I’ve said it many times “all customers are not equal.” I’ve even delivered whole seminars on the topic, but lately I’ve decided I was wrong! All customers are equal especially if you are beginning to build a business community around your brand. How exceptionally arrogant of me to think otherwise.

Customers are equal, they contribute something different to your business. The basis of how healthy your database is should not only be measured by its profit generating capabilities. The benefits some customers bring are not, and should not, be totally profit centred. Sometimes its influence, occasionally it will be knowledge, other times they will act as word of mouth operators. We need to recognise the non financial value adding aspects too.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t focus on the profit generating customers, not at all. What I am saying is that we need to be encouraging all customers to collaborate with each other to ensure the best prospects for everyone rather than pursue the short termism of money! What I have effectively been advocating is for businesses to act like faceless corporations instead of people. I’ve firmly wrapped my own knuckles!

So all customers are equal, just some may, at a particular moment in time, have more of a priority depending on the needs of the business. I accept in times of low sales, you chase the profit/cash generating ones, but its only a temporary measure, If you have an effective customer experience process in place, it means your other value givers are never forgotten and constantly engaged with you. Not all customers will bring you financial value, some will bring influential value…..and that’s just as important!

Moving that static database where you ‘buy’ customers to a healthy, engaging, vibrant business community isn’t going to be easy, no one said it was. It’s also a long and windy road too. However, the only limitations to it are what you place on it, not your customers, nor, the community you already have. There is a clear step by step approach that I feel is appropriate using some leading edge thinkers for help and bit of my own brain power.

In simplistic terms, you need to understand that all community members are equal but they will have and want different roles. Participate and engage in different ways! In the past we would grade our customers based on A, B, C and D or whatever denomination that was. That’s a little outdated. Using a mix of Frank Reichheld’s model and Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s model in the book “Groundswell” can provide a great solution to getting to grips with the dynamics of your community.

Identifying the following groups is essential to planning your reputation and marketing campaign where you can engage with individuals, maximise the intelligence and intellect and ensure you communicate the right things at the right level.

I suggest these are the critical game players in your business community:
1. Pillar influencers - significant influencers, they are not afraid to challenge you, intellectual about the future and have the ability to refer potential customers.
2. Connectors – well connected either online or offline or both
3. Promoters – people who promote, without any incentive, what you do
4. Passives - people who buy from you on a regular basis but who can also become promoters with some encouragement
5. Collaborators who could also be co-creators

There are sub groups of people that are important but these are your main ones. These members will significantly shift your business towards the new competitive advantages of innovation, engagement and building relationships with the relevantpeople.

What’s non-negotiable is the fact that the groups are made up of people. People have replaced products, connections bind communities and, with that, comes the rocky movement from broadcasting at customers to being social with your community. It’s a hell of a challenge, but at the route is building the right relationships with the right people.

We’ve already talked about why we need to start shaping and creating communities around our brand but what are the benefits and is it worth the significant effort required?

Well we know from the case studies of Lego, Harley Davidson, eBay, Apple and Sun Microsystems that business communities no matter how big, help us to deal with the ever changing environment and enable us to proactively innovate on a continuous basis. We can’t afford the talent, all the ideas to destructively compete anymore, it makes no economic sense in a world of abundance. There is no sense and therefore no option.

People attracted to our business communities are there voluntarily. They haven’t been imposed upon and are truly motivated to provide opportunities for brands to stretch themselves and move beyond an individuals personal best. Through this we will learn to collborate, an essential skill on anyone’s CV in the future.

Admit it, a new organisational way of doing business is emerging and we are all struggling to adapt and deal with it. The presence of a fully engaged business community will aid that revolution because there is nothing like being in touch with your customers and employees.

Business communities will come up with ideas we hadn’t even thought about. They will open our minds and give us access to knowledge that will send our competitors green with envy. The new challenges we face are just to big and sophisticated for individuals or individual organisations to face in isolation. A community can take some of the responsibility and accountability for these changes and share the burden of finding the solutions. Whilst at the same time you are bonding them to your brand. Making people feel valued brings a return in commitment and loyalty.

The next few blog posts will be about how you start the process of creating a business community that can elevate you above the competition. Don’t forget we are about to go far beyond marketing

There is a lot of dispiriting going on. There must be something in the air. I’ve made a list:

1. My local Caffe Nero’s not offering free wifi.

2. Companies House making it nigh impossible for you to do business with them, as their website is an entanglement of mush thats completely unusable.

3. The Chelsea Building Society devaluing houses, so on paper you have less equity and they can charge you a higher interest rate. Nice way of promoting customer retention.

4. Biscuits that you used to get in your hotel room, but you don’t now. Cut stuff from behind the scenes, not on the stage!

5. People like lawyers, accountants and public sector workers thinking they have a right to be aloof. Get your parachute chaps, you’re heading for a big fall.

6. People still trying to ’sell’ stuff. Features and benefits is just so yesterday.

7. People using social media to broadcast. In the past we just had companies doing it, now we have thousands of individuals.

8. People who just show up at work, dream all day about doing something else and never get round to it because they didn’t take time out to find their passion and purpose.

Just thought I’d dump that. Ah, feel much better now……..

Disrupting the status quo is every leaders prime role. It’s a stark contrast to the ‘command and control’ days of previous business models. Companies need to think about disrupting their relationships with their customers. Yes I did say that! We are far too complacent about them. We need to change the game with openness, transparency and moving from a culture of ‘managing the customer database’ to sowing the seeds of creating a ‘community’ around our brand. Something that will be at the heart of every business in the future.

Look at this model I created. It’s by no means perfected….months of R & D will do that but it shows a shift from an inert account management regime to a community model that will be full of life and vibrant.

Database →                        Relationship →                 Community

You can look at www.club.lego.com/en-US/default and www.harley-davidson.com for great examples. But it won’t be easy, it means unlearning stuff that’s ingrained in our minds. After decades of disappointing relationships, we now have the ability to gain impressive inroads into true partnerships with customers that really do change the dynamics for the better.

Truth is, we are struggling to get off first base. For many it will be a leap of faith, for others a simple transition. But it does require a deliberate plan to achieve it. And. ironically it starts with the database. More on that tomorrow…..

This isn’t contradicting yesterday’s post, far from it. If you don’t like people, then the future is going to be hellish difficult for you. Even if you love being amongst people, you’re going to have to shift your thinking considerably. Being with people who inspire you and make you smile are critically important. How you converse with people will mean a change of position:

Involvement to participation

Communication to conversation

Customers to community

Ownership to sharing

Control to collaboration

The future will demand being intimate with people internally in your organisation as well as externally. A delegate on a workshop I delivered recently said “I’m not sure I want to get as close to my plumber as my wife.” Perhaps, but he has missed the point. If the plumber is building a community of followers who love what he does, he’s going to have to get close to you somehow!

Hmmm…. your customers are creating the market place now not you. Give us choice and we will take it! Look at us has been replaced with look at what we are doing. The big question; is your marketing designed for a static world or an ever changing one?

Markets will always outperform individual businesses, they also learn a lot faster and are better connected than  business too. If you’re marketing ain’t broken, its about time you asked yourself why? As Jeff Jarvis said “The mass market is dead. It committed suicide. Google just handed it the gun.”

Most companies, for the last 10 years, have taken the easy way out to market their brands, they have essentially bought customers. Sadly, its cost more and more and had less and less impact. In the past it was about driving traffic to your business, now its about loyalty.

Remember this equation; Feeling valued = loyalty + commitment

Most of us are still acting as if what we do is scarce. Shouting isn’t going to get you heard above the crowd, not when everyone else if shouting too. Now really is the time to tear up the marketing you have been doing in the past. Measure its return on investment and, then when you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, go and find some other way of connecting with your customers.

In all the loudness, the shouting, the telling, the one sidedness of it all, we’ve forgotten what really matters the relationship. The relationship you have with your people, with your customers, competitors and collaborators. Communication is out (far too one sided) and, as we know, conversation is in (its far more two way.)

As Christopher Locke said in The Cluetrain Manifesto, “genuine conversation flourishes only in an atmosphere of free and open exchange.” That means respecting people’s opinions, feeling what its like to be in there shoes, understanding their values and concerns. Attempting to help solve solutions, not absolve ourselves from responsibility by building robust, meaningful relationships.

2010 will mean us becoming more ‘real’ and the web and social media will aid us in this mission next year. Many still think of the web as not real, yet it’s never been more real, more alive, more exciting. It generates millions of conversations everyday. It transports important information every hour and it enables people to stay connected every second. It’s time for you and I to get a grip and think about how the web will help you develop and sustain great relationships next year.

I think we are heading for more trouble, well some brands both big and small. We’ve spent the last fifty or so years (perhaps more) encouraging several generations of customers to demand more and more even when they didn’t need it. Now those demands are outstripping businesses ability to meet it.

Overnight, technology, people and economics have collided to create a new market, a new desire, a new need. No longer can we control and exploit customers. We can’t keep them on the threshold of our businesses and carry on with a transactional relationship. We have to invite them in to fully participate in what we are doing.

Like it’s employees/managers, customers are just as important stakeholders as the owners of the business. The word ’shareholder’ will have a very different meaning in the future.

Business in the past was valued on it’s financial performance, it still is. Increasingly, it will also be based on influence, followers and fans. If we own something we try to protect it. In fact, we can become over protective. For years we have been conditioned to think that we own stuff at work; our team, our customers, our products. Tesco thinks it owns it’s suppliers!

This over exuberance can be detrimental, if not a tad delusional. We can spend lots of money defending something that we actually don’t own. The future, we know, will be based on the value of our relationships with our fellow humans. You can only part own a relationship. You will only part own a product as we collaborate more, you have never owned your people, especially in a war for talent. And customers just ain’t buying that ‘priviledge’ thing anymore.

You don’t own the buildings you work in, you probably don’t own that car you drive and your company probably only lease that computer and mobile you use. We need to shift our mentality from one of ownership to partnership. That way we can work positively on the things that really are meaningful and rationally focus our efforts.