Sarah Silverman for “The Great Schlep” (www.thegreatschlep.com) in which she asks Jewish college kids to persuade their grandparents who live in Florida to vote for Barack Obama.
Whatever your politics, religion, or opinions about this Sarah, you’ve got to be amused. (My Jewish grandmother, who used to live in Florida, voted for every Democratic candidate from FDR through Kerry, before she died in 2005. Not sure if she would have needed persuasion from The Great Schlep this year to keep her streak up.)
But, from a marketing point of view, will this work?
(What’s funny about the premise that a hotel will bend over backwards for a guest who comes through a “low-priced” Internet channel is that the opposite is often true. Check out this post I wrote tompeters.com.)
(I published this post in June on tompeters.com. The news of the past few weeks encouraged me to republish it here.)
The U.S. economy is in bad shape. If, by chance, you haven’t heard about this yet, just turn on cable TV news for 30 seconds.
What does this mean to your business? It could be terrible, but it doesn’t have to be.
How can I say that?
For the last few months, I have been asking workshop audiences the following questions:
1. What percent of your customers are giving you all the business they reasonably could?
2. What percent of your referral sources are giving you all the referrals they reasonably could?
The answers to these questions have stunned me, because they have been so low. I knew they would be quite a bit lower than 100%, but I’ve found that most executives estimate that only somewhere between 0 and 25% of customers are giving them all the business they could. The numbers are even lower for referral sources.
So, let’s say that the economic downturn has softened the market for your products or services by 10—20%. Yes, that’s a lot. But it pales in comparison to the 75% of the business you are missing if your current customers are only giving you 25% of their potential business.
Here’s the cold, hard (but potential-laden) truth: For most companies, the untapped latent profit in their existing customer relationships is much greater than the magnitude of our current economic problems.
The downturn is real. But so is the amount of business you are missing from your current customer relationships. How do you develop this potential with your existing customers?
Customers who believe they are in “We” relationships with you will give you a larger share of their business. They are willing to pay more, and they are less likely to leave you for a competitor. On the other hand, customers who are in “Us & Them” relationships with you are more likely to spread the business around among your competitors, and will also be more likely to bolt to the competition for a lower price. If you create “We” relationships with your customers, one relationship-building encounter at a time, you will go a long way towards making up for—and maybe even surpassing—the effects of the soft economy.
Here’s a link to the newsletter I sent out today, focusing on the disproportionate focus companies have on acquiring new customers, at the expense of developing relationships with existing customers.
I have facilitated workshops for the past five days in a row, from Sunday through yesterday, Thursday. Each forum enabled me to engage the audience in the exchange of ideas.
This is one of the most rewarding parts of my work. I show up for the workshop, well-prepared, and with a clear idea of the content I want to cover. But, at the start, I do not know what will happen in the workshop, because I have not yet heard the participants’ contributions.
When I meet people as they come in the room, they are always friendly, but all I can learn about them as we greet each other is what is written on their name tag and in the few words we can exchange. But, with each person, I am am confident that there is a depth that I have not yet uncovered.
Once a workshop starts, I begin to solicit contributions from the attendees. As I provoke them and prod them, ideas begin to surface. One person’s thoughts encourage another to speak, sometimes to agree, sometimes to amend, often to debate.
As I stand in front of a group, the vision I have is that there is a well of intelligence seated before me, and my job is tap into that well, using my ideas and concepts to bring forth new, stimulating thoughts. Every group I work with is different, because each well of intelligence has its own strengths and personality.
Presentations are not about presenting. They are about being present enough to engage a group of people, in a way that creates new ideas that none of us could have created without the collaboration of each other.
I am a very satisfied subscriber to Audible. Their selection is great, the system is easy, and I always have an active audiobook on my iPod.
Tom Segev is a great writer. His books on modern Israeli history, while controversial, are well-researched, well-written and captivating.
Segev’s latest book, 1967, as I reach chapter 2 of the audiobook, is really interesting and informative. It was translated by Jessica Cohen. It’s got the sign of a good translation: I’m confident I’m getting the whole story, but the narrative sounds like it was written in English, not Hebrew.
The 1967 audiobook was published by Tantor Media, who list 731 titles on Audible.
James Boles, the narrator of 1967, has a good voice and reads well. However, his pronunciation of the Hebrew or Arabic words in the text (place names, peoples’ names, names of organizations) is atrocious. It’s almost impossible to listen to him. Even worse, he’ll pronounce the same word different ways, each time he comes to it.
So, does this poor performance reflect only on Boles, or also on Audible, Tantor Media, Segev, 1967, and Cohen?
It reminds me of my days, just after business school, wholesaling vacations to Las Vegas and Hawaii. If a United Airlines flight attendant sneered at one of my customers, I had to deal with a complaint letter. There was also the irate customer who wanted me to return his money because he walked into his Maui hotel room, which he had chosen from my brochure, and the housekeeper was sitting on his toilet.
Customers use Brand Harmony to evaluate us, meaning that every point of interaction influences a customer’s brand impression. I guess you could say that James Boles and Tantor Media are responsible, but I’ll certainly think twice about my next audiobooks from Audible or Segev. Wouldn’t you?
Entrusting our products to others is a risky business. Be cautious of those who influence your brand.
Sometimes creative indulgence goes beyond the bounds of taste.
AT&T is running a series of ads for its Internet Connect service that show Bill Kurtis, holding a laptop in various out-of-the-way places, declaring, “I just found the Internet.”
Sounds like a great product, and the basic advertising idea is a good one. But in one execution Kurtis tells viewers that he is on a deserted island as he holds his laptop with the AT&T Internet Connect card stuck in its slide. He declares “I just found the Internet” while he stands in front of a crashed airplane that has “Amelia” painted on its side.
On July 2, 1937, the famous aviator Amelia Earhart, along with her flying partner Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific during an attempt to fly around the globe. They were never found, and were declared dead a year and a half later.
Sorry. But this is just badvertising. Those who don’t know about Amelia Earhart won’t get the reference, and those who do will (ought to?) find it in bad taste.
"When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention" - Tom Peters
Steve is the author of Brand Harmony and the newly published We:
The Ideal Customer Relationship. Learn more and order direct from our Products
page, or from Amazon.
Subscribe for a Free Ebook! Encounters: The Building Blocks of We Relationships
About Steve Yastrow and Yastrow & Company
In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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