First things first

I asked a group of students, “How many of you think that Wal-Mart is good to its employees?”

A few hands went up. I asked them why. The answers were varied: My sister worked there. All the people who work at my Wal-Mart look happy. They bring jobs to my community….

I asked the thirty people who hadn’t raised their hands why they hadn’t. My brother worked there. Most of their employees don’t get health insurance. They don’t pay anyone enough to live on. They don’t promote women.

“You heard all that,” I told the hand-raisers. “Why do you disagree?”  They told me that it was that their experience with Wal-Mart was different.

“You heard that,” I told the hand-not-raisers. “What’s your concern?”  They told me that they had been following the news.

But, I told them, last year, Wal-Mart spent 2.3 billion dollars on advertising, much of which was directed at telling consumers what a great place Wal-Mart is to work. Why don’t you believe it?

The answer, of course: Just because Wal-Mart says it’s so doesn’t make it so. They told me that what they’ve been seeing in the news and reading in the blogs they trust say otherwise. They told me that Wal-Mart spends more on advertising than it does on health insurance for its employees. They told me that what they know about Wal-Mart from other sources undermines Wal-Mart’s credibility for them.

Moral:

It’s easier to convince people that what you say about your business is true if it is.

Lesson:

Before you begin lauding the merits of your business, spend the necessary money, time, and energy getting it into tip-top shape. It’s hard enough to get people’s attention. (See “That Animal Eats Deer.”) Don’t burden yourself with the additional challenge of trying to convince people that they are mistaken in what they believe is the truth.

We see what we look for

True story #1:

I have a friend who is a dedicated patron of the small shops in a nearby village with a thriving art community.  When I go out with her, she requires that we stop at every blessed shop and strike up a conversation with every single shopkeeper.  Except the glass shop.  And the glass shop is beautiful — there’s always a cat sunning in the window, and its walls and shelves are adorned with lovely one-of-a-kind lamps, gazing balls, statues, stained glass windows, and blown ornaments.  One might surmise my friend dislikes glass, or has had some blowup with the owner that keeps her away.

One Friday afternoon, we stopped in front of the shop.  I asked her if we were going to go in.  “You go in first,” she said, “and make sure that cat is shut away.”

True story #2 (thanks to Ananonva.com):

“A pair of flamingo chicks at London Zoo have been left ‘terrified’ of the colour pink.

The birds, named Little and Large, developed the phobia after being fed using a pink sock puppet.

Zoo staff are now hoping they get over their aversion before developing their distinctive colour, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Keeper Alison Brown, 30, said: ‘To try to encourage Little to feed by himself we’ve been wearing a hand puppet which imitates adult flamingos, but unfortunately he was really terrified of the socks.’

Young flamingos take up to a year to turn pink, after they shed their grey downing feathers, so Little and Large are not afraid of themselves or each other – so far.

Ms Brown added: ‘We’ll just have to hope they get used to the colour pink, but I’m sure it won’t be a problem. Once Little gets his own pink colour he’ll be fine.’”

I wonder if it occurred to the zoo staff to find out if is really the color pink that terrifies the chicks.  Maybe what the chicks are afraid of are the zoo staff.  Or sock puppets.  (Come to think of it, who isn’t afraid of sock puppets?)

Moral:

When we observe behavior, whether it’s the behavior of buyers or the behavior of birds, we tend draw conclusions based on our own preconceptions.  The truth might be right in front of your face, but you won’t see it if you’re looking for something else.

Lesson:

Market researcher Katie Harris of Zebra Bites asked recently, “Are you measuring what you think you’re measuring?“  A related question is, “Are you seeing what you think you’re seeing?”

Let’s say you operate a retail establishment that sells, among other things, pink flamingo sock puppets, targeted to flamingo children.  If these youngsters are terrified of your store, the last thing you want to do is toss out all the pink items if what they’re afraid of is sock puppets.

If you’ve been in business for any period of time, you’ve figured out that what people say and what people do are often two differenct things.  (See my earlier post, Omission Detection.)  What people do will give you greater insights into their values than what they say, but be careful about mind reading when you are trying to figure out why people do what they do.  Connect the dots.  Ask people why.  And then watch their behavior to help you figure out whether they are being truthful with you (and themselves) about why they do what they do.

Only then will you know what decisions you need to make to turn your business into one that your target customer — be they flamingos or families or ailurophobes — want to patronize.

New Rules of Marketing and PR

If you haven’t picked up David Meeman Scott’s book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, you should. It’s written in plain English for everyday people trying to get the word out about their business.

Scott is appearing in a webinar sponsored by Vocus on June 24th. Registration is free.

Winning the Yellow Pages War

We interrupt this blog for an important, albeit temporary announcement for readers within earshot of Madison, Wisconsin.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 16, 2009
Contact: Vicky Jones
Phone: 608-218-9005
Email: mail@vickyjones.com

Yellow Pages Seminar Will Help Businesses Avert Costly Mistakes

[June 16, 2009, MADISON, WI] Vicky Jones, principal consultant of Victoria Jones Strategic Marketing Communications, LLC, is leading a half day seminar for business owners, entitled “Winning the Yellow Pages War,” on Tuesday, June 30, and Wednesday, July 1. The seminar cost of $95 includes materials and refreshments.

Marketing consultant Vicky Jones says that this is the time of year when the telephone directory sales reps start knocking on doors and locking up advertising contracts for the coming year. “’Winning the Yellow Pages War’ will help business owners ask their reps the right questions and make good decisions regarding directory advertising and listings.”

The seminar will cover:

• Why most yellow pages ads fail
• What people look for in the yellow pages
• How to decide if you really need the yellow pages
• How to avoid the biggest mistakes yellow pages advertisers make
• How to choose the right directory for your business
• How to create yellow pages ads that generate more calls
• How to get ready to talk with your yellow pages rep

The seminar will also provide practical, hands-on exercises to help participants determine the role that directory listings should play in their businesses’ marketing plans, the essential elements of a strong directory ad, and tips for tracking results.

Jones says she developed the seminar because there is much at stake when a business owner considers purchasing a listing in the yellow pages of a telephone directory. For many, it is the biggest advertising investment they will make all year, and once they’ve made the commitment, there’s no turning back. Unlike other media, which allow the advertiser to make changes to an ad or withdraw it if it’s not working, directories are published on an annual cycle, and the advertiser is billed every month for a year, regardless of whether an ad is producing the desired results, business has fallen off, or he/she has run into cash flow problems.

Bob Adams of Adams Media tells the story of a service business owner who had to close his doors because he couldn’t afford the monthly bill for his Yellow Pages advertising. “This may be an extreme case,” says Adams, ” But Yellow Pages advertising salespeople are among the best in the industry and among the best paid, and they convince many small business people to buy larger Yellow Pages ad space than they should.” (Source: BusinessTown.com)

Jones says she has heard similar horror stories from her own clients, but her concern is not only that business owners often buy larger ads than they can afford. “The most expensive kind of directory ads are the ones that don’t work,” she says. “Business owners deserve good advice, not only about size, but also about headlines, design, page placement, and content that differentiates their businesses from the competitors whose ads appear alongside theirs. And they need good counsel regarding whether directory advertising is even the best medium for them – advice from someone who isn’t in the yellow pages business.”

“Winning the Yellow Pages War” will be presented in the training room at Jones’s office at 330 S. Whitney Way, Suite 201, Madison, Wisconsin. To accommodate business owners’ schedules, the seminar will be offered on two consecutive days at different times: Tuesday, June 30, from 8:30am-noon; Tuesday, June 30, from 5:30-9:00pm; and Wednesday, July 1, from 1:00pm-4:30pm. The seminar cost of $95 includes materials and refreshments. Seating is limited, and interested business owners are encouraged to register for “Winning the Yellow Pages War” by June 26 to secure their place at the table.  Download a flyer.

Victoria Jones Strategic Marketing Communications, LLC, is an independent marketing consulting firm that offers assistance to for- and non-profit organizations in positioning, strategic marketing planning, and tactical implementation. The firm’s principal, Vicky Jones, has been helping companies, large and small, plan, develop, and execute strategic, integrated marketing communications programs for over twenty five years. The firm is neither affiliated with nor sponsored by any advertising medium or directory publication. For information about Victoria Jones Strategic Marketing Communications, LLC, contact Vicky Jones at 608-218-9005 or mail@vickyjones.com.

Rethink doing it yourself

A group of boiler installers were venting in an online forum. (Usernames and grammar have been tampered with to protect the innocent.)

HEATMAN: These do-it-yourselfers really burn me up.
DALE49: They think that because they have a box of tools and internet access they know how to install a furnace.
GASSER: Are they trying to prove something or just do the job on the cheap?
DALE49: If they’re trying to save money, they’re deluded.
HANDY1: It never fails that whenever some guy gets it into his head to DIY, he ends up making a mess and everything costs more than it would have if he had just called a pro in the first place.
HEATMAN: And then they gripe about how much the job ends up costing. Like it’s my fault.
GASSER: Amen, brother.
DALE49: Maybe we just make it look too easy. We need to let people know how much school we had to go to, all the experience we have.
GASSER: That reminds me. Do you guys think that it’s better to do email marketing or post cards?
HANDY1: Email is a lot cheaper.
HEATMAN: I found a website that’ll let you build postcards online. They have art and everything. All you have to do is type your message.

If I were looking for advice on direct mail versus email marketing, I don’t think a bunch of boiler installers would be my first choice resource.  But what I find most interesting from this exchange is the notion that doing it yourself is misguided if you’re installing a boiler but not if you’re implementing marketing tactics.

Moral: We tend to think that people are making an expensive mistake if they try to do something for themselves that we have expertise in.  But we have blinders on when it comes to our own decisions.

Lesson: Find your expertise and make that your personal focus in your business.  This does not mean that this is the only thing your business should focus on; as a business owner, you need to understand the importance of managing your books, attracting customers, and drafting solid contracts.  But unless you are an expert in bookkeeping, marketing, and law, it is likely that your resources of time/energy/money are better spent doing what you are great at and paying experts in these other areas to do what they are great at.

For example:

• An attorney is having trouble with her computer.  She’s pretty smart and knows a lot about computers.  She could probably figure it out in a couple of hours.  Or, she could call her Mac guy and have him take care of the problem in thirty minutes.  She has to pay him, but now she can use that one-and-a-half hours she was going to spend fixing her computer to do networking or billable work.
• A plumber is considering what to do with the Yellow Pages this year.  It’s his biggest marketing expenditure, and the Yellow Pages rep  — whose expertise, by the way, is in persuading terrified business owners to buy bigger and more expensive ads than they did the previous year — has offered to give him free help in designing his ad.  With a several thousand dollar invoice staring him in the face, the plumber could save money by doing it himself with the help of the YP staff.  Or, he could find someone a marketing expert who can help him decide whether he really needs a YP ad, how much of an ad he needs, and how the ad ought to be crafted to get the best results.  Yes, he has to pay her, but he might end up spending less on his YP ad and get an ad that brings him more business.
• A caterer wants to grow her business serving corporate lunches.  She could advertise on this one radio station she likes.  Or she could pay a advertising expert to help her find the medium — radio, television, internet, print, skywriting, direct mail, doorhangers, etc. — that her corporate lunch planners are most likely to respond to.  And, if she doesn’t know exactly who it is in corporations makes the decision to engage caterers, or what messages are most likely to push their buttons, she can hire a marketer and/or a market researcher to find out.  Yes, she will have to pay these people to learn what needs to be learned, but that’s better than spending a lot of money on advertising that doesn’t reach the right people with the right message.
• An appliance repair shop needs a new roof.  The owner is a handy guy; he could figure out how to reshingle the roof himself.  Or he could hire a roofer, who will come out with a crew to get the job done quickly, while he spends his time in his shop strengthening his reputation for speedy and reliable service.

As smart as you are, the fact that you watch television doesn’t mean you are an expert in advertising.  The fact that you know how to insert clipart into a Word document doesn’t mean you are an expert in graphic design.  The fact that you speak English does not make you an expert copywriter.

Sometimes, especially lately, we have more time than money, and doing it ourselves seems the most prudent path to take.  When you’re trying to save money by doing it yourself, remember that the most expensive marketing is marketing that doesn’t work.

f u cn rd ths…

Apocrypha has it that Tolkien’s first draft of The Hobbit was written in Elfish.  He showed it proudly to a buddy of his who said, “That’s brilliant, Ronald, old chap.  Trouble is, nobody can read it but you.”

Moral: People shouldn’t have to learn a new language to figure out what the heck you’re talking about.

Lesson:  Every business, from cheesemaking to accounting, uses jargon.  It provides shorthand for note-taking and helps us make our meaning clear when we’re talking with our colleagues.  Every one of us gets caught up in the language of our business.

There are only three reasons to use language this is incomprehensible to your prospects and customers:  (1) you’re clueless, (2) you’re lazy, and/or (3) you want to demonstrate how much smarter you are than they.

But your customers shouldn’t need an advanced degree in [insert your profession here] in order to understand what you do or to communicate with you.  Are you in business to make people’s lives easier or harder?

For one thing, most people won’t work that hard — see my first post, “Don’t assume” — and will likely go looking for a vendor easier to talk and listen to.

For another thing, it limits the range of people you can work with to people who are already expert enough in your field that they can speak your jargon.  (Besides, if they know so much, why would they need to hire you?)

Do this: Pull up your web site and plop someone in front of it who doesn’t know what you do.  Ask her to point out the words, phrases, and acronyms she doesn’t understand.  Then translate those words into plain English (or whatever common language your audience speaks).  Do the same thing with your brochures, selling scripts, and PowerPoint presentations.

Don’t worry that converting your communications from jargon to English will “dumb down” your image.  Intelligent people appreciate clarity just as much as stupid people do.

(Thanks for Mark Anderson for this cartoon.)

Cartoons by Andertoons

For Love of Cat

Concerned about occasional customer complaints about pricing, a specialized veterinary clinic was at a loss. It wasn’t like the staff were all spending their giant paychecks on Jaguars and Italian shoes. The clinic was constantly reinvesting in state-of-the art equipment and continuing education for technicians, assistants, and veterinarians.  The vets donated tons of of time to the international boards, state veterinary school, and local shelters.

And every cat who came in to the clinic received unparalleled care — before an appointment ends, she will have been seen by a veterinary assistant, a veterinary technician, and the veterinarian. If a cat needed surgery, there were always a vet and two vet techs working the procedure, not just the vet and an assistant.

If only everyone knew the value of what they were paying for!  Surely the complaints would stop.  So the clinic began posting its credentials.  Diplomas, commendations, awards covered the walls.  And some people kept complaining.

Worried about losing clients, the clinic did a survey of pricing of other, non-specialty vets around the area and cut some of its prices.  Within a couple of months, it was operating in the red. It didn’t know how to cut its prices further without sacrificing service. It was determined not to sacrifice service.

And yet people were still complaining.

Almost as an act of desperation, they agreed to pay for some focus groups. I told them that I wanted a list of their favorite clients, and a list of the people who would be their favorite clients if only they weren’t bitching so much about prices.  I said, “Let’s see what the difference is between the two groups. Then we can go out and look for more people like the ones in the non-complaining group (we’ll call them Group A) and let the complainers (Group B) take their business to the cheap vets, since they don’t appreciate you anyway.”

The vet expected to find a difference in income, education, marital status, proximity to the clinic, gender, presence of children at home.  What we found was this:

Group A: “My 16-year old diabetic cat needs injections every day.  Last Christmas, we called a family meeting and we had a vote: Christmas presents or medicine for the cat.  We voted medicine for the cat.”

Group B: “Are you nuts?  It’s a cat.”

There it was.  People’s willingness to pay high prices for veterinary care wasn’t about how much they valued the veterinarian.  It was about how much they valued the cat.  They weren’t spending money on veterinary services; they were spending money on the cat.

The clinic discovered through this process that it wasn’t just in the business of providing health care for cats; it was in the business of keeping a family’s beloved cat happy, healthy, and in the family for as long as possible.  It came to understand that its “patients” weren’t just the cats, but the cats’ owners as well, who needed to have their relationships with their cats supported and affirmed.

The veterinary clinic would never have learned this by sending out a survey, because the survey questions would have been developed in line with what the vet thought was most important — credentials, expertise, experience.  What was most important to its clients, though, was their relationship with this valued member of the family.

Learning this created a whole new marketing opportunity for the Cat Care Clinic: to groom “perfect” clients by helping foster deep bonds between pets and their owners early in the pet’s life.  Now, when you go to the Cat Care Clinic with your brand new kitten, everyone who isn’t otherwise occupied rushes to the waiting room to have a peek and coo over your find. The proud cat owner puffs up her chest and thinks proudly, yes, I did indeed find the most adorable kitten ever, didn’t I?  (Granted, the clinic staff were already doing that, which is why the non-complainers loved this clinic in the first place.  One man in the focus group had said, “I go to the Cat Care Clinic because they don’t make you feel crazy for loving your cat.”)

Then the assistant pulls out a camera and takes the kitten’s picture — and hands you a baby book to paste the picture into.

All around the office walls, little quizzes are posted which ask questions like: What does it mean when your cat walks with its tail straight up in the air? How does purring happen? What does it mean when your cat turns her ears around? All of the questions are intended to start an owner paying attention to the quirks and personality of her cat, to begin forging that bond.  Now there are very few clients of this clinic who would scoff,  Are you nuts? It’s a cat!

Moral: Pricing issues are hardly ever about price — they’re about value.  If people are talking about price, it’s because you yet haven’t tapped in to what it is they truly care about.

Even if the clinic had suspected that love of cat was playing a significant role in owners’ attitudes toward price, it still would probably not have learned what it needed to learn from a survey.  If it were to ask, for example, for people to rate how much they love their cats on a scale of one to five, almost everyone would surely have answered “five.”  But the trouble with surveys and scales is that one person’s “five” is another person’s “Are you nuts?  It’s a cat.” You can’t learn anything about love by asking people to rate something on a scale of one to five.  The only way you can find out about love is by listening to people’s stories.

Lesson: Marketing isn’t just about promotions and advertising.  It is about giving people a terrific experience that is relevant to your business and their desires.

Notice that none of the stuff the clinic is doing now has anything to do with what we think of as “marketing.”  That’s because marketing isn’t about telling people what to buy.  It’s about connecting what people want with what you have to offer.

Think of every experience people have with your business as “marketing.”  Yes, you need high quality to stay in the game.  But that’s not the only thing people are paying for.

Junior Jones

Tip: My pets have better health insurance than I do.  I get it from Veterinary Pet Insurance.

Brown on brown

“This is beautiful!” one of the advertising people exclaimed.  “It should definitely be in the running for first prize.”  The three other advertising guys agreed.  This brochure was, indeed, a thing of beauty.  It was the shining crown of this advertising competition.

Then why was the group still there, arguing about it?  Because the marketing person disagreed.

It was late.  Everyone was hungry.  Tempers were getting short.  “What is your problem?” one of the advertising guys finally demanded.

The marketing person heaved a big sigh.  “It’s brown on brown,” she said.

“That’s one of the qualities that makes it so beautiful!”

“It’s a brochure for a nursing home.  The target is the old person they’re trying to get to move into the nursing home.”

“So?”

“So, it’s printed on tan paper in brown ink in 9 point type.”

“So?”

“The target reader is not going to be able to read it!”

Moral: No matter how beautiful your marketing materials are, if they can’t do what they’re supposed to do — communicate — they don’t deserve a prize.

Lesson: It doesn’t do any good any good to tell a compelling story if nobody can get it.  Your first job is to make certain that your words can be received and comprehended.  Colin Wheildon’s research found that the harder you make people work to figure out what it is you are saying, the less likely people are to comprehend what you’ve said — that is, provided you haven’t already lost them before they’ve reached the end of the page.  The effectiveness of your words depends on their being conveyed in a way that supports your meaning.   Your words are only a part of the “story” you are telling about your business.  When people are reading your words on a printed page, scanning them on a computer screen, or hearing them on the radio or television, they are also experiencing:

• Readability – how easy/difficult it is to discern the words, based on your choice of typefaces, font sizes and colors, background colors, placement on the page…
• Language — how easy/difficult it is to figure out what you’re saying, based on your tone, accent, use of colloquialisms, the complexity of your sentences, the formality/informality of your approach…
• Visuals — the stories told by the photos, illustrations, colors, designs, and moving images you use…
• Kinesthetic — the weight and substance of the paper your messages appear on, how loud  your volume is set, the sort of music you use…

Think about the goals of your advertising.  Do you want to win beauty contests or do you want to communicate why, of all the choices people have available to them, they should choose your product/service?  A well-designed advertisement can’t make a weak story strong.  But a poorly-designed advertisement can undermine a strong story — even if it looks beautiful.

The customer is always right

David Friedman tells this humbling story:

I recall the day early in my career when I worked in Penn Station in NYC fixing public pay phones.  A very large man – about 6’ 6” 250 lbs- called me over to where he was using the phone and told me the phone was broken.  It didn’t seem broken and I told him so.  Thereupon, he ripped the phone off the wall and broke the handset into two pieces. NOW THE PHONE WAS REALLY BROKEN!!

It’s easy to succumb to the temptation to get into a pissing contest with a customer, especially if the customer did something stupid like buy the wrong size or install a part backwards or call your service line without checking first to see if his unresponsive machine was even plugged in.

Here’s the question: What do you get by being right?  It means you’ve “won.”  But we’re supposed to be in relationship with our customers, not at war with them.  Win the argument, lose the customer.

There is one thing the customer is always right about — he always knows whether he is happy or unhappy. And, whether his reaction to your response is pulling a phone out of the wall or just quietly walking down the street to another vendor, that action is the direct result of what he is right about. And it’s the customer’s behavior — not the final score of the Who’s Right War — that has the ultimate impact on your business.

My own humbling story

I had bought my first house.  I was very proud of myself.  And now I owned a lawn.  (Still proud of myself)  Next step: procure a lawn mower.

As it happened, one weekend morning, while I was driving around, acquainting myself with my new neighborhood, I spotted seven lawn mowers of various ages sitting in front of a house.  They all had price tags on them.  I chose a slightly-rusted but still respectable-looking one that looked just like the lawn mower I had pushed around my yard as a kid — at least I would know how to get it started — and I drove home, proudly. I had bought a lawn mower that I already knew how to use for only $35.  What a smart shopper and home/lawn owner am I!

That afternoon, I pulled my brand new/old lawn mower to the very center of my backyard. I adjusted the height of the wheels, opened the choke, and cranked ‘er up.  Like butter.  How proud I was!  I pushed the lawn mower around the perimeter of the yard, still proud, and, at almost the very place where I had begun, the lawn mower stopped dead.  Uh oh.  I pulled the starter thingee a few more times, getting a response something like, Brrrrpppppp.  Well, now I’d flooded it.

So, I popped into the house, made myself a sandwich, and gave my lawn mower about a half hour before I went out and tried in again.  Again, my new/old lawn mower started right up, just like a dream.  I’m not only proud, but smart! I can’t believe I got this fabulous piece of machinery for only $35!  Once around the yard again.  And then: nothing.  Again.  Oh, well, at least now I know how to fix it.  I cranked it a few more times, flooded it again, went back into the house and cleaned the bathroom.  Came out in a half hour and tried it again. Brrrrpppppp. Brrrrpppppp. Brrrrpppppp.

I cranked it.  I kicked it.  I turned it upside and shook it a few times.  I cranked it some more, gave it some more time.  At the end of another 45 minutes, I wasn’t so proud anymore.  I was mad.  I can’t believe I paid $35 for this lousy lawn mower!  I dragged it to my car, opened the trunk, and prepared to drive over to the house of the bastard that sold me this piece of crap machinery, give him a piece of my mind, and demand my money back!

I stormed up to the swindler’s front door and furiously informed him that he had sold me a piece of junk.  He listened to me patiently, and said, “Well, I’m so sorry about this. Let’s take a look.”  He lifted the lawn mower out of the back of my car — gently, so as not to scratch my car — and set it on the grass.  While I stood there, arms folded, foot tapping, he studied the lawn mower carefully.  Then he held up one finger, as if to say, “Don’t go away,” and he stepped into his garage.  He came back with a gasoline can, filled up the mower’s gas tank, secured the lid, and put it back into my car.

“That ought to do it for you,” he said kindly.  “Let me know if you have any more problems with it.”  I’m very grateful to that guy, partly because he sold me a decent lawn mower for $35, but mostly for not glaring at me, arguing with me, heaving weary sighs, or otherwise rubbing my nose into what an idiot I was being.  His goal was to ease my unhappiness, and he did.  What he got out of it was a customer who then referred him to all of her lawn-owning friends.

Moral: If your customer thinks he’s unhappy, he is unhappy.  Regardless of whatever else your customer is wrong about, he will always be right in his assessment of how he’s feeling about his situation.

Lesson: Is your irritated customer worth the trouble of keeping around?  Your job, when confronted with an angry, unhappy customer, is to consider what your goal for your interaction is before you respond.  Is it to be right, to win the argument, or is it to relieve your customer’s unhappiness with his situation?  Whichever response you choose will have both short-term and long-term effects that range from losing a customer to securing one for life.  You can choose, quite reasonably, to decide to kiss a troublesome customer goodbye — that’s the subject for another post — but if you do, it should be done consciously and thoughtfully, burning as few bridges as possible — rather than as the result of your being as out-of-control as your customer seems to be.

If they don’t care, it doesn’t matter

A pair of engineers left their corporate jobs and started up their own consulting company.  One of them had lots of experience in electrical engineering, the other in plumbing, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.  They counted among their clients architects and water parks.

These engineers took great pride in their standards.  While most other consulting engineering companies, including the ones they had left, handed off the work of converting hand-drawn plans into precision CAD drawings to draftsmen, assistants, or interns, these guys did all the CAD work themselves.  To them, this commitment to quality is what set them apart from their competition, and they trumpeted this difference on their web site and in all their marketing materials.

Interviews with some of the firm’s clients told a different story.  While they all agreed that these engineers did great CAD drawings, none of the clients felt that the CAD drawings coming out of this firm were any better than the drawings coming out of the firms that gave the drawings to underlings to do.  The unanimous philosophy was I don’t care who does the drawings as long as they get done and they’re accurate. In other words, the firm’s clients had confidence that any engineering firm’s CAD drawings will be perfectly fine, regardless of the process to create them, as long as the person who reviews the drawings knows what he/she is doing.

This engineering firm cared about who does CAD drawings, but its clients didn’t.  The first right thing the firm did was try to discover the truth, even though they already thought they knew what it was.  The second right thing the firm did was ask questions in a way that would give them useful information.

Questions that would not have helped these engineers discover the truth about the importance of who does the CAD drawings:

• Are you satisfied with the CAD drawings produced by XYZ Engineers?
• How satisfied are you with the CAD drawings produced by XYZ Engineers?
• What do you like about the CAD drawings produced by XYZ Engineers?
• How do you compare XYZ’s CAD drawings with those of its competition?

The reason these are not helpful is that they all assume that CAD drawings hold the same importance in their clients’ organizations that they do in their own.  Better questions:

• Talk about the process you used in finding an engineer for your last project.  What were you looking for?
• Which engineering firms were you considering for such-and-so project?  How were these firms similar to or different from one another?
• How did you end up including XYZ Engineers on the short list of engineering firms you work with?  When you choose one to work with, how do you choose?

Notice that none of these asks about CAD drawings.  (We did ask them about CAD drawings eventually, out of curiosity.  It turns out that who does the CAD drawings is so not important to the firm’s clients that they were actually surprised the topic came up.)

If you want to find out what’s important, you need to ask what’s important.  Sometimes people don’t know what’s important — actually, most of the time people don’t know what’s really important to them because we make most of our decisions unconsciously — but by steering respondents down a narrow path, we close ourselves off from finding out something potentially really cool and interesting.

As it turned out, there was something that differentiated this engineering firm in the minds of its clients: the size of the firm.  Clients didn’t care who the CAD drawings got handed off to, but they cared who they got handed off to.  This small firm had big credentials, but it wasn’t so big that clients would get lost in a queue or delegated to junior engineers.  On top of that, because it was a two-man firm, instead of a sole enterprise, clients knew that if one guy couldn’t come to the phone, the other one would — the entire company wouldn’t shut down if someone caught the flu.

A much better place to live in the heads of one’s clients — that the firm takes care of clients in a way that neither smaller nor larger firms can — and much more difficult for a competitor to replicate.

Moral: Whatever it is that matters to you about your business, if it doesn’t matter to your customers, it’s not the bait you should be using to try to lure new customers in.  This is not to say that you shouldn’t pay attention to these important things — good CAD drawings are important — but whatever you are saying about your business to differentiate it from your competitors needs to be a difference that matters to your customers.

Lesson: When you’re trying to get to the heart of where your business lives in people’s heads — this is called positioning — the smartest place to begin is with people in whose heads your product already lives, that is, your customers.  If your product or service already lives where you want it to live with your happy customers, then you can figure out how to go out and look for more people like them to make happy.

Don’t assume you know what matters — watch what customers do, ask them why they do what they do, and listen to the questions they ask you.  That will get you started on understanding matters to them.  Beware of your own blinders, those biases that prevent you from inviting people to tell you the whole truth.