We’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to what it takes to create a remarkable client experience. There’s certainly no shortage of research and expertise on this topic. Sometimes, though, it’s the simplest of all concepts that strike you the hardest. Like this one I stumbled upon this week surfing the Web:

Delighting your customers doesn’t build loyalty. Reducing effort does.

The body of research behind this statement comes from the Corporate Executive Board and popped onto my radar screen this week from reading this post. What’s my takeaway from my cursory reading about the Customer Effort Score? Using its four dimensions—reducing thinking effort, emotional effort, physical effort and time—is a helpful framework for improving how you work with clients…and, if you’re a salesperson, how you sell. After all, according to other research by the Customer Executive Board, client loyalty is more a function of how you sell than what you sell.

I remember when you pulled into a station to fill up your car. You would wait for an attendant to come from running from inside or finish with another car. Almost all stations are self service now. Why? Because while it required a bit more physical effort from me, it reduced time as I could jump out, fill up my car and dash off.  Also, now the credit card reader is right at the pump—you no longer have to wait for the attendant to run inside. What a concept! Oh, and have you seen some of the new restaurant check out systems where the server can take payment right at the table?

What are you doing to reduce your client’s efforts?

This image gas_station_2 is courtesy of Atle Brunvoll on Flickr and made available under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license.

By sharing access to great thinking, we all get smarter. That’s what prompts me to share this graphical summary of how to write the perfect blog post created by Derek Halpern of Social Triggers. Thank you, Derek!

More great blog posts written = more great content items you can share with your clients using Postwire!

Like this? Get more marketing tips from Social Triggers.

We were all vaguely aware that Craig stayed up late April Fool’s night to submit an application for Postwire to compete at TechCrunch’s Disrupt NY 2012. In fact, he whispered the narration of the requisite product demo in the wee hours from home, careful not to wake his wife and young children.

Meanwhile, startup life marched on. In the next few weeks, feedback from early beta users contributed to a decision to make a major shift (dare I say “pivot”?) in the Postwire user experience. Turns out the ease with which users could beautifully present and share content was, well, too “automagical”, and consequently, confusing. We realized we needed to fundamentally change the experience of sharing content in Postwire.

So the dev team had just begun coding to the new vision when Craig got the email from Conference Program Chair Susan Hobbs on April 26^th: “Congratulations! You are a Battlefield finalist!” One of 30 finalists out of a 1000 applicants!

We had 3.5 weeks to finish building out the new UX/UI and create messaging to publicly launch Postwire on stage May 22 at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. Gulp. “Are you in?” All eight of us agreed we were.

Already well versed in lean product development and agile project management, Craig became more disciplined than ever in prioritizing design decisions. What do we absolutely need for a viable product? Does this feature add complexity to the user experience? Will not having it prevent use? Craig’s leadership and the talents of each of the developers gave birth to Postwire.

Meanwhile, as Craig led the back room through design iterations, Cliff led the charge in the front on messaging. Do users build a Postwire “page” or “web page”? “Personal page” or “private page”? Or, is it a “resource page, “guidebook”, “portfolio” or “touchstone”?! Tick, tock, tick, tock…with time running out, we circled back to where we began—“private web page” it is!

Deadlines and disciplined prioritization during the push to TechCrunch brought clarity to fuzziness. We knew Postwire doesn’t yet have all the desired features and “private web page” is far from perfect. Our messaging especially needs lots more work. But could we tell a compelling-enough story at TechCrunch? We decided yes and the very act of making that decision was empowering. Cliff & Craig ultimately committed to the words we settled upon and nailed the 6-minute pitch on the TechCrunch stage.

During the 3.5 week TechCrunch prep period, our team re-formed, stormed and began to norm.  It wasn’t always pretty. Not surprisingly, we were all stressed-out as we heads-down sprinted to the finish line. One of the developers called out the widening gulf between back and front room activities. We all knew it to be true and flagging it was just the shock to the system we needed. Brewing team communication issues were immediately brought out in the open.

What I realize now as I reflect upon our TechCrunch experience is that we gained so much more than good press (TechCrunch.com, Forbes.com, BostInno.com, MassHighTech.com, nibletz.com …) and validation of Postwire as a disruptive innovation. Being a Battlefield Finalist, also gave us the gifts of:

• A hard—and unanimously motivating—deadline to rally around;
• Confidence to make good-enough decisions;
• Discipline to continuously test our assumptions;
• Words to tell our story;
• Respect for the unique contributions of each team member; and
• The foundation for a new team culture.

For all that and more, the VisibleGains team thanks you, TechCrunch.

P.S. Check out the fruit of our labors by signing up for a FREE Postwire account. We’d love your feedback here!

Just back from TechCrunch Disrupt with Battlefield Finalist Team Postwire. Sitting in my porch on Memorial Day Weekend, I finally have some time to process the experience.

What has most stayed with me this week is the challenge and power of messaging. Distilling our message to the five or six most descriptive words–as few notes as possible so that the listener can name that tune–has been extremely challenging. As I visited other Battlefield and Start-up Alley teams, I noticed huge differences in how quickly I was able to “get” the what, why, how and how-easy of the hot new products. (I was, after all, probably the #oldestwomanatDisrupt.)

I was particularly obsessed with this because our own team has torn out our respective hairs trying to get the message down. When co-founders Cliff Pollan and Craig Daniel practiced their talks with theTechCrunch staff at the AOL office (thanks to  John Biggs, Eric Eldon, Heather Harde, Susan Hobbs and Alexia Tsotsis), even their focus was on trying to help us “nail down” the  essence of Postwire.

So, it was really eye-opening to see and hear how others talked about our product. Postwire’s TechCrunch “coming out” story from writer Matt Burns explained that Postwire “Aims To Be The Flipboard For Client Communication”.

Bostinno’s Walter Frick reported that Postwire is “as easy as Dropbox & as visual as Pinterest… marry[ing} personalization and privacy with the visual pop of services like Pinterest and Springpad”.

So these two writers went for the “anchor to familiarity” tactic.

One gentleman my colleague spoke to on the Battlefield said that we had the messaging all wrong: he adamantly asked why we were not just focusing on the hallmark video sharing capability of the product and strongly suggested we should be talking about “boards” not pages. Everyone is searching for the just right noun: Frick tried by referencing us as a “compelling receptacle”.

Our team all enjoyed TechCrunch winner Uberconference’s creative ability to tap the “Why” of their product. The low-tech homespun “everyman-or-woman” style of this video resonated with everyone’s struggles with teleconferencing and helped our team realize we had more work to do with our “Why” message.

We call this the “OMG I have had that problem” tactic.

Our team’s favorite  gadget was found on display at Bedphones: “Headphones so flat so you can sleep on them.” They all returned to our booth giddy with delight at their newest find.

Let’s call this the “this is so cool” tactic.

My favorite find was TechCrunch finalist  SnipSnap the coupon app which allows you to “scan, save, and redeem printed coupons on your mobile phone.”

A video played in their live Disrupt stage presentation caught my attention–people were saving a lot of money! “Prepare to save some serious moolah.” Indeed!

I’d call this the “save money easily” tactic.

But one message won me over hands down. I was following our Postwire Twitter feed on the last day of Disrupt and saw this tweet by Walter Frick from Bostinno:

@wfrick: If Don Draper were real and alive today he’d use this Boston product #tcdisrupt http://t.co/Xhy55bvS @postwire

That was it! Why hadn’t we thought of that?

Peggy Kriss, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Newton, Massachusetts and  Communications Strategist  to VisibleGains. Stay tuned for more psychology informed blogs by Dr. Kriss.

What started in the late 90’s as “Casual Friday’s” is now standard dress code all week long for many working professionals. Just as fashion shifts to be more relaxed, so have email communications. Have you noticed? Messaging has become much less stilted, more familiar and conversational. We call it business casual email.

Case in point is an email I received from the President, Barack, with a one-word subject line: “Hey”.  The brief message was an appeal for an end of year online donation. I was a prime target because I supported Barack back in 2008 with a micro-donation. Yes, I know Barack didn’t actually write that email. Still, the extreme casualness of it intrigued me. I asked others what they thought. As it turns out, most actually like the colloquial approach because it grabbed their attention.

It inspired me to run an experiment. I signed up to receive email from the Republican primary candidates. I figured this would be a fun way to collect a group of emails to examine.

As the campaign emails arrived, I filed them into a folder and am only just now looking at them as a group to write this post. I only received emails from Mitt and Rick; I didn’t receive emails from Newt and Ron and I’m still not sure why.

Anyway, scan the email subject lines below and take note of the following:

• simple language
• one to three words max
• mostly lowercase
• written as you might to a friend
• insider references

The email subject lines all strike a very casual tone. However, the message style varies by person. Summed up:

• Barack’s two messages are succinct, text-only, including one or two hyperlinks. One greeting is “Friend” and the other is personalized with my name. Signoffs are simple: “To 2012” and “Thank you”.
• Mitt’s two messages are also brief and both include links to video.  They open with “Friend,” and close expressing thanks.
• Rick’s nine messages are published in patriotic image-laden red-white-and-blue html formats (with the exception of one text-only message). None contain a salutation; otherwise, they resemble letters, complete with his scanned signature in closing.

Stripping away politics, what can we learn to apply to our own communications with prospects and customers?

• Know your target audience
  Wildly different interpretations of business casual attire create wrinkles in corporate dress codes. The same is true for business casual email. Rick’s formal letter message body was likely carefully crafted to resonate with his base. Beware: coming across as too familiar could be as off-putting as wearing flip-flops in some workplaces.
  When in doubt, err on the conservative side of business casual.
• Be personal
  All of the subject lines in my sampling looked like they came from a friend. Subject lines that read more like titles are out of fashion.
  Next time you send a prospecting email, try adopting a more casual, friendly tone.
• Spark curiosity
  “Wheaties”. That subject line is both thought provoking and timely for Rick’s constituents who recognize its reference to a positive comment made by a CNN consultant after a debate.
  Be relevant by relating your email messages to current events in your prospects’ and customers’ worlds.
• Connect emotionally
  Video is a very effective way to connect emotionally, as Mitt’s communications team knows. Video need not be over-produced. In fact, we are huge proponents of more ad hoc and authentic business casual video—a term first coined by Cliff (Pollan), VisibleGains CEO and written about by David (Meerman Scott) in the latest edition of his book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR. 
  Follow up your next meeting with an impromptu video message and include meeting notes and other supporting documentation. It’s easy. Got an iphone? Download our free app from the itunes store.

Take note of the business casual emails landing in your Inbox. Experiment with your tone, word choice and video to connect more personally with prospects and customers.

The National Retail Federation annual convention is underway at the Javits Convention Center in NYC. This is the show where retailers from all walks of life come to learn about the latest and greatest in the world of retailing. I decided to take in the show to learn from the innovative, new ways retailers can engage customers. The conference theme this year is Engaging with Shoppers in a World of Fragmentation and Change.

So imagine my surprise (or maybe not) when I arrived at the Javits Center and was greeted by massive lines (multiple) for check-in. No problem, I thought. My colleague and I had our bar codes handy on our smart phones. We would just whiz through express check-in while all these other poor folks wait for a human to slowly process their registration.

After making our way past the long lines that were almost 1000 people deep, we found a representative from the National Retail Federation who told us these were the lines for express check-in (those with the bar code for scanning).

Why the long lines? She wasn’t quite sure, as the conference opened yesterday. Perhaps it was because President Clinton was speaking today? Don’t worry, she said. The lines move fast.

Not really. It took an hour for us to get to the check-in counter. Once there a check-in person, who was courteous, manually scanned our barcode, which automatically printed our badge. We were finally on our way—more than an hour since we stepped in the line.

Inside the exhibit hall, almost all of the companies offered technological solutions to help retailers do a better job engaging clients—driving more sales and maximizing profits.

So why the disconnect between the host of the event and purveyors of technology?

1. Change is hard. Here was the National Retail Federation, an organization dedicated to helping retailers grow their businesses, operating in an old model. Not much thought had been given to their “customer experience”. The innovation of bar codes wasn’t fully embraced. Why not use self check-in? So many vendors on the floor were selling Kiosk check-in solutions! And, why not use customer registration data for streamlining check-ins? Simply knowing how many registrations were processed on Day 1 could improve check-in logistics on Day 2.
2. Change requires vision. The goal of leaders is to set a vision and enable the organization to carry it out. Here was a perfect opportunity for leaders of the National Retail Federation to partner with vendors to showcase how all the technology inside the exhibition hall could be applied outside to improve the attendee experience. However, my hunch is the conference was run much as it had been the year before.

Never underestimate how hard change is for all parties. Even so, embrace change for the good of your customers, pretty please. Put yourself in your customers’ world and do whatever you can to make it better. Anytime you need reminding—just think of me in that 1000 person queue.

What “long lines” in your customers’ experiences can you eliminate by embracing change?

This blog is inspired by David Meerman Scott’s recent post where he adeptly writes about lessons learned from political stories and applies them to marketing strategy.  And learning from DMS, I  reprint his disclaimer:

“This is a marketing blog, not a political blog. I am not talking up the merits of any candidates but rather using their marketing as examples for all to learn from.” 

So with that said….

It’s the political season and everyone is talking about which presidential candidate connects best with the voter. Genuine? Trustworthy? Feels my pain? Has a viable plan to meet my needs, hopes and dreams?

Spend an hour or two reading B2B tweets about effective sales communication and you’re likely to hear the same chatter about sales “to-dos”:

• Engage in a dialogue not a monologue.
• Really Listen
• Be Curious
• Build Trust

All of these admonitions could come from a campaign manager or sales manager. Hence, the lessons from one can be easily applied to the other—Campaigner can learn from Salesperson and Salesperson from Campaigner.

The predictably intense focus on every word, facial expression, question, or answer muttered by Candidates during primary season, coupled with 24/7 polling, yields data galore on every perception, impression, and reaction of the Voter. Consequently we can all learn from politics about “closing the sale”.

Enter the satirical New Yorker piece on what a “President Romney” might sound like given his penchant for what the New York Times and Boston Globe referred to as Romney’s “guessing” game.

In December 2011, the New York Times reported:

For a candidate who is exceedingly risk-averse, Mr. Romney has developed an unlikely penchant for trying to puzzle out everything from voters’ personal relationships to their ancestral homelands.

“Sisters?” he asked. (Nope, stepmother and stepdaughter.) “Your husband?” he wondered. (No, just a friend from the neighborhood.) “Mother and daughter?” he guessed. (Cousins, actually.)

The results can be awkward. “Daughter?” he asked a woman sitting with a man and two younger girls at the diner in Tilton, N.H., on Friday morning. Her face turned a shade of red. “Wife.”

And the creative license taken from the New Yorker in response to the Times’ report:

Chancellor Merkel looked somewhat taken aback at being mistaken for Sarkozy’s aunt. When she’d regained her composure, she said to President Romney, “I know you will have much to add on the question of the debt crisis in the euro zone, Mr. President.”

President Romney looked at the German Chancellor carefully, up and down. “I’d say you’d go about one-forty, give or take five pounds,” he said. “Am I in the ballpark?”

So what can be learned from all of this? All of the candidates have positive and negative relational qualities and moments.

This same New York Times article gives Romney some positive spin:

Mr. Romney has plenty of moments when he wins positive reactions and seems to make a genuine link, undercutting his caricature as robotic. And he is hardly giving up on mastering the art of the soft sell: he personally insisted on spending more hours talking to voters this election and fewer sequestered in his Boston headquarters.

The point I want to make here is that this guessing game is not something to be taken lightly! On the positive side, candidate Romney in this spoof took on a curious stance towards his “Prospect”. And he was engaging in a dialogue not a monologue. But was he really listening? And what about trust?

What’s wrong with guessing you might be musing? The problem is that guessing can make the receiver feel embarrassed and offended. It is hard enough to pull off when there is a high level of comfort and familiarity between two individuals.

There has been a lot written in sales blogs about the importance of taking the time to build trust and about the necessity for matching the type of communication to your Prospect with the stage or level of “intimacy” of the relationship. My colleague Bill Carney recently addressed  this critical issue in a lighthearted way, focusing on email communications. Give it a read—in addition to a good laugh—you’ll learn a lot about this “matching” issue, which will help you to avoid some of Romney’s missteps.

Making the sale—in the marketplace or in politics—needs to be done in a thoughtful, callibrated step-by-step way:

• Allowing lots of opportunities to understand the concerns and hopes of your “Prospect”; and
• Listening instead of assuming and having your conversation content and style attuned to the level of intimacy you have at any given time with your Prospect.

Yes, being curious is an important quality in building the relationship BUT curiosity is not a green light for guessing. There may be a time to play the “guessing game” with your Prospect, but the price of entry to the competition must be earned.

What sales lessons have you learned from observing the 2012 Candidates?

Peggy Kriss, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Newton, Massachusetts and a consultant to VisibleGains. Stay tuned for more psychology informed blogs by Dr. Kriss.

188 billion email messages sent each day?! That’s a boatload of email!

We concur with the Infographic’s conclusion—email is here to stay. However, email is not always the most effective way to transmit your message. New(er) technologies—like Facebook and Twitter—introduce additional ways for humans to communicate. Think about what you’re trying to accomplish and select the best media available to you.

Email gets a deserved bad rap from marketing campaigns and spammers pushing unwanted messages that ignore communication fundamentals—such as this basic truth: the receiver must want to receive the message sent!

When your emails are written to be personal, with timely, relevant information the receiver really wants, they can help you build relationships one-to-one. Make your emails better and create relationships using VisibleGains.

Click to download .PDF version

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<a href=”http://www.visiblegains.com/is-email-dead” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.visiblegains.com/Portals/54582/Infographics/visiblegains-emaildead.png” alt=”Is Email Dead? [Infographic]” width=”550″ border=”0″></a><BR><div> courtesy of <a href=”http://www.visiblegains.com/”>Visible Gains</a></div>

I recently realized we’ve taken for granted a powerful shortcut for creating Outlook message templates that’s been in our company toolkit for a while. I was talking to a prospect recently about email workflows and described our process for sending multiple personalized emails containing a similar core message. He was amazed at this shortcut, even though it seems pretty obvious to me. I’m documenting it here to share more widely. Hopefully you already take advantage of using Outlook’s standard signature setup; this just kicks it up a notch for creating multiple personalized emails containing similar message text.

5 Steps to use Outlook’s signature function for creating email message templates

Step One: Click New E-mail

Step Two: Click Insert, then click Signature

Step Three: From drop-down menu, click “Signatures…”

Step Four: Click “New”. Enter a name, as well as text, for a complete email message. (Remember to also include an email signature in this “Signature” template entry!)

Step Five: Select the appropriate standardized message by “Signature” name each time you want to send similar text in a new email. Don’t forget to add a subject line and the first name of the person to whom you’re sending the message in the message body. Also, modify the templated text appropriately to ensure it’s relevant to the individual receiving it.

This shortcut saves me time when I want to repetitively send only slightly different emails over and over again–such as a follow-up to a hands-on product demo I’ve just given. Let me know how this shortcut works for you.

Got any Outlook tips to share with us?

I recently called my satellite TV provider—DISH Network—and asked what they could do for me as a longtime subscriber. I was perfectly happy with DISH Network’s service. In fact, over the years I’ve referred new customers to them by gushing online via social media as well as offline. However, an offer from Verizon for FIOS TV had piqued my interest since we already receive our Internet service through Verizon. Without much hesitation, the customer service rep from DISH Network told me nothing could be done to match Verizon’s offer. Oh, and don’t forget to mail in the last month’s check—thank you very much.

Really? No, really?!

At the time, DISH Network was actively recruiting subscribers and I was truly confused by the service rep’s indifferent response. Guess what I did? I switched to Verizon for FIOS TV, of course.

We’ve all seen statistics on customer retention versus acquisition. Lots of really smart Ph.D’s have explained the concept of Customers Lifetime Value (CLV). In the simplest of terms, it’s a lot cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one—common sense without the fancy TLA (Three Letter Acronym). Within the past few years, I’ve noticed CLV has been modified to CCLV (Connected Customers Lifetime Value) and CEV (Customer Engagement Value).

Basically, anyone selling anything should expand their thinking beyond their existing customers to their customers’ network and sphere of influence.

Product marketing sometimes casts customer retention in terms of switching costs. Think about what a pain it is to switch cell phone carriers. The Cell Carrier Lobbyists fought tooth and nail against LNP (Local Number Portability) until they could figure out ways to lock up customers. There’s really no reason to have specific phones for specific carriers. Europe doesn’t. Instead of focusing on change penalties, how about improving the value of the services delivered by understanding my needs and what makes me choose to be a loyal customer and refer my friends?

Airlines attracted and successfully retained loyal customers for a while with frequent flyer programs. I know—I booked most of my flights on United even though there weren’t always direct flights to where I was going. But then United and other airlines blew it by instituting too many restrictions.

Most businesses truly do strive to please their customers. Most business people appreciate the power of referral marketing and naturally hope through careful management of customer relationships, we’ll gain new customers via referrals.

I invite you to pause now and honestly ask yourself: when was the last time you reached out to your customers individually? I don’t mean sending a newsletter or some marketing automated message, but making a direct one-to-one connection. And, not when there’s a problem, but when there isn’t—simply as a way to listen, learn and share information.

Connecting genuinely on a more personal level—one-to-one—is a powerful way to cultivate happy customers, and, hopefully, referrals. Here are several tips to help you get started:

• Tweet a congratulatory note or comments to new customers who use Twitter accounts.
• Actively participate in LinkedIn groups around conversations you care about.
• Reward your customers with information that helps them stay on top of their game—even if the data you share has nothing to do with what you’re selling.
• Offer favors, connections and networking opportunities to advance your customers’ careers.
• Find out what makes each customer tick—what they’re passionate about. Do this to find common interests you share and can connect through.

Having said all that, my hope is to personally connect with more of our customers. Please DM me @biasforaction or give me an old-fashioned phone call to chat. My direct phone number is 781-350-3416, extension 113. My email is bcarney at VisibleGains dot com (so the SPAM bots won’t pick me up).