It’s very hard for anyone to take criticism. Whether it’s in the professional world, or the personal one. Also the tone sets the line between Criticism and Insult. you should never criticize something that cannot be changed, like the way someone looks or sounds etc. It’s hurtful and may cause undesirable consequences. That said, let’s talk about business and how to sell crap.
Sometimes companies don’t put things in their product or service descriptions, but the customer/client reads between the lines. So companies that are smart, will take the feedback from their customers and change the message, or better yet, change their offering to match the customer/clients’ expectations, even better yet, in addition to the latter, they add value by giving a little something above and beyond the expectations of the customer.
When I taught marketing at Cal Poly University, I would use examples, one of the examples was “Cracker Jack”. Of course Cracker jack had a little hidden gem inside and that was expected, so it really became a part of the product, some people bought it for the little toy, and threw away the actual box with the snack.
Customers expected this little gem, they knew it wasn’t worth $100, but imagine if every nth box had a real gem, like a real Gold ring. What would this do to the sales of Cracker Jack? Of course cereal boxes followed this model, also Publisher Clearing house etc.
Then along came Woot! A daily deals site that set the standard for hidden gems. They sold the unwanted and unsold inventory of companies for a good price, but every so often they put odds and ends in a bag and sold it for $1 and called it “Bag of Crap”. The limit was 3 of them, and the shipping was the same, $5 whether you bought one, two or three.
People started buying this “Bag of Crap” (BOC). The shipping cost $5 and the bag $1, for a total of $6 for one bag, $7 for 2 and $8 for 3. So it doesn’t take a genius to figure out, that it makes much better sense to buy 3 than it does 1, right? (Some people still buy 1 till today). Needless to say, when this BOC comes online, the servers crash, and within 1 minute, they have sold more than 5,000 Bags of Crap, or in proper English Bag-Of- Craps (I love it!).
When they first started the BOC program, they truly had junk and people didn’t expect much because they were telling you, “Hey, you’re getting a bag of Crap, so don’t expect anything”. But the tipping point was when every so often they put an Xbox or Large LCD TV, or something that’s worth a lot, but like I said, in most cases you got crap that didn’t sell on its own. So if they had 10,000 BOCs, they would have sold all of them, maybe even 20,000 or?
I like the fact that somebody at Woot was connected to the customers enough to see that there was a potential for a made up product like that. This person was interested in making it better in the future for the customer and of course, ultimately for the company.
A lot of companies get defensive and just blurt back at customers. Customers have nothing more to lose, but merchants do. The customer takes his/her money elsewhere but piles a whole lot of negative feedback online about the company and how they don’t care about the customer etc. If you’re a company with customer facing employees, send them to anger management training.
No one likes being told that their “Stuff” is not right or not valuable. Successful companies ask and find out what they can do to make it better, and get free and very valuable advice from the customer or client, which is the Holy Grail of marketing and commerce in general. I would rather hear honest feedback from a consumer that didn’t buy than a rosy comment from a buying customer, or worse yet, a great comment from a prospect that never even bought, and probably would not buy.
That’s why you MUST take the time to respond fully to customers and make sure to get their feedback. Also be ready to tweak your product or offering to satisfy the majority. In my classes I used to teach what I was taught when taking marketing courses, “You’re not the customer! The customer is the customer and the customer is not you!” always remember this.
You want the customer to fall in love with your company, put in things that were not included in your description and say, “I know we didn’t tell you about this, but you are such a valued customer that we included this too”. It doesn’t need to be much. A Mousepad would do fine for a software company. A list of sources to lookup if you are selling information, a small card with a mortgage calculating table if you’re a Real Estate agent, a card with useful conversion charts if you’re selling spices or food products online, etc etc. —– and take the chance to have them brag about you to their friends?
If you are a company that does this, you have earned my respect. Great job!
-D
*Disclosure: Woot was the original daily deals site (for me at least), they were acquired by Amazon
Mousepad.com is a company I have interest in. It sells custom printed mousepads and has some off the shelf pre-printed mousepads too that I found to be useful giveaways. PrismPlug is another company I have interest in. Prism Plugs are small removable covers that let you cover and uncover your webcam so you can make sure you have some privacy from hackers and other people that are not authorized to view through your webcam.
I taught Marketing courses as an adjunct faculty and guest lecturer from 2000-2003 at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.