#005 The Five Types of Talk Triggers with Jay Baer

KAMCast - Key Account Management Strategies for Business Leaders

IN THIS EPISODE:

I continue my discussion with Jay Baer, Hall of Fame Keynote speaker and the author of SIX best-selling books which all point to the importance of the customer experience. One of those books is ‘Talk Triggers’ which delves into creating intentional mechanisms within the day to day carrying out of your business which spur your customers to CHOOSE to talk enthusiastically about you to their friends, colleagues and networks. This is without being prompted by you!

This introduces the importance of having a contagious Word Of Mouth (WOM) strategy –which creates involuntary marketers out of your existing customers and ultimately wins you more business (for free!)

If you haven’t listened to the first part of our conversation where we explained what a Talk Trigger is and what the structure of true and impactful Talk Trigger is, it will help contextualise this second part to the conversation for you.

In the first part to our interview - Jay talked about the criteria for a successful Talk Trigger. To qualify as a Talk Trigger, they need to be:

𝙍𝙚𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙠𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚

(truly worthy of remark and packed with detail that would make for great story telling)

𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚

(given the resources and financial investment that may be required to fulfil these experiences and consistently over time)

𝙍𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙫𝙖𝙣𝙩

(to your business, your industry and your customer demographic)

𝙍𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚

(becomes part of the business, and is available at scale to your most important customers, and beyond)

With 91% of B2B decisions being influenced by word of mouth, it is so important that we consider the stories that our key contacts might be telling their networks and design experiences that feed them with great stories to tell.

Have you ever wondered why a deal with a key account is stalling, not going anywhere fast or, at worst, heading in the direction of the competition?

Do you know what stories your key contacts are telling about you when you are not in the room?

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THIS EPISODE:

This episode really offers up some incredible insight and inspiration from Jay. You will not walk away disappointed in spending the 30mins with us. Plug us in when you next take a walk to get away from your desk.

Jay walks us through the Five Types of Talk Triggers & shares some superb real-life examples of how businesses are using these types in their businesses. He also shares some superb real-life examples of how businesses are using these types in their businesses.

The Five Talk Trigger Types are:

• Talk-able Generosity. Where you are not just giving your clients value for money, but also value for free.
• Talk-able Speed. Every customer cares about speed, and being nimble is often unexpected. With huge potential for B2B businesses in using pace and reaction times to differentiate, what can you do or improve within your working practices to optimise speed and delight your customers?
• Talk-able Usefulness. Being massively helpful and providing informational resources will never go a miss. Maybe you are helping clients to D-I-Y (knowing that your secret sauce is almost never secret.) By removing the fear of giving away too much simply hones in on the right clients who are desperate for your support. Remember that a list of ingredients doesn’t make someone a chef!
• Talk-able Empathy. Treating customers with empathy and care used to be the norm, however we have fallen by the wayside. In a world where empathy and compassion is key and we are often suffering from empathy deficit, businesses have a real opportunity to be different in this area.
• Talk-able Attitude. Are you ready to push the boundaries - be wacky and different and add attitude to experiences?

This is a really interactive, fun and engaging episode to listen to. It is powerful in its simplicity as well. As David always says: KAM is a beautifully simple business skill. Adding a Talk Trigger to the mix – just makes sense.

The book really is a great read and we’d love to hear from anyone who is picked up a copy and see what you think. What ideas do you have for creating a Talk Trigger in your business? (I’ve included a spotlight below on the book for you.)

Can you create a Talk Trigger that feeds your key account contacts with the fuel for telling great stories - spreading the word and evangelising the great messages for you and your business?

The objective is to motivate people to literally spill out and tell a story about your business, however in order to do this, we need to focus on our storyteller’s audience:

• What stories will they find remarkable?
• What do we need to do to empower people to tell those stories? (Think about the customer touch points on their journey with you).

If you like this concept, where will you start?

Remember that G-O-O-D is a 4-letter word and not just in the literal sense! DIFFERENT will be what makes the difference for great KAM Success, and incidentally DIFFERENT is what causes unprovoked chatter. (Jay reminds us that just being competent retains a customer – they expect you to be competent. You need to be DIFFERENT to create conversation and a spontaneous buzz about your brand (which comes from customers and not you).

KILLER QUESTION SEGMENT:

In each episode we ask you, our listener, a killer question that is designed to get you reflecting on your business, your KAM Culture and where changes in thinking and behaviour could lead to increased customer success.

In this episode we asked Jay to give us his killer question. However, he gave a QUESTION that you can use to ask YOUR Customers:

Please can you complete this sentence (in relation to working with you) :-

You won’t believe what happened to me when…(insert here)

What comes in the “(insert here)” …is your Talk Trigger. Perhaps you can make a start by asking your key contacts how they would describe what it’s like to work with you in 3 words? (That will get the ball rolling).

SPOTLIGHT ON 'TALK TRIGGERS' - THE BOOK:

Jay has created a lot of resources to help you on this journey – so be sure to buy the Book and take advantage of his and his co-author Daniel Lewin’s excellent insight into creating these remarkable moments.

The Book contains: ​

• Proprietary research into why and how customers talk
• 30+ detailed case studies of extraordinary results from big hitters like Doubletree Hotels by Hilton, The Cheesecake Factory, Penn & Teller and also dozens of delightful small and medium-sized businesses
• The 4-5-6 learning system for creating and activating talk triggers in your business

Click here to learn more. You can easily buy the book on Amazon (available as an audio book too).

If you get stuck and need help in really looking at the touch points in your customer journey in order to identify the opportunity for a Talk Trigger – we do this customer touchpoint work during our KAM Excel Programme, so do reach out and ask David more about this.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT MY GUEST: JAY BAER

Jay Baer, CSP, CPAE has spent 27 years in digital marketing and customer experience, consulting for more than 700 companies during that period, including 36 of the FORTUNE 500. His current firm – Convince & Convert – provides content marketing, social media, and customer experience advice and counsel to some of the world’s most important brands.

Jay is best described as one of the world’s most inspirational marketing, customer experience, and customer service keynote speakers. He is a Hall of Fame speaker and emcee, a New York Times best-selling author of six books and an Internet pioneer. As a 7th-generation entrepreneur, he has founded five, multi-million-dollar companies and today runs his digital strategy consulting and media firm, Convince and Convert. Jay has two College-age children and lives in the idyllic college town of Bloomington, Indiana with his wife and travels from Indianapolis to speaking opportunities world-wide.

You can find out more about him on his speaking website, connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter. You can find out about his Talk Triggers Podcast, as well as his digital strategic consultancy, Convince and Convert.