August 27, 2009

Sales - Relationship Builders NOT Product Floggers

There are two options to consider when setting a sales philosophy for your organization. You can choose to generate revenue by selling stuff or you can choose to build intimate relationships with people and have them buy stuff.

Selling stuff equates to flogging products; the focus is on what is being produced rather than on the demand elements of the customer. Very few people like the flogging experience where a sales person tries to shove a product down your throat with little consideration for our needs and expectations. At the end of a flogging experience we generally feel used, abused and violated vowing to never return.

Building deep relationships and having people buy stuff is quite a different thing and is based on the axiom that ‘you need to make a friend before you can do business’. The sales dynamics focus on getting to know the prospect and their specific needs and expectations (in the marketing chapter of my book I delve into the notion of customer secrets and how this intimate level of customer knowledge can unlock raw marketing power that create BE DiFFERENT organizations). The Relationship Builder actually make you compelled to buy! The forces at play propel the prospective buyer along a course of action that requires a transaction; anything less conjures up the feeling of guilt given the time, effort and caring the Builder has invested in you.

Relationship building firms understand and trust that cash flow is the result of deep customer relationships; an annuity stream is established over a longer period of time with an impressive Net Present Value as compared to the short term financial benefits of the one sale wonder.

Start the move today to developing a relationship building sales team. And introduce this element in the sales compensation plan. If you are purely a flogging organization today, ad a percentage for the relationship element and begin the journey to BE DiFFERENT Sales. Begin with compensating your sales team 20% on relationship building and increase this amount over time.

How do you measure relationship building? Create a Customer Report Card with 6 key relationship building behaviors and ask the customer to rate the salesperson on each. Customer perception is reality and it will not be long before every salesperson is paying attention to what is required to be a Builder!

Here are some relationship building behaviors to consider: show honest concern for the customer, build a profile on them, be an active listener, problem solve, be the customer advocate in your organization, relentlessly follow up on customer issues and be available 24X7. Or better still do some customer research and build the Builder behavior profile for your customers specifically. Good luck!

Cheers,
Roy Osing

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Posted 8.27.09 at 06:50 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (2)

August 20, 2009

Coors Ad Pulled for Wrong Reason

Over the last few days the radio talk shows in BC and Ontario were busy discussing the recent billboard ad by Coors that declared that Coors is ‘Colder than most people from Toronto’. The ad was displayed apparently on 30 billboards throughout the Vancouver area. Some Torontonians picked up on it and complained to Coors who took the ads down forthwith.

The issue in my view is NOT that the ad disturbed the sensitivities of some people from Toronto. It should not have been pulled for that reason.

It should have been pulled - in fact should never have been published - because it was off strategy!

This is a marketing issue not one of positioning folks from the west against people from hog town. The fact of the matter is that Coors has a national market so they need to deal with the traits of people throughout Canada. The choice to poke fun at one region of their overall market doesn’t make any sense at all.

In addition, the use of Toronto in the creative was to describe the ‘cold’ dimension of their product. The creative execution was wrong and I suspect the ad guys were trying to be cute. Why would you choose a geographic region of your market to prove the ‘cold’ image of your product when there was a chance of alienating some of your market? Not a good choice.

The marketing folks need to get control of the ad creative staff who in my experience love to come up with off-the-wall, edgy and controversial ads at times. I have no issue with this as long as strategy is served.

In this case strategy was NOT served! Minus one for the ad guys.

Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 8.20.09 at 07:18 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 18, 2009

Customer Share measures BE DiFFERENT Marketing Success

A critical component of BE DiFFERENT strategy development is to determine WHO you want to SERVE. This represents a key decision in the strategic development process as it defines the turf you intend to compete on and where you will allocate your scarce resources. Rather than flog products to a mass market, you narrow your opportunity down to smaller groups of customers where you have unmatched competencies and provide value-based Offers that meet a compelling customer need.

The primary objective in the BE DiFFERENT marketing world is to maximize the percentage of the target customer’s business you hold as opposed to the portion of a mass market you possess with the products you sell.

If you have, say, 30% customer share, you have work to do; a significant growth opportunity exists. Understand customer secrets, create value Offers - premium priced of course - and provide them as tangible benefit of the deep intimate relationships you seek to build with them.

If, on the other hand, you hold 80% customer share, watch your back! You represent a growth opportunity for others and they will be targeting you to gain advantage. Your action plan? Focus on deepening the relationships you have with these customers. Build what I call barriers to customer exit by providing unsurpassed value.

At the end of the day, its all about FOCUS. You don’t have the luxury of unlimited resources to chase a mass market. Select the customers who represent the highest potential opportunity for your organization, learn their innermost needs and desires and create holistic Offers for them that provide relevant and compelling value. And, measure customer share continuously as the dash board measure of your success.

Cheers, Roy Osing

Remember to follow me on Twitter

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Posted 8.18.09 at 09:18 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 16, 2009

BE DiFFERENT Branding

Recently I was asked to comment on a number of brand and logo alternatives a business had developed. From a creative point of view, some were quite clever and definitely better than others. Yet I couldn’t choose one.

Why? Because I didn’t understand what the business was trying to achieve. What was the communications strategy? To evaluate anything you need strategic context. In BE DiFFERENT or be dead, I talk about the importance in ‘looking up’ to your strategy to provide specific direction on tactics and programs. In the same way you need strategy clearly defined before you can decide on the appropriate tactic to employ. I see many organizations today ‘wallowing’ in tactics without a strategic rudder and happy doing it. The problem is their business doesn’t translate into performance because they don’t have the strategic metrics to examine.

A decision on your brand requires a clear understanding of the strategy you want to employ. Alternative brands are then evaluated in terms of how well each serves the strategy; how well each expresses it to your target customers. A brand is intended to convey your value proposition in a clear and compelling way. The debate within an organization should be around this issue and not be based on personal bias and emotional criteria (which ends up to be the case most of the time).

Conversely, if you want to change your brand it should be for one of two reasons: either your current brand doesn’t reflect your current strategy as effectively as it should, or, you have changed your strategy and need to reassess your brand accordingly. You shouldn’t be changing it because it is stale dated or it isn’t ‘sexy’enough. If you do, you run the risk of confusing your customers who may just presume that you are now something else - an outcome you didn’t intend.

Don’t change your brand unless it is no longer satisfying the strategy of the organization.

The New Democratic Party of Canada is considering changing it’s identity to The Democratic Party of Canada. The reason given is that the party isn’t ‘NEW” any longer and the party feels they need to build currency with younger people as did Obama in the US. Changing to the ‘Democratic Party’ won’t do it. Many people argue that the ‘NEW’ in the current name implies a new approach to democratic reform and not the age of the party.Does changing the name imply they are no longer interested in new approaches to solving the country’s problems?

If they are targeting new voter segments, what is their (new) value proposition to those groups and how does their revised identity reflect it? Not apparent to me. I suspect they are trying to capture some of the ‘Obama magic’ by changing their name. A very risky strategy indeed!

Here is the process to create an appropriate brand:
- Develop your BE DiFFERENT strategy - see Section Two of BE DiFFERENT or be dead
- Ensure your only claim is clear and concise
- Determine your communications strategy to serve the overall strategy you just developed
- Articulate the message you intend to send your target customers
- NOW look at a number of alternative creative executions to deliver the message

Cheers, Roy Osing

Remember to follow me on Twitter

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Posted 8.16.09 at 06:04 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)