Selling with the Sincerity of a Snake-oil Salesman

Stephen King Thinking (Feb 12 2012) Accounting , B2B , Branding , Customer Loyalty

1. 

   I recently had the pleasure of refreshing the brand and marketing statements of one of my clients, Jazzit (http://www.jazzit.pro), a software company that creates financial statement and reporting templates for accountants.

   Their software is amazing, but their messaging was lagging behind in terms of telling their great story. In particular, and something that is typical in many B2B SME technology firms -- they had the problem of empty and unfocused marketing benefit statements:

   • "Saves time"
   • "Saves money"
   • “Makes you more productive”
   • "Make your employees happier"
   • "Recommended by thousands"

   Selling with the Sincerity of a Snake-oil Salesman

    

   The problem with these types of statements is that they speak with the sincerity of a snake-oil salesman. They neither talk in language that is unique to the target customers, nor do they provide proof of the ROI that's promised in the statement. Prospects are numb; they see these kinds of statements everywhere so they don't have any effect. Every software company can say them.

   What benefits are unique? What's the REAL Customer ROI?

   There's a straightforward way to approach focusing and quantifying benefits.

    

   Focusing Benefit Statements

    

   At Jazzit, they've been making and selling their software for 11 years, and have a good-size customer base, so they must be doing some things very right. We knew their customer base was happy with the software (although we didn't know HOW happy yet!) they have a high rate of annual renewal, and great feedback through both their support channels as well as at trade shows. 

   Because of this, to arrive at some hypotheses for their benefit statements, I first turned inwards and talked to the product development team. After all, I figured, they've been making features for customers for a while, so we just needed to understand what few features were most beloved by their customer base. 

   9 times out of 10 this information can be found in the CTO's (or similar development person) latest Powerpoint deck. It's sometimes hidden by the technology and architecture stuff (which I sometimes call "secret sauce"), but it's there. In the case of Jazzit, there were several features the developers have been working on over the years that really resonated with the customers. Ask a developer: "Why did you make that feature?" For example, because the software they develop is 100+ financial statement and working paper templates that run on the CaseWare (http://www.caseware.com) platform, their clients save time creating and maintaining their own set of templates. Secondly, the way the way they handled notifying clients when a document update is available was patented by Jazzit; it saves a great deal of time every year when creating the latest year's financial statements vs. other methods of preparation (such as competitors or using Word/Excel).

   

   So, I had two good benefits for accounting firms using Jazzit around their TECHNOLOGY:

   •Saves time annually on updating

   •Saves time per client engagement 

   Other features, like diagnostics, and automatic notes to the financial statements removed hundreds of repetitive and non-valued retyping and checking that is greatly prone to human error. This was not just a time saving thing, this also made staff happier at accounting firms (important as it leads to employee retention). And, it greatly increased the quality and consistency of the final output to the clients.

   Thus, two other two benefits I wanted to explore are around PEOPLE (the employees and clients of the accounting firm): 

   •Employees are more satisfied using Jazzit software 

   •The firms clients' are more satisfied because the firm uses Jazzit software

   The last benefits derive from knowing their clientbase is super happy with the product. This can be used

   to create peer-to-peer EVANGELISM:

   •Would you recommend Jazzit to your peers and what is your intent to renew?

   •How satisfied are you with overall product quality?

    

   Quantifying Marketing Benefit Statements through Customer Loyalty Research

    

   Customer Loyalty science is a great way to help drive product development as well as closing customer service gaps. It's also a great way to understand and quantify marketing benefits. 

   We carried the above benefit hypotheses into our customer loyalty research project.

   For this, we partnered with Dr. Bob Hayes, Ph.D. with http://www.businessoverbroadway.com. I call him "Dr. Bob."  I've written in MRWeb about using Dr. Bob's customer loyalty science in the mobile space and adapting the science for usability research products at Mob4Hire (http://www.mob4hire.com), and I continue to be impressed with how it applies to a variety of uses across industries.

   Dr. Bob has a most-excellent research service called “Customer Relationship Diagnostic.”  http://businessoverbroadway.com/services/customer-relationship-diagnostic  As he describes it, "The Customer Relationship Diagnostic (CRD) is a business intelligence solution that helps companies measure, improve and valuate the health of the customer relationship."  

   

   Some of benefit statements we wanted to quantify are already part of his science: "Would you recommend Jazzit to your peers and what is your intent to renew? How satisfied are you with overall product quality?" 

   To help personalize the recommendation data (for use on subsequent marketing collateral), we wanted to get some testimonials by asking the question: "If someone you knew was considering Jazzit, what would you say to them?"  Get permission -- make sure you ask the question: "May we use your response in our marketing materials," otherwise you'll need to go back and ask for permission individually after the fact before you use customer quotes publicly.

   We also added specific questions so we could quantify the other benefit statements. For example:

   "On a scale of 0 to 10, how much more efficient are you per year-end client engagement vs. your previous solution?"

   Dr. Bob explains: “Customers tell us the percent improvement they experienced as a result of using Jazzit solutions.”

   As it turns out, the customer base was MASSIVELY happy with their software. 98% of the customer base fell into the "satisfied" category of both recommending software to their peers and also intending to renew their annual contract. These were the highest scores we've ever seen in a customer base, and a testament to Jazzit's focus on listening to their customers over the years. 

   Tell It From The Mountain

    

   Of course, all of this research is useless unless prospects and customers actually see it. Don't get me started on companies doing research that they subsequently ignore for tactical purposes (and don't get Dr. Bob started on the uselessness of asking a bazillion different questions).

   We created some simple graphics as well as a "Customer Survey Results" .PDF "info sheet" that now serves as the foundation of our customer messaging. You can download the .PDF here.

   On our website, we tied it together a bit more. Using a list of "Top 10 Challenges of Accounting Firms" list found in a accountant trade publication, we mapped our features back to the benefit statements and also correlated them to the top 10 challenges; you can find this in our description of Jazzit Fundamentals.

   We’ve just started using this messaging, and it will be core to our branding for the next several business cycles.

   Debating the Results

   
   One of the data points, "Firms using Jazzit are 60% MORE efficient per client engagement vs. their previous solution" was up for considerable debate with the team as it seemed far more significant than we previously thought. 

   Here's the thing. When you ask your customers this type of data, they are the ones who are right. This is their perception of the marketing benefits, and perception is reality. The results could be suspect if we ran the survey ourselves (vs. internal product managers), so we used a 3rd party research firm to run it. By having an independent voice assessing these benefit statements we further validate the results in the eyes of our prospective target market.

   "Marketing = art + science" in a never-ending, cyclical journey of mapping product features and client benefits for the purpose of creating warmer leads. By both understanding "Why" you make a product and "How much" it means to the customers, you can build believable messaging to use throughout your online and offline marketing collateral.

   So, it’s time for you to:

    

   I hope this has sparked some thinking for you. Here's some tactical things you can take back to the office:

   • Re-align Messaging: Go back and review your marketing benefit statements; are they still aligned to your product’s features and value proposition?
   • Quantify Benefits: Ask customers to quantify marketing benefits of those features through a customer loyalty survey.
   • Spread the Word: Build marketing assets and campaigns around customer’s perception of benefits and share them with teams that create offline and online collateral, as well as distribute to support and online community management staff.

   Bookmark or Share this article