I lied

A while back I wrote a post titled “Never offer a discount.” I even wrote a second post on the subject of offering discounts which you can read here. Both posts discuss the reasons that you should never offer a discount. In a nutshell, you should provide value and keep your prices firm. Don’t cheapen your brand. Yadda, yadda, yadda…well, I’ve changed my mind…sort of.

Recently, my company offered its first discount in over 20 years. It was not something that came easily. There was plenty of internal discussion about the effects of doing such a thing. But ultimately we did. And here is why.

Everyone knows we are in difficult times.  And the staffing industry is no different. But when the subject of offering a discount came up, it was always a short discussion. Nope, we’re not doing that. Eventually, however, we decided that as a long time contributor to the success of so many companies in Silicon Valley and around the country, it was time for us to give back a little and show some support. The unusual economic times dictated it. So we did. And we wrote up a nice letter explaining why we were doing it.

So while I said “never offer a discount,” there are clearly times when it makes sense. And those times are not when you are desperate for business but when you are providing support to your community.

So you’re a service company and service is not your priority?

The management team at my company recently sat through a presentation done by Staffing Industry Analysts. They are an organization that tracks all sorts of trends within the world of staffing. It can be a little dry for those of you that don’t like numbers, charts and graphs. Their presentations don’t usually provide anything too surprising but they always have some good information. Their most recent presentation, however, had some real shockers.

One of the questions they asked staffing firms across the country was this, “What are your top priorities?” And to everyone’s shock in the room the bottom two priorities were “Recruiting Quality People” and “Excellent Customer Service” Really? Quality people and customer service? Those are the bottom two?

Now I realize times are tough and companies are scrambling to make ends meet, but there is no way a company in a service industry should ever rank those two items at the bottom of their list of priorities. Never ever. And if you find yourself doing it, your pretty much doomed.

Providing a quality service REQUIRES quality people and an intense focus on excellent service. This is true during good times and bad. Don’t loose focus on the long term goal by focusing on short term problems.

My CEO posted more about the presentation on our company blog.

Your customers just want to know

I had a very unfortunate experience with Ricoh customer service this week. And although Ricoh sells products and not services, there is a lesson to be learned. Your customers just want to know what’s going on.

So I needed a new part for our color printer here at work. The printer is less than a year old and the Ricoh guy on the phone, Scott, told me they would replace the part free of charge. Great. So far so good. I scanned in the invoice and emailed it to Scott for proof of purchase as he requested. Perfect. We’re all set. He told me the part would ship on Monday. Great.

Thursday rolled around and no part. I called and left a voice mail asking for a return call to let me know when I could expect to see the part. I also sent an email. Nothing. No reply. I called again on Friday and was told Scott had gone home for the day.

“Okay, but can you tell me when I’ll be getting my replacement part?” I asked.

“Nope, I’m sorry but I don’t have access to that information. You’ll need to speak with Scott.”

Great. “Can I leave him another voicemail please.”

Monday rolls around and still nothing. More voicemials and emails and I get no reply. And all I want to know is when the part is arriving. So finally, its Thursday. A week and a half after I was told the part shipped and I get a call from the front desk that there is a package from Ricoh for me.

Yes, the part has arrived.

I bring it upstairs, replace the part and the printer works like a charm. And believe it or not, as I get back to my office I notice I have a voice mail. Its Scott. My part should be arriving today.

Thanks Scott.

The fact is, your customers simply want to be made aware of what’s going on. This is so often the most common reason for dissatisfied customers, whether you are selling a product or a service. Your customers just want to know.

Its not the size of the logo that counts

The title of this post really says it all. Don’t make your logo too big. I see it over and over, almost like a company feels that it won’t get noticed if their logo is too small.

The companies that pay boatloads of money to manage their brand and logo don’t use large logos, so why would you. Take a look:

Intel
Cisco
Toyota
Disney
Apple

Have to vs. get to

If you are not telling everybody about your service, then its probably not that great. You recommend movies, restaurants, and TV shows to others without hesitation. That’s because you have an emotional attachment to them. They brought some joy to your life and you want to share that with others. But do you have the same feeling about the service you offer?

If you truly believe your service will improve someones life, you are already telling people about it. You are figuring out ways to reach the people that will benefit from it and telling them all about it. You are disappointed when you get voice mail because you lost out on an opportunity to tell someone about your service. Is your attitude that you “have to” sell your service or you “get to” sell your service?

Let me give you a a great example.

I get lots of sales calls at work. And because of this, I don’t answer my phone if its not a number I recognize. So the other day I’m sitting at my desk working away and I get paged that there is a call for me. So I pick it up and surprisingly its a sales call. But the thing is, the guy was so sure that I would benefit from his service that he felt it was that important to speak with me. At first I was a little irritated but the more I listened to the guy, it was apparent that he really believed in what he was selling. He felt he just had to reach me. This guy had the privilege of “getting to” sell his service not “having to.”

There is a big difference and your customers and prospects can tell.

Whatever you blog about, don’t do this

I came across something last week that shock me to some degree. A major, multi-national company had made a post to their blog that basically outlined their services. It was like reading a company brochure. It was painful to read. I almost commented on the post but realized my sanity would be better served if I just left it alone.

If you are blogging, or plan to blog, do us all a favor and please do not post anything that feels “corporate”. And please do not write about anything that belongs on your website. Your posts should be informal, informative, current, trustworthy, honest, and to the point. Blogging is about having a conversation and providing insight not telling the world what you are selling.

As my CEO said in the first post on our company blog, “Yes, this is the ATR blog and I could write about ATR, but that’s probably not what you want to read. If you want to read about ATR, you would go to our website.”

Amen.

Who needs collateral material?

The topic of collateral material comes up often at my company. Its one of those things that everyone has an opinion on, and every opinion seems to be a little different. From copy to color to images to layout, everyone seems to love offering their opinions on how a brochure should look. But is collatreral material really that important?

I heard it said once that the best sales person only needs a pad of paper and a pen. And at the risk of offending some of my colleagues in sales, there is a lot of truth to that.

During a sales meeting the other day, we were going back and forth about what should be in our brochures. After 10-15 minutes of “discussion”, our Executive VP said something that really rang true, and I am paraphrasing:

“Let’s not forget that you are the ones selling the companies services, not the brochure. Don’t get caught up in what the brochure says or doesn’t say. What’s important is that you are out there speaking with clients and prospects and demonstrating to them your expertise and convincing them you are the solution to their problem.”

This statement ended the conversation in its tracks. Everyone knew it was true and we all realized that “discussing” brochure content was probably not a great use of everyone’s time.

So who needs collateral material? I know who doesn’t, and those are the people I want to buy from.

The road less traveled

As I was sorting through my feeds over New Year’s looking for something that seemed interesting, I came across a post on GigaOM. Its titled With 2008, Let’s Say Good-bye to Mediocrity. My first thought was that it is truly sad that we even have to be saying this, and I think Mr. Om is actually being kind with his choice of words. In a country that put the first man on the moon, created the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, invented the steamboat, telegraph, telephone, cotton gin, light bulb, airplane, transistor and so much more, have we really gotten to the point where we need a reminder that mediocrity is bad? It seems so.

If nothing else can be taken from the past year, it is a great reminder that mediocrity is not an ingredient in the recipe for success. One should always be looking for ways to improve processes, communications, service delivery, etc. If you are doing things the way they have always been done then chances are you are mediocre. You are traveling the same old road over and over.

To paraphrase a great American author, if you take the road less traveled, it will make all the difference. Happy new year.

Happy Holidays

Wishing everyone the very best no matter what it is you are celebrating. Happy Holidays to everyone. Here’s to hoping for a better 2009.

Shouting is not marketing

We’ve all seen it…splashy adds in the paper, neon starburst signs in store windows touting huge discounts, flashy spam email offering bargain prices on printer cartridges, some guy on tv yelling at the screen that you just have to try Shamwow! And some people actually call this marketing or maybe advertising. Most of us simply call it annoying.

Let’s be clear, this is not marketing. So what is marketing? According to the American Marketing Association (AMA) “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.” That definition works, but I personally like how Allen Weiss at Marketing Profs defines it, “Marketing is, in fact, the analysis of customers, competitors, and a company, combining this understanding into an overall understanding of what segments exist, deciding on targeting the most profitable segments, positioning your products, and then doing what’s necessary to deliver on that positioning.”

The key really is finding the most desirable segments of the your market and positioning your product or service in a way that that segment finds appealing. Making pretty brochures and websites is fun, but ultimately its about revenue and profit.