Strategic Discipline Blog

Upfront confession, I stole this idea from The DiJulius Group’s blog Ellen Shocks Waitress Who Delivers Great Service | The Power Of Brand Advocates. If you want to get the inspiration behind this blog, go straight to the link.

The story here isn’t new.  It’s the basis of The Ultimate Question, and The Ultimate Question 2.0.

Most of my customers have adapted this methodology for determining their customer loyalty with the Net Promoter Score. Reluctantly, I must admit, the emphasis of measuring this often neglects the powerfulness of the advocates it discovers.

Simply measuring your Customer Loyalty with NPS ignores the value of the customers who identified themselves as being your Promoters.  Not marketing to them, failing to take advantage of the power they have to influence prospects, to drive your revenue limits the value of the measurement you took time and energy to identify.

Measuring Customer Loyalty by itself, may mean you can pat yourself on the back when your score is good.  Alone it means nothing, unless you do something with the score. Reach out to your advocates/promoters to drive future purchases and influence your prospects!

To discover more about Brand Advocates, visit this info-graphic by Robbie Richards, JitBit, to answer questions and understand why Brand Advocates are so important to your business.

Brand Advocates Power

In DiJulius’ Blog he asks what the value of building a team of 10 – 1000 sales reps who could influence the opinions and purchase habits of your ideal customer? What if these reps worked for you for free?  This would amount to passive traffic, leads, sales and revenue all running completely on autopilot and at absolutely no cost to you.

Your Brand Advocates, the customers who love your product/service are exactly this type of potential revenue builder for your business.  Without being paid or asked to do so, Brand Advocates (your most highly satisfied customers) share positive information about your products and services without ever being asked or paid.

How much they influence your prospects and customers depends on how many you have.  DiJulius notes this segment (Brand Advocates) influence 20-50% of all purchases.  Nationally this amounts to $6 trillion in consumer spending each year! 

Here’s where the opportunity and the serious failure of NPS, customer satisfaction surveys and consumer feedback is worrisome.

• In the US, 80% of companies are not leveraging their Brand Advocates in their marketing.
• 58% don’t even know who their advocates are.

Chip Bell’s quote here is punishingly revealing. Why aren’t you taking advantage of this customer segment in your business?  Brand Advocates grease the skids to make everything easier.  It might be suggested to many businesses, the answer to their One Thing Question: What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? Is simply leveraging their Brand Advocates.

In What Value Do You Offer to Support Your Pricing – Scaling Up Example I shared how one of my customers got each leadership team member to qualitatively ask their customers the four costumers feedback questionnaire we recommend our Gazelles Coached customers to use and report back at each weekly meeting.  In less than six months their customers consistently reported that when a competitor called them they responded P&L Technology was their technology support company.  They didn’t need or want to change. 

In our business, we are so focused on growing our revenues we often fail to realize the best source of continued growth is simply spreading the word on the success are current customers are enjoying.  Look again at Chip Bell’s quote.  We look for low hanging fruit.  The obvious is not always obvious.

Who better to deliver your message than your current loyal customers.  What are you doing to market your customers love of what you do?

Who Is Responsible

I’m pointing the finger at you!  The only person who can do this is you: The CEO, or an executive team member of your organization.

In a recent theme meeting with one of my customers one of the employees confided in me about the failure on several fronts of initiatives the company sponsored.  One was their theme organization and implementation.  Another was the company’s sponsorship of cleaning up a roadway twice a year.  When these initiatives started, they sounded like great ideas.  As time passed, involvement dwindled.  In the case of the clean-up, the company had to pay employees to show up, and even then, participation is minimal.

In each case Leadership at the Top of the Organization failed to take ownership.  No one on the executive team sponsored the effort!

The truth is no matter what initiative, project, or priority you choose, without someone at the top level of the business enthusiastically committed to its success, it won’t work. 

In The 5 Things CEO’s Regret Most On Their Deathbed About CX, John DiJulius shares this diagnosis for customer experience and satisfaction.

The CEO and the Executive team may lament when initiatives fail, however the first question they should ask is, “How did we lead to this failure?”

Responsibility is minuscule, blame is enormous.

YOU need to be accountable and responsible. 

Looking to improve Accountability in your organization?   Read Raising the Bar on Accountability and then download our Accountability (Who, What, When) Excel Spreadsheet and weekly review to ensure your team commits and accepts responsibility for their accountabilities.

For direct coaching help, with tools and resources to drive your personal and businesses growth, contact dwick@positioningsystems.com.

NEXT BLOG – How Does your Hiring Process Compare to the NFL’s

The NFL Draft finished Saturday.  If you’re an NFL fan like I am, you probably showed at least a little interest in whom your favorited team acquired. NFL teams go through extensive research, analysis, and interviews to decide who to draft.  Compare your recruitment, selection and hiring process to the NFL’s.  How does it compare, and what is the most significant question you should be asking?  We’ll share all this next blog.