Bad news is bad news. But when there is some bad news, we'd better not sit back, and wait for the problem to be solved on its own. Specially in the business.
If you can’t deliver on time, don’t wait for the customer to call you angrily, and then you decide what you can do. This way, if the customer can afford, he will cancel the order or at least, he will not do business with you anymore, not to mention he will bad mouth you.
Take the initiative
Don’t sit on the problem. The problem is there and the customer will come to know about it. Don’t wait to exceed the deadline and to receive the call from the anxious customer. Pick up the phone and make the call and tell him that you hate giving good people bad news.
Be Honest
Ok, the worst thing has happened, but never lie to your customer. If the shipment has not arrived don’t say that all shipments from Europe have been delayed, because your customer will come to know you are lying and it will push him to the top.
Put the customer in control
People like to be in control of thing belong to them. When you ship a good to a customer, the good really belongs to him, and he has paid for it. So he is the best person to take corrective action. When in the day of trouble, pick up the phone, and immediately inform customer about the problem and work with him to find a solution.
Take responsibility
In every transaction there is one entity who pays money and another entity who gets money. As long as you or your company get the money you are responsible for any problems may arise. Next step is about you: are you a leader or a normal person? If you are a leader you don’t want to blame other departments. Your customer wouldn’t care if you have done something wrong, or your logistics department or your supplier. You need to take responsibility, fix the problem and not the blame.
Ask for repeat business
This one is a very important one yet often neglected. When based on the above steps, you have successfully solved the problem, and have proved to be a leader, ask your customer 2 simple questions: 1) Is there anything else I can do for you? and 2) Do you know anybody else, who might need my sort of products/services.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Saturday, January 06, 2007
"Achilles' Heel" and "King of the Hill” Advertising
This article is based on an interview with Allan Kay by Guy Kawazaki .
Allan Kay is the founder of Korey, Kay & Partners, a $75-million advertising
agency in New York City.
Kay believes that there are 2 kinds of advertising methods when you are going head-to-head with competitors: "Achilles' Heel" and "King of the Hill”.
Achilles’ Heel:
In Achilles’ Heel advertising, you find out the competitor's weakness, and you combat it with your strengths.
Kay gives example of Achilles’ Heel advertising method his agency has used to develop a campaign for Wise Potato Chips.
In 1970s, P&G had come out with a new product: Pringles. Allan Kay and his guys studied the packaging of the new P&G chips, and they got all they needed in order to compete with Pringles. The Package read like a chemistry set—with things like mono- and diglycerides and butylated hydroxyanisole—to preserve freshness of all things!
Kay then looked at Wise Potato Chips pack and their ingredients were potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt.
So they created a very simple commercial: two women sitting side by side. In front of one woman was a can of Pringles and in front of the other woman was a bag of Wise potato chips. The woman with the Pringles picks up the can and reads the long list of chemical ingredients. Then the other woman picks up the Wise package and reads, "Wise potato chips contains potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt." Then they cut to Pringles and the announcer says, "The newfangled potato chip." They cut to Wise and he says, "Or Wise, the oldfangled potato chip. You decide."
King of the Hill:
In King of the Hill advertising you find out the competitor's strength and present yourself as being stronger at it.
A sample campaign is the one Kay and his associates did for Virgin against British Airways.
British Airways was the gold standard in San Francisco. Kay's agency wanted to tell people as much as they could about Virgin Atlantic Airways in as short a period of time. Virgin was a relatively unknown quantity in San Francisco.
People knew British Airways had good-quality products; so did Virgin. They knew British Airways had regular flights and big airplanes; so did Virgin. Therefore, if they could quickly put themselves on the same pedestal as British Air, they would get considered.
So the advertising started with a teaser that appeared on billboards and on television with the phrase "Yoooooo-hoooooo, British Aiiiiirrrrwayyys," which signaled, Uh-oh, somebody's coming to compete with British Airways. It was the shortcut to the top of the mountain. The customer knew that there was going to be someone new in town. They had a frame of reference even before they knew the name of the product.
So how to develop strong campaigns?
Kay gives us great advice on developing campaigns against our competition. He says: "You have to know yourself and your competition equally well, and you have to know the customer—we always say start with the customer.
We have five basic guidelines for developing advertising: Start with the customer. Live with the client. Uncover the obvious. Keep it simple. And follow through.
If you do each of these five things, you're going to come pretty damn close to the target. I always believe the problem will dictate the solution if you really understand the problem and set your objective."
Allan Kay is the founder of Korey, Kay & Partners, a $75-million advertising
agency in New York City.
Kay believes that there are 2 kinds of advertising methods when you are going head-to-head with competitors: "Achilles' Heel" and "King of the Hill”.
Achilles’ Heel:
In Achilles’ Heel advertising, you find out the competitor's weakness, and you combat it with your strengths.
Kay gives example of Achilles’ Heel advertising method his agency has used to develop a campaign for Wise Potato Chips.
In 1970s, P&G had come out with a new product: Pringles. Allan Kay and his guys studied the packaging of the new P&G chips, and they got all they needed in order to compete with Pringles. The Package read like a chemistry set—with things like mono- and diglycerides and butylated hydroxyanisole—to preserve freshness of all things!
Kay then looked at Wise Potato Chips pack and their ingredients were potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt.
So they created a very simple commercial: two women sitting side by side. In front of one woman was a can of Pringles and in front of the other woman was a bag of Wise potato chips. The woman with the Pringles picks up the can and reads the long list of chemical ingredients. Then the other woman picks up the Wise package and reads, "Wise potato chips contains potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt." Then they cut to Pringles and the announcer says, "The newfangled potato chip." They cut to Wise and he says, "Or Wise, the oldfangled potato chip. You decide."
King of the Hill:
In King of the Hill advertising you find out the competitor's strength and present yourself as being stronger at it.
A sample campaign is the one Kay and his associates did for Virgin against British Airways.
British Airways was the gold standard in San Francisco. Kay's agency wanted to tell people as much as they could about Virgin Atlantic Airways in as short a period of time. Virgin was a relatively unknown quantity in San Francisco.
People knew British Airways had good-quality products; so did Virgin. They knew British Airways had regular flights and big airplanes; so did Virgin. Therefore, if they could quickly put themselves on the same pedestal as British Air, they would get considered.
So the advertising started with a teaser that appeared on billboards and on television with the phrase "Yoooooo-hoooooo, British Aiiiiirrrrwayyys," which signaled, Uh-oh, somebody's coming to compete with British Airways. It was the shortcut to the top of the mountain. The customer knew that there was going to be someone new in town. They had a frame of reference even before they knew the name of the product.
So how to develop strong campaigns?
Kay gives us great advice on developing campaigns against our competition. He says: "You have to know yourself and your competition equally well, and you have to know the customer—we always say start with the customer.
We have five basic guidelines for developing advertising: Start with the customer. Live with the client. Uncover the obvious. Keep it simple. And follow through.
If you do each of these five things, you're going to come pretty damn close to the target. I always believe the problem will dictate the solution if you really understand the problem and set your objective."
Monday, January 01, 2007
Defining your customers
"Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production” said Adam Smith, Father of modern Economics.
Without customer there is no consumption and without consumption, there is no need for production. Without customer there is no business.
Customers are the most valuable assets of every organization and marketing is about customers. No wonder there is so much books and articles written about customer satisfaction and marketers are very interested in social sciences.
As we continue our study on “Marketing 4 Sales”; in this article we concentrate on customers.
The more we understand our customers the better we can feed the sales force with useful information on where customers are and how to deal with them (how to take care of them), and most importantly we can identify the qualified leads and sales ready customers.
Understanding customers is indeed a difficult task but in reality we need to answer 3 rather simple questions:
- Who is using and who is buying your product?
Who is using kids’ toys and who is buying them? Obviously kids use toys but in reality parents buy them. Therefore while packaging it, its important to use the word “educational”.
Think of your business. What products and services do you produce and why? Who buys them and who uses them: especially who buys them? For example if you offer companies with interior design services then your customer is the decision maker(s) and staff are the users. Now should you target staff or decision maker(s)? Obviously decision maker(s) and for that you need to get closer to your target market and learn more about them. What sort organizations are they? What industries? What size? Small, Medium or Large? If a small company then perhaps you have to target CEOs but in case of a large organization, the purchasing manager could be your customer. Why should they buy from you and not from your competition?
Buy understanding your customers and users, you will be more focused and will have better results in terms of ROI.
- How are products in your category used by your customer?
When we learn who our customers are, we then need to learn how they use our products/services. I think an interior design firm who sells to businesses is always a prime example, because 1) It’s a B2B environment which is much more complex than B2C and 2) it involves both products and services. So an interior design company might learn that the freestanding desks are often linked together to shape a meeting desk, due to space limitation (rent is increasing so space is at premium). By marketing multipurpose modular desksing solutions, the company can generate new enquiries.
- Are laws, regulations, or societal pressures changing your marketplace?
What if the interior design firm faces a new rule: demolishing existing walls and building new ones are prohibited. No tenant should change the floorplan of existing office? In this case the firm may use “mobile partitions: as a way to penetrate market and to generate new leads.
You need to answer the above 3 simple questions, if you want to successfully market your business. In most cases, thinking enough and using available sources of information, will give you essential data to answer the questions, But in some cases you’ll need to plan a research to answer the questions. In the next article we will quickly talk about market research.
Without customer there is no consumption and without consumption, there is no need for production. Without customer there is no business.
Customers are the most valuable assets of every organization and marketing is about customers. No wonder there is so much books and articles written about customer satisfaction and marketers are very interested in social sciences.
As we continue our study on “Marketing 4 Sales”; in this article we concentrate on customers.
The more we understand our customers the better we can feed the sales force with useful information on where customers are and how to deal with them (how to take care of them), and most importantly we can identify the qualified leads and sales ready customers.
Understanding customers is indeed a difficult task but in reality we need to answer 3 rather simple questions:
- Who is using and who is buying your product?
Who is using kids’ toys and who is buying them? Obviously kids use toys but in reality parents buy them. Therefore while packaging it, its important to use the word “educational”.
Think of your business. What products and services do you produce and why? Who buys them and who uses them: especially who buys them? For example if you offer companies with interior design services then your customer is the decision maker(s) and staff are the users. Now should you target staff or decision maker(s)? Obviously decision maker(s) and for that you need to get closer to your target market and learn more about them. What sort organizations are they? What industries? What size? Small, Medium or Large? If a small company then perhaps you have to target CEOs but in case of a large organization, the purchasing manager could be your customer. Why should they buy from you and not from your competition?
Buy understanding your customers and users, you will be more focused and will have better results in terms of ROI.
- How are products in your category used by your customer?
When we learn who our customers are, we then need to learn how they use our products/services. I think an interior design firm who sells to businesses is always a prime example, because 1) It’s a B2B environment which is much more complex than B2C and 2) it involves both products and services. So an interior design company might learn that the freestanding desks are often linked together to shape a meeting desk, due to space limitation (rent is increasing so space is at premium). By marketing multipurpose modular desksing solutions, the company can generate new enquiries.
- Are laws, regulations, or societal pressures changing your marketplace?
What if the interior design firm faces a new rule: demolishing existing walls and building new ones are prohibited. No tenant should change the floorplan of existing office? In this case the firm may use “mobile partitions: as a way to penetrate market and to generate new leads.
You need to answer the above 3 simple questions, if you want to successfully market your business. In most cases, thinking enough and using available sources of information, will give you essential data to answer the questions, But in some cases you’ll need to plan a research to answer the questions. In the next article we will quickly talk about market research.
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