Pain Killer Marketing

Hurricane Irene - Lessons for Business

2011-08-29T04:33:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Irene is moving through eastern Canada and out to sea just as fast as the storm moved into North Carolina, New Jersey and New England, leaving behind a mess to clean up. Over 20 people died in only the third hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey in the past 200 years. There was an estimated $7 billion in damages; however, it could have been much worse. As bad as it was, some of the predictions and fears for destruction in highly populated areas were not realized. This photo is of flooding in New Jersey.

What lessons should business take from this? Our view is that predictive metrics played a key role in reducing the deaths, injuries and destruction. The forecasting of the Hurricane Center was very accurate and timely. People had warning. Flights were cancelled. Airports were closed. Transportation systems were shut down. Every attempt was made to save life, property and infrastructure. People throughout the region were asked to evacuate low lying areas, for example. Public officials were able to predict where flooding was likely and thereby prevent loss of life. Damage occurred, to be sure, but the precautions reduced the impact of Irene significantly.

What we have advocated for businesses is to have internal predictive metrics that can predict behaviors and outcomes with customers. One prime example from our presentations and book is the idea that if popcorn is less than 10 minutes old in a movie theater, it will taste fresh and the customers will like it. That metric was derived through research and used to predict how customers would react to the popcorn based upon how old it was. We are not comparing the impact of Irene to popcorn, but the idea is that predictive metrics can save disasters and minimize negative impacts for businesses.

Developing predictive internal metrics for businesses is both an art and a science, just as it is for hurricanes, but it can be done. Our book outlines the basics of approaching this problem. For every issue that is important to your customer (like the freshness of the popcorn in a movie theater), there should be at least one internal predictive metric (such as a kitchen timer that is set for 10 minutes near the popcorn popper in the movie theater) that can warn the business when things are going awry, so you can take action (throw the old popcorn away and pop another batch), hopefully before your customers notice a problem. To see a couple of videos about this process, click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.

Are you prepared for disaster? If a Hurricane Irene type of event were to approach your business, what precautions would predict that you have minimized potential damage to you and to your customers? What internal predictive metrics would you monitor? What actions would you take?

As we also discuss in the book, the House of Quality and other techniques can be used to not only find and document those predictive metrics, but also to decide which ones to act upon and how. We will leave that discussion for a future blog entry.

Does Higher Customer Satisfaction Always Mean More Sales?

2011-04-16T20:20:00.001-07:00

In brief, the answer is “No!” – You must do more than merely drive customer satisfaction scores up. As an illustration, consider the Cadillac Brougham of the 1980s. The design of this automobile had virtually no changes from 1978 through 1992. During most of those years, I was working at Cadillac. The result? The people who loved that car kept buying it, through several lifetimes of automobiles (typically 2 to 5 years of ownership). They tended to be very loyal. During that ten-year plus span of time, the average Cadillac buyer aged almost ten years as well. Customer satisfaction was going up for this car. Those who lived long enough bought several and loved each one. However, sales went down!

We were experiencing a diminishing, perhaps dying (literally) market of customers who loved our product. Thus, despite the notion that satisfying customers leads to increased sales, it is not merely the driving up of the scores that delivers sales. You must also have exciting products that attract and please new customers as well. By the time the Brougham was significantly altered, many of the original target market had died. It had been 14 years. Even though these buyers loved that car, we needed to attract a new audience to maintain or increase sales.

Thus, increasing customer satisfaction scores is not enough. Remember, these scores come after the fact, sometimes one or more years after purchase. They can testify to the initial purchase process and design, as well as customer service. However, what you want is increasing scores AND increasing sales. This necessarily means product enhancements and service enhancements to attract and satisfy new customers, with new “pains.”

Have you experienced the phenomenon of increased customer satisfaction and decreasing sales?

Pain Killer Marketing: Egypt, the Battleship Maine and Market Research -...

2011-02-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

Pain Killer Marketing: Egypt, the Battleship Maine and Market Research -...: "The Battleship Maine was sunk in Havana harbor 113 years ago today, sparking the US public to get behind the Spanish-American war. Was US pu..."

Egypt, the Battleship Maine and Market Research - A Question of Ethics?

2011-02-15T23:05:00.000-08:00

The Battleship Maine was sunk in Havana harbor 113 years ago today, sparking the US public to get behind the Spanish-American war. Was US public opinion galvanized by the "yellow press" over an accident in a coal bin?

We all watched in wonder as the events in Egypt unfolded in recent weeks. What was remarkable for a lot of reasons was the power of social networking. The deaths and beatings of individuals became symbolic of the experience of the population, they took on much greater meaning than merely individual incidents.

Social networking is obviously extremely powerful. However, what is the power of market research done on the social networks? Target marketing for advertisements and new contacts has been prevalent for some time, but are there any ethical concerns? Can we adequately measure emotions and their representativeness or strengh through this medium? Can we manipulate it to our will?

I believe this Dilbert illustrates one of my concerns well: should research be done because it can be done, or are there other issues at stake? Is there a moral high ground in this discussion?

I couldn't help but wonder, as the events in Egypt unfolded, what if someone were to gain enough information about each of us through our computers (websites visited, items purchased, videos searched for or watched on YouTube) to be able to activate our "hot buttons" to their own ends? What information should be sacred, if any? How would we choose to protect it?

Does entering the "world wide web" abdicate personal privacy through the act of accessing the web itself? Some might say, "Yes. Having access guarantees access by others to you."

There are laws and practices in place in market research for "informed consent" and similar ethical standards that apply to performing research activities with humans. Does the same logic apply to what you can do with data they provide by accessing websites or social networking sites?

What about the images they see or access on the screen? We have all received emails and images that were later shown to be incorrect or false by Snopes.com and similar services. The only way to prevent history from repeating itself is to study history, to learn and listen to the past. "Remember the Maine" was the cry in the US in 1898. The sinking of the Battleship Maine (and the 266 American sailors lost) in Havana served as the catalyst for the Spanish-American War. It was later shown that it was somewhat dubious that the Spanish had anything to do with the sinking, but that was 13 years after the war. I am somewhat sensitive on this issue as I lost a great great uncle on board the Maine. Was he killed in an accident (likely) or an act of war?

So, what are we to do to avoid being misled or abused by researchers or marketers? To be sure, the Egyptians had many reasons to reject their leadership. The millions of Egyptians who accessed the information about demonstrations on Facebook felt empowered to act. What if they had been researched and empowered in a different way? What would be ethical to find out about them, if you wanted to do so? What should we be allowed to access as researchers and what should be protected? How would we guarantee protection?

The ART of CONVERSATION

2011-01-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

The Art of Conversation

As a marketer and market researcher, I often wonder about the effectiveness of various communications techniques. Obviously, the marketing and advertising world is going through very rapid changes these days. Many of us are struggling with measuring the effectiveness of social media advertising, finding the correct messaging for online media and similar issues. My training was "in the good old days" of telephone, mail and face-to-face customer contact. Are any of those techniques as effective today as they once were?

My specialty is "Voice of the Customer" techniques and executive interviews. I often ask myself, what happened to the art of conversation? Very little emphasis is given to this topic in major universities these days (I teach at a couple of local universities in San Diego). Is this a lost art? Does anyone care? I think not.

One of the highly-touted benefits of Blogging and online conversations is the interactive nature of the discussion. There is an ebb and flow, point and counterpoint. However, I lot of what I see and read seems impersonal, sometimes aggressive and downright nasty. Does the level of animosity expressed online translate into interpersonal conversations face-to-face? Sometimes I think the anonymity of "talking" online creates distance that enables people to express some thoughts much stronger than they might in person.

So, what about the Art of Conversation? There was a television commercial for an airline a few years ago that said the message of this piece well. The brokerage was losing clients. The CEO called all his executives into the board room and talked about losing a client that had been a client and friend for over 20 years. He said he was not going to call the client, but get on a plane a visit them, face-to-face. He handed out plane tickets to everyone else in the room and asked them to visit lost clients. Basically, their job was to listen...and learn! They were to be humble, to appear humble in their dress and body language. They were not to be "experts," but to listen to what the customers had to say about their dreams and how their expectations had not been met by the firm. I loved that commercial! Have we been teaching our market researchers how to listen well, with their whole bodies? Do marketers and ad men use customer language in their messaging, as if they were speaking to customers face-to-face?

Perhaps I am a bit old fashioned, but I strongly believe that face-to-face conversations will always have a valued place in the marketing world, despite the world of social media. What do you think?

Do You Come from the Land Down Under?

2010-12-19T16:56:00.000-08:00

It is nice to be quoted. I was alerted today that someone in Australia has published one of my articles for Australian business people to read. It shares some thoughts that were first expressed at CustomerThink.com. (Be sure to check out that website. You may want to search for "Chris Stiehl" there and see some of what I have written in the past.)

One of the advantages of being published is that people can comment on your thoughts and your work. That enables an author to direct the discussion, to put a position out there and see what interest it sparks. I appreciate my thoughts about salespeople being shared in Australia. I cannot wait to read any responses from "The Land Down Under."

So, what was the point of the article? Salespeople are often blamed and measured, not often listened to or studied. I have seen salespeople being required to spend hours a week filling out reports and paperwork (OK, it was mostly computer "paperwork"). The salespeople were unhappy about this. They understood management's need to "measure" their activity, but wished that the measurement could be less intrusive. Instead of sitting at a computer desk, they felt they should be out selling!

The very best salespeople listen well. That is the key attribute. It can be shown that faster and easier tracking or reporting techniques not only make salespeople happier and more satisfied, but it also makes them more productive, in dollars and cents, their key measurement.

Management needs to listen to the salespeople just as if they were another segment of the marketplace. What I would recommend is that each company consider obtaining a "Voice of the Salesperson" in much the same way that customers are researched - collecting their needs in an open-ended research effort, possibly using an objective 3rd party to ask the questions and obtain their needs. Then, set about meeting those needs. The sales force is the voice and face of the company. Treat them as a valued resource.

What do you think?

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!

Take Time to STOP ... and Listen!

2010-12-15T08:20:00.001-08:00

You may have read about this. Joshua Bell, the world renowned violinist, played incognito as a "street musician" for an hour in the DC subway as an experiment for the Washington Post.

He played six challenging Bach pieces, as passersby hurried on their way to work. Over a thousand people rushed by. A few people gave him money, and about 6 stopped to listen. Only one person recognized him.

Various people, from time to time, would pause or slow down and admire his talent. One three year old boy didn't want to rush past. He kept stopping to listen. Finally, his mother pulled him away. He was turning his head the entire time. Bell collected $32.17 for an hour's performance. There was no applause or recognition of any kind. Just silence. He had played a violin valued at $3.5 million.

This was a performance by one of the world's best musicians, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made. Did anyone notice? Just days before, Joshua Bell had played to a sold-out theater in Boston, where pretty good seats went for $100 each to sit and listen to him play.

Is there beauty all around us if we stop, look and listen? How much are we missing by rushing through life? Are we in too much of a hurry to appreciate beauty and life? Are only innocent children open to this kind of experience?

The Washington Post won a Pulitzer for their feature article about this experiment.

Take a moment today, right now, and appreciate life and sounds around you. You are not here forever. You have an expiration date.

As we have argued in this blog before, are you truly listening to the world around you? Learn how to do that, and you will be successful in business, and in life!

Is it lack of jobs or lack of skills? + social networking question

2010-12-03T11:21:00.000-08:00

Is there a lack of jobs out there, or a lack of skills and training to fill the jobs that are available? A new book co-written by my friend and co-author, Henry DeVries, claims there are plenty of jobs, if you have the right skills and training. The book is called Closing America's Job Gap. It is available for pre-sale next week; due to be published in January. I think the book is terrific. I provided a little data for the book from my experiences doing research on the Workforce Investment Act. The main premise of the book is that even though unemployment stands at or near 10%, there are jobs available. There is just a lack of skilled and trained workers. With math and science skills declining in America's workforce, the workers and the jobs just aren't matching up too well. To read more about the book, click HERE.

If you are a potential employer or a job seeker, you should read this book! Please add to the comments on Barnes&Noble.com or Amazon.com about the book, even if the comments are brief and merely about anticipation, as the pre-sale starts next week and I'd like to help Henry develop some "buzz" about the book.

Now, does your employer encourage or discourage social networking activity at work? We have all heard of companies that actually encourage it, and have experienced success. PetCo, for example, has become a preferred commentator in the world of social networking by contributing and hosting helpful conversations about pets. I'm sure that does not hurt their business. In the cartoon referenced here, Dogbert winds up giving a promotion to an employee who "wasted" all his time at work on social networking. He was given the job of being the new Marketing exec. Other companies punish employees for such activities.

What do you think? Is spending a little time building your presence on social networks at work worthwhile? What limitations should there be? How should this be monitored?

Are You Being Served? Are You Free?

2010-11-23T05:30:00.000-08:00

Many of you may recognize the phrases in the title from the hilarious British sitcom about Grace Brothers Department Store in London in the 1970s and 1980s. When a customer came onto the floor needing attention, Captain Peacock would ask the customer, "Are you being served?" If the customer needed attention, he would address one of the staff with "Are you free?"

I have several friends who always ask if I am free when they call. Of course, they are being polite and hoping I can help them. They realize that I will take their call, even if it may not be convenient for me at the moment to do so. I rarely ignore the phone. After all, I am a consultant, always hoping for a client. I am also an engineer/psychologist, hoping for a problem to solve (whether I am paid to solve it or not!).

What is puzzling to me is how many people act like Wally in the Dilbert cartoon above. As a market researcher, I am often calling business people to conduct interviews for my clients. Of course, the business people have been contacted by email or telephone by my client, telling them that I would call, what the reason was and perhaps even offering them an honorarium for completing the interview with me. So, why don't business people answer the telephone?

I realize that they may be busy, on vacation or otherwise unable to talk at the moment. They may not share my anticipation about answering the telephone. But what should I think when they never answer their phone or email? ...even after repeated calls and emails asking for a time and date to speak with them? At times, I ask if someone else may be able to answer my questions, or I ask them to give some basic answers via email. If the sales staff or marketing staff of my client have properly prepared the respondent, what could the issue be? At times I feel like the fellow who is trying to trap Wally in the cartoon above. (I have a couple of friends who have just written Slaying the Email Monster, learn their techniques to never let an email languish without response or action).

The business people often are surprised at how easy it is to complete the call, once we are talking, and how often they find the interview enjoyable, not a pain. They often learn quite a bit by going through the process of being interviewed.

What do you think? Are one-on-one telephone interviews going the way of the dinosaur? Is this type of market research, with the personal connection, out of date in the era of social media?

I don't think so. The research process, as described in Pain Killer Marketing, is actually working quite well with customers, especially when they are well prepared as to what to expect and what the questions may be. The customers want to share their thoughts and feelings about the product or service, not just cold cryptic responses to an online survey. There may be a lot going on behind a rating on a survey. Will this fact change as the generations change? Will Gen X and Gen Y customers be tougher to get to talk on the telephone for 20 minutes?

What is your perception? For how long will the one-on-one interviewing techniques described in Pain Killer Marketing work? How should they be adapted for social media?

My Business Card is a Book?

2010-11-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

I know this sounds like an expensive business card idea, but it works. Think of how easy it is to throw away a business card, but people never want to throw away a book. For some reason, we think books are valuable, to be treasured.

The best networker at any meeting is not the one who gives out the most business cards, but the one who collects the most. This lesson is gradually being learned by consultants and business people.

So how does it work to have a book as a business card? In our view, you don't want to give your card, or your book, to everyone. You need to size up each person who asks for your card at a conference or show and see if you can acquire theirs instead. If you begin an email conversation and they really are a prospect, the book is an easy way to document your competence and expertise, as well as a convenient item for them to pass on to others whom they may know. In that way, they become your advocate within their company, sharing your thoughts and ideas with others. The fact that books are so difficult to throw away works for you.

This past weekend was the "Marketing With A Book" seminar in La Jolla with Henry DeVries and friends. It was intimate (20 people) and great fun, as well as a very good experience for those who are learning how to market themselves and their books. We were somewhat surprised that there were seminar attendees who had not seen their book as a potential business card. If giving the book to someone can result in a $25,000 consulting gig, what is the problem with spending $10 on the book? As Henry and Liz Goodgold (one of the speakers) and others have said: the book should be just one piece of your overall marketing and branding strategy, not an end in itself. Making videos (DVDs) and CDs of chapters or ideas in the book is the logical next step. People have relationships with people. Use your book to promote YOU.

As one of my clients said when offering me a job, "When it came down to choosing between you and your competitors, we went with you. Afterall, you wrote the book on the subject!"

Feel free to visit either of our websites: www.stiehlworks.com and www.newclientmarketing.com for more information on us and where we will be appearing. By the way, Mr. DeVries has a new book being released in January Closing America's Job Gap. Watch for his book tour appearances.

Is Survey Data Always Relevant or Good?

2010-11-09T17:43:00.000-08:00

Obviously, if you are fielding a customer satisfaction survey, you want to have good questions. However, some companies have stopped fielding surveys. They are flying blind. Why? Management claimed that they were spending a lot of money to find out that the numbers never changed! Of course, they had not executed the necessary improvements to change the numbers. More importantly, they had not used customer data to develop the questions!

If the questions were written by engineers and market researchers without consulting customers, how relevant are they? It could be that the company referenced in the previous paragraph would be getting more information, more actionable information, if they had good questions, relevant questions.

We talked in a previous posting about how many businesses that changed brands on a product, do so because of poor customer service, having nothing to do with the performance of the product. Does your survey ask about non-product performance? Shouldn't it?

As Dilbert says above, how relevant is your data? Are your questions important to customers?

If you need help developing a survey that reflects the Voice of the Customer for your customers, give us a call at StiehlWorks (619-516-2864).

What do you think, is the expense of executing customer satisfaction surveys a good investment? Is the data worth the cost?

What Does "Service" Mean in Customer Service?

2010-08-24T22:27:00.000-07:00

It seems that many companies are investigating their interactions with customers these days. They may be focussing on the wrong issues, however!

One of my clients asked me to check out some improvements they had made to their customer service activities. When I called the customers, they reported almost without exception that they had noticed the improvements, they were beneficial, just not in the customers' highest priority areas for the customer service activities.

In fact, the areas of the highest improvement priority for the customers were the same as I had found six years previously in a similar study: having good language and communication skills on the part of the phone rep, making sure they understand the customer's issue.

While the client was very happy to have invested in success with their improvements, the customers were not all as excited as the client was. The customers were thrilled to be asked their opinion, and happy that improvements were being made. They just wished improvements could be made in other areas. The customers were hopeful because the results were encouraging. The hope was that as progress was made, more important issues would be tackled.

How about your company? Do you know your customers' highest priorities for improving your customer service activities? How many customers actually like all of the phone trees they must navigate to get where they want to go in your system, or even to hear an actual customer service employee? My guess would be....NONE!

The phone trees that I have had to navigate just this week remind me of the days when I worked at GM: we are going to do this to you just because we CAN, not because you want it! Remember, according to surveys as many as 75% of all senior managers and above NEVER talk to a customer. Now, it seems that the companies want to make sure that the customer almost NEVER talks to an employee!

Even when you are able to access an employee in one of the phone trees, you are often asked two or three times for the same pieces of information! ...name, birthday, address, phone number, etc.
Today I stared at the phone when the automated system asked for my birthday for the third time on the same call, before I got to my destination in the tree. Someone blew it when doing the logic for this phone tree!

Do companies understand that this phone call may be their only access to the customer? This is the company's voice and face, and it seems so dense and downright stupid! I wonder what research is conducted on these systems. I have friends who are the "IVR Docs." They try to make sure their clients don't encounter these difficulties.

What are your experiences? Have you found phone trees that work well? Share with the rest of us, please!

Are You Stuck?

2010-08-03T11:52:00.000-07:00

Organizations tend to be entities that are difficult to move, to change directions or to make significant leaps...much like a cow!

This image was inspired by a friend who helps people who are "stuck" address their problems and move on (www.LivBig.com). He was a recent student in my class at UCSDx, despite his maturity and business sense. Doesn't this cow look as if it is in pain?

Since the class, I have thought about my friend's business model as applied to my clients: for how many of them is their pain the fact that they are stuck? I would guess this is true for many of them. They have the same customers, the same data from customer satisfaction surveys and they are having difficulty moving the numbers.

A couple of my clients have engaged me to help them see things differently. Where to start? ...by talking to the Customers! For both of these clients, we are listening to customers describe their pains and what is getting in the way of making progress, not just with my clients but in their business world at large. We are in the process of rethinking the customer satisfaction surveys and who the competition is.

In one case, top management is getting bored with what they are seeing in the survey results. Management is even thinking about terminating the customer research efforts, because nothing new was being learned! My client used one of my videos (shown below) to justify continuing the expense. In the video, I tell the story of spending $20K to $30K on customer research and reaping $3,000,000 a year in savings as a benefit, while customer satisfaction went up!

Ask yourself: Am I stuck? Is my company stuck? Do I need to revamp the way I see the customers in the emerging marketplace? More importantly, have I learned how the customers view us in the new marketplace (outside looking in)? That is a tough perspective to acquire! To be successful, you must be able to view your business as if you were a customer looking in. Why should they do business with you? How does working with you help them get more business? How easy are you to do business with? Can you be easily replaced, or can the need for your services dissappear?

If you or your company are "stuck," please call me and talk about how you can get them "unstuck." If you use the video, please share the outcome with me. Maybe I can help you get unstuck! Call (619)516-2864 or visit www.stiehlworks.com.

Business Metrics & the Voice of the Customer

2010-07-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

Are You Tired of Selling Features Yet? Shut Up & Listen!

2010-06-22T02:55:00.000-07:00

I keep being amazed by how few salespeople know to just listen, listen to what the customer's problems are (their "pains").

I have recently conducted research for a client that included finding out how well their salespeople performed. I know it is a tough economy out there, but the worse sales get, the more talking this company's salespeople were doing. This is backwards!

When I spoke to the customers, they told me they did not want to hear all about the features that were nice, but did not apply to their specific problem area. In fact, the more the salespeople spoke about those features, the more the customer thought, "How much is all that going to cost me?!" Many of the salient features in the salesperson's discussion were neither needed nor wanted, at any price.

The best salespeople in the study actually spoke the least, but were classified as "very good listeners," among other traits. Sales necessarily involves building trust between the salesperson and the customer. The skill of "active listening" builds trust. The best salespeople demonstrated this skill in their work. The customers felt that the best salespeople really understood their pain, their issue. These salespeople only spoke after listening carefully to the concerns of the customer, what their pains were, even if they did not involve the salesperson's product or service. These salespeople spoke about the features that addressed the pain of the customer, or the features that the customer asked about. They spoke of resources beyond or in addition to their own products and services that might be accessible to the customer. When this "active listening" technique was employed, the customers trusted the salesperson, perceived them as knowledgeable beyond their own products and services, and thought the extra features were a bonus, not an unnecessary expense. It was the same device, with the same features, but the perception of the customer was shaped by the behavior of the salesperson.

How do your salespeople stack up?

Ever Thought About Writing a Book? Come to our exciting event!

2010-02-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

Chris Stiehl is a panelist at the Marketing with a Book Summit in La Jolla, CA. Henry DeVries is the Host!

Marketing With A Book™ Summit

How to Dramatically Increase Revenue, Gain Credibility and Attract Clients by Publishing A Book With Built-In Marketing

February 20-21, 2010
Location: La Jolla Shores Hotel, San Diego ($119 room rate for this beachfront hotel) www.ljshoreshotel.com
Saturday 8 am to 5 pm
Sunday 8:30 am to 1 pm
Price: $1,000 (but early bird discount of $495 until Feb. 14, 2010)
Register with Paypal here
(You do not need a Paypal account to register)

Headliners:

Arthur Chou, president of WBusiness Books
Mark LeBlanc, past president of National Speakers Association and author of the book “Growing Your Business”

Speakers:

Will Marre, co-founder and former president of the Covey Leadership Center where he translated the concepts of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People into powerful leadership courses taught to over one million executives world wide
Holly Berkley, author of "Marketing in the New Media" and "Low Budget Online Marketing for Small Business"
Liz Goodgold, author of “Red Fire Branding”

Panelists:

Chris Stiehl, author of “Pain Killer Marketing”
Chris Witt, author of “Real Leaders Don’t Use PowerPoint”
Rhonda Sher, author of “The Two-Minute Networker”
Jeremy Duimstra, Web marketing and search engine optimization expert

Host:

Henry DeVries, founder of New Client Marketing Institute, author of “Self-Marketing Secrets” and “Client Seduction”, marketing faculty and assistant dean of UC San Diego continuing education

Who should attend:

You’ll benefit the most by attending this program if you are a…

Management consultant
Professional service firm
Executive coach
Professional speaker
PR person responsible for consultant and professional service firm marketing

Spots Are Limited

We are only offering 27 seats to this conference and 10 were already taken before we could even launch the Web site. We want this to be a small group so there can be interaction, feedback and a chance for one-on-one time with the presenters. After all spots are sold we will be putting interested people on a waiting list.

How To Register

Please call Henry at 800-514-4467 with questions.

Are You Insane?

2009-11-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

You know the old addage: "If you always do what you have always done..." ...but people do!

I recently worked with a team to answer an RFP. I asked if the potential client wanted to research the reasons why people in their target market were not buying, despite obvious benefits to them and to others. The answerf was , "No." How can this client grow market share unless and until they do something different? Shouldn't we at least check to make sure we have all the reasons for rejection? Without changing, expecting to grow the business is insane!

We recently presented to the annual meeting of the Public Relations Society of America, and to a ProVisors group. The "Popcorn Story" worked well with both groups, as it always does. I started thinking, why is it so difficult for people to think of customer needs when they are in a business frame of mind? The example always works. People almost never think of the customer when they are thinking of business metrics. And yet, when they are asked to think of their own needs with respect to a movie theater, they can come up with an extensive list immediately. Why do we have these two separate parts of our brain? Can they be brought together? Are we insane, with two completely separate personalities, the "business" person and the customer?

Do me a favor. Talk to a few of your customers or potential customers. Really concentrate on listening to them talk about their business and their future. Listen for opportunities. Listen for pains or problems. Listen for budget issues. If you need a few questions to get started, look in the front of Pain Killer Marketing: How do you see your business or market changing in the future? How does doing business with us cost you money? How do we help you make money? Who is your best supplier, of all types, and why? How do you choose whom to enlist as a business partner or supplier? Listen. Listen without judgment. Listen without an agenda. But listen.

After you have spoken to a few customers or potential customers, contact us here and let us know how things went. What did you learn? Were you able to solve your insanity and bring your two minds together: the business person and the customer?

This blog posting was inspired by an article written by Stacy Karacostas a few weeks ago on Biznik.com: "Is Temporary Insanity Keeping You From Growing Your Small Business?"

Your thoughts are always welcomed and appreciated!

How Can You "Listen" to Blogs?

2009-11-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

Many companies are debating whether to create a blog or not, whether to participate in any form of social networking or not. One of the key questions is: Is it worth it?

As most of you know, besides being consultants, we both teach at UCSD Extension. Many of our students come from local businesses. The class projects of these students have convinced us the some companies could really benefit from listening to and participating in some blogging activity. Blogging is not for everyone, but some companies have set aside hours for executives to respond to bloggers, with success.

Has your company developed a formal program for monitoring, listening and organizing data from blogs about your products or services? If not, why not? Lack of interest? Lack of time? Not knowing the value?

Think about the person who blogs: they are passionate, interested and vocal with their opinions. If you have read Pain Killer Marketing, this describes an ideal subject for qualitative research! Learn which blogs to follow. Occasionally steer the conversation to a topic of interest to you. You may find an incredible source of detailed information on customer pains or Voice of the Customer attributes!

What do you think?

If you want to see the slides from our presentation at Dine America! in Atlanta in September, visit Chris Stiehl's page on LinkedIn for access.

Be sure to see us at our Public Relations Society of America presentation on November 10th in San Diego (convention center) in the morning.

To Tweet or Not To Tweet: Is that the question?

2009-10-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

Many companies have wondered how much "Tweeting" to allow their employees to do, if any at all. One employee inadvertently shared a proprietary cooking process while engaged in social networking. He was fired! Other companies have had executives engage with social networkers for an hour a day, just to stay in touch with the customer base. This raises several key issues:

Should employees be allowed to engage in social networking at work?

How can the social networking tools be used to engage and listen to customers?

What are the dangers? What are the potential benefits?

I have written here in the past about the new world of customer service: a woman who had unanswered questions about a flight after her children were on board. She tweeted her network to get answers from the airline. She had a personal phone call from the airline's customer service department in less than 5 minutes! Impressive use of social networking on both ends: she had a large network; someone at the airline was listening.

Check out this article on the four dangers of social networking and let me know your thoughts below. Reading the article should take less than 5 minutes.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/24703.asp

How much should we be monitoring, restricting or limiting employees' use of the scoial networks at work?

Customer Service = Social Networking?

2009-08-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

If you read our last post, you know what we think about social networking: we think we are in the process of revolutionizing customer service and customer expectations. In a world where many products and services are being thought of as commodities, customer service is becoming even more of a differentiator than it was before. Of course, you will still need to service your customers by telephone, and in some cases in person, but more and more transactions are taking place via social networking.

Last time we talked about the woman in JFK airport and her experience: getting explicit personal help in less than 5 minutes from her airline, using Twitter and her 10,000 followers. Rather than the exception, such experiences are rapidly becoming the rule.

In an article by Aaron Strout that appeared in MultiChannel Merchant yesterday (http://multichannelmerchant.com/social-media/0810-social-marketing-customer-service/), the author discusses how embracing social networks has enhanced customer loyalty and differentiated customer service for several companies (Intuit, Comcast, Zappos). What is social networking doing for you and your company?

Mr. Strout suggests that you begin your social networking efforts by listening (sound familiar?). As "The Listening Coach," I couldn't agree more! The book that I wrote with Henry DeVries gives you a structured way to accomplish this (Pain Killer Marketing).

The second step is to engage your customers. Stimulate their passions to help to create loyalty. The author cites Fred Reichheld's assertion that increasing loyalty by as little as 5% can increase the bottom line by between 25% and 85% (Leading with Loyalty)! Again, this agrees with the assertion that Henry and I made in our book: tap into the customers' passions (often, their pains).

The third and final step is to measure. You must develop and deploy predictive internal business metrics. This will enable you to show the ROI for your efforts and predict future success.
Have you engaged in social networking as a corporate entity? Are you wondering what the cost/benefit calculations show for your investment of time?

Many of the companies who have engaged their customers and potential customers in this way have greatly reduced their need for call centers and reduced their time to service. In some cases, customers help each other solve problems! Talk about establishing a community of loyalty! Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, has more than 1,000,000 followers! What would it be worth to your company to have direct access to a million customers, instantaneously, who want to hear from you? As a market researcher, I would say that is a lot of people to tap into for their ideas and opinions about your product.

As you move into this realm, whether as a marketing effort or as a customer service program, please keep in mind that it begins with listening. Have a structured way to capture and use the Voice of the Customer. If we can help in any way, please call.

Great Customer Service is Really a Tweet!

2009-07-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting customer service story making the rounds these days, on CNN, WOMMA and elsewhere. Jessica Gottlieb was an active blogger on her iPhone. She watched helplessly as her children sat for 60 minutes on the tarmac at JFK, waiting to take off. Jessica immediately got on her iPhone and twittered about her problem to Virgin Air.

In 140 characters, she indicated her situation to Virgin Air: plane delayed, kids onboard, waiting for an hour, her gate at JFK, asking her followers to "retweet" her message to Virgin Air and/or their networks of followers.

She had nearly 10,000 followers. Who knows how many followers they had! Within minutes, Virgin Air called Gottlieb to reassure her that her kids would be OK. They contacted the gate agent and explained the weather problem, indicating that this information should be shared with Gottlieb. Within 20 minutes, the plane took off.

How does this scenario compare with customer service at your company? Are you listening that well, so you would know within minutes if an individual problem had occured and be able to generate a cogent and meaningful response? This is not the customer service challenge of tomorrow, but today!

As "The Listening Coach," I cannot encourage you enough to embrace the new technologies and be prepared to listen and respond. Your competition will do that, if they have not done so already.

The listening technologies have changed. There used to be just a few ways to report a problem: telephones, face-to-face and US Mail, pre-Internet. Social networks came along, but American businesses were not responding to them, not quickly, if at all. Now, Facebook and Twitter are everywhere. Many companies have thousands of followers. JetBlue, for example, has 700,000+ followers. Social networking is rapidly becoming a business necessity, at least for customer service, if not market research.

Are you listening? What is being "tweeted" about your company? How quickly can you respond? Are your customer service agents equipped and authorized to respond? What's next? Google Wave will allow text, photos and other information to be shared in real time later this year. Are you ready for that? Is your customer service organization ready? What will the marketing research issues be? Is marketing ready?

What are your thoughts? If we can help you understand your customers' needs or your own with respect to any of these issues, please call (619-516-2864).

Local CFOs Say Recovery May Take 2 Years

2009-06-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

FEI and IMA recently surveyed their membership (these are CFOs from local Southern California businesses). While many were cutting costs, through renegotiating with vendors and the like, most were looking forward to a better future. They were investing in improving processes. They were training their management and staff on ways to cut costs and perform better. Almost half of them were launching new products in the next few months and continuing to invest in Research and Development, at least, not cutting there. Many of their businesses, particularly in service industries, have flattened out and are just starting to see the hints of recovery. The business is nowhere near as good as 12 months ago, but it may be turning up. Many of these excutives felt that the road to full recovery may take a while, up to two years. What do you think?

Penn Post, Bob Eberlein and Chris Stiehl conducted this research. It will be available as a white paper soon. Please let me know if you want to be able to obtain a copy.

Are You a Good Web Conversationalist? Companies better be!

2009-05-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

The great benefit to Web 2.0 is the conversation. Normally, you advertise or do your PR work, and it is all about talking to customers (the target market, etc.), telling them your benefits, then measuring the impact and response. LinkedIn and other social networks allow a conversation between the company and its customers - not just listening, but interacting. How well suited are you to having a conversation with your customers? How do you listen and generate a response, without sending it through legal, etc.?

In my experience, many companies have no mechanism for this. At one company, getting a communication through legal could take a month or more - not practical for the Web. The companies that can design the system for having a conversation with customers online will have a tremendous advantage over their competitors.

The interactive nature of the conversations provides opportunities for market research, particularly for creating a Voice of the Internet Customer. What are the demographics? Do they mirror your target market for your product or service? A well-trained researcher can use the opportunity to ask generic questions, with sincerity, and collect ideas and attributes for analysis. The techniques outlined in our book are applicable here, with a few modifications.

How are you using the interactive nature of the Web? Are you taking advantage of the conversation, or just listening?

Customer Service People Need to Learn How to Listen!

2009-05-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

Companies need to trust their customer service people a little, and not just have them follow a script. Sometimes you feel as though you are speaking to a recording, and listening to one, even when it is a live body on the other end!

I called someone about a service that I had seen advertised on the Internet. I was an enthusiastic buyer, but I had a couple of questions. The person who answered the phone had a script to follow. He proceeded through his script quickly, as if he were in a hurry to get to the next break point where he would ask for my credit card information. I tried several times to interrupt him with questions. One time he stopped, totally befuddled, and had no idea how to answer my question or where to refer me for an answer. He transferred the call to a supervisor.

She asked what my issue was. When I told her, there were a few clicks on her keyboard followed by her reading a script, which was not exactly related to what I had asked. She wound up transferring me again. Apparently, this company had never seen the data that each time you transfer the call, customer satisfaction is cut in half.

By now I had gone from being a very interested buyer, to being an annoyed buyer, to being just curious about where this would all end! No one seemed to be interested, or willing, or able to just shut up and listen to me! They did not have access to the data or the authority to think about my question and answer it. I wound up deciding not to waste any more time, but I wondered, what could my clients learn from this?

Do your sales, marketing and customer service people have access to the data they need and the authority to use it? Are your incoming sales calls scripted, or do you allow the sales rep to listen to the customer and think creatively about how to meet their needs?

If you are reading this post, you are probably sympathetic with the need to ask customers about their pains, wants and needs with respect to products and services. Don't forget to include the sales experience! How do your customers prefer to buy? What are their wants and needs with respect to the sales process...the ordering process? Do you have that needs hierarchy? Make sure your sales people know how to listen!

No $ for Marketing in Downturn? Evidence Says That's a Mistake!

2009-04-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

The historical evidence is clear. Companies that want to win in the long run, MAINTAIN or INCREASE their marketing budgets during a downturn, when the ad rates are lower.

Dr. Gerard Tellis of The Marshall School of Business at USC has conducted a study of the recessions in the last 110 years. The recessions are growing less frequent and of shorter duration. Of interest to us is the fact that those who invest in marketing and advertising during the recessions come out of the recession with much stronger brands. Kellogg's did this in the 1930s to gain considerable ground on Post Cereals, for example.

Russ Klein, Chief Marketing Officer of Burger King is doubling down on his investments. He told Advertising Age: "There is strong historical evidence around companies that step up with their innovation and advertising and their ability to move through economic downturns and emerge with stronger brands."

Dr. Tellis' research has shown "There is strong, consistent evidence that cutting back on advertising during a recession can hurt sales during and after the recession, without generating any substantial increase in profits."

Bernard Ryan, of the American Association of Advertising Agencies wrote in Advertising in a Recession in 1991 "One study after another, of recession after recession, shows that those who reduce spending usually lose market share and sales. Furthermore, they take longer to recuperate...The bottom line? The advertiser who does not cut back can move ahead during the recession and afterward, capturing share from those who, hesitant and unsure, do cut back."

Content may still be king. We can help with that with "Voice of the Customer" studies to get the right messaging and words. What do you think?

Can You Understand Customers Without Talking to Them?

2009-03-27T16:46:00.001-07:00

Recent market research has shown that 75% of senior managers and above in the United States NEVER talk to customers! Does this make sense to you? Not to me!

How can you possibly understand what's going on in the world without talking to customers? I understand that salespersons and Customer Relationship Managers will get nervous about having executives talk to customers. They may promise things that their organization cannot deliver, or say that an issue is "fixed" when the solution that they are talking about is in a future product, not the one the customer has.

Of course, the senior manager or executive will need to be coached on what to ask and what can and cannot be promised. They may want to read our book concerning the Voice of the Customer process. They can talk to their salespeople about what may be on the customer's mind and what problems they may be having.

Having said all of that, why not talk to customers? Why not get a first-hand account of what the issues are? The book describes how to collect and make sense of that data, how to organize it to take action. It is our feeling that ALL senior managers and above should have at least a few conversations with customers every year. There is no substitute for that experience. What do you think?

Can 900 Customers Be Wrong?

2009-03-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

On Amazon they began selling milk for $3.99 a gallon. As a result, they got 900 people to rate the milk as very good or outstanding! One rater said that the milk was so good it was "worth its weight in gold times infiniti!" An analysis of Amazon's ratings of books shows that the "average" rating is 4.2 out of 5! When Amazon sold staplers, almost 60% of the raters gave the stapler a 5, with only one rater giving it a 3. Does this mean that there are no average staplers? I don't think so!

When people rate romance novels, for example, they tend to be fans of romance novels. So even a mediocre read is rated good by that audience. How many of us, when we are unhappy, will make the time and effort to find the item on the web and enter a "Poor" rating? If only fans of products are rating them, what happened to the old addage that an unhappy customer tells 30 people, while a happy one tells just a handful? Is that changing on the web?

Are the people inflating scores on the web sincere? There were stories of some companies inflating scores about their products on blogs, etc. Do we trust these scores?

Some companies are using online reviews as measures of the "Voice of the Customer." Is this wise?

We would recommend more traditional surveys, but they have problems as well. What are your thoughts?

Voice of the Sales Staff?

2009-02-27T17:36:00.000-08:00

Do you treat your salespeople as well as your customers? You should. Good salespeople are tough to hire and even tougher to hold. You can apply our listening techniques to your sales staff. Learn their pains and learn how to solve them. You will reap great benefits!

One company that did this hired us to interview their sales staff. We obtained a "Voice of the Sales Force" in much the same way as described in our book. We then got several sales managers together to discuss metrics that would predict success with the sales staff's pains, things like "The Amount of Time Required to Generate Reports for Upper Management." Obviously, the staff wanted this metric to be near zero!

By implementing these metrics and solutions, their sales increased, the staff were happier and had more time to make sales calls. Revenues and profits increased. After all, that's the purpose of sales activity, isn't it?

What Is Your Pain?

2008-08-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

What is your marketing pain? Please comment or send an email.

If you are like many salespeople or business executives, trying to find new customers or clients can be frustrating. Maybe you are struggling with your marketing message. Or maybe referrals aren’t paying off like they used to. Maybe you are concerned about wasting time and money on unproductive efforts. If marketing seems like a lot of hard work with little or sporadic payoffs, you are not alone.

How would you like to attract more clients than you can possibly handle, without breaking the bank? The good news is the American Dream of creating a professional service or consulting business that provides a high six figure income is alive and doing well. That is, if you take the time to get the knowledge how to do it. Best of all, these techniques require a minimal investment.

Face facts. Other successful professionals and consultants have found the way. How can you model their success? To attract new clients, the best approach is the Educating Expert Model that demonstrates your expertise by giving away valuable information through writing and speaking. In addition, you can increase closing rates up to 50% to 100% by discovering and rehearsing the right questions to ask prospective clients.

Here are the five ways prospects judge you (Aaker, 1995, Strategic Market Management) and my views of how the Educating Expert Model is the perfect fit:
1. Competence. Knowledge and skill of the professional or consultant and their ability to convey trust and confidence (you demonstrate and prove your expert knowledge by speaking and writing)
2. Tangibles. Appearance of physical facilities, communication materials, equipment and personnel (you do this by the appearance of your Web site and how-to handouts)
3. Empathy. Caring, individualized attention that a firm provides its clients (educating people to solve problems before they hire you proves you care)
4. Responsiveness. Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service (when you promise to give people things like special reports and white papers, do it promptly)
5. Reliability. Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately (prospective clients will judge you on how organized your seminars, speeches and Web site are)

Here’s how to determine if this is a good fit for you. Do you specialize in performing professional, scientific, and technical activities for others? If you are like most of our clients, your activities require a high degree of expertise and training. Do you provide any of the following? Legal advice and representation; accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll services; architectural, engineering, and specialized design services; IT and computer services; consulting and mentoring services; research services; public relations and advertising services; HR and recruiting services; translation and interpretation services; and other professional, scientific, and technical services.

If you fit this profile and have struggled with marketing, it is no wonder. Maybe you tried to emulate the marketing of big companies, a common problem for professionals and consultants. According to one Harvard Business School researcher, typical marketing not only doesn’t work for professionals and consultants it is actually harmful. Instead become an educator and attract all the clients you need.
Want to discover more strategies on how to create a high six figure income?

Turning Pain Into Marketing DNA

2008-08-20T15:27:00.001-07:00

Attracting Clients With Marketing DNA

(Be sure to see the end of the article for a complimentary invitation)

Before you can begin attracting clients, you need to create a marketing genetic code that is attractive to clients. All of your marketing messages, from networking discussions to speeches, will contain the elements of this marketing DNA. Here are 10 steps that will help you create these all-important marketing genes.
1. Create a business name or a Web site name that gives potential clients a hint at the results you can produce for them. The worst possible name or Web site name is your name. Sorry to say, clients don’t want us, they want results.
2. Write a headline for your Web site and marketing materials that describes your audience and the results you produce for them. Do this in no more than 10 words. Mine is “We help professionals and consultants attract all they clients they need.”
3. Name your client’s pain. What are your client’s worries, frustrations and concerns that you help solve? This is also called the FUD factor: fear, uncertainty and doubt.
4. Describe your solution or methodology for solving these pains. What process do you follow to produce results? Offering a proprietary problem-solving process that you name and trademark is best. This answers the all-important question in their minds: “Why should I do business with you instead of one of your competitors?”
5. State the common misperception that holds many back from getting results. Why doesn’t everybody do what you named in step 4?
6. Tell your clients what they need to do in general to solve their problem. Pretend they weren’t hiring you and you had to describe the steps they should take for success.
7. List any other benefits they get from following your methods. What other good things do people get when they do what you advise?
8. Elaborate on your track record of providing measurable results for clients. Be specific as much as possible. Use numbers, percentages and time factors.
9. Create a Web site with free tips articles on how to solve these pains. Each article should be about 300 to 600 words. What’s a good format? Consider the numbered tips approach you are reading right now (easy to write, easy to read).
10. Make prospects an offer of a free special report on your Web site. You are offering to trade them a valuable piece of information for their email address. Tell them they will also receive a tips enewsletter from you. Assure them you will maintain their privacy and they can easily opt off your list any time they want.

How To Turn Speeches Into Customers

2008-08-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

Give speeches about solving customer pain and you will be a star. Even though surveys consistently show that people would rather visit their in-laws than speak in front of a group, speeches and presentations are absolutely essential to build strong bonds with customers.

To turn speeches into customers, I recommend you read From Contact to Contract by Dianna Booher, CEO of Booher Consultants (a communication training firm that counts among its client list 25 of America’s 50 largest corporations and 227 of the Fortune 500). Here are just three of her valuable tips.

1. Make Subtle Mentions, Not Blatant Plugs
A conference organizer’s greatest fear is that a session will turn into a blatant sales pitch. “Your audience will protest loudly if your speech becomes a sales pitch,” advises Booher. Still, you can (and should) create subtle ways to mention your services and organization. Choose case-based anecdotes to illustrate key points that showcase your expertise. Put descriptive slogans on your handouts and other reference material. And be sure to have the person who introduces you mention your organization and establish your credibility.

2. Provide Multiple Avenues to Your Front Door
When you do land a speaking engagement, you must give prospective clients in the audience as many ways as possible to contact you afterwards. In all likelihood, Booher points out, you won’t be able to speak with each one or answer detailed questions immediately after the session. Instead, offer several methods to let them get in touch later. Put your contact information on slides, handouts, and invitations to future events. Give them a good reason to visit your Web site (offer a download of your slides or other free information). Make it easy and beneficial for the true prospects in your audience to seek you out.

3. Be Stingy With Your Business Cards
When a prospect asks you for your card after the presentation, turn the tables unexpectedly and ask for their card instead. Why? Because if you give them your card, you’re dependent on them taking the next step. Booher points out that when you have their card, you’re in control of the follow-up process. Furthermore, she says, you should avoid exchanging cards, too, because that gives a prospect reason to say “I have your contact information; if I have a need, I’ll be in touch.” What you want, of course, is the opportunity to help them understand they have the need in the first place.

How to Use Pain to Find More Clients in 3 Easy Steps

2008-08-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

Would you like to fill your pipeline with qualified prospects? Here is a three-step approach that works wonders.

Identify Target Prospects -- Step one is to find a potential market niche that will be profitable. In today’s market, clients demand specialists. You want fewer prospects to be interested in you, but much more intensely interested. This requires focus. It doesn't mean you'll turn down a client who doesn't fit into your two or three chosen verticals--it simply means you won't be actively shaping your marketing campaigns toward them. Evaluate your business. Have you sold most of your services to medical device companies, energy companies, or home builders? Then THOSE are the three places to start thinking. But if home builders in general don't have the budget for your services, you'll need to look harder. Let's say you are going to target energy companies. Then do in-depth interviews with a dozen past customers or potential customers in the field. Find out their pains that you solve.

Make Prospects A Promise -- Step two is to determine what promise you or your firm is making to your target market. This includes your unique selling proposition: what you do, who you do it for and how you are unlike competitors—all in 25 words or less. What measurable results do you obtain for clients? You need to decide what makes you different than everybody else, and you need to overcome fear of focus--the desire to want to be everything to everybody. People hire professionals who specialize. Very few people would hire a surgeon who says he can do everything from tonsillectomies to facelifts and open-heart procedures. When you're in pain, you want a specialist--not just somebody who's "good with a knife."

Harvest Emails on Your Web Site -- Step three is to create an easy-to-update Web site that demonstrates your competence, rather than asserts how great you are. The Web site is the cornerstone of your marketing, and must not be a mere electronic brochure. Your Web site is the silent salesperson that prospective clients visit before making the decision to grant you permission to meet. There should be plenty of free articles with great how to advice for prospects. The home page of the Web site should have a headline that makes it clear who your target is and what pains you solve. The Web site should include an offer a free special report in exchange for the visitor’s e-mail address. This special report should contain valuable information that tells prospects how to solve their problem in general. Then e-mail these prospects tips and invitations to get more ideas from you at seminars, workshops and telephone seminars. Remember, the more people you tell how to solve their problems in general, the more will hire you for the specifics.

Want to learn more tips for filling your pipeline with qualified prospects? Here is a way. Attend our two-day growing your business conference in Irvine, California on October 17 and 18, 2008. You will leave with an action plan. For details visit http://www.newclientmarketing.com/html/october2008conference.htm

Pain Killer Research Like Dale Carnegie

2008-08-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

How To Win Clients and Influence Referrals

First comes the problem, then comes research, and finally presentation. Dale Carnegie wrote that he had searched for years to discover a practical, working handbook on human relations. The he did whta we call a pain killer research study. He started by reading every scholarly book and magazine articles he could find to ascertain how the great men and women of all ages had dealt with people. Then he interviewed scores of successful people and to discover the techniques they used in human relations.

From all that material, he prepared a short talk. He called it “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and it soon became a 90-minute lecture. Then the teacher learned from the students. Carnegie asked attendees to share their stories of how the principles helped them. First he put the rules down on a postcard, that grew into a leaflet, then a series of booklets, each one expanding in size and scope. After 15 years of experiment and research, came the book by the same title as that original short talk. Of course, it has been a best-seller ever since (if you haven’t read it, you really should).

During those 15 years of research Dale Carnegie became the go-to guy for human relations. Thousands attended his training each year and he prospered. This also resulted in many consulting contracts. He is long gone, but his training company has continued to this day. So decide what niche you want to be the master of, then begin the research. As Robert Bly once wrote, “Slice off a segment of the world’s knowledge that you can realistically hope to master—and then convince others of this mastery.” You can start small. You can start wherever you are. But by all means start now.

To attract new clients, the best approach is to prove your expertise by giving away valuable information through writing and speaking. Actually, that isn’t technically true. You should sell the information if you want to win clients and influence referrals

Independent professionals, management consultants, corporate trainers, executive coaches, marketing and creative firms, and HR and recruiting consultants can fill a pipeline with qualified prospects in as little as 30 days by offering advice to prospects on how to overcome their most pressing problems. But don’t do it for free. Charge for your seminars and the information will be valued more by your potential clients. The burden is also on you to research great information.

This also helps those people who know, like and trust you enough to refer business to you. You can make these people a special deal: if they know someone who would value what you have to say, then your referral source can offer comp admission to your events on a space available basis.

Look what this does. You make the referral source feel special because they can hook people up. The prospects who attend still value the information more because there is a charge for it, and they feel even better because they didn’t have to pay.

Unfortunately, many professionals who learn this truth find the idea of writing and speaking too daunting and even mysterious. Most feel this is only for a select few, but that is a miscalculated view.

How to Network Without Probing for Pain

2008-08-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

Probing for pain is not always the way to go. For instance, what is the best way to network with people at business functions, like Chamber of Commerce mixers or association luncheons?

According to Bob Burg, author of the bestselling book Endless Referrals, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, people they know, like and trust.”

One key to quickly establishing this type of connection is showing interest in other people by asking them questions. Burg has developed a series of questions to ask people at networking events that are not sales-oriented in any way. These are fun questions to ask and fun questions to answer. This is not the time to probe for pain.

While you will never need or have time to ask all of his questions during a conversation, Burg maintains it is good to have an arsenal to choose from. Here are four his 10 questions:

1. How did you get your start in the widget business?
2. What do you enjoy most about your profession?
3. What do you see as the coming trends in the widget business?
4. What one sentence would you like people to use in describing the way you do business?

Burg’s next question is the one that is key in getting the person to feel as if they know, like and trust you. “How can I know if someone I’m talking to would be a good prospect for you?” That final question shows you are concerned about them. You may be the only person who asked them this question during a first conversation.

Then, wrap up the conversation in another surprising fashion: Instead of offering them your business card, ask for one of theirs. Follow up by sending them a thank you in the mail containing your business card. These techniques might just land you in their database of preferred contacts.

In Burg's bestselling book (over 150,000 copies sold), he updates many of the principles and techniques that resulted in ENDLESS REFERRALS becoming an underground hit within numerous niche sales industries such as network marketing, and insurance, and a staple for salespeople new and veteran everywhere. Visit http://www.burg.com for more details.

Burg regularly appears on the business speaking circuit featuring speaking legends such as Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, CNN's Larry King, Dr. Denis Waitley, Mary Lou Retton, Coach Lou Holtz, Radio Legend Paul Harvey, Les Brown, Brian Tracy, former U.S. President Gerald Ford and many others.

Want to learn more about how to double your revenues through endless new client referrals? Come to our two-day New Client Generation Conference October 17-18 in Orange County, CA. For details visit http://www.newclientmarketing.com/html/october2008conference.htm

How to Build Trust With Pain Questions Put to Prospective Clients

2008-08-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

A good diagnosis is the result of asking the right questions. When you meet with prospective clients, you need to monopolize the listening, not the talking. Professionals and consultants must ask pain probe questions to uncover problems and budget. Not only is it polite to talk about money at this point, it is essential.

By all means you should set the ground rules for the meeting, and the ground rules are mutually agreed upon by both the prospect client and the professional or consultant. In its most basic form, it’s critical to determine the following before the meeting gets too far along:·

The time allotted for the meeting·
What each party’s expectations for a successful meeting would be·
What will happen at the end of the meeting if there is or is not a fit

Meeting agreements are an effective tactic for giving the professional or consultant control of the selling process, while permitting the prospective client to control the content. They help lower the prospect’s fear of being sold something they don’t want and are an excellent tool for building trust and rapport.

How to Get New Clients To Sign Up With the Right Questions

2008-08-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

Are you struggling to attract enough new clients? By learning to ask the right questions and listen, you can increase new client sign up rates dramatically.

Questions should be your secret weapon. Questions persuade more powerfully than any form of verbal communications. Are you regularly practicing the right use of questions? If not, then you are making one of the three biggest mistakes that professionals and consultants make trying to attract clients.

Questions allow you to fully understand the prospect’s pain. Pain is the difference between what prospects have and what they want, and as such can be classified as pain (things are bad and need fixing). You need to ask open-ended questions to know the following:
· Does the prospect’s motivation come from a problem that needs to be addressed today (pain), a problem that might arise in the future (fear), or simply an interest in getting more information?
· How does the problem impact the organization?
· How does the problem personally impact the prospect?
· How committed is the prospect to taking action to fix the problem?

How to Get More Clients in August

2008-08-04T09:07:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the dog days of August. Typically people slow down during this hot and sometimes humid month. What is your strategy to win clients and influence referrals right now? One of my mentors is the speaker Michael Gerber, author of the underground best-selling book The E-Myth (which I recommend highly). His book is about what is wrong with almost every small business and what to do to fix it. Michael is always talking about your COD. Pardon my language, but that stands for your Crap Out Date. In other words, game over. His point is not to procrastinate, to do it now, because once you reach your COD you won’t have any more opportunities. That reminds me of what I heard another speaker say last year. He said do all you can when you are alive because the dead cannot see, hear, feel or taste. But they do smell. Hi, this is Henry DeVries, founder of the New Client Marketing Institute. One of my favorite books about overcoming procrastination is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, a best-seller since it was released in 1937. Someone suggested to me the title really should be Think, Act and Grow Rich. You have to take action to get results. If you don’t want to be frustrated because you don’t have enough qualified prospects to fill your pipeline, then take action. If you don’t be worried because you won’t have enough revenues to pay all the bills, then take action. If you lost a big client and you are concerned about how to replace them, then take action. My hope for all the readers of this blog is that you take strides now to put the strategies we teach into action. Don’t wait until everything is perfect. Perfect is the enemy of done. And getting things done and moving on to do more things is what you need to do to win clients. But what strategy should you follow? One of the most important things I advocate you do right now is really understand the pain of your clients (Chris Stiehl and I wrote a book on that subject called Painkiller Marketing). Then research really great information on the best ways to solve those pains. Next educate these potential clients through a variety of sources like articles on your Web site, special reports, speeches, seminars, white papers, blogs, podcasts and the rest. One of the most powerful psychological triggers is pain. When delivering your message, focus on the old aspirin vs. vitamins truism (you will always have an easier time selling the aspirin than the vitamin). Tell prospects what they will lose by not taking your advice. According to Dr. Robert Cialdini in The Power of Persuasion (a third book I highly recommend), you need to tell people more than what they stand to gain. You need to tell them what benefits they will lose if they don’t choose what you offer. People are more motivated by that idea. Using pain is not about hype or manipulation. There is a proven process for marketing with integrity and getting a 400% to 2000% return on your marketing investment. To attract new clients, the best approach is the Educating Expert Model that demonstrates your expertise by giving away valuable information through writing and speaking. You talk about pain to get attention, but you offer solid medication in the form of best practice advice. In addition, you can increase closing rates up to 50% to 100% by discovering and rehearsing the right questions to ask prospective clients about their pain. Once you understand their frustrations, worries and concerns, it is amazing how smoothly the rest of the conversation goes.

How the Best Professionals and Consultants Generate Clients

2008-08-02T07:24:00.001-07:00

How the Most Successful
Professionals and Consultants
Attract All the Clients They Need

The number one challenge for professionals and consultants is creating new clients. However, many professionals and consultants feel marketing is too time consuming, expensive or undignified. Even if they try a marketing or business development program, most professionals and consultants are frustrated by a lack of results. They even worry if marketing would ever work for them.

According to a researcher from the Harvard Business School, the typical sales and marketing hype that works for retailers and manufacturers is not only a waste of time and money for professionals and consultants, it actually makes them less attractive to prospective clients (Maister, 1992, Managing the Professional Service Firm).

However, research has proven there is a better way. There is a proven process for marketing with integrity and getting an up to 400% to 2000% return on your marketing investment. At the New Client Marketing Institute we call it the Educating Expert Model, and the most successful professional service and consulting firms use it to get more clients than they can handle. The findings of our 8-year, $2 million research study about how the most successful professional and consulting firms use this model were published in the book, Client Seduction.

To attract new clients, the best approach is to demonstrate your expertise by giving away valuable information through writing and speaking. Research shows independent professionals, management and technical consultants, corporate trainers, executive or personal coaches, marketing and creative firms, and HR and recruiting consultants can fill a pipeline with qualified prospects in as little as 30 days by offering advice to prospects on how to overcome their most pressing problems (DeVries and Bryson, 2005, Client Seduction). You will leave the conference with a step-by-step action plan on how to do this.

How many new clients would you have to generate to make this investment of time and money pay off for you? Here is another question. What is the lifetime value of a client to you?

Unfortunately, many professionals and consultants who learn this truth find the idea of writing and speaking too daunting and even mysterious. Most feel this is only for a select few, but that is a miscalculated view. In the beginning, it is not unusual to wonder how these other professionals and consultants get in front of audiences and get their how-to advice in print.

The good news is there exists a body of knowledge that some have discovered to grow their professional and consulting practices. As an example, management consulting firms like McKinsey & Co. pioneered the approach and have it down to a science (Bartlett, June 1996, “McKinsey & Co., Harvard Business Review). This is a growing trend. In 1991 a random survey of the top 1,000 U.S. law firms found that 89 percent held at least one client seminar per year. In 1999, 94 percent of law firms were regularly holding seminars. Lawyers at the top 1,000 firms ranked seminars as the most effective tool for cross-selling and gaining new clients (Source: FGI Research, 1999).

What should you do to increase revenues? First, understand that generating leads is an investment and should be measured like any other investment. Next, quit wasting money on ineffective means like brochures, advertising and sponsorships. The best marketing investment you can make is to get help creating informative Web sites, hosting persuasive seminars, booking speaking engagements, and getting published as a newsletter columnist and eventually book author.

Rather than creating a brochure, start by writing how-to articles for a blog or to be posted on Web sites. Those articles turn into speeches and seminars. Eventually, you gather the articles and publish a book through a strategy called print on demand self publishing (we’ve done it under 90 days and for less than a $1,000 for clients). Does it work? Here are a list of business best-seller titles by professionals and consultants that started out self-published (Source: Southwest Airlines Spirit, March 2005):

§ The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson: picked up by William Morrow & Co.

§ In Search of Excellence, by Tom Peters (of McKinsey & Co.): in its first year, sold more than 25,000 copies directly to consumers—then Warner sold 10 million more.

§ Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, by Weiss Roberts: sold half a million copies before being picked up by Warner.

Understanding the psychology of clients also provides critical evidence of the validity of the get published approach. Professional services and consulting are what economists sometimes call “credence” goods, in that purchasers must place great faith in those who sell the services (Bloom, October 1984, “ Effective Marketing for Professional Services,” Harvard Business Review). What does the research say about client choice, satisfaction and dissatisfaction of professionals and consultants? Here are the five ways prospects judge you (Aaker, 1995, Strategic Market Management) and my views of how the Educating Expert Model is the perfect fit:
1. Competence. Knowledge and skill of the professional or consultant and their ability to convey trust and confidence (you demonstrate and prove your expert knowledge by speaking and writing)
2. Tangibles. Appearance of physical facilities, communication materials, equipment and personnel (you do this by the appearance of your Web site, book and how-to handouts)
3. Empathy. Caring, individualized attention that a firm provides its clients (educating people to solve problems before they hire you proves you care)
4. Responsiveness. Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service (when you promise to give people things like special reports and white papers, do it promptly)
5. Reliability. Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately (prospective clients will judge you on how organized your seminars, speeches and Web site are)

Even if you believe in the Educating Expert Model, how do you find time to do it and still get client and admin work done? No professional or consultant ever believes they have too much time on their hands. Nothing worth happening in business ever just happens. The answer is to buy out the time for marketing. You need to be involved, but you should not do this all on your own. Trial and error is too expensive of a learning method. Wouldn’t it be better if someone helped you who knows the tricks and shortcuts? We can show you how to leverage your time and get others to do most of the work for you, even if you are a solo practitioner.

How much should you invest in marketing? That depends on your business goals, but here are some norms. Law firms generally spend about 2 percent of their gross revenues on marketing, and the average expenditure is about $136,000. Marketing costs for accounting firms average about 7 percent to 10 percent of gross revenue (Source: The New York Times, November 15, 2001). The typical architecture, engineering, planning, and environmental consulting firm spent a record 5.3 percent of their net service revenue on marketing (Source: ZweigWhite's 2003 Marketing Survey of A/E/P & Environmental Consulting Firms).

Here are some of the key benefits of following the Educating Expert Model:

§ Allows your message to be heard above the noise of all the other professionals and consultants

§ Systematizes your marketing with a proactive, monthly approach that is simple and affordable to implement

§ Makes it easier for your clients and business advocates to refer potential clients to you

§ Creates multiple streams of income because prospects actually pay for you to market to them

§ Increases closing rates up to 50% to 100% by discovering and rehearsing the right questions to ask prospective clients

§ Produces all-help, no-hype marketing you actually feel proud to communicate

§ Quits wasting money on ineffective tactics like brochures, sponsorships and cold-calling

§ Leverages your time so you get more results in less time

You Are Invited to Attend Our Two-Day Clientology College
Learn How to Use Your Expertise to Woo and Win Clients

Friday October 17 and Saturday October 18, 2008
9:30 am to 5:30 pm both days
Near the Orange County, CA airport at the
Sandler Sales Training Center
2091 Business Center Drive, Suite 230
Irvine, CA 92612
Tuition: $395 before August 31
for up to three individuals from the same firm
$495 if you register September 1 to 30
$595 if you register October 1 to 15

The New Client Marketing Institute teaches these techniques to independent professionals, management and technical consultants, corporate trainers, executive or personal coaches, marketing and creative firms, and HR and recruiting consultants who are struggling to attract enough clients. We have a 15-year track record of measurably improving revenues for professional service firms and service businesses. Through one-on-one brainstorming, small group practice sessions and in-house marketing retreats we share more than 1,000 pragmatic strategies and tactics.

(If you are flying in there are many great hotels to stay at in the area. The Irvine Airport Hilton and Atrium Hotels are the closest. Attractions like Disneyland, Downtown Disney and Newport Beach are nearby.)

At the conference our faculty of experts will work with you one-on-one to determine what is best for you. We’ve had very good results guiding professionals and consultants to increase revenues through more new clients, more fee income per client and more money from past clients. Here are just a few concrete examples:

§ Through an informational Web site and electronic newsletter we helped create, one management consultant client added an additional $100,000 in revenue from speaking engagements and sales of information products within 2 years
§ In 45 days one client who is a consultant to the home building industry was able to launch a Web site and education expert campaign that helped him double his business in a year
§ Using one strategy alone a Web marketing consultant client was able to double his income and add $100,000 of revenue in one year through just one strategy
§ By switching over to the model, a marketing services client was able to receive a 2000% return on investment its new marketing campaign that featured how-to advice seminars and articles form senior executives
§ When an IT consulting company gave up cold calling and switched to our model, the quality of their leads dramatically improved and closed deals quickly increased by 25%
§ Using these strategies of seminars and getting published, a law firm client has grown in a few years from a regional practice to a national firm
§ A well established regional accounting firm client reported they were able to accomplish more in 6 months with our methods than they had in three years on their own
§ An advertising agency used the strategy to double revenues from $4.5 to $9.6 million in five years and earn a spot in the Ad Age 500
§ With the model a 100-year-old financial services firm was able to double awareness and create 100,000 qualified leads per year for its advisors

In closing, I leave you with this thought:

How will they hire you unless they trust you?

How, in turn, will they trust a person they have not heard?

How, in turn, will they hear without someone to speak?

How, in turn, will you speak unless you have a solution?

How, in turn, will you have a solution unless you understand their problems?

How will you understand their problems unless you listen?

Please know this: the universe rewards activity. Start by asking clients about their pains. Gather information on how to solve those worries, frustrations and concerns. Be the expert who educates people on how they compare to their peers and the best ways to overcome their obstacles. The more prospects you inform how to solve their problems in general, the more will hire you for the specifics. In the words of motivational speaker Zig Ziglar: “You can get whatever you want in life if you just help enough people get what they want.”

Conference Faculty
(subject to change)

Clientologist and new client generation expert Henry DeVries is a best-selling author, a member of the marketing faculty of UC San Diego Extension, and founder of the New Client Marketing Institute. His life highlights include appointments at two universities, completing specialized studies at the Harvard Business School on leading professional service firms, earning his MBA while serving as president of an Ad Age 500 advertising and public relations agency, and coming within one question of winning $13,000 on the TV game show Jeopardy! In his talks Henry reveals the results of his $1 million research study, which are more than 1,000 pragmatic strategies to achieve marketing returns of 400% to 2,000%. His research findings are covered in his books Self-Marketing Secrets, Client Seduction and Pain Killer Marketing (with Chris Stiehl.) For more information visit www.newclientmarketing.com

Money-making mindset expert Marilyn August is a business advisor, wealth coach and the founder of Wealth & Wisdom Seminars, a company devoted to dramatically increasing productivity by changing the way professionals, sales people and business owners think about money. She is an author, consultant and popular speaker on mind over money topics. Her books are the Journey to Wealth and Wisdom and Wealthy U: Seven Sacred Wealth and Wisdom Lessons. For more information visit www.wealthyu.com

Business development psychology expert Scott Bailey is the founder and president of BMC, Inc., a training and sales force development firm founded in 1994 with an affiliation with Sandler Training. He champions honest, no-nonsense consultative sales and management techniques that get results while preserving the individual team member’s self-respect. He has coached and developed thousands of sales professionals, professional service providers, and hundreds of owners of small to mid-market companies. Scott earned his MBA while working as a senior sales specialist for 20 years in the medical field for a leading manufacturer in the industry. For more information visit www.baileymarketing.sandler.com

Prospecting networking expert Rhonda L. Sher -- creator of the Two Minute Networker™ concept -- is a nationally-recognized expert in person-to-person business networking. Rhonda is passionate about helping entrepreneurs, small business owners and sales professionals learn the effective networking techniques that can fill their pipelines with qualified prospects, double their referrals and ultimately allow them to enjoy more income for less effort. Rhonda is the expert at teaching others how to “take the work out of networking.” Her book, The Two Minute Networker, was a result of her “hands-on” experience in sales and marketing. For more information visit www.twominutenetworker.com

Voice of the client expert Chris Stiehl is a Baldridge Award winning market research professional, author and member of the marketing faculty at UC San Diego Extension. He has over 30 years experience working in and for Fortune 500 companies such as Cisco, Palm and Johnson & Johnson. His resume includes Eli Lilly and Company, Wyle Laboratories, Polaroid Corporation, Cadillac Division of General Motors, and Pacific Gas & Electric Company. He is the author of Pain Killer Marketing (with Henry DeVries). For more information visit www.stiehlworks.com

Persuasive presentations expert Chris Witt works with business leaders — CEOs, presidents, executives, owners, and senior managers — who want to speak in a way that advances their organization's success. He also works with high-level technical professionals — senior scientists, engineers, and programmers — who want to present sophisticated material in a way that non-technical audiences can understand and use. He is the author of Real Leaders Don't Do PowerPoint: How to Sell Yourself and Your Ideas, to be released in 2009. Chris combines a background in education, counseling, and ministry with advanced training in public speaking, communications, and emotional intelligence. For more information visit www.wittcomm.com

How To Register
Call 800-514-4467 and speak to Henry DeVries to make sure space is available. You can pre-pay your tuition with a credit card or check. If you have questions you can call or email Henry at henry@newclientmarketing.com

© 2008 by New Client Marketing Institute. All rights reserved.

Interesting Move at Chrysler

2008-05-22T15:51:00.000-07:00

Our book outlines a key point for business, especially in tough economic times: learn how to listen. We have done research on "pain" headlines versus "benefit" headlines for the same product or service - pain outsells benefits by 19 to 1! Businesses need to learn how to listen for customers' pains, and solve them. That is what our book, our classes and our practice is about: learning how to listen to customers and what to do with the data once you have it.

We are not alone in this belief. A recent survey indicated that as many as 75% of senior executives NEVER talk to a customer. That scared me. Cars.com reported that Chrysler's CEO Bob Nardelli launched a new program to get feedback about his company's cars. According to the report, Nardelli and 300 of his executives are going to call one customer a day, each and every day, until they're satisfied that any problems their customers have with their products are solved. They believe that if you're happy with your car, you'll tell people about it. If you're unhappy, you're going to tell a lot more people. Nardelli wants his executives to feel the pain of their customers directly and deal with it.The cynic in me wonders if this is just a gimmick to make Chrysler customers feel better about a product that may not be that great. I prefer to believe this is a genuine effort to fix perceived or real problems with Chrysler's products, and Nardelli is trying a lead-by-example approach to ensuring quality. I suppose only time, and Chrysler owners, will tell. In any case, his executives will be more sensitized to customer needs and their problems. We hope that Chrysler has a way to organize and prioritize these data, rather than to just collect a laundry list of problems to be fixed.

2008 has been hailed in some circles as "The Year of the Customer." If this is so, businesses need to learn how to listen, in our view. A company can gain over $50,000 worth of market research for $5,000 or less by learning how to listen to customers and organize their input.

How the attract all the customers you need

2008-03-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

Start by asking customers about their pains. Gather information on how to solve those worries and concerns. Be the expert who educates people on how they compare to their peers and the best ways to overcome their obstacles. The more prospects you inform how to solve their problems in general, the more will hire you for the specifics (PKM, 27).

How do you get started as a guru?

2008-03-02T09:39:00.000-08:00

How do you get started as a guru? First, understand that generating new clients is an investment and should be measured like any other investment. Next, quit wasting money on ineffective means like brochures, advertising, and sponsorships. Rather than creating a brochure, start by writing “how-to” articles. Those articles turn into speeches and seminars. The best marketing investment you can make is to get help creating informative Web sites, hosting persuasive seminars, booking speaking engagements, and getting published as a newsletter columnist and eventually, a book author. (P.25-PKM)

Four True Ways To Be A Published Authority

2008-02-24T15:17:00.000-08:00

by Henry DeVries

One of my heroes, Guy Kawasaki, is out to democratize the spread of information with a new venture called Truemors. If anyone can change the world without firing a shot, it is Guy.

Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

I say I first met Guy through my friend Lisa Nirell (Chief Energy Officer of EnergizeGrowth.com) when he was writing the book The Art of the Start. In truth, I met him a decade earlier through the pages of a book I read over and over, his take on business evangelism called Selling the Dream. These are two business books I can’t say enough good things about.
According to his latest venture, www.truemors.com, you are invited to become a “citizen journalist/editor” and “tell the world”—within the bounds of good taste and the law anyway.
Second, from a reader perspective, it puts you “in the know” about the latest news, rumors, and happenings, so that “you know better” without having to spend hours every day searching for information.

Simply stated Truemors is not interested in crap. Some crap, says the Web site, is easy to recognize: profanity, pornography, bullying, libel, slander, and advertising.

The content that Guy and his cofounders want are true rumors that are relevant, informative, and interesting. Reading them would make them a person more interesting. Gossip, by contrast, is less urgent, less useful, and almost always deals with people’s private lives.

In other words, says the Web site, if we wanted gossip, we would have called our site “Truessip” or some such drivel.

The Web site covers the evolution of information. A long time ago royalty and religious leaders had scribes. Around 600 the Chinese printed using negative reliefs. Around 1450 Johann Gutenberg combined hundreds of years of progress into the screw printing press.

Fast forward to 1985 when Apple (Macintosh), Aldus (PageMaker), and Adobe (PostScript) produced “desktop publishing.” A few years later people could create Web sites. Then blogging appeared on the scene. Still, people needed a computer and a blogging tool like WordPress or TypePad to disseminate information. Kawasaki believes he has created a better way.

You can post your information on Truemors in four ways:
Call 1-650-329-2020 and leave a voicemail. SpinVox will translate your voicemail to text and send it to our server. Incidentally, you can speak in English, German, Spanish, and French. Your message, however, will remain in the language you spoke.
Text “2020 ” to 55022.
Enter your message in an online form on the Web site
Send an email to post@truemors.com. FYI, this is a SpamArrest-protected email address, so you’ll have to confirm your address.
How much does it cost to change the world?

“In total, I spent $12,107.09 to launch Truemors,” Kawasaki said in his Change the World blog. ”During the dotcom days, entrepreneurs had to raise $5 million to try stupid ideas. Now I’ve proven that you can do it for $12,107.09.”
By the way, Guy has an honorary doctorate from Babson College, an MBA from UCLA and a BA from Stanford. To say thanks for writing the foreword to my new book with Chris Stiehl called Pain Killer Marketing, we invited Guy to be our guest at last fall’s sold out USC-Stanford football game. But he declined and chose instead to stay home to spend time with his four kids. He missed Stanford’s last second shocking upset of number one ranked USC, but as always he has his priorities straight. And that is the truth.

Are we speaking the same language??

2008-02-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

One of the keys to eliminating customer 'pain' is to understand what they are saying, and to respond in a way that makes sense to them. Speak the same language!! When you are working out of a call center, customers want things fixed by the first person they talk to, and they want it fixed fast! Be responsive to their "hierarchy of needs"! (PKM, CH.22)

Upcoming Events!

2008-02-10T21:52:00.000-08:00

3/8-3/9: Networking with other authors and speakers asking to cross-promote books at the Odd Couple Seminar in San Francisco.

3/13: "Pain Killer Marketing for Consultants" for Institute of Management Consultants Orange County Chapter breakfast meeting

3/13: Blue Velocity Partners hosted event and video taping of Pain Killer Marketing workshop (coming soon to YouTube), 9:30 to 11 am at Sandler Sales Institute, 2091 Business Center Drive, Suite 230, Irvine, CA 92612

4/8: "Science of Clients" by Henry only to the American Association of Senior Executives, Irvine.

4/15: "Pain Killer Marketing for Direct Marketers" for San Diego Direct Marketing Association lunch meeting, Sheraton Hotel, La Jolla Village Drive and I-5. www.sddma.org

4/17: Book launch networking night in Silicon Valley at El Torito, 2950 Lakeside Drive, Santa Clara, CA from 5 to 7 pm. 408-727-4426. Free books to first 50 people who agree to read and review the book

4/22: Book launch networking night in San Diego at El Torito across from UC San Diego, 8910 Villa La Jolla Drive, La Jolla, CA from 5 to 7 pm. Free books for first 50 people who agree to read and review the books on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

5/8: Book launch networking night with other W Business Book authors in Orange County at the El Toritos across from John Wayne Airport, 18512 Macarthur Blvd., Irvine CA 92612 5 to 7 pm 949-833-8230

5/16: Henry to present at Columbia University Consultants and Coaches Conference, New York City.

5/30: Signing books at the Book Expo in Los Angeles and attending author event sponsored by W Business Books.

7/18: Henry to present an all day workshop for the San Diego chapter of the Public Relations Society of America

Managing Key Accounts

2008-02-07T15:34:00.000-08:00

Manage Key Accounts as if They Were Key!

By Chris Stiehl, StiehlWorks, co-author of Pain Killer Marketing

The idea of singling out key accounts is to treat them special, to give them the recognition and treatment that they deserve. If the age old “80/20 rule” applies, there are 20% of your customers, or less, who generate 80% of the profits, or more. These customers should be made to feel as though they are really special. Most companies recognize this strategy as being important and create sales plans and organizations to reflect this idea. In my experience, many lose sight of the objective of this strategy when they implement tactics to support it.

As an example, in one of our clients too many customers were considered “key accounts.” The objective was to treat them all as “special.” What happened internally was that each region of the company wanted to define their own key account criteria. None of them wanted to be left out of this program. The result was that the number of customers who were put into this group far exceeded the number of customers that the sales staff could reasonably accommodate. The key account sales reps did not have time to treat each customer with the special attention that they deserved. The hope was that each special account would be visited at least once a month, or once a quarter at worst. In fact, many were only visited twice a year or less often.

What does a key account want from sales staff? Some do not want frequent contact, but most of them do. If their partnership with your company means that they are a key account, they have a number of wants and needs that have been expressed frequently in market research:

Understand their business – they don’t want to have to explain their needs over and over because you have changed sales assignments or don’t remember from last time.
Know how they make money and how your product or service helps them accomplish that.
Ask about their plans. Are they expanding? Are they moving? What are their major problems? In what direction do they see their business or industry going in the future? You need to know in case you can help, even if they don’t think the problems apply to your product or service. Find out what their problems are, all of them, and find ways to help.

Make sure that you know not only their order history with you, but any problems in the relationship, even if they did not involve the sales activity (e.g., missing delivery dates or service delays).

Many companies do not treat these types of customers as truly special. Designating them as a “key account” should be meaningful to them as well. If they don’t feel as though they are being treated as important to you, such a designation will be a negative, not a positive, in their mind. I have heard several times in my consulting practice, “I don’t feel as though I am being given the attention that my purchases would indicate I deserve; I’m not being treated as a special customer should be treated.”

Make sure that your best customers don’t feel that way. You may want to ask them what being a key account means to them and how they would want to be treated. Some of the answers may surprise you. This type of research is invaluable. It may be done fairly easily if your C-level sales executive is sincere about making these customers feel like the select few. Find out their thoughts on how to grow the partnership so both companies profit.

The bottom line: Don’t lose sight of your overall objective to make the key account feel special as you implement the tactics of that strategy.

How To Fill Your Pipeline In Three Steps

2008-01-05T16:23:00.000-08:00

Emanuel Rosen wrote, “The more connected your customers are to each other, the more you depend on their ‘buzz’ for future business.” (The Anatomy of Buzz, Doubleday, New York, 2000.)

Would you like to use your pain of customer research to fill your pipeline with qualified prospects? Here is a three-step approach that works wonders:

1. Identify Target Prospects. Step one is to find a potential market niche that will be profitable. In today’s market, customers demand specialists. You want fewer prospects to be interested in you, but much more intensely interested. This requires focus. It doesn't mean you'll turn down a customer who doesn't fit into your two or three chosen verticals--it simply means you won't be actively shaping your marketing campaigns toward them. Evaluate your business. Have you sold most of your services to golf-ball manufacturers, pet stores, and electrical suppliers? Then THOSE are the three places to start thinking. But if pet stores in general don't have the budget for your services, you'll need to look harder.

2. Prove You Understand Their Pain. Step two is to determine what promise you or your firm is making to your target market. This includes your unique selling proposition: what you do, who you do it for and how you are unlike competitors—all in 25 words or less. What measurable results do you obtain for customers? You need to decide what makes you different than everybody else, and you need to overcome fear of focus--the desire to want to be everything to everybody. People hire companies who specialize. Very few people would hire a surgeon who says he can do everything from tonsillectomies to facelifts and open-heart procedures. When you're in pain, you want a specialist--not just somebody who's "good with a knife."

3. Harvest Emails on Your Web Site. Step three is to create an easy-to-update Web site that demonstrates your competence, rather than asserts how great you are. The home page of the Web site should have a headline that makes it clear who your target is and what pains you solve. The Web site is the cornerstone of your marketing, and must not be a mere electronic brochure. Your Web site is the silent salesperson that prospective customers visit before making the decision to grant you permission to meet. There should be plenty of free articles with great how to advice for prospects. The Web site should include an offer often something free like an e-book in exchange for the visitor’s e-mail address. This e-book should contain valuable information that tells prospects how to solve their problem in general. Then e-mail these prospects special offers that address their pain.

Salespeople as Customers?!

2007-11-30T20:10:00.000-08:00

Have you ever thought about your sales staff as customers? Henry Ford thought of his employees as customers for his cars. He wanted to pay them enough and charge the buyers so little that his employees could afford to buy the cars that they made. However, what I am suggesting here is that we should go even farther with the sales staff – we should literally treat them as customers of their company’s management.

Many sales people are incented to sell. They often make a percentage of their income based upon how well they do in sales. There was a recent Dilbert cartoon strip (2004) which focused on strategies for selling without a sales staff. The pointy haired boss thought he could reduce headcount by eliminating sales. All he needed was for marketing to find a way to get customers to select their products, pay for them and pick them up at the warehouse. Obviously, sales staff is needed to meet customers’ needs.

Some companies have taken the idea of treating sales staff like customers to heart. There are benefits to following a robust process for developing customer-centric products and services (see the stiehlworks.com). What we have done in consulting for these companies is to follow the same process for developing ideas to improve the performance of sales staff.

For one manufacturer of durable goods, we conducted a "Voice of the Salesperson/Employee" study. The resulting internal predictive metrics and survey results were used to generate strategies for improving sales success. In this company, several key strategies emerged which lead to a tremendous reduction in the time required to track and report sales progress. The sales tools were integrated and updated. The result was a 25% increase in sales without hiring additional sales people!

A robust system of metrics, surveys and analysis had been created which could be perpetuated. Employee satisfaction improved significantly, as the sales staff felt that management was listening to them and being responsive.

This company had learned how to treat their sales force as customers of management and management decisions. The management saw that treating sales people like customers resulted in better service to the customers and higher customer satisfaction scores as well.
Treating their sales staff as customers of management and management systems resulted in increased revenues and profits for the company as well, and that is the mission of the sales staff, isn’t it?

Beauty and the Geek All Day Seminar November 16

2007-11-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

An all-day seminar on “The Science of Clients: How to Win Clients and Influence Referrals” featuring the pair dubbed Beauty and the Geek: Rhonda Sher, author of The Two Minute Networker, and Henry DeVries, author of Client Seduction, will begin 9 am Friday, November 16, 2007 at the Carlsbad Village Theatre, 2822 State Street, Carlsbad, CA 92018.

Why are these two authors nicknamed Beauty and the Geek? Sher and DeVries have been married for 27 years, but not to each other. He has an appointment at two universities. She has appointment every week to get her nails done. Both are professional speakers and authors who have teamed to train advertising, marketing, public relations and other professionals on how to find, keep and grow clients.

“You can call us Beauty and the Geek until the Fox attorneys file a awsuit,” says DeVries.

The session will cover how to get more clients, how to charge clients more money and how to smooth over client problems. Cost is $99 in advance at www.scienceofclients.com. For more information visit the Web site www.scienceofclients.com or email info@newclientmarketing.com or call 800-514-4467.Meet Beauty and the GeekClientologist Henry DeVries, MBA is a best-selling author, marketing instructor at UC San Diego Extension, and founder of the New Client Marketing Institute (www.newclientmarketing.com). Rhonda L. Sher is the founder and owner of The Two Minute Networker, one of the nation’s leading networking training companies. Rhonda is the expert at teaching others how to “take the work out of networking.”

Pain and Your Value Proposition

2007-11-02T21:24:00.001-07:00

What is a “Value Proposition?”

The value proposition for your company or business is the statement of why your customers should give you money – what do they get in exchange for the money that they pay you?

How do You Write One?

One of the toughest yet most important tasks that any business has to undertake is to explain to its customers why they should pay for the company’s products and services. Why should they (your customers and customers) give you money? What is the “value proposition?”

We fly airplanes often as consultants. A question that is often asked of us by our fellow passengers is: “What services do you provide?” followed immediately by “That sounds interesting, who are your customers for that service and why do they need a consultant for that?” In other words, “What is your value proposition?”

Co-author Chris Stiehl’s friend Bradley Gale (author of Managing Customer Value and The P.I.M.S. Principle) often speaks of customers making decisions based upon the value of the deal, not the price. After all, if price was the major factor in decision-making wouldn’t we all be driving used Yugos? We aren’t. Why? Chris thinks we make such decisions based upon the utility of what we receive as compared to the price we pay; i.e., the value of the deal, where price has several attributes. The price attributes can range from initial cost to the hassle of dealing with you as a supplier to the long-term costs and many other cost-related factors.

Dr. Gale’s book addresses several issues: What is customer value and how is it managed? Who “owns” it? What are the specialized tools that are used to manage it? What data is needed? The market research elements that Dr. Gale discusses include the “Pain of the Customer,” customer satisfaction survey data and the “House of Quality.”

A value proposition captures the essence of these ideas: what is the utility you receive from our products and services versus what does it cost you? Of course, the better the utilities are described by the marketer or salesperson, the better is the perceived value by the customer. This is where the “Pain of the Customer” fits in. Marketing professionals have known for decades that customers respond best to ads that speak to their pain, both the fact that you understand it and the fact that you can solve it. Recent literature has shown that businesses behave the same way, especially with respect to “hi-tech” products and services. They want their risk of pain alleviated.

Thus, for your value proposition to work, the customer must perceive that his pain or risk of pain will be reduced, or there is an excitement about the positive attributes (features) of your product or service with minimal risk (pain avoidance).

Checklist of 5 Keys to a Great Value Proposition

1. Be able to express the value of your product or service in terms of how it solves or deals with the customer’s pain, or how the customer benefits with minimized risk of pain.
2. Make sure you understand how much that pain costs them in terms of dollars, staff, time, hassle and energy; i.e., the total cost.
3. Be sure to understand the costs of your product and service, both initially and long-term, including the hassles for the customer, if any.
4. Make sure you can articulate the value (the return) on the investment with your company in dollars and cents and when payback should be expected; this necessarily involves analysis of the dollar value of benefits that may not be easily quantified.
5. Be aware of their alternatives (competitors to you or the option of doing nothing) and what advantages you have over each alternative; proper value proposition analysis includes head-to-head comparisons with all of the customer’s choices.

Why Worry About the Pain of the Customer?

2007-10-14T13:27:00.000-07:00

Bradley Gale and Robert Buzzell in The PIMS Principle stated, “…businesses with a superior product/service offering clearly outperform those with inferior quality.”

Does worrying about the customer’s pain really pay off?

The data from over 450 companies (in The PIMS Principle) shows that companies that care about quality and meeting customer needs have stronger customer loyalty (more repeat business) and are less vulnerable to pricing strategies (price wars). These companies can command higher prices for their products and services. They have lower marketing costs. A customer that buys from one of these companies is less likely to be challenged by management for making that decision. It is a “safe” decision.

Many companies collect pain points. We have seen lists of several hundred pain points within a division of a Fortune 500 company. How does this company decide which pain points to address? In most cases, the decisions are political, based upon who complains the loudest. Obviously, with a list of several hundred pain points, only a small percentage of these ever get attention. Much of the focus of this book is to help you decide what needs attention, how to select the appropriate issues and what strategies would address the most pain points where you have the most to gain.

As you progress through this book, realize that most customers respond to products and services that reduce their pain or their risk of pain. Do you remember the ads for headache and pain relievers from years ago? Some of these ads give you the impression that they are striving to create the headache that their product would then solve! Customers respond to pain in advertising. Any popular magazine illustrates this point. The ads, even in business magazines, often focus on one or more pain points and use the solution or reduction of pain as a key to the promotion of their product or service.

Keep in mind that the pain of the customer is the foundation of the Pain of the Customer and all of the processes described herein.

Six Ways To Prepare Your Business For Future Shift

2007-10-08T21:35:00.000-07:00

Are you prepared for the coming shift in the economy that business futurists are predicting. Below are some tips from Scott Hamilton of Blue Velocity Partners. Join Scott and Henry DeVries for a free teleclass at 5 pm Pacific Time Tuesday October 9 by calling 712-945-1601 and then pin # 968996#.

Did you see this in the news? More than 100 homes in the upscale San Diego community of La Jolla were evacuated after a landslide about 60 yards wide pulled the earth from beneath a three-lane road and some of the multimillion-dollar homes that adorn it.

The Mayor of San Diego declared a state of emergency, asking California and the federal government to help the La Jolla community recover from the landslide.

Was this a surprise? No, cracks had appeared in the road for months. Officials warned for at least two weeks that the ground was shifting beneath the hillside community along Soledad Mountain Road.

How does this apply to your business? Please know this, there are serious cracks showing in the U.S. economy. A shift is about to happen in the world of business. You need to be able to make some hard decisions in the coming months.

According to futurist Joel Barker, it is a “leader’s responsibility to take care of the future.” Joel Barker was the first person to popularize the concept of paradigm shifts for the business world. He discovered that the concept of paradigms, which at that time was sequestered within the scientific discussion, could explain revolutionary change in all areas of human endeavor.
Barker says people shoot down good ideas because they assume that the future is merely an extension of the past. Many things we accept today once met substantial resistance from thoughtful people.

People resist change when they operate within old paradigms. These paradigms establish boundaries and provide the rules for success.

People tend to filter out information that doesn't fit the paradigm. Barker calls this the “Paradigm Effect.” This can block creative solutions to problems and the ability to see the future.

To illustrate, Barker tells stories of triumph and disaster resulting from paradigms. Here's one:
Question: What nation dominated the world of watch-making in 1968?
Answer: Switzerland, a country renowned for over a hundred years for watch-making excellence. In 1968, it held 65 per cent of the market.
Question: What nation dominates watch-making today?
Answer: Japan, a nation which, in 1968, held virtually no market share.
Reason: The introduction of the quartz watch.
Question: Who invented the quartz watch?
Answer: The Swiss. The Swiss were so certain that it was only a novelty, they showed it promiscuously at a trade show.

The Japanese came; they saw the idea; they conquered the market. The Swiss failed to see the potential because they had a financial and emotional investment in the old paradigm.
Barker says: “When a paradigm shifts, everybody goes back to zero. It doesn't matter how strong your reputation, or how big your market share, or how good you are at the old paradigm.”

Barker makes these key observations about paradigms:
1. Paradigms are common. They apply to all areas of our lives.
2. Paradigms are useful. They show us what is important.
3. A warning: Sometimes paradigms become THE paradigm — the only way to do something. Thereafter, any new idea is rejected out of hand. Barker calls this “paradigm paralysis.” It’s a terminal disease that has destroyed many a mammoth.
4. The people who create new paradigms are usually outsiders. They are not part of the established paradigm community. They need not be young, but they are people who are not invested in the old paradigm.
5. The paradigm pioneers must be courageous.
6. You can choose to change paradigms — to see the world anew.

Want to learn more? Then attend the teleclass on October 9 for free or attend this $35 workshop with Scott Hamilton October 12 in Irvine, CA:
Forecasting the Future—Joel Barker’s Strategic Exploration Business Tools
October 12, 2007
Irvine, CA
8:30am-12noon
Continental Breakfast Served
How to:
—Reduce uncertainty in your plans
—Improve the Accuracy of your Forecasts
—Achieve Consistently Better Results
Presenting the Implications Wheel® and the Strategy Matrix ® (Bonus presentation of John Kotter’s workshop—Leading Bold Change based on his bestselling business book Our Iceberg Is Melting is included.)
Key learning points addressed in this session include:
Learn how to reduce uncertainty, out-innovate and out-maneuver the competition by forecasting the implications of your decisions before they occur.
Powerful software allows you to rapidly identify positive and negative potential outcomes—even identify sources of stakeholder conflict
The Strategy Matrix uncovers the intended impacts that exist in all strategic plans
Forecasts the effect of your strategy or a competitor's innovation on your plans
Identify and remove obstacles that prevent people from taking action
You will identify additional forces that will increase or decrease the likelihood of being able to achieve true change
To Register For This Event:
The registration fee is $35 and includes continental breakfast and a catered lunch.
Click here to pay with Visa, Mastercard or American Express.
Or call toll free at (888) 857-9722.
Session held near the John Wayne Airport in Irvine, CA.
2091 Business Center Drive, Suite 230, Irvine 92612
Chris and Henry are both members of Blue Velocity Partners, a regional team of senior level consultants whose mission is to help organizations move into new spaces, take on tough decisions and navigate change. While we recognize the importance of great strategy, this is to no avail if the window of opportunity closes or the execution is flawed.

Turn Pain Into Blockbuster Marketing

2007-10-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

Did you know that psychologists and sociologists have repeatedly found that people are more motivated to avoid pain than to seek pleasure?

For instance, in an attempt to explain how and why some individuals with pain develop a chronic pain syndrome, in 1983 Lethem et al. introduced a so-called 'fear-avoidance' model. The central concept of their model is fear of pain. 'Confrontation' and 'avoidance' are postulated as the two extreme responses to this fear, of which the former leads to the reduction of fear over time. The latter, however, leads to the maintenance or exacerbation of fear, possibly generating a phobic state. In the last decade, an increasing number of investigations have corroborated and refined the fear-avoidance model.

Another example is that microeconomic theory maintains that purchases are driven by a combination of consumer preference and price. Knutson et al. of Stanford University investigated how people weigh these factors and use pain to make purchasing decisions. These researchers demonstrated that separate parts of the brain are activated when people are confronted with financial gains versus financial losses. The study shows that distinct brain regions are triggered when consumers are offered products they wish to buy (a potential gain) and when they are offered the products' prices (representing a potential loss). The results of their study (“Neural Predictors of Purchases,” Neuron Magazine, January 2007) show that consumers are trading off the hoped for gain of making a purchase against an immediate pain: the pain of paying money.

Your target market experiences its own unique frustrations and pains. The secret to maximizing your attraction factor is to articulate the worries, frustrations and concerns that you solve. As the old adage states, “People don’t care what you know, until they know that you care.” Truly identifying your market’s predicament tells them that you understand and empathize with them.

Here are some ad headlines from companies who understand the power of pain:

“What if your labeling printer makes 12,000 errors a minute?” – Zurich American Insurance

“Here’s to road warriors with spines of steel and delicate backs” -- Courtyard by Marriott

“Nickeled and dimed? I feel like I’m being quartered.” -- Charles Schwab

“Is your cholesterol out of whack? – Crestor by AstraZeneca

“There’s more at risk than your reputation.” – Electro-Federation of Canada

“We can’t keep it from getting knocked around, but we can keep it from getting knocked out” – Tecra A8 Notebook Computer by Toshiba

“Unburden your back.” Kensington Notebook Computer Cases

“When bad vacations happen to good people.”—Travel Guard International

If you are a business who struggles with marketing, you are not alone. Many companies are tired of the rejection, frustration and mystery of marketing.

There is a better way to attract customers. The secret is to turn their pain into your gain. Start by asking customers about their pains. Then gather information on how to solve those worries, frustrations and concerns.

Let us ask you this (now be honest): Do you really understand the problems of your prospects and customers? Or do you just think you know? Make no doubt about it, the stakes are high. Wrong marketing messages will cost you potential customers and lead to more struggles and frustration.

So here’s how to become a new customer magnet. Each group of prospects experiences its own unique frustrations and pains. What’s the secret to crafting a marketing message that will maximize your attraction factor? Ask them (or have someone ask for you) about their pains. Start by asking a sample about their ideal business, and then segue into problems. Listen carefully to the exact words they use (you will want to mimic them in your marketing messages).

When you interview some current, past and potential customers about the pains you solve, here are 10 questions you should always ask:

Describe for me the “ideal” experience with a ____________ (your product or service). How do most compare to this ideal?
Describe for me a recent time that the experience was less than ideal.
What are the three most important aspects of doing business with a___________.
If I said a __________ was a good value, what would that mean to you?
In what ways does dealing with a _________ cost you besides money (time, hassle, effort, etc.)?
What is the biggest pain about working with a _________.
Would you recommend a _________ to a friend or colleague? Why, or why not?
How does working with a _________ help you make money?
What does a _________ do really well?
If you had the opportunity to work with a ________ again, would you? Why, or why not?