Making Your Competitors Irrelevant

Do not be afraid to build relationships and go deep. do not be afraid to use all of the modalities and connection points at your disposal to deepen your relationships with your customers.

Outcare the competition

I can’t control what your competitors do, but I can control what you do. And one of the things I say is I help people ethically build and scale their companies by out carrying the competition. And when was the last time that a customer had a horrible experience and recommended a company? Not that often, but when was the last time a customer had an amazing experience and stay with that customer, stay with that company, stayed loyal, did all those pieces all the time.

And so the way that I say that you can make competitors irrelevant is by out carrying them. So for example, let’s say they. I have an Instagram and all they do is post, but they never respond to their customers. Go respond to their customers. You don’t have to tell them to come to buy your product, but if you answer their questions, they’re going to like you more. That’s a really extreme example, but I say. You can’t make them all irrelevant cause sometimes it’s a kick in the pants and they’ll come, navigate the customers more. They’ll come to respond to the customers more. They’ll come to love the customers, but most time they won’t, but that’s a perfect example.

I’m going to give you a couple of examples of what you do, but here’s what I want you to do to remember. You can easily make your competitors have relevant by going deep because a lot of the time, even in our own lives, we’ll have products that might be inferior to a new product that came out. But because of the endowment, as Jonah Berger calls it, that we have with the current company based on a lot of inputs, like the time we’ve been using it, how hard it would be to change, but also the depth of our relationship with that brand or that product determines whether we jumped ship for the better product, or we keep using the one we have because of the loyalty we have with that brand.

And so think about all the ways in which you can connect with customers. Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you looked in your account, when somebody bought from you, bought one of your courses, bought one of your products and you picked up the phone and you called them and you just said, Hey, thanks. I want to introduce myself. I’m the founder of the company and you just bought. And I just wanted to reach out personally and say, thank you, or use Bonjuro and send them a video. When was the last time you jumped on that call and you asked them a question about them, their life, their family? When was the last time you had your customer service department?

When somebody called ask them for details to collect information like we have notes in some of the companies I work with when somebody calls and the cabin calling the, hear a dog in the background, and they’d be like, Oh, do you have a dog? I’m like, yeah, what kind? And they’ll write it down in the CRM, the customer relationship software that we use. And then we’ll send a thank you note in the mail. And we’re like, Oh my God, I hope Fido enjoys these treats and sentences there. You can ask them questions as people buy from, you use your email, use your Bonjuro, use your social media. Don’t just respond to their comments, go deeper. So I’m like, Oh my God, I love this. But Oh, that’s amazing. What are your goals for 2020? What’s one of your favorite hobbies or you slide into their DMS, but your job is to always go one step deeper than your competitors do. And there is an absolute guarantee that you win that game for all the right reasons for all the right customers. But like when you take the time to connect, don’t connect where everybody else connects everywhere, right? People are so used to buying and getting an email receipt, send them a video message or pick up the phone, literally have a. Accompany phone, have a company iPhone, and don’t even worry about apps. And when they buy, literally send them a personalized thank you tax from the company phone, and you can have the CEO do it, the customer service team to be like, Hey, this is the company number. We just want to say thank you. We’re so excited.

You have an unlimited amount of opportunities to go deep with your customers. You have an unlimited amount of opportunities to add touchpoints that add depth and build relationships with your customers. You have an unlimited amount of ways to guarantee that they stay with you if they’re the right customer. But if you do none of them work. And so I’ll tell you this one story because it’s a short episode. And so the way to make your competitors irrelevant is to Outcare them. And some of them are going to jump in. And they’re going to care too, which is great. But I will go respond to people’s Amazon questions. I will go to my competitor’s social and I will answer their people’s questions. Sometimes they do it on my personal account. Sometimes I’ll do an under my business accounts, depending on how bold I’m being. There are other times where I’ll be like, Hey, I saw your question. I just wanted to send you a DM. No rush. Just wanted to answer it for you.

 And I’ve even been known to help customers use our competitor’s products more effectively. So then they literally told their friends like, Hey, I bought it from this company, but they didn’t help me use it. But George, over here from high-speed daddy helped me use their bag better. Don’t buy there, just please go buy him. And they’ll literally sell our product, even though they don’t own it based on the experience they had with us. And so there’s one company, in particular, I had this bright idea and I looked at sales and sales were great. And I was like, Hey, do me a favor. Pull up a record of anybody who’s ever spent more than X amount of dollars in the company.

And the record pulled up like 31 people and the 31 people were all there and we all have their phone number. And we just noticed that one of them happened to buy two days prior and they bought 30 of this one product. And I was like call her. And they’re like, what am I calling? Pick up the phone and just call her and say, Hey, it’s, the owner of this company. I just wanted to say, thank you and introduce myself. And she’s Oh my God. And she’s Oh, you’ll never believe I bought 30 of them because I own a small construction company while small, I have a hundred employees, but I wanted to see if they would like this product. I didn’t want to commit to all of them, but they love it already. And so I just wasn’t sure if I could stand behind the company, I didn’t know what it would be. We’re like, Oh my God, tell us about it. She told us she was buying this product for all of our employees to help them work better. And then. And we call she’s now that you guys have called, you know what I’d like to just buy them for all my employees. Because now I know you guys are going to take care of us. And she literally turned around after that phone call and bought 90, more of that product, which that product was $68 per. And so we made her own coupon code in a special just for her to get it for that one time. But that would have never happened if we didn’t pick up the phone.

And so do not be afraid to meet people where they are, do not be afraid to build relationships and go deep. Do not be afraid to take it from email to phone or phone to video or video to email, do not be afraid to use all of the modalities and connection points at your disposal to deepen your relationships with your customers. But I guarantee you that if you always go one step deeper than all of your competitors, they become irrelevant. Or they become relevant by doing it the right way. And maybe they become people in arms, but that’s the way that I see it. And so you have to go one step deeper and stop relying on automation and apps and do it intentionally with your team, with your groups, with your processes and be like, what can we automate that doesn’t require human touch so that we can have more time being in relationship with the things that matter and being in those human touch elements.

I want that to be your focus every day. How can I go deeper? How can I add another touch point? How can I surprise in the light? And the thing is that people love phone calls when they’re not being telemarketing to or sold people love phone calls when it’s about having them feel seen, heard, and respected.

So utilize the tools that you’ve created to go deep with your customers to develop a stronger bond. To get Intel by asking things like, what are your goals? What are you to spend your time doing? What’s keeping you stuck? Like, why are you trying us now? What can we do differently? And then create solutions to those. And I guarantee you that your competitors will be irrelevant.