If you’re in the process of putting together marketing literature or sales sheets — then you’ve come to the right place.

You’ve done the hard work of putting together a product or service — and now it’s time to give your prospects and customers all the information that they will need to choose YOU instead of any other alternative.

Features – Capabilities – Benefits Defined

Before we get into the details of laying out the features, capabilities and benefits of your product, it’s a good idea to get on the same page about what distinguishes features from capabilities from benefits.

• Features -are actual items, buttons, widgets or functions of your product and service.  Features contain absolutely no emotion.  They are items such as fingerprint scanners or webcams on your computer.  If you’re dealing with software, a feature would be a function of the software or even a form or screen that’s part of the software.  If you sell a service, then the feature of your service is a task such as window cleaning or printing.
• Capabilities are what the features allow you to do.  A computer webcam allows you to see the other party.  Like features, capabilities aren’t emotional either.  They simply expand on the what the feature makes possible for the user.
• Benefits are all about emotions.  Web cams allow you to see the person you’re talking to, so that you can see them smile.  Benefits focus on the emotional payoff that we get by using the feature and experiencing the capabilities that it allows.

How to Use Features, Capabilities and Benefits to Build an Irresistible Offer

If you’re ready to get started, I’ve created a simple and FREE Feature and Benefit template that you can download to get you started.  It isn’t pretty, but it does the trick.  Let me explain the details of the spreadsheet here:

When you open the file, you’ll notice that there are two tabs at the bottom.  The first tab is called “Feature-Benefit” and it contains three columns (Features, Capabilities, Benefits).  All you have to do is list your features (one per row), then list the capabilities that this feature allows (you can have multiple capabilities per row).  Then in the third column list all the benefits that this feature and capability provide your customer (you can have multiple capabilities per row).

The second tab is named “Customer Want Table”  this is the feature-capabilities-benefits chart turned upside down and based on what your customer wants.

Customer wants are just that — using the voice of the customer, list all their wants (one per row).  For example, “I want my pizza to show up hot at my door in 30 minutes or less.”  Then in the second column list all the features that deliver the customer want.  Using our pizza example you might say “We have 10 locations in every zip code” or “We have 100 drivers in your town”.  These are all “features” that make it possible for a pizza to show up hot, at your door in 30 minutes or less.

Features-Capabilities and Benefits Build Competitive Advantage

When you take the time to list every feature that your product and service offers, match it to its capabilities and benefits and then go one step further and compare those items to the other alternatives competing for your customers’ attention — you will be amazed at the perspective that you will get.

You will find a new excitement and appreciation for your product and service that you may not have had before.  Another benefit is the added perspective that your sales people and customers will get as they learn more about what customers want and where the trade-offs are for customers as they explore alternatives in the market.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE FEATURE BENEFIT TEMPLATE HERE — Not pretty – but effective.

The days of Star Trek are finally here.  For your Friday entertainment, I ran across this fun article that goes over a list of 10 Star Trek Inspired devices that are in use today.

With so many new devices and applications hitting the streets at record speeds, you might be wondering how to put some of these new devices to marketing use.

In my latest OpenForum article, I discuss 6 Ways to Use Mobile Devices to get and keep customers.  Here’s a short list for you:

1. Generate a 2-dimensional QR code and engage your customers and contacts with coupons or incentives.
2. Get Paid.  There are apps for that.  I use a PayPal app on my Android device that does the trick nicely.
3. Run Surveys – Ask a Panel.  Surveys can be FUN !  Why not run your next survey using SurveySwipe mobile survey platform.  It’s super easy.  You can ask an existing panel to answer questions OR you can upload your customer list and create your own panel.
4. Customer Service.  Most CRM systems like SalesForce.com have customer service apps that will allow you to help your customers on site.  You can also create an app just for your customers and deliver service on the fly.
5. Education and Training.  YouTube is mobile – why not deliver demonstrations, training and education via mobile phone?
6. Advertising.  This one is obvious, but can get overwhelming because there are so many options.  Use text messaging with Fanminder, offer alerts so that your customers can receive specials and offers straight to their device.

Creative marketing can do one of two things for you. Either you can dig yourself into debt and go full force ahead while crossing your fingers, hoping that the return will pay that loan or you can stop worrying and stick to your guns with a low budget. Often times, we have big dreams and think that big dreams means big money. Stop worrying! I will let you in on my secret to powerful brand building on a skimpy budget.

Create a High Impact Brand Using a Marketing Theme

At the end of the day what you want to do is literally drive your customer to the store. Catchy phrases or jingles that we all recognize on television ads or simply a picture that is engraved into your market audience’s mind are all avenues to the store. Aligning your market theme with the vision of your company is a sure way to create a high impact brand. Depending on what type of business your theme could be for an entire year, each quarter, monthly or even from week to week.

• Step One: Design your theme

Your theme should be both specific and flexible. Your company’s vision will help you define what you are trying to portray to the audience. Keeping your theme flexible will allow you to move with the ever changing marketplace without giving the appearance that you are changing but rather a solid company with a solid product and/or service. As an example, when I see a Stagecoach I immediately think of Wells Fargo Bank. This stagecoach is a flexible brand and it can be driven in any direction that the bank would need to take to keep up with the financial industry. Now the stagecoach is only one part of the branding for Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo Bank has had different themes throughout the years.  Currently, their theme is “Together we’ll go far.” The theme is specific – they want to work with the customer to gain a purpose (that purpose would be defined individually by each customer). The theme is flexible – it allows each customer to determine where they are going together with Wells Fargo Bank.

• Step Two: Build you message

Take your theme and convey your message. What is it exactly that you are trying to convey to your market audience? You want them to know exactly how you can help them or why your product is the best product in the marketplace. “Together we’ll go far.” This conveys a very important principle in any kind of business transactions. Togetherness, you cannot create a service or a sale without both parties involved. This theme defines a customer service like no other – they want to work together with you. Again, you have to stay focused on your vision and portray that vision through your theme and that theme is part of building your brand.

• Step Three: Deliver your message

Now that you have defined and built a theme that will ensure to grab the attention of your audience you need to deliver that message. You don’t have to use the expensive television ads, newspaper ads or radio commercials. You can deliver your message through multiple inexpensive channels. The first place to start is your web site. Deck the halls of your web site to influence your browsers and leave an impression. Start a blog and add articles describing your product and/or service to ensure that you are getting your message through. You can use a specific type of writing called SEO which will force your article/blog to come up on search engines such as Google or Yahoo.  Your sales presentations should always evolve around your theme. Have you seen or heard of the power of social media? Take advantage of all trends with the public. Currently, social media is a big hit so utilize places like Twitter and Facebook. Create videos that could be uploaded to YouTube. The delivery of your message can be sent instantly to the whole world. Drive your message across multiple channels and you will see the difference on your bottom line.

Take these steps and flourish your brand recognition and influence the bottom line. You can stick to a healthy budget for your marketing campaign and see tremendous success. With the right theme and multiple delivery channels you will showcase your vision to the customer. Next thing you know they are picking up their keys driving to the store.

Every business loses customers.  We all like to think we won’t; we all like to think our businesses are amazing enough – and provide enough value – that we won’t lose any customers.

But the reality is – EVERY business does.

Sometimes it’s our fault – maybe one of our processes or systems didn’t work and a customer didn’t get the service or value they should have.  Sometimes their needs simply weren’t a good fit with what our business could provide (and in those cases, we probably didn’t do an adequate job qualifying them when they were still a prospect).  Sometimes their needs change and we can’t adequately help them anymore.  And sometimes – who knows?

When business owners are looking to improve their financial results, an often overlooked source of “new” customers are “old” customers who have left.  And it makes solid business sense to look to these customers.

After all, we know who they are, we usually have their contact information, and we know what they have bought from us in the past.

But before you rush into a full-on “customer reactivation campaign” and go contact all your old customers, wait.

Roll up your sleeves and do some analysis first.

What kind of analysis?

The most important one is to list your inactive customers along with the amount of business they did with you before they left.  Since inactive customers often become inactive over a period of time by slowly purchasing less and less from you, you should look at how much business they did with you each year for the last three years.

That way you can identify their true potential.  For example, an inactive customer may have purchased $1,000 of your products and services in the last year before they became inactive.  But they may have routinely purchased $5,000 in a year prior to that.

A customer like this would be a better reactivation target than one who spent $1,500 with you before they became inactive, but that’s all they ever spent in a year.

What you are looking for is the potential gain in revenue (and gross profit) you will likely realize by reactivating specific customers.

Another thing you should analyze for each inactive customer is how much of an investment they forced you to make in them.  For example, a customer who routinely purchased $3,000 of products and services from you before they became inactive may seem like a good reactivation target.  However, if they were slow to pay and therefore forced you to tie up capital, they may not be as good of a reactivation target as you first thought.

This is an important step in planning your reactivation efforts because the worst thing you can do is “win back” a bunch of inactive customers who will cause you to tie up excess capital.  That will actually cost you money rather than improve your financial results.  And even worse, they will do it because you asked them to.

Getting old customers back is often surprisingly easy.  You just need to ask.

But before you do ask them to come back, make sure you aren’t inviting people who will cause you repeat problems, and not add any profit to your business.

Sometimes old customers can be like vampires in some movies.  They won’t come in until you invite them – but once you do, they sink their fangs into you and suck the life from you.

Related articles

• What You Should Never DO or SAY to a Customer(diymarketers.com)
• Turn a Bad Customer Experience into a Good One(blogs.constantcontact.com)

When you first build your business, you vow to treat your customers like gold.  But before you know it, you get busy servicing customers and growing.  Then you start feeling the pressure.  And in this pressure, you start behaving in a way that you would never recognize.  It’s a slippery slope that starts with one small thing that doesn’t really matter and then grows into a bad habit that leads to poor customer service.

Check your behavior and and make sure that you’re not doing any of these customer killing behaviors.

1. Make them buy. The days of the pushy sales person have long been gone.  And if you’re still measuring sales performance on quantity (revenue) instead of quality (profit), then you are bound to get reluctant customers who cost money to integrate into your system and are often lost before they become truly profitable.
2. Set higher expectations than you can deliver. Studies show that expectations drive satisfaction results.  So if you set your customers’ expectations higher than you are able to deliver, they will be MORE dissatisfied than if their expectations were closer to the true experience.
3. Tell them what they want to hear.  This is another expectation issue.  Customers want to know what to expect; when will their product be delivered, when will the service guy show up, etc.  People are PLANNING their busy lives around your answer, and when you just tell them what they want to hear – and deliver something altogether different, this absolutely sends people through the roof.
4. Ignore them after the sale. Bringing on new customers is important, but loyal customers who refer do so because of their experience AFTER the sale.  There’s an old joke about a prospect that was sold on the pitch that hell would be nothing but a party – but when he showed up, saw the fire and brimstone and asked “What happened to the party?”  The response was “Yesterday you were the prospect, but today you’re the customer.”
5. Acting like a giant corporation when you’re a personal small business. Loyal customers feel like they have a relationship with the company.  When customers have the feeling that they can reach out and talk to the CEO whenever they want to (even though they rarely do it) it gives them a sense of closeness and loyalty.
6. Putting your policy about their service.  Rude and condescending tones can creep out in your communication – especially if you’re stressed.   Your customers probably aren’t as smart as you about the product or service that you sell – THAT’S WHY THEY BUY FROM YOU!  It’s that little bit of perspective that often gets lost – especially with industrial or technology products.
7. Nothing but Voicemail.  It’s getting more difficult to find people at their desk.  And today’s communication tools have increased expectations that when a customer calls, they expect a call back or a response ASAP.  Voicemail will NOT cut it anymore.
8. Not understanding what’s important in their application.  There’s nothing more frustrating to customers than feeling like they are talking into a black hole when they explain how they use your product and service in their application.

What are some of your Do’s and Don’t for powerful customer building relationships?

This article appeared on the AMEX Open Forum blog last week.   The idea for the article came out of my realizing that we spend a lot of time looking for creative ways to find and attract new customers, but often ignore doing the same thing with customers we already have.  We often get so busy servicing these customers, that we forget to treat them like opportunities.  And yet, this might actually be the easiest sales job EVER because they’ve already made the most difficult decision of all — to work with us in the first place.

Where are you spending more time; getting new customers or growing and expanding your relationship with the customers you already have?  If you’re like most companies, you’re probably spending more time and money looking for and wooing new customers than finding new opportunities within the customers you already have.

When the economy gets tough, everyone tends to go into survival mode and think that they don’t have enough customers, or that they need new customers to replace the business that they lost.    But the truth is that focusing on the customers you already have is your highest value strategy when times are tough.

If you’re afraid of losing a customer or just want to keep the customers you have loyal, here are some easy, low-cost strategies that will help you keep a customer today.

Calculate your customer net worth. The best way to inspire increase sales to existing customers is to see how much these customers have already contributed to your bottom line. The formula is actually simple: Take the total profit of your ideal customer  over the lifetime of your relationship.  Subtract all the costs associated with acquiring that customer.  That’s all there is to it.  If you’d like more detail, here’s a wonderful tool that you can use to see how much each of your ideal customers is worth.

Identify what’s most important to your customers. Focus on specific benefits that your customers are looking for such as 24/7 access to technical support instead of just service.  The best way to find out is to literally get on the phone or schedule a meeting with a handful of your best customers and simply ask them “What’s important to you when you’re buying what we’re selling?”  Then be quiet and let them just talk.  Listen for golden nuggets that may not have anything to do with WHAT you provide, but HOW you provide it.  That’s where real value lies.

Review the next customer letter you see and remove all elements of  “corporate-speak” from it. You can spot fake, empty and inauthentic language (corporate B.S.) from a mile away – so can your customer.  And they don’t like it.  Customers are drawn to real people who use plain and simple language.   Here’s how to test your document’s readability in Microsoft Word 2010: Click the File tab, and then click Options. Click Proofing. Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, make sure Check grammar with spelling is selected. Select Show readability statistics.

Get employees involved in building your brand and communicating with customers. Some companies shy away from having employees on Facebook while they are working.  But creating a social media presence and then actually encouraging employees to connect with customers and communicate with them via Blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is a terrific way to put a personal face and connection to your company.  Before you jump into this strategy, be sure to create a social media policy and clearly outline what’s acceptable and not acceptable.  Also be sure to create corporate identities for your employees i.e.  Scott Simon, the NPR personality’s Twitter ID is @nprscottsimon.

Create a “Key Account Plan” for a Critical Customer. The most profitable customers are the ones who purchase across your product and service offering.  Yet, many of us have customers who purchase one or two products or services – when they might actually have a need for (but not know about) the other products we have available.  A key account plan puts your focus on your customer and all the different ways that you can serve them – not just with products, but with other value added services.  Think of it as a marketing plan for that one target customer.  If you’re still in a bind, you can download this strategic account plan template here.

Offer an insane guarantee. BEFORE your customer starts threatening to go to a competitor, create and offer an insane guarantee.  Business owners are often afraid of offering guarantees because they think that they will lose money.  But if you’ve done the customer net worth calculation (tip #1) you will see that offering a risk-free guarantee costs NOTHING compared to what that customer has already contributed to your bottom line.

Give them the star treatment. Identify your key customers and create a “concierge” team to service their every need.  Have a member from key areas such as sales, marketing, service, production or technology serve as the customer concierge team.  Give them a broad latitude and freedom to get things done.  If this proves successful for you, think about making this an added service that other customer can subscribe to.  I know one company that added $2 million straight to their bottom line by using this strategy.

Create an advisory board. Instead of wondering what new products or services would most interest your customer – get them involved in the development process by inviting them to participate on an advisory board.  The investment in time and money in creating this engaged customer community will pay off in spades.  Create events where you educate your customer advisory board on industry trends and then ask them the questions that keep you wondering if there’s actually demand for your idea.  You can even keep these virtual with tools like GoTo Meeting that have chat screens, polls and the ability to create recorded sessions.

Monthly “Surprise Gift”. We’ve all heard of a book of the month club, how about a surprise of the month “gift” for your key customers.  I’m not necessarily talking about the kinds of gifts that get you in trouble – maybe it’s something like “This month’s order of widget “x” was on us!  Enjoy”  Again, if you look at your key customer’s net worth to your business, isn’t it better to spend your money on keeping them loyal than throwing your money away on hopes of gaining a new customer?  Reciprocity (along with quality and service) is a powerful loyalty tool.

LOVE them. When you love a hobby or another person you take an interest in what’s happening around them.  Do the same with your customers.  If you know that your customer contact is a fan of pink flamingoes and you see a postcard or figurine in a gift shop – pick it up and send it to them.  It says that you know who they are and you listen and care.  Do at least one nice, selfless thing for a customer because you love them.

This is a short list of 10 ways to keep customers.  But YOU’RE somebody’s customer too.  Why not take this opportunity to share what you’d want to see from the companies you do business with that would keep you loyal and get you singing their praises.

If you’re a reluctant sales rep like me, then you already know how much MORE FUN it is to sell more stuff to existing customers than it is to get out there and find new customers, make nicey-nice, get them to like and trust you, get them to actually consider using your product and finally get them to buy.

If you’re lucky, they made a good decision and were a good fit for your company, your product and the level of customer service you offer.

Not every customer is for everybody.

Joseph Jaffee’s latest book “Flip the Funnel” is my latest book review on Small Business Trends.  And it holds lots of lessons for DIYMarketers.

1. Focus on the customers you already have.
2. Set up a relationship retention process that engages them and encourages them to buy more of your stuff. (the more of your stuff a single customer buys, the more profit you make — it’s a good thing)
3. If you look at a piece of customer communication and it sounds “corporatey” and empty — it probably is.  It’s a good bet it will make your customer feel — NOTHING and give them a good reason to look elsewhere the next time they need what you sell.
4. Treating your customers like individuals will SET YOU APART and differentiate you from the competition and from other alternatives — remember — they aren’t do thing (go figure).
5. It will make work FUN.  Whoever said work wasn’t supposed to be fun and that’s why they call it work — died poor.  Building loyal profitable relationships with your customers (assuming they are a good profile fit for you) is FUN and will make your life and your employees life more fun.

“Flip the Funnel” is an entertaining read — but not necessarily an easy logical read.  Jaffe himself will tell you that he’s a bit ADD and jumps around and this is true.  However – it’s perfectly possible to read this book in small doses, take in the tidbits and pull out a few things that you will do differently.

As a DIYMarketer, you can’t afford to miss out on this relatively FREE strategy that sets you apart, builds business with customers you’ve already got and increases your level of fun at work.  Pick up your very own copy of “Flip the Funnel” and see what it does for you.

Calling and Connecting with Your Customer – Just Because

I’ve been on a soapbox of “loving your customer” for over a decade now.  It got rolls of laughter from the management teams of my manufacturing company employers.  Then somewhere around the late 90′s and the early 2000′s Fast Company wrote an article called “Love is the Killer App” and suddenly, loving your customer was hip and cool.

Well, loving your customer and working with people you love that love you back, has never gone out of style.  Legendary companies like Southwest Airlines,  L.L. Bean, and the Ritz Carlton have done it for decades because they know that getting and keeping great, profitable customers is how you consistently make lots of money.

So today, show your customers a little love.

5 mintue tasks that will make your customer LOVE you.

1. Call at least one client and customer per day – check in to say hello, ask how things are.  Just talk to them about what’s going on in their world.  Talk to them as a professional, share insights and trends.  You never know what might come out of it.
2. Send at least one client a card, note,article, cool tool or reference that you think they will find useful.

What if you could increase sales by simply setting yourself apart from the competition with some quantitative, relevent elements that your customer cares about?

In this series of posts, we’re taking on the challenge of doing exactly that – step-by-step.  In the first post, we simply got our arms around the fact that a competitive advantage was quantifiable and objective, not claimed by another competitor and NOT a cliche.

It’s clear that finding a competitive advantage is exactly that — a search.  Sometimes what sets you apart is clear and sometimes it requires a little digging and soul searching.  As I go through the “Creating Competitive Advantage” book by Jaynie L. Smith, It’s clear to me that this search is a kind of journey into facts, history and circumstance.

Here’s a competitive advantage by JTECH (the company responsible for those beepers you get at your restaurant that tells you that your order or table is ready).

“Of the fifty largest chains who use paging, 100% use JTECH”

JTECH was the first in this market, and so it’s no surprise that they can make this claim.  This competitive advantage is rooted in facts surrounding your customer base and your penetration of the market.

1. Are you the first in your market or industry to do something?
2. When you make a list of the leading customers in that industry, how many of them are on your customer list?
3. If you are first or your product is relatively new, your customers may have some fear around risk involved, think about alleviating this fear by saying something about who your customers are or their experience.

You can also look for your competitive advantage in one of three places:

1. Cost reduction (think Wal-Mart.  You’ve got to be better and cheaper and have the systems to pull it off – that’s a hard one.)
2. Technology.  If you’ve got something innovative that meets a customer need – search here.
3. Customer Intimacy.  There is a lot of opportunity here because the possibilities are endless – it all depends on who your customer is and what’s important to them.  Unless you obviously fall into the previous two categories, this is a great place to start.

In today’s competitive advantage statement – we focused on the customer (restaurants)  and what was important to them (getting more customers to tables so they don’t leave).  This is a great place for you to start as well.

1. Start your own list of what’s important to your customer.  Just brainstorm it and use real words that they might say themselves – remember cliches are a “no-no”.  Challenge yourself and make a list of the top 13 items that are important to your customer.
2. Using a simple online survey software (I prefer QuestionPro, but you might also like Survey Monkey) I would create blind survey and test for what’s really important to them.  A blind survey means that you use an outside party, run the research as “industry” research and see what’s really important to your customers and how they rate their alternatives.
3. Use this information to dig deeper into your internal facts and figures and see what you come up with.

How is this process working for you?  Have you found your competitive advantage?  How did you do it?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Cult Culture as Competitive Advantage (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)
• Strategic Marketing Datasheet (slideshare.net)

This week’s book review on Small Business Trends is on “Creating Competitive Advantage” by Jaynie L. Smith.   You can see a summary of the book review as a feature video as well.  It’s one thing to read the book, get the principles and think that it’s a great idea, it’s quite another to sit yourself down and start comping up with a real competitive advantage that you can use to actually increase your sales.

I’ve got the book and will be pulling concepts from it while we go through this, but I would encourage you to get a copy for yourself – it’s stellar.  Rather than simply creating a list of what to do, we’re going to start actually doing it over a series of posts and let’s see what we come up with!

Getting Your Brain Around Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage has three pre-requisites – otherwise it doesn’t count.

1. Must be objective.  This means that it’s a statement of fact; 3 locations, open 24 hours, etc.  If you think about it, it’s kind of like a “feature” of your business.
2. Must be quantitative. Specify how much, how many of anything you’ve got as a feature.  In the example above we made some specifics here are a few more: each service representative has at least 20 hours of training (specify what kind), your pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less or it’s free.
3. Not claimed by any other competitor.  This is where it gets tricky,  your competitive advantage could truly be something that no one else is doing OR it can be something that they are not claiming – or focusing on.  This gives you a lot of creativity.
4. No cliche. Stay away from empty phrases like “your solution provider.”

Start With a List

To get your brain bubbling take a moment and list as many “factual features” of your business.  Aim for a list of 49!

Here are a few areas to get you started:

• How would you respond to your customer when they ask “Why should I buy from you?”
• What’s most important to your customer when they are buying what you are selling?
• What features of your business give the customer what’s most important to them?
• In what ways does your business deliver what’s most important to your customer?

This is just a short list of thought starters – spend about 45 minutes on this exercise.

Stuck-Buster Ideas

Are you stuck on this?  That’s totally normal… here are a few brain-busters to get you started again.

• Draw a picture (stick figures are great) of your customer at the moment when their mind should be triggered to contact you.  What’s happening, where are they?  In what ways can you be “present” to remind them that there is a solution?
• Go outside for 10 minutes with a notebook.  Walk around and note the first thing you see.  Now make a list of all the ways that this item reminds you of the reason your customer chooses you.

Try this and let me know how you’re doing.

How did you discover or uncover your competitive advantage?