MANAGING INCREASING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS

om Moe’s take on today’s customer expectation quandary is liable to take a few different turns depending on which part of the puzzle you want him to focus on. First, there is the standard form of contact (which centers on Marketing Rule of 7), which helps guide his team at Daily Printing from email exchanges to phone calls and meetings (either in person or online via platforms like Zoom). As a refresher, the rule of seven in marketing refers to the idea that it takes, on average, seven messages to a customer before the customer makes a purchase.

In the days before technology expanded the way you can engage with your customers, the traditional interaction was more of a sales team-requested meeting—ones that Moe, President and CEO of the Plymouth, Minnesota, print and marketing service provider, says often were not well planned out and organized.

Today, this cannot be the case. Buyers are busy, so the last thing they need is what Moe calls a “show up and throw up” meeting. “So much of the information a customer gets today is readily available online via websites, trade associations, etc. That means it is much harder to get time with a customer without having a good reason and a good message.”

So much of the information a customer gets today is readily available online via websites, trade associations, etc. That means it is much harder to get time with a customer without having a good reason and a good message.”

– Tom Moe, President/CEO, Daily Printing

The new era of sales meetings must bring value. For starters, they must be informative, well planned and interactive. The customer must be able to find a takeaway. The days of social calls to discuss family, friends and the last baseball game are over. “The purpose of a meeting should be to show how you can help your customer with a specific problem,” Moe says. “You want to get them to buy from you, but the real outcome should be to uncover other issues, which provide you with the chance to do it all over again.”

When it comes to meeting rising customer expectations, the customer expectation gap continues to widen. More than anything else,