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What Leaders Want to Know
- What is your most important target audience right now? Is this market the source of growth for the future?
- How valuable would it be to have customers tell you exactly what you need to grow your business?
- You don’t chose the method the customer uses to deliver a message; the customer does.
- What example will you set for your team in active listening and responding to customers needs?
- How will you recover from a service failure?
- What is there about your store to attract people as an alternative to the low price/same experience message of the chains and big boxes?
- Identify what you do for your customers and how your customers are better off doing business with you.
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Content
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The primary elements of ALL good marketing plans
- Values
- Mission
- Past Performance
- Target Audience
- Products & Services
- Edge
- Branding
- Future Performance
- Future Pacing
- Development
- 3 WIGs
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Step-by-Step Tooling
- Target Marketing
- Word-of-Mouth Marketing
- Marketing Campaigns
- Progressive Planning
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BULLSEYE: Targeting and
Retaining Your Best Customers
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1 - identify your current target audience
- Your growth is always on the shoulders of what you have done in the past — always.
- Start with looking at your existing customer base.
- Who do you enjoy working with?
- Who values what you provide?
- Who is willing to pay you for that?
- Do they have buying patterns?
- Looking at your existing numbers, what do they tell you about your business?
- Who are the best revenue-producing customers?
- Who are the most profitable customers?
- What are your key profit centers and who are the best customers for these profit centers?
- Either identify your overall best customers or best customers for key profit centers.
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2 - identify your value proposition
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Operational excelence
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Providing customers with reliable products and services at competitive prices, delivered with minimal inconvenience
- Stripping out operational costs wherever possible
- Eliminating production steps
- Reducing transaction costs
- Optimizing business processes
- Examples
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Product leadership
- Product innovation
- Early adoption
- New, edgy, fresh
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Customer intimacy
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Segmenting and targeting markets precisely and then tailoring offerings to match exactly the demands of those niches
- Investments in customer knowledge, customer service and the ability to customize
- Willing to spend now to build customer loyalty later
- Examples
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3 - identify your dream target audience
- Your growth is still on the shoulders of what you have done in the past.
- Who do you enjoy working with?
- Who values what you provide?
- Who is willing to pay you for that?
- Who are your best revenue-producing customers?
- Who are the most profitable customers?
- Do your value proposition and target audience currently match up?
- If not, how will you make that happen?
- If so, how will you enhance it?
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Targeted products and services
- From the exploration above, it is now clear what your best products are and why.
- How can you better fill the needs of your existing customers who fit your target audience parameters?
- How can you attract and keep new customers who fit your target audience parameters?
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New Customer Process
- Pharmacy
- Physician
- Retail
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Vision
- Organization Vision. Where do you see your organization in 3-5 years?
- What can you do today that gets you closer?
- What must you do today to get you there then?
- Problems you solve
- Products and services
- What you or your organization does best
- Target markets served
- Value you provide and to whom
- Number and location of offices
- Processes you oversee
- Technologies you have in place
- Types of employees/contractors
- How big can your organization/career get?
- Key milestones needed?
- Do you have controbution goals?
- What else about your vision?
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Mission
- We express our values with the following activities...
- The contribution we want to make in the world through our work is...
- What makes us passionate about what we do...
- Who Are You
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Values
- consider a Value segment if you're not clear
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WORD-OF-MOUTH MARKETING : Turning
Your Customers into Raving Fans
- It's easier to keep a customer than to to find a new one.
- It's cheaper to keep a customer than to to find a new one.
- The most effective way to keep a customer is to MAKE THEM FEEL HEARD!
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Customer communications can be delivered using the following methods:
- Comments
- Compliments
- Appreciation or thank you notes
- Questions
- Ideas or suggestions
- Requests or wishes
- Complaints
- Upsets and mistakes
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Customer complaints
- 1. Say 'thank you'
- 2. Explain why you appreciate the complaint
- 3. Apologize for the mistake
- 4. Promise to do something about the problem immediately
- 5. Ask for necessary information, like product or employee names
- 6. Correct the mistake promptly
- 7. Check customer satisfaction
- 8. Prevent future mistakes by creating or updating system
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Service Recovery Process
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1. Apologize:
- It doesn’t matter who is at fault. Customers want someone to acknowledge that a problem or difficulty exists or occurred and to show concern over their dissatisfaction.
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2. Listen and Empathize:
- This is essential. Treating a customer in a way that shows you care about them as well as their problem will go a long way to fixing the problem and diffusing any anger.
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3. Acknowledge the Customer's Feelings:
- Customers have feelings and emotions. It’s important to acknowledge these as well as the facts of the situation. Listen to what they say and then repeat it back to them in your own words so they know you were listening.
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4. Fix the Problem Quickly and Fairly:
- Involve the customer in the solution. Find out how they would like the situation resolved and if at all possible, accept their solution. If not, explain what you can do instead.
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5. Express Thanks:
- Thank the customer for bringing the problem or issue to your attention. Remember that the customer who voices their dissatisfaction is in the minority. Most dissatisfied customers simply walk away. This customer is giving you the opportunity to correct the problem.
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6. Follow Up:
- You can add extra care by following up after the customer leaves with a call or note to make sure things were resolved to their satisfaction. Don’t assume you’ve fixed the problem. Check in with them to be certain.
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Involving your team
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How will we track customer input?
- Journal at registers?
- Journal at exit?
- Note box for staff?
- Verbal statement to MOD?
- Active listening
- Capturing customer communication
- Discussing the messages received
- Discussing how to make improvements
- Discuss common mistakes that happen in your store or areas of your store that generate complaints. Discuss ways of minimizing them, and also how to deal with them so you and your team can handle the improvement; the customers perception of value.
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Analysis Tool
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Comment 1
- Subtopic 1
- Subtopic 2
- Subtopic 3
- Comment 2
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Branding
- Distinctive
- Relevant
- Consistent
- Authentic
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Positioning
- Create a story
- Be specific
- Give clear solutions and valuable benefits
- Make an easy yes
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Problem Statement
- Gain emotional access
- State solutions
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Explain edge-USP
- Unlike others...
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How to Develop
Marketing Campaigns
- If you don’t differentiate what you provide, people will choose the lowest perceived price, point blank.
- “Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation." - Milan Kundera
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Benefits
- Have a clear focus on who your target customer is and how to reach them.
- Have a consistent message that your staff can be comfortable sharing.
- Builds your reputation as a stable community provider.
- A chance to have fun and think creatively.
- Develop strong relationships and communication with clients, prospects and vendors.
- More streamlined decision making ability.
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Micro-Branding
- What you do for customers
- What your customers value most
- What your focus is and why customers are better off doing business with you
- The emotion you want your customers to feel when engaging with you
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Reenforcing
- Letters
- Advertising
- Emails
- Facebook pages
- All printed items
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Your Marketing Template
- Plan. Identify what you are promoting.
- List benefits.
- Craft a message.
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Determine distribution.
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PR
- JV
- Event
- Contribution
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In House
- Staff Training
- Scripting
- Bagstuffers
- Posters
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Direct
- Email Blast
- Facebook/Twitter Posting
- Voicemail Blast
- Newsletter
- Mailing
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Advertising
- Newspaper Ad (local/regional)
- Radio Ad
- TV Ad
- Billboard
- Determine time-line and initiate tracking tools/team.
- Marketing Message and Formats
- Marketing Copy Checklist
- Press Release-Why, How & Sample
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Development
- Assignments and experience needed
- Strengths that we can build on
- Knowledge and skills we need to move forward
- Behaviors that might be holding us back
- Attitudes that might be holding us back
- And how will we acquire/build/shift or eliminate them?
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Assessment tools to identify likely high performers
- Teachable moments – providing real-time feedback
- Setting a tone for and modeling high performance
- Rewards and recognition
- Recruiting that targets potential leaders
- Management by walking around
- Recruiting leaders from outside who can shake things up
- More flexible options to retain top talent
- Mentoring
- Internal leadership development academy
- Identifying flight risks and engaging them before they leave
- Fostering collaboration up, down, and across the organization
- Formal succession planning for key roles
- Dialog with employees about the company’s direction, vision, and strategy
- Development planning
- Designing roles to include autonomy and opportunities to grow
- Compensation and reward systems
- Coaching
- Clear career paths
- Training programs
- Challenging high-potentials through new assignments and projects
- Frequent informal performance reviews
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Progressive Planning
- Utilize the Rule of 3
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Plan your marketing for year
- Monthly , Bi-monthly, Quarterly Cycles
- Develop templates for each form of distribution
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Ideas for planning
- National health calendars: Pain Awareness Month
- Sports/Social calendars: Professional Football season
- Spring = Outdoor, Fun in the Sun activities
- New line(s) of products you want to highlight
- Will your plan be program, product or topic based
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Summary
- Values
- Mission
- Future Vision
- Edge
- WIGs
- Development