Delight Your Customers

How Can You Delight Your Customers?

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How do big-name brands like Coca-Cola and Disney retain their customers after their first sales interaction? They continuously delight their customers with their products and services, and aa a result, develop a strong relationship with those customers.

So what does it mean to “delight” consumers? The “delight” phase of the Inbound Marketing Methodology is all about pleasing your customers so that they benefit from your company and remain a customer and promoters of your brand. Read on to find out how you can delight your customers:

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thank you pages

A Thank You Page Isn’t An End, But A Continuation

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A thank you page is where a website visitor is directed after downloading a content offer. The function of a thank you page (of course) is to thank that visitor for downloading the content from your landing page, but also to help them move through the Buyer’s Journey.

A thank you page shouldn’t just say “thanks for coming.” Saying thank you is important to be courteous and trustworthy, but you can use thank you pages to your advantage and lead visitors to discover more about your company. Here are some important practices to help make sure your thank you pages are as effective as possible.

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website redesign checklist

Website Redesign Checklist For 2016

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Your website is not just an accessory, it is an extension of your brand. For the best results, websites constantly need to be adjusted, added to, and improved upon, based on trends, consumer behavior, and website performance. Here is a six-step website redesign checklist to help you make sure your website is ready to be competitive and work for your brand in 2016. Read more

McDonald’s Revolution in Retail Marketing

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As I was traveling recently through St. Joseph, Mo last week, I stopped to get some gas and near the station was a McDonalds. I haven’t been in a McDonalds for about a year and decided to order my lunch. I wanted to stretch my legs, so I walked into, what I would consider to be the future. 

I was greeted with a digital Kiosk board. Actually three of them. And all it said was “Create your taste”. I could create my own burger, with ten additional sauces, avocado, tortilla strips, three cheeses, grilled or raw onion and the list goes on-even lettuce wraps. You see, I walked into the very first 6,500 square feet McDonalds offering you to create your own burger. Also looking around I saw televisions, armchairs and couches.

As I moved my hand around, I created my own burger. Once paid on the kiosk, I was asked by someone standing by me to take a seat. Huh? McDonalds is going to deliver to my table? I was given an electronic device that linked my order to my table.

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sales success story

Using the 3R’s Method To Tell A Sales Success Story

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If you’re in sales, you know that one of your most important ways to build credibility is through success stories.

However, many success stories are more like success reports. They often consist of lifeless facts that every salesperson in the organization is told to present to every prospect. As such, they are usually presented as boiler plates, with bullet-pointed facts that are more relevant to a general audience than any audience in specific.

Here’s a somewhat tired template that you may be familiar with.

•State The Problem

i.e. “Life Charities was having a difficult time generating donations”

•State The Solution

i.e. “We showed them how to increase their donations through our car donation program.”

•Show Measurable Results.

i.e Life Charities increased their donations 3-fold in one year.

Oftentimes, the measurable results part is played up more than any other facet of the success story. This happens despite the fact that success is often achieved through a number of factors outside our control. Most audiences know better than to give you 100% credit for the success you are claiming as your own.

Also keep in mind that whenever you tell a success story, people expect it to have a happy ending. We don’t call them success stories because they give us a chance to wax on about our failures. I bring this up not to diminish the importance of results. In fact, don’t. However, if you’ve ever taped a sporting event or watched a movie where you know how it ends, you know that the real interest in any story comes from events leading up to the results, and not just the results themselves. How you stage those events can say more about you and your company than the actual results you’ve achieved.

A story is something that arouses emotion, while engaging, inspiring and motivating its audience. Using the 3-R’s approach to structuring and telling a success story will help you engage your audience far better than the standard problem, solution, and results triumvirate. Using this approach will turn a lifeless, factual success report into something that will involve your audience by helping them imagine a similar success.

The 3-R’s of a powerful sales success story. The three R’s stand for Relate, Rescue, and Resolve. Here’s how to put the 3R’s to work:

RELATE

Success stories are effective to the extent your audience can relate to them. It is critical that you be able to draw parallels between the problem you are describing and a problem or problems that your prospect is experiencing. Do otherwise and your presentation will be an invitation to mentally check out. It is arguably better to have no success story at all than to have one that has nothing to do with your prospect’s situation.

Don’t leave it up to your prospect to find the relevance between the problem you solved and the problem they want solved. Use words like “just like you,” or “similar to what you’re currently experiencing…” For this reason, the “You” word is one of the most important, if not the most important word in your presentation.

Just make sure you’ve done your homework. You’ll gain points by having equipped yourself with facts about your prospect’s current problem, but you could blow-up your entire presentation with a set of wrong facts or worse yet, faulty assumptions.

However you can, don’t make the company you worked with the centerpiece of your story. People relate to people more than they relate to companies. ABC Lugnuts Inc. may have had a problem, but talk more about Mr. Lugnuts, what he was experiencing and how he felt being faced with his problem. Perhaps he was frustrated with what had been tried in the past? Perhaps he was perplexed, confused, or convinced that there was just no workable solution to his problem. Again, RELATE: Any good story conveys emotions its audience can identify with.

Don’t gloss over the problem you were faced with. One of the big reasons stories are more interesting than reports is that stories are comprised of conflicts that need to be overcome. Do what you can to help your prospect feel the pain that your client or customer was experiencing. Beware however. Don’t go overboard. There’s no need for big drama – in fact, avoid it. Your audience does not have the time nor the patience for a sideshow. A question like “Have you ever experienced a 20% drop in sales over the course of a month,?” can suffice. If your prospect answers yes, they know the pain. If they answer no, help them imagine what that pain feels like.

RESCUE

Don’t think that simplifying your solution is always the best route to take. A statement like “All it took was our product to turn things around,” is an overstatement that will lose your audience entirely. Talk about some of the difficulties you experienced before finding the best solution. This is an opportunity to show your prospect how you work as much as it is a way to show them that you can solve problems. You want your audience to hear angles singing in the background when talk when you describe the rescue. Skip through your success story without talking much about the rescue, and the only thing your audience will hear are thoughts wishing you were done.

Use dialogue. Nothing makes a story more interesting than dialogue. One of the reasons for this is that dialogue allows your audience to experience the situation as opposed to being told about it. “And then he said Jim, that just won’t work,” is much more interesting that telling your audience that at first, your client resisted your solution.

If you can, talk about the specific insight or realization you helped your client come to. Bring your audience to the doorstep of your “aha” moment. Help them see how you got there. However, maintain a sense of humility. It’s better to say something like, “after struggling with this a bit, it suddenly dawned on me,” than “the solution was obvious.” If you can, use “We” instead of “I,” by all means, do so.

If possible, show how you made your client a partner in coming up with the solution. Demonstrate that you are collaborative and work with, not for your clients.

Above all else, show how your solution is similar to a solution that your audience would be interested in. Help your audience see themselves sharing the same insight.

RESOLVE

Again, your audience knows that this story is going to have a happy ending. Otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about it. Measurable results are important. But even more important are the changed feelings that were experienced. Go beyond the numbers to explain the long-term effect your solution had on sentiments that were felt, like new optimism or an improved sense of purpose.

If you’re interested in learning more ways to use storytelling as a sales tool, visit Storytelling For Sales Workshops.

Click here to learn more about how to tell your brand story!

Our Father Who Art In Starbucks – Customers Support Brands With A Purpose

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I recently came across a major marketing study conducted by this big public relations firm called Edleman. They interviewed 8000 people. And they found that 86 percent of us want to do business with companies that have a “noble purpose” – one that goes beyond selling stuff. 86 percent!

As if it isn’t hard enough to convince us their products will grow more hair, lose more weight and create less worry when we need an erection. Now companies have to demonstrate that they care about us as much as they care about making money. It’s as if brands are more like organized religions. Choosing between coffee shops is like deciding whether you want to believe in the gospel according to Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts.

Have we consumers turned into social responsibility freaks? Used to be when you were asked”Paper or plastic?”, you could pick plastic without getting stink eye from the person next in line. I mistakenly parked in a handicap spot the other day. I received a note under my windshield wiper that read “I was going to tell you not to park in a handicapped zone, but then I realized that includes the mentally handicapped too.” Clever.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s a Darwin thing. Have we evolved into eco-sexual, howling joiners who want the companies we do business with to become causes that make the world a better place? But then, maybe it’s something else. We’ve got a Presidential candidate gaining support who sells ties made in China and who complains that our country is being destroyed by cheap Chinese labor. Perhaps it’s just that we have different standards for the people who could run our country than for companies that could improve our lives.

Whatever the reason, the days when the Mcdonald’s menu board didn’t have to remind us that our Big Mac is 583 calories have gone the way of walking a mile for a Camel. Gone too are the days when employees are more interested in making money than they are in working for a company that is driven to support a meaningful reason for being. According to this same Edleman study, the more purposeful company is one that is going to do a better job of recruiting.

Companies can always stick their head in the sand and pretend this trend does not exist. But that would only make for a bad hair day – or an itchy bald spot. In truth however, I’m not sure companies have much choice.

As for us consumers and employees, it’s a new world for us too. And one that is going to take some getting used to. Imagine… companies with a conscience. Companies that actually think of us as human beings first and consumers second. What’s next? Honest politicians?

Brand

Story vs. Assertion: Which Is Better For Your Brand?

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One of the first things we do in our Business Storytelling Workshops is give respondents a mini-quiz to see if they can tell the difference between a story and an assertion. It is rare indeed when anyone gets all or even most of the answers correct. Albeit a common mistake, I’d like to show you why this mistake can have negative consequences for your company and, by extension, its brand.

First, and especially in a business setting, assertions and stories are tools used to make a point. The difference is in how the point gets made. An assertion makes the point through a statement of opinion or belief. A story makes the point through the description of an event that has already happened or will happen sometime in the future.

Consider these two examples:

First the assertion:

“Introducing New Coke was an egregious error in judgement made by negligent management. They should have taken into consideration that emotional bonds people have with brands can be very strong.”

Personally, upon hearing this at a meeting I once attended, I was turned off by the speaker. Based on my studying the New Coke failure, I thought that referring to the failure as “an egregious error in judgment” was an ill-informed oversimplification. Additionally, I didn’t like the insinuation that knowing about the strength of any brand’s emotional attachment should just be thought of as common sense.

You may disagree with the reasons for my strong reaction. That’s not the point. The point is that assertions always present the risk of disagreement. To assume that everyone is going to agree with you can backfire. Especially when the risk of disagreement is high, it is better to rely on a story leading up to your point.

Contrast the above assertion with this story used to make a point:

When Coke saw that New Coke performed better in taste tests than the current Coke, they confidently introduced it with a great deal of fanfare. Yet, Coke drinkers didn’t just reject New Coke. They revolted against it. They told Coke it was destroying something they had grown up with. Can you imagine how baffled Coke must have been when they found this out? Clearly, this points to the strength of the emotional bond that consumers can have with a brand.  It can be so strong that it outweighs rational considerations given to taste or other attributes.

And yes, it took a little longer to get to the point.

However, when the point is made about the emotional power of brands, it gets served up as an assertion that is inescapable.  This is one of the reasons it has been said that stories persuade without getting in their own way.

Learn How Story Branding Can Help Your Marketing Strategy

The challenge and how to meet it:

Again, the challenge is to become aware of whether you are asserting something or telling a story.  Stories come in a number of different forms. But if you were to take any story apart, you would generally find these elements:

Time markings:  Stories imply or directly state that something happened in time. eg. In 2001…,” “Just the other day” “Last Tuesday …” “When we last spoke to the CEO …” The archetypal time marking is, of course, “Once upon a time” but that’s not one you want to use in a business setting.

Place markings:  Just stories imply or state that something happened in time, the same is true for place. eg.“We were outside his office …” “At the basketball tournament…” However, sometimes the place is nondescript. “Our representative met with their President, ” could suggest that a meeting took place at the  President’s office or possibly by telephone.  Either way, the meeting occurred at a place.

Characters: Stories:  Stories feature a “personified it.” eg.  Besides being a person, the “personified it” could be a company, an animal – anything that performs an action. “The brand died an ignominious death.”, “The tree lost its leaves early this Fall.”.

Events:  The biggest signal that a story is being told is when an event is described as in all of the examples above.

Click here to learn all there is to know about telling your brand’s story.

elicit your prospect's business story

How To Elicit Your Prospect’s Business Story

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Much has been written about storytelling as a business tool. And for good reason. Storytelling can be an extremely powerful way to influence, motivate and inspire others. However, it is common for storytelling trainers to err by disregarding differences between business storytelling and recital storytelling.

Stylistically, business storytelling should be more casual than careful.  Indeed, like recital storytelling, business storytelling is used to engage listeners, facilitate interest, and gain emotional reactions. However, when telling a story in a business setting, you should not try to become the next Mark Twain. As a business tool, storytelling should be more  “informance” than performance.  Otherwise, it will do more harm than good.

There are other differences, as well. For instance, recital storytelling travels from the speaker’s mouth to the listener’s ears.  By contrast, in a business setting,  storytelling can and should be a two-way street.  In fact, one can benefit as much from eliciting as they can from telling stories.

Consider, for instance, the salesperson interviewing a prospect who is considering a change in vendors. Typical questions that the salesperson might ask are, “Why are you considering a change in vendors?” or “What are you looking for that you are not receiving from your current supplier?” Using questions like these will likely yield a direct answer and provide some understanding of what the prospect is looking for.  However, by eliciting a story, additional insights can be gained.

Instead of asking for reasons why, consider what would happen with quesitons like, ” When did you decide to change vendors?” or “ What happened to cause you to reconsider your current arrangement?”  By asking for the event or events leading up to the reason,  a story would be elicited.  And, instead of receiving a direct answer like, “We are looking for someone who can provide faster responses to our requests,” it’s more likely that prospect would say something like,”When we first started working with them they were Johnny-on-the-spot.  But now it takes 5 or 6 phone calls before anyone gets back to us. Last  year, they were acquired by a bigger company.  And following that acquisition, we got lost in the shuffle.  Being one of their smaller accounts, we just didn’t seem as important anymore.”   As the story unfolds, the emotional component of the problem rises to the surface. Besides the directly stated more rational reason why behind the considered switch, we also learn that the prospect has been feeling left out in the cold and wants to feel important regardless of the size of his business.

This is but one example of how eliciting stories can be more helpful than just the fact gathering. It takes some practice.  But here are some things to consider when developing your ability to elicit stories:

  1. Go for the “time stamp.”   Stories, by definition describe events that occurred at one time or another.   Be mindful of this as you ask questions.  Always ask for the “when” or  “what happened” instead of asking for a direct reason why.
  2. Learn about the setting.    When describing where something happened, you are likely to elicit a story, as well.  i.e “where did the process start falling apart?” or  “where did you first start to see changes occur?”
  3. Avoid “why” questions if you can.  Certainly knowing why someone believes the way they do is important.  But, again, “why,” more often than not, will yield opinions or theories that are often rational in natural.  Stories generally reveal the emotions that underly the facts.
  4. Be aware of assertion or opinion cues.  Whenever someone says or implies what they think, you should know you are not being told a story.
  5. If you get an assertion, go for the underlying story.   Instead of asking, “why do you believe that to be true?” ask, “Did something occur to cause you to feel that way?”   This will inevitably yield far more useful information than the assertion alone. Just remember, a story is not a story unless an event is described.

Learn more about brand storytelling here!

marketing strategy for success

Brand Storytelling: Turning Your House Into A Home

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What makes your brand special?

If you answered by talking about your brand’s unique advantages and consumer benefits, you own a house, not a home.

Don’t feel lonely.  There are plenty of companies doing the same thing.  And they all have lessons to share.

Take Xerox for instance. At one time, having a  Xerox machine in the office had become a necessity.  Instead of asking, “Can I get a copy of that?” it was commonplace for people to ask, “Can you make me a Xerox?” Having achieved a great deal of success, the company decided to cultivate other ambitions. For one, Xerox wanted to get into computer technology and data processing. They spent many years and millions of dollars before finally throwing in the towel. Why? Because they couldn’t get buyers to believe that a copy machine company could make a good computer. In effect, Xerox found out that it was a house, not a home.

Chiquita is another example. Chiquita had to admit defeat after trying to convince us that they make a good frozen juice bar.  Country Time Lemonade was forced to stop trying to sell Country Time Apple Cider. Ponds barely got out of the starting gates with Ponds toothpaste before it quit. And Smith and Wesson (yes, the maker of guns) tried to sell a bicycle of all things. Thousands of stories like these exist.

But then many brands tell a different story. Apple has gone from selling computers to phones, to tablets to who knows what’s next. Nike started out selling waffle-soled running shoes but is now the leading brand of athletic equipment, gadgets, and apparel.  Perhaps a more extreme example is Virgin with its long list of unrelated products and services: phones, records, airplanes, casinos, satellites.  In case you’re sick and in jail, Virgin even provides a prison health service.  Add Harley Davidson, Disney, Starbucks, and anything that Oprah labels to the list.  See any similarities?  These are brands that grew by creating homes, not houses.

When we think of these brands, we don’t just think of a single products or service.   We think of the ideas, values and beliefs their names represent. To their buyers, they offer something more important than functional benefits.  They provide a sense of belonging.  In fact, their buyers aren’t really buyers. They are more like members of the same household who share similar beliefs. Virgin could sell mud flaps if it wanted to.  No doubt, they’d become the best selling mud flaps available. ( Hey Branson, you heard it here first!).

How do you build your brand story? Learn here! 

How To Turn Your House Into A Home

If you’re interested in turning your house into a home, here are 5 simple brand storytelling rules to follow:

  1. Check out your brand’s foundation.  Does it provide a solid base that will support any additions, or is will it only hold up your house as is?
  2. Improve its curb appeal.  When people see it from the outside, will they think ” Looks nice”  or will they think “This could become a good representation of me and what I stand for?”
  3. Get rid of the clutter.   Throw out everything that distracts away from the one simple but important truth that your home represents.
  4. Hire the right agent.  Anyone can help you find renters or even buyers.   Hire someone who can tell your story in a way that will attract followers.
  5. Conduct a permanent Open House.  Stay real, authentic and open to transparency.

Making a distinction between a house and a home has many advantages. Just remember, a house functions as a place to shelter you from the elements, provide you with ample closet space and a place to park your automotive status symbol.  Homes serve a very different purpose.  They provide belonging, and support for values you can identify with.

The extent to which your brand can offer customers a home instead of a house will determine the size of your family.

oral business storytelling

5 Tools For Oral Business Storytelling

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Oral stories told in a business context, make up a unique category within the whole storytelling genre. They fall somewhere between the extremes of your basic TV news story and stories delivered by performance artists. Stories told in business settings are necessarily short, conversational, and only work if they make a relevant point.

Nevertheless, business stories do have one thing in common with all other types of oral stories. If appropriately told, they emotionally engage audiences and have a very good chance of being remembered. Think about it. What’s easier to recall from an oral presentation? 3 bullet points or a story about 3 pain points similar to yours? It is for this reason that oral business storytelling can do the heavy lifting when you need people to engage with what your information.

If you’re wanting to learn the basics of business storytelling, there are plenty of resources available to you, including companies like Anecdote that specialize in business storytelling training (full disclosure/shameless plug: I am an Anecdote Storytelling trainer). But, whether you are a trained business storyteller or not, here are some tools and resources that will further your abilities.

1. The Metaphor

I’ve lumped similes and analogies into this category. Each has its own structure, but these three forms of speech have the same purpose. They all provide new information within a known frame of reference. As such, they create mental pictures that foster more involvement than plain descriptions.

“The boardroom turned out to be a heavy artillery of egos” paints a more interesting picture than “the members of the board all had strong egos.”

“His desk was as big as a tennis court,” may be an exaggeration, but it will say something more than “He had a big desk.”

If you’re challenged with coming up with metaphors, there’s plenty of help available. For starters, I recommend two books:

Metaphors Dictionary by Dorris Weiss and Elyse Sommers. It contains 6500 comparative phrases, and a complete bibliography of sources.

The other is The Tall Lady and the Iceberg: The Power of Metaphor to Sell, Persuade & Explain Anything to Anyone. In addition to containing a number of great metaphors that can be used for business storytelling, the author provides a number of techniques that will help you come up with your own unique metaphorical phrases.

2. The “Then, Now and How” Formula.

The “Then, Now and How” formula is something I learned while working with the highly acclaimed speaking coach, Craig Valentine. He writes more about this formula and other storytelling techniques in his bestselling book, World Class Speaking, co-authored by Mitch Meyerson. Here’s the gist of how to apply this formula:

First, talk about the way things used to be. Then, talk about what has changed. Finally, explain how the change came about. Here’s an example:

Then: “We used to have a problem with employee turnover (really embellish the problem by talking about the setbacks and the frustrations this caused).

Now: ” Today, however, we have substantially reduced turnover to _____.”(fill in the blank and embellish).

How: “The reason for this change is all due to the system I want to talk to you about today. ”

This formula has many applications for selling or presenting case histories.

Click here to learn all there is to know about telling your brand’s story.

3. Humorous Dialogue

Too often, speakers try to get audiences to laugh by telling jokes or delivering overly rehearsed one-liners. And they fail. This is because audiences get turned off by speakers who try too hard to make them laugh.

Witness Senator Rubio’s first debate when, during his introductory remarks, he held up a bottle of water while saying that he’s made sure to bring water this time. This was a call-back to the time when a dry-mouthed Rubio embarrassed himself by reaching off camera for water during a nationally televised rebuttal to the State of the Union speech. I’m not sure what was harder to watch, the reach for water or the joke that didn’t get a laugh.

If you’re looking for humor, find it instead within the stories you tell. More specifically, find it within dialogue used to tell a story. Consider this example for instance:

“I started out working for a pretty tough boss. He watched over everything I did and was quick to criticize. One day, he told me that he’d love to stop correcting me. “You have my full permission,” I said.

This may not generate a guffaw, but it’s easier to deliver and will be appreciated more than a canned joke or witticism.

4. Your Story Journal

A relevant business story isn’t something that most of us can come up with spontaneously. For that reason, it’s important to keep a journal of some sort that will trigger stories most appropriate for any given situation. You needn’t write out the whole story. A headline and a one or two-line gist will suffice.

Two sources can help you with this. The first is Evernote. Create a category called “My Stories’ in Evernote and tag each story you add to it with words that help you find them, as needed. You might have a story about a challenge about a weird problem you once encountered, for instance. Simply write a couple sentences that will help jog your memory. Tag them with words that will help you call them up when they are needed – tags like, #weird problem, #unusual challenges, or #creative solutions.

Another source is Day One. Day One is a daily journaling program that also allows you to categorize and tag stories of the days they occur. However, Day One will send you timed notifications with questions like, “What are the best, worse memories from your childhood?” I use this by providing short, taggable answers similar to the way I use Evernote. Additionally, Day One provides a way to diary events, emails, photos or anything else that you’d like to keep track of.

5. The 2+2 Formula.

This is a formula I learned from a Ted talk, entitled, The Clues To A Great Story, given by Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, the creator of Finding Nemo and Wall-E. During this talk, Stanton explains that audiences don’t like to be told that 2+2 equals 4. “We like to figure things out for ourselves,” he goes on to say.

The 2+2 Formula really underscores one of the fundamental reasons we are drawn to stories. It’s why comedians don’t explain the punch lines to their jokes.

Practice using these 5 tools and you’ll add to your ability to capitalize on the power of story as a business tool. For more information, on storytelling training for business, go to http://www.story-lab.net.