Joey Coleman, Never Lose a Customer Again – InnovaBuzz 250

Joey Coleman, Never Lose a Customer Again

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Joey Coleman, who is the author of Never Lose a Customer Again. Joey helps companies keep their customers. As a keynote speaker, workshop leader, and consultant, he helps businesses design creative ways to engage customers – especially in the crucial First 100 Days®️ of the customer lifecycle.

Joey has an eclectic background that has seen him defend “alleged” criminals, sell custom research to Fortune 500 executives, race along the Great Wall, juggle in front of the Taj Mahal, emcee charity auctions, work in the White House, sing a solo at the Kennedy Center, and travel to 48 countries (and counting). Today, his focus is on speaking, coaching and writing about all things customer experience.

In our discussion, Joey and I talked about:

• Why the first 100 days of having a customer are so important and how to overcome buyers’ remorse
• Why it’s important to understand what the customer REALLY wants and focusing your efforts on helping them achieve that result
• How to intentionally engineer a customer experience that will generate more sales, but more importantly, generate an army of raving fans that will want to tell everyone about your company.

Joel Klettke on episode 223 introduced us to Joey.

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

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Show Notes from this episode with Joey Coleman, Author of Never Lose a Customer Again

Key points and takeaways from this episode include:

• The thread that connects every position I’ve had is the human experience. The way I excelled and succeeded in those roles was through a keen understanding of why humans do the things that they do and how I can persuade them to do the things I’d like them to do.
• Customers seek out a more personalised connection. They’re looking for a more bespoke and local experience where they feel that they matter as a human rather than a number.
• The longer a customer has been with a company, the less he should pay, and the lesser it requires to manage his account.
• If you get the first 100 days right, you will have a customer for life. If you properly lay the foundation of onboarding a new customer, you can have a long term relationship. 
• A customer’s lifetime value is clearly defined and influenced by how they feel in the first 100 days.
• As the value of a purchase increases, the feelings of buyer’s remorse increases as well. 
• Always remember that new customers have never done business with you. They have no idea what’s coming next. Often they don’t read the instructions in the same way as you don’t. It’s your job to fill in the blanks for them and help them navigate through the process.
• Pay attention to what the customer REALLY wants. 
• Accomplishment is not when a customer walks out of your store with your product. It is when the customer uses your product and gets the benefit or the value for which he made the purchase.
• Map your current customer journey from being a prospect through the decision making process to the use of the product. Pay attention to everything that happens before and after the purchase. 
• All the various conversations that happen after the sale are just as important, if not more important, than the conversations that happen before.
• When customers cancel because they have been paying for months and haven’t gotten any value, the likelihood of getting them to sign up again is very small because they feel they’ve already given you a lot of money but received no value. You’re going to have to provide a tremendous amount of value without any additional money before they can feel that the playing field has been leveled, and they are interested in paying you again.
• The 8 Phases of the Customer Journey
  1. Assess – when a prospect is considering whether he wants to do business with you.
  2. Admit – when a prospect acknowledges that he has as a problem and admits that you might be able to help him. 
  3. Affirm – when a customer begins to doubt the decision he has made. At this stage, you need to do everything to affirm customers about their purchase and let them know they are going to be well taken care of.
  4. Activate – the customer gets your product or experiences your service. Activate the relationship. Let customers know that doing business with you is going to be unlike any other business experience they’ve ever had.
  5. Acclimate – where everything starts to fall apart. Help your customers get familiar with your way of doing business.
  6. Accomplish – when the customer achieves the goal that he had when he decided to do business with you. 
  7. Adopt – when the customer is completely loyal to you and your brand. The customer adopts you and takes responsibility for the relationship. They’re not going to shop around on price, and they’re not going to look at your competitors because they are committed to you.
  8. Advocate – when a customer becomes a raving fan. They refer friends, families, and colleagues to your business. It is the goal every business has. 

• Many times when you introduce a new product or service to existing customers, they have to work with new people on your team that they haven’t met before and don’t have a relationship with. Customers expect you to know their history. They expect you to know that they’ve been loyal customers and to be treated as such as opposed to starting from scratch. 
• If you can keep 5% of your customers who would otherwise leave, it will increase your profit by 25-100%.
• The incremental cost of continuing to serve a customer does not cost a business the same amount of money as it costs to get that customer up and running in the beginning.
• Businesses have the privilege of increasing prices over time as a customer works with them and becomes more committed and dependent on their product or service. Therefore, each additional dollar a customer spends becomes more profitable.
• Customer experience and employee experience are 2 sides of the same coin. As you improve and polish one, the other side improves and polishes on its own. Happier employees make for happier customers.
• Focusing on the customer experience does not only enhance customer retention. It enhances employee retention as well.
• You can intentionally engineer a customer’s experience by looking at each of the 8 phases of the customer journey and deciding what emotion you want your customers to feel in each phase.
• Business is 100% personal. It is emotional. It is human to human. The sooner you acknowledge that your customers have emotional needs and you do your best to deliver on those needs, the happier everyone in the relationship will be.
• Creating an exceptional customer experience is all about showing your customers that the statement that you have on your website about how much you care for them, lines up with your behaviour. It is all about showing you care.
• One of the best ways to grow your business is to clearly tell your customers who are not the right fit that they are not the right fit.
• If you come from an honest place of always trying to do best by your customers, you will succeed. When in doubt, think about the long term impact more than the short term impact.
• Go out and celebrate what’s working in your life. Gratitude and giving thanks for the things that are working well are proven to increase our health and longevity. It increases our overall wellness, the success of our business, and the success of our personal relationships. The more thankful we are, the happier we are. 

The Buzz – Our Innovation Round

Here are Joey’s answers to the questions of our Innovation round. Listen to the interview to get the full scoop.

1. #1 thing to be more innovative – Have more and different experiences. Get out of the norm. Get exposed to new things. It will create new pathways in your brain that will make innovation easier.
2. Best thing for new ideas – All my different jobs. Working across different industries and across the world in different businesses. The more I do that the more it allows me to innovate and come up with new ideas.
3. Favourite tool for innovation – Having dedicated devices for specific apps. 
4. Keep project / client on track –Have a clear checklist and a clear plan for where you want your clients to be in the process, and then track where they are against that predetermined checklist.
5. Differentiate – The best way to differentiate yourself is by how you make your customers feel. Pay attention to the emotional journey of your customers. Decide which emotions you want them to feel. Building systems and processes to make sure that they experience those emotions will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition in a way that only stands out but is very difficult for them to replicate.

To Be a Leader

The people who excel the most are those who have experiences that go beyond the industry they are working in. Get involved in organisations that will give you insights into other businesses, nonprofits, government entities, and local community organisations. Those perspectives not only make for a more successful career but also a more successful life.

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank Joey through his website. 

Suggested Guest

Joey suggested I interview Jesse Cole of the Savannah Bananas Baseball Team. So Jessie, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz podcast, courtesy of Joey Coleman.

Links

• Website– Joey Coleman
• Twitter – @TheJoeyColeman
• LinkedIn
• Experience This Show Podcast

Books

• Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days

Cool things about Joey

• He is an experienced graphic artist and watercolor painter. 
• He sang first tenor throughout school including gigs with his high school show choir, the high school musical, the University of Notre Dame Glee Club, and the GRAMMY-nominated Washington Men’s Camerata.
• He has jumped out of a perfectly functioning airplane, raced along the Great Wall of China, juggled in front of the Taj Mahal, sang love songs on the Ponte Vecchio, goose-stepped to mock the soldiers in Red Square, dined in a tent next to the Great Pyramid of Giza, jumped into a rushing river in Fiji, and ridden a mountain bike down a volcano. 

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