Mark Price

M Squared Group, Inc.

Mark Price is the managing partner and founder of M Squared Group, a consulting firm that specializes in customer analysis and relationship marketing. He is responsible for leading client engagements, e-commerce and database marketing, and talent acquisition at M Squared Group. Mark is also a RetailWire Brain Trust Panelist, a blogger at “Cultivating Your Customers” and a monthly contributor to the blog of the Minnesota Chapter of the American Marketing Association.

When is your customer not your own?

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Posted on 2012-05-09

Q: When is your customer not your own?

A: When that customer also is your dealer’s customer.

Manufacturers have been struggling for years to find ways to build relationships with customers who purchase their products. The challenge is always that those customers do not purchase products directly from the manufacturers; rather, they by directly from dealers who then have the relationship with the customer.

Ultimately what lies behind manufacturers attempts to build relationships with customers is channel conflict.

The dealer is afraid that the manufacturer will build a relationship with the customer thus making the dealer’s customer relationship less important or irrelevant. In addition, the dealer is also afraid that the manufacturer may steer customers to other dealers, or entice them to purchase less profitable products.

The other party in this relationship — the...

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Have you missed the change in your prospect’s decision process?

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Posted on 2012-04-10

With the growing influence of the web on purchase decisions, particularly for high–risk or complex business–to–business sales, the traditional way of thinking about the purchase process no longer applies.

Begin with one key fact: 74% of purchasers conduct research on the internet before they even contact a company for the 1st time.

We all know that; don’t we research before buying a bike, a car, a house, personal insurance and so on?

The larger the dollar amount, and the greater the risk, the more research we will do before we contact a providing company. One of the reasons why is because we fundamentally don’t trust advertising or sales anymore. Now, that may be a difficult fact for salespeople to understand, yet by understanding it they can become even more effective than before.

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How much more are your customers willing to pay for great customer service?

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Posted on 2011-05-16

In a recent American Express survey, close to 70% of respondents said they would pay an average of 13% more for excellent customer service. That result is a significant increase from last year, as customers become more frustrated by customer service from the companies they patronize.

At the same time, over 85% of respondents believe that American companies are not increasing focus on customer service.

Who will be the first in your industry to take that extra 13% in revenue and all those customers who are so angry?

Now you have the high level business case to drive discussions.

Amplify’d from www.livescience.com

Americans Mouth Off About Poor Customer Service

In the survey, seven out of...

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7 Warning Signs Your Customers May Be Deserting You

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Posted on 2011-05-03

Image by xcode via Flickr

You come into the office one morning, and within minutes, your stomach starts to get queasy. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something is wrong. Are you losing customers, especially best customers?

Before Sales starts grumbling and the CEO comes by for an explanation, look for these 7 key warning signs that you may be losing customers:

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Forget your most important customer?

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Posted on 2011-05-02

We have always known how important it is to communicating well internally in order to help make the sales and operations teams more customer-centric. You can do all the data-mining in the world, develop stunning, game-changing insights, and it can all fall flat in the field (and often does).

This analysis, from South Africa, is the first I have seen that quantifies the value of effective internal communications on employee engagement and the impact on the bottom line. In terms of return to shareholders, companies with “effective internal communications” have 33% higher return to shareholders than companies who do not rate themselves as effective. That result is driven by a 4.5x higher level of employee engagement — wow.

Use these results as part of the “sell” — what you have to do to convince senior management that people don’t just do what they are told because it is part of their jobs, but because they are reached and...

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Will you be fired because of the new acquisition?

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Posted on 2011-04-26

Image by Mecaniques via Flickr

In the past week, three of my clients have told me about an acquisition that their organization was making. Apparently, this is a good market to add scope and resources, since the some of the industry leaders are turning around and looking to improve their short and long-term profits by buying some of the competition.

Would you believe that customer data never came up during the acquisition discussions for any of these clients at all? Yet a seamless...

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Does data-driven decision-making work?

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Posted on 2011-04-24

You bet.

Recently, a study at the Wharton School demonstrated that companies that adopt “data-driven decision-making” average 5-6% high productivity than those that did not.

The academics studied 179 large companies and found that data-driven decision making was often the difference between success and poor performance in their industries.

Here is what the study does not tell us:
* how long it took the companies to embrace data-driven decision-making
* the differences in how data is used in those adopting companies
* range of time of their superior performance (did it last)

But what they did find was that decisons, not the data by itself, made all the difference. Whether in new product development, market expansion, evaluation of performance, etc., companies that leverage data heavily performed better.

As a CEO, can you afford to ignore these results, when your Board Members may be shortly asking if you are beating...

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Data is only valuable when you use it

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Posted on 2011-04-20

We all know that we need to collect customer feedback and use it to improve our processes to drive increased conversion rates, retention and loyalty.

Then why are so few of us doing so?

A recent article on MarketingWeb highlighted that close to 95% of large companies were collecting data, yet only 10% use the data to improve customer experience and 5% ever communicate back to customers on their feedback.

Why collect the data if you are not using it? Just to look good?

There are barriers to using customer feedback and data — change management, turf issues, politics and conflicting priorities often hamper our clients’ efforts to leveraging what they learn from customers. Yet the opportunity is significant, both in how using customer feedback changes the culture of the company as well as the business results.

What strategies have proven successful for you to “break through” and use customer feedback?...

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Lies your CFO told you

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Posted on 2011-03-30

Have you ever heard these before?

1. Marketing spends money like a drunken sailor
2. When revenue gets tight, it is time to cut marketing
3. Customers would have bought anyway

I am sure that there are many more lies but these are three of the most common objections that Marketing faces from Finance, particularly from the CFO. How you counter these objections can make the difference between leading the charge or following behind cleaning up the waste.

1. Account for those pennies
The best way to show Finance that you are accountable is to be accountable. Track spending closely, and show Finance how you connect spending to results. Get them involved in how you measure your programs, before you actually do the measuring. And don’t, don’t overspend without permission – that is the best way to show Finance that you just don’t care.

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Customer retention is not advocacy

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Posted on 2011-03-23

We often assume that customers who stay with us the longest are “loyal” and therefore potential advocates for our company.

Not the case.

Recent research by www.surveymethods.com has shown that retention is not a sign for advocacy by itself. Rather, the only time that a customer could be considered an advocate is when they are both retained and have “attitudinal loyalty” — have a relationship to the company or brand, and indicate willingness to recommend.

Do not confuse retention with loyalty; many customers purchase from a store or brand due to convenience rather than any innate connection. When another alternative appears, they are gone so fast, you don’t even have time to say goodbye.

In order to nurture your advocates, you have to determine who they are. Find them on social media (particularly Facebook fan pages) and through...

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