Net Promoter Score

Frederick F. Reichheld is a global authority on customer loyalty. He is also the father of a simple but powerful theory known as the Net Promoter Score. The theory states that if you ask a sample of your customers the one simple question “How likely is it that you would recommend our product, service or company to a friend or colleague?” you can calculate your net promoter score by finding the ratio between those customers who are promoters and those who are detractors.

Each customer is asked to respond to the question using a 0 to 10 rating scale, with 10 being “extremely likely to recommend” and 0 being “extremely unlikely to recommend.” Reichheld considers that those giving a rating of 9 or 10 are promoters, those with a rating of 7 or 8 are passively satisfied, and those with ratings from 0 to 6 to be detractors.

By subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, you arrive at your net promoter score. Based upon Reichheld’s research, companies with net promoter scores of 75 percent or higher are held in high esteem by their customers.

One question. Meaningful insights

Overall, the net promoter score can offer meaningful insights into how your marketplace feels about your business, product, concept, or content. By measuring audience attitudes in this way, you can evaluate your offering, your competition, and even new concepts.

The net promoter score is a useful way of determining both the relative strength and the execution of a concept, and it provides an indication of the concept’s word-of-mouth or viral potential. We recommend that participants in our Eureka program use it, among other things, to evaluate whether a social media strategy or concept has any real-world merit.

You can learn a lot by asking several hundred people who have been exposed to your concept: “Based on what you now know or have experienced, how likely would you be to recommend this product, service, company or concept to a friend or colleague?”

By asking just this one question and averaging the scores of a few hundred respondents, you can begin to determine the true potential of any concept. You can then refine and tweak your concept to better satisfy the needs and preferences of your marketplace. You can also position your concept to ensure that it appeals to their attitudes, values, and beliefs, and set expectations for doing future business.

Radical change

While easy to grasp, the Net Promoter Score metric represents a radical change in the way you manage your customer relationships and organise for growth. Rather than relying on customer satisfaction surveys that all too often are ineffective, you can use Net Promoter Score to evaluate and measure customer relationships as rigorously as you now measure profits.

You can also use it to hold employees accountable for treating customers right, and it clarifies the link between the quality of your customer relationships and your growth prospects.

How do companies measure up? According to Frederick Reichheld’s research, the average firm sputters along at an NPS efficiency of only 5 – 10%. In other words, promoters barely outnumber detractors. Even worse, many firms—and some entire industries—have negative Net Promoter Scores, which means that they are creating more detractors than promoters day in and day out.

Abysmal Net Promoter Scores like this explain why so many companies can’t deliver profitable, sustainable growth, no matter how aggressively they spend to acquire new business. Companies with the most efficient growth engines—companies such as Amazon, eBay, Harley-Davidson and Costco—operate at NPS efficiency ratings of 50 – 80%. So even they have room for improvement.

In concept, it’s just that simple. But obviously, a lot of hard work is needed to both ask the question in a manner that provides reliable, timely, and actionable data—and, of course, to learn how to improve your Net Promoter Score.

If you’ve used Net Promoter Scoring in your business, please comment on your experiences. If you haven’t used it, what do you think of the idea? Your comments and thoughts are welcome.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

A client who buys a hundred times is many times more valuable to you than someone who only ever buys from you once, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom.

As obvious as this should be, in most cases when someone carries out a business transaction for the first time the businesses concerned just wait passively for the next client to call or turn up instead of actively trying to set up an ongoing relationship to develop that untapped repeat business potential.

One of the best ways of increasing your transaction frequency is to program your clients to return again and again … and that doesn’t mean using hypnotism, manipulation or underhand practices!

Instead it is a powerful strategy that can be used in any business where clients obtain a significant benefit each time they do business with you, and on an ongoing basis.

Essentially it is the process of managing people’s expectations, anticipating and meeting their future needs in a systematic manner and giving them the leadership, education or guidance they need to achieve the best possible outcome or results from your product or service. It is also about providing a level of service that enhances their lives or wellbeing to a greater extent than that offered by your competitors and educating them to that fact.

Don’t assume that your clients will automatically know, appreciate and understand the finer points of what you do if you don’t explicitly tell them. If you educate them from their first transaction with you to fully understand what you do, how you do it, and why it’s more desirable for them to transact business with you on a continual basis, you’ll have made a good start.

That means that you must be able to quickly and lucidly present the best, the easiest, the most compelling and simplest to understand and appreciate case right at the moment of the initial sale, explaining why it’s in your client’s best long-term interest to continually seek out your products and services.

When you do that, your clients are much more likely to understand and appreciate the benefits you offer at a higher level than they do your competitors. This makes it many times more likely that they’ll come back to re-purchase from you more often. And they’ll also be much more receptive when you or your salespeople write to them, email them, call them or visit them.

Start by developing and testing different ways of articulating and demonstrating to your clients how and why they will benefit from your product or service on an on-going basis, and why it’s in their best interest to deal with you continually.

Once you’ve created a formula that works, develop the process to the point where it becomes a natural and automatic part of what everyone in your business says and does whenever a new client transacts business with you.

Then reinforce that message in everything you do; in the material you send out; when your product or service is delivered; with post purchase reassurance communications; at every point of contact with the client.

Your aim should be to help your clients, in a consultative manner, to develop a buying or usage strategy that both makes sense to them and helps them achieve the outcome they’re seeking.

If you know your clients and their consumption or usage patterns, you can paint a picture not only of the outcome they can expect from next transaction, but also what their ultimate outcome will be and why committing to an ongoing purchase strategy will be much more beneficial for them than a one-off, intermittent or ad-hoc deal.

If you don’t program them at the outset of the relationship, while they’re at the height of their enthusiasm curve, you’ll have to work much harder to achieve the same result later.

It definitely shouldn’t be a case of cross your fingers and hope it happens. Getting your clients to acknowledge the outcome they’re seeking and gaining their commitment to a series of actions that will give them the result they want should be an integral part of your selling process.

If each client is inclined to use your services just once or twice more a year as a result of this initial education, guess what? You’ve probably just increased your frequency of purchase and grown your business by a substantial margin.

To illustrate the point, let’s say you run a restaurant and a client initially comes in for just a cup of coffee. If you take a genuine interest in the client, strike up a meaningful conversation, and he or she enjoys the ambience and the personalities of your team, there’s a very good chance that they will come back for lunch or dinner.

If you then advise and guide them on the best menu choices and suggest things they might like to try, perhaps even offering to waive the charge if they don’t like your recommendation, there’s a good chance they’ll make the transition from a one-time static revenue source to someone who comes in with their friends at least once a month for dinner, and pushes the boat out when they do.

You’ll benefit from dramatically increased business, and your clients and their friends will have a memorable and enjoyable experience.

Dentists often program their patients to come back for checkups every six months. Getting patients to seek their services more frequently, and explaining why and how that benefits them not only improves their patients’ dental health, but also programs them to appreciate the importance of these checkups as a continual part of their ongoing life.

Programming clients can be done in other ways too. In industries like soft furnishings where buyers have to touch and feel product samples before they will buy, sales reps and agents normally visit retailers on a regular cycle to show-off the latest products.

But when stock from a supplier runs out, the buyers generally don’t replace it until the next time the rep or agent visits. Meanwhile they often fill the hole in their shelves by ordering similar products from a competitor whose sales reps just happen to call between the regular sales visits of the original company.

A soft furnishings importer and wholesaler overcame this problem very simply by instigating a simple ‘Priority Reorder Sheet’ that was faxed to the retailer at the start of each month. It listed the products they had specifically purchased the month before. It had a column that allowed them to mark-off how many of each item they wanted and gave a freefone number to which the order could be faxed back.

That simple example of programming made it easy for retailers to check their stock requirements and reorder. It worked really well. The soft furnishings company got masses of repeat orders they’d never had before. It was like having an extra salesperson that cost them nothing. It kept competitors products off the shelves and locked them out of the account. The retailers received a much better service. And it reduced the company’s costs of servicing their clients.

Implementing a simple strategy like this in your business means that instead of living from job to job and passively waiting for your client to call you, you have on-going business with zero additional sales and marketing costs. And it will give you nothing less than guaranteed future cash flow … which will also add significantly to the capital value of your business.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

Companies go from start-up to market leadership through the correct use of stories. By articulating everything you do in a compelling manner in the form of a story, you bring everything alive, you make the invisible visible, you enable everyone in your team to rapidly understand exactly what you’re about, and deliver your product, service or expertise in a better and more consistent manner.

Present your story to the right people in the right way, and they will intuitively embrace it, buy into it, develop a passion for what you do and pass your story on for you. And this will happen in a fraction of the time it would take to get your message across by any other means.

An Innocent Promise

In less than 10 years Innocent has become one of the best selling juice brands in the UK. As it now prepares to burst through the £100M turnover barrier, it has become one of the most feted brands in the UK. That success has been achieved, despite the expense of its products, more because of the story they tell on each bottle or carton than for any other reason. People pick up the bottle, read the story, and immediately buy into the brand’s values. Once they’ve done this they happily come back again and again, and pay a premium price for the privilege. Here’s a simple example taken from one of their bottles:

“An Innocent Promise: We promise that anything innocent will always taste good and do you good. We promise that we’ll never use concentrates, preservatives, or any weird stuff in our drinks. And we promise to eat our greens.”

Pret’s Passion Facts

Pret have always been brilliant at this, too. Their sandwich boxes, bottles, napkins, paper bags, coffee and soup cups … and anything else you might pick up and take away invariably tell a story. Bit by bit Pret’s values seep into your consciousness. And before you know it you’re buying from Pret in preference to anywhere else. Here are some examples of the many “Passion Facts” they use to educate you:

“Just roasted. Like bread, coffee beans go stale. Big coffee companies keep schtum about this. The truth is, after a couple of weeks the flavour goes out the window. Anyway, we get ‘Just Roasted’ beans delivered every day to every Pret. Coffee beans not used quickly go to the compost heap. We grind a generous 14 grams of ‘Just Roasted’ into every Pret cup. Our Barista Council is obsessive. Our milk is organic and has been for yonks.”

“Chop Chop. It takes three months to slice our vegetables. Sounds mad but that’s how long we train our people before they’re able to get chopping. This means they’re super-fast, scarily accurate and can spot a badly sliced vegetable at 500 paces. Only then are they let loose on the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.”

Stories like this succeed because they make the invisible visible. They capture the imagination of large and important audiences. They make a promise. They explicitly set out what you do, how you do things and why you do them. All of this engenders trust, one of the scarcest and most valuable resources in today’s world where no one trusts anyone.

Great stories allow readers to draw their own conclusions … resulting in a higher level of buy-in than would otherwise be the case. They also work fast. The reader is engaged the moment the story clicks into place. This often eliminates the need for twelve-page colour brochures or face-to-face meetings.

Great stories should be aimed at a specific group of people who are in the market right now for what you offer. If you have to water your story down to appeal to everyone, it will likely appeal to no one. Runaway hits like Innocent and Pret take off because the values they communicate in their stories match those of a small group who share the same passions—and that group then spreads the story.

The best stories fundamentally change the way the target audience experience your product, service or expertise. They don’t teach people anything new. Instead, they reinforce what the target audience already believes and makes that audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.

Schlitz Brewery

A classic story is that of the Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which in 1904 was caught up in a market share war with the other major US breweries.

All the breweries at that time were claiming superiority with headlines that emblazoned the word “PURE” across their ads. One would extol “PURE” in bold capitals. The next would take a double page spread and put “PURE” right across the two pages. They didn’t explain to the beer drinker what pure really meant, they just said “pure, pure, pure”. It was a market share battle going nowhere.

Schlitz, at number seven in the market, realised they had to bring in the best advertising advice to gain an edge. So they called on a brilliant copywriter called Claude Hopkins, famous for his ability to dig and delve into a client’s product and the market to find a compelling story to tell. His first request was to do a master brewing course.

They obliged, and showed him large rooms with double airlock doors and foot thick glass walls that kept the air inside pure. Inside he saw giant pulp filter towers filtering the purest of water over and over. He was shown how the water came, not from the nearby Lake Michigan … but from two specially constructed 5,000 foot deep artesian wells right on the shores of the lake. Even though the water back then was very clean, they had to go deep enough to find the right combination of water with the mineral content to make the best possible beer.

They took him to the laboratory and explained how they went through 1,200 separate experiments over five years to identify and develop the finest mother yeast cell that could produce the richest taste and flavour, and explained that every bottle of Schlitz beer came from cells grown from the mother yeast cell.

They showed him how they went through a process of distilling the water before they used it to brew the beer, where it was heated to five thousand degrees Fahrenheit and then cooled down and condensed, and they did that three times to make sure it was absolutely purified.

He saw bottles and vats being cleaned and sterilised by super-heated “live” steam, where they steamed each bottle at temperatures of sixteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit to kill all bacteria and all germs so that they could not possibly contaminate the rich taste of their beer.

Then they explained that every batch was aged for six months until thoroughly fermented, then tasted to make certain it was, in fact, pure and rich and at its very best before they’d bottle it and send it out of the door.

Hopkins became very excited. He went back to the Schlitz management to tell them he’d discovered the theme that would set them apart. Hopkins told them of his discoveries about the mother yeast cell, and the pulp filters, and the live steam and the 5,000 foot bore, and the foot thick glass walls …

Well … the Schlitz management just looked at him. “Why is that anything special?” they said, “ALL BEER IS MADE THIS WAY!” … “Yes!” Hopkins replied, “You know it, and now I know it, but no one in your industry explains that. The first person who tells that story and explains how and why you do something, will gain distinction and predominance in the marketplace from then on!”

So Hopkins wrote a wonderfully engaging full page ad, telling this fascinating account … all things that not merely CLAIMED purity … but perfectly articulated what “purity” WAS!

Schlitz became the first company who ever told the story of how their beer was made. It made the word “pure” take on a very different and much more dimensional and tangible meaning in the eyes, the minds and the palates of all beer drinkers around the country.

To cut a long story short … Hopkins’ ad caused a sensation. People who’d never consumed beer in their lives or let a drop of alcohol pass their lips were compelled to try Schlitz just to experience its purity. So many people changed to Schlitz as a result of that story that Schlitz soared from number seven in the market to equal number ONE in a matter of months. And it retained that number one position for nearly fifty years!

That’s how powerful your story can be.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

If you don’t have a compelling story to tell, one that explicitly sets out everything you do and how and why you do it—and very few businesses do by the way—then there’s a very good chance that everyone in your business will have a different response to a simple question like “why should I buy from you?” That’s because everyone probably sees and buys into your product, service or expertise in different ways.

If no two people inside your business can describe what you do in the same way, or if they can’t answer a question that everyone is likely to ask in the same way, or they don’t all see what you do in the same way, they’re singing from different song sheets, and you’ve got a problem.

It’s even worse when your clients or potential clients get different stories from different people they speak to. This sends out an inconsistent and confused message, and when clients or prospects are confused by the message, they simply go elsewhere.

Putting together the right “behind-the-scenes” story will allow everyone in your team to understand and communicate what you do from the same perspective. It will allow everyone to buy into your values and deliver according to those values. It will often promote passion for what you do. And it should form the basis for virtually every marketing message you’ll ever need to communicate.

What makes a good “behind-the-scenes” story?

It may only be ink on paper, but your story, properly constructed, has the power to do nothing less than transform people’s perception of your business. So let me now explain what makes a good “behind-the-scenes” story.

It should be addressed specifically to your prime target audience, and no one else, and must be compelling, interesting and engaging to them specifically.

Its primary aim is to give your prime target audience the clarity, understanding and motivation they need to desire, embrace, buy into and actively seek out your product, service or expertise … then act on it and keep coming back to you again and again.

This can be achieved by educating your readers about the benefits or outcomes of your product or service and anticipating and overcoming any concerns they might have about you or your industry.

And it is crucial to provide proof in support of your claims to give your audience peace of mind and eliminate any doubts they may have about your product or service.

Who should your story be aimed at?

Before you can write your story you must be very clear as to who and where your prime target audience is. There is no point in aiming at people on the fringe who may, someday, perhaps, possibly be interested in your product, service or expertise. That will just dissipate your energies to little or no effect.

Your story should therefore focus solely on satisfying the wants, needs and desires of your prime target audience. As such it must connect immediately, clearly, powerfully and directly to that audience, and to no one else.

Those people should immediately identify that they’ve found an important answer or outcome they’re seeking, backed up with as many tangible, compelling and meaningful reasons as possible as to why they’ll benefit if they move forward and do business with you.

How do you achieve the desired effect?

Your story’s first job is to grab the reader’s attention. The headline and opening copy should contain a specific benefit, promise or outcome that the reader greatly desires so that they have a compelling reason for reading on.

You therefore need to demonstrate awareness of your audience’s problems, needs or concerns and the outcomes they’re seeking. Believe it or not, hardly anyone wants to buy your product or service, whereas large numbers of people could be very interested in achieving the outcomes provided by your product, service or expertise.

The desired outcomes will vary enormously from one product or service to another, but could include some of the following: Results; solutions; benefits; answers; enhancements; improvements; reliability; time-saving; convenience; avoidance of pain; elimination of worry or fear; freedom; protection; safety; economy; pleasure; enjoyment; happiness; prestige; health; popularity; better appearance; more self-confidence; risk reduction; comfort; pride of ownership … or indeed many others.

Once you’ve got your readers’ attention your next task is to deepen their interest by packing your story with a continuous barrage of features, advantages and benefits. In doing so, you should never talk about the features of your product or service without mentioning the advantages and benefits as well.

Once you’ve gained your reader’s interest, your story needs to increase their desire. You do this by educating them about what you do on a far higher and deeper level than any of your competitors do. This requires you to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and anticipate and answer every possible objection to your product, service or industry. You need to overcome their concerns and show them exactly how they can achieve the outcomes they’re seeking.

You must lead your reader step by step through all the arguments for and against what you do and set out in explicit and compelling detail what you do, how you do it and why you do it at every point along the way to overcome each of their concerns.

As your target audience read your story they should be able to clearly visualise every step in the process until they can see themselves achieving their desired outcomes. It should therefore paint a word picture that takes the reader ahead into the future, helping them to experience everything about your product or service in their mind, before they experience it in reality.

What, how and why

You need to explain WHAT you do and HOW you do it: How you select your team members; how you and your team are trained or gained your experience; how your products or services are created; how you choose your suppliers or the components of your product or service; how your product or service performs more advantageously, beneficially or tangibly for your clients than the alternatives; how you share, appreciate and embrace your client’s vision; how you’re still there for your them after the transaction has been completed.

It’s just as important to explain WHY you do things in certain ways; why what you do is in your clients’ best interests; why your product or service performs better for the client; why your product or service is more appropriate, superior or desirable for your client than someone else’s; why your product or service is priced the way it is; why it will help the reader in their life or their business; why they should buy from or do business with you; why they should put their faith in your product, service or company; why they should act today.

It is also important to construct layer upon layer of comparable value, contrast and measurable ways in which readers can see the benefit, the intrinsic value and worth of your product or service.

The entire thrust of your story should be focused on your prospect’s interests. It should advise and guide them and provide meaningful recommendations, suggestions, counsel, direction and advice on everything they need to do to solve their problems and achieve the outcomes they’re seeking.

People need proof

Finally, and most importantly, your story should give its readers complete peace of mind. Every claim should be quantified and backed with proof, endorsements and testimonials. People are wary these days, and with good reason. Claims alone are not enough. They must be backed by solid proof. So you’d better provide it.

Create a story that does all of these things and use elements of it in every marketing activity you engage in and you’ll never be short of business as long as people are seeking the outcomes you can deliver.

Brought to you by Robert Clay - Visit Website

Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and want to be notified when other new articles come up, just click here. To get your free copy of Robert's well regarded book “Learn how to grow your business … in just two hours: An introduction to low risk/high-return marketing strategies that will help you transform your business”, click here. If you would like to share any of your personal experiences, observations or the results you’ve achieved using these or similar tips, please leave your comments and/or thoughts below. We always love to hear from you:

If you really want people to buy into your product, service or expertise, it is incredibly important to fully and deeply educate your prospects and clients about what you do, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom.

Updated Feb 2010: You have a story to tell in your business. And you need to tell it! If you really want people to buy into your product, service or expertise, it is incredibly important to fully and deeply educate your prospects and clients about what you do, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom.

I frequently come across people in business who claim very high success rates once they can get their prospects to meet them face to face; or visit them in their premises; or see how they operate; or to see their processes in action. Each of these situations represents a valuable education opportunity. When you educate your prospects and clients properly, it brings out the uniqueness of your business, sets you apart from all of your competitors and dramatically increases the chances that you’ll end up doing business together.

Unfortunately, each of these interactions can also consume massive amounts of time and resources. That means you’re limited by the number of prospects or clients you can handle. But that limitation no longer has to exist if you develop a compelling “behind the scenes” story for your business.

To illustrate the power of education that this represents, let’s say you read a compellingly written article in a magazine or newspaper like the Sunday Times. When you first spot the headline, you probably have no more than momentary or passing interest in the piece.

But let’s say the headline grabs your attention and, as you start reading, you learn about a fabulous travel destination. You may not even have been aware that the place existed and you’ve certainly never considered going there before. Prior to this article, you may have known little or nothing about the place, its people, culture, scenery, climate or magnificent buildings.

Yet, as you read the article, you’re more and more drawn to what you’re discovering. By the time you’ve read the article you want to visit the place. You may even be ready to book a trip right away.

The point is, do you believe it’s possible in a single reading of a well-written article to go from passing interest at most, to actually wanting to experience what the article describes?

I’ve asked that question hundreds of times, and ninety-nine percent of people tell me that a well-written article has that power. A single reading of a well written “behind-the-scenes” story like this can take people several rungs up the buying ladder in a single step, dramatically speeding up their decision-making process. And if it’s possible for mere ink on paper to have such a powerful effect, then why aren’t we all using that power every day in everything we do?

Critically important

That’s why a behind-the-scenes story can play such a critical part in your marketing success. In my experience every business has a story to tell. Yet less than one business in a thousand has ever developed such a story. But those that do are often catapulted from obscurity to market leadership in their field. For example:

One client, a 23-year-old entrepreneur operating a business from his spare bedroom, went to No.1 in Europe in his field within four years of developing his story.

After six years he won the national Ernst and Young Young Entrepreneur of the Year award (the previous winner was Stelios from easyJet). A year later he was mentioned in the Sunday Times Rich list for the first time. A year after that he sold a stake in his business to a private equity company, and pocketed £ millions. Three years later, in December 2007, his business was sold to another private equity company for £75 million. Today it is a well-known and highly respected brandname. But this would never have happened if we hadn’t helped him to put his “behind-the-scenes” together.

As a result of their story, another new client immediately won two contracts worth some £2.5 million in extra profits. In another example, the right story helped a new start-up business to achieve it’s first year’s objective in its first month of trading. In the next 8 years they went on to build a group with annual revenues of over £100M.

These stories should tell you that creating your “behind-the-scenes” story is critical to your marketing success. In fact it is so important that we always make this the very first task we undertake whenever we work with a new client.

Creating your story

We no longer offer one-to-one consulting, but when we did, we evolved an in-depth process for developing a world-class “behind-the-scenes” story.

The process would have started by getting the all of the key leaders in your business to respond to a long list of questions that provided an array of deep insights into your business; how your clients view it; who you compete with; what sets you apart from your competitors; who your ideal clients are; what concerns or issues the story need to address; where your biggest opportunities lay … and a variety of other factors.

The responses were then analysed and deconstructed virtually to a molecular level. An outline of the compelling story that needed to be told was then built up over a number of days. Along the way we would spot gaps in the story, or need further information so that we could elaborate on certain points. This would result in another long list of questions.

A comprehensive customer survey (and I mean really comprehensive) was then carried out to build a profile of your ideal clients; to understand their attitudes and perceptions of your products and services and your industry; to discover where you can (or do) add the most value; to measure how well you perform in many different areas; to establish how you can serve your clients better .. and a whole lot more. This exercise alone often produces hundreds or even thousands of pages of incredibly valuable data.

At the same time we would analyse your competitors using a combination of desk-based research, telephone calls and face-to-face visits. Many facets of your competitors’ businesses would be analysed including their product or service offering; their marketing messages; how they handle enquiries; their competence; their effectiveness; their strengths and weaknesses; and what, if anything, sets them apart.

The information assembled from these exercises was then used to create a 30-50-page brief for a professional copywriter who would have the task of creating an incredibly powerful “behind-the-scenes” story for your business. These stories would run anywhere from 20-70 pages, depending on the business. The finished stories were used as internal working documents, “master” stories, if you will, from which all subsequent marketing messages for that business were extracted and developed.

On the subject of copywriters, we found that most of them are not that good, and some are truly useless. But we would occasionally find ones who were really excellent, who would get the job done right first time, every time. Copywriters like that are rare. And worth their weight in gold. We used to keep copywriters like that very busy.

It normally takes many drafts to get the story right (fewer if you have a really good copywriter), and many more questions would undoubtedly arise as we picked up on points we particularly wanted to develop or emphasise. Once the job had been done to everyone’s satisfaction, it was tested in the marketplace. Feedback from those tests was then incorporated into the final draft.

What your story will do for you

Your story, once completed, will do nothing less than revolutionise the way that you, your team, and your prospective clients will perceive and understand your business. It will dramatically speed up your prospects’ decision making processes; your existing clients will do a lot more business with you … and it will give you a sound basis for dominating your marketplace.

Best of all, you can put your story to work in front of tens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people simultaneously. Without spending a lot of money. And the right story will produce far better results for you than you could ever achieve using any other method.

Creating a world-class story that produces results of this magnitude is no trivial task. It took years to develop the robust procedures we used to do this and it was quite normal to invest around 750 hours of our time whenever we did this for a client.

We now teach this process to the aspiring market leaders who participate in our invitation-only Eureka program. We also recommend selected third parties who can provide one-to-one help with this process, as appropriate.

If this seems like a lot of work, it is. If you’re bothered by that, you should know that it’s quite possible to craft a decent story with a fraction of this effort. But the result is unlikely to be anything like the 20-70 page world-class story that emerges from this process, and which has been the catalyst for many businesses to emerge as market leaders in their niche.

So do you tell your story? What do you say? Have you articulated it in writing? Where and how do you use it? What’s your experience when you do? We’d be very interested in your thoughts, feedback and experiences.

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Robert Clay is an entrepreneur and marketer who has been growing businesses since age 19. He has studied and mastered more than 200 of the world’s most successful marketing strategies, building-up an unprecedented 1.8 million page knowledgebase. For a decade he conducted an experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, and has now launched an extraordinary new program that helps aspiring market leaders to create breakthrough marketing results.

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