Excerpt from The Creative Sales & Marketing Manual...
Chapter 21
The Right Way to Build a Killer Brand and Create Customers for Life
Is there a right way to build a brand?
Yes!
Can we create relationships on terms that benefit both the buyer and (you) the seller?
Yes!
We can generally get want we want (sales, new buyers, repeat business, and yes…a killer brand) by looking at the relationship building and buying process through the eyes of our customers.
Looking through their eyes you’ll discover eight fundamental levels or stages universally required to create, nurture and sustain customer equity, “loyalty” and cash flow.
There is an order – a flow. Address each prerequisite level or set of needs before moving on to the next rung. Leave one level out and the relationship you seek (along with the prospect of customer loyalty) evaporates.
Use the diagram on the following page to see what these levels look like and how they all fit together.
Figure 1: Brian’s “Customers for Life” Hierarchy
Eight Steps to Creating Customers for Life
Let’s start from the bottom rung.
Level 1: Believability.
Before anything else can occur, you must pass the first hurdle by answering the first questions all long-term relationships begin with….Can I trust you? Should I believe you or are you full of crap?
To answer these questions prospects are going to search for their own answers. They want to know:
1. Who else uses you?
2. What does my personal network have to say about you?
3. What do others (online, offline and the media) have to say about you?
4. What’s your history?
5. Is it too good to be true?
6. What happens if it doesn’t work?
What can you do to address the believability litmus?
Start by just meeting the client’s expectations, which generally aren’t very high after years of abysmal service and customer horror stories. Most customers are pleasantly surprised if you do what your marketing claims you’ll do.
For instance, show up! If you say you’ll meet them or be somewhere on their behalf, follow through. Be on time and do the job completely. Honor your word, price, and positioning in the buyer’s mind.
As a subset to the above, do what you’re good at and don’t offer services or products you aren’t suited to deliver or improve upon. One-stop shopping (for fundamentally different products and services) can be a dangerous goal, since no one can be great in hundreds of different specialties.
If you’re going to surprise your client, let the surprise be a positive one. Go beyond the expected by tweaking your delivery time, increasing the value to price quotient, product or service quality, level of professionalism and attention to detail.
Additionally, be certain that your marketing message is congruent, regardless of the medium.
Be sure that your actions (how you treat your customers, delivery times, how you respond to questions, how to keep in touch after the initial sale) mirror the words you use in your marketing message?
When was the last time you read your own marketing? Is it still accurate? Or is there a gap between the promises and the reality?
Solicit and leverage testimonials. What customers say is more important than what you say – at least initially. Testimonials are one of the purest forms of customer evangelizing, so use them at every opportunity.
Testimonials help to mitigate the risk of going with an unknown company. That’s why you want to use testimonials on your website, on your voicemail, on your business cards, in your brochures, magalogs, spec sheets, and recruiting materials.
Put them anywhere they’ll fit!
Real testimonials attract more potential converts and retain current customers, by reminding them that they are part of something bigger, and that they’ve made a wise decision.
Search yourself. Schedule time to Google or Yahoo your company name to see what others are saying on blogs, message boards, forums and various review sites. Is there anything about your business that might be setting off red flags and hindering prospects from calling you?
Establish a clear policy about returns, exchanges, guarantees, warranties and customer satisfaction commitments. Are you willing to “make it right” so the customer doesn’t have to worry about making a bad decision?
Level 2: Quality. Consistency. Reliability
What creates the perception of quality?
Start with a good logo. Continue with well-written copy and clearly designed collateral with quality images that set an expectation early in the relationship. Manage the tone of your marketing material so that a definitive personality comes through.
Reinforce at this level how the consistency of your services or products allows buyers to realize an immediate return on investment.
Use the creativity and innovation strategies you’ve learned in this manual to relay the quality or artistry of your work. But, do so in a way the keeps the message from being overshadowed by the delivery.
Be a professional at all times. In addition to your vocabulary and demeanor, be sure that your appearance and the appearance of your staff reinforce the image your marketing materials convey.
Leave your personal issues at the door. When you go to work, be there completely. Put 100% of your efforts into being present mentally and physically.
Instead of thinking about the problems at home or with your relationships, or thinking about where you want to go to lunch or how you wish it was already quitting time, focus your energies on doing your job well and listening to what buyers are saying to you.
Additionally, the company’s problems are not the buyer’s problems. Don’t air dirty laundry in front of customers.
Not everyone is always going to get along all the time. Not every policy is going to make you or your team happy. Still, keep your internal infighting or disagreements with others hidden from your customers.
Most buyers have their own dysfunctions to deal with. They are turning to you with the hopes that you, your product, service or expertise will help to ease or eliminate those problems. If you’re not feeling positively passionate, fake it until you do.
Define the rituals that customer are expected to participate in. What can they expect from your company that makes them feel like a member of special group? What customs make you memorable?
Pay close attention to the product or service delivery. Your product and service specs play as much importance in producing sales as your best salesperson. Make it to spec or don’t make it at all.
Keep a pulse on the attitudes within your organization. If it’s true that poop rolls down hill, your customer is going to get steamrolled over by it eventually (and not be back for seconds). The damage caused by low morale becomes even more obvious when an employee or manager loses their cool and takes it out on a customer.
Additionally, your marketing efforts go to waste on apathetic employees who have no interest on whether the company makes a profit (let alone directing customers to your company website).
Provide the best service they’ve ever had. Be world-famous by empowering trained staff to make decisions without your approval and constant micro-management.
Train your staff to deliver friendly, knowledgeable and proactive service. Baptism by fire is a risky training technique. Everyone is responsible for sales and marketing. That’s why the company should train everyone to know the intricacies of your offers, how to work through worse case scenarios, and to stay positive even when annoying, and arrogant people try to bring them down.
What about cleanliness? Be fanatical about maintaining a pristine environment. The aesthetics of your business communicate to customers and to employees about the pride the company takes in itself.
If you see something out of place, a display that needs some TLC or a floor that’s dotted with litter – clean it up. Inquire about the systems in currently in place to maintain the cleanliness of your workplace. Are they working?
Focus on your turnaround time. For returning calls. For answering emails. For delivering your products or services. Don’t keep the customer waiting 20 minutes to see you. Time management is a function of marketing!
What will it take to keep you on schedule? Are you being realistic in your marketing materials about your turnaround times?
With so many factors beyond your control, give yourself extra time to complete the project, ship the order, or render the service. If they get it sooner than expected – you’re ahead of the game!
Connect using real people. Answer the phone, cordially and succinctly – using a real person! It has gotten to the point where we almost expect to hear those mechanical or pseudo-human voices instead of a breathing, cognitive person.
Buck the automation trend by using live people to answer your phones during normal business hours instead of recorded messages or subjecting callers to voice mail hell. Return email promptly and personally. Not everything necessitates using email auto-responders.
Have enough people available to provide exceptional service. Can your customers count on consistent staffing levels? What good is great marketing if you don’t have the staff in place to support the influx of new customers?
Don’t forget your management team. Is the management team running your company up to date on changes? Are they communicating what’s happening on the front lines? Do they have the actual skills to produce quality and consistency at every level in the organization?
Are managers coaching staff to serve customers and build sales or are they hiding in an office hoping that the shift will be over soon?
Lousy management is the kiss of death to any business that seeks to earn the trust (and dollars) of its customer base.
Level 3: Convenience
Call it laziness. Call it too much to do in too short a time. Whatever you want to call it, your customers are looking to follow the path of least resistance. Make the process of owning your product or service easy. Companies that make purchasing convenient enjoy the reward of repeat sales.
Here are the questions your customers are asking at this level.
What are the fewest steps needed to own it?
How can you do it for me?
It is available in multiple formats?
Are your distribution points accessible, understandable and easy to connect to?
Can I just plug it in and go?
Remember that buyers fall into two distinct groups, the do-it-yourselfers and the you-do-it-for-them-ers.
Cater to both groups.
To provide additional service for those who want to do-it-themselves, create educational tools and regular upgrades that lengthen the product or service life cycle.
Simplify your systems and go to great lengths to make it easy franchise your systems and create do-it-yourself manuals that are a joy to read and easy to understand.
For those buyer who prefer that you do it for them, build continuity programs into each sale. Ask if they would like to participate in auto-debit programs, lifetime upgrade programs and we’ll do it for you insurance policies.
Reinforce the “Peace of Mind”, and “Always be Current” cards. People will pay a premium for the ability to put their problems in someone else’s hands.
Level 4: Perceived Value
We’ve discussed ways to create value in detail. What’s important here is spelling out to the customer that they are the real winners because of the relatively low amount they have to invest versus the results achieved.
You can construct your value proposition based on a variety of outcomes including:
- time savings
- faster realization or implementation of a goal
- as a defensive strategy (against inflation, changes in technology, higher costs in the future or lower availability of key supplies)
- an offensive strategy that preempts the competition
- where you are located (accessibility)
- how purchasing is actually an investment
- how it improves job security, or makes the buyer more attract to other employers
- how the purchase protects their privacy
- how it protects their family’s or company’s well being
Additional questions asked by customers at this level are:
What does it fix?
What does it do to protect my assets and I?
How badly do I want it?
To whom does it connect to me?
What does it help me to escape?
Is there a Jones Factor? Will my neighbors be envious and congratulate me for making such a great purchase? Does buying this keep me popular? Does it make me relevant?
Level 5: Prestige and Exclusivity
Have you ever wondered why someone would purchase a $500,000 vehicle when a $20,000 vehicle will suffice?
It’s because they can.
Human nature drives us to look for ways to differentiate ourselves. Almost every culture has class systems, castes and stark differences between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
Whether this is fair or just is beyond the scope of this manual. What’s relevant here is that the majority of consumers seek ways to create purpose and meaning through their purchases.
We feel better about ourselves when we buy something that few others have or can afford. If we can go to the front of the line or have access to premium services or products reserved for the select few, they will pay handsomely.
As a marketing and sales professional, you can leverage this desire for prestige and exclusivity by making it cost prohibitive for the majority of people in your general target group to afford the crème de la crème.
Or make the steps required to earn the right to become part of an elite group or inner circle long and complex. People want bragging rights. So make them pay for the right to brag.
This is essentially the strategy of colleges and universities. Time and money buy you access to a degree. The more you pay and the more you play the more stripes on your graduation gown and letters after your name.
For better or worse, it’s a strategy that works, and one that you can emulate.
Cult your business and level of service. If you’ve addressed the first four levels, you are in a position to create fanatics who go to great extremes to get what you offer. People want something to believe in, and to give them meaning. It’s your job to create something to believe in.
What is the strongest set of words and images you can come up with to make your product or service appear to transcend the mediocrities of the marketplace?
How does your offer serve as an anchor, or act as a god or goddess? What does it heal? What evil does it remedy? What sin does it wash away? How does it bring the buyer closer to paradise? What does it keep the buyer from losing? What makes it unique, genuine and worth the buyer’s effort?
In addition to making the “cost of entry” time intensive, labor intensive or money intensive, you can use other means to meet the demand for prestige and exclusivity. These include:
- Limited supply (version, edition, exclusive offer, duration, quantity, and accessibility)
- Referral or invitation only events, meetings and consultations
- Exclusive access or member privileges (My wife loves the fact that she has direct access to our banker because of our platinum checking account)
- Make it arduous to pass “initiation” or to enter the “inner circle” of special members.
- Complicating the rites of passage by creating a special initiation process, complete with signed affidavit that the inductee will not share the information with anyone outside the group
- Promising insider knowledge and inner circle secrets known only by the elite and taught only by a reclusive guru
More importantly, make it easy for customers to evangelize on your behalf. Create an experience worth evangelizing with others.
The highest indicator of a job well done is when a buyer puts his or her trust equity on the line for you by telling someone else to specifically choose your solution over everyone else’s.
Level 6: Relationship
The pain of starting over is a big reason why some relationships (business or otherwise) last far beyond their life expectancy or usefulness.
When we get to know someone, and they in turn get to know us, bonds form that are hard to sever. The pain of starting over is too much for many to bear. So rather than moving on, we rationalize that even if ending the relationship is a logical step, we should be content with what we have.
Even when a better option comes along, the effort required to engage in the “courting, getting to know you, learning to trust you, loving you despite your flaws” stages cause even the most fed up person to stay right where they are.
For a marketer who wants to retain his current customers, that quality of inaction is a very good thing. Take the time to appreciate your current customers and reward them for their loyalty.
In your communications with them, remind your customers of how long they’ve stayed with you and how much you’ve been through together. Cement that history with anniversary celebrations.
Most importantly reinforce the value of maintaining a monogamous buying, selling and referral agreement.
In other words, create a strong sense of importance to the value of remaining the vendor or solution provider of choice. Strongly encourage your buyers “not to cheat” or muddy the relationship you have with each other. If you love me you won’t shopping elsewhere!
Make it clear to the customer that they should continue to come to you exclusively when it’s time to purchase, upgrade, renew or pass along referrals.
Remember that guilt is a powerful emotion! Tempered with genuinely delivering great products and great customer support, you have the right to encourage your customers to stick around and to have them evangelize on your behalf.
Provide service beyond the sale. Help your buyers buy more by building a back-end into your business model. Start with planned follow up. Show buyers how to get the most from each purchase. Make it easy for them to purchase more and purchase more often. Deeply integrate your solution into the buyer’s life by making it more intuitive to use.
The more uses a buyer has for your offer the more intricately woven it becomes into the every day tapestry of who they are and how they do things. This multi function, ease of use and transparent level of service makes leaving, switching, or trying other competitors painful, unpleasant, time-consuming, and guilt producing.
Level 7: Experience
Buyers are always seeking their next “fix.” Your job is to give them that fix and improve the experience in the process. The experience they get from you, your products and your service justifies any sacrifice they might have to make. What are you doing to constantly improve or change your product or service options?
The questions your customers are eternally asking are:
- What’s new?
- Where else can I get it?
- With whom can I share it?
- How often can I get it?
Answering these questions helps to drive innovation by creating new uses for your product, creating new ways to talk about your product, or creating new distribution points and new profit centers.
Be unusual where usual is expected. Look at your industry norms and find 5 to 10 areas where you can innovate beyond the ordinary way of doing things.
For instance, in my creative marketing workshop, I challenge my clients to “-est” their business. Specifically, I have them write down five areas where they can claim your products, services or entire company is the most extreme in compared to the rest of the sector.
People like extremes. They want the biggest or smallest, the most expensive or the cheapest, the purest or the dirtiest. What are five “-ests” that you can use to clarify your uniqueness and meaningful points of differentiation?
Level 8: Ultimate Outcome
How does this purchase, belief or action make me healthier, happier, sexier and/or wealthier? Ultimately, people want one or all of four of these outcomes. Remember that there is emotional wealth, spiritual wealth, physical wealth, and mental wealth.
How do your products or services lead to the acquisition of those outcomes?
More specifically, what core Emotional, Spiritual, Physical and Mental truths or outcomes do buyers reached via the acceptance of your marketing message (and by taking action on it)?
Treat buyers with respect. Don’t talk down to them. Constantly educate them on how to best use your offerings. Keep them informed of changes. Go easy on the hype and let your record of accomplishment, quality and consistency do the selling. In return, demand that each buyer respect your time, expertise, value and employees.
For those customers who refuse to act like professionals, refer them to others with lower standards, and replace them with customers who are willing to consent to mutual respect.
Additionally, allocate more time and options to your best buyers and be willing to walk away or phase out buyers who no longer fit your organization.
Get business for your buyer, or for your buyer’s buyers. Consider how your business can act as a natural conduit for developing sales on your customer’s behalf. Think about ways to develop referral systems for your buyers. Find out who they consider to be the ideal customers and develop multiple channels where people can go to connect with potential prospects.
Look at blogs and social network sites that create online referral communities. A small POS display that says “Next time you’re in the market for XYZ, we recommend you ask for Company Z by name. You’ll be glad you did” is a powerful way to channel new business to your clients. It might be pure goodwill, or part of a reciprocal joint venture, where they do they same for you.
Another simply strategy is to make extra business cards publicly available of those customers who you’re trying to help. Reciprocity is a powerful tool, because what goes around usually comes around.
Give buyers valuable information to help build their businesses. Think of their ultimate outcomes instead of just your product or service.
By providing exceptional information to others – not just conventional marketing collateral, but good stuff with no strings attached – you instantly begin to position yourself as an expert and resource. People buy from experts more than they do marketers. Whatever you create and give to them, make it something they’ll use and show to others.
There you have it … the secret to creating customers for life. Use this hierarchy and these ideas as a roadmap to creating, nurturing ands sustaining customer equity, loyalty and cash flow. Start with the “Believability” rung, and move up from there.
Account for and incorporate all the rungs in your marketing plan so that you can confidently reproduce the results repeatedly.
A Final Note…
Memorize this important formula:
Attitude + Action + Consistency= Repeat Business.
Break the formula down and you’ll get it.
Attitude: As discussed in earlier chapters, your attitude towards life affects more than just marketing. It influences everything. Rather than zeroing in on the “can’t do” within your business or industry, train your employees to have an attitude of “What CAN we do?” and “What will it take?” that is personified through your behaviors and actions.
“What CAN we do to attract more business?”
“What will it take to best service our clientele?”
“What CAN we do to retain more of our best internal and external?”
“What will it take to make our delivery of service even better than yesterday?”
“What CAN we do to best leverage our small marketing budget?”
“What will it take to complete our marketing objectives on time and on budget?”
Action: Faith without works is pointless. Give yourself and your entire staff the mandate to act on their new marketing know how and customer retention skills.
This goes for you too. If an opportunity comes along for you to exploit a new trend or respond to new suggestions that will positively improve the organization, have the courage to act.
Consistency: As discussed earlier, be consistent in your message, your tone, your service, your positioning, your doctrine, your core proposition and your attitude.
Know who you are and what your organization stands for in the marketplace. Follow these principles everyday, not just when you feel like it or the spirit moves you. Inconsistency breeds confusion. No one wants to be part of a confused, unstable relationship. Especially your customers.
Brian Norris is one of the world's leading marketing minds, He isthe author of The Creative Sales and Marketing Manual. As a best-selling author and professional speaker, his work is read and his ideas are used by organizations across the globe. He also conducts marketing training programs and keynotes to assist other marketing and sales professionals to improve their best practices. Mr. Norris may be reached by emailing info@briannorris.com or calling 414-899-1905.
