TES 080 - How to Create a Compelling Customer Promise

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there, Mel Abraham here, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to brand yourself as an influencer for more impact, income and freedom. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. In this episode we're going to talk a bit about promises. We're going to talk about your customer promise. How do we elevate and amplify your customer promise? So not only do you end up with customers for life, but evangelists that will fight for your business. And I'm going to introduce you to my Customer Promise Amplifier, a tool and template that I use with many of my high level clients. And if you want to download that tool, just go to Mel Abraham, melabraham.com session 080 and you'll get a chance to download the action guide for the Customer Amplifier Customer Promise Amplifier. In that process. And if you're not by your computer, maybe you're out for a run and you're just listening to this on the podcast or you happen to be driving and I want you to be. Then just text me at some point in time. Text, text mylegacy1word to 38470. I'll send you the download link. Make sure that you get all the tools, all the value out of each and every episode. So let's look at this whole idea of the customer promise because here's what I believe. A satisfied customer is your path to disaster. All right. It's not what I want. I don't want satisfied customers. I actually want ecstatic customers. I want customers that are jumping for joy, that, that are absolutely beyond themselves. I mean, think about what it's like. I remember my wife and I, we frequent a hotel down here for brunch. They have a great brunch and it's right on the water and we love going there and we happen to go there for our wedding anniversary this past year and they kind of Know us there, but they treat us so well. We walk in, we sit down for the brunch. We've got the view of the water and all of that. And here they come. They bring us this. This beautiful pastry with happy anniversary on it. You know, and the treatment and everything throughout the whole process was phenomenal. But then we come out, and now, normally they keep my car up front, and I come walking out and I don't see the car. And I look at Dan, the valet, and I said, hey, Dan, you know, where's the car? And he says, oh, shoot, I'm sorry, Mr. Abraham, it'll be up in just a moment. And I said, where is it? He says, well, it was your anniversary, so we decided to wash the car for you. And you. You think about that as completely not. You know, it was not something that we expected. It was not something we asked for. We had no idea that they would even consider it, but they took it upon themselves to create an extraordinary experience for Stephanie and I. And this is what I'm talking about. What is your customer promise? And I think that the things that we got to think about is this. If we don't get this right, there's some things that happen. Effectively, if we don't get this right, you're going to find that you have no distinction in the marketplace. You become commoditized. You become reduced to being put in a pile of sameness, and people won't go there. I mean, you think about this place that we had brunch at, we will go there. And we typically go there many times a year because of the way they treat us, because of the experience, because of the whole process of. I mean, aside from the fact that the food is absolutely amazing. So if we don't get this right, there is no distinction between us and the rest of the stuff that's out there. And if we don't get this right, what you find is that since there is no distinction, the perception in the marketplace is that you're low value, you're a commodity. I mean, you may be a pile of beans at that point in time. And I don't mean it in. In a negative way. Well, I guess I. Actually, I do. Fact of the matter is that as a business, as an entrepreneur, I never, ever want to compete at a commodity level, because then there is no differentiation. And the primary focus when you're at a commodity level, then is price. And I don't ever want to be the differentiator on price. I want to be the differentiator on Quality, experience, connection, the whole process. But price is never in there. Because I want price to become no object. In fact, if I do this correctly, not only does price objections go away, but competitive objections go away. The last thing that happens, well, one of the last things that happens if we don't get this right is effectively you end up with customers that I call runaways. In other words, they're transactional. They're going to come to you, they're going to buy, and then there is no loyalty, there is no connection. It's a transactional relationship and they're going to run away, they're going to be gone out of your sphere, out of your circle. You're never going to hear from them again. And that means that the challenge is that in order to continue your business, you're always got to keep getting more and more customers. And you've heard the cliche that it's easier to sell a current customer to create value in a current customer's hands that's already got a relationship with you versus trying to do something from the very beginning, start to find a new customer. So what I want to do is, yes, I'm going to have a process or, or a system that allows me to bring in new customers, but I need to have something that nurtures the customers that are already there. The people that care for, that I care for, that have cared to come to me and transact with me at least once to really build that relationship and build that connection. Many of you have heard that. I believe that our society in general is starved for connection. And we've confused contacts, likes and shares and thumbs up and all that stuff as connection. And it's not, not, it's contact. So how are you connecting the audience? Here's the cool thing. When you get this right, when you get this right, some things happen. Some really cool things happen. First things first, competition fades away. Because what ends up happening is you've created a relationship with that customer in such a way that you're not going to go anywhere else. There's a tremendous level of loyalty. I mean, I've just had a recent buying experience for something that was a very high priced, high ticket item. And the salesperson that I worked with was absolutely phenomenal work with bent over backwards. He worked through some challenges that we had during the transaction, some difficulties with timing, with structuring, with all the types of things. And he did everything possible. In fact, when there was ever an issue, I would simply call him up. He says, I got this. Don't worry about it when you can do that for your customer, man, you know, I took the time to write his direct report, his boss and their boss a letter about him because. And I'm going to refer to him because of the experience that he created. So competition effectively fades away if we do this correctly. The other thing that happens is that, as I said earlier, price doesn't matter. The conversation is not about price at that point, because you are the provider. If you positioned yourself correctly and you've created the experience in your customer's eyes, in your clients hearts, in their minds, through the experiences that you created, not some promise that is never fulfilled, but something that is over fulfilled. If you'll see in the framework when I break it down, that is over fulfilled in such a way that, you know what they say, I get it, I'm paying a little more, or I'm paying a lot more, but I'm willing to do it because of the experience, because of how it makes me feel, because of how they treat me in that process. And so really, when we start to look at this, that starts to really, really shift and change the relationship that you have with your market, with your audience, with your customers and your clients. And ultimately what ends up happening is that you build an army of evangelists. I mean, people that are willing to go to bat for you, people that are willing to stand toe to toe for you in a way that they're going to tell people that about you. In fact, this transaction I just talked about, I've already referred them, you know, two people to talk to them about doing a deal for them. And the fact is that that relationship is what created the referral. So they've got someone in me that is an evangelist for their brand. And when you can create evangelists for your brand through experience, so they can sit back and say, I've had firsthand experience with you or with your brand. And here's what it was like. It's like having a bunch of really high ratings on Yelp. But when you're going out there vocally and telling people about it, that's a different ballgame. And so what we want to do is use the customer buying experience to build an army of evangelists. In fact, this, if you will, unpaid sales team that's out there touting your wares, that's out there, you know, singing your praises, that's out there willing to raise the flag and say, this is who you got to go to. This is who you should. You should be working with. I mean, think about that in your business Think about how that would affect your business. The business coming in, the revenues, the profitability, the work that you're doing, the meaning all the way down the line, the ripple effect of creating that experience, you know, so what do you need to know to make that happen? I think there's a couple principles for you to understand as we move forward. And then we'll build out the framework, the Customer Promise Amplifier framework. So here's the thing. The first thing to understand is expectations are transactional. What do I mean by this? If all we do is build our business, our customer experience to meet their expectations, then you're creating a transactional relationship. We've got to surpass their expectations. We've got to absolutely wow them with the things that we do. And we'll give you some ways to do that. We've got to give them some surprises. We've got to do some things differently. Because meeting expectations is the bare minimum of operations. And that's not enough. And that is where I think we start to create that transactional relationship that's fleeting. And I want you to have not transactional relationships. I want you to have long term relationships that are mutually valuable. In other words, they get value out of the relationships and you do too. I mean, granted there's commerce involved and it's a commercial relationship, but that doesn't mean that there can't be a relationship just the same just because there's money involved. The second principle that I think we need to really think about is if we're not focused on expectations, what should we be focused on? What we should be focused on is their identity, their aspirations. What are they really trying to identify with? If you think about some of the incredible commercials even going way back.

There was when they first came out and women started to smoke, there was an advertisement that came out for the cigarettes that they called them torches of. I mean, think about that. What they did is they created an identity for women to pick up cigarettes. Now, I'm not.

A smoker, nor have I ever been, nor do I support it. I think it's an unfortunately unhealthy habit. So I'm just using as an example because when we're talking decades and decades ago when this started to happen, what they used as an advertisement is to create an experience that I that created a connection to an identity. And that was torches of freedom. You can see the same thing with Apple. When they first came out with the ipod and you had those white silhouettes of the people with the headphones on and this cool kind of feel for it. And they created an identity for people to work from and to say, I want to be part of that crowd. And so one of the things that we need to think about in our products or services is how do we appeal to their individual identity, to their aspirational identities in order to make it come to fruition, to raise the bar of what it is that they want in the process. And then the third principle is to realize that we need to create a buzz from the delivery. In other words, when you deliver your service, your product or something, how do you create a buzz? How do you over deliver and create an experience beyond any other? I know that last year during the holidays, my wife and I took some time and we went and spent Christmas Eve out at a hotel. And here we came back in from an evening out and they had on our bed a monogram pillow with a for my last name of Abraham. They had rose petals strewn through the room, they had a bubble bath set, they had chocolates and champagne. And all that stuff was nothing we ordered, was nothing we asked for. It was something they did to create buzz, to allow me to sit back and want to talk about the delivery, to want to talk about the experience. And I ask you this is that if you look at your experience, if you look at your customer's journey, if you look at that relationship, what are you doing to get them to talk about it, to verbalize it, to post it on social media, to have conversations with their friends saying, you have to go there, it's the only place to go. Because if you're not doing that, then we're failing on this principle. We need to get people to have a buzz, to be willing to talk about it. And even if there's problems, I get it, there's problems, there's challenges that we deal with those at a level that also creates a positive buzz that you take care of things in a way that allows people to feel good about the relationship they have with you. So how does this happen? I think that we need to understand what I call the Customer Promise Amplifier. And in order to do that, I'm going to, we're going to actually jump to the iPad here and get ourselves into building out this, this framework. And again, if you, if you've not, if you've noticed, downloaded the action guide, the Customer Promise Amplifier action guide, just go to melabraham.com session 080 to download it or text me mylegacy one word, no spaces to 38470. I'll make sure that I Get that to you. So let's just jump into the iPad and.

Let'S work this thing out and see how this works. So one of the first things to consider in this process is this, is that we're going to talk about things on a variety of different levels. And the first, the first thing that we're going to talk about is really about your execution.

So at what level are you executing at first? So we're going to talk about your execution, we're going to talk a bit about, we're going to talk a bit about your customers perception.

And then from there, because based on their perception, I'm just going to expand this a little bit. Based on their perception, they will then come up with their buying criteria.

So we're going to talk a bit about the buying criteria based on your execution and what they're looking at. We'll then touch on the type of customer that you're creating. You're creating a relationship. The kind of relationship that you're creating with a customer becomes important and you have the ability to impact that. And then the last thing that I want to touch on is what impact that has with your relationship in the marketplace and that customer as we move forward. So at the bare minimum, at the bare minimum, when you first start out, we're really dealing. And this is the thing that we talked about in one of the principles, is that you can deliver your execution based on their expectations.

Yeah, effectively you meet their expectations. Here's the challenge with that, is when you meet their expectations, as I said, you're actually creating a relationship of a commodity.

The perception, the marketplace is that you've got a commodity that you're offering and there is no differentiation, there is no distinction, there is no value beyond what they're using it for. Their buying criteria then becomes one of what does it cost me? They're totally focused on one thing and one thing only, and that's the price. And we need to get that customer focus off of price and onto value, that client focus into, in. In order to, to really nail this thing. And in the end, what ends up happening is you have, okay, satisfied.

Customers. And that, my friends, will be the beginning of the end for you. Because satisfied customers end up becoming what I call leavers or runaways. They're not going to stay with you for long. So what we need to do is we got to look at this whole piece and say, all right, that's where a lot of people may play, but it's not a place where you want to play. You want to Move yourself up. I don't want to serve at the expectation level. The minimum that I want to serve at is what I call.

The desires level.

Because if I'm serving their desires, I've elevated myself above their expectations because they come into the game with a level of expectations, but there is always a little bit where they would desire just a little more, just a little more. And so if you can serve at that desires level, what ends up happening is they start to look at you not as a commodity, but it's a premium.

As a premium. And when you start to be seen as a premium, what they start to look at from a buying criteria is not as much the cost. They're still going to focus a bit on the cost, but they're actually going to look at what we call utility, the impact it's going to have in their life, how it works, the functionality, the utility of what it does for them in the process. And now instead of satisfied customers, you actually have happy customers. So this becomes the minimum level. If I, if it were me, this is the minimum level. We need to operate at the desire level, not at the expectation level, at the desire level. Because with happy customers, you have what I call repeaters.

Now. People are going to come back to you and use you over and over again because they felt that you actually exceeded the expectations that they had. But there's still another level above that. And this is where I actually think we ought to strive for. This is where I think if you take the time to create the relationships, to do the things, to really bring this to life, things will change for you dynamically. And I'm going to give you a worksheet that's going to help you build out and amplify this customer promise experience for your customers in doing that. But, but now you start to operate at a different place. And this is at their unexpected.

Needs level.

Completely unexpected. Just like this whole thing with them washing the car for me and, and doing some of those things, it was totally unexpected. The card certainly needed a wash. So I'm guessing that's what they saw. But the fact of the matter is it was totally unexpected. And in that process, it made me look at it and say, that is extraordinary.

So their perception, if you operate at that unexpected needs level, is that you're extraordinary in your delivery, that you're extraordinary in your service, in your product. You're extraordinary in that.

Process of creating the connection with your clients, your customers, in your marketplace, and with that extraordinary type of relationship, with that kind of, that kind of perception. In the marketplace, their buying criteria.

Is based on their identity. They identify with it. Now you, you've created a deep seated relationship and connection with them in their heart, in their soul, not only in their logical mind that gets them to go, this is about me and this is who I am and this is what I want and I want to, to be part of. And they feel like they're part of a movement, they feel they're part of a mission. This is what drives some of these companies that, that have some tremendous, tremendous success and growth is because they, they work at the identity level. Clif Bar is one of them, Patagonia is another one. Tomshoes, Zappos, all of them, what they're doing is they're actually Apple and in some cases they're a little challenged right now. But what's built Apple is that people identified with them. They worked at the identity level. And when you work at the identity level, what you do is you create not only happy customers, but you create fans.

The impact, and this is the cool thing about it is if you do this well, and when you do this well, if you take the time, and I know that none of this is easy and in fact, sometimes it's going to cost you money to do it, but in the long term it's going to pay you back in spades. Because in the long term the impact you're going to have is now I have evangelists.

Evangelists, people that are willing to go to bat for you, people that are willing to speak about it, people that are willing to be vocal about it. Not someone that says, yeah, I'm satisfied. And I don't say anything good, bad or indifferent. I want people that are screaming to the hills that are saying, my gosh, you got to go to Mel. I mean, I've had a couple of folks in recent, just recent times that I've had the opportunity, the blessing to work with them one on one. And the response because of the impact it had was tremendous. And so what you need is people that are willing to vocalize this in that way. We live in a different marketplace today. It's not about just direct advertising or TV advertising or newspaper ads. It is about word of mouth. It is about that viral kind of nature of contacts and communication. And we need to create that viral nature by blowing away our customers, by exceeding their expectations, by far exceeding their expectations and exceeding their desires, by working at their unexpected needs level and doing it in such a way that creates them a perception of you being extraordinary and makes them your evangelist, your Invisible, if you will, unpaid sales team that's out there talking you up and putting it out there for you. That's the key to doing this. That's the key to amplifying your your customer promise and your customers experience. And when you do that successfully, man, the doors are going to open up. As I said, price and cost become a non issue, competition becomes a non issue because you've set yourself apart. You've created the distinctions in a way that people cannot compare you to what's out there. Great book, if you haven't read it, that talks a bit about this distinction is all this Blue Ocean Strategy. I love, love, love, love that book. If you haven't checked it out, check out Blue Ocean Strategy in the process. So here's the deal. The Customer Promise Amplifier action guide that you can download, melabraham.com session 080 you can download has a worksheet that takes you through a number of processes that allows you to start to understand what it takes to really build out and work through the process of amplifying your customer promise and delivering on it. So it's not, it's not hear me clearly on this. It's not about just making the promise, it's about delivering on it. It's about fulfilling that promise in a way that your customers, your clients, your marketplace are talking about it all the time. So you're going to go through it. We're going to talk about three different categories of things that you can do in the action guide. We're going to talk about your baseline, what's the baseline things that you can do, what's the aspirational things that you can do and what's the experience you can create.

For your customers and clients. So do me a favor, download that action guide, work it through, get it implemented in your business, get it out there in such a way that you start to see things again. You're going to have to invest your time because, because it takes a little while to create these experiences and to build that trust that the experience is going to be consistent experience over and over again. But when you do, man, what happens is you start to create momentum in the business. So take that guide, work through it, work through it with your people, work through it with it with the people that are face to the customer people, your internal people. Create it part of your business identity to go out there and create extraordinary experiences, to wow them in a way that makes them go, oh my gosh, I got to tell the world about them. So I hope that this serves you I hope that you found this of value. Fulfilling and exceeding your customer promise will be the key to transcending price objections, competitive impacts and that'll do it. So do me a favor, if you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe because I got a lot of these tools, these templates and these, these success tips for you in business and wealth and success and thought leadership and thoughtpreneurship that I'm going to keep doing on a weekly basis. So subscribe, be part of the community. Love to hear from you also. And so if you've got any questions, just leave them for me@askmelnow.com you can go there, you can leave me your question. We'll make sure we get it on an upcoming episode. And one last favor, if you would do me a favor, is that there's probably people that you know that these kinds of tips, these things could serve them. So it could help them share it with a friend. Go ahead and share this, post it, put it out there. Let's get it out to the world so I can be their mentor, their success mentor, their entrepreneurial mentor in their back pocket. This is the way I can get access to as many people as possible and give them access to me.

At this level. So do me a favor, share it. Subscribe and until we see each other on the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

Foreign.

And that's it for this episode of Building your Money Machine where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.