What it means?

The term Grok (rhymes with rock) is a term that refers to a person's ability to "understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with." The term was coined by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 novel, Stranger in a Strange Land.

The term also comes up in the programming world (science fiction and computer programmers, hmmm?): When you claim to "grok" some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity.

Are you thinking, "Judy, that's all well and good but I own a small business and I have customers to call, prospects to follow up on, and stuff to do." Why the heck should I care?

Good thing you asked.  (or alternatively: it matters a lot; here's why)

Why it matters?

The ability to grok your customers is the x-factor of effective marketing. Grokking your customer is what creates truly viral marketing.

Have you ever noticed how many of the sales pitches you encounter each day feel forced and impersonal? The average American is exposed to literally, x persuasive messages a day and we ignore the vast majority of them.

As a small business owner, I encounter hundreds of appeals for products and services that are supposed to help me make more money, do more in less time, leap tall buildings in a single bound, and so on. If you own a small business or practice, you know what I'm talking about.

I can count on my fingers the number of times an appeal has truly stood out and pulled me in. But when they do, they're almost irresistable. Not manipulative. Not seductive. Irresistable as in "attraction."

And if the company is doing right by their customers, they are treating me very, very well when I do become a customer.

What does it mean to "Grok" your customers?

I like to think of "grokking" as understanding customer in our heads and in our hearts. Too often I see marketing messages that err in one direction or the other and the results are a mess.

Several years ago, I worked as a technical writer for a large software developer (no longer in business by the way). They spent an enormous amount of money on very slick looking ads that appeared in magazines, at tradeshows, and on their website. Although the ads looked impressive with fancy colored diagrams and such, you would have to have a PhD in Engineering to have a clue about what they were selling.

And then there are the appeals that  

What does it mean to "grok" your customers?

Let me turn the question around first. Think back to a time when you felt truly understood, recognized, and appreciated by a business for which you are a customer. Got that time in mind? Good. So how did it feel?

I think it is easier to recognized when you're being "grokked" than when you're not. This is because when we're not being grokked, it can be very subtle. The feeling that "they're just not getting what I need." 

Business 101 tells us that in order to have a sustainable competitive advantage we must offer products and services that satisfy customer needs and that we need to do it in a way which is in some way better than our competitors.

Logically, then, shouldn't your marketing focus on letting customers know what a great job you do when it comes to meeting their needs?

Yes and no. Although customer needs are incredibly important and should be taken into account when you plan and develop your marketing, they shouldn't be the focus of your marketing. Money spent on needs-focused marketing is not money well-spent.

Needs-focused marketing doesn't work because people spend money on what they want not on what they need. It's like the classic song from the Rolling Stones:

"You can't always get what you want

And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need"

What's important to remember is that even though we can't always get what we want we still want it and we still try to get it. This is why marketing that focuses on satisfying your customer's wants is always a lot more compelling than marketing that focuses on needs.

Does this mean you can ignore the needs of your customers and clients when developing your marketing? Absolutely not! You need to consider both wants and needs in your marketing. You market to customer wants and you deliver on customer needs.

Let's first define what "wants" and "needs" mean when it comes to marketing.

At their most basic level, human needs are what we need to stay alive: air, water, food, and sleep. Once these basic needs are met, we focus on meeting higher level needs: companionship, security, protection from the elements, entertainment, and so on.

In the United States and countries with similar economies, these basic needs are pretty well met for most people. This is why most products and services today focus on meeting higher level needs.

There are two ways to think about wants:

1. Desire for relief from pain

For example, an aspirin ad, "I just want my headache to go away." The pain here is self-evident.

Pain is often a symptom of an important need that isn't being met.

For example, headaches can be a sign of too much stress, not eating right, needing to wear glasses, or something even more serious.

2. A preference for how you want a need met

For example, most of us need shoes to protect our feet from getting injured. Some of us prefer wearing Nike cross-trainers and some of us prefer wearing pink satin slippers with beaded trim.

So what does this mean when it comes to marketing your products and services. Two things:

1. Make sure your marketing focuses on relief from pain and/or customer wants;

2. and, when someone becomes a customer make sure that your products and services provide the solution to so that their real needs get met.

Steps for Creating Wants-based Marketing

1. Understand the symptoms and wants that are driving your customer's interest in buying from you.
 
2. Know what the important unmet needs that are causing the symptoms

3. Create a marketing message that addresses your customer's symptoms and wants

4. Make sure that once that person becomes a customer that your products and services address what is causing the need to remain unmet.

5. Honor the want

For example, life coaching has become a very popular profession but a lot of coaches struggle to attract clients because they don't understand why people hire coaches.

A lot of marketing I see from coaches focuses on helping their clients meet very high-level needs. For example, "Life Coaching for Personal and Professional Empowerment"

Getting past the jargon ("empowerment") what need is this coach addressing? Probably the need people have to feel effective and to create positive change in their lives. This is a very legitimate need that many people have and with which a good life coach can help.

The problem is that most of us aren't in the market for "empowerment," or "better self-awareness" or "cognitive structures." We are, however, in the market for:

"Helping me deal with my jerky boss who is making my life totally miserable"

"Helping me get my kid to keep their room clean"

"Telling me what to do so I have enough money to retire on."

If your marketing doesn't address the wants of your customers or relief from the pain they are experiencing, they won't be interested in doing business with you.

How could this life coach change his or her marketing to appeal to the wants and desires of their prospective client?

How about:

"Are your kids driving you crazy because they never clean up after themselves?"

or

"Is your boss making your life miserable?"

Once someone contracts to work with this coach, they can work with the client to implement cognitive structures, systems, etc, to help the client address the cause of their problem (improve self-esteem, become more assertive) to their heart's content. If they address the cause and help the client get their needs met, they will have a very satisfied client who will happily refer more business their way.

Bottom Line

Your marketing message needs to talk about the pain your customer is experiencing or a want that they have.

Your products, services, solutions, and so on need to address what's causing the problem so the symptoms go away or to satisfy the particular want.

When your message and solution work in this way, you attract a lot more qualified prospects and you retain a greater percentage as satisfied customers. This holds true for any type of small business marketing from brochures to word of mouth referral marketing programs.

True or False: Referral marketing is the easiest way to get the word out about your small business? The answer is…

FALSE

Don't feel bad if you answered, "true." Most people do.

So often, I've seen someone start a new business, with the assumption
that their friends and colleagues would send lots of new business
their way. Three months, sometimes six months later, these new
business owners are still waiting for the phone to ring. And even if
the phone does ring, only a small percentage of those calling end up
converting to real paying customers. Sadly, many of these businesses
don't make it.

The owners of these failed businesses aren't dumb or niaive. Many
have owned successful small businesses in the past or had successful
corporate careers. They know how to get things done.

So what's going wrong? Why do referral marketing programs so often
fail to produce results?

First, business owners simply don't ask for referrals. Often this is because the business owner assumes that others "know" they need more customers. Unfortunately, the folks outside their business often assume the opposite; that if a business owner isn't asking forcustomers, they probably don't need any! It's easy to see how this dynamic undermines the referral marketing process.

Business owners may also resist asking for referrals because theythink they're “bugging” people or haven't earned the right to ask for referrals.

Regardless of the reason, the consequence is the same: if you don't ask for referrals, you won't get them.

The second reason referral marketing programs fail is because when
we do ask, we leave it up to our referral source to figure out who to
send us. So often, we ask for referrals in a vague, general way
(“uh, do you know anyone who needs my services?”).

Asked in this way, people almost always say, “no, can't think of
anyone.” Why? Because they're running through their mental contact
list, a list so large for most folks, that they rarely think of
someone specific when asked.

The third reason referral marketing program fail is because people
forget your request. Let's say someone has agreed to send you
referrals and they are completely sincere in their desire to help you.
Unless they immediately call the person they want to refer to you,
chances are they will forget because they're busy and there are more urgent things demanding their attention.

Unfortunately, if they don't remember you, they won't send you referrals.

At this point you may be thinking, “Sheesh, this is harder than I thought, maybe I should tattoo my company logo on my forehead after all,” don't be discouraged. With the right skills, know-how, and a little creativity, your referral marketing program can thrive. Read on for strategies that will take the number of referrals you receive from “blah” to “VROOM.”

Four strategies to getting more referrals:

1. Don't assume anyone knows what your business needs. Ask for referrals.

2. Understand why people give referrals and, in particular, why they will give you referrals.

Put simply, people give referrals to look good.

Think about it when you are the referrer. Have you ever referred a friend to your favorite restaurant and your friend ends up loving the place? They probably thank you every time they see you and you feel pretty great—like you let someone in on something very cool and special.

That's why people give referrals for everything—plumbers, realtors, pediatricians, electrical contractors, you name it—they get to be a hero in a small but significant way.

3. Make it easy for people to refer you.

To send you referrals, your referral sources need to remember you when opportunities arise and they need to know what to tell the person about your business. For example, compare these two referrals:

"My friend, Ann is a realtor"

"My friend Marion is a realtor who will buy your house if it doesn't sell within 90-days."

See the difference? Which is more memorable? In a tough seller's market, who would you rather refer? If this were all I knew about the two realtors, Marion is the one I'd refer.

4. Follow up and acknowledge.

If you assume people don't care whetheror not you say thank you, you assume wrong. When you call your referral source and let them know how your meeting went with the prospective customer they sent you, it reinforces their involvement in your success and their ablity to make things happen.

In addition, sending a note of appreciation regardless of whether the referral works out, encourages your referral source to send more.

When done right, referral marketing is, without a doubt, the most inexpensive AND most effective way to get the word out about your small business. Although it requires more of your time upfront in terms of planning, developing a strong message, and educating your referral sources, remember that—every dollar—every minute—you spend on your referral marketing program will pay for itself many times over in terms of the high quality new business you attract.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

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Recently, I worked with a local community group to develop marketing that would help them grow their membership. The organization I worked with is new and focuses on creating opportunities for business, non-profit, and government work together to achieve common goals.

At our first meeting, I asked the group, “What is it we want to accomplish?” Some of the answers that came back were:

“Redo the brochure”

“Fix the website so it's easier to sign up for events”

“Do a documentary on member success stories”

And so on.

Sound familiar?

When you put the words “marketing” and “accomplishments” (or “goals” or “objectives”) together, what we usually think of are specific activities such as what to do with the website, or what events to offer, or getting a classier look for the company’s promotional materials. That's what the work group participants were talking about: the specific activities they thought would help the organization increase membership.

These activities certainly sound good and worthwhile. Having an appealing website is great. So is a brochure with strong copy and a great logo.

Here’s the problem. All of us have limitations when it comes to time, money, and energy. Having lots of money helps but ultimately, you can’t implement every cool marketing idea that strikes your fancy.

So how do you choose? How do you make sure that every marketing activity will contribute to getting your business to where you want it to be? How do you make sure that each action you take contributes to your marketing effectiveness?

Here’s where marketing strategy comes in. When you set marketing objectives and create a strategy to meet those objectives, it’s easy to decide which marketing actions (or tactics) are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck.

So what's the difference between marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics and how does each insure that your marketing gets results?

Marketing Objectives are what you ultimately want your marketing to do for your business. In other words, what role does marketing play in the success of your business? Marketing objectives usually describe the number of customers you want, sources of revenue, and market share, just to name a few.

Example: The organization I worked with had two objectives: 1.) to double their membership in 2006. 2.) to increase the percent of members who own small businesses (versus non-profit and government).

Marketing Strategy describes how you will use your money, time, people, and other resources to achieve your objectives. Some of the issues addressed by marketing strategy are: what markets do we want to be in? How will we reach our audience? What products and services will we offer? How do we want to stand out in the minds of our customers?

Example: An issue that came up again and again for the community group was “it's difficult to describe what makes us different without sounding New Agey.” They had been trying but they just couldn’t say it in ten words or less. On the other hand, everyone agreed “when the organization is right for someone, they almost always sign up after attending one of our events.” That is, experience with the group is one of their best marketing tools.

From a strategic standpoint, this meant: (1.) Don't spend time and money on approaches that require strong copywriting to be effective. This meant putting on hold any major changes to the website and to the brochure and (2.) Time and resources should be focused on encouraging prospective members to attend live events.

To encourage prospects to attend, the group asked current members to invite people in their networks who were likely to appreciate what the organization had to offer—essentially, they chose a word-of-mouth marketing strategy to grow the membership.

Marketing Tactics are the specific activities you do to fulfill your strategy.

Example: Once they decided to focus on word of mouth marketing (as opposed to changing the website or redoing the brochure) the group needed to come up with activities members could do. They created a simple "outreach" card which listed membership benefits, where to go for event information, contact information, and a coupon that gave a $10 discount to first time visitors. Next they distributed cards with an emphasis on getting cards to members who tended to be "connectors" (people who had broad, diverse contact networks and who were enthusiastic proponents of group).

Two final points here:

1. The Chinese general and philosopher, Sun Tzu said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” To get results from your marketing, you need to employ strategies AND tactics. Companies that tend to get bogged in "analysis paralysis" are those that have good strategy ideas but fall short when it comes to executing tactics. Companies that overly emphasize tactics tend to “spray and pray” by implementing random marketing activities that don't support and reinforce one another. Without appropriate balance between strategies and tactics, you are likely to be wasting your marketing dollars.

2. It’s more important to set marketing objectives and strategies that you’ll use than it is to create ones that are profound and/or impressive. If your marketing objectives and strategy are three sentences written on a legal pad, fine. As long as they support your goals for developing your business and as long as you take action to put your strategy into practice.

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During a discussion about small business marketing, one owner asked me “How do you get big?”  In other words, what did he need to do with his marketing to take his business to the next level.

Great question because the marketing you do to take your business from $0 to $100,000 is very different from the marketing you do to take your business to $250,000 or $1,000,000 or $5,000,000.

Let me illustrate with a story.

In the early 1970's shampoos and conditioners that smelled like lemon, strawberry, apple, herbs, and so on, became all the rage. As a teenager, I remember plunking down my hard-earned babysitting money to buy Love's Fresh Lemon shampoo so my hair would smell like fresh squeezed lemons. A small, Chicago-based company best known for a line of perm products used by hairdressers did something interesting. The company, Helene Curtis, created a line of shampoos and conditioners that copied the most popular fragrances but retailed for about half the price of the name brands. Then they ran very simple, inexpensive television commercials during daytime TV in which a deep, authoritative male voice would say something like: “Their shampoo smells lemon fresh; Suave shampoo smells lemon fresh. Their shampoo costs $2.50, Suave costs only $1.25. Suave does what theirs does for less.” It was a simple but brilliant strategy. It launched the billion dollar Suave brand which has since expanded into just about every personal care category including baby products, skin care, and a line of products for men.

It wasn't just the “Suave does what theirs does for less” campaign that made Suave a billion dollar brand. In the 1980's Helene Curtis made a decision to become a major player in the personal care market and staffed their consumer products division with key people from consumer product giants such as Quaker Oats, SC Johnson, and Proctor & Gamble. These individuals had the training, experience, and know-how to create major consumer brands.

Having worked in Helene Curtis' consumer products group for five years, I was actively involved in brand development and marketing. Here are some things I learned about marketing's role in growing a business.

Have an audacious vision

The mission at Helene Curtis was to become the premier provider of personal care products on a global scale. This represented an enormous shift for an organization known, primarily, for marketing a small line of permanent wave products to beauty shops.

How big and audacious is your vision for your company? I encourage you to create a vision that is big enough to make you a little nervous but exciting enough so that you want to stretch yourself in order to realize it.

Don't just meet your customers' needs

At the most basic level, people need shampoo to keep their hair clean. And at that level, just about any shampoo will do. Hence, branding. Brands address higher level needs such as self-esteem and social belonging. Even more important, brands reinforce the customer's sense of who they are…their self-identity. For example, people who buy brands like Suave, think of themselves as "smart consumers" because they're buying a product that is identical in quality to the "name brands" but paying less.

Think about your customers. How well do you really understand them? Do you know what problems drive them crazy? Do you know what they aspire to? Do you know what their vision and mission is? How do your products and services help your customers deal with problems or attain their goals? To achieve your growth objectives, help your customers or clients achieve theirs.

Develop partnerships and strategic alliances

My most eye-opening experience while working at Helene Curtis was learning that as important as the consumer was, the real customer, the customer upon whom the most resources, time, and manpower were spent was the retailer. Even fifteen years ago, most major consumer products companies were courting mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart as well as warehouse clubs.

Looking upstream and downstream at your supply chain, distributors, customers, and promoters, where are there opportunities to combine resources in ways in which the results are greater than the sum of your efforts? In particular, can you cross-sell one another's products, do joint promotions, combine media buys, and so on to increase your and your partner's marketing power?

Be willing to say good-bye to people, products, and activities that don't support your growth

The Suave brand has been around since the 1930's. It's signature product back then? Men's hairdressing. The hairdressing is long gone but the brand is thriving having evolved with the times. During my time at Helene Curtis, brand management was constantly scrutinizing product sales to identify poor performers which were discontinued and replaced with ones that better reflected consumer trends.

As mentioned earlier, when Helene Curtis made the decision to become a major player in the consumer market, they brought in new people, implemented new processes for investigating and introducing new products, and developed new relationships with retailers. Not everyone stayed during this expansion. Not all retailers continued to carry Helene Curtis brands. Products that had once been "stars" where discontinued, reformulated, or sold.

As you develop at your plans for 2006, assess your current marketing practices, relationships, and processes to determine which will support your growth objectives and which will not, and discontinue those that will not.

In conclusion…  

If you take away just one point, remember this: what you did to get today’s customers probably will not work with different or “bigger” customers, and what works for your customer today may not work for them tomorrow. You cannot grow your business by doing more of what you did to bring your business to this point. At some point your will have gotten as much return as possible on your marketing investment and it's time to move on.

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As a business owner wouldn't you just love to get all the new business you could handle through referrals from your current customers? Sure you would. Especially if those referrals not only needed your products or services but also were truly excited to be doing business with you.

Would that be great or what?

So do you have all the referrals you can handle? If you said “no,” you have lots of company. A lot of business owners I talk to tell me they would love to get more referrals but aren't sure how to ask for referrals. Or that the referrals they receive aren't qualified prospects.

Even if you do a superb job and have customers who are raving fans, you probably aren't getting as much referral business as you could. That's because it may be difficult for your customers to explain to others what it is that makes you so great. It's easy to recommend a restaurant because “they make the best margaritas in town;” but how do you recommend a mortgage broker or an accountant or a project management consultant?

Many of you, no doubt, know a lot already about word of mouth marketing. You've read books, attended workshops, and attend networking events. And perhaps you have enjoyed some success in building your referral base. But wouldn't it be great if you could accelerate the rate of referrals you receive? Wouldn't it be greater still if those referrals were highly qualified?

One approach I like a lot and am using with my own company is called the N.U.D.E. Model of Referral Marketing™. I like the approach because it's simple, makes intuitive sense, and doesn't require lots of time or money to implement.

I also like the N.U.D.E. Model™ because it’s based on evidence. In fact, the model was developed by a mathematician—not a marketer. Because it’s based on data (a lot of data), it’s highly predictive. The founder of this material, Scott Degraffenreid, has yet to have a client use this model and fail to achieve at least a 300% improvement in their referral customer base—most attain considerably greater. 

The N.U.D.E. Model of Referral Marketing is based on the fact that people like to give referrals because it makes them LOOK GOOD. When you recommend your favorite restaurant to someone you feel like you're giving them something special. When that person calls you and say, “Thanks so much for recommending that restaurant. We had a fantastic time!” You feel a little like a hero. And to your friend, you probably are a bit of a hero. Now think about how it feels when you can sincerely recommend a great realtor or an attorney or a doctor? And think of how you feel when you urgently need some service and you are referred to someone who is a "gem."  

However, there’s downside. If the referred business does a poor job…for example, when your friends visit the restaurant, their reservation get lost, the food is awful, and the waiter is rude…you, the person making the referral, lose credibility. This risk to our reputation and credibility is the reason why we won’t give a referral if we're afraid it will make us look bad.

Your customers must not only love doing business with you…they must also feel that you will do just as great a job for the referrals they send you. According to the model, there is a "recipe" that enables customers to give such heart-felt referrals. The recipe is simple, there are only four factors (“ingredients”) but when you have the right amount of each of the four ingredients, you create a condition in which this type of viral marketing can occur.

Once the four factors are in place, you create a "Looking Good" message. The Looking Good message is what your customers say to people as part of the referral conversation. For example, a beauty salon might use the Looking Good message, "We fix $10 haircuts." They could print the message on compact mirrors and ask their customers to give the mirrors to friends who complain about getting awful haircuts from cheapo salons.

The N.U.D.E. Model of Referral Marketing™ can be used by anyone desiring more referrals. Non-profit organizations, government agencies, and job seekers can all benefit by using the model.

The only caveat in using this approach is that your business needs to have enough unused capacity to handle the increase in business. Remember, businesses using this approach typically see a 300% increase in their referral base. So when your customers begin spreading the word, you’d better ready to delight the prospects being sent your way.

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Trust and marketing are not exactly two words that go together.

When you think about marketing (or it's siblings, advertising and sales) what comes to mind? “Respectful?” “Sincere?” “Trustworthy?” When someone approaches you with the intention, hidden or not, to do business, how do you feel? Do you feel understood? Do you feel like they “get” what your business is about and that they have the sincere desire to help you succeed? It's pretty rare.

I don't think the majority of business people wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “I can't wait to rip some people off!” But I do notice that when someone wants to do business with me, it seems like it's more about them and their success. My satisfaction with their product or service seems incidental.

It isn't for lack of intention. Most business people I talk to have the intention of providing excellent service. They want to do a good job for their customers. They are entirely sincere in this. But somewhere along the way there's a breakdown between intention and reality. Where the breakdown occurs is not so much at the business to customer stage. It's at the intention to activity stage. You see, if you're serious about fulfilling customer expectations; about having what Ken Blanchard refers to as “raving fans” you need to take positive, concrete steps that are meaningful to your customers.

It can be as simple as following up with customers to find out how they think the job went. Or a more formal survey. Or you call customers just to talk about things are going with no intention to sell them anything. A lot of business owners don't trust that the time and energy they put into these activities will pay off.

You can't just say you have your customer's best interest in mind. You have to demonstrate it. What are you doing, today, to develop trust? In your own business and with your customers? If you're having trouble figuring out where the payback is, remember this: 80% of your business comes from existing customers.

Some simple things you can do today to cultivate trust:

1. Call one or two customers and if they have a few minutes, ask them how the product or service they buy from you is working out for them.
2. Take your best customer out for lunch and tell them how much you appreciate their business.
3. If you say you're going to call someone. Call them.
4. If someone calls with a question, call him or her and answer the question or refer them to someone who can.
5. Send a handwritten thank-you note.

Do these suggestions seem trite? Then let me ask you something. When is the last time you received a handwritten thank-you note? How did you feel? Or the last time someone called you and sincerely asked how things were going?

All things being equal, the person who sends the thank-you note or returns my phone in a timely manner gets my business. Remember I said all things being equal. But there are times when I will pay a little more or wait a little longer simply because of the rapport I have with the person with whom I'm doing business. These folks are also on my short-list when it comes to giving referrals. After all, I don't want to stake my reputation on someone upon whom I can't depend.

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