The Gilman Company Blog

What other problems do your customers have?

Isn't it frustrating? You product or service is great. It's going to solve a lot of problems, move your potential clients forward, make them more happy, improve their lives, save them tons of money, and no one can be more convincing or charming than you, but....

At least address the issues that are surrounding the problem that you're trying to solve for your clients, for your buyers.

How most offers work:

1. Here's the stuff
2. Here's why it's better than the stuff other people are selling and why you need it
3. Here's how much
4. Wanna buy?

Talk to your clients or customers about what they need, the unique problems they have and sort those issues out. Anyway, you're an expert in your industry, right?

Ask a question.

Sharing is the new taking

Facebook, Twitter, blogs, open source, MySpace, personal websites, Wikipedia, etc., etc. One very important thing in common here. People love to share. What does this mean for your business?

Ask a question or get a free consultation.

Got info?

You: Nothing says disenchantment quite like sitting across the table from a business person that didn't even bother to Google me or my company.

A deal breaking element of direct sales is information about your customer. A critical element of direct sales is personalization.

How do you achieve the type of personalization that comes with a sale? You learn about your customer. In that process of learning, you will begin to understand the qualities of your products or services that are most appealing to your customer. In that process, you will also learn about the needs of your customer. In that process, you will learn whether or not this customer will be a good one. You will learn how to improve your product or service. You will learn how not to waste your time.

Ask a question or get a FREE Gilman consultation.

How not to pass your costs along

At the end of the day, you are passing along certain costs to your customers. There are many ways to pass these costs along.

When you are in a market where price is everything (wireless service, banking, etc.), a market where your product or service being 5% higher means you lose sales, you end up with things like hidden fees, watered down products and services, etc.

If you're not in that type of market, why would you ever consider inviting consumer angst with something like a "fee" or an additional cost when you can pass your cost along strategically?

Get a Gilman consultation.

Grocery Store Membership Cards

Dear Chain Grocery Store CMOs,

Yes, membership cards seemed like a good idea at the time. But let's face it. There is no value in grocery store membership card programs for customers and your not realizing the type of value that seemed to exist from a conceptual perspective. Here are a few reasons why you should drop your membership card program first and take credit as the industry leader who did so:

1. Obviously, all of the retail chain grocery store competitors in your category have the same program.

2. A lot of the data you collect is bogus.

3. The rewards you offer aren't compelling and unique enough to retain a customer that you wouldn't retain without a card program.

4. Now you have a duty to inform people when they may have purchased bad food. "Dear Valued Customer, we sold you some bad food."

5. Your card program is a hassle for potential new customers.

6. You give so-called preferred treatment to some customers and the others are chopped liver.

7. Wal-Mart has been expanding grocery sales since "Go" and they don't have a card. Although customers will still come in for your extensive mustard selection...unless it's cheaper at a card-less discount grocer.

8. You can reduce your marketing budget by eliminating membership cards and have something new to talk about or pass the savings along to customers.

9. Unless you're a discount chain, the real value in your local stores is location, personal service and selection, not membership. Spend more money marketing that stuff.

10. Relating to the people who come into your stores as "customers" is more important to them than relating to them as "members."

Get a Gilman consultation.

You are Not Your Customer

If you want to enhance the experience that your customers have when they do business with you, remember that "you" are not "they". What may appear to be the best solution to you may not be the best solution for your customer.

For example, if you like pastels and your in the business of selling sporting goods, the packaging for your boxing gloves product probably shouldn't be designed based on a pastel color scheme. You should be looking for a bold and strong color scheme.

If you like to get creative but your customers are very no nonsense, you should market to and communicate with them with that in mind.

Bonus tip: know your customers.

Get a Gilman consultation.

Customer Experience: The New Battleground

Interested in a new way to measure your success with consumers in a market? Several directly competing firms have begun to bash it out on "customer experience". No, it's not about product satisfaction, it's not about environmental friendliness and it's not about trust or economic viability. It's strictly about customer experience, not to be confused with customer service.

How do you measure customer experience? Think interactions in terms of usefulness, ease of use, pleasantness and general customer satisfaction with interactions.

Here, a recent fray and a worthy match up between Dell and Apple where Apple takes the day.

But, what does beating out or losing to your competitors on customer experience mean? That depends.

Get a Gilman consultation.

Existing Customers vs. New Customers: Marketing and Sales(Part II)

If your only marketing goal is to source new customers or members, you’re losing out on sustainable growth. That means you’re not optimizing the lifetime value of each customer. Unless you’re running a lonely gas station in the middle of nowhere that caters to the occasional passer by, existing customers should be a priority.

Because the attention span of consumers can be short and because consumers love trends, marketing efforts to retain existing customers or members should focus on the reason why your existing customer became a customer in the first place: “value.” If you keep a close eye on your competitors, this marketing focus might need to change to “added value.”

Also, it’s almost always less expensive to keep an existing customer than it is to track down a new one. This is precisely why the sophisticated players in this game are often willing to pass a part of that savings on to existing customers in the form of loyalty based incentives.

Get a Gilman consultation.

Top Ecommerce Retailer Searches

According to an Internet Retailer article, the top 20 ecommerce retailers in the month of February were as follows:

1. eBay
2. Walmart
3. Amazon
4. Target
5. Best Buy
6. Netflix
7. Home Depot
8. Circuit City
9. Sears
10. Costco
11. Walgreens
12. Macys
13. Bed Bath and Beyond
14. JCPenny
15. Kmart
16. Staples
17. Office Depot
18. Kohls
19. Barnes & Noble
20. iTune

Is it great to be as high up on this as possible? Absolutely! Is it everything? Probably not. However, much to learn about consumer habits online if you watch this list fluctuate month to month as it certainly does.

Get a Gilman consultation.

Existing Customers vs. New Customers: Marketing and Sales (Part I)

One of the greatest marketing flaws I see on a regular basis occurs when a company focused marketing (dollars) on either existing customers or new customers, but not both. First, existing customers.

Focusing all of your marketing or sales efforts on existing customers is a great way to create a downward spiral in sales and growth. One of the reasons why a marketer’s job is never over in a relatively free market is because customers always move on at some point. On one end, a customer tries your product and doesn’t like it. That customer is lost. On the other end, they try your product, love it, buy it over and over again for several years and then they…well…die. Either way, if you only market to your existing customers, you will eventually fail.

Ignoring your existing customers, on the other hand is much like chasing your tail. Maybe “reinventing the wheel” is a better platitude. Either way, your existing customers should be coveted and marketing efforts that are uniquely designed to keep them coming back should be planned and implemented.

Get a Gilman consultation.