Enter setting expectations.  Or more accurately, setting the right expectations.  Or even more accurately, NOT not setting expectations.  As a small business marketing consultant I pay a lot of attention to this stuff!

Problem: When you install an enterprise software system, the vendor must convert all the user company’s data to conform to the new system.  This is normally cumbersome and takes lots of fine-tuning to get right.  Meanwhile, the decision-makers at the user company start thinking, “Wait a second, this new expensive software can’t even handle the data our crappy current software handles just fine.  What are we getting ourselves into.”  And eveything about the installation after that seems to go a bit rockier.  Why?  Everything is seen through what-are-we-getting-ourselves-into eyes.

Solution: Let me tell you about one part of the installation process that can be frustrating.  Data conversion takes a lot of fine-tuning.  In fact, you may wonder at times why the new software can’t handle data your old system handles just fine.  Don’t worry.  This is a natural part of every installation and nothing to worry about.

Setting the right or more realistic expectations can improve the customer experience even though what actually happens to the customer doesn’t necessarily change.  You’ve experienced this.  You “get off on the wrong foot” with a vendor or customer and then notice every time there is a small glitch in the relationship.  And the glitches reinforce your growing concern about their reliability.  Your frame of reference: the customer or vendor is unreliable.  You “get off on the right foot” and those same small glitches don’t reinforce anything.  Your frame of reference: they can be trusted and a little glitch here or there doesn’t matter.

I don’t mean setting high expectations. 

Problem: When a landscaping contractor remodels your back yard, the place looks awful (all torn up) for about 80% of the time.  During that time the homeowner starts to question whether the contractor knows what he’s doing.  After the homeowner arrives at that conclusion or level of discomfort, they notice every little imperfection.

Solution: Let me tell you how you’re going to feel throughout some of the project.  Your back yard is going to look completely torn up for a long time.  You’ll be thinking hey, they’re supposed to be done is three days and it looks like World War Three out there.  Don’t worry.  Everything comes together during the last few days of the project.  I know it’s hard to imagine, but that’s just the way these projects work.

My experience is that most companies don’t set too high an expectation going into new customer relationships, it’s that they don’t set any expectations.

Problem: When a new patient comes into an Oncology practice (after they’ve been diagnosed with cancer) the first two contacts they have are with a scheduler (appointment setting, forms to fill out, medical information to bring) and a financial counselor (insurance, reimbursement).  Patients can start to feel like the practice is more interested in getting paid than curing them.  This can lead to the patient questioning their quality of care when they experience the little bumps that are part of any healthcare process.

Solution: All of us in the practice are here to help you beat your cancer.  As you come into the practice, you’ll find there will be a lot of paperwork to get past at first.  That’s just part of the system so please bare with us.  We like to get all that handled up front so you and your care team can focus on one thing, your healing.

Without an attempt by the practice to set expectations, the cancer patient is left on his or her own to make sense out of what happens.

Look at the customer experience through the customers’ eyes.  There are typically small “interventions” you can make early in the relationship that can help set realistic expectations.  Realistic expectations foster comfort and a comfortable prospect or customer is a much happier prospect or customer.

//  After creating and implementing hundreds of marketing campaigns for clients in just about every industry imaginable, a handful of elements kept coming up as essential.  That is, when we ignored one, we paid the price.

Learn from my experience:

1.  Your message isn’t customer-driven

What you’re saying about your product is important to you, is understandable to you.  But not to your customer.  It doesn’t matter what’s important to you.  What’s important is what’s important to your customer.  They buy for their reasons, not yours.  Make sure your message is important to them.  How?  Ask them.

2.  Your marketing methods aren’t customer-driven

You keep going to trade shows, but the decision-makers inside your customers’ companies stopped going two years ago.  You keep advertising in that trade magazine because it’s the best and biggest in the industry, but the decision-makers inside your customers’ companies stopped paying much attention to it two years ago.  Hummm.  How do your customers expect to learn about new vendors like your company?  How do they prefer being contacted?  Ask them!  Align your methods with your customers’ expectations and preferences.

3.  Incomplete marketing support (not a campaign)

I see it all the time.  A company sends one mailing, not much happens and they go about the task of figuring out why their marketing isn’t working.  Or they place one ad or go to one trade show.  No follow up.

Things change.  A prospect may not be open to your message this month, but might be next month.  Think marketing campaign: multiple contacts executed a variety of ways (ads, direct mail, Internet, trade show, etc.).  One ad or one mailing or one trade show does not a campaign make.

4.  No testing/quit before you succeed

“We tried direct mail but it didn’t work.”  Tried it one time, did ya, and it didn’t work-well then, forget direct mail!  Sounds silly, but too many owners give up on a marketing method before they give it a chance to succeed.  Make small affordable tests.  If customers tell you newspaper is how they learn about firms like yours, test in a newspaper where a quarter page ad is $400, not $4,000.  Learn, change the headline.  Change the offer.  Change the price.  Add a picture.  Test.  Rarely is something that “fails” 100% wrong.  Testing helps you eliminate the bad and keep the good.  Don’t quit before you give yourself a chance to succeed.

5.  Too much “me-too”

Great food, fast, friendly service and reasonable prices.  Wonderful, but why should I eat in your restaurant?  Knowledgeable, experienced staff, made in America quality and fast shipping.  Great, but why should I buy from you?

Are all those wonderful things you’re saying about your product really differentiating you, or do they sound like everybody else?  My best antidote to too much “me too” is two things:

Make sure you’re giving people reasons to buy that are their reasons, not yours (a previous topic).

Be specific.  Quality, service and price are so overused they have no impact.  What does quality mean?  “Our superior manufacturing techniques allow us to warranty our gizmo for 10 years, DOUBLE the industry standard.”  “We have two owners and two superintendents in the field checking every job.  No other contractor our size can say that.  No other contractor cares more about quality than we do.”

6.  You don’t contact enough people

At its most basic, marketing is still a game of odds.  The more people you contact, the higher the odds your message gets to people who want your product at that time. 

7.  You don’t contact people often enough

Same as above.  Get the odds in your favor.  I may not need or want your product today, but I may next month. 

Any of this sound familiar?  Well. . .yet started changing things!