The CEO of a client company once told me I shouldn’t do a webinar on the company’s, secret sauce.  They were a professional services company, and he was worried the competition would go to school on them, learn something about their secret sauce, and then use it against them.  I asked him if no one knew about the secret sauce, then what good was it?  I asked him what would happen if that competitor began giving away their knowledge?  How would customers and prospects react?  I promised him I would give the attendees only a taste.  Well, it might have turned out to be an appetizer.

Giving away your secret sauce is a type of thought leadership.  You find forward thinking companies and individuals doing this.  CEOs and bean counters don’t like it because it’s hard to quantify the immediate return.  That’s what makes it hard to instill in a company, and why it has to be top down driven.  But what is thought leadership and why is it important?

Here’s my definition of thought leadership:

It is the ability to share with passion the things that truly advance the art and science of your company’s business, your understanding of customer needs and your marketplace, and to do this with confidence and without thought of risk and immediate return.

The longer term value of thought leadership is that it can help a smaller companies leverage their size, become better known and increase their reach.  This creates larger audiences with more significant clients and reduces the cost of client acquisition.  And like brand, it can add to the valuation of the company.  In addition, from several of my last posts, it can help retain customers and engage them in new products and services.  There is value in thought leadership.

A key characteristic of true thought leadership is sharing; sharing ideas, technology, knowledge, and intellectual property, all without the thought of immediate gain.  It contains elements of passion, generosity and education.  Ultimately, like brand, it is about what others say about you.  You can’t say you are a thought leader or if you do, no one will believe you.  It’s like saying you are the world’s greatest lover.  Though that also has something to do with sharing, recognition comes more with simmering the sauce over a long time.

The combination of sharing without asking for something immediate in return is what makes it so hard for senior management to appreciate thought leadership and get behind it.  Like brand, marketing’s job is to help lead organizations into creating a culture of thought leadership, and to help show that ROI.

While the webinar was going on, I shared a text from a prospect with the CEO.  “This stuff is great.  I am reminded again of why we should try to do business.”

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One of the most successful marketing campaigns I’ve been involved with was sending personal thank-you notes to over 1400 customers.  The notes simply said, “Thank you for your business.”  They were hand written by an executive management team, fifty at a time.  The benefits were twofold.  First, the customers were blown away.  Many said that they had never received anything like it from a vendor.  The rewards for renewal of business were in the millions of dollars.  But there was a more subtle reward.  The management team got more vested with the customers.  Their personal signatures made them feel more responsibility for customer satisfaction and loyalty.  They began to think about their customers differently, appreciate and pay attention to their needs.

Thanking customers and clients for their business is “Marketing and Sales 101.” But it’s rare when we do it with sincerity.  Many companies send year-end holiday cards, but I sometimes get the same reaction from this that I get when my bank sends me and email on my birthday.  Sometimes it’s better to send nothing.

One business I know sends Thanksgiving Day cards.  No one expects them, and they don’t get lost in the shuffle of the end of the year holidays.  So they stand out a little more and are appreciated.  There are a hundred ways to say thank you.  So what’s stopping us?

So thanks.  Thanks for reading this. Thanks for the encouragement, and thank you if you’ve passed this blog on to others.

PS: And right up there with thanking your customers is… thanking your employees.

PPS: Marketing, please thank your sales team.

PPPS: Image Attribution

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I help manage marketing vendors for one of my clients.  Using external resources is often a way to get things done quickly without having to develop the skills internally.  Some of these resources are significant with expenditures of over $100K, and some are smaller services such as design, email software, and web conferencing systems with costs in the $10-$25K range.  All of these vendors have the opportunity to increase business with this client long term.

About four months ago, the management team of the client, myself included, decided to invest in an infrastructure part of the business to increase efficiency for the growing business.  As a consequence, I postponed most of the external marketing resource projects for a period.  In a related situation, a PR agency had given me the fraternity rush pitch for a $75K engagement about six months previously, and I turned them down, saying we weren’t quite ready, and to call us back in three months.  An interesting thing happened.

I haven’t heard from any of these vendors.  Not one peep.  Not a, “Hi, how are you? Just thought I would check in?” Or a, “I saw something interesting that might help you bridge this postponement.”  Nothing, nada, zilch.   Four months is not a long time, but was it something I said?  Is it the old, “It’s not you, honey… it’s me?”

No.  It’s not me.  It’s them.

We all know that it’s a critical mistake in marketing and sales to ignore your current clients much less your prospects.  We’ve all heard, and maybe know from experience, that it’s much harder and more expensive to gain a new customer than to retain an existing one.  So why do we do it?  Why do we take our clients and customers for granted?

I could say that it’s because we are always focused on the new, the next best thing, that our attention spans are limited, that we are calculating the risk/cost ratios all the time for how much energy we need to put into existing relationships.  It really doesn’t matter.  Don’t stop talking to your customers and clients.

I know many organizations may say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to me… we have a customer care department.” Or, “Our NPR score is over 8.”  Or, “Our customer retention is over 95%.”  But here are a couple of questions:

1. If you are in marketing, how many customer/client visits have you actually been on in the last month?
2. For marketing, how many real value touches in terms of newsletters, webinars, user group meetings, emails have you had with your current customers in the last month?
3. If you are in “new account” sales (not account management), how many of your clients have you visited or called in the last month?  Not for golf, but to actually understand what their issues are and to try and add value?
4. For both sales and marketing, who else have you talked to at the customer other than your usual buyer?  Who else has issues you might be able to help with?

You know the drill.  If you’re not doing these things, then perhaps a competitor is.  Customers go through buying phases.  They are not always ready to buy, but they are always appreciative of those that want to help them save money, solve a problem, or make them better.

The irony is that with the internet and new technologies, communication is a lot easier than it used to be.  Of course we are all busy, we all get too much email, too many calls.  The call we do take and the email we do read has three characteristics.  It is relevant, it is useful and it is timely.  And maybe it’s appreciated as well.  One of the most successful campaigns I’ve run was a simple hand written thank you note from an executive saying ‘thanks for your business’.

In part 2 of this blog post, the subject of how to nurture your current clients will be addressed.

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