May 30th, 2009
Recently I had an encounter with @Just_Janie on Twitter. She told me she started a new account for her company @HouseofJerky. I proceeded to tell her that I’m not too big on jerky. She then offered to send me some of her jerky complimentary.
If you’re not always listening and paying attention as well as networking then you’re not doing enough. Janie Honeycutt was having a conversation with me on what was new with her. She wasn’t trying to force a product on me or sell me on it’s benefits. What she did was build upon a relationship and offer usefulness where applicable.
I could go into detail about each and every jerky but I won’t. I will tell you that the encounter and the person behind the company makes the product shine more. Running a business nowadays is all about timeliness and relevance. House Of Jerky took both of those into consideration when building on our relationship.
The key here is that this selling approach is a part of the long tail. She got to know me first. She sold me on me, me on her and ultimately me on our relationship. Once I buy into who you are I’ll definitely buy into what you have. Taking the time out to care about each and every one of your customers as they were an individual person ingratiates you in their hearts.
There’s no secret to this. This is about being a real person and wanting to connect. We all know we have something to sell. Take the selling out of the equation so the buying can exist more easily.
(notice the personalized 'Enjoy DB' card)
I haven’t tried jerky before so it was really thoughtful of Janie to send a House Of Jerky sampler. It included beef, buffalo, venison, ostrich, and turkey in hot, sweet & spicy, teriyaki, black pepper and exotic flavors. I recommend finding out which jerky you love by trying the All Flavors Jr. Variety Pack. It’s inexpensive ($36.99) as well as all-encompassing. The best thing about the jerky besides it’s taste (you’ve got to try the Teriyaki) is that it’s all-natural. I actually understand what I’m eating.
When someone gives me something I do not feel obligated to say anything about it. It’s only when I am truly impressed OR dismayed that I do. In the case of House of Jerky, Janie Honeycutt’s interactions with me laid the groundwork to allow her products to shine on their own merit. The interaction IS a part of the selling process. You’re fooling yourself if you think you can just push product alone.
With so many options of equal value, the great differentiator is real, open and honest interactions. A great product will sell itself but an even greater salesman will sell you on you. Care about the transaction from the start to the finish. Selling starts with the customer AND ends with the customer ALWAYS.
Tags: benefit, black pepper, branding, buffalo, business, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, conversations, differential, encounter, feelings, flavors, fool, heart, hearts, interaction, interactions, listening, marketing, network, networked, networking, ostrich, paying attention, personalities, personality, productivity, real person, relationship, relevance, running a business, selling, social, social media, taking the time, timeliness, turkey, twitter, Value, variety pack, venison
Posted in branding, business, featured | 1 Comment »
April 12th, 2009
© Will Lion
“We don’t think of social as a destination. We think of social as a dimension.” ~Ari Balogh, Yahoo! Chief Technology Officer commenting on how Yahoo! will make services associated with social networking part of the fabric of their existing sites and not just another service. (Source: NYT, Bits)
Social Media is hype. People don’t understand it. Companies are scared of it. For what? They’re only a bunch of silly programs that are touted as the next big thing, just like email and the internet and computers and the telephone and the television and radio and countless others.
So why is Social Media causing such a stir among people AND companies? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: advantage, benefit, best communications, business, communicating, communication, communications, communications platform, consumer, consumer decisions, consumers, email, Facebook, fingertips, focus groups, functionality, god, grouping, holy grail, hype, influencer, internet cam, knowledge, life, lifetime, linkedin, listening, marketing, media, mediums, mentions, network, networking, nielsen ratings, place where people, platforms, productivity, reading, science, silly programs, social, social medium, technology, Television, traditional avenues, traditional paradigm, uphill battle, wealth of knowledge, word of mouth, words, Yahoo
Posted in featured, social media | 8 Comments »
April 8th, 2009
© Will Lion
Consumers seek meaning and a brand they can trust. They are busy at work on Web 2.0 platforms creating ways to cut through the noise in search of products and services that resonate with integrity and transparency; in a word, authenticity. That quest for authenticity is a call to action for any company intending to be relevant in the 21st century.” | Sohrab Vossoughi, Business Week
Branding is an art not a science. What may work for one company may not for another. The most important thing is to engage and listen to your customer. The following is a brand checklist that every brand (personal and professional) should go over before doing business. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 21st century, advantage, aggregation, attribute, authenticity, benefit, brand, branding, business, business vision, communicating, communication, communications, company values, competitor, consumer, consumers, design, designers, differential, doing business, functionality, goals, integrity, interaction, interactions, knowledge, life, listening, marketing, media, platforms, productivity, reading, science, screwdriver, screws, social, technology, transparency, Value, viewpoint, words
Posted in branding, featured | 2 Comments »
January 20th, 2009
Customer value, not control, is the answer in the digital economy. ~Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams in Wikinomics (p.143) Value Shmalue. I have noticed many people speaking of value lately but no one speaking of what exactly is value. I decided that before the word “value” goes to the 2.0 
hype graveyard like many others have (see: the cloud, Whatever X.0) I would get to the bottom of it all. I asked my followingers what value meant to them in order to get to some basic tenets of why they valued something. Needless to say this all took place early in the morning whereupon i did forgo sleep to see where this line of questioning led me. I ended up valuing a lack of something in gain of something else, which speaks to the myriad of answers that people gave. The following are my conversations broken down with people based on person and categorized into points each person contributed to the discussion on value. While it is not the end all be all definitive go-to guide to delineate value, it is a start:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: amp, brand, branding, business, categorization, chat, clue, collectibles, communicating, communication, communications, conversation, Conversation Ecosystem, conversations, customer value, design, designers, digital economy, discussion, don tapscott, downloading, experiences, experiment, follower, fool, generalities, graveyard, hype, interaction, interactions, iTunes, knowledge, left hand side, life, limited, listening, live journal, marketing, media, mediums, myriad, network, networked, networking, Peers, perception, permanence, personalities, personality, plans, Principles, reading, reply, responsibility, signs, sleep, social, social media, streams, Tenets, thoughtfulness, tweets, twitter, uniqueness, Value, visuals, weirdness, wikinomics, word value, words
Posted in business, featured, life | 3 Comments »
November 18th, 2008
I was speaking with @LisaHoffmann (?http://newmedialisa.com/?) on Twitter about monitoring one’s ROI [Return on Influence/Investment] concerning customer satisfaction, when Twitter went down for maintenance. I couldn’t have planned a more strategic timing to illustrate my point: communicating is listening. The only way to truly listen to your customers is by monitoring multiple forms of media. When one goes down, they will find a way to substitute another.
In today’s fragmented marketplace, ?your customers come in all shades of variety, from completely dialed in to the bleeding edge of technology to old-school snail mail & telephone land-line users. People tell you how they want to use your product. You can not dictate how or what people will say about your product. Customers are your business. It is your business to please your customers. Even though you may think most or all of your customers are using one form of media, it is your job to monitor all forms of media for potential customers or customer issues.
Some ways to monitor customer happiness: take polls, review taped calls & online customer queries, monitor your online presence, set up google alerts. The main thing that these tools illustrate is that you should ALWAYS BE ASKING. Zappos is doing it right by having customer service phone calls go to everyone in their company. Their WHOLE company is customer service, not just one section of it. Radian6 ( http://www.radian6.com ) is an integrated way of monitoring social media for your company. Not every solution is the right solution for every company, but no solution is definitely not the solution. ?
The solution is to listen to the people. People are very vocal advocates. They want to be heard and validated by others. Their ideas and beliefs are very important to them and they will vocalize to defend them. Utilize this fact to your advantage. Be there to guide the conversation from the side. Offer feedback and useful knowledge. Just remember, you can not tell them how to think and act. You must be the expert and give them what they are ideally looking for. When presented in a palatable way, people will gladly integrate this information into their vocabulary, especially if it is a well-crafted party line.
People are social by nature. They want to be your biggest supporter. They like spreading information. They?are looking for something they can believe in. They are looking for something they can be happy about.?
Happiness is not something that can be specifically measured with numbers and analytics. You can measure your effectiveness with how well you are doing your job but that won’t necessarily translate into your clients view of you. Are you really doing your job if your clients aren’t 100% satisfied? If there is something that needs to be addressed with them that may be outside of your core mission it is now PART of your core mission. ?Your customer is your business and servicing your customer is your business.
So, who is making you happy? Who are you making happy? How are YOU doing it?
Tags: business, communicating, communication, customer satisfaction, customer service, group dynamics, happiness, Lisa Hoffmann, listening, radian6, satisfaction, social media, zappos
Posted in business, featured | 4 Comments »
