Keeping Customers Happy and Buying

AddressTwo University Podcast 

with Patrick Giammarco of PWG Marketing

Tune in 4pm (E.S.T) Tuesday May 8th

Click Here to Listen U.AddressTwo.com

 

Patrick fell in love with marketing at an early age, but it is his grandfather who he credits with inspiring his consulting business.

During college Patrick worked as an intern at his grandfather’s plumbing supply business and realized early on how easy it is for small businesses to be confused and overwhelmed by marketing. Patrick witnessed first-hand his frustration and it bothered him to see his grandfather struggle to market his business.  

Impacted by what his grandfather experienced, Patrick oriented his education and career toward marketing. While earning his MBA and gaining valuable corporate marketing experience, he never wavered in his desire to simplify marketing for small business owners.

In 2006, Patrick discovered the DuctTape Marketing System—a unique small business marketing system created by award-winning author and blogger John Jantsch. Immediately, its main principle of simplifying marketing for small business owners appealed to Patrick.

Empowered by Duct Tape Marketing, Patrick launched PWG Marketing through which he offers marketing consulting and digital technology coaching services to small businesses. As a Certified Duct Tape Consultant, Patrick provides advice and expertise when needed, accountability and strategy when stuck and proven tactics to help owners systematically build their business.

Patrick has 16 years of corporate marketing and branding experience with Libbey Glass, Calphalon, Microsoft and The University of Toledo and is a founding member of Social Media Breakfast Toledo, a monthly event where people come together to eat, meet, share, and learn about social media.

Patrick also sits on several non-profit boards: the northwest Ohio chapter of the American Cancer Society, Hanna’s Socks and the Advertising Club of Toledo.

Patrick, his wife, Joely and their daughter, Penelope, live in Perrysburg, OH with their dog, Scully.

Employee Loyalty Is the Secret to Customer Retention

For many small businesses customer retention is all about external customers the ones who generate revenue from which bills are paid including salaries. Now forward thinking small business leaders understand employee loyalty is truly the secret to external customer retention.

As the old expression goes when Mama is happy, everyone is happy. Employees are truly the mothers in any business.  Depending upon their roles and job descriptions at any moment of the day they are:

• Watching over others
• Monitoring progress
• Providing feedback
• Communicating the dos and don’ts
• Ensuring the family unit is intact

One of the not so small businesses, Southwest Airlines, understands the importance of employee loyalty.  Their entire business plan revolves around the employees who then engage in those moments of truth with the external customers. This approach has increased customer retention for Southwest Airlines.

What organization will retain customers where the employees are rude, cranky, disrespectful or disinterested especially when facing customer complaints?

To create internal loyal customers requires uniting systems or processes; strategies and people.  

Systems or processes comprise the ongoing continuous improvement actions such as lean, Six Sigma or Baldrige. Additionally, team building and a customer focus is also included within this area.

Strategy returns to the strategic planning where vision, mission and values are defined not only for the entire organization, but for major departments as well.

People area speaks to the management and development of all people through leadership skills, attitudes and behaviors, interpersonal skills, intrapersonal skills and the execution of business plans to department initiatives.

When this three prong approach is undertaken and executed well, then loyal employees (internal customers) are created.  This approach also supports the development of a high performance culture because everything is working together in alignment.

Seeking customer retention begins from within just like any other sustainable change process. Once all employees are united and behind the executive leadership and truly believe the organization is 100% focused on the employees who create those moments of truth for the customers, the results will not only be customer retention, but higher profitability, increased innovation and decreased costs including the very expensive one of employee turnover.

Guest Author:

Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Chief Results Officer

ADVANCED SYSTEMS

219.759.5601 CT (near Chicago, IL USA)

http://www.processspecialist.com – website

http://www.increase-sales-coach.com – blog

Author of Be the Red Jacket - http://bit.ly/1Q9mnV

Being a Better Customer

A guest blog post from Scott Gingsberg www.hellomynameisscott.com

It’s amazing.

Considering how much time, money and effort companies spend on customer service training; we’re never really taught to become better customers ourselves.

Because in most of the day’s transactions, we’re the customers – not the servers.

And if we truly want to have a joyful, remarkable experience, we can’t just sit back and wait for people to read our minds and make us happy. We have to help them help us. As guests, patients, viewers, clients, patrons, members, visitors, users, callers, listeners and customers, we have to make ourselves more servable.

Otherwise we’re equally at fault for not getting what we want, the way we want it.

It starts with expectational clarity. Sharing what’s important to us. Letting people in on our preferences. And delivering a vision of what happiness looks like.

Take a massage studio. If we don’t want the therapist yapping our ear off during the entire session, we need to speak up and let her know that silence is essential to our relaxation. Otherwise we end up getting mad at her for being chatty and ruining the experience, when all we had to do was take two seconds to say, “Oh, and I prefer to keep quiet most of the time.”

Being a better customer also has to with vocalizing dissatisfaction. Letting those who serve us know that we’re not happy with the exchange. Unfortunately, this is harder than it sounds because, as humans, we dread confrontation. We avoid conflict. And we don’t want to be difficult.

We’d rather suck it up and eat the overcooked steak instead of making a fuss, sending it back and risk being the topic of conversation in the kitchen.

Because nobody wants to be the freak at the table.

The problem is, this kind of passivity hurts both parties.

It hurts the server because he misses out on valuable feedback from his customer. Our silence robs of the opportunity to create a service moment and a story worth repeating.

But it also hurts us. It reduces our experience. We get annoyed that an employee missed the mark, and we selfishly assume it’s because he’s an incompetent dolt who doesn’t listen to his customers.

When in reality, the real reason we’re so unhappy is because we made that employee do unnecessary guesswork.

We never helped them help us.

We just sat there, winking in the dark, hoping they would read our minds.

 And unless we’re getting our palm read, that’s not the smartest path to happiness.

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Scott Ginsberg is the World Record Holder of Wearing Nametags. He's the author of thirteen books, an award-winning blogger, professional speaker and creator of NametagTV.com. He specializes in approachability, identity and execution, and for more info about books, speaking engagements, strategic planning crusades or to rent Scott's brain for a one-on-one session, email scott@hellomynameisscott.com.