The problem with promises, implicit or tacit, is that they create expectations. So what?
Here’s the problem with that:
As business owners we make promises, whether you want to or not. When we make a promise we are creating the future for other people. People come and expect that something will happen within a reasonable delay and with respect and a fair price.
I have stopped using stores for numerous reasons, all related to failed expectations.
One of the local sporting stores wanted to charge me for warentee support for a product that they sell and carried a lifetime guarentee!
I had to chase after the regional distributor and then finally the manufacturer in Germany to get warranty service from my local vendors. It took me almost two years of intermittent effort to get a lifetime guarantee honoured.
This is exactly the opposite of what we expect of a company that offers a strong warranty on their products. No one said to me when I purchased my product that the service would be fast and easy. They just said that they would replace them if they broke due to manufacturers defects. But our expectations turn around something will happen within a reasonable delay and with respect and a fair price.
So the only way for us to satisfy our clients is to allow them live fulfilled expectations. So it is up to us to manage the things that we can.
We have to justify:
If you can manage those things then you will be able to have happy clients with fulfilled expectations. They will thus have nothing but good things to say about them because you held up your end of the bargain.
Be proactive and control the promises and turn any tacit agreements into voiced agreements so that people won’t be surprised by their own expectations being unfulfilled!
Good luck and take control.
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Charm is a wonderful thing.
I love a charmer, someone who comes along with a big smile and is eager to help. That is the best kind of reception that we can receive; if they have a desire to fulfil your desires and expectations. All of these things are really pleasant to find in your environment.
But there is another side to the charmer’s personality. They expect you to say yes to their effort. They are not used to being denied for no other reason but you don’t feel like it. You are supposed to be polite and accept their effort as cash and feel bad if you say no. So, we as customers will avoid that guilty feeling of denying effort by saying yes.
That works with lots of people, but not really. If you leave with the feeling of being taken advantage of you will be an unhappy customer and avoid that store in the future because you don’t like that icky feeling of being used.
So it is important that your best charmers are well trained in being able to take no as an acceptable answer to their charm.
It was quite funny this morning when I was sitting in the coffee shop where I wrote this article and I wasn’t quite ready for anything and a lovely waitress comes up with the full blown charm machine running and asks if I would like a good capuccino or a café au lait in a bowl…I said not yet; and I was briefly reminded of Bilbo’s Gollum moment in the Lord of the Rings:
I think I was momentarily scared…fortunately there were witnesses so I was okay.
But it is to be remembered as the supervisor of the sales force that our clients are more than just tools to fulfil our objectives. They need to be listened to and empathised with. So make sure your charmers leave the clients charmed and not mildly terrified, queasy or guilty.
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People are meaning-making-machines. We need meaning, we need to find reasons and relationships. Try and get away in a world that is empty and meaningless and you will fall in between the cracks filled with those who provide people with meaning. So if you choose a company name that has no meaning, internal or external, people will have a hard time making yous stick in their heads.
When I started my Storage business, I spent about 8 months finding the name that would work. I founded Casa Grande self storage. Why? Because, we went through a hundred names before settling on that one!
A name has power and we can’t forget that. It is what people told fairy tales about and so many stories. When you know the name of something you have power over that thing. You also have the ability to call upon it and to use it. In the best known fairy tale, the hard working girl has to guess the name of the tricky gnome (Rumplestiltskin) to get out of the horrible deal that has been cut.
Even when my children came about, we spent a great deal of time hammering out which names to give them…And other great successes today have done the same. Look at:
All names that are huge in their own right and all of them tell you exactly what they do! There is no working hard to figure out what these companies do and how they can help you! Please help your clients because they have better things to do than figure you out. People work hard to assimilate all the diverse and complicated information that is out there. People are here because they want to live their lives…Not because they want to make you rich. It is not your client’s job to understand you and to figure out why you’re the right business to do business with. It is your job to understand what job your clients have to do and let them know that you can do it for them!
If you decide to come up with the name that makes you happy but no one understands, go ahead but don’t sit around waiting for people to break down your door because they know exactly what you do and how you do it!
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So last time we looked at the hierarchy of needs by Maslow, and how the basic needs are the same for everybody, but how we arrive at those needs differs between people. Now we are going to look at how using basic needs allows us to create relationships that last a lifetime and to which we are fundamentally bonded. attachment theory is something that has been being developed since the UN wanted to create awareness of the impacts on children being left orphans after the Second World War. It has largely supplanted Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as the dominant approach in understanding people through Psychoanalysis.
“Okay Aaron, you’re babbling…what’s your point?”
Pay attention, the whole world revolves around this theory now and it explains why social media works and why you should care!
Today people are in an ocean of media marketing crap. We are constantly bombarded by people telling us how much we should give them our money because they make the biggest, fastest, hottest, sexiest, most ecological thermonuclear widget in the world. But what actually attracts people is calling to their attachments. And those attachments may be parental, relational, emotional, sexual, political, and even brand. But how do we attach ourselves to a brand??
Easy, values!
People live in a theoretical future. People don’t spend there time in the present, they live in some hoped for future that calls them to do things today. If our society didn’t completely fail us we feel part of some group. And those groups are what link us together; us and them. Social media, and even brands are about creating links between culture and product. Their product has to make my life a representation of what I want.
When it comes down to it, I could care less about the difference in flavour between coke a Pepsi! I want to drink Coke because it’s the real thing. I don’t want to be part of the new generation I want to be solidly planted in the historical number one. I see myself as the solid winner not the substitute number two. So I see Coke as my drink and Pepsi as the replacement.
Now ask yourself to what subset of humanity do you want to attach yourself? What need do you want to fulfil as a brand? That is the group who will become your tribe and the people who you will want to market to.
Have fun!
Learn MoreThis is not a I love Apple article…so anti-apple people, Stop. It just happens that I had a great client experience with them.
If you want to know why the Apple Stores do so well, well there is a customer service aspect that goes beyond the whole design, it just works whoop,whoop thing.
We are currently evaluating what kind of IT equipment we will transition to for the next generation of computers, smart-phones, etc.
One of those options is to go into the closed garden that is Apple. We are tempted. And I have to say the pre-sale experience has been impressive so far, and I’ll tell you why.
They have been there when I called and I was impressed by their capacity to listen recommend products and solutions that they have as well as taking the time to write personalized letters and make jokes in them as well as making sure to be there when they say they will be and they have followed up in a respectful manner. They are an excellent example of permission marketing.
What is permission marketing, simple, just ask if your allowed to do things before you do them! IE
So when we ask our clients what they want we feel respected and it makes us responsible for our relations with them their actions and our feelings towards them. It is the new wave and it is so much better than older methods.
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