I love, therefore I buy...

I have a friend who happens to own and run the largest privately owned hardware store back where I’m from.  Granted it’s a family business that was started by his father.  But by most accounts he’s managed to not only maintain the business but grow it as well.  He’s done all this in the face of the Home Depot, Loews and a world of competition that his dad never had to deal with.

He also happens to be the first person in his family to ever graduate from university.  He’ll tell you that all the book smarts he picked up about business and management strategies combined with all the hard work put in by the family is the secret to the success.  No doubt those are huge factors, but I think there’s something else at play.

For some bizarre reason his favourite artist has always been Madonna.  Always has been always will be.   In our younger years, when out on the town.  When Madonna came over the sound system.  Watch out!  My buddy would spread his arms as though he had wings and would spin around like a helicopter on the dance floor.  If only more camera phones existed back then...

This gregariousness and larger than life personality carries over to all aspects of life.  He’s the guy that nobody has anything bad to say about.  In fact, he’s the face of the hardware store which markets itself as a place where the staff will remember you and where you’ll get a level of customer service that you simply can’t put a price on.

Contrast that with who he competes against, big boxes.  Faceless corporations, the type of businesses that Michael Moore makes documentaries about.

That disparity between the culture of small business and the culture of big business is something that as marketers I think we can all help to improve.

Social media and a renewed focus on the experience provided to customers across all channels at its core are humanizing the world of business.  Consumers don’t want to be looked at as sources of revenue on a pie chart.  Consumers want to be a part of a community, and they want to know the people behind the businesses and be a part of an active dialog on how to improve them.  This is grounded in not only psychology but biology.  We’re a tribal species, and I think that business is really on the cusp of an era of understanding this again.

That’s why as long as Madonna still sells albums; my friend will be ok…

Look what I've got up my sleeve...

I probably spent about 82% of my teenage years playing the guitar; most of that time was practice, some of it playing gigs, and some of it jamming with whoever I could find to jam with.  At one point I actually got pretty good at it.  But that didn’t happen until I learned an important lesson about what being a good guitar player actually meant.

Early on my dad taught me how to play some basic chords and scales, then I bought myself few song books and I was off to the races.  Once I had some finger strength I proceeded to spend about a year and a half learning how to play every song off of Metallica – Kill Em All, and Eruption by Eddie Van Halen.

At that point I was quite proud of myself, and I thought I was pretty good.  I could play accurately, and I could play really fast – really fast.  Then one day I was jamming with some folks in the area and an older guy who was a one of the best musicians I’ve ever played with told me something quite profound.  “All those things that you do, the pinch harmonics, the finger tapping, all the effects, forget about them, those are just tricks… focus on the notes you’re playing and how they feel”. 

He was right, I was hiding the music with all the tricks I learned early on, and since I was so skilled at scattering my music with those tricks they were both obscuring the notes, and they were holding me back from really becoming a good guitarist.  So from that point on I tried to focus on how the notes felt, instead of how many I could play at a time.

Today I see a similar thing happening with social media.  Everyone seems to be creating Twitter scavenger hunts, or a social media raffles that send users on some web based goose chases.  In today’s marketing’s quest to turn every campaign viral, and get the type of groundswell buzz that folks like JJ Abrams often get they are repeating the mistake that I made as a young guitarist.  They are letting all these tricks obscure the value of the social channel.

Social at its core allows customers an unprecedented level and speed of communication with vendors.  In short social media channels such as Twitter, allow you to have a direct conversation without the gatekeepers that usually exist in a customer/vendor relationship.  Plus in the case of Twitter, the message limitations actually force both parties to get to the point much faster. 

So for the time being, why don’t we all set aside the social media tricks for a minute (unless of course you actually ARE JJ Abrams) and focus on the conversation…

What I learned from a homeless dude with a golden voice…

I'm certain that you've all seen or read, and heard about a man named Ted Williams who's blessed with a golden voice. He was once a radio announcer but had fallen on hard times until Doral Chenoweth III posted a video of him online showcasing both his voice and his story.

That little video went viral and now Ted has several job offers on the table, and even some offers from some to sponsor him a new home.

Definitely a great feel good story, and definitely a much happier story to start the year than the other big story in my news feeder at the moment which involves hundreds of thousands of animals dying and falling out of the sky… scary.

Anyway, back to the man with the golden voice. His story reinforces something that I believe in with when it comes to social media or web 2.0 or whatever other buzzword you want to attach to communication on the internet. These are technologies that can finally bring us together as a global village.

The portion of the video that to me was the most powerful was not simply the voice, but when he described how he used to have a career in radio, but then drugs and alcohol became a part of his life and things took a turn for the worse. With that, I was pulled in to the screen and Ted resonated as a real person. A real person, with a real story, who had experienced real tragedy, which all somehow made me care. What the internet provided was simply a platform for him to distribute his message to an audience wider than he could have ever imagined.

That's what a global village is all about. It's about going back to a time when we all knew each other's names, a time when I felt a personal connection to my neighbors. A time when people even had real relationships with vendors, only they were called local businesses back then. Joe the butcher, Doris the florist, Ken the guy who cuts my hair.

Some will tell you that things have evolved past those ideals. But this new communication platform now give us an opportunity to turn back the clock… at a global scale. The internet changes the definition of local. My neighbourhood is no longer measured in kilometers, but instead by the reach of my message.

So all you sales and marketing people out there. A request. Please stop inviting me to "like" stuff or asking me to follow you if all you're going to do is send me the same boring brochures and press releases. Tell me something about yourself. Tell me why you're a real person. Make me laugh. Tell me why you're a real person who I should trust, and heck maybe I'll even take a look at what you're selling along the way.

 

What is this guy talking about again?

Over the years I’ve developed a love/hate relationship with product demos.  In my various sales and marketing roles and even today I’ve had to deliver hundreds of product demos for audiences as small as one person or as large as a few hundred at an event.  Being a regular attendee of industry events, I’ve also had to sit through many, many, many product demos over the years as well.

The good and bad of product demos really crystallized in my head over the holidays.  

In an effort to better share photos with my in-laws, my wife set her father up with a Facebook account.  All he wanted to do was see pictures of his grandson…  My wife had all the best intentions but proceeded to put him through a painstakingly detailed product demo of Facebook.  This is how you post your status update, this is how you search for new friends, this is how you buy a new pig in Farmville, this is how I play Scrabble with my friend from high school I haven’t seen in ten years... on and on it went…  He was put through a gauntlet of about a dozen features and capabilities before he got to see even one photo.  The look on his face said it all… He had fallen asleep.

And that is what’s wrong with product demos.

I’d seen this demo before.  Only it had to do with virtualization, or business intelligence, or systems monitoring, or some other “B2B” related topic.  Very rarely did a product demo ever get to the point.  Or at least they rarely get to the point before I fall asleep.

All I want to do is see some photos!  Or perhaps all I care about is the one report I need!

Sadly technology driven people, and technology driven presenters are too focused on features.  Especially the new ones - those are the shiniest.  Users, customers, father in laws, they just want to get to the good part.  They want to read the last page of the book first.  Or perhaps a better analogy - they just want the headlines.  Takes less time, and gives more value.

So please, for all you product presenters out there.  Get to the point.  Show me what I care about, and save the features for inside your own boardrooms.

It’s all in the sauce man…

Over the holidays I had a few discussions with various people about the failed buyout of Groupon by Google. Everyone was completely flabbergasted by the valuation the company was given, rumoured to be close to SIX BILLION DOLLARS (said in my best Dr. Evil voice). Interestingly just this week Goldman Sachs invested in Facebook putting their valuation close to FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS (again, with the Dr. Evil voice).

This got me to thinking. Where is this value really coming from? An accountant I am not, however from what I can tell, neither of these companies, can justify this valuation off of revenue alone. So there must be something else, something about their potential.

So here's a story…

I have a friend back home who is wildly successful. The root success is pizza. He started a local pizzeria many years ago and has since expended to having multiple locations and even franchised out other locations as well. If you ask him, the secret is in his sauce, some of family recipe. Although I swear I see it simply come out of a can. Nevertheless, I believe that his secret lies somewhere else.

Whenever I walk in to his restaurant (he still enjoys manning the counter at the place where it all started) he greets me by name. Not only that. Everyone who walks through the door is greeted by name. Even more, he still remembers most people's orders by heart. No onions for this guy, extra sauce for her, that ladies kids like the crust well done…

For me the personal touch that he brings and real relationships he has developed with his customers over the years is what has made him a success. It's what makes his customers come back over and over, and it's what makes us all recommend his restaurant for best pizza in the city whenever asked.

What if there was some way he could expand that personal touch outside of his neighbourhood? What if there was some way that he could create a global community where everyone could get to know him, interact with him, suggest things, or maybe even post a coupon or two…

AH HAH!!! Could that be the secret? I think so. Never before has it been so easy for customers and vendors to start a direct dialog. Social media, web 2.0, team buying, blah blah, blah. To me the core value of all of this is the internet's ability to break down the communication walls between buyers and sellers. The online world gives us all an ability to take the loyalty of the local pizza store and spread it to a global fan base. How much is this worth? Well apparently the financiers of the world have already valued it at BILLIONS OF DOLLARS (again Dr. Evil)!

And you thought it was all in the sauce…..

Faster than the speed of the internet...

I heard an interesting quote the other day that for the kids today everything moves at the speed of the internet. I've been thinking about this and realized that despite being well beyond my kid state, I also expect things at the speed of the internet also. Well my attention span does anyway.

My wife tells me that I have a shorter attention span than our one year old son. I blame the internet the way people used to blame MTV. But I see this as a good thing. I believe this is a result of the tremendous access I have today to information. Some might be useless, while some can also be tremendously valuable.

Take how the online world has transformed the buying process of today's consumer; both enterprise and individual.

I'll use my recent experience of buying a car as an example. I spent hundreds of hours researching before making my purchase. Not only did I go through traditional channels like the typical car magazines off the magazine rack, I also ended up joining a few online forums. I even joined one site that offered a service that gave me access to manufacturer list pricing as well a dealer invoice pricing for not only the cars but for accessories as well. I also joined owner communities for the top two vehicles I had narrowed my selection down to, to get an owner side perspective of the pros and cons of each vehicle.

Best of all this was all research that I was able to entirely on my own.

By the time I got to test driving the cars I knew exactly what I wanted in terms of the options and price I was looking for. More than that I also knew what to expect and things to look out for in terms of how the cars drove from the user forums.

I was a buyer with a level of education and comfort in the product that would have been unheard of only 10 years ago. Rather than relying exclusively on the manufacturer and dealer to provide me with the information I needed to decide on my purchase by the time I arrived on the car lot I only needed a few things validated and someone willing to process paperwork for me.

That's the beauty of the access to information available online. It's also something that can be frightening to vendors. The old adage says that knowledge is power. And in the world of sales and marketing this has put a twist on another old adage "the customer is always right".

Kids today…..


 

HOW TO: Use Social Media to Create Better Customer Experiences

HOW TO: Use Social Media to Create Better Customer Experiences