We spent many years answering letters, faxes, phone calls and emails and developed a philosophy regarding Customer Support that I’d like to share and encourage you to adopt.  Here is our take on Customer Service from the viewpoint of a marketer.

The purpose of a HelpDesk for a company like ours is to:

• Listen to our Client’s issues and respond in a timely manner with answers designed to resolve their issues.
• Delight our Clients and Users to such a degree that they recommend our products and services to others.
• Increase our own cycles of learning to improve our products and services faster than our competition is able to.

When you implement this in your business, the most likely end result is positive word of mouth marketing which brings in many more leads and that is something we really appreciate.

Let’s face it, a lot of people in the business world today do a great job delivering results for their Clients but many hit a wall when it comes to scalability. The issue is simple… there are only 24 hours in a day and of those hours, only 4 during which one can really be productive. Delegation is a must if you want to get ahead and actually assume the role of manager rather than coordinator or key account manager.

Most of us never really learned how to delegate effectively and thus, we control way too much rather than teaching, coaching and inspiring our staff to perform at the same level as we perform for our Clients each day. There is no magic pill here, just a simple process to get you started and some best practices that we picked up along the way.

It all starts with hiring ‘A’ players and giving them both the authority and ability to perform their jobs and reach mutually agreeable objectives but, before I get ahead of myself… let’s start with an example of the viscous cycle.

THE SUPERVISOR’S LAMENT:
“I don’t have enough time to do everything that needs to be done!”

There are really only four options:

• Don’t do some of the things
• Make the day longer!
• Use the time available more effectively.
• Delegate some of it.

Clearly the best option above is to delegate some of the tasks but how do you delegate effectively? Let’s explore a few of the barriers to effective delegation first.

BARRIERS TO DELEGATION:

• I haven’t got the time (It will take longer to explain it than to do it
 myself)

• I lack confidence in my staff (They won’t do it properly/on time
- I can do it better myself)

• I’m the supervisor so I’m responsible(People expect me to know the answers/get the
  job done)

• I’m afraid (I’ll impose on others
- I’ll be disliked/resented
- They’ll be after my job
- I won’t be needed any more)

• I don’t know how to delegate

Here’s a little tip:
YOU CAN DELEGATE AUTHORITY BUT YOU CAN NEVER DELEGATE RESPONSIBILITY

So that we are all on the same page… let’s define the word
DELEGATION:
DEFINITION:

“Achieving results, by empowering and motivating others to carry out, to an agreed level of performance, tasks for which you are ultimately responsible.”

Please read and re-read the definition and commit it to memory. It will surely be handy to remember as you embark on this journey ;-)

If you invest time in Coaching your staff, they will likely become more competent and be able to take more off your shoulders. In this way the vicious cycle can be broken.
Coaching is a short term investment for the long term gains of improved performance; more independent and capable staff; and more time for you to concentrate on your role as supervisor.

REASONS FOR OVER/UNDER DELEGATING
Over Delegation

When tasks are delegated which fall within the area of ‘supervisory tasks’, this is known as over delegation.  Normally this would be considered to be an unacceptable practice, although there are certain circumstances under which delegation of these tasks would be acceptable.
Unacceptable reasons would include that the supervisor:
Dislikes the task
Is too lazy to do the task
Delegates to prove authority
Thinks everything should be delegated.
Some acceptable reasons would be:
Training/Coaching: where the task is normally done by the supervisor, but is delegated as part of a training session.
Succession planning: where an individual has been identified for potential promotion, or to deputize in the absence of the supervisor, certain tasks may be delegated which would normally be done by the supervisor.

EFFECTS OF OVER OR UNDER DELEGATING
The effects on the team leader who delegates too much, or too little are:
Too much:

• Causes resentment
• Loses respect
• Loses touch, and maybe loses control

Too little:

• Is overworked
• Has no time for planning
• Makes no provision for work being done in his absence
• Makes no provision for work being done in his absence
• Is despised by the team
• Is taken advantage of by the team

The effects on the team when the leader delegates too much or too little are:
Too much:

• Team is overworked and inefficient
• Team is prone to making mistakes
• Team resents the leader
• Staff turnover is high

Too little:

• Individuals don’t develop
• Motivation is low
• Team becomes complacent
• Team feels insecure

So… what can you do?

Here are 3 helpful tips from our manual on best practices on the process of effective delegation – they have worked beautifully with several of our Clients over the past decade and I hope that you get similar results. If you need some help implementing the following, just drop us a line.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF DELEGATION

1. Choose the right person
2. ‘Sel’egate
   • WIIFM
   • IMPORTANCE
3. Coach
4. Specify results
5. Talk it through
   • How?
   • Action Plan
   • Deadlines
6. Never tell when you can ask
7. Give authority
8. Monitor implementation
9. Regular review/feedback
1
10. Support
11. TRUST THEM!

The Delegation Process
(Some Key Points in a bit more detail)

1. Deciding what to delegate = planning
   • Examine your own work and decide what can be delegated.
   • Plan to delegate now, do not wait for a crisis.
   • Decide the outcomes to be achieved, not the activities involved.
   • Plan the limits of the task, resources and time required.
   • Think about the criteria for measurement and control.
   • Decide on the person.
   • Think about what support the person will need.
2. Selling
   • Decide how to ‘sell’ it to the person involved
   • Ensure initial briefing is clear
   • Invest time in the briefing
   • check understanding and
   • choose  the time and place carefully
3. Their Plan of Action
   • Ask what they plan to do and how they plan to do it.
   • Ask about the timetable and what control check they will use.
   • Agree the reporting back method and the frequency.
4. Implement and never tell what you can ask
   • When you spot a problem, or potential problem, and they do not, ask questions.
   • When things go wrong, ask questions.  Let them solve the problem with your support.
   • Do not take the task back, unless the circumstances are exceptional.
   • Remember your responsibilities and use mistakes to learn and to plan for the future.
   • Inform others what you have delegated and to whom.
5. Follow up and …
   • Carry out the agreed reporting procedures.
   • Encourage and give credit for good performance.
   • Trust them.

My favorite delegation acronym is SMART, or better still, SMARTER. It’s a quick checklist for effective delegation and it’s more than 50 years old – it goes like this:

Delegated tasks must be:
•    Specific
•    Measurable
•    Agreed
•    Realistic
•    Timebound
•    Ethical
•    Recorded

In a nutshell… that’s all you really need to get started with delegation. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to share your thoughts with us – we’d love to hear from you.

Once upon a time in a farmhouse not too far away, a mouse peered through a hole in the wall and watched as a farmer’s wife opened a small package.  The mouse went into a state of shock and awe when the package contents turned out to be a mousetrap!

The mouse immediately ran into the barnyard to warn the other animals, “Hey guys, there’s a mousetrap in the farmhouse!”

The hen clucked “It’s not my problem!  I’m not a mouse.”

The pig responded.  “Sorry to hear the news, but all I can do is recommend that you don’t get caught in it.”

“It’s really no big deal, just ignore the thing.” said the cow.

The mouse returned to his little hole in the wall to wait for the farmer and his wife to go to sleep so that he could begin his daily quest for a bit of leftover cheese in the darkness.  The sudden snapping sound of the mousetrap disfiguring its prey caught everyone by surprise.

The first on the scene was the farmer’s wife. She was half asleep and failed to notice the venomous snake on the floor until it bit her. The snake apparently entered the house looking for a rodent dinner when it got caught in the trap.  The farmer rushed his wife to the hospital for treatment and then brought her back to the farm where the side-effects from the drugs and venom antidote created a high fever and excruciating pain.

On the premise that chicken soup would reduce the fever, the farmer sacrificed his chicken for the soup.  But the wife’s condition did not improve. Friends provided help around the clock so that the farmer could tend to his crops and animals.  In order to feed them the farmer butchered the pig.  Alas, the wife did not survive the week and hundreds more came to her funeral forcing the farmer to slaughter the cow to provide enough meat for the hungry and respectful crowd.

The mouse watched the events unfold with great sadness from his little hole in the wall. All his barnyard friends (the ones who ignored his warning) were now gone.

We all know stories like that:  we see a problem and try to warn our co-workers but they just don’t see the big picture until it’s too late.

When one area of your company is in trouble, chances are good that the entire company’s performance will feel the impact.  For example, if there are issues with production, sales will be impacted when Customers don’t receive their orders on time. Similarly, sales may be slow and it is only a question of when production will be reduced to reflect the decrease in demand.

Phone lines and websites that can’t keep up with demand can shut down an operation overnight and permanently damage the brand and your reputation even if sales are high and production is on schedule.  A natural disaster such as snowstorm, hail, hurricane or flood will derail the most efficient of businesses unless contingency plans are in place for remote operation.

It really does not matter if you are a one-person operation or a team player in a major corporation, you should always be prepared and ask yourself:  What could go wrong?

At BoxOnline, we call this process Protecting the Plan.

Protect Your Plan - Put our PPA Process to work today

A planned response to situations that have the potential for wiping out profit and ruining your business is what gives you that extra edge should disaster strike.

Setting up a contingency plan or taking preventative measures to minimize the most likely causes of potential problems are two processes that you can initiate immediately. We have well over a decade of Client experience Protecting The Plan and look forward to helping you and your team feel more at ease, knowing that you are prepared for the worst.

Remember the lesson many of us learned in school, the time to study for a test is before you take it.

Be prepared, or be prepared to fail.

Dan Ariely has a fascinating story to share about irrational behavior…

His book held my full attention for several hours and in addition to being a good writer, Dan is a superb public speaker. The presentation you are about to watch, offers some insight into how people make decisions. You may want to check any preconceived notions at the door, this video offers a glimpse into the reality of how effective marketing can be when the marketer is able to tap into a predictable pattern of behavior. Naturally, our consultants leverage many of the concepts that Dan covers in this video but, I did not want to sell you on our services here… I simply wanted to share great video content, especially when the speaker is a professor at MIT. The presentation is refreshing and interesting but above all else, Predictably Irrational.

We just did it a few times this past month and thanks to our Client challenge… we had plenty of volunteers for the exercise.

If you’d like to get similar results and you are willing to make the changes that we recommend to your site then… submit a review request below and my team and I will do our best to check out each request and give you some helpful feedback to improve your search engine rankings.

In order to make the most of our review of your website we need:
- the URL
- the purpose for the site
- the target market you are trying to communicate with
- your SEO objective and primary keywords
- your current rank in Google:

Please provide that in the comments below and we’ll email you our findings.

In the meantime, here’s a summary of what we did for a Client during the past 10 days:

- the URL: aoinonlinereview.com
- the purpose for the site: communicate with fellow AION gamers and review AION products
- the target market: online MMO gamers
- your SEO objective and primary keywords: aion online review
- previous rank in Google: not in the top 30 pages of results
TODAY’S RANKING… we managed to move it into the top 3 for the primary keyword (check it out here) there are more than 40,000 pages competing for this spot

After presenting our Vendor Selection Process at a few technology conferences, we were overwhelmed with questions and feedback and we thank all of you for your input and encouragement to summarize our process in text and place it online to benefit others. The following is a summary of our presentation:

The Truth About Vendor Selection

When our Clients task us with identifying the most appropriate vendor for their project, discussions are frequently oriented around the same 5 topics – The Outcome, The Audience, The Objectives, The Strategy, and The Technology Decision. This article was written to help outline our thoughts and give readers an indication of the process involved in successfully selecting a vendor for a technology implementation.

Today’s example comes from the world of social media, the latest, greatest must-have for your business. In most business engagements we start with the end in mind by figuring out what we want to accomplish. Social technologies are not mysterious black boxes. They can accomplish business oriented goals as well. Consider that it’s probably time to stop implementing ‘social’ because it’s cool. It’s time to get into it because it is effective if done right.

Our first step is to fully understand our Client’s desired business results (the Outcome) for creating a community online. When we have formulated the outcome into a clearly written, text based paragraph resembling a project statement and as soon as we receive our Client’s approval for this formulation, we proceed to step two.

Our next step is to Identify the Target Audience that will want to be members of this community. Before they become members of our community, these individuals are our prospects – out there somewhere on the internet sitting firmly within the parameters of what we define as our target audience. In this step we focus on access and conversions. How we are able to get in touch with our prospects is what we refer to as ‘access’ and getting a prospect to become a member is what we refer to as conversion. We usually initiate a profiling exercise in this step to reveal the needs of our target audience. This can be done in a variety of ways, our current favorite is by using sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to attract or pull the target audience toward us where we can present them with a relevant reward for answering a combination of multiple choice and open questions in our online surveys.

The next step is to determine the appropriate Objectives that align with and help to achieve our Client’s desired business result (the outcome). This list of objectives is critical to understanding what our Client’s expectations are and what limitations (if any) will be placed on this project. Are you launching a project to listen to your Customers or to enter into a dialog with them? To support them or to energize your best Customers so that they evangelize others? Or are you trying to collaborate with your Customers? Decide on your core objectives long before you decide on a technology. Then figure out how you will measure it.

Most of our time at this stage will be spent scoping out the Strategy, which includes budgets, roles, internal processes, stakeholders, policies, empowerment, change management, legal, regulatory and compliance issues. This information needs to be collected, discussed, agreed with the Client and then documented. In addition to the above, the scoping document will need to include a plan for how relationships with Customers will change over time. Be sure that the strategy is in line with the Objectives. Do you want a closer, two-way relationship with your best Customers? Do you want to get people talking about your products? Do you want a permanent focus group for testing product ideas and generating new ones? Imagine you succeed. How will things be different afterwards? Always imagine the outcome and you’ll have a good idea where you need to begin.

Once you’ve completed your scoping document and outlined the work breakdown structure, only then are you ready to select a technology and a vendor. Selecting the technology in this example has to do with a community, a blog, a wiki or even thousands of blogs. Once you know your desired outcome, your audience, the objectives, and the strategy then you can decide with confidence what the technology needs to deliver using a simple process called decision analysis which helps you to make the best possible selection when presented with alternatives.

Selecting a vendor is a Decision Making Process that begins with setting must and want objectives and ends with evaluating risks. This decision analysis is what presents the decision logic to anyone requiring your reasoning for making a particular decision and it follows the same process that NASA has used for the past 50+ years.

As a rule of thumb, successful brands focus about 80% of their efforts on the The Outcome, The Audience, The Objectives and The Strategy and about 20% of their effort on the Technology Decision – make sure that you get it right too.

When you have a powerful brand, sales tilt in your favor. That’s not just a bold statement, it’s a fact.

In business school we learn that are two approaches when it comes to branding:
a) a manufacturer’s identifier
b) a promise of a Customer experience

I’d like to introduce a third which focuses on a single idea that your company owns that tilts sales in your favor.

That single idea can be described as the Sales Moment.

For example, if I were to say:
- “Family fast food” odds are that you would reply “McDonalds”
- “Family Entertainment” you’d be thinking “Disney”

There is just too much information available in the world today. If people can’t quickly understand what you stand for, then you will not break through the clutter. With so much competition, people gravitate to those that make things easier for them. If you want to create a powerful brand that increases your sales, you need to communicate one single idea and you have to keep it simple so that people can see how you fit into their world.

Think about the single idea that you need to own in order to tilt sales in your favor. If you think tactically, you will not succeed at this level because your focus will be on building a website, creating a brochure, buying some ads etc You need to think strategically and start at the beginning with the Sales Moment and your brand strategy.

To discover your Sales Moment you need to either triangulate your Customer’s Desires and your Strategic Advantages with your Competitor’s Exploitable Weaknesses or simply contact us using the form below and we’ll guide you through the process.

A powerful brand makes it easy for your target Customers to understand how the brand is relevant to them and this will increase your sales.

So, if you are prepared to consider rolling up your sleeves and working on your brand strategy, we can help you… If you insist that what you need now are tactics, then sorry but, this article is probably not what you’re looking for… on the other hand, it just might just change the way you think about branding forever.

A brand is a single mental image that tilts sales in your company’s favor and it is made up of 4 major elements:
1 the Name
2 the Logo
3 the Tagline
4 the Ad Campaign

From a potential Customer’s perspective the above are experienced simultaneously.

To create a powerful brand, all 4 elements MUST quickly communicate the Sales Moment.  If they don’t do this, the brand is weak and will confuse the target Customer. The Sales Moment is the one thing that can be said of your company’s products or services that actually makes the sale and converts a prospect into a paying Customer.

Businesses grow rapidly when the mental image from the four brand elements trigger the Sales Moment.

1 THE NAME
When you create a brand, the name MUST help to create a mental image based on verbal cues. There are six different types of names used by the most successful brands of all time. Each of the types helps the brand achieve a particular objective and at the same time communicate the Sales Moment.

Think about the idea that your company is trying to OWN…  and how you might be able to do it more effectively with the right name.

Creating a powerful brand name begins with understanding the different naming types:
- Functional
- Metaphor
- Energy
- Morpheme
- Historic
- Family

Functional:

• Liquid Plumber
• Toys R Us
• ThinkFun

If you select a functional name, be careful with the other brand elements (logo, tagline, ad image etc) so that  the company does not appear cheap or unsophisticated compared to other brands.
Functional names use a key product feature that you want to own.

Metaphor:

• TransparentValue (an asset mgmt company)
• Amazon (name conveys size)

The focus here is on creating strategic value using a word that suggests an important value of your brand.

Energy:

• Big Ass Fans (yes.. that is the company name)
• OshKosh B’Gosh (it’s just fun to say… esp for the target mkt of little girls)

Energy naming uses words that convey emotion, action or tone of the brand to achieve effect.

Morpheme:

• Microsoft
• Verizon
• FedEx

Morphemes use small syllables of a word or words to conveys essential meaning and can be combined to form a new word like FedEx from Federal Express and Microsoft.

Historic:

• Rembrandt toothpaste
• Baby Einstein
• Con Edison

Historic naming uses an historic event, character or location to embody a brand.

Family:

• McDonalds
• Ford
• Samsung

Family naming uses either real or fictional names usually from the founders to convey the sales moment effectively especially when one needs to differentiate from competition.

Once you have a clear brand idea to work with then develop names in all 6 areas… Then you can determine which type of naming works best to convey the sales moment and helps you to own your brand idea.  Then do trademark searches on the best names to see what is available. Choose the name that is the most memorable and best owns your strategic idea.

CAUTION:
Do NOT select a company name that you like best or one that others like best.  You may not like your company name at all… The results are in and after 50+ years of studying successful brands the ones that succeed are the memorable ones that best own their Sales Moment.  If you let your ego get in the way and you decide that you ‘don’t like it’ then you will be missing out on best practices and you will be making a decision based upon a limited perspective of what you, personally are comfortable with.  It is much better to make such a decision based upon your Customer’s perspective answering the question: What name communicates the sales moment to the Customer in a memorable way.

So we can not brand a company based upon what you or I or a bunch of friends think is cool nor can we brand the company for you, me or your friends using some inside meaning that is only relevant to us. Your Customer likely does not share the same perspective as you do… We can’t choose the company colors based upon what we like either. Instead we select each of the brand elements based on what performs. These elements create an ownable mental image. Whether we like it or not is irrelevant. What matters is that your brand makes it easy for your target Customer to understand how it is relevant to them. That will increase sales.

A few more tips:
Avoid names that are challenging to spell or difficult to pronounce easily. Do some research and drop names that have negative connotations in languages that are important to your market.

2 THE LOGO
Simplicity is the key to a great logo as long as it is memorable. Customers need to be able to construct the logo easily in their mind so that they have a clear an unique mental image of your brand.
The stronger your mental image, the more likely they are to remember you. The four main attributes of successful logos are that they are simple in a symbolic way, memorable, differentiated from the competition and that they tell a story. The story MUST be closely related to the Sales Moment. Does your logo tell a story that communicates the Sales Moment?

The logo must support the mental image of the brand in such a way that you own the strategic idea stemming from the company name and supported by the tagline. Be sure that your logo is different from those used by your competitors.

3 THE TAGLINE
Great taglines bring a brand to life. They should NOT include a description of your products or services. Great taglines communicate why your brand is relevant to your target Customers by calling up the Sales Moment. There are 3 types of taglines.
- Promises
- Calls to Action
- Memory taglines

Promises are based on a key brand attribute.
Calls to Action are invitations for a Prospect to join us because they share a similar philosophy.
Memory taglines play off the name or logo to help people remember the brand.

Examples:
Timex – it takes a licking and keeps on ticking (promise)
Apple – think different (call to action)
Army – be all you can be (call to action)
Maybelline – Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline? (memory)
Prudential – own a piece of the rock (memory)
Duracell – you can’t top the copper top (promise & memory)
Volvo – For Life

Here’s another angle on creating killer taglines that I think you will enjoy. The following taglines all have a few things in common. They focus on the user’s experience (the UX) in addition to that, each of them offers a comparison and lastly, each is a highly memorable brand that achieved fame in part due to a superb tagline.

ClubMed – The antidote for civilization
GLAD – Don’t get mad, Get GLAD
Memorex – Is it live or is it Memorex?
Outback Steakhouse – No rules Just right
Secret Deodorant – Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman
Target – Expect more. Pay less
United Negro College Fund – The mind is a terrible thing to waste
US Marines – We’re looking for a few good men
MasterCard – There are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else there’s MasterCard.

If you’re in the United States, and over 30, there’s a good chance you recognize them all. What’s more, I’ll bet you can even envision how the advertising looked and sounded once you read the tag line…

Below are a few more. These companies have powerful ad agencies and multi million dollar brand creating budgets yet, how many of the following brands’ taglines do you remember from your UX? Each of the following taglines relates to their product or service… not the UX.

Ernst & Young – Quality in everything we do
Fancy Feast – Good taste is easy to recognize
Ford – Bold Moves
Honda – The power of dreams
Pepsi – For those who think young
Wells Fargo – The next stage
Aflac – Ask about it at work
Bank of America – Higher standards
Cheez-It – Get your own box
CNET – The source for computing and technology

Does your tagline quickly explain why your brand is relevant to your target Customer and, at the same time, differentiate you from your competitors?
tip: wrap your tagline around the desired UX and compare / contrast it with something that your target Customers want / don’t want to experience.

4 THE AD CAMPAIGN
In the history of the world. there have been only 4 types of advertising campaigns that build brands and drive sales. If you’d like to learn about them, enter your contact details below and we will share a few more of our best practice secrets with you shortly.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

PS.

If you are not using one of these four types of advertising campaigns to build your brand and drive sales, your marketing is simply not working.

Every sustainable business that we studied during the past 20+ years has:

• Quality products / services that their market needs and values
• A strong value proposition that justifies strong pricing and delivers strong margins
• A process to fully monetize Customers instead of just selling one at a time
• A continual stream of leads and business opportunities
• Cost-effective methods to consistently convert leads into paying Customers
• Processes and systems in place so that people and machines get enough done daily to be both effective and efficient
• Been successful with socially supported marketing strategies
• Listings in industry directories, networking publications or search engine results pages
• The ability to collect intelligence easily through research

In order to survive, you need to succeed in at least 4 out of these 9 core areas.

If you want to prosper, you need to master all 9.

At BoxOnline, we can help you to:

• Create products that Customers want to buy
• Increase your gross margin
• Increase the amount of money each Customer spends with you
• Increase the number of business opportunities or sales leads (leveraging SMM or SEM for online businesses)
• Efficiently convert prospects into paying Customers
• Offer processes and tools that increase the number of productive hours you spend each day without working more
• Provide you with a variety of competitive intelligence reports to help you build successful strategies

Our consultants frequently coach Clients to achieve success in each of these core areas.

If we could help you to improve in any one of these areas so that you would make more money – where would you want us to start?

Click here and let us know your thoughts.

Hey there,

Why is it that most people in business think that they are going to sell what they have by delivering a list of features along with a few reasons why someone should buy their product?

The truth is that there is a much deeper psychological process behind making a decision to buy something than most business people realize.

When selling to Consumers, the pitch must appeal to a buyer’s emotions or the sale is simply not going to take place. When selling B2B, keep in mind that the buyer is still a human being with needs and a strong desire to succeed – a benefits oriented approach has been proven to be more successful than any other technique we tested during the past 20 years.

If you’re ready to sell something, we are ready to help you create a winning pitch.

The first step is a bit of homework so grab a pencil and some paper and get ready to answer a few questions:

• Write down a list of your competitors and their websites
• Write down what they’re doing, what they’re offering etc.
• List their product’s benefits

Ahh, now we come to the core purpose of this article…

Do you know the difference between features, advantages and benefits?

A feature is what a product has. In essence, the core components of your product or service; sometimes referred to as the bells and whistles or buttons, knobs, levers, switches, format, platform etc.

An advantage is what the product does or how it performs against a competitive product. A vacuum for example, is a product that might have the advantage that it doesn’t need bags. Another advantage would be that it can clean the floor in a room without you being present. In a services business one advantage would be the number of years of experience you bring to the table or your level of certification. Some common advantages include words like fast, easy, simple, cheap and good.

A benefit is what a given feature means to your prospect in terms of emotion and passion. A true benefit goes really deep and says something about how it makes you feel – a really great benefit gets a consumer excited because it means something special to the buyer.

Here’s a good B2C example. One of our Clients sells a facial cream online and she called it something like, microderm abrasion emulsion – essentially it is a cream that helps reduce wrinkles.

On her website she listed several features such as ‘it reduces wrinkles’, ‘it comes in an easy to use home care kit’, ‘it is pH balanced’ etc etc etc.

When she came to me to help increase sales, conversions and traffic… I asked her to:
Take a piece of paper and create three columns.
List as many features as you can in the first column.
In the second column, list what you believe are the top benefits.
She wrote down ‘because it reduces wrinkles, it makes you look younger’ and ‘because it comes in a home care kit, it is easy to use at home’ and the third one was ‘because it is pH balanced, it’s gentle on your skin’.

As politely as possible I let her know that those are really advantages not benefits so we continued the exercise and I asked her to list in the third column what she felt the ultimate end result for her Customer was going to be – in other words, ‘the ultimate benefit’.

Here is what she wrote:
‘If it makes you look younger: then it means you’ll be more attractive, you’ll get that promotion at work, you’ll feel more confident, nobody will know your true age, you’ll fall in love all over again and you’ll be able to attract that person you’ve had your eye on.’

‘Since it’s easy to use at home: you won’t suffer embarrassment by going to a doctor’s office, you don’t have to waste time, it’s like a face lift in a jar in the comfort and privacy of your own home.’

‘Since it’s gentle on your skin: there are no risks, no pain, no healing periods like surgery or those harsh chemical peels people usually buy.’

We had arrived…
These were descriptions of how Customers would feel before, during and after they used the product. They were a few of the true benefits this product offers its Customers.

In a very short time she was able to list several of the true benefits her product offers to her Customers. She took this piece of paper and changed her website to reflect the benefits. She also adapted every piece of marketing material including all advertising (online and offline), all landing pages, sales letters and Customer communications and within two months her sales doubled. One month later sales doubled again. Then she adapted the packaging to reflect the new text and sales doubled again. Sure we did some work on conversions and six months later, she was not able to buy as much traffic as she wanted – not even from Google ,Yahoo and MSN combined… Folks, this stuff really works!  I’ll let you guess if I am referring to the creme or the marketing process here.

Remember, real benefits go deep. They live within the emotional and passionate sweet spot of the person wanting or using your product. In order to increase your sales you will need to tap into that sweet spot and then use the real benefits in everything you produce to help sell the product.

Begin by figuring out what your prospect’s current emotions are regarding the things that your product addresses. Understand which of those emotions are the strongest, most compelling, most “dominant” in his or her life. Then identify the benefits your product offers that will most effectively enhance your prospect’s strongest positive emotions and/or resolve his strongest negative ones.

People buy for emotional reasons far more often than for merely rational ones. If you want people to act on your copy and buy your product, first determine how your prospect is likely feeling right now . Then, use your benefits as bridges to activate the emotions that will compel him/her to buy!

Now, let’s venture into the world of B2B with a comment or two and some real life examples. First my comments; B2B has specific demands that don’t apply to the B2C world. Most of the time these demands orient themselves around the concept of ROI. A few of the thoughts running through the heads of many buyers include: How will my business benefit if we were to buy your product or use your services or implement your widget? If you can orient your sales message around the benefits that your product offers to your target market then you have a much higher probability of closing a deal over your competition – and you will probably be able to reduce your sales cycle at the same time. Here is one of the best B2B examples I have ever read:

“Amazon S3 is based on the idea that quality Internet-based storage should be taken for granted. It helps free developers from worrying about how they will store their data, whether it will be safe and secure, or whether they will have enough storage available. It frees them from the upfront costs of setting up their own storage solution as well as the ongoing costs of maintaining and scaling their storage servers. The functionality of Amazon S3 is simple and robust: Store any amount of data inexpensively and securely, while ensuring that the data will always be available when you need it. Amazon S3 enables developers to focus on innovating with data, rather than figuring out how to store it.”

Notice that they are not listing bells and whistles here… this text is crafted specifically to get the business buyer emotionally involved. They decided to use the concept of freedom to achieve their objective. If you were a developer, wouldn’t it be nice to be ‘free of worry’ regarding at least one mission critical component of your site that has the potential to shut down your online business if your product suddenly becomes an instant hit?

As I encounter more brilliant examples like this, I will add them to this article. If you have a submission that you’d like us to review or even add as an example of how to do it, be sure to let us know by filling out our contact us form.

Two of the services we frequently use with our Clients are Idea Generation and Problem Solving. We approach both challenges with very different, process oriented methods but there is one thing that remains constant – Our ability to think laterally and come up with novel concepts by looking at situations in new and different ways. Many of our Clients are so deeply involved in an issue such as their daily business that they find it hard to change perspective and see things from an alternative angle. This is where we come in… we tend to see things that are ‘outside the box’.

Vertical thinking, also known as logical thinking, takes an idea and carries it forward. Lateral thinking, on the other hand, provokes fresh ideas and essentially changes the frame of reference in almost any situation. Vertical thinking tries to overcome problems by dealing with them head-on, lateral thinking attempts to bypass obstacles using a variety of different approaches.

In essence, Lateral thinking is a tool that helps us change our way of thinking about something often by modifying our perceptions.

With logical thinking you start out with certain given components and boundaries wrapped in a process. This is similar to the situation in chesswhere you start out with specific pieces and are expected to play by the rules. The issue is that in most real life situations, we can not use the chess model or logical thinking to solve problems because you don’t know what the pieces are, what they represent or how many pieces actually exist… knowing the rules is almost irrelevant to solving a problem or generating new ideas.

Throughout our lives we are handed several different rulebooks (cultural, social, business oriented etc). When we get these rulebooks we just assume that the components that the rulebooks refer to, simply exist and we tend to accept that certain boundaries and limitations are present because they were mentioned in the rulebook. Lateral thinking throws out the rules and assumptions as well as the boundaries and limitations so that we are free of our social, cultural, geographic and demographic bonds.

Lateral thinking focuses on changing some element to enable a new and fresh perspective of a given situation. Lateral thinking deals primarily with perception. By using lateral thinking techniques we can organize the external world into the pieces that we can then process. Perhaps more importantly, by observing lateral thinking in others we can generate new ideas and better understand how they perceive the world around them.

The brain is a self-organizing information system that forms asymmetric patterns. In such systems there is a mathematical need for moving across patterns. The tools and processes of lateral thinking are designed to achieve such lateral movement to accomplish a given result.

A famous person once said that you can’t dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper. Think about that for a moment… If you were driving in a car on the highway but your intended destination is behind you, driving faster while keeping the car on the same heading will not get you to your intended destination.

If you were to continue thinking about a problem or a solution in a given way, this may not be as useful as changing tact and trying something completely different. Additional effort in the same direction will not necessarily help you get the results you were after but applying some proven tools designed to turn the car around, may offer you options that you never knew existed. It’s a format of thinking ‘out of the box’ and our Clients believe that we are very good at it. It may be because we do it frequently.

If you have a challenging problem or need some new ideas, please, fill out our form and allow us to get in touch with you today.