Paul Johnson sez: "I'm Looking for Trouble!"

The Enemy of Marketing is Here

By Paul Johnson

1,205 words. Abstract: Your efforts to market your business and boost sales are sabotaged easier than you might think. Learn how to recognize and thwart the enemy of marketing with the application of three easy practices you can incorporate into your operations.

Do you leave customers breathless and begging for an encore, or fuming and screaming, "No more!"? How do you know... for sure?

I had almost finished a glorious shopping experience at one of my favorite stores. The shelves were stocked with plenty of options, and the helpful salespeople gave me good guidance. I made it almost all the way to the cashier when it happened. If the cashier later sensed my agitation, she didn't let on. Neither did I, until I walked out of the store. Then I shared my complaints with anyone who would listen.

Marketing's Payoff
The event I will describe happened at a Bass Pro Shop, but my intent is not to pick on them. In fact, I would bet the same scenario has happened to you at numerous stores you frequent.

Here's the situation. Companies like Bass Pro Shops spend millions on marketing every year to induce customers like you and me to give them our money. I get their direct mail, and I spot their ads in the newspaper. I visit their website to investigate purchase possibilities. Now I'm in their store, encountering carefully-place displays and special offers. I choose item after item and their marketing investment is about to pay off: I am headed to the cashier lanes.

It's a slow day, and only one lane is open. I'm No. 3 in line, then No. 2, and now I'm next. The transaction ahead of me runs into a snag. The line grows; now 6 are waiting behind me.

Another employee walks toward a nearby cashier station. He has at least three possible choices of what he could say and do. They are:

• He approaches me and offers, "Sir, I can take you over here." Then he helps me carry my loot to his station.
• He motions to me, looks me in the eye and says, "I can take the next person in line."
• He looks down at his terminal to avoid eye contact with everyone and announces, "I'm open over here."

Guess which one he chooses?

More Than a Feeling
As the people behind me scurry to become his first customer, I realize I'm penned in and there's no way I can beat them there unless I climb over a point-of-purchase display. If I change lines, I'll be No. 5 instead of next in line. I've already been standing here 10 minutes, and I have no reason to believe it won't be another 10 minutes. Smoke is coming out my ears; I decide to stick it out and complete my purchase anyway, but only because I am holding someone else's birthday presents in my hands.

Companies in highly-competitive markets often find it difficult to create and articulate meaningful points of brand differentiation that can support their business growth objectives. When customers have a hard time finding differentiation, it's often the simple things that drive those customers to the competition. Companies like Bass Pro Shops spend millions to generate repeat customers that will have significant lifetime value for their company. When a grand and glorious shopping experience is capped by a torturous conclusion, what elements of the experience are most likely to be remembered and shared with others? In a matter of a few seconds, the opportunity for referral and word-of-mouth business is converted into customer attrition.

I See What You're Saying
It's evident that neither customer-facing employees nor their managers pay attention to the outcomes of their careless customer dialogues. They fail to see through their customer's eyes. Every business is smart to automate processes where possible when we remember that automation is designed to serve the masses over the individual. Oftentimes attempts to monitor individual customer satisfaction are again automated through online and paper surveys, providing managers with a misguided illusion that everything is alright with their systems and procedures.

While mass surveys do provide useful data and information, the real knowledge (and, often, wisdom) comes through real-time interactions with customers. Here are three ways to make that happen.

• First, get trained eyes to watch the body language of your customers in a multitude of situations. I've learned through decades of customer interactions than I can learn more from what people do than from what they say or don't say. A wrinkle of the forehead or a curl of the lip can tell me volumes about what a person is thinking and feeling. When it contradicts what they're saying, I believe what I'm seeing first. Experienced eyes can easily spot confusion, disappointment, contempt, frustration and many other feelings your customers may never admit to verbally. Yet these feelings are what customers remember and are often what keep them from coming back for more.

• Second, reward customers who show you your faults. It's tough for us to hear that something is wrong inside our organization that we work so hard in every day. It's also hard not to shoot the messenger of the bad news. Every time someone points out a deficiency, we're given an opportunity to make our business better. When customers give us these gifts, let's remember to be cordial, make things right for them right then, and then give them a gift or reward that will encourage them to offer more useful feedback in the future. A gift card virtually guarantees that you'll see them again.

• Third, arrange for "mystery shoppers" to evaluate you. It doesn't matter what business you're in; you'll benefit from getting an outside-in perspective of what your customer-facing employees do for and to your customers. When we mystery shop our clients' sales organizations, it may involve walking into a retail store, meeting with a salesperson face-to-face, talking to the salesperson over the telephone or even through website chat. While we often find them doing many things right, there are always opportunities to grow. Get someone from outside your company to mystery shop your organization if you really want to see through your customers' eyes.

Surveys and Other Black Holes
Remember that your customers are really on your side as long as they believe you are on theirs. Customers want to do more business with you; it's easier than finding another supplier. Give your customers reason to believe you're going to be a better resource tomorrow than you are today. For example, if you rely on surveys to collect customer feedback, do you routinely let survey participants know how their input has led to changes designed to improve service delivery levels? If you're not already, perhaps you could call the customers who've responded to three or four surveys to personally thank them for their participation and discuss some of their responses.

Because Bass Pro Shops does so many things right, I'm willing to give them another try. Perhaps that check-out lane experience was an aberration; I truly want to believe that. They are not my enemy, nor am I theirs. The enemy of marketing is anything that disrupts our customers' reasonable expectations. These enemies are insidious and hard to find because they creep into our business through carelessness. Renew your efforts to look at your daily customer interactions through their eyes. Do that and they'll be eager to come back for an encore and invite you to sell them more.

© 2008 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson the Trouble Breaker is a keynote speaker who works with organizations to convert trouble into double and triple digit performance breakthroughs. Discover breakthrough concepts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Visit http://TroubleBreaker.com for presentations on performance improvement.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: How has your otherwise wonderful shopping (or dining) experience been trashed at the last moment?

Marketing Lessons from the Business of Football

By Paul Johnson

1.326 words. Abstract: The football game on the field has little to do with why butts are on the bleachers. Football teaches important marketing lessons that we can apply to gain more customers and fill a stadium of our own.

People don't go to football games to watch football. Oh, a few people do, but not enough to come close to filling the stadium. To find out who the pure fans are, you'd have to do away with the video screens, the mascots, the cheerleaders, the halftime shows, any foods more exotic than hot dogs, soft drinks and peanuts, and then see who's left in the stands. Would you still buy a ticket?

Football is more than a game; it's also a business. The business of football has grown because the promise included with each ticket has grown to appeal to more than just the pure fans. Does your business cater solely to your pure fans? If so, you're sitting on a tremendous growth opportunity.

No One Wants Your Product
We forget that people don't really want our product; they want what they can do with our product. Take coffee as an example. If we focus on the coffee itself, it's easy to get caught up in the price per pound or per cup, and the qualities that make coffee taste good or bad. Yet when we think about what we can do with the coffee, those factors become almost insignificant.

The place where coffee is served (the coffee shop) becomes the backdrop for a social event with friends or business acquaintances; the price of the coffee becomes insignificant. Perhaps coffee is the warm, comforting friend that accompanies us on our journey into the new book we just picked up at a Barnes and Noble book store. Whenever we buy coffee or football tickets or your product or service, we are buying much more than what the label on the package indicates.

Get a Feel for the Game
Football organizations discovered long ago they can enjoy significant boosts in business by looking at all the ways to serve their customers during a football game. By expanding the core product -- the game on the field -- to appeal to a larger audience, their market grows beyond the pure fans to include their spouses, other family members and their friends. In the process, football organizations enjoy multiple up-sell opportunities while engendering customer loyalty that keeps fans coming back. You don't have to love football to love going to a football game.

While your product or service may not be as flashy and exciting as football, you can apply football's marketing lessons to improve your market share, revenues and profits. If you don't, you risk seeing your sales fall flat and watching business go to your competition. If companies can apply these marketing principles to a product as simple as coffee, you can win using these strategies, too.

Unfortunately, we may be too close to our product to successfully apply these principles. We likely know the features and benefits of our product inside and out, and understand all the things our customers can do with our product. What's more important is that we step back and work to understand how people feel while using our product. Find out the feelings your customers associate with using your product or service, and then think of ways to give them more of those feelings. Here are three ways you can do that.

1. Ain't I Social!
Many people use a product or service as an excuse to get together with other people. Football tickets, coffee shops, birthday cakes, bowling leagues - people may buy these products solely to enjoy the feelings they get when they're experiencing them with other people.

Think of ways to get people who share a common interest in your product or service to socialize around it. Consider:

• Conferences
• Online chat rooms
• Reunions
• Rallies
• User groups
• Advanced training sessions
• Charitable work

Any event, really, can be the perfect excuse for your customers to gather and experience the great positive feelings that will generate customer loyalty and keep them coming back for more.

2. Make it Memorable
When customers have a good experience with your product, they'll want to repeat it so they can recreate those good feelings. Ideally our customers will talk about their experience with their friends and associates long after the experience is over. You can extend the power of this word of mouth effect. Help your customers remember their positive feelings long after the experience that created them is over.

Memories are heightened when emotions are involved. The stronger the emotions, the stronger the feelings, the longer and more powerfully we remember them. At football games we watch instant replays of key moments; the turning points and dazzling plays worth remembering. We buy programs that allow us to engage at a deeper level with the personal aspects of the players. Sometimes we're provided with heart-stopping opportunities to win prizes. Souvenirs allow us to take the football game home with us; we can relive the feelings we had at the game simply by looking at or holding our souvenir.

Get your customers emotionally involved so they'll long remember the positive experiences they have with your product or service.

• Provide mementos.
• Give them a chance to win something.
• Deliver a nice surprise they don't expect.
• Give them moments with industry celebrities.
• Take pictures, especially of them, to give them vivid reminders of the great experience they had.

Do these things, and they'll do business with you over and over again.

3. Include the Fringe
Around your core customers -- the pure fans -- is a fringe of secondary customers you can easily access. These secondary customers may be spouses or friends of your core customers who are easily reached through viral marketing. Give thought as to how to provide for their social needs and create positive, memorable feelings that will encourage them to try you once and then come back again and again.

The football business has this figured out. The football lovers in a household have an easier time getting to games when their non-football-loving spouse is eager to go with them. That's why a football ticket provides so much more than the game these days. While marketing the game to pure fans is a simple endeavor, football becomes a much better business when the offer is expanded to include the social and emotional aspects that appeal to the secondary market. For example, the Super Bowl has become more of a party than a game. People plan for and look forward to the huge social event that engulfs this championship game. Millions watch the Super Bowl on TV, yet few watch it alone.

Get in touch with your market and work to understand who your secondary customers are. Coffee shops gladly sell tea and soft drinks so their "regulars" can easily bring along their non-coffee drinking friends. Expand your marketing to include these secondary customers and you can boost your sales revenues by 50% and more.

The Game of Change
Football as a game hasn't changed much over the decades. The proposal to permit challenge flags supported by video review was carefully debated by National Football League (NFL) officials before its adoption, all because the League knows this; never alienate your pure fans. They are the bedrock of your business. Keep delivering the solid, consistent product that keeps them coming back for more.

Don't focus on improving your product. Instead, focus on improving the product experience. Once you understand the positive feelings your customers experience by using your product or service, look for ways to extend that experience. Sure, cream and sugar go with coffee. But so does a soft chair and soothing music. So does a well-written book of fiction. So does a table surrounded by family or friends.

Football is a game and it is a business. Look at your business like a game. How does it feel to do business with you today? Make your business social. Make it memorable. Make your business the game your customers are eager to play.

© 2007 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson works with organizations to convert trouble into double and triple digit performance breakthroughs. Discover concepts for marketing breakthroughs at http://ShortcutsToResults.com.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

Tease Your Customers and Make Them Bite

By Paul Johnson

1,147 words. Abstract:  You can hold each prospective customer's attention longer when you use a technique so powerful it holds the rapt attention of millions every day.  This technique has even made individuals millions of dollars.  Learn what marketers can do to prevent prospective buyers from turning you off before you can get them turned on.

We don't mean to be boring.  We don't want to be irrelevant.  We despise being hung up on. 

But could it be our own fault when buyers lose interest in our message so quickly? As marketers, we need prospective customers to pay attention to us long enough to "get it" and bite on our offer.  If you need customers to pay attention longer, you can use the same technique that experts use to keep literally millions of people from "hanging up". 

The Present is Tense
Customers live in a time-starved world with never enough daylight to get everything done.  Every day, the relentless push for production is interrupted thousands of times with distractions via the eyes, the ears, and sometimes even the nose.  As a consequence, attention spans are short.  Customers ask a question, demand an answer, check the box, and move on. 

Once we've borne the expense of getting a prospect's attention, we'll never be able to establish value and make the sale if we can't keep their attention for more than the few seconds we'll have before the next distraction.

The Future is Suspense
My niece, Natalie, has learned how to keep the attention of millions of people at once.  She produces a news show for a television station in a major city in Ohio.  As soon as the show starts, Natalie knows she must immediately present the viewer with a reason to not change the channel.  Her solution: the tease. 

You've been hooked by teases before.

• "Coming up, find out why one local homeowner is taking the governor to court."
• "What will the coming storm do to tomorrow morning's commute? Find out when Ken give us his weather report later."
• "Local sports star may face jail time.  Will it impact the team's playoff chances? Nancy will have the full story for you right here. "

Teases give your "audience" a reason to stick around.  I'll explain more about what they do and how to use them in a moment, but first consider how important they are to you when selling.  Once we have attention, we must establish value in the customer's mind.  For most of us, the message must be considerably more than "Hair brush, $5."  We need to give them enough time to mentally move from paying attention to developing their interest and desire to understanding why your offering is worthy of their investment.

Using the equivalent of a tease will give you the time you need to establish that value proposition, and you can do it all in just three steps.

Replace Whole with Hole
Step 1:  Use the tease to expose a hole in their knowledge.  Your tease should be designed to make them curiously aware that there is something they want to know but don't.  Your tease must create a feeling of deficiency or lack.  Look at the example teases above and you'll see that each is missing the kernel of information we long for.  The resulting curiosity keeps people from diverting their attention from us.

Dan Brown is a master of applying teases and creating curiosity in his own genre.  I first found Dan brilliantly applying these techniques in his book Angels and Demons.  Next I read his The Da Vinci Code.  The Da Vinci Code starts with this tease:  "Robert Langdon awoke slowly.  A telephone was ringing in the darkness - a tinny, unfamiliar ring." 

Immediately, I'm wondering...

• Who is Robert Langdon, and why should we care? 
• Why was it dark?
• Why was the ring unfamiliar... would he remember where he was? 
• Would the caller be helpful, or hostile? 

And that's just from my simple mind. You may have your own questions.

The Payoff Will Wait
Step 2:  Tell them what you decide they NEED to know.  As a marketer, this would be anything that is relevant and necessary to establish value but isn't necessarily as exciting as the payoff to the tease.

Your mother understood this principle.  It's why she told you dessert was coming at the end of the meal so you'd put up with the peas in the middle.  Your expectations of a delightful payoff made the whole meal more enjoyable. 

Customers are funny about this.  They tell us they'd rather we get to the point, but they really don't mean it.  In fact, if you can make the potentially long and circuitous route to the payoff fun, they'll pay you lots of money to do it. 

In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown continually leaves multiple questions open in your mind at once, and you just have to wait to find the answers. 

This technique gave Dan time to establish value within the book.  It gave him time to develop his characters, scenes, and plot lines -- all the things he needed you to know.  You're happy to let him do it, because his teases have hooked you.  You keep reading page after page, chapter after chapter.

A lot of TV dramas are serialized these days.  Shows like Fox's "24" use the same technique to require you to come back every week.  During each one-hour segment, some issues are resolved while others crop up.  The show always ends on a cliffhanger, with the unthinkable ready to happen.  The result? We all happily tune in next week.   

Satisfy the Want
Step 3:  Finally, we must give the buyer what they want.  Your tease promises to tell them something they didn't know before, so you must eventually give it to them to maintain integrity and trust.  Dan Brown does this by resolving every open question you have in your mind by the last page, all the while keeping your attention for hundreds of pages.  The result is a satisfying experience that makes you glad you invested your time and money in the book.   

More importantly, it also inspires you to tell your friends and to buy more of Dan Brown's books yourself.  Dan Brown is a multi-millionaire because he first uses teases to create curiosity, and then eventually gives people what they want.  The "experts" have criticized his writing, but anyone who can sell close to a billion dollars worth of books is a brilliant marketer in my book. 

Go For Long Engagements
As marketers, we're all encouraged to "cut to the chase" and "get to the point." There's nothing wrong with being concise, and I'm not advocating wasting anybody's time.  However, it pays to find a way to make people take the time to truly understand how your offering will be a personal benefit to them in a measurable and significant way.  If television producers like Natalie can capture the attention of millions of people in just one or two sentences, it pays for us to practice this technique.  When we learn to keep our prospects engaged long after we've captured their attention, we're sure to make more sales. 

Bonus! Can you find the teases in this article?  They're there!  Drop me a note through the Comments link below.

© 2007 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results educates, consults, and speaks on ways to achieve business breakthroughs using the Trouble Breaker™ Methodology.  Check out more shortcuts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

Don't Cheat When You Greet on Voicemail

By Paul Johnson

599 words. Abstract: Your voicemail greeting most likely fails to convey the most important thing of all. Learn some simple tips that will allow you to stop sabotaging yourself during those few precious seconds it takes to deliver your voicemail greeting.

If you wanted to cheat in school (not that you would!), you'd cheat from the smartest kid in class. After all, you wanted answers better than your own.

Judging from how similar many voicemail greetings are ("I'm either away from my desk or on the other line!"), it seems that many of us cheated and copied someone else's greeting when we set up our voicemail box. Unfortunately, we didn't copy a very smart greeting, as most don't deserve even a C.

First Comes Once
Your weak voicemail message blows a prime opportunity. As you know, we never have a second chance to make a first impression. Think about that word "impression." Even though your greeting might be perfectly correct and technically functional, did you use the opportunity to impress the caller?

The impression you leave can be positive, neutral, or negative. It can support your image and gain you respect, or it can sabotage you. Much of that has to do with how people FEEL when they get to the "beep."

Now Feel This
Once you choose the words for your greeting that will let people know what you'd like them to do, go back and choose words to evoke feelings. The words you choose (and the way you say them) can convey cheerfulness, eagerness, and fun. Or you can sound all business if you prefer. You can help people feel glad they called, or confident that you'll respond. Maybe they'll feel relaxed after having left a message, knowing that you'll take care of them. Maybe you’re the type who change their message every day and give the impression that you're on top of things and take care to communicate easily with others. Those can be all positive things.

Or you can copy others, and risk being boring, trite, evasive, or verbose. Come on, you can do better! Your reputation depends on it.

Get it Write
Write out the greeting you plan to use for your voicemail, and then record it word for word.
In addition to providing simple instructions on how to leave you a message, get creative and inject your personality in a way that will leave callers with a positive feeling when they hear that beep. Here are some ideas:

• "Welcome!"
• "Thanks so much for calling."
• "Don't worry - I'll call you back within 4 hours."
• "Sorry I missed you."
• "I appreciate your thinking of me."
• "Your message is important."
• "Wow!"
• "I'm excited you're calling!"
• "Take as long as you like."
• "I'm interested in what you have to say."

Grade A Performance
With your written greeting in hand, you're ready to record it for all to hear. Don't just read it, perform it! Use varying emphasis, pauses, and changes in pitch so that it sounds conversational. Just because your message will be delivered by a machine doesn't mean it should sound like it.

I don't believe there's a perfect voicemail greeting, although there may be a perfect one for you. If you cheated and copied someone else's greeting for your own, it's probably not the best one for you. Make the most of those precious few seconds when that caller first hears your recorded voice, and don’t cheat your callers out of feeling great about calling you.

I'll be curious to learn what you come up with. Please put your voicemail greeting in the Comments area below for others to learn from. If you'd like to hear my voicemail greeting, dial 770-271-7719. You better do it after hours, or you might end up talking to me!

© 2006 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results educates, consults, and speaks on ways to achieve business breakthroughs using the Trouble Breaker™ Methodology. Check out more shortcuts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

Aligning Marketing and Sales; An Interview with Mark Semmelmayer

By Paul Johnson

2,438 Words.  Abstract: Mark Semmelmayer, marketing expert at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, shares his insights on the evolution of marketing, sales and customer relationships in this interview with Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results. 

I recently had an opportunity to get you "the long view" on the evolution of sales and marketing, along with some ideas for your future success.

One of my local Atlanta buddies is Mark Semmelmayer, a B-2-B veteran with over 30 years of career in his rear view mirror.  He agreed to be interviewed to share not only what he's observed, but also what he predicts for the field of sales and marketing.  He's had a hand in many of the market breakthroughs that have emerged from his present employer, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and has plenty of wisdom to share with you.  You can read more about Mark Semmelmayer at the end of this feature.

OK, since this is an interview, get ready to get bounced between "Mark" (that's him) and "Paul" (that's me).  Me first...

Paul:
How do people choose products today differently than they did in the past?

Mark:
I think, especially in business to business, cost consciousness has come more to the forefront than it was in the past.  It's not the exclusive determining factor, but it probably is number one on anybody's priority list. 

Paul:
It seems that whenever the marketing messages get lost and buyers become confused, the lowest common denominator becomes the price tag, and that's how people make their decisions. 

Mark:
That's pretty much it, in a lot of senses.  While basing buying decisions on price alone isn’t necessarily the right answer, in today’s environment, it’s the safe answer. 

However, from the standpoints of both buyers and of savvy marketers, I think there's the beginning of a shift away from the traditional 4 P's [Price, Product, Promotion, Place] to what -- and I've used this in presentations before -- can be thought of as the 4 C’s.  More than anything else, it's kind of a consolidation of some ideas I picked up over my years of association with the Business Marketing Association (BMA).  I need to attribute it to a number of people, most importantly, Bob Lauterborn at UNC Chapel Hill and Don Schultz, who chairs the Medill School at Northwestern, put together.  Price has become Cost, Product has become Customer, Promotion is now Communication and Place has become Convenience.

For instance, for a buyer or marketer today, instead of Price, it's Cost.  You can buy a product for a buck less a case, but if it costs you two bucks more a case to put it in place to replace what you were using before, that's an issue.  So Price is no longer necessarily all that material, as long as the customer can see the difference. 

Paul:
So Cost includes carrying costs, switching costs, training costs, and all the other things beyond product Price?

Mark:
Exactly.  Similarly, Product is no longer as important as the Customer.  Multiple manufacturers make the same kind of Product, perhaps differentiated only marginally at times.  It’s the manufacturer or seller who really relates best to the Customer and their needs who, I think, succeeds.  It isn’t difficult to imagine that a customer buys from the seller who relates to customers the best.

Promotion has become Communication.  It's an open, two-way street between buyer and seller.  You can't just throw messages out there and expect people to respond.  You've got to Communicate with them... and listen to their feedback.  That means you need, realistically, a pretty damn good USP [Unique Selling Proposition] that is meaningful to the buyer in terms of their needs in order to Communicate.  Otherwise, the easiest buying decision becomes reversion to the lowest common denominator... Price.

Finally, Place has been replaced by Convenience.  There is no longer a need to have your store or your distribution point just “around the corner.”  You or I or today’s business buyer can get pretty much anything we want by picking up the phone, calling an 800 number, placing an order and having FedEx deliver it tomorrow.  That’s a lesson that shouldn’t be lost.  Make it more Convenient to acquire your product and you remove yet one more obstacle to purchase.

Paul:
When you relate the product to a specific customer, does that imply additional customization of the product, or does that mean different messaging for different customers for the same product?

Mark:
I think more than anything it means deep customer understanding.  At Kimberly-Clark, it’s referred to as "customer insight."  It's a knowledge of customer needs and wants that leads to the ability to produce and market a product that truly meets them.  It’s all about who understands the customer best.   

Paul:
Do you have a magic formula for how to do that?

Mark:
Not really.  It's a combination of a lot of things, including market research, user testing and very, very, good feedback from and communication with sellers on the street who deal with the customer every day, who you can count on to talk back, in realistic terms, about customer needs, every day!  I think all that information needs to feed into both marketing thinking and product development thinking.

Paul:
What dynamics are causing you to rethink how sales departments should be organized?

Mark:
From what I can see in most business to business arenas, market segmentation of selling efforts is becoming more important.  For instance, at Kimberly-Clark, much of what we sell on a B-2-B basis goes, in one way or another, through distribution.  As distribution channels differentiate and become more specialized, we’re looking to more closely align our sales force with those channels and their specific needs.  I think most B-2-B marketing and sales organizations are seeing a similar need to focus on specific customers by market segment, whether in distribution channels or specific types of end users. 

Paul:
So you think sales teams need to become experts in specific channels or specific business verticals?

Mark:
Yes.  Or more expert in. 

Paul:
How do you see this alignment paying off?

Mark:
Again, better understanding of the customer.  The closer we are to figuring out who customers are, what they are and how they do business, the better we can align our products, our selling strategies, our pricing, etcetera, to what the needs are within that marketplace. 

Paul:
How is globalization affecting you?

Mark:
Kimberly-Clark is a large, multinational corporation and, like any other global marketer, globalization is a challenge.  From the broader standpoint of business to business marketing and sales today, I think globalization is tending to make companies try to deliver one brand message, one brand promise, and universal products meant to globally address customers’ needs.  It also means higher emphasis on developing marketing and sales materials and programs that function internationally, including translation specific to, production specific to, and programs specific to given countries.  That's pretty much my view about globalization. 

Paul:
Hmmm, that seems like a bit of a contradiction, or paradox of sorts.  Here's what I mean; from a global perspective, when you say one message and one promise, it sounds like you need to be known for one thing to be able to stand out and make a global impact.  And the paradox or contradiction comes from the need to be able to NOT focus on the product but understand our customer at a deep level.  Since all customers are different, or a least they think they're different, it seems like a bit of a challenge to be able to differentiate at the customer level and yet have a common promise or message at the top level. 

Mark:
Focus on the customer is not just a marketing or sales issue.  I think product development is the point at which understanding the customer really makes the biggest difference.  You've got to offer the right products to meet real needs.  If you look at the K-C B-2-B product lines, whether it's Kimberly-Clark Professional’s wipers and washroom products, or Healthcare products meant to protect health-care workers or help prevent Healthcare Acquired Infections, the issues are, relatively-speaking, universal: health and hygiene.  Many, if not most, B-2-B products are developed to address customer needs in terms of technology, efficiency, productivity and so forth; needs that are also pretty universal.  In any business, the first challenge is to develop the right product, which, regardless of country, should be functional for the customer.  I think successful differentiation by customer or market segment comes from exactly how you go at it, country by country, culture by culture.  How you go at it from a marketing and sales perspective, that is. 

Paul:
In your Healthcare division, is there a way to sum up what you're brand message or your brand promise is?

Mark:
Yes.  We have adopted a very specific brand message.  “Kimberly-Clark: Trusted Clinical Solutions.” That's a very universal message. 

Paul:
As a business to business marketer, what's the biggest business challenge that you face today from your office looking out at the world?

Mark:
There's a lot of ways to answer that question.  If I look at it on the basis of a B-2-B marketer’s skill set, I would have to say it’s a combination of compacting time frames balanced against available marketing resources to focus on high-yield possibilities. 

Paul:
Ooh, that sounds juicy.  When you say "compacting time frames," does that mean a shorter product life cycle, shorter time to market, or...?

Mark:
Again, I'm talking about it from a marketing communications standpoint, my area of expertise.  Overall, it means shorter time frames to get the marketing job done.  From the inception to completion of "We need a program that will support X product," with collateral, direct marketing... whatever.  It used to be we'd think about that a couple times year.  Now, as the need to react quickly to changing conditions grows, we're dealing with it four or more times a year.  You simply have less time to assimilate all the information you have and get it right. 

Beyond shorter time frames, you're also dealing with more, and more narrowly defined, audiences, whether global or market-segmented.  You need to, strategically, prioritize your resources and expenditures to support high impact possibilities.  Trying to understand what defines those big hits, evaluating them in terms of potential ROI and developing tactics to do it right becomes challenging. 

You've got to decide which products or market segments get support, as opposed to which communications vehicles are used.  Vehicles are, in part, going to be determined by the marketplace's communications habits.  It's more about Product A vs. Product B; which one do we put the money behind to reap the highest reward, because you only have limited resources. 

Paul:
How is the role of marketing evolving?

Mark:
I think marketing is evolving into more of a partnership with sales.  It’s something I've said before, and I think it's pretty much true; sales and marketing are not two different departments, they're what a company does.  In a lot of senses, the traditional marketing mantle of brand stewardship is blending in with the traditional sales mantle of customer understanding and fulfilling customer needs. 

In a nutshell, marketing needs to go beyond its traditional brand stewardship role, into a more customer-centric and sales-cooperative approach that propels sales in the marketplace.  At the most basic level, the only purpose of marketing is to increase sales.  That means staying closer to the sales process and supporting it to better meet customer needs.  Another part of the new marketing role, independent of a day-to-day connection with sales, is listening objectively to customers and understanding their changing needs in order to meet them even better.  Hopefully, that becomes a completed loop, feeding customer understanding into continued product development, which feeds back into improved products and brand stewardship at a higher, more customer-focused level, resulting in better focused support for those products on the street.  It's more of an interrelationship with sales and product development than it has been in the past. 

Paul:
Do you think brand stewardship is getting harder?

Mark:
I think it's getting harder.  Again, back to your point, there are so many messages out there.  So many different companies often manufacture products that meet similar needs.  While the marketing role is changing, marketing's Job One remains brand equity... brand stewardship.  Making your brand truly meaningful to the customer.  We need to remember a product is something that meets a customer need.  A brand is that one product they think meets it the best.  It's not what your product IS, it's what it represents in your customer's mind.  Good marketing needs to create that mindset and sustain it in the face of competition, market dynamics and economic factors. 

I’ll go back to that "trusted clinical solutions" positioning for our Healthcare products.  In research we found that people think, "Hey, K-C products are the best out here, I can trust them.”  That’s what they believe and that’s what we need to continue to deliver, both in messages and in products.

Paul:
Wow, I've gotta say this is working for me, Mark!  Thanks so much for your candid responses that will help our readers so much.  Here are some key ideas that really resonated with me:

• "Product is no longer as important as the Customer."
• "Sales and Marketing are not two different departments; they're what a company does."
• "A brand is that thing that they think meets their needs the best.  It's not what your product IS, it's what it represents in your customer's mind."

Perhaps our readers would like to click on the Comments link below and share their "A-ha's" from reading your interview.

Thanks again, Mark.  For the rest of you who are eager to know more about Mark Semmelmayer, read on!

About Mark Semmelmayer:
Mark Semmelmayer, CBC, earned his BA in Communications from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 1974. He has spent more than 30 years in communications, including positions in broadcasting, ad agencies and corporate communications. Semmelmayer joined Kimberly-Clark in 1981 and currently serves as Marketing Communications Manager in their Marketing Services group in Roswell, GA.

He has been responsible for marketing and communications activities over a broad range of Kimberly-Clark's business-to-business products, ranging from health care to printing technology, nonwoven fabric technology and technology transfer licensing. His current responsibilities encompass marketing communications activities for infection control and surgical devices, as well as clinical education, in Kimberly-Clark's healthcare markets.

Semmelmayer is an award-winning copywriter, including a 1981 CLIO finalist nomination. He frequently contributes to industry publications and speaks on business-to-business marketing topics ranging from ethics to integrated marketing communications planning. He is a member of the Business Marketing Association (BMA) since 1982, earning its Certified Business Communicator (CBC) designation in 1991. Semmelmayer has served on the Association's International Board of Directors from 1993 to June 2001, including a term as Chairman of the Association in 1996-97.

You can email Mark Semmelmayer at pen_and_ink@mindspring.com.

© 2006 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results educates, consults, and speaks on ways to achieve business breakthroughs using the Trouble Breaker™ Methodology.  Check out more shortcuts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com.  Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

The Trouble with Trademark Squatting

By Paul Johnson

689 words. Abstract: Your competition could be using the Internet and your own good name to steal customers from you.  Learn how to detect and avoid this attack on your business before costly lawsuits occur.

"We're being sued!"

That's never a good way to begin a dialogue.  My client was upset because he had just received a letter from the law firm of a competitor.  My client had infringed on this competitor's trademark, and didn't even know it. 

The story sounded so innocent.  The webmaster of my client's website had put the competitor's name and trademarked product names in the meta tags on the home page -- without direction or permission from my client.  When Web surfers used search engines to look for the competitor or their products, there would be a good chance my client's site would come up, too.  Now this trademark squatting by the webmaster had my client in hot water. 

Look Before You Reap
I'm not a lawyer, but I know to stay away from other people's trademarks.  In the United States, trademarks are formally registered with the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office.  Once registered, the owner of the trademark is entitled to use the ® in association with the registered mark.  It's pretty easy to check if an item has been trademarked; visit www.uspto.gov and use the trademark search function.

Although company names and names of individuals might not be formally trademarked, I like to stay away from them as well.  You may remember a few years back when people bought domain names of companies and celebrities on speculation, hoping to sell them for big bucks.  Instead, courts determined they had no legal rights to the domain names, and they lost them. 

Take a Peek
Are your competitors squatting on your trademarks? Here's a simple search that I sometimes do for the benefit of my clients.  Using Internet Explorer as your Web browser, go to the home page of one of your competitor's websites.  On the menu bar, click [View], then [Source].  A Notepad window will open showing the computer code that generated the Web page you're looking at.  Any meta tags will be contained in this window, usually right near the top.  You can browse through it to look for your company name, product names, or names of prominent officers.

To make your search easier, you may want to use the CTRL-F function.  In fact, this search capability works in most Microsoft products.  Simply hold down the "Ctrl" key, then press the letter "F."  A dialogue box named Find will open; insert the term you're looking for, such as your company name, and press [Find Next]. It will allow you to find all instances of that term for the page you have open. 

Of course, your competitor may have embedded your trademarked names on any of their Web pages, not just the home page.  If you really want to be thorough, you'll have to repeat the search function on all the pages. 

Hide and Seek
While checking for trademark squatting on behalf of one of my clients, I found a competitor who was using my client's name in their meta tags.  An e-mail from my client to the squatter's CEO was enough to bring the problem to light and get it corrected.  Again, the squatter's webmaster did it without their knowledge.  The squatter was happy to do the right thing and remove my client's name from his meta tags.  No lawyers were involved. 

Stop the Leak
As I dialogued with my client facing the lawsuit, I learned that there was really no lawsuit at all -- yet.  The letter from the competitor's law firm was more of a "warning shot across the bow" to get my client to pay attention.  And pay attention he did.  The meta tags were quickly changed, and he avoided paying lawyers, court costs, or damages for his innocent trademark squatting episode. 

You may not be so lucky.  Trademark infringement is serious, and can become a costly affair.  Check with your legal counsel to understand what you can and cannot do in this area, and then take steps to make sure your competitors are playing fair, too.  Your good company name and registered trademarks are valuable company assets that help you compete in your marketplace.  Don't let trademark squatting undermine your marketing efforts. 

© 2006 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results educates, consults, and speaks on ways to achieve business breakthroughs using the Trouble Breaker™ Methodology.  Check out more shortcuts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

Four Common Words That Will Ruin Your Sale

By Paul Johnson

1,414 words. Abstract: Four words commonly used in marketing today can have a devastating effect on your sales results. Using any of these words invites miscommunication, disappointment, and negative references. Learn what to avoid and, more importantly, how to boost marketing results.

Good news! When you say po-ta-toe, and I say po-tah-toe, we both know we mean exactly the same thing. The trouble comes when a single word means different things to different people.

Four words commonly used in marketing today can have a devastating effect on your sales results. We use these words to describe our offerings and assume the prospective buyer knows exactly what we mean. However, definitions vary widely and the end result of that type of miscommunication is disastrous.

These words can lead to disappointed buyers and reversed sales. They cause unmet expectations on the part of the buyer and result in poor referrals. Using any of these four words is a sure way to generate negative references for what you sell. Let’s take a moment to explore these four words and the impact of their use when selling.

What Did You Expect??!!
The first word to avoid is “Value.” All customers want good value, and all customer-oriented companies want to provide a good value. Yet, the seller should never claim to provide good value; that is entirely up to the customer.

A good value is a transaction that provides us with more than we expect, more than we believe we paid for or bargained. The key word here is "Expect.” A transaction either is or isn’t a good value based on how well expectations are met. Unfortunately, expectations change almost daily.

For example, if I shop for a television set and choose a model that happens to comes with a one-year warranty instead of the usual 90 days, I’m pleasantly surprised. I feel as though I’m receiving good value for my investment. When I go to buy another television set, my expectation may be the inclusion of a one-year warranty. The manufacturer’s idea of value may be a 90-day warranty and a lower price. The result: I’m disappointed if I don’t get the one-year warranty, even if the price is lower.

The solution is to break a generic value statement into something more specific and meaningful to the targeted buyer. Where does the value come from? As a seller, you can point out where the value might come from so your buyer cannot overlook it. However, it doesn’t have to be accepted by the buyer.

For example, perceived value may result from a longer warranty, a lower price, or more standard features. It might come from lower cost of ownership due to extended reliability, or from lower maintenance costs. But I can’t tell you that I am providing value. I can only tell you what I am providing, and let you decide if there’s value for you.

See "It" Yet?
The second common sale killer is the word “Quality.” Many of us have a hard time defining quality, thinking “we’ll know it when we see it.” According to Philip Crosby, author of Quality is Free, quality is not a matter of opinion. Quality means conformance to requirements, and is defined by those characteristics that allow your purchase to do what you expect it to do.

For example, consider which is the higher quality automobile, Mercedes-Benz or Chevrolet? That all depends on the characteristics needed for quality. If I use my vehicle over an extended range, such as throughout the US and Canada, and up-time is important to me because I depend on my vehicle to make a living, the Chevrolet may be the higher quality choice. Wherever I travel, I am never far from a Chevrolet dealer and the parts needed to fix my car. Chevrolet has over 15 times as many service locations as Mercedes-Benz in North America, and the parts distribution network to support them. It will almost always take longer to get the Mercedes back on the road. If it’s important to me that my car isn’t tied up in the shop regardless of where I go, the Chevrolet is the higher quality product.

The solution is to describe the quality of your offering in terms of the fundamental characteristics that allow you to deliver that quality. For a product, characteristics might include the purity of the materials used, the precision with which they’re built or assembled, or the functions it can perform. For a service, quality may relate to speed of service delivery, a low error rate, or depth of services available.

Note that all of these are measurable and definable. By focusing on the characteristics of quality, quality changes from a nebulous “I’ll know it when I see it” into a set of clearly definable and measurable requirements. Always remember that your definition of quality is not the same as the next person’s, even though we all think we know what it means.

Just Shut Up and Deliver
Third, avoid the word “Service.” It’s simply overused. Too bad, really, because everybody does want good service. It’s just that, like quality, everybody has a different definition of what good service is. Some people associate good service with the sound of a human voice. Others actually want resolution of the problem. In fact, there are so many different ways to define good customer service that the topic has spawned an entire industry of consultants and professional speakers to address the topic. If you haven’t heard enough good and bad customer service stories already, give me a call and I’ll be happy to share a few of my own.

Instead of talking about good service, just shut up and do it. Put some performance standards in place for your own organization, and then deliver to those standards. Let your customers tell your prospects how you deliver service.

Jeff Multz of Atlanta, Georgia figured this out already. He read Ken Blanchard’s book, Raving Fans and decided to create his own. Jeff would insist that his staff (including him) return all calls and acknowledge all e-mails within an hour. Not only did they have their service benchmarks on paper, but they used software to help them deliver it, as well as report on it. Their computer would tell them if they are living up to the performance standards they’ve set for themselves.

When talking to prospects about your offering, you won’t have to mention a word about service. Instead, show them the testimonial letters you’ve collected from your happy customers. Encourage them to talk to your existing customer base. Show them the statistics from your customer satisfaction surveys that talk about responsiveness and service levels. Your prospects will get the message.

Now Compare This!
The last, and ugliest, word to avoid is “Price.” Price doesn’t usually come by itself. It’s usually accompanied by another word, “low.” As soon as you start talking about price, your prospects will be happy to compare it. Therefore, avoid making any claims regarding price in your advertising or other initial messages to your prospects.

You can never consistently win at the low price game anyway. To paraphrase Don Peppers of Peppers & Rogers Group, “if you’re competing on price, you always have to underbid your stupidest competitor.”

Price becomes a distraction in your customer’s buying process. They forget about how important their purchase is in solving their problem, and instead become concerned with comparing “apples with apples.” They quickly discount all the unique and significant attributes that make your offering a better solution. This concern over price reduces your offering to commodity status.

Of course, sooner or later everyone is going to need to know “How much?” and your offering needs to be priced in a range that is comparable with your competition. Just make sure the solution you’re offering is worth much more to the buyer than the price you’ll ask for it.

If your prospect jumps the gun and asks “How much?” before you’ve had a chance to help them establish value, explain with pride, “that’s the best part. I’ll get to that in just a moment.” While you should be proud of your price, leading with it only makes your job more difficult.

Value, Quality, Service, and Price will get you in trouble because they mean different things to different people at different times. While each concept is important, you must take care to explain and define each of these words if you choose to use them. Before you ever talk about value, learn the buyer’s expectations. Before you mention quality, determine the buyer’s requirements. Don’t talk about service. Let others do it for you. And price? If you’re really providing a worthwhile solution, price is the best part. Save it for last.

© 2006 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results educates, consults, and speaks on ways to achieve business breakthroughs using the Trouble Breaker™ Methodology.  Check out more shortcuts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

You Can Be Bought for a Dime

By Paul Johnson

1,056 words. Abstract:  A retailer is turning the loyalty program concept on its ear, and turning rational folks like you and me into zombies who are powerless to resist their offer.

We like to believe we're rational creatures. We make good, logical decisions based on the facts. We're smart. Yet somehow a clever retailer has elegantly sidestepped all that and managed to earn our loyalty for one thin dime.

What Price Loyalty?
Loyalty programs are as common as Camrys these days. A novel marketing innovation when they were first introduced, ground-breaking programs like American Airlines frequent flier program have now been copied by all their competitors. Loyalty programs are now more of a consumer expectation than a company advantage. According to the 2005 book Loyalty Myths, 91 million participants belong to the 90 frequent-flier programs, and many of them belong to five or more. Any advantage American Airlines once had is long gone.

That's what makes this new program so intriguing. It's so simple, so cheap... so irresistible.

These Groceries are a Gas
The Kroger Company is one of the largest grocers in the U.S.. They also run hundreds of convenience stores under the banner of a Quik Stop and Kwik Shop. Here in my hometown of Atlanta, we've seen them merge these two businesses by putting gas pumps on the parking lots of their grocery stores. I personally didn't make the association between gasoline and food, but apparently the folks at Kroger thought it worth a try.

Now here's where the genius comes in. A few months back, Kroger introduced a loyalty program that connects grocery purchases with gasoline discounts. The proposition works like this: for every hundred dollars in groceries you buy, you save 10¢ a gallon on your next fill up. It sounds simple enough, but I can't believe the huge change in behavior that 10¢ creates. Even in my own household, we talk of planning our purchases around Kroger gas fill-ups.

• "The _____ vehicle is low on gas. Let's go to Kroger and fill up. Be sure to grab the grocery list..."
• "Our $100 credit expires tomorrow. Better run over to Kroger and fill up the tank, even though it's only half empty, or we'll lose our credit."
• "We need gas NOW, but let's try to make it to a Kroger station because it'll probably be cheaper there with our 10¢ discount."

Funny Money
These all sound rational on the surface, until you start looking at the numbers. If our vehicle gas tanks were nearly bone-dry, one tank would hold 15 gal., the other 20. My maximum savings would therefore be $1.50 and $2, respectively. Was I really changing my behavior -- day in and day out, week after week -- to save $2? Does this sound rational and logical, especially when you consider how fast we can throw away two bucks?

• We drop in at Starbucks.
• We order a full salad instead of a half salad, and then not finish it.
• We order magazines and newspapers that we don't read.
• We throw away a printer ink cartridge before it's not really empty, because we're tired of seeing the "low ink" pop-up message on our computer screen.

Yet we continue to think we're rational beings. Kroger knows the joke's on us.

And I know it's not just me. Last Friday afternoon, I went by the Kroger gas station and there were cars at almost every pump -- eight or nine of them. Across the street was the BP station with one car at the pumps. And the posted BP price was 5¢ a gallon less! That means Kroger customers were saving a net of just 5¢ per gallon -- maybe a buck total -- AFTER they spent $100 on groceries. This monkey business is sure working for Kroger!

It's Truly Monkey Business
In a news release from Yale University dated June 20th, 2005 ( http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=4256) they report that "Humans Rational and Irrational Buying Behavior is Mirrored in Monkeys". A basic economic theory is that people work harder to avoid losing money than they do to make money. Researchers wanted to test this theory to see if it was shared by monkeys, suggesting that this trait has a long evolutionary history.

I'm not sure that this is comforting or not, but the monkeys' behavior supported this theory. M. Keith Chen, assistant professor at Yale School of Management, reports, "The economic view says people are aware, rational and in control of their major decisions. Social psychology cuts in the opposite direction, maintaining that people are often unaware of the forces that dictate their behavior." Chen adds, "We are fighting tendencies that may be biologically hard-wired." Apparently Kroger is using that wiring to their advantage.

We can all agree it is stupid to pay too much for anything. Plus, we'll work hard to NOT lose a price advantage WE'VE ALREADY EARNED, even if it's only 10¢. In the process, look at what Kroger gains: They not only sell more gas (I never bought Kroger gas before they offered the discount), they also sell more groceries. What's it cost them? They limit a fill-up to 33 gal., so their cost -- the most you can save -- is $3.30, or 3.3%, of your $100 grocery purchase. I'm guessing their real cost is actually closer to 1%, considering that most gas tanks are smaller than 33 gallons, credits expire, they buy the gas wholesale, and so on.

Make Me Stop!
I'm trying to rebel, but it's hard. Whenever I get a Kroger receipt, I avert my eyes from my grocery credits total revealed at the bottom. I try to forget about the expiration dates. I struggle to wait until my tank is really empty before I fill up wherever I am, instead of topping off at Kroger when my needle is nowhere near "E". I try, but sometimes that biological hardwiring takes over. Have I become a Kroger Gas Zombie? Rationally, logically, I say, "Hell, No!" But then, we're not rational and logical, are we?

I applaud Kroger for coming up with a fresh, new loyalty plan that seems to really work. And their timing couldn't be better. With higher gas prices, we're all paying more attention to the money we spend at the pumps. But is it rational to pay so much attention to a dime? Apparently we can't stop ourselves. The marketing gurus at Kroger have broken that behavioral code, and now they're buying our loyalty for a dime.

© 2005 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results educates, consults, and speaks on ways to achieve business breakthroughs using the Trouble Breaker™ Methodology.  Check out more shortcuts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.