Connecting With Your Customer

Tom Kellerwww.tkeller.com

pingtk@gmail.com

Connecting With Your Customer

Webster:• “connected” – joined or linked together• “your” – belonging to you• “customer” – someone who pays for goods or

services

Connecting With Your Customers

Connecting With Your Customers

My Customer Connection Dream

Earning the Cheese

• Customer has significant pain

• If perceived benefit of product/service exceeds cost, then voluntary exchange of value possible

• Solution must be better than could do by themselves (“economic rent”)

“Rent” and Pricing

Cost Value Rent0

25

50

75

100

Series 3Economic RentSeries 2Series 1Variable Cost

Flying Money Ingredient #1

• Group of customers that has:– Bags of money– An important problem that I can profitably solve

A Word On “Better”

• Best!• Best?– Cheapest– Fastest– Highest quality– Most convenient– Most fun– Most admirable values

Flying Money Ingredient #2

• Best Widget

Product Features

• Customer pain Product Features

• “Marketing is the art of talking about features, but wrapping them in a value proposition” –Holly Hamann

• Pricing

The Power of Brand

• All sales are emotional

• People have memory, and hopes: What is the perception of how you treated them previously? How do they think you’ll treat them in the future?

• “A brand is a promise to a customer of quality, image, and differentiation.“ – CEO, E&J Gallo

Video - TheBlogFrog

The Power of Brand• All sales are emotional

• People have memory, and hopes: What is the perception of how you treated them previously? How do they think you’ll treat them in the future?

• “A brand is a promise to a customer of quality, image, and differentiation.“ – CEO, E&J Gallo

• TheBlogFrog video – what is the brand?

• The enduring power of brands: Apple, MS

The Sales Process Brand

• Helpful attributes– Affinity / trust / sincerity / integrity– Alignment– Timely & capable

• An aligning question: “How can I help?”– Timely– Sincere– Expert– Expedient

Flying Money Ingredient #3

• Best Brand– Aka perception as best widget

• (Hint: perception is reality)

Wait: Nobody Cares!

• Field of Dreams “Build it and they will come” = stupidest movie ever, Kevin Costner sucks

• It takes time and effort to make people give a damn about your schtick

• The science art of advertising:– Making potential customers aware of, and want, your

product – at the precise moment they’re feeling pain

Advertising Methods

• Newspaper ads• Magazine ads • Billboards• Yellow Pages• TV ads• Endorsements• Spam• AdWords• Word of Mouth

Raving Fans

• Increasingly, humans are making purchasing decisions based upon their social network

• WoM offers timely, trusted, deep product connections – for free!

• Ask any customer who’s had a good experience to tell a friend, tweet and/or blog about it

Flying Money Ingredient #4

• Big Ad Budget• Vocal, Raving Fans

The Flying Money Virtuous Cycle