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April 14, 2005  http://www.thecompetitiveadvantage.net
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CONTENTS:

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CUSTOMER SERVICE QUIZ
What Kind of Service Provider Are You?

Great customer service doesn’t just happen. You must care about your customers and dedicate yourself to your career. Take the following quiz to find out how you rate as a service provider. Give yourself a point for every "yes" answer.

Score:
8-10: Congratulations. You’re the kind of customer service professional that people respect. You don’t settle for "good enough." You go above and beyond to understand and serve your customers.

5-7: You’re on your way. You’ve mastered some of the essentials, but you still have some work to do if you want to be a star.

0-4: You have some work to do. If you could answer "yes" to only a few questions, your customers probably aren’t very happy. That’s the bad news. The good news: You now know what you need to do to improve. Don’t try to change all at once. Work on one problem at a time. If you lack product knowledge, seek additional training. If you have a hard time listening, make an extra effort to concentrate when customers speak. With a little effort, you can score a perfect 10.

Reprinted from Briefings Publishing Group, www.briefings.com.
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LARRY CHASE’S WEB DIGEST FOR MARKETERS
Top 10 Online Trends for 2005

1. Email Marketing Still Has Staying Power: One year ago, many were proclaiming the death of email marketing because of too much unsolicited email, reduced click-throughs and so on. But it’s still just about unbeatable for return on investment for legitimate true blue internet marketers, and will continue to be so.

2. Multimedia Picks Up Steam: It’s a long way from enjoying the universality of the email platform, but multimedia finally has traction. Even I admit it, and I was a naysayer for a very long time. When done right, response rates are increased due to the higher involvement of the user. The trick is to use the magic of sight and sound appropriately and not gratuitously.

3. Vertical Search Finding its Niche: People don’t want zillions of relevant search results; they only want a handful of the best. Market-specific directories like my www.SearchEngineForMarketers.com will continue to gain momentum in their respective industries.

4. Blogs Bloom Bigger: Look for ads to start showing up in some types of blogs. Other blogs will be used for branding purposes or for SEO reasons, or simply because you must express yourself and hope there are people out there who will read your stuff. If a blog gets updated, but nobody reads it, did it really happen?

5. RSS. Really. What some call "Real Simple Syndication" is being used by many email newsletters as a way of avoiding email filters. For newsletters that cater to early adopter audiences, it’s more apt to pay off first. Figuring out how to monetize RSS, i.e., designing good and useful ad formats that aren’t so intrusive but are effective enough to have advertisers repeat buy, will also need to happen.

6. More Online Media Reps: According to eMarketer, online ad spending will overtake radio in the foreseeable future. Follow the money.

7. Webinar Marketing Loses Secret Status: The sponsored model, when done right, is an exceptionally cost-effective and time-saving way to obtain very qualified leads, especially in the b2b space. You advertise the event, people register to attend and you have someone in your organization get in touch with them thereafter. Compare the costs to that of a trade show.

8. Direct Marketers Take Over the Internet: Oops, sorry. It's already happened. What advertiser in his or her right mind won’t look at response rates to their messaging when they’re so easily available? At the very least, it’s market research of the first order. Branding will always have its place, but most media people I know are glued to those response rates. It’s only natural.

9. Cost of Clicks Continue to Climb: Because of click fraud, where your competitors have teeming hordes of people constantly clicking on your pay-per-click listings in search engine results, and because the cost of clicks are getting so high for many keywords, new models will need to surface. Google’s AdSense might have sprung from such thinking. Anyway, we need more of those venues where sellers can find qualified buyers. This is another argument for vertical search engines. See Trend  No. 3.

10. Commercial Content: Marketers will continue to conjure up offerings to their target audiences that will actually be welcomed by the recipient. I often see well targeted, well-written ads get more click-throughs than many of the reviews in Web Digest For Marketers. Valuable commercial content is key. It keeps in mind solely the interest of the reader’s needs just then, so how can the reader not like it? People pay lots to wear the Nike logo or shorts with Coke’s logo emblazoned on them. Why shouldn’t people have a similar affinity to your firm’s good services, products and people? Advertising which screams "Me, Me, Me" is doomed. Messaging that says "You, You, You" is where it’s at.

Larry Chase is a speaker, consultant and the author of Essential Business Tactics for the Net. He also publishes the Web Digest for Marketers, a free, weekly e-mail letter. To receive a free subscription, go to wdfm.com. He may be contacted at LarryChase@LarryChase.com.
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CRM
TRENDS AND PREDICTIONS IN CRM
By Liz Roche

I’m very excited about three new ideas that have reached "trend" status this year: sell-side commerce (though e-commerce is back in style, I’m talking about multi-channel commerce), customer data integration and consent management. These trends are developed by looking at a number of different things including customer expectations and demands, enterprise business strategy, technology market direction, CRM vendor product roadmaps and goals.  Understanding these CRM trends will enable your organization to "future proof" itself relative to changes in the CRM market.

TREND: Overall CRM. During 2005-06, CRM business strategy in which the customer is the design point becomes mainstreamed as "customer lifecycle management" (CLCM) essentially balancing the duality between the internal view (profit realized) and the external view (value delivered).  What does this mean to you? The ability to solidify your customer segmentation strategy, as it will drive your CRM implementation. Not all customers will be treated the same so each customer’s experience must be optimized. "Optimized" does not necessarily mean "maximized".

TREND: CRM Technology. During 2005-06, balanced CRM technology environments will become de facto standard best-practice CRM technology designs, with organizations finally augmenting operational CRM investments with analytics and collaboration. What does this mean to you? Build business cases for CRM analytics, as CRM vendors will increasingly augment their out-of-the-box CRM functionality with analytics--which has been sorely missing from 50-60 percent of all commercial CRM applications.

TREND: CRM Applications.  During 2005-06, basic horizontal CRM functionality such as sales, service and marketing, delivered by ERP vendors, will reach functional parity with that delivered by CRM specialists, and will be differentiated based on technology ecosystem completeness, vertical process depth and fit with enterprise architecture strategies. What does this means to you? If you have an ERP application implemented in your environment such as SAP, Oracle etc.,  you should definitely shortlist their CRM modules.

TREND: CRM Patterns.  During 2005-06, organizations will begin creating relationship treatments by describing and encapsulating customer profiles, behaviors and preferences into reusable, value-based customer relationship patterns. These patterns will contain scenario-specific customer lifecycle treatments, the associated business processes and the enabling technology to instrument the relationship. What does this mean to you? Again, segmentation is everything. Begin to think about value metrics beyond pure profitability and plan for product and brand management to be augmented with customer segment management.

TREND: Marketing. During 2005-06, enterprise marketing management (EMM) coalesces around three domains: marketing resource management (MRM), campaign management and lead management. Concomitantly, cross-channel integration enables customer marketing beyond the engage stage, and throughout every stage of the Engage/Transact/Fulfill/Service customer lifecycle. Through 2006-07, the marketing function will be repositioned as the "air traffic controller" of customer engagement interactions, optimizing inbound and outbound marketing opportunities. By 2008, marketing organizations will evolve from channel to segment specific, to manage always-on marketing campaigns as customer-specific customer dialogs. What does this mean to you? As you select marketing technology, look beyond pure campaign management and include MRM and lead management.

TREND: Customer Data Integration. During 2005-2006, enterprises will experience "dueling customer master files" as proliferating in-production business applications create and consume customer information such as CRM and ERP. Through 2006, innovative organizations will adopt Customer Data Integration (CDI) as a strategic imperative to resolve data primacy and accuracy issues related to the customer "system of record."  What does this mean to you?  Assess your data quality issues around customer master data now.  While perhaps not requiring technology intervention, this assessment will give you a good foundation as you approach the segmentation and profiling exercises suggested in the above trends.

TREND: Consent Management.  During 2005-06, the proliferation of legislated customer privacy and contact requirements, such as Do Not Call, will stress organizations’ ability to operationalize customer privacy preferences across all business units. Through 2007, organizations will institutionalize customer preference management and coalesce CRM preferences, customer privacy and information security disciplines. What does this mean to you? Think beyond opt-in/opt-out and begin to manage all consent-related business processes together.

TREND: E-commerce.  During 2005-06, outdated dot.com-era e-commerce engines will be overhauled and integrated into enterprise CRM initiatives to enable a consistent multi-channel customer experience, fully exploitable integrated channel systems, lower interaction costs and increased channel productivity and interoperateability. Through 2007, e-commerce product and brand managers will become organizationally integrated into traditional channel management structures and participate in shared revenue targets and compensation strategies.  What does this mean to you? Embark on a "dot.com makeover" that integrates the e-channel with traditional selling and marketing channels.

TREND: Hybrid Channels.  Despite traditional selling channels such as direct sales, telesales and VARss driving more than 95 percent of revenue in almost every industry, during 2005-06 there will be a consistent increase in the amount of revenue the e-channel drives, though traditional channels will remain the focus of CRM investments. Through 2007, combined (i.e., hybrid) go-to-market systems, not the e-channel in isolation, will be the dominant driver of growth, relationship quality, self-service and selling effectiveness.  What does this mean to you? See above - it’s not just "online" vs. "offline" - think about "all-line" commerce.

Liz Roche, a META Group analyst, has 15 years of IT experience managing strategic enterprise technology and business programs, and has worked in the field of CRM for the past 10 years.
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CASE STUDY
Want Great Salespeople?
Cutlery manufacturer Cutco finds that its partnership with students and colleges is a win-win for all involved.
By James E. Stitt, ALCAS Corp.

With college tuition prices skyrocketing, students today realize that the degrees they earn must enable them to find jobs that pay decent salaries.

Likewise, corporations are under pressure to hire graduates who can make an immediate impact on their bottom lines. Gone are the days when companies have lengthy honeymoon periods with new hires, hoping that an individual might be productive a few years down the road.

Sales is a discipline that is gaining more attention from universities, in part because students realize that good sales professionals are in demand in any economy. Several universities are now partnering with companies, allowing students to combine sales theory with practical experience. Cutco is one such company and has become an important part of several college curriculums.

Cutco is a 55-year-old company based in western New York which manufactures and sells more than $200 million in cutlery each year, mostly through a nationwide network of college students. Students work as independent contractors selling mostly during the summer and on a part-time basis during the school year.

In 1990 there were only two universities in the United States with certified selling programs offering minors or majors. Today there are 11. These curriculums place an emphasis on relationship sales and problem solving rather than on pushing product.

As a result, the image of the professional salesperson is changing from that of the slick sell-at-any-cost person to the individual who uses a consultative approach.

In many cases, corporations are funding these programs because they realize that graduates with sales degrees are significantly more productive than those without this background. Just as important, companies can reduce expensive turnover because new employees have accurate expectations of a sales career.

The Cutco Model
Prior to entering the field, Cutco student reps undergo a comprehensive training program which takes place in three short sessions and covers a variety of topics. During this three-day program, students are taught how to generate appointments among friends and families. Cutco also spends significant time on product education so that salespeople understand the product’s value and can confidently sell it.

These direct sales reps are monitored and mentored by company executives, but because of their independent contractor status, they work on their own. Many earn significant part-time income and others learn that direct sales is not for them. Either way, they learn valuable lessons that can benefit them in most any career.

Cutco’s three-day program includes training in these areas:

These are the basics of any sales process and are key elements of several curriculums taught in textbooks. The sales course in one university requires students to take the Cutco program and to go through the sales process. Students are not graded on sales, but rather on how effectively they implement strategies that can lead to sales, including sales call quotas; generating reports on analyzing sales calls; generating weekly sales reports and presentation skills.

In one program, students receive extra credit for making actual sales.

Most important, the Cutco portion of the curriculum forces students to probe, to listen and to develop closing skills.

B2B Sales
Most students who graduate with a degree in sales aspire to a position involving business-to-business sales as opposed to personal sales. B2B involves customer service, up-selling and maintaining customer relationships among repeat customers. People in these positions can service the same customers for years. In many cases, securing new accounts is not a priority.

At Cutco, we’ve been told that the value of our program in these curriculums is that it forces students to re-create the entire sales process over and over. The process starts with generating the appointment, demonstrating the product, closing and then providing customer service.

For those who are committed to a sales career, the combination of classroom and field work is invaluable for both students and the company which hires them after graduation.

James E. Stitt is president and CEO of ALCAS Corp., the parent company of CUTCO.  CUTCO is based in Olean, New York.
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COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Crack a Competitor’s Best Account

You’re trying to get a piece of a competitor ’s top account. What’s the best approach? First, understand that the buyer is probably concerned that a new vendor won’t understand his needs as well as his long-time vendor does. But you have a big advantage: Your competitor may be taking the relationship for granted. To win the buyer over:

- Adapted from Guerrilla Teleselling, Jay Conrad Levinson, Mark S. A. Smith and Orvel Ray Wilson, John Wiley & Sons, www.wiley.com.

Running Scared?
Some salespeople are so aware of the competition that, rather than tending to their own strategy, they’re always looking over their shoulders. Warning: If your sales tactics are based on how rapidly the competition is catching up, you’re selling defensively.

Better: Take charge and put yourself firmly in the lead. Look ahead. How can you help your customers? Sometimes, even the smallest ideas can do a lot to advance your position - and put more distance between you and your competitors.

Suggestion: Treat even the most longstanding accounts as prospects who could dismiss you at any moment. Work as hard to retain their business as you do to bring in a fresh prospect.

You’ll remain mentally alert and stay focused on your best customers’ needs. And that will help you build relationships that last.

- Adapted from The Mentor, Jack Carew, Plume, www.penguinputnam.com.

Hot Closing Phrases
You’ve heard it a thousand times: "Don’t leave until you ask for the sale!" But for many salespeople, the hardest part of any sales call is making a smooth transition from the presentation to the close.

Here are some low-pressure phrases that can move the sale forward:

-- Adapted from Cracking New Accounts, Terry L. Booton, Probus Publishing, www.books.mcgraw-hill.com.
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SIX WAYS TO IMPRESS YOUR MANAGER

Most salespeople take pride in determining their own success. But even mavericks must report to someone. Here are six simple rules to help you make the most of your relationship with your boss:

1. Report frequently. Bosses like to know what’s going on at all times. Always hand in your reports and other paperwork on time. And look for ways to communicate informally, too.

2. Be candid. No one likes surprises. If you discover a problem pending, don’t try to sweep it under the rug. Discuss the situation - before your boss starts looking for someone to blame.

3. Be resourceful. Never use your manager as a dumping ground for problems. Whenever you report a problem, always suggest at least one solution.

4. Be straightforward. Honesty never hurts. So if you notice a policy or plan that doesn’t seem right, say so.

5. Be willing. You’re not going to win every time. If your boss overrules you, do the best you can to make the policy or plan work, despite your reservations.

6. Succeed. Last, but far from least: Salespeople who meet their goals and beat their quotas are the most likely to attract their boss’s positive attention.

- Adapted from Sales Manager’s Desk Book, Gene Garofalo. Prentice Hall, www.prenhall.com.

Creating Instant Rapport
Use this powerful strategy to gain instant rapport with any referred prospect: Just discover something your referral source likes or admires about the prospect. Then follow these two steps:

Then paraphrase what you learned from your source to build quick rapport and trust.

- Adapted from The Referral Coach, Bill Cates, www.referralcoach.com
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BOOMERS: THE FUTURE OF MARKETING BOOMERS
Why the youth bias of marketers no longer makes business sense and what you can do about it.
By Brent Green

Do boomers truly offer marketers a fertile business opportunity?

To this question there is one reverberating answer: "Duh!"

Nevertheless, the question is bandied daily in the business media. But consider the economic clout held by boomers and older generations.

Today, American adults over age 50 represent 38 percent of the population, and that group will explode to 47 percent by 2020. According to data collected by the U.S. Census and Federal Reserve, the 78 million Americans who were 50 or older as of 2001 had $28 trillion in assets, or 67 percent of the country’s wealth.

The question raised above has a forceful answer: 50-plus adults control from $750 billion to $1 trillion of all household discretionary income. Mature consumers outspend younger adults by a factor of two to one.

Marketers and media have a youth bias ... and we can partially thank boomers for this. When they were younger, boomers became Madison Avenue darlings by stimulating and popularizing youth marketing. Marketers are still obsessive-compulsive about the 18-to-49 demographic segment and its junior counterpart, 18-to-34.

Although people over age 50 haul in more than half the discretionary income in the United States, they receive less than 10 percent of ad messages. Since the nation’s youth market is shrinking and the mature market is burgeoning, a singular youth focus is folly.

So, to wrestle fully with the niggling question about boomer economic opportunity, we need a spoonful of demography and a pinch of sociology. 

The baby boom generation is composed of Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Post-world War II parents procreated 76 million times during this 19-year span and immigration has expanded the cohort by 6 to 8 million since the end of the boom.

Those born between 1946 and 1955 are called leading-edge boomers; those born during the second half are referred to as late- or trailing-edge boomers. The leading-edge boomers are different from their younger brothers and sisters in some fundamental ways.

Members of the older group shared teenage encounters with the galvanizing experiences of the Vietnam War era and the cataclysmic cultural shifts, including modern feminism, civil rights and environmentalism. Leading-edge boomers are most often associated with the protest movements of the ‘60s, as well as over-publicized experimentation with "drugs, sex and rock n’ roll."

Late boomers entered college after the Vietnam War ended in January 1973, and most experienced a more peaceful, less culturally chaotic time to start careers and begin families.

Leading-edge boomers are receiving a lot of attention right now because they are nearest to retirement, with bountiful implications for the housing, health, and hospitality industries, to name a few.

Every 8 seconds, another boomer turns 50. That’s 10,000 to 12,000 per day and 4 million per year. America is getting older every month, and one-third of the U.S. population will be older than 50 by 2010.

But the nature of boomers must be considered as well as the numbers.

Boomers have proven that they don’t just occupy life stages, they transform them. Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., author of several books on the subject, including Age Power: How the 21st Century will be ruled by the New Old, points out that boomer trends become social phenomena and cultural obsessions. Examples:

When a plethora of boomer children overwhelmed mealtime during the fifties, a company called Gerber introduced portioned and prepared foods for babies and toddlers.

When boomer teenagers developed a taste for carryout food and its conveniences, McDonald’s grew from one humble California store to a national juggernaut.

When GM became a metaphor for Big Brother during the antiauthoritarian ‘60s, Germany and Japan, America’s World War II arch-enemies, captured the U.S. automotive market with VW Beetles and Toyotas.

When boomers decided to lose extra pounds from consuming so much fast food, jogging became a craze and Nike became a Fortune 500 company.

Considering the paradigm-busting history of the boomer generation, why would anyone apply yesterday’s thinking about aging and retirement to tomorrow’s possibilities?

It is ludicrous to expect members of such an outspoken, demonstrable generation to accept their parents’ standards for retirement life, or to foresee them sauntering passively into a golfing sunset, estranged and disenfranchised. 

Recall the battle cry many boomers enjoined during Vietnam: "Hell no, we won’t go!" Today’s economic and social realities portend a different kind of retirement era, one driven by activism more than resignation.

When marketers understand this generation and its wants and needs, companies make money ... lots of it. What are some of the tricks that will open collective pocketbooks?

A full answer to this sweeping question will require a book, not an article, but here are some examples of cohort-sensitive marketing approaches.

Spiritual Satisfaction
The quest for self-discovery and self-actualization are fundamental mid-life issues. People who arrive at this stage of development become more concerned about relevance and legacies, less concerned about acquisition for purely material satisfaction.

Spiritual concerns in a material world have, at their roots, a collective desire for community, abundant health, brightening horizons and life satisfaction. There is an underlying search for holistic solutions - those modalities that interlace body, mind, and spirit.

This searching culture has generated a marketplace of new spiritual resources, including books, videotapes, audiotapes, weekend retreats, newsletters, institutes, and digital networks.

Beyond Stereotypes
You’ve probably seen a few boomer advertising clichés: hippies and Earth mamas; wistful nostalgia about the ‘60s, ad infinitum; and SUV-driving, cell-phone-yakking yuppies who appear inane and ego-centered.

A global electronics manufacturer launched a colossally expensive TV campaign in 2003. The flashy flourish, featuring a boomer’s global orbit in the International Space Station, makes its hero appear narcissistic and irresponsible. The underlying message, wherein the protagonist proposes to disinherit his children in the name of self-gratification, is a subtle putdown, veiled in cinematic beauty and boomer nostalgia.

A marketing campaign last year by a multinational pharmaceutical company demonstrates another typical error. The TV spot rivets attention with its classic rock music bed by Queen. But as boomers gyrate to the nostalgic beat while celebrating their erectile-dysfunction medication, they appear overweight and disheveled.

These ads are the products of the most high-profile, respected advertising agencies in the world, yet boomers are growing weary of this kind of positioning. No generation deserves to be dismissed as "self-absorbed" or some other sweeping invective. Opportunity lies in creating advertising that compliments rather than criticizes and messages that elevate rather than denunciate.

Experiential Marketing
According to Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy, the newest source of value creation is experiences: promotions, events and shopping environments designed to engage boomers in a personal and profound way.

The key to marketing with experiences is to position brands as a reflection of unique psychological encounters. Experiences create memories, rich with sensations and personal engagement. Boomers are experience seekers, especially today in mid-life.

Freedom Values
Aging often is associated with the values of comfort, predictability and routine, but healthy boomers defy these generalizations. Many head in the opposite direction and embrace unabashed experimentation as a pre-retirement lifestyle.

Experimental behavior could manifest itself in a number of new ways. That’s why the adventure travel trend is gaining momentum in the early years of the new century.

Freedom is the most romantic and compelling lure of retirement, and its multifaceted meaning will find expression during the next few years through new or revitalized products and services.

Gathering and Community
Boomers became accustomed to communal experiences at an early age. It was common for many to coexist in groups of 40 to 60 or more within classrooms built and designed for half as many. Appealing to this sense of generational community can become a powerful motivator for marketers selling lifestyle housing, recreational facilities, entertainment events, and educational conferences.

Cause-Related Marketing
Since the mid-1970’s, many boomers have refocused on careers, child rearing, and the increasing demands of economic competitiveness. However, I believe important lessons from their teen years about group engagement remain buried in the generation’s collective psyche; many retain a spirit of social activism that took shape and found passionate direction in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

The opportunity is always available for your company to support a worthwhile non-profit and then enlist your customers and stakeholders to participate in promotions that integrate advertising, sales promotion, and public relations. As a corporate brand development strategy, cause-related marketing powerfully resonates with boomers.

Processing Life
During a recent visit to Denver, David Wolfe, author of Ageless Marketing, wisely reminded me that "the most effective marketing is marketing that helps people process their lives." Help boomers process their lives with marketing communications and targeted brand strategies, and you won’t need to ponder the $750 billion question any further.

You’ll just profit from its answer.

Brent Green is the author of Marketing to Leading-edge Baby Boomers: Perceptions, Principles, Practices, Predictions, Paramount Market Publishing, Jan. 2005. He is president of Brent Green & Associates Inc., a Denver-based marketing and communications company he founded in 1986. A member of the leadership council for the Business Forum on Aging, American Society on Aging, Green is himself a boomer with a 23-year marketing career.
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