Marketing Mix

“If Trump becomes president of this country, the S&P will go to 1,000,” one Wedbush trader predicted. “People are brushing it off, but there is absolutely no way that this market — and this economy — does not get pounded.”

No matter what else we discuss in the next few activities, never lose sight of John Sculley’s message. It is all about the customer. Nothing else matters. Don’t satisfy, but delight customers and the rest becomes just details. In this activity we will discuss marketing. Marketing has been much of my life job, and I can tell you that the more things change the more they stay the same. There will be a temptation for you to say “yes, old guy, but the world has changed since your day. You don’t even know what Instagram is.” It hasn’t, and I don’t need to.”

The “Old” Marketing Mix

When you consider commercializing your product or service you need to create a blend of tactics in the same way that a chef blends ingredients in a recipe. In commerce, this recipe is called the marketing mix.

For decades, economists and marketers spoke about this mix in terms of the four Ps: product, price, promotion, and place (distribution). In the marketing of a service rather than a product, however, the four Ps have been expanded to include: physical evidence (store/web design), people (employees who interact with customers), and process (systems that impact marketing). In 1990, Lauterborn proposed a four Cs classification instead: consumer needs, cost, communication, and convenience.

Those classifications seem rather archaic for the way business is conducted today. According to recent research published in the Harvard Business Review, a five-year study involving more than 500 managers and customers (in multiple countries) found that the 4 Ps model undercuts entrepreneurs and marketers in the B2B space in three important ways.

It leads marketing and sales teams to focus too much effort on product technology and quality. Even though these factors are important, researchers stressed that they are not significant differentiators; they are just the cost of entry.

The four Ps under-emphasizes the importance of building a convincing case to explain the superior value of the solution being sold

It distracts businesses from leveraging their advantage as a trusted source of problem solving

The “New” Marketing Mix

When I first started a sales career my trainers drummed into me “people buy people first.” They were instructing that no matter how good your product, if customers don’t like you, they won’t buy. The challenge is that people make their minds up about someone they meet in just a few seconds. We never get a second chance to make a great first impression.

Today the same adage applies to how people perceive you and your company from something as simple as landing on a website page. Studies show that it takes 50 milliseconds for someone to form an impression about a company or a product they see on a website. People tend not to buy from companies they don’t like to be associated with, or from people that make them uneasy. In my opinion, trustworthiness is now the most essential element in the purchase decision.

I think of trustworthiness as the end result of getting a marketing mix right. When we trust a company we are more likely to buy their offering. More importantly, we are more likely to recommend the company and offering to someone else. The ingredients of trustworthiness are:

Satisfy a Need

What product or service do you provide that brings a smile of satisfaction to a customer’s face? The old mix focused on features of a product or service looking at it from the maker’s perspective. Now we need to place ourselves in the shoes of our customer and realize that the features don’t really matter. What matters is that the product or service works and fixes the issue. When it does, you gain trust.

Company Image

Create an image of a company that the customer is proud to be associated with. It is not enough to have fancy logos and business cards. You must appeal to your customer’s emotions, likes and dislikes. You want the customer to trust you.

Price

Price is not just the cost of manufacturing and distribution anymore. In making a purchase decision the customer has to consider the cost of switching from one product or service to another, the cost of shipping, and the cost of paying by installments. When you get the package right, and the customer receives the product or service as advertised, on time, and for the cost anticipated, you engender trust. If there are hidden costs, or unexpected charges at a later date, you lose trust.

Communication

Communication needs have changed dramatically. Under the old mix great effort was made by the company to push information toward the potential customer. The new mix switches from push to pull. Your aim is to have the customer trust you so much that he or she can’t wait to tell others about you. That means you have to make it easy for the customer to provide and publish feedback and reviews.

Convenience

What effort does the customer expend to find and then purchase your product? How easy is it to pay? How accessible are customer service people to help? How easy is it to upgrade or fix issues later? Can the customer sample it for a period of time for free before deciding?

We will look at each category in more detail.

Satisfy a Need

There are no short cuts for this essential ingredient. Customers are a very needy group. They don’t just want a fix to their problem, but also they want it fixed now, and once fixed they expect it to stay fixed. Too often, businesses get caught up in the features, functions and technological superiority of their product. The harsh reality is that none of that matters to customers because all they care about is solving their problems, even ones they might not be aware they have until you show up with a new gizmo.

To engender trust you have to provide a product or service that does what it says. That means avoiding the temptation to oversell its features. Too often customers are disappointed with the comparison between the product advertised and the actual experience of it in their hands. The old mix encouraged the selling of features and specifications to impress. Today it is better to under-promise and over-deliver because pleasantly surprised and pleased customers have the means to tell everyone else through social media. So do dissatisfied customers.

As we discussed earlier, experts enjoy debate whether customers actually know their needs and whether, when asked, they can articulate them. For instance, how did anyone know they needed a television when they were quite content with radio? Steve Jobs famously said, “People don’t know what they want until we show it to them.” It is a bit of a chicken and egg debate.

Trying to anticipate customer needs has led to both incredible successes like Apple and incredible failures like, well, Apple. While everyone can enjoy the success stories of iMac, iPod, iPad etc. most people have forgotten the dozen or so catastrophic failures like Apple Lisa (Steve Jobs first ‘baby,’ that cost $10,000) and Mackintosh Portable (weighed 16 pounds).

Anticipating customer needs is a lottery to some extent, and unless you are a genius like Steve Jobs you are better off not playing the game. Instead, identify a fix and fix it well.

Harland Sanders was born on a small farm in Henryville, Indiana, in 1890. Following the death of his father in 1896, his mother worked two jobs and taught Harland to cook for his siblings in her place. Forced out by an abusive stepfather, Sanders left home and school when he was 12 years old to work as a farm hand for $4 a month. ($95 a month today). Over the next two decades, he did a variety of jobs, including painter, railroad fireman, plowman, streetcar conductor, ferryboat operator, insurance salesman, justice of the peace, and service station operator.

Proving the adage that it is never too late to reinvent oneself, in 1929 Sanders opened a gas station in Corbin, Kentucky. He cooked for his family and an occasional customer in the back room and his reputation traveled by word of mouth. He enjoyed cooking the food his mother had taught him to make when he was a small child: pan-fried chicken, country ham, fresh vegetables, and homemade biscuits. Demand for Sanders’ cooking rose, and it became his more lucrative business. Eventually, he moved across the street to a facility with a 142-seat restaurant, a motel, and a gas station.

According to Kentucky Fried Chicken’s own description of its evolution, during the 1930s, the world-renowned image of an avuncular colonel developed. First, the state’s governor named Sanders an honorary Kentucky Colonel; then Sanders developed a unique method of spicing and pressure-frying chicken. Due to his regional popularity, the Harland Sanders Court and Café received an endorsement by Duncan Hines’ Adventures in Good Eating in 1939.

In 1952, the Colonel, now 62 years of age, signed on his first franchise to Pete Harman, who owned a hamburger restaurant in Salt Lake City. For the next four years, he persuaded several other restaurant owners to add his Kentucky Fried Chicken to their menus.

In 1955, Sanders incorporated and the following year took his chicken recipe to the road, doing demonstrations onsite to sell his method. Clad in a white suit, white shirt, and black string tie, sporting a white mustache and goatee, and carrying a cane, Sanders dressed in a way that expressed his energy and enthusiasm, and created a company image that lived long in customer’s memories. By 1963 Sanders’ recipe was franchised to more than 600 outlets in the United States and Canada.

Refusing to accept aging or retirement, in 1964 Sanders sold Kentucky Fried Chicken for $2 million and a per-year salary of $40,000 for public appearances; that salary later rose to $200,000. The offer came from an investor group headed by John Y. Brown, Jr., a 29-year-old graduate of the University of Kentucky law school, and Nashville financier John Massey. A notable member of the investor group was Pete Harman, who had been the first to purchase Sanders’ recipe 12 years earlier, and believed he could market the image.

Meanwhile, Harland Sanders enjoyed his less hectic role as roving ambassador. In Business Week, Massey remarked: “He’s the greatest PR image I have ever known.”

Just imagine if you could create an image as iconic as that. It has endured. It is as relevant today as it was decades ago. No matter what changes in the world around… it endures. It is also a business that delights customers. Their product is… apparently… finger-licking good.

The Dotcom bubble occurred between 1997 and 2000. It was a wonderfully crazy time, a bit like Bitcoin et al is today, and I was as caught up in it as anyone. Almost everyone with a computer started trading stocks. NASDAQ soared to unimagined heights for the time, peaking at 5408.60 and people thought they had found a way to get rich quick.

During the mayhem, Warren Buffet who was widely considered the most successful investor of the twentieth century, was bombarded by media and public criticism. Budding traders called him a dinosaur for refusing to invest in Internet companies and missing the “changing of the guard.” People said the Dow Jones Industrial Average was dead and a new technology kid was on the blocks. Responding to the criticism, Buffet stated simply that no matter how much he liked the technologies, he had trouble understanding which of the dotcom companies would survive long enough to become profitable. Most, he said, would never make it. The media and populace, who not long before had praised him to the rafters, now laughed at him.

By 2008 as recession hit the world a calm Warren Buffet was officially the richest man in the world with a personal worth of $62 billion. Most of the dotcom had long since disappeared with just a few spectacular survivors. Most of the day traders had returned to they regular day jobs. My point? Leave fads alone. Let the herds herd.

I am a great admirer of the self-made men and women throughout history. I have studied what gave them an edge in life over other seemingly better positioned, better-off people (see Three Simple Steps) and also what is responsible for their business longevity. Whether it is Ford, Carnegie, or any other, it comes down to the basics. Fads change. Technology changes. However, the need to show a return on investment remains the same. The need to fix something remains. The need to satisfy customers is the same no matter the year.

In Buffet’s own words, “The basic ideas are to look at stocks as business, use the market’s fluctuations to your advantage and seek a margin of safety. A hundred years from now they will still be the cornerstones of investing.” In other words, the more things change the more they stay the same.

So will the cornerstones of commercialization.

Find a need

Fix it.

Make your customer smile about the fix (price, cleanliness, attitude, clean up, discount)

Make it easy for your customer to grade and refer you (image, accessibility, motivation)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. None of those self-made people surrounded themselves with an executive team of yes men or women. None of them hired bloated middle-management layers or invested in human resource systems designed to keep employees cozy. Technology changes did not distract them from the basic need to make a profit by making people happy.

If you remember nothing from this lesson remember this… only delighted customers matter. You don’t.

We are constantly bombarded with offers to try out the latest social media fad in an attempt to somehow beat the odds and make it big fast. We are told the world is changing and we need to get on board something new before it is too late. Before we get into how to succeed commercially I encourage you to take a deep breath and remind yourself that 82% of companies die from cash flow management issues. That has not changed in decades so why has anything else?

It is all too easy to get sucked into the hype offered by the latest social media tool, search engine optimization strategies, traffic boosters, and the like. Your ego might feel great from all those followers and “likes,” but how is your bank account feeling?

The core elements of successful commercialization have not changed one iota. Build a loyal customer following and make a profit from their purchases while making it easy for them to refer you to new customers. It is that simple. Don’t let all the technological noise distract you from that.

Image is not about you or the company.

Image is all about the benefit of the product or service you provide. Forget the company. Forget you. Kentucky Fried Chicken is not about Sanders. He is there to advertise the chicken. The chicken recipe tasted good. If it didn’t people would not have returned for more. Lots of fast food companies fail to heed the point. Who can forget classic product failures like New Coke , Apple Newton and Smokeless Cigarettes.

What thoughts immediately come to you when you think of KFC Inc., Walmart Inc., or Nike Inc.? The mention of each company name probably called to mind an established image and logo. When they started out, however, none of the leaders of those companies had the funds to invest in a company image. They were about product and service.

Walmart went two years without a logo, and even then the lettering was at the whim of the printer who made it all up. Yet today I meet entrepreneurs who have invested thousands in hiring a logo expert.

Nike started out as Blue Ribbon Sports, a running shoe distributor for a Japanese manufacturer. Blue Ribbon Sports was a partnership started with $500 each and a handshake between Phil Knight, a talented runner, and Bill Bowerman a track and field coach. When the distributor relationship between Blue Ribbon Sports and the shoe manufacturer in Japan broke down, the two entrepreneurs started making their own brand of shoes. The famous “swoosh” logo was designed for free by a student at Portland State University. It wasn’t that they got lucky. It was that they had a good product and eventually the customer matches the product with the logo.

Today I meet many entrepreneurs who have been fooled by the proliferation of logos and catchphrases that bombard us from billboards to TV and online into believing that success is all about company brand. In other words it is about pushing an image onto a customer. It is not. Good products build a company brand. A strong company brand cannot impact product quality. It is quality products that fix a customer need that sells the image, and all those great, eye-catching logos serve only to remind us of that positive experience.

Push Or Pull Marketing?

MBAers learn that marketing is about getting the right message to the right people the right number of times. There may be some truth in in. Hit over the head with a catchy phrase enough times I might be indoctrinated into trying a product or service. Successful businesses, however, are not built on single sales, but on repeat customers and positive referrals. If my first experience of your product or service is anything less than perfect, I will not return. After that it does not matter how many times you hit me with the right message or how much you invest in a company brand… I ain’t coming back.

It used to be said that a satisfied customer told five to ten other people about their experience, and perhaps one in ten would also try the product. It also used to be said that a dissatisfied customer would tell more then twenty people, and it was a certainty that none would sample the same product. Today we live in a world in which one person can communicate with thousands or even millions with the click of a mouse. It is a world in which word of mouth pulls good products along, and traditional marketing managers with their push mechanisms have to change the way they think. That is why custormers have to be delighted. Satisfied is no longer good enough.

Through the 70s and 80s decades push methods were at the fore, but with the advent of consumer led opinions via internet reviews those days are gone.

In some ways we have returned to the days of KFC, Walmart, and Nike which had established loyal regional customer bases long before they thought about pushing a company image. The key to image is not the company brand, but the quality of the product or service, and I encourage all entrepreneurs and CEOs of small businesses to put their cash and energy into building a loyal customer base before they fritter it away on eye catching logos, gimmicks, tag lines or social media advertising campaigns.

Several years after starting my first company, I hired a 24-person sales team managed by a contract sales organization to raise awareness of a key product. I was often asked by members of the team, many of them with MBAs, to provide company information for their customers. They said that the customers were interested in the company history because we were unique in the industry. They never understood my resistance. I was paying for them to sell my product not the company. They doubled sales of our product and I sold its rights to a larger company for $57 million. No customer would ever remember the name of the fist company, but they all remember the product.

As much as human resource managers have scratched me off their Christmas card list because I believe unnecessary hiring is a corporate disease, so marketing leaders will be pinning ‘wanted dead or alive’ posters of me on their storyboards. So many of them believe they can push their products and services on a customer by investing cash in branding and boasting a list of features. It is possible to attract customer interest and raise awareness that way, but it only returns on the investment if the customer experience is delighted. A brilliant product or service is the essential thing and that fact will never change.

A further challenge for virtual, non-employer, and small businesses is that branding is expensive. Various experts have tried to define how many times a potential customer has to see or hear a brand name, and in how many different venues, before their curiosity is peaked enough to sample it. Estimates range from seven to fifty “hits.” That is an expensive endeavor and probably beyond the cash reserves of many start-ups.

In the early days of your start-up save your cash and instead focus on a quality product or service that guarantees referrals. Word of mouth sold Colonel Sander’s recipe, and it is as true today as back then. These days word of mouth travels faster due to all the communication tools of media and social networking. If you have a quality product or service your business can succeed. One day there will be sufficient funds to invest in branding if you so choose, but using that cash before you have an established and loyal customer base can put you out of business fast.

The book Three Simple Steps is a classic example. All my proceeds from the book go to cancer R&D (like this course) so I didn’t have a budget to fund marketing. The publisher did not invest one cent in marketing. It is an authentic self-help book, a quality product, so purely by word of mouth it became a New York Times bestseller and translated into six languages. It delights readers and delighted readers tell others. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Company Image

OK, so delighted customers and a quality product or service make your company. You still have to consider your company image although hopefully you now have its importance in perspective.

Your company image is the mixture of the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions, and visions people have whenever they interact with you, your company, or when they experience your product or service. It is also the impression they get whenever they communicate with any of the vendors or contractors that represent you in the virtual model.

The management and direction of that image is in the hands of one person—you. It is up to you and no one else to handle the image through every spoke of the virtual model, and if you get careless or distracted by branding efforts it can be catastrophic.

Think of a restaurant that you might have been going to for years. The manager who usually greets you with a smile of delight is on vacation and the temporary hostess he has hired to cover for him treats you like any other newcomer. She makes you wait for a table that you booked online for a specific time, and when it is available, it is not the favorite one you usually get. Then the food is not up to its usual standard and the surly waiter who does not know you are a regular client treats you like a troublemaker when you send something back to the kitchen.

Because you have been a loyal customer up to that point, your sense of indignation is even higher, and the chances of you returning to that restaurant soon are slim. Unfortunately for the restaurant you also have thousands of followers online and within minutes of leaving they all know about your bad experience.

It takes a huge investment in time and money to win a customer’s loyalty, and just a second of carelessness to lose it forever. Of what use is the logo and tag line on the billboards then?

It may seem hard on the vacationing restaurant manager, but if he were a true entrepreneur, he would have had a dossier of details of his favorite regulars to share with the temporary hostess. He would have reached out to his important regulars ahead of his trip to let them know he would be on vacation and that they should introduce themselves to the new hostess as a VIP and receive a free glass of wine, compliments of the manager.

All that said, everyone expects to see a company logo and tag line for any company. That is fine because it is remarkably easy and cheap to create them. All it takes is a little thought and imagination, and the fast-paced technological world around allows you to turn that into eye-catching imagery and high-quality customer support for just a few dollars.

Whether the customer interaction is via a business card, phone call, product label, or personal meeting, you will need to pay attention to everything that the potential customer sees, feels, smells, and hears. The key is consistency of quality. There is no point spending money and time creating great looking business cards if your teenage daughter with attitude then answers your phone, or you turn up at an appointment smelling of garlic.

Company Logo

We already discussed choosing a company name. How about an eye-catching logo? Don’t sweat this any more than you should worry about a company name. I do not recommend designing a logo by yourself for the simple reason that professionally made logos from people trained and experienced in design can be purchased online for so little. Just do a search online for a free logo, and you will be amazed at the options available.

Go to the website, point and click. This is not something you need to lie awake at night worrying about. All that is needed is a little common sense:

Your main focus is to create exceptional products and service, so the purpose of the logo is for it to be simple, eye catching, and professional. Nothing more, nothing less.

Word logos are boring and it is hard to stand out from household logos like Google and Yahoo. Go for an image to create a sense of activity and movement.

Add a tagline that simply describes your business or product.

A little color goes a long way and attracts attention.

Transferability. Because the logo will go on all your stationery, product packages etc., it needs to be easily transferable. Keep it to simple images, standard fonts, and only one to three common colors.

Company Address

The world around your virtual company values anything glitzy, and often devalues anything virtual. The challenge for you is to be virtual, while appearing anything but that. Customers and clients make instant judgments based on what they see and hear. Right from the start, your image must be that of a seasoned (even though it is not), and successful (even though it is not, yet) enterprise that provides top quality products and services (it better had).

One of the mistakes I made early on was to use my home address as the business location. I had converted a spare bedroom into the office and did not give any thought to how a residential address would be perceived. People wanted to hear something like “It is a new business park in the downtown area,” or “It is our office suite, not far from town, close to the freeway.” It was, however, in the suburbs, next to nothing at all business-like, clearly a residential address, and when I explained that I worked from home, people made instant negative judgments. Even though major corporations often start off as a home or garage business, people wrongly associate virtual businesses with hobbies and pipedreams.

After a few months, I decided to use one of the local virtual office services. This provided a mailing address (avoid P.O. Boxes because they generally don’t accept courier mail and they also don’t add to your image), which was well known as a chic location. In reality, all they did was forward my mail, but with the address on my business card and stationery, my company had a better image. One ex-colleague even said to me “My! You must be doing really well to have offices there.”

Business Card

Despite the amazing changes in technology everyone still uses business cards as a form of introduction when face-to-face. These days, it is inexpensive to have good-quality business cards made. There is no need to spend more than a few dollars. Do not try to print homemade cards because they look… well, homemade.

A business card is more than a piece of hard-pressed paper with contact data on it. It is often the first or only impression a client or customer gets of your business. It can also be the most powerful sales tools in your arsenal. Over the years, I have created more lucrative leads from paying careful attention to business card etiquette than from any other sales activity.

Effective sales technique comes from engaging a potential customer or client in conversation. Dialogue leads to sales. It is not complicated, and business cards are the easiest way to start a discussion with just about anyone. In skilled hands, they are sometimes all that is needed to sell a service or product. Let’s look at the design first, and then spend a short time discussing how to use a business card effectively.

Keep in mind you are concerned with selling a product or service. The business card should highlight that and make it obvious to the recipient what your business is involved in. Too many people think the business card is about them, and their egos run wild. Always remember that your card, and in fact anything you use to communicate with others, is a marketing tool. It is a commercial for your product or service, not a personal resume. Your customer has a need and your business stationery should indicate clearly how you intend to satisfy them. The customer should be able to pick up your card days later and instantly recall the benefit of your product or service. If they cannot, then it is not an effective tool. Business cards also get passed around, so what is the point of it if the next person, who you did not meet or speak to, has no idea what your company does or provides?

Come up with a catchy tag line that hints at the exciting thing your company does. My first company was called QOL (short for Quality of life), and the tag line was changing lives. Being in the bio-pharmaceutical industry, that intrigued people. Sometimes they asked about it. Sometimes I just watched their expression change, and used that as an opportunity to explain what we were all about.

Keep the design clear and simple. Cluttered cards give an impression of a disorganized company and make it difficult for the recipient to get the main message.

Whether to include a head shot is a personal decision, but I never have liked them on business cards because they take up too much space and also make it seem as if an ego has run wild. If you are selling cosmetics, then of course I want to be able to see the benefit and a headshot can convince me that the products work. But if you are a plumber, I really don’t care what you look like. It is a truth that people buy people first, so if you think it helps to sell your service, then make sure it is a professionally taken headshot and does not take up much room. Also make sure it is up to date. You want the client focusing on what you can do for them, not on how unkind the years have been to you.

Some people suggest not adding job titles and qualifications. I understand the need to be humble, but it also reduces your opportunities for opening up a conversation. People might ask questions about your degree or title, and the main point of a business card is that it is a tool to begin a conversation.

Job Title: When I see the title “President” or “Owner” on a card, I tend to think it is a small business that is run by one person. There is nothing wrong with that, but the image I get in my mind is one of an amateur. When I see the title CEO, I imagine an operator of a company that is probably more than one person. With one of my companies, I had several different card versions, one with CEO, one with VP Business development, and one with CFO. Depending on who I was meeting, I’d use a different one. Some vendor account managers tend to deal with people of a similar rank at their client companies. They would not expect the company CEO to be speaking with them, so it helped to introduce myself as a similarly ranked person.

Qualifications: Similarly, when I see a first-degree qualification, or something that is not a higher level of education, I tend to disqualify it because so many people have a degree these days. It is not impressive enough to make me want to open a conversation about it. Only add a qualification if it is notable, such as MD, PhD or MBA. The purpose is not to show off, but to allow for someone to ask about where you studied. On my cards I put MBA (DUBS). In America, people would ask about the acronym in parenthesis because it is not something they normally see. It is Durham University Business School in the UK, and I included it only because I knew some people would ask about it. All I needed was an opportunity to start a conversation. The main point here is that you try to be innovative while all the time remembering that the only point of the card is to be a short service or product commercial.

Have several people proofread the design. Oftentimes, our eyes play tricks on us and we overlook the same simple typos and errors. A local restaurant I know prints their take-out menus without a phone number. I have pointed it out to them for years but the same error persists.

Always use card material that can be written on, which may mean using a matt rather than glossy design, and leave the reverse side mostly blank. In business, the reverse side has been the drawing-board for many a successful deal for me. It makes an excellent way to do quick quotes, negotiations or to present a concept.

Whatever your card design make sure it includes a picture, tag line and/or website address to your product or service.

Once I have a basic business card design in mind, I simply upload my logo to any of the dozens of online printing companies and order all my office supplies. Some companies even offer free business cards as an incentive for you to visit their site.

How to Use your Business Card to Win Customers

One of my pet peeves is the dismissive way people often use their business cards. They throw them around a room like confetti, and exchange them without so much as a glance. In many other cultures, the business card is viewed as a complete representation of the person offering it. In the exchange of them, there is a degree of reverence involved. We live in a global society and it is necessary to appreciate and respect other cultures as well as adopt their best practices if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

When handing them out, use both hands as if you are offering a tray of delightful food. Present your card with the thumb and forefinger of each hand just pinching each upper corner, and present it upside down to you so the recipient can immediately read the content. This might seem strange at first, but with practice it becomes a habit. The ritual causes the recipient to actually look down, notice the card, and because of the reverence you are showing they show it too.

When the recipient goes to receive the card, hold onto it just a fraction of a second longer, as if this is a cherished article from which you are loathe to part. Your business card is a commercial, and you want the recipient to register the image and data for as long as possible.

If you want to test for yourself the difference it makes doing things so formally, hand a business card to a friend in a casual, don’t really give a damn, manner that is the common way in our culture. Then do it the way I suggest with another friend and observe the difference in their response.

Before the recipient puts your card in his or her pocket, point out something on the card to further cement the image in the customer’s mind, and to open up dialogue. For instance, I might jokingly say “As you can see I have joined the twenty-first century and added a Facebook page where you can read testimonials from other customers. What do you think of the value of Facebook reviews for a product?”

By asking a question that begins with “what,” I have opened up the dialogue. The prospect cannot dismiss me easily with a yes or no answer. For those of you who are new to sales technique, the most important tools are an ability to listen well, and a desire to engage a client in conversation with an open-ended question. Closed questions invite a single word answer such as:

“Can I help…?” “No thanks.”

“Would you like…?” “No thanks”

These sort of closed questions shut down a conversation and make it hard for a person to explain the benefits of their product or service. Next time you are in a clothes store or a car dealership, test it for yourself. I am almost always asked a closed question… “Can I help you?” “No thanks I am just browsing.” Sale over!

Open questions begin with the simple but magical word: “What?” This word forces the recipient to respond with more than a one-word answer. For instance: “What sort of clothes are you looking to try on today?” “What do you look for most in a new car?”

You can practice this with friends and family in the safe environment of home by engaging them in simple conversations. For instance, if your friend has been on vacation recently:

Closed:
“How was your vacation?”

“Great”

“Where did you go?
“Mexico”

“When did you get back?”

“Sunday”

Now switch to an open question.

Open:
“What did you enjoy most on your vacation?”

And away you go! Practice this at home and it will become more natural to you when you are at work. With business card etiquette, look for a “What” question from the contact information provided. Some examples:

“As you can see, we are launching a new cleaning service in the area using only effective eco-friendly supplies (finger points to tagline clean homes, clean planet). What has been your experience with cleaning services in the past?”

“There are so many plumbing services to choose from that it is hard to tell them apart. We’re different. For us quality is not a word but a way of life (points at tagline where quality is the only acceptable standard). What do you look for when you consider a plumbing service?”

Etiquette is a two-way street. When receiving a business card, no matter how casually given, offer the same reverence. Take it gently in your two hands. Turn it so you can read it correctly. Deliberately take the time to glance it over. Do not simply place it in a pocket or pile it up with others like a pack of playing cards. Where possible, look for some information that allows you to ask a “what” question. An easy crutch is to use their title or qualifications. “What is the hardest part of being the CEO of the company?” “What was your favorite subject in your MBA course?” “What do you enjoy most about being your own boss?” Their address can also be used to open up dialogue “I have never been to that city. What are the winters like?”

Documents

Every time you communicate with a potential customer or client, you have the opportunity to advertise your product or service. Every time you communicate with a current customer or client, you have the opportunity to reassure their purchase decision. It doesn’t matter whether it is an invoice or a text, every method of communication is an opportunity for more business.

Business writing is a dying art form. Each year I receive hundreds of letters, emails, and invoices. Very few gain my attention. Many of them are ragged, unstructured, and show a low level of communication skill. Every form of writing represents you and your company as much as a handshake, a business card, or a storefront.

The communications I receive are usually missing one or more of the following elements considered essential for standard business letters: letterhead (or heading with a typed name, address and phone number), logo, tag line, product or service description, date, inside address, salutation with proper punctuation, body (text), complimentary closing with proper punctuation, signature, and a typed name, link to social media, or web pages.

Letters

The visual appeal of a letter is important. Surprisingly, the standard of writing is usually equally poor across functions and ranks. It is often hard to distinguish the quality of a letter written to me by a senior executive from one written by an apprentice. For the virtual business this can be a challenge because there is no formally trained personal assistant to help you out. For letters use the following template and you cannot go wrong.

Three Simple Steps LLC

New York Times Bestseller: Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life
235 NE Novel Hill St, STE 3, Redmond, WA 98052

August 20, 2014

Mr. John Doe
Chief Executive Officer
Vendor Corporation
123 Any Street
Any Town, WA 98052

Dear Mr. Doe:

This is the first line of the first paragraph. It should succinctly state what the letter is about so as to not waste the recipient’s time. This may be the only part of the letter anyone reads so work hard to get it right. Write and rewrite it until you feel you have hooked your recipient.

Second paragraph. Try to keep your letter to one page and two to three paragraphs. Keep them brief and to the point. The key message here is the structure of the letter. Simple, concise header: Inside Address; date correctly placed; Salutation, and then the body text followed by the right format for a signature.

I am closing this letter with a final paragraph just to show the neat structure and layout. I might add a complimentary sentence to wish the recipient well and to offer that he or she give me a call to discuss it further if necessary.

Thank you for considering this letter.

Sincerely

Trevor G. Blake
Chief Executive Office
(ph) 800-555-111 (email) information@threesimplesteps.com (website) www.trevorgblake.com

Many letter templates are available for free online. Whichever software program you use for writing documents, it will contain some basic templates. It is essential to take the time and effort to create smart, appealing documents. Your header should include the company logo and consistently match your business card design.

Invoices

When I receive an invoice, I have to read it in order to pay it. What a great advertising opportunity that is, but one usually missed by entrepreneurs. Most invoices I receive do not have the company logo, tagline, product reminder, or anything that makes me glad I made a purchase.

Often the person I submit an invoice to is different from the one for whom I provided the service. That equates to a new advertising opportunity for me. An invoice is always an opportunity to invite a customer back—adding a line such as “We always appreciate your business. Repeat customers are the lifeblood of our company and we would like to offer you a 10 percent discount on your next purchase as a thank you,” can make a big difference.

You might also consider including a small advertising flyer in the envelope that contains the invoice, even if it is just another copy of your business card.

Electronic

There is no doubt that we are transitioning to a culture of limited character messages. That, however, can be a trap for sloppiness in business. Being succinct and maintaining a high-quality image is not at all easy, but you should pay as much attention to those forms of truncated communication as you should with a formal letter. Keep in mind that image is what others feel, see, read, and sense from you. You can do as much good or damage from a few well-chosen words as you can from a fifty-page business plan.

It often surprises me that people do not even alter the tagline that their iPhone or other device has set as a default. Sending an email with the tag line “sent from my iPhone.” is common and unimaginative. How refreshing it is to see an email or text from someone who has taken the trouble to customize their signature, and include a link to a website or blog. Then they send a text that includes a dumb profile picture. That might be funny to your friends, but it does nothing to your business image.

With a virtual company it is important to make sure everything you send, and that has the potential to be seen by a customer or vendor, mentions your product, and contains a link to more information about it. Remember that the link needs to be directly to your product or service.

Most forms of electronic communication offer a subject line. A great first impression can be achieved by how you write the subject line.

1. Keep it Short. Less is more.

2. Avoid words that will be caught by spam filters. Words like “free,” “act now,” “credit,” and “offer” are usually red flags to spam filters. And whatever you do, DON’T WRITE AN EMAIL SUBJECT LINE IN ALL CAPS. SPAM filters will drag it away, but it also irritates the recipient, because it feels like you are shouting.

3. Make your Subject “Active,” with verbs like “Learn,” Download,” “Earn,” or “Sign Up” convey a sense of urgency and necessary interaction with your email.

4. Twenty years ago, business communication and inter-personnel communication was quite formal. Today it is generally casual in tone. That can be a trap because casual portrays a “don’t really care” image. Don’t use abbreviations or single letters to replace words.

5. Never respond to a text or email without using the sender’s name as a courtesy.

6. Never sign off with just your initials. Show pride, and show quality. Sign off with a pleasant and formal signature such as “We greatly appreciate your attention to this email, cheers,” “sincerely,” or “best regards.” Pay attention to these details, and you will reap the benefits.

Telephone Etiquette

Your company needs to strike the right balance between making it easy for a customer to get to a live decision-maker (you), and giving the customer the appropriate perception of organization and competence. Oftentimes, it just comes down to your skill as a communicator.

The first requirement is obviously a dedicated phone that no one else in the house uses. The second is that you give the appropriate impression of quality and organization with a simple virtual call center. Customers often form their first impression of a company by how their call is handled. They associate small with risky, so the trick is to appear larger than you are. A toll free number and simple automated message attendant help because that gives the impression of a busy, quality company.

A number of online options exist that allow you to present your company in a professional, customer-minded manner so that prospects gain a sense of confidence that allows them to base their purchasing decision upon the issues which are important—not on how big you are or how many people work for you.

Even though I worked from home and had no employees, I sometimes felt it important to give customers a perception of a larger company. I purchased a simple voicemail package that consisted of five extensions, each dedicated to a different function or department. All five extensions were then instantaneously forwarded to my one mobile number so I could receive calls and messages no matter where I happened to be. The customer’s perception is that of calling a dedicated toll free number at a corporate office, with their call being triaged to the appropriate person. The truth is that no matter which of the five extensions they selected in answer to the auto prompt, their call would come to me.

Because I have a distinguishable accent, I used the online service’s standard greeting options to begin with. Later, and for a few dollars extra, I sent them a short script to record.

If you worked in a regular office, some of your calls might have been answered first by a receptionist. Receptionists usually have friendly, professional manners on the phone and you would be wise to mimic that. It annoys me when I call someone and they simply pick up the phone and make a grunting sound. That does not portray a quality company image, nor a company that appreciates the fact that I am taking the time to call. It could be my very first impression of that company, and in this case the last.

Take care how you answer the call. Many years ago I learned the benefit of speaking a formal greeting such as: “Good morning/afternoon, this is *****, how may I help you?” or “Thank you for calling company X, this is *****. In what way can I be of help to you today?” It is amazing how positively people respond to the friendly, open question. (“How,” is also an open-ended question.)

On my voice-mail message, I make a point to thank the caller for making the effort to contact me. Such small, but positive changes make a huge impact on your company image.

“Hello, you have reached (company name), the makers of (this is an advertising opportunity so mention your product or service or tagline). We (never use the “I” word as you want to convey the image of a larger company) are sorry that we are busy helping another client right now (never just say “away from my desk”). Please leave a message after you hear the tones. We check voicemail frequently, and someone will (emphasis) return your call. Thank you for calling us at (company name).”

All of these seemingly small details with regard to communication combine to present an image to a customer. Getting the small things right early on, gives you a higher chance of drumming up demand and achieving success. Once you have your company image right, you can consider the best way to ignite demand. For the virtual company, the Internet provides an obvious channel.

The communications I receive are usually missing one or more of the following elements considered essential for standard business letters: letterhead (or heading with a typed name, address and phone number), logo, tag line, product or service description, date, inside address, salutation with proper punctuation, body (text), complimentary closing with proper punctuation, signature, and a typed name, link to social media, or web pages.

‍

This is a big subject, barely touched here, but for me the more things change the more they stay the same. Delight customers and the rest is just detail. However, we live in a crazy world of social media in which online reviews and opinions seem to make a difference. Please add any tips or ideas to help others build a successful marketing mix. My own experience with social media management has been negative. It is almost impossible for a third party to represent my voice accurately (ask Trump the same thing). It is also so hard for a small company to be heard in all that online noise. Tips for how to stand out from the crowd without spending a fortune?