by Scott Howard | Sep 7, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Just a quick FYI. The Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast is moving our weekly release date to the beginning instead of the end of the week and so this is a teaser to the next episode titled, Don’t Be Social Media Stupid With Your Business.
I really, really, really, yes REALLY want you to make a change in your business that will cost you less than $100 a year.
Get a professional email address.
I’ve had one for years. It is Scott@ScLoHo.net.
Mine is part of Google Suites, so it looks like a Gmail account to me, but to anyone sending me an email, with my own domain, it is a step or two or three above Gmail.
The past couple of months, I have seen businesses with email accounts from HotMail, Yahoo, Gmail, and even AOL.
What this tells me is that these folks either don’t take their business seriously, or they are really, really behind the times.
And having one of these old email domains for your business hurts your credibility and the trust factor we want to have in you.
But I’ve had my hotmail email address for years, all my customers use that, how will they reach me if I change?
Easy. You can have your current email addresses forwarded to your new email address.
While you are at it, your website probably needs an update too, but that’s a subject for another day.
by Scott Howard | Aug 29, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo Sales Tips, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Today, I have a few key tips for anyone in the business of sales, which is not limited to people who sell for a living, but nearly all of us. The three words I want you to remember is: Help People Buy.
This month, the company I work for, Federated Media, experienced a tragic loss with the unexpected death of Charly Butcher, the host of Fort Wayne’s Morning News on WOWO Radio. Charly began his career with Federated Media in the 1980’s on WOWO’s sister station, WMEE. His life touched countless numbers of people as made evident by the stories and tributes.
One story I heard from my coworker Tracy was how a car salesperson was struggling with a sale but then Charly stepped in to Help People Buy:
We were at a remote at Fort Wayne Subaru and they just got in one single BRZ sport coupe in bright red that was stunning. This guy about 23 was looking at it with lust and the sales person just could not close the deal no matter how hard he tried. Charly went to the guy and said “I tell you what…you buy this car now and I will put you on the air live on Monday to brag about it. You can tell all your friends you will be on WOWO Monday morning.” The guy agreed to it on the spot and sure enough he got his 5 minutes of Fame on Charly’s show that Monday. We had a happy customer, happy sales person, happy manager and Charly was so proud of himself.
I’ve recently told you about my most recent car buying experience, which was filled with unnecessary sales pitches, because by the time I went to the dealership, I already decided exactly which car I wanted and all they really had to do was take care of the paperwork.
Today, I’m going to share with you another bad buying experience I had.
The afternoon after attending Charly Butcher’s funeral, I needed to visit some funeral homes for a brother-in-law who was just transferred to hospice care. Yes, it was a dreadful week, but sometimes you have to plow through it to get things done.
I visited 3 places and told each exactly what I was looking for:
I am here to get price information for direct cremation for the upcoming passing of my brother-in-law who is likely in the final week of his life. I am getting this information for my wife who will be making the decision of who we use. No public funeral or additional services are needed, just the bare bone basics. A family memorial will take place in a few months out of town.
That was the story I told all three funeral homes. From what I said, if they were listening, they would know that I am looking only for their price and I was not going to be buying anything today. I told them I was price shopping only.
So what happened?
At funeral home number one, I get what I am looking for, the bottom line price, in writing, but first the guy shows me his powerpoint on who he is, how many funerals they have done over the past 10 years complete with the standard bar chart.
He was not listening to what I said, he was stuck in selling mode. I redirected him to get the info I needed and left.
Funeral home number two was worse. Two guys, teaming up to sell me, after I told them exactly why I was there. They even asked questions about my wife and I that had absolutely nothing to do with why I was there. Like, “how long have you and your wife been married?” I almost walked out. In the end, I got the answers I wanted and a bad taste in my mouth to never do business with these two salespeople.
Funeral home number three was actually the best. When I told him the same story I told the other two, he actually listened and told me that they are not the least expensive for cremation services. I appreciated his honesty instead of his sales pitch and we talked more. I learned a few things that made me want to transfer some of my own business to them in the future.
I learned a few lessons that day about the sales process that I am going to apply to my work, and hopefully you can apply these same lessons in your company:
How to Help People Buy
- Listen first to find out what they think they are shopping for so you can focus on what they want.
- Ask questions to clarify what they are looking for as an end result.
- Answer their questions first, then ask how else you can help them.
Funeral home number two, almost had me walk out in the middle of their sales pitch, can you imagine having a potential customer come to you and then walk out because you were too salesy?
I bet it happens more than we realize.
By the way, I wrote a piece about Charly Butcher and his impact with WOWO and the community, but did not create a podcast for that article because it contains a few videos. I invite you to read and watch by clicking on the link to this article on my website at ScottHoward.me
Here’s the link: https://www.scotthoward.me/remembercharly-butcher-of-wowo-wmee-fort-wayne/
by Scott Howard | Aug 23, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
The topic for this week is: Make it Easy. I’ll start with some questions.
How easy is it for someone to do business with you?
How easy is it for someone to get an answer to a question?
How easy is it for someone to find you online?
How easy is it for someone to call you?
How easy is it for someone to pay you for goods and services that you offer?
How easy is it for someone to pay you a compliment? Either in person, or online?
I could continue asking similar questions and I’m sure you could come up with a few more that are just as important for you and your business.
Here’s the take-away I want you to have: Make It Easy.
No matter what the question, do what ever possible to make it easy for people.
Advertising can bring people to you. What happens next is up to you. The WHOLE BUYING EXPERIENCE is part of your marketing.
I understand that there might be some pretty complicated things that need to go on behind the scenes that will Make It Easy for your customers, but sometimes it really doesn’t need to be complicated at all.
Recently I was talking to a business owner who wants to let people know that despite the fact he has a couple dozen employees and managers that work for him, the real person that can solve their ultimate problems is him.
So we created a way to Make It Easy for anyone to reach him. A special phone number that accepts phone calls and texts that rings directly to his personal cell phone. When you call, you talk to the owner, not his manager, not an answering service on the other side of the planet. You get the guy in charge, the one who can make everything Easy.
Some companies empower their front line employees to take care of everything. Instead of having to “ask a manager” or “go up the food chain” to resolve something, the actual person you or I talk with takes care of it, then and there.
A couple more stories to illustrate how this Make It Easy process works. For years my wife and I have had cable TV, Internet and sometimes phone service from one of the two big national companies and every year we saw our bills climb just because they could raise the prices. One year my wife spent 3 hours on the phone with customer service and was able to knock our bill down a little but it went back up a year later even though we dropped some of their services.
This summer I was convinced to cut the cord and go with internet only because I finally figured out all the other pieces to the puzzle to watch what we wanted via internet streaming and over the air local channels.
Our current internet provider wasn’t going to budge on price, so I tried to buy from their main competitor. I attempted to do it online and over the phone. Even using the online chat feature was a nightmare. I nearly gave up until my friend told me exactly who to talk to in person at a local store front location.
I walked in and asked for her by name and she knew who I was because my friend had contacted her earlier that day. Within 15 minutes on a Monday afternoon we had everything set up for them to come out 3 days later to install and start internet service. Plus the price was lower than what I was paying the other company, and lower than I was able to find online with this company. This woman was an expert in the Make It Easy department.
The other Make It Easy story is a follow up on what I shared recently when I upgraded our homes heating and cooling system. We were eligible for a rebate from our electric company with the new system and I started to fill out the paperwork online, but never completed it. In the meantime, a check for $300 arrived from the electric company. Turns out the heating/cooling company took care of that paperwork for me, and I forgot that they were taking care of that for us. They really won in my book in the Make It Easy department.
My work as a marketing coach and consultant and advertising sales person with WOWO radio and Federated Media Digital includes doing what ever I can to Make It Easy for my advertising partners. Last week I updated a couple items on a clients website, not because they paid me to do it, I was just doing it for them to Make It Easy.
Go back over that list I started with and review the questions about how easy is it for people to do business with you and then add a few that are particular to your business, and take action. If you want my help in reviewing those questions and coming up with answers, let’s talk.
You can email me, text me, message me, call me, find me online on social media by simply looking for ScLoHo, that’s me. That’s my commitment to Make It Easy for you!
by Scott Howard | Aug 15, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, Really? The Personal ScLoHo, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Time to introduce myself, again for some of you that I’ve known for awhile, and perhaps for the first time if you are unfamiliar with this website and podcast.
This is episode 75 of the weekly podcast titled, The Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast.
Launched in early 2017 as a request from a couple of the managers at Federated Media in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they were asked to create a sales and marketing oriented podcast and they asked me if I would consider doing it.
See this ScLoHo thing has been around for quite awhile. On the ScottHoward.me website are over 13 hundred articles I have written, edited and published since 2011 and the Genuine ScLoHo Media & Marketing Podcast is simply an audio version of most of the articles I have created since March, 2017.
The history of ScLoHo however is much longer that that.
And before we dig into that history, I want to clear something up about what ScLoHo is.
ScLoHo began as an email address and grew into an online moniker, identity and nickname. I even registered a marketing company with the ScLoHo name. ScLoHo is a made up word that takes the first two letters of my first name, middle and last names and mashes them together. Scott Louis Howard becomes ScLoHo. Look for me on Twitter, Instagram and nearly any other social media site that I am on as ScLoHo. Before launching the ScottHoward.me website, I published over 10,000 articles on ScLoHo branded blogs starting around 2005.
So ScLoHo and Scott Howard, that’s me, are synonymous.
I began working in the media world as a teenager when my high school launched a radio station. After school, I landed my first full time job on the air in Marion, Indiana at WBAT, followed by WIOU in Kokomo, WMEE in Fort Wayne, WKSY in Columbia City, WZWZ in Kokomo, and WXIR in Indianapolis. At all of these stations, I worked on the air as a disc jockey and radio personality.
Life changed when I turned 26. I crossed over to the advertising side of the radio business. I was impressed by the philosophy that the Crawford Broadcasting Company had regarding the relationship between the listeners, the radio station and the advertisers. I moved my young family to work for WMUZ in Detroit, one of a dozen Crawford stations at the time. My job was to write and produce advertising campaigns.
I loved the challenge and learning that occurred during my 8 years at WMUZ. I also did fill-in work in the afternoon and spent about a year hosting WMUZ’s morning show in Detroit. My first venture as an advertising salesperson was also at WMUZ.
The philosophy that I learned related to the trust factor we as people have. WMUZ was and is a commercial Christian radio station that has a special bond with their thousands of weekly listeners. Listeners trust the WMUZ radio personalities. Those personalities often talk about their advertising partners and so that trust factor is passed along to the businesses that advertise. WMUZ listeners trust that the businesses that advertise on their station are trustworthy.
My job was not just to create effective advertising campaigns, but to screen out the bad businesses from the good. I carry this philosophy today as I consider which businesses I want to work with at WOWO radio in Fort Wayne.
In the mid 1990’s, we decided to leave Detroit and return to Indiana. I worked on the radio again in Fort Wayne at WBTU, WFWI, WGL and WAJI. Between 1995 and 2003, along with some part-time radio work and voice over production I was doing, I took a few blue collar jobs too in the printing business, the plastics industry and even automotive.
2003 was the year that I returned to media and marketing full-time in Fort Wayne when I joined a group of radio stations in the advertising sales side of the business. I spent 8 years rising as high as one could advance at that company before I was lured away to work for a website development company and later manage the social media for a $50 million dollar internet sales company.
Kevin, Ric and me. Picture snapped by my friend Ryan Recker.
I also served on the Board of Directors for the American Advertising Federation/Fort Wayne Chapter for 7 years. I taught personal branding seminars, guest lectured at a local university, was featured in some national publications including the Wall Street Journal, won a few awards and have had a lot of fun. I have consulted and coached businesses doing newspaper and magazine ads, billboard advertising, social media and all kinds of internet marketing, along with television and event marketing. More recently I was featured on an international podcast for broadcasters to share what it takes to be successful in broadcasting.
I only share all this with you because I want you to have confidence in the Scott Howard dude a.k.a. ScLoHo, that I’m not just hear to sell you stuff. I am here to help. I’m here to teach, to consult, to advise, to coach and even guide you through the process of marketing you and your business.
Human Relationship Principles are the heart of most successful marketing and advertising efforts and I can help you employ them with your business, organization, or event.
I have learned a lot from a lot of people and continue to learn more and more every week. If you have any marketing or advertising questions or answers, I’d love to talk with you.
by Scott Howard | Aug 8, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
It’s a perspective that I wish everyone had. The Lifetime Value of a Customer.
Or to take it from the customers perspective, What Am I Worth To You?
Two items inspired me to write and podcast on this topic. One was an article by Seth Godin. The other was a purchase I made recently.
And here’s what I want you to get out of this today…
Each individual customer is worth a heck of a lot more than you realize and the sooner we learn this the sooner we can make significant changes that will increase everyone’s value, including that of your business.
Here’s the quote from Seth:
We’re still clueless about lifetime value.
If an Apple upgrade breaks your phone and you switch to Android, it costs Apple more than $10,000.
If you switch supermarkets because a clerk was snide with you, it removes $50,000 from the store’s ongoing revenue.
If a kid has a lousy first grade teacher or is bullied throughout middle school, it might decrease his productivity for the rest of us by a million dollars.
Seth says it’s the little things that add up or more accurately multiply as either a gain or loss.
In 2001, my wife and I bought our first house together. The house did not have central air and so I called a couple of heating and cooling contractors for estimates. The first one sent a salesperson out who walked around our house, jotted down some notes and then sat down at our kitchen table and gave me his written estimate. The dude was pretty quiet, didn’t ask any questions that I remember and never followed up until about a month later!
The other heating and cooling company sent the owner over to give us our estimate for central air. He asked plenty of important questions and explained the process of what they would need to do since our house needed duct work for the central air. His price was more than the first quote, but I went with him because of the way he presented himself. I spent $8,000 on that central air job in 2001.
Four years later we moved and our new home had a combination hot water heater furnace that needed some repairs and eventually replacement. We spent another $2000 on heating and cooling services during our 8 years in that house.
That’s $10,000 in customer value in furnace and air conditioner services in 12 years. But wait, there’s more.
In 2014, we moved again and this house has a heat pump to take care of all of our heating and cooling needs. That summer, around the 4th of July, we noticed it was getting very warm inside our house. The last couple of experiences with our previous heating and air company were not the best so my wife suggested we contact one of the two we originally called in 2001.
The one that was able to make a service call right away got the job and it was the company that I did not use 13 years ago. They came prepared with the part to fix our heat pump and the tech was great, much better than my previous experience with their former salesperson. Over the past 4 years, I have spent a couple thousand dollars with them to fix some issues that ended up saving us money.
If you are counting, we are up to $12,000 that I’ve paid to various heating and cooling companies. However in June, I decided to replace our entire system that was 20 years old. That’s another $11,000.
My personal Lifetime Customer Value to heating and cooling companies has been $23,000 since 2001. I don’t expect to need to spend much more as long as we are in this house since I bought a top of the line heat pump that will take care of us for a long time.
That very first salesperson who was too quiet and lost the job never saw my Lifetime Customer Value. He may have just thought of me as the dollars he would earn as his commission, I really don’t know.
The heating and cooling company that earned my trust has also earned my recommendation over and over again. I know at least three of my co-workers are regular customers including one that just bought a new furnace and central air for his home. See, besides my personal Lifetime Customer Value, I also have value as a referral source for even more business.
So tell me, how do you assign worth and value to your potential customers? Does your staff understand this concept? Honestly, most don’t do they. But that can change and it starts with you just like it starts with me when I do my work.
What am I worth to you?
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