Landscape Digital Show

Episode 80 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to build meaningful customer relationships and transformative experiences.

Getting to the heart of customer relationships starts with understanding and then ultimately discovering what really makes them tick. It requires listening and having consistently meaningful conversations.

Not much of this may be new to you, but ask yourself if you need to hear it again? We all do. We're human beings and that's what makes customer relationships such a slippery slope and an amazing opportunity at the same time.

Every day we need to be thinking about what we can and should be doing next for our customers because somebody else just may we waiting to take our place. And they may be smarter, faster, younger and tech-savvy, or more experienced and wiser.

Most of us have been in business for a while and the one thing that is on our side is the skills we have developed over years of serving customers, making them happy, occasionally letting them down, and yes, sometimes even irritating them.

Everyone eventually makes a mistake, it s part of life and that's why it's vital to get so close to the customer that they not only know, like, and trust but love us so much that they give us the opportunity to make things right.

3 Pillars of The Customer Experience

Getting and never squandering the opportunity to serve and make things right in my mind is what it means to truly get to the heart of customer relationships. Here s my model for making it happen.

• Business is personal
• Selling is collaborative
• Customers are community

Let's break down these 3 pillars or principles because they are the foundation of relationship selling, that process of working with customers to ensure they not only get what they need and want but ideally more than they expected. That is the goal in my mind – taking people to a better place than they had imagined was even possible.

It starts with being personal because no matter if your business is B2B or B2C you are working with people. That fact should guide your efforts in so many ways. It should give you clues about personalizing your messaging so that your customers feel that you have customized everything just for them.

The trick is designing a customer experience for your ideal customers that also adapts to each and every one of them. That can be a monster undertaking, but the payoff is equally massive.

Steve Jobs said this when confronted by an audience member that challenged him on a product release that some thought was not ready for the market.

"You have to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? If mistakes are made it means decisions are being made and that's good. Support customers and learn from the mistakes. Some will be unhappy, but it's a proven way of getting there."

Your approach should ideally be a collaborative process that brings together everything the customer knows, fears, and aspires to achieve by tapping into your years of business experience and the expertise and wisdom that you have acquired along the way.

Bigger Customer Experiences are Transformative

Now, this is where things get a little tricky.

How does a business organize its expertise and experience? I believe the most reliable way is with stories that capture people's imagination and affect change. Stories can be transformative, and isn't that what we are trying to do for our customers with the work that we do?

I'm hoping to get you to think bigger, to imagine your customers' needs at a higher level than just the work they hired you to do. What do they want out of their lives, to be happier, fulfilled, accomplished, safe, secure, confident? Whatever that is it admittedly is hard to nail down, but there are ways.

That said, for all of these methods to work everything must be written down.

If you cannot commit to writing the value of the experience your business delivers to its customers then you do not know it with sufficient clarity.

An excellent starting point is writing buyer personas to create a laser focus on who is being served, and how, and why and so on. Once that ideal buyer persona is created it gives clues to the buyer s journey, including what those buyers are experiencing at an emotional level. That is, what he or she is thinking, seeing, feeling and doing.

I know this may seem a little touchy-feely and it is, but there is a reason for that. By starting with the feelings you have a much better handle on what to do at a practical level to make that transformation happen.

For example, at some point, a contract has to be signed. When should that happen, where should it happen, and what do you want the buyer to feel when it does?

It s essential for every business to understand what's going on when deals are made with people because they are investing in a relationship with your business. Some are putting their jobs on the line. In other words, just as you are taking risks, so are they.

If the buyer's journey is the ideal or big goal, then the machinery that predictably makes it a reality is everything that guides that customer experience, including marketing, sales, production, and service.

And the fuel that drives that machinery is the stories that give it meaning and purpose.

The perfect customer experience is 100% purposeful. There should be a reason for everything and it should all work together perfectly, which of course it doesn't because people are people.

Most important is trying to make it work (as Steve Jobs noted) because that s how you remove buying obstacles by answering questions, solving problems, and hopefully inspiring your customers to work with you.

When you start seeing the world through the lens of customer relationships it expands and grows. That's what makes relationships the holy grail of business growth.

Get close to your customers. Write everything down and persevere to make it all better while respecting the 3 pillars of personalization, collaboration, and community.

If you can do that you'll find everything falling into place soon enough, and most likely long before your competitors.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is making the commitment to getting to the heart of customer relationships by designing your process — and committing it to writing — for understanding and then ultimately discovering what really makes them tick.

If you take the time to do this now you'll have a roadmap for making sustainable growth in 2018 and beyond!

The post Getting To The Heart of Customer Relationships appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 79 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to build a relationship selling narrative that attracts and retains customers.

Have you ever noticed that some people always answer a question with a story?

For some of us, storytelling is part of our DNA because we learned at a young age that a compelling story is arguably the best way to sell an idea.

For me personally, growing up with three brothers was the perfect storytelling training. When put to the test you quickly learn that telling the truth works better when it s backed with a compelling story.

While a handful of people may be natural storytellers, most of us struggle with exactly how to convey information in meaningful ways, especially when the circumstances are unexpected.

What s needed is a structure that will stand up to the demands of any situation, including what buyers want to know that they believe will help them solve their problem.

This is why relationship selling requires a sales process that is supported by a narrative structure, a series of stories that collectively become a purposeful, global story, like a novel, film, or non-fiction documentary.

Your global story is your value proposition. The sequence of stories that support it give prospective buyers what they need, where they need it, and at the right time. In my landscaping business, we knew that early in the relationship we had to tackle tough issues like design fees, budgets, and timelines.

If we failed in that conversation it was all over. Thus, the first true challenge was to get the buyer to know, like and trust us and our business. How exactly does that work?

Most of us have learned to start by asking good questions and listening, but at some point in that conversation, you need a story that hooks them so that they are dying to know what happens next.

That's where the relationship selling narrative begins.

The Classic Storytelling Structure

Buyers are hungry for information because they want to make the best decision for their particular situation. Yet even in our data-driven world facts and figures will fall short if there is not a persuasive story that validates why that data matters.

Before I started writing this article I pulled out a legal pad and divided the page into three equal sections that represent the beginning, middle, and end of the article. Probably the greatest value of this planning and organization method is that it gets you thinking in terms of where your ideas will work best.

Last night I was watching the film Adaptation that profiles Robert McKee s legendary storytelling methods. One of the points he emphatically made to the aspiring screenwriter played by Nicolas Cage is there has to be change!

For characters to be changed there has to be a progression and that is a function of time. This is why every story has a distinct beginning, middle, and ending, and yours should too. It s a classic structure that has been used for centuries.

Here s a modernized version.

Beginning Hook – For a story to work it has to hook the audience in a way that has them wanting to discover how it turns out.

Middle Build – Taking action involves risk and that's what builds in the middle of your story. There is drama and suspense that raises the stakes and the risk of taking action.

Ending Payoff – Did the risk pay off? That's the resolution of the conflicted emotions that build in the middle of the story, and it often happens in unexpected ways.

It's helpful for you to know that every story is comprised of beats, scenes, sequences, and acts. It's not important to know what these are, other than pieces of a story that move it forward.

Your story may have three acts, one for the beginning, middle, and ending, or like most novels, it may have over a dozen acts. But what s an act?

Acts are major changes in the story that are comprised of beats, scenes, and sequences, which are smaller elements of change. They all build on each other to create greater change.

The important changes or acts in your sales process may be signing a contract, mobilizing for the work, and getting paid. You ll intuitively figure out how to spark those changes that get buyers taking action on mutually beneficial objectives.

Everything Supports the Global Story

One of the reasons it is so difficult to answer the networking question, "What do you do? is that the best response is telling your global business story, which would be a massive undertaking.

In fact, most of us often reply with something like, Wow, where should I start? Now, you know at the beginning.

A smart approach is to define that beginning within a much narrower context, like what you are working on right now. That s what will easily get the conversation started.

This is exactly what you want to do in selling situations to engage prospective buyers or customers. Your larger narrative is the global or brand story that is at the heart of all of your marketing, but that can be too much for most people to digest.

Try this. Start with the most relevant story and wait for the response. Then follow it with another that is equally meaningful and that gives it further context, and so on, with all of it relating back to your brand story.

It isn't necessary to understand everything about storytelling to build a customer-focused relationship selling narrative. More important is to understand the big picture, your brand story, and how a collection of supporting stories build it, including those that may be 140 characters or less.

Show Notes

• If you would like more on this, check out The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne
• The ideas I've shared here are a portion of my most popular speaking program: Relationship Selling in The Trust Economy. I'll be presenting it in the coming months at a number of events, including LANDSCAPES 2017 . Hope to see you there!
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to get clear about your brand. Then get busy using your website, social media, and email marketing to tell that story with a narrative of stories from your years of helping customers every day.

In an earlier episode of Landscape Digital Show, we discussed the editorial calendar. You may wish to review that to learn how to use it to keep topic ideas ready to test new stories when they come along. them.

The post Relationship Selling: Building a Customer Focused Narrative appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 78 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how a meaningful relationship selling narrative attracts and retains customers.

One of my longtime landscaping clients helped me understand the dynamics of relationship selling with a very simple question.

"What's Next," he asked, after a walk-through of a recently completed project.

My response may not have been the most thoughtful, but it was accurate.

"What do you mean what's next, we're done," I replied.

"You don't get it do you," he asked?

"I guess not. Help me out, I said.

My customer proceeded to remind me that years ago when our relationship began, his primary goal was to create a showplace that not only he and his family could enjoy, but also his friends and neighbors.

It was apparent I was standing in the way of that vision because I had viewed our interactions as a series of business transactions, as opposed to a relationship a business has with one of its customers.

That experience dramatically altered my view of selling. And I hope it has the same impact for you because embedded within that understanding is not only the secret to relationship selling, but clues for using email marketing, social media, video, websites, and just about every tool we have available to make it better.

Tell Better Stories

I've never been comfortable with the term upselling because it tends to focus on the stuff, the products and services, sometimes to the detriment of the relationship. This is one aspect of what my customer was trying to convey to me.

If you have to upsell a customer doesn't it suggest that you didn't get it right the first time? I believe it does and that has shaped my relationship selling model.

#1. Buying is personal #2. Selling is collaborative #3. Customers are community

To have relationships with customers you have to personally get to know them. Then capture that data with buyer personas that inform your future actions with your customers, that is, who they are, where to find them, keywords and phrases that resonate with them, and so on.

Selling is a collaborative activity or should be, regardless of whether of whether the communication channel is digital or personal. This collaboration is another source of valuable information, especially stories that illustrate why customers choose to work with your business.

Our brains are wired to make sense of the world. We search for stories that provide meaning by getting to what every buyer wants to know, and that's why. Why you, why this product, why this price, why now, etc.

Most customer decision-making criteria are stepping stones to a universal question of trust: Why should I consider or stay in a relationship with this company?

This is a question that every business must answer again and again because it is one that comes up not just at the beginning of the relationship, but whenever there are communication gaps. As you know, communication gaps nowadays are any failure to respond to customers or proactively keep them informed.

Thus, relationship selling has a lot in common with content marketing: Consistently creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience, and ultimately, to drive profitable customer actions.

Today I was thinking about the many apps that I depend on. Every single one of those companies has a direct channel to communicate with me due to my having downloaded their paid or free app. If I were them and I would be using that channel to ask questions like these.

How are you using our product? Have you downloaded the most recent update to get this cool feature? Is there anything you need to know that we can address?

Since most of them rarely if ever contact me, other than to upsell me to a higher version, I have no other choice but to conclude they are concerned about profits above my business or personal well-being.

Like most consumers that don t have a choice, I plan to stick around with these companies until something better comes along. Thus, your relationship selling mantra probably should be: Communicate now or lose them forever.

Build Your Relationship Selling Narrative

As we know, customers share stories about their experiences with friends and neighbors, but that s not where it starts. Before customers become customers they tell themselves a story that justifies their decision.

Actually, it's not one story but many. This explains why relationship selling is ideally a collaborative process that progressively achieves alignment, one story at a time. Throughout the experience of working together, the buyer discovers little pieces of meaning that either further or stop the process.

That said, remember that communication gaps can also stop the process.

When a buyer says, Let me think about it, that is indicative of a gap that is in need of the right story to come to its rescue.

Your website and media are outstanding places to practice and record your stories. Get your sales and support team involved in this content marketing exercise too. Then do the hard work of organizing those stories so that they can be used in the right places and times throughout the buying or customer experience.

Your customers are a community that has self-selected by nature of their purchase behavior. Like members of a club, they tend to share similar lifestyles, challenges, and aspirations. Therefore, a story that resonates with them will tend to attract more valued customers just like them.

Show Notes

• If you would like more on this, check out my book: Built-In Social. You can buy it or download the introduction and first chapter for free.
• The ideas I've shared here are a portion of my most popular speaking program: Relationship Selling in The Trust Economy. I'll be presenting it in the coming months at a number of events, including LANDSCAPES 2017 . Hope to see you there!
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

Like my customer, I am hoping you are wondering what's next.

Build your plan for telling better stories that further the relationship selling narrative because that conversation gets and keeps customers invested in the relationship by either informing or reminding them why it matters.

The post Relationship Selling in The Trust Economy appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 77 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to reach any goal with deliberate practice that becomes self-teaching and coaching.

In her bestselling book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, psychologist and professor Angela Duckworth provides evidence that more than talent and skill, it s gritty, deliberate practice that predictably leads to the accomplishment of goals.

For this to happen, she cites four conditions that must be met.

#1. A stretch goal #2. Concentration and effort #3. Immediate feedback #4. Repetition, reflection, and refinement

My personal experience training months for a marathon backs this up and clarifies grit to be a blend of physical and mental practice.

While I have once previously completed a marathon, that was over 30 years ago. Nevertheless, my results from my current marathon training have been surprising, even to me, and I believe the method can be replicated to reach any goal.

Assuming you are committed to your goal and are consistently doing the work, you are already fulfilling most of the conditions that define grit. You only need a reliable feedback mechanism for getting better. This is key.

If you read no further than the following heading you will discover one of the secrets of deliberate practice for reaching any goal. Of course, if you would also like to discover the complementary component that truly makes it work, you will want to read further.

Physical Practice is Self-Teaching

When a scientist enters the laboratory, he or she follows a disciplined process for making new discoveries. Variables are tested and the results recorded and analyzed. It s one experiment, trial and error, after another.

The act of recording is much more than documentation. It creates awareness that leads to progress when action is taken to solve problems that stand in the way of you and your goal.

In my opinion, this is the secret to achieving goals.

More than practicing you have to test the boundaries that are holding you back.

Here s an example of how solving one small obstacle led to massive progress toward my goal of running another marathon at age 60.

In the early days of my training, I experienced a recurring injury that shut my training down completely. This was troubling because two weeks later I was scheduled to participate in a memorial race honoring the legacy of my high school track coach.

Not being able to even walk without pain, I considered canceling. Then I researched injuries and made a remarkable discovery from a book on the anatomy and mechanics of running.

It turns out I was doing everything wrong. Who knew that we needed to be taught how to run? Actually, most of us need to unlearn habits that we ve acquired from well-meaning people, including high school track coaches.

There is indeed a great deal of science behind running that I was completely unaware of. While the details are beyond the scope of this discussion, I ll only say that nearly all of it is counterintuitive, such as using your legs as little as possible and shortening your stride to go faster.

What I learned from that book was rigorously tested in my training and the results recorded. That simple process of recording is a personal conversation that leads to progress, provided every condition you encounter is thoughtfully considered as a teaching moment.

Mental Practice is Self-Coaching

In addition to recording logical training data like pace, mileage and weather conditions, my running log is mostly an ongoing conversation of scientific experimentation. For example, after learning that a shorter stride and quicker cadence results in less fatigue and fewer injuries, I began testing it.

It was months before I was finally able to support the hypothesis. Part of the challenge was actually learning how to consistently and comfortably increase my running cadence (steps per minute). Then one evening it all seemed to magically come together, and that was a beautiful moment.

You don't have to be a scientist to put scientific experimentation and deliberate practice to work in your personal life or business. More important is committing to a goal that you care deeply about and recording your progress, while always seeking solutions by doing research and more testing.

One particularly surprising discovery I made is that I often run faster into the wind, which clearly doesn't make sense. I've reasoned this it is due to the cooling effect, which is part physical and part psychological.

This brings us to the power or mental practice. They say the mind leads the body. Actually, the two work together. I ve also learned that mental fatigue is to be taken seriously because it compromises physical performance.

As a business leader, your words directly influence the minds of your team and that means they affect their physical productivity. Have you considered how useful it would be to understand what your people are thinking and feeling on any given day?

Businesses tend to track physical inputs and outputs, such as the man-hours necessary to complete a job. I believe it would also be helpful if each team member personally recorded his or her daily thoughts in a journal. This practice becomes valuable self-coaching that gets the wheels turning about how to make the next day better.

Those ideas can be tested when similar circumstances are encountered. Until that time the mind is actively working on crafting new solutions. Just staying the course with deliberate physical and mental practice and daily recording will get you there.

Show Notes

• If you happen to be a runner, the following books were my faithful companions on the way to achieving my goal, which is still in front of me. You may hear more about that outcome in a future episode.

** Anatomy for Runners: Unlocking Your Athletic Potential for Health, Speed, and Injury Prevention, by Jay Dicharry, MPT, SCS ** Chi Running: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running, by Danny Dreyer and Katherine Dreyer. ** What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to apply deliberate physical and mental practice toward the achievement of important personal and business goals.

I d love to hear about your progress.

The post How to Reach Any Goal with Deliberate Practice appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 76 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to sell more products by finding and closing gaps in your marketing systems.

When you approach marketing as a system everything gets easier because it gives you a basis for evaluating possibilities, such as what to leave in and what to leave out.

Choices have to be made and less is usually more. Less complexity leads to more predictable results.

One of the challenges for companies that learned to succeed with traditional marketing and selling systems is being relevant for digital savvy consumers. However, regardless of the methods used, everything still comes down to a simple three part formula:

#1. Get people's attention #2. Interact with people #3. Sell products that add value to people's lives

If there are any gaps in that equation business growth is compromised. All marketing systems must balance attraction with engagement, and they must seamlessly integrate with selling systems that bring home the profits that sustain the company and its growth.

#1. Get People's Attention

Advertising is how businesses have traditionally introduced or reminded people about them and the products they sell. Now social media is the new advertising, and that's certainly how many companies try to use it.

However, anyone that has tried to use social media for product awareness understands it s a different animal than advertising. Not only do you have to choose from the many social media channels, but also how to use them well. You must have a strategy that goes beyond basic awareness because that's not nearly enough anymore.

Your strategy to get attention might include humor, entertainment, education, news, or humanity. The trick is deciding on the story you want to tell and making choices about how to use one or several channels to consistently do that.

Whether the media is free or carries a price-tag, the true cost is what it takes to get people's attention. If you cannot accomplish that then your business will always be challenged with lead generation. Study what works for others, then test those methods and track your results to discover what works for you.

#2. Interact with People

Interaction is a two-way street, and that is why it's best to get permission to do so. Fortunately, social media typically takes care of this for you by managing friend requests and the like.

Although, more powerful than social media for interaction is email because it is targeted and gives you greater control. However, as a business, you still have to get people's permission to send them emails. That's why we call email marketing permission marketing.

The flip side of email marketing is that people will unsubscribe if the interaction does not give them the value they had hoped for. Thus, if your list is not growing you need to change your approach.

As long as that list is growing you shouldn't worry about unsubscribes. You only want people on your list that want to receive communications from you, because if they are not, the likelihood of them buying is almost zero.

You may find it useful to occasionally create a Facebook custom audience of your unsubscribes and target them with a special offer. You may be surprised at how many accept it and rejoin your list. This is just one example of using marketing systems to add value instead of just promoting.

#3. Sell Products that Add Value to People s Lives

To sell products on or offline you need a system that you can recite in your sleep, step by step. In fact, if you believe as I do that everyone in your company is in selling then they too should know this system cold.

You never know if the opportunity to sell will happen at a neighborhood block party or waiting in line at the local Chamber of Commerce event. This is why everyone in your company is in selling, and why they should know the constants and variables of your selling system.

Constants are the non-negotiables that allow your company to deliver an exceptional customer experience. This may include when and where you meet, what gets discussed, and the resources used, such as how to communicate payment terms.

Variables are how the business adapts and personalizes its products and experiences for the buyer, including budgets, timelines, and style choices. Ideally, this should be a collaboration that makes the customer feel safe and confident in their future with you.

Lastly, every selling system should accommodate specific exceptions that I refer to as catalysts. This is when a buyer wants to take a shortcut to product ownership. It may go something like this: "Look, not to be rude, but I trust you and would just like to move ahead now. Can we do that?"

If you are comfortable that what needed to be communicated has been, or will be before the work begins, then accommodate their wishes.

Marketing systems are typically designed to close gaps by removing obstacles that prevent buyers from moving ahead. But there should also be some flexibility in them to accommodate a more experienced or prepared buyer.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to revisit your systems for getting people's attention and selling them products that will add value to their lives.

In other words, revisit how your company fulfills its mission.

The post Marketing Systems: How to Close the Gaps and Sell More Products appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 75 of Landscape Digital Show reveals how to build marketing resources that will save time and sell more services.

The dilemma for business owners that are also the primary rainmaker, and our survey indicates that is the majority of landscaping companies, is the ongoing fight for your time between marketing and production.

Production usually wins because that s what generates profits. Then the cycle begins again as selling takes priority in order to make it rain. It doesn t have to be this way because nowadays there are many marketing options for keeping the pipeline full.

As you know, having abundant options means you have to choose, and my experience in this industry is that most companies will choose whatever promises to get results quickly. That s what keeps that stressful roller coaster going. To get off of it you have to commit to building time-saving marketing resources.

Plan and Grow Valuable Marketing Resources

The resources necessary for marketing and selling your landscaping services will be created over time, so don't get overwhelmed if you currently fall short in one particular area. More important is to know what you'll need so that you can be planning for creating it.

Photos are an excellent example. Most landscaping companies put off taking photos until they need them for upgrading marketing materials such as websites or social media profiles and pages. This is unfortunate because you only have one chance at getting before photos of a project, with numberless opportunities for capturing the best after image.

Think of your marketing resources as selling tools, because they are. Photos, videos, testimonials and more are invaluable tools for both marketing and selling, and not having them puts your business at a serious competitive disadvantage.

You may have the most talented salespeople in your community, but without these tools, they will have to invest more time than necessary to communicate with prospective customers. It s up to you as the owner to plan for growing these assets.

That planning starts with creating a list of what s necessary, including the following.

• Photos
• Videos
• Testimonials
• Case-studies
• Unique solutions
• Informative articles
• Budgeting scenarios
• Hidden costs
• Common shortcuts
• FAQ s with answers

What would you add to that list??

Marketing Resources Are An Investment in Your Target Audience

There s a reason why marketing resources were once commonly referred to as marketing collateral. You are using them to invest in relationships with customers.

Case studies are a perfect example. Everybody that has been in business has them, but only a few have taken the time to break them down into teaching moments for staff and prospective customers.

The longer you have been in business the more cases studies you should have for helping buyers better understand what's possible, while also getting a glimpse into the personality of your company.

Let s assume you have been in business for at least ten years. Can you produce at least 10 customer case studies, supported by data and visuals, that can be used to help people envision a relationship with your business?

If not, the same is probably true about other marketing resources that serve to educate and inspire your targeted audience and ultimately drive profitable outcomes.

In a nutshell, that s the definition of what we now call content marketing. It s using marketing resources to attract and retain customers. It requires an investment in the future of your business your customers

Now decide who can get this work done?

Systems are Necessary for Creating Marketing Resources

Whether you do the work yourself or delegate it to a team member, you need to build a reliable system for getting the work completed. To quote legendary production efficiency expert, W. Edwards Deming, A bad system will beat a good person every time."

A checklist is a system. Choose at least at least a couple of marketing resources to build, maybe case studies and unique solutions. Then list the steps involved and put them on the calendars of the people responsible for creating them.

Remember our 10-year example? Surely your aspirations are higher than that, but to be sure you have a win in a few categories, aim for just two pieces every year. That s two case studies, testimonials, FAQ s and so on.

Try this. Charge your teams with building the habit of asking customers to share their current challenges. It could go something like this. Can I ask you a question? If there was one problem that I could solve for you, what would it be?

For one thing, that customer will appreciate that you cared enough to ask and listen. And most likely they will be thinking about your business for much of the rest of their day. That is free marketing.

If every one of your front line people brought just one story like this to your weekly staff meetings and it was captured in a few sentences, you would soon have more valuable content than you could ever use to help your customers.

Those problems and their solutions are the seeds of a case study, testimonial, or informative article that can be shared with all of your prospects and customers, whether that is with a website, newsletter, social media, or in direct selling situations.

Selling suddenly got a lot easier, didn t it?

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to put this into action.

List the marketing resources your business needs.

Get them on the calendar.

And get them done.

Over time you will have marketing assets that will save time and sell more services.

The post Marketing Resources: This is What You Need to Sell More Services appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 74 of Landscape Digital Show reveals 9 ways telephone selling can be used to get people talking, earn trust and grow relationships

When I began my career in the early eighties I accepted a technical sales position with a big oil company. That s when I learned to overcome my fear of the telephone as a selling tool.

At that time telephone selling skills were everything because other than personal meetings, it was the fastest way to make discoveries, share information and develop relationships.

Like anything else, telephone selling is something you learn from experience. This may be why so many people today are afraid of cold calling. They have seldom been in tough situations where they had to make it work.

Instead, they lob an email out there and hope for the best. There's a problem with that approach. Everyone else is using it too.

This is why telephone selling works. It makes you memorable, and that should be enough to make it a key part of your selling strategy.

Not only that, it improves the effectiveness of your other selling tactics, including email and social media.

Telephone Selling Sparks Relationships

If your audience is predominantly comprised of people are over the age of 40, there is a very good chance they prefer to do business in person or over the telephone. While they may use text and email, you will never truly have their full attention unless you are face-to-face or on the telephone with them.

The telephone gets and holds people's attention. If you have ever tried to have a short telephone conversation you know that it's not easy because most people want to have a little small talk first; it's just how we are wired as human beings.

The telephone makes human connections that are vital for earning trust and closing deals.

Contrast that with email, texting, and social media. These methods of communication are best-suited to brevity. It's why lengthy social media updates earn the tag TLDR – too long didn't read.

That s not going to happen with telephone selling if you follow these 9 proven practices that respect the person you are calling and the value that you bring to him or her. You may not agree with all of them but give each a few tries before rejecting any because people are different and not every tactic will work every time.

#1. Have a written telephone selling plan.

This includes how you will open and close the call, and key questions to ask. This is especially important if you are not comfortable with telephone selling, and if there are key issues you want to be sure to address.

However, be prepared to go off script. Most important is to follow the lead of your caller. If they want to small talk you should too. They will let you know when it s time to talk business.

#2. Do not send an email to set up the call.

If you use email to state your business up front you increase the odds of having your call ignored. That email gives your caller what they need to craft an excuse for the gatekeeper.

#3. Be prepared to leave an intelligent voicemail.

Congratulations. While you did not have a conversation, you ve become more memorable than your competition that isn't using the telephone. Now you can follow-up with an email to provide additional value that you promised in the voicemail.

It s a process that you have to plan and track.

#4. Research your caller.

When your call is accepted you need to quickly establish alignment. The purpose of the call is to develop a more personal relationship by making discoveries that are shared with the inner circle. Come to the call prepared or you will destroy that trust.

Also, be sure to update your CRM systems to document the call and build your intelligence for this contact and others like him or her.

#5. Connect the dots to mutually trusted connections.

Having mutual friends in common is a great way to establish alignment that moves the conversation along. Just be prepared with details that only another friend would know about that person.

#6. Be humble.

People may be intense or relaxed, but those that are most successful are always humble because nobody knows everything there is to know. Be attentive and interested and you will make surprising discoveries.

#7. Offer to collaborate.

This stops short of offering a solution and that earns respect from people that don't want to be pitched, and that's most of us. Collaboration always leads to better outcomes and greater commitment to seeing them through.

#8. Go for no instead of yes.

High-pressure sellers go straight for yes and that makes people uncomfortable because everyone has a different process for making decisions.

Smart sellers make inquiries that are likely to receive a no response. This approach eliminates obstacles and objections one at a time. Eventually, there is only one likely response, and whether that s a yes or no, you will be remembered as a professional.

And that is how you get referrals from people that do not become your customer.

#9. Thank them for taking the call.

This is an extension of being humble. Your caller took a chance that you might have some value to offer. And they invested a nice chunk of their time. That should be acknowledged in no uncertain terms.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

As I was putting these tactics together I realized there are more I ve developed or happened upon during the course of making thousands of telephone selling calls over the years. I'll put those together for a future episode.

Until then, the call to action for this episode is to put these 9 telephone selling tips to the test. Then drop me a line to let me know how they are working for you.

The post Telephone Selling: 9 Ways to Get People Talking appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 73 of Landscape Digital Show reveals why customer relationships with a business are more valuable than those with its products.

Relationships have a fundamental purpose. They make us better; otherwise, there is no reason for the relationship.

In business, the debate is whether the customer has a relationship with the products or the business or both. And if it does, which should come first?

If your customer relationships are with your products, then the relationship is only as good as the products.

The problem with that scenario is that if something fails to work as expected, the relationship is at risk of failing too.

It takes work to build business relationships, so it makes sense to use every means possible to avoid those breakups.

Flip Your Marketing from Products to Relationships

In his bestselling book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It, former international hostage negotiator for the FBI, Chris Voss, identifies two conditions that people need to be comfortable in negotiating situations:

#1. Feeling safe #2. Having a sense of being in control

These conditions are personal and emotional, and that means they are people, not product-based.

Traditional advertising creates product awareness, and it does that well. But you have to go further to get and keep buyers engaged with your business so they can feel safe and in control.

You have to shift your focus to create familiarity with buyers by showing them the big picture, that is, how your company goes about helping its customers.

Give them something that helps them see, feel, and understand their relationship with your business in advance. And that something is your branded process that addresses the known customer concerns, which may include:

• Project scope
• Budget and payment terms
• Schedules and timelines
• Communications and changes
• Warranties and remedies

To name a few.

Fortunately, the interactive nature of digital marketing makes it possible to address these concerns pretty easily. A short explainer video on the home page of your website that introduces your company is a good start.

Then, you can create more videos, podcasts, or blog posts that address every conceivable concern, with the idea of removing risk so that buyers feel comfortable moving forward with your business.

Your Business Process is The Relationship

It should encapsulate the 5, 10, or 30 years of your company s accumulated business experience, especially the relatable stories that make its capabilities real.

To convert prospective buyers into customers requires trust in your business, in your products and services, and the people on the front lines and behind the scenes that make it all happen.

That s a lot to accomplish when you have the limited attention of a potential customer because trust is something that has to be experienced first-hand. A referral or testimonial is helpful, but not enough.

For some companies, a "try before you buy" offer is a risk-free way of acquiring that first-hand experience. Although, one problem is that trial is a product based-solution, so it falls short in the relationship department.

Also, that could involve significant costs for a landscaping business.

The alternative is to design, brand, and market a process that can serve as a stand-in for the experience.

Think of your process as an interactive map that gives buyers the opportunity to experience the most meaningful aspects of your business.

What are those essential elements or touch points that make your business unique? I m sure several come to mind, but I ll suggest you can find others where your competitors tend to drop the ball.

If you would like to know more specifics on how to build and brand your business process, check out the links in the show notes below.

Good luck.

Show Notes

• Case Studies: How to Get Customer Stories that Sell
• Customer Experience Marketing: Differentiate Your Business with Empathy, Brand Story and Service
• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to give people confidence in your business by taking control of customer relationships from the beginning.

The paradox is that you taking control makes them feel in control. It s no different than going to a doctor or CPA that you know and trust.

You are putting your faith in them and secretly hoping that they will deliver everything you want and more. There are no guarantees, but that hope is often enough.

The post Customer Relationships: This is Why People Come Before Products appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 72 of Landscape Digital Show reveals the connection between surfing and personal branding that instantly influences buyers and outcomes.

In all walks of life, people are most admired not for what they have achieved but how they went about it doing it.

How people get things done in life used to be known as reputation management, but now that we all manage our own media it is best described as personal branding.

A Harvard Business Review author observed that all surfers end their ride in exactly the same way: They fall into the water. It doesn't matter if that ride was an epic success or dramatic defeat; the outcome is the same.

This is why what happens next matters most. Does he or she head back into the surf or pack it in for the day? I imagine that is something surfers talk about that defines their personal brands, who are the risk-takers and who are not.

Evaluating outcomes and taking action to create something better is what life and business are all about.

People admire winners, but we are especially interested in the path they chose to get there.

As an entrepreneur, this is your personal brand, and it's never been more important for attracting the opportunities you desire for your business and your life.

Celebrate Endings That Create New Outcomes

Like so many other practices, surfing is a series of events. Knowing they all come to an end makes it that much easier to get back up and do it again in the quest for the perfect ride.

The truth is the perfect ride probably doesn't exist for surfing or any other profession. Whether it does or doesn't, the question that arises is always going to be the same.

Now what?

By definition, winning is an ending. It's an event or outcome that had a beginning and now it's over. That win may be an amazing landscape project that earned an industry award and put you on a big stage.

Now what?

Your current customers want to know. More important is that it shapes your personal brand for anyone that may be watching, and these days that audience is as large as the Internet.

What happens off stage matters as much and probably more than what happens when the spotlights are bright, because almost everybody can be good when they others are watching. Then there is that uncomfortable gap before the next event when we as human beings have all kinds of feelings

What happens in those gaps between events influences buyers more than we care to admit because that's when your true character is revealed.

This is why it is vitally important to close the gap by celebrating the wins and the losses, and then taking action to create the next new one.

Your Brand Story Lives Between Wins and Losses

Have you ever noticed that when people win too often their methods and practices are scrutinized and sometimes criticized? This is one reason to publicly celebrate your losses just as much as your wins to humanize your personal brand.

If you are an introvert like me it can feel like work to live your life out loud on social media. But the truth is if you are not telling your story people will make assumptions based on what they think they know.

It's fair to say that the term personal branding has business connotations, but it's much more than that. Your personal brand impacts your success in life because it communicates who you are and what you care about, which of course either attracts or rejects people with similar interests and values.

The story of you is your personal brand and the easiest way to give your audience of fans, friends, and followers a glimpse into the authentic you is to document what's happening in your world.

Video may be the best way to do this because it's pretty hard to not be yourself in front of the camera. Just be mindful that it's not so much what you have to say but how you say it that people will notice and remember.

Make no mistake that being your best self is a performance. After all, being yourself is typically being who you think people want you to be in the role you find yourself. You will have to find that balance for yourself.

You will have to find the balance that's right for you.

Good luck.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to plan your personal brand just like a celebrity because it deserves that attention.

Determine the qualities that best represent who you are as a person because that personal brand is what will attract the right people to your business for years to come.

The post Personal Branding: How to Instantly Influence Buyers and Outcomes appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.

Episode 71 of Landscape Digital Show reveals what the LinkedIn native video rollout will do for social selling and how to get your business ready for it.

Earlier this year LinkedIn made a number of updates to their platform that signaled a more relaxed environment for its users.

The most notable change is the newsfeed is now prominently displayed on the home page, making content (not contacts) central to the LinkedIn experience. Content updates boast bigger photos and video that occupy the full-screen width on mobile, with comment and share buttons more visible too.

All of this is clearly designed to position LinkedIn more like Facebook, it's splashier social counterpart and not the old man of social media.

It's apparently creating confusion about LinkedIn's identity and how we should now be using it. For instance, LinkedIn started as the business networking platform, but now it prompts you to wish your connections a Happy Birthday, an activity that many believe belongs to Facebook.

Astute social media marketers are taking notice of the conversations growing on LinkedIn and considering a reallocation of resources to take advantage. You should too because, in addition to what we ve seen thus far this year, the current rollout of native video is sure to shake-up how we accomplish our objectives with LinkedIn.

Native video is video that is created on social networks and played in-feed, as opposed to links to videos hosted on other sites.

Native Video Promises to Personalize LinkedIn

As of this writing, it is reported that only 500 people have the LinkedIn native video capability, and that is currently only possible using the LinkedIn mobile app. By limiting it to mobile, LinkedIn may be telling us that it is interested in what's going on out and about with our lives, not just from behind the desk.

Native video is going to give you the chance to share more of your personality and the enthusiasm and energy you bring to your work. This means you should be thinking about how video can help bring out your best qualities as a person first and a business second.

LinkedIn s co-founder, Reid Hoffman, has said that no business has ever given you any business.

It s always a person within a business that helps you to accomplish your objectives. That s probably a good stance to take with native video.

Social selling is being a person first, not a business.

It s easy to imagine that if little things like birthday notices create turbulence for some LinkedIn users, then native video will be a disruptor, especially when you consider that what follows it is sure to be live video.

That will no doubt be the game changer, but before we go there let s get ready for native video.

How to Get Ready for LinkedIn Native Video

One of the first steps for being ready for native video is getting your LinkedIn profile in order so that it is congruent with the persona that you intend to amplify with it. Depending on its current state, this may be no small effort.

Every LinkedIn profile should incorporate these accepted practices.

1. Choose a headline that accurately identifies your expertise 2. Write everything as a person, in the 1st person 3. Place special emphasis on the first 220 characters of your summary 4. Make your work and volunteer experience come alive with story 5. Upload articles, videos, and other supporting content

Getting your profile right is the foundation for native video, just as it is for all of your other content updates. The trick is to use it to encourage a dialog between you and your connections to hopefully spark new opportunities.

While I have done my share of video, I ll admit to not having a great deal of experience with doing it live, which to be honest is how native video feels to me.

The raw qualities native and live video make it best suited for live events and unique venues that bring a slice of your business activities to your LinkedIn audience in an interesting way.

Your LinkedIn native video readiness should consider the following.

Locations Topics Structure and Format Goals Equipment

To do mobile video right you will need a mobile device with a good camera and an external mic to best manage the audio quality. The Rode smartLav+ lavaliere microphone is one that my tech savvy friends recommend.

As with anything else, the early adopters will get the most bang out of this before it goes mainstream. You can be part of that first wave if you start planning now, and of course, if you are one of the lucky ones to be among the first to get this feature.

You'll know that when you have a video icon in your mobile app for making post updates. We re told it will start showing up in the desktop version sometime after that.

If you follow the practices suggested here, you will be fully prepared to make the most of it.

Show Notes

• Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Landscape Digital Show on iTunes.
• And if you are on Facebook, please like the Landscape Digital Institute page. I ll greatly appreciate that!

Call to Action

The call to action for this episode is to be prepared for using LinkedIn native video when it arrives to get serious about enhancing your social selling interactions and outcomes.

Once you master native video you'll be a pro with live video.

The post LinkedIn Native Video: Social Selling Comes Alive appeared first on Landscape Digital Institute.