Stopping the Clock for your Customers: Stop Watch Marketing

One of my favorite things about having a blog is that I get access to some of the most amazing people to interview and to share with you.

This week's interview is no exception. I recently spent 30 or so minutes talking with John Rosen and AnnaMaria Turano of MCAWorks, and authors of the exciting new book Stop Watch Marketing. I met John and AnnaMaria at the 800 CEO-Read Author Pow-Wow in December, and I LOVED the concept of their book that they shared with me. I knew when the book came out I had to share the ideas with you, so here you are. I'll be posting the interview in audio form shortly so you can listen in.

For now, read and enjoy the written words from my conversation with John and AnnaMaria about Stopping the Clock for Your Customers!

Phil Gerbyshak: For those who don't know, please give me an overview of your backgrounds.

Stop Watch Marketing: John and I started working together at another consulting firm from 1999-2000. In 2002, we decided, along with John Hawkins who is another partner, that we could do our own thing along. We decided to write a book. In running the Consultancy, we called a meeting three years ago ago and said we have to do other things to market and build the firm, and to build intellectual capital. rather than calling clients and asking for more projects. Each partner (there are now five) took on a specific assignment. They all picked something beyond consulting to help build the firm. The one that Anna Marie and John picked was to get a book out there. We know there are a lot of things that we don't think are sufficiently addressed in the marketing world right now. We took that one on as a project.

The result is Stopwatch Marketing. It's basic premise is that Marketers (Managers, Vice President of Marketing, or small business people), are all charged with same thing, creating a sale. Marketers give insufficient importance to the importance and power and implications of the customers time. A lot of clients, we have found, really believed that the consumer hangs on every word in a 30 second commercial, or reading the print ad from beginning to end. We found ourselves constantly telling them that our research tells them that during the 30 second commercial, the consumer goes to the refrigerator to get a beer, and the Marketer is lucky to get 5 seconds across to them. Think about the “time” the target customer is willing to give you to sell them. Then we developed this image that had a lot of power with our clients. Think of every customer having, figuratively, a ticking stopwatch in the back of head, counting down to moment they actually decide to buy. Your role as Marketer is to either slow that ticking down so that you can capture their attention and make the sale, or speed up and stop it right then and there, and close sale. It is a complex issue. You have to figure what time segment you are going to work with, speed or slow down, so you can capitalize on the moment the customer decides to buy.

What Marketers fail to realize is the level of risk that the consumer is willing to take, or not willing to take, in any purchase decision. This is something that the book talks about. There are lots of decisions people make, having lunch, buying a soda, etc., that have a very small level of risk. On the other hand, it might be a decision they might have to live with a couple years, some for the rest of their lives. They could be buying furniture, painting walls of their home, or deciding on a college for their children. These decisions are of a higher level of risk, when there might be more thought put into it and Marketers need to realize how important this purchase decision is in someone's life.

PG: Why don't more companies do this?

SWM: Companies today know how to do the blocking and tackling of marketing so they have the P's C's, and everyone is embracing the idea of consumer centricity. But they are not going a level beyond, not thinking of their own time and consumers time. In a way, it is very self- centric thinking. As a Marketer, we know this, because we probably experienced that as well. You think about your product 24 hours a day 7 days a week. No consumer is ever giving that much thought and time to thinking about your product the same way as you, the Marketer, are. So you really need to flip your thinking, walk the walk of your customers life, how much time they are going to spend listening to messages, sifting though information, weighing purchase options and ultimately making a decision.

Flipping that thinking is so important, when you're thinking of anything, thinking of it from the other persons perspective instead your own. You know your message, customers don't know or care. Customers have no imperatives to care, unless it is something urgent and important to them at this point in time. Otherwise, customers have other things to do. An example in the book is replacing tires. We drive around three or four years, the last thing you think is that you need tires. When the moment comes you need them, it is deeply emotional, and highly urgent to the customer. Their thoughts may be that they don't know about tires, don't have time for this, and don't want to make a mistake. How am I going to do this ? The risk is two-fold: The customer doesn't want the wrong tires, or they don't want to feel like their next door neighbor got a better deal. More psychological than marketing research, people think in relative and competitive terms. It's not so much in an absolute sense, “Did I pay less for...” , rather, “Did I pay less than my neighbor”.

PG: Let's talk about marketing and customer service a bit more. Obviously customer service is often the “new” marketing. Let's talk about how important it is, how can Stopwatch Marketing work with the Customer Service department to really add value to the equation.

SWM: We talked with Whole Foods about Stopwatch, how a lot of times it's fast ticking. Customers don't have a lot of time or energy weighing the purchase decision. But sometimes they want to slow down the ticking. For some, shopping is recreation. But for most, going to grocery store is not. For most customers, it is usually dreadful, they want to get in, get out, and not feel like they've been “taken”. Whole Foods succeeds in slowing customers stopwatch, not just by product and merchandising, also by fantastic Customer Service. They have done a lot of training and incentives for employees. Employees go out pro-actively to see if customers need anything, to help you find them, and they will open a box for you to try, even if not being sampled that day. This encourages the customer to spend more time and money in the store. Every associate knows it's a great way to add to that Customer Service and marketing experience.

We talk a lot about Customer Service in the sense of Help Desk, and service after the sale of something. Important considerations there are that from a customer standpoint, it is often the usage of product, such as Laptops, and the relationship with the company after a purchase, which leads to true loyalty. Will we buy more Dell, etc? It all comes down to after sale service quality. If you are a calling Customer Service, and have a problem, your stopwatch is ticking very very fast. If your computer has problems, you are losing money and your stopwatch is ticking very very quickly. We found clients who emphasize only that “fast ticking”, and don't emphasize the overall quality of the experience. Basically they want the problem fixed professionally and intelligently. Dell is a very good example. They got very, very good a few years ago at handling their customers on the phone very quickly. They found that everyone was angry, they didn't feel they had been treated professionally and courteously, and they didn't feel the problem had been solved. This cost Della lot, and they made a big announcement about a year ago. They put in billions of dollars revamping and upgrading Customer Service, because for a company like that, loyalty after the purchase is how you get repeat purchases, for the rest of purchasers life. This builds the company. It is now how you fix the problem, and how you make people feel about fixing the problem. If you don't fix it often, they still feel valued and will get another one even if your brand is faulty. But they don't trust you forever! They will give a second chance, if you market them, and make them feel valued and feel like it is a quality experience. Everyone wants to feel unique in the sense that whomever they are dealing with in a Customer Service or business relationship understands their unique set of problems. It may indeed be something that we as Marketers have seen 50 times before, but the purchaser hasn't. That is their problem, and issue, and they need you to understand them and give a unique solution for their unique problems. If you do that, you've do a great job. Think of the companies that use technology to simulate, or do this.

Think about Amazon when we look for books: They have list of people who bought that book, plus what other purchases they have made. They use technology to show that they understand my unique issues, and respecting it. That is what Marketers need to do, respect the Customer. They have a certain schedule and you are on their schedule, they're not on yours. Make sure that follows through in your product development and marketing, and advertising. Focus on the customer.

PG: How do we implement Stopwatch Marketing in our own life? How can we make it more relevant to you and me as consumers, and as people?

SWM: As Marketers, we need to apply the Stopwatch Marketing principles. These gather information on how to better understand your Customer shopping style. A simple survey, asking questions, what kind of calls coming into the call center, etc., along with the complaints. We actually featured a Wine Seller, Discovery Wines, in the lower East Side of New York. They had their employees execute a one page survey to their Customer. There was so much information garnered by the 10 questions asked of consumers. This allowed us to figure out where does everyone fall, how much money and how much time they can spend in the store, then how you can use that to your advantage. After gathering this information, we decided on the ideal shopping style for that brand. We talk Recreational a lot. Recreation Shopping behavior is not the end all for every category or product, nor do we advocate that. The idea is to speed up the customer's Stopwatch, or slow it down. What makes sense for your brand for your unique proposition. Allocate resources to that pathway. Think of a pinball machine, the accelerators and brakes are marketing touch points. The consumer is the ball moving through machine, sometimes you want to bounce them around a bit more because they want to gather more info before they make a decision, other times will be brought right to the finish.

Applying Stopwatch Marketing can also improve our daily lives. Think of your interactions with all the humans you come into contact with every day, separate from the specifics of trying to market and close sales. If you keep thinking of it this way, people have ticking stopwatches to get through the day, and different levels of risk tolerance for the various interactions. My advice is, if dealing with spouse, child, or coworker, stop and think how much time they want to allot to this, and is it high or low risk situation and decision that you are asking them to confront. If you read literature on troubled kids or marriages, people always wonder why a simple discussion about where we were going on vacation blow up into huge fights. We would say that is because, to begin with, one partner didn't realize how risky it was, and, one of the parties didn't stop to think he/she wanted to take a little more time to talk about this and analyze and discuss it. Think of those two dimensions, risk and time, and think of that in your daily life. You will get a bit further. While it won't solve all problems, it goes a bit further in getting through the day.

What we loved about setting up the book was, it doesn't have just case studies, and theory. We also have real life application to it. We have shown where we applied it (the Wine Store), and we give the Marketer tools to use it Monday morning in their organization. It's not cocktail chatter, or an enjoyable read, to be read on an airplane. It also is something that is usable, almost a workbook. You can look at marketing strategies, looking at marketing budget, and allocation of their resource and their own time and money to do what is best for the consumer.

We did work very hard to have practical applications and “How To Do It” in the second half the book. The First half is descriptive, second pre-scriptive. We broke that up the “what do you do about it” section into two. One is, if you have a big budget, and separately if you don't. If you own a shoe store, or the wine store we talked about earlier, for $250.00 you can do some of this research, and get very good results. Things like laying out the store differently will drive up sales. One of the messages we don't understand, literally, why small businesses don't do a bit more market research. You don't have to spend millions, just ask Customer's as they are checking out, with as little as six quick questions. Examples are, “How much time did you plan before coming here, etc). Then start to apply StopWatch principles. The “How To's” work well in either small companies, or big companies. In addition, if you work for a big company, we lay out, in significant detail, and with a lot of math, how to help you align your marketing expenditures to the specific time segments of the process the Customer goes through before making a buying decision. You must align marketing spending with the importance of each step or tick in the Stopwatch. It is important to the buying decision for consumer. Car companies spend billions on things like TV advertising, not enough, in our opinion, in dealer training and experience in the dealer location, and the researchers said the dealer experience is critical!

To learn more about John Rosen and Anna Maria Turano, or our thoughts about the Stop Watch Marketing book, case studies, or praise in our blog, go to www.stopwatchmarketing.com and www.mcaworks.com. This gives more information on the type of work we do, results, successes, etc.

PG: Lastly, remember that risk and time, two little principles we all can put into practice today, and in our lives, and increase our profitability. Great takeaways!Thanks John and AnnaMaria for your time and for sharing your insights.

Friends: what do you think?

Does the theory of Stop Watch Marketing resonate with you?

What can you learn from John and AnnaMaria's principles?

How can YOU put them into practice?

Comments

[John Rosen]

Phil:

Thanks for the post and the time it took to put together the transcript, etc. I'll look forward to the next edition of "10 Ways to Make It Great!" That is, my stopwatch will always be ticking in anticipation of helping out on your next book.

John

[Book marketing newbie]

Yes, thanks for putting together the transcript of this interview. I really appreciate it. I would have to agree, you can't market a point-of-purchase type item the same as one that the customer values much more. Those need a different type of marketing. I think some companies are catching on to this, but this book looks like it gives a clear conscise picture of the way to market to the appropriate audience so that it is not wasted time.

[John Rosen]

Newbie:

Yes, indeed, marketers of point-of-purchase items have to think and act differently than thos selling items that the customer values much more. One of the key insights of our book is that the wise marketer has to think in the customer's terms all the time and that the customer is always changing his/her mind. That is, the value (we use the flipside term, "risk") the customer puts on any given purchase is situation-specific...on any given day or for any given purpose, the very same customer may place very different values on the purchase of, say, a book...even the very same title. If she's purchasing it as a personal, recreational, read-it-on-the-beach-this-summer item, she has a very different risk profile than if she is buyig it as a gift for her boss, spouse, or mother-in-law.