Be Different or be dead

January 14, 2013

What happens when you know a person’s hidden ‘secrets’?

Source: Pexels

What happens when you know a person’s hidden ‘secrets’?

Successful organizations know more about what people want than their competition; they use information — customer ‘secrets’ — as the power ingredient in their value proposition mix to separate themselves from everyone else and to achieve incredible levels of performance.

The winners are the insightful ones because there are two tiers of information available to organizations; the first tier is common, and the second one rarely gets used.

Tier #1 is the ‘needs-layer’; it consists of what people need.

Tier #2 is the ‘secrets-layer’; it consists of what people want.

A typical organization talks about the importance of determining what their customers need and delivering appropriate solutions accordingly.

The theory goes: identify what a person needs; build a product or service that delivers the needs and provide it. Simple enough.
The problem is that every competitor is doing it and no one in the market gains any sustainable advantage.

And the added challenge is that the needs of most people are already satisfied; most people already have the things that sustain their everyday lives.

So how can you be successful in attracting them if you and every other market player are using the needs-layer as the basis for your marketing efforts?

You can’t.

People are now more than ever doing business with organizations based on their wants and desires; products, services and experiences they ‘covet’ and ‘lust for’ as opposed to what they need.

And the successful organizations understand that it’s the secrets-layer of information on people that provides the insights they need to get and keep an advantage over their Tier #1 competitors.

So, what’s a customer ‘secret’?

A secret is an individual thing; it’s not a mass thing. Crowds don’t have secrets; individuals in the crowd do.

My secret is not likely to be the same as yours because we are different people with different backgrounds, different competencies, different lifestyles and, in organizations, different financial and market challenges.

A secret reveals itself as a habit, bias, dream, hope, skill, competency, lifestyle choice, family priority, ego drive, friendship affinity, recreation preference, entertainment choice, or in the case of an organization, inventory problems, cash flow margin challenges, employment equity concerns or product quality issues.

If we can discover the secrets of individuals or business decision makers, we will be in the enviable position to deliver something that they can’t get anywhere else (since others are still basing their offerings on what they learn from needs-layer information).

What does it mean to marketing?

A secrets-layer focus changes both the process we use to obtain information on people and the type of information we gather.

The focus of research must be to discover the secrets that every person has, with the trust and conviction that sustainable competitive advantage will result from using this information to develop products, services, packages and other offers (as an aside, packages solutions can only be created if we holistically understand what people desire.)

Marketing strategy must move away from periodic needs based research of mass markets to continuous secrets based learning of individual people.

And the secret learning process must be continuous; information is constantly streamed into the organization as a result of ongoing customer engagement as opposed to conducting periodic studies which only provide a snapshot in time of what people are wanting.

Source: Unsplash

What does it mean to customer service?

Secrets-layer information feeds the service recovery process — what the organization does in response to a service blunder that royally screws the customer. The objective is service recovery is to turn the service OOPS! into a loyalty building event where the customer is more committed to the organization after the mishap than they were before it occurred.

The service recovery process looks like this: fix the problem fast (studies show that a response is necessary within 24 hours) + surprise the customer with something they don’t expect.

If you can’t respond to an OOPS! in 24 hours you lose and chance of enhancing customer loyalty.

And the essential ingredient of a surprise is the secret-layer; some fact or fantasy you have discovered about the screwed over person that they would be startled to learn that you know about them.

What is critical to get full value from the secret-layer in service recovery is that secret information is available to the service organization in real time.
When a mishap occurs, “What secrets do we know about this customer?” must be answered quickly so the recovery process can conclude within 24 hours.

Use the secret to personalize the process of apologizing for the mishap and ‘atoning for your sin’. Make it special. Show them that you put thought into what is the right way for you to make amends.

And they will quickly forget about the OOPS! and all they will remember is how amazing they felt when you recovered in a personal way.

What does it mean to sales?

A secrets-layer focus means that sales must be held accountable for gathering customer secrets, leveraging them as a customer engagement tool and reporting the information back to their colleagues (like marketing and customer service) who are then able to use them as needed.

Even though sales is in a great position to ask the right questions of customers, listen, take notes, and record what they discover, they are rarely asked to perform this function. They continue to be expected to perform their traditional — and commonplace — role of pushing products and services to their markets and hitting their short term quota.

And unfortunately, this traditional role contributes virtually nothing to enable an organization to stand out from their competition and gain a strategic advantage.

Notwithstanding the fact that the process exposes opportunities to grow revenue, secret gathering is an excellent way for a salesperson to deepen relationships with their customers.

The mere fact that it’s the secret discovery process is highly interactive means that relationships are automatically strengthened (with the caveat of course that fulfilling promises made is done promptly and to the customer’s satisfaction).

The way to get sales to be ‘secret agents’ is to build secret gathering into sales performance and compensation plans otherwise it won’t get done.

Sales bonuses should assign a material weight to this component to get sales attention - I suggest at least 25% of the sales bonus should be based on secret gathering effectiveness and that a customer report card be used as the measurement vehicle.

Source: Pexels

What does the discovery process look like?

The fact is that people are willing to give you their secrets every time you engage with them if the right approach is taken. 

All you need to do is to show that you are more interested in them than you are in pursuing your own agenda. By your actions tell them that you are a ’human being lover’, and that you are interested in their story.

The secret floodgates will open.

The secret gathering process looks like this:

Ask a question > listen > record what you hear > ask another question > ask another question > repeat.

The point is that we have all been taught to be in the transmit mode, anxious to tell the other person what we have been up to, what we have to sell and the attributes we possess.

To really learn about someone we need to make a right-angled turn from this behavior. We need to be open to others and focus on learning what THEY are all about.

As a way to get started, create a secrets manual on each of your high value customers.

Have fun with the idea. How about a secret agent award to honor the person who discovers the coolest secrets every month?
Or an annual recognition award of someone who excels at continually maintaining and sharing their secrets manual?

A sustainable advantage is the most difficult thing for any organization to achieve in markets overwhelmed with intense and aggressive competition.

It’s ironic that most organizations look to the text books on strategy for the solution. They all look to technologies, products, services, branding and a plethora of other tactics to one-up their competitors, yet there is one rather mundane and non-sexy thing that can be done to attain incredible strategic success: discover the secrets that decision makers house and protect — and exploit them to grow business.

Secret gathering is strategic and it should be developed as a core competency in your organization if you want to standout and power up your business.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 1.14.13 at 10:26 am by Roy Osing
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January 12, 2013

Why the ONLY statement must be about what really matters to people

Source: Unsplash

Why the ONLY statement must be about what really matters to people.

“We are the ONLY ones that .... “ is the claim that will distinguish your organization from everyone else.

It’s not about being better, best, number 1, leading or the top at anything.

It’s about being the ONLY one that does what you do>.

But your ONLY must be relevant (it must address something people care about) and it must be true (you must deliver it consistently, all day, every day)

A local radio station in Vancouver proudly states the following as their ONLY statement.

“CKWX is the ONLY radio station offering traffic and weather every 10 minutes on the 1’s.”

Interpretation: every 10 minutes they update their listeners on local traffic and weather conditions, and they claim that they are the only station that does it.

Let’s test it. Is it true? Yes it is. They deliver updates every 10 minutes as they claim.

Is it relevant? This is where I have an issue. Another radio station in the area provides continuous traffic and weather information. AM730 only provides traffic and weather. They do nothing else.

Why claim uniqueness on something that is clearly inferior to what someone else does?

People who care about getting traffic updates, for example, when they need it wouldn’t value waiting every 10 minutes to get it on CKWX when they can tune in to AM730 and get it instantly.

Make sure your ONLY talks to a capability that you have, a product or service you deliver that really matters to people.

Getting a traffic update every 10 minutes when I can get updates all the time clearly is inferior and lacks the relevance criteria of being a good ONLY.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 1.12.13 at 10:32 am by Roy Osing
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January 7, 2013

5 simple ways to make your organization awesome for customers

Source: Pexels

5 simple ways to make your organization awesome for customers.

Organizations are challenged to define what makes them special in the marketplace; to provide a compelling reason why people should buy from them and only them

Here are 5 ways you can find your way to uniqueness that your customers will honour.

◾️Declare and live the screaming imperative to stand-out NOT fit-in. Common, copycat, follower organizations are invisible to consumers and are ignored. They are dying or dead.

◾️Success starts and ends with your fans. The people who care about what you do, talk to others about you and are forever loyal to you. Never forsake them.
Always give them the best deals.

Don’t insult them by offering only non-customers special incentives to switch to you from their current supplier.
Trust that if you invest your resources in them, they will spend more with you and enable your organization to grow.

◾️Create value, don’t flog products. Seek to inspire your fans. Do whatever you can to leave ‘em feeling breathless, happy, honored, amazed, surprised and delighted.

It’s not about your product and the gee-wiz things it can do. It’s about the feelings it arouses when it is consumed in your organizational context.
PS. if you think you can survive in the long run by offering low prices, you’re so wrong!

◾️Be relevant to your customers. Know what their burning issues are. Play to them. If the value you offer doesn’t address their top wants and desires, who will care about you? Right. No one.

◾️Be unique. BE the ONLY one that does what you do. Create the ONLY Statement for your organization.

“We are The ONLY ones that….” is the only meaningful ultimate expression of distinctiveness

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 1.7.13 at 09:06 am by Roy Osing
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