Listen and Learn: A Lesson for Marketers

I love my dad: it’s necessary to make that clear before I tell you this story. My dad is always wondering when I’m going to give up this lark and get a real job. That’s not the worst of it – the worst is that he’s not at all sure what ‘this lark’ is! Yes, I’ve told him – and told him, and told him … Those who are avid readers of The Marketing Edge will know that we here at Zee2A help our clients to craft a Verbal Signature – a brief statement which encapsulates who you work with, what problem you address and what the outcome is of addressing their problem. My dad has heard my Verbal Signature on many occasions – so why doesn’t he know what I do?

The answer (I’m sure you’ve already guessed) is that hearing doesn’t mean the same thing as listening. Perhaps you’re wondering what on earth this has to do with marketing, so let me rephrase that: Speaking, telling, talking – none of them mean the same thing as listening! And yet we as marketers are always focused on telling, not so? We just assume that the person we are talking to has listened.

I’d like you to participate in a short experiment in case you’re not convinced. Quickly write down the names of five people who are close to you but not people you do business with – family, friends, community members. Done? Right, now call them one by one and ask a simple question: ‘What do I do?’ If you got five accurate, congruent answers I’d like to hear from you – you’d be a world-first! You’ve told them (almost certainly) but how many listened?

I recently participated in a very interesting experiment under the direction of Maureen Scott of Mascott Training. Maureen wanted to graphically illustrate to a roomful of hard-nosed business people the challenges we face in accurate communication. She did so by splitting us into pairs and assigning one of the pair as the talker, the other as the listener. To the talker she gave an envelope containing a simple sketch, to the listener a pen and a blank piece of paper. Then, sitting back-to-back, the pair had to reproduce the sketch on the blank piece of paper. Get the idea? The talker cannot see what the listener is drawing, while the listener cannot see what the talker is seeing.

I was the listener in my pair but it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine the challenge faced by the talker: how do you even begin to describe what you are seeing? (You may be interested in seeing what I drew, which you can do by clicking here.) Do you describe the scene? Do you describe each line in detail and let the overall picture form as the process continues? What about colour? Positioning of the drawing on the page? Page orientation? (Our pair made the mistake of assuming that we were both holding the paper in the correct orientation, so the picture you see was inaccurate in that it should have been in portrait orientation.)

It is a deceptively simple experiment with so much meaning to be derived from it. Different people listen and visualise in different ways, so understanding whether the person you are talking to is a visual listener, an auditory listener or a kinesthetic (touchy-feely) listener is immensely useful in guiding how you present a proposition to them. Equally, as a talker you need to be a good listener too, because you should be sure to check regularly whether the person you are talking to is developing the correct image of what you are presenting. Maureen illustrated this concept by suggesting that the goal of communication is to create a shared vision, so we should imagine two ‘thought-bubbles’ emanating from the respective heads of the talker and the listener. If those two thought-bubbles are overlaid on one another, are they identical? If not, there is more (and perhaps also better) communicating to be done!

What can marketers take out of this? Here are three keys to effective communication:

• Never assume: Remember the mental exercise of overlaying your ‘thought-bubble’ with that of your prospect. Are they identical? Or does your communication need enhancement? If you don’t know what is in your prospect’s thought-bubble then you need to listen more!
• Be adaptable: Different people need the same information to be communicated in different ways. Are you talking to someone who seems to get frustrated when you try to talk detail? Chances are they are visualisers – start using verbal ‘broad brush’ strokes to paint an overall picture. (This type of person is vehemently opposed to presentations that rely on scores of Powerpoint slides – you have been warned!) Are you talking to a detail person (career engineers are a good example)? They are auditory listeners – break your proposition down to its key components and allow the prospect to build the picture as you supply the components. Touchy-feely listeners really struggle with a service proposition because they can’t run their hands over it! Make sure that you provide lots of references (the closest thing we in the service profession have to a tangible offering) and offer to set up calls with or visits to satisfied clients. Some kind of demonstration of how your service works is also powerful if you are selling to a kinesthetist.
• Listen more than you talk – Always! Yes, you are trying to communicate something to someone else, but never think that you don’t need to listen. Only by listening carefully and diligently can you understand how your message is coming across to the prospect. A ratio of ‘2x listen : 1x talk’ could be called the Divine Ratio – because we were given two ears and one mouth!

In conclusion we could perhaps say that rather than listening and learning, the goal of our decision to be good listeners as marketers is because listening leads to more profitable clients. Now that’s music to my ears …

Are you a Professional Services Executive struggling to close deals at the right price? Do you have to ‘give away the farm’ in discounts to clinch the deal? Would you like price to be a non-issue in your sales cycle? It is possible! We at Zee2A have not had to negotiate on price to close a deal in more than three years! Our methods work, and we know that because we use them on every deal. Find out more about our Marketing Edge Mentoring Programme here.

©David Deakin and Zee2A Limited

Would you like to reprint this article? You may do so as long as you include the copyright notice and the following paragraph:  David Deakin, CEO of Zee2A, is a marketing guru who works with Professional services Executives yearning to take their business to the next level of profitability and success.  Through one-on-one and group mentoring programmes he helps them to create sustainable marketing strategies that attract more clients at profitable rates. To learn more, sign up for his e-zine, or make an enquiry please visit http://www.zee2a.com

 

Excuses rather than Solutions

In a recent issue of our e-zine The Marketing Edge we asked readers to share their experiences illustrating how service providers offer excuses rather than solutions. We ran the same question in the Q&A section of LinkedIn. Here are some of the best answers we received:

“Back in November I alerted my web host company about a problem with one of my accounts. I supplied the requisite paperwork to resolve the issue on my end with the promise by them that the issue would be resolved.No less than five phone calls later, a lost account, and excuses galore, I ended up recovering the account two months later, but it cost me time and money. I’m still not satisfied with the way that they handled this problem and I am closing this account after a five year business relationship. Worse, were the excuses and lack of customer support. There were times I felt insulted by their answers, never mind the canned answers I received for many of my problems.The bad thing about this company is that I am telling everyone how dissatisfied I am with their product. I am sure they’ll lose more business because of their customer nonsupport.”  – Matt Keegan

“I was unable to find my question addressed in the FAQs on the Web site. Past experience has taught me that sending a service request e-mail would only net me further frustration, so I called the service hotline instead. I was routed through a long menu of options, none of which seemed to fit my question. Then I was put on hold. No exaggeration, my phone timed it–I remained on hold for seven minutes.The rep who finally picked up told me I could not proceed any further without a credit card number. My name, PIN, account number, password, etc.–things that work from the Web site (assuming the Web site is functioning, which is another frequent problem) would not do–it had to be the credit card. I ran off and dug up my credit card…OK. I asked my question. The rep told me that wasn’t his department. He transferred me, at which point I went back on hold for another five minutes.The second rep took me through the credit card routine again, and I asked my question. The rep wanted to know why I called her because the other department should have answered. I told her the other department had transferred me, so what do I do? She put me on hold again (3 minutes) and came back with an answer this time…but unfortunately the answer was, we don’t offer that service. Before ending the call, the rep tried to pitch me an account upgrade. It’s easy, she said…I already have your credit card number and only need your authorization!Now that’s nerve. And it’s NOT “customer service.” ” - AnnaLisa Michalski

“Excuses vs Solutions. However best an excuse is, it will still remain an excuse and not satisfy the customers right to get a solution. The irony of today’s cost cutting competetion is that no one is allowed to build an infrastructure to support the customers, every penny goes into marketting and sales efforts. Upon this, there are chances of over committment to sell more. So, finally comes the role of Support staff to handle the customers problems. Really, the present situation is of firefighting and companies should understand the need to build the infrastructure to be proactive to serve the timely solutions to the customers everytime. They should understand that however best the firefighting operation is, it still leaves many damage marks which are difficult to erase/compensate for. Also, the classic case of using Service Providers, the principles should understand that they still are accountable/responsible for the after sales services to drive the repeat sales and so they should be really in the driver seat of all the activities of the service providers instead of allowing them the liberty of carrying out the service operation from A to Z. Its their brand name which sells and its their image which gets hurt when the customer does not get the desired/ committed solution.” - Bhupinder Sehgal

“Part of the answer to that question, I think, goes to the basic business model of the service provider. It is easy to illustrate in the case of a very small (micro) start-up, compared with a larger broad-market provider of the same basic service. The start-up model may rely upon word of mouth and customer referrals to grow the business, and this may work well up to a point. At some point, the company must leverage its reputation, that is, the company has to capitalize an expansion of its work force and delivery zone to keep growing, and this “lumpy” investment (bigger facilities, internal training, new layers of supervision/management, etc.) means borrowing based on past business performance, which was reputation-driven. It starts to get hard at this point. The larger competitor may operate on a different business model, one that invests much more heavily in advertising and sales. To the extent that the big company relies upon advertising and a well managed sales process, they will have less incentive to invest in customer service–because their new customers do not come from referrals, they come from advertising/sales! Now, at some point in their target market, the big company may find that negative feedback, transmitted by word of mouth, is harming new sales. But in many situations, this intuitively plausible outcome does not occur. How, after all, does an unhappy customer communicate their bad experience to prospective new customers? In some business environments (hospitals, say, where there are only a few thousand in the entire country), that’s a risk, but in others (snow removal services to residents in Chicago), it’s tough for an dissatisfied customer to “get the word out” about Ace Snow Removal on a broad scale; ASR can continue to advertise on TV and the Trib.”- Rod Bell

“My worst experience: I took an expensive gas trimmer (had it for 2 months and it busted) into a local shop for repair, the one required by the manufacturer – I had purchased this at a big box home improvement place, but was not allowed to take it back there for an exchange. (flag 1) The shop tagged it, said it would be ready in 2 weeks. I let 3 weeks go by, no phone call. I then call and they say (flag 3)”oh, it’s next in line, it’s not ready, but call in tomorrow, so you can come get it.” I call the next day and it’s still not ready. (flag 2 – me having to call, flag 3, it’s not even ready) Next week, “we don’t have the parts.” (flag 4) Okay, so you get the idea.After 2 months, I still don’t have my trimmer. I call the manufacturer and proceed to throw the shop directly under the bus. The final straw? They said “we have other stuff to work on here, your machine is not a priority.”
I ask for the manager of the shop and he is more rude than the other people that work there –this treatment is part of their company culture! This small business amazed with their ignorance of the situation and had multiple opportunities to care for me, but chose instead to make me feel like I was a nuisance and a bother for wanting my machine repaired.That said, I don’t believe the clock starts ticking at the time of a complaint: it starts ticking the minute you begin a relationship with them. Like any relationship, they have an opportunity to knock your socks off with attentiveness and care or they have the opportunity to completely blow it and treat you like you’re not special at all. Making excuses does nothing but this – they don’t care. “ – Deb Kolaras