2. Connecting With Your Customer Webster: “connected” – joined or linked together “your” – belonging to you “customer” – someone who pays for goods or services
6. 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”)
11. Product Features Customer pain Product Features “Marketing is the art of talking about features, but wrapping them in a value proposition” –Holly Hamann Pricing
12. 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
14. 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
15. The Sales Process Brand Helpful attributes Affinity / trust / sincerity / integrity Alignment Timely & capable An aligning question: “How can I help?” Timely Sincere Expert Expedient
17. 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
18. Advertising Methods Newspaper ads Magazine ads Billboards Yellow Pages TV ads Endorsements Spam AdWords Word of Mouth
19. 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
I’ve let it be widely known that I’m interested in helping entrepreneurs. I’ve asked many times at CU if there’s anything I could do to help with entrepreneurial education. Finally, the good folks at NVC asked if I could talk about Connecting With Your Customer. “Sure” I said!
I am an entrepreneur, so I am resourceful; I looked in the dictionary to help me understand what I am supposed to talk to you about.By the way, I’m pretty sure that whoever came up with this topic meant “customerS” – otherwise their entrepreneurial ventures are going to be pretty rough!But because I am an en entrepreneur, I don’t really care about Convention or What’s in the dictionary. The Most Important entrepreneurial process!
Customer is somebody who hands me a bag of money happily
It Still Feels WeirdWhat I want, what I really really want…