My friend Bob Nelson -- author of the bestselling book 1001 Ways to Reward Employees -- talks a lot about all the different ways to (no big surprise) reward your employees. While rewarding employees is important, there are other people in your life who you should consider rewarding too. At the top of my personal top-10 list would be someone near and dear to my own heart: my customers. And one of the best ways to do that is to turn them into heroes.
According to Tracy Schneider, owner of TLS Marketing of Seattle, Washington, there are two particularly effective ways to turn your customers into heroes. The first is to make them look great within their organizations, and the second is to make customers look great outside of their organization, to the business community as a whole.
Schneider says that there are a number of things you can do to shine the spotlight on your customers. Not only will these things help turn them into heroes, but they'll go a long way towards making you a hero in the eyes of your customers. Says Schneider, "If you're a savvy marketer, then you're already out in the industry a lot and out in the community a lot. You're doing things like presentations. You're writing articles for trade publications or association publications. You're going to association meetings. You're on a board or two, and you're attending luncheons and dinners. You have a Web site. You have some kind of a mailer that goes out to your clients and prospects. These are all great opportunities for you to share stories about clients you're working with. It makes you look good, and it makes them look good, as well."
In a way, you're sort of becoming a mini-public relations firm -- telling success stories about the customers you're working with. Not only are you getting out the word about the good things your customer is doing, you're getting out the word about the good things your company is doing. And doing so doesn't have to cost you a lot of money. In fact, you're probably already doing a variety of things that can easily be directed to this purpose. Says Schneider, "The way you get your clients' success stories out is by putting them up on your Web site, or including them in a direct-mail piece to your prospective clients. You should also share these stories at association meetings and in presentations that you give, and in articles you're writing -- everywhere, all the time. We've all heard enough people tell us that if we do these five things, we'll achieve our goals, but it really jazzes up both an interest in you and in what you're saying if you can share a real story. And you can do it with all of those things."
If you're going to give this a try, the first step is to figure out which medium will give your message the biggest bang for the buck. Then you should decide on the message you want to convey, and pick out a success story to tell. Accentuate the positive, and be sure that your customer is the focus of the story -- not you or your business. One note of caution: be sure that your customer sees, hears, or at least knows about the message before you use it. Some customers may be very sensitive about being mentioned in say a newspaper op-ed piece. If you're telling the story to others in the community, let your customer in on whom you're talking to -- and when and where. You can even send an invitation if you like.
The power to create more powerful customer relationships is in your hands. Treat your customers like heroes, and they'll do the same for you. And with a mutual admiration society like that in place, there's a very good chance you'll have those customers for life.
