Marketing - The Bold Approach Method

Howard Stern Marketing Vs. Movie Marketing Or, The Mistake Quentin Tarantino Is Making

I was reading an excellent post on Ted Goodier's Blog "For Your Consideration" yesterday. Ted was talking about being disappointed by the promise of a movie based on his belief about what the movie was from watching the trailer. He was talking about the movie Lord Of War with Nicolas Cage. To add to that movie, I'll add any movie not actually directed by Quentin Tarrantino. Hostel being the latest to lead people to believe it was a Quentin Tarantino directed movie when in fact it is just an endorsed movie. I'm a huge fan of his movies, but hate his tactics for promoting movies not his own. I have a message for Mr. Tarrantino and other producers later in the post.

I've long been of the opinion about movie promotions: "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, but fool me thrice and I'll forever wait for DVD."

Marketing is about being relevant, truthful and compelling. Quentin Tarantino is compelling to me the movies he makes are relevant to me, the movies he openly and outright clearly endorses are important to me. But, the ones that lead me to believe maybe he made them or maybe he is endorsing them leave me flat and impact his credibility with me. I'll never go to another Quentin Tarantino movie on opening day, and probably not opening week, until I'm 100% sure that he made it.

Howard Stern leaves no quesiton about who he is, what he is, who he is trying to be relevant to and what his intentions are. You never have to wonder if Howard is misleading you, he tells the bald truth good or bad. You either like him or you don't, you either buy him or you don't. There is little middle ground with him. He makes buying him easy if buying him is your thing.

If you are a marketer, small business, entrepreneur, author, speaker, consultant, or coach, you have to decide what you want to be to whom and then be that 100%. Don't try and be everything to everyone. Don't lead pepole to believe you are something you are not. You are what you are and perfect for those people who want you. Those people will buy more and their frequency of purchase will be much higher too.

Oh, and they'll give you that illusive best kind of advertising everyone wants, word of mouth.

Take the time to look at you rmarketing and your message. What you are saying? Then ask, what are you doing.

When they match, you profit.

This is one of the coolest sites on the internet

If you haven't seen In Bubble Wrap yet, you should check it out. Every day they give away free books and trainings. You simply have to answer a couple of quick questions and they choose several people a day to get the books.

I provided copies of my book recently and they gave them to people on the site.

I did it as a test to see how this kind of promotion would work and so far it has been pretty good.

A couple of guys who have a very popular podcast called Lock Jaw Radio

my book and talked out it on episodes 12 & 13. I'll be very curious to see how much impact this has in actual sales. I'm a big proponent of podcasts and believe that most companies can use them to more effectively promote their business.

They also followed the In Bubble Wrap instructions very carefully (in addition to popping the bubbles) and crowned themselves winners. It is a great example of how you can even use your packaging to get people involved in an experience.

Take a look at the pictures here.

Many times giving away a sample of your product is the best way to kick off a word of mouth effort. Since I just started following the results of this I'll let you know how it turns out as time goes on.

What can you do to give your clients a taste or sample of what you do so that they can begin their relationship with you?

Enjoy the site and I hope we both win a book tomorrow!

P.S. Amazon reports that they just got a fresh new shipment of Persuasion: The Art Of Getting What You Want in their warehouse, now is a great time to get your own copy.

Decisions about the aesthetics of a website are made that determine the viewers experience in 1/20th of a second, less time than it takes to blink you eye. The study that was conducted was just reported in the Behavior and Information Technology Journal. It has fairly wide ranging persuasion implications for your website and yourself. Read the whole story here: http://tinyurl.com/alwzq

If you've been reading my blog or these newsletters for long and especially if you've read my book Persuasion: The Art Of Getting What You Want you know that I've talked about how important a persuasive persona is because of the speed at which we read each other. People may well see you long before they hear you and even if they see you and hear you nearly simultaneously, they make many decisions about you instantly (are you safe, trustworthy, friendly, appropriate etc.). You've also heard me say that a brand, a building, an office, a desk, your car etc., all have a persona as well.

If you are serious about persuading, I want you to take a long look around and ask yourself these questions:

What snap decision might a casual observer who was meeting me
for the first time make about:
My Office?
My Car?
My Brand Image?
My Business Card?
Me?
My Website?

Be very honest in your assessment and if you are really brave ask someone else the same questions but set them up this way:

Say "If you were a highly judgmental person, what might you think about me by looking at my desk, my attire, my car, my website or my card? Just ask them one question at a time.

Use that feedback to improve your persona and create an immediately pleasing look so that you meet or exceed expectations.

Dressing better than your clients doesn't hurt, it sets you apart. Driving a clean car that is well taken care of says something about you no matter what model or year.

Success or failure may well be determined in less than the blink of an eye, so be sure to go into your next persuasive encounter with eyes wide open.

If you want to learn more about persona and how to create the most persuasive impact possible get a copy of Persuasion: The Art Of Getting What You Want http://tinyurl.com/78g57. If you've already read it, please do me a favor, go to Amazon right now and leave a great review! Here is the direct link: http://tinyurl.com/78g57

Best Buy Continues To Demonstrate Their Utter Contempt and Hate Of Customers

Best Buy Hates Their Customers And They Go Out Of Their Way To Prove It Every Day.

They also recently hired a consultant to help them in their effort to dislodge those customers they deem unworthy of Best Buy's unique brand of service. He helped Best Buy rank their customers as "Demon Customers and Angel Customers."

My experience with Best Buy and their ongoing effort to be identified as America's retailer with the worst customer service continues.

After my last post, I patiently waited and just got my notebook back today. Their answer to correcting my problems was to reinstall the operating system, according to them the Microsoft XP Operating System was the reason my computer was spontaneously shutting down. When I got it back, they assured me it was repaired and tested.

So, in front of Boise, Idaho store manager and poster boy for Best Buy's complete lack of customer service, Dameion Maupin, I turned on the computer. And, to my utter shock (tongue firmly in cheek here) I had to configure windows as it was being run for . . . you guessed it, the very first time since it was reinstalled.

By Dameion Maupin's admission in front of the customers that were looking on, it was very unlikely that they system was ever tested after reloading the operating system because it wasn't set up . . . but that wasn't Best Buy's problem it was mine. Oh, and my warranty expires on the 20th of the month and if after I reload my software and the system doesn't work, I'm out of luck if I don't bring it back in by the 20th . . . unless I want to spend $300+ for another extended warranty (which I'm about as likely to do as I am to stare at the sun with binoculars).

I asked the manager to please put in writing what happened which he refused to do. He also further refused to even agree to what he had put in writing before about honoring the warranty of repaired items for 90 days after the repair. He also refused to replace the battery which is covered under warranty and

When I suggested that my only last resort was to take Best Buy to small claims court and name him as Store Manager in the lawsuit, he got red faced, angry and threatened to call the police if I didn't leave the store.

Of course, as you may have guessed, Best Buy's CEO Brad Anderson has yet to call me back . . . I'm not sure if it is because he cares so much that he is trying to formulate an appropriate response or if he simply can't get his email working and is waiting to have his operating system replaced.

I'm plan on taking a stand on this now, this kind of service can no longer go un-confronted. I will be initiating a small claims suit against the local Best Buy shortly and I'm going to explore the possibility of a class action lawsuit.

I also will be using the media heavily to bring attention to their service. Watch for media releases and interviews focused around their utter lack of service.

And, watch (and this is serious) for my new website and annual award for America's most sickening customer service. My first winner in the Big Box category . . . Best Buy.

Best Buy's Customer Deconstruction Process Or Why Best Buy's Customer Service Is So Bad That There Is A Whole Website Devoted To It

Be forewarned, this is a long post, if you just want to know how to not destroy customer loyalty, skip to the end.

I may end up writing a book about my bad customer service experiences. Before I tell you how Best Buy in Boise, Idaho caused me to never buy from them again, I want you to consider one thing.

As Americans, we've become so willing to trade a few dollars savings (which is really artificial since everyone price matches anyway) for horrendous customer service that we've conditioned big retailers to automatically give us poor quality service every time we walk through the door. Gone is the day of people actually caring about developing a long term relationship or even about the profitability of each customer. Now the only focus is to get away from you as fast as they can so they can begin escaping from the next person who is asking a question. It is time to stop rewarding bad customer service with our dollars and start rewarding it by walking out the door to the competition.

So, here is how Best Buy convinced me not to be a customer for life and how you can avoid doing the same to your customers.

Two years ago I bought a VPR Matrix notebook from Best Buy, turns out it was one of the worst purchases I'd ever made, memory failed, then the system failed, but fortunately I'd purchased the extended warranty, something I rarely do. I purchased it because the salesperson told me specifically that if I bought it and something failed on my computer I could take it to any Best Buy anywhere in the United States and it would be repaired or replaced on the spot.

When my computer failed, I let them work on it and they couldn't fix it and promptly told me they'd need to send it in for 3 - 6 weeks to have it repaired. But wait, what about my warranty? No, the warranty does not cover replacement says the manager, only depot repair. We had a rather long and drawn out argument (I'd actually purchased two of the computers and both were having the same problem) where I was told that there was no way a Best Buy salesperson would have told me that. After much more talking, which involved me coming to the store and confronting him face to face, he decided that the right thing to do would be to replace the two computers, but with an inferior computer in terms of processing speed and capability, to which I would not agree. Finally after about an hour he agreed to replace it with an equivalent Toshiba notebook and transfer my warranty.

That notebook worked perfectly for about 10 months and then guess what? I start having processor and memory problems with it. I take it to Best Buy, talk to the manager and this time he is completely unwilling to replace it, my only option is to send it in for 6 weeks if there is something wrong, but they'll test it and let me know. I have no options, so, I let him send it in and promptly go down the street to CompUSA and purchase a new notebook so that I can continue to earn my living. I then begin about a five hour process of reloading software and restoring data.

A week and a half goes by and I haven't heard from Best Buy on their "testing" I call them up, they can't find my computer or any record that I left it there, they basically tell me that if there is no record of it being left there then it was never there and I'm out one notebook computer. Luckily, I made one of their "agents" sign one of their forms saying that I left the notebook with them. I fax them a copy. They still can't find it but now they are nervous, they might actually have to replace my notebook.

A week goes by and they finally find it, they test it, it fails. They send it in.

Fast forward to yesterday, January 2nd, 2006. I get a call saying it is back and everything is working, but that there is a tremendous amount of spyware on the computer and would I like them to clean it for an additional $79. Now, I know that this is very unlikely since I use the McAfee Suite of anti-virus and spyware products, so I opt out.

I go to pick up the computer, there is a 40 minute wait to get to the service desk. The girl at the counter who gives it to me doesn't ask for any ID and can't tell me what has been done to the computer. I walk out with my note book. When I get to my car, I look at the paperwork and nothing has been fixed. They say that they made some software setting changes and it works fine. I fire up the one program that seriously taxes processor and memory (Sony Sound Forge) and begin rendering a big file, it dies just like before. So, I go back into Best Buy and wait 27 minutes to get back to the service counter and speak to the person there. I tell them this time I want the computer fixed and I want it back by the end of the week. He says, that won't happen, it'll be about six weeks. I'm not satisfied with that so I tell him to just go ahead and replace the computer with a new one like the salesman who sold me the warranty would do, he says that is impossible. So, I get the store manager and he tells me the same thing. Both agree that the computer should have been fixed before it came back and both agree that it wasn't. Neither bothers to apologize to me for my inconvenience. So, they say to give them the system back and they'll send it back out and let me know when it is fixed. I ask for something that has a case number on it or some way of tracking my computer which causes both the "Agent" and the manager to get really pissed off and tell me that I don't need to be harassing them. At this point, I have to tell on myself, I got mad and said "You lost my damn computer for over a week, then you sent it off for several weeks and didn't fix it and now you are pissed because I ask for a receipt so that I can once again prove you have it? Just give me a damn receipt for the system." I know I shouldn't have sworn but I'd reached my limit and frankly the language I used was minimal. To which the agent walks over to help some other people and tells them "Sorry for the wait some people need "Special" attention and nods his head in my direction."

That was the final straw. 20 years ago I'd have punched him in the mouth. 10 years ago I'd have belittled him to the point of tears. This time, I simply said "You should be ashamed of the way you treat your customers." To which he replied, you are the one who should be ashamed of yourself" Then demanded my receipt again, got it and left the store and wrote this story for you so you and thousands of others can see how Best Buy goes out of their way to destroy customer relationships.

The irony of this is that I spent over $15,000 with Best Buy in 2005 and I can point to another $150,000 in purchases that were made as a direct result of my recommendations. I've now called everyone that I recommended Best Buy to last year and told my story and suggested that they not make a major purchase from Best Buy and I'm imploring you to do the same.

My experience is not the only one though, there is a whole website called Best Buy Sux devoted to people who want to chronicle their Best Buy experience.

Here are the lessons that we can all take away from this experience:

1. Don't do business with Best Buy, you are condoning horrible service

2. Be sure that your staff not only has the training to set the right expectations when they sell products or services, but to be sure that they are actually saying the right things.

3. When you make a mistake, start by apologizing, sincerely.

4. Focus on a solution and acknowledge people's frustration. If you or your organization screwed up, use it as an opportunity to build customer loyalty not destroy it. Let them know that you screwed up and that this is where you really excel. Then make it right.

5. Do the job right the first time.

6. Create an experience in your store that makes people want to come back for a reason bigger than the lowest price. At some point even the lowest price isn't good enough as is the case for Best Buy.

7. Visit Best Buy Sux and see what can happen when enough people get mad and start telling their stories. It may not hurt now, but it will and as the word spreads, people will become more and more skeptical. If Best Buy hiccups the buying public will react by going away. Shutting down a store like Best Buy is a long process but one that will occur as more and more people get involved. The real lesson is what can happen if you are not as big as Best Buy, a smaller retailer would rapidly be destroyed by this kind of focused rage. A search for the term Best Buy Sucks results in over 17,000 entries in Google.

I hope the CEO of Best Buy stumbles on this post and has the gonads to call me, I tried calling him, but there were not enough buttons on their corporate voice mail system that worked to reach him.

I guess he's busy trying to get his computer fixed too.