Winning Customers and Clients by Owning Our Mistakes and Shortcomings

I recently returned from being out of town with a couple of clients. Over the course of two days, we were in a number of meetings, large and small, with clients, prospects, and joint-venture partners. After a group meeting the first morning, one of my clients went to lunch with a large group, while I and my other client went to lunch privately. (I just have to throw in here that we found an amazing little Thai restaurant just west of downtown L.A. It was nothing to look at, but the food…Wow! And the proprietor was the neatest lady you’d ever want to meet.)

When we rejoined the others after our heavenly meal, we discovered their lunch experience hadn’t been the pleasurable one in which we had basked. They had gone to a well-known, semi-pricey place near the Staples Center downtown. They ordered their food, then visited for 90 minutes before their lunches began coming out. By this time, they needed to leave to get to their scheduled appointments.

Not only had my client’s lunch showed up extremely late, it was ice (literally) cold. It appeared the “grilled” chicken had come directly out of a freezer and not even been warmed. Everyone got their lunches packed in to-go boxes and left…not at all pleased with their experience.

The two gentlemen who had organized this lunch group felt terrible and offered to pay for everyone’s lunch--a bill of somewhere around $650. They then went to the manager to explain the situation to see if the establishment wanted to own up to its shortcomings and give them a discount. When they finished sharing their story, the manager apologized sincerely and told them lunch was on him. The entire bill was covered.

The gentlemen were shocked!

What had developed into an unpleasant, uncomfortable situation for the people in that party (most of whom were very upset and swore they would never set foot into the establishment again), was immediately reversed as all were pleasantly surprised at this gesture of genuinely going the extra mile to make things right. While there were some conversations that afternoon about the less-than-acceptable dining experience, the bigger point was everyone’s disbelief that the manager so readily owned up to his staff’s mistakes and did the only thing he could at that point to try to make amends.

There are two morals to this story: 1.) We all stand prepared to receive much-deserved complements when we perform well for our clients. We should be equally prepared to take the heat when we fall short. 2.) A mom-and-pop Thai restaurant is almost always a good bet.

Here’s to your client satisfaction success!

Bryan Waldon Pope

Great, Free Template for Managing Marketing Campaigns and Activities

A new year is upon us, and with it comes the need to make sure our plans are in place to make it the best year possible. An important tool for making this happen is a functional marketing campaign calendar.

For years, I’ve kept mine in a word processing document with monthly headers and activities chronologically listed for each month. There are two problems with this approach:

1. Activities that span multiple days require entry on each of those days manually.

2. This list approach doesn’t give me a very good vision of how activities correspond.

I found a great, free template for Excel that takes care of the problem. The file covers the whole year, with each month being on its own sheet. I can enter an activity once, then stretch it to cover multiple days if necessary. Perhaps best of all, I can assign preparatory tasks, execution activities, and follow up efforts in different colors so I can quickly differentiate them.

Since I’m color blind, I use orange for tasks that need to be accomplished in preparation for upcoming campaigns, green for activities that relate to campaigns being executed, and blue for efforts tied to follow-up on prior campaigns. These are three colors that stand apart well for me. Now, whether we’re talking about a campaign, event, or other marketing activity, I can quickly and clearly see what’s on my plate for any given month. I love it!

The template is available at no cost at cnet (download.com), a highly trusted resource: Cnet Download Page

I hope you find this template and my comments helpful in planning and executing your marketing this year.

If you have ways you plan, track, and execute your marketing that may be helpful to others, we’d love to hear them! Just comment below.

Here’s to your 2011 marketing success!

Bryan Waldon Pope

The Ethical Way to "Steal" Marketing Ideas

“There’s nothing new under the sun.” I believe this old saying in every sense of its meaning.

What there is, however, is creative application, reworking, and improvement of ideas and tangible objects that give us ever-evolving products, services, and lifestyles. Though we could all argue society would be better off without some innovations that have come along, most will agree that, in the big picture, our situations, experiences, and comfort are enhanced because of the drive of untold millions of human minds making incremental changes to existing realities over centuries of time.

What does this have to do with marketing? EVERYTHING!

If we begin at square one with everything we do, we won’t make it very far in business. We must use others’ successes as springboards to move ahead. Here are just two of the many ways to borrow and build on the efforts of other businesses in meeting our marketing goals:

1. Look for successful marketing strategies and tactics in industries outside our own. It’s easy to get stuck in the rut of doing the same things as our competitors in marketing our businesses. What’s working in other industries? Other geographic markets? How can these successes be adapted to work for us?

2. Borrowing existing assets of other companies is another way to enhance our opportunities. When Canon decided to enter the copier arena against Xerox, they didn’t start from square one. They licensed existing technology and aligned themselves with established distribution channels. They leveraged others’ assets to gain a foothold in the marketplace and launch a thriving division of their company.

Gather your team and look at these two areas of opportunity. What can you borrow from others’ success that has application in your situation? Whose intellectual property, technology, client base, or other assets can you leverage to bring greater returns to your business while benefitting the assets’ current owners?

OK, so what I’m talking about here isn’t really “stealing” as the headline said. It’s innovating…the same way mankind has been doing it from the beginning. As we open our eyes and our minds, we’ll find new, productive ways to market our businesses using others’ ideas and innovations as stepping stones to our own greater achievement.

Here’s to your 2011 marketing success!

Bryan Waldon Pope

I Hate To Say Goodbye...

I hate to say goodbye to any client. I know you do, too.

We work so hard to find them. Then we put massive effort into nurturing them as prospects and converting them into clients. It’s often a long process in which we’ve invested much in financial and other resources. So when they leave us, it’s not an easy thing to take.

A CHALLENGE FOR 2011

With increasing competition and noise in the marketplace, focusing on capturing our audiences’ attention, attracting them, converting them into clients, then retaining them long-term is more important than ever. That last element--retaining--is the one that seems to get too little attention.

My challenge for you in 2011 is to understand and act on, more than ever, your awareness of the value of an existing client. What measures can we each take to ensure our client bases will increase in the coming year--not just through new client acquisition, but because of aggressive client retention activities as well?

I will propose one possible direction to get your mind going on this subject:

Imagine offering your existing clients better deals than you give prospects to get them to become first-time clients. This is backwards from most companies’ approach. In the scenario I’m proposing, your absolute best deals would be available to your longest-term clients.

Can you take this concept and create a culture among your clients in which it becomes something of a competition to be an ongoing client who gets the premier deals from your company?

Of course, this is just one of many possible directions. Pull your team together and share this message with them. Then dig deep and find the best way(s) for you and your people to keep your clients actively engaging with you this coming year.

Here’s to your client loyalty success!

Bryan Waldon Pope

Finding Our Hidden Marketing Assets (Part 2 of 2)

In my last post, I talked about people and organizations that may be seen as marketing assets. Today I’ll share two other categories of possible assets we should each examine with the help of our marketing teams.

The two categories are: tangibles and intangibles. These categories cover just about anything that isn’t a person our group of people. I enjoy working with clients to find these resources because they are usually much more readily visible by me than by the people working day-to-day in the business. That’s the power of your mastermind team. Since they aren’t in the trenches in your business every day, they stand in a better position to see these assets and opportunities. Here’s a short list of items under each category to help prompt the creative juices as you consider your own situation:

Tangibles

Wasted production space
Overstocked items
Old inventory
Repackaging current products or services
(bundling, re-purposing, etc.)
On-hand collateral material
Databases
Etc…

Intangibles

Successful campaigns and activities from the past
Joint-venture opportunities
Bartering
Publicity opportunities
Unused intellectual property
Relationships and connections
Etc…

Between the lists I shared previously and these two, every person reading these posts has the opportunity to identify and engage at least a couple of meaningful assets at no financial expense to increase revenues.

I’d love to hear your success stories or answer any questions you have. Just comment below. Let’s uncover our hidden marketing assets and put them to work.

Here’s to your marketing success!

Bryan Waldon Pope

Finding Our Hidden Marketing Assets (Part 1 of 2)

Any time I ask business owners and marketing managers what the one thing is they’d like more of to effectively market themselves, I always get the same response that has already popped into your head: money. While more money can be hugely beneficial in marketing our businesses, we all have other assets--many of which may be hidden from our immediate view--that can be used to meet our marketing objectives.

Today I’d like to share two of four categories of assets we should take time to carefully explore: people and organizations. Our connections and affiliations can be leveraged appropriately, tastefully, and effectively to ultimately bring us the greater success we’re each seeking. Here’s a partial list of places to look to get your mind going:

People:

Vendors
Clients
Employees
Friends
Family Members
Inactive Clients
Old Colleagues
Past Employees
Past Co-workers
Past Business Partners
Mentors
…and the list goes on.

Organizations:

Associations
Chambers of Commerce
Networking Groups
Mastermind Groups
Seminar and Workshop Groups
Business Societies
etc…

Gather your team and take a look at the resources and assets available to you as a collective group in terms of relationships and associations with other people and organizations. You’ll be surprised at the opportunities available in these largely untapped asset pools.

Next time I’ll share some insights on two other groups of assets to consider diving into to find unused marketing opportunity.

Here’s to your marketing success!

Bryan Waldon Pope

2011 Marketing and Business Plans

The holiday season is here! And with this season comes a time of reflection and planning for all business owners.

What went well in 2010? What could have been better? What are we going to do to make the most of our opportunities in 2011?

It’s extremely valuable, at least once a year, to step away from our businesses, evaluate what has happened since our last examination of the company, and plan for the upcoming year. For many of us, December is the time to undertake this task. For others (like retailers, who are in the middle of their busy season), this activity may make more sense after the first of the year.

I’m going on my annual retreat next week. This is a solo experience where fresh mountain air, fluffy holiday snow, and a crackling fire combine to take me away from the trenches of everyday business and open my mind to limitless possibilities. (Who knows, I may even buckle on the ol’ skis and hit the slopes while I’m at it just to make the experience complete.)

After this solo portion of my review and planning experience, I’ll take what I come up with and present it to my team for further examination and input. By month end, I’ll have my 2011 plan in place.

However you choose to engage in this activity, I strongly suggest you do it. A two-part solo/team approach works well for me. Perhaps a team retreat is more suited to your situation. Whatever the case, it doesn’t have to be expensive, but the outcome is genuinely invaluable.

Here’s to your 2011 planning success!

Bryan Waldon Pope

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