Maggiano's Magic Marketing by Twitter

by Hank Trisler

My wife and I celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary on April 2. (We felt the day before was too obvious.)

We decided to go to Maggiano's, as the food is good and the service pleasant. There are several Italian restaurants closer to us, but we like Maggiano's. We invited another couple to join us.

While waiting for the wine to arrive, I tweeted on my iPhone: "Dinner at Maggiano's celebrating 31 years married."

Now why did I do that? Hell, I don't know. No one really cares about that or the fact that I play bad tennis, but someone told me I should tweet every time my dog rolls over, so I do. Besides, the wine hadn't arrived and I had nothing else to do but politely converse with my guests and I sure wasn't going to do that, so I tweeted.

Dinner was all we expected it to be and we went away happy. When I got home, I checked my messages on my desktop computer and found this from Maggiano's. "@trisler Congrats. and a very happy anniversary to you and your wife! Enjoy your evening."

WOW! Now how did they know? We had told no one, as we didn't want singing dolts bearing lighted cupcakes or any other sort of civil disturbance. We just wanted a quiet evening, which we had.

AHA! I'll bet they used Google Alerts, or something similar, to monitor Twitter for mention of the word, "Maggiano" and when I put it in my idiot tweet, they picked it up and responded.

Now that's powerful marketing. Notice they didn't ask me to go to their web site, they didn't offer me any special deals or discounts, they didn't yell at me or pitch me on anything. They just wished us a Happy Anniversary like one human being to another. I really liked that and I'll guarantee you that I'll be back and I'll tell my friends (both of them) about it.

How have you effectively used "soft skills" in your marketing?

TEN COMMON ENEMIES (10)

By Hank Trisler

Whew! We're heading for the barn. I'm NEVER going to commit to writing a 10 part series again. But the fact of the matter is that we've run through the first 9 of the 10 COMMON ENEMIES, leaving only a

LACK OF DAILY PRACTICE

It took a lot of practice for our friend on the right to be able to twist his body that way. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. If you practice swinging a golf club from the outside to the inside, you will perfect an ugly slice. First we need some instruction to be sure we’re practicing methods that are proven, or provably successful. Then we need to practice those methods every day.

The true key to professionalism in any endeavor is practice. Our practice can come in the form of cold calls, in person and on the telephone. That practice will make us stronger, and at absolutely no risk. You can’t lose, as you had nothing going in.

As long as we've come this far together, let's quickly sum up our trip.

Our EGOS make us think that what we have to say is more important than what the customer has to say. This leads us to

TALK TOO MUCH. The customer should talk 80% of the time, while we talk only 20% of the time. Our 20% should be largely questions to keep the customer talking. Talking causes

POOR LISTENING HABITS. It is far more important to understand than to be understood. From an income point of view, the pay is greater for asking the right questions than for knowing the right answers. Because we listen poorly

WE ASSUME WE KNOW WHAT'S ON THE CUSTOMER'S MIND. Assumptions are lethal in selling, as in many other areas. Because we don't know what the customer thinks

WE TALK ABOUT THINGS THAT DON'T INTEREST THE CUSTOMER. We need to talk only about those things interesting to the customer. We support the customer when they make statements that take us closer to our sales goal, and withhold support when they make statements that take us away from our sales goals.

WE INCORRECTLY EVALUATE THE CUSTOMER'S ATTITUDE. There are only three attitudes available to the customer: Acceptance, Objection and Indifference. Only if we know how to correctly determine the customer's attitude and then how to appropriately respond can we expect to achieve friction-free selling. Because we don't know the customer's attitude

WE DON'T ASK FOR COMMITMENT. We're afraid of being pushy, so we become a conversationalist, rather than a salesperson. The sales interview does not begin until we've asked someone to do something. Ask and ye shall receive. Don't ask and you don't get. That simple.

LACK OF WELL-DEFINED GOALS AND OBJECTIVES. Not just your normal annual goals that sales managers have been harping about since the beginning of time, but specific goals, descending in order of importance, on each sales call. The only reason we lose is that we don't give ourselves enough opportunities to win.

WE DON'T TAKE NOTES AND KEEP RECORDS OF THOSE NOTES. If we can't remember what the customer said was important to him, we'll talk about what is important to us and therefore should be important to him. That causes us to consistently miss the mark.

And lastly, A LACK OF DAILY PRACTICE, the problem of which is set forth above.

Defeat these ten common enemies and 2009 will indeed be your finest year ever.

Please let me know what you think of this series and how it might be useful to you.

TEN COMMON ENEMIES (9)

By Hank Trisler

Because our egos tell us we have excellent memories which will be more than adequate to recall important items when we need them,

WE FAIL TO TAKE NOTES AND KEEP RECORDS OF THOSE NOTES

An old Arab proverb states that "The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink." If we do not write down what the customer says is important to him, we will talk to him about what we think should be important to him. This is the sort of unwelcome influence our egos exercise over us.

"Won't my customers be put off by my taking notes?" you might well ask. Quite the contrary. The customer will be gratified that we are making notes, because we not only look like we’re listening, we are proving we’re listening. As we've discussed before, people don't listen to one another anymore. By listening and making notes, you set yourself above your competition.

Remember that people treat us the way we have trained them to treat us. If you don't like the treatment, change the training. You might want to say something like this to a customer you're meeting for the first time, "You're going to be telling me some very important things and I want to be sure I don't forget any. You don't mind if I make some notes, do you?"

In over fifty years of selling, I have yet to have someone say, "Yes, I mind. Don't you write anything I say down." Are you kidding? People are delighted to have you make notes. It makes them feel important and aware that you know they are important. After they get used to it, they'll tell you if you miss something. "Hey, I just said something important. Write that down." You have non-verbally transformed your self from a pitching sales critter to an assistant buyer. You're on the customer's team.

Yet another benefit comes when we ask for a commitment. All we need say is: "Let’s review what you told me is important to you," and pull out our notes and summarize them. "Looks like all we need to do to get you where you want to be is your signature right here. Press hard, the fourth copy’s yours."

Only by taking notes can we be sure we're talking only about things important to our customers. Only by keeping records of those notes can we instantly get back up to speed when the customer returns for that precious repeat business.

What do you think about note-taking? Is it too mechanical for you? Tell me what you think.