Monthly Archives: November 2015

Thanksgiving Trust

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Last night I met with a group I had been a member of for several years. It was a reunion of sorts. All of us had come to know each other rather well in the years we met regularly but business and living crowded in and the glue that held the group together slowly vanished.

Trust wreathI was first to arrive and staked out a place in the lounge with seating for the expected 8 people.

Suzie arrived next. We did the usual “how’s things,” and settled into wait for the others. I told her I was struggling with what to write about in a pre-Thanksgiving blog.

She asked, “What are you thankful for?”

I told her about my family and friends plans for Thanksgiving… a daughter winging her way cross country to the upper left corner and a couple I first started celebrating the holiday with to satisfy my ex’s desire to have a bigger gathering when her family was scattered across the USA.

As each of the others came in I asked, “What are you thankful for?”

All of them, in one way or another said family and friends and the renewal of their ties that happens around this special meal.

In the light of a suicidal terrorist attack in Paris and in Mali in just the last few days preceded by the bombing of a Russian passenger plane I find it hard to ponder what we might do to change the dreams of those that kill instead of rejoicing in life.

Family, Friends, Tribe, Religion, Nation, World seems to be the hierarchical order of the emotions that drive homo sapiens.

Family is not always a positive space. Somehow, Mother Nature allows us the wonder of children that turn into teenagers. Then somewhere in their early twenties they discover that their parents are not the dolts they thought them to be. But in some cases trust fails and that void just widens.

Friends come and go. Friendship appears to be dependent on both sides being willing to compromise, learn from the other and respect the other’s differences. The foundation is trust.

Tribes, unless you are Native American, tend to be a matter of where you grow up seasoned by race, intelligence, income and raw courage. But then again, the simple wearing of a selected color can make you part of the in group or the out group. Trust is between individuals. It is never uniform.

Religion is a tricky one. I have friends that are Agnostic, Hindu, Jewish, Mormon, six different kinds of Christian, Zoroastrian and several, like most of humanity, still searching. But no one close to me is a follower of Islam. That, I trust, I can fix.

Nation is becoming less and more of a defining difference. It is less so for the first generation or one that is backed into a corner by tribalization. It is more so if assimilation occurs. It comes down to not allowing things that get in the way of friendship, the trinkets that separate tribes and the suspicions that surround religions to get in the way of the trust that is basic to human nature.

It is one world. There is no argument with that. The argument is over who is to be in charge. I trust we can work that out.

The Takeaway:

The only way forward, in my view, is to stop asking someone else to trust the stranger. You can do that as an individual but you can’t do it as a tribe or a religion or a nation. You can only do it as an individual. Find a way you can do it. Help your friends do it. Keep it personal.

 

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry Fletcher is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue. Sign up for the blog and other publications at: www.JerryFletcher.com/Profit.html

Jerry has been researching and implementing small business marketing that builds businesses, careers and lives of joy for 25 years as President of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Learn more at www.JerryFletcher.com

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com

 

Prisoner of Expectations

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“I was listening as a client spoke about Succession Planning. Somewhere along the way he used the phrase Prisoner of Expectations and my mind went chasing that idea through the myriad of myths people have about all things marketing.”

B2B Sales ProcessRick said, You mean like thinking that brand is more important than sales, right?”

“You’re right my direct marketing friend,” I responded. “That assumption is at the heart of so many expectations that people have of their marketing that are so wrong! Brand is something you have to allow to happen instead of trying to control it.

That’s why it is nearly impossible to put a number on it.

Rob, our southern-fried band guru arrived and jumped right in saying, “But you can measure it. You have to spend the money to learn the basic level of awareness and preference as well as sales to satisfy Rick and repeat to really nail it down.”

Jim, the lunch guest who had triggered my maunderings asked, “Can you explain that?”

Rob, who all of us call Bubba turned on his Georgia charm and said, “You betcha. Research folks believe you can figure out how powerful a brand y’all have by showing people your logo along with the competitions. Tha’s why lots of folks think a logo is a brand. Taint.

“The measures you can get that way break down like this:” he said indicating his points with raised fingers:

  1. Awareness—that’s the percentage of folks asked that can identify your “brand” and what it is all about from nothin’ more than your logotype.
  2. Preference—what share of the folks that can identify you and your competitors say they pick you first in a buying situation.
  3. Acquisition—that’s when it gets harder ‘cause you’re dealin’ with actual sales versus the competition but if you keep good records even ‘little guys’ can use this measure.
  4. Satisfaction comes next. Most marketer don’t want to admit that not everyone likes their product or service even when they buy and use it.
  5. Repeat— Another way to figure out where you really stand is lots easier in today’s on-line purchase world if you’re price, delivery included, is still the best easily available.
  6. Referral—is the final measure in reality. Y’all can get an idea about this by asking everyone that considers your product or service who told them about you.

Gail, the veteran advertising copy writer said, “If you run ads in national and sometimes regional magazines you can sometimes get Bubba’s first two from readership studies they do. B2B and B2C are pretty much the same except lower prices mean faster answers and acquisition is replaced with trial but it is pretty much the same game.”

“And,” I said, “the rule of thumb I learned long ago and far away is that the percentage drops by 20% each step of the way. In other words if 100 folks were aware than only 80 would Prefer my brand and then only 64 would actually buy. Of those, 51 would be satisfied 41 would buy again and of those just 33 would refer me.”

“Don’t forget,” Bubba said, just about nobody ever gets 100% awareness. Best ever I saw was barely north of 90%.

The Takeaway:

You can measure brand but generally only when it becomes a regional or nationally known product or service. A high awareness score is terrific but Preference, Acquisition (sales), Satisfaction, Repeat and Referral are always lower than Awareness. Always.

For the little guy, the better measure is found in knowing how your sales stack up against repeat and referral which you can easily develop from your B2B sales records

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry Fletcher is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue. Sign up for the blog and other publications at: www.JerryFletcher.com/Profit.html

Jerry has been researching and implementing small business marketing that builds businesses, careers and lives of joy for 25 years as President of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Learn more at www.JerryFletcher.com

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com

 

 

 

Customer DisService

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“Look out,” Rick warned the others, “he’s on a rant.”

Gail, the calm presence that is the wordsmith in the group asked, “What is it this time?”Bad Customer Service destroys trust

Kate looked over her glasses leaned in and said, “Every time he goes to the bank lately he comes out snarling and snarky. First it was the lines and then it was being asked for identification. Who knows what it was this time?”

Rob, last as usual, sat down and without asking looked at Fletch and asked, “So what’s the burr under your saddle today?”

“Customer DisService,” I said.

“Theahs a lot of that going around,” Rob allowed in his familiar southern drawl.

“I went to the bank just before coming to lunch and once again the line was 6 people deep and there was only one teller. Of course there were three managers discussing their coming weekend over in a cubicle. And when I finally got to the counter the teller asked me for identification even though I was making a deposit into my account with a pre-printed deposit slip and not taking cash! I commented that there was no way I could walk away from this transaction with any cash so the ID thing was ridiculous. Then she told me that tellers are now required by the bank to check the ID of people making cash deposits!

Banks are absolutely the worst in my view. The turnover since the old manager left this branch has been 100%. All the professionalism is gone. Folks my age talk about it in line. It is pretty bad when the bank doesn’t trust its own customers”

“So why don’t you change banks?” Chris asked.

“Because I hear it is just as bad everywhere else.”

“You have no idea,” said Chris. Friend of mine bought a soup deli franchise and now he’s working twice as many hours. Every time he thinks he’s got the staff and shift leaders nailed down one of them just doesn’t show up so he has to fill in. He tells me it happens all the time. Makes me sure I don’t want to have employees if I go back to running my own business.”

Rick waved both hands in the air to get our attention and said, “My experience last week gets the prize.

I went to a national department store and picked out a jacket and a couple shirts just for knocking around. I got in line at a checkout. There were only two people in front of me. 25 minutes later I was still waiting. Two other business men behind me had dumped selections on the counter and said they couldn’t wait around for the clerk. In that 25 minutes only one other clerk had come to help. Finally, a young lady said she could help the next in line. As I passed the counter I muttered that it was about damn time. The original clerk started berating me. You know I’m a mild mannered guy but he really ticked me off. I dropped the coat and shirts on the counter and told him my comments were made for obvious reasons and that his ineptitude had resulted in over $1000 in sales being lost by the store.

I went back to the office and wrote a letter to the President of the company. A few days later, the President called me. No, I would not tell him the name of the employee and no I didn’t want anything other than to let him know he had a problem out here in the hinterlands. If the clerk had simply acknowledged the people in line and stopped using the sell them a credit card script and doing everything by the book, the sales would not have been lost.

Today, I got call from the store manager. After we got through the fact that I would not name the individual we had a conversation about what the store manager’s job is like. It is the same as Chris was talking about. Employees seem to have no sense of their importance in how customers see the company. They just aren’t trained to think about service. Instead they are given scripts and told they must do things one way regardless of the situation. That’s not his choice. It is a corporate mandate“

Bubba, the branding Guru cleared his throat and said, “Now y’all know why it is so hard to keep a positive brand differential. The more locations and the more people you have the more chances there are for Customer Dis Service to happen especially if you push employees to do everything by the book.”

The Takeaway:

Service perceived as good is a matter of trust. Banks apparently don’t trust customers. Corporations obviously lack trust in employees ability to think and adapt to the situation.

DisService might be cured in your organization by getting to trust with customers, staff and yourself.

 

Jerry Fletcher’s blog recaps conversations with clients, prospects and the unruly mob of business development professionals he consorts with. They discuss marketing that works from solopreneur to enterprise level. Jerry Fletcher is the ringleader and “Watson” of the dialogue. Sign up for the blog and other publications at: www.JerryFletcher.com/Profit.html

Jerry has been researching and implementing small business marketing that builds businesses, careers and lives of joy for 25 years as President of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. Learn more at www.JerryFletcher.com

Schedule a personal appearance. Jerry speaks internationally on Networking, Marketing and Contact Relationship Magic. www.NetworkingNinja.com