Andrew lives on a perfect little farm in rural Maine and sells his produce to customers who go out of their way to buy from his stand, which is just off the main road. He appreciates his customers but finds it hard to hide his annoyance when people say, “Wow! This is beautiful. Your life is so simple and easy.”

He gently corrects them: “Simple, yes. But, simple is not easy.”

Andrew came to this “simple” life by way of a long path scattered with small but significant gains. None of these gains was easy, and none so significant as to be life-changing taken individually. But in aggregate—finding a more pest-resistant potato, experimenting with more efficient equipment, developing a more popular bean, moving his stand closer to an intersection—they led to a remarkably successful and meaningful existence for him and his family. He earned this simple life, in which customers come to him and appreciate him for what he’s built.

So it is when we walk into the busy diner and are instantly recognized by the owner, whose name we know as well, or when we visit Mr. Foster, the proprietor described in our feature article, “A Hardware Store for Past and Present,” as a popular, knowledgeable and well-respected member of the business community.

What these people do is so natural to them that if we didn’t consider it carefully, we might miss the fact that each has reached the very pinnacle of expertise in sales and marketing. Each is an expert. Each is a person who focuses on what individual customers are asking for, want and need. Each has learned that his business—any business—is built on one-to-one relationships. Each is an advocate for his customers.

Advocates are knowledgeable and knowable. They are curious, studious and patient. They are authentic. And they represent a model for us, as marketers, in the art of one-to-one relationship building.

1. Advocates do the research, ask the right questions and listen to the answers.

   Don’t let anybody tell you there are no stupid questions. There certainly are. They’re the ones you should have known the answers to before you ever met the customer in the first place. They’re the ones whose answers can be found in the public domain, in simple research. They’re the ones that waste your customer’s time.

   The really good questions are born of a genuine curiosity about what makes your customer or her business tick. They usually strike at what she’s passionate about. They’re much more about what she wants than they are about what she has.

   Here’s an example of a good question: “If your sales organization did absolutely everything right, what kind of numbers do you think they could hit?” Here’s another one: “What would it look like if your sales organization was perfect?”

   This kind of question—this kind of curiosity—brings us to the heart of our customers’ desired outcomes. When we make that the center of our attention, when our customers’ desires supersede our own, we become true advocates and create sustainable relationships.

   A better bean, a higher-quality tool, the best hash-brown potatoes—they’re all a function of what the customer wants, and you don’t find out what the customer wants by guessing.
    

2. Advocates engage in dialogue, not monologue.

   We recently conducted a survey to gauge the buying behaviors of very high-level stakeholders. When asked, “What kind of marketing turns you off?” the replies consistently pointed to the question of relevance. Our favorite was, “Quit talking about stuff I don’t care about.”

   Overheard at the farm stand: the best month and week for heirloom tomatoes.
   Overheard at the hardware store: how to sharpen a blade without chipping it.
   Overheard at the diner: a discussion of whether putting sugar in cornbread is a crime.

   Mainers like Andrew never talk about themselves, but we also doubt that our hardware man or diner operator gained a lot of customers by focusing on themselves. A one-to-one relationship, like the tango, takes two.

   This goes for social media, too. Be sure you’re serving rather than shouting. Starting a dialogue is a lot different from pushing your business interests onto others. Start a dialogue with a smart question that matters to the recipients. Better yet, send some information that will educate and illustrate your point. That’s advocacy, and it’s the foundation of a future one-to-one dialogue.
    

3. Advocates automate without becoming automatons.

   Finally, you don’t have to run an old-fashioned hardware store or produce stand to apply old-fashioned advocacy to your relationships with customers. It is the stuff of success in the most modern and technologically advanced businesses. But it only works when we make sure that the technology that delivers our message doesn’t take precedence over the message or the relationship itself. Don’t assume that if something gets to your audience faster that it automatically helps you get to your audience faster. It’s not that easy. The message is still the meat. The technology is just the cooker.

   Using technology as a tool to distribute a thoughtful, integrated campaign is fine. But technology won’t do the hard work of advocating for your customers, finding ways to serve them and their individual needs and deliver to their outcomes. That’s your job, and it’s why they call it work.

   E-marketing, blogging and all forms of business-appropriate social media are essential tools. But the technology won’t do the work for you. “Those guys who send 15 blast e-mails a week” aren’t the ones you’ll go out of your way to buy from.

None of these approaches is complicated. They are centuries old and repeatedly and consistently proven. They are simple. But take a look around. Only those who recognize that one-to-one relationships don’t come easy make it look like they do.

If you’d like to know more about Outcome Communications™, creating a one-to-one dialogue using social media, or integrating your marketing campaigns, contact us.

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