Steve Yastrow
Author of two books, We: The Ideal Customer Relationship and Brand Harmony
Steve’s passion is helping organizations create major profit breakthroughs through better connections with customers. As a consultant, speaker and writer he challenges his clients, audiences and readers to reinvent the way they look at marketing, offering clear action steps to improve business performance through stronger customer relationships.
The concepts behind Steve’s ideas were developed in the “real world” through his work as president of Yastrow Marketing, a consulting firm which has served such clients as McDonald’s Corporation, The Tom Peters Company, Kimpton Hotels, the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, Agilent Technologies, Jenny Craig International, Great Clips for Hair, Cold Stone Creamery, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Viacord, Dental Care Partners and more than fifty other organizations.
Steve is very energetic and is opening his session by surveying the audience on company profitability. His ability to tell a story and create a vision is excellent. Steve’s point is that we are missing the current opportunities that are right in front of our face. Open our eyes and get to work. Steve is a big fan of Peter Drucker…awesome! Marketing is not limited to what the company does. It is all about how the customers want to hear the message. The traditional way of marketing is through a brute force method - push, push, push. Does this really work? The average American is exposed to 5000 branding messages each day. What is the stickiness of this approach?
Marketing needs a new look…Just because we say it, does not mean it’s understood.
Brand Harmony - Key Themes
- Your brand is not what you say you are…your brand is what your customers think you are.
- Integrated Marketing - Is this for the convenience of the customer or the marketer? Marketers don’t do the integrating, the customers do.
- 180 degree flip - You don’t brand your customers…They brand you.
What is it that your customers can’t get anywhere else?
- Products, etc…? NO..it’s about relationships
We all have received a free copy of Steve’s book “We” focusing on relationships. Thanks!
Customer relationships are ongoing conversations in which the customer never thinks of you, without thinking of both of you. How powerful if this? Sound great! What we mostly hear is THEY this, THEY that verses US or WE. Being invited into the first person is powerful. The WE statement is the most powerful statement one can make on Brand as well.
Would you rather do business with a company you have a relationship with or not? Do you buy on price or relationship? Which do you act on when it comes from a recommendation? All 3 questions are answered in the positive percentage on the relationship side. Are we getting the point yet?
The Building Blocks of Customer Relationships. Every time you interact with a customer, 1 of 3 things happen:
- It gets better - Encounter
- It stays the same - Transaction
- It gets worse - Transaction
Encounters vs. TransactionsEngagement in the moment, the conversation and the uniqueness. - How powerful can this be…hmmm.
See chapter 2 of the “We” book if you have an active mind on tips to quiet your mind/actions to have better engagement. Invite your customers to be engaged in the moment. There is also a free eBook available on Steve’s website if you sign up for the blog. Go
here if you are interested.
Electronic Communication Tips
- Aim for encounter
- Engagement is in the moment
- Conversation - Is it uplifting
- Uniqueness - Is this written just for your audience
What does this relationship look like over time? It grows slowly at first and gains momentum over time. It becomes an ongoing conversation…in which your customer never thinks of you, without thinking of both of you. Steve mentions the movie 50 First Dates and says it is not a romantic comedy but a business movie. Each day the relationship was built from scratch versus continual conversation.
Memory - The connection between encounters. How do we use databases to connect the memories? How can we make ourselves memorable to be worthy of memory? The “When” becomes the rhythm of the relationship. Manage the “when”…don’t let the “when” manage you.
In conclusion…When all these experiences blend together to tell a powerful story. Pointillism is a great example of this concept. What is a customer relationship..It’s an ongoing conversation in which your customers never think about you, but about we.
