Category Archives: Customer Solutions

Marketing MAYhem Event Features MASSolutions President

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

 Keynote Speaker David Mastovich asks “What Are You Really Selling?”

DaveMastovich_Photo

MASSolutions’ President Dave Mastovich

MASSolutions President David Mastovich is preparing for an impending brush with mayhem. Actually, Mastovich will be a keynote speaker at the Society for Marketing Professional Services Pittsburgh’s “Marketing MAYhem” event.

Mastovich will deliver a presentation that focuses on answering the question, “What Are You Really Selling?” The SMPS Pittsburgh event will be held on May 14 at the Regional Learning Alliance, 850 Cranberry Woods Drive, Cranberry Township.

     Mastovich will address:

  • What’s the Big Idea?
  • Crafting Your Compelling Story
  • Making It About Them
  • The Importance of Listening…Really Listening!
  • Pre-Call Prep…Every Call, Every Time

A dynamic speaker who utilizes real-life experiences and a touch of humor in his presentation, Mastovich combines specific action items with motivational ideas that change the way attendees look at things, present ideas and interact with internal and external customers.

For more than a decade, Mastovich and Pittsburgh-based MASSolutions have focused on improving the bottom line for clients through integrated marketing.

In his recent book, “Get Where You Want To Go: How to Achieve Personal and Professional Growth Through Marketing, Selling and Story Telling,” Mastovich offers strategies to improve sales and generate new customers; management and leadership approaches; and creative marketing, PR and communications ideas.

Prior to becoming CEO/President of his own company, MASSolutions, Dave Mastovich served in senior management positions with UPMC, Duquesne University and Monongahela Valley Hospital.

SMPS was created in 1973 and the association currently has a membership of more than 6,000 marketing and business development professionals.

For more information on Marketing Mayhem, contact Stantec’s Kimberly Ridenour at 724.477.1218, or via email. Or contact MASSolutions’ Mike Gatti.

 

 

 

6 Things To Do With Emails

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

This is the first in a series of three posts based on content from presentations made to college seniors.

While preparing a speech for a group of college seniors, I focused on the importance of a lifelong thirst for knowledge and achieving positive, incremental change. The end result was a presentation with three key themes:

  •  Success, like beauty, should be in the eye of the beholder. You decide what you want to do, how you want to live and what you want to achieve.
  • Potential employers need to know what you are capable of and how you think. Use the Seinfeld PR Approach and tell your story. What you think is nothing can be interesting to others.
  • People will want you on their team if you are organized, efficient and get things done.

DM IUP ACME

For this post, here are some tips to improve your organizational skills.

6 Things To Do with Emails:

  1. Act–Act on it immediately.  If something can be done in less than 15 minutes, act on the task immediately and complete it.  Then, it’s done and off your ‘to do’ list.
  2. Tickle–If a task requires action within two weeks, place it in your ‘Tickle’ folder along with a due date. Your ‘Tickle’ folder should be reviewed two or three times each week with actions taken based on priority.
  3. To Do–If the item needs acted on within the next week and you can’t work on it immediately, put it in your ‘To Do’ folder.  This folder will contain multiple items  and  must be reviewed every day to stay on top of your main priority items.
  4. Delegate–Delegate or forward the email to someone. Provide specific timelines and action items for the person assigned the responsibility. Follow up as necessary on the progress.
  5. File–If it is important but not actionable immediately, create a folder and file it as soon as possible.  If you can’t file things quickly, at least file multiple items once a week.
  6. Delete–You need to get rid of emails if they are not relevant now or won’t be within six months.  Enjoy deleting. It should be a liberating experience.

The key is to touch the email once and then have a plan for it. Use these 6 Things To Do with Emails to become more productive and gain peace of mind.

But What If It Doesn’t Work?

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

When we have an idea, one of the first things we ask ourselves is “But what if it doesn’t work?”

How many times does this prevent us from trying something new? How often do we accept the status quo even though we think there has to be a better way?

It’s OK to consider what might happen if an idea doesn’t work as long as we ask two other important questions:

“What if it does work?”

“What do we stand to lose by sticking with the current way of doing things?”

We subconsciously fight change. Our self-doubt and negative inner thoughts prevent us from proposing or implementing new ideas. We avoid or ignore problems and make irrational rationalizations like “That’s not my responsibility.”

Whether you are a team member, middle manager or senior leader, you owe it to yourself and your organization to focus on creative solutions that improve your customer experience, operational processes and overall bottom line.

You have to do your part to foster an environment of creativity and innovation. Challenge assumptions. Offer solutions rather than just pointing out problems. Ask questions of peers, bosses, subordinates and customers. Actively listen and think about what you hear.

Try following the 5 W’s Technique used by journalists, police officers and market researchers.  Ask and answer: Who? What? Where? When? Why?

*Who do you want to reach and influence? Clearly define your target markets. Learn how they think. What makes them tick? Why do they say both “yes” and “no?”

*What are you selling? Not just the mission statement or website copy points. What are you really selling?

*Where do we have a competitive advantage? What makes us different? Why do they want and need us?

*When can we maximize our opportunities? When do they (your target audiences) want and need the solution?

*Why aren’t we making it happen?

Instead of convincing yourself a new idea might not work, ask the 5 W’s. The answers will lead to creative solutions that enhance your customer experience.

Better Listening Leads to Better Results

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

It seems like an organization exists for just about everything. My company belongs to the Society for Healthcare Strategy and the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. I’m part of the National Speakers Association. You can probably rattle off a few that are specific to your industry or area of expertise as well.

So I guess it makes sense there’s an International Listening Association. Their mission is to advance the practice, teaching and research of listening throughout the world.

I hear that.

But I just enjoy their statistics, gleaned from years of studying the good, the bad and the ugly of listening. Here are a few nuggets:

 

  • 85% of what we know we have learned by listening.
  • 75% of the time we are distracted, preoccupied or forgetful.
  • We only recall about 50% of what was said immediately after we listen to someone talk.
  • In total, just 20% of what we hear will be remembered.
  • Less than 2% of us have had formal education about listening.
  • People listen through one of four primary styles: people, time, action or content oriented. Females are more likely to be people-oriented and males are more likely to be time or action oriented.

Say what?

I’m thinking it means listening is vital to leading, managing, marketing and selling. Your personal productivity and your company’s success will be enhanced via betterlistening. With that in mind, here are…drum roll please…

10 Ways to Improve Your Listening

1.     Let the speaker finish their thoughts, don’t interrupt

2.     Keep an open mind, don’t judge

3.     Listen without planning what you are going to say next

4.     Give feedback

5.     Pay attention to the speakers posture and body
language

6.     Stay focused

7.     Show respect

8.     Take notes

9.     Make eye contact to keep the speaker at ease

10.   Put as much effort into listening as the speaker puts into talking

Better listening leads to better results. And you don’t even need to join an organization to improve…

Just listen.

With Digital and Physical Product Releases, Make It About Them

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

In a Harvard Business Review article Why Digital Media Require a Strategic Rethink authors Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang make it clear that delaying product availability in low margin channels to maximize revenue in high margin channels is not effective.

Most customers choose their channel (hardcover vs e-book as one example) before choosing a product and they’re unlikely to jump channels. In reality, they are more likely to move from a digital channel to an illegal/pirated channel than to a physical channel.

For example, in December 2007 NBC removed its content from the iTunes Store, causing an 11% increase in piracy the following month with no increase in DVD sales.

Conversely, when NBC added its content to Hulu in 2009, piracy DROPPED by more than 20% while viewership remained unchanged.

Another example provided by Smith and Telang involves a major U.S. publisher that stopped providing Kindle editions and saw no increase in hardcover sales. When it reinstated the Kindle editions, its e-book sales were 50% lower than before the withdrawal. Customers had either given up trying to find digital versions of the publisher’s books or had pirated them.

The takeaway? Give the people what they want. Make content available physically and digitally at the same time. Don’t try to move customers from one channel to another one. In other words, it’s not about you. Make it about them.

Google

Creativity and Innovation Lead to More Sales

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

Solutions to help you grow…

In today’s hyper competitive environment, your organization has to relentlessly pursue innovation. Creativity can lead to new ideas that become competitive advantages.

It’s also no longer enough for Sales, PR and Communications to tell your company’s story. Employees throughout the organization need to become de facto members of your Integrated Marketing team.

How do you create an environment of creativity and innovation?

Ask and answer these three questions:

  1. Who are we trying to reach and influence? Clearly define and drill down your target markets and communicate to everyone in your organization about these segmented groups. How do they think? What moves them? Why do they say ‘Yes’ to your company? What makes them say ‘No?’ Explain your target markets in detail to your entire organization so everyone knows the specifics.
  2. What are we really selling? Seattle’s Pike Place Fish Market isn’t just selling fish. We can buy fish at thousands of places and barely remember doing so. Pike Place is selling the experience just like Starbucks and Apple. Today’s marketplace is driven by our experiences. Asking ‘What are we really selling?’ and tailoring your message to that experience can increase sales and enhance your brand.
  3. How can we tweak our offerings to better meet our customer’s needs?
    Make gathering customer feedback part of your formal sales process. Have each salesperson ask their clients and prospects how to change and improve the company’s offerings with questions like: “What are the top three things you would change about our company?” “What’s the one thing we could do to make you happier?”

Coach your sales team on how to ask the questions and track the results. Respond to what customers and prospects say. Be willing to change, innovate and create something new. Tell customers and prospects what you learned and what you did about it. Then, make the ask and close the business.

David M. Mastovich, MBA, is the president of Massolutions, a Pittsburgh based Integrated Marketing firm that focuses on improving the bottom line for client companies through creative marketing, selling, messaging and customer experience enhancement.

Go Daddy Gets It Right After Crash

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

You’ve probably read or heard about how Go Daddy was attacked by hackers on Monday that brought down Go Daddy and the sites of its millions of customers. The web hosting service responded first by fixing things and getting customers back online. They then handled the media firestorm with transparency and timely responses. Now, the company has gone a step further. Check out the email we just received about our accounts:

 

Call us 24/7: 480-505-8877  |  Online: www.GoDaddy.com
Dear David Mastovich,We owe you a big apology for the intermittent service outages we experienced on September 10 that may have impacted your website, your email and other Go Daddy services.

We let you down and we know it. We take our responsibilities — and the trust you place in us — very seriously. I cannot express how sorry I am to those of you who were inconvenienced.

The service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented a series of immediate measures to fix the problem.

At no time was any sensitive customer information, including credit card data, passwords or names and addresses, compromised.

Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999% uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level of performance we expect from ourselves. Monday, we fell short of these expectations. We have learned from this event and will use it to drive improvement in our services.

As a result of this disruption, your account will be credited for the value of 1-month of service for each of your active/published sites.* This credit will be available to you for the next 7 days. Please click the button below to redeem your credit.


It’s an honor to serve you. Thank you for the opportunity to re-earn your business and trust.As always, please call us 24/7 at 1-480-505-8877 — anytime, for any reason.

Sincerely,

Scott Wagner
CEO
GoDaddy.com

It’s good see such a solid response to the crisis from both a PR and customer service standpoint.

 

Customers Don’t Need Salespeople Anymore…5 Ways to Make Them Want to Talk to You

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

When we are looking to buy, we want to learn as much as we can and make a good decision. If a salesperson can help, we tolerate them. But if we’re able to learn and compare options on our own, online, we aren’t clamoring to talk with multiple sales reps.

Does this mean customers don’t need salespeople anymore? In more and more instances, the answer is “Yes.” But that doesn’t have to be the case.

Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon, co-authors of the book The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, emphasize that salespeople can survive and even thrive if they are willing to change their approach. Here are five ways salespeople can change the game:

  • Evaluate Prospects Differently: Look for potential customers who can act quickly and decisively. Reduce time spent on prospects that are tied up in organizational hierarchies and have to sell through multiple layers.
  • Focus on Mobilizers, Not Advocates: Adamson and Dixon’s research showed average sales reps typically connect with Talkers, prospects who are accessible, willing to share their organization’s latest gossip, like to network and are focused primarily on personal gain. Mobilizers, on the other hand, are constantly looking for good ideas, passionate about sharing insights and will push back throughout the process. Star sales reps–peak performers–spend most of their time on Mobilizers.
  • Discover Emerging Needs: Average reps ask questions about current needs. Star performers work to find an emerging need and focus on what the prospect should do to change the game in the future.
  • Challenge Prospects with Provocative Ideas: Rather than using the same feature/benefit presentation as the competition, top salespeople challenge prospects to think about big ideas that can make a huge, lasting impact.
  • Coach Rather Than Sell: Top salespeople realize prospects have done research and heard from a bunch of salespeople. Spending time on closing techniques isn’t as valuable as teaching them how to buy. Coach them on how to steer the idea through the organization. Help them overcome objections from others in their company.

You can keep doing what you’re doing and see how that turns out. Or you could  work with customers who want to hear your ideas. Wouldn’t it be great to be needed?

Find out how to identify your mobilizers by watching this video!

4 Questions Business Leaders Must Answer About Social Media

Posted on by Dave Mastovich

Solutions to help you grow…

As I talk with CEO’s, business owners and senior leaders of organizations big or small, I’ve noticed a common theme with respect to Social Media. Many leaders ask the same questions, albeit each in their own words:

Why should we do Social Media?

This one is sort of like “Do I really have to?” Most understand the power of Social Media. However, many leaders of business to business (B2B) companies wonder if it is necessary. The answer today is “Yes” and in the near future it will be an emphatic “You Better Be!”

Back in the late 1990’s, some companies either didn’t bother with a website or simply created an “online business card”. It wasn’t long before the lack of a strong internet presence hurt credibility. The same is happening today as companies dabble in Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn but aren’t all in when it comes to Social Media.

People need to find you or your company when conducting an online search. Social Media creates awareness and improves rankings on Google and other search engines.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can be utilized for recruitment, competitive intelligence and industry knowledge. These outlets can also help with Pre Call Prep prior to meetings with prospects, potential partners and clients.

How can we do it and not create any problems? 

While Social Media is unique, the major tenets of successful communication still apply. Clear, succinct (that’s an understatement), memorable  messaging. Make it about the target audience rather than just self promotion. Repetition.

Use a common sense approach to developing a simple, easy to understand Social Media policy. Then, create the messages and tweak appropriately based on Social Media outlet. Build an action plan so your Social Media messaging is ongoing rather than the typical quick start, quick fade approach that is far too prevalent.

How much does it cost?

First, accept that it’s not free and that in house resources might not be enough. But that doesn’t mean the investment has to be prohibitive. You will need someone to craft creative messages through a Social Media management application like HootSuite, TweetDeck or SocialOomph. Budget for some giveaway items to use in online Social Media promotions that build awareness and a following.

How do we measure success?

Social Media offers plenty of valuable metrics that enable you to evaluate progress and modify tactics accordingly. Search engine rankings before and after the campaign. Number of followers and connections. Size and quality of your network–the connections of your connections on LinkedIn can be invaluable. Click through rate on links in Social Media promotions. Number of “opt ins” who provide their contact information and agree to subscribe to e-newsletters.

Commit to building a Social Media presence. Don’t wait. Do it now and do it right.

David M. Mastovich, MBA, is the president of Massolutions, a Pittsburgh based Integrated Marketing firm that focuses on improving the bottom line for client companies through creative marketing, selling, messaging and customer experience enhancement.

Don’t Touch That Dial! (or URL!)

Posted on by Mike G.

Mastovich on “The Most Positive Business Talk Show in America” 

MASSolutions President David Mastovich will be a guest on “The Experience Pros Radio Show/The Most Positive Business Talk Show in America.”

Mastovich will make his second appearance with host Angel Tuccy on the Denver-based station KLZ 560 AM radio show at 1:33 p.m. EDT on July 25.

Listen Live for an exclusive radio offer from MASSolutions!

As host of “The Most Positive Business Talk Show in America,” Tuccy has interviewed high-profile guests such as Laura Ingraham, Michael Gerber, Dr. Ivan Misner, Microsoft Vice President Toby Richards, U.S. Under Secretary for International Trade Francisco Sanchez and authors Dean Koontz and Jackie Collins.

Mastovich, author of the book “Get Where You Want to Go: How to Achieve Personal and Professional Growth Through Marketing, Selling and Story Telling,” previously appeared on the show July 5th.

MASSolutions is a company that focuses on integrating strategic customer planning, advertising, marketing communications and sales management for its clients. MASSolutions has offices at 320 Fort Duquesne Blvd. in Pittsburgh and 160 JARI Drive in Johnstown, Pa.

For more information, visit www.ExperiencePros.com or www.MASSolutions.biz.