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1、Marketing your service business Ian Ruskin-Brown Blank page MARKETING YOUR SERVICE BUSINESS IAN RUSKIN-BROWN Published by Thorogood Publishing Ltd 10-12 Rivington Street London EC2A 3DU Telephone: 020 7749 4748 Fax: 020 7729 6110 Email: infothorogood.ws Web: www.thorogood.ws Books Network Internatio
2、nal Inc 3 Front Street, Suite 331 Rollinsford, NH 30869, USA Telephone: +603 749 9171 Fax: +603 749 6155 Email: Ian Ruskin-Brown 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying
3、, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than in
4、which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of any material in this publication can be accepted by the author or publisher.
5、 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. HB: ISBN 1 85418 311 7 PB: ISBN 1 85418 316 8 Cover and book designed and typeset in the UK by Driftdesign Printed in India by Replika Press Special discounts for bulk quantities of Thorogood books are available to corporat
6、ions, institutions, associations and other organizations. For more information contact Thorogood by telephone on 020 7749 4748, by fax on 020 7729 6110, or e-mail us: infothorogood.ws iii The author For the last 26 years Ian Ruskin-Brown, the author, has been the owner/ entrepreneur of several servi
7、ce businesses. These have included: Property management and the provision of student accommodation An international market research company, and A consultancy and international training business. Ian ran a market research company Marketing Decisions International Ltd from 1980 to 1994. The company w
8、as a full member of the Market Research Society. It was through these businesses that Ian conducted many market research and consultancy projects for fi rms in the service sector: from government organizations (BBC, HM Customs whereas the remaining 80% of information will probably not only cost more
9、 per quantum, but will probably only be of use (circa) 20% of the time. Finally, the key factor in any relationship is to build trust; the successful service marketer does not promise what cant be delivered. They would rather under promise and over deliver, as we will see in Chapter 4. Customers: Th
10、e key questions Thus, in pursuit of the fi rms most valuable asset, the (Customer Relationship), there are some key questions which the service marketer must address, with care and skill. These are:- Who is my typical customer? The frequent reply to this question is that the fi rm has no typical cus
11、tomer. Customers are all different. Indeed, all human beings are individual, but such observations are not very useful. In most cases the service marketers job is to classify their prospects and customers into typologies, (such clusters are generically known as segments), not to do so implies a stra
12、tegy of one size fi ts all. By grouping customers into homogeneous clusters (segments) the service marketer is able to get much closer to satisfying each customers needs (that is both the aim and the skill). The exception is when the fi rms business is derived from a few large customers5 . In these
13、cases each customer may contribute such a signifi cant share of the fi rms business and each customer may be so signifi cantly different from each other, that it is best to treat every one of them as a segment in their own right, this strategy is known as Key Account Management. Even if the fi rm is
14、 engaged in B2B markets, it is not helpful to classify the customer as a fi rm, a company, or an organization. It is people who buy, not companies or markets. It is the people in those fi rms, companies and markets who make and execute the buying decisions. MARKETING YOUR SERVICE BUSINESS16 Further,
15、 there are very few purchases which are made by the individual acting alone (and then mainly in consumer markets). It is normal human behavior to reduce risk by seeking advice and input from others. This group-buying behavior is well documented and understood: marketers of all types refer to the gro
16、up of people involved as the Decision Making Unit (DMU). The main roles, whether in business-to-business or in consumer markets, in brief are: BUYER/S The person/s who actually place the order, the Purchasing or Procurement Manager of an organization. The mum solo shopping for her family. DECIDER/S
17、The person/s who take/s responsibility. USER/S The internal consumer, the worker using the commodity or equipment purchased, the stock controller. SPECIFIER/S The person with particular knowledge who specifi es the features to be purchased (sometimes the user). SEARCHER/S AND GATEKEEPER/S Person/s w
18、ho control the fl ow of information into the DMU. Searchers are active, they seek out the required data, Gatekeeper/s are passive, they act as a valve, permitting some information (or informants) to fl ow in, but keeping others out. Examples on the consumer side are wives and other women close to th
19、e family; on the commercial side are trainees, PAs, secretaries, design departments etc. A very powerful role. RECOMMENDER/S Person/s who advocate a supplier, they can be internal to the family or fi rm, or external. ONE WHY SERVICE? FOSTERING THE FIRMS MOST VALUABLE ASSET17 INITIATOR/S Those who pr
20、ovoke the buying process, they recognize the need and bring it to the attention of other members of the organization/DMU. INFLUENCER/S Person/s within the family or fi rm who bring infl uence to bear, though they are not a directly active part of the DMU, examples are: uncles, aunts, parents etc. or
21、 even accountants, budgeters or change agents. VALIDATOR/S Persons from outside the organization, opinion leaders, peer group leaders, such as media commentators and consumer groups etc. There are also combined roles such as in the so-called USER-CHOOSER where, for example, the person who will atten
22、d an MBA course is the one who chooses at which university they will study. Whether our service business is to the consumer direct, or via a business customer, it is vital to know what roles are played in the buying process by which individuals. What is a customers lifetime value? The well considere
23、d answer to this question reinforces the sheer good business sense behind the practice of building and husbanding customer relationships for the long-term. The principle is to calculate how much income a customer can bring to the fi rm over the lifetime of their commercial relationship. There are se
24、veral ways to calculate this value here is the most straightforward: Take the size of an average purchase and multiply this by the expected number of that type of customers purchases per year, then multiply this by the expected number of years of the relationship. In most businesses it is reasonable
25、 to further multiply this fi gure by the factor of advocates to customers in your business, (in general terms say a ratio of one advocate for every four friends producing a factor of 14) MARKETING YOUR SERVICE BUSINESS18 and then by the number of prospects referred by each advocate, say fi ve prospe
26、cts per advocate. So, for example, a major supermarket would calculate this way: A major supermarket is said to have used such a calculation in the early 1980s to convince institutional investors of the viability of its expansion program. They wished to open one new out of town shopping center, per
27、month for some eleven years. Each store was then said to cost upward of 14m. It is perhaps no accident that, at the time of writing, the fi rm in question has the largest market share and is by far the most profi table supermarket in the UK. What typically do they buy? The successful management of a
28、ny commercial relationship requires that we provide the customer with an offering that more closely meets their needs than the competitors. Thus the lifetime value of a supermarket customer equates to: 75 x 52 weeks x 10 years x 214= 87,750 A considerable fi gure. Average spend per household per wee
29、k on groceries = 75.00 Number of weeks per year = 52 (disregard taking holidays because Christmas spending makes up for it), Expected life of relationship = 10 years.6 Thus, Lifetime Value = the average spend per year X number of expected years X 214* *in this case every fourth friend brings in fi v
30、e new customers, i.e. 5 4 = 114, added to the customers 1, = 214 ONE WHY SERVICE? FOSTERING THE FIRMS MOST VALUABLE ASSET19 Customers rarely buy what we sell; they buy what they get out of what we sell them. As any profi cient professional salesperson will confi rm, we provide features, the customer
31、s buy benefi ts (see the section on the Levitt Construct Chapter 5). The service marketer must therefore take care to view the service product from the same perspective as the customer: What are the customers needs? What are the benefi ts required? We must resist the temptation to see the service pr
32、oduct from our internal perspective. Each member of the DMU will have their own fairly unique perspective. Take as an example the provision of a training service. The Decider may be the trainees departmental head, not their immediate boss, and the Decider may view the training as a way of rewarding
33、the boss and the trainee. A major Infl uencer could be the Financial Director, and their need is to manage budgets more closely. The trainers boss could be the Specifi er, trying to ensure an improvement in departmental productivity, and satisfy a need to show the departmental head that action is be
34、ing taken. The User is the trainee, perhaps with an eye to improving their market value, etc. The main message from this is that the service marketer needs to be sensitive to these nuances, and to communicate accordingly. The Validatorscould be peers to any of these people and/or an external body su
35、ch as OMTRACK7. In addition, each of the segments will have unique needs, as exemplifi ed by the differing views expressed in recent advertising campaigns for pension products (fi nancial services), each for different target groups8. Whilst one major pension company, with its tag line Grow old disgr
36、acefully, saw the pension as a vehicle whereby its TG could self actualize (i.e. do all those interesting and exciting things customers had no time to do whilst they were busy earning a living), another saw the pension as a step-up from the subsistence of the state scheme with its tag of “Who could
37、live off 3,000 pa. nowadays?” (See Chapter 10, Segmenting a service market.) MARKETING YOUR SERVICE BUSINESS20 How do customers judge quality? The successful service marketer will not just meet the customers needs, but in addition they will delight the customer by exceeding expectations. This can be
38、 expressed as either one of two equations: SATISFACTION = PERCEPTION minus EXPECTATIONS. When perceptions are greater than expectations, the customer is delighted, but when perceptions are less than expected, the customer is disappointed. OR as suggested by Malcolm Macdonald: When value is greater t
39、han One (i.e. PRB PRC) the customer is delighted, and the service marketer can (almost) be assured the customer will return (i.e. the probability of re-buy is c.90%). However, if value is less than One (i.e. PRB Customer Customer Waitress Waitress Waitress 13pt DO NOT include small numbers and brack
40、ets! Insert the words PRESS RELEASE immediately after the heading Say when to be used (or embargoed etc.) Use OUTSTANDING quality and size of paper To build visual appeal Use colour with text to highlight but with care! KEEP IT TO ONE PAGE if possible TITLE; Times Roman or Schoolbook MAKE SURE IT GE
41、TS THERE ELEVEN PROMOTING A SERVICE215 Networking and making connections “In the network environment rewards come by empowering others not climbing over them.” John Naisbitt in Mega Trends When marketing professional services or those services with a very high content level of intellectual property,
42、 skill at networking is absolutely vital. There used to be an old saying, “Its not what you know that is important, but who you know”, although relevant, this is not the whole story, its not even the most important part of the story. The marketer of professional services must always bear in mind tha
43、t the objective is: TO MANAGE WHO KNOWS THEM. This is an intrinsically diffi cult thing to do, because almost by defi nition, more people will know of your organization that it is possible for your organization to know. So the service marketer must employ a strategy designed to stay in touch with as
44、 many people as possible and try and create an environment whereby those with whom they are in contact will spread the good news outside the boundaries that delineate the extent of the service marketers control. Objectives The intention of any networking activity is not to build a high social profes
45、sional profi le, as many believe, though this may well be a bi-product and, for some people, prove quite enjoyable. The objectives are, however, to build and maintain: The organizations connection to the grapevine, (the network) via: Building databases specifi c to the service marketers fi rm. The w
46、hole principle was beautifully stated many years ago by Mark H. McCormack in his rubric, “He who has the largest Roladex wins”, of course, Roladexs are now old hat, the fi rm must employ a modern computer (PC) database, but the principle still applies. MARKETING YOUR SERVICE BUSINESS216 The context
47、of managing who knows you A short defi nition is useful here: networking is the activity that builds connections on the grapevine for people or organizations. A connection is a known individual on the database. It is not a full and useful connection, however, until contact details are obtained and r
48、ecorded in some easily referenced format. It is always useful to collect other information to fl esh out what is known about the person, but it should never be forgotten that a database is a reference tool not a dossier. In Figure 11.2, we see where networking fi ts in to the overall promotional act
49、ivity of the service organization. At the top of the tree we have the sales plan, which in this context divides into two distinctly different activities. One is support activity, such as advertising, PR, editorial publicity, already mentioned. The other is sales activity which is designed to infl uence purchase via a person-to-person process. FIG 11.2: THE CONNECTIONS TREE Managing who knows you! THE SALES PLAN Sales activity Suppo