Main Idea
Are there businesses or stores that you can’t stop talking about? Do your friends get tired of hearing about them? Do you have customers that talk about your business like that?
Expansion of Idea
Word of mouth advertising is the best way to generate new customers. Every sales guru in the world will say the same thing. Yet most of us do not focus on this as a way to get business. We spend our time and resources on direct mail, cold sales calls, websites and email blasts. We absolutely need to do these marketing steps and there are definitely benefits of these methods.
However, generating a buzz by creating raving fans can do more for our businesses than any other marketing campaign. For one thing, it solidifies our relationships with our customers. That, by itself, is enough of a reason to work on this. This buzz also provides a secondary benefit because people talk. And when people talk and are excited about something, it catches on. Word spreads and you start getting referrals. Does Apple really need to promote the I-phone any more? There is a third and largely ignored benefit of creating a company with a buzz. It energizes your team. When you are doing great work for customers, it can fire up your whole team. It can transform a normal business into a place where people love to work.
The real issue for most of us is to focus on creating the buzz. Do you show up at work trying to figure out how to create a buzz for your customers? Are you intentional about adding value to the customer and also about improving the systems and processes in your business? How can you take a boring business (like a CPA firm) and turn it into a business that has raving fans in the marketplace? For my firm and for most of my clients, our long-term success is directly tied to how well we handle these issues by creating advocates for our firm. Satisfaction is not an option. We have failed if we just satisfied our customers.
Points to ponder:
Are your clients satisfied? Or, are they raving fans?
What could you do to raise the service levels?
What could you do to add value?
Read the book “Raving Fans” to get some ideas on raising customer service.