Neither Captious Nor Weasly Be

When it comes to customers, don't be captious. Niggling gets you nowhere.

How many times have you contacted sales or customer service, only to be informed you've called the wrong line? Or told to fill out some online form first? Or made to feel a fool, because you don't know if you have Version 4.2?

When conversing with a customer, be sensible and humble. To show off your knowledge blunts your effectiveness.

And when it comes to customers, don't weasel. Weaseling destroys trust.

If you need to make a point with a customer, make it clearly, concisely, candidly.

How many times have you contacted sales or customer service, only to be informed the price isn't actually available, the product doesn't really work, the warranty is never, ever applicable? "You'd have known that, if you'd seen the fine print."

When conversing with a customer, be sincere and straightforward. To squirm out of every promise makes you a weasel. And the weasel is a threatened species.

Ashley is Done with Your Stinking Personas

Human beings are too important to be treated
as mere symptoms of the past.

― Lytton Strachey

Persona-based marketing―marketing automation's linchpin―is kaput, says Ernan Roman in CMO.com.

In 2016 his research firm witnessed "a surge in the number of companies disappointed by the lack of a significant increase in response and engagement from their traditional persona-based segmentation."

Customers are knottier than marketers allow―which comes as no surprise.

Roman quotes a Fortune 1000 CMO: “We are using new CRM technology to automate old bad behaviors. The result is irritating and brand-damaging spray and pray.”

Persona-based marketing is flawed, Roman says, in large part because it ignores customers' opinions about competitors' offerings.

Marketers' crude attempts to apply personas to personalize communications irritate customers, waste marketing dollars, and tarnish brands.

It's time for them to nix their trite imaginings and "establish human partnerships and relationships" with customers, Roman says.

"Consumer relationships require authentic and relevant communications and interactions.”

Yesterday

Does your meeting need a chief experience officer?

Samantha Whitehorne answers yes in Associations Now, and identifies three roles for the CXO:

• Attendee advocate. The exec who spots and fixes "small mistakes that could frustrate attendees."


• Listener-in-chief. The exec who studies live audience feedback and recommends adjustments in real time.


• Brand guru. The exec who polices branding before, during and after the event.

To Whitehorne's list of duties, I'd add:

• Guardian of truth. The exec who goads planners to up their game.

Want the truth? Attendees have zero tolerance for mediocrity.

Salesforce.com proves that fact in its new study, State of the Connected Customer:

• 80% of B2B customers say they expect real-time response
• 75% say they expect providers to anticipate their wants
• 70% say technology makes it easy to take their business elsewhere
• 66% say they'll abandon you if treated like a number

It's easy for planners to pine for yesterday, when the audiences were pliant; the competitors, pipsqueaks; the margins, porcine. But today's audiences want more.

"Excellence, quality and good should be earned words, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves," Disney animator Ed Catmull says in Creativity, Inc.

The time is now to appoint a CXO for your event.

Indeed, it was yesterday.

Crap Content Portends Crap Customer Care

A friend once told me he paid a call on a prospect while battling a sudden-onset flu. My friend was ushered into the executive's office and promptly threw up on the man's desk. Not surprisingly, he didn't close the sale.

When you publish crap content—ungrammatical, tortuous and jargon-heavy—you kill sales, just as surely as my friend did.

Crap content portends crap customer care.

Need proof? Then consider the following, courtesy of the crap-content creators behind United Airlines' blog, Hub:

Top 5 things to know about the United Polaris experience

We're very excited about our brand new international premium cabin service—United Polaris first and business class—which offers comfort and relaxation for restful sleep in the sky. To make sure you know what to expect with United Polaris travel, see below for a few key reminders. You can learn more at united.com/Polaris.

1. Service


2. Lounge


3. Seat


4. Amenities


5. Cabin names


What makes this crap content?

• Prolixity. Why does the blogger use superlatives to excess? He's not "excited," but "very excited." The service isn't "new," but "brand new." It doesn't provide "comfort," but "comfort and relaxation." The blogger doesn't offer "reminders," but "key reminders."
  
  
• Jargon. The blogger packs the 180-word post with jargon like "long haul," "roll out" and "soft-launched."
  
  
• Nonsense. Planes fly, but since when do "seats take flight?" What the hell are "sleep-focused amenities?" And who really cares that United has renamed its first-class cabins?

Crap-content creators like United's will say: Who cares? It's only marketing content: here today, gone tomorrow. Their indifference reflects the brand's values to a T.

They'd be well served to take the advice of critic Alexander Woolcott:

I count it a high honor to belong to a profession in which the good men write every paragraph, every sentence, every line, as lovingly as any Addison or Steele, and do so in full regard that by tomorrow it will have been burned, or used, if at all, to line a shelf.

B2B Buyers Rational? It Ain't Necessarily So.

The B2B Kool-Aid claims buyers don't behave like consumers.

But two new studies show it ain't necessarily so.

State of the Connected Customer, from Salesforce.com, reveals how consumer-like many B2B buyers have become:

• 83% say technology informs them about product choices
• 80% say they expect companies to respond to them in real time
• 79% say it's vital to have a sales rep who's a trusted advisor
• 75% say they expect companies to anticipate their needs
• 70% say technology makes it easy to take their business elsewhere
• 66% say they'll switch brands if they're treated like a number
• 65% say they'll switch brands if a company's communications aren't personalized

Turned Off, from Sprout Social, reveals why buyers "unfollow" companies on social media:

• 46% say the companies annoy them by over-posting self-promotions
• 42% say the companies post irrelevant content
• 35% say the companies use too much jargon
• 18% say the companies are don't post frequently enough
• 15% say the companies fail to respond to comments

You say, so what, who cares?

Well, Turned Off also reveals 75% of buyers have purchased a product after seeing it on social media.

Do Your Customers Feel the Love?

Do your customers feel the love?

Not the majority, finds a new study by Gallup.

Gallup finds that only 3 in 10 B2B customers are emotionally and psychologically attached to their suppliers.

The rest—70%—could care less, and are ready to take their business elsewhere, according to analysts Craig Kamins and Anson Vuong.

But wait! Is it your fault customers don't feel the love?

"A big part of the problem is that when customers make their purchasing decisions, they really care more about the product or service they're buying than the company that provides that service," Kamins and Vuong write. 

"Put another way, they're buying the function, not the brand. This makes them a flight risk."

Company leaders are often the last to know customers feels unloved, Gallup finds. Leaders don't:

• Hold meaningful conversations with customers
• Try to empathize with customers
• Pay attention to burning issues brought to their attention by account reps

Not only is lost business at stake.

Account growth is, too.

Gallup's analysis of more than 200,000 relationships shows that indifferent customers are less likely to want to increase their business with current suppliers, or be an early adopter of new products those companies might offer.

To fix the problem, Kamins and Vuong recommend B2B companies work hard to engage customers with their brands.

"If the brand promise is distinct enough, if the company effectively communicates its promise to the customer and if the company consistently delivers on its promise, then it can fully engage more of its indifferent customers," they write.

To engage customers, a B2B company's brand must promise "impact," according to the two analysts.

"Impact can be the catalyst that transforms indifferent customers into fully engaged ones," they write.

To create impact, a company must:

• Understand customers' businesses
• Bring them a steady stream of relevant new ideas
• Put those ideas to work by tailoring them to specific markets and workplaces

"B2B companies must convince customers that they are buying the brand—not just the function. Each customer will define impact differently, but every B2B company can find a way to improve its customers' business."

Nichecraft

"Find a niche, not a nation," Seth Godin says in The Bootstrapper's Bible.

Niche is a time-honored business term and an ancient idea. It literally means a "pigeonhole," and derives from the Latin for nest.

Finding yours means your craft never has to compete on price, because your flock needs you/relies on you/likes you/talks about you/cares about you.

Take, for example, Joe Smith, an ornithologist, independent researcher and top blogger for The Nature Conservancy.

Because he practices his craft with skill and diligence, Joe Smith's flock needs him/relies on him/likes him/talks about him/cares about him.

"There's no such thing as a niche that's too small if the people care enough," Seth Godin also says.

Have you found your niche?

DISCLOSURE: Joe Smith is my son-in-law. Check out Cool Green Science.

Customer Retention: Not My Job

B2B marketers spend 60% of their budgets to land customers, but only 30% to keep them, according to a recent study by Demand Metric.

The imbalance shouldn't surprise you.

It costs more to attract new customers.

But you might be surprised to learn more than half (55%) of B2B marketers spend little to nothing to keep customers.

And three in four think keeping customers "is not my job" (instead, it's the job of sales or customer support).

The disconnect handicaps all B2B companies, no matter the business model.

For those with “subscription” business models, the value of a customer is realized in installments, so profits depend on keeping customers.

In others, that value is realized after multiple, independent and relatively small purchases, so profits also depend on keeping customers.

HAT TIP: Kudos to Ann Ramsey for suggesting this post.

Marketers, You Have Work to Do

The second in a two-part series, today's post was contributed by Margit Weisgal, author of Show and Sell: 133 Business-Building Ways to Promote Your Trade Show Exhibit. She writes for The Baltimore Sun.

“If it weren’t for customers, we could get our work done.”

Adults indeed say the darndest things.

Don’t you wonder how some companies stay in business? They spout platitudes about how much they care about you and that customers are paramount. 

Then they go and do something incredibly stupid.

Here's an email I received recently (identifying information deleted):

Thank you for contacting us. As for as why our department does not receive incoming calls, there are many reasons. The greatest of these reasons is that if they were required to answer phone calls in addition to their paperwork that is sent to them every day, they would have a much more difficult time processing the requests they receive. Please be patient as our department looks into your request. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

In other words, paperwork trumps customers. 

It’s marketing’s job to make sure there is consistency in everything a company says and does.

Marketers, you have work to do!

Terms of Endearment

The role terms play in the marketing mix isn't discussed outside the pages of the Harvard Business Review.

But your terms matter to prospects.

Here's a case study.

Recently, Bob (yours truly) shopped Craigslist for the services of a freelance editor, on his employer's behalf. Based on his Craigslist ad, Steven seemed a capable choice. Bob phoned Steven, described the project, and sent him background materials.

Below, verbatim, is their email exchange immediately after that call.

From Steven to Bob

I've read over the attached documents and have a good grasp on what you want in terms of the scope of the editing. I can realistically accommodate the edits for the 400 documents you've stipulated for $475 and have them ready within your two month time-frame. Or, if you'd like them ready within one month's time, I could accommodate that for $599. Just let me know which option you choose. Also, if there are any other stylistic recommendations you have for the revisions go ahead and send those over to me. I accept Google Wallet for payment. To proceed, go ahead and send your payment, via Wallet, to me and then I can confirm, put this on my schedule and get started.

From Bob to Steven

Wow, I think you are underpricing this project. A few thoughts:

• How much time do you think you’d devote to each document?
• Advance payment on line won’t work. We can pay in installments or a lump sum, but only as satisfactory work is delivered.
• Doesn’t the style guide I sent you make clear the “stylistic recommendations” desired?

From Steven to Bob

You're right. I sent you a quote meant for a different client. Realistically, I could accommodate this within 2 month's time for $3,500 or within one month's time for $3,999. However, I do not accept checks (they have that pesky ability to bounce...) and I do not do work without a payment, or at least a serious deposit, in advance. You came to me so please abide by the processes that I work by. Otherwise, I'd have to deny this request due to lack of seriousness. The only other payment methods I accept are Square Cash, Chase Quickpay or bank transfer.

As the Harvard Business Review might put it, "Steven's terms erected a considerable obstacle to Bob the Buyer's consideration."

By insisting on online prepayment, Steven demonstrated he works only with students and, perhaps, the occasional entrepreneur. He failed to grasp, in this case, his prospect represented an 88 year-old, multibillion company with customers like McDonald's and Microsoft.

The rest of their email exchange follows, again verbatim.

From Bob to Steven

No thanks, Steven.

From Steven to Bob

No skin off my nose. You're obviously a joker or a scammer. Before you waste more time trolling the Craigslist ads like a desperate prostitute, you should know that no self-respecting professional is going to be doing any work without payment upfront. Perhaps if you weren't a senior citizen you'd realize this is how commerce in the 21st century works.

Do your terms cost you customers?

How about your manners?

Tomorrow's B2B Sales Professional Needs a Blue Ocean

One million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs by 2020, replaced by e-commerce systems, according to a study by Forrester.

The job-loss can be blamed on Millennials, who prefer what I call M2M (Millennial to Machine) over F2F (Face-to-Face).

First on the chopping block are entry-level "order taker" jobs.

For over a century, order-taker jobs have allowed high-school and college grads to readily enter the workforce as salespeople.

But the tightening market means tomorrow's wannabe sales pro must find a fresh opening gambit.

Inventiveness will be key.

You might have to think like comedian W.C. Fields.

To drum up business for Atlantic City hot-dog vendors, Fields worked one summer in his youth as a professional drowner. 

Twelve times a day, he would wade into the surf and begin to scream and flounder.

Mammoth crowds would rush to the scene to witness Field's "rescue"—and buy lots of hot dogs from the nearby vendors' carts.

Here's a great source for more innovations: The Sales Blog.

All Hat, No Cattle

The world is filled with big, stupid companies.

When it comes to the customer experience, they're "all hat, no cattle."

A story to illustrate.

I encountered a bug in the software from one of today's top 10 providers. The bug is so serious, it prevents any use of the product. 

My first plea for help spawned this canned email:

Thank you for submitting your case. My name is Henjie from Support. I have taken ownership of your Case number 12483149. I understand that you need some assistance. I won't be able to call you. For now, I will need to have your case endorsed to a team to make sure that we will be able to assist you further with your concern. Thank you for choosing [name withheld].

Four weeks, hours of my time, and 31 comparably inane messages later, no remedial action has been taken.

Disney likes to say, "no employee ever 'owns the customer,' but one employee always 'owns the moment.'"

At stupid companies, employees own neither customers nor moments. The only "owners" are the legal ones, who spend all their moments minding the share price, while buzz-talking auto-responders are left minding the store.

Entrepreneurs can take heart.

Your Event is Either an Experience or a Waste of Time

While they puzzle over details, many event organizers never grasp the key to a satisfactory event.

It has to deliver an experience.

In the same way a restaurant is not about food, an event's not about tables, chairs, booths, badges, busses, signs or even speakers.

An event is about an experience.

Restaurateur Danny Meyer says the restaurant's job isn't to serve food.

It's to create an experience of wellbeing: to instill in each patron the sense that "when we were delivering that product, we were on your side."

Delivering an experience justifies the patron's expenditure—not of money, but of time—Meyer says. "When they leave, are they going to say, 'That was a good use of my time?'"

"The most precious resource we all have is time," Steve Jobs once told a reporter.

Are you delivering an experience, or wasting your attendees' time?

Save $26,041 per Employee with this Simple App

A 2008 study by SIS International Research showed that an employee squanders 17.5 hours a week deciphering faulty communications in the workplace. The researchers estimated the wasted hours to cost a small company $26,041 annually.

No surprise. 

Communication, like every business activity, is prey to Murphy's law. 

Any message that can go wrong will.

But there's a simple app available that will staunch the flow of red ink.

It's called clarity, and it's friendly and easy to use:

• Turn long sentences into two or three shorter ones.

• Chop big blocks of text into separate paragraphs.

• Use connectors—words like although, but and because—to join ideas together.

• Avoid pronouns—words like it, we, they and this. Use pronouns sparingly and you won't write a sentence like: Advise customers they are guaranteed to work 24/7 when we upgrade our servers.

• Be careful with directions—words like about, before, on and over—and you won't write a sentence like: Before lunch with the client we should hash out next year's price increases.

You can get the full download on clarity from "grammarphobes" Patricia O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman's You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online.

Aim for the Heart

You'll earn an inimitable advantage over competitors if you link your brand with customers' hearts, says Michael Hinshaw, a customer experience specialist, in CMO.

Hinshaw cites research from The Disney Institute showing that companies that rouse good feelings have customers three times more likely to repurchase a company's products than the customers of other companies.

Customers develop feelings about your brand based on experiences with it. And try as you might to win them over with slogans, cheap prices, bribes or warranties, feelings are facts for customers, Hinshaw says.

So how do you forge heart-felt ties with your brand?

• Learn the features of your brand that customers care about. Do they care about choice, reliability, durability, speed, comfort, convenience, neatness, or other features? Delivering unimportant features well won't improve how customers feel.

• Track each customer's expectations of your performance on these features. Customers' expectations differ at different times, and for different transactions, Hinshaw says. To catch a customer's fancy, you need to meet her expectations in the moment. At first, you might have to show the customer that your products are fun and safe (you market party favors, for example); while at a later time, that you can deliver them overnight, in any style and color (just in time for a birthday).

How to Calm an Angry Customer

Recently, I had my DNA analyzed and learned I'm related to Benjamin Franklin.

So I'll quote him.

“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”

How can you make amends after disappointing a customer?

Sue Hershkowitz-Coore, author of Power Sales Writing, offers these five tips:

Plan to keep the customer's business. Before you write a word, determine your strategy for delighting the angry customer. Find an alternative solution to her problem.

Begin with a thank-you. Offering a thank-you makes the customer feel "safe and smart," according to Herskowitz-Coore. Writing, "Thank you for giving me a chance to explain the situation," helps disarm further criticism.

Validate the customer's viewpoint. Acknowledge that, from her shoes, the customer's right. "The words 'Your'e right' are magical when they're genuine."

Belay the apologies. Don't dive into the "We're so sorry" waters. An apology is robotic and doesn't soothe; a solution is sincere, and should.

Stay positive. "Explain what is possible, not what is impossible," advises Herskowitz-Coore. Find positive ways to express negatives. Tell your angry customer what you can do, not what you cannot do—and explain what's in it for them.

End Sloppy Emails

When I first entered the workforce, no one would dare send a written communication (we called it a "memo") without prior review by the boss.

Business ran according to military rules (in fact, many of the bosses were former military officers). 

Those days are long over.

"A new status symbol in today's generally more egalitarian business environment has arisen: sloppy e-mails," says consultant Keith Ferazzi.

Writing for Harvard Business Review, Ferazzi recommends these four tips for ending sloppy emails:

Empathize with readers. Too many writers lack empathy for their readers. When writing an email, "use respect, positive affirmations, and gratitude to set the right tone and proper context." Your writing will display more empathy if you "visualize that individual in his office as you send him an e-mail."

Appreciate different styles. "We all tend to prefer a certain 'language' for communications at work," Ferazzi says. Some people prefer numbers; some, pictures; and others, stories. Appreciating others' styles improves your ability to communicate and reduces the likelihood of misinterpretation.

Spell things out. "We often communicate less information than we think we are, a syndrome psychologists call signal amplification bias," Ferazzi writes. Make descriptions and instructions clear and complete.

Respond promptly. Readers care not only about content, but about the promptness of your replies to their emails, Ferazzi says. "When your reply is tardy, the other party is left wondering whether you value that relationship or not."

Why Event Planners Should Cut Choices

Part 2 of a 5-part series on event design

Choices have power over us.

Too many can cause us to crumble.

If you're offering attendees too wide an assortment—dozens of hotels, seminars, menu items, networking activities or after-parties—you're doing them a disservice.

It hardly matters attendees always say they want unlimited options.

According to neuroscience research, vast selection inhibits decisionmaking.

Cutting choices to three or four eliminates attendees' anxiety and helps them decide.

Thanks to Ron Graham of Freeman for providing this event-design tip.

NOTE: I wrote this post in 2013, not imagining that two years later I'd be employed by Freeman. Wonders never cease. 

None is One

On Pike Place in Seattle, I visited the original Starbucks this week.

My stop reminded me of a favorite statement by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Even when I make a cup of coffee I change the world."

The philosopher meant your every action—large or small—affects all others.

Even though you may not want the job, you are "a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind."

What are you up to today?

Going Broke? Maybe Your Website's Broken.

Research firm Forrester asked 5,200 customers what they do when a Website fails them.

According to the study, Websites That Don’t Support Customers Waste Millions, they:

• Pick up the phone. 35% call when your Website lets them down.
• Take their business elsewhere. 17% move to a competitor. 
• Give up. 17% abandon their purchase.

Forrester also gauged the cost of broken Websites and concluded:

• Large e-retailers are losing $47 million in direct income every year.
• Large e-retailers are adding $47 million to their cost of sales every year.

For 14 years, Forrester has been evaluating B2C and B2B Websites. 

It estimates that only 3% aren't broken.

To learn if yours is broken, Forrester recommends you ask. "The only way to know whether a site visit was a success is to ask the customers," the report states. 

Ask visitors three simple questions:

• What did you come to the site to do today?
• Were you able to accomplish that goal?
• If not, why not?