Tag: Customer Centricity

What Is Customer Equity? 💰

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Thoughts on Lifetime Customer Value from Peter Fader’s book, Customer Centricity.

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Transcription

What is customer equity?

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Brought to you every day by AmazonProofBook.com. The website you go to to get your own free copy of, 9 Ways to Amazon Proof Your Business. It’s my own book on how to build a strategy long term strategies in order to defeat your competition in every way possible.

And so it’s, 9 Ways to Amazon Proof Your Business, free copy AmazonProofBook.com.

Now let’s talk about customer equity. What is customer equity?

Well, I really liked the definition put out by this book. This is Peter fader, customer centricity. It’s one of my favorites, it’s a really good read short read on if you’re interested in learning more about strategy, especially marketing strategy when it comes to focusing more from a customer perspective.

And in this is from chapter chapter three, the whole chapter is on customer equity. And here’s how he defines a customer equity is the sum of the customer lifetime values across a firm’s entire customer base.

Okay, so what’s that mean? So customer lifetime value, we’ve discussed that before. That’s the basic value that you have from a customer over the lifetime. Now, you may have different types of customers. And so their value is going to be significantly different depending on what type of customer they are, what market you’re pulling from, what products or services that they specify or stick to, it may be a demographic change, or what have you, but you’ll have different customer bases.

And from each of those you’ll have, you’ll have a basic customer lifetime value. Meaning this is this is what they’re bringing in versus how much they cost for their entire time that they’re with you.

And obviously, you get highs and lows, depending on where you’re at in the business and and how broadly, you’re defining that customer. But you take all those customer values, and you smash them all together, you pull, pull the sum from that, and that’s customer equity, that’s your overall customer equity.

That’s the value that you have from your entire customer base. It’s what you’re talking about. That’s what customer equity is. And it’s a term that doesn’t get tossed around too often that I found.

Oftentimes, when I’m talking to new clients, they have no idea. Oftentimes, I mean, if you don’t even know what your customer lifetime value is, that’s pretty typical. Don’t worry about it.

What you got to do though, is you might want to figure out some of these ideas, because it allows you to know how much advertising to spend, how much where you should be advertising and everything else comes from customer, lifetime. valuing customer equity gives you very much a larger view of where you’re going.

And it’s really good to take your customer equity and map it out over quarters and years to really find out whether you’re growing or not. Because if you have growing customer equity, especially if you’re looking at ever possibly selling your business, having a high customer equity value is going to attract the right type of buyer.

And it’s going to determine whether your business continues growing beyond you or whether it fizzles out.

Because if you don’t have the right values, that attract somebody that is going to build your business, you’re going to get someone that doesn’t know how to build a business and they’re going to run into the ground now maybe they’ll give you the right price and you don’t care what happens to your business.

But if you’re anything like me, and I think most business owners, your business is like your own child, you know you don’t want you don’t want to send it off to to to some horrible person that isn’t going to take care of them if you’re not able to.

So that’s another way of looking at customer equity. That’s the way I like to look at customer equity. Like I said, this is a pretty good book, Customer Centricity by Peter Fader and also my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

We’ll be back tomorrow with another either strategy, tactic or principle that you could use directly in your business. You have a great night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Why Should You Interrogate Your Customers?

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Why should you interrogate your customers?

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live coming to you live every day here from Grants Pass, Oregon.

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about why you should be interrogating your customers. Why you shouldn’t just be talking to them.

You shouldn’t just be communicating at them or even with them. You should be questioning them. You should be having them in an interrogation and pulling every morsel out of that interchange as possible.

Are you recording your conversations with your customers?

Are you having conversations with your customers?

I know what the answer is.

The answer is no, you are not having enough.

And here’s how I know you don’t think enough about your customer in general. I can make that a blanket statement.

I could find that to be true. So tonight I was working, doing a little bit of a help with some people who ran a political campaign, just a local political campaign, nonpartisan. And they were wanting help on where to go next.

I’ve known them for awhile and the answer is always the same. The answer is find out what the voter wants.

Because in a political campaign, you’re not as much looking for our customer issue are looking for a donor. You’re looking for a volunteer, you’re looking for voter, you know, you’re looking for a little different action.

You’re not necessarily needing money to be exchanged for a product. The product is the candidate, when it comes to politics.

So in this case it’s a candidate, and in the particular case we were talking about, it’s a voter. They’re looking for a vote in exchange for what the candidates going to do for them.

It’s common human nature.

They create what they’re about first before they talk to the end customer, the voter.

And it’s like, wow, yeah, well they’ve got to have something about them first.

Well, yeah, you have to already know who you are about and everything else, but you should not design your marketing until you find out what they want.

Then you take where you’re at and where they’re at and you meet in the middle somewhere.

You find them along the way so that you could communicate to them first about their needs and their desires and what they’re looking to accomplish first. It’s not about pandering, it’s about true communication, which is putting the other person first.

Here’s a great book on it.

I know I’ve mentioned this one before. It’s a little book. It’s a little simple book but very powerful because he uses statistics to back up his point of view here.

It’s all about Customer Centricity by Peter Fader.

This is a focus on the right customers for strategic advantage.

It’s put out by Wharton Digital Press. Good book. Very straight-forward.

Let me see if I can find something, something quick. I should have looked this up ahead of time, but let me see if I can find a quick quote in here. Because I tend to get pretty good at highlighting good quotes here.

Says here, in the end, putting customer centricity into practice demands a good bit of work and a willingness to suffer a short-term hit in the pursuit of a long-term goal.

In other words, you’re not going to be able to put out your concept of what you’re wanting to do right away.

You’ve got to put the customer first. It doesn’t mean the customer’s always right. It means for you to be able to have a conversation with them.

You have to acknowledge where they’re coming from first before you can bring them to where you’re at.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a candidate running for office or whether you are a someone trying to get people to go to your bowling alley or whether you’re selling a hamburger.

It’s the same thing no matter what.

If you’re communicating with someone and you’re attempting to persuade them to do something that they’re not currently doing, then you’ve got to acknowledge them first. Acknowledge where they’re coming from, and then show them what you are doing.

The product you provide, the candidate you’re supporting, how they can help get them there.

It’s the same thing. No matter what is all more about communication than about traditional marketing or how you would normally think of it.

This is probably my favorite quote out of this book. This is a customer centricity is a strategy to fundamentally align a customer’s products and services with the wants and needs of its most valuable customers.

That strategy has a specific aims, more profits for the long-term.

So this is specifically business, but you could take the same concept and tie it into whatever you’re doing.

That’s the end game.

So how you do that, how do you put the customer first?

It’s like I said, interrogate your customers, interrogate your customers, get them on the phone. Ask them if it’s okay to record the conversation and then move forward with asking your question.

Find out what they’re all about, why they tracked you down, how they tracked you down.

What other things are they looking for that you aren’t currently providing them?

What do they use your products for?

What did you know you’d go on and on?

I’m going in a very broad sense right now, but you can get more specific depending on your specific situation and you could brainstorm a bunch of questions and just get ready to ask.

Follow up questions, listen to the answers they’re giving you.

Record the answers they’re giving you, transcribe it, get it all written out because you’re gonna start seeing similarities over and over again of things that people suggest.

That’s the next product you should be creating or finding out there and delivering to your marketplace.

In the end, your goal as a business owner should be to get that market what they want, not to sell your product or service to them.

Selling your product or service to them should be secondary to them getting what they want.

Then you can add in everything else that you want to. Afterwards you can put in your concept. You can try and persuade them to your way of thinking or to get them to do something else on top of that, but you have to acknowledge where they’re at and you can’t create that desire.

You have to meet that desire. The desire is already there.

You’re not going to create it in them. Candidates for political officer. Perfect example of this because it’s something we can all see in business.

We can’t all see what’s going on in the business owner’s head because sometimes they don’t advertise enough or anything else and but most advertisements show this to be true.

Most ads are…..I’ve got this thing that does a bunch of things with it and it’s all focused on them, their product, their service and all the features and very rarely do they say, Do you have this issue? Do you have that issue?

Here’s a way for you to solve it.

This is a solution to the issue, to the desire you already have. You got to realize you can’t cause a desire to happen. It’s already got to be there somewhere.

You could connect up that whatever base desire, they haven’t connected with what you have, but you can’t create that desire. It’s already in place.

So that’s just some simple principle thoughts to keep in mind.

It’s one of the most common misconceptions I run into over and over and over again when people are attempting to communicate. When they’re trying to persuade people to do something and nothing is more of a larger persuasion on a more constant persuasion than the persuasion of business, of you trying to sell your products and services to other people.

So hopefully that’s helpful to you.

If you’d love to talk about this further and dig in a little deeper as to far as your business, because I’m sure you think that your business is completely different from everybody else’s.

I’d love to be able to talk with you and help you out, especially if you’re in the self-reliance field.

You can go check out DreamBizChat.com it’s about the Dream Business Transformation.

It’s a very simple phone call that we get on the phone or over the internet or an online video chat. It’s free.

Go check out DreamBizChat.com for more information.

We’re going to be back tomorrow with another one of these quick little tips and back and forth talking about principles, strategies, and tactics that you can use in your business for standing out. We’ll see you tomorrow. Get out there and let the magic happen.

Ideal Client: More Than One?

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Ideal Client: Do you need more than one?

Hi I’m Brian Pombo welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live, filmed and sent out to live every day from Grants Pass Oregon here in the BrianJPombo.com headquarters.

Today we’re talking again about customer centricity that we talked about yesterday.

We were discussing how if you really want to focus and find the best people and be able to do really last long with your customers, you gotta be customer centric. You have to think of them first.

You have to consider where they’re coming from, especially your ideal customers.

Your ideal clients, however you refer to them, the people that pay you the money, you know, in the end, who are they?

Sometimes when sitting down with new clients will start talking about the ideal customer and they’ll get bogged down because they think that you only need one type of ideal customer.

Most businesses, if you’ve been around for a while, if you’ve been able to keep things going as a business, you may just have more than one ideal customer.

You may have an ideal customer profile of one type and then you’ll have another type and possibly another type. Especially if you offer more than one type of product or service you, some of them may play towards certain audiences versus others and that’s okay to have more than one ideal audience.

But the best thing to do if at all possible is to take your marketing and advertising and focus them on one market at a time. That way you can control some of it when it comes to advertise, especially if you’re doing online advertising, you can target it directly to them.

You can have it show only to them and you know you’ll save money and be able to see the effectiveness of that ad.

That’s one of the huge portions. The huge ideas behind direct response advertising is being able to really focus in on an ideal market, on an ideal group of people.

Then see whether your ad actually had an effect or not or any form of marketing that you’re using. So the reason why this came up is I was having a conversation with a couple of partners that I have and we were putting together a new presentation that’s going to be going out there and we notice that we have more than one audience that we’re going to be speaking to. And most of the time I would say, Hey, focus on just one if you can, but in this specific, there was no way to get around it.

You’re going to be talking to multiple different types of people all at the same time.

So how do we incorporate all those pieces in without having it hurt?

One or the other. And one way of doing that, this is a specific little tip that if you are trying to reach an ideal audience on a regular basis, and this was something that my partner brought up.

He said, even if you just have dog whistle concepts within this presentation and the whole point was is that if one audience knows what you’re talking about and the other audience doesn’t, as long as you don’t overly focus on it, it doesn’t matter.

You just want to say it in a way that hits that audience the way it needs to and then you continue going on reaching the other audience.

This is just one example of how you would go about doing that if you’re handling two audiences at a time, you can speak differently without causing any type of friction in that process.

I hope that makes sense to you one way or the other. It’s good to at least know who your main ideal client is, who your main audience is. And then from there, knowing what all the sub audiences are and being sure you know who you’re talking to at any given time with any form of communication.

Whether it be marketing, advertising, sales, or whether it be direct communication with your customers.

Keep always keep in mind who you’re talking to and what they’re wanting and what they’re thinking and trying to enter that conversation already going on in your customer’s mind like we talked about before.

If you’d like to discuss some of these concepts in terms of how it directly affects you and your business and you are, then I suggest going to BrianJPombo.com and take a look at some of the offerings there and also if you are in the self-reliance field, meaning you have products and services that help people become more self reliant.

I’m going to suggest that you go to a DreamBizChat.com at DrreamBizChat.com you have the opportunity to sign up for a free one-on-one with me and that is at DreamBizChat.com the link is in the description.

You go watch the video there, explains a little bit what the dream business transformation is all about.

Dream business transformation. Hopefully I said that clearly, so DreamBizChat.com hopefully this was helpful to you.

If not, come back tomorrow and we’ll have something else where we discuss business concepts, ideas that basically show you how to stand out in your marketplace, industry, in front of the people that you’re trying to get your message to.

So have a great night. We’ll see you next time and get out there and let the magic happen.

Your Company is Stuck, Because Your A Selfish Jerk

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Your company is stuck because you’re a selfish jerk.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today we’re going to be discussing how selfishness might be getting in the way of you growing your company from where it’s at right now. Even if you’re still in a growth mode, sometimes you can’t quite grow faster or you might be going a little bit backwards or you might be kind of stuck one way or the other.

If you’re wanting to grow faster.

One of the big pieces might be you and it might be in an area that you’re not quite aware is there.

Now this comes back to attitude.

I was having this discussion with some very young business owners. This was a couple out of Canada and I was working with them on their business and talking to them about some of the things that might hold them back.

And I don’t know if this is holding them back or not, but a lot of it comes down to.

First one on one posture, a term that’s used quite often. I’m not talking about how they hold themselves, physically, but how they hold themselves basically their energy in front of others and that posture, that attitude can really make a huge difference.

It depends and you could see it manifest itself in the wrong way.

When a person comes off too needy, when a person comes off too excited, when a person comes off like they’re trying to make a sale type of deal, and we’ve all been in front of those people who are just trying a bit too hard to get on our good side.

Or to get us to purchase something or to try something out or whatever it is, selfishness is what is what we’re feeling.

When you’re feeling that from someone else, you’re feeling someone who’s thinking about themselves, someone who’s trying to hit the bottom line, they’re trying to get the next number and you’re just another one in the long line up.

Take that aside and think about the situations that you have with people that you enjoy being around the most.

I guarantee the people you enjoy being around the most are the least selfish.

These are the people that spend more time talking about you more time, wondering where you’re looking at going and then possibly helping you to get there through their products and services, but it’s based on you, not on them.

It’s less selfish.

Now that’s a one on one situation, but you can also see this happening in a large scale with most companies. When they really start moving along, eventually selfishness creeps in. It creeps into the pure bureaucracy of the company and they start focusing more on more on what the company’s needs are and where the company wants to go and less and less on anyone that could possibly be considered a customer.

Even someone that’s not a traditional customer.

Sometimes your vendors, sometimes your partners, if you’re not focused on them and where they’re going, that could be slowing you down because all it takes is a little bit of extra time and a little bit of extra effort to consider their point of view and all of a sudden everything changes because the attitude changes.

People get a different vibe off of you and your company and your company culture and everything changes.

I’m going to give you an example of this. This was a book I had read a number of years ago, but really enjoy it and it’s one that I’d love to recommend to others out there, and if you’re somebody that I work with, and I haven’t mentioned this to you, let me mention it to you right now.

Customer Centricity by Peter Fader.

It’s a very short book, tiny little book, large print, and has some amazing gold nuggets.

He talks about the concept of being customer centered, not from the, “customer’s always right.” Because honestly, I mean we should all know that’s a lie.

The customer is not always right and you’re going to be in a big trouble if you try and please every customer that comes to you, but like he says, I’m here. The right customer is always right, meaning the best customer, the people that you know are the ones that you want to be with over the long haul.

Those are the ones that you have to pay attention to. Their point of view. Otherwise you’re ruining your entire business. That’s what customer centricity is all about.

This a great book that specifically deals with the data involved and paying attention and tracking where your customers are at, whether you have a large business or a small business, this is a huge deal, but if you think of the philosophy behind it, it will change everything that you do and how you handle things, and when you go into something that you would normally consider a sales meeting, those type of one on one situations.

You should be spending more time asking them about what their needs and where they’re looking to go, and then you’ve got to get good at seeing where your products and services can help them and come up with new products and services to be able to help them.

Here’s a, here’s a great line out of out of this book. He says, customer centricity is a strategy to fundamentally align a company’s products and services with the wants and needs of its most valuable customers. That strategy has a specific aim, more profits for the longterm.

In the end, it’s a selfish need that you’re trying to get, but you’re going to help more people, as we’ve talked about before, one of the greatest sales tips of all time. The more you help people, the more you get back and as a car karma, call it karma or what have you. It’s a law of the universe.

It’s just how it works.

You do it with the right energy and it can be from your own selfish intent. That’s fine. As long as you do it with the proper energy and you’re actually listening to what they’re saying and doing your best to get them what they want.

If you’re doing that, it’s okay. If you get a little bit of gratification in the long run, that’s all right. That’s what, that’s what freedom is all about really, if you think about it, so here’s customer centricity.

Great book, great concept more than anything else.

If you can realize that a lot of what’s holding your company back is you’re not putting enough emphasis on first finding out what the customer wants and secondly, doing everything you can to get that in front of them. You do that, you can turn around any company.

Honestly, it seems to be the number one thing that I run into when I’m going into companies that are having a tough time getting past their initial successes.

Hopefully that’s helpful for you. If you’d like to get past your initial successes. I only work with a successful companies, but if you’re interested in talking about some of these concepts, go to dream biz chat.com especially if you’re on the self-reliance field and a meaning you have products and services that help people become more self reliant.

Go to DreamBizChat.com the link is in the description. Hope you had a great one today and we’re gonna catch you tomorrow. Talk about similar concepts. Have a great night and get out there and let the magic happen.