Promise-Driven Organizations | WOM10

NOW is the time to…BUILD LOYALTY

Blaine Millet — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 17:26:36 +0000

"NOW is the time..." Series

Given our current set of business circumstances, this NOW series will help you take a leadership role in your industry…regardless of what your industry may be. This series doesn’t sell anything…it simply HELPS your business stand out and rise above your competitors. These are practical, actionable, quick-acting, and proven ways to elevate your business above others and make you “top of mind” to your customers. I guarantee they will make a difference in your business. I hope you will find this helpful. I hope you will share them with your fellow business owners and leaders. And I look forward to hearing about how they helped you in some way. If you missed any of the previous articles in the NOW Series, here they are for your reference…

BUILDING LOYALTY is a big bucket of money sitting there, waiting to be picked up!

It is also one of the most significant ways a company can leap ahead of their competitors. But these can only happen when you have a strategic focus on building Loyalty with your audience. Before I share how you can build massive Loyalty, let me clarify one thing. You can only earn Loyalty from your Customers. It should be the goal of every company to get all their desired customers to the status of Loyalty…it’s money in the bank.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Speaking of money in the bank, do you calculate a Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) for each of your customers and customer groups? If not, I highly recommend you start here. It is an excellent way for you to get some hard analysis on which customers make you the most profit. It is one tool I find many companies are not using (yet) but will open your eyes to some fantastic information when you go through the exercise of calculating it for each customer.

I talk about it extensively in my upcoming book (learn more about it at the end of this article), but suffice it to say, it should be on your required list when analyzing customers and their contribution to your organization's profitability. In essence, it calculates how much profit you get from each customer and customer group you serve. You essentially identify how much money you make from a given customer over their lifetime (or projected lifetime) minus the costs it takes to acquire them and service them. Let’s look at a straightforward example…

And Example...calculating CLV

Let’s say a customer of yours had an average purchase of $500, and they purchased from you four times a year. Their purchases would give you a total revenue of $2,000 each year. If this customer stayed with you for five years, their estimated revenue for your company would be $10,000. However, to calculate their Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and profitability, you would need to subtract the costs it takes to acquire and maintain this customer. Let's say it cost you $1,000 to initially acquire the customer and $250 per year to maintain them as a customer (your internal cost to support them). It would cost you $2,000 over the same 5-year period. When you subtract these costs from the revenues, you end up netting $8,000 of gross profit for this particular customer…their VALUE over their LIFETIME. Their CLV is $8,000.

If you did this analysis for all your customers, you would quickly see which ones had the most VALUE to you. It is an excellent way to determine which customers you should invest more in and which customers you should fire because they literally cost you money. If you don’t have this level of analysis, how do you ever know? Gut feel or intuition? Maybe, but having the facts can give you a completely different perspective about some of your customers. Now that we know which customers we should keep and which ones we should get rid of (giving them to the competition is a great idea) based on profitability, let’s look at how we build more Loyalty to work with our most profitable customers.

Companies that have a heavy “acquisition strategy” can end up spending much more per customer and may end up with a negative CLV.

When you change your mindset from “acquisition” to “retention and loyalty,” you will see amazing things happen in your business. Your profitability will go up, and your marketing will completely change…both of which are awesome things! I hope you can read my upcoming book on this topic. It represents an incredible opportunity for virtually every company on the planet. And, most importantly, it moves you one step closer to building Advocates, the Holy Grail for any business if they truly want to dominate their market!

To build Loyalty, you have to go back to the basics…building Trust by keeping your Promises.

As you can see in the Advocacy Architecture diagram below, there are a few stages your audience needs to go through before they can become Loyal to your business. Everything starts with building Trust. Without trust, there is no chance of building Loyalty. But once you have someone’s Trust, you can then begin to build a solid and “Trusted Relationship” with them, which leads to Loyalty.

If you do nothing more than improving the percentage of Promises you Keep, you will be on a much stronger path to building Trust, which can lead to creating Loyalty with your audience. Sounds simple, right? It isn’t. I have found it very hard for companies to keep their promises. First, most employees don’t understand they are making promises when they interact with their customers. Many promises are “implied,” where a Promise wasn’t actually made, but the audience believes a Promise was made. These are the most dangerous to an organization. The customer hears you promised something to them, but you don’t think you committed or promised. We have a disconnect. Other times, we make a commitment and then don’t keep it…breaking a promise. Both implied and not keeping promises kills the opportunity to build Trust.

You can help build more (and stronger) Loyalty in your audience by helping them improve their life and/or their business.

Another way you can help build more Loyalty in your audience is to “help them improve their life and/or their business.” When someone sees you going out of your way to help them improve, they have more commitment to you. The more things you can do to help them out, the more sense of Loyalty they have to you. People are loyal to those who help them…period. Think about how you specifically help your audience improve their life and/or business.

Are there specific things you do today?
How often do you do them?
How many people in your organization focus on doing this for your audience?
Is it consistent and something you do regularly?

These are all great questions to stop and ask yourself if you want to improve Loyalty. Take some time to think about the Advocacy Architecture and do a self-assessment on how well your company does at each stage to building Loyalty. If you feel you lack in these areas, it would be a great time to identify WHY you are and then develop some specific plans for HOW you can do more in this area. And not just tell your employees to keep more of their promises, for example, that never works. There have to be specific process changes and Customer Experience changes if you want to move the needle in any of these areas. It can be done, and relatively quickly…well within 30 days. You can see significant improvement in 30 days if you have a definite and targeted plan. If you want more guidance on this, shoot me a message, and I would be happy to talk with you and help you get started. Building more Customer Loyalty will definitely change your business significantly…and quickly.

My GOAL For YOU...

As with this series, my goal is always the same…help you be more CUSTOMER OBSESSED so you can become “REMARK”able, where your customers (and others) are doing your marketing for you and acting as your “Advocates and Marketing Agents.” Everything I share with you has this underlying purpose and goal attached…I want you to “light up” your audiences so they can become your Advocates and Marketing Agents. That’s it. If you want the same, keep reading this series. Thank you…

My NEW Book

I referenced earlier that I have a new book coming out. It is finished and getting ready to be launched, so you should hopefully see it this coming month. It will change your business…forever…guaranteed. This series of “NOW is the time to…” talks about some of the book's components. Unlike I can do here in a brief article, I share specific ways for HOW to make it happen in your organization. It’s transformative. Keep your eye open for the announcements of its upcoming release. If you want to be on a list to know about it exactly when it comes out, shoot me an email at blaine@WOM10.com, and I’ll make sure you get on the early announcement list.

Tell me when it is released

The post NOW is the time to…BUILD LOYALTY first appeared on WOM10.

NOW is the time to…BUILD TRUST

Blaine Millet — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 13:29:00 +0000

"NOW is the time" Series

Given our current set of circumstances in business, this series is designed to help you take a leadership role in your industry…regardless of what your industry may be. This series doesn’t sell anything…it simply HELPS your business stand out and rise above your competitors. These are practical, actionable, quick acting, and proven ways to elevate your business above others and make you “top of mind” to your customers. I guarantee they will make a difference in your business. I hope you will find these helpful. I hope you will share them with your fellow business owners and leaders. And I look forward to hearing about how they helped you in some way. If you missed the first one, NOW is the time to…DIFFERENTIATE, check it out, it will give you a great foundation to build upon. Here’s the second one…

TRUST...something we all want more of

Fake news, telemarketing, multilevel marketing, lying and deceiving politicians (on both sides), products that don’t work the way they are supposed to, less than spectacular services, increases in sexual harassment, and the list goes on and on as to why our level of trust is at an ALL TIME LOW! It was already at an all-time low before COVID hit (Trust…the most “Taken for Granted” Part of Business) and it continues to decline.

Now is the time when we need more Trust…businesses need to step up and build more trust with their audiences if they want to create Loyalty and Advocacy…which are the Holy Grail for business.

Ask yourself, as the CEO, Business Owner, or Leader in your company, “Are we doing things to specifically “build” more Trust with our audience (including customers) during this crisis or are we doing things that “erode” Trust with our audience?” Be honest with yourself…the real answer to this should help you see whether or not you need to be more “proactive” in specifically building more Trust. If you feel that you are “building more Trust” with your audience, the next step is to identify specifically “HOW” you are doing this on a daily basis. If you answered “no” to this question, then the next step would be to hold a brainstorming session immediately with your leadership team and identify some specific ways where you can build more Trust.

If you aren’t “building” Trust on a daily basis, you are “eroding” Trust on a daily basis.

Think of the above phrase for a minute. It’s synonymous with the idea in business that if you “aren’t moving forward” in some way you are “falling behind.” There is no “staying the same” when it comes to business. The same is true with building Trust. Unfortunately, our audiences need constant reinforcement and emphasis if they are to see any changes. They need to “see and feel” what you are doing that will allow them to Trust you more tomorrow than today. They need constant reinforcement to “why” they should Trust you.

Most leaders I talk to don’t have a “specific action plan” for building Trust. They think it will happen just by the way they do business. This is false thinking. Trust is prescriptive. You need to have specific (prescriptive) measures and actions you are taking if you want to continually build more trust with your audience. These don’t have to be major programs, but your actions need to be consistent and frequent to be effective.

PROMISES...the best and most effective way to build Trust

In the previous post on DIFFERENTIATION, I talked a bit about Promises. And I can give you a spoiler alert as you read more of the articles in this NOW series…Promises will come up again and again. They are a game changer. Let me repeat this just to burn it into the front of your brain…KEEPING YOUR PROMSES WILL CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS…GUARANTEED.

Every employee in every business makes Promises throughout the day. Some are very direct and some are indirect and quite passive, but they are still Promises. Employees make them internally to other employees, they make them to their customers, and they make them to others in their audience. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of Promises being made every day in your business. Here’s a way to learn more about what promises are being made in your business today…

Walk into any area (department) of your business and spend 15 – 60 minutes just listening. Listen to what is being said. I doubt you will hear the actual word “Promise” being used, but if you listen closely, you will be hearing them “committing” to doing certain things. These commitments are Promises in the eyes of your customers, employees, and others in your audience. It’s always amazing to me when I interview customers how often the customer uses the word “Promise” when they describe what the company does. They always tell me that the company “promised” to do something and they didn’t. Yet when the employees are asked, they never said they “promised” them anything. Why the disconnect?

Your audience hears the word “Promise” even if no one ever specifically said it.

I know, this sounds crazy (and it probably is) but it’s what’s happening inside your business today…guaranteed. Your employees are saying things to your customers (and others) where they actually think a “Promise” is being made…even if the word is never said. These are “inferred or implied promises” and they are, in the mind of your customer, just like saying the word “Promise.” It drives business leaders nuts. But, the customer, in their own mind, hears a Promise being made. How do you deal with this?

Use the word "PROMISE" and change the game

Here’s something I would encourage you to think more about…actually using the word PROMISE. Instead of wondering whether or not your audience is hearing this word, use it. Whenever you think you are making any kind of commitment (large or small), use the word Promise. For example, if you are going to deliver something to the customer on Friday, tell them, “I Promise we will deliver it to you by the end of the day on Friday.” Now there isn’t any misunderstanding and the customer probably heard that phrase anyway, regardless of what was really said. But now you have it on the table, in front of them, and they will recognize it. They will really appreciate it and you will have just taken away a ton of stress from them. Now you just have to keep the Promise, which is also the most important part of making a Promise.

To build Trust, you have to KEEP the Promises you MAKE.

Now that you have started telling your audience you “Promise” to do something, the key is to KEEP this Promise…every time. It’s the “keeping” part that builds Trust, not the “making” part. The “making a promise” part is easy, everyone does that. It’s the “keeping your promise” part that builds Trust. You can make all the Promises you want but if you don’t keep them, you will be worse off than if you didn’t make any. Having plans in place where you can keep these Promises is a game changer. Caution…this doesn’t just happen because you say it should. Telling your employees they need to keep all the Promises they make won’t change anything…they won’t keep them. Not because they don’t want to, but business processes and other demands will deter them from keeping these Promises.

Go back to the beginning of this article and you will see that “building Trust is a prescriptive process” that has to be orchestrated throughout the organization. There has to be processes and maps in place to help the employees keep their promises. If these aren’t in place, they won’t be able to keep their Promises. I have never seen a single situation where employees can naturally keep all their promises without a prescriptive, well-designed plan in place. They need tools and processes in place so they can keep their Promises as part of their job. They have to be “supported” beyond words if you want them to deliver on the Promises they make.

There are other ways to build Trust. This is just one, albeit a major one. However, developing a prescriptive process and plan for how to help your employees keep their Promises will change the game NOW…today. As I mentioned at the start of this series, I want to give you things that you can do quickly and that have a long-lasting impact for your organization. Creating a prescriptive recipe for how you will keep more of your Promises is exactly that…it will change the game almost immediately for your organization when you put it into action. If you need some guidance on how to get started doing this, shoot me an email and I’ll give you some additional thoughts to get you started…complementary of course. I’m here to help…I want your organization to build more Trust.

My GOAL for YOU...

As with this series, my goal is always the same…help you be more CUSTOMER OBSESSED so you can become “REMARK”able where your customers (and others) are doing your marketing for you and acting as your “Marketing Agents.” Everything I share with you has this underlying purpose and goal attached…I want you to “light up” your audiences so they can become your Advocates and Marketing Agents. That’s it. If you want the same, keep reading. Thank you…

My NEW Book

I referenced earlier that I have a new book coming out. It is in the final editing stages right now so you should hopefully see it as early as August but most likely in September. It will change your business…forever…guaranteed. This series of “NOW is the time to…” focuses on some of the components that I will talk about in-depth in the book. And, unlike I can do here is a brief article, I share specific ways for HOW to make it happen in your organization. It’s transformative. Keep your eye open for the announcements of it’s upcoming release. If you want to be on a list to know about it exactly when it comes out, shoot me an email at blaine@WOM10.com and I’ll make sure you get on the early announcement list.

Tell me when it is released

The post NOW is the time to…BUILD TRUST first appeared on WOM10.

Statistics Won’t Change Your Business…Your Customers Will

Blaine Millet — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 20:28:17 +0000

I have never come across any Business Owner or Leader who decided their business should become Customer Obsessed because they heard some positive statistics about why it will change their company...no one. What did cause them to change was what they heard (or didn’t hear) from their customers.

Statistics can do whatever you want

Statistics are a tricky thing when it comes to making decisions. You can use them to support or reject any business decision. They are universal in being able to do both. Anyone can find statistics to support their claim…especially now that we have the internet and can find virtually any number we need online. So, when someone says they read some great statistics about why they should or shouldn’t do something, it’s usually because they want to simply support their position for a decision they have already made.

They are also great to use when you want to use when you want to confirm your “gut feeling” about something you want to do or don’t want to do. Most business owners will tell you they have a “Good Gut Feel” about what they should or shouldn’t do in their business. No data, just a gut feel. Who am I to challenge this…I have seen too many of them turn out to be right and a great decision for the business.

What WILL change your decision or “gut feel”

There is only one thing I have seen that will consistently trump a leader’s decision or gut feel about something…their customers. When their customers give them feedback on either their experience, a product/service, an employee, or a variety of other areas of the business, leader’s will change their decisions. And rightfully so. If their customers are expressing discontent in some way something usually happens if the company cares at all about their customers.

Or if their customers are raving about something they are doing, they will pick up on this and want to do it either more often or throughout more of their company. Capitalizing on some of the awesome things happening inside your company is just smart business.

Ask your leadership team these questions

Here are a few simple questions that would make for some great conversations at your next leadership meeting…

Do we know specifically “how our customers feel” about the experience they are getting from us…all of us…every person that interacts with our customer in one way or another?
Do we feel that our “customer experience is consistent” throughout the organization or does it rock in some areas and suck in others?
Are we consistently “keeping the promises we make” to our customers? How do we know?
If you were a customer of our organization, what would be “the top 3 things you loved” about working with us and what would be “the top 3 things you hated” about working with us?
Do you, as leaders in this company, feel like our “customer experience is head and shoulders above our competitors” or is it just comparable to our competition?

Your Opportunity…

The (honest) responses to these questions will help you assess whether or not you are more of a “commodity” or you are “differentiated” in the eyes of your customers. No statistics, no gut feel, just the facts. If you are truly honest with yourself you will realize you are probably closer to a commodity than you are a unique, completely differentiated organization IN THE EYES OF YOUR CUSTOMER. It really doesn’t matter what you and I think…it only matters what the people who write us checks think.

The opportunity always starts with “self-assessment” before change can happen. I can guarantee you there will be NO CHANGE until you have openly discovered (and admitted) where you are today. But once you do, amazing things can happen. You can actually start to move along the path to market domination and true differentiation in the eyes of your customer.

If you honestly answer these questions, you won’t need any statistics to support or reject your position…you will know EXACTLY where you stand. I get to do this for clients and it is eye-opening. We discover things that the leadership team would never know by what they were currently doing. This first step is an amazing opportunity to take the first step to becoming more CUSTOMER OBSESSED.

What to do next…

You can start collecting this information TODAY. It’s right in front of you if you choose to take advantage of it. Put a plan together that will allow you to accurately and consistently capture this feedback right now. Whether you use me or someone else to help you get it, it will be the most valuable information you can have about your customer today.

If you ever have any questions about this or any other aspect of what it’s like to be Customer Obsessed or how you can set up a process to capture this type of information, just ask and I’ll be happy to answer them. Or if you want to understand how to do this in more detail and how you could move your company to becoming more Customer Obsessed, I’d be happy to meet with you (complimentary of course) to discuss it further for your own particular situation. Hopefully you found this helpful…if so, I think it’s our responsibility as fellow business owners (and leaders) to share this with others we think could benefit from it…please help them out and share this with them.

I hope you decide to take advantage of the massive opportunity that awaits you and you make a strategic decision this year to become Customer Obsessed. It will put you on a completely differentiated path so you can be known as a company that is memorable, remarkable, incredibly helpful, someone who delivers an unbelievable customer experience, and someone who keeps their promises 100% of the time. That would be awesome!!

The post Statistics Won’t Change Your Business…Your Customers Will first appeared on WOM10.

Customers are Continually Asking…We’re Just Not Listening

Blaine Millet — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 19:24:21 +0000

Do you feel like you actually listen to what your customers are asking for? Almost every business leader says they do…but customers don’t believe them. Sure, if you ask your customers if they would like a better product or additional services at a better price and they give you feedback you are listening…but is this enough to change your business to be at a competitive advantage? Customers say no.

One phenomenon I find prevalent in most businesses is that they are happy to respond to questions that are asked of them or they are asking of their customers. This is only natural. These are usually the basic questions a customer asks every business. But what about the questions that aren’t being asked by the business but the customer is answering for you anyway? I know, seems strange…but follow along with me and this will make perfect sense in a minute.

Customer Feedback isn’t Always in Response to a Question

Most of us are duped into believing we have to ask our customers everything we want to know. And we actually believe they will respond and tell us the answers we need to know. Doesn’t happen. This hasn’t worked in decades…yet most businesses still pursue this as a viable channel for feedback and answers. It isn’t and it doesn’t (hasn’t) worked in a very long time. Think about this for a moment…

There are lots of issues with asking customers questions…here are just a few to consider. See if any of these ring a bell for you…experiences you have had with collecting valid customer data.

The vast majority don’t respond…survey’s (or other inquiries) give responses in the single digit range…like 1% to 5% might respond, if you’re lucky
The customers responding are rarely the ones we want (or need) answers from…they are usually the wrong customers giving us input we don’t need or want
Usually the “extremes” are the ones replying (those really unhappy or those very happy) so we don’t have a “voice of the majority” …these “passives” are the group we need to hear from
Most customers feel like it won’t change anything so why take the time to respond
Most surveys or questioning techniques are disrespectful to our customers…we ask them for boatloads of time and information that is unwarranted or unrewarded
We may only be capturing them at a moment in time instead of along their customer journey where we need their input and data…if they haven’t bought recently you can’t get a fresh perspective
And on and on and on…asking customers for feedback is tricky, expensive, and most likely won’t give you the data and information you need to make significant changes

Asking Does (and can) work

Despite all the reasons why asking your customers for feedback doesn’t work, there are definitely ways to get answers from your customers that will work for you. However, this is a much deeper topic…one for another blog post…sorry. Stay tuned…it will be coming out in the next few weeks.

How to get great Feedback DIDN’T ASK FOR

Here’s the real answer to my initial question of “what feedback are you getting that you aren’t asking for with your questions” …your CUSTOMERS’ EXPERIENCE. Every day your business has tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of interactions with your customers. These interactions contain incredibly valuable information and data. And the best part is that it is free! And it is coming to you with honesty and integrity. This is information being thrown at you and your people every minute of every day.

What are you doing with it? Are you even capturing it? Are you even aware of it?

The Opportunity…

For most businesses, they aren’t doing any of the above…they are just getting it thrown at them but not capturing it. What a waste. Here is an opportunity for you to get some of the most valuable input from your customers that isn’t being captured, analyzed, discussed, or improved upon with any formal plan or actions. From my perspective (and hopefully yours), this is missing the gold sitting right in front of you. This is one of the best opportunities any leader can have with their company.

What exactly is this information I am talking about that you are getting thrown at you every day? Let me break it down into a few key areas for you to think about with regard to your own company.

· Information about how your employees are making your customers feel after each interaction. This is readily available via call recording, or detailed observations, or immediate follow up with your customers…this is extremely valuable (and helpful) experiential information
Information about time…how much time it is taking to serve your customers either in person or over the phone or through email…TIME is the most important asset anyone has today according to a research study by Forrester…how are you treating this asset with your customers
Information on Promises being made to your customers and how many of these Promises are being kept by your customers…you don’t need feedback to tell you if this is in or out of alignment…this is the cornerstone to building trust
Information on your culture within your company…how they interact with your customers will tell you a lot about your values and your culture…are your employees living your values and are they demonstrating and living the culture you want in your business

These are just of few of the ways you can start collecting this incredibly valuable information WITHOUT ASKING A SINGLE QUESTION of your customers.

What to do next…

You can start collecting this information TODAY. It’s right in front of you if you choose to take advantage of it. Put a plan together that will allow you to accurately and consistently capture information from these many sources sitting in front of you right now. This is not only free information, it is probably the most valuable information you can have about your customer today. Free and valuable…is there any reason why you wouldn’t want to capture this information?

The post Customers are Continually Asking…We’re Just Not Listening first appeared on WOM10.

Could Your Business Survive WITHOUT Marketing?

Blaine Millet — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 16:15:31 +0000

What if...

You didn't have a website
You couldn’t mail out your brochures
You couldn’t do any more email campaign blasts
You were banned from social media channels
You couldn’t do any more cold call soliciting

What would you do to survive, let alone thrive as a business? I would argue that we are there today.

You might still be using some or all of the tactics listed above to reach your audience. But if you’re like most companies today, you are finding their effectiveness may be so low (possibly nonexistent) that it’s almost like you’re not doing any marketing. One thing I hear a lot today is, “Our marketing just isn’t working very well any longer and very few, if anyone, are responding to our offers and solicitations.”

This is happening more and more and by all indications, this trend will continue getting worse going forward. The noise level of marketing is becoming deafening.

Is this happening to you? What can you do about it? What can you change or how can you turn this upside down so that your marketing efforts are paying off and you are getting your audience to respond to you and you can get more customers? There is an answer…one that has been around as long as time. Most businesses are just not using it to its full potential…nor are they leveraging the most powerful weapon they have in the war on marketing.

WORD-OF-MOUTH Marketing

I know, right now you’re probably saying to yourself, “I already know about the power of word-of-mouth but it’s hard to get more word-of-mouth.” And you would be right…it isn’t easy to just decide you need more word-of-mouth and it appears. But one thing is for certain, the investment is worth it and it pays dividends for a very long time…it is a “long-tail” solution. And if you want more word-of-mouth in the future, you need to START NOW!

There are prescriptive ways you can start building more word-of-mouth and referrals over time…it just requires focus and persistence.

There are two CRITICAL INGREDIENTS to building more Word-of-Mouth

Once an organization commits to creating a business strategy around getting more word-of-mouth, they can literally stop worrying about the more traditional marketing approach. These aren’t “silver bullets” or “magic pills” you can just take today and life is better tomorrow, sorry, word-of-mouth doesn’t work that way. But like in everything we do, small improvements made consistently can lead to big changes.

There are several steps you can take to start getting more word-of-mouth…and you can start doing something in these areas TODAY! There are two critical cornerstones for creating massive and consistent word-of-mouth, regardless of your industry or competitive position.

Upgrade your Customer Experience

First, and without hesitation, you should UPGRADE YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE. This is the number one thing people talk about when it comes to a business…not their products and services, but HOW THEY WERE TREATED and HOW THE COMPANY MADE THEM FEEL.

Visualize this…Disneyland empty, after hours and closed. What does it look like? Pretty mediocre…I’ve seen it in this state before. A bunch of average rides, average places to eat, small areas to walk, not many places to sit, and certainly not new and shiny. When you look at it in this light, you wonder why anyone would ever go there. These are the “products and services” of Disneyland if you were looking at it like a normal business. There is nothing impressive about it and nothing is certainly differentiating or worthy of any word-of-mouth.

Now inject what their business is really about, the GUEST EXPERIENCE, and you have a completely different business. The place comes alive and it becomes the “happiest place on earth.” It is vibrant and exciting and full of fun and energy. You don’t mind waiting an hour in line for a mediocre ride or foo because you are having an incredible time and everyone is happy. You see, the “product and service” of Disneyland isn’t the rides, food, and shops, it is their guest (customer) experience.

And since this is their “differentiator,” they get massive word-of-mouth. Everyone who has ever been there has a story to tell about their experience at Disneyland…and it’s usually awesome. This is how Disneyland markets…they get you and I to rave about them and tell all our friends that they need to go there and have their own experience at the happiest place on earth. Even though Disneyland sends out information and has a website, along with all the other things listed earlier, if they were all taken away they would still survive and people would continue to go and tell others about it. Even without any other marketing stuff, people would continue to talk about Disneyland regardless of whether or not they use any other source of marketing.

Build More TRUST

Second, and a close second to creating and incredibly awesome customer experience, is BUILDING MORE TRUST with your audience. As with the customer experience, this isn’t easy work either, but work that needs to be done if you want to get massive word-of-mouth. NO ONE TALKS ABOUT YOU IF THEY DON’T TRUST YOU…period.

There isn’t a single part of your life that exists in an awesome state without Trust. No relationship, no customer loyalty, no friendships, no partnerships, no nothing…all of these need Trust to be successful. Your business isn’t any different from any of these other relationships. To obtain more Trust and ultimately get more word-of-mouth you need to have a very specific TRUST STRATEGY.

Keep in mind, you can’t go to your employees and tell them, “OK, starting today we are going to build more trust with our audience and customers.” That will fail…and most likely make things worse. Keep in mind if you start to build more trust and not everyone is on board with how you are doing it (the processes you use), you’re going to cause your customers to think you are schizophrenic…one day you do things that they trust and the next day you don’t…this will cause confusion in the eyes of your customer.

Trust is one of those things that when you get it you are golden and when you lose it, it is incredibly hard to get it back. It takes five times the effort to get trust back than it does to keep it. This is why you need to create a “Trust Strategy” to help you steadily and consistently demonstrate to your audience you can be trusted. When this happens, it is a game changer for any business.

CUSTOMER OBSESSED companies have a distinct advantage…they get tons of word-of-mouth!

I would encourage every business leader to do some introspection and give your company a grade on these two critical elements to building more word-of-mouth. Obviously we all want to have an A+ grade, but that’s not where most organization start. Start by assessing where you are today in these areas and then make a leadership decision that you want to significantly improve them and get them to a top, differentiating level. If you do, you will see the results through more word-of-mouth and more buzz in your market.

Ask yourself a very important question, “If we didn’t have use any of the current marketing tools, would we have people spreading word-of-mouth about us and be able to survive and grow?” After you implement some of these changes necessary to deliver an incredibly awesome Customer Experience and your audience knows they can Trust you, word-of-mouth will start to go up…and go up quickly. And once word-of-mouth starts to climb, it feeds on itself and you get more and more of it every day. Word-of-mouth feeds on word-of-mouth.

Just Ask...

If you ever have any questions about this or any other aspect of what it’s like to be Customer Obsessed, just ask and I’ll be happy to answer them. Or if you want to understand it in more detail and how you could move your company to becoming more Customer Obsessed, I’d be happy to meet with you (complimentary of course) to discuss it further for your own particular situation. And if you found this helpful happened to think of someone you know who could benefit from this post, please help them out as well and share this with them.

I hope you decide to take advantage of the massive opportunity that awaits you and become Customer Obsessed so you can be known as a company that is memorable, remarkable, incredibly helpful, delivers and unbelievable Customer Experience, and garners massive amounts of Trust. That would be awesome!!

The post Could Your Business Survive WITHOUT Marketing? first appeared on WOM10.

Death by Mediocrity

Blaine Millet — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 13:28:11 +0000

Sorry for the morbid title, but it’s the only way I can hopefully get you focused on what might be happening in your business today when it comes to your customers. Customer Loyalty is at an all-time low…customers are switching companies faster than they change their underwear it seems. But it doesn’t have to be that way…you can create more customer loyalty and advocacy faster than any other time in history!

The famous physics discovery, Newton’s first law of motion, describes the state many companies find themselves in when it comes to becoming Customer Obsessed. Newton said, “An object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.” Unfortunately, most companies remain at rest…but the few that are in motion tend to say in motion and capitalize heavily on the opportunity to differentiate and stand ahead of their competitors.

Mediocrity is death in today’s fast, ever changing market. Customers DON’T REWARD MEDIOCRITY…they REWARD EXCEPTIONAL.

Unfortunately, when it comes to delivering a differentiating, awesome, and mind blowing customer experience, the majority of companies are mediocre…at best. You may think you are above being mediocre, and you may very well be, but upon further analysis, most aren’t. How can you tell?

3 Ways Customers View You as MEDIOCRE

Let me back up and describe what customers view as “mediocre” when it comes how they are treated by most organizations. They summarize it in 3 main ways (or areas).

The Customer Experience isn’t MEMORABLE

If your customers aren’t saying, “WOW, I love the way everyone at this company treats me as a customer…I always feel special and like I really matter to them,” then you aren’t delivering a memorable and remarkable customer experience. Delivering a “good” or even “great” experience today is mediocre…everyone is doing it. The bar has been raised because there are so many more competitors fighting for your customers business. But adding some very specific Customer Experience Maps to your organization you can change your experience from mediocre to awesome and spectacular. It won’t happen overnight, but it will definitely be differentiating.

The Company Doesn’t Keep Their Promises

if your customers believe you don’t keep your promises you are basically “dead man walking” in today’s economy. This is one of the easiest ways to kill a company. But the real issue is whether you even know the promises your employees are making…most leaders don’t. And often time’s employees may not think they are making a promise but the customer feels like they are making a promise.

This misalignment of "promises made with promises kept" is fatal. This, too, can be overcome when an organization creates a “promise inventory” and is able to identify specifically what promises are being made to their customers. Once you understand the promises you can incorporate process changes that allow your employees to keep these promises. Again, it won’t happen overnight but you can change this into a significant positive pretty quick and your customers will notice the difference immediately.

The Company Doesn’t Help Me Improve My Life

This may seem subtle to some but it is big to your customers. When they don’t see you going out of your way to help them improve their life or their business they simply think you don’t care. Companies that are viewed as not caring are commodities today. It’s easy to find a company that doesn’t really show they care and when the customer does, they shop on price.

But there are many ways you can take advantage of the opportunity and change how your employees interact with your customers. You can arm them with incredible tools they can use to help their customers in every role the customer audience plays…this can create a WOW factor very quickly when implemented. Again, it doesn’t happen overnight and needs a very specific strategy so your employees can be consistent with how they help your customers. When this happens over and over, you become very differentiated in the eyes of your customers.

Back to the test…how do you stack up in each of these three areas? Not from your perspective…from your customers perspective. If I went out and talked to a mere 20 of your customers selected at random, what would they tell me about how you perform in each of these 3 areas?

If you don’t think you would get resounding applause from them in all 3, you’re mediocre. Sorry, but it’s the way your customers feel about you. And unfortunately, being mediocre is the same as being a commodity in today’s marketplace. Anyone can be mediocre…there isn’t any differentiation between mediocre companies…except price.

The OPPORTUNITY...

This is where the opportunity lies for those leaders who can see past living in a state of mediocrity and moving their company to a state of being memorable, differentiated, unique, in high demand, and being more profitable…they have made the move to becoming Customer Obsessed! All of these words describe Customer Obsessed companies…they are just different.

Take the time to do an honest assessment of your organization with your leadership team. It is worth the investment to truly understand where you are today. Don’t believe your own internal hype from all your employees telling you how great they think the company is…ask your customers. Better yet, get someone not a part of your company to ask your customers. I always get different answers when I interview customers for clients than they get when they talk to them about how they feel. Get the real story so you know how you stack up in these areas.

Invest the time to better understand why your customers don’t see you (or do see you) as memorable, or someone who doesn’t (or does) keep their promises, and why they don’t think (or do think) you are helping them improve their lives or their businesses. I can guarantee you it will open your eyes to what you have either chosen to ignore or are not aware is going on with your customers.

Once you understand, then, and only then, can you begin to put together a strategy to change your situation and start to take advantage of the opportunity that exists in everyone’s marketplace, in every industry. The opportunities are boundless today…but only those who have the foresight and vision will take advantage of them. Are you one of them?

What To Do Next?

If you ever have any questions about this or any other aspect of what it’s like to be Customer Obsessed, just ask and I’ll be happy to answer them. Or if you want to understand it in more detail and how you could move your company to becoming more Customer Obsessed, I’d be happy to meet with you (complimentary of course) to discuss it further for your own particular situation. And if you found this helpful and are thinking of someone you know who could benefit from this post, please help them out as well and share this with them.

I hope you decide to take advantage of the massive opportunity that awaits you and become Customer Obsessed so you can be known as a company that is memorable, remarkable, incredibly helpful, delivers and unbelievable customer experience, and who keeps their promises 100% of the time. That would be awesome!!

The post Death by Mediocrity first appeared on WOM10.

When you don’t keep your promises it costs you more than money…Amazon

Blaine Millet — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 13:54:21 +0000

Customer Obsessed companies keep the promises they make to their customers…its part of their culture and DNA. But what happens when they don’t keep their promises? It can cost them a lot more than money and can often times be hard to repair. It always leaves a stain.

A few weeks ago I ordered a product called “Immunity Drops” from Amazon for my wife…she loves these and swears that they keep her healthier in the “cold and flu” season. They were easy to order. I am an Amazon Prime member so it only takes a couple clicks and in 2-days they arrive…easy. I place the order on Monday and the order page told me they would be delivered Wednesday…perfect tmiing since she just ran out.

However, Wednesday comes and goes and no Immunity Drops. What??? Amazon “promised” me they would be here on Wednesday and now they aren’t. They didn’t keep their promise. I wasn’t very happy and my wife definitely wasn’t happy. They made me a promise when I ordered them and now they didn’t keep it. That’s the problem with a promise, once it’s made we don’t worry about it because we know (or hope) it will be kept. And when they aren’t, its much worse than if you hadn’t made one at all…you’ve broken a promise. Amazon broke their promise.

As expected, I contacted Amazon customer service to figure out what happened and to hopefully resolve the issue. When I asked them where they were (expecting them to say they would be here any time) they told me they would be arriving next Tuesday, almost a week later! What??? I explained when I ordered them on Monday they promised me they would be here on Wednesday and now they are telling me they are a week late. They lied…no other way to say it. They made a promise on their order page and didn’t keep it.

I explained that my wife really needed them now so I asked if they can expedite the order and get them to me tomorrow. They can’t. I asked if they could send me out a new one since the site says it offers 1-day delivery. They are happy to do that for me and pay for the expedited order…only one problem. When I clicked on the 1-day delivery option, the delivery date wasn’t tomorrow…it was next Tuesday…the same day my original order was going to arrive. What???

I was now totally confused…they “promise” me 1 or 2 day delivery and I am getting either 4 -8 day delivery…this isn’t keeping their promise. Their response is to reimburse me for 1 of the 2 products I ordered…not expedite the order. I explained I didn’t need the discount, I needed the product. They had no option but to give me a discount and call it good.

They ended up giving away money AND they still couldn’t keep their promise so they went down a few notches in my mind as being an awesome customer obsessed company. I have always looked at Amazon as a customer obsessed company who finds ways to make my experience better and better when I shop with them. They let me down on this one…and offered no real solution other than to throw money at it.

Think about this example in light of TRUST. Trust is built when you make AND keep your promises…simple. Yet incredibly difficult for many companies to execute. For the sake of example, let’s say I ordered 5 more products from Amazon and 3 out of the 5 had the same issue…promising me a date they couldn’t deliver on. Would I trust them more or less than I do today? Easy…of course it would be less. If they did this over time, I would essentially have no trust for what they said regarding their shipping schedule because they demonstrated to me that they simply couldn’t keep their promises.

Promises are powerful things…we expect people to keep them once they make them. When they don’t, their trust meter goes down a notch. When you continually fall short on delivering your promises, you continually erode the trust your customer have in you…until at some point it’s gone.

Here’s the real kicker…most companies have no idea what the promises their employees are making on a daily basis…until it’s too late and the customer leaves. When this happens, your only hope in saving the customer is to try and give them a variety of concessions to win them back. That costs you money, if it even works at all. If you don’t give them concessions or they have had enough of your empty promises, they simply leave. Sometimes you end up giving concessions and since they still don’t trust you they leave anyway…losing on both ends…money and the customer.

This is pure bottom line profit to a company. You just gave away your entire profit margin on the product plus you lost the cost of time it took to deal with this issue. This is a lose-lose for any company.

NOT KEEPING PROMISES IS EXPENSIVE!!

To close out the story with Amazon, they ended up giving me back the entire cost of both my products and still didn’t expedite the shipping date. It cost them the product margin, the employees’ time to deal with me on the issue, and they lost some trust with me as a customer. Even though this wasn’t a huge order (around $50), multiply it by thousands and you are now talking about some significant profit they are giving away on a single product. It’s a promise not being kept that most likely isn’t going to get discussed or fixed.

But there’s the biggest kicker of all when you don’t keep your promises…I LEAVE. I leave because I can’t trust what they tell me and I can’t count on them to do what they say they will do. Before the turn of this century there weren’t as many options so disgruntled customers had to stick around and put up with companies not keeping their promise. No longer…there are tons of options for everything today thanks to the Internet. I can get this particular product I ordered from at least another 20 other places than Amazon…and they all said they would deliver it when they said. I would be happy to pay a few dollars more for them to keep their promises and get it to me when they say they will. So will your customers!!

As a business owner, ask yourself, “Are we keeping the promises we are making? Do we even know what they are?” These two questions should scare the living daylights out of any business leader/owner. If you don’t know, then the answer is invariably a YES. And if it’s a YES, then your only question is how much profit are we throwing away and how can you identify the areas where we are making promises we aren’t keeping so you can stop it?

When you know the answers to these questions and can be at a point where your customers know you will keep the promises you make, you will be more profitable and your customer loyalty will increase. And the customers will be so happy that they will tell others…they will become your ADVOCATES in the market and proactively tell others about you. This too is pure profit since it didn’t cost you anything to acquire this new customer…your current customers did it for you.

Companies that want to strive and achieve the elite status of being Customer Obsessed keep their promises…every day with every customer. It is one of their competitive advantages and certainly a differentiator today. Do some introspection and see how your company stacks up in the “Promises Made = Promises Kept” analysis. I’m hoping you are keeping all the promises you make.

If you have any questions about this, just ASK…I would be happy to share some additional insights with you. Or if you feel you need to talk about this in more detail, I’m happy to sit down with you and give you some deeper insights, complimentary of course…that’s one of my promises. Either way, I would love to hear from you either in a comment, via e-mail, or a phone call to hear what you found out about your own organization. I know it will be eye opening for you…the only question is what you will do next.

The post When you don’t keep your promises it costs you more than money…Amazon first appeared on WOM10.

When Did We Stop Using “Common Sense”…One of our Most Powerful Weapons to Differentiate Our Business and Dominate the Competition

Blaine Millet — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 13:10:26 +0000

I would offer that most of us make things too complicated. We take something simple and for a variety of reasons we make it more complex. Complex to a point where it almost becomes unusable. This doesn’t (shouldn’t) happen if we step back and look at what we are really trying to accomplish.

Start by looking at many of the processes you have in your business for your various departments such as operations, sales, marketing, management, or something else. At first look you might think they are really great and efficient…but are they easy to execute? And most importantly, how do they impact your CUSTOMER? Is your customer happier because of your existing
processes or are they potentially less happy because of the way you are doing something?

Often times the beasts we have created, called business processes, work against our overall ultimate objective of making our customers lives easier and better. They end up getting designed and built to make things more efficient and effective FOR US instead of OUR CUSTOMERS. I’m sure this was never your intent, but it happens. We took something simple and made it complex for the sake of being more efficient internally or saving some time or money for our employees…but not our customers.

I would challenge all of us to step back and take a deeper look into what we are doing in our businesses and why. Ultimately, asking the question, “Why are we doing this that way,” should be focused around how we help our customer’s lives or their businesses. The real question we should be asking is, “How is this making our customers life (or business) easier and better than it was before they came to us?” This is the question that gets lost in our efficiency and complexity changes. It shouldn’t be this way…let’s change that.

I would argue that using “COMMON SENSE” is a great place to start…it’s where I start when I talk (or work with) any business owner or executive. It’s not that hard…but it takes quite a bit of discussion to help get leaders back to the basics of their business…and how it impacts their customers.

For example, from a very simplistic (and practical) perspective, it’s fundamental to ask “Why are you in the business you are in today?” Hint…it isn’t to make money (that’s a result) or you have missed the point. You are doing what you are doing for a purpose…it’s time to go back to that purpose. Granted, it isn’t generally an easy discussion for many who have been in business awhile, but nevertheless, it is a very valuable discussion to have. Sometimes this takes several hours to days for me to ferret this out for a business.

But even after this discussion, a more “common sense” and powerful question should be, “What are we doing to make our customers lives better today and how are we making them feel after they interact with us?” This is a very difficult question for most leaders to answer…and their employees generally have no idea either, they were just told to do certain things as part of their job. But I can guarantee you that your customer is asking this question every time they deal with you and your employees.

The “common sense” side of this says we should step back and come up with some simple, yet powerful answers. The simple, common sense, gut feel answers hold the solution for any company. They are the ones that are easy to understand and your customer is looking for. They don’t want to hear about all the fancy processes, they just want you to make and keep your promises and treat them as if they are the most important person to your company. That’s it…very simple. But we make it complex…too complex.

I’ve been there too…more times than I would like to admit. One day in particular a few decades ago this happened to me when I was working for a Fortune 100 company and leading a group to implement an IT solution. After we gave a very detailed and “complex” about all of our fancy stuff on fancy slides with fancy pictures (and far too many words), the CEO/Business Owner made a comment I will never forget. He simply said, “This looks really complex and expensive to me.” I just had a major life lesson and blow to the gut…he was exactly right.

He didn’t get it…he didn’t see the simplicity of how it would help him to help his customers better, and he only saw complexity and the high price of this complexity. He wanted a simple, easy to understand common sense solution he could wrap his head around and see how it was going to help his customers and make them happier than they were today. I didn’t get it either back then…I forgot about common sense and went for the complex. We lost the sale…and rightfully so.

Here’s a suggestion for you and your leadership team. Step back, start asking simpler questions about your business and how the things you do affect your customers. Be honest with yourselves and don’t try to justify why you are doing things a certain way today. Take a fresh view of what is truly happening so you can analyze it…FROM THE CUSTOMERS PERSPECTIVE. Act like customers of your own business and see how you would feel if you were being treated the way you are treating your customers right now. Again, BE HONEST about it and do some introspection and self-analysis with your team. This isn’t a one hour staff meeting exercise…this could take days, and possibly weeks, depending on your business.

Use your “common sense” abilities and ask if you think this makes sense. Start at ground zero and work up to what is happening in the business. Start with the basics…such as something simple like how you answer the phones throughout your business. How does something this simple project how much you care about your customers, the ones who pay for everyone to be working there? Then look at more involved activities, such as how your customers feel when they walk into your place of business. How are they greeted? Do they feel like the most important customer you have and they look forward to coming into your offices?

Simple questions to ask…but massive impacts on your customer and how they think of you.

Go back to using your “common sense” and if it doesn’t feel right to you I can absolutely guarantee it doesn’t feel right to your customer. Do the introspection, do the work of really analyzing what is going on in your business with your customers.

I CAN GUARANTEE IT WILL CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS (AND PERSPECTIVE) FOREVER.

If you want to talk more about this, have a question, or need more guidance on how to approach this, shoot me a message and I’ll be happy to discuss this in more detail and give you some guidance in this area. My treat…my passion is to get every company treating all their customers back to the way we should (and expect) to be treated. After all, aren’t they the ones keeping your doors open?

The post When Did We Stop Using “Common Sense”…One of our Most Powerful Weapons to Differentiate Our Business and Dominate the Competition first appeared on WOM10.

2 Assets which Lead to either Differentiation or Risk of Extinction

Blaine Millet — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 17:01:58 +0000

There are always certain aspects of every business, when not integrated, put them at high risk of not surviving…and they are what keeps CEOs and Business Owners up at night. When a business has lower quality products, inefficient services, poor customer experiences, or a variety of other items, they are putting the business at risk. But now there are 2 items, in the current Internet Revolution, which have become so critical that they can take down a company even when they have high quality products and services.

These two critical items are directly linked to your customers…TIME and TRUST…and if they are missing today you are at high risk of becoming extinct. I call them the “Twin T’s”. But if you have them, you can lead the competition and become much more differentiated in the eyes of your customer.

Every business leader should do an in-depth analysis of their own business to see how they are doing at managing these two critical assets…today. I guarantee you will find some amazing answers (some good and some bad) to why your customers either love to buy from you, why they may be shopping around, or why they are leaving.

TIME…according to Forrester Research (and others), is listed as the most valuable asset people have and want today. They all want more of it…or at a minimum they want to make the best use of it. We all know we have the same 24 hours in every day but it’s how it is being used that is concerning people more and more. Think of it in the reverse direction, people want to either “make better use of it” or “not waste it.” This is how people are thinking about time and how they are thinking about your business.

Customers are rapidly choosing companies who they feel help them maximize their time.

So the question to ask yourself as the CEO or Business Owner is, “Are we helping our customers make better use of their time when they interact and buy from us or are we costing them time?” If you ask this question in every aspect of your business, you will find out very quickly if you are on the path to extinction or if you are on the path to differentiation.

You might answer the question with a resounding YES and say your sales people and customer service people are very efficient at helping them get what they want when they interact with us. I would challenge you to look further into the process to see if this is actually the case. For example, many sales and service departments in businesses are predominantly “order takers” because the customer calls up with a specific request…I need XYZ. The sales department says great, I can get that for you and have it to you by Tuesday. Seems efficient, right? It is as long as all you care about is taking the order and “assuming” the customer knows everything about it and its use…many actually don’t.

How many times does a customer buy something only to find out it isn’t the right product or service? If you have zero returns or issues, then you could say 100% of the time…very few can say this. Instead, they got the wrong product because they thought this is what they needed…now it gets returned and they start over with the buying process…a huge time waster. But if during the interaction with your people, they had asked some simple questions, such as “Why do you want product X?” or “Out of curiosity, what are you planning to use Product X for?” or “What issue are you trying to solve by using Product X?” or a host of other probing questions, you might just find out they don’t need Product X and they need Product Y.

When this happens for a customer and they realize within a few minutes you were able to save them a ton of time because they were going to buy the wrong product and now you have steered them to the right product they love this interaction…and are much more likely to both shop with you again and tell others about you…the two key goals of delivering an awesome experience.

Looking at TIME in a slightly different way, what if you knew your customer and that based on their buying patterns they always call within a certain time to get the same product. Why would you wait for them to call and waste more of their time ordering the product over and over again? What if you put in an automatic ordering function that shipped the product to the customer when they usually need it again and then just invoice them on a certain date…with the understanding if they didn’t need it they can return it without any cost? And explain to them the purpose is to save them time so they don’t have to continually call in for the same product. You just helped save your customer more of their most valuable asset.

There are plenty more examples of how thinking creatively about the customer can change your relationship with them to one of LOYALTY and ADVOCACY. This is at the heart of why it is so critical to become CUSTOMER OBSESSED in today’s economy. This is at the core of helping your customer be more efficient with their most valuable asset…TIME. If you don’t have a Customer Obsessed strategy, you are most likely a “product/service centric” organization. When you implement a Customer Obsessed Strategy, you change the benefits your customer will get from you…and they immediately start thinking and seeing you as being different.

TRUST…we are now living in the “Trust Economy.” Because of the factor of TIME and commoditization in the market, customers are looking for those they can explicitly TRUST. They don’t want to worry about all the details and increase their risk. Trust lowers their risk and gives them peace of mind. And when someone interacting with you has peace of mind, they want more of it and avoid others that don’t give them this calming emotion.

Trust is a huge DIFFERENTIATOR for a company…possibly the most valuable asset a company can own.

Trust is earned by keeping the promises you make to your customers. When customers feel like they trust you, then they will tell others about you…but not until they trust you. NO ONE wants to tell someone about a company they don’t trust for fear of losing credibility with their friends or colleagues. And if they aren’t sure if they trust you yet, they will tell others that they bought from you but then qualify it by telling them they don’t know that much about you yet.

“Trust is so valuable today that a business should do everything they can to earn it and twice as much not to lose it.”

[bctt tweet=”Trust is so valuable today that a business should do everything they can to earn it and twice as much not to lose it.” username=”BlaineMillet”]

Trust starts at the CEO. If the CEO wants a company that is known for keeping its promises, then it starts with two primary components…processes and the customer experience. BOTH have to be in alignment to be able to deliver on the promises made by their employees. If the processes and customer experience are designed to do whatever it takes to keep a promise, you will build trust…and your customer will see it and feel it with every interaction. You can’t fake trust!

TIME and TRUST are the reasons why Word-of-Mouth is so Powerful today…more than any other time in history. People consider Word-of-Mouth to be a “time savings” rather than a “time waster.” And people only talk about the businesses they “trust”.

For example, you are looking for a great restaurant in either your current city or a city you are visiting. One approach is to go to Google or Yelp or Open Table and do some searching…this takes TIME. You have to do the research, compare reviews, look at the menus, check out the location, and a host of other “time consuming” activities to find something you would feel good about. The alternative is to simply ask your “TRUSTED network” of friends and colleagues what restaurant they would recommend based on your criteria. They shoot back some suggestions with personalized comments about their experience and you pick one that sounds the best for what you want…a significant “time savings” and from a source that is “trusted”.

As a leader in your business, take the challenge and honestly assess how you are delivering on TIME and TRUST to your customers. I believe this will be an eye-opening experience for you and help you see your company the way your customer sees it every day. And as always, if you want to gain more insight into this area and learn more, I’m happy to sit down over coffee and share some additional thoughts.

Amplifying these two key assets could be the game changer you have been looking for to finally differentiate your company from the other businesses in your market…and put you on a path to growth, not extinction.

The post 2 Assets which Lead to either Differentiation or Risk of Extinction first appeared on WOM10.

The “Plunge” of Newspaper Advertising…it’s a CUSTOMER Issue

Blaine Millet — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 19:54:33 +0000

Image created by and courtesy of Wall Street Journal

I’ve talked about this issue in probably 700 of the 1000+ speeches I have given over the past 8 years…traditional media, predominantly newspapers, are in a free fall and it will only get worse. To prove this point, a recent article in WSJ (Wall Street Journal) shared some research by GroupM where they stated that “global spending on newspaper print is expected to decline 8.7% in 2016…the biggest drop since the recession of 2009 when it dropped 13.7%.” These are big numbers when converted to dollars. And while this is significant, it isn’t my point…their CUSTOMERS are the real issue.

We can talk all day about the implications this has for many people, including the employees and suppliers to these organizations, but that is a topic for another day and another discussion. Let me just leave this one on the table by summarizing it in just 3 words…THEY MISSED IT. If you want to read more about how this impacting thousands of employees and changes in their industry I would encourage you to read the article, “Plummeting Newspaper Ad Revenue Sparks new Wave of Changes.”

These traditional media organizations, newspapers being a major component, missed it…they missed the Internet Revolution and the Digital Economy. They were so powerful and consumed with their own success and domination that they missed the Tsunami headed to shore that was going to change their world forever. And if you need a quick refresher…think of Craigslist…the first “shot across the bow” that literally wiped out their stalwart of classified advertising. They never recovered from this and never attempted to change their model to compete with Craigslist…they missed it.

I could go on and on about how they missed many other aspects relating to their industry but that is not the point I want to make…or the opportunity that is present today for EVERY BUSINESS LEADER. I want to talk about HOW THEY COULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS FROM HAPPENING so we can all learn from each other’s mistakes and apply them to your industry.

I want to answer the question, “WHY DIDN’T THEY SEE THIS COMING…THEIR CUSTOMERS WERE TELLING THEM WITH THEIR ACTIONS.”

These changes didn’t happen overnight. Granted, they happened faster than any other time in our history but they weren’t instant. There were plenty of warning signs from their customers…their subscribers, advertisers, and readers…that could have guided them out of the cave. Customers were telling them how they wanted something more effective, less expensive, and easier to use.

Back to Craigslist for an example…it was a great model they could have overcome and become a leader in if they had been more “outwardly focused” rather than “inwardly focused.” They missed it. When Craigslist entered the market it was new and innovative…a Blue Ocean strategy for a fat and overpriced service called classified ads. I know, I placed many of them in my day and couldn’t believe how much I had to pay for minimal results. It was a bloated system designed to make newspapers very rich.

And just like all the other models that come along and blew up a bloated industry (think of Uber, AirBnB, Amazon, Zappos, etc.) they became successful because the incumbent’s didn’t want to change their model…it was their “cash cow” at the time and they made billions. They had all the power because they had the audience…the CUSTOMERS. They could have adopted more of a Craigslist model and stopped Craigslist in its tracks…but they didn’t. They thought because of their power in the market they could dictate what the customer should get…remember Henry Ford when he only wanted to offer black cars?

If they had actually LISTENED TO THEIR CUSTOMERS and realized their true wants and needs…to sell their stuff in less time and less money…they could have owned this market and created an entirely new revenue stream. They missed it because they didn’t listen to their customers and come up with a plan to give them something of great value. The only wanted to offer it in black.

They also missed that the CUSTOMER WAS IN TOTAL CONTROL of the purchasing decisions. With the switch from the Industrial Revolution to the Internet Revolution, customers had many more choices and could now vote (with their wallets) which one(s) they wanted to support. They chose Craigslist because there was no competitive alternative from the newspapers. The newspapers customers left. They went to a better model…one that gave them what they were screaming for…efficiency, time, and cost.

The newspapers must still be in denial today because they still don’t have an offering to compete effectively with Craigslist. But as the saying goes, “the cows have left the barn” so their opportunity is gone. They missed it.

THIS WAS A CUSTOMER ISSUE…IF THEY WERE LISTENING TO AND IN TUNE WITH WHAT WOULD HELP THEIR CUSTOMERS LIVES THEY COULD HAVE CHANGED.

Now I would ask you to think about this with regard to your own business…your own industry…your own customers. What is it in your industry that is “fat and bloated with margin” and not giving your customers what they truly want at a reasonable price? I believe there are opportunities to identify this in virtually every industry. What exists in what you do or provide to your customers they would love to see changed? What could be changed in your business which would actually help your customers lives (or businesses) improve? What could you offer that would be more efficient and/or less costly?

And what could you change in your CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE which would blow your customers mind in how much you cared about them and demonstrated how much you cared about improving their lives (or business)? What are these? If you don’t know, it’s time to find out…because they are there. If you don’t believe the opportunity is there and there is nothing you can do, go back up to the top of this post and reread the case study on Craigslist…there is always an opportunity.

THIS IS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR EVERY BUSINESS LEADER TODAY…identify the areas by finding out from your customers what would improve their life significantly if you could change it. Be bold…be open minded…be creative…and encourage this feedback from your customers. If you do this…constantly…they will actually see you truly care and maybe, just maybe, start telling you something they aren’t telling anyone else (including your competitors).

When this happens, you all but eliminate the danger of becoming the “newspaper in your industry” and it opens the door to become the “Craigslist in your industry.” This is where future minded business leaders want to go…now you have the insight to get there. Are you up for the challenge?

The post The “Plunge” of Newspaper Advertising…it’s a CUSTOMER Issue first appeared on WOM10.

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