Today, and in the future, where mass-customization is the call of the day, we will do business “with” my Starbuck’s, my doctor, or my Disney vacation. “When I go to MY Starbucks, they know me personally. I appreciate that fact when they put MY name on MY cup of java.” Like the Pied Piper, the future will vacuum us into personal relationships with others and their organizations. Disney’s Magic Plus, or a Harley-Davidson HOG weekend, or even the personalized shopping experience of a Zappos shoe purchase, will become the norm. It will become the expected. Your competition will change from
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Archives for Sales
Beam Me Up Scotty . . . The 3 Types of Marketing and Sales
It was a hot summer day in 1969 when Neil Armstrong said those immortal words, “Hey this place looks like southern Arizona . . . now what?” To stand on a different planet (or moon) is a major “Ah-ha” for mankind. We have been there before. Columbus, Einstein, and Captain James T. Kirk. What? There are three phases to sales and marketing. Three distinct processes. Each has a different focus. All three result in revenue. But each evokes a different type of customer response. Let’s call them the 3 T’s. Transaction > Transformation > Transportation Transaction This is the world
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Moving Past Success . . . .to Signficance – the 40/20/40 rule to Business Success
Like Christmas, weddings, vacations, birth of a child, pending retirement, and proms, each carries with it a potential for something big. For something significant. Half the fun is in this planning and looking forward. THIS ESPECIALLY APPLIES TO BUSINESS. Your business.
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Customer Satisfaction — hogwash –what about your Employees? – The 5 ABC’s that separates winners from losers.
Sorry about the absence. I took a few months off to fight off cancer. That is done and I AM BACK! Let me introduce you to Denise and Leslie. At my Seidman Cancer Center . . . these two ladies were at the front desk. One day I stopped to get a sucker out of their candy bowl. When I came back out one reached up and put the candy bowl down by her phone. I thought, “I didn’t ask earlier . . . I wonder if I did something wrong?” So the next day I asked them, “Does the
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Good versus Evil Profits – 3 minutes to read
When your customer ranks you “12” on a 1 to 10 scale. When you delight them beyond their expectations. Good profits are not mandated by some executive in a corner office. They are created by the personal interactions between one employee and one customer. There are many Starbucks coffee houses, and not all of them provide awesome customer experiences, but on the whole they try to create a customer experience that evokes a warm emotional and trust laden relationship. The coffee has to be good, but the interaction needs to be better.
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“Excuse me. You have a French fry sticking out of your nose.”
Five Guys hamburgers. Visions of red and white checked decor, with peanuts in shells to distract you while your burger is customized in it’s assembly and you are assaulted with the French fry experience. Assaulted? By French fries? Experience? To the uninitiated. You can pay less to get a hamburger at almost every other fast food joint in town. But then you are not vacuumed into the experience of a Five Guys . . . “burger and fries” (I know the rhyming is too much). The added price is worth the price of admittance. There on the wall is the
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Your Satisfied Customers are Killing Your Business
Sales management is not enough anymore. The profitable businessperson needs to understand the discipline of producing a customer experience, just like a Steven Spielberg or a Disney. This is a battle of the Baskin & Robins ice cream cone versus the pageantry of a Cold Stone Creamery.
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What happens when you charge for free things
Can it be that simple? That the customer feels certain resentment about a $1.00 charge for air when the competitor is free. That the customer FEELS like they are being nickel and dimed. (Which would not be hard to do with the price per gallon of gas). When all things are equal, is there an attitude that shifts the customer’s loyalty when customer FEELS like they are being taken?
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Minus 36 degrees . . .Cookstoves . . .Carrott . . . How to make email and voicemail that connects.
Research shows that 80% of all interaction in the workplace is done with you communicating with some sort of technology. Voice mail, email, etc. So how do you “get through?” I arrived to 36 degrees below zero temperatures. When it I got up the next morning and started the car, the transmission was frozen. I had to let the car sit in idle for 15 minutes before it worked. Canada in March. The coldest cold in my life. I was there for a series of presentations over three days in various Alberta and Saskatchewan cities. And then there was the
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Say Less, Sell More
The need to ask more questions, be more conversational to connect with customers.
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