change what people do, you can start by wondering what change you’re trying to create instead.
Start by listing three reasons why the people you want to serve will pass a competitor and cross the road to buy from you.
Once you get clear about the difference you create for people, the marketing strategy becomes obvious. The shortcut to more is to matter.
Image by Garry Knight.
A Reputation That Precedes You
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s 5pm, still thirty minutes to go before Mr Wong opens its doors for dinner. The line snakes down the street and around the corner. A few people have bookings for tables of six or more, but not many, most are walk-ins who know that if you’re not dining with a bigger group and have no reservation (house rules), then you need to get there early. Mr Wong’s reputation precedes it.
There is clearly no time for the management to worry about what the dozen other restaurants within walking distance are doing and no urgency to allocate resources to traditional marketing campaigns.
Like the Mr Wong team every one of us has a choice. We can spend the majority of our time either managing our reputation or keeping pace with our competitors or we can deliberately create the reputation that precedes us.
What’s the story you want customers to tell about your brand? [Take time to write it down].
How will you make that happen?
Image by deepstereo.
What Are Your Rules Designed To Do?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s never a good sign when a flight doesn’t board on time. When the ground staff make announcements about ‘engineering faults’ and begin handing out meal vouchers you know you’re in trouble. And so it went last month for flight 029 to Hong Kong. Three hours after the first announcement the flight was cancelled, leaving the ground staff with five hundred customer service issues to deal with in one hit. No wonder few airlines do this well.
There were a few options for me to choose from—accept a downgrade to a different flight class taking, one of the last remaining seats on a partner airline’s flight that was departing later that day, wait to fly on the ‘next available’ (no more flights today and not sure when there will be any in that class tomorrow), or cancel the trip. The first rule of flying is, always go on the flight that’s going, so it was a no brainer, and besides this was a work trip and there was no way I would let this client down even if I had to swim to Hong Kong.
There was a rush to get a couple of us ticketed and boarded and no mention about how the airline would compensate passengers for the inconvenience and the downgrade, that would be sorted out later. Much later.
Six weeks on I’ve repeated this story to three of the airline’s ‘customer care’ representatives and one supervisor, after they asked if I had kept my new boarding pass (even though they could see I had boarded and travelled).
Initially I was offered Frequent Flyer Points (and no refund) “as a gesture of goodwill”. I was told that because of the ‘fare rules’ the difference between the fares could not be refunded in cold hard cash. When I tried to dig deeper about those rules I was informed that rep number three hadn’t been “trained in the fare rules”.
And there’s what’s at the heart of the problem.
If your rules are so complex that staff can’t understand them, what hope is there for customers? What are those rules designed to do? Are they there to protect customers and staff, to ensure that everyone is treated well and fairly, to empower the delivery of surprise and delight? Or are they designed to enable the organisation to maximise its return on investment in the short term, thus forsaking things that matter?
If your rules are not designed to make customers happy or to empower staff to make that happen, then what are they designed for?
Seven weeks and another conversation with the supervisor later it seems I might get a partial refund. The customer care representative who is handling my case was due to email me about the decision late last week. I’m still waiting to hear if the rules are designed to be broken and fair.
Image by Jonathan Cohen.
The Right Thing To Do
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Joe was in a real fix. The equipment he’d been scheduled to hire from the builder’s supplier had accidentally been hired to another customer, there wasn’t an alternative machine available for a month. Joe needed to do something fast, if he didn’t the job he was working on would be behind time by weeks and this delay would have a knock on effect on the whole project, impacting not just him, but other tradespeople and most importantly his client.
Delays in his industry were always costly.
He quickly began phoning around. It was early but most hire places were open. As he expected there was no joy from the first two, the equipment was specialised and not readily available at the drop of a hat. The last number he tried was more promising, the sales assistant told him that they had a machine for sale and an older model for rent. The sales guy began trying to convince Joe to buy the new machine, Joe explained that he was saving up for one but couldn’t justify the investment with other end of year expenses coming in. He agreed to come and collect the older rental model and to discuss buying the new one in a few months time.
Relieved, Joe set off across town. Ten minutes into his journey he got a call back from the sales assistant. While they did have the equipment available to hire a ‘higher authority’ at the yard had decided that if Joe wanted it he’d have to order and pay for the brand new machine in full today. If he didn’t they wouldn’t hire the machine to him. No amount of pleading could change the decision.
Authority affords someone the power to give orders, make decisions, make (or change) the rules and enforce obedience. These are the ‘whats’ of leadership—but they are not the ‘whys’ and without those ‘whys’, or a reason to serve there is no need for an authority, higher or no.
The highest function of any business is to do the right thing by the customer and to make that customer happy. When we forget that we disempower our teams and alienate our customers. Because it’s the right thing to do, is a far better leadership strategy than, because I’ve got the power.
Image by Pict73.
Not Everything Is An Opportunity
filed in Entrepreneurship, Storytelling, Strategy
We first met casually, in a social situation one Saturday morning. Less than five minutes into the small talk Terry asked what I did for a living. No sooner had the words “I run my own business” left my lips, than his hand reached into his back pocket to draw out some business cards (one for me and a few for my friends). Terry is an accountant who specialises in small business.
His reaction was a reflex. He has learned to see any conversation with someone who is not employed as an opportunity. Of course Terry is trying to grow his business the only way he knows how, by using a scattershot approach, looking for the opportunity in every single encounter—because ‘you never know’.
Not every encounter is an opportunity to close a sale.
The way to succeed is not to clutch at all of the straws—it’s to have the discipline to discern.
Discernment and timing are two skills every marketer needs to cultivate, because ‘you never know’ is not a smart marketing strategy. We need to make understanding who our customers are, and who they’re not, a priority.
The best way to start is by taking time to consider the worldview of the person you’re trying to reach. Easier said than done, especially if your back is against the wall.
Luckily there’s a blueprint to help you make a start.
Image by David Tan.
The Ideal Business
Something unexpected happened while I was on the phone to my health insurer making a quick change to personal details. The operator threw me by asking if I wanted to reduce my cover (and thus, the annual premium).
“No sense paying a fortune for something you don’t need.” she said.
True—but when I began to dig deeper I found that the higher tier of cover bundles claims for IVF and pregnancy, with mental health, hip and knee replacements and cataract operations together. If you opt out of one, you opt out of all. I was being down-sold to a policy that would not entitle my family to claim in any of these categories, because of course they are the most expensive claims for the insurer to fund.
After her third attempt to get me to switch, I began to wonder if there was some kind of reverse bonus in place at this company. Did the operator get a bonus for persuading people to downgrade their cover, potentially saving the insurer a small fortune?
If we reduced our cover it was a win for their business, but was definitely not the right thing for our family (even if I won’t be needing IVF or pregnancy cover any time soon).
The ideal business is one where the right thing for the business, is the right thing for the customer.
Those businesses are few and far between.
That’s why we seek them out and when we find them, we stick with them.
Image by Garry Knight.