Amazon is getting tangled in the trust economy while Airbnb embraces it
If customers stop believing you, they’ll stop buying. While Amazon struggles with fake products, Airbnb is raising the bar to give guests, hosts, and even neighbors more confidence in its service.
18-Nov-19 – The most critical enabler of e-commerce and so many other tech-centric businesses today is the emergence and continued growth of the trust economy. We’re surprisingly comfortable putting ourselves – and often our offspring – in cars with drivers whose training, credentials, and even honesty are mainly a mystery. Their principal qualification is showing up – usually on time and hopefully sober. We buy products and services from sellers worldwide without a moment’s hesitation, in the good-faith belief that they are what they’re represented to be and that they will be delivered on time and as promised. While sites like The RealReal aggressively stress the authenticity of their used luxury goods and the extent to which they go to verify that fact, most e-commerce sites – and most of us – just take largely for granted the fact that what you see is what you’ll eventually get.
Given what we’re finding out, how much longer can Amazon hang on to the title as the most trusted brand in America? Seems to me that even a golden reputation based primarily on execution and cost considerations is more than a little vulnerable when the goods that are promptly and economically provided turn out to suck or are actually harmful. Cost is what you pay, but true value is ultimately what we’re looking for. As I used to tell my car dealer clients, customers don’t care how fast you fix their cars if you don’t get the job done right. They’d rather wait a while longer than have to bring the beast back to be repaired again. Amazon needs to clean up its Fulfillment by Amazon business, which continues to grow explosively, because shoddy quality control is killing a lot of legitimate players who can’t compete with all the fakes, while slowly impairing our faith in the company as well. Airbnb just raised the bar in the trust economy, and it will be interesting to see how soon all the others step up their game as well. They will probably have a much heavier lift than did Airbnb and, in some cases, not much interest or appetite to open that particular Pandora’s box. I can understand why. Brian Chesky, an Airbnb co-founder and its CEO, announced last week at the DealBook Conference in New York that Airbnb will roll out four service enhancements to provide far greater comfort to all stakeholders. Not just to the guests and the landlords, but also to the residents and regulators in the communities where the business operates as well. The four changes include...
Twitter has opted for veracity, banning blatantly false political advertising, while Facebook sticks to its controversial hands-off position. Google is on the sideline, trying to figure out how to play the issue. Even more importantly, the changes and the challenges that so many of the other tech companies are going to face in upping their “honesty” will be much greater than those faced by Airbnb because basic trust was a critical component of the Airbnb business and a central part of its culture from the beginning. Not that Chesky and his fellow founders, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk, are exceptionally honorable and sincere guys – although maybe they are. But they really had no choice, because delivering the right experience was the whole essence of their business, so they made accuracy, honesty, and integrity all key components of their corporate culture. When you invite someone into your home to sleep in your bed, you’d better get a lot of things right from the get-go including, but not limited to, the breakfast. Where you start the startup journey has a lot to do with where you ultimately end up and what kind of business you build. If you don’t care where you end up, any road will take you there. And, if your North Star is “breaking things” or “asking forgiveness rather than permission” or selling a “raised state of consciousness” instead of speculative real estate space, you can end up building a morally bankrupt business that no one trusts or ultimately believes in. The examples of how to do it wrong are just about everywhere today. There aren’t any real shortcuts to sustainable success and there never have been. The miracle workers and people selling any other story are just shipping snake oil.
This is a leap of faith to be sure, but in listening to the guy who has led the charge for over a decade and done about as well as anyone could – especially in dealing with the occasional serious bumps in the road – you have to believe that he may have the right stuff and the strength and character to get the job done because he’s coming from the right place. If it’s you against the world, it makes a lot of sense to bet on the world. All these guys want to be appreciated and admired – a key part of what drives every entrepreneur. Who doesn’t want to be loved? But trust is a much bigger challenge. Being trusted is a lot harder to achieve than being loved.
By Howard Tullman | Loop North News | h@g2t3v.com
Published 18-Nov-19 1:10 AM
|
HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Showing posts with label iit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iit. Show all posts
Monday, November 18, 2019
Amazon is getting tangled in the trust economy while Airbnb embraces it
Monday, November 04, 2019
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
New INC Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman
Why Mr. Wonderful Banks on Female Founders
He's
heard a zillion pitches on Shark Tank. The startups that are most successful do
three things well, are more likely to be led by women--and more likely to get
his investment money.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
We
hosted Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, aka "Mr.
Wonderful", at the Kaplan Institute for a talk and a fireside chat last
week in front of about 400 of our student entrepreneurs. He shared some
important and serious thoughts about the entrepreneurial journey in general and
about his own education as a successful investor in so many different startups
(more than 50 in his portfolio as of now). He covered both things he learned
through the TV show and, more importantly, some lessons for anyone looking to
start or invest in a new business.
Here
are a few of the most interesting notes and comments.
1. It's all about sales and the costs of customer
acquisition.
Kevin
likes to meet the CEO of a potential investment and ultimately the main players
on the management team, but the person he wants to meet first is the head of
sales. Because if you don't have sales, you've got nothing. And, if you
don't understand what the cost is for your business to attract (CAC) and retain
new customers, you're doomed. So, he likes to meet the person who's putting the
meat on the table right off the bat.
With
the World Series under way, I'm reminded of an old baseball truism:
"pitchers in baseball can never win a game, they can only lose it."
It's the hitters who get it done. Raising money is easy for a lot of people --
they're great storytellers -- selling customers is much harder because when you
make them part with their rubles, that's where the rubber really hits the road.
2. We're much more brand loyal to consumer products
than to tech products.
We may
use a favorite laundry detergent or shampoo our whole lives, especially if it's
what our parents used, but that kind of loyalty doesn't play in the tech
world today, where everyone only wants the latest and greatest. If you show me
something that's better, cheaper, faster, easier and available today, I'm
yours. And no one worries a bit about changing horses in midstream
as long as switching costs like equipment replacement, re-training, etc. are
modest.
In the
software business, it's certainly important to take care of your existing
customers. But as I always tell our portfolio companies, the real measurement
of your long-term success isn't simply the size of your installed base,
it's your ongoing share of installations of your products on new machines and
new technology implementations because those are the customers who'll
matter the most in the future.
3. Winners on Shark Tank do three things well.
After Kevin
had watched zillions of presentations and studied exactly who won and
which deals got funded on Shark Tank, three specific attributes of
winning pitches emerged.
1. They could convincingly
tell their story in 90 seconds or less.
2. They demonstrated that
they had the right team to execute their plan.
3. They knew their numbers
(backwards and forwards) and they had a full understanding of the economics of
their business model.
Everything
else was fixable especially with the vast benefits of the exposure these
companies received on TV which often drove their customer acquisition costs
close to zero.
4. Women make the best startup CEOs.
He said
he was a little worried about being accused on being a reverse sexist because
such a huge percentage of his investments are made in companies with female
CEOs. But here again, he has consistently observed a set of skills and
attitudes among these leaders that he even goes so far as to suggest to the
other male-led companies in his group. The four skill sets that were most
important were:
1. They have great time
management skills. They didn't run around trying to do everything at the same
time or taking on too many projects or challenges all at once. They are focused
and centered and consistently triaged and re-proritized what they needed to get
done in the moment.
2. They set goals that are
achievable and hit those goals far more often than their male counterparts. He
said that he encourages this strategy of manageable and somewhat modest
targets even at the cost of some rapid growth, because it
makes for successful employees, which leads to the third differentiator.
3. They build company
cultures that have lower overall employee turnover, which in turn dramatically
reduces their operating costs. Happy workers are healthier, more productive and
stick around.
4. Women executives are
simply better listeners.
There
was a lot more in the conversation, but these seemed to me to be the key items.
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
New INC. Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman
The Myth of the First Mover Advantage
Get
to the market first and you capture most of the business, right? Not anymore.
Customers are too demanding and competitors are too good. Your product and
service has to deliver everything you've promised from day one.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
We
spend a lot of time talking about first movers in the startup world. We
pretty much take it for granted that getting out there as soon as possible with
our idea is basically a good thing even though there are clearly downsides to
being a pioneer, including the problem of winding up with a bunch of arrows in
your back from both fast followers and from increasingly smart, rapidly
reactive and agile incumbents as well.
Being
first is nice, but in the long run, consumers ultimately go with the best.
Among online shoppers these days, there's a lot more caution and conservatism,
because too many of them have been burned by startups that got too far out over
their skis and couldn't deliver the goods or services promised. Rent
the Runway may play into the new thrifting and sustainability
trends that are so popular right now, but if the company can't handle the influx of new customers or
ship their goods on time, its service isn't a bargain or a benefit for
anyone. Don't think you can have too many customers? Or that it's a
problem that just startups face? Ask Apple (iPads), Microsoft (Xboxes), Toyota
(Priuses), or even Amazon with the early Kindles? They've all run out or sold
out of key new products.
Being
the "best" these days can mean a lot of different things in the
consumer's mind. Best can relate to quality, service and support, reputation,
consistency, longevity, stability, etc. This is one of the reasons that
startups often end up setting the table and identifying new market
opportunities for the big guys to then jump all over. When the elephants dance,
the little guys and the grass take a beating.
New
product ideas and speed to market are important, certainly, but they're not the
only success factors - especially when you're talking about certain kinds of
household products that we buy infrequently and hang on to for a long time.
Refrigerators and washing machines are good examples. Mattresses are another instance
of something, you would think, that we'd want to be durable and long-lasting,
rather than disposable. Yes, you could argue that, for kids in their first
apartments, these foam-slab mattresses made and shipped by outfits such
as Casper make as much sense as anything
else in a world where it's all about near-term utility and not about
possessions or ownership.
But
even if your customers don't plan to keep their mattresses forever, that's only
half the problem with this particular business model. The central question is,
how often am I gonna buy a new mattress (not very) and what, if anything, do
you think you're going to sell me in the meantime? And why should I believe
that you bring any supply chain edge, assembly or manufacturing skill, or other
competitive advantage to sell me a lot of other stuff that I can get (and have
been getting) from a million other places? It's not like I never bought sheets,
pillowcases, duvets, and even bed frames in the past. There's a Bed,
Bath & Beyond everywhere you look. (Okay, maybe less than
everywhere--the company just announced it was shutting 40 stores.)
And
some brands and some businesses just don't stretch no matter how hard you try
or how much wishful thinking you do. I really love my Kohler sinks, tubs and
toilets, but I draw the line at stopping by the Kohler Water Spa to learn about the
healing properties of H2O.
This is
similar to the case I made against the Uber model. My main point was that not every business or industry can be Uber-ized.
And, that's why I say Casper and its counterparts and colorful competitors
like Purple and Avocado are ghosts in the making. Not only isn't
the model extensible in any convincing fashion, it's vulnerable in too many
ways. Fast followers like Leesa and Saatva are all over the place with New York
Times ads dumping on the "bed-in-a-box" concept and the big sleep
guys, Serta Simmons and Tempur Sealy, are building (Cocoon) or
buying their way (Tuft & Needle) into the space as well.
It's
increasingly important when you look at the prospects for a given new business
that you identify the kinds of products and services that have no business
being a first mover (or maybe any "mover" at all) because they have
no sustainable business idea that can scale and grow beyond that first frantic
and frothy stage. The vast majority of these companies "start", but
they never "up". And we're starting to see more and more
examples of this "one-trick pony" problem where there's just no
worthwhile place for the new business to go or to grow because their basic product
or service offering can't or won't scale.
Because
this is not a dream at all - it's a nightmare waiting to happen.
Sunday, October 20, 2019
AITP Chicago Dinner Meeting Features Kaplan Exec Director Howard Tullman
Topic: Trends and Innovation Drivers
Howard will speak about technology trends and innovation including 7-10 drivers that IT professionals will deal with in the future. Howard believes that IT professionals are going to be at the core of every business, not on the fringes as a “service” to the rest of the company. He speaks about the strategy and competitive advantage IT brings to business by making sure it has a seat at the table.
Speaker: Howard Tullman
Howard Tullman is the Executive Director of the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship as well as the first University Professor appointed at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He was previously the CEO of 1871 (the home of 500 digital startups) which, under his guidance and leadership, tripled in size and was recently named the Number 1 university-affiliated tech incubator in the world. Prior to his role at 1871, Tullman was the Chairman and CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint College and the President of Kendall College. He is also the General Managing Partner of two early-stage venture capital funds, Chicago High-Tech Investment Partners, LLC and G2T3V, LLC which focus on identifying and funding disruptive innovators.
Tullman is a world-class serial entrepreneur and has successfully founded more than a dozen high-tech startups in his 50-year career and created more than $1 billion in investor value as well as over 6000 new jobs. He is a tireless supporter of entrepreneurs and a mentor to many startups, growing businesses of all sizes, political leaders and government agencies as well as a board member of several of Chicago’s fastest-growing tech companies.
He has written over 30 books and writes a regular weekly column on The Perspiration Principles for INC. Magazine which reaches over 2 million website visitors a week. He lectures on technology trends, innovation, entrepreneurship and change management all across the world as well as at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University where he is an Adjunct Professor.
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
New INC. Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman
Startups Have to Hire Who They Can Find, Not Who They
Want
You
might think your startup is something special, and it is--to you. But the
people you employ to execute your vision may not have the same enthusiasm or
skills that you do. It's your job to make them better.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
When I retired from law in 1979 after 10 years as a trial
attorney, I thought I knew pretty much what to expect as I set out to start my
own database company: little money, long hours, lots of stress, and the
constant ups and downs of birthing a new business. I had already been working 80-hour
weeks, traveling cross country regularly for trials, and dealing with a
constant stream of crazy, demanding clients. I assumed that the masses of
consumers and insurance adjusters I hoped to quickly convert to customers
couldn't possibly be any worse than the aggrieved and angry litigants I was
representing every day. But I was badly mistaken. As it happens, the really
rude awakening actually had nothing to do with the customers; it also had very
little to do with the nature of the job itself.
In those days, the bookstores (remember them) weren't
bursting at the seams with books and magazines explaining everything there was
to know about the challenges of being an entrepreneur. In fact, Inc. had
just started publishing in April of that same year. If you asked most people
what the word "entrepreneur" even meant, they'd usually say
"gainfully unemployed" or about to be. Being an entrepreneur wasn't
exactly the profession at the time that any mother-in-law would have picked for
their darling daughter's husband and most of them wouldn't have called it a
profession at all. Imagine a highly successful lawyer giving it all up to
become an insurance adjuster or, worse yet, a used car salesman. What a shame
and a story that almost everyone (except me) believed couldn't possibly end
well.
My fundamental miscalculation - in comparing my new life to
the good old days at the law firm - was that I didn't realize that nothing
mattered more than the people who were going to be in the boat with me. And
that, in the real world, those people were a whole lot different than my law
firm partners. Not until I was out there in the wild trying to make things
happen, did I realize that the professional workforce at a high end,
highly selective law firm is a completely different animal from the folks you
can find, recruit and afford in a startup.
At the law firm, you're surrounded by partners and
associates who are all equally nuts, mostly in a good way -- terribly anal and
attentive to every detail, and off the charts in smarts. If they weren't
talented, tough and bright, they wouldn't be there long. And, after a short
while, you begin to take for granted that everyone works insane hours, that
they're all self-starters and absurdly ambitious, and they're driven to do
whatever it takes to get the job done well, on time, and every time. That's
part of a history, a culture, and some long-standing and entrenched behavioral
norms that may never change. And, of course, because they all came from great
schools, were aggressively pursued, and make a ton of money, they're
unbelievably competitive in every respect and Type A personalities to the nth
degree.
But when you get outside of that affluent and insular legal
bubble and try to find and hire your first team, you quickly discover that beggars
can't be choosers and that you pretty much have to take whoever you can get.
And that the ones you do get come in all sizes, shapes, and especially
attitudes. You don't exactly get the pick of the litter - more likely, you're
taking whoever you can find and hoping to upgrade the team over time if you're
lucky. The most important consideration in those early hires isn't skill. It's
always will. If their hearts are in the right place and they're willing to try,
then it's on you to help make them successful.
A lot of your early employees aren't going to be neurotics
like you who have joined the crusade and had a healthy gulp or two of the
company Kool-Aid. Given how quickly things change, they might not
even be sure what exactly they've signed up for. And a fair number of them may
be equally unsure about what they want to do with their own lives in the long
run. In many cases, they're much more likely to just be happy to have a job,
but not that interested in giving up the rest of their lives to make your dreams
come true. And, unlike you, they regard work as what they do during the day
from 9 to 5 and not who they are. And they're probably much healthier mentally
as a result.
One of the biggest mistakes that young entrepreneurs make is
in trying to assemble a cast of characters who all look and act just like them
and, not only isn't this actually possible as the business grows, it's really a
bad plan as well. There are no better recent examples than WeWork and the toxic
and pumped-up culture of Uber of old. To build a strong team, you need a mix of
people - some lovers, some lifers, some lunatics, and even a few losers when
you start out. Honestly, to survive during this phase of your company's
development and not drive yourself crazy, you need to set your sights and your
expectations of your people a lot lower at the outset than you'd ever imagine.
As long as some of them show up, do their assigned tasks, and don't cause more
problems than they're worth, you need to take your medicine and keep moving
forward. Things will get better over time if you keep going. Start with what
you have.
And the bigger and more important lesson for leaders is one
that takes quite a while to learn. It's related to a problem that we see quite
often in sports managers who end up losing their jobs. They were usually trying
to make their players work and perform within their favorite "system"
whether or not the players had the interest, skills or egos that were
appropriate to the task. Business just doesn't work that way. You've got to
operate with the assets and resources you have on hand and put together the
best team you can.
In the startup world, it's even more critical to understand
that you may have a dream, you may have a game plan and a roadmap, and you may
even know exactly where you want to take the business. But you can't get there
by yourself. As you start out, the job is to get the best work and results out
of the team you have - not the team you wish you had - and to
exhibit a little patience and some more modest expectations until your people
can, hopefully, grow into their positions or you are eventually able to find
better and more capable employees. If you build your business from the bottom
up, it will have a powerful and lasting foundation.
The bottom line is that you can't make your people fit the
system, you've got to create a fluid approach and a near-term plan that
optimizes and maximizes the team's strengths and skills and the talents
that they have today - on the way to tomorrow - or else you'll end
up burning out the people you have and not attracting the ones you'll
eventually need.
Saturday, October 05, 2019
Tuesday, October 01, 2019
NEW INC MAGAZINE BLOG POST BY KAPLAN INSTITUTE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR HOWARD TULLMAN
Is Your Business Habit Forming?
The
best companies create customers who can't live without them. Follow these ABC's
of customer retention and never give them a reason to go elsewhere.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
Habits
are much like technology--they can be good or bad --it's all a matter of what
you make of them. Some become second nature, others require constant
maintenance and vigilance, and still others seem expressly made to be broken.
Bad habits are those we typically call addictions or even diseases; good habits
are lauded as evidence of stern discipline, rigorous training, and a commitment
to quality and excellence. The truth is that many of the things we do on a
daily basis have far more to do with habit than good reasons.
We all
have good and bad tendencies, whether we realize it or not. Indeed, it's a
full-time job to avoid, enhance, nurture, change and/or care for all of the
diverse commitments that these behaviors entail. Habits are funny little things
- so weak at the outset that you barely notice them - and then, seemingly
overnight, they become so strong that they are very hard to break. Naturally,
the older and more established they are, the more challenging and
difficult they are to change or abandon.
One
interesting psychological aspect is that, if we really look carefully, we
sometimes discover that routine and process is what we are most attracted to,
and affected by, rather than the behavior. I was absolutely addicted to Diet
Coke for decades and then one day I quit cold turkey and discovered quite
quickly that I didn't miss the beverage as much as I missed the daily beats.
The regularity of stopping every day at 7-11 for my Big Gulp; the simplicity of
the every time answer: "I'll have a Diet Coke"; and the satisfaction
of that first, over-carbonated and essentially tasteless, sip to start off the
morning with a bit of cold caffeine.
In the
same way, this is something that almost every smoker would readily admit to. No
one with a brain thinks that smoking is healthy, but smokers persist because
something in the routine and the ritual is comforting and feels satisfying,
even though they know full well that it's slowly killing them. And it's
not just that smoking is something to do with their hands on a boring date
(that's what our phones are for) or to help keep the weight off or to be a
"cool" kid. It's a lot deeper and sadder than that.
I think
of our worst habits as unfortunately comfortable grooves we get into even as we
still try to convince ourselves -- despite copious evidence to the contrary --
that the reassurance and consistency and comfort they offer will somehow save
us from their obvious ill-effects. We're blinded by our own actions. Initially,
we tell ourselves that these foolish acts evidence our individuality, our
developing style, and the risks we willingly take to set ourselves apart. Then
we reach a certain point in our lives (and our careers) where it's clear that
the mission has changed. We go from acceptance and adherence to avoidance and
abandonment as we try to break the old chains and move to a healthier and more
sustainable business and personal life.
For
any business, on the other hand, there's nothing better than
to become a regular habit for your customers. And the best way to accomplish
that highly desirable status is to look to our own quasi-compulsive behaviors
for the keys and the cues that drive our personal actions and incorporate these
same drivers as much as possible into the ways in which you solicit, support
and sustain your own connections to your own clients, consumers and customers.
I'd
focus on five strategies which, over many years of application, I have found to
be the most consistent ways in which to assure -- as much as humanly possible
in the incredibly fluid and fickle world which we inhabit these days -- that
your customers stick around and come back.
A = Anticipate My Needs: Go to Where the Puck is Headed, Not
Where It Is
The
demographic and behavioral data we have available today makes it incumbent upon
smart companies to get a few steps ahead of their customers if they want to
keep them. Saving me time, helping me be more productive, and showing me how to
make smarter decisions for my own benefit are all ways of demonstrating that
your business is in the "business" of looking out for me. Getting the
job done is table stakes; helping your customers get a jump on the future is
the golden ring.
B= Beat My
Expectations: Experiences/Expectations > 1
There's
just no question that the businesses that succeed today are completely
committed to continuously raising the bar in order to meet the growing demands
and expectations of their customers. Customers' expectations are perpetually
progressive. Yesterday's miracles are today's "so-whats." It's all
about surprise and delight. If my every day experiences don't regularly exceed
my expectations, I'm more than likely to leave as soon as anything even
arguably better comes along. No one owns the customer anymore; we're obliged to
earn their trust and loyalty in every transaction and on every single
day.
C = Consistently Deliver: No Delays, No Mistakes, No
Surprises
Consumers
have the luxury of being unforgiving. In many cases, if you mess up at the
outset, you'll never get a second chance to make a first (or any) impression
because they won't stick around to give you that opportunity. But your existing
customers have already decided that it makes sense to deal with you as long as
you continue to execute and to deliver the goods. It takes years to develop trust,
confidence and the kinds of bonds that won't break under the slightest stress,
but it's nothing you should take for granted in this "what have you done
for me lately" marketplace.
Execution
is everything and you're competing not just with the guy down the street, but
with everyone across the globe and especially with whoever delivered the last,
best and most satisfying experience to your customers. You don't have to do it
better than Amazon every day, but you'll be left in the dust if you don't make
every effort to keep up.
D = Deepen Our Connection: Double Down on Your
Winners
The
very best customers are the ones you already have, and the easiest money is
earned by increasing your share of their spend or, as McDonald's used to say,
your share of their stomach. So much of business efficiency today is about
mining targeted slices and niches segmented from the broader general population
and also about reaching the right customers - the ones who are engaged,
connected, and willing to spend on an ongoing basis. It makes no sense to play
a volume game where you're focusing on traffic metrics rather than working to
build a real and specific audience for your products and services. Go deep. It
pays real dividends and beats the guys who are "a mile wide and an inch
deep" because they're trying to be all things to everybody.
E = Evidence: Show Me How Smart I Am to Stick with
You
Everyone's
an expert today on almost everything and - right or wrong - they're happy to
share their "expertise" with your customers. It's important that you
help your customers do their homework and feel smart about the choices they've
made to do business with you. You need to make sure that they have the facts,
the formulas, and the ammunition to support their decision to choose and then
to stick with you so they can withstand the constant onslaught of conflicting
views, arbitrary and unfounded opinions, fake surveys and studies, and all the
general noise pollution and commercial clutter that's out there today. Give
them the proof to make them proud.
As the
band Chicago sang in "Hard Habit to Break": "I guess I thought
you'd be here forever.... I was acting as if you were lucky to have me....
Doin' you a favor .... I was spreading my love too thin."
Don't
make the same mistake with your customers. There is no substitute for paying
attention and, if you don't, customers quickly stop caring.
You
want to become a very hard habit to break.
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