Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship - Session 4: Communicating with your Customer

Royalty and strip-poker

To view Session 1 click here
To view Session 2 click here
To view Session 3 click here



We've all heard the cliched catchphrase "customer is king". While just reading the phrase makes me want to gag - there's a truth hidden in there somewhere.

Think about the royalty you know. The first thing I think of is some poor ginger being hunted by the paparazzi (while playing an innocent card game) in the privacy of his Las Vegas hotel room. There are two points I want to make here. First - royals misbehave, or shall I say, they behave in a way we think they shouldn't. Second - hotels should have curtains, or tinted windows... oh wait a minute... no, that wasn't my second point.

My real second point is that royals, kings, customers - are people. They do what they like. They have opinions and weird habits (some weirder than others!). The most pertinent point
is that their behavior is seldom governed by what we think they should do.

As a business owner, you're in a dangerous place when you assume that what is important to you is important to your customer. When your marketing efforts are focussed on communicating information that is important only to your business, your customer's "what's in it for me?" question goes unanswered.

"Ultimately, marketing is not about the strategies you put together
or the brilliant advertising or branding you design;
its about how your customer experiences your business."

- Branson Centre, Foundations of Entrepreneurship

In Session 4 of the Branson Centre Foundations of Entrepreneurship course, we were challenged to think beyond "me, myself and I". We evaluated a number of different products/ services from a customers perspective. We tried to identify what their top priorities and expectations were. It was quite a challenge because most of us are so used to trying to promote our own products and services. Its difficult to be objective. You actually have to switch roles and look at your business from a customer's perspective before you can effectively communicate that your offering meets their needs.

If you don't go through the process of correctly identify customer needs, its far too easy to get distracted or focus on things that are irrelevant to the customer. Its a bit like peddling on a stationary bike. You work up a sweat. You puff and you pant. You're exhausted when you get off the bike - but in reality you haven't moved forward. And now you are wet and smelly too.

Back from the tangent I just went on... Once your focus is on your customer, you are in the right mental space to develop an effective Marketing plan. Essentially developing this plan boils down to answering 3 questions:
1. How do you make potential customers aware that you exist?
2. How do you get them interested in doing business with you?
3. How do you put your product or service in their hands?

From there we went on to learn about the various components of the Marketing cycle, which starts with researching and understanding  your market environment. Once you have a good understanding of this, you can develop and implement pointed and effective marketing, promotional and sales strategies. All of these activities are rounded off by a thoughtful and deliberate customer service approach - which encourages repeat business.

A new concept to me is touch points. I think the concept may have been floating around somewhere in my overtaxed grey matter, but now I have a neat little name for it.
Every business has a brand. That brand is a set of beliefs that customers associate with either the business, the product, or the service. Your brand is essentially a promise to your customers of what they can expect when they deal with they interact with your business.

Touch points are contact points that customers, or prospective customers have with your organisation. Each of these interactions provide an opportunity for the brand to either uphold or break its promise. Websites, sales staff, receptionists, product performance, payment mechanism or even delivery and installation are all touch points.

Lastly, we came to grips with the different stages of the sales process. This is a summarized version of what it looks like:

1. Generate leads
2. Qualify opportunities 
3. Develop and submit a proposal
4. Negotiate and close the sale

There's so much content in those 4 points, I think it best to split them into future topics on their own instead of trying to tackle them all here. One thing I'd like to highlight is that there needs to be a fair mix of prospects in different stages of the sales process. Its no good having a million prospects, but few have been qualified, negotiated or closed. 

Similarly, if you've closed a number of deals, but your new prospects are looking dry - you're going to suffer down the line! Keep it flowing! A large percentage of every day needs to be focussed on activities that are sales oriented. 

A final though, and something I'm going to try and put into practice following this session - systematize your sales process. Devise a system that works for your company that standardises customer contact methods and frequency. Once you've made the system, put it into practice. 

In my next post, I'll cover how I've implemented the knowledge gained in this session to my own business - so keep an eye out for that. 

Until then - be sure to close the curtains when you play strip poker. You never know where those sneaky photographers are lurking!