In “The Anatomy of Buzz”, Emanuel Rosen exhorts businesses to augment their marketing and sales teams by enlisting their most engaged customers as advocates for their products. In “Raving Fans”, Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles describe the three steps to create a cult of such highly engaged customers for your products:

• “Decide what you want” – Clarify your company’s mission and values to focus your team re. what you do best, for whom you do it, and why it matters – to them and to you.
• “Discover what your customer wants” – Help prospects discover what they emotionally want and rationally need to more deeply understand their current problems/opportunities and the painful costs of their current solution, then educate them about the unique benefits that “perfect” customers of your current products enjoy – and finally, allow them to make a wise purchase decision on their own.
• “Deliver plus one” – Over-deliver by fulfilling 101% of the above promises AND show your customers that you genuinely care about them and appreciate their business.

Shaping customer experiences around these three sets of activities builds strong brands and proudly engages customers and employees in the honorable professions of marketing and sales.

Nine Communication Tools to Help Prospective Customers Make Good Purchase Decisions – and Thereby Help You Create Raving Fans

Decide

1. Product/Company Brand Identity
2. Team Education (Internal Brand Messaging)
3. Industry Education (External Brand Messaging)

Discover

4. Inside Sales Conversations (Lead Generation)
5. Field Sales Conversations (Lead Qualification)
6. Field Sales Leave-behinds & Follow-up (Qualified Lead Conversion)

(Over)Deliver

7. Account Management/Customer Conversations (Retention & Referrals)
8. Account Management/Customer Conversations (Up-sell/Cross-sell)
9. Former Customer Conversations (Win-back)