How to listen better and strengthen your business
“Listening is a powerful act: you have to put yourself out to do it.” ~ David Hockney
Marketing and business development have become so high tech, it’s easy to lose sight of the basics. With so many platforms, so many formats, so many ways of connecting, and of measuring performance it can feel overwhelming.
In small businesses this overwhelm can lead to paralysis – ‘I just don’t know where to focus my efforts’. In bigger organisations this overwhelm can be absorbed into marketing activity that looks like it’s doing what it should be, but isn’t. It’s easy to fall into the trap of being busy, while straying off the straight and narrow. And before you know it you’re miles away from you should be.
Turning your business around to make it more customer focused makes sure you stay on track. Whether it’s your business strategy, your product/service strategy or your marketing communications and content strategy, if you see your business from the outside in then your direction becomes much clearer.
Organisations that really connect with people put their customers at the centre of all they do. How do you do that? By talking to real clients and customers; asking them the right questions and listening hard.
The single most useful thing that you can do to inform your marketing, and indeed your whole business, is to invest in customer feedback.
This client feedback process was at the heart of what we did at Valuable Content. Whether we were helping a client set their future strategy, find their story or work out what content would be truly valuable, customer feedback was the lynch pin that held it all together. And listening is still at the heart of the way I work with my Message Creation clients today.
Invariably listening to clients and customers provides the insights that spark the best and most productive ideas.
Marketers and strategists too often go into a huddle in a boardroom to work out the next steps. Far better to get out there, ask good questions and listen really hard!
Here’s where listening is invaluable, and quick run through the listening process.
Listen for strategy
The absolute business fundamentals. What services are you providing and for who? What do people use you for/pay you for? And why? What’s the true value?
Talking to a range of your customers/stakeholders about how, why and where they use you can help you get your offer and positioning straight.
This is as useful for a start up wondering how to lay out their first stall as it is for a large organisation with complex established services. Are you providing what people want? If you don’t know, ask them some good questions and listen hard to their answers.
Listen for story
How do you tell the story of what you do? What’s your business purpose?
That might feel like it has to come from you – it’s your story, right? But if it’s not grounded in your customer’s world too, it won’t resonate with them. Self-absorbed stories won’t win you any fans.
Listen hard to the challenges your customers are facing, and weave those into your story, so it feels relevant. Make sure you’re slaying the right dragons, or it won’t be happy ever after! More on telling your story here.
Listen for tone of voice
Tone of voice is one of those slippery things it can be hard to pin down. A warm and engaging tone of voice makes a huge difference to the way your brand is perceived. But what does that actually mean in practice? How do you know which words to use in your email newsletter? What language will engage your audience on your website home page? Listening to your customers is really helpful here.
Good, clear and simple language is your baseline, but to create a tone of voice that genuinely feels like it’s talking your customers’ language, use your customers’ language. How? Well, a light touch approach could mean listening to check that you’re not using any jargon that your customers never use. Ridding your website of internal focused language will make it more helpful and easier to understand. And using your customers’ exact words in your copy is the simplest way to demonstrate empathy.
If you really want your customers to feel like you know them, then you need to put yourself out and discover what they’re truly thinking and feeling.
Go deeper
If you want to go deeper, listen more. Record conversations with clients, work to unpick how their language is constructed, and reflect it back in your communications. What metaphors do they use? Which comparisons do they make? What patterns of words do they use to describe the before and after of the way you help them? This kind of information is marketing gold dust.
Listen to support change
Business doesn’t stand still. Listening supports strategic change. If you build listening into your business activities you’ll be ahead of the curve when it comes to meeting your customers’ changing needs. Ask questions that delve deeper than a straightforward ‘how are we doing?’ into ‘describe the challenges in your world.’
It means you’ll have the evidence you need to change the way you do things or what you offer. Listening can de-risk change. It means a change of direction won’t be a stab in the dark, rather a response to your customers’ guiding lights.
Listen for content ideas
My perennial favourite. The very best content ideas will come from your customers. Answering their questions will give you blog, video and podcast ideas for the rest of the year and beyond.
What does Google love? Google loves content that answers the questions people are asking.
How to listen
Here’s a simple customer feedback process.
Select a range of your best customers/clients and contacts. One call is better than no calls, but the more the merrier. A couple of examples: for a small business using customer feedback to help write their business story, aim for between 5 and 15. For a larger business using customer feedback to inform strategy decisions aim for upwards of 30.
Create a list of open-ended questions. You’re listening to understand their world, their challenges. Make them broader than a simple, ‘tell us how we’re doing.’
Decide whether you want to do the calls yourself, or need third party help. Sometimes it can be easier for someone else to ask searching questions on your behalf, and sometimes it can be easier for people to answer honestly if they’re talking to a somebody independent and experienced.
Phone is better than face to face. It’s easier for you to ask the questions, and it’s easier for your interviewee to answer honestly without all that awkward eye-content and being polite malarkey! It’s faster too. You can get heaps of really juicy detailed information in a 25 minute phone call, which would take at least an hour face-to-face.
Record the call. There are lots of recording options.
Transcribe the call, verbatim. You want the exact words, all of them. Your customers’ real words are infinitely more valuable than marketing persona guess work.
Do listen
“The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand.
We listen to reply.” ~ Stephen R. Covey
Try it, test your assumptions. You’ll be amazed at the value you get back – real gems of wisdom and insight – marketing and business strategy gold!
And if you’d like my help with a client feedback/listening project, you can get in touch here.
