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Branding
What The Hell Are Brandable Chunks And Why Do They Make Taglines Look Played Out?
This legendary print campaign for Canadian Club whisky provides a superb, “in the wild” example of Brandable Chunks.
Sometimes it’s best to start with a good strong example, before attempting definitions or explanations.
Fortunately, this legendary print campaign for Canadian Club whisky provides a superb, “in the wild” example of Brandable Chunks. This campaign, launched in 2008, would reverse 16 previous, consecutive years of sales decline for Canadian Club within the first month of launch. Take a look:
If you can’t read the copy in the ad, it says:
YOUR DAD WAS NOT A METROSEXUAL
He didn’t do pilates. Moisturize. Or drink pink cocktails. Your Dad drank whisky cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. Served in a rocks glass. They Tasted Good. They were effortless. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT
Again, the copy reads:
YOUR DAD NEVER USED A BRIDGE
He didn’t wheel his luggage. Drive an automatic. Or drink anything rimmed with sugar. He drank whiskey cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. In a rocks glass. And if there was a cue around, he didn’t have to pay for them. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT
YOUR GRANDMA DIDN’T APPROVE OF YOUR DAD
He had a reputation. He Broke a few hearts. He drank C. C. and Gingers. They were smooth. They mixed really well. Just like him. Eventually Grandma came around. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT
YOUR MOM WASN’T YOUR DAD’S FIRST
He went out. He got two numbers in the same night. He drank cocktails. But they were whisky cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. Served in a rocks glass. They tasted good. They were effortless. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT
YOUR DAD HAD GROUPIES
He soloed. People paid to see him. He drank cocktails. But not in martini glasses. They were whisky cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. Served in a rocks glass. They tasted good. DAMN RIGHT YOUR DAD DRANK IT
So What Were the Brandable Chunks — And Why Do They Matter?
The campaign’s stated goal (other than to reverse the sales decline) was “to put masculinity back into cocktails” The perceptual reality that they had to deal with was the fact that their target audience remembered Canadian Club as their dad’s whisky. So while the client wanted to ignore that reality, the ad agency (Energy BBDO) decided to use it to their advantage. As in, before your dad became your dad, he was probably manlier and cooler than you — and he drank Canadian Club whisky. Hence the over-arching tagline: “Damn Right Your Dad Drank It.” But in addition to the tagline, they came up with several brandable chunks to provide repetition to the messaging without boring the reader. Not every chunk is used in every ad, and they weren’t always used in the same order. But most ads used a handful of them and they provided strong continuity between ads:
- Your Dad [He] drank cocktails
- They were whisky cocktails
- Made with Canadian Club.
- Served in a rocks glass.
- They Tasted Good.
- They were effortless.
- They were smooth.
- They mixed really well.
Notice that every chunk helps to support the main themes of “Damn Right Your Dad Drank It” and “Bring Masculinity Back to Cocktails.” But each chunk was modular — could be used alone or mixed with any of the other chunks. Every ad had a new headline and angle of approach, but the “meat” of every ad was Brandable Chunks. And beyond all that, take a look at each chunk – note that it’s short, hard-hitting, and image or sensory-based. Even more than that, note how if you take any two or three of them together, they paint a mental scenario that perfectly reinforces the goals of the campaign. You see your (masculine) dad, drinking a manly man’s whisky cocktail made with Canadian Club. This is crucial. Brandable chunks — in order to work — have to be short-form phrases that form strong mental images in the mind of the audience. Images that reinforce the positioning of your brand.
How You Can Use Brandable Chunks
Like the Canadian Club Campaign, your advertising campaign should have a unifying theme and goal. And you should aim to convey that theme in all of your messaging while providing variety within your consistency. Which is where brandable chunks come in. You’ll want somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 and 16 chunks that can be mixed and matched to support your overarching theme. Short, memorable, hard-hitting phrases that can be modified as needed to flow within the overall messaging of your ad. And perhaps, if it fits, you might have one of those chunks that can serve as a tagline like “Damn Right Your Dad Drank It” Of course, always using that same tag in the exact same way and place in your ad will defeat the purpose of the chunks — variety within consistency. But you have to make a pattern before you can break a pattern. So having a tag long enough for it to become expected gives you the luxury of breaking that pattern and waking people up. Because audiences like playful ads that entertain them.
Brandable Chunks and Cross-Platform Consistency
While Brandable Chunks are great for ad campaigns, they are even better when it comes to ensuring consistent messaging across all media — to include your website, your social media marketing, and your in-person customer interactions. When you get your employees using the same language as your ads and website, it creates a compelling consistency and user experience for customers. Customers feel like they’re getting the experience they were promised in the ads. And that’s a good thing. They call up, and the person on the phone uses the same language that attracted that customer to you in the first place. When they walk into the store or your employee walks into their home, the customer again hears that same language. This is powerfully reassuring. Now, given that level of consistency and repetition, what kind of language do you think that customer will use when they talk about you? Exactly. Done right, Brandable Chunks will shape and reframe how people perceive your company. Just like they changed a behind-the-times whisky into a badge of masculinity and tradition.
One More Example of Brandable Chunks in Action
Here’s a set of Brandable Chunks created for a bait & tackle store:
- Fresh, live fish prefer fresh, live bait
- Grand River Bait and Tackle believes there’s no time like the present, and no present like time
- No cell phones. No video games. No electronic devices. Just a tackle box and a couple of fishing poles
- Your luck will change the moment you step through that door. (The face-to- face variation would be, “Your luck changed the moment you stepped through our door.”)
- It may look like they (we) sell bait and tackle, but what they (we) really sell is the perfect day
- Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town.
- Just add water
Notice that there’s a clear theme — fishing isn’t about catching fish, it’s about the magic of being on the water with friends and family, and Grand River Bait and Tackle will help you be more successful at that. And here’s what a radio ad written with those chunks would look like [chunks in bold]:
“Fresh, live fish prefer fresh, live bait. And the really BIG fish prefer that you get it from Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town. Your luck will change the moment you step through that door. You can actually feel it happening. Time slows down, your neck muscles relax and the radio plays better music. It may look like they sell bait and tackle, but what they really sell is the perfect day. Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town. Just add water.”
And another ad, just for good measure:
“Time…it’s the most precious thing you can give someone. Especially if you make sure it’s uninterrupted. No cell phones. No video games. No electronic devices. Just a tackle box and a couple of fishing poles. And time. Grand River Bait and Tackle believes there’s no time like the present, and no present like time. Step through their door and you’ll feel time stand still. It may look like they sell bait and tackle, but what they really sell is the perfect day. Grand River Bait and Tackle in Old Town. Just add water.”
Note how tight, hard-hitting, and image-rich those 30-second radio ads are? Notice how those ads change how you think about a Bait and Tackle store? That’s all thanks to Brandable Chunks. So raise your glass to Canadian Club and Brandable Chunks. Next week I’ll go into details on how to create your own.
Marketing
Does Your Home Service Business Suffer From Feed the Beast-itus?
The bigger your business gets, the harder it is to “feed.” Sometimes it feels like you spend more time worrying about demand calls...
Your home services business is growing — congratulations!
You’re no longer a one-man-brand or only running a few trucks. You should be getting ready to hit breakthrough.
And yet, the bigger your business gets, the harder it is to “feed.”
Sometimes it feels like you spend more time worrying about demand calls than anything else.
If that’s you, you might be suffering from Feed the Beast-itus.
Symptoms of Feed the Beast-itus
Common Symptoms include:
- You’ve had double-digit growth the last few years, but have serious concerns about sustaining that growth rate.
- Pay-Per-Crack is killing you — and you desperately need more of it! The prices are going up, because everybody else is doing PPC now, so it’s not working like it used. to.
- You hate — but are still signed up for — every digital lead source available.
- You wake up thankful that today is OK, but you’re already fretting over rest of the week. You wish you had more control over this key “fuel” for your business.
- There’s no positive momentum. You get wins, but every new day starts at zero and it’s back to filling those boards.
- You’ve rock-bottomed tune-up and maintenance prices because you’re using them as a lead source. Worse, your average ticket price is too low — the tune-ups aren’t “converting”!
- You’re undecided on diagnostic charges. You’d like to eliminate them, but running too many zero dollar sales calls is killing you.
- You know selling memberships is key, but you can’t crack the code on how to do it.
All of these symptoms point to the same problem — you are trying to manually feed your growing business by hand.
And the hungry beast just never stops needing more.
Yet you know that some businesses seem to “feed themselves.”
There are companies that are two to three times your size in the market and their owners don’t seem to scramble for demand calls like you do.
The Solution to Getting Off Pay-Per-Crack and Creating the Steady Lead Flow You Need
When you wait for someone to need your service, and then react to their immediate need by bidding on keyword searches, you are essentially gambling.
You put your money into the digital slot machine and hope something good comes out.
And the bigger your business, the bigger your bets, and the harder it is to get lucky all the time.
You’re also placing the future of your business into someone else’s hands. Mostly Google’s.
In sharp contrast, when you advertise to the masses before they need what you sell, you pro-actively win the sale before it ever happens.
You want those prospects searching on your name — not generic industry terms — when they need what you sell.
When that happens you win, and everyone else loses.
The customer is no longer coming to you by chance. They’re coming by choice. No gambling required.
Now your beast of a business has a steady diet of high quality leads.
And customers that come to you by choice are happy to pay a premium price for you — and everything that you offer and stand for — rather than someone else.
Combine that with an already-established reputation for your people, and you’ll start to see in-home sales improve too, with more people opting for “better” and “best” options.
And you don’t need me to tell you fatter profit margins are a good thing.
But there’s something even more profound that happens when you move from reactive to proactive marketing…
Building Brand Momentum and Transforming Your Business Into a Self-Feeding Beast
When you use mass media to bond with customers, you build momentum.
Pay per click is strictly transactional. People forget it immediately after clicking.
But once people form positive associations with your brand — once they feel as if they know you and what you stand for — those associations not only last, they continue to build for as long as you run your campaign
And the more those customers think of you first and feel the best about you when they need what you sell, the more demand calls just come flooding into your business.
All without starting at zero and having to grind away at filling your board.
Your business will be essentially feeding itself. Only your competition will fear it as a ravenous beast.
You’ll have more time to work on your business than in it.
And your empire building dreams will become a certainty rather than a hope.
Others May Have Told You Mass Media Branding Is Expensive & Slow. If They Only Knew…
More than a few Direct Response gurus have claimed that mass media branding doesn’t work or is ineffective.
However, dozens of Wizard of Ads clients have grown from $3-$5 million on-the-cusp companies to over $20, $30, and up to $80 million market dominators using this strategy.
But to give you full confidence, let’s look at the numbers and see how the math pencils out.
Of course, mass media does have a barrier to entry. You do have to be big enough to afford it. But if you’re suffering from Feed the Beast-itus, you’re big enough.
In fact, it’s your size that’s making the symptoms worse. You’ve outgrown the ability to fuel the business purely with digital PPC.
And once you can afford mass media, it’s an order of magnitude CHEAPER than ppc.
Instead of reaching a customer for, say, $10 per click, you can reach them three times a week, every week of the year for under a dollar per person.
Moreover, as long as most people eventually DO buy what you sell, reaching the masses is never wasteful.
Of course, you won’t want to quit your Pay-Per-Crack addiction cold turkey. And we’d never ask you to do that.
We’ve got an established transition plan to move you from where you are now to where you want to be. No withdrawal symptoms necessary.
The reality is that it takes about a year to fully make this transition.
But it’s like any other worthwhile change — the law of seed time and harvest applies.
If you start working out now, several months from now you’ll be in great shape. It won’t happen tomorrow, but it will happen.
Similarly, you can start branding now, and have hit breakthrough in eight to twelve months. Just make sure you work with a team that understands how to brand non-sexy, “Ugly Duckling Businesses”
Or you can let that time go by and find yourself still suffering from Feed the Beast-itus.
Your call.
Marketing
7 Essential Elements You Need To Successfully Sell Services Online
Services generally get some kind of copy describing the service, but generally nothing describing the experience of...
Products have product pages, but what do services have? Well, services generally get some kind of copy describing the service, but generally nothing describing the experience of working with the service provider. Nothing that’ll answer questions like:
- How can I explore the possibility of working with you without getting a sales pitch or committing or even giving you the impression of a commitment?
- What can I expect at each stage of the service or project?
- How much contact and review and control will I have during this time?
- When can I see the finished work?.
And leaving this stuff out of your copy is a fatal mistake. If you’re selling a service rather than a product — or if you’re selling a customized or personalized product — it’s vital to get prospective customers as comfortable as possible with the process of hiring and working with you. More importantly, you must get them to imagine — in the most inviting and non-threatening a manner as possible — the benefits of receiving your services.
“People go only to places they have already been in their minds” — Roy H. Williams
Now, there are plenty of ways to achieve both goals — getting the prospect comfortable in exploring the possibility of working with you AND getting them to imagine the process of working with you — but my favorite strategy for achieving this is what I call a “Mental Walk-Through” page, although it usually shows up in the navigation as something like, “Project Timelines,” or “Working With Us” or “The Process.”
So here they are.
7 Elements of a mental walkthrough page:
1. Point of No Commitment
I originally called this the “Point of Commitment” until I realized I had it backward: prospects want to know how far into the process they can go before they have to pay/commit or at least before they get a serious sales pitch. And how confident will they be in what they’re buying/getting before they actually have to pull the trigger? Note that there are two ways of approaching this: a) emphasizing the low-key, “come check us out and see for yourself with no hassle or commitment because we’re that confident in our value” approach, or b) emphasizing the “I’m in way too high demand to waste time with tire kickers, and you’ll need to pay my gatekeeper before I even talk with you” approach. Approach A is usually the one taken by the vast majority of mental walk-through pages.
2. Phases and Stages
What are the stages of this project or service? And why are the stages in the order that they are in? Also, if you do things a bit differently than others — because your way gets better results — make sure to explain that as part of the Phases and Stages element in your Mental Walk-Through. The same thing goes for any specific actions or review periods you include as “hand-holding measures” used to keep the client in control and confident. This is where you can brag about those things a bit.
3. Results and Upsides
How quickly till I see results? At what stage will I get to see mock-ups or will I notice my page rank improving. How soon till my child can play a complete song on the piano? When do the various indicators of progress show up, and how long until I can enjoy the first fruits, and when does the full or final payoff come. People are impatient. Achieve clarity upfront on when they can start to see progress, results, milestones, etc.
4. Downsides
Be equally upfront about any dings and downsides they’ll experience along the way. An expected downside is way better than an unexpected one. So make sure to mention when and where downsides come in and how soon they go away or are eclipsed by the upsides. If you create a mess when you knock down a wall for my add-on or rip out my old appliances and cabinetry for my kitchen renovation, how long till the mess is cleaned up, and how much longer until the new cabinets are in, and how much after that until I get my kitchen back? If I should expect to be sore the next day, let me know. In fact, let me know how sore and for how long. If it’s a procedure, how long until the swelling goes down or until I can get back to work, and so on.
5. Options and Customization
How many ways can I upgrade to premium options or personalize this service or have it custom-tailored to my needs, and at what points in the process will I see this taking place? People who want things the way they want them are often anxious to make sure their requests have been taken into account and put into action. They want to make sure the final result is as planned in their mind’s eye. Use this page to put them at ease.
6. Testimonials
Every statement you make in your walk-through needs substantiation, just like any statement of claim on your site. If you tell me the redness from the laser skin treatment will subside by the next day or a few hours or whatever, put a customer testimonial to that effect right in the timeline/walk-through. If you tell me I’ll see the difference in my next energy bill, having a few testimonials to that effect will help. This is also a good place to put before and after pictures
7. Audio & Videos
Ever see cool time-lapsed photography or a super-speed video showing the growth of a plant or the construction of, well, anything? If you can put one of those together, do so. You can even slow down or pause the action at various stages of completion to show off benefits, before & after’s or whatever else. I can think of nothing better at making the prospect feel as if the end result is worth the wait and disruption than a time-lapsed or super-speed video. Talk about mentally walking them through the project!
The Final Result
At the end of the walk-through, you’ll not only have added quite a bit of reassurance to your prospects, but you will have allowed them to have done business with you in their mind’s eye. They’ll have already gone there and done that in their imagination, making them that much more ready to go there and okay it for real. That’s why the end of the walk-through is an ideal place for a “next step” call-to-action. So if you’re a small or local business specializing in services or customized products, try creating a “Doing Business With Us” or a “Project Timeline” page. You’ll be surprised at how many customers will quite quickly move from imagining doing business with you to actually doing business with you.
Marketing
2 Adorable And Useless Pieces of Marketing Advice Home Service Companies Need To Banish
There’s a lot of bad marketing and advertising advice out there for Home Service Companies. The two most common and useless pieces are...
Frankly, there’s a lot of bad marketing and advertising advice out there. And when it comes to Home Services Companies the two most common and useless pieces are:
- Create a USP, and
- Market to a List
Let’s tackle the Unique Selling Proposition BS first.
Why USPs Are a Waste of Time — Especially for Home Service Companies
Look, no one wants a unique plumber (or AC tech, electrician, etc.). In fact, no one actually desires any of those services at all — UNTIL they have a plumbing, AC, or electrical problem. And in the face of that problem, the only things customers want from a home service provider are:
- That they answer the phone when called
- That they’re available to come out right away
- That they’re technically competent to fix the problem properly, and
- That they are honest, professional, and pleasant
Any “unique” quality or characteristic you might attempt to claim that falls outside of those four things will end up as either
- Irrelevant to the customer, or
- Only relevant so far as they act as indexes or cues for those four things.
And notice that none of those four things could possibly be UNIQUE based on your actions alone. YOU certainly should be able to demonstrate your ability to meet these requirements. Because if you can’t then no amount of advertising is going to help you. But while you can — and should — communicate that you’re an honest plumber, you’d be a fool to claim that you are the only honest plumber in town. This is why Unique Selling Propositions are counter-productive: they actively prevent you from communicating the factors customers care about.
Why Great Messaging Is Both Simple to Understand And Hard to Execute
That customers only care about the four above-listed factors is actually the tricky part. Because those four things are simple to claim, but hard to make people believe.
All love poems are about love, but there’s a world of difference between Shakespeare and “Roses are red…”So too, all non-idiotic branding for home service businesses will be focused on those four things. But there’s a world of difference between an announcer reading copy points and story-based ads that persuade the public of your character and mission. This is why the quality of your ad matters so damn much. Not only because a great ad will help break through the clutter and ensure that you’re messaging is heard, but because without brilliant writing, your ads won’t be believed even if they are heard.
Crappy Advice #2: Marketing to a List
Marketing to a list can be solid advice. A lot of Direct Response marketers have grown rich by building tribes and marketing to them. But this strategy is of limited use for most home services businesses. Why? Because that list doesn’t exist. And for the simple reason, that demand for your services is externally motivated rather than internally motivated.
Your Services Are Externally Motivated — And That Matters
Basically, what you sell is a “grudge buy.” People don’t want to buy it; they have to buy it. And they have to buy it because of an external trigger — something that happens external to their inner desires and motivations which forces them to need what you sell. This is as opposed to an internal motivation that makes people desire what you sell. If you have trouble understanding the difference, try to imagine the customer showing off her recent purchase. If you can imagine her showing off a new car, outfit, iPhone, etc. — that’s an internally-motivated purchase. If you can’t imagine her showing off her new water heater, furnace, unclogged toilet, etc. — that’s an externally-motivated purchase.
As the examples indicate, most external triggers are a breakdown that requires repair or replacement of an un-sexy necessity. Absent the breakdown, you just can’t get people to desire what you sell. That’s the bad news. The good news is that when prospects suffer a breakdown, you don’t have to convince them to buy. Those people in need are already highly motivated to buy from someone. You just have to convince them to buy from you.
Why The List Doesn’t Exist
Bringing this back to lists, can you see how there’s no list of people destined to suffer a breakdown in the next few months? That’s why the advice to market to a list is useless for most home service companies. So while you likely have a list of customers that you market to, that’s not a list that’ll help you grow your company. It’ll help you sell tune-ups to keep your techs busy in the off-season. But you can’t grow your customer base and company by marketing to old customers. You need a way to get new customers, which is the job of advertising — making “marketing to a list” useless advertising advice for your business.
The Marketing Advice You SHOULD Listen To Instead
So if USPs are bullshit and marketing to a list is relatively useless, what should you be doing? Well, let’s focus on both a Stop-Doing and a Start-Doing list, ok?
For Stop-Doing:
- Stop worrying about a USP.
- Stop trying to grow your business by marketing to a list
- Stop aiming your operational improvement efforts at anything that isn’t one of the four factors that customers care about.
For Start-Doing:
- Focus operational improvements on the factors that matter most to customers.
- Aim your advertising at communicating those four factors.
- Hire an advertising consultant who can create story-based ads that effectively communicating those four factors.
- Ensure your advertising consultant understands how to brand un-sexy, externally-triggered businesses.
And that’s my best advice for you, today. Good luck and Godspeed!
Customer Journey
How to Improve Your Marketing For Free(ish)
One of the things you can do right now is to make sure that your customers are having a good experience with your business.
Johnny Molson: All too often when we talk about marketing, we are talking about advertising. And while advertising is part of marketing, it’s actually only a sliver of the stuff that needs to be considered. And one of the things you can do right now that’s within your control, and more or less doesn’t cost you any money, is making sure that your customers are having a good experience with your business. To talk about that today we’ll go to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Ryan Chute is going to remind us that if your salespeople are being measured by the sales and the dollars they bring in, that may actually be working against your company. Tom Wanek is in the Cleveland area and he’s going to talk about three things that you measure right now to make sure that your employees are treating your customers right. And when you do that, sales will come in. Let’s start in Canada, though, with Ryan Chute and businesses are coming back online. Customers are coming back into stores. So what are businesses doing right now?
Ryan Chute: I think a lot of folks are trying to make sure that they’re within compliance to what their state or provincial laws are dictating, as far as reopening and things like that go. They’re trying to do what’s right. And ultimately that’s valid and important. But it’s also important to make sure that we’re doing what’s right for our employees when it comes to time off and being flexible. And those intentions will pass along through to the customer. There’s going to be all kinds of things like Plexiglas barriers and limited office interaction, spacing issues that you have to deal with. But really what it comes down to is being a company that’s compassionate. That’s helping their employees as much as their customers achieve success and results, whatever those positive things are. Being trustworthy. And frankly, being grateful.
Johnny Molson: Tom, you have said in the past that customer experience isn’t just an idea “we should treat our customers right”. But really, it’s more of a discipline and something you’ve got to deliberately do. Expand on that. I mean, tell me a little more about what you mean by that.
Tom Wanek: Yes, one of my biggest pet peeves is thinking that you could shoot from the hip pocket and just have a great customer experience. That you could just print out these “I love my customer” mugs and t shirts and, you know, say “let’s just delight the customer”. It just doesn’t work like that because what delights you and what delights Ryan is vastly different than what might delight me as a customer. And so we have to take that into account. I have a client that is a jeweler and they’ve preached to all the sales staff, “Delight the customer. Delight the customer.” And so that was left to the individual’s interpretation. And it created a sales disaster. Sales declined because what the business owner found is we had these long lines of customers waiting. Because we were taking an abundant amount of time serving beverages and food and chatting up the customer, when all they really wanted was to get in and out of the store. And so they were losing sales because of “delighting the customer” and they didn’t define that for the sales staff.J
ohnny Molson: And these two things, which you’re both saying, tie in together so nicely with each other. Because people are sort of tiptoeing around the corner and saying, “Is it safe to come back in now?” You’ve got to be very deliberate in how you tell them that it is safe to come back in now. I know we’re past the hump of freaking everybody out and saying, “My God, isn’t it scary out there?”
“But after leaving our 450-degree ovens, the only hands that touch them are yours.”
So what are some of the shoulds and shouldn’ts, Ryan? How do I word this… I was struck by the Domino’s commercial that is now promising that they don’t touch your pizza after it comes out of the oven. That’s one of those things like “What the hell were you doing before?” Right? And so where’s that little bridge between welcoming them back in and not freaking them out?
Ryan Chute: I think it’s quite reasonable at this point in time to take the time to do a touchpoint assessment. And really just look at every spot where you’re judging the customer: from the CSR, taking that phone call to book an appointment, through to people being received through a retail door as traffic. In Canada, for example, they have to actually log everyone that’s coming in and going out so that there’s X amount of people that are in the store at any given time. Some stores have mask policies. Some stores are asking for compliance when it comes to a six-foot distancing. Some aren’t. Ultimately, those are the kind of key elements of what we’re dealing with here today. But all of those things translate into “the every day". And good principles are good principles. Ultimately, if we look at the touchpoints and we see where can we make it easier, smoother, faster, more comfortable for the customer to get to the point of purchase — we’re winning. Time is a test, in my opinion. And ultimately the customer is gauging us on whether we’re being successful or not with the commitment that they’ve given us with their time. People are busy. And ultimately, if we don’t have a product that’s any different than anything else, we are the difference. The only reason they’re going to buy from us is us. You go into a car dealership, you can buy that car at every single dealership. So what makes you different? How we treat the people that we receive and our actions are going to speak much louder than our words. We can say all day long, post all kinds of great videos and all kinds of wonderful things that of demonstrate our worth. But the proof is in the pudding, frankly. Let’s get out there and do the things that are right, both socially responsible for what we’re dealing with now with pandemic issues, but just in general principles. Tom and I had a nice conversation a number of months back regarding the idea of not every touchpoint is an infinite delight factor. And just as he says with his jewelry customer, everything isn’t about being delightful. It’s about being exactly what the customer wants. And that certainly lives in the mind of the customer. But remembering that by the time we’re done with the customer, we need to find something that is going to surprise and delight them. It’s the linchpin. It’s the difference between a good review and a great review, a sincere review, a loyal customer, and all the things that matter to the company in the first place, which is to stand head and shoulders above their competition so they get repeat business.
Johnny Molson: Tom, you’re nodding your head chime in there.
Tom Wanek: You know, something Ryan said that was was really profound. He said that the right principles are the right principles. Good principles are good principles, whether you’re in a situation like we’re in now or just talk about normal times. You know, go back to the basics. One of the things that you should be doing no matter what is actively listening to your customers. Getting on the phones, listening to what they’re saying, the questions that they’re asking boots on the ground. Get in the showroom. Ride alongs with your technicians. Whatever it takes to listen to the customers and get their direct feedback. Oh, man. That alone could lead to such profound insights as to what to do to improve your products and services. Such a basic thing.
Johnny Molson: Yeah. And I think we’re going to be surprised, if we’re not already picking up on it, of how much isn’t going to change. I mean, some of those you say — you use the word “basics”. But it’s stuff that you probably should’ve been doing anyway. And now you have the opportunity to really up your game.
Tom Wanek: That’s right. I mean, these are fundamentals for a reason, right? Just what Ryan said, go back to the basics. Do the fundamentals, do the good principles that you should have been doing anyway and you’ll be light years ahead of the competition. That’s how you get through things like this. You don’t go looking for a red herring or that special little shiny object that’s going to take you to the promised land. It’s about fundamentals.
Johnny Molson: To that end, and Ryan you can speak to this. What should businesses be measuring? We love throwing around the acronym KPIs. And everybody has a different definition of what that means or what that should mean. Ultimately, what does a business measure to see? Is this thing working, am I connecting with my customers?
Ryan Chute: That’s something that we’ve been talking a lot about with a couple of clients recently. And you know, there’s a couple of things that come out of that. One is KPI as it stands for Key Performance Indicators. And the other is metrics that matter, a book that was written a number of years ago, but still very relevant today, trying to remember who the author is but it’s evading me. Two things that it boils down to. One, a key performance indicator is an indicator, not a whipping stone. Right? So it’s not one of those things where we’re “Hahaha! We’ve caught you. You’re under par. It’s time to axe you and take you to the guillotine.” And the metrics that matter are metrics that revolve around actions and behaviors. Right?
So we get really obsessed with results in most businesses. Because usually somebody above us — in the automotive world, the OEM is obsessed about the result. If it’s in furniture, it’s going to be the manufacturers. If it’s a franchisee, it’s going to obviously be the franchise offices. All of these things where we’re just fixated on the result. So we’re just trying to get to the results come hell or high water, when in reality good leadership — not management of the task, but leadership of the people — comes down to, are you doing the behaviors and actions necessary to achieve the result that you want? And by the time we’re finished, that result is a historical number. Did we achieve it above the bar or below the bar?Steve Rae, one of our partners, when he went into the radio station and started doing things the Wizard of Ad ways. One of the first things that he did was he eliminated sales quotas 100%. Because he found that it changed the disposition of the people who are on commission who typically to do whatever it took to get the sale done, not do what was right to make sure the customer won. So there’s a big difference between the two. If we just stuck to our behaviors and actions, we would see that we could maneuver off of that. We can also manage that better and we can also train off of that better when we stick to those consistent things that actually help us get over the finish line. And in some cases, a sales quota is just as bad as anything else in productivity. Daniel Pink writes about it in his book Drives. There’s a video online that speaks about the counter-intuitive strengths of what we see as incentives. But you know, I’ve seen plenty of salespeople hit their target and they go on full stop and check out for the rest of the month. So are we really gaining or are we really kind of holding ourselves back?
Johnny Molson: And that point right there, I think is hugely important. This idea that the number is the result of the effort that you put in. And it’s true with anything. I mean, you want to lose weight, you focus on eating right and walking around the block a couple of times. We know that this is true. And yet we still don’t do it. Why?
Tom Waynek: That’s a great question. The first thing I think about — what Ryan was saying was making sure that we’re measuring the right things and trying to achieve the result that we want to achieve. So within that, there’s this alignment issue. And Johnny, you know a lot of times we get on on the phone with clients and they talk about being customer-centric. Yet at the end of the day, when you ask them, “Well, in your team meetings, what are you measuring that points to customer-centricity?” And there's crickets, “We don’t measure anything.” Well, you can’t improve what you do not measure. There’s nothing in there tying in customer centricity, well what are you going to expect? And everything is based on sales. Like Ryan was saying, sell, sell, sell. And you just got to sit down and really look at “You know, what type of company are we? Are we customer-centric? Are we sales-centric? Operationally efficient? What are we trying to achieve? What do we need to measure?”And the other thing as Ryan was talking that made me think is, a lot of times we too like to just measure things and we like to collect data, but we don’t take action with the data. We just collect it. So if you’re going to collect data and you’re going to measure things, be sure that you’re going to take action with that feedback that you get.
Johnny Molson: How does a business then measure the things that maybe don’t go on a spreadsheet? The squishier things of doing right by the customer?
Tom Wanek: Well, I mean, there’s a number of ways go about it. The first thing that pops up is the ubiquitous NPS or Net Promoter Score. Which is an indicator of advocacy. It’s a Likert scale from 0 to 10. And it’s a basic single question you ask a customer, “How likely are you to refer this brand to a friend or a colleague?” And zero: not likely at all. Ten: very likely. And then there is a formula that NPS uses to separate the detractors from the passives and those who are the advocates and promoters of that brand. So that’s probably the most common way. But there are others. I mean, there’s a suite of different customer experience metrics that an organization can use to really gauge how effective they are at their experience that they provide.
Ryan Chute: For me, it’s on the front line. I’m speaking to my managers and I’m telling them to put down the paperwork. To stand up. Go walk around the showroom to listen to people, to actually hear what they’re saying. To get that feedback and be engaged in the sales process so that you have a clear understanding of where things went sideways. There’s no question that they never talk to a guy during a sale. Now I have them talking to the guy as he’s building the deal. I have them talking to the guy if he runs into a “no chance of closing the deal today.” I have him talking to the customer before he’s basically wrapping up the call. They’re seeing an increase of closing upwards of 30 percent because they’re engaged in the sales process. Now, instead of just standing back and hoping that their guys are going to do exactly what they need them to do, you support that with some really simple word tracks that you can trust that they’re going to go out there and do the right thing. And I say word tracks, not unlike our brandable chunks. Those elements, those beliefs statements, those stances that we have that really do drive home a consistent delivery of what it is we do. So you’re going to get great results out of your staff if you teach them in a way that’s simple enough for them to understand it, in a frequency that’s high enough for them to remember, and to make sure that they’re going out there and doing the right thing every single day. And starting from the place of intent. Sales is very much about intention.
Johnny Molson: So is it as simple as saying “These are the things that we believe to be true and if we treat our customers this way, sales will surely follow.” So now we’re measuring did you treat the customer this way? Is that the way you put that together?
Ryan Chute: That’s a big part of your system. Now, there’s some technical elements to a sales system as well that follow along certain lines of psychology and neuroscience. But really what it boils down to is we have to program our staff to be consistent with what we believe in. And we have to demonstrate to our staff by our actions as leaders that this is actually how we believe it, and this is actually how we live it. That means that you have to treat your staff the way you want your customers treated. In a way that they’re going to win. You want to treat them with trust and integrity and dignity equally as much with gratitude.
Johnny Molson: And this isn’t a guessing game. I think, Tom, the trick is you got to talk to the customers and work from their perception inward. Talk a little bit more about that because you had you mentioned customer centricity and sales centricity and operationally efficient. Go a little bit deeper on customer centricity.
Tom Wanek: Yeah. I mean, it dovetails nicely into what Ryan is saying. There’s two things that I could draw from and comment on that Ryan said beautifully. And the first thing is taking an outside perspective, which is that we’re going to go and view our organization, our product category from the outside in from the customer’s perspective inward. Most companies don’t do that. Of course, they take an inside-out perspective and they focus on building products and services and say, “OK, now who can we sell this to?” So one of the most efficient things that you can do as an organization is get your staff again doing what Ryan talked about. Listening to the customer, hearing what they have to say. You’re going to notice when you do that too, that you’ll get three or four things that develop. Maybe they’re things that you can improve or issues that you need to handle and take care of to fix your experience. But again, I am almost embarrassed to say it, but it’s such an easy thing to do. Get on the front lines or talk those frontline employees, get on the phones yourself, like I said, and get that outside-in perspective. One of the best books I read about this was from Youngme Moon, and I think the book was called Different. And she talked about that a business organization and those working within the organization are the connoisseurs of that business. And when they surveyed the horizon, they see all the subtle little nuances, the asymmetries of that product category. Where the customer is not the connoisseur, they are the novice. And when they survey the horizon, they see shades of gray because they suffer from apathy. They just don’t care like we do. And so that’s why it’s really a necessity to take that outside-in perspective and learn what the customer is really thinking and feeling when it comes to your products and services. The other thing that Ryan said I think is enlightening, is this idea to treat your employees well and they will treat your customers well. I mean, that’s something we call the law of congruent experience. It’s the thing that you could do today to best improve your customer experience is just take care of your customers. Bruce Temkin is perhaps the godfather of experience. He said my favorite quote, “Employees will do what is measured, invented, and celebrated.” Employees will do what is measured, invented, and celebrated. And if we could just do that and improve our employee engagement, as a byproduct we will improve our customer experience.
Johnny Molson: One last question. Would I be more credible if I was wearing a black shirt right now?
Tom Wanek: One hundred percent. One hundred percent.
Ryan Chute: Yes you would, yeah.
Johnny Molson: I knew I goofed this up. I’m so sorry.
Ryan Chute: It’s all right.
Tom Wanek: It happens, man.
Ryan Chute: There’s always next time, rookie.
Johnny Molson: These are conversations that we’re having with our clients and conversations that we’re having with each other. The stuff normally you’d only hear if you were sitting around the Wizards roundtable. We appreciate you watching. And if you want to get in touch with me or any of the folks on the show today, here are their e-mails.
Advertising
Stop Asking People, "How Did You Hear About Us"? You Only Collect Useless Disinformation
You want to know if your advertising is working, so you ask everyone how they heard about you. Are you getting the right answer though?
“How do you know your advertising is working?” “I ask everyone how they heard about us.” “Did you put toothpaste on your toothbrush this morning?” “Of course. Crest.” “How did you hear about Crest?” “That’s different. I always use Crest.” “That wasn’t my question. There was a point in your life when you never heard of Crest. Then you did. How did you hear about it?” “I dunno, man. Maybe a TV commercial or something.” “You sure? Crest does a lot of advertising in a lot of different media.” “It’s what my Mom bought when I was a kid.” “So, you heard about it from your Mom?“ I don’t know…it’s right there at eye level in the store I guess.” “You heard about Crest from Proctor and Gamble’s merchandising strategy?” “I don’t know! Why are you asking me this??!?”
Ahhh… yes. Why**are**you asking your customers this? Let’s set aside the folly of the faulty research for a moment. Think about what this is like for your customer. If you’d like a visual example of what’s happening, watch this brief video:
A customer just came to you 100% prepared to give you money. But you’ve thrown a hurdle in front of him to ask a question that has no reliable answer. “Oh, what’s the big deal?” you say. It is a very small inconvenience, true. But why introduce any inconvenience? Having an automated attendant and phone tree is a small inconvenience. But an inconvenience just the same. Asking “can I get your zip code?” is a small inconvenience. But an inconvenience. Keep adding these up and suddenly you’re not the customer-centric, friendly staff, conveniently located, business anymore. You’ve heard businesses say “to us, you’re more than just a number.” Well, Clyde…you are literally turning your customers into a number when you ask “how did you hear about us?” You’re also asking him to answer an impossible question. Just like that tube of Crest, there’s no reliable way to get people to rewind their brains and reassemble the puzzle pieces in the right order to give you the answer you want to hear. Neurologists and psychologists have been asking the question for over 100 years.
- Why did you choose a candidate (Gaudet, 1955)
- Why did you choose a detergent (Kornhauser & Lazarsfeld, 1935)
- Why did you choose your occupation (Lazarsfield, 1931)
- Why did you go to graduate school (Davis, 1964)
- Why did you become a juvenile delinquent (Burt, 1925)
- Why did you get married/divorced (Goode, 1956)
- Why did you join a voluntary organization (Sills, 1957)
- Why did you seek out a psychoanalyst (Kadushin, 1958)
- Why did you move to a new home (Rossi, 1955)
- Why did you fail to use a contraceptive (Sills, 1961)
Instead of finding an answer to “why,” they learned that people didn’t realize that:
- There was something trying to influencing them.
- Their actions were a response to something.
- The thing trying to influence them caused their action.
(From “Telling More Than We Can Know,” Nisbett and Wilson, University of Michigan,_Psychological Review Vol 84. No 3.)_Absent an FMRI scan of your customer’s brain (which is terribly expensive and noisy), you won’t get an answer. At best, the customer (trying to get out of this awkward situation) might say the last action he took (e.g.: “looked you up on Google”), or just blurt out some answer to get you to stop the interrogation (e.g.: “my friend told me” or “I just saw your sign”).Roy Williams tested this with a major national plumbing company.
When asked “how did you hear about us,” the customer’s responses were:
- 31% heard about them from newspaper
- 24% saw their TV ad
- 19% said a referral
- 17% had no idea
- 4% heard it on the radio
- 5% said “other.”
**100% of their advertising was on the radio.**There never was a newspaper ad or a TV commercial. You’re not going to get the answer…because it’s a question that cannot be answered.
How do you know if your advertising is working?
Measure something that is measurable:
- Did you make more money this year (pretty easy, yeah)?
- Has your name recognition increased (top-of-mind awareness studies are affordable and enlightening)?
- Are customers eager to tell their friends about you (Net Promoter Score® is designed to measure if your customers are genuinely happy with you, and help predict growth)?
Measure your marketing efforts. That’s important. Stop making your customers do your research for you. That’s rude.
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