Creating wave after wave of Advocates

“Excellence is never an accident” -Aristotle

If you don’t know where you are going any road can take you there. 

-The Cheshire Cat

Two statements that are said every day in business.  Who would really look at their business and think that everyday we don’t really have a plan to address how to create an advocate of our customers? Have you addressed that yet? Do actually have a well thought out plan to understand touch points between your customer and you? Do you INTENTIONALLY create and foster experiences or the lack of frustration for your customers?  If you are not being intentional about it, you are costing yourself the best assets you could ever have.  The true Advocate.  The customer that will tell people they know, and come in contact with, that YOU are the person to see.  

We spend hundreds if not thousands to land that one customer, then once we get them we don’t have a purposeful strategy to help them help us.  I have found I cannot be in two places at one time.  I can however, create wave after wave of advocates that will call me looking for help.  They could call anyone, and they call me. I didn’t spend a dollar on a billboard.  I didn’t send out a mailer that if 1% of the people even open it or respond is considered a success. I got a cash free opportunity to do business.  There is a cost, that is why I mention cash free.  The cost of the ADVOCATE,  is doing things right the first time.  If things go wrong, which can happen, do I have a plan of recovery?  Be amazing at recovery.

Most salespeople are so worried about the hunting and killing of beasts that they forget what it is like to have a sheep, that every year provides more wool.  We have taken the task of sales to the lowest common denominator.  We try to rush the experience to the TRANSACTION instead of the INTERACTION.  

What is the cost of the transactional sale.  I have to continually be the lowest price, cheapest, or only game in town.  The problem with those ideas is that they change so rapidly.  With all of the pricing tools around, pricing at 97% today is 102% in two days because everyone else monitors the same pricing strategies and then adjusts their pricing to match or lower.  This is very short term.  Quick fix, for sure, Simon Sinek in his Book “Start with Why”1 describes it this way:

“Playing the price game, however, can come at tremendous cost 

and can create a significant dilemma for the company. For the seller, 

selling based on price is like heroin. The short-term gain is fantastic, 

but the more you do it, the harder it becomes to kick the habit. Once 

buyers get used to paying a lower-than-average price for a product 

or service, it is very hard to get them to pay more. And the sellers, 

facing overwhelming pressure to push prices lower and lower in 

order to compete, find their margins cut slimmer and slimmer. This 

only drives a need to sell more to compensate. And the quickest 

way to do that is price again. And so the downward spiral of price 

addiction sets in. In the drug world, these addicts are called junkies. “

This is pure commodity transactional selling. It happens, and happens everyday of the week. So why do we volunteer to become price junkies so fast?  That is the real question? Do you have to be competitive, of course, do you have to be the leader of the 100 yard sprint to the gutter? It is an option, but it seems you don’t trust that who and what you are will work.  So back to the drug of low prices. 

Purely transactional sellers have to continually hunt. They have to continually advertise, and spend crazy money on that. Always lurking, always in the moment, and this is great for a time, but you are only playing the short game.  

The Long game takes time.  It takes patience.  It takes an attitude of INTENTIONALITY to create greatness. Everyday, each time, INTENTIONALLY takes effort, but the longer you do it, the larger your army of ADVOCATES.  Like the wake of a boat, the longer you go the wider your wake becomes.  You can still only be in one place at one time, but with an Army of Advocates the people will seek you out.  You can turn to harvest mode instead of hunting mode.  

Amazing customer service that creates an Army of people to advertise, care about, support and cheer for you is never an accident. If you never know if you would like that mentality, any road will take you there.  Aristotle was right, “Excellence is never an Accident”.  It takes forethought, planning, a willingness to adjust and adapt when new data or information comes along. Consistent core values that move you to the idea that how, when and why you do things in your interactions will change your long term outcome dramatically.  This is the long game.  The real winners don’t worry about every deal.  There are some deals not worth taking.  Creating the WIN-WIN with your customers is on purpose.  It is INTENTIONAL.

1-Simon Sinek -Start With Why

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