The Hindu Business Line : Managers control features, customers buy benefits

Promotion works, but only if you start with a great product. This is one of the first messages in Trump University Marketing 101, by Don Sexton, from Wiley (www.wiley.com) .

The book sings the praises of Donald Trump by filling many pages with his insights, photographs of his buildings and `signature collection.' Despite that, there is a lot you can learn from Sexton on `how to use the most powerful ideas in marketing to get more customers.'

Such as, that marketing is `managing perceived value.' And that perceived value is "the maximum a customer or prospective customer will pay for your product or service." This value is not the price you charge, but the ceiling on the price you can charge, explains the author. "Customers behave according to their perceptions of the value they receive, not according to the actual value they receive."

Before you work to get more from customers, you must understand them. "Customers are not easy to figure out," alerts Sexton. "They may see product advantages or disadvantages of which the marketing manager is unaware." A focus on short-term results can result in forgetting to talk to customers; and the consequence can be `major marketing mistakes.'

An essential discussion is on the difference between benefit and feature. Benefit is what the customer plans to derive from buying your product or service, and feature is the specification of what you offer. For instance, the width of an airline seat is a feature, but the comfort it offers to the passenger is the benefit. "Managers control features, but customers buy benefits."

To increase `perceived value,' you can improve your performance on a benefit, advises the author. For example, you can think of tailoring your working hours to what are convenient to a significant number of your customers. It would also help your case if you can persuade the customer "to consider the benefits on which you perform well to be more important to them."

A whole chapter is devoted to `creating your most valuable asset,' that is, `your brand.' Well-managed brands, whether in big or small organisations, typically represent about 50 to 80 per cent of a company's total value, says Sexton. "Brands are built with relentless consistency - over time and over markets," reads the first tip on brand-building. To communicate the brand to members of your organisation, you may think of a `style guide,' with information on how your company name and logo should be portrayed. `Brand book' is a further sophistication, to ensure that all your staff speak with `one brand voice.'

Try the COPS model of Sexton to increase customer satisfaction. The acronym stands for culture, organisation, process, and strategy. "Make customer satisfaction everyone's responsibility," insists the `culture' paragraph. "Nearly 70 per cent of customers quit being customers because of the attitude of those employees serving customers."

Those in customer-driven organisations need to have what Tom Peters has called a `passion for perfection,' urges Sexton. Check if you can locate people with such passion, as, for example, "a dry cleaner who will not return clothing with stains or missing buttons or an accountant who reminds the client when to submit his or her tax forms."

O for organisation. But how can it help in raising customer satisfaction? By making it easy for the staff to satisfy customers. Empower your employees, therefore. Also establish accessible lines of communication for the customers to connect, rather than tax them with an oxymoronic automated response system that says - "Your call is very important to us ... All customer servers are busy... "

The third component in the COPS model - `process' - is about designing your procedures from the customers' viewpoint, and not from the company's. And the last, strategy, has to have the customer at the centre, because customer satisfaction is `a leading indicator for the financial performance.'

Profitable read.

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D.Murali