Summer Reading Rather Than Recession

The news is full of disaster and it could get downright depressing if that becomes your focus: A deepening recession made somewhat permanent by the appetite for energy, oil and living with a roof overhead and indoor plumbing.

Fortunately, I am surrounded by customers and they remain our best source of reality and a constant reminder of abundance.  When you feel stuck or even consider the possibility of withdrawing, not spending money on marketing or otherwise shooting yourself in the foot, go talk with some customers. 

Here's two great pieces of advice from my customers this week.  One said it best when he said, "I choose to not participate in this recession.  I don't have to make that many trips or use as much gas as I once thought necessary. I don't have to consume as much as I once did. If I just spend time with my customers, I'll find a lot of the satisfaction I really need to advance my business and life."

Another customer told me, instead of reading all the bad news in that pile of newspapers you get everyday, how about switching to your summer reading program?  What a great idea!  It's nearly Memorial Day and so I got myself to Barnes and Nobel to focus on leadership.  After all, this current situation calls for leadership, not a pity party.

Into the bookstore I walked with conviction and enthusiasm.  Going to the kiosk that tells me all the books possible, I typed in "leadership" and here's my reading list for the summer:

Good to Great (have it already...will read it again)

Now Discover Your Strengths (love the first one so I bought the sequel book --2.0)

A Whole New Mind (fabulous, fast read that tells us exactly how to prosper in any economy)

What Got You Here Won't Get You There (what leaders know about sustained success)

Blue Ocean Strategy

Execution--The Art of Getting Things Done

Several books by Maxwell, such as the 360 Degree Leader, Developing the Leader Within You, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

Speed of Trust

Duct Tape Marketing (bought 100 of these and gave them to 100 customers and business colleagues...you gotta live this book)

All of this reading and thinking brings us back to the central theme of this blog.  Economic conditions are temporary and ephemeral.  Only one thing is real--customers.  They count and they are not going away. They will go to someone else if you don't serve them well, talk to them, keep asking what they value, etc.  But they don't disappear; rather, they take their constantly GROWING needs to someone who can take care of them. 

Finally, focus on this.  Someone is going to make a lot of money in the months ahead.  Someone is going to prosper and use this summer to put themselves in a better position, business wise, than they've ever been before.  It could be you.

Feed your mind and get some perspective on the bigger picture.  Try summer reading and time with customers. 

You have the abundance of the sun.  More daylight now and that means light for reading and light for getting out for golf, lunch or whatever your customers like to do for the next four months.

Time to Eat Your Own Cooking

Since becoming one of 10 Duct Tape Marketing Coaches on the planet and getting hip deep in the Ultimate Marketing System for my own business, I've discovered something you may have noticed already.

Too many marketing professionals do not do what they write about.   It's theory--not results backed up by testimonials from customers who will say "These guys do what they advise and it has achieved success in my business."

Actually, this discovery first came during the first round table discussion with all 10 coaches and John Jantsch, the guy who invented Duct Tape Marketing--the company, the blog, the Ultimate Marketing System, the coach crew, and (soon) the soon-to-be-famous book.  "Do you eat your own cooking?" several coaches asked each other at a dinner meeting.  Have you completely worked your way through the Ultimate Marketing System and put everything into practice?  The answer is, "Well, guys, the UMS just came out in it's new, total workbook and audio CD form, and I'm going through each of the 15 workbooks as fast and completely as possible."

What they were asking was even more basic.  Do we live this blog or simply hand out customer creation lessons and stories?  You betcha! We actually do all of this and then some.  If you want to have more customers than you ever thought possible, this is the right place to get what you need, plus the help to do it.

What made me stop and wonder about others who know better was a really beautiful newsletter from the guys who have developed several websites for us and our clients.  They are nice looking sites, but not the "marketing sites" that we have created with other developers who "eat their own cooking."

The headline of their newsletter caught my attention: "How To Get Valuable Feedback From Your Web Visitors"  As I read the article, I wondered who their customers were.  Certainly not me or any clients I've brought to them.  My eyes went down the entire list they published  in that newsletter about the "eight techniques you can use to get valuable feedback from your customers."

In the four years I've been their customer they never did one of those eight techniques with this customer.

1. Use surveys and questionnaires regularly to improve your business. (Never got a survey from them.)
2. Create an online community for your customers. (Not on their website.)
3. Offer your web site visitors an online product or service from your web site at no cost. (Where's that?  Nothing on their site on this.)
4. Create a customer focus group. (Great idea. Never invited to be in a group and never saw any results from ever conducting one.)
5. Stay in contact with customers on a regular basis. (Oh!  My favorite!  I would love to get a call from those guys, just asking how my business is doing.  I have to go into email and put in a "job ticket" to contact them.)
6. Make it easy for your customers to contact you. (Sounds easy, doesn't it?  Why would I want to run after them?  What's wrong with this picture?)
7. You could regularly contact customers on birthdays or holidays. (Still waiting by my mailbox for the first birthday card.)
8. Invite your customers to company meetings, luncheons, workshops or seminars. (Again--a great idea.  If they do it, I've never seen an invitation.)

Clearly, they never put their advice to work for themselves. What good are a bunch of tactics without strategy? What a waste of good time and money! That's why we have Duct Tape Marketing, which is all about strategy, first, and a system that makes it impossible to fake it.

How Many of Your Customers are Boomers?

"On Jan. 1, 2006, the first of an estimated 77 million baby boomers, those Americans born from 1946 to 1964, will celebrate their 60th birthday. Through its sheer size -- and, some would say, self-indulgence -- the generation has given rise, or given teeth, to a host of fashions and institutions that are now central to popular culture: rock 'n' roll, working moms, Earth Day, sport-utility vehicles, Botox, Viagra and Starbucks." - The Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2005

Today's seniors constitute one of the richest segments of the U.S. population, with more personal wealth than any previous generation. And the size of this group is growing. The number of Americans age 64 to 85 is expected to double in the next 25 years, says the U.S. Census Bureau.

As you work your business plans for 2006, ask yourself this question.  What have you done to put yourself right in the middle of this pack of people with plenty of time, money and interest in exploring new products, your services and new experiences?  What did you do for the past 5 or 10 years to build a relationship of trust and excellent service, just for their interests and needs?  What does it say in your marketing plan about becoming more attractive to this "booming" market?

We assume you have a business plan and in these crisp and colorful days of autumn, you are revisiting that plan and fine tuning it for 2006.  If not, get thee into The Ultimate Small Business Marketing System course, which you can complete by January 2006.

Does your business have anything to do with technology?  Is your business all about customer service and innovation?  The boomers love that.   They are the ones with the cell phones, the satellite navigation systems, the total fitness-plus-technology advantages, the latest computers and the iPod Nano. 

The voices of 77 million baby boomers came through loud and clear one day when my vet, a really handsome and energetic man, born in 1945, said to me "My generation never left anything the way we found it. Nobody was ever ready for us so we just changed the world to make it all work."  He said that the same year he retired at 57, sold his very successful practice, and drove off in his red BMW convertible. He is living out the life he probably envisioned and planned, during all of those years of 60 hour days, taking care of everyone's livestock and pets.

Is he your customer?  He's somebody's customer and he's the kind of customer we all want.

Let's Float This One Past You

For the past 125 years, 99 and 44/100ths percent was pretty good when it came to product quality. What everyone loved, in addition to quality, was the way Ivory Soap floated.

Today, 100% or better is the minimum standard for service or product quality.  Over the top and better than your last experience is what you must have just to get in the game and stay in business. Before you drop your price to make your service or product more attractive to customers, work on your service.

In a poll by Accenture, who commissioned International Communications Research to survey customers about their experiences in 10 service-related industries, including banking, Internet services, hotels, airlines, life insurance and retail, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believed customer service had not improved much in the past five years, even though businesses have been adopting technologies to help them improve customer service.

Poor service or product quality topped the list of reasons why customers (61%) switch service providers. Thirty nine percent said another reason for the switch was the representative of the business did not know enough about the service or product.  Other things that got in the way of the customer experience included company policies that create lots of extra steps and technologies that delay or stop service.   

So you can drop your prices to the level of your stupidest competitor and it's not  going to get you very far.

Here's something else you might want to check against your own business practices and memory of what customers tell you. In that same research by Accenture, the most frustrating aspect of interacting with a business was needing to repeat the same information to different people, all in the same company. Seventy-five percent of the respondents said that frustrated them and we know that feeling becomes a vote with their feet, plus, they tell their friends all about this after they've left you.

This is the essence of CRM.  It's about one to one marketing and that means everyone in one company remembers and shares everything  about one customer so they never have to repeat information.  CRM is about treating different people differently.  The golden rule has been about treating others like you want to be treated.  That's not good enough any more, either.  Now it's the platinum rule that says treat every customer the way they told you they wanted to be treated.  This is not about you any more.  It's all about them.

What Is So Hard About Listening to Customers?

Are you so busy talking about how important the customers are to your business that you don't listen to them? If you are an accountant, management consultant, trainer, lawyer, or any of millions of other small business partners who say they are in the professional services business, you are way behind the rest of the world, from a marketing perspective, according to Michael Schultz, publisher of RainToday.com

Hold on, you say?  Are you saying you know other businesses, other than professional services, that lose money and sleep just because they fail to work on their listening skills every day?  That may be true, but there's a wowser of a report over on the RainToday.com website called  How Clients Buy: The Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing and Selling from the Client Perspective.

The report comes from surveys with nearly 200 purchasers of professional services at firms ranging in size from less than $1 million in annual revenue to more than $1 billion.  The analysis shows that while many buyers are planning to increase their professional services spending soon, the service providers they are using now have done little to differentiate themselves and satisfy the customers.  Why do you think many professional services are unwilling or unable to move past their messages about great customer relationships into actual practice?  Schultz says he talked to 20 to 25 accountants at a conference and asked each what differentiates them from other CPA firms.  Each one said the same thing!  They said "The people that we have differentiates us."

For a price that is less than a morning of hours -- billable or wasted, you can buy and download this report at RainToday.com. That might be a great idea if you have had these questions in your head or on your back for some time:

• How open are buyers to switching to a new provider in your service area?
• How important are brand...referrals...industry expertise...and other factors in the decision making process?
• Do buyers attend seminars, conferences, and webinars (and, if so, how do they find out about these events)?
• Do purchasers of professional services visit service provider websites? How influential are those websites in the purchasing process?
• How important are your fees in the services purchasing process?

While checking out the site, you might try the free newsletter.  There's a lot a great information that doesn't cost a nickle, as well, on the RainToday site.

Tell us, in the comment area of this blog, what pops into your head when you see this piece of news: 74% of Professional Services Purchasers Say They Would Be Much More Likely to Consider Hiring a Service Provider if They Listened Better.

Have you noticed that nowhere in this discussion about customers are we bringing technology into the conversation? The only "cool tool" of marketing we are emphasizing here are your ears.  Both of them--without any iPod plugs or Bluetooth earpieces in them.  Just ears and a brain, totally focused the reality that all that you want in life is going to come from one place--customers and other valued relationships.

These powerful communication tools costs nothing extra.  They came home with you from the delivery room.  You've had them the whole time. So why don't we use them more?  Why are we making this thing called business, along with marketing, so difficult?

A lifetime of moving your mouth is not making you the money possible through listening, which builds trusts and that builds relationships.

If you are serious about immediately or dramatically improving your professional services business, stick with books and advice that come from David Maister.  He's simply the best.  And he's devoted his life to one thing.  Your success.   We've met and worked with David, as have many business leaders around the world. We adore the clear and bold statement in the middle of his homepage:  Everything we want in life (riches, respect, fame, love, the chance to work on exciting things, cooperative colleagues, supportive staff) has to be given to us by other people.   Accordingly, all our questions (business and personal) come down to this one:  How do we get another human being (client, colleague, subordinate, romantic partner) to give us what we want.  My work is dedicated to answering that question.  -- David Maister

Mommy, Where Does Value Come From?

The instant answer that everyone offers for how to attract customers, please customers, keep customers, get referrals, win contracts and get rich is to simply "provide value."   "Value" is a slippery word.  And slippery words are nothing but trouble because they are the prime cause of misunderstandings.  Misunderstandings kill relationships.  And business and making money happens only where there is a relationship and trust.

Can you explain "value" to anyone, in action steps, so we know how to create it?  Sometimes it's easier answering the child's question, "Where do babies come from?" rather than answer the business owner's question, "Where does value come from?"  They both have that puzzled look on their faces, and instinctively know this is a "life itself" knowledge bite they must have.

Help has arrived and I know you're going to love this and break the "value" code for your own business.

In the August 16 issue of Today's CRM Industry Alert there is a great article, Understanding Why People Buy.

They buy because there is customer value.  Innovation is a big part of that.  The article tells us, a focus on creating customer value is the single most powerful driver of successful innovation. We know that successful innovation isn't just developing cool new products and services. It's about creating higher-margin, higher-visibility, and high-velocity products that deliver a host of financial, functional, and perceptual benefits to the developer. The article goes on to say creating customer value isn't some soft West-Coast notion about making people feel good or delighted. It's about hard-nosed business. Ultimately, it's bottom-line performance and top-line growth.

The point of innovation is to create value for customers. So why do businesses spend more resources defining what creates value for the company rather than what creates value for customers? For one, it's easier than reading the hearts and minds of customers, which is hard work that never stops.

The first person who taught me, and then millions of other business executives in every size company, all there is worth knowing about reading the hearts and minds of customers is Dr. Martha Rogers. She is still doing a great job explaining exactly how to build customer value and you can find it right on the Teradata website. 

Can you calculate the lifetime value of your customers?  This is basic if you want to throw the "value" word around because you need to know what in the world you are measuring or counting up. Why do we emphasize "Customers Count"? That's because they can measure your value and you can measure theirs. To make this as easy as possible for you, Click Z Network - Solutions for Marketers
provides a very detailed calculator that includes a downloadable Excel spreadsheet. Take a stab at calculating the lifetime value of your customers. If you are not treating that number like your business life depends on it, then treat the exercise as much-needed practice.

When Is Your Database a Crystal Ball?

Are all loyal customers profitable?  Are all profitable customers loyal?  Can you look into your database and answer those questions?  What happens if you can't tell or don't know?  Let's put it another way.  What happens if you spend too much of your time and marketing resources on customers who don't buy much or generate no profits for your business?  It's not  a pretty sight. Your money and energy drains away and the more profitable and more loyal customers go to someone else because you are not giving them the attention they deserve.

Businesses that do well have many ways to measure customer behaviors and relationships with their company. It seems like they have a crystal ball that helps them anticipate the future.  Businesses of every size can have this advantage and it is called a database.  Suppose we want to gaze into that crystal ball we call our database and ask it this: "Tell us where to put our marketing time and money for best results."

Fortunately, there are many reliable guides and solid answers, base in careful research, to help you with that decision.  Because you have to make that decision every day, you need all the support you can find.  In case you were too busy in 2002 to read the Harvard Business Review, we'd like to point you directly to the article "The Mismanagement of Customer Loyalty" and it asserts that despite the gospel of customer loyalty, engendering faithful customers simply doesn't pay.

The authors, Reinartz and Kumar, tell us what they found in a study of the relationship between customer loyalty and profits by studying 16,000 customers in four companies' databases. They found a link between customers and profitability that more accurately predicts future buying probabilities. 

The way they differentiate customers is enlightening and you might want to try this with your own database after you understand how they arrived at the characteristics for each of four customer segments.  Butterflies are the customers who are profitable but disloyal.  True friends are profitable customers who are likely to stay loyal. Barnacles are highly loyal but not very profitable customers.  Strangers are those who generate no loyalty and no profits.

How much are loyal customers really worth?  Because your business life (or painful demise) depends on knowing that answer, we assume you have some great answers and terrific resources to share to us and others on this blog.  Go ahead. Come out of the shadows and identify yourself.  Tell us what you use to turn your database into a crystal ball. Add your comments here or send us an email.

Flair, Understanding and Wowing the Customer

Here's a web site that hit me between the eyes, in the heart and worked great for both them and me.  Take a look and tell us what you think by adding your comment or send an e-mail to me.

Traffic Synergy, referred to us today by our friends at Linked In, puts this right at front and center of their home page:

What do we do?
Common question isn't it? What does your company do? What makes you better than other companies in the same industry? Most answers to that question are either "Buy our stuff now!" types, or you don't really know whether you got the answer or not. What Traffic Synergy does for our customers, and potential customers, is get advertisers for affiliates, and get affiliates for advertisers that will drive more traffic to their sites. It's that simple!
What makes US different is that we do it with flair and understanding of EXACTLY what the customer wants. This is done by creating personal relationships with every single one of our customers. You can't go wrong with that!

Where's the Wow:

1. Who in business has not spent a lot of time answering "What do you do?" or coming up with better ways to deal with that question.  These guys at Traffic Synergy create value immediately by showing us how they handle it.  What you do -- when someone asks you that question, opens doors or turns people off, depending on how you handle it.
2. They don't really say a lot about their stuff, their processes, their cool tools, etc.; rather, they focus on customers. They attract me with their absolute belief and policy that personal relationships with every single customer is the most important element of business success.

Nobody cares about what you are selling or almost giving away until they have evidence you care about them.

Perhaps you need what Traffic Synergy is offering. Maybe you just want to admire their site and how they make themselves attractive, plus connect with customers. Whatever your thoughts when you take a look around their site for yourself, you need to notice how simple and powerful it is to say out loud, what your commitment is to customers and then follow through with those words and expressed intentions.

What do you think about that?  What has business taught you about differentiating yourself with with flair and understanding of EXACTLY what the customer wants?

Satisfied Customers and Loyalty

We always want more, it seems.  When you started your business, customers of any kind seemed good, didn’t they?  Quickly, you learned they needed to be profitable customers.  Then you went for satisfied customers.  Before long your Internet surfing and business reading told you the real money was in loyal customers because one customer that returns often and buys every time is so much more pleasant and profitable than lots of tire kickers. 

Our friends at SearchCRM.com have provided, again, something worth reading and applying to your own business, no matter what the size.  The article is Differentiate a Satisfied Customer from a Loyal One and Eric Krell from Peppers & Rogers Group  puts this thought on the table for your immediate consideration today: A satisfied customer is not necessarily a loyal one.

The case studies are great and if you just translate terms like sales and serve rep into those in your own business who talk with customers the most or get their calls, e-mails and questions, then you can get past this “it only applies to large business” syndrome that we sometimes use as an excuse to not complete an article.

Even though a smaller business always has the home court advantage in the CRM game, because they usually remain close to customers and remember what individuals and their friends like in the way of services and products from you, the lessons learned and facts gained by companies like Diebold, provider of ATMs and security systems, are worth noticing.   How many ATM’s do you think there are?  Okay, how many did you visit or use just last year?  How fast do you think the security system business is growing?  Go to trade shows like ISC West and the ASIS Conference and you’ll wonder who doesn’t have a security system.  Millions and millions of customers and tons of great data—that’s the point. 

You’ve heard of the loyalty test, right?  Think in terms of the loyalty survey and ask yourself as you read Krell’s article, what can you do to survey your customers?  What questions should you ask that will tell help you differentiate a satisfied customer from a loyal one?  If you want a scarey answer, ask yourself what it will cost your business if you do not ask and you don’t find out. 

What Customers Really Want

Years of research and millions of dollars spent studying customers for every size business keeps coming back with the same answer: Customers want to be treated differently.  If this is so easy to understand, why is it so hard to do? 

Smaller businesses have had this natural advantage for a long time. You knew your customers by name, by what they preferred, by their buying habits and what types of friends and referrals they sent your way.  Even though the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) principles and technology enhancers leveled the playing field so the big companies could remember customers and everything they might reveal about their needs and preferences, they kept slipping back into mass marketing (a throwback to the Industrial Age).

For a long time the Golden Rule worked for business and life.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  That's not good enough any more and it's the Platinum Rule, or lose customers.  The Platinum Rule says do unto customers exactly what they just told you they expected.  They don't want to be you.  In order to do this, it takes more time, more effort and more data management to differentiate.

That's all very useful and profitable information.  Here's the point we want you to work on and comment on: You have needs too, such as terrific customers who love doing business with you and think your prices scream value.  So the next time you find yourself putting the name of a big money client on your website or your wish list, ask yourself if they are as profitable and as much fun as the customers who don't take as much hand holding, special distribution needs, or education. 

Differentiation is what customers really want and it's what your business needs. While you are getting ready to give us the full benefit of your point of view (click on the "comments" link below and see how easy it is to become famous and have fun with the Duct Tape Marketing Channels), get your head around this big money question: Do you want more customers or perfect customers?  If you have not tried for perfect, you'll be delighted to know that it doesn't take long and it's not hard.  Go to Perfect Customers Inc. and get thee into The Power of Strategic Synchronicity.  Start with the book, Attracting Perfect Customers, and let it help you look at your customers, customer data, and the future of your business through the eyes of unlimited growth.

And if money means nothing to you, how about getting rid of the stress that is cutting years off your life?  Perfect customers mean less stress.