After landing in Baltimore late this afternoon, I popped over to Annapolis to meet with my colleague Dan Harris and his associate Steve Holt for a short social get-together. Over drinks and a bite to eat we got on to one of my favorite topics: How most companies don’t tap the potential in their existing customer base. We were discussing how companies reflexively focus a disproportionate amount resources on acquiring new customers at the expense of developing their current customer relationships.
Steve was making the related point that it’s much more profitable to have fewer, high-producing customers than many low-producing customers. He suddenly improvised a great line: “A ton of bricks weighs as much as a ton of feathers, but it takes up a lot less space.”
What a great image! Managing a ton of feathers requires a lot of overhead “space” in your company. If you can concentrate your revenue “weight” in some very profitable bricks, you’ll be in much better shape.
Jeffrey Gitomer is one of the leading experts in sales, by any measure. His Little Red Book of Selling and seminars are legendary. But I have to disagree with him this time.
Yesterday, a number of people forwarded me Jeffrey’s latest Sales Caffiene newsletter, in which he recommended that his readers banish the word “We” from their vocabulary as they interact with customers. The people who sent me the newsletter were curious for my reaction, since, as they know, I believe that “We” is one of the most important words to describe a customer relationship.
Unfortunately, Jeffrey sees the word “We” only as a tool for bragging about your own company, as in “We are #1 in our market” and “We’ve been a leader since 1982.” He says that you should avoid the word “We” because it’s more important to talk about your customer, not about yourself.
Yes, of course, it’s more important to talk about your customers than to talk about yourself. But, to me, “We” isn’t about bragging about yourself, because the “We” I’m thinking of doesn’t only include you and the people in your own company. The “We” I am aiming for is one in which your customer can’t think of you without thinking of himself at the same time. In your customer’s mind, your company evolves beyond being “them” or “those guys” to being “We,” because the customer sees the two of you bound in genuine partnership.
So, I’ll agree with Jeffrey in that you shouldn’t brag about how great “We” are, since your customer doesn’t care. But I also want to encourage you to embrace the word “We” … not in the way Jeffrey describes it, but in the way you aim for your customers to view their relationship with you: As a “We” relationship.
If you don’t know Jeffrey Gitomer, check out his site. It’s full of amazing ideas. But this is one on which “We” disagree.
(For a quick description of a We relationship, check out the first audio link on this post.)
Is a perfect We relationship attainable with a customer?
It really doesn’t matter. Imagining a perfect We relationship is what matters. That vision will guide you to create the relationship that is the best relationship possible with this customer.
This is a lesson that is not new. Plato, more that 2300 years ago, pointed out that everything in the real world is imperfect, but that we can understand the essence of things by comparing them to an absolute “form” which we have never actually seen. Have you ever seen perfect blue? Witnessed perfect justice? Heard perfect truth? Plato would say that you haven’t, that every thing you see in the world is only a shadow of a perfect form. But, through inherent knowledge of that perfect form we understand the things that we experience in real life. (How we get that knowledge is another story – see Plato’s Theory of Recollection if you are interested)
Similarly, it may be impossible, with a given customer, to create a perfect We relationship. But, by imagining a perfect relationship, as if it were a Platonic form, you have something to aim for. That fact that you will never attain perfection is beside the point. Aim high, and the relationship will be as strong as possible.
Like many things, a relationship is not an on/off switch. A relationship is more like a dimmer switch. Imagine total illumination, and turn up the brightness.
I just checked into a beautiful, spacious suite at The Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. This room is four times the size of any hotel room I would choose for myself; thank you to the folks at Subway, for whom I’m speaking tomorrow, for the nice room.
Before sending me up to my luxurious suite, the very nice front desk clerk, Anna, warned me about the mini-bar refrigerator. “It’s touch-sensitive,” cautioned Anna, “So if you open it and pick anything up to look at it, you’ll be charged for it.”
What if I want to read the label on the Pellegrino to see how many calories are in it? Or closely study the logo on a can of Budweiser?
I arrived in the suite, and got lost for a few minutes finding my way around, marveling at all of the amenities I would not have time to enjoy during my short stay. Remembering Anna’s admonition, I located the refrigerator and looked at the outer door. (No way was I going to open it and risk maxing out my credit card) A sign on the door said that “For Your Convenience” you will be automatically charged if you grab anything.
Wow. The Venetian is offering me all of this comfort in my suite, but I was feeling like I better be careful or they might reach in my wallet while I’m not looking. What else shouldn’t I touch? What other secret charges are lurking in wait for me?
Suddenly, I thought of the hangers in the closet. I went to look. Sure enough, they were the kind that have the extra-small loops, to go over the extra-thin rod, so you won’t steal them. Nobody has closet rods in their homes that can fit these types of hangers. Like a Motel 6, The Venetian wants to make sure I won’t walk off with their clothes hangers.
So, after initially feeling pampered by The Venetian, I now see that they look at our relationship as if I were an adversary. This is where Brand Harmony meets We relationships … a few small dissonant cues reveal that we are not We.
Recently, I interviewed with Erik Hansen of the Tom Peters site as a Cool Friend. The interview was really long, and I know you all have lots of things to do, so I broke it up into byte-size pieces.
There are two interview clips in this divShare box. In the first piece, Erik and I talk about what makes a We relationship. In the second, Erik and I discuss how marketers lose their sense of real-life relationships when they start “targeting” their customers.
If you’d like to hear or read the entire interview, you can find it here.
Just finished a wonderful book, Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book focuses on how Abraham Lincoln built his cabinet. Instead of choosing cronies and old pals, Lincoln’s choices included three of his major rivals for the 1860 presidential nomination, William Seward, Edward Bates and Salmon Chase. None of these men thought Lincoln was presidential material, and, in fact, he was considered a light-weight who was not prepared for the job.
Lincoln won them over – especially Seward – by genuinely and methodically building his relationships with them. In fact, relationship-building encounters were a key to Lincoln’s success, whether it was at the highest political echelons or meeting the troops at the front. (Chase was the toughest relationship in the cabinet for Lincoln, but that was due more to Chase’s awkwardness with personal relationships than it was to anything Lincoln did.)
What’s especially interesting is that Lincoln was very successful at building relationships from afar, through letters and telegrams. I’m often asked, in speeches and workshops, if the proliferation of electronic communications – text messages, emails, instant messages, etc. – are making it harder for us to have human encounters. The truth is that it’s now easier to connect with people who aren’t nearby. Sure, electronic communication can be a crutch, but people can respond immediately to text messages, and you can instantly be in a dialogue with someone a continent away just by dialing their cell phone. And, of course, air travel makes it possible for us to include more in-person encounters in our relationships than was possible mid-nineteenth century.
We can learn from Mr. Lincoln. Every interaction can be a relationship-building encounter, if we genuinely believe that relationship building is at the center of what we need and want to do.
The movie, 50 First Dates, starring Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler, is billed as a romantic comedy. But I see it as a business movie.
In the film, Sandler’s character, Henry, and Barrymore’s character, Lucy, meet one day and have a great time. However, the next day Lucy doesn’t remember Henry, due to a memory problem that erases the previous day’s memories each night. So, their relationship has to start anew each day.
This is just what it’s like to do business with most companies. Aren’t there stores in which you’ve shopped for years, that still greet you with an impersonal, “May I help you?” as if you’re entering for the first time? How many restaurants remember that you don’t like pickles on your burger, from one visit to the next? Why do I need to repeat my customer service problem to successive AT&T operators?
So many things that seem outlandish in real life, such as a person not remembering yesterday, are taken for granted in business. More convinced than ever: The best business practices reflect the basic truths of everyday life.
My father, Shelby Yastrow, is one of the most un-litigious lawyers you will ever meet. He was general counsel of McDonald’s at a time when they had no written vendor contracts – just handshakes.
Dad told me of advice he got from one of his first mentors, Glenn Seidenfeld, shortly after completing law school: “If you have a good relationship, you don’t need a contract and you’ll never look at it; if you have a bad relationship, no contract is good enough.”
What does mint chocolate chip ice cream have to do with CRM?
One of my “rant buttons” is the way Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is usually discussed as a software-oriented, direct marketing, customers-in-the-aggregate, technology tool. Shouldn’t we focus, first, on how to manage human relationships with individual customers, and then look at how the technology can support those one-on-one relationships? In practice, it usually doesn’t work that way. Here’s a recent post I wrote on tompeters.com that sums up these thoughts.
Last week, during a presentation to 200 employees of one of our health care clients, my associate, Caroline Ceisel, made a spontaneous comment that put customer relationship management in usable, human terms. Caroline was leading a discussion on how to use information we learn about an individual patient, at one point in time, to personalize the patient’s relationship with the practice at a later point in time. Caroline said, “It doesn’t matter if you know your girlfriend likes mint chocolate chip ice cream if you don’t ever get her some.”
From where I was standing, near Caroline at the front of the room, I could see the faces in the audience. They practically glowed with understanding.
Sure, technology is very helpful in remembering those “nuggets” about individual customers. But those nuggets only matter once you pull them out and use them to give customers what they want. Think of all of the nuggets about individual customers that are sitting in your CRM database. Is your company using that information only to execute more streamlined direct marketing campaigns, or are you using that information interact with individual customers in ways that are relevant to each customer?
Remember, it doesn’t matter if you know it. It only matters if you use it.
"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.
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."
