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.

Are You Making Innovations or Sinnovations?

I saw a billboard in Florida advertizing 55 calorie beer: the lightest beer ever made. This creation comes from one of the largest breweries in the country. Is there really an arms race to find the lowest calorie beer? Do you really want people to know your beer is so watered down it is barely beer?

Why innovate?

In the quest for innovation some companies will produce anything new just to satisfy some innovation craving, or to justify an R&D department, or to tell stockholders they are trying new things. Some innovations are more like sinnovations: a sinful attempt to make something new that just doesn't matter.

Innovation means an act to create something new. I would add to that definition; it needs to be something significantly new that shifts the buyer’s experience with your product. Budweiser has created barely beer, Coors has a label telling you the bottle is cold, and Coke now has plastic bottles resembling the old glass bottles. Do these innovations really appeal to the buyers of their products? Get real on innovations.

1. Do it right or don't bother

Imagine if I produced an entire marketing campaign to my clients that I was going to give them the same speech they heard at last year's conference but this time (drum roll) I will be in a brand new suit! (Hear the applause?) Honestly, do they care? No, and that is my point; to tell your customers about an innovation means they need to have a different experience with what you are now offering. If it isn't a significant different experience with the product, don't tarnish your brand by trying to sell nothing. A label? More water? Differently shaped plastic? Get real. Those are sinnovations.

2. Real innovation makes a difference

For years auto makers tried to refresh their brands with no innovations to make the newest models more attractive to buyers. The concept cars they would debut at auto shows created buzz, but the time those innovations reached the buying public, well, the sad story was seldom did they do enough to really get the buying public to take notice.

When Research In Motion entered the phone market with the Blackberry that was innovation. When Apple released the iPod that was innovation. When Lipitor brought statins to the masses that was innovation. All of these organizations are reaping billions of dollars thanks to their real innovations. Innovation in today’s market needs to cause a dramatic shift in the marketplace. These are real innovations.

Your innovation needs to be something people will take notice of. Your innovation needs to be dramatic. Your innovation needs to be with the customer in mind more so than the bottom line or some self-serving attempt. Real innovation grows companies.

Beware of Edgecreep

The leading edge of innovation in products, services, work place design, technology and business leadership is in constant movement. Edgecreep happens like the changing phases of the moon; gradually every day. What is edge creep? In business we recognize this most dramatically in technology. The minute you purchase a computer it is obsolete and something better has already started down the assembly line. Technology is setting the pace for all businesses to recognize edgecreep happens daily.

Edgecreep is how the cutting edge makes its way to mainstream and becomes taken as the standard. GPS in cars, social marketing on the internet, and online access by mobile phone were cutting edge ideas initially and now are considered mainstream.

To no one's surprise the cutting edge innovation is getting to the mainstream faster than ever requiring businesses to get faster into innovation.

What in your business are you proud of as a huge step in cutting edge innovation in product, service or technology? How long ago did that first happen? How has the edge creeped away since that time?

Amazing how mainstream we become unless we are constantly grabbing for the edge. Six months ago twitter was still the domain of a select few early adopter types and today it is talked about in magazines, newspapers and on television shows. In fact, when sports talk shows are taking tweets as well as email; well, it doesn't get any more mainstream than that.

What giant step do you need to make to reposition your organization on the edge again? If you are losing market share – it's not the economy, you've lost your edge.