3 Steps to Appealing to Customer Values

In a recent article I mentioned were erring in marketing, selling, and in customer retention activities by focusing on CRM, on customer service, and on customer satisfaction.

Instead, we should be concentrating on creating customer VALUE. To do this, we need to explore what customers actually consider important to them.

When I was teaching college communications classes in my 20s, I had my students analyze their audiences using an inventory of human VALUES. They crafted speeches and written reports that were nothing less than astonishing in their appeal.

Values are defined as desired end states. In business, you can think of them as customer goals.

And there are many, unlike what primitive models of customer behavior suggest.

To say, for instance, Customers want satisfaction, is a valid, but generally empty statement.

We should be asking: What do customers openly want, and secretly crave?

The student who decides to apply to a graduate school because an internationally acknowledged guru teaches there is seeking something very specific. Overtly, it is first-hand guidance from the best academe has to offer.

But his secret wish could be status, bragging rights, the ability to say, later in life, I studied with management mastermind Peter F. Drucker, inducing the awe-struck to ask, What was he like?

I was late to Chicagos OHare Airport, concerned that I might miss my connection to Columbus, Ohio. When I disembarked from my flight, an airline valet was waiting exclusively for me, ready to shuttle me in his electric cart to my next plane.

I remember thinking, Wow, at least there is a payoff in traveling every week. Being recognized as one of their most valued passengers in this way was just as valuable to me as catching the last connection of the day.

But this pales next to the time when the Dean of a Texas business school accompanied me to the gate where my plane had pulled away, onto the tarmac, and he asked the agent: Do you know who this man is? Hes Dr. Gary S. Goodman, and he must get to Texas Tech tonight!

They recalled the plane to the gate, I boarded, and my fellow passengers applauded.

Find a way to make me feel unique, and you have done something impressive that Ill reward with even more of my business, as I did with the airlines.

But the key isnt simply to understand that Goodman likes status, or He responds to special treatment, because this could apply to nearly everyone. Knowing where this value ranks among my top 10 or top 20, is really the trick.

Would I continue to patronize an airline that is consistently fifteen minutes late, but which treats me like a prince? Or, would I defect, giving my loyalty to a no-frills, cattle-call carrier that ignores me but gets me to where I need to go on time?

Few companies ever seek or learn this type information that reveals what specific clients will trade-off for various satisfactions.

I have only mentioned status as a value in this article, but we could have focused on tranquility or peace of mind, which, for instance, is one of the chief deliverables insurance clients value.

Rates are important to them, but above all, people want to know their claims will be handled right, meaning theyll be covered and theyll get a payout immediately, without hassles.

This is what made the Allstate Good Hands commercials so successful, and is so appealing about the current batch of Farmers ads that show accidents being reversed, and clients returning to a state of normalcy.

There are 3 steps to using VALUES in your sales, marketing, and client retention activities:

(1) Develop an inventory of customer values, a comprehensive list that defines customer drives, operationally;

(2) Ask your clients to rank order them. When this is not possible or practical, observe customers in action to infer which ones are most significant. Another approach is to role-play customer behaviors in a group setting with associates and then to identify and rank the values that seem to predominate.

(3) Deploy ad campaigns and sales and service strategies that explicitly tap into these motivations, and test the results you get in terms of added sales, and client retention rates. Mix the order of values, to validate which performed better than others in your trials.

Then rollout the winners!

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 1,000 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered "The Gold Standard" in negotiation, sales development, customer service, and telephone effectiveness. Top-rated as a speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the globe and the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

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