Empowered Employees

You strategized. You advertised. You search-engine-optimized. You managed to get a few tire-kickers through your doors, and now they’re mulling about quietly. Now what!?

Give them an experience to remember! So much attention is paid and money spent to get them into your shop, why would you let that sleepy teenage salesclerk be their first in-person interaction? Lackluster employees are cheap, until you consider the opportunity costs of not “wow”ing your customers.

Every person that walks out of your doors without a story to tell is (at least) 3 potential new customers that aren’t warmed up for you! That means reaching out to them down the road is a cold call at best, when they should’ve been hot to trot.

Employees need to be educated, inspired and empowered. After all, what good is a savvy, fired-up clerk if he feels his hands are tied when it comes to offering above-and-beyond service? Running back to the manager to authorize every extra sucks the satisfaction right out of the process. (I should know, I used to be that teenage clerk) Authorize them ahead of time to a set degree, and watch them work their magic on their own!

Famed-for-service retailer Nordstrom is said to have given new hires a one-page, 75-word employee reference manual containing a bit of info about the company, along with the Nordstrom Rules:

Rule #1: Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.

That’s employee empowerment!

Communication Gaps

I read The Posture of a communicator on Seth Godin’s blog, a post about who’s responsible for poor communication.  I absolutely agree with his position, and it got me thinking . . .

Businesses (or, more specifically, employees) live what they do day in and day out. Customers come into contact with your business only when they need something, and even then they are only exposed to that polished “public face” that we work so hard to keep up.

How can we expect someone who is privy to everything behind the scenes to put all that experience and knowledge aside and see things with the fresh eye of the customer? It’s like watching a movie the second time–it’s a whole different experience when you know who dunnit.

And this is where communication gaps occur. You’re sending a message or offering an experience in one cypher (knowledge level, industry jargon) and expecting the audience to decode it with their own.

Always view your communications from your audience’s perspective before sending the message. If you want to understand the experience of being awestruck by “The Great and Powerful Oz”, bring someone in who hasn’t already seen “that man behind the curtain.”

My Valentine

It’s easy to be cynical about a holiday like Valentine’s Day, but every once in a while it can be a good thing to forget about the hokiness of an act, and just indulge. (My Valentine reminds me of this every time I watch a sappy romance movie with her through rolling eyes)

In that spirit . . .

I want to tell my Valentine
I love her very much;
I’m a lucky man to’ve been with her,
through ups and downs and such.

Composing’s not a thing I’ve done
enough these past few years,
I’ve let things get the best of me–
distractions, hopes and fears.

But rest assured I’m still the man
who strings words full of thought,
even though I’ve been neglect
to share, more oft than not.

For love, you see, is tricky,
e’en the best-intended fails
to express itself fully enough
to make a mate’s heart swell.

So here’s my best attempt to show
the bubblings still beneath
a much-t0o-oft complacent shell
that hides my passion’s teeth.

To the girl I’ve loved for all these years,
my Valentine, my Kelly:
may my efforts be more showing of
the feelings in my belly.

I hope this lyric finds it way
through cyberspace and Google,
if you check your RSS feed, dear,
you’ll find I’m shameless for you.

Marketing the Original

Thank you Creadiv for posing a follow up question to my last post, The Curse of Originality.

“So how then do you market an evolved product? One that doesn’t fit directly in with the category of it’s competition. Other than brand recognition how will you reach your clients? If the product is new and doesn’t have a market how do you create one or establish a demand for it?”

Marketing the Original is about defining a solution to a need people realize they have, in a way that they don’t realize they need it. More simply put: you can’t outright create a new need, but you can help people realize that your product or service is a better way to satisfy an existing need.

This is an oft-used example, but think about the automobile: People had always had a need for independent locomotion (previously satisfied by walking, riding horseback, carriages, etc.). When the automobile arrived (in lackluster fashion), people didn’t immediately see the need for it–what they already had worked just fine, and was much more practical. But then, as more efficient production lowered prices, better mechanics increased reliability and paved roadways (later, networks of roadways) coevolved to increase practicality, demand skyrocketed. People no longer saw the automobile as an unnecessary extravagance–they saw that it satisfied their need to travel/commute/etc. much better than the old horse and buggy ever could. (That’s changing again as people begin to see not driving as a way to fulfill their need for our planet to have a future, but that’s another story…)

Another example is one I’ll borrow from Jeffery Gitomer’s The Patterson Principles of Selling. The idea of the receipt as a necessary function of the basic retail transaction was largely the product of a cash register salesman. His cash register was the only register to create a paper receipt for the customer to hold as proof of the transaction.

Now remember, in the pre-receipt era, this little bit of paper didn’t mean anything to anyone–it was a new idea with no market. But this salesman capitalized on the basic need for peace of mind by offering this receipt, this record, this document which people could use to say, “Yes, I paid my bill,” or “You overcharged me for this item.” He actually marketed the idea of the receipt (posters, lectures, advertisements devoted specifically to the receipt) and got people to demand them before the merchants had even thought about offering them. People saw (whether consciously or not) that this bit of paper actually gave them piece of mind, so the idea of the receipt caught on, and demand for this new cash register rose (merchants want to please their customers, after all). Then came the competitor’s imitation, further proliferation of the idea of the receipt as necessary, more demand, and so on . . .

In the Information Age of today, these cycles are happening much more quickly. Products and services live or die by their ability to catch on with an attention-depleted public which is constantly being over-exposed to “the next best thing”. Our confidence in that idea is wavering (dot-com bubble?), so often the best way to promote a genuinely “new” product or idea is to frame it as a solution to an “old” need. More and more in the Web 2.0 community, the framing is being done by the users themselves.

For example, the human need for social connection was once satisfied on the local level, by going to church, attending town hall meetings, showing up at the hoe-down and/or hootenanny of the season . . . generally sharing a physical space with a bunch of other humans with similar norms and values.

Today, that need is beginning to be satisfied (in part) by online social networks. And this isn’t just taking that town hall meeting and hosting it online . . . these networks are an entirely new experience, with new interactions, new functionality and new possibilities (along with new challenges). The point is that they’re a complete departure from the way we used to do things, but they’re still satisfying that same basic need.

So (in brief answer to the question):

1. Determine which basic need(s) your product or service satisfies, even if it’s a secondary effect (like the register/receipt situation).
2. Foster a link between that basic need and your new (unknown) product or service. More and more, the solution is not just advertising, but actually being where your customers are (physically or online) and showing them the value of your offering.
3. Reinforce that link at every touchpoint–every interaction that the would-be customer will have or will perceive as having with your product or service. Sometimes this can be easily controlled (i.e. packaging, brochure, website, advertisements, etc.) and sometimes this will be just out of your reach (media coverage of related topics, or bloggers doing their work). Control the ones within your reach first, then try to be heard on a higher level (offer to write an expert-column on a related topic, make yourself available for interviews, write guest posts for relevant blogs, etc.)
4. Be persistent and stay prepared. Minds aren’t changed quickly, but when they do come around, in the world of today it’s likely to be fast and fierce.

That was a long post, so thanks for sticking with it!

The Curse of Originality

A few of my clients, I’ve noticed, have extremely original takes on their industry–so much so that I would hesitate to say they’re even in the same business as their “competition”.  This is great from a marketing standpoint, because it’s that differentiating point that I love to use to distinguish them in the minds of their audience.  But these clients have such a fresh approach to what they do that there isn’t even a market for it yet–and that’s where one can run into trouble.

Now let’s be straight, reader–I will always encourage fresh ideas and moving (considerately) into yet-uncharted territory, as that’s where the greatest potential for growth and profitability often lies.  But one has to understand that there’s a reason they call it breaking new ground–it’s hard work.  One not only has to convince one’s customers that theirs is the best widget, but that they need a widget at all!

Fortunately for the aforementioned clients, they are extremely well-versed in what they do and are able to communicate the need for their services to the right people.  But it still becomes a question of how many people they can effectively reach (they can only make so many sales calls in a given day and still do their jobs).  In this case, their marketing has to go beyond name recognition to function as a primer in their offerings.  And there has to be a lot of it (plenty of minds to change, after all).

This may come as a surprise, but in this case, the best help they can get will likely be imitators.  The more business there are preaching a new message to the masses, the more potential clients hear it, the bigger and faster the overall market for that service will grow.

The good news for the Originals, then, is that once the scale does tip in their direction, and people come to understand why they do things the way they do, they’ll have a head start on their competition, establishing themselves as the experts to seek out–so long as they’ve built up enough brand recognition in the minds of their market-to-be to stand out from the followers.

The Story of Stuff

Another complex idea, distilled, and presented in an easy-to-understand, low-production-cost manner. Give yourself a few minutes to watch The Story of Stuff and change the way you look at consumption.  Then tell a friend about it.

Tone

Here’s a little lesson in the written word:

Good writing conveys more than the explicit meaning of the words themselves.  From a branding standpoint, the tone of the piece is what really determines how the writer (your company) is perceived by the reader.  Take Woot!, for example…

Besides having a unique business model (they sell thousands of ONE item each and every day, from MP3 players to remote control helicopters to vacuum cleaners), their product “blurbs” are typically elaborately-woven, entertaining, sometimes depricating narratives about the day’s item.  In fact, a lot of the time the item is mentioned only in tangent to the story.

You don’t always get the best feel for what the item is or does, but, then, who doesn’t understand a set of headphones, or an alarm clock?  More importantly, you know they’re not pumping any sunshine.  It’s like talking to a friend that you know isn’t going to jerk you around (that quirky electronics geek who lives on World of Warcraft and lights things on fire–everyone has those, right?).

So loosen up a bit–don’t be afraid to show that winning personality everyone at the office is always raving about.  Very often, the customer isn’t buying the product or service, they’re buying you!