Valentine's Day. What a rare day in many parts of the world to say "Thank You" to your best customers, best friends and those you love the most. My old friend, Bob Valentine, now retired President of Valco Graphics in Tukwila, Washington, had a natural way of saying Thank You.
Each year, as a high-end printing firm, he produced an elegant valentine greeting and sent it to his best customers with a note that says, “With a name like mine and customers like you, every day really is Valentine's Day.”
OK. Sure, it’s easy enough for a guy with a name like Valentine, but how do you express the appreciation, respect and affection you feel to your best customers on a day honored globally as a day for expressing affection? It’s easier than you might imagine. All it takes is an intention to mold stronger ties with key individuals — a willing administratively skilled-assistant to help with the details like memory and production, and making the time and patience to sit down and write a few simple letters.
Research has shown that frequent contact between key executives of key customers is the hallmark of a healthy and growing business relationship and it seems to prove true across all cultures and all ethnic customs. As time grows progressively scarcer, finding the opportunity to make frequent, positive, intelligent and personal interactions (experiences) with even your top 20 customers used to be tough.
It was one of those critical but frequently postponed responsibilities of every customer- focused executive. I advise our clients to plan a minimum of nine ‘relationship-building touches’, evenly spaced over a period of from two years to life to ensure that the fundamentals of relationship management are covered.
While Valentine's Day is a wonderfully appropriate time to begin, nurturing touches are welcome all year round. I can think of at least nine letters that every executive could sign.
Start with a sincere Thank You letter and then at about 60-day intervals, send the following:
A Customer Satisfaction Inquiry
An Article of Interest
A New Service Opinion/Preview
An Invitation to Event
An Executive Book Summary Gift
Your 21 Best Tips
A Referral Offer to Help
Your Core Values
Like a gentle, spring shower, such contacts reinforce and articulate your interest, your values, your market position and your unique differentiation. And best of all, done in an intelligent and respectful manner.
One that says you consider them to be an “A” customer. Begin today. Start with a list naming the key person in each of your 20 best customers.
Say Thank You. In your own words — tell the person how much this business relationship means to you personally and invite a dialogue on ways to even strengthen the bond.
Say How’m I Doin? It’s not necessary to send a massive customer opinion survey. Just a sincere letter that tells them why you are asking the five questions you’d like addressed. You pick the questions — what do you really what to know? Make the scoring simple as 1 – 5 or A, B or C. Assure the reader you will personally review and act on any comments they make. And offer a summary of findings to those who respond
Say What do you think? Ask their opinion about products or services before you change or add them. They’ll tell you the truth and will usually become your earliest adopters if you are right.
Say I thought about you today. Send a relevant, visionary book or even an executive summary as a gift. A simple, brief note that says “I read this the other day and thought about you (or our customers) and wanted you to have a copy.”
Say How can I help? Offer to refer or introduce them to your contacts. Ask them to profile an “A” prospect from their perspective and allow you to suggest appropriate introductions. A basic law of the harvest suggests you feed before you reap and the law of reciprocity almost guarantees the favor will be returned.
Say Have you seen this? Stay on the lookout for articles, books, or even individual press mentions. (Google Alerts) A brief note attached to the article says volumes in a short space. It’s a relevant touch that reminds without pressure.
Say Come Join Us! Invite your top 20 to an event at least once a year. It can be a personal and individual appreciation luncheon, a new product launch, an introduction to a VIP event or virtually any reason to ask people to join you and to feed them. It’s an ancient and proven ritual that fuses people together.
Say Here’s 21 Tips. Every firm has developed, over time, their own unique compendium of great tips, tricks, solutions, ideas, and clues to solving major problems for their customers. Have a list of these nuggets compiled, edited and printed. They make a useful, intelligent and appreciated gift that keeps you in front of their mind often.
Say We’re here for you. Find unique ways to express your values without your having to say them about yourself. I found a great little book called “Whatever It Takes,” (www.compendiuminc.com) and in 128 pages, there are over 300 powerful quotations on the topic of the simple value of going the extra mile. Naturally, as the sender, you get attached to the values enclosed and with every reading, you reinforce on their mind one of your key attitudes about your relationship — doing whatever it takes. Oh, and by the way, you can automate the entire process.
While every day is rarely Valentine's Day, every day our key customers, employees and fans need tangible reminders that we care and that we take them seriously. Like an ardent suitor, a campaign of personalized contacts will allow you to pursue, persist and inspire customer loyalty with professional and appropriate persistence.
What would happen if you made this Valentine's Day the day you commit to intentionally touching at least, your personal most beloved one, your top 20 customers, your valued employees and even your key suppliers and alliances, and make those contacts ones that matter.
If words fail you, you can find letters like these and many more in our eBook, 101 Business Love Letters.
So, a warm, Happy Valentine's Day to you and to nurturers, everywhere.
Let me share a story that taught me worlds about nurturing relationships. I'll explain.
For most of the last 22 years I have had the privilege of traveling the world studying, speaking and consulting on the concept and methodologies involved with authentic Nurture Marketing. Nurture Marketing is about caring, in your “heart of hearts” about your clients, employees and prospects and about communicating well the services and products you provide for them.
Let's say you are the perfect fit for what your clients need and you know it, your challenge is that everybody is saying pretty much the same thing. Nurture at the technical side is about the process of automating your communications to stay in touch with precisely the right people, with exactly the right message and always at just the right time and done so, all the time.
Many years ago I had the opportunity to speak at a marketing conference in JiuZhaiGuo located in the newly emerging western Chinese Province of Chengdu. One beautiful afternoon a couple of us were offered a personal tour of a living black bamboo farm that transformed my belief in the connection of nurturing with the spirituality of nature.
Bamboo is a pivotal commodity in the Chinese economy used almost exclusively to provide scaffolding for high-rise building construction. Our 75 year old guide, Ping-Sun (Peter) Liu informed us that our rickshaw tour would include fields illustrating the various stages in the 5-year growth cycle of black bamboo.
This special species of bamboo is and has been vital in the economic development and construction of this rapidly expanding giant country. China is a vast country, with a huge, rapidly expanding, population but you would not know it from the first fields we visited. Extending as far as the eye could see was an empty field of rich, black, tilled earth. Not a single bamboo plant was in sight, not even a tree. Peter explained to us that the field had been sown a few weeks prior. Each of over a thousand farmers carried a heavy satchel of seeds, water and fertilizer on their backs. He explained the great care need necessary at this step in the process.
Bamboo seeds need to be carefully identified and culled, planting only those seeds that appear to have the best chance for sprouting, each perfectly positioned by hand in the ground, not too deeply and never too shallow to prevent attack from the competitive birds and scavenging rodents.
Also of importance are the placement of each seed a precise distance from one another; if placed too closely the plants will compete with each other for food and water and not grow to their full potential. Too far apart and you will have an inefficient root-system and ultimately a poor harvest.
Once placed in the ground, each seed is individually fertilized with a deep drink of water and a handful of fertilizer from the farmer's heavy satchel. The process of watering and fertilizing is ritually carried out weekly on a seed by seed basis for nearly five years. No heavy machines, no modern irrigation equipment just individual farmers carefully tending the individual needs of each seedling in the field. About a mile down the dusty road was a field that Peter told us had been sown two years prior. When we reached our destination we were surprised to see what looked to us like thousands of farmers working in an empty field.
Our big surprise was when Peter told us that every week, up until the 11 month of the 5th year the bamboo fields appeared visually barren. In the 12th month of the 5th year the black bamboo would suddenly sprout and very rapidly grow up to 60 feet in just under 30 days. By now we were tired of the hard seats of the wagon seat and I was anxious to see a fully developed bamboo field ready for harvest. On the way to the final stop, we passed a field covered by heaps of broken bamboo that looked as if a tornado had laid waste to a fully mature black bamboo crop. When we questioned Peter on what we were convinced was a bamboo plague or at the very least a natural disaster. With a disgusted scowl, he spat loudly and answered simply, “stupid farmer”.
He explained that the farmer working this particular field had not nurtured his crop weekly but every other week and had used the wrong fertilizer resulting in a black bamboo crop with root systems so weak that the entire field was blown down in a wind storm so it could not be sold and needed to be destroyed. He repeated, “five whole years wasted! Stupid farmer”!
When we reached the last huge expanse of green on the trip we were greeted with a massive field full of strong and very tall black bamboo and left me with the feeling that our guide Peter taught us some very valuable lessons about Nurture Marketing.
• Having a long-term plan is essential to reaching your goals in both endeavors.
• You must choose your seeds very carefully with a clear understanding of a your desired harvest outcome.
• You must understand what each and every one of your seeds need to grow and thrive.
• Each seed needs its own species-specific formula of water, fertilizer and caring to be successful.
• Each plant in your garden has its own unique life cycle and trying to rush a crop to harvest will result in disaster.
• Trying to shortcut the laws of the harvest will also result in disaster.
• The harmony of nature can be applied to business and that true nurturers are all ‘Farmers at Heart.’
This year one of my resolutions is to get through the pile of business books on my desk and to revisit some of my favorites. I thought I would highlight my top 4 and invite you to share yours.
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug. Although the latest edition is 2005, this is still very relevant. I was given this book by my favorite webmaster as she guided me through a new website for a previous company. It gave us a common language and me a lot of insight into why she recommended certain approaches. If you’re thinking about an update of your site, grab this book. It’s a quick read. TIP: I prefer this one in paperback (as opposed to my beloved Kindle) just because of the layout and great images.
The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More, Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen. It’s here!! I’ve been waiting for this book for a while and pre-ordered via my Kindle months ago. I just received it and I can guarantee I’ll be finished with this one quickly. There are thousands of social media experts but few focus solely on B2B and even fewer with the expertise of Bodnar and Cohen. If you don’t recognize their names – you probably still have read their stuff through the http://socialmediab2b.com/ blog. I will go out on a limb and completely recommend this without even reading past the first chapter. Not convinced? Read some of their blog posts first, then buy the book (and a highlighter).
Deliver Magazine by the US Post Office. YES. That Post Office. Although not a book and technically not sitting in my desktop pile, I read every issue of Deliver from cover to cover. Far more than just a direct mail “advertisement” - Deliver (and its accompanying website) is a treasure trove of ideas and best practices. It goes way beyond direct mail to include articles on new technologies such as QR codes, and integrating email and direct mail in winning campaigns.
Are any of these on your list too? What else should I be reading? Leave a comment and let us all know about your favorite must-read business books.
P.S. I couldn’t write a list of amazing business books without mentioning,Nurturing Customer Relationships, by our own Jim Cecil and Eric Rabinowitz. It will absolutely change the way you approach marketing and customer relationships. You can pick it up in our Store today.
If you're the kind of person that appreciates professional honesty, read on. If not, read on anyway because you might need to hear this. Most of the time we are a really friendly bunch around here and our clients are pretty awesome if you ask me. But, every once in a while there are things that just drive us crazy so I thought I would share a little inside info.
In this month's NurtureNotes, we give our Top 5 marketing trends to watch in 2012. But, we didn't have space for everything, so our editors cut out these four marketing trends I would love to see END in 2012.
1. Questions like, "What works?" (Translation: There must be one thing I can do for more sales – and I really only want to do/have the budget for this one thing – so what is it?)
Just like a physical trainer would tell you if you asked him what latest diet you follow or pill you should take to drop 50 pounds this month - there is no magic potion! Consistent, integrated, professional and PERSONAL marketing (to human beings) works. Yeah, it’s boring, unsexy and we’ve heard it before – but there’s a reason for that.
Make this the year you worry less about the latest fad and more about what’s proven. The answer to what works is what everyone knows and no one wants to hear – consistent, integrated touches that provide value and build a “relationship” with the prospect.
2. Shotgun Marketing (a/k/a: I need leads like yesterday, how fast can we get a campaign in market?)
Hmmm... so let’s get this straight. You have no pipeline, you haven’t done any consistent marketing (or any marketing for that matter) for quite awhile and your sales team is clamoring for leads. Shocking! If your answer is to buy a list and drop some emails – you are shotgun marketing.
Consider that the average person is touched by about 2,000 messages per day. Add the fact that it can take 10-15 touches to get the attention of a contact in a B2B sale and you’ll see that the numbers just don’t add up. Save your dollars, take a step BACK and think about how many times you’ve been in this situation. You don’t need a campaign – you need a change in “behavior” and a marketing plan to back it up.
3. Sales people, students, your cousin doing your marketing.
By all means you should bring all hands to deck to help with your marketing - but make sure the leader of the ship knows how to steer. Watching your budget? We get that. Use a consultant to build the plan and then use outsourced resources for specialized tasks (like writing and web design). Save the unskilled labor for the execution only.
4. A $5 million revenue goal with a $10,000 marketing budget.
We often find the lack of correlation between revenue goals and marketing budget starts with not knowing how to really measure marketing impact. You can offset your budget needs with lower cost activities such as social marketing but there’s no free ride: Lower cost activities can still require a much higher investment of time.
Although it varies by industry, B2B marketers should be spending 2-7% of their total revenue on marketing – not including marketing salaries. You may even need more than 7% depending on how strong (or weak) your foundation is such as your website, case studies, lists, etc.
On behalf of all the marketing professionals in the world, thanks for listening. Got your own marketing trends you want to see end in 2012? Sound off below!
Nurture Marketing's managing partner, Eric Rabinowitz, is guest speaking for KnowledgeCircle's webinar on December 15th, Make 2012 Your Best Year Ever: 50 Business Tips in 50 Minutes.
Join Eric, along with a panel of IT channel partners and IT industry experts for a fast paced webinar where you will learn 50 great ideas on the following topics:
• How to build a high performance sales team
• How to create long term profitable client relationships
• How to leverage the power of social media networks
• How to align your entire organizations sales and marketing initiatives with your customers’ needs
• How to set focus your business on success and profit
For those lucky enough to know Jim Cecil, Nurture Marketing's co-founder and managing partner, this will come as no surprise to you. Jim was recently nominated by Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) as one of their 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management.
Nominations for this distinguishing SLMA award are submitted by nominee peers and colleagues. Members and non-members of the SLMA may vote for up to three people and the top 50 nominees receiving votes will be listed on the SLMA website, will receive a certificate and special logo, and will be interviewed throughout the year.
"To even be nominated among this august group of lead generators is humbling. It's an exciting time. Being part of effective demand creation in the cloud is changing the very landscape of marketing, stirring the executive level and blazing a new trail towards customer connections. What a time to be in the game. WOW!" says Jim.
Jim Cecil is truly one of the most giving, nurturing people in the world of marketing (and the world in general if you ask us).
Sure, times are tough for all of us right now and marketing budgets are being cut up like a bad kindergarten craft project. Of course we don't recommend cutting the one thing that will keep you on top when the economy is back on track (and we know it will be), but we understand that's just the reality for many businesses. Instead, we want to give you some tips to help you make small changes that can make a big impact right now.
Our NurtureNotes newsletter for September has the Top 10 tips for marketing in a down economy so be sure to sign up now and get free marketing tips delivered right to your inbox every month.
Today, let's talk about three small changes to help get you started.
1. Rethink your messaging.
Are you spending lots of money to grow your business right now? If so, congratulations! If not, you are in the same boat as most of your customers. Instead of going on and on about benefits that aren't on their radar right now, focus on the things that are important to them – like money. Shift your messaging to solve their problems, not sell your product or service. Their problems are a lot different today than they were just a year ago. Even loyal customers are looking for ways to cut costs, and that might just be with your competitors.
2. Mix up your marketing.
It's easy to get stuck in a marketing rut. What worked in the past doesn't seem to be working as well right now and that's for several reasons. Your prospects are scattered all over the place and you are supposed to find them how? If you only use email campaigns, try a few direct mail pieces. Not a fan of social media? It's time to become one and soon you will have some fans of your own. Never thought about old school telemarketing? You would be surprised how effective a personal call can be these days. If you don't have the resources to explore new marketing avenues on your own, hire a professional marketing firm to help you out. (We happen to know a great one!)
3. Dress to impress.
This goes beyond traditional marketing tactics but deserves a spot in our Top 10. A first impression can be everything and it's critical to find new ways to differentiate your company and your brand. Whether you are greeting a customer on the phone, in your office or in theirs, think about the image your front line is portraying. In a business casual world, become the designer suit. Polish up your image whether it’s how your receptionist greets your visitors or callers, revamp your website to welcome online visitors, or ask your sales staff to take it up a notch next week.
Have some tips of your own to share? Be sure to leave a comment below. We enjoy hearing from you.
Our Nurture Marketing Writer's Guild is an ongoing support system where we learn from industry experts, and each other, to consistently keep up-to-date on the latest techniques, styles and solve challenges. Recently, we were thrilled to speak with Dr. Tom Sant and gain some awesome insight. We thought we would share his kind words about our managing partner, Jim Cecil, and the concept of nurture marketing. Thanks Dr. Sant!
From Dr. Tom Sant:
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of having a virtual conversation with members of the Nurture Writing Guild. Inspired and led by Jim Cecil, who has been one of my favorite people for more years than either he or I care to remember, the Guild consists of professional freelance writers who create effective nurture messages for clients.
The whole concept of nurture marketing is one that I strongly believe in. And Jim Cecil is the leading exponent of that approach to business development.
The concept is simple: stay in contact with your customers and your prospects. Send them messages, news items, personal notes, tips, and whatever else you think they might find interesting or enjoyable. Do it regularly, say once every month to six weeks. Over time, people will feel more connected to you, they will have a sense of your competence, and they will think of you first if they need help in your area of expertise. Jim calls that maintaining "top-of-mind awareness" so that when they are ready to buy, they think of you first.
In The Giants of Sales, I wrote about Joe Girard, the "world's greatest salesman," according to the Guinness Book of World Records, who used a variation of nurture marketing to sell Chevrolets. He sold over 13,000 cars in 12 years, working as a solo sales guy on the floor of a Chevrolet dealership in Detroit. All by himself, selling cars retail to individual buyers, Joe Girard sold more cars per year than 95% of all the dealerships in North America.
So how did nurture marketing figure into his method? He realized that every person he met knew a couple of hundred other people, some of whom might be looking for a car. If he stayed in touch with all of those people he had met, reminding them he was out there, then when they or their friends, relatives or employees decided it was time to buy that new car, they'd think of Joe Girard first.
Joe sold cars back in the days before e-mail, so he did the old-fashioned way: he sent out greeting cards. He was fierce about collecting names and mailing addresses from everyone he met, and once he had your contact data, he sent you a message every month. In fact, at his peak, he mailed over 13,000 cards a month. He kept the message simple and personal, and he never used his mailing list to try to directly sell anything. No special offers on oil changes or lube jobs.
For us, we have multiple media that we can use to nurture our contacts. How hard is it to send an e-mail with a link to an article? How tricky is it to send a note of congratulations when you see that someone had updated his or her LinkedIn profile with a new job? But very few people bother, even sales people who probably know better.
Recently I conducted a class for a major bank, working with a group of 30 high potential young managers. After it was over, I received three thank you notes. Maybe only ten percent of the attendees thought the training was worthwhile, but I suspect that there were actually a few others who liked it but just didn’t bother to say "thanks". So which of these 30 do you think I'd recommend first?
Jim and his colleagues have recognized that writing a short, focused message that's interesting to read and not too self-serving or technical is hard. Lots of companies would like to use nurture marketing—even something very simple like Twitter—but just don't have the time or talent to pull it off. So the Nurture Writing Guild has stepped up to fill that gap.
You can learn more about nurture marketing here: www.nurturemarketing.com. And you can access some of Jim Cecil's wisdom at his blog: http://nurturemarketingblog.com/. Jim's warm and funny and smart as can be. He's definitely somebody to read if you're involved in any kind of sales or marketing or business development role.
To order the world's best-selling book on writing winning proposals, Persuasive Business Proposals, click here. For Dr. Tom's fascinating study of the origins of the most important ideas in professional sales and the individuals who first came up with them, The Giants of Sales, please click here. To improve your writing, take a look at Tom’s book, The Language of Success, which you can order here.
Last night I was watching TV and, as usual, trying to accomplish other things I felt were way more productive. I didn't even think I was paying attention but then I heard, "The two most important questions you can ask yourself are 'Why?' and 'Why not?'"
Brilliant! I instantly went to my special marketing place. You see, I am a self-proclaimed testing nerd. With every marketing campaign, I am constantly asking these two questions. However, I find that at the end of the day, most people only care about why not and somewhere along the way the why gets totally ignored. I attribute that to human nature.
We want to fix what’s not working instead of nurturing what is working.
With hot summer days around the corner, let me ask you a question you can relate to. Do you have your air conditioner at home serviced twice a year so you know it’s going to be there for you when you really need it? Or, like most, do you put it out of your mind until it breaks down on a 95 degree day and then you are forced to make a frantic call to a local repair place to come FIX IT!
Think of nurture marketing as a maintenance plan for your customers. Don’t think you can neglect them for months, then we you need to fill your sales quota, you can reach out and they will be there ready to buy. You can read more about the philosophy behind Nurture Marketing on our site, but I should get back to the whole why and why not thing. Bear with me, it’s all related.
Say your latest marketing email returned lower numbers than you expected.
• You sent 1,000 emails to your general marketing list
• Of those 1,000 emails, 100 people opened it (10%)
• Of the 100 that opened that email, 2 people clicked on your link (2%)
Oh no! You totally expected click percentages in the double digits! Now you are so disappointed in the 2% you immediately focus on what went wrong. They didn’t like your email. Why not? You must fix this! So you start moving graphics, changing subject lines, anything you can do to grab the attention of the 998 people that didn’t click. Predicting what 998 want to click on? That’s a lot of pressure!
I’m not saying you should ignore what isn’t working. Analytics are important. But, what if you forgot about the number for a moment? What if you started focusing on the person behind the number?
Now you have 2 people that DID click. Why did they engage? What did they like about the report? Was it helpful for a challenge they are facing right now? Pick up the phone and ask them why they clicked! Then, you take those 2 people and immediately put what you learned into your CRM software or your client database, so going forward you know exactly what they need from you.
Over time, with some diligence and patience, those 2 people become 4 people, then 40, and before you know it 400 loyal customers are engaging with your marketing. Your list becomes clean, targeted and effective. And it all started by asking why.
A strong social presence online brings attention to your company and creates an opportunity for growth. Here are twenty tips to attract followers to your social networking sites.
If you're the kind of person that appreciates professional honesty, read on. If not, read on anyway because you might need to hear this. Most of the time we are a really friendly bunch around here and our clients are pretty awesome if you ask me. But, every once in a while there are things that just drive us crazy so I thought I would share a little inside info.
Last night I was watching TV and, as usual, trying to accomplish other things I felt were way more productive. I didn't even think I was paying attention but then I heard, "The two most important questions you can ask yourself are 'Why?' and 'Why not?'"