A very good morning to you all. As I write this, England are enjoying the euphoria of not being knocked out of the World Cup at the group stages. It's an odd mentality isn't it? We don't so much celebrate winning as we celebrate not losing. Still, it's nice to see so many people in a good mood, so let's see if we can keep it up.
This week I want to talk to you about voucher codes. Now there are a number of sites out there that will offer you discounts on restaurants, high street retail stores, attractions and all sorts of things. All you need to do is know where to find them, print them out and WHAM - money saved.
Shelly (that's my wife for all you new readers out there, and as much as I'd like her to read this blog, she rarely does) asked me what the point was in these vouchers. Why would anyone want to just give discounts to anyone who asks? It's fairly obvious though - these vouchers are an enticement. As a shopper you may well be saving 20-30%, but without the voucher you may well not have shopped there at all, so everybody wins - especially the retailer who has created a new customer.
Indeed, these people are buying your business, and the fact is that the system is working. I don't even think about shopping without checking the voucher sites first these days. But is there more to the story? Of course there is.
Let's say you're exhibiting at your first ever trade show and you've decided to have some promotional gifts on your stand. If you printed some kind of voucher code on the merchandise, then you would have a way to measure just where your customers are coming from.
Think about it - when you ask customers how they heard of you (waddya mean you don't ask - you really should) then a lot of them will simply say they Googled you. They're not lying to you, it's just that the correct answer is not all that important to them and they won't have remembered.
How much more powerful is this though? "Hello, I was at your stand at the recent ABC Exhibition and I have a voucher here - the code is WVXYG - is the offer still valid?"
Fantastic! You see if you give out, lets say, 1000 gifts and you get 150 calls like this, then you know that your merchandise is giving you a 15% return which is pretty great. You've tested it, you've measured it, and given the success ratio, there's a strong chance that you will repeat it, perhaps with even greater numbers next time.
Remember - a gift, in and of itself, really won't do that much for your business. Applied correctly, it could be a serious turning point for you.
Have a great week in business.
Thursday 24 June 2010
Thursday 17 June 2010
Sorry to interrupt? NEVER!
We’ve all been through it – it’s the end of a long day and we’ve finally kicked off our shoes and settled onto the sofa when WHAM! The phone rings and once you’ve said “hello” three times waiting for the call centre operator’s software to kick in, they launch into their pitch:
“Good evening Mr Rose. Sorry to bother you. I’m calling from wer;lkjvfwe0r9qwecvnuwer…….zzzzzzzz” I mean they may as well be speaking gibberish after that awful opening. “Sorry to bother you” is a line that really makes the hairs on the back of my neck stick up.
The problem is that it is weak, and it sucks all of the confidence out of the call. The person trying to sell you their goods or services clearly doesn’t believe that what they have to offer is any good. If they did, it wouldn’t be a bother at all would it.
I mean think about it. Does this sound like a likely scenario? “Good evening Mr Rose, I’m calling from National Savings and Investments and I am delighted to tell you that you have just won one million pounds!!!!”
Are the people at NSI sorry to bother me? Of course not. They know I am going to be ecstatic about the reason they’re calling.
Are people going to be just as pleased to take your call? Sure, chances are you’re not calling to give them something, but if you really believe in the value of your product, why wouldn’t you be just as enthusiastic?
“Good morning Mr Prospect. My name is Paul Rose and I’m calling today to see just how we can help you make the most of your promotional merchandise.” I’m not sorry to bother them because I am there to help them. It’ll come across in the tone of my voice and the shake of my hand when I meet them.
That’s right – they’re lucky I called. I could have helped any one of their competitors today but I chose to offer my expertise to them! Now do the people making sales calls in your organisation put out the same vibe when they pick up the phone? If not, then they’ll be sorry……
“Good evening Mr Rose. Sorry to bother you. I’m calling from wer;lkjvfwe0r9qwecvnuwer…….zzzzzzzz” I mean they may as well be speaking gibberish after that awful opening. “Sorry to bother you” is a line that really makes the hairs on the back of my neck stick up.
The problem is that it is weak, and it sucks all of the confidence out of the call. The person trying to sell you their goods or services clearly doesn’t believe that what they have to offer is any good. If they did, it wouldn’t be a bother at all would it.
I mean think about it. Does this sound like a likely scenario? “Good evening Mr Rose, I’m calling from National Savings and Investments and I am delighted to tell you that you have just won one million pounds!!!!”
Are the people at NSI sorry to bother me? Of course not. They know I am going to be ecstatic about the reason they’re calling.
Are people going to be just as pleased to take your call? Sure, chances are you’re not calling to give them something, but if you really believe in the value of your product, why wouldn’t you be just as enthusiastic?
“Good morning Mr Prospect. My name is Paul Rose and I’m calling today to see just how we can help you make the most of your promotional merchandise.” I’m not sorry to bother them because I am there to help them. It’ll come across in the tone of my voice and the shake of my hand when I meet them.
That’s right – they’re lucky I called. I could have helped any one of their competitors today but I chose to offer my expertise to them! Now do the people making sales calls in your organisation put out the same vibe when they pick up the phone? If not, then they’ll be sorry……
Thursday 10 June 2010
A lack of integrity is costing you big time
Many years ago I attended a personal development programme known as The Landmark Forum. Many of you will have heard of it, and some of you may well have gone through it yourselves. To those people, you know all this stuff, so why not just flick over to my website and have a look at all the new merchandise that we have to offer.
I want to talk to you about integrity. Now this word means many things to many people, but for the purposes of this blog – and any future dealings that you may have with me – the definition is very straight forward. It is quite simply doing what you say you are going to do, when you say you’re going to do it.
Not exactly rocket science, but you’d be amazed just how many “professional” organisations fall down miserably on this point.
Allow me to elaborate. I’m having a bit of trouble with a mobile broadband service provider at the moment. Now discretion prevents me from naming names, but suffice to say that their name is synonymous with the symbol for carbon dioxide, once you take all the carbon out.
After going round the houses and getting absolutely nowhere, the person on the phone gave me his word that he would call me back the next day. Now I’ve dealt with these people before, as has my wife, and I didn’t believe for a moment that he would actually call me, so I questioned him on it. With all the reserve I could muster (and that’s a lot of reserve let me tell you) the conversation went like this:
“No offence (OK, I realise that these words usually mean that the statement to follow has a 99.9% chance of actually causing offence) but I have no faith in the statement that you will call me tomorrow. In all my history of dealing with your company, nobody has ever called me back once they’ve promised to do so”.
“I understand Mr. Rose”, he offers, “but my Team Leader has told me to make sure that I will call you. So it’s in my notes to do so and I’ll be in tomorrow afternoon and will give you a call.”
I see – so despite the fact he’d offered to do it anyway, it seems that unless his manager was on his case to provide basic customer service, that he simply would not have bothered at all?
So did he call back the next day? I think we all know the answer to that question. But it gets worse – when I called the day after it turned out that he had made no notes reminding him to call me at all!
What kind of crappy customer relationship management is that? It’s bad enough that these massive organisations like this make you feel like just another number, but when given the chance to do just a little better, they totally stuff it up!
Anyway, rant over – I put in a formal complaint to them and they plan to invest more in staff training. Quite sad though that the training in question is to tell them to not lie to their customers. I mean seriously, if you don’t think you’ll be in a position to call me tomorrow then just don’t tell me that you will.
It all comes down to managing expectations. If you know that an order will take 7-10 days to fulfil, tell the client 10 days. That way the customer is either satisfied that their goods are on time, or delighted that they are early. Tell them 7 days just because you think it’s what they want to hear and you are inviting a world of trouble.
Is it really necessary to point out to the business world that they should not lie to their customers? Sadly, in the faceless, unqualified, most likely to not care about their job, assuming they’re even in this country – not that I’m a racist or anything but come on, you know what I mean – call centre mentality, the sad truth is that integrity has been lost to the ages.
Just don’t stand for it OK? If you’re getting given the wrong information by any of your providers, call them on it, and demand better of your business partners. Ultimately, the world will be a better place for it.
I want to talk to you about integrity. Now this word means many things to many people, but for the purposes of this blog – and any future dealings that you may have with me – the definition is very straight forward. It is quite simply doing what you say you are going to do, when you say you’re going to do it.
Not exactly rocket science, but you’d be amazed just how many “professional” organisations fall down miserably on this point.
Allow me to elaborate. I’m having a bit of trouble with a mobile broadband service provider at the moment. Now discretion prevents me from naming names, but suffice to say that their name is synonymous with the symbol for carbon dioxide, once you take all the carbon out.
After going round the houses and getting absolutely nowhere, the person on the phone gave me his word that he would call me back the next day. Now I’ve dealt with these people before, as has my wife, and I didn’t believe for a moment that he would actually call me, so I questioned him on it. With all the reserve I could muster (and that’s a lot of reserve let me tell you) the conversation went like this:
“No offence (OK, I realise that these words usually mean that the statement to follow has a 99.9% chance of actually causing offence) but I have no faith in the statement that you will call me tomorrow. In all my history of dealing with your company, nobody has ever called me back once they’ve promised to do so”.
“I understand Mr. Rose”, he offers, “but my Team Leader has told me to make sure that I will call you. So it’s in my notes to do so and I’ll be in tomorrow afternoon and will give you a call.”
I see – so despite the fact he’d offered to do it anyway, it seems that unless his manager was on his case to provide basic customer service, that he simply would not have bothered at all?
So did he call back the next day? I think we all know the answer to that question. But it gets worse – when I called the day after it turned out that he had made no notes reminding him to call me at all!
What kind of crappy customer relationship management is that? It’s bad enough that these massive organisations like this make you feel like just another number, but when given the chance to do just a little better, they totally stuff it up!
Anyway, rant over – I put in a formal complaint to them and they plan to invest more in staff training. Quite sad though that the training in question is to tell them to not lie to their customers. I mean seriously, if you don’t think you’ll be in a position to call me tomorrow then just don’t tell me that you will.
It all comes down to managing expectations. If you know that an order will take 7-10 days to fulfil, tell the client 10 days. That way the customer is either satisfied that their goods are on time, or delighted that they are early. Tell them 7 days just because you think it’s what they want to hear and you are inviting a world of trouble.
Is it really necessary to point out to the business world that they should not lie to their customers? Sadly, in the faceless, unqualified, most likely to not care about their job, assuming they’re even in this country – not that I’m a racist or anything but come on, you know what I mean – call centre mentality, the sad truth is that integrity has been lost to the ages.
Just don’t stand for it OK? If you’re getting given the wrong information by any of your providers, call them on it, and demand better of your business partners. Ultimately, the world will be a better place for it.
Thursday 3 June 2010
New catalogue out this week
It seems that one of my old posts has started up a little bit of an argument, and I LOVE IT! The post in question is called "Scrap your no names policy" and you'll find it in the archives on the right, so feel free to have a read and chuck your two cents' worth in.
Rather than sparking another controversy this week, I just wanted to let you all know that the brand new Merchandise Mania catalogue is out this week, so if you'd like a copy, please drop me an email and I'll be glad to send one out to you.
Or will I?
'Glad' may be the wrong choice of word here. I may well send you a catalogue but I do find myself wondering why you would want me to do so. The catalogue itself is filled with all of the same generic merchandise that you would see from countless of my competitors. There's nothing wrong with that - it has to appeal to the masses and if we filled it with nothing but weird and wacky things, a lot of people would simply dismiss it.
The fact is however, that in any given year, over 60% of the merchandise that I sell to people was not in the catalogue in the first place. Much of this stems from what I talked about in last week's blog, in that if you do simply look through these books, you're limiting yourselves to a very small piece of a much larger picture.
Think about it. I have access to over 1 million products worldwide. Would you want to trawl through a catalogue with everything in it? Of course not. The sensible path is to get me in to discuss your marketing strategy with you and then start making suggestions as to which items may well bring about the desired result.
Ultimately, and I've said this before, there's no lack of merchandise out there, but there is a lack of application. Branded with a clever message, the ubiquitous pen could become your most powerful marketing ally. Sure, you will have seen it in the catalogue, but I doubt that it would have jumped off of the page for you.
So by all means, call me to take a look at the new catalogue. Just bear in mind that I won't be putting it in the post - I'll be bringing it with me to what promises to be a very enlightening meeting.
Have a good week.
Rather than sparking another controversy this week, I just wanted to let you all know that the brand new Merchandise Mania catalogue is out this week, so if you'd like a copy, please drop me an email and I'll be glad to send one out to you.
Or will I?
'Glad' may be the wrong choice of word here. I may well send you a catalogue but I do find myself wondering why you would want me to do so. The catalogue itself is filled with all of the same generic merchandise that you would see from countless of my competitors. There's nothing wrong with that - it has to appeal to the masses and if we filled it with nothing but weird and wacky things, a lot of people would simply dismiss it.
The fact is however, that in any given year, over 60% of the merchandise that I sell to people was not in the catalogue in the first place. Much of this stems from what I talked about in last week's blog, in that if you do simply look through these books, you're limiting yourselves to a very small piece of a much larger picture.
Think about it. I have access to over 1 million products worldwide. Would you want to trawl through a catalogue with everything in it? Of course not. The sensible path is to get me in to discuss your marketing strategy with you and then start making suggestions as to which items may well bring about the desired result.
Ultimately, and I've said this before, there's no lack of merchandise out there, but there is a lack of application. Branded with a clever message, the ubiquitous pen could become your most powerful marketing ally. Sure, you will have seen it in the catalogue, but I doubt that it would have jumped off of the page for you.
So by all means, call me to take a look at the new catalogue. Just bear in mind that I won't be putting it in the post - I'll be bringing it with me to what promises to be a very enlightening meeting.
Have a good week.
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