Customer loyalty
Maximizing Business Impact: Sell Painkillers, Not Vitamins
I’ve discovered the secret to thriving in the competitive business world – it’s not about what you sell but how you sell it.
The metaphor “sell painkillers, not vitamins” encapsulates a crucial strategy for success.
Painkillers represent solutions to urgent problems, offering immediate relief and necessity.
In contrast, vitamins symbolize nice-to-have supplements that enhance well-being but aren’t critical.
Successful businesses identify and alleviate their customers’ acute pains, creating indispensable products or services.
This approach builds customer loyalty and drives organic growth through word-of-mouth.
Companies excelling in this strategy deeply understand their customers’ challenges and innovate solutions that directly address these pains.
The key is to satisfy a need and become an irreplaceable part of the solution.
In essence, by positioning your product or service as a painkiller, you make your offering essential, carving out a unique and sustainable niche in the market.
Tweet This: “Be the cure, not just a comfort; for in solving the urgent, you secure the essential.” – Mike Brewer
#BusinessStrategy #CustomerFocus #Innovation #MarketSuccess #EssentialSolutions #PainkillerNotVitamin
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The Deep Connection: How Client Feelings Toward Service Reflect Their Feelings About Providers
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
In the multifamily industry, and indeed, across all business sectors, there’s a time-tested and unwritten rule: Clients don’t just feel about a service; they feel about the person or entity delivering it. I often emphasize this intrinsic relationship, and today, we’ll explore this connection a bit more.
The Emotional Resonance with Service Providers
Have you ever wondered why clients become loyal to a specific brand or business? It’s not just about the quality of service; it’s how they feel when interacting with the provider. Emotional resonance is the unsung hero of many business relationships. When clients perceive the provider as trustworthy, competent, and genuinely caring, they’re more inclined to view their services positively. This synergy between how a client feels about service and the service provider underpins the foundation of customer loyalty.
Building and Nurturing Customer Trust
I often write about trust as the cornerstone of any successful provider-client relationship. But how is it earned? Transparency, consistency, and genuine empathy form a framework. Clients can sense authenticity a mile away. If they believe a provider genuinely cares about their needs and well-being, they’ll reciprocate that trust, resulting in stronger ties.
The Importance of Positive Service Experience
In the words of Maya Angelou, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Our philosophy at MultifamilyCollective echoes this sentiment. When clients have a positive service experience, they associate those feelings of satisfaction, happiness, and trust with us. Over time, these positive experiences stack up, reinforcing the client’s positive perception of the service and the one delivering it.
Going Beyond Transactions: The Provider-Client Relationship
Service interactions are more than mere transactions. They’re opportunities to build lasting relationships. Providers understanding this principle go above and beyond to ensure every interaction counts. Providers cement their place in the client’s heart by prioritizing the client’s needs and addressing concerns with sincerity. And as I often say, “In the multifamily business, relationships are everything.”
Crafting Memorable Service Interactions
Providers need to create memorable service interactions to leave an imprint on a client’s mind. These aren’t necessarily grand gestures. Often, it’s the small, thoughtful actions that stand out. Listening actively, showing appreciation, or even going the extra mile to resolve an issue can leave a lasting impression. These memorable interactions set providers apart and ensure they remain top of mind for clients.
To sum up, service provision isn’t just about the service itself; it’s deeply intertwined with clients’ perceptions and feelings toward the provider. Like many others, the multifamily space thrives on the depth and strength of these connections.
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How’s My Service?
JHerzog · · 3 Comments
We’ve all seen one of one of those How’s My Driving stickers on the back of a truck.
They seem to care but do they really?
My boyfriend recently ordered my birthday present online from a popular home and garden store. I won’t disclose the name, but let’s just say it rhymes with Shmowe’s. Anyway, he ordered it through their In-Store Pick-Up service so that he could pick it up from a store near me while he was visiting for my birthday, but when he went to pick it up, it wasn’t there. He was told that someone was supposed to be in charge of calling him to let him know it hadn’t arrived yet, but apparently they forgot, and they would have to call him back Monday. When they didn’t call, he called them, only to continue to get the run around. Almost a week later, the item showed up at his home (in a completely different state than where he had requested to pick it up). The only solution customer service would offer was for him to return it to the nearest store (40 minutes from his house) and have me re-buy it from the store where it was originally supposed to go. Only when he went to the store to return it, they couldn’t access his order in their system and refused to give him his money back. After spending almost an hour in the store dealing with several different store associates and managers, and becoming infuriated, he was given his money back. Needless to say, after their complete lack of help and horrible customer service in dealing with his issue, he would not be re-buying anything from any other ‘Schmowes’ store.
No matter how bad his issue became, not one person was willing to become solely responsible to insure he received call backs and verify that the matter was corrected and the customer was satisfied. Instead, he was given different answers from several different people and given the run around to the point where it ended up losing them two customers (both him and myself), and potentially more because apparently he was not the only person in their customer service line who had issues with their online in-store pick-up program (and of course all of you reading this who don’t want to take the chance of this happening to you).
The point of all this is that I work for Mills, a fairly large company that relies mostly on our site teams to handle property specific customer service issues. However, we recently added a resident relations position to our portfolio for those times when an issue reaches the level that the above mentioned story reached. This person is specifically responsible for getting to the bottom of such issues and working directly with the resident until the issue is resolved. This has become a great asset to our company and I believe that no matter how big or small the company, there should be some type of position similar to this available for customers.
Do you have a program in place to insure that customer issues never get out of control? Any tips on what has been most effective?
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MultiFamily Blogging: Letter to The MultiFamily News Editor
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Apartment Leadership – Your Answer May Not be the Only Answer
I read a story today that held a lesson too important not to share. The overarching premise related to creative solutions for business problems. The key lesson being that just because you [leaders] don’t get the answer you are looking for does not mean the answer is not an acceptable solution for the problem.
Allow me to take you back to my childhood for a second to bring this point home. I grew up on a farm just South of a small town on the Eastern Plains of New Mexico. The summers, outside of crazy boring chores, were packed with a ton of down time. My only mode of transportation were two wheels straddled by a frame, two peddles and a seat. It was four miles along the highway to the edge of town and another four to my nearest friend. Needless to say, I was not jumping at the chance to make the trip very often.
Both of my parents worked so my sister and I were left to make the best of each day. Days that included a long list of chores to complete before they made it home. On one occasion that list included a request for me to pull an acre of weeds no less than four feet tall [exaggerated for emphasis]. A project that wold have taken the better part of two days to accomplish [no exaggeration on this point].
Now I don’t claim to be any more resourceful than the next guy or gal but I can say that if there is a more efficient way to do something, trust that I am going to find it. In this instance, I went next door and asked by neighbor if I could borrow a few of his healthiest farm animals to assist in my assignment. He agreed and it took them the better part of a half-day to complete the project. They mowed the weeds right down to the dirt and in many cases pulled them out by the root. Needless to say, I was very proud of my accomplishment and could not wait to share it with my step-father.
“What were you thinking? I asked you to PULL the weeds,” he thundered upon my sharing. I was shocked. Devastated. And, angry. Why was my solution any less effective than his alternative? The reason according to the story I read this morning was because it was not his desired solution.
Getting to the point, how many times in our property management careers have we been put off or put back by resourceful thinkers that get things done in a different or better fashion than you. Do you coach them as it relates to your desired solution? Did you coach out of an underlying premise of frustration or anger? Here are some things to think about if you are in this crowd of thinkers:
1. Are you stalling creativity?
2. Are you screening out innovation?
3. Are you killing a free thinking environment?
4. Are you killing moral?
5. Are you losing good people?
Photo Credit: conversations.nokia.com