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Trust-based Selling

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The goal of most selling is to make the sale. The goal of trust-based selling is to help the customer; the sale is an outcome, not a goal.

In trust-based selling, the right time to mention price is when it is useful to the customer to know it.

In trust-based selling, you don’t “handle objections” – you jointly explore the fit of the solution.

In trust-based selling, hard-sell is not a sin – wrong-sell is.

In trust-based selling, the acid test is whether or not you’d refer the customer to a competitor – if the competitor has the better solution.

In trust-based selling, a sale transaction is just an event along the path of a relationship.

In trust-based selling, the default mode of presentation is transparency.

In trust-based selling, the time-frame is lifetime. Assume that you will meet this customer again, along with his or her customers, cousins, bosses and Facebook friends, and that every interaction is evident to all of them instantly. That’s your reputation.

Trust-based selling relies on the proposition that people return good for good, and bad for bad. If you treat a customer respectfully and with trust, and they happen to need what you are selling, the natural response is to buy it from you.

That proposition is not only an ethical template – it is a business model.

Trust-based Selling: McGraw-Hill, also available in Kindle and CD-ROM format. It’s a good book.

Customer Death by Survey? Or Just Bad Surveys?

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I recently wrote an article in RainToday called How To Annoy Your Client  Without Really Trying, about the excess of customer satisfaction metrics.

Wouldn’t you know it – someone disagreed with me! I know, hard to believe…

But in this case, the someone was pretty interesting and had some good points to make. So please meet Erich Dietz, of Mindshare Technologies.

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Charlie: Erich, welcome. Let’s jump right in. Consumers are getting surveyed to death… but how can one argue that the solution is as simple as changing the survey script?

Erich: You’re 100% right that every time a consumer turns around they are getting hit with surveys – surveys from every business they have ever interacted with. It’s a painful exercise that feeds a market research propeller head in an ivory tower somewhere who never shares what he/she knows; that’s what the problem is.

Which means I also agree with you that the solution is not as simple as changing a survey script.

Charlie: Well, now we’re getting somewhere!

Erich: This is one of those cases where dirt-simple solutions just aren’t realistic. Businesses must change their mindset – from surveying customers to engaging them.

Engagement derives from demonstrating respect for the customer’s time, showing that feedback is actually being used, and using surveys as part of a meaningful, recurring dialogue.

Charlie: So, it’s one of those mindset things: back to ground zero.

Erich: Did you really think otherwise? Me neither.

Unfortunately there will always be businesses that survey in a customer-unfriendly way. But I don’t think anyone is seriously proposing legislation to regulate or ban bad surveying.

What’s important is not how bad most surveying is – what’s important is how a smart company can take advantage of that.  Let me suggest that if your business surveys the right way, then out of the 1,000 survey-invites the customer gets in a day, yours will be the one they elect to take. And that’s huge.

Charlie: That is pretty big, actually, and what you’re saying is the bad surveys actually make it easier for the really good ones to stand out.

So let’s jump to the question that begs: how does a business go about surveying the “right” way?

Erich: They increase their focus and commitment to structure, communication, and engagement. Let me start with structure.

Too many surveys are written for the surveyor; they end up long and rigid. Reduce the length of the surveys, focus more heavily on allowing customers to share their experiences, wants, interests, etc. in their own words.  This is a radical change from asking the customer to conform to their rating scales or menu choices on every data point.

Transactional surveys should be no more than 2 minutes, and should set accurate expectations with the invite (e.g. “please answer 4 brief questions”).

I strongly recommend that, wherever possible, businesses compensate customers for their time. Think about ways to compensate the survey customer that can actually drive incremental revenue back into the business.

Charlie: Cool! What about communication?

Erich: When did you last feel that your feedback went anywhere meaningful? Most businesses miss the simple layup – tell the customer when they make a change based on customer feedback!  You have to show customers you’re listening to – and acting on – the feedback they’ve spent their valuable time providing. Show them their time was not spent in vain.

Charlie: Common sense, even though it’s not common. Engagement?

Erich: Use surveys to enhance and deepen customer conversations. When a surveyed customer indicates service lapse, make sure the front line is empowered to follow up – personally.

Conversely, for those customers who indicated positive experiences – reach out, frequently, just to say thank you.

Charlie: Erich, those are eminently sound recommendations. If all survey designers took your advice – well, that’s an interesting thought-experiment. It occurs to me the effect would be massive. Thanks so much for taking time with us.

Erich: A pleasure, Charlie.

 

Keep Your Damn Receipt!

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They say a pun is the lowest form of humor. Analogously, a rant may be the lowest form of blogpost. But we love both from time to time.

The other day I bought a salad at a health club (overpriced at $7.50). The pre-packed kind, in a plastic container with a tiny plastic cup of dressing inside. They sell sandwiches and water and chips—it’s a small place run by a concessionaire.

I gave the lady a twenty. She gave me back change—a few coins, and several bills—with the receipt neatly held together with the bills.

So here’s my little rant. I hate those gratuitous little receipts. I mean, a salad?

“I don’t need the receipt,” I said, making a bit of a show of peeling off the receipt and handing it back to her.

That’s when she upped the ante. “The wastebasket is right over there,” she sniffed, pointing behind me as she withdrew her hands from the proffered receipt. Which of course just ticked me off more.

“I’m sure there’s a wastebasket on your side too,” was my (oh-so clever!) retort as I turned and left the receipt on the counter.

Now, maybe I could use a good “get over it” lecture. Fair enough. Still…

What is it with dinky purchases and receipts?

If I’m buying a computer, furniture, office supplies—I get it. The tab for six at a business lunch, the week’s grocery shopping, hardware—I get it.

But a Hershey bar at the airport bookstore? A coffee at Starbucks? A bag of chips or a magazine at a chain pharmacy? Like I’m going return it? Or put it on an expense account?  My tax return?

Am I the only one that thinks it annoying to get a receipt for every little purchase?

Here’s what I suspect.

• I suspect it’s largely the bigger, chain stores that are guilty of this.

• I suspect this is the same crowd that brought us “Your message is very important to us…”

• I suspect some programmer suggested it ages ago, something like, “now that we’ve got the inventory replenishment process linked to the POS system, you know what else we could do—like, for free?”

• I suspect some “customer service analyst” thought, “If the customer has to ask for a receipt, that’s annoying to the customer—but hey if we just give it to everyone without being asked…”

• I suspect the higher-up that approved this nonsense thought, “Hey, if we give one to everyone, then no one can ever blame us, and we don’t have to allow our brainless frontline staff to make any decisions at all. It’s a total win!”

That’s what I suspect, anyway. How about you?

 

The Deeper Message of Financial Markets’ Volatility

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The Dow swung 600 points (high to low) in two days this week—and the week’s not over.

Key stock market indices in Indonesia and South Korea lost over 6% of their total value yesterday alone. Seoul’s Kospi Index had its biggest point drop ever. 

Katie Couric leads the CBS evening news with tales of homeowners who can’t find lenders to refinance massively increasing adjustable rate mortgages they (stupidly) assumed.

What’s it all mean?

The short story is the same as the long story—but the long story is much more interesting.

The short story starts with a classic housing bubble. People start borrowing to buy real estate. It becomes musical chairs, flip the property, sell to the greater fool. And use leverage.  Better yet, OPM (other people’s money).  Best—use both.

Lenders, like good drug pushers anywhere, develop new products and pitches.  Finance the first mortgage with the second; “liar’s” loans, no proof of income required. Wall Street packages loans, slices and repackages them and resells them. No one is left holding the bag—-everyone is left holding the bag.

National Public Radio reports that you can purchase complete lies about your income and employment history at sites like verifyemployment.net  to help fuel the game.

The short story is that the world has become so connected financially that a housing bubble in the US can decimate the stock market in Djakarta.  Everything is linked to everything.  This isn’t like 1929, where wealthy people lost money in the crash and soon couldn’t pay their employees.  This is far more integrated, international, intertwined, interdependent—and fast.  Butterflies flapping wings and all that.

True enough. But the financial markets are just a piece of a bigger puzzle. 

In the long story, the growth in connectedness of all things  exceeds the wildest dreams of rabid conspiracy theorists from just a few decades ago.

Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat is, at root, about how the world has become interconnected.  Time and space are being obliterated by always-on, high-bandwidth,  voice, data and video connections.  Capital flows easily around the world. The internet’s inherent freedom runs roughshod over the desires of industries and nations alike to maintain boundaries.  Even labor becomes mobile—if not through immigration, then through outsourcing.

Six degrees of separation has for some time now begun to look like an overstatement.

The first level of business implications is clear.  Pick one thing and do it the best in the world; outsource everything else to whomever is doing those things the best in the world.

But even that is old paradigm stuff—competing in a global world and all that. Increasingly, that’s so five minutes ago.

The really, really big lesson is this.

The game of competition is over. It’s not about vertical corporations competing against each other anymore.  It’s about collaboration and connectivity—with everyone. He who can get along with everyone better than everyone else will succeed.

Not “win”—succeed.

In a massively connected world, corporate strategy is less relevant than customer strategy.  It’s your ability to cut agreements with customers and suppliers that helps you—not your ability to squeeze pennies out of them.

This is a huge shift for people raised in business in the last 50 years, weaned on concepts like sustainable competitive advantage and shareholder wealth creation.

The business-strategic value of trust was always high.  It’s about to get far, far higher.  Those stuck with mental models built on inter-corporate competition are going to get left behind those who "get" the simple idea of service to customers, employees, and partners.