Volume 5 Issue 1
A BUSINESS WITHOUT CUSTOMERS...isn't
You need them. Your business needs them in as large numbers as you can muster. But getting them and keeping them is not an easy task. You must know them--really know them, their wants, their needs--what they'll buy, for how much and what will best facilitate the sale.
To further complicate matters, today's marketplace keeps on changing and your customers change right along with it. Just when you're certain you have the pulse on your customers, they change. They develop new needs, wants, demands, likes and dislikes.
As a marketer, as a business person today no matter your business, you too must be changing just to stay in sync. You must know who your customers will be and what they will want just before they themselves know. Getting close--and staying close is key.
Some companies, like Nike stay close through intensive social marketing. They sponsor sports endeavors across the professional and amateur spectrum. Their "swoosh" logo, displayed on jerseys and at venue sites, together with their "help the children" image has helped make Nike the brand of choice for an ever increasing customer base. To ensure this trend continues, Nike doesn't stop. It keeps adding new sponsorships and involvements to keep its name and image in front of its customers.
What social marketing do you do to keep your name and image in front of your customers?
Other companies, like the Canadian bookseller Chapters, anticipate encroaching competition by Heather Reisman's Indigo (Mega book/music stores) by rewriting its frequent buyer program. Its revamped transaction-based rewards program assists Chapters know its customers (with membership cards), and their buying habits well--very well. This enables Chapters to estimate the acceptance rates for new offers with uncanny precision. Certainly an advantage to maintaining both full-priced sales and merchandise in-stock--and happy customers.
What are you doing to offer your customers a "value added"? What are you doing to keep track of their buying habits?
And still other companies, like American grocery chain Safeway concentrate on staying close--really close to its best customers--its most deserving customers, the repeat high-ring shoppers. Culling a wealth of customer information, Safeway launched its loyalty-card program in October '95. Incentives to use the card are high--as is usage. Today 75% of sales go through the loyalty card. Safeway continues to reach out to its important customers, continuously targeting new and valuable promotions to them because it is not ready to lose these loyal shoppers.
What are you doing to keep your loyal customers --loyal?
Your strategy to get and keep customers may be yet an entirely different one (and I would love to hear about it via email.) As long as it is relevant to your customers today--and will be relevant to them tomorrow--it will succeed in ensuring your business has customers--loyal customers in abundance.
-Sam Geist
TODAY'S NEWS... TOMORROW'S TRENDS
- TargetBoomers... again
Boomers (adults 35-54) comprise 38.4% of US households, but control 49% of all dollars spent.
They control especially high percentages of:
- education spending (62%)
- personal insurance and pensions (58%)
- entertainment (54%)
- household furnishings and equipment (51%)
Interep (New York seller of radio airtime)
- How Do I Love Thee?
...Let me count a new way--
Just released, the premiere issue of "Men Are From Mars & Women Are
From Venus" magazine.
Effective communication and clear understanding of one another's needs has become such a massive issue in today's society, it warrants a regular publication devoted to it.
Editor: It begs the question, how well do you communicate and understand your customers and their needs?
- Say It With Flowers
Virtual flowers, that is. Send your regards without worry of wilting or watering, to almost anyone, anywhere. It's easy, free and fun... and it's become the techno trendy thing to do.
Tom Johnson, Virtual Florist (http://www.virtual florist.com) sends about 15,000 bouquets a day (250,000 during Valentine's Week). Other cyber-florists include:
Phillips' Florals - http://www.800florals.com/virtual
Virtual Flowers - http://www.virtualflowers.com
- The Stats on...
- Cell Phones
According to a study reported by the New England Journal of Medicine (Feb '97), drivers on their cell phones are 4.3 times more likely to be involved in car accidents than those drivers not on the phone.
- Getting The Message Out
The following are the number of years it has taken for new media to reach 50 million
homes: radio - 38 years
television - 13 years
cable - 10 years
web - 5 years
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
- Web Spending
Expected to reach almost $100 billion (US) in the year 2000. That's five times higher than the $19 billion (US) spent in '96.
International Data Corporation
- Closing The IT Skills
Results of skill building efforts of 50 global 2,000 companies.
These companies outsourced IT projects instead of providing internal training:
- yes - 16%
- no - 35%
- did both - 47%
They are recruiting for these skills:
- client/server - 64%
- internet/intranet - 26%
- business - 18%
- development tools - 14%
- personality - 12%
*Multiple responses accepted
They found the top three training obstacles to be:
- time - 52%
- motivation - 22%
- cost - 20%
Further it was found that only 8% of companies have someone responsible for recruiting IT skills, while 92% rely on HR. Only 6% use any software tools to catalog IT skills and most have no idea of the ROI of training.
Chief Executive Magazine, June '97
- The Top Five Adult Fears and Worries
- public speaking - 56%
- getting fat - 45%
- going out alone at night - 42%
- going to the dentist - 42%
- own death - 42%
Levels of fear hasn't changed much in 20 years.
Roper Reports
- Being A City Mouse or a Country Mouse
Primary reasons for living in the city
- job/career (48%)
Primary reason for living in the country
- pace of life (24%)
1997 Fannie Mae National Housing Survey
TAKING YOUR CUSTOMER'S PERSPECTIVE ... further!
Nothing can be more vital--and more rewarding then thinking like a customer and acting on that perspective. Today customers have options--more choices than they ever had before. In order for them to choose you--to do business with you, they must see advantages--valid reasons to convince them to come back again and again.
The following three articles offer strategies--techniques--ideas and inspiration to assist you provide reasons of your own.
KEEPING CUSTOMERS LOYAL
Customer turnover costs. When you consistently lose customers, you really have no choice but to focus your energies on finding new customers to replace the ones who have left, instead of focusing those energies on loyalizing the ones you do have. There's really no better or cheaper way to build a business than with loyal customers. Looking for new customers constantly is ex p-its a huge investment of time, money and talent.
Use these four ideas to build customer loyalty. Think up four more ideas of your own.
(Editor's note: Email them to me and I'll be pleased to post them in the next newsletter).
- Teach your customers your business.
Because you know your business better than your customers, you can help them find savings by cutting costs, by operating a little differently, by buying a little better. Make them smart and they will stay. How do you advantageously teach your customers about your business?
- Treat established customers like new ones.
It's easy to start taking customers for granted after they've been around for awhile. You'll do anything you can to land their business but once you've got it, your attitude changes. Keep in mind that your competition is ready to woo them, because now they're looking at your customer the way you did when you were starting out. What are you doing to treat old customers like new ones? How are you making their lives easier? What new ways can you find to continue making their lives easier?
- Maintain stable prices.
Find ways around raising prices--new efficiencies, better investments, smarter buying. When its necessary to raise prices, small increases once in awhile are easier for customers to swallow than one enormous increase every few years. What are you doing to maintain your prices? What else could you do?
- Build and grow a beneficial relationship.
Relationships in business just as in personal life need care and attention. Without interest, without nurturing they flounder. Floundering leads to divorce. What are you doing to nurture your business relationships?
How often?
Take advantage of the opportunities created by customer loyalty. You'll find it has never been more rewarding to see those familiar faces again and again and again.
DELIGHTING THE CUSTOMER
"The customer relationship can be analogized with a triangle in which the bottom side is meeting customer requirements and the two supporting sides are exceeding customer expectations and anticipating customer's needs."
Dilip Saraf, Senior Consultant
QI International (Management consulting firm)
No its not easy, but yes there is a system, a method to the process.
Once you've learned it, it applies to all customers--big or small--and it has its reward, customer loyalty. To move beyond getting the customer to do business with you by meeting their requirements --to delighting them, you must identify and meet future needs (in addition to exceeding existing expectations).
In order to achieve this you must ask questions that transcend transactional interchange. That is you must be prepared to get into a discussion that goes beyond product features and benefits, beyond warranties and guarantees, beyond delivery.
Often we don't know how to ask these types of questions. We don't know how to get into an "intimate" conversation with our customers.
However when your front-line staff are freed from transactional demands, they are freed up to build customer intimacy. Through intimate, face-to-face dialogue in a non-transactional setting, your staff can ask customers the real questions like, "How are we doing, how is our relationship going?"
Everyone in the organization should be made aware of what it takes to develop customer intimacy. The message, not just the rhetoric, but the requirements, the process to exceed customers' expectations--and delight them needs to go from the CEO on down.
DELIGHTING CUSTOMERS BY DELIGHTING FRONT-LINE STAFF
In all industries, but it seems particularly relevant in the commodity products arena, that an effective way to distinguish yourself from the competition is by the service you provide and the way you distribute your products as opposed to the products themselves. And because its so time consuming and resource-absorbing to attract new customers, long-term revenue growth is definitely tied to the degree to which you can keep and enrich existing customers. Service is easily a first business priority.
It is interesting, therefore to learn that some future-focused companies are not focusing on customers directly as their key to success. Rather they feel the key to developing loyal customers is through their front-line staff. They see a definite correlation between the satisfaction, the pride, the attitude of their front-line staff and the satisfaction, loyalty and good feeling of their customers.
"It only takes getting your people to feel good about your company and they will automatically, and without any extra costs translate that to your customers." say these future focused companies.
Use your staff to find out what your customers are thinking--since they're in touch with hundreds of customers everyday.
In today's environment winning staff provide an outstanding differentiator and competitive advantage. In order to capitalize on this resource (their staff), companies such as Norwest Corp., a banking institution, uses "recognition" to encourage desirable attitude and on the job dedication.
"Recognition doesn't cost a lot, but it has an immense impact on people's feelings about a company. By recognizing someone doing something that's important to the business... you're also communicating to those who didn't get the recognition that what they're doing isn't desired. And it's much better to talk positively about someone than negatively to 150 others," said Richard Kovacevich, CEO and Chairman, Norwest Corp.
Norwest has literally thousands of recognition programs on a daily level. A bonus of the programs is that they encourage sharing of information--of technique. Staff learn from each other.
Norwest also offers staff a stock option incentive. They feel that if you want people to do the right thing, have the right attitude and be dedicated, it is important that they share in the benefits that are accrued if they do a better job with customers.
Once you consider the tremendous advantages of delighting customers and delighting staff you realize its a strategic tool that can catapult you ahead of the competition today and keep you ahead tomorrow.
For more information on the customer perspective see "Why Should Someone Do Business With You...Rather Than Someone Else?" available by mail or at your local bookstore. Also available, but only by mail, the "Why Should Someone Do Business With You...Rather Than Someone Else?" Workbook--full of thought-provoking questions, exercises and ideas designed to keep you asking, answering, planning and changing.
NOTABLE QUOTABLES
"The Internet is becoming the Yellow Pages on steroids."
Rich Masterson, US Interactive
"Change is very hard work."
Gene Syvensky, CEO, Calgary Co-op
"People will only achieve the level of success that their image of themselves can absorb."
Brian Schwartz, Psychologist
"Today's consumers are college educated and more sophisticated and discriminating than ever. And, since many reside in two-income households they're often also overtired and overworked. It is difficult to get their attention, much less make an easy sale. But when they want a product, they expect to be able to get it anytime--24 hours a day--and at a low cost. More and more they are making their own rules. Companies that want to do business with this group must adopt to these new pressures--quickly."
Ian Morrison, PhD, Institute for the Future
"We've learned from experience that we don't necessarily learn from experience."
Magazine ad for Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University
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