Be Different or be dead

November 13, 2017

12 simple reasons your product is not as important as you think

12 simple reasons your product is not as important as you think.

Organizations take products too seriously.

They think products convey value and stress features, cool technology and price as the reasons why people should buy.

I think the product - centric strategy is severely flawed.

Products don’t make companies great. In a marketplace where benchmarking and best practices are relied on as the main vehicle of innovation, virtually every company in a given product space offers similar products.

The smartphone sector, for example, has a number of participants whose products, give or take, are essentially the same in terms of functionality and price.

Market participants claim that they have different features and that their prices are more attractive than others, but essentially they are all the same.

If products are relatively equal across all competitors, why are some companies awesome and others not so much?

It has little to do with products.

Rather it has everything to do with the company; the culture an organization wraps around it’s products and services; the context it provides for customers to engage with them

Uncomplicated moves

These 12 uncomplicated moves enable organizations to provide the WOW! cushion to sell their products.

1. They recruit sensitive and caring people who have an innate desire to help others rather than place all the emphasis on their academic qualifications and related experience.

2. They have friendly technology dumbed down to express the value it creates for people rather than emphasizing the coolness of what it does. Technology intimidates some; they get that and try to remove the mystique.

3. They create policies and rules to make it easy for customers to do business with them, not control the terms of engagement. They never say “It’s not our policy.”

Special promotions

4. They offer special promotions and deals first to their existing loyal customers rather than use them as an incentive to attract potential new customers. They look at special deals as a reward  for customer loyalty not as a tool to entice new customers away from their current supplier.

5. They make substantial investments in the local communities where they operate, and emphasize their employees and the amount of personal time they give to the volunteering effort.

6. They routinely communicate with customers keeping them abreast of what’s new and available to them. They don’t believe in mass communications; they personalize each message to make it as meaningful and relevant as possible to each recipient.

Customer engagement

7. They proactively reach out to their customers with lower cost product and service alternatives which could save them money over what they are currently using. Their priority is to ensure each customer has the most cost effective solution.

8. They have a fun esprit de corps culture where employees are allowed to be casual with customers. Informality puts customer engagement at ease and has them leaning in rather than leaning out.

9. They empower their service personnel to make decisions to resolve customer issues fast without the need to escalate the matter to their supervisor. They trust that their frontline will make balanced decisions that represent the needs of both the customer and the organization.

Empowerment

10. They are willing to provide advice to a customer to seek another organization’s product when they are unable to satisfy the customer’s need.

11. They have people available to take the customers call as an alternative to being managed by call answer technology. Their customer contact strategy is to make it easy for people to engage with them, not to force customers into using a tool of technology.

12. They treat their call centers as ‘loyalty centers’ with the emphasis on taking care of the customer rather than processing their call quickly. Maintaining customer loyalty is the focus, not managing costs.

People don’t buy products.

They buy the instruments of organizations they admire, respect and are comfortable with; whose ideals match their own.

Organizations that want to stimulate product sales should build the right culture and sales will take care of themselves.

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

• Posted 11.13.17 at 03:59 am by Roy Osing
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December 26, 2016

8 practical ways to be an awesome marketer

Source: Pexels

8 practical ways to be an awesome marketer.

There are organizations that are really good at marketing who they are and what value they create.

They exhibit marketing effectiveness.

They have marketing awesomeness.

There are others, on the other hand, who struggle to get their message across and are not contenders.

Building marketing awesomeness isn’t just the job of the marketing department; the entire organization must take on the responsibility and work in harmony to deliver it.

Awesomeness-building routine

▪️Consistently WOW! your customers — Delivering awesome customer service is fundamental to building muscle; it’s the basic platform you need to build a strong sustaining brand. If you don’t serve your customers in an exemplary way (or at least have plans to), ignore the rest of this article.

▪️Lead with innovation — Be the first ones to do something creative and ‘out there’. Yes, it’s risky to try something new, but if you try often enough you will have the winners that add dimension to your brand.

▪️Surprise your market — Do something that people don’t expect. Awesome marketers pulse surprises from time to time, creating buzz and attracting a great deal of attention.
And they don’t surprise just anybody; “delight tactics” are aimed at their loyal customers. Check out Richard Branson to see how it is done.

▪️Earn the customer’s business everyday — Don’t feel entitled to it just because you have it. This is all about never taking the customer for granted; assuming that since you already have them, you don’t have to do much to keep them.

This is a fatal mistake! Investing in deepening your relationship with a customer and earning their trust will not only keep them spending with you, it will also motivate them to “spread your word” to others.

▪️Integrate yourself in your community — People want to do business with organizations that care about the communities they are in; that give back in some meaningful way.

Awesomeness is built with a huge dose of humanity, and social investing is an effective way of allowing your softer side to be seen. And target community investments to programs aligned with your strategic plan; avoid trying to support every cause out there.

▪️Adopt customer learning as a core competency — Learn about your customers as a continuous process rather than a periodic task.

Customer needs, wants and desires change and it is critical to keep up. Awesomeness grows proportionately with how knowledgeable you are about who your customer is and what their top priorities are.

▪️Have fun! — It’s amazing how impactful it is to shed business formality and show an informal playful persona from time to time. Casual language, humour and making fun of yourself are ways to show your customers that ‘it ain’t all about the bottom line’.

▪️Think “ME” — Shift your thinking from mass production to personalized value creation. Narrow your focus to create solutions for small groups of customers rather than trying to come up with one size that fits all (which doesn’t work anyway).

Keep in mind that awesome form isn’t developed overnight; it can take years of blood, sweat and tears before the market sees you as a contender.

However, there is no time like the present to get on with it.

Define your awesomeness building program.

Start executing.

Don’t look back.

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

• Posted 12.26.16 at 04:27 am by Roy Osing
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December 12, 2016

Why a loyal customer should command more of your money

Source: Unsplash

Why a loyal customer should command more of your money.

Put your money in the rare customer who loves you back.

If you accept the proposition that anyone who is willing to pay you for a good or service is worth paying attention to, then any customer is good your business.

Right?

Maybe not.

Some customers produce revenue for you, but the emotional and financial costs you incur to generate it are unreasonable.

Some customers are more of a hindrance than an asset.

These are low or ‘no value’ customers who should command an investment proportionate to their worth.

Many organizations that I have experienced have difficulty scaling the level of investment they apply to the value of the customer.

They assume that ‘a customer is a customer’ and therefore apply the same effort to satisfy each one of them.

They treat all of their customers the same way; the highest value customer receives the sale level of service, for example, as the no-value one.

Or, they actually provide the no-value customer premium benefits that high value ones don’t enjoy. My favourite example of this are the promotional incentives offered to lure customers away from their current supplier.

“Come to us and receive 3 months free service” or “Switch to our product and a flat screen LED TV will be yours” are commonly used offers when an organization wants to add new customers.

The costs of acquiring a new customer are significant, and are often incurred for a customer who spends virtually nothing with their new supplier or they switch again when a better offer comes along leaving unrecoverable investments in their wake.

Furthermore there is unintended collateral damage from this type of promotion. Existing customers discover the special offer is available, but not to customers who may have been with the organization for many years and demonstrated their loyalty many times over.

These disenchanted ‘loyalists’ voice their displeasure to others and often switch to another organization they believe will treat them more fairly.

High performing organizations invest in customers who provide a decent return on that investment. The higher the value, the greater level attention and resources applied.

And the more favourable treatment given. The highest value customers receive the better levels of service and any new promotional offerings. Check out The Grateful Dead who understood this.

No-value ‘promiscuous’ customers, on the other hand, receive a no frills level of service and no special treatment.

Every organization has limitations on the resources they have available for their customers.

You can’t afford to be all things to all people even if they are your customers. It’s just not a responsible thing to do.

No two customers are alike; no two customers create the same economic value for you.

Determine the ones who make your life worthwhile.

Focus on THEM; leave the “bad ones” for someone else to chase.

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

• Posted 12.12.16 at 04:28 am by Roy Osing
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October 3, 2016

Why certain low value customers should be totally ignored

Source: Pexels

Why certain low value customers should be totally ignored.

This is why it’s really important to ignore selected customers. Who you ignore is just as important as who you pay attention to.

Peter Drucker said of leadership: “Most leaders don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”

The same can be said of building an effective business plan.

It’s not just about what you take on as a new direction, its more about what you do to terminate your old ways that are no longer relevant.

And that includes deciding the customers you intend to serve — the WHO — and those you choose not to serve - ‘the Non-WHO’.

Whereas the WHO represent high revenue potential, the Non-WHO are those customer groups that don’t represent significant economic opportunity for the organization.

And as a result, they warrant minimal investment.

Choosing customer groups you want to invest your valuable scarce resources in is a critical matter. You don’t have an endless stream of time and money to be all things to all people; you need to target your efforts with a minimum amount of interference that can dilute your efforts.

The Non-WHO is the enemy that can attract your attention, take you away from your game, suck you dry and give you no strategic return.

Often the Non-WHO are existing customers who no longer warrant attention. They may have been attractive at some point in the past, but no longer should command strategic focus.

These customers need to be managed out of the organization. They need to be cut loose in a manner that doesn’t create any collateral damage.

Take concrete measured action to remove them from your investment portfolio.

As well, the Non-WHO can be represented in over-the-transom business that you end up chasing because of the urgency of the moment or because you feel you have no choice but to give chase.

This yummy incoming activity can be devastating for an organized and can impede any progress towards achieving its strategic goals.

Choose WHO to serve and stick to it.

Avoid the execution leakage that forces you off strategy.

Like a selfish lover, The Non-WHO will have their way with you, rob you blind and leave you high and dry.

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

• Posted 10.3.16 at 05:25 am by Roy Osing
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