Tag Archive for 'Age of the Customer'

The customer is now in control - get over it!

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on May 4, 2011
in Social Media and e-Business
. 2 Comments

As previously revealed in this space, the Age of the Seller is succumbing to the Age of the Customer. In the new Age, control of the relationship between Seller and Customer has shifted to the latter.

This paradigm shift is largely caused by online platforms that are: 1) increasing the access customers have to information about a Seller and its products; 2) allowing customers to express and share what they have learned about and experienced with a business.

To put two fine points on the first element of the shift, in the new Age: Customers have access to virtually all the information they need before you know they’re interested, and prospects are similarly informed before you even know they exist. Such access to information is changing - or disrupting - the way you market to and connect with customers, as well as how you train sales people. Plus it demonstrates why your greatest danger in the Age of the Customer isn’t being uncompetitive, it’s becoming irrelevant.

The second element is the new kid on the block, but corresponds to a centuries-old marketplace maxim, “If you make customers happy they will tell someone; if you make them unhappy they will tell 10 people,” which describes the ancient practice of word-of-mouth. The theory behind the 1:10 ratio is that all businesses, regardless of size, are motivated to perform, or risk a marketplace indictment by the judge and jury of word-of-mouth.

In the new Age, online platforms have caused word-of-mouth to transmogrify into a powerful dynamic called “user generated content,” aka UGC. This is when customers post online their experiences, questions, praise or condemnation about a seller’s products, services, and general behavior in the marketplace. In the vernacular, it’s word-of-mouth on steroids.

Indeed, if the word-of-mouth maxim were coined today it would sound like this: “Customers may post online their opinion – positive or otherwise – about your business, making it available potentially to millions.” To paraphrase Mark Twain, comparing word-of-mouth to UGC is like comparing a lightning bug to lightning.

In the new Age you have to do two new things: 1) anticipate that customers are already well informed; 2) track and respond to UGC about your business. And how well you do these two will influence whether the new customer control becomes a sales lever, or a disruptor that makes you irrelevant.

It’s the Age of the Customer - get over it.

Last week on my radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked with Alan Maites, President of Robinson & Maites, an unconventional marketing firm in Chicago, about the Age of the Customer and how it will change relationships with customers. Take a few minutes to click on one of the links below and listen to our conversation. And, as always, leave your thoughts on the Age of the Customer.

Marketing in the Age of the Customer featuring Alan Maites

Serve communities in the Age of the Customer featuring Alan Maites

Let customers read about your authentic side

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on March 2, 2011
in Customer Care and Networking
. 0 Comments

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics and author of The Wealth of Nations (1776), identified writing as one of the three most important inventions of mankind – the other two being money and economic tables.

More than two centuries later, the Internet has powered the written word to levels unimagined only a generation ago, let alone during Smith’s era. Indeed, it is the driving force behind a handy new-media maxim, “Content is King.”

Today we’re consumers of many kinds of online content, including streaming audio and video. But even in the face of such multi-media majesty as iTunes and YouTube, most of the kingly content is still in the graphic form so highly regarded by Smith.

So what does all of this mean for small business owners? It’s simple: In an era when content is king, if you want to connect with customers competitively and stay connected, you have to produce more written words than ever before. But not just any words – authentic words.

Since 1999 – long before blogs and social media – two of the things I’ve encouraged small business owners to do is: 1) develop better writing skills and 2) publish more of their own words online that communicate to and connect with customers.

In the 2nd decade of the 21st century, prospects and customers want to read about the stuff you sell before they meet you. But they want more than marketing messaging; they want authentic, straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth information that delivers three things that are increasingly a big deal to customers: the voice, vision and values of the human beings behind the stuff, as unartful and unscripted as they may be.

So don’t worry if you’re not a professional wordsmith. When you need fancy words for strategic marketing messaging, online or otherwise, hire a pro. But you must become comfortable with conveying your vision and values online, in your own words – the voice – about a variety of issues from explaining how to use a product you sell to a local cause you care about to your philosophy on serving customers. And it’s just fine if some of these authentic words come from employees.

In the Age of the Customer™, now armed with as much information as the businesses they patronize, customers expect to be treated more like insiders. The good news is that no one makes this connection as effectively and authentically as a small business.

Recently on The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked more about using language to reach and connect with your customers. Take a few minutes to listen and leave some ideas on how you connect with your customers.  Authenticity through the written word

Do you know how customers are finding you?

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on February 23, 2011
in Customer Care
. 0 Comments

In the old days, when someone would call or come in the door of your business for the first time, you would ask them how they found you. And since it’s not your customer’s job to catalog such things for future retrieval, you probably had to help them a little by reciting examples of where you might have spent your marketing budget: an ad on the radio, TV, newspaper, Yellow Pages, a Little League uniform, etc.

Here in the second decade of the 21st century, asking how customers find you is still important, but with one new element: For the past 10-15 years, you should also include, “or did you find us online?”

Not too long ago, saying “our website” instead of “online” would have been appropriate. Today, online is best because customers can find you in other places on the Internet, including the social media and customer review platforms, even if, Heaven forbid, you don’t have a website.

The question is not whether your company is “out there” online today, but rather to what degree and – this is so important it will be on the test – what is being said about your business.

We wanted to know how much small businesses are attributing sales performance to the Internet, so recently we asked our radio and online audience this question: “How much of your 2011 sales do you think will result from some kind of Internet activity, even as simple as people just finding your business mentioned online?” The results made me very happy. About 90% of our respondents said they would be able to attribute some sales in 2011 from the Internet.

Breaking the numbers down, over 50% said less than half of 2011 sales would be attributed to online activity. The next number is really exciting: About one-fourth said they would see more than half of their sales from the Internet. And finally, the bookends: Those who said all of their sales would come from the Internet were almost the same – around 10% – as those who recorded a goose egg because (read this with a nasal whine), “We don’t have a website.”

As the Age of the Customer™ becomes the marketplace norm, your customers are increasingly demanding more connection and support from you with online resources. Any company that is not making at least some effort to meet the growing online support demand will experience the painful death of irrelevancy.

You don’t have to win the online race to be successful, but you do have to show up and compete.

Today on The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked more about the Age of the Customer and why you should have an online presence. Click on the link below to listen and, as always, leave your comments.

Do you know how customers are finding you?

To participate in this week’s Small Business Advocate poll, go to SmallBusinessAdvocate.com.

It’s the Age of the Customer - get over it!

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on February 16, 2011
in Problem solving and Sales - Sales Management
. 0 Comments

Markets were born when humans chose to acquire what they needed by trading with each other rather than producing it themselves or taking from someone else by force. The moment of proto-market conception was when the first seller offered to trade with the first customer, and that offer was accepted.

For millennia, this marketplace dance was as beautifully simple as it was exquisitely effective, having at its nucleus three primary elements:

1. The product, controlled by the seller
2. Information about the product, also controlled by the seller
3. The buying decision, controlled by the customer

From that first transaction, when shells were the reserve currency, to about 1995AD, the marketplace dance was performed zillions of times with little variation. I’ve termed this period “The Age of the Seller,” because the Seller controlled two of the three elements.

Then something happened that had not occurred for 10,000 years: A new age – I call it The Age of the Customer™.

This new Age was born as micro-computers and associated innovations converged with high-speed Internet and associated applications. As this convergence shifts marketplace paradigms, it conveys the balance of power from the seller to the customer.

The millennia-old marketplace dance is still beautifully simple. But when the dancers come together in the Age of the Customer, a new leader emerges, because control of the three major relationship elements has changed:

1. Products and services are still controlled by the Seller.
2. Information – including customer experiences – is now easily and abundantly available to the Customer without being controlled, filtered or distributed by the Seller.
3. The buying decision is still controlled by the Customer.

The Age of the Seller is succumbing to the new Age as customers resist the restrictions of the former Age and embrace the empowerment of the new. During this transition period, Sellers are operating in parallel universes, but not for long.

Your small business is now operating in a new age where customers rule. They like this new-found empowerment, and increasingly expect sellers to connect with them on Age of the Customer terms. Sellers that transition to the new Age with their customers will be successful. Hidebound sellers, nostalgic for when they had control, will become irrelevant and perish.

It’s the Age of the Customer – your world has changed.

Recently on The Small Business Advocate Show I talked more about the Age of the Customer and how you can avoid becoming irrelevant. Take a few minutes to click on the links below and listen. As always, leave your comments on what is working for you in the 21st century marketplace.

It’s the Age of the Customer - get over it!

Avoiding irrelevance in the Age of the Customer

Economic recovery job one: Rebuild trust

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on February 10, 2010
in Communication, Customer Care, Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Trust
. 2 Comments

In life and in the marketplace, nothing works without trust. I believe that so much that for the entire time I’ve been talking with small business owners on my radio program, we’ve included the wisdom and counsel of experts on trust as regular programming. Here is an important thought on trust from one of our experts, whose name and book I’ll identify below:

“Trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It undergirds and affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture, every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality and outcome of every future moment of our lives, both personally and professionally.”

The Great Recession we’re experiencing has produced a kind of double jeopardy: the classic negative elements of any economic downturn, plus what we now know caused the recession, a collapse of trust. Consequently, true economic recovery can’t happen, regardless of government efforts, until we regain trust. Not only do we have to rebuild our economy, we have an extra, and even more important assignment to fulfill: each of us has to demand trust and demonstrate trustworthiness across all sectors of society and the marketplace.

Recently on my program, The Small Business Advocate Show, the author of the quote above, Stephen M.R. Covey joined me again to discuss why operating with trust and fostering its growth will be more critical to success in the future than ever before. Stephen is a member of my Brain Trust, co-founder and CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide, a keynote speaker and advisor on trust, leadership, ethics, and high performance, and author of The SPEED of Trust.  The quote is on pages 1and 2.  And yes, he is one of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen R. Covey’s four sons.

Take a few minutes to listen my visit with Stephen and leave your thoughts on rebuilding trust. Listen Live! Download, Too!

Don’t just adjust to change, lead it and sell it

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on February 8, 2010
in Customer Care, Leadership and Problem solving
. 1 Comment

As I have said many times before, our challenge is not change - the computer is just a fancy wheel.  Indeed, the only thing that’s really different about change in the past 3,000 years is the velocity of change. What’s taking our breath away is the time between generations of change, which is being significantly compressed by technological innovations.

In this high-velocity change environment in which you operate your business, sustained success requires that you do more than merely accept change.  In fact, 21st century success means you embrace change, are able to sell it to your organization and customers and then lead that change - everyday.

I know this sounds hard. It is. If it weren’t, monkeys would be running small businesses.  But here is a piece of advice that will help you embrace, sell and lead change.  I hope you’ll write this down somewhere and remember it. I call it Blasingame’s 21st century Small Business Attitude on Change: “It’s okay to fall in love with what you do, but you can’t fall in love with how you do it.”

Recently, on my radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show, I discussed this new attitude on change with Brett Clay, including tips on how to incorporate this leadership attitude about change to find solutions for your customers. Brett is the founder and CEO of Change Leadership Group, LLC. and the author of Selling Change: 101 Secrets for Growing Sales by Leading Change.

Take a few minutes to listen to what Brett and I have to say and, as always, leave your own thoughts on leading with change. Listen Live! Download, Too!