3 Ways to Use the Buddy System to Improve Profits

People distrust marketing messages. Part of the distrust comes from the information overflow that can be more than a person can process. What can I believe? What are the real pieces of information and what is pure misinformation? Who really cares for my best interest as a customer? These are the questions being asked by people making buying decisions.

When you are lost, misinformed and in a quandary who do you turn to for advice? Your friends; those people you can trust. The best sales person a business can have is someone who loves the product and eagerly shares with their friends. This is the buddy system of sales.

With ubiquitous communication tools such as Facebook, Twitter and smart phones people are in touch with more people more frequently than ever before. Granted, the depth of these relationships are not nearly as strong as when people met face to face with their friends, but the circle of friends is much larger and the influence someone can have on their friends is broader as a result.

How can you use the Sales Buddy System for your business?

1. Embrace the new communication technology

For donut aficionados the Krispy Kreme "Hot Now" sign lit up in the window is a beacon inviting them to stop in for those donuts at their very best. But the customer has to drive by to see it. What if the store had a Facebook and a Twitter account and notified their followers and friends of "Hot Now" this way? Maybe even add in an afternoon incentive of a discount within the next fifteen minutes of the post or tweet? Your fans are informed.

Using the technology to notify friends and followers is a piece of live information that friends share with friends. Buddies convincing buddies its time for a donut run.

2. Don't market just inform

Too many businesses are using the new technology just to post ads in a different location. #Fail. Forget the marketing attitude. Just inform your friends of what is going on. Instead of telling your employees to keep mobile phones turned off at work, have them sending out positive messages about what is going on in your workplace.

Credit union tells tell me they have members who request them personally to deal with. Great! Let that employee create a fan club of those members and encourage them to use the buddy system to let their fans know when the credit union has posted some new favorable rates. It's not selling, it's just informing.

3. Freebie compensation

Do you have a fan who just loves your products? Does this person have a circle they influence on Facebook or Twitter? They will do your marketing for you and they aren’t even on the payroll, and it’s the best marketing you can get -- the word of a buddy.

Take good care of this person. Send them freebies, invite them in as a VIP to preview new products, provide feedback on intended changes you want to make. The key to the buddy system is to keep them as your buddy so they are eager to share the good news with their buddies.

The Oops Clause or the $30 Big Mac

How do you forgive your customers when they make a genuine mistake? Ever overspend your limit? Today people are running close to the end of their checking account balances and because of the vagaries of the financial world companies put holds on money, banks post bigger withdrawals first and people lose sight of where their actual balance is.

Some institutions have at least a $25 charge for an overdraft, meaning one customer I am aware of ended up spending close to $30 for a Big Mac. Think about it, with the current conditions banks are facing, do the banks really want this revenue stream to stop? Fee income is a significant source of revenue in these volatile times and financial institutions are looking for every way they can to improve their bottom lines. So where are their incentives for teaching better customer behaviors?

Treat your customer like family

Taking advantage of customers with fees such as the $30 Big Mac example doesn't build relationships or trust. The short-term view of customers makes for short-term customers and there is no relationship.

Treat customers like family. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Work with them in their trying times.

Create an "oops clause."

An "oops clause" simply means when your customer makes the rare mistake, you work with them on it; not take advantage of it. Make one late payment after years of on-time payments, or one overdraft situation after years of good money management; we got you covered. Obviously an "oops clause" is different than a "bad habits clause." If you are a financial institution and some of your customers are perpetually in a negative balance situation forgiveness only goes so far. In bad habit circumstances why not require they get some financial help your organization offers for free? There are still ways to help the habitual offender, if you want them to stop that self-damaging behavior.

How can you offer better customer service in your organization with an "oops clause"? What oops would your customers really appreciate your understanding? You are going to create much better customer buzz with your forgiveness in an “oops clause” than in making them choke on a $30 Big Mac.

Social Interaction -- Should You Script It?

Look around the subway car and notices those passengers under the age of 35. What percentages are listening to headphones?

Ever been to dinner with a someone under the age of 30 and they texted throughout the entire meal?

How about rode in a bus or even sat beside a person of this age in an airport?

I'm finding an increase in the inability of employees to handle complaints, cross-sell and deal with personal interaction with fellow employees, managers and customers. What should a company do?

Handheld video games, ipods and smart phones have removed a significant amount of social interaction. Obviously, this isn't only happening with the younger age groups, but the younger generations are the ones who have had these options available almost their entire lives. They are missing the development opportunity for critical social interaction skills.

Soon you will have employees who have communicated predominately through computers and texts their entire lives. In a social setting where they are not the center of attention they are usually absorbed by a game or phone or music and completely tuning out the world around them and focusing on the world in their hand.

How will these folks do with social conflict with fellow employees, managers and customers? No reset buttons here. You can't close the screen or turn off the electronic gadget when a customer is complaining about a problem they are having.

Interaction training

The social interaction that was once learned on the play grounds and during after school neighborhood pick up games has been replaced with structured play dates with friends and electronic games where opponents can literally be halfway around the world and is only known by the name on the screen. Not much socializing and learning to deal with people different from yourself.

Employers need to be training employees on the meaning of social interaction. During customer service training and sales training employers should actually create scripted responses to certain situations. During your training discuss the best response to customer complaints. Then have every attendee write it down. In fact, creating flash cards with scripted responses are a great start to teaching the words to use when interacting as a representative of the company.

The scripts are not intended to teach the employee not to think during such interactions, but it is a good way to get them to understand the right approach with people and how to structure proper communications with people.

Think this is a bit too simple? Take notice of how your interaction is with customer service representatives in the retail and food industry. Get back to me on that.

3 Questions for Your Customers to Answer

Being indispensable to your customers is the defining edge between surviving and thriving in this new economy. How would your customers answer these questions about your business? If you are not getting the perfect answer you are looking for, you know where to put your immediate efforts to improving your business in the eyes of your customers.

1. Who is the first organization that comes to the customer's mind in your industry?

99.2% of people surveyed said they will do business with the first company that comes to mind for a product or a service. Customers, either consumer or B2B customers will develop buying habits and resource habits. Once Google dominated Yahoo in searches, they worked to create interactive search pages for people to use as their home pages. Once Google became the default choice for a home page, Yahoo had to find a new service to offer, because they were done as a search engine.
Where are you positioned in your customers' habits? Are you the first choice that comes to mind, or are you the second alternative?

2. How eager are your customers to come in contact with your employees?

Once call centers were relocated overseas, customers began dreading help services because the people on the other end were perceived to have poor command of the language and information the customer needed help on. Companies who created good products were getting their reputation hammered because of the service interaction.

Do your customers dread talking with your employees, consider them a neutral experience, or enjoy the interaction with your staff? The more enjoyment your customers get from your staff the more interaction they are going to want. If you have a fun knowledgeable staff customers enjoy talking with, why are you using an automated phone system that makes it difficult to talk with a real person? Make the customer interaction personable.

3. What makes it worth the effort for your customers to do business with you?

Every buying decision is a choice. Maybe once you were the only competitor in town and now your customers have options closer. Once upon a time you had the most charismatic salesperson working a territory, who no longer works for you. What are you doing to make sure your customers consider you a worthy choice that is worth the effort to do business with you?

Too many businesses rest on their successful history and expect the flow of customers to continue. Nothing stays the same. When a city creates a new retail area, traffic patterns shift. When a competitor creates new technology, the rules of the industry change. When a competitor grows by acquiring other players in the market, you now have a new force to deal with. Companies go bankrupt ignoring these changes.

What changes have happened in your market to cause you to react and increase the reasons why customers should do business with you? Even better, how can you be proactive to maintain your customer base?