This is not the first time on this blog that I have taken on the time honored tradition of the customer always being right, but I believe it is the first time I actually offered a solution that involved dealing with the customer and not just reassuring the employees who deal with them that the abuse they take is worth it.
Once again, I will admit that I am a horrible closer in sales, but once committed to a client and product, they get 100% effort, routinely overshooting their expectations. But in the cases when you are not meeting the needs of the customer to their satisfaction, despite delivering exactly what they asked for and more, I offer three solutions:
- Sell Them At A Lower Price: Times are tough right now for all of us, and your clients are no exception. They are feeling just as much pressure to cut costs or get more for the money they are spending, and they are driving you insane with worry for loss of revenue I you can’t meet their panicked demands. Now is the perfect time to take a small loss with a loyalty discount for those long time customers, especially big spending customers. A limited batch of discounted goods and services might be to ticket to keeping them at bay.
- Sell Them At A Higher Price: Custom orders, rush delivery, and last minute changes are enemies to your bottom line, especially if your customers are coming to you discounted and not premium prices. If your customers are making requests that mean increases to your normal cost of service, you are well within your right to share some of that cost increases with those customers. If your customers are just annoying, well, make sure you can both justify and prove the necessity of the cost increase
- Stop Selling To Them: If you were no longer serving the best interest of a client, you would expect them to stop using you. It is odd that the opposite is usually not an expected option. If a client becomes too much trouble or expense, and you can come to no workable discourse, you have to fire the client. You would do better using the time and energy to focus on your profitable customers or finding a new replacement customers.
Your News Releases Need Work: Emailing Bad News Releases
After receiving a tweet from a friend asking for news release help last week, followed by was seemed like an entire day of emptying my email inbox of bad news releases, I figure it was time I took another shot and explaining the art of getting your release at least looked at, and hopefully used.
I want to attack the problems I dealt with yesterday:
Assume We Don’t Have The Latest & Greatest: Last Friday, I learned that according to Forrester Research, 60 percent of companies use Internet Explorer 6 as their default browser. That was the day I stopped whining to my IT folks about why we were using the old & busted browser of the past. Today I plead to all the PR folks to sent thinks out in the future. Web pages with lots of flash widget and browser optimized settings can not trump a simple webpage with a clean overall look and images set to just enough that it means something. My 5 year old office desktop running Windows 2000 would appreciate it.
Assume We Don’t Have The Latest & Greatest Part 2: As with the case in an office where I am running Windows 2000 for heavy audio editing, we’re also short on licenses for MS Office. ANY version of MS Office, let alone the latest and greatest. Assume that the person on the computer on the other end may be in the same boat, and don’t send them word docs typed on your brand new, shiny Vista computer with converting them down from .docx to .doc. Even better, try .rtf or a .pdf, both which are universal, and for the latter, you don’t have to worry about a change in font shifting the entire press release.
Images Can Ruin Everything: Our web based corporate email system allows every user in the corporation 20MB or storage space, unless you’ve been with the company over 8 years, whet they may be stuck with the old cap of 10MB. Not a serious problem for those who have machines with the MS Office suite and MS Outlook. I don’t have that luxury, and had to dump my email twice yesterday, after receiving an attached .mp3 from a new artist (5MB) and a two press releases from the same person because he forgot to attach a picture to the document (2MB for first email with large corporate logo, 8MB for email with large corporate logo and 7MB hi-res headshot in .docx press release). Sending news releases with links to download media, scaling down large images to travel reasonably through email, or just sending a .pdf would have made life much easier for me, the one you are trying to influence to cover your people and events.
How many times have you passed up a great personal opportunity, with the only reasoning being you figure you could live with the good thing you already had going? How did it make you feel in the short and long run, as you watched greatness continue and you flounder?
How many times have you watched as your bosses balked at the chance to go after a potentially great employee hire, get in on the bottom floor of a potentially great business opportunity, or expand on a potential great internal program?
There might be good reason (no sustainable capital, not enough physical resources or manpower, possible conflicts in our business model, contractual loopholes to battle out of, etc). Then again, there might not be any reason other than being able to live with the ‘good’ thing we got right now, even if that thing is more along the lines of ‘serviceable,’ or ‘adequate.’
How does that make you feel in the short and long run, as you watch greatness continue for other job sites and yours continue to flounder?
And in some cases, you will find not only opposition to the change that can take your good to great status, you will find much more effort and energy to keeping things status quo that taking your new initiative to greatest, especially if the current state of affairs is closer to the sub par than the par .range
Anytime you take a risks, despite how minimal you can make it, if there is no risk, there is no reward. Even getting out of bed has some risk involved, even if the much more pleasing alternative offers enough consequences to make the decision not to particularly silly.
If you get the opportunity to reach out and touch great, you need to take that opportunity.
Joint ventures are an excellent strategy for increasing your market reach and overall revenues. However, the question is, how can you entice a prospective partner to join you in a lucrative joint venture? Not everyone can see the big picture quite as vividly as you can ' and therefore, it is important to employ strategies to make sure you both are on the same page of excitement.
Increasing the value of the partnership
There is only one bottom line to attracting a joint venture partner: provide significant benefits. Of course, this is easier said than done, and therefore, there are several strategies you can take to enhance the lure of your joint venture proposal.
- Craft your proposal with only the partner's perspective in mind. You already know what the joint venture will bring to your benefit, so there is no need to re-hash this information in your offer. Instead, your proposal should truly focus on how your potential partner can benefit significantly from this joint venture.
- Clearly outline all of the benefits. What seems obvious to you may not be apparent to your potential partner. Being too clear is never a flaw, but vagueness is always a fallacy. Make sure that you specifically highlight all of the benefits to your potential partner, whether tangible or intangible. Of course, the partner will gain additional sales and revenues, but what about the intangibles, such as increased branding, new market segments, and free exposure to a target audience? The revenue benefits may not be seen immediately, but certainly offer long-term benefits.
- Make your offer standout from the competitors. Chances are that if you are approaching a potentially lucrative partner for joint venture purposes, then other companies are doing the same thing too. Making your joint venture enticing means standing out from the crowd. If you are willing to provide your potential partner with a higher commission than the industry standard, then make sure to mention that first. This will attract their attention, motivating them to read through your entire proposal and absorb the benefits.
- Be exclusive. If you have joint ventures with anyone and everyone, then the most lucrative potential partners will not be enticed. Why would they want to joint venture with you when your partnerships are already saturated? Make sure that your joint venture proposal feels exclusive, and you can discuss the reasons why this proposal is unlike the others already out on the table.
- Demonstrate your understanding of both lists. When you show your potential partner that you have a full understanding of both your customer bases, this demonstrates that you fully understanding the prospects of the joint venture. Point out both why and how your customer list benefits the joint venture's endeavors. The more specific you can get, the more enticing the offer is.
Joint ventures go above and beyond the standard affiliate marketing. Typically, joint ventures can offer significant rewards for both parties that supersede the affiliate relationship. Subsequently, the work you put into enticing your ideal partner will be worth the payoff in the end.
About the Author:
Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Strategic Collaboration Marketing consulting firm. He empowers business owners to discover and implement Integration, Alliance, and Joint Venture marketing tactics to solve specific business challenges. He demonstrates how to create your own Collaboration Marketing Strategy to increase your sales, conversation rates, and repeat business. Contact: christian@christianfea.com or http://www.christianfea.com
While you might already know that your customer is always right, and make steps to ensure that they know this too, did you realize that your customer can also be your best advertisement? It's easy to forget that customers interact with our businesses more personally than we ever will. And while we think we know our business inside and out, it's actually the customer that sees whether or not our business is doing the job it says it can do. Here are three reasons why your customer is your best advertisement ' and why you need to make sure they're always satisfied.
They Will Share Their Good Experiences
Nearly everyone has a story about a good customer service experience they've had with a business. Whether there was a problem that got quickly addressed or perhaps the business simply went above and beyond what was expected, nearly everyone has had one moment in which they wanted to sing the praises of their business transaction. So, if you had this experience, you told people and then they went to the business you did and then they told others of their experiences, etc. When something good happens, people are going to talk about it, letting you get more positive advertising than you could ever get on your own.
But at the same time, you need to remember that if there is a bad experience; customers are more than likely going to share that too. When things go wrong and you don't take the time to fix them, you are going to start a conversation between your customer and their friends ' one that ends up in you getting less business. Each experience that your customer has with your website or with your business should be as positive as possible. While you don't have to go out of your way each and every time, it's better to be more than they need than to be less than they deserve.
They are More Believable Than You Are
So, what makes these customer experiences so important to your advertising? Customers who talk to their friends and to their family are more believable than you will be. This isn't to say that you're not trustworthy, but people tend to believe things they hear from their friends more than they will trust things that come from a business that wants to make money.
Again, this is why treating the customer well is so important. Because whatever they share with their friends is going to be taken as the absolute truth, you aren't going to get a second chance to change their minds.
They Can Give Testimonials
When a customer does have a good experience with you, you might want to talk to them about writing a testimonial. This is simply a summary of the compliments they have about your business that can be posted on your marketing literature or on your website. In exchange, you might want to offer them a discount on future purchases, but many people will simply be excited to see their name and their picture on your business site. These testimonials should be verbatim of what your customer says, along with a release that says you can use the statement for your business. If you receive a testimonial that isn't written as well as you might like, as the customer if you can edit it and then show them the changes you made. If they agree to the final copy, then you have another marketing tool at your disposal.
Your customers are the best advertisements for your business and you need to make sure they are advertising well.
About the Author:
Scott Oliver offers free video coaching to help you build a profitable home business FAST. Get an hour of "Website Traffic Secrets" and "Minisite Creation Tactics" for FREE -- immediate access here: http://www.InstantWebsiteBusiness.com
While the drawbacks of getting sucked into reading seemingly random inputs from seemingly random people you follow on Twitter are pretty obvious, the possibilities for focused input, or even a true focus group, are amazing.
When I was an Acquisitions Officer in the Air Force, I worked for about 8 months on a program that processed security clearances and was given a team to work all the data on how fast the process was going, and presented daily metrics to the government agency in charge of the program. The words my boss told me when he gave me the duties, “The guy who reports the metrics can prove just about anything he wanted to,” turned out to be so truthful it was a little frightening.
The experience has made me a numbers and info junky on par with die hard rotisserie baseball geeks. And Twitter is filling that addiction to information like no other analytic tools ever has.
The magic is in its mission statement, a chance for people around the world to instantly share with others what they are doing. It also gives you the chance to look into the minds of those same millions of people, and see what they are doing, thinking, buying, or dissing.
This power is easily seen in the quick Twitter chatter scene during big television events as people who are looking to be a part of the mass experiences fire off snarky comments as an organic commentary track. This power has been most prominent in watching the ups and downs during the 2008 presidential election and the early days of the Obama Presidential Administration.
As a metrics nut, I like to lot watch the Twitter feeds during big events on TV, like new episodes of 24 and live performance shows nights on American Idol. But the real fun has come during President Obama’s television news conferences. Especially the ones that delay prime time television. Instant praise, instant hate, and instant color commentary is available to anyone willing to scroll thought a few pages of tweets.
Any marketer or sales manager can do a Twitter topic search on their company and find out exactly what is being said exactly when people are thinking about it. That was a good thing for the marketing team at Skittles that decided to make their Twitter search page the actual corporate product website, and a bad thing for Motrin after the Motrin moms took to blogosphere over a commercial that didn’t go over so well with them.
Monitoring your Twitter conversation does give you lots of insight into the thoughts of your brand or product. Just be ready to dismiss some of the more silly or snarky comments. After all, we are still talking about people using the anonymousness of the internet (even if it’s getting harder and harder to stay anonymous) to be a little to open and honest, with little regard of the consequences of the words going out to the world.
AIG used government bailout money that was supposed to help shore out the struggling insurance/investment giant to pay executive bonuses and avoid contract lawsuits, which could have but the company out of business for good. The right thing to do legally, but the American public, and its new President, are not happy.
NBC Universal finally found a new way to brand the Sci Fi Channel, and in few months it will just be SyFy. Seriously. With a new tag line of “Imagine Greater.” If you thought fan boy hate was reserved of geeks and comic book movies, search for some of the comments online about this one. The hate is coming on strong, and from plenty of people who were barely holding on the channel as it was.
Sometimes your company has to deal with bad timing. Sometimes your company has to deal with a serious gamble of a decision. As the economy continues to suffer, expect a lot more chances to test your crisis management skills while you have to explain your actions.
And make sure you are prepared for the backlash. Because its going to come.
Americans are losing money, jobs, and patience. American businesses are trying their best to adapt to the new economic world. It’s a frightful existence, and some very old companies with long standing reputations will not make it out of this.
So what happens when hard times come? People panic, leaders jump to a conclusion that they hope will get the best results with the least amount of effort and pain, and decisions are made that are meant to push the greater good, but looks more like the digging of their own graves.
Now is the time to make smart decisions that take advantage of the disadvantages of the current reality. Now is the time to continue advertising, so negotiate for new rates with your outlets that have taken good care of you so that you can continue to take good care of them. Now is the time to reach out to new, nontraditional customers to make up for the regulars you are bound to lose, but not alienate your current customer base that has gotten you this far. Now is the time to make sure the tough decisions you make are the right decisions, not just legally binding.
Now is definitely not the time for perplexing moves for the soul propose of generating buzz. There really is such a thing as bad press.
These are four questions you should be asking yourself when comparing your products and services to that of your competitors:
1: What is it that we do that our competitors also do?
2: What is it that we do that makes us come out better than our competitors?
3: What are we doing to make sure we stay better than our competitors?
No, you don’t ask yourself what the competitor is doing better than you. In most cases, when you look at a category where you are trailing behind the completion, you look to see what they are doing and then scramble your forces in an effort to attempt to out do them. It is extremely difficult to beat the established leader at their own game.
I call this living by an “Advantage: Us” standard. When you know your strengths, you have the advantage of working to ensure they continue to be your strengths. This viewpoint may seem a little short sided, but an “Advantage: Us” playbook will easily push back any pretenders to your throne in the eye of the customer. Just make sure you really are better than your competition for the reasons you are stating.
That doesn’t get you off the hook for the areas where you are at a disadvantage. You must acknowledge your company’s shortcoming and make note of areas where you are trailing the competition. But don’t get overly stressed. Unless your company is at the brink of going under, you will continue to get much better results by knowing why you are the leader in your field, and by doing what you can to ensure you stay that way. Just deal with the areas where you are lagging behind the competition by working hard to grow and improve, until you find yourself on par, or even better, than your competition. Then you ask yourself questions number 2 or 3 for that area.
Broadcast media is hurting for advertising dollars. With the major corporations heavily reducing their ad spending to save cash, its no wonder the mom and pop shops around the nation are a little wary of pouring money down the perceived black hole of a bill board, newspaper ad, or TV and radio spots.
Whatever your business is, your customers are likely using the need to save cash as their reasoning for not stepping foot into your store. Your business works because you fulfill some need, and if you do it well enough, you make more money at it. But a cash strapped public is beginning to forgo the excesses and have turned to disciplining themselves to ensure financial survival. That’s a good thing for them and a great thing for you, if you know how to sell to them.
If your customers are not seeing or not responding to what they will receive from buying your service or product, take up a different approach. Try showing them what they can actually save from shopping with you. If you can show them way that you actually save them money, effort (almost as good as money), or time (sometimes even better that as money), your cost will be instantly justified.
At the day job, we’re providing the same amount of service, if not more, for our loyal customers. We are offering them deals to help them in their rescheduled budgets and providing plenty of reassurance that their ad dollars are now moving further as other companies, including the major corporations, are backing away from their promotions, saving them time and effort spent in pushing their products and services.
In the side gig (a part of this here blog), I’m creating products and programs that lead to a lot of front end prep work, but will in return leave my customers better prepared to handle various business and personal issues, saving them time and effort to ultimately get things done.
What does your product or service do along the lines of offering savings for your customers? How are you presenting this information to your customers?
Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will chronicle the next phase of mis-adventures of my life. Thank you for staying on the ride, and for you newcomers to the inside of my mental mania, I will do my best to make sure the trip is both entertaining and educational.
Life In Fast Forward: The Blog is still a bit of a work in progress. Keep checking in for new posts and site updates.
About Blog
This blog supports some of the thoughts and interjections from the folks at Fast Forward Business Properties. Our ideas, things we test, and a few random thoughts will show up here.
Name: J. Cleveland Payne
Home: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
About Me: News is my profession, so it only fits that I am a news junkie. I'm a radio show/segment producer for a news/talk radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
