I have summarized four tips on getting along with customers

For a marketer , long vacations have many benefits. One of them is that it gives us time to think about issues that we don’t usually think about, such as - how should we get along with customers?

It is unrealistic to ask marketers to think about these things in their busy daily lives. It is as unrealistic as asking a woman not to go shopping on Double 11 but to write an 8,000-word online shopping report.

However, in my opinion, it is worthwhile to spend some time thinking about our relationship with our customers. This can reduce many troubles in daily work, relieve anxiety and stay away from those "useless work". Here are my 4 tips for your reference:

1. Consistent understanding of the partnership

Unless it is absolutely necessary, I seldom call my clients “clients” now, especially in person. I prefer to call them “partners” (the reason why I use the word “client” in this article is mainly for everyone’s intuitive understanding).

As a marketer, I always believe that language is powerful and an expression always corresponds to a cognition. In any case, referring to the partner as a “client” does not, in my opinion, help both parties to correctly understand their relationship.

Of course, much of this problem is due to the industry confusing the concepts of “customer” and “partner.” For example, for some highly standardized services, which are so standardized that they only require registration in the background and placing an order to purchase certain data, the platform will also call the buyer a "partner" (but no collaboration occurs in this process); on the other hand, we will summarize many things that require full collaboration at the insight, creativity, and execution levels as "serving customers" rather than "deep cooperation", which is actually unreasonable.

There is nothing wrong with realizing that Company A is your client (from a financial perspective), but calling it a client is a bit inappropriate (from a business perspective). The reason for this is that this kind of "expression" carries obvious "Party A thinking", implying the idea that "when we entrust things to Party B, it has little to do with ourselves, because we are the client, so the work should be done by Party B", which is probably still deeply rooted.

One thing that made me very happy recently was that a partner said to me:

“Through this project collaboration, our team members have also gained a greater sense of involvement. Now they are more likely to take work matters more as their own.”

Indeed, in this project, we started from the questionnaire design to the recruitment of personnel for focus group interviews; from analyzing the self-media that is most likely to reach the target audience to discussing 3 styles of visual identification schemes. Most of the time we work together in a fully collaborative state.

If we regard the role of a marketer as an image consultant, I think what we need to do is not to use our own standards to "dress up" the brand we serve, but to work with the brand to deeply explore and refine its "beauty", help the brand to do "Self-Discovery", and through this process, let every participant establish a complete and clear awareness and confidence in this "beauty".

2. Challenge your customers’ understanding of their needs

Of course, the name may only be the beginning of the mutual understanding between the two parties, and it is far from easy to truly achieve this. There is a particularly important step, which I think marketers must do before cooperation, which is to challenge their partners' understanding of their needs.

Simply put, from the early stages of a project negotiation, marketers must intervene in the "diagnosis" as "brand doctors." Being able to perceive what the "patient" "wants" is certainly helpful for communication, but in addition to this, marketers must be more aware of what the patient "should want." In other words, we must find out before signing a cooperation agreement whether the customer has a correct identification of his or her own "symptoms" (the actual problems faced by the brand)? Do we have a clear definition of the problem we are trying to solve?

For example, in the past some companies might describe their needs like this:

“I think our brand needs a new positioning now.”

At this point I would stop and ask:

"So what exactly do you mean by 'new positioning'?"

The other person might say:

"Oh, that's right. I think our brand is facing 'aging' and it's hard to attract those consumers born in the 1990s and 1995s. I think we need a brand new image and a brand new positioning to attract young people with strong purchasing power."

At this point, I will stick to his expression and try to summarize and define the customer's needs, such as -

"Oh, so your core demand is to solve the problem of brands attracting young consumers, is that right?"

If the other party says, "You can say that, but not completely," then it seems that our understanding of the needs is incomplete, and I should guide them again to make it clear; and if the other party answers, "Yes! That's it." Then I will take the issue deeper and discuss whether "new positioning" is the "remedy" for the "symptom" of "brand inability to attract young consumers"? for example--

"So would you prefer to turn your brand to young people and become a youth brand? Or would you rather attract young people as well as older consumers?"

If the other party’s answer is the former, then I would like to ask why we must do what you call a “new positioning” instead of launching a new brand for young people? (You should know that changing consumers’ perception of an old brand in a short period of time is at least 3 to 5 times more difficult than building awareness of a new brand in the same period of time).

If the other party’s answer is the latter, then I would like to know whether the existing products are also facing aging in terms of their core values ​​in attracting young people? Or is it that the product value has not aged, but only our image, or the way we express and interact in the new media environment has aged?

Is our problem that we don’t understand our target audience? Unclear about brand value? Dissatisfied with the brand image? Or is it the incompetence in brand communication? How widespread is the problem? How deep is it? Could there be other problems that we are not aware of?

I think that only by patiently and continuously asking good-intentioned questions or even questioning customers' needs can we get to the core of customers' needs more and more clearly, just like hammering nails into the ground in rock climbing or adjusting the focus bit by bit when taking a photo.

3. Tell your customers what you can’t do

When both parties have reached a consensus on "needs" and "solutions", the next step is for marketers to make clients have a clear understanding of their value (or the agency they represent). Although the following truth is simple, it is ignored by us again and again in reality - if customers cannot accurately identify your value, then no matter how hard you work or how much value you think you have created, it will be useless in the eyes of customers.

I think, instead of instilling a lot of information into customers before cooperation about what you can do, it is better to tell them more about what you don’t do or cannot do.

For instance, taking the above example, now whenever a client comes to me and says that he wants to do “brand positioning” or “repositioning”, after the aforementioned basic communication, I will always kindly tell the other party that I can’t actually do “positioning” for him, but if he is interested in trying the SDi (discovering brand value and building user awareness based on user insights) marketing method, I will be happy to continue discussing it with him.

Of course, I say this not because there is anything wrong or bad about "brand positioning", but because the underlying logic and specific methods of what I do for my clients are different from "positioning".

To use an analogy that may not be appropriate, it's like I really like to cook a dish called "Sweet and Sour Fish" that pleases me. If the customer thinks from the beginning that it is the "Braised Fish" he is familiar with, then of course there is nothing wrong with that. But if after my explanation, the customer still fails to recognize the difference between the two, still cannot appreciate the beauty of "Sweet and Sour Fish", and still thinks that "it's almost the same as Braised Fish", then out of a chef's love for his craft, I have to kindly suggest that he change restaurants.

In addition, I think that if the following situations occur during communication, we may need to carefully evaluate the necessity of cooperation again, and whether we should tactfully tell the other party that we "can't do it":

1. There are obvious differences in values ​​between the two parties, or the client's product (and way of doing things) makes us suspicious.
2. Clients either want us not to "disturb" their team and complete the work "independently"; or they want to be with us "every day" and regard us as part of the execution (in other words, they do not recognize that marketers' independent thinking and creativity are irreplaceable). Both situations are unacceptable in my opinion.
3. The client said: “Some of the issues you are aware of may be correct, but for various reasons, it is not convenient for us to change them immediately.”
4. Our clients’ demands on us are mainly to conduct so-called “ event marketing ” in the form of “witty comments”. Since this type of demand generally reflects the customer's awareness of marketing, it does not fundamentally think about "what value to create for whom" or is too eager to pursue short-term benefits, so it also needs to be viewed with caution.
5. Continuing from the previous point, the client said, “I think it’s not very meaningful to do a lot of insight research to understand user lifestyles, because we are very clear about the core value of our products and brands.” However, in actual communication, he was evasive and could not withstand questioning or scrutiny.
6. Our plan has to be discussed and confirmed by eight leaders from four departments, and then approved at every level before it can be implemented. However, they all have different interpretations and calculations of the needs.
7. Clients do not have genuine expectations for our creations, but rather it is more for "process needs"; in the final analysis, it is mainly to give the relevant business departments "something to do" and at the same time to demonstrate that they "do things with basis, logic, and method".

In general, your customer's perception of your value is, to a large extent, the information that you have intuited into his mind in advance.

By repeatedly reminding your customers of what you "should not do", the value of marketers can become clear in the minds of customers. This is like a sculptor's creation, which is not actually "carving" in essence, but constantly hammering on a complete piece of material, allowing the parts that do not belong to the sculpture to peel off bit by bit, so that a clear image is finally presented.

Although such an approach will certainly cause you to lose some clients, you will eventually find that only clients who conform to your values ​​and creative ideas in many aspects and can withstand your questioning or even rejection are more likely to become good partners that are beneficial to your business.

4. Professional and non-professional performance are equally important

“When humans think, God laughs.”

I have found that as marketers gain more skills and experience, sooner or later they will become more inclined to think of their careers from a “professional” perspective and believe that it is these professional skills that help them continue to win clients. This understanding is certainly not wrong, but it is incomplete.

Talking about this, I think of a similar phenomenon: I have observed that some brands always like to join in the marketing fun, chase hot topics, make up jokes, and release posters, and they keep tossing around with their products that are not very entertaining. To be honest, I think this kind of approach has little effect. Some of these brands still have good sales today. The more important reason may be that most consumers who will buy your products actually can't see them at all, and even if they do, they won't pay attention to your communications. Consider also that everyone's mature mind has the ability to proactively separate the connection between information we don't like and the brands we like. Based on this, stopping these "jobs" as soon as possible should help your brand sell better.

Back to the topic, the relationship between "professional" and "non-professional" is the same. If we overemphasize "professional ability" and neglect those "non-professional" things, it will inevitably make marketers mistakenly believe that the core of winning customers lies in professional ability. However, the fact is far from this. To make this clear, let us now go down to the most basic logic of SDi methodology - "building cognition" to explain it briefly:

SDi (marketing methods that explore innovative user value and create user awareness) believes that whether it is To B or To C business, the fundamental mission of marketing is to make customers (or consumers) recognize your value. But what is “cognition”? We believe that based on the human mental structure (the left and right hemispheres of the brain), we have "linguistic and logical knowledge" and "emotional and experiential knowledge" of a thing.

For To C business, our "value expression" must include these two points to achieve better results. For example, I recently noticed a beverage category called "smoothie" that sells fresh or frozen fruits in a puree. The word "snow" reminds people of the product form of the puree drink (logical knowledge), and the word "smoothie" activates a certain emotional experience of consumers (emotional knowledge).

The same is true for To B business, except that the way we build cognition is largely different from To C business. It relies less on public communication and more on personal behavior and industry reputation. Among them, the professional ability of marketers corresponds to the customer's "logical knowledge", and the personal image and interpersonal relationships of marketers correspond to the customer's "emotional knowledge"; in the final analysis, the logic of this one is just that simple.

Having been engaged in marketing for a few years, one of my experiences has been summarized as follows: If a brand cannot build good "emotional awareness" for both customers and consumers (especially women), it will also be difficult to build "logical awareness" and will ultimately be easily excluded from the minds of the target audience.

It is difficult to expect clients to recognize your professionalism in the short term. The attention to, understanding of different information and the mastery of different skills will always lead to us and our clients not being in the same context. The situation is like you who have watched "Westworld" for the second time to episode 7 and want to discuss the profound proposition of "awakening of consciousness" with friends who have just started watching episode 1.

On the contrary, at this stage, there are other details that will significantly affect the client's "emotional perception" of you, such as whether you are punctual for meetings; whether you dress appropriately to show your attention to the client; whether you remember the name of every client representative, even if one of them is an assistant who has just been in the business for half a year; whether you frequently check your phone during the communication with them, revealing a certain impatience; and when you meet for the first time, will you put the other party's business card on the table in the meeting room and forget to take it away when you leave, etc.

Before marketers hope that their clients recognize their professional abilities, it is always these small details that are easily overlooked that have an inestimable influence on our professional situations in the longer term; this means that before becoming a qualified marketer, we may first need to better understand and respect "people" and reflect this in our sincere attitude towards cooperation.

This is perhaps what people often say - "The real skill lies beyond poetry."

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