Make £millions by changing customer habits

Make £millions by changing customer habits: by Jason Li 2012 ©

It’s one of the secrets of business success...

Changing customer habits to do what you want...

Just like brands such as Google, facebook and Kit Kat...

Who earn millions from you changing your habits.

(Creepy alert: Please don’t use these powerful methods to do creepy things.)

In the last few years, everywhere I go I see people with a smart phone. It’s unbelievable. I stand on the train platform and people are either texting or on the internet. I’m in the restaurant and people are sharing photos. I’m walking down the street and tourists take pictures on their phone; there’s no such thing as the instant camera anymore. And then I go on facebook out of habit and see people’s new pictures that are uploaded.

Is it any wonder that people involved in smart phones from the manufacturer of the chips, the phones, and even facebook are making all the money at the moment? People are habitually using these gadgets and tools. Go back ten years and hardly anyone did these things. Young people today will not understand when you tell them people socially sat at restaurants without anyone bringing out a phone.

These companies are doing two magical things to make millions by changing customer habits:

1.       Creating value

2.       Changing customer habits

Replacing customer habits

Now you might not be able to go out and create and mass manufacture a smart phone to challenge Nokia. However, you can use training to work on replacing customer habits in your industry.

You may be able to help your customer by training them to use your product in a way that is better than the way they do tasks with their existing product. So let’s say you have an electronics kit that a sound engineer uses, you can train the engineer to get better results with your kit than a competitors. Once the engineer gets used to it, the engineer will continue to use yours out of habit.

Imagine that, just a bit of training will cause someone to start using your product instead of a competitor. (Just don’t show the dog how to beg for steak!)

Adding customer habits

Work with customers to find out new ways they can use your product by adding customer habits. Customers will always want to get the best use out of products and services they have paid for. So if they can do more tasks then they originally bought the product for, they will naturally use it of other tasks. To do this, keep in contact and offer bits of training for additional features.

The best thing about adding customer habits is that the more uses your customer has for your product and service, the less likely they are likely to change to another supplier. Even if your business makes mistakes or does something wrong. The fact that your product or service is relied on for so many tasks makes it really hard for a customer to change to another vendor.

All you need to do now is turn your coffee machine into a toasty maker too!

Removing customer habits

Sometimes you will have a customer or prospect that has been used to doing a task in a certain way for months or even many years, so your focus is training them by removing customer habits.

Imagine you have a customer that already uses your sophisticated software system and only use it at the moment for storing documents. When they create company notices it is normally sent by email or they pin up messages on a company board. If people read the email then they see the message, if not, it’s just one out of 100 emails a day they get.

If you want them to use your intranet system then you might train the administrator to post on the intranet system, and following this, train the administrator how to train department managers to train staff how to access the intranet. You could even train the administrator how to put a link on the emails to the intranet too for new notices and to access all sorts of company information. Now the intranet will be habitually accessed and no-one ever misses a company notice.

So is it really possible for your business to create a way for customers to change their habit so they cannot live without your product? Well, here is an example to show it happens all the time. When you want to know something, have you ever heard people say: “Google it.” Noticed how this has replaced the encyclopaedia. (Another one where young people may never know what it’s like to see a book shelf of A-Z encyclopaedia to research subjects; because our habits have changed.)

If not, can you find a way to train customers to habitually use your product? Think of Kit Kat: their advertising is trying to train you in the habit of having a Kit Kat on your break if you are hungry.

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Why your customers are crying out for business training and might cancel the order

Why your customers are crying out for business training and might cancel the order: by Jason Li 2012 ©

At some point in your business training a customer is unavoidable...

Whether you are in IT or an electrician...

If you do have to, be great at training...

Because being good at training customers can make your business stand out.

Let me tell you a story of an experience of training that made a difference to me changing supplier. For a long time I had used a certain mobile phone which had a lot of contacts in the address book built up over the years, and this was the sole reason to stop me changing over to a new phone. I bet you can’t believe it, but hey, I find things like that just plain annoying. In the past when I changed phone, I had to write out numbers and names and it took me a whole day to do, so it was a case of never again.

Anyway, technology has moved on. At the shop, the shop assistant eased my fears and inertia by showing me how to copy numbers off my phone into my new phone so that I could do it in minutes when I got home. And so the deal was done.

Small business training

Every day there will be small businesses training needs, whether it is for staff or customers. Of course, with staff training this is easy because you really know your staff and if they get things wrong they can keep learning and practising to improve. But what if a new prospective customer can’t get what you are offering them, or cannot get to grips with using what you offer?

A prospect might only give you one chance or two chances at most. So you will need to try to make sure your training is as simple and understandable by anyone possible, even if you are training people with PHD’s.

The reason is that new things are hard for people to know and fully understand the first time around. So when showing prospects and clients how to use your products and services, your business needs to make sure they can understand and do all the processes to get them from A to B.

 Then get them to demonstrate back to you how to do it. If they can’t and they say: “I think I get it,” try not to leave it to chance, just say: “Well while we are here we can try it again and it should be easier this time.” Or something along these lines to ensure they can use your product or service.

Business training home page

When I trained customers, I always had the business training home page ready as my emergency. Let’s say I’m training a customer to use software, if they got lost, then we could go to the home page and get them back to the relevant page in one or two clicks. Once the customer knew this, the software felt safe and understandable to them. They knew how to ‘reset’ I guess in a way and start again.

There’s times when I’ve trained online and I can’t see what the customer is looking at on their screen, because they got adventurous. So if I thought it was too confusing to try to untangle what they’ve done and make them feel ruffled, going back to the home page and starting again always helped them get used to feeling comfortable with the software. There’s always a way to make customers comfortable with your product or service so try to find out what that is.

Finance and business training

Simplicity is always important when dealing with finance and business training. I have worked with financial people and found it easier to have some pre-calculated examples to show these customers, mainly because they would definitely be better than me at maths. Plus you can practise examples which are easy for people to follow to reduce questioning.

But doing any training in finance without preparing and pre-calculated examples will leave you confused and looking worried in your training when finance directors start picking holes in your made up examples. So why leave it to chance?

So, whether you are putting on business training seminars or there’s a need for someone in your business training individuals, remember this:

‘Making it easy for clients to follow and do what you train them can make a difference in whether they use your product or not’.

Examples include:

Apple: The giant of technology that thinks of everything. Go to an apple store and you will find that the staff there are willing to show you how to use the iPads and design software. Once you’ve got familiar and can use it, you can’t live without it.

Google Maps: Easy to use map software. Just type in a post code, follow arrows or move a bar to expand or reduce the map size. Who buys road maps anymore and struggles with trying to find 38A19? (Although I do like to show I can read a road map when the sat nav is wrong, just to make sure I can still do it)

Flat – pack furniture: A great way to build furniture if you are good at following instructions, have tools available, and like to build furniture. But what if you are not good at building furniture but bought furniture on assurances from staff that it should be easy to build? Well, many people will give it a try, make an attempt to build, struggle, get frustrated, and send it back. Remember, the product, price, design etc were exactly what the customer wanted at this stage and the order has already been placed; they just needed help so that they can use it.

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How to train professionals

How to train professionals: by Jason Li 2012 ©

When training VIPs you will find you need to employ different techniques compared to when you train junior staff. You may be thinking: ‘Well of course, you need to have better cups and saucers and expensive coffee granules with a buffet.’

In fact, although this may impress professionals when they assess your facilities and refreshments, a major focus on this will possibly disappoint a professional.

Have you ever been to a seminar where you spent ages drinking and eating, but learnt very little from the content? Yes you may say; and that’s why professionals won’t really judge your training based on facilities and refreshments. In fact, you may have been to a seminar or conference and had to sit at the back in an uncomfortable seat, hungry and thirsty, yet, the trainer was so good and so full of interesting information you were writing down loads of material on a pad on your leg. But hey, it was well worth it as this information might be worth £500 over 12 months for your business if you implemented it.

Training directors and high powered people

These people are successful, goal orientated and not your average person who are just there to get some freebies. Only average people and average businesses go to seminars or events to miss work, because they get to have a couple of hours doing nothing. Average people go to events just to consume. Here you may be thinking: ‘Surely if a director is at the same event as an average person they must be doing the same thing, so they are consuming as well?’

No: successful people produce all the time. Professionals whether they are an accountant or book keeper, or an electrician to a web designer knows that if they are going to forego £50 or £200 for the next hour then they want information that helps make them more money in the future by using your ideas to improve their business. So don’t fall into the trap of providing fluff.

Get to the point when training

Establish who you are and let them know from the start what you are going to do. Business owners don’t like to be left in the dark in what they are doing in the next hour, directors want to know what will come out of their time ‘invested’ with you.

Cut out fluffy talk like saying ‘please’ all the time. They know you are nice when you introduced yourself. When training, time is money. Get to the point quickly. But don’t skip explanations either; but if you do explain try to do it succinctly so that high powered people understand why you had to explain points.

Humour

Business owners like to have fun and love humour. But they are not here at your training programme to have fun. They can find a better way with their profits to have fun than go to a training seminar. So there’s no need to be a comedian to offer a humorous experience. However, the funny thing is, where it’s relevant, a bit of humour will work very well.

Numbers

You can use numbers at certain points to back up your explanation. This is a very effective way for directors to see if the ideas you are training quickly weighs up, to ensure if it is of value to them. People like business owners get asked to make decisions all the time and like to make assessments on behalf of the business.

When a business owner sees numbers related to a subject they have made many assessments on in the past, they will know instantly if what you are saying works, and you will lock in their interest.

Business questions and objections

Expect high powered people to interject and relate their thoughts. This is not because they are trouble. It’s because they want to get the idea now and not leave the training session with a new idea a bit ‘muddy’ in their mind. They want to be sure they know what you are proposing now. Revisiting to try to learn things again is a waste of time; as said before it could be worth anything from £50 to £200 to spend an hour going over the same material from their money making time.

Objections are normal. Often it can be because they are interested, so don’t panic when they object. Directors have a lot of data and your information may be challenging this. But they are here because they want to give you a chance to improve on what they know. So you must provide the information they need to make their assessment so that they get the answer they are looking for.

Results

Nothing pleases a business owner more than results. Show relevant results. Show really meaningful results with impact to excite them. Give them a chance to visualise the results for their business. But in the end, show a lot of results if you want 100% success.

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Main problems when training people to use online software

Main problems when training people to use online software: by Jason Li 2012 ©

Trainers find many problems when training people to use online software as it is a lot different from traditional blackboard, books or PowerPoint. You will find also find that students are not always sure what to expect from online training, and the following reasons will show you why.

Linear

When using traditional methods such as PowerPoint or books, training is more in a Linear method. So you will get a PowerPoint slide and follow sentences starting from the top as they arrive on the slide one-by-one until the slide is filled with sentences. And then onto the next slide and the next sentence starts again at the top.

Linear training by explaining key words and short sentences can be quite hypnotic and you will have to use a lot of conceptual skills to help the students visualise what you are explaining.

In order to keep the concentration of the classroom; firstly you have to have explained a concept and managed to get the students to understand; then you have to drag them back from the images that make sense in their heads back to concentrating on the slides; then you need to provide some interaction so that the students don’t fall asleep due to the sequential telling by the trainer. If you just explain sentence-after-sentence one slide-after-another, you will very quickly lose the concentration of the students.

As you can see from the way I have written the five paragraphs so far about linear training, there has been minimal interaction so you might be bored at this point. Imagine putting students through this for an hour of reading slide-after-slide?

So if you are still using old school technology and methods, then at every 5 minute intervals you will need to provide interaction or the information will not sink in. By the way, could you see the word linear is spelt out in the paragraphs above. Just thought I would wake you up. It was boring what I had to write above, but necessary, so the big letters would have given you some intrigue. You might even re-read the above again now and let it sink in.

Problems with online training

The problem with online training is different. It is usually training of a software programme or package. It is hardly ever linear in terms of starting at page/slide one and ending at the final page/slide at the final sentence. So you if you are the trainer that likes to just start at A and just go through the motions to Z you will need to adapt.

With online training, you will need to create a script to make sure you have your own linear training method. So you start in the programme where you want, and take them through the screens in a sequence that best allows the students to absorb the information.

Needless to say, most online training will involve a lot of jumping around, so you must go slow and thoroughly through a section at a time. Miss any steps and your students will not understand what has happened or how they ended up at a certain screen in the software.

In a classroom

Training online in a classroom is different in comparison to using traditional tools, as you would expect. If the students are just watching you: clicking different areas of the screen, typing, amending and jumping into new screens, it can be hard for them to follow.

Also, just watching can be very hard on the concentration. After following you make 10 clicks and 5 amendments or passwords, this can mean the student has to remember 15 different actions in a linear process, but through different areas and different screens; this can also involve flicking between two or more software packages too.

To let you know what this is like, play 15 moves in chess or monopoly and then walk away for an hour and then try to exactly replicate every move and option available chosen. It’s very hard to do and hard to expect any student to remember and put into action later.

So break each section into bite size chunks so that students can master each chunk. So wherever the student is in the software package, they know what to do in that section and can piece together sections they do know well; which will help them know which sections they need to master.

Over the telephone

In most cases when teaching on the phone or a conference call, you cannot see what they see on the screen; so make sure you are more descriptive in your directions.

Here is a way to practise. Describe step-by-step how you would make a drink or pour a drink. Then list all the steps. Then an hour later follow the steps and see if you complete the task without any problems. You might do it well and have a perfect drink. Or you might miss a step such as ‘twist the milk cap clockwise until the cap comes off, then pour the equivalent of three tea spoons of milk gently into your tea making sure it does not splash everywhere’. Forget this step and you have tea or coffee with no milk. Your training will need broken down steps to help students in pretty much the same manner.

If you jump a step, the student will panic naturally as they want to keep up and follow you. They may not even say anything and click around in silence and then before you know it be on a completely different screen to you. Then you will need to stop and reverse the clicks, which means you will be wasting valuable time.

Click and follow

By far the best way is for students to click and follow you on their screen.

I have done this both in a classroom and on the phone with a board room of directors. If a few people are sat around a screen, make sure you have a dedicated person clicking the mouse, and one person on the phone on their side as the main speaker for their group; with yourself on the speaker phone as the sole voice so everyone can hear you giving directions and answering their queries.

Go through each section one-at-a-time, and then give the other side on the phone a chance to ask questions. If you get asked a question, just show small simple things to questions if you know it won’t lead to more questions. If you think it will lead to more questions or take a long time to answer, say you will note it down and come back to it later as it will break up the training sequence.

Practice

Just like any job, you need to practise a lot. Training online is not natural, you have to re-train yourself and quickly get students adapted at the beginning of the session to training in an online way.

So set the rules for the students to follow what you say and how you will give them opportunity to speak and ask questions as you go along.

Script

Finally, make sure you have a script that you can test until it works. I have done this many times to ensure it flows smoothly and students can follow you seamlessly. It’s not easy to do. You just have to do it over-and-over again until you get it right.

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