How Should You Work With Customers?

Are the rules of customership the same, no matter how small or large your business? We’ll let you vote first, since this is your business and your customers. One thing remains the same and that is the title CEO. If you are a business of one, the owner of a business with fewer than 50 employees or the head of a company that has many employees and customers, your business card probably says chief executive officer, president or some “C” label that says you are top dog.

 

John Quelch has a terrific blog on Harvard Business Online—How CEOs Should Work With Customers and states the mantra we live by, here on Customers Count,: “Customers are the source of all cash flow.”

 

If you don’t believe it, try going without customers, or lose too many and you’ll understand the gap between saying you are customer centric and actually getting out of your office or factory to get out and meet customers on their home turf—in their homes, in their offices, on their job sites, where they create value and generate revenue.

 

“How much time should you spend with customers?” Quelch asks and offers three specific strategies with instructions on what do to and why. Read his blog and gauge your activity in each of the areas.  Find out why running around visiting customers is not enough.

 

What does the current economic downturn tell you? If your answer is conserve cash by not traveling, not investing in new services and products and bunkering in your comfort zone, you’ll just make things worse, even faster.

 

If you were paying attention to the political campaigns for the past 21 months (how could you not notice?) you saw that customer insights and knowledge comes from listening to a lot of them, first hand, at a somewhat exhaustive pace. Leadership strengths tell you how much time to spend balancing the work on customership inside your business and how much to spend on the outside.

 

Customers vote every day with their wallets. They may not buy as much in the months ahead and that’s why it’s important to focus on what they will do. The cash flow reality is customers don’t go away; they just go to someone else. They may buy differently based on their economic circumstance, but they are someone’s customer.

 

The main question you ought to have now is How do I grow my business in a time when thing around me appear to be shrinking? The answer will come from one source—customers. Someone’s business and customer satisfaction numbers will grow and thrive this year. We hope it’s yours.

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.

The Last Word

In a few minutes we will watch the ball drop in Times Square and bring in 2008.

Every good intention of taking the day to just ponder the past (2007) and plot the goals for the new year just never happened.  Why"  Customers!  You would think they would take the day off.  You would think the phone would stop ringing for a little while. 

As it turned out, this was a super busy Monday.  Customers sending email from their iPhones, BlackBerry devices, and laptops everywhere. We love it.  We adore customers because they are 24/7.  Their needs never stop, nor do their expectations.

Happy New Year

Web 2.0 and Small Business Benefits

What do you know about Web 2.0? What does it mean to your customers?  How are you using it to grow your business and networks of customers and referrals?

Are you still in a Web 1.0 mode or do you think you've achieved the Web. 2.0 level?  Much of the Duct Tape Marketing system helps businesses with 50 employees or fewer understand, in practical terms, what Web 2.0 is about and how to bake it into every aspect of your customer-creating, customer-dialog and customer-referral habits.

For most of the readers of this blog, Web 2.0 is about on-line tools that get smarter the more than customers and your staff use them.  It's about marketing that is driven by user stories and applications that interact with each other to form a broader integrated platform.  It's about cost-effective business tools delivered on-demand with limited in-house IT structures or support for you to manage.

Here's a few examples. You can manage projects and keep customers informed about "where do things stand today?" with Basecamp from 37 Signals.  You can track billable hours (everyone on the team no matter where their base of operation is) and invoice customers using FreshBooks.  You can grow your business network, find talent and get introductions to people who need to know about your services and products on LinkedIn. You can skip the whole learning curve and cost on creating and publishing newsletters when you set up a blog with Typepad or any other on-line blog service.

How do you know you've arrived at Web 2.0 levels? Here's a few indicators. Check them off to see where you are on your evolution from Web. 1.0 (one way mostly with YOU doing all the talking/writing) to Web 2.0 (your customer doing more of the talking and content creation):

• You use the web as a platform for delivering technical services.
• You consume software services, not packaged software.
• Tools and applications scale in a cost-effective way for the way you run your business.
• Your experience and your customers' experience (where you give them access and client areas for collaborating with you and other clients) is of paramount importance.
• You provide RSS feed capabilities to your customers and prospects and you use RSS feeds to get exactly the information you want, when you want it.   (Essentially, your email in box is no longer sucking the life out of you.)
• You share pictures with Flickr and you're getting better every day at visualizing your ideas and your world with pictures.
• Customer referrals increase.

Got all of that? Good. Now come back here next week and I'll give you a look at Web. 3.0. Oh yes--it's here already and it will really rock your world. You may need to pick up the pace and fast track some of your Web 2.0 experiences because the customer will be a big part of what Web. 3.0 is all about.

So Many Stories; So Little Time

How many of you depend on national conferences and trade shows to build your network, open doors for new business and strengthen the trust and relationships you have with current customers?  Even with the invasion of web seminars and instant lessons, on our wireless laptops every day, we still find the money for travel, hotel, food, cabs, tips and registration fees, plus the days away from our routines to make the journey.   

We make this costly investment in professional development and advancing the knowledge of our respective professional communities, be they engineers, business executives, professors, nurses, financial analysis, risk enterprise managers, or nature center administrators, to name a few. They are great opportunities to fill the Blog Writing notebook.   

Boy, do I have a few hundred pages of great stuff for you. There's more than enough here on customership and growing small businesses to blog plenty of times each week for the rest of 2007. Let's begin.   

This ended up being a two spiral-notebook summer. That's how many notes I made for blogging topics.  Over the Labor Day weekend, I slowed down long enough to look at how many blogs I have NOT written because of all of the meetings I was invited to and participated in.   When your business and your life is a string of interesting people and great stories, you can run out of bandwidth for blogging.  Accept no excuses. There is always time to blog, right?

Here's a page of notes from one convention experience, the American Society of Association Executives Annual Conference and Exposition in Chicago in August.  It was a record-breaking year with more than 7,000 associations and their executives. I've gone to the ASAE conference for many years and in many different roles, depending on which associations were our clients that year.  This year, I went as the only Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach in the entire association industry and had a terrific time with 7,000 customers and prospects, all for myself with no competition.  It was a perfect time to interview famous customer evangelists and gather blog grist for the Customers Count content mill.

The headline of this page of notes says, Best Experience and Worst Experience Contrast.  After years as a fan for Creating Customer Evangelists--How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, I met Jackie Huba.  Even better--we heard her customer evangelist presentation to a breakout session of about 1,500.  Then there was our one-on-one time after the presentation. Getting some serious hang time with superstars of the small business growth community is mind expanding and validating.

At the other end of the customer experience spectrum, I make my way through a massive exhibit hall and had a conversation at a booth where I would be considered a prime customer.  I'm the person they studied as "typical best customer" and prepared for.  They spent thousands of dollars to be there and stood on their feet, on the cement floors of McCormick Place for many days.  We exchanged business cards and had some substantive conversation.  Then, two weeks later  I get a form letter (by email... not even real paper and stamps) that talks about how nice it was to meet me and our conversation about their products.  Wrong!  First of all, the person signing the letter, I never met.  He was never at the booth.  Next, I didn't have any of the conversations mentioned in the letter.  And they completely did not follow up with what we did talk about.  That's not the worst of this customer abuse story, yet.    Because I could see this was starting to turn into a blog topic, I shoot back a response (again like a perfect customer) that says, "Great letter.  Let's talk business.   I can open my calendar next Monday for you."

How many of you would be thrilled if your new business form letter came back with an enthusiastic response, in spite of your lack of individual recognition for the customer?   What I got right back was an auto responder that said the person, from whom I got the letter, was really not in the office at all this week and wouldn't be back next week either. 

My jaw is still on the floor where it dropped when that auto responder hit me between the eyes.   All of those big bucks to exhibit,  staff salaries, and hundreds of hours for preparation and on-site work,  just to kill the budding customer relationship?  If it's this hard to get some decent interaction during the sale, can you imagine the nightmare you are buying if you become a customer?

This all made me wonder if we were all at the same convention or not?  Didn't we just hear Jackie Huba tell us all of the secrets of generating tons of business with and through customers? 

What we know to be a huge truth in marketing and in business today is customers no longer tolerate arrogance and lack of a wow experience.  Customers don't disappear.  They just go to someone else who will take care of them.

Getting New Customers is Child's Play

For the past few weeks I have been a participant in meetings and conference calls with organization leaders who are eager to have college students as customers--especially those who are 20 something and entering the workforce. 

Much of this pressure is coming from facts we have been ignoring for the past 20 years and denial didn't make it go away.  Here's the crunch.  The boomers are retiring now, the scramble is on like never before for a trained and qualified workforce, and there were just not enough humans born 20 years ago to fill the gaps.

Our firm works with many different national certification organizations who seem passionate about attracting this young market; yet, the program manager and executives talk about creating messages and media that they are familiar with, such as ads, mail and getting your name in the paper or on TV.

None of this was making much sense and then I heard a presentation by Leonard Sweet who is a theologian, author and futurist.   If you want to connect with these folks, you had better understand how their minds work and to do that, you need to make sure you have some video game experience. You need to take a close look at where they get and share information.  Essentially, if you understand child's play today, then you have a chance at finding a way to attract and retain college students as customers.

Let's leave the old marketing tools to one side for the moment. Instead, do you understand MySpace which has  built its customer base to 106 million in 3 years?  Have you taken a good look at YouTube  which is about a year old and means we are all movie producers now? How about FaceBook?  Do you have your account active there and is it part of your daily communication habits now?  Have you joined the Duct Tape Marketing group on Facebook?  (That's right, the business community is quickly adapting what their 20 something customers are using.)

Most importantly, look at the video game industry.  It's bigger than all of the entertainment revenue generated by Hollywood.  What experience do you have with Microsoft Xbox 360 or Sony Play Station 3? If that's bigger than Hollywood, what's next?  Both of those video game giants are now being dwarfed by Wii by Nintendo.  It is neither bigger, nor better. It's value is in being vastly different.  It redefines play and makes the participants physically active in the game. Nintendo sold 3 million Wii in the first 6 months.  They can't make them fast enough.  Sweet said the Wii will outsell both the Xbox and Play Station, combined.

What does this mean if you want college students as customers?  For one, it means you have to get in the game and experience what "interactive" and "customer conversations" mean in their world.  It probably means you must learn what Web 2.0 means and that' s easy to get.  If Web 1.0 is one way communication--you pushing information out to the world, then Web 2.0 is a two-way conversation.    And that means the whole idea of "messaging" may not fit at all. 

The customers that those organizations want to attract don't want a message.  They want to get in the game. And they expect to see you in the game with them.

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My Space With Integrity

Where are the customers and what do they expect next?  We talk a lot about that here in the Customers Count corner of Duct Tape Marketing because that's the question we get each day.  And we are delighted that someone new finds this blog each day, takes their first steps out of the shadows of the lurker and into the light of the dialogue by putting their fingers on the keyboard and discovering the power of the ENTER key.

You can learn a lot, every day, about where customers are going and who they are actively seeking out for information about things they want to buy, try or find, if you become an active member of a social network.

I'm an early adopter in two social networks that play to the business mind--LinkedIn and Zaadz.  How about you?  Which social networks will you travel to make sure you are visible in front of your customers and others like them?The big news over at Zaadz today is going mainstream with some visibility on MSNBC.  They are really excited about becoming famous and we can assure them we had them as odds on favorite when we first featured them in our famous blog--right here!  Because MSNBC is still drawing more hits to their site than Duct Tape Marketing, we'll cheer along with them.

Blogging, social networking, getting comfortable with the technology--these  are not options for business owners; rather, they are requirements for tracking the movements of the herds of customers, as they let their decisions about business and life play out in places like Zaadz, Facebook, My Space and various Haystack networks.

Do you know about Facebook?  If you are in college, it's the cool place to be, all the time.  And what about My Space?  That's sort of wide open when it comes to  social networking and  can get creepy.  What about Zaadz?  Are you one of the 50,000 members of that community of Conscious Capitalism?

Paddle on over to Zaadz and you'll find me and 50,000 other potential customers there.  Everyone we meet in Zaadz land seems to be more about customers and customership than any of the other social network experiments now playing on a computer screen near you.

A Wowser of a Year, So Far

We felt the ground shake a little there at the end of 2006 and knew something really big was going to come this way.  It turned out to be one direct hit after the next and that makes Q1 of 2007 the most memorable, phenomenal period in our business and personal lives--ever. 

It's been a wowser of a year, so far, and it's time to climb back up in the blogging saddle and ride out the rest of this year, with you, our loyal customers and blog fans.  The great news is I have enough great information and stories to feed this Customers Count blog for some time.  Here's the top lines of what's going on and what you can look forward to.

1. Business is booming and the talent is terrific. It's not just professional football owners who scout the college talent for their first round draft picks--my company does the same thing.  We looked for a super achiever in communications practices and performance and found it in our newest member of the firm.  Because of blogging, UTube, social media, and all of the essentials communications consulting in the future, we now have a 20-something consultant who won the hearts and minds of all of our clients before we got to the end of January.  Most importantly--the customers are especially thrilled. 

2. The book--it's a big hit. Duct Tape Marketing was officially released on January 9th and that put our whole world on fast forward. We knew there would be a feeding frenzy the minute it came out and we have been delightfully swamped with the success, buzz and additional business coming this way because of the book.  We bought 100 copies to give away to 100 CEO's and marketing leaders who are our loyal customers and best referrals.  We have 100 great stories and that's another reason to stick this blog in your RSS feeder.  Come back often. You'll love theses stories. Okay, here's my favorite.  One recipient of a Duct Tape Marketing book is a super sharp consultant who is a Wharton MBA graduate.  She said, "Every time I read a business book I want to slap the author because they insult me or mislead the reader.  This Duct Tape Marketing is the first business book I've read where I didn't want to slap the author. It's good.  Really good."

3. Life gets in the way of blogging. We know the rules.  If you are on the Duct Tape Marketing blog team, you have to act like a #1 Blog author and that means posting several times a week.  My dad went into the emergency room of a hospital in January, ended up in the Intensive Care Unit and he died within 10 days. Intellectually, you know that everyone will die.  Emotionally, you don't think it's your turn. Not this month.   But it is.  The aftermath of it all takes months of appointments, decisions and paperwork.

4. Getting back on the blog. There are some bloggers who you should read anyway.  If you ever need a shot of inspiration or motivation to write good blogs, all the time, see if these do it for you (in addition to the whole Duct Tape Marketing Channels blog):

• Social Customer Manifesto

• Network Centric Advocacy - Advocacy strategy for the age of connectivity.

• Media Guerrilla

What makes them worth your time (which you will never get back)? They are interesting,frequent, and useful. They give you something every week that helps you find customers, connect with customers or increase value for your customers.

5. Learning to Live. When business and life is super intense every day, you discover the absolute necessity for taking time to recharge your battery.  For years we've heard how important this was and we just thought that was for those who are already wealthy or have too many customers.  Because of the extreme intensity of 2007 so far, we also learned about the ways to decompress and handle that stress.  It really is a killer and it will rob you of years of life, if unchecked.

There isn't a business person reading this who doesn't have a stressful job. Customers, no matter how much you like them, have a way of changing their minds, going outside of the scope of work and expecting more for less.  This can drain you and make you less than cheerful and generous with another customer or prospective customer.

Here are some proven strategies that will help you stay where you prefer to be--on top of things.

1. Laughter. A lot of laughter, with friends, for at least 15 minutes over something really funny will make you feel great.
2. Music. Go for the music you love--the kind that makes you move your whole body.
3. Exercise. If nothing more than a fast walk outside for 15 minutes, exercise is a key to staying emotionally balanced and positively charged.
4. Recreational reading.  This is not the book you think you should read--go for the one you think is totally stupid or diversionary.  It will help you decompress and stimulate parts of the mind you thought were deep fried with burnout.
5. Special time with family or friends. Don't assume they will always be there. Do something that shows them how much you count on them, caring about you.
6. A special place or special activity. These always feel like guilt, such as four hours playing golf or a weekend getaway instead of working constantly.  This is what you really need the most.
7. Extra sleep. This is what renews and restores you, so why are we all cutting into our sleep time to check off five more items on our super hot priority list?
8. Massage. My husband, who has to have a massage every week for a medical condition, introduced me to the health-promoting aspects of this.  See item #6.  This feels like luxury at first.  Then you realize it is one of those things you'd better do, like dental hygiene, if you want to stay well.

Taking care of yourself if the same as taking care of your customers.

It Feels Great When You Win

Have you ever been to a horse race where you place a trifecta bet--and won?   The satisfaction of  figuring out the future and being perfectly correct feels better than all of that cash you get for being right.  Okay, I like getting a thousand bucks back for a five dollar bet, but being in the right place at the right time is a bigger thrill.  (Briefly, for those who wonder what trifecta is all about. A trifecta is a particular type of bet that is very difficult to win, but it yields very high returns. To successfully win a trifecta bet, you need to specify the horses that finish in the top three spots in the exact order in which they finish. So if the horse you selected to show (3rd) actually places (2nd), you don't win anything.)

Three years ago, this Customer Counts visionary thought LinkedIn was going to be the way customers found what they are actively seeking. It was new and strange.  Only the geeks and unemployeed with time to surf the Internet seemed to be joining LinkedIn and building up their profiles and business information sheets.   Then they introduced something special for those who applied and made the cut--LinkedIn for Groups.  That was a "gated community" just for your alumni association or national organization.  As leader of one of these organizations, the Certification Network Group, I set it up and worked hard to get everyone to participate. 

About half did and we wondered if this was a trendy thing or if half of the people were getting ready to go the way of the dinosaurs?  We stuck with it and then we discovered Cerado's Haystack.  That took social networking to the level of almost perfect.   Who in our group wouldn't be wild about this?

We are rolling it out, big time, this month at our quarterly meeting Dec. 6th and if you are anywhere in the Washington, DC area on that day, you have to shoot me an email by Friday, Dec. 1st to say you want in.  There's no admission fee, just a group of guards with guns at the security desk, and that's why you have to RSVP in advance.

Business 2.0 December issue hits my desk this morning and the feature story is The Missing Link.  "Social networking has been of much use to business--until now.  With Reid Hoffman's My Space-for-grown-ups at a tipping point, these days you are either LinkedIn or left out."  What a great story!   It just screams--you just won the trifecta of figuring out what's really working these days in helping the right people (best customers and best prospects) find you and connect quickly with your services, products and reasons for being in business.

Traditional and older methods of marketing are dead.  They don't work.  Running after people doesn't work.  Shouting at them doesn't work.  You have to figure out how to help customer find you and then reward them generously for their trek, their exploration through the search engines and social networks, to find you.   Even if you are just down the street from a customer, they are in their office searching the Internet for the best deal and comparing your to others not in your neighborhood.   

It's a Haystack Networked world.  It's a LinkedIn world now.  This is no fluke.  It's where you'll find your customers and capitalize on referrals.

Customers & Conversations

Succeeding in business is not as hard as many try to make it.  As long as you start with the customer in mind and keep that central to everything you do, you will do just fine.  This blog, my business and my professional path, from the time I checked into the Social Security office at 16 and picked up my shiny new Social Security card, is all about customers.

A west coast colleague, Chris Carfi, founder of Cerado and award-winning blogger (our favorite and most recommended blog is his Social Customer Manifesto) is working with our customer-creation team at The Communicators this week.   We are connecting more than 100 of our favorite customers to us and each other with a Haystack Network.

While working and talking about customers and blogging, Chris introduce me to Deborah Schultz - Blogging, marketing and tech from East to West and everywhere in between.

She seems to have a great pedigree, impressive resume, great blog and writes deep truths such as this: "As reported in the NY Times today as well as on various marketing blogs, it seems that the big advertisers and marketers are waking up to the fact that the consumer is indeed in control."

That's music to our Customer Counts ears.  It also looks like Deborah Schultz has seen and experienced plenty when it comes to geeks and marketers getting in each other's way and making it challenging for the customer to have a conversation with the business owners and managers.  She writes, "It sounds to me like the timing is right to get the geeks and the marketers together for an old fashioned "throwdown" on getting past jargon and discussing how to get this done to the benefit of BOTH sides."

Do you want to weigh in on this?  Please comment on this blog.  What is your story about geeks vs marketers and who wins? And if you want to know how that story and your story ends, it's with the customer, most of the time, always.