Tag: customer

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Two Most Valuable Voices in Business

The voices in business that reign supreme above all others and provide the most value are the voice of your customers, internal and external, and your own voice.

Regardless of strategy, goals and plans, if you are not listening to your customers, nothing else matters.

The Voice of Your Customer

Voice of the customer (VOC) is the practice of identifying the needs and demands of those that engage with your business by asking them to participate. VOC opens the opportunity for you to learn your customer’s concerns, desires and ideas. You are inviting them into a conversation by providing a platform to engage.

Whether they are buyers, influencers, partners, employees, or the community, together their voices define your brand. They are the real embodiment of your brand’s customer experience.

The “voice of the customer” is a process used to capture the requirements and feedback from the customer in order to provide best-in-class products and services. This process must be proactive and constantly innovative to capture the changing requirements of the customers over time.

Customers are the only reason for a business to exist. It’s who you serve. Your purpose for being in business. Without a transaction or trade, there is no exchange for goods and services, for profit or not. In other words, if the only person “buying” what you are selling is you, then that is not a business. It’s a hobby or a gift.

Listening to your customers, which means all your stakeholders, is fundamental to growth and innovation.

The collective expressions, from complaints to praising testimonials, define your organization. It’s the good, the bad, the passive and the unknown.

  • Do you know what your customers are saying about you?
  • How do employees feel about the place they dedicate a good percentage of their working hours each day?
  • What is top of mind for your partners and investors?
  • Do you all these constituents know what you value?
  • Is everyone empowered and encouraged to use their voices?

It Starts with You

The second most important voice in business is your own.

Communication is two way. We are learning about the silent voices, who are changing the course of business today by no longer staying silent. These voices are setting the standards for which we will operate in the future. These voices are shaping our definitions for what we will tolerate, or not. What we will accept and what we will teach others as to how we will engage and interact. Everyone is watching and listening to those that are using their voice.

Business leaders can not be silent if we expect our customers and employees to use their voice to guide, teach and share.

If you want to be heard, if you want to be respected, you need to speak up. Now. We all need to use our voice. It is our power. It provides us the ability to declare what we will allow and accept as a course of doing business and in our lives. It clarifies what we will tolerate in our communities and how we will be represented. Our voice expresses how we are to be understood and what others can expect from each of us.

As leaders in business, it is our ultimate responsibility to provide a platform, as well as the security, to utilize all voices. It is inherent in transformational and transparent cultures, which enable and empower every single person in the business to have a voice.

Leaders must say, let their voices be heard. We are listening. We will respond. We will engage. We will act. We will not ignore. All of your voices matter.

Back Up and Start Again

We have long spent years in training people to be good listeners. The practice starts early. Remember this, “Shhhh, listen and don’t interrupt!” Yes, we are told to be quiet and listen at very early ages. At home, in school and on the job. When are we taught to speak up? It often comes years after constant “shushing” and being told respect comes from not questioning others and being quiet.

We need to encourage and demand others to use their voices. It starts with every single person using their voice to encourage change and to uphold standards of accountability. Say something. Don’t be silent.

Unlearning the fears related to saying how they feel or how we are harmed requires as much practice and training in business, as does teaching people to be better listeners. Both need to be equal within the corporate culture. Leadership needs to intervene, transform, support and train others to participate in using their voice, as well as be cognitively aware of constant listening. Reinforcing this by having specific programs for listening to customers is one way companies can demonstrate their “best practices” related to voice of the customer (again, internal and external).

Voices Are Out There in Mass

The voice of the customer has been empowered by the strength of social media and our ability to share billions of pieces of content every day. Companies are seeing the voice of their internal customers publicly on display in platforms like LinkedIn, Glassdoor and Comparably. Is this how you learn about your internal customer’s concerns? Is this where prospective job candidates find out about your culture?

Our external customers are experiencing the greatest transformation in using their voice. They have individual and collective powers that can promote and destroy business reputations. They don’t even have to be a customer to have a voice. Have you seen the boycotts that come from people that don’t even use the product or participate in the service? The bandwagon is full and these voices carry great weight and influence.

The internet age birthed an expressive outlet that has since grown exponentially by every second. What happens in internet real time gives you just a glimpse of how much content is being voiced across the globe every second. Are you watching? Listening? Are these your customer’s voicing their concerns? It’s business, not personal.

The volume of voices is beyond our grasp at the scale of the internet; however, they can not be beyond our grasp within our organizations. We must put in practice voice of the customer programs and practices in order to succeed in business.

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Do you really know what your customers want and what they don’t want? Remember, it’s not about you or what you think they want.

Ask them. They’ll tell you.

10 Ways to Empower the Voice of Your Customers

  1. Call your customers. Yes, pick up the antiquated phone and call. Don’t text, don’t email, call. Engage with at least 2-3 customers a week. Ask them, how are we doing? What can we do better? Anything you would like me to know? Most CEOs do not call customers until there is red hot issue or they already fired you. That’s too late. Never be afraid to learn from the person that pays your salary – your customer.
  2. Interview buyers. Create buyer personas by interviewing prospects, buyers that use your competition and your customers. Know what they need. Ultimately the products you design and services you offer should be based on the customer needs – if you truly want to grow the bottom-line.
  3. Survey internal and external customers. Ask for feedback from your customer and employees. This is more than a employee or account review. This is a moment in time single questions for asking how they like the company or are they satisfied? Go one step further and add a couple questions for real intelligence gathering. What would they change? What will make you buy more of what we offer in the future? Use standardized feedback programs like Net Promoter Score (NPS) to set benchmarks within your organization. It’s a way to identify the voice of your raving fans and the voice of your distracted influencers. Often you’ll uncover the fastest paths to retaining customers and employees is through feedback you gather in a simple survey. People will share, if you ask.
  4. Feedback forums, innovation labs and focus groups. The best product design engineers will tell you that the most profound changes often came from these groups and forums. It’s the buyers and users. They know what they want and what they don’t want. Test groups and feedback loops give you valuable insights. It also reduces unnecessary cycles of development and money spent making something better when it really didn’t matter. The mechanisms to build-in technology to gather insights and use cases today make it easy to deploy and gather valuable information.
  5. Events and customer programs. Give the opportunity for your customers to share their ideas, best practices and “delight” by sharing advice with your other customers and prospects. This is also very valuable to employees, who can get face-to-face time with customers to learn what excites them as well as the pitfalls that distract and destroy relationships.
  6. Social listening. Utilize every platform available to actively listen to your customers. Watch for opportunities to create engagement, ask for further information. Respond and take action. It demonstrates your commitment to customer care.
  7. Everybody sells. Find a way for everyone in your company to participate in the sales process. Offer ride-along programs with top sales reps. Give team members the opportunity to listen in to customer calls and meetings. Record presentations with your customers for training. Capture comments and evaluations from demos and share these “voices” with the employees. Everyone in the company is a sales person and they should know how to represent the company by hearing the customer voice.
  8. Customer service and feedback loops. Gather input and provide recaps and training on key customer issues to the entire organization. Utilize first-hand experience and real customers to provide real accounts of the experience. Recognize those that are engaging with the customers each day, those that are doing the heavy lifting to ensure your customers are happy.
  9. Measure VOC. Define your program and assign key performance indicators that enable you to constantly know how the company is performing related to brand, customer experience, listening, feedback and service.
  10. Use data. Analyze trends and do data spot checks to ensure the voices are being heard and the information is used to guide the company forward. Start with survey data from NPS or customer satisfaction surveys, analyze retention and buyer frequency, measure engagement, track user experiences and monitor daily customer activities.

Use your voice. Learn from other voices. Empower those around you to use their voice. Show others it is safe and OK to do so. Ensure your customers, internal and external, that you will protect them when they speak up.

All voices have a right to be heard and it is right to listen to all of them. Most importantly, it is right to use your own voice. Speak up. And listen. Both will provide great rewards and opportunities to learn.

Jamie Glass, Founder and CMO of Artful Thinkers, a sales and marketing consulting company.

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Investing in Co-Selling Partnerships to Grow

iStock_000022899520_ExtraSmallSmall businesses and entrepreneurs can greatly benefit by selecting co-selling partners to drive revenues. Utilizing another company’s sales and marketing resources may be a great channel to aggressively extend reach and acquire new customers.

Co-selling partnerships with businesses selling complimentary products and services to your target customer can be smart business. These partnerships can cut existing sales costs and even accelerate growth in market share. The best sales partners create a synergy between respective offerings. There should be a “natural fit” of how the products and services add value for the customer. The buyer should inherently understand why you would partner, not question as to why you did or if there is any benefit in buying from a single vendor.

Co-selling partnerships can reduce sales costs. There is a required investment in sales and marketing to grow a business. The costs of a sales team can be crippling for a new venture or small business.The overhead expenses that enable a sales person to be trained, productive, and armed with the right marketing tools, technology and product support can be onerous in the earlier stages of an organization.  Lack of initial investment often produces lack luster results and can actually cost the business even more with unexpected turnover or lengthy sales cycles. Businesses need a specific budget and defined cost of sales to properly staff, train and equip a sales organization to get results.

Time-to-market and time-to-close can be reduced through co-selling partnerships. A new sales hire ramp-up time can be 3-12 months, depending on price of goods to be sold and anticipated sales cycles. Ramp-up requires an “blind faith” investment of time and resources. A business has to invest in sales with nothing more than the anticipation and belief that something is going to be sold. It is a huge price to pay and has great risk. Utilizing a trained and experienced sales team through a co-selling partnership can help you bring revenues in while you invest in building your own sales team.

Co-selling is not free. There are costs of co-selling partnerships. A strong partnership requires investment in training and account management resources to keep top-of-mind awareness with your co-oped sales team. You also need to provide sales and marketing tools to properly equip the team to sell your goods and services. You need to be available when they have questions and to support them throughout the entire sales process.

You also need to create an incentive as to why a sales person in another organization should throw your offering into the mix. Higher commissions, faster time-to-close and value-add to the customer, are all good reasons; however, remember — sales people need to be sold too. If you extend the deal time or complicate the sales process, it will never work. Make it easy and valuable for the sales team through your co-selling partnership.

Incentives matter in co-selling. If the paired companies benefit but not the people selling, the partnership will fail. You need to set up a partner agreement for commissions and shared revenues.  A typical commission in a co-selling relationship starts at 10% of net revenue on the deal for a qualified lead pass. This type of agreement puts the burden back on you to close the deal. You are basically paying for marketing and an introduction. If the partner does all the work, including closing the deal, you may provide an incentive of 20% or more just to get that customer on your books. The structure of the agreement and commission rates should be based on your financial projections and cost of goods and associated expenses in managing the customer post-sale.

What doesn’t work? Relying on commission-only sales teams and partnerships that are by name only. There are business owners that believe they can get a motivated, committed sales person to work for free. The odds of making this type of relationship work are close to nil. The relationship between a company and it’s sales team, whether a direct hire or partner, is measured by the commitment from both sides. Small businesses may have to tier commission levels based on the ramp-up of sales or find ways to create early non-cash incentives; however, no one should be expected to go out and sell without a financial commitment. The words “you get what you pay for” should ring loudly if you are thinking about commission-only or finding people to sell for you because they like you.  Sales people that are really good at closing deals are expensive because they have a huge ROI.

Attributes of great co-selling partners to consider are the size of the partner’s sales team, market reach, relationships with your customer and available support the sales team receives in training for new products. The partner must have the means, connections and existing relationships to introduce your products to market. Co-selling means they will take an active role in selling. Again, partners by name only often produce little value.

If you choose to use co-selling partnerships, embrace the model and build support for the partnership. Show your loyalty through your commitment to make the partnership last and benefit everyone including the customer, the sales person and the partners. Create value by talking about the partnership and promoting the relationship. The results you get from this co-selling will be directly tied to the amount of time and resources invested in the partnership. You have to give to make it work and really pay off.

“In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.” – Anthony Robbins

Jamie Glass, President and CMO at Artful Thinkers @jglass8

Related to a series of posts on partnering.  Also read: Sales Referral Partners Lead to New Customers

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How May I Help You?

If you provide service as part of your value, the first opportunity you have to learn about your customer’s needs is to ask one very simple question, “How May I Help You?”.  These five words will enable you to define the pain and opportunity. Carefully listening to the response opens the door for how you can provide the greatest value, how you might actually help!

Asking someone how you can help them may be viewed as a conversation opener. It does provide a moment to engage. Engagement is critical in moving a target to a potential buyer or consumer of your goods and services.  What better way to get the dialogue started by asking how you might fulfill a request or need.

Asking someone how you can help them is different than using professional etiquette to ask, “How are you today?”.  Though this is a nice sentiment, it doesn’t require you to stop and listen. In fact, most people use this as a long form hello or welcome.  Many will respond with a trite and unemotional “good”, when in fact it may not be how they are at all. It limits your engagement.

The better way to open up a dialogue with a potential customer is to ask how to help them.  It requires you to pay attention.  It means you have to participate in a conversation that will have to use your perception skills, your listening skills and your problem solving skills.  A much higher demand upon your brain than a rehearsed canned response of “good”.

A person skilled in the art of providing outstanding service will anticipate the potential requests that will ensue from the question of how you can help.  The proposition of providing outstanding service also demands that the response demonstrates how you plan to deliver the help or better qualify the type of help that will best serve the customer’s needs.

Expectations of your engagement will be defined when you ask how you can help someone.  It is up to you then to determine how you can deliver that help or point them in the right direction.  The first impression is set by your willingness to open the door, invite someone in and learn of their requirements.

Here are some easy ways to remember how to create the greatest value of HELP:

H = HOW the person defines their need when you ask how you can help them. It is your opportunity to determine HOW you can be the best in serving them when you ask the question.

E = EXPECTATIONS are set when a person is asked how you can help them.  Knowing exactly what is expected gives you the opportunity to WOW them with your determination to provide outstanding service.

L = LISTEN carefully when you ask someone how you can help them, as they will assume you will hear and understand their needs.  Your first response will be their first impression of how good you will be in helping them resolve their problem or attain their goal.

P = PREPARE to deliver when you ask how to help.  Every request may be unique; however, you have standard services that will fit the needs with or without some customization.  Know your responses and the value that you will provide in helping them.

Most important, when asking someone how you can help them, is to respond with honesty.  If you cannot help, tell the person you are not able to help.  It is a measure of your integrity.  If you can extend yourself by giving them a referral to others that can help or pointing them to another resource, you will be a better service provider.  Your value to help does not require you to actually provide the help, only yield to a pathway to gets the person to where they can get the help they need.  Then you are truly a great service provider.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.  ~Mohammed Ali

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.

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Best Gift to Any Business is a Referral

Are you looking for the perfect gift to give your customers or clients this holiday season?  There is one gift that has far greater lasting value beyond a spoken word of thanks, a sparkly holiday card or overflowing basket of nuts and baked goods.  It is the ultimate gift — the gift of a referral.

When you tell a client or company that you believe in what they offer, so much so you are willing to tell others, you are bestowing a very special tribute. Beyond the confirmation, providing an unsolicited referral requires thought and work. It is a bit like the effort of making a homemade holiday gift versus buying all your gifts online. You have to think carefully about the need and fit between the referral and referee. You are attaching the value of your name as an endorsement to the product or service.  You will forever be the link between the buyer and seller. Your gift will often be appreciated more because of the effort you put into the “making” of the gift.

Another reason for giving a referral as your holiday gift this year is the financial value. Customer referrals are instrumental for business growth.  In fact, the value of a referral can even be more than a single purchase, especially if the client offerings are complex or dependent on developing long-term relationships with valuable prospects. Your gift can shave months off of the sales cycle.  A referral can reduce the cost of sales and customer acquisition costs. You could be gifting a customer and potentially a profitable customer with significant real lifetime customer value (LCV).

Your word matters and your actions speak louder than your words.  Everyone is grateful for a ringing testimonial.  It serves great purpose to have your endorsement out into the marketplace to attract buyers for your clients and show your support.  The actual gift of a referral is going beyond championing your like and approval.  It is an affirmation that you believe both sides of the transaction will benefit. You are providing a seal of approval for an engagement between the buyer and the seller.

Yes, we all want customer recommendations on LinkedIn, Yelp and on our Facebook and Google+ pages. It is good business practice to endorse your customers and clients when they buy your services.  This will encourage them to do the same for your business.  Word of mouth and online reviews are proven to work.  Market studies show buying decisions are impacted by referrals, as noted in HubSpot’s example of the impact of social media referrals: 71% More Likely to Purchase Based on Social Media Referrals [Infographic]. These endorsements are reviews of our work. They are critical to marketing today.

Knowing the value of a review and recommendation, the referral puts financial value to your words.  As you put together your shopping list this holiday season, think about the best gift for your customers.  A gift that only you can provide by making a meaningful connection.  A word of gratitude followed by an invitation to do well.  A contact that can lead to revenue. Give the ultimate gift to those that pay you. Give back by giving them a customer!

“The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.

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Ready to Engage Your New Customer?

The buzz in marketing circles today is engagement. How do you effectively hook potential customers into a committed relationship? The investment a business makes in the engagement process should be directly tied to revenues. If you expertly and skillfully engage, sales will increase.

Competent engagement helps a business target, influence, nurture and convert prospects to customers.  The more expeditious a business is in engaging with prospects, the bigger impact to the bottom-line.  How are you engaging your potential new customers?

The easiest way to initiate engagement is to view customer and wedding engagements as the same.  The difference between the two are in the details of tactics.  How you move from targeting into proposal are nearly identical in overall strategy.

Engagement begins by determining how to get someone to respond to your offer.  First, identify the target based on the qualifications of a “good match”.  Who is a suitable candidate for engagement?  What are the qualities you are seeking, both in demographics and social behaviors? Then you need to determine what makes you attractive to others.  Packaging and presentation of your “stand out” qualities are critical in the initial step of the engagement process.  Know where to direct your message and selling to the most qualified targets.

Second, you start the courting process, where all long-term valuable relationships begin. This step is more difficult to measure and needs careful preparation. You can spend a tremendous amount of resources influencing others and never get to the proposal. Laws of attraction and suitability apply.  Who you target, what you say and why they are a good candidate must already be known to successfully influence the “right” prospect.

Using engagement tactics like research, focus groups, asking for referrals can speed progress directly influencing better qualified prospects when cultivating relationships. Put out a few “asks”.  Look for agreement.  Identify the buying signals.  Know what makes this prospect want to engage further in the relationship.  Define what is in it for them. It might take some sampling and analysis to reach a successful outcome.

Third, define acceptable terms of the relationship.  Nurture your relationship to fully understand the “how and why” you need to partner.  Build upon the strengths of your bond through mutual consent. Constant communication, validation and envisioning the success of your relationship solidifies the “why”.  This is the beginning of a potentially long-term committed relationship, one that must be mutually beneficial.   Are you both in agreement? Create timelines and set expectations to help control spending, time and resources while nurturing your relationship.

Fourth, make the BIG proposal.  It is time to go all in and ask for the close.  Whether it be a hand in marriage or to partner in business, the only way to get to a “yes” is to make the proposal.  If you have taken time to go through an engagement process, building consensus along the way, you will have eliminated most of the risk in making the proposal.  Converting a prospect to a buyer requires you to “pop” the question.  It is time to seal the deal.

The opportunity to engage is there, are you ready to start the process?  Only if you are able to commit to an engagement, will you be ready to “tie the knot” with a new customer.

[W]hen you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.  ~Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.