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Selling Done Right
What profession is best suited for a liar?
How do you know when a salesperson is lying?
It’s unfortunate that salespeople have become the butt of so many jokes. In the past I’ve written about pests, peddlers and Demand Creators, and shared the advantages to being a Demand Creator.
As the world continues to move forward from the deep recession, there are still not enough companies that are building the organizational capability necessary to consistently grow profits. Selling, on the whole, is not creating the value necessary to support higher margins and faster profit growth for small and mid-market companies.
Ineffective sales efforts are actually contributing to:
- Greater commoditization
- Lengthening sales cycles
- Greater price pressure
As I’ll be sharing next week in our free webinar on The 7 Steps to Shortening The Sales Cycle, businesses need to create a new path and implement new approaches to sales. Now, more than ever, it takes an organization to sell effectively, not just a salesperson.
Done right, your sales effort is the most powerful, leverageable resource to accelerate revenue and profit growth, and to increase the value of your business. Building the capability enhances your brand, allows you to bypass competition and serves as a virtually insurmountable competitive advantage.
Selling properly requires that you stop focusing on making a sale. Instead, you need to focus on being relevant, helping your customers achieve their objectives and teaching your prospects how to improve their worlds.
It means slowing things down a bit, (really) putting customer’s interests first and understanding that sales, profits and business value are the result of a proper focus, and cannot be the focus.
When you realize that the job of sales is to help, and you build the system to make that happen, suddenly the sales process becomes easy.
7 Steps to Shortening Your Sales Cycle
The trends are not good when judging the effectiveness of small and mid-market B2B sales efforts.
- According to recent purchasing surveys, as many as 40% of organizational buying processes are ending in a “no decision.”
- A recent research project done by the Wall Street Journal demonstrated that on 37% of salespeople were actually effective, and a comprehensive research project done by The Sales Research Council shows number worse than that.
- Margin and pricing pressure continues to mount on businesses, even as we emerge from deep recession.
- Finding good salespeople is tougher than ever.
Most companies continue to struggle to find a successful growth formula that will work in the short-, mid-, and long-term. There are, however, a few businesses that have transformed the challenges before them into a significant advantage over their competition. They’ve developed new ways to shorten the sales cycle, bypass competition and grow margins.
These companies understand that their sales process is the most powerful leverage point available to their business. Companies that are able to materially shorten the sales cycle enjoy huge advantages over their competitors.
- They need less money or capital to grow.
- They are able to capture more revenue without adding people.
- They enjoy a significant cost advantage.
- They’re margins and profits are substantially higher.
Shortening the sales cycle should be a key objective for every growing company. Yet, only about 5 – 10% of small and mid-market B2B companies are able to do so consistently.
Make sure you’re one of them!
Join us on May 23rd at 2pm EDT, as we share the secrets to shortening your sales cycle in our latest webinar.
7 Steps to Shortening Your Sales Cycle
May 23, 2012
2pm EDT
The Key To High Margin Sales
I don’t know about you, but Varuca Salt was my favorite character in Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. “I want an oompa loompa, and I want one now.”
I think of her virtually every time I work with an entrepreneur on their go-to-market approach. “I want more high margin sales, and I want more high margin sales now.”
The biggest frustration in building an effective go-to-market approach is simply the time that it takes. Recently I had a prospect ask one of my references, “Why does the process [referring to our process] take so much damn time? What can’t they just bring something in and have it done in 90 days.”
A major impediment to small and mid-sized businesses growing is the inability (or unwillingness) to look longer term. Too often, executives try to “fix it now.”
Here’s what is important to understand, if the problem could be solved quickly:
- You would have already fixed it,
- The problem would be of little value, and/or
- Every one of your competitors would be doing it already as well.
One of my favorite sayings is, “It takes one year to get a year’s experience.” There’s simply no shortcutting it. When you try to shortcut it, bad things happen.
Those who accept the challenge and bring the discipline and patience to solve the big problems gain a significant advantage vs. those that do not. Remember, the time it takes is the “brick wall” that keeps your competitors out.
Another Word For Solution
Do you want to know another word for solution? It’s commodity. That’s right, any time your focusing on a solution, your solution, you are focusing on a commodity.
Let me share some examples:
- ABC company develops unique solutions. Really, it’s ABC company develops unique commodities.
- ABC’s dynamic solutions enable companies to create advantages. Really, it’s ABC’s dynamic commodities…
Think about that. How can a commodity be unique? How can it be dynamic? It can’t!
A commodity is anything with a perceived alternative – and every solution has an alternative.
Last year I shared some important insights into pricing and how to increase the desire people have to pay you more. I talked about the importance of focusing on the right-side of the value equation, not the left.
Solutions are at the core of “left-side value.” Results are the core of the right.
When you focus on the real results companies desire, you’re having a “what’s it worth conversation.” When you spend your time exalting the superiority of your solution, you are merely commoditizing yourself.
So, get out of your own way. Forget about you and focus on the customer. Understand them, and what it is they really want. What are their end results? Tie them back to your approach, and the solution takes care of itself.
Beating The Typewriter (Part 2)
Yesterday, I shared the challenges associated with selling new and better products/services. I shared the six steps to preparing to sell anything disruptive. Today, I’m going to put the six steps in actions and share with you how I would sell word processing in an age when the Selectric typewriter with auto correct tape was considered cutting edge.
Putting It All Together
I’d focus on mid-sized and large law firms. Before the word processor, these firms dealt with paper and writing in massive ways. They had large secretarial pools that created no value but retyping complex documents. Think about the waste!
Also, at the time of the word processor, laws and regulations were changing that dramatically affected a law firms ability to compete. So while the general partners within these firms cared little about the technology called “word processor,” they cared greatly about their partnership distributions and their ability to compete.
I’d provoke their awareness on the large, unnecessary waste caused by the constant typing and re-typing of documents. I’d share with them the leverage they could gain by serving far more clients, with far fewer people. And I wouldn’t stop there. I share how small savings in time and costs spread throughout the organization added up into millions of dollars of lost profits.
I’d ask them what they would do with those profits. Would they add them to their distributions making far more money with no increase in effort? Would they take the cost savings and reduce their fees in an effort to take business and market share from their competitors? I’d highlight the dangers they’d face if they failed to adjust and adopt this new technology. I’d acknowledge the costs, fear and disruption associated with buying from me, and I’d highlight the costs of not buying from me. As history proved, it would become a pretty easy decision.
I think you get the point. I’d sell word processing, not by focusing on the word processor – but by focusing on the result. I’d sell small technology in a BIG way.
Maybe you’re not selling a disruptive technology. Maybe your product/service isn’t the game changer that the word processor was.
It doesn’t matter! In today’s commoditized world, adopting these 6 steps is the only way to ensure that you get the reward your deserve.
Beating The Typewriter (Part 1)
Imagine selling word processors, when the IBM Selectric typewriter with self correcting tape was considered cutting edge technology. Think about the challenges you’d have as a salesperson:
- You couldn’t focus on “your solution” because no one knew they had a “word processor problem.”
- You couldn’t rely on explaining your features and benefits because no one would understand them.
- There’d be no word of mouth, because no one was really using them.
- You’d have no case studies, because it has little to no history.
I could go on. Let’s just agree that it would be very difficult.
So, what would you do?
Here’s how I’d handle it:
- I’d get real clear on the critical business result I would focus on. In the case of word processing I’d choose between productivity and costs. Here I would focus on costs over productivity as the primary result, putting productivity very much in the background. The reason for this is that productivity focuses on gains, while costs focus on loss avoidance. When asking people to change, loss avoidance is far more powerful than gain.
- Next I would decide what a good sale is. Do I one to sell one software package at a time, do I want to sell several, do I want to sell in bulk, etc.? In my case, I’ve always been a fan of leverage so I would focus on selling hundreds of licenses at a time.
- Then I’d focus in on what types of organizations are incurring costs that I could impact in a big way.
- As I brainstormed the list I’d be looking for a sweet spot. Who are the people that absolutely need what I do and have the ability to buy at the level I want. It’s important that I focus not only on the types of companies that I want to sell to, but who inside those companies do I want to connect with. I want to connect with the people who have the power to cause change and displace the status quo.
- Once I’ve settled on the key customer types that I want to focus on and who I want to connect with, my job becomes immersing myself in their world and understanding them better than they understand themselves.
- Now my job is to sell.
Tune into my next post to learn the specifics of what I’d do.
It’s Not A Salespeople Problem
With increased frequency I’m getting requests from owners, CEOs and VP’s asking for recommendations for a recruiter who can “find ‘good’ salespeople.”
What’s unfortunate about these requests is that even if these companies do find good salespeople (a difficult task in and of itself) there’s still only about a 10% chance that the salesperson will be successful. A study reported in Harvard Business Review revealed that only 1 in 250 salespeople actually exceed their targets.
It does not take a genius to realize that a 99.6% failure rate is not a people problem. It’s a system problem.
The traditional selling system is broken.
There are two fundamental problems with traditional selling.
- First, as I have written extensively, traditional selling is solutions focused and commoditizes the selling organization.
- Second, traditional selling (as it is implemented in 95% of small and mid-market B2B companies) puts way, way, way too much of the client acquisition burden on the salesperson. In today’s complex, fast-paced, ultra-competitive world there is simply too much pressure on the capabilities of an individual to succeed. As a result, the rate of commoditization, and failure, increases.
Great salespeople, and great selling organizations, are the result of excellent systems. IBM created the greatest selling force of all-time, not by hiring great salespeople, but by plugging normal people into a superior system.
There are four parts to every effective selling system:
- Solid positioning. A successful sale begins long before a salesperson arrives – it begins with effective positioning. Do you have a clear, powerful message? Is your value proposition understood, and valued? Are you clear on who your core customers are? Is your pricing strategy clear?
- Outreach. Great selling organizations are very focused in their go-to-market approach, while average ones are tactically opportunistic. Are you earning and capturing the attention and awareness of your best few markets? Do your salespeople know precisely who to focus on and what the resonating issues are? Does your marketing efforts clearly support your sales efforts?
- Cultivation. The buying process is far, far longer than the selling process, beginning even before the potential customer knows that they are looking to buy anything. It is triggered when the customer starts to investigate their issues and uncover their problems. This is where the fundamental flaw of traditional selling rests – and 95% of small and mid-market B2B companies completely skip this step. If you’re not optimizing this step of the system, your results could be negatively impact by as much as 75%. Are you regularly creating content that educates your customers and causes the sale?
- The Sales Process. The fourth – and final – part of an effective selling system is the sales process. An effective sales process ensures consistency, repeatability and effectiveness. It unleashes the power and capability of good salespeople, making them great. And it makes great salespeople stars.
To win in the competitive world that we find ourselves, you can no longer rely on hiring good people alone. You must match good people with effective systems.
No Shortcuts
As much as I would like to tell you about a short cut to resonating with your customers and Creating Demand, there are none. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the process is rather simple. The approach can best be summed up as: Deeply understand your customer’s business (and life).
The First Unbreakable Rule To Creating Demand is: Know and understand your customers better than they understand themselves.
You need to know:
- What drives their profits? And as a subset of that, what drives their revenue and costs?
- What are their key processes and how do those processes drive their profit formula?
- What are their key resources and how do those resources support their key processes?
- What is their customer value proposition and how do they deliver it?
When you understand these four areas you can begin answering these questions:
- What problems exist in their model that they aren’t aware of?
- Where are unnecessary choke points?
- How can they run their model more efficiently? More effectively?
- What opportunities could they capture with your approach?
These four questions are the basis of your business case. When your case is clear, you can provoke awareness and manage the sales process effectively. If you do not understand this and you attempt to move the sales process forward – it’s a good bet that you’ll find yourself in The Commoditization Trap.
People Don’t Buy What You Do…
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” – Simon Sinek
These of some of the wisest words I’ve heard in years.
Many of you may already be familiar with this video. For those that are not, I promise that watching this will be 18 of the best minutes you’ve spent on your business.
Sinek does a masterful job of sharing why companies are being commoditized (without every using the word commoditization). He shares the remarkably simple secret of success for companies like Apple, Starbucks and Southwest; as well as the Wright brothers, and, even, Martin Luther King, Jr. He also shares why TiVo has never been a commercial success.
Please watch this 18-minute video (I promise it’s worth it), then answer the question below:
Why do you do what you do?
Giving Value to Gain Sales
I’ve been spending a lot of time working with clients to build out diagnostic systems to create value and create demand. I recently referred one of my clients to a blog post I wrote almost 5 years ago. I thought it was valuable enough to share again.
My experience working with fast-growth companies has taught me that there are three levels of value that a company can provide:
- Level one occurs when you provide people with the knowledge of ‘what’ needs to be done.
- Level two occurs when you provide the knowledge of ‘how’ to do it.
- Level three (execution) occurs when whatever needs to get done actually gets done.
Level one is all about diagnosis. Today, too many companies hold back level one value, fearing that if prospects know what needs to be done, they’ll go out an try to do it themselves or to do it cheaper. The reverse is actually true. Give the ‘what’ away. The more people know what to do, the more value your company’s knowledge of ‘how’ to do it becomes.
When prospects don’t know the ‘what’, they self diagnose; and when that happens, you are, and should be, just a commodity. So, stop “protecting’ your intellectual capital so fiercely. Start giving it away and fast growth is yours.
Don’t Be A Pigeon (Why Selling Is Dead)
Traditional selling techniques are no longer effective in the twenty-first century. A study conducted by Harvard Business Review revealed that only 1 in 250 salespeople actually creates positive economic impact for their companies, and less than 37% of salespeople meet a profile deemed to be “effective.” It is time to end the traditional approach to sales, where most salespeople are considered pests or peddlers and transform that approach so that salespeople are perceived as the valuable assets they can be.
Through 20 years of research, I have learned that the problem is a systems problem, not a people problem. To drive profitable growth, companies must adopt new systems, develop new skills and apply new disciplines to be effective. The good news is that companies that make this transformation gain disproportionate rewards – often 5 to 10 times average rates of return.
The fundamental problem with traditional selling is that it structurally places the focus on the commodity value. If your goal is differentiation and earning margin premiums, then you must work against traditional selling tactics. For six years, the focus of this blog has been to support the development of a better approach to selling. Consider this post a 30,000 foot review of six years of content (with the links to previous posts to support it).
Here’s the problem with traditional selling:
- It is solution-focused. When you begin with the focus on the solution, you are focused on the commodity portion of your proposition. As I’ve written before: solutions are worthless – until there is a problem.
- It views your difference as a “value-add,” rather than as core to your proposition (think IBM pre-1995).
- The playing field is defined by your competition, and the focus is “winning the business.” This make the process far more adversarial than it should be. From a customer perspective it makes it a hodgepodge of “sameness.”
- Because it’s solution-based, the go-to-market focus is broad; too broad. The approach is based upon “who can use the solution,” rather than on where the selling organization can be best.
- The sales and marketing approach are silo’d within the selling organization – leading to misalignment, confusion and brand degradation.
A new, far more effective model of selling flips these issues on their head. The focus is on creating value throughout the entire sales/marketing process. Rather than merely fulfilling demand (which is akin to being a pigeon trying to compete for a piece of bread) the focus is on creating demand – what I call Demand Creation Selling.
- It focuses on critical results – and the barriers that prevent those results – rather than on solutions. It focuses on the problem, and enabling the customers/prospects to better understand their problems and the causes and consequences of those problems.
- Rather than viewing your difference as the “value-add,” it focuses on your difference, your business’ intelligence if you will, as the core of your offering. I refer to it as making The Shift from selling stuff to selling your ability to create results.
- The focus is on creating demand (and markets), and as such, you eliminate competition and you own markets, rather than compete.
- You focus and allocate your resources where you can be the best, and you ignore areas where you’re a “me-too” company.
- Instead of focusing on the solution, Demand Creation Selling means that you manically focus on understanding customers – better than the customers understand themselves.
- Sales and marketing are fully integrated, and the company goes-to-market in a clear and powerful manner. There is no need to differentiate, because you are different.
- Expertise is defined by how well, and how deeply, you understand your customers and their issues, rather than how well you know and understand your solution.
Growth is tough enough as it is. Businesses can no longer rely on systems and approaches that work against them. The time has come to change the way you sell – and the rewards await.
Build It…They Will Come
The 1989 movie Field of Dreams is, in fact, the daydream of every marketer. The line made famous in the movie, “If you build it, he will come,” embodies the desire of every marketing organization since the beginning of time.
Of course, marketing has never been that easy. John Wannamaker, a famous retailer, said, “I know I’m wasting 50% of my marketing budget, my problem is that I don’t know which 50%.” My own experience indicates that not only are most companies wasting 50% of their budgets, but also the 50% that is not wasted is only getting about ½ of the results it should be.
The fact of the matter is that marketing – traditional marketing, at least – is broken. Just like traditional selling, it is built on an ineffective, highly inefficient foundation. This means that improving your marketing efforts isn’t going to do you any good. Quite the contrary, merely throwing more to this inefficient system is going to further thrust your company into the black hole of The Commoditization Trap.
There are two critical flaws with traditional marketing:
- It is a broadcasting mechanism, and
- It only communicates value and typically fails to create any.
Broadcasting
It’s trite and it’s true. When there were only three channels and virtually no other way to communicate, broadcasting worked. Today, broadcasting is highly ineffective.
Picture yourself in Times Square in New York City. How difficult would it be to get the attention of people there? How loud would you have to yell? It would be virtually impossible (before you protest, the Naked Cowboy is the exception that proves my point).
You need to understand that today we all compete in Times Square. Here are some scary statistics for you:
- The typical person is exposed to 3,000 commercial messages a day, yet the human brain is incapable of processing more than 100 per day.
- In the last 5 years, the number of pages indexed by Google has expanded by more 360 times.
- In 1986, America had more high schools than shopping centers. Today shopping centers outnumber high schools by two to one. Plus the stores are three times denser than in 1986 – and that doesn’t even account for “online shopping centers.”
This means that there are a lot of people shouting and if all you’re doing is broadcasting (shouting) with a static website, advertising, direct mail or whatever, the likelihood of getting through and driving real results is highly unlikely. Whatever results you do create will be swept away by the costs of getting and maintaining your presence.
Value Communication
Before the age of the Internet, people relied on traditional advertising and marketing as a means to know what was going on, what was available and how much stuff cost. Today, people are building bigger barricades to keep advertisers and broadcasters out.
With all of the noise in the world today, the only effective approach to marketing now is to earn people’s attention. And, in case you didn’t know this, your customers and prospects don’t really care about you, your products, or even your goings on.
What they care about is themselves. They care about their lives and they’re constantly looking for ways to make it better. Contribute to that – before they have to buy from you or even give you their name – and they’ll give you their attention.
The Good News
The marketing tools available to businesses today make it relatively easy to overcome the barriers of traditional marketing and to transform your broadcasting approach into a finely tuned, pull marketing system. Today, if you follow the new rules: if you build it – they will come.
Even better, where traditional marketing approaches favored large, high capitalized business, today size is at worst a neutral factor; and in my experience the new world of marketing plays to the strengths of small and mid-market companies willing to work at it.
There are three simple rules you must follow:
- Create value by providing useful information and knowledge that will help your customers and prospects.
- Give it away and give up control. That’s right – give it away. Don’t ask for money, don’t ask for commitment, and don’t even ask for an email address. First give, then over time you will receive.
- Consistently engage. This is not an overnight success strategy; you must “be there.”
If you follow these three simple rules, you’ll be able to build an enormously valuable marketing asset and you’ll be able to eliminate marketing expenses.
Avoiding A Damaging Sales Mistake (Part 2)
In yesterday’s post I shared a critical designation, and strategic sales decision, that must be made early in the sales process. Are you making a “status quo” sale, or a “change” sale. Now I’d like to share part 2 – the implication of each sale and how to tell the difference.
In many ways, a status quo sale is easier than a change sale. But, as with anything, “ease” has its trade-offs. Status quo sales are far more susceptible to competition, commoditization, and price/margin pressure. It’s very hard to stand out when making a status quo sale, so the sales/marketing focus is much more tactical, with the tactics shifting frequently.
Change sales are harder to make, if for no other reason than change is involved. The upside is that they can have greater impact to the buying organization. Selling organizations that master change sales are able to avoid commoditization by bypassing the competitive environment and becoming a true resource to their prospects/customers – as I’ve written before – they’ve made The Shift from selling to stuff to selling results.
The danger here is that sellers frequently attempt to make change sales to people in the buying organization who worry about the present or past. This is just as damaging as when companies try to sell total value propositions to fundamental value buyers.
In a typical business organization 80-90% of the people are responsible for the present or past. If they’re who you are counting on to drive the sale, then you need to be making a status quo sale.
Only 10 – 20% of people in a company are responsible for managing and allocating resources to address what could be happening. They should be the focus of your sales efforts if you are making a strategic, change sale.
Be careful, while title is an indicator of one’s time frame it is often misleading. So, how can you tell if you’re talking to a future-oriented person or not? Two cues:
- Listen to them. If they spend most of their time talking about what could be, they’re future oriented. If they spend time talking about what is or was, they’re status quo.
- Look at their resource allocation authority. Do they allocate resources to deal with future possibilities or present-day realities?
Going forward spend a little extra time to make sure you are aligning your selling proposition to your buyer’s time frame.
Avoiding a Damaging Sales Mistake (Part 1)
In 2004, I wrote about the need to align your sales proposition with the value definition of your buyer. Over the last seven years, I’ve become increasingly aware of another critical misalignment that occurs in sales efforts every day – timeframes.
Far, far too often, sellers are bringing superior value propositions and promises of better futures to people who do not worry about the future. There are two types of people who work within companies:
- Those who worry about the future.
- Those who worry about the present (and past).
As a seller, you must make a critical decision early in the sales cycle (and in many cases even before the sales cycle begins): Are you making a “status quo” sale, or are you making a “change” sale?
A status quo sale requires very little change in behavior or approach on the part of the buyer. While there are too many possibilities to describe all status quo sales, you are promising an improvement in an area of work where your customer/prospect is already paying for something – be it a key process, a resource or even people. When your new customer makes a status quo purchase from you, they do the same basic things they did with their previous “solution.” The status quo sale is aimed at addressing the issues/problems/worries in the “now.”
A change sale requires the prospect/customer to change their approach is some way to be able to fully take advantage of (and therefore, fully value and pay for) the value proposition. A change sale can address key process or resources, just as a status quo sale can, but the issues/problems/worries it addresses occur in the future.
Tomorrow, I will share the implications of a status quo vs. change sale and how to tell what type of buyer you are dealing with.
Defining a Remarkable Customer Experience
The post below originally appeared as two different posts in 2005. Yesterday I was having a conversation with a client and friend. She was asking me my thoughts on different experiences that high end companies provided and what she could learn from them. I pointed her to these posts. After re-reading them I realized how “on point” they still are, and I thought it would be worth sharing again. I’ve combined the two posts into one. Apologies for the length – but I think you’ll like it.
Be a ‘Purple Cow.’ Pursue the ‘Wow’. Make it ‘priceless.’
The buzzwords (and the book sales) are many. Putting them to work is more difficult. I do not have any problem with the ideas offered by Seth Godin, Tom Peters or the many authors that are writing about delivering a remarkable customer experience. As a matter of fact, their writings have given me tremendous insights that I use everyday.
The problem with most efforts to provide amazing experiences is that businesses often forget that it is the customer, not the business, decides what is remarkable and what isn’t. You have to remember, too, that what is remarkable for one company, may not be remarkable for you.
The purpose of creating a remarkable experience is to make absolutely certain no one can find a substitute for what your company offers. When there is no substitute for what you offer, you cannot be commoditized. When you cannot be commoditized, then growth, loyal customers and profits are yours for the taking.
Want a definition of a remarkable experience? How about, Reading my mind?
Really, that’s all your prospects, customers and clients want. They want what they want, the way they want it (preferably, without having to ask for it) – no more, no less.
Now let me give you an example of what is not remarkable.
Recently, a meeting at Starbucks with a client of mine ran long. We decided to get lunch; and, so as not to break our chain of thought, we went to the restaurant next to Starbucks – Fuddruckers. Mind you, we did not go to Fuddruckers for a ‘fabulous dining experience.’ We went to get a burger and a table so we could continue our conversation.
Clearly, this Fuddruckers has undertaken and effectively implemented customer service training. When I placed my order for a hamburger, I communicated that I wanted: cheese, ketchup, lettuce, onions and tomatoes (the way I always get my burgers) and that I did not want fries (my nutritionist would be proud). The order taker then communicated every other option I could have, most of which I did not understand. Placing an order for a hamburger had never been so difficult.
Then we went to the table, where a very kind employee introduced himself to us, told us his name and said that if there was anything else we needed, at all, we should speak to him. He asked if that was alright with us, we responded yes, and he closed by asking us if this was a “good deal.” Okay, I thought, a little over the top; but, hey its Fuddruckers, you’ve got appreciate someone who shows that type of energy in their job. Over the course of our lunch he interrupted us six times asking if we needed anything. Unfortunately, what we needed was to be left alone.
I’m sure that he was doing what he was taught to do. Be of service. Show energy. Smile. Have fun. He did all of these things. What he didn’t do was give me what I wanted.
The Four Seasons, on the other hand, always seems to know what I want before I do. If I want assistance there is someone there ready to give it. If I want to do it myself, they leave me alone. They read my mind, and as a result I pay significantly more for a room than I pay elsewhere. Why? Because the staff there has been trained to respect their customers and treat them as they themselves would expect to be treated under the circumstances. They pay close attention to what their customers are doing at any particular moment and “read” their level of need. That’s how they always seem to be reading my mind. It’s a level of attention for which there is no substitute. I simply can’t find that feeling having someone read my mind anywhere else at any price.
Then there’s Fuddruckers. Will I ever eat there again? Sure, as long as it’s the most convenient alternative and the prices stay low.
When I wrote that post I got lost of comments that caused me some concern. Because I used The Four Seasons as the example, people began to use words like upscale and luxurious as being synonymous with remarkable. As a result I wrote this:
A number of the responses I’ve received made me think the people who wrote feel their companies have always tried to provide a “Four Seasons” type experience. Judging from the tone of their responses, what they meant was that they work to provide a ‘fine, upscale, luxurious’ experience. The point I wanted to make was that one does not need to be ‘upscale’ to be remarkable.
Wal-Mart provides a remarkable experience. Wal-Mart gives its customers exactly what they want and what they expect – no more, no less. (Though as Wal-Mart now talks about moving up-market to compete with Target, I wonder if they will be able to read their new customers’ minds or continue to be in tune with their current ones Editors note: Wow, I was right. Wal-Marts strategy to take on Target was a complete failure. Since then they’ve been trying to recover from that mistake and I am no longer convinced that Wal-Mart still provides a remarkable experience. The point still stands – they DID provide one.)
Southwest has always provided a remarkable experience, and no one would confuse Southwest with The Four Seasons.
So remember, a ‘fine, upscale, luxurious’ experience is only remarkable if that is actually what your customers want.
There’s a questionnaire I use with my clients to help them understand and appraise their customer/client experince and I’d be happy to share it with you if you like.
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Resources
Doug's Washington Business Journal Columns- Intelligent Growth Articles
Third Wave Selling Blog
Products to Grow
