birddog

What You Sell -v- What Customers Buy

Our heartbeat quickens, our pulse races, our palms and brow sweat a little… that’s the change we experience when we’re buying a new car. According to Ian Armstrong, Manager of Customer Communications at Honda UK, the science of car buying is every bit as important as the art. Ian was the guest speaker at a recent Brand on the Run event and I was interested to speak to him about the day to day marketing activities that happen behind the scenes of the more glamorous Honda TV advertising. I think Honda has been delivering great television advertising for years now. They’ve had consecutive successes with ‘Hate Something, Change Something,’ ‘Cog’ (the parts/domino ad) and ‘Impossible Dream’.

Honda TV ads however, are a long way from the ‘Swiss Tony’ stereotypical style of car selling I recall from walking in to a car dealership many years ago to buy a car. Thankfully most car brand dealerships have evolved somewhat. Although now that it’s mentioned, I was slightly taken aback recently when I went into a BMW dealership only to find that I couldn’t actually look at the cars until I had ‘reported to reception’ and been ‘announced’ to my very own personal Swiss Tony. But that’s another story for another day. For Honda at least, there seems to be the recognition that even if the ad works, it can only take prospective customers as far as the doors of the showroom. There’s still plenty of work to do to ensure a vehicle is sold. Honda doesn’t seem to be leaving anything to chance.

The car brand has been undertaking extensive testing of both sales people and prospective customers within dealerships to monitor the physiological changes they go through during the process of buying a car. The research shows that our immediate ‘gut instinct’ is the primary response mechanism that people use when going through the car buying process. The ‘facts’ (car performance statistics for example) are outweighed by how we ‘feel’ about the purchase.

Honda has discovered that customers are most relaxed when dealing with a sales person who delivers exactly the customer experience they say they’re going to – not one that over promises then under delivers, and not even one that under promises then over delivers. The sales people and customers are most relaxed when they’re telling and being told the ‘truth’.

There’s an excitement attached to buying a new car too. The smell of the leather, the clunk of the door, the rev of the engine. The sales person and the customer both feel exhilaration when a car is being bought.

Unfortunately, not at the same time.

Honda’s research shows that the customer is most excited about their potential purchase about 10 minutes before the sales person. That’s when they’ve made the decision that they’re going to buy the car and want to complete the deal and part with the cash. The sales person, however, doesn’t recognise the physiological changes in the customer (because they’re pretty hard things to see…) and continues selling for another 10 minutes longer than the customer wants. The sales person only gets excited when the contract is on the table and the customer is about to sign it. The danger of course is that during the 10 minute period of unnecessary selling, the customer becomes disappointed, annoyed and leaves without buying the car. The impossible dream just becomes the impossible.

In a B2B context, the analogy needs almost no further development. Whatever business market we’re in, the potential to oversell, undersell, or worst of all, not sell at all, is pretty clear. Brand guardians of every B2B market sector would do well to ensure their brand promise is properly aligned to the customer expectation and that the message is delivered to the customer in the way and in the time it is required. Not too much, not too little, just right. We should all make some changes…

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666

B2B Corporate Hospitality. Is It Worth It?

Corporate Hospitality. Is it going to flourish as companies try to secure the loyalty of their clients in the face of difficult economic conditions, or is it going to die a horrible and painful death as budgets are cut and redirected to the tried, tested and instantly measurable?

I’ve never really been big on accepting corporate hospitality. I don’t have the slightest idea how cricket works for instance – they’re in, they’re out, they’re not out, they play for days, then draw. Mmmm… no. I have a similar problem with the ‘Corporate Golf Days’. Take a stick, a little white ball and acres of nothingness then spend the day thwacking the little white ball with the stick to put it in a hole (where it clearly doesn’t want to go). And then do it again another seventeen times before you’re allowed a beer. I don’t think so.

So either I’m not personable enough to be invited on corporate hospitality days – harsh, but possibly fair – or I avoid them because they get in the way of, god forbid, getting on with some work. But that’s just me. Or at least, that was me. I’ve changed my mind. Not about cricket or golf which are just plain silly, but I’ve had cause to reconsider hospitality as a marketing ‘tool’ from both sides – as the provider and as the recipient.

Providing the hospitality, I took a whoop of clients to the Caldesi Italian Cookery School in Marylebone .The client reaction when we sent out the invitations was good. “What? It’s not a golf day? What happened to the golf day?” “Look, I thought we’d try something different – d’you want to come or not?” “Oh, ehh, actually, yeah – sounds great…” So then I worried that everyone was being polite and they wouldn’t turn up. Actually, it was a full house – 100% attendance. That’s never happened before. We all had a jolly good time. A bunch of senior executives wearing pinnies and covered is flour is the perfect recipe for a jolly good time. I was pleasantly surprised – not just with the day itself, but with the post-event camaraderie and the feeling that we all knew each other a bit better – and it’s just good to ‘know’ who you’re doing business with. I don’t think you can or need to put a ROI figure on that, it’s invaluable.

On the flip side, I was recently invited to a day of motor racing at the Jonathan Palmer Autodrome near Bedford. I think I can safely say that it was the best ‘work-day’ I have ever had. Ever, ever, ever. My host had invited about 100 guests for the day and we all thrashed the bollocks off Porsches, Jaguars, Renaults, Caterhams and even Land Rovers under race conditions. I suspect the cost of the day would have been moderately in excess of the National Debt, which, let’s face it, is considerable these days. Not that I cared of course. I was just pleased to have been invited and unashamedly delighted that it wasn’t golf or cricket.

But how do you measure the ROI? The simple answer appears to be that all those concerned do their very best not to. “It’s a ‘thank you’ for the value we have already had from the client…”, and, “It’s slow burn for key prospects we’re hoping to develop…” In other words, bullshit. It reminded me of the many conversations I’ve had with clients about their trade show attendances and what, if anything, they achieve out of them. “Not really sure, but we absolutely need to be there…”

I suspect that with both recession and new forms of digital communication appearing daily, budget spending on events like these might be reconsidered in favour of the more tangibly measured lead generators. I think that’s a shame. However hard it may be to measure the short term impact of corporate hospitality, we still need to keep a weather eye on the longer term future of client and prospect relationships. And there’s really nothing quite like the parp and squelch of your buttocks going into the hairpin bend at 150mph to remind you that life is more important than ROI.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666