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A cure for the common cold call
Posted in Growth
By Jim Cecil, originally posted on Nurture Institute in April of 2007
"People remember people who remember them." (Marshall Field)
This brief book is about the nature of Nurturing. It's about the awesome power that is released between people who trust, like, respect and appreciate each other. It's also clearly about the application of technology to the philosophy of caring and nurturing. But this is about even more than that. With this compendium of thoughts, you and I can explore our vision, our goals, our market focus. I'll share 21 of what I believe are the best tips I've ever found on nurturing loyalty with customers, prospects and all our critical business and personal relationships. These are among the best strategies of some of the most successful Nurturing firms, large and small, from all around the world. We'll explore ideas, strategies, tactics and technologies those firms actually use in targeting, meeting, evaluating, aligning, communicating and serving their best customers.
You'll find one fundamental belief woven into virtually every paragraph of this little booklet.
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap!" (Galatians)
I believe we're all farmers at heart. Whether apples or customers, Unto all things, there is a season. There is a time to plant and a time to harvest.
Nurturing is a term I use to describe the experience your customers have at all their points of contact with you. In that critical span of time from planting to harvesting, Nurturing describes specific behaviors that ultimately make all the results of the harvest possible.
Like different crops, important prospects ripen at different times. The nurture cycle is, therefore, different for each crop and each customer. From prospecting to welcoming, to leveraging to recapturing, automated drip irrigation works best to nurture each client, one- to-one, during the various relationship developmental periods. This seems especially true in nurturing customer/client relationships. Seeds are planted. The prospect relationship must then be nurtured. When the time is right, the prospect becomes a client, the first sale is harvested, and the next phase of the relationship begins. Have you noticed that relationships are usually measured and defined by the perceived value of the quality and quantity of contact between the parties?
The Nurture Selling Process may be your "Cure for the Common Cold Call"
I'll bet you'll agree that perhaps the least productive time to meet a prospective client is on a cold call. No relationship has been established. No basis for alliance or even trust yet exists. Any sale made on a cold call is more often a case of very "low hanging fruit" -- someone who happened to be very ready to buy when you just happened to come along.
Wouldn't you agree that the best time to meet a prospective customer is when they have a serious and immediate need and when they already understand and prefer you as their first choice of Solution Provider?
Customer Relationship Management
Frequency Marketing, Loyalty Marketing, Intimacy Marketing -- Each customer relationship is leveraged and grown from your unique perspective and intimate understanding of your existing customers' wants and dreams. If not every customer, certainly your "A's", those that offer greatest profit potential.
1. OUTCOMES
"It's not so much what you get from goals that matters, it's what you had to become to get it that's yours forever." (Jim Rohn)
Consider the world from an abundant viewpoint. There are so many people on this planet that you could really help. You can never serve them all, so why not decide out front what you will become and why and for whom. Answer, at least for next year, "How much is enough?"
My Dad used to say "good fences make good neighbors" and "clear expectations create desired results." The power of crystal clear outcomes is that it forces you to make a decision about where you are, right now; where you want to be, by when; and most importantly, what prospects and customers you must learn to influence along the way.
"Begin with the end in mind." (Steven Covey)
Work backwards from the vision of your goal. Consider the components to getting there. Ask yourself what you would have to do or say for people to mentally position you as a true Solution Provider. "Specifically how many "A" customers do I need next year?" Determine and write down exactly what action you want your customers to take. Articulate specifically what you want them to think, know, feel & do after they have experienced a marketing or sales interaction with you.
2. THE POWER OF LISTENING - Survey Clients, Prospects, Ask them!
"I am not my target market." (Jim Cecil)
Why second-guess clients and prospects? Simply ask them what they want more of, now. It's easier and far less expensive to supply what THEY want. Second- guessing their needs and wants usually creates scattered offers, confusion and skepticism. Do simple surveys now, simple questions for every point of customer contact; create simple ways to capture information and communicate what we learn to each other; develop simple ways to quickly change our behaviors in response to their feed-back.
Study your "A" clients' business thoroughly. Learn ways to proactively initiate new areas of business activity between you and them that will profit both of you. If there's a product or service that's giving them grief -- or a vendor they're unhappy with, figure out a way to provide that product or service yourself. Even if it's not a category or service you currently offer. It's almost always easier and less costly to add new products/services than it is to add new customers.
Ask yourself these questions, "Which of my best prospects are under-served by the current distribution method? How can I make life easier for them?"
3. THE POWER OF POSITIONING & DIFFERENTIATION - From Commodity Purveyor to Solution Provider
"Economic advantages may be created by any person who surrounds himself with the advice, counsel, and personal cooperation of a group of people who are willing to lend wholehearted aid, in a spirit of perfect harmony. This form of cooperative alliance has been the basis of nearly every great fortune." (Napoleon Hill....1936)
Your Top of Mind Position
Remember, the goal of positioning is to create and occupy a space inside your target customer's mind and you want to occupy the top most part of that space. It seems to me we have two choices when selecting a marketing position to occupy. We can choose salespitch-based marketing, in which we take on the role of a salesperson with a specific agenda to sell and just deliver a sales message. Or we can choose Knowledge-Based Marketing where we assume the role of an alliance. We position ourselves as a resource, not just a commodity vendor. We educate prospective clients about problems and offer innovative solutions.
The battle for "top of mind" is usually won by adroit positioning. What they can't name, and frame, they can't claim. Positioning simply means concentrating on one idea that defines your company in a unique way. This strategy is not about retooling your products -- it's about reshaping how customers perceive your products. When customers talk about you, as they inevitably will, how do they position you?
Complete Solution Provider or Commodity Purveyor? What do they say about you? World class or mediocre? Higher priced or a bargain? The single best place to call or another nightmare to deal with?
The Power of Positioning is that it breathes life into all your communications with customers.
The Power of Differentiation — Your Own Unique Selling Proposition
"You don't want to be considered just the best at what you do. You want to be known as the only one who does what you do." (Bill Graham, Concert Producer)
No doubt you've noticed, it's a competitive world out there. Undoubtedly, you have strong competitors fighting for your customer's affection. Like you, they also offer quality products and their prices and delivery standards are reasonable or perhaps even excellent. How can you continuously and inexpensively attract and win new customers? How can you prevent current "A" customers - your critical client base -- from being seduced by able and amorous competitors? Nurture! Stay in touch.
First Class or Coach--it's always a choice. Establish your position and articulate your Unique Selling Proposition. Know your competitors. What's going to differentiate your product, service or information from others? Can you add consultation as a new level of service? Can you become a complete solution provider, an out-source resource? Will you offer lower prices, higher quality, better service, faster delivery, better partners, smarter insights, bigger endorsers, innovative solutions, larger inventories, etc.? Think about them. What customer value propositions can you make? Domino Pizza's customers wanted pizza delivered. That became Domino's unique selling proposition. Can your strategy or your tactics become your differentiation?
4. THE POWER OF THE ELEVATOR SPEECH
"The goal of positioning, therefore, is to create a space inside the target customer's head called "best source for this type of situation" and to attain sole and undisputed occupancy of that space." (Geoffrey Moore)
Customers cannot know what to expect or how to value a product or service until they can place it in some sort of comparative context. You've got about 30 seconds, about the time of an average elevator ride to define your position to your targeted segment and explain how what you do benefits them. You've got to tell them quickly, tell them clearly every time you get the chance. The actual words that you learn to use when you deliver your elevator speech will become the most profitable 30 seconds you may ever use. Here are three proven formulas for getting your message and all the important components down in a few short sentences. Try them out on your own company and one of your key products. Just fill in the blanks.
FORMULA 1
FOR (target customer)
WHO (statement of the problem or opportunity)
THE (product name)
IS A (product category)
THAT (statement of key benefit, the most compelling reason to buy)
UNLIKE (primary competitive alternative)
OUR PRODUCT (statement of primary differentiation)
EXAMPLE:
The Nurture Library
FOR: CEO's and Marketing Managers of rapid growth, mid-sized companies
WHO: must maintain continuous skills, philosophy and business development training for their key team members.
THE: Nurture Library
CREATES: a focused pro-active, self-paced training system
THAT: teaches each member of your team exactly what they must do to create execute a process that transforms you into a Nurturing Company.
UNLIKE: seminars, the Nurture Library is designed to make sales grow year to year because sales skills grow from repetition of principles.
THE: Nurture Library helps you make a process out of what otherwise would be just another "good idea."
FORMULA 2
WHAT IS THE SITUATION
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION
BENEFITS
HOW DOES IT WORK
NEXT EASY STEP
EXAMPLE:
Action Plans and Communiques
WHAT IS THE SITUATION: Sales and marketing executives must enhance sales force automation software with meaningful contact content.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM: Lack time, experience or process to create this type of solution.
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION: A comprehensive, pre-written series of letters, emails and/or phone scripts that position and articulate your interest and differentiation.
BENEFITS: Nurture creates a process, it's personalized and effective and it's completely outsourceable.
HOW DOES IT WORK: Producers assign prospects to a plan; software and administrator executes the process; customers feel special.
NEXT EASY STEP: Decide to Nurture and call us today.
FORMULA 3
DO YOU KNOW HOW ________
WHAT WE DO IS ___________
EXAMPLE:
The Nurture Selling Process
DO YOU KNOW HOW: the more successful an executive becomes the more people they have to stay in touch with on a regular basis? And most of them would tell you they don't have the time or the process to manage it.
WHAT WE DO IS: help those executives design, write and even produce and deliver sincere, intelligent and continuous messages of appropriate content and sentiment. We call it the Nurture Selling Process. Our clients call it drip irrigation marketing.
5. THE POWER OF THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT
"If I'd known this body was going to last this long, I'd have taken better care of it." (Jimmy Durante)
Have you ever calculated an honest "Full Lifetime Economic Value" of one "A" customer? With that amount of money at stake, can you afford not to Nurture? What will you gain if you do? How can you decide how much would you be willing to spend to get a new customer if you don't know how much one is worth over its full life cycle? If you could buy an insurance policy to guarantee you wouldn't lose a customer, wouldn't you buy it?
6. THE POWER OF TARGETING
"While there may be 6 billion people on the planet, you probably only need to influence a few thousand at the most. But they must be influenced knowledgeably, respectfully, innovatively and persistently." (Fredrick Tucker, Jr.)
• Target your market carefully. Identify those who truly need most what you provide. Provide the best of what you have only to those who need it and are ready to pay for it.
• Probe and profile your top ten customers for insights into potential markets and prospects.
• Determine a broad profile of each category of customer.
• Segment your entire customer base into A B C D Categories.
• Assess the amount of Nurturing required to create loyalty among each group.
• Decide the number of new "A" clients needed to reach or exceed your goals.
Bonus Tip
Before attending any trade-show or public presentation, agree among those working the booth to capture a minimum amount of information from each visitor.
A B C D = HOT WARM COOL COLD
1 - 10 = Small to Huge
Growth cycle = Fast or Slow
This simple code will reflect who this person is and where they are in the buying cycle.
7. GROWING YOUR INTERNAL CULTURE OF NURTURING
"The nurtured seed produces the abundant harvest." (Anonymous)
The evolution of a customer-driven business begins with your understanding of the actual value of investing your personal time and resources to maintain constant communication with all of your customer base. Cultivating loyal relationships and making our customers more successful is not just a sales job. It's a corporate mandate.
Teach your people to Nurture by nurturing them. Consider this. Your employees will usually be about as nice to your customers as you are to your employees. Satisfied and well-nurtured people are most ready and motivated to serve clients well and to create an experience of preference. Encourage your entire company, well beyond sales and marketing, to be mindful of ways to best Nurture everybody; each other, our customers and certainly our prospects. Be creative in developing new, nurturing approaches to customer challenges. Solicit and recognize contributions from your team. Become a Nurture cheerleader. Urge others to Nurture.
8. THE NURTURE PHILOSOPHY
"A relationship is not something that you pursue; it's what happens to you when you are immersed in serving the dreams of your customer." (Tom Peters)
The power of Nurturing is that it is one of the best ways to initiate and grow relationships by design. It's a process that creates and sustains "top-of-mind" awareness. Research constantly reveals that the sales cycle is elongating. We know that it may take as many as a dozen or more contacts just to establish such a relationship. A relationship with a customer is often like an emotional bank account -- it's inappropriate to ask for a "withdrawal" until you first have established a positive balance. You create this balance by making useful, knowledge-based deposits first.
Nurture marketing is not a new concept. Successful sales people have pampered customers and prospects for decades. What has dramatically changed is the cost of face to face contacts. I urge that you use a comprehensive customer management software and broad-band communication technology to enhance the sales relationship and increase your level of competitiveness. Educational mailings and values-aligning phone calls are ideal vehicles to enhance and sustain the growing relationship at an affordable cost-per-contact. The very survival of a business often depends on our ability to enhance and sustain contact with the people that make up loyal customer relationships.
9. THE POWER OF CUSTOMER INFORMATION - Sales Force and Customer Database Automation
"When you need a friend, it's too late to make one." (Mark Twain)
Create an information packed database for your business selling needs. Gather all the information that will be useful to you in building loyal relationships with prospects and customers. Identify and capture all behaviors, needs and preferences you consider even remotely useful to your ability to better and more individually service clients.
Powerful database marketing software programs are now widely available that allow you to utilize desk-top computers to satisfy customer information needs. These programs make it simple to implement Nurture Marketing. Armed with a well-crafted marketing database and automated action plans, relationship marketing can be quickly expanded to all constituents.
For a more serious evaluation of all matters regarding sales force automation, may I recommend my friend, Richard Bohn. Publisher, author, journalist and international customer management software consultant. Reach Rich through www.sellmorenow.com.
10. THE LAW OF THE HARVEST
"My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view." (H. Fred Ale)
In the absence of nurturing, the business relationship usually deteriorates. Both organizations tend naturally to face inward rather than outward toward each other. The natural tendency of relationships, whether in marriage or in business, is toward erosion of sensitivity and attentiveness. Our inward orientation often leads to insensitivity and unresponsiveness in all our customer relations. At best we substitute bureaucratic formalities for authentic interaction. "Have a nice day."
11. THE PATIENCE OF THE FARMER
"Kicking the tree has never been known to hasten ripening." (Jim Cecil)
Can you develop the patience of the farmer? Being patient and respectful by waiting for the prospect to call you are probably the most difficult parts of relationship nurturing. Don't be so fast to call the prospect. Wait until you feel the prospect would be more receptive to your call. Pay close attention to the response of your communiques. When an individual has responded to at least two of your previous offerings, you are certainly entitled to a phone visit.
Champions the world over point to persistence as the catalyst. In most cases otherwise persuasive people give up way too soon. Sales management research says nearly 50% of all prospecting attempts are aborted with the first no. 15% attempt it a second time. 65% are out of the game now. With just two contacts. An additional 14% will come back for a third try. 10% stop after the fourth contact. Think of it. Nearly 9 out of 10, almost 90% give up only after the fourth contact. Yet, all the research says that you aren't even remembered until the 12th contact, in most of the cases. And when you're in a two-year sales cycle, that might be 24 contacts you must manage just to maintain that presence.
12. NURTURING BEHAVIORS - DEPOSITS AND WITHDRAWALS
"Customers, when given a choice of where they spend their money will invariably go back to a place where they were made to feel special." (Marshall Fields)
Nurturing is a way of thinking about the way we establish a relationship. The actual process to create and sustain "top of mind" awareness. It may take as many as 10-12 contacts just to establish yourself as the one occupying such a position. Steven Covey compared a relationship with a customer to a joint, emotional bank account -- it's inappropriate to ask for a "withdrawal" until you first have a positive balance. You create this balance by making deposits first. A letter or note, a gift, a thought, a phone call, a Hallmark card, an offer or an insight is "Customer Food."
Knowledge-Based Nurturing is an innovative approach to increasing your customer base. Provide information and advice early in the relationship. Generously help them solve real problems right away. Demonstrate your values with your behaviors. Friends stay in touch. Avoid the sales pitch. Give potential clients real facts and advice. When they're ready, they'll come to you, already viewing you as a respected authority in your field.
Make little offers - let them raise their hand timidly so you learn who is listening early on. Rather than send something not requested, by making an offer, you save money and usually get the same credit as if you sent the gift.
13. THE POWER OF AUTOMATED ACTION PLANS
"Outta sight is outta mind and outta mind is outta money, Honey" (Mae West)
Is it time to revive the "romance" in your business or customer relationships? What would happen if you began to Nurture customers and prospects intensely, just as you might behave if you wanted to revive the romance in your marriage. Sure, you care about your customer (or your spouse, children, friends), but what happens if you get "too busy" to remember to show it? Maybe a little more planning. Become a little more thoughtful, attentive and creative about the quality and frequency of your communication with everybody. Set up a regular series of "nurturing" contacts throughout the year -- a continuous customer contact program that will demonstrate, at regular, pre-planned intervals, that you honestly and sincerely care about your customers' well-being and the condition of your relationship.
Rule of thumb: Critical contact is not about smothering customers with gratuitous affection or meaningless trinkets. All critical contacts, even mailings should be spaced at appropriate intervals, cost appropriate, related to mutual business concerns or values, and truly heart-felt but practical.
Just like farming, use "drip irrigation" tactics to Nurture prospects at their varying stages of buying readiness. Explore and use software that identifies and manages the appropriate frequency and sequence of contacts suited to your particular client behaviors.
"Treat 'em like seedlings."
Tell the truth. Acknowledge, in your first contact, that you know the recipient may not know you and that you know only a little about them. Tell them you feel you may have something they need. You realize they may not need it just now and that you'll stay in touch with them.
Always make your second contact with your prospect an education-packed and a nurturous one. Information and "them-serving" knowledge- based enclosures tells them you are thinking of them. This contact could include a reprint of an article about you or a topic you particularly think might interest them.
14. THE POWER OF THE INTERNET
"A millennium is the largest unit of human culture. So, not surprisingly, the turn of a millennium tends to promote big thoughts about the future and our legacy to it. No doubt the biggest of these inheritances will be the implications of the current revolution in technology. Information technology is accelerating contemporary life to unprecedented speeds. Some of us applaud this change, some fear it. But none of us can escape it." (Forbes Magazine)
Our most intelligent and affluent customers regularly use it. By the year 2001, the only asset any firm will have is the awareness, esteem and preference of its clients. Study your competitors. Watch how they Nurture customers. How attractive are they to the prospects you know. Constantly visit and study industry leaders' web sites i.e., Intel, Microsoft, Volvo, Lexus and others. See how well they Nurture you as a visitor to their site. Ask your top ten customers ways you could serve them with the Internet. The Internet is a giant feeding station. What can you feed your customers?
15. MANAGING TOP-OF-MIND
"Relationships are a multiple contact sport." (Jim Cecil)
Nurturing is about being there when they're ready to talk or buy. Each client has a unique time when they are actually ready to buy -- different from any other client. Each has a unique "ripening" schedule, a different season. Farm your crop, working it appropriately until the prospect is ready to buy. Nurture, cultivate, assist, and harvest when they are ready to be harvested -- on their schedule.
Top of Mind - To get a prospect to think of you first, to get an old customer to think of you in a new way, to get an entire organization to operate more productively or even to change long-standing attitudes and behaviors. The mental changes alone may require pro-active nurturing. It may require technology and human resources but it cannot be ignored. When your nurturing efforts take hold, results often measure in double-digit percentages. The return on investment, the pay-back for effective nurturing and relationship development, is proving to be enormous.
Create a relationship of understanding and preference well in advance of your client needing you. By the time they need it, you can become the only one they will consider. You've been there all along, asking for nothing, and Nurturing them with useful knowledge and intelligent behaviors.
16. THE POWER OF WELCOMING & APPRECIATION
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