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Jul
9

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Become Advocate for Your Customers: Awesome Example from Canada.

Category: Business Strategy, customer relationship, leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Farm Credit Canada is the David of the Canadian Banking Industry. But unlike the biblical tale, FCC has more than one Goliath in its path — it has five. And they’re all trying to steal its clients.

Based in Regina, Saskatchewan, FCC provides business and financial solutions to farm families and agribusiness across Canada. And while it boasts a portfolio of $10 billion (CAD), its competitors — companies including the Royal Bank of Canada — weigh in with portfolios nearly 20 times larger.

In addition to the sheer size of its competitors’ operations, FCC is forced to fight on an uneven playing field. Because its primary shareholder is the Government of Canada, it is not allowed to offer services, such as operating lines of credit, deposit accounts, or home loans, due to the fear of unfair advantage.

While that factor threatens immediate growth, the five large Canadian banks are doing their part to raid FCC’s existing client base. By flagging large payments that FCC customers make through competitors’ checking accounts and automated banking systems, the banks are able to identify FCC’s top customers. To entice those clients away from FCC, the banks bundle key banking services with their term debt, offering similar terms and conditions at a slightly lower interest rate than FCC’s.

As the banks zero in on FCC’s large, successful clients, another hand is at work, robbing it of smaller accounts. According to Thakker, the number of farmers in Canada is shrinking, and the size of farms is growing larger. In the next 10 years, 50 percent of Canadian farmers are expected to go out of business, partly due to attrition.

With a vested interest in assuring that its clients survive in the industry, FCC needed a strategy to retain customers, target new lending opportunities, and differentiate itself from the chartered banks.

Become Advocate for your Customers

FCC quickly decided against new product development as a strategy to differentiate itself. The features and financial terms related to loans are easy for competitors to reproduce, without significant cost. Key competitors match product features within weeks of initial launches and promotional campaigns.

Even if FCC could sustain distinct products and services, it would not result in a significant advantage over its competition. Industry research conducted by Waltham, MA,- based Copernicus Marketing Consulting indicates that bank brands, as well as competing banking products and services, have extremely low levels of differentiation in the minds of consumers, measuring just above bottled water.

Instead, FCC capitalized on the biggest weakness of its competitors. Service-dissatisfaction ratings for all five competitors are astonishingly high.

“We aren’t able to be the lowest-cost provider,” Thakker admits, “but we’ve made a very conscious effort to differentiate ourselves through our expert staff and our customer interactions.”

To cement this advantage, FCC went beyond the normal boundaries of customer service — it became a customer advocate.

In 2004, FCC launched the “Very Important Producers’ MarketPlace,” at the Ramada Inn and Conference Centre the evening before the 2004 Pacific Agriculture Show (PAS).

FCC invited food processors and cottage-industry operators to participate as “Taste of Success” vendors at the event — exhibiting their products at tables positioned around the room. Then it provided each of its 300 attendees with an empty paper gift bag, menu, and vendor guide.

Each attendee also received a paper wallet with a special message imprinted on it: “Performance should have its rewards… Is cash okay?” Each wallet contained $20 in VIP MarketPlace bucks, which were redeemable at any of the 22 vendors.

This unique giveaway encouraged guests to network with FCC’s other key clients, visiting all the vendors in order to sample their products and select the gift they’d most like to take home — from wine and chocolate, to jams and gourmet cheeses.

Attendees could see the breadth of successful products produced by FCC customers, and network with potential buyers of their specific products.

In addition to mixing and mingling with other FCC clients, guests were able to meet with FCC employees, including the company’s CEO, John Ryan.

“The participants in the agricultural industry see the large corporate bank executives as largely invisible and completely inaccessible,” Thakker says. “Mr. Ryan, FCC’s CEO, loves going out and meeting with our clients, demonstrating our customer focus and approachability. And if you, as a client, have the CEO’s business card in your Rolodex, you feel like you have a connection upward.”

A Bountiful Harvest

Following the first VIP MarketPlace in 2004, 44 of the customers who attended expanded their portfolios by a total of $40 million (CAD), four times FCC’s initial objective of $10 million (CAD).

These results are especially remarkable because of the low cost of the event. Cost-saving measures, including the low catering costs and in-house printing and design, allowed FCC to produce each event for less than $20,000 (CAD).

Perhaps most importantly, 100 percent of customers who attended the event have stayed with the company, and FCC is poised to exceed its year-end goals for increased lending in British Columbia’s value-added sector after only six months.
The results are powerful. “By acting as the customer’s advocate in a market, a company has a greater chance of earning more trust, sustaining better relationships, creating positive word-of-mouth, reducing marketing costs, increasing brand value — and achieving profit and growth.” – Excerpt from original report: Cultivating Customers.

FCC repeated the event the following years.

Farm Credit Canada won Gold Award for Corporate Event for this Initiative.
More detail here: http://www.exhibitoronline.com/corpevent/article.asp?ID=847

Jun
22

By

A Single Action Marketing Solution for Your Business.

Category: Business Strategy, customer relationship, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

IRaaS (Information and Recommendation as a service) requires nothing to implement. There’s no marketing plan, there’s no book to read, no training necessary, no content to create. It’s a Single Action Marketing.

It only requires one single action, which is easy and even enjoyable to do. Here is the baseline : “Send your customers to other businesses for free and See your business flourish”

To do So, All you need to do is create an IRaaS network of companies you trust.

That’s it. You’re good to go.

Here’s how it works:

  1. You join an IRaaS network
  2. You list your customers’ needs for products and services other than your own
  3. Your IRaaS network companies show you their products and services, and give you the information you need to make a solid recommendation to your customer.
  4. After reviewing and editing the information, you send the produces and services that best fit your customer’s needs to them.

You’ve built customer loyalty, trust, and advocacy, and made yourself a dead ringer for future referrals.

What are the benefits?

IRaaS is relationship-building solution for both existing customers and new prospects.  It has three immediate benefits:

  • Referrals Strategy: Once you show your existing contacts, clients, staff or community that you care about them beyond your need for their business, you’ll develop a reputation for being a great company.  That reputation will earn you constant referrals.
  • Networking/Reputation Strategy: IRaaS also allows you to become known and to build trust among peers and the business community. You create constant opportunities for other businesses. By doing so you build a network of colleagues and peers and you double your chances of referrals.
  • Keep-In-Touch Strategy: This strategy helps you stay in front of clients and new prospects on a regular basis using two different types of content strategy:
  1. Content Creation Strategy:  Create winning content about your business that gets distributed to qualified prospects through the IRaaS network. Through this strategy, you’ll be positioned as the most qualified to address the needs and interests of your prospects,
  2. Content Distribution Strategy:  Imagine being able to consistently create thousands of reasons and opportunities to stay in front of your clients and prospects!  IRaaS lets you do this on a weekly, monthly, or per-event basis. The more content you distribute, the more you stay in front of customers, build trust, and become top-of-mind with your clients.

By following these basic strategies, you’ll improve your marketing productivity.

You’ll put an end to the stress and uncertainty of marketing.

And you’ll have fun doing it. Promised.

Jun
17

By

How to Start Conversation with customers, partners or Strangers?

Category: Conversation, customer relationship, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Everyone is talking today about the need for companies to start conversation with customers, partners or strangers to boost their marketing. But Conversation is not a Self Starter.

Many marketers have been misled by what is called “buzz techniques” or Buzz marketing: funny videos, shocking stories, statements or movies. These buzz techniques are good to “get attention“; they could start small talk, but in many cases they are too short-lived to build momentum for good a long lasting conversation to start. They rarely convert into business result.

Not all conversation are equal. The kind of conversation companies want is the one that help them to Be Wanted and Welcomed in their Customers’ and Prospects’ Mind … to quit from chasing customers to Customers coming to them … to  receive faster, more enthusiastic and more qualified responses to their promotion, and turn more customers and contacts into friends and voluntary advocates, generating a consistent word-of-mouth referrals and a non-stop viral buzz.

Yes, Starting this kind of powerful and irresistible conversation is possible. But How?

The answer comes simple: Befriend your customers and contacts One at a time. It’s a One to One to Millions marketing strategy, or the power of Befriending One Customer at a time.

The strategy is to change strangers into friends, friends into advocates, and advocates into customers. It works by offering Information as a Gift ™ to strangers, friends, customers and contacts.

For established companies, it means sending their customers to other businesses for FREE, as a powerful way to build loyalty and growth.

For start-up companies, it means finding or creating great content that would be helpful for their target population, and packaging this content in personal and attractive way, and send it to their target with the purpose to befriend, then convert them into customers. It works.

The more successful your company is at recommending other companies’ products and services that are relevant to its customer’s lifestyle and needs, the more likely it is that customers will extol the virtues of your company. They’ll reward you for it, too.

Your company gets a reputation for caring about people through this free exchange of information. When a person benefits from information you give them, they become an advocate for you. And the next time they hear someone looking for a service that your company provides, they’ll recommend you – in glowing phrases.

You can’t buy that kind of advertising, and it’s the most powerful positive conversation Starter.

Remember, we said “to befriend one person at a time!”.

Most marketers will exclaim to this statement with astonishment and signs meaning “that’s impractical”, “that’s impossible”, “that’s not possible in our industry”, “Our business is different”…

The mere truth is that most people in marketing and advertising positions today have been trained or formatted to think that “mass marketing is the King” and have sound expertise ONLY with the “big bang” approach: to reach thousands or millions with a single message at a time.

This approach has worked, and still works for many marketers, but its efficiency and effectiveness are losing ground. Customers acquired this way are lost the same way as they came, and to build loyalty you’ll need to invest vast amount of money, and slash your profit margin to keep them happy.

There is no ending to this approach.

Our previous post “Do you have the right to advertise?” explained very clearly the moment and situation in which You have the right to advertise and for what you have the right to spend your money.
I strongly advise you to read this post. It’s one of the Best articles you could find on this blog.

Jun
13

By

I need help to choose, to find relevant information … Please Help.

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

The end of the scarcity age in developed countries resulted in consumers being overwhelmed by a huge number and variety of goods and services.

“Am I buying the right digital camera? Am I getting the best treatment for my chronic ulcer? Am I signing up for the right service?” becomes the inner voice of each consumer when he faces this “hell of choice.”

There are, in fact, vast amounts of information available to respond to these questions, and there are several channels, “But who has the leisure and the proficiency needed to sort through and evaluate all these products and services? [And] the burgeoning complexity of offerings, as well as the associated risks and reward, confounds and frustrates most time-starved consumers. Product variety has not necessarily resulted in better consumer experiences.” - C. K. Prahalad

As a result, consumers are lost. Information comes to them as noise. When consumers need answers, they may end up sifting through contradicting advice, opinionated content and a lot of pretty crappy material. They’ll waste plenty of time.

The unheard voice of the consumer behind all this data could sound something like this: “I want less data, not more data. I need to know what’s important, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of Tweets and Friendfeed messages and blog posts and emails and IMs a day to find the five things that I really need to know. …Can someone please do this for me? Please? I need help.” – Erick Schonfeld

Netflix, like Amazon, has figured out that helping people make choices is the key to market success. People won’t buy things if they can’t make fundamental choices, and most people won’t make as many choices if they don’t get a little help — without being barraged with too many questions.
That’s the trick. We don’t want to answer too many questions about what we’re looking for. Half the time we don’t know what we’re looking for (just browsing) and the other half of the time we are incapable of describing it ‚ or maybe that’s just me. Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert details people’s inability to understand or describe what makes them happy in his book, « Stumbling on Happiness ». We think that many of those same mental barriers exist for people shopping or searching online, and we believe a good recommendation platform is essential to overcome them.” Rob Rustad, From Collarity.com.

How to transform helping your customers to choose and find relevant information in a marketing strategy that built loyalty and growth for your business?

Send “Information as a Gift” your customers.

According to a 2004 Forum Corporation study on cross selling, 88 percent of customers with spending power welcomed product and service suggestions that help them. The same is true in the B2B world—clients prize sales professionals who empathetically understand their business and make suggestions on how to improve it.

What is information as a Gift?

“Information as a gift ™” means to pay attention to your customers’ and contacts needs and interests for products and services other than your own, and give them relevant and trustful information to help them reach good services providers.

Since one company alone can no longer autonomously create consumer experience, Linkcrafter members pay attention to their customers’ and contacts needs and interests for products and services other than their own, and send their customers to other business for Free as a powerful way to build loyalty and Growth.

Linkcrafter solution helps you send your customers safely and securely to other businesses as a powerful way to build Loyalty and grow your business. Yes, It’s about Sending your Customers to other businesses for FREE as a way to build Loyalty and Grow. And It works.

You become known as a powerful resource for others—and when you have the reputation for being a strong resource, people start turning to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, connections, etc. This keeps you visible and your business top-of-mind when people need your products and services. This, in turn, will greatly increase the number of referrals your customers will send to your business.

You don’t need Money to start. Information, Recommendation are intangible things you can give again, again and again without being left broke.

“Information as a gift ™” has a tremendous power to induce positive emotional connections to customers and contacts. The positive emotional connections in turn has the power to turn customers and contacts into voluntary advocates for your organization, generating a consistent word-of-mouth referrals and a Nonstop Viral Buzz for your business.

How it works?

“Simply go to that address book and list out the 20 percent of your contacts who matter most. Do you know their interests? Their biggest dreams and goals (professional and personal)? If you don’t then that is a place to begin. Once you do, mark down next to each name what specific actions you can take that will help that person realize those goals. What connections can you make for them? What knowledge can you transfer to them? Call them up. No agenda. No ‘asking for the business.’ Just deliver value relevant to them and keep doing it.”

Howard Mann

Jun
5

By

Send Your Customers to Other Businesses for FREE to Build Loyalty.

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Linkcrafter, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

“What you Say? Send My Customers to Other Businesses for Free as a way to Build Loyalty and grow my business!?”
It sounds like complete folly.
Why would I send my customers away?
It’s very unconventional, but terribly powerful.
And, It’s in this way that Linkcrafter is transforming the marketing landscape, changing the lives of small business owners, freeing millions of entrepreneurs from marketing stress and uncertainty.

Here we go, Instead of giving Planners, calendars, T-shirts, Mugs, coupons, or other material or monetary gifts to customers to build relationship, what in most cases fail to build loyalty, Linkcrafter helps you send your customers safely and securely to other businesses as a powerful way to build Loyalty and grow your business.

Yes, It’s about Sending your Customers to other businesses for FREE as a way to build Loyalty and Growth. And It works.

The old era of egocentric sales pitches never entertained the idea of sending customers to other companies, for any reason. They held on to their customers tooth and nail, even if they didn’t have anything the customer needed at the time.

Companies wanted customers to pay attention to their company, and no one else.

Apparently, no one ever mentioned to those companies that no business is an island.

Customers need more than one company to satisfy their everyday needs and desires. “No company owns enough resources – or can possibly own enough – to furnish unique experiences for every customer,” said C.K.Pralahad in The New Age of Innovation. “Companies must organize a constantly shifting global web of suppliers and partners to do the job.”

A customer experience includes satisfaction in all the customer’s needs for their everyday life. It isn’t enough to sell your customer the microwave oven that person needs. The customer also needs clothes, baby food, music, a good carpet cleaner, a certified massage therapist, and an antique hood ornament.

No company in the world could possibly give a customer every single thing he or she desires.

In short: it takes a village to create a customer experience.

You’ll be recommending companies to your customers that you personally have selected as the best for their needs. You won’t be giving them referrals to professional service and product providers simply because you’ve agreed to – you’ll be giving them the companies that you sincerely believe are the most qualified professionals to meet your customers’ needs.

And your customers will love you for it.

That reputation will buy you customer loyalty and enthusiasm that is impossible to get through any other means.

Linkcrafter marketing solution often sounds too idealistic to companies who have been in the era of the sales pitch too long. Many companies will be thinking, “Spending extra time and resources to help customers with their problems without any request for a sale, without any pitch at all? What’s in it for me?”

The more successful your company is at recommending other companies’ products and services that are relevant to its customer’s lifestyle and needs, the more likely it is that customers will extol the virtues of your company.

Your company gets a reputation for caring about people through this free exchange of information. When a person benefits from information you give them, they become an advocate for you. And the next time they hear someone looking for a service that your company provides, they’ll recommend you – in glowing phrases.

You can’t buy that kind of advertising.

Linkcrafter web based relationship management solution helps you to engage with other qualified companies to co-create customer experiences. You’ll work within a network of partners, all of whom can provide your customers with products and services that are outside of your area of expertise but that are essential to making sure the customer is completely satisfied.

Learn to Co-Create

Through Linkcrafter, you’ll be able to co-create complete experiences for your customers with other companies. You’ll collaborate with these companies to understand exactly what your customers need and how to get it to them.

Your customers will look to you as a resource, a guide, and a trusted ally.

Is Your Company Still in the Dark Ages?

Most companies aren’t prepared for this new approach to marketing. Companies who co-create customers experiences with other qualified companies will keep themselves far ahead of the competition.

How do you accomplish all of this? We’re not going to lie. It takes a change in mindset.

Business people become super-connectors, people who know a lot of people, and know their interests, skills, and needs of everyone in their social or business circle and connect them together.

May
31

By

What is the most valuable source of leads?

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Recently, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council has conducted  a study with channel executives, distributors, resellers, and other channel representatives, asking the question: “What is the most valuable source of leads?”

Customers referrals came at the top: four times more powerful and valuable than E-Mail or Direct Marketing campaigns, and nearly seven times more likely to result in sales and new business than leads from the Internet.

Here is how the results look like:

  • 54% Customer Referrals
  • 14% E-Mail or Direct Marketing
  • 8% Internet
  • 7% Events
  • 7% Leads from Vendors
  • 3% Third Party Lead Generation Organizations
  • 8% Other

Why Customers referrals is so powerful and valuable?
Simply because they command instant credibility, and when customers talk about your business, they have personal stories to share, and could illustrate with real world examples how your solution worked and served them.

Customers are your Natural Advocates.

If your business is struggling to attract clients, it’s simple because you don’t have enough advocates.

Your advocates are customers, prospects and even strangers who like you and your business. They can’t help but singing your praises to the world.

Your business flourishes when more than 10% of your customers become advocates; You thrive when 30% turn advocates and you become irresistible when like Apple 78% of customers are your fans, and go beyond advocacy to create Ads for your brand with their own money and resources.

Frederick F. Reichheld and Thomas Teal found that an increase of 5% of your advocates will yield your profits 25 to 95%.

In average a person has 11 to 12 intimate contacts, 150 social contacts and from 500 to 1500 weak ties. Look what will happen to your business if you succeed in the next 12 months to turn 12 to 15  customers into your business advocates:

Number of Intimate Friends

Intimate friends of your Friends(x12)

Social contacts of your Friends (x150)

Weak ties of your Friends (x1500)

Potential reach through your Friends network

1

12

150

1 500

1 663

2

24

300

3 000

3 326

3

36

450

4 500

4 989

4

48

600

6 000

6 652

5

60

750

7 500

8 315

6

72

900

9 000

9 978

7

84

1 050

10 500

11 641

8

96

1 200

12 000

13 304

9

108

1 350

13 500

14 967

10

120

1 500

15 000

16 630

11

132

1 650

16 500

18 293

12

144

1 800

18 000

19 956

13

156

1 950

19 500

21 619

14

168

2 100

21 000

23 282

15

180

2 250

22 500

24 945

If you succeed to have 15 customers as advocates, you could reach up to 24 945 contacts, without measuring the cascading effect of their referrals. Your marketing will automatically go on autopilot: with the social medias, Blogs, E-mail, twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. customers today has an increased ability to share personal experience and sing your praises to the world.

May
29

By

How Graphic Designer James Dean Use "IRaaS" to Attract Clients.

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Linkcrafter, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

IRaaS is helping Thousands of web-workers (designers, programmers, copywriters, publishers) and freelancers to build a continual referral stream around there business without spending a single Dollar in advertising or wasting precious time in networking websites and events.

James Dean is a graphic designer in Los Angeles. He loves his job and clients. He knows deep down that when a client comes to him for a graphic work it’s because he has a much bigger project. James knows well how difficult is it sometime to find good services providers. So, He is always trying to help, asking his clients about their needs for services other than what he could provide  directly to them. He asks about their business purposes and challenges. In this way, he collects precious information and send his customers to a network of trusted providers.

James send his customers who need website search engine optimization to SEO experts, his customers who need content edition to copywriters, etc.

    The system works the same way for the Seo experts who send his customers to copywriters, copywriters who send their clients to graphic designer and so on.

    When James doesn’t know a contact to refer directly to, he posts his customers needs to the community on Linkcrafter who send him proposals that he reviews and rates before sending them to his customers.

    James uses Linkcrafter as  an utility to build customers relationship, and create bonds that make his customers talk positively about him and his business.

    Besides, James gains reputation inside his business community. James sends his customers to other businesses for Free. He NEVER ASK anything back. The Power of Linkcrafter is in this very simple sentence:  James sends his customers to other businesses for Free, He NEVER ASK anything back.

    Each befriended  customer by “Information as a Gift” becomes James advocate, infecting the world with the narration of his positive experience.

    The more successful your company is at recommending other companies’ products and services that are relevant to your customer’s lifestyle and needs, the more likely it is that your customers will extol the virtues of your company.

    They’ll reward you for it, too.

    Your company gets a reputation for caring about people through this free exchange of information. When a person benefits from information you give them, they become an advocate for you. And the next time they hear someone looking for a service that your company provides, they’ll recommend you – in glowing phrases.

    “Information as a gift ™” has a tremendous power to induce positive emotional connections to customers and contacts. The positive emotional connections in turn has the power to turn customers and contacts into voluntary advocates for your organization, generating a consistent word-of-mouth referrals and a Nonstop Viral Buzz for your business.

    May
    24

    By

    Why is it So Difficult to Keep in Touch With Customers?

    Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Linkcrafter, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

    Most companies don’t know what to do with their customers once the transaction is done. The only thing they know to keep in touch with their customers  is to spam them with selfish advertising, new offers, sales, like:

    “We’re having a huge sale! There’s tons of stuff we want you to buy! Come in now! Drop everything you’re doing! We don’t know what you’re doing, but it surely not as important as BUYING STUFF FROM US!”

    These companies understand that it’s necessary to keep in touch with customers, but do it in a very bad way.

    Spaming customers with selfish advertising, new offers and sales is not meaningful ways to keep in contact with your customers. Customers don’t want to hear pitches anymore. They don’t want to know how great your company is, how fantastic your product is, or what you’re selling this week at 10% off.

    There is a second group of companies who understands the need to keep in touch with customers but don’t know what to tell them after the transaction. The usual question they will ask me is “What to tell them? I don’t know what to tell them.”

    Keep in touch with consumers is the most critical function of marketing in the new economy. It helps you stay in front of clients and new prospects on a regular basis. For example, a contact in your database with whom you don’t keep in touch in meaningful way during the las t 3 or 6 months is a dead contact. Your database is becoming slowly a debris.

    Survival of any business today depends on its continual advertising capability. Continual advertising is about your capacity to keep your business in your present customers mind and attract enough new customers to fill customers turnover.

    Continual advertising is like the constant oxygenation we all need to survive. Without continual visibility on the marketplace, business survival is problematic.

    If you keep in touch with your Customers in way that add value to their life, they will keep in touch with you in a way that create value for you.

    So how to keep in touch in a meaningful way?

    Adopt IRaaS marketing approach. IRaaS baseline is: “Send your customers to other businesses for free and See your business flourish”

    Professionals and Companies that adopt IRaaS commit to actively paying attention to their customers’ needs and interests for products and services other than their own.  They also commit to actively seeking the necessary information and connections to help their customers achieve personal and professional goals.

    For each member company, joining an IRaaS network is an opportunity to gain influence by becoming a trusted source of information and connection for customers and clients.

    You become known as a powerful resource for others—and when you have the reputation for being a strong resource, people start turning to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, connections, etc. This keeps you visible and your business top-of-mind when people need your products and services. This, in turn, will greatly increase the number of referrals your customers will send to your business.

    The IRaaS network is a technology-powered group of companies and professionals that collaboratively filter vast amount of information, verify it, put their “stamp of approval” on it, and deliver it to consumers based on their stated or unstated needs. Through IRaaS, you can fulfill your customers’ needs for contextual, relevant, trustworthy, and timely information.

    We call it “Information as a Gift ™”. It’s delivered with the clear intention to please, help and create a meaningful experience for the receiver, the customer. It’s the best incentive and loyalty system, hugely loved by customers.

    “The businesses that understand this stay in touch, They call, they write, they ask for your input. They are in communication when you’re not at the register or don’t have your credit card in hand. For that level of communication and loyalty the relationship will last. In addition, customers will sing their praises to others and that beats any marketing plan hands down.

    Great business relationships happen in between the transaction.” Tim Andren

    May
    16

    By

    The Danger of Dissatisfied But Loyal Customers

    Category: Conversation, customer relationship Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

    In today’s economy, a dissatisfied customers will quickly defect to competition. There is choice outside there. But two kind of customers are obliged to stay with companies they are dissatisfied with, because of:

    1. multi-months or multi-years contracts: these contracts keeps unhappy customers from leaving for a period
    2. the pain of change: the habit and the comfort  that come with having been with the same company for a time

    When trapped in one of these two situations, unhappy customers are more likely to speak twice and more vehemently about their negative experience to Friends and colleagues.

    On average a dissatisfied or unhappy customer will tell 10 to 16 people about his negative experience, but a dissatisfied-but-Loyal-customer will tell 20 to 32 people and will repeat again and again his complaint to the same people, reinforcing the negative word of mouth and its reach.

    Without Internet, a dissatisfied but loyal customers negative word of mouth will reach in a year from 1700 to 3200 people. But with Internet, this negative word of mouth on buyers’ or consumers’ forums will potentially reach millions of people.

    Be careful to keep dissatisfied customers.
    They harass your employees, they are aggressive, they complain more often, they infuse stress into your organization, they spread widely negative word of mouth about you.
    In The end, these customers loyalty cost you more money and reputation.

    • Survey your customers to check why they are staying with you.
    • Help your customers who want to leave, to leave.
    • Offer incentive to your difficult customers to leave and help them find new providers.
    • Commit yourself to deliver better customer service, and treat customers like you’ll treat friends.
    • Turn more past and current customers into friends.

    May
    15

    By

    Who are Your Company's Evangelists on Social Medias? And Why?

    Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

    Two kind of people are actively talking about you on the social medias (blogs, twitter, social networks, consumers forums, buyers forums, etc.): Your detractors and Your Promoters.

    There is in fact a third kind of people who are just spectators: your passive satisfied customers. They won’t move their fingers to defend you or write a testimonial about you.

    Social medias are the conversation engine of  today. Most consumers take their buying decision based on the opinion of your Promoters and your Detractors. You need to care about this, because The new economy is based on advocacy. For example, a Mckinsey marketing study found that 2/3 of US economy is now based on advocacy:  Friends telling friends what is hot and what is not.

    Only 14% of people trust advertising, 69% are interested in advertising blocking technologies, and 78% of consumers trust one to one recommendation from friends.

    That’s the reason why the Law of the few in marketing states that 90% of your present customers are brought to you by 10% of your contacts (customers, prospects, friends or strangers) who like you. These people are your  Natural advocates. They are your Friends, your Evangelists.

    Your Detractors and Promoters have one thing in common: they are emotionally engaged in, express appreciation based on personal experience. Ones say “I love them”, Others say “I hate them”.

    Your Promoters are customers, prospects and even strangers who like you and your business. They can’t help but singing to the world nice songs about how great, how magnificent, how terrific you are. They are your advocates.

    Your business flourishes when more than 10% of your customers become advocates; You thrive when 30% turn advocates and you become irresistible when like Apple 78% of customers are your fans, and go beyond advocacy to create Ads for your brand with their own money and resources.

    Frederick F. Reichheld and Thomas Teal found that an increase of 5% of your promoters will yield your profits 25 to 95%.

    You detractors are customers who don’t like you and your business. Contrary to a popular belief, Your detractors are not customers who are not satisfied with your product or service. Marketing research revealed that 68% of customers who defect and become your detractors do because of the way they have been treated by your employees during a transaction or customer service operation.

    They are unhappy because of they way you’ve treated them, and they want the whole world to know how bad you are with your customers.

    You business is stagnant because your Promoters are less than 10% of your customers base. Your business suffers from mixed image and faces marketing struggle because the percentage of your detractors are over the percentage of  your promoters.

    All businesses have detractors, but you need to be careful, and actively take action to limit their number and address their complaints.

    I strongly recommend the following two articles for reading:

    1. The One Number You Need to Grow
    2. Customer Satisfaction and the Success of Your Organization

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