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Lesson Info

Tools and Deliverables: Acclimation to Advocacy

Become the acclamation right we're at altitude it's time to tackle a meat toa where we're at and for this example I'm going to turn to a company I've talked about a few times my wonderful client out on the east coast sm oh right home heating oil propane and h back repair that's their business right so s m o when we first started working with them I had a a mail activity that they would do every year at christmas and they would send a christmas card on the christmas card would have some snow fake season's greetings you know they actually we do a nice little custom envelope where they printed on the outside of the envelopes he's in greeting and this is what they would send like many companies you know a holiday card and they said season's greetings and said a merry christmas just so that they could cover all their bases with one card something to think about why not find out whether your client celebrate christmas or not why not ask them you know I had to be you know and you do this agai...

n let's be really clear this would not be in a first conversation okay, this would not be so do you believe in jesus not a good opener in any situation all right but you could probably find out whether they're okay getting a merry christmas card or whether they'd rather prefer getting the season's greetings card chances are the person that's getting the seasons greeting card would rather get the happy kwanza card or the happy hanukkah card or maybe no card whatsoever. All right, so these are the kind of cards were doing and so we're like okay, well, what can we do two and the assimilation stage our excuse me, the acclamation stage where we're acclimating toe altitude what can we do tow let folks know hey, this is what it's going to be like to do business with us we're trying to get them toe ac lemaitre toe our environment we've invited them in as our audience members our customers, our environment how could we acclamation them tow what life is going to be like with us? Well, instead of sending one holiday card, maybe we could start to have several communications via mail that were non transactional in nature that we're not up cells that were not product offerings, not trying to get him to spend more money but were things that were just acknowledging him then. So we created this what to give you for your birthday and this is an accordion fold card, which is the sexy way of saying that it kind of folds out like this so it looks like a fan and all the panels kind of like a folding screen, so the first one says what to give you for your birthday and you opened it up and it says ashley and sales and customer care wanted to give you a phone headset, so we're starting to let him know we're going to play a little. This is going to be fun, and this is an actual picture of one of their employees. They spent the time, the money in the effort to create a great experience by doing a professional photo shoot with their team. Let me ask a question as you look at ashley's lovely smile, do you think she was kind of be ex? She was kind of excited to have her makeup down that day and get to be in a photo shoot for the company she'd worked out for a while. Yeah, she really liked it, but not as much as claude, claude and delivery wanted to give you a phil whistle. Claudio mike, I think you just want a quiet home with the nicest guy, claude, I think at the time, if I'm remembering correctly had been with the company for over thirty years, he'd never been asked to be in a photo shoot before. I mean, look at that smell like it to hell with hollywood that's a smile. Claude in delivery one to give you a phil whistle of phil whistle for people that have home heating oil is a tool that attacks attach is to the tank, either in your basement or outside that when they're filling it. Ah, whistle goes off when it's getting close to the top so it doesn't spill over it's. One thing to be pumping gas in your car and have it spill over and spill there at the gas station where they have this stuff to lay down and they take care of it, it's something entirely different to be pumping heating oil into the basement of your house into this tryin tank and have it spill over it's, an environmental nightmare. So phillips, those they're really important to guys like claude, ron and service wanted to give you a tape measure and let's be honest, ron's a really nice guy. He was not as excited about the photo shoot, but we included ron anyway, because we wanted someone in services. Well, ron wanted to give you a tape measure, but in the end we agreed to this birthday card signed by all the people who work on your account, not robo signed by one person not stamped with the sm ooo logo, but what they actually do is when it's a customer's birthday, they have these pre printed they pass on down the line at the call center and have all the gals on the call center sign. And you may think and it's all women, this isn't me being sexes, they employ women and their call center, you would think, await showy that's. That's not true, it says all the people who work on your account well, when you call into the call center, you never know which rep you're going to get so there's a decent chance someone did. Then they have some of the guys in delivery who run the route that they're familiar with signed the card. They have some of the people in equipment sales who sold that purse in the furnace that they're using sign the card and they make it really personalized and really special. We started sending these and their clients were blown away like, wow, ah, card actually signed, and we usually get, like, somewhere between ten and fifteen signatures per card. So this wasn't just a one or two people over lunch. Let's make it happen. Let's, put some ink on the page. We decided to take that and stack it all right? Because as you probably figured out by now, I'm the guy who I want to create one great experience and then let's see if we can create another right on the heels of it. So it's time for the christmas card. The name of the company is s m o but they're affectionately referred to by their customers as smoke let it snow let it smoke let it smoke wishing you into your family the best in the new year to come your friends at sme o r s m o and the car that looked like this not only signed, but with what department they were in. And I overheard somebody say, if we click back here, you may not have noticed the snowflake is their logo falling. This was the same year we rebranded their company to this new logo. I'll show you the old logo here in a minute. But this was the new logo. So this was actually part of our logo rollout instead of sending a thing that's like hey, we have a new logo we sent let it smell that smell that it's mon back of the card. Nice pastoral scene. We concluded the earl on the phone number. You know, hey, this is a business communication we acknowledge that people called us and told us that they was one of the best christmas cards had ever received they loved it and you know the funny thing it wasn't even a christmas card remember said wishing you the best in the new year but we send it in the end of the year and so those who thought it was a christmas card embraced it is a christmas card those who thought it was a new year's card embraced it is a new year's card, so we didn't have to create cards for different segments. You could do that, but because we were launching the brand and because of what we were doing, we were like, you know, we need everybody needs to be the same, not to mention they have tens of thousands of customers on we wanted to just kind of keep the costs a little bit low so there's a practical side of this to I'm not just saying hey, go spend a boatload of money on a personalized, customized communication for every customer but you can have some fun with it so what did we do in person in this? You know, acclamation stage with this new logo? Well, this is their old truck, right? This is their old logo the s m o and it actually used to say it on the other side you see it's kind of faded oh my gosh, the company that did the vinyl for their trucks it was horrible like they picked the wrong guy faded and bleached out in the sun this is on the side of a truck this comes to your house and parks there sometimes for two or three days while they're doing an equipment installation I'd be interested in this truck drive down the road letting alone have a park in my driveway and what going backto our earlier question what about a fluent customers do you really think the person owning the three million dollar home wanted that pos parked in front of their house cheese no way but what about that? Okay bye bye beige indeed sm au air conditioning available in breezy and typhoon settings can you imagine what it's like to see this driving down the road and see her hair blowing up behind her sa mo comfort comfort for the whole family ah baby many of their customers are families and their work is done during the day for like a phil or an installer and equipment repair and in this particular community that they serve the majority of the set up is that it's a stay at home alone so there's a woman at home when this person is coming to do the repair again not making a judgment it's about knowing your audience know your audience and meet them where they're at if you have an audience of a bunch of stay at home moms and you do air conditioner repair put a baby on the side of your truck they're gonna like you before you even get to the front door again sweeping stereotypes but this is why do we developed the personas this's what? We spent time doing that this is why it's important to do the homework and know who your audience is propane is something they sellas well jump in the water's warm thanks to s m o the number one use for propane in the community they serve is heating pools right it's on the east coast in the mid atlantic it can get cold in the winter people with outdoor pools are trying to drag it out as long as they can. The most energy efficient and affordable way to heat their pools is with propane so we remind them year round why they love being a propane customer it's because they love doing cannonballs and we could have just had the pool right but doesn't it say a little bit more about the spirit of our company and the ethic to have a guy doing a cannonball? Another way they use propane is to heat water for hot water and it says sm oh never have to take a cold shower again this is a promotion we did for what they call a tankless water heater right instead of a giant water heater like a lot of you have an older homes that has, you know two hundred gallons of water and it heats up and this is why when you're taking a shower and you've got guests in maybe for the holidays the last person in the shower gets a cold shower because all the hot water and the water heater has been used up and we need to wait for it to refill and heat up there's this awesome new technology called a tankless water heater it's about this big on what it does is it runs the water through and it flash boils the water instantly is it's going across so there's no tank so you never have to take a cold shower again? I don't know about you most people I run with don't like cold showers so this is kind of cool and I will say is an aside when I first introduced this to the drivers one of the drivers in the back and the drivers are all male right as you might take picture, what a delivery driver would look like and you pretty much understand that audience right? I presented all of these and by the way the baby they were like wolf okay, but we got to this one and they said coleman, why don't you put a woman on the side of the truck? And I said because you idiots would have been running around to the other side to take a look okay, not so much what about the heating oil? All right, these are the trucks that deliver the oil. How about this? S m o fueling homes and vehicles for eighty five year ares we identified that a certain segment off their target audience and their target market and their existing customer base our mechanic gearhead types, you know, guys that like to tinker on cars, so we put a classic car there. They also have a gas station associated with their business right assyria chain of gas stations, so we're like, oh, we're actually doing some very subtle co branding with other aspects of our business we're not hitting you over the head with it, we're not saying hey, by the way, get your gas and dash in, which is the name of their gas station. Now we're saying up, pulling fueling homes and vehicles for eighty five years there's some longevity we've been in business, you can trust us, you can rely on us we've been doing this for a while by the way, it looks like an old car, right reinforces we've been here since that car was new subtle messaging, subconscious messaging but messaging nonetheless finally hehe samo thanks for keeping our water warm no, seriously, thanks. If I were to ask how many people in the room are dog people, a significant number of hands would go up okay, look what I love is I asked what I was even looking for the hands on all the dog people are like yeah yeah that's me if I ask how many people are in the room are cat people would be more like I'm a cat person you know we're kind of a different type of person than a dog person all right if I would ask how many people in the room are neither a cat or dog person my hand would go up in that be the only one now what's fascinating is the emotional reaction so many of you in the room had a cz wells the people online you said had really grown to like him over the last three days but he doesn't like dogs he doesn't like cats that jerk I'm just being honest and transparent I've been honest and transparent and open all three days I'm not going to stop now what we figured out though is they have a significant percentage of their customers that love dogs because what their customers are human so we put a dog on the side of truck you know how many phone calls they get asking the name of the dog asking if they could meet the dog I'm like the dog is owned by I stock photo dot com okay, but what we're going to do next time is get one of the employees dogs and do a photo shoot so that at their annual open house where they have a carnival and affair for all their customers they can park this truck and you can get your photo taken with the dog we missed it the first time that's how we'll make it better I share that piece of the story to let you know sometimes you get into creating an experience and you realize wait there's a better way I could have done this don't beat yourself up don't say this is miserable don't say oh my gosh I failed say I'm going to improve on it next time average customer there's give or take does about two thousand five hundred dollars a year in business with them they pet spent a lot more money doing that and putting everything together but you know that's where rat assimilation assimilation is when we're in the zone and our goal now they've acclimated to altitude we want them to assimilate to our way of life we want them to get comfortable with our brand we want them to buy in tow our vision off what our spirit and ethic is now if we've done our recruiting on our prospecting and are on boarding properly this is easy two d'oh if we haven't this is where the train comes off the tracks one company that does this very well or one organization is a mastermind group I'm involved with called maverick okay wonderful group international clientele our membership it's successful entrepreneurs from all over the world that want to have a little bit of adventure in their life, they want to combine adventure with business with personal, with growth, with content, with learning and wrap all that into an event once a quarter so they're big specialty is in person, they have a lot of email, communications and phone and things like that. But where really the rubber meets the road is the in person event it's so earlier this year, we had an event in chicago, you know, we gather different places in the united states, different places around the world to meet and as part of our gathering, we always have some start ups come in because most of people in the group have been running successful businesses for a long time. We have startups come in and they tell us about their business, and then we give them free advice. One of the startups that came in was an energy drink company called zombie blast their tagline, don't be a zombie, so if you're feeling like a zombie, do one of our shot blast, you'll feel energized and you'll be good to go on what's great about zombie blast is their packaging looks like a shotgun shell, so you're ready for this on the invasion, okay? Fantastic and had we just met with the ceo of this company and given him the advice would've given us is entrepreneurs they've been at it awhile a chance to give back connect a little bit, but if the story would have ended there, I wouldn't be talking about it instead, what they did is arranged a zombie fication off the members of maverick this is the founder of the company janek silver having makeup applied by professional makeup artist so he looks like a zombie the product of the work looks something like this these air successful business owners that look ridiculous at a business conference a masterminding thing we went out and did a zombie crawl around the streets of chicago from one bar to the next. It was fantastic had a great time going back to our earlier question kitten, can I have too much fun? I had a lot of fund and I wanted more, so I went to their next to ben in las vegas. This is actually the event I was there for when I told you guys the story about the mandarin oriental and the amazing service that's where I was staying for this event. So for this event the costume aspect ofthe the first chicago event it wasn't the first event, but the first time they really incorporated costumes was so successful that they said we're going to do costumes at every event, every quarter that some of you are like chili that's insane like costumes at every event, every quarter, and they're like, yeah know your audience, the name of this group is called maverick. Do you think anybody in the group had a problem dressing up? Not at all. The theme was kings and queens course, we're in vegas, who we're gonna have the king present there's a different interpretation on what a king looks like. In fact, everyone who came to the event did a costume. They embraced the spirit, they were all part of it. This is a group that does all kinds of adventures aerial combat, flying and doing loops and planes. This is the group that I went shooting machine guns with that I mentioned earlier, right? Then we went and played trampoline dodgeball and not just this group. I mean, the whole group know your audience. This audience pays a thousand dollars a month to be part of this group twelve thousand dollars a year, and they're willing to dress up in costumes. Your audience is willing to have fun, too. Let's talk about adoption adoption we goto apple it's one we're very familiar with it's, a story we've talked about in person apple created the white year bud but not only did they do that they built it into their marketing campaign and surely remember seeing these all over the countryside all over the world where they would take fans customers models have them pose there were even apse that you could create a version of the ad of yourself with the white ear phones it was so popular that it spurred parody ads for the simpsons and what happened is when celebrities starting to use it we didn't even have to know that michael phelps was an apple customer all we had to look it is see a white headphones yet he's got an ipod or an iphone as we mentioned earlier, I think russ talkabout it got to be so much that people were being targeted in public transportation because you knew if they had the white earphones on they were walking around with about three hundred dollars in their pocket advocacy we finally reached the end of the phase right and for advocacy I want to talk about a brilliant story with drop box it's probably something with his many creatives and people dealing with large computer files are familiar with if you're not it's a free online service that allows you to store files, documents, photos, videos in the cloud and then share those folders with other people so that they can get in and download that information or download that file dropbox very early on used videos to grow their business in a really unique and remarkable way but before we get to that let me explain what happened to me recently your drop boxes full get more space I'd used up all my space on my dropbox account so when I click on get more space it says select your dropbox pro plan either bill me eight twenty five a month bill danieli for one hundred gigabytes two hundred gigabytes five hundred gigabytes I like to spend my money on experiences while dropbox works well and really rather not spend eight twenty five a month toe up my account so what dropbox has done has said well guess what, joey if you refer a friend to dropbox and they create a drop box account we'll give you both five hundred megabytes of space free what free space I mean this has created a fascinating subculture there are hacks off how to get more dropbox storage by referring people if you google dropbox referral hack there are seventy six a thousand results of ways toe hack dropbox this system and I point that out to bring up a reason sometimes people say, well joey, I want to do this cool fun thing, but what about the people? We're going to take advantage of it who cares seriously it's such a small percentage of your audience and if you're doing your analytics right and you see that they're taking advantage of it you know that somewhere in your mix it either on boarding or maybe even further down the line prospecting you're drawing in the wrong kind of audience member take it as a gift instead of getting pissed get even say okay guess what we're goingto shut down not our offer we're going to shut down the funnel that was bringing that type of people into the fold because we trust our employees we trust our clients are customers were not going to throw the baby out with the bath water so it dropbox did when they first started is they created this video okay atget traa box this is early on in the process they were in beta they hadn't even launched and here's what happened within twenty four hours they had seventy five thousand people signed up for an account in twenty four hours now the reason is the video they made was put on dig and it was very specifically built for the dig audience. There were actually easter eggs and references in the video that on ly the big dig fans and digg users would get and they laughed and they liked it they thought it was cool and it was relevant to them it wasn't just some marketing ploy ah lot of people that are on dig our tech savvy they wanted this they've been looking for a cloud based solution and drop box was there and it's free look what happened because of that refer a friend to get more space program seven months in they had a million users twelve months in they had ten million users that's insane growth that's insane referrals now were they saying give me a referral give me a referral pay for this no they're referrals were for free you got this for free they recognized our goal is to build a user base our goal is to get as many customers as possible all because some of these customers will come in it free and when they're dropbox fills up they'll go refer some more people and those people will come in free and then there's other people will come in free but eventually we're going to start to find customers like me who looked at it and go I really don't want to span my friends with a bunch of like dropbox referrals why not just pay nine dollars a month and they were willing to pay the game because of the scale abilities software they could do that this is how their website usedto look right download dropbox watched video wanna find more take a quick two are available for windows mac and lennox and all of those were links contact us feedback press partnership they quickly realised the paradox of choice that's too many things when you come to the website what I want you to dio I want you to watch the video and hello, drop box that's it dropbox charges its clients zero dollars we've now done world class examples at every level. Okay, we have some brief time for some questions. If there are any either online or in the studio audience, we have some online. We have a plenty coming in. We let's see it's just a question of which ones I think we're goingto ask. So I think I'll start with rescuing interrupt for a second. I know we've I had a lot of questions come in. I'd like to make an offer to everybody who's watching online at home and that kind of thing in people, frankly, her watching later in the telecast. Sometime in the next month, I'm going to do a free webinar where I'm going to do an hour because our time and our schedule got a little off today. Romney do an hour of q and a that's it. So if your question doesn't get answered as we're coming to the end of day, rest assured, I'm gonna work with the creative live team. We're going to get all the questions from the chat room and that's going to be the opening volley for the webinar, and then we'll have the opportunity to add more questions, so rest assured, you don't need to freak out if your question doesn't get answered today. It will get answered in the next thirty days. Forgive me for interrupting then that's the problem at all that's fantastic, so just click the enroll link on the course paige it's on the left hand side and you'll get information about that. Enough says on day one, he talked about the disillusionment from being handed off to an account rep. I'm wondering if it's possible to outsource the interpersonal contact without creating that annoyance, say, for someone who deals with social anxiety, yeah, is it possible? Yes, is it kind of walking a tightrope without a net? Yes, take it to the dating analogy, is it possible to outsource your dating? Well, you can I don't know that it's the most successful technique and it has the potential to fall apart really fast if you have social anxiety, I want to recognize that acknowledge that it's a very riel kind of state to be in there are a couple things you can do, I mean, obviously there are things you can you two start toe work through that, but you may be thinking that your customer needs a certain level of in person interaction or hand holding or things that make you anxious, when in reality there might be things you could do that don't make you is anxious that could solve for the same problem, for example, imagine if you've been in business long enough, you know the type of emotions that your customers are going through, you could create a siri's of videos and then when that customer females human says, hey, I was hoping to jump on the phone and talk to you about where we're out in the process. You could respond back with the email and say, hey, I'm sorry would love to, but it's going to be a couple of days before I have time on my calendar in the interim period, I've made this video that I'm happy to send you that address is exactly what you were asking about your message. The customer then says, wow, they made a video for me. They don't stop and say, I wonder if they just have this pool of fifty videos that they send because they have social anxiety? No, they say, wow, they actually cared about me, so might be something to consider like that. Can you outsource it? Yes, if you're going to do that, it ties a little bit to the conversation we were having earlier with meghan about training your team. Make sure that you hire the right people, make sure you hire people that you trust and people that have the same belief around what the customer experience should be that you dio, and we have a question from jesse l and they ask in our business we tend to get heavy handed and emotion and approach they serve health plans, hospitals and medical group practices that in the offer understanding of why people behave towards their health the way they dio how might we insert some fun in our communications? Yeah, great great question I mean let's be honest, most people's emotional association with health care is on the negative side of that list, right? Because I'm either sick or I'm not feeling one hundred per cent or I've got something even more serious than that that I'm dying typical hospital set up is not really the most warm and welcoming space I mean, they tried it like, oh, we painted new colors on the wall to make you feel better about yourself. I'm like, yeah, and you still have me lying on a slab of metal naked waiting for a doctor to come into the room sometime in the next four hours, right? Absolutely, I think there's an opportunity it's probably cliche in their industry, but I'd say number one go watch the movie patch adams with robin williams there's a guy who brought all kinds of fun and humor into the hospital true story right, really interesting story what air the fun things they could do to be more playful, you know? Could they do interesting things that would make their customers or their audience members laugh. You know, I'm getting this vision in my head of like a tongue depressor and maybe the fun little faces you could make on tongue depressors and new videos with tongue depressors talking to each other. You know there are lots of ways you can get creative and fun. Some of it you may say, no, charlie that's ours or the ceo of a multimillion dollar hospitals they're going to think that's way too corny, maybe, but maybe you could send them a puppet kit with tongue depressors and little googly eyes on it the whole thing and say, hey, by the way, doing business with us is going to be unlike the rest of your day. We hope here is excited about it is we are on, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of hospital ceos would say, yeah, you know what? That actually is fun because I'm sick of dealing with the boring stiff shirts and at the same time, like most of the health care professionals that I know dealing with what they deal with on a daily basis, they tend to have a pretty strong sense of humor sometimes it's a very black sense of humor, and I guess that requires, like knowing your client's really well, but there is a lot of opportunity there