Mars

Cras congue malesuada nisl, non rhoncus diam congue vel. Cras vitae dui id nibh pretium blandit. Morbi pharetra diam eget felis mollis in vestibulum tellus cursus. Cras consequat mi gravida nunc adipiscing ac aliquam nisi eleifend. Praesent nec pulvinar orci. Vestibulum placerat sollicitudin nunc, sit amet suscipit nulla hendrerit nec. Donec id massa ut dui feugiat bibendum vulputate non quam. Etiam et eros nec quam porttitor mollis. Nunc cursus velit congue est molestie elementum. Mauris massa lorem, fringilla eget porta fringilla, aliquam at turpis. Maecenas commodo lacinia porta. Pellentesque augue quam, sodales vitae vehicula ut, vulputate at massa. Sed nec tellus sit amet lorem convallis iaculis. Maecenas quis elit a dolor euismod adipiscing vitae ut quam. Mauris odio dolor, convallis in cursus a, aliquet quis tellus. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Vestibulum pulvinar eros lobortis elit elementum ultricies. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Suspendisse vitae justo a mi mattis laoreet. Nulla condimentum, turpis nec tristique faucibus, massa nisl euismod turpis, non ullamcorper libero dui at purus. Quisque sollicitudin euismod lectus sit amet ultrices. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Curabitur vel est eget odio pharetra eleifend. Proin diam neque, sodales at vehicula molestie, dapibus et lacus. Integer varius augue quis ante sagittis sed condimentum nibh suscipit. Vestibulum et elit tortor. Proin vestibulum quam a lorem varius dignissim a vel est. Ut tempus congue diam, malesuada fringilla tellus congue et. Curabitur luctus urna ac leo semper pharetra. Duis nec imperdiet neque.

Nam eget dignissim lorem. Aliquam porttitor dapibus volutpat. Sed volutpat, massa nec pulvinar tempus, dolor dolor aliquam metus, id porta nibh orci quis ante. Sed sollicitudin, libero sit amet convallis mollis, ante erat pulvinar mauris, nec egestas felis turpis id magna. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Quisque dapibus dolor vitae velit facilisis ultricies porttitor erat facilisis. Nunc leo tortor, euismod quis dapibus et, hendrerit et felis. Donec dui augue, sagittis at fermentum ut, interdum a lectus. In ante ipsum, commodo non elementum ac, aliquam sit amet arcu. Aenean et massa tincidunt lacus cursus laoreet. Sed dapibus arcu at purus aliquet viverra. Cras justo velit, tincidunt sit amet venenatis ac, tincidunt vel libero. Suspendisse potenti. Vivamus odio purus, faucibus vel congue eleifend, varius eu nulla. Pellentesque placerat risus ut tortor tempus a convallis felis fringilla. 

[Delphi] DH Downloader 1.0

New version of this program to download files using Delphi with the following options: In the generator:[+] You can rename the downloaded file [+] can be saved in the folder you want [+] You can hide the file [ +] it makes the file starts every time you load Windows [+] You can charge hidden or normal in the Stub: [+] Lets run the downloaded file in parallel [+] works silently [+] You can change the name of the downloaded file [+] can be saved in the folder you want [+] You can hide the file [+] makes the file starts every time you load Windows [+] You can charge hidden or normal An image:

A video with examples of use:

If you want to download the program they can do from here: SourceForge GitHub

Need a CRM? Consider These Tips First

Customer relationship management and CRMs are not the same thing.

Customer relationship management is what you do: how you work with, serve and support your customers. It is a strategy for building relationships with your current and potential buyers and understanding their needs so you can help them be successful through your product.

Sound time-consuming? Think about it this way: Customer experience is the most essential element of your growth strategy and just plain the right way to do business. Companies large and small can no longer afford to ignore it. As Forrester reported in their CRM trend report, “In 2017 companies are becoming increasingly cognizant of the economic value of managing customer relationships.”

This is where CRM software comes into play. CRMs enable relationship and contact management at scale through data collection, segmentation, automation and analytics. Infusionsoft sums it up nicely: “The core function of CRM is contact management. It gives you the power to actively track and segment a much larger volume of contact variables.”

“When it works,” according to Harvard Business Review, CRM software “allows companies to gather customer data swiftly, identify the most valuable customers over time, and increase customer loyalty by providing customized products and services.”

When it works is the operative phrase. That’s where the struggle gets real.

The problem with both CRM strategy and software is twofold. First, the software industry pressures businesses to adopt tools for manufactured problems that they want business owners to think exist. Second, and as a result of the first problem, too many businesses begin with tools, not their customers, so their strategy is built around an object rather than the humans they are trying to serve.

Your success should be based on making your customers successful.

It’s no wonder why as far back as a 2002, Gartner found that 55 percent of all CRM projects don’t produce results, and why most people think of tools when they talk about CRM. What’s old is new again.

Mo McKibbin, in Customer Success here at Help Scout, emphasises the importance of a customers first, tools second approach:

“A successful CRM serves both the business and their customers. But all too often, automation is used solely for cutting time and costs, which comes at the customer’s expense. You have to start with
your customer experience strategy, then figure out what tools you need to support it.”

The reality is that success in the beginning is much simpler, and it’s achievable for companies of all sizes. It starts with supporting your customers and building relationships with them. Answer their questions, be available when they need you. Ask them questions, build personas, experiment, establish a point of view of customer success at your company. Once you have that, you’re ready to consider a CRM, because you’ll know what you actually need from it. And as a result, your investment will reap meaningful ROI, quickly.

Related: Why customer-centric companies win

Will the real CRM please stand up?

You’ve opened the doors to your business, gotten your product to market, made your dream a reality. Now it’s all about your customers. How are you going to manage their questions? Make sure no message falls through the cracks, track common questions and problems so you can make proactive business decisions, maintain high-quality service, and prevent confusion among your own team (if you have one).

“In today’s world, you need to have a customer engagement process right from the very beginning,” says Brent Leary. “If you start blogging and somebody likes what you’re writing about and they want to learn more, you have to have an engagement process that helps you respond quickly and effectively so you can keep the momentum going.”

The good news is that you don’t actually need expensive software in the beginning. As we’ve argued before, using free or low-cost tools enables you to delay more expensive investments until you really need them.

Help Scout’s integration with HubSpot puts customer information right where you need it. See it in action -->

Support tools like email or help desk software are great options for supporting customers while you figure out your overall customer experience and growth strategy. They help you start building relationships with your customers while avoiding expensive administration investments. And they avoid the pitfalls of more archaic CRM solutions that Leary identifies:

“Consider the confusion that’s associated with using spreadsheets for tasks they’re not designed to handle. What if your sales process suffers as a result? Opting for spreadsheets to tackle CRM for the time being may actually cost an organization customers — and the sad part is, you’d probably never know it.”

Break it before you buy it

You know you’re ready to consider a CRM when you start asking your customers these questions on a regular basis:

• What was your last order?
• Have you spoken to anyone else from our company?
• What’s your phone number?
• What plan are you on?
• How long have you been a customer?

When these questions present themselves, you’ve reached a point where you’re anticipating your customers’ needs and can be more proactive. That’s when you know you’re ready to evolve how you manage your customers, and when CRM software becomes a worthy consideration.

The better you understand your customers, the more responsive you can be to their needs.

The good news is that CRM software can be layered on top of your existing customer tools, like a strong email service provider or a help desk (homegrown or purchased), making the transition easier and less costly.

Related: 5 Customer Service Tips for Early-Stage Startups

You’re ready for a CRM — what now?

With so many options, bells and whistles among CRM software options, it’s easy to get lost right when you’re getting started. The best approach is to outline your goals at the outset.

1. Establish your business goals

Start with three high-level pieces of information:

• Revenue goals: How much money do you want to make this year?
• How many customers do you have right now?
• What resources do you have (budget and employees)?

Before you begin formulating any numbers, however, consider digging deeper to consider:

• The cost to support each new user
• The cost to onboard each new user
• The lifetime value (LTV) of each new user
• How much churn they can expect

Using these calculations will help you avoid setting sales targets based on numbers rather than humans, and will instead promote practices that are customer-centric and work within your definition of customer success.

As Charlie Brown writes in Harvard Business Review, “Find metrics that measure relationship health, not just sales.”

Ultimately, this formula enables you to create incentives that will attract customers who will actually get value from your product 

. They force your entire company to rethink the relationship between sales and support from the ground up, and use them to refocus activities on serving the customer.

Related: Aligning Sales and Support for Long-Term Growth

2. Define customer relationship management at your company

Whether your company has one, five, 10, or 50+ people, you need to know what success looks like for your customers. What kind of service will you provide? How will you approach sales?

Kate Leggett outlines it for Forrester:

“Forward-thinking companies invest in customer success by articulating a customer success strategy and high-level measures of success as well as forming customer success teams that have clear retention metrics and revenue goals for accounts under management. They use CRM data in conjunction with finance and product usage data to gauge a customer’s health and intervene when surfacing signs of distress.”

3. Determine what CRM features you need to support your strategy

HubSpot’s great first-time CRM buyer’s guide helps identify the basic features every CRM should have:

• Contact management
• Deal stages
• Daily dashboard
• Task management
• Content repository
• Automated data capture
• Reporting
• Mobile app
• Integration with marketing automation

Visualized another way, this grid shows the basic info managed in a traditional spreadsheet alongside some of the functional benefits a CRM adds to your data:

Spreadsheet	CRM
Name	Lead scoring based on triggers
Email	Company Size
Phone Number	Multiple contacts within a company
Website	Contact Title
Address	Notes History
Type of Customer	Current sales pipeline stage
Date Purchased	Detailed reporting

While every company and team will vary in their needs, three features are essential to customer experience that benefits all stages of the funnel.

Conversation history: To maintain a consistent experience for your customers, your CRM should talk to your help desk (and vice versa) through an API integration. This contextual data helps your sales team make better recommendations for current and potential customers. For example, the Help Scout + HubSpot integration automatically adds Conversation activity to your HubSpot timeline, so your support and sales can stay aligned without adding a step to their process.

Audience targeting 2.0: With more sophisticated technology comes greater expectations from customers that the content you’re sending them is relevant and timely. And the CRM you use should enable you to meet those expectations. In 2017, says CMS Newswire, “we will witness a surge in technologies for real-time hyper-targeting, catering to micro-segments of customers and embodying the vision of contextual marketing: targeting every customer with the right message, on the right channel, at the right time.”

Multichannel support: According to a recent Forrester report, the average adult is connected to the web by 4.5 devices, making it even more essential for CRM software to prevent interruptions to the user experience across channels that me be managed individually.

Support-driven growth

You don’t need a CRM to be successful at customer relationship management. It’s inside the heads of your customer service team, who are the front line of relationship building with your customers. People who contact the support team often share information far beyond the practical details of products and features, explaining their broader business goals, their frustrations, and their fears.

Stop thinking about your customer experience as the tools you use to support your customers, and start thinking about your customer experience as the relationship you build between your company and the people relying on you.

A software CRM rollout should integrate with your help desk and the other tools you use. That way, customer information can be shared across teams to provide a more personalized and holistic sales, marketing, or account management experience.

“With the right framework in place,” says Mat Patterson, Help Scout Customer Evangelist, “companies can create a consistent customer experience, all the way from first marketing touches to ongoing support, which will help your company stand out from the competition.”

Having CRM details inside your help desk is incredibly valuable for support teams, too. A competent, accurate answer to a customer’s question is great, but an answer that takes the customer’s individual situation into account and is adapted for their specific needs is much more powerful at building loyalty and customer success.

Related: Support, Sales, and Marketing Need to Work in Harmony

Why bother with all this?

Bad customer service costs companies money — both lost revenue from churn and lost potential revenue from customers who fall out of the sales funnel.

“Mercedes-Benz was sold in the UK through a franchised network of some 138 dealerships. Each of these was autonomous, with the exception of three dealerships owned by the distributor DaimlerChrysler UK (DCUK). DaimlerChrysler had relatively little control over relationships between dealers and customers. All dealers managed their own relationships including customer research, database management, acquisition and retention processes. Although the technical quality of the product was highly regarded, customers complained that the service that they received was not of the same high standard. This translated into declining customer satisfaction and increased defection.”
— Customer Relationship Management Case Study: Mercedes Benz

Good customer service increases retention and makes upselling a benefit, not an interruption. “After observing a few hundred thousand pricing studies at Price Intelligently,” says CEO Patrick Campbell, “we started to notice that the customers of our customers known for phenomenal service appeared to be willing to pay much more than the customers of competitor products.”

By keeping the focus on our customers — rather than the sale — we succeed when our customers get more value out of Help Scout over time.

Good customer service also increases word-of-mouth:

The future of CRM tools

The ultimate value of a CRM does not lie in the capturing, storing or organizing of information. The value lies in how information is understood and applied by the business to future customer interactions.

The future of CRM tools is in making that information easier to understand and apply. We’ll see deeper integrations with marketing automation, so each customer has an ongoing experience tailored just for them. AI will suggest the most likely answer for any particular customer, given everything already known about them.

Gartner predicts that “We are in an age of convenience, where customers — whether they be defined as customers or citizens, students, patients or partners — turn to the enterprise to provide customer service that is convenient, intuitive, immediate, and on the channel of their choosing.”

Applied carefully in multiple areas, CRM data is what takes personalization beyond “you can make your background a different color” — into a custom experience that is vastly more valuable for your customers.

How to Foster Inclusivity at Your Company

Think about a time in your life when you felt most included. What was going on, and how did it feel?

Now take a minute and think about a time in your life when you felt excluded. What was going on there, and how did that feel?

Everyone wants to feel included. We all want to feel safe. We all want to have that power.

Some of us have more power than others, but as individuals, we can take a number of thoughtful actions that add up to create a better, more inclusive and inviting culture. 

As an individual within your company, you don’t need to be in the C-Suite or on the People Ops team to affect the kind of positive change that inspires people from different backgrounds to apply and feel included once they’re hired.

How transparency fosters diversity and inclusion — my story

Exclusion is nothing new for me — in fact, it was my norm for a long time. As a black, bisexual, college-dropout-woman-with-lots-of-opinions, the idea of inclusion was a fairy tale I only read about.

When I applied to jobs, I wouldn’t use my real name — Chanita — on my resume. Sometimes I’d lie and say I had a degree. I never included my LinkedIn or social media in fear of people seeing the real me. I would “code switch” to seem more appealing to the company culture or brand.

That changed when I applied to Help Scout because of this blog post:

Here’s how Help Scout is addressing diversity debt and holding ourselves accountable to build a more diverse and inclusive team. Diversity and Inclusion at Help Scout

I’d been a fan of Help Scout for a while, and it was inspiring to see them openly admit their shortcomings. This time, the hiring process was so different — I didn’t change my name on the application; I didn’t feel the need to act like anyone other than myself during interviews. They got to know the real Chanita and it felt fantastic!

9 ways to foster inclusivity

No matter what your role is, you can affect the kinds of change at your company that inspire people from different backgrounds to apply (and thrive once they’re hired).

1. Be transparent

Everyone in the company — leadership and individual contributors alike — should practice transparency. Admit to your shortcomings and encourage others to do the same.

That’s what Leah’s blog post about Help Scout’s demographic data did, and that post is what encouraged me to apply. I could have gotten a rough idea from the team photos on the “About us” page, but for the company to actually come out and say it made a bigger impact, and felt like an invitation for growth.

2. Use inclusive language

Instead of addressing a group of people as “guys,” why not “team” or “folks” or “y’all”? How about trying something fun, like “party people” or “fellow humans”?

Recognize that some commonly used words, like “crazy” or “ghetto” or “females,” can make people uncomfortable. They might not bother everyone, but they do bother some people, and it’s not hard to find other (usually better!) substitutes that don’t exclude anyone. Buffer has a great guide to inclusive language here.

3. Be an ally

According to Valerie Aurora from Frame Shift Consulting:

An ally is a member of a social group that enjoys some privilege that is working to end oppression and understand their own privilege.

Allies speak up even when it’s scary. It sounds simple, but it makes a huge impact. If you have the social capital to say, “We don’t say that here” when someone uses non-inclusive language — and to suggest more inclusive alternatives — use it. Allyship makes underrepresented people feel comfortable and confident.

If I didn’t know I’d have allies standing up for me and championing for me, I would be terrified starting work at a new company where I was the only black queer woman. Knowing you’ll be supported and appreciated goes a long way toward alleviating any fears about being the “only one.”

4. Self-educate

When you don’t know something, Google it. Take the initiative to learn on your own instead of relying on members of that identity group to do it for you. There is nothing wrong with asking questions, but at the same time, there is nothing wrong with finding out things on your own.

5. Switch up your social media scene

Who do you follow on Twitter? Who do you retweet? Which Instagram posts are you liking? Which Facebook groups are you in? What can you do to switch that up sometimes? Resources like #DiversifyYourFeed, POCIT and Colorlines can help, but again, do your own Googling!

6. Amplify marginalized voices

Who is getting credit for ideas in meetings? Be mindful of who is dominating conversational space, and who is getting interrupted. There is so much power in speaking up for people and amplifying voices that may not otherwise be heard.

If you can, support underrepresented peers to speak at conferences, write for blogs, teach customer classes, appear in company videos and so on. If you’re invited to speak on a panel but you and all the other participants are from more privileged groups, consider recommending someone else in your place. If you’re asked to appear on a podcast but you don’t have time, think about whose career could use a boost and suggest them instead.

7. Lean into discomfort

If you belong to an identity group with power and privilege, it can be easier to ignore some of the difficulties other people face. Challenge yourself not to! “Leaning into discomfort” means having the hard conversations, showing up for others and not tuning out the realities of the world we’re all living in.

One of the small ways we lean into discomfort at Help Scout is with a # diversity Slack channel (where the above screenshot recommending “party people” as a gender neutral form of address came from!), as well as private channels for women, people of color and LGBTQ+ team members.

8. Accept critical feedback

We all make mistakes! It truly is a part of life. When someone calls you out for making a mistake, rather than getting defensive: apologize, discuss what happened, try to understand the problem along with the impact, learn from it and move on gracefully.

“I find that when you ask thoughtful, specific questions pertaining to a certain kind of feedback, you can get high-quality answers. For instance, I could ask a team member, ‘hey, are there any words I’ve used in team meetings or in writing that have stuck out to you and caused a reaction? If so, what were they?’

The more I heard feedback about being an ally and changing my vocabulary, the less defensive I became when receiving the information. I also started asking more questions, being more proactive and even giving others feedback based on what I had learned.

It sucks when it’s all on the offended party to initiate a difficult conversation. Good allies don’t wait for the feedback.”

Nick Francis

Nick Francis, Help Scout CEO

9. Diversify your network

Do you know five amazing people within your industry who are either:

• 
  
• A woman
• Part of the LGBTQ+ community
• In a different generation/age group than you
• A veteran
• A person of color
• Someone with a disability
• Someone with a different educational background than you

If not, that’s my challenge to you: Get to know at least five people you wouldn’t think to communicate with before. Don’t be afraid to spark up a conversation on LinkedIn! Sit next to a stranger at the next conference you attend. Break the ice with someone in a different department and have a fulfillingly random conversation.

Start where you can, and trust that it only gets easier.

Why we’re still talking about diversity and inclusion

I could share plenty of statistics and quotes and powerful images to back up everything I’m saying here — but that’s not what this is about. Honestly, we just need to talk.

Diversity and inclusion are difficult to discuss because lots of emotions are involved any time you’re talking about identities, power and privilege. 

 But we need to keep talking about diversity and inclusion because frankly, not enough has changed. We have to continue to have these hard conversations because this is how we grow as companies and as individuals.

So let’s continue the dialogue. Let’s own what we know and what we don’t know, help amplify other voices, give credit where credit is due, support one another, serve as an example and set the bar high for everyone we influence.

How to Deal With ’Tightwad’ Customers

What can your business do about customers who are reluctant to part with their money?

First, it helps to stop seeing these customers as “cheap” or “tightwads” (although the title of the article suggests otherwise because that is what scientists call them — more on that research in a moment!), and instead recognize that “cheap” customers simply feel more “buying pain” than other types of customers.

In other words, the way to deal with cheap customers is to reframe the problem.

“Cheap customers” are simply folks whose brains are wired to feel more buying pain than other individuals — they’re harder to sway in their purchasing decisions because they feel more pain for each purchase. That’s especially crucial info for small to medium-sized businesses, where nearly one on four customers fit the “tightwad” persona.

The question, then, is this: How can businesses successfully sell to “cheap” customers without wasting everyone’s time?

3 types of paying customers: Tightwads, Unconflicted, and Spendthrifts
Neuroscientists have literally defined human spending habits as “spend ’til it hurts.”

Numerous studies on “tightwads vs. spendthrifts” have demonstrated the following spread of customer types:

Customer Types

1. Tightwads (24%) — people who spend less than they would ideally like to spend
2. Unconflicted (61%)
3. Spendthrifts (15%) — people who spend more than they would ideally like to spend
4. Conservative spenders make up a large portion of the average customer base, so easing their pain should be a priority.

One subset of these conservative customers, sometimes called “barnacle customers,” isn’t worth trying to sell to at all — we’ll address that later on.

For now, just know that your typical “tightwad” is not a customer who isn’t able to see value in full prices. Cheap customers aren’t necessarily bottom-dollar sale chasers; they just have a harder time parting with their money. 

Fortunately, there are ways you can ease their buying pain that won’t affect your other customers.

Get ‘cheap customers’ to buy, by minimizing their buying pain
Among some incredible research using neuroimaging that breaks down the neural process of purchases, as well as the research cited above from Carnegie Mellon University, we’ve found some consistent ways to appeal to thrifty customers that doesn’t affect your other customers (especially your more willing spenders).

Here’s what you can do …

1. Reframe your product’s value
While all humans struggle with large concepts of time and money, this process is even more difficult for conservative spenders.

It’s harder for so-called “tightwads” to rationalize expenditures when the length of time and price point are at their most abstract: for instance, when deciding to pay a large price for a product or service for a full year.

For instance, paying $1,000 a year for a continually used product or service makes it tough to grasp its actual value. When selling to these customers (and all customers), it’s better to break pricing up into segments that makes value calculation easier to stomach.

For instance, at that price point, you can create an offer around $84 a month, which makes it easier to assess the value a customer might get from your offering. Additionally, you could take things further by going with, “for as little as $2.75 a day!”, giving customers an exact daily value for your product.

Being able to say: “This product solves enough problems that it’s worth a little more than two bucks a day” goes a long way in convincing customers who can’t see the value at $1,000 per year.

For one-off purchases, be sure to highlight life-expectancy of the product: an expensive camera will seem a lot more interesting if the quality makes it feasible to last 5+ years and still take fantastic pictures.


2. Bundle products to reduce recurring pain points
Neuroeconomics expert George Loewenstein has noted that all customers (but especially conservative spenders) are averse to buying multiple accessories if they can complete their purchase in one swoop.

One example he cites is how car manufacturers often bundle accessories in the form of a “plus package” in order to reduce the number of individual purchases: Few people could handle the pain of buying not only the vehicle but also leather seats, digital navigation, an upgraded sound system etc., but many people opt for a better package when it comes all together.

The reason this works is that these individual purchases force us to make a specific decision for each transaction, even if our “end goal” is just a generally upgraded vehicle.

By offering combined packages (for our digital camera example, imagine throwing in a memory card and a case), all of your potential customers can reduce their buying pain to one transaction if they so choose, and you’ll have offered another unique value perspective for hesitant tightwads.

3. Pay attention to the details
One of the more surprising findings from the aforementioned research is just how true the expression, “the devil is in the details” is for conservative spenders.

Minor changes in language — microcopy — can greatly affect customer’s reactions and receptiveness to making purchases.

A “small” change creating big sales
The CMU studies revealed that changing the description of an overnight shipping charge on a free DVD trial offer from “a $5 fee” to “a small $5 fee” increased the response rate among tightwads by 20 percent!

Let’s put those two offerings side-by-side for impact:

“a $5 fee”
“a small $5 fee”
Has the word “small” ever felt so big? A 20% jump in the response rate by adding a single word … the devil really is in the details!

When you can accurately identify additional charges as small or unimportant, be sure to highlight that they are. Reminding people a charge is small definitely affects their perception of it.

Appeal to utility over pleasure
In an additional CMU study, researchers tested frugal spenders’ reactions to paying for a $100 back massage.

They framed the offer in both a utilitarian way (“it can relieve back pain”) as well as with hedonic terms (“it’s a pleasurable and relaxing experience”).

Although the “tightwad” group was 26% less likely to be persuaded by the hedonic message, they only lagged by 9% when it came to the message promoting utility — impressive, considering the offering is a luxury purchase for pretty much everyone except those with true back problems.

While many products combine both of these messages in their selling, be sure to emphasize utility when selling everything but luxury items (where pleasure is the main goal), and especially when selling to more frugal customers.

It’s either free or it isn’t
In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely showcases the importance of “free” in respect to things that are almost-free.

Amazon learned this important distinction when they launched a new “free shipping” promotion with the purchase of every second book. When looking at sales, marketers found that every country except France showed a big jump thanks to the new offer.

What’s the deal with the French?

As it turns out, nothing: Amazon had in fact made the offer in France to include a menial charge of only a single franc (~20 cents). In essence, this is really the same offer, as 20 cents is essentially nothing when compared to buying a book of $10 or more, especially when it’s just for shipping.

The results were clear: Performance didn’t change when this offer went live, but when things were switched over to “free” shipping in the subsequent weeks, sales improved to levels seen in all other countries.

When selling to customers, consider if it’s worth adding on additional minor charges. What if, instead, you incorporated these costs into your overall offering?

At this point, these extras would be seen as free and wouldn’t create another decision point, easing the process for especially conservative buyers.

When you shouldn’t even bother…
Although it pains our customer-loving selves to say this, there is a certain kind of customer you don’t want to bother with.

In an paper titled “The Mismanagement of Customer Loyalty,” HBR calls these customers “barnacle” customers because they:

... do not generate satisfactory returns on investments made in account maintenance and marketing because the size and volume of their transactions are too low.
Like barnacles on the hull of a cargo, they only create additional drag.”

Ouch!

(These customers are labeled as such based on their spending habits — it’s not an assumption of their overall character!)

While it might seem strange to want to avoid customers of any variety, here’s the cold hard truth: You are doing both you and this sort of customer a favor.

You avoid customers who aren’t truly interested in your offering, and you also help these customers who wouldn’t truly fall in love with your product anyway.

You can do this by positioning your brand so that it outright favors certain customers over others, and you don’t have to be rude in the process.

We know, for example, that while customer service is important for practically every business, Help Scout is going to be optimal for certain types of businesses. We position our content around this positioning so that anyone who visits our blog or HelpU gets what we’re all about right away. Check out a few of these posts:

22 Customer Retention Strategies that Work

Switching Help Desks Doesn't Have to be a Nightmare

The Fast, Empathetic Way to Get Your Team to Inbox Zero

You’ll notice a trend in all of these articles. There is an emphasis on putting customers first, and building and growing customer-centric businesses. They’re designed to be most interesting to one group of people: the typical Help Scout customer.

Your brand’s positioning should actively avoid customers who aren’t suitable for your offering. 

This way, you won’t have to play the price game with customers who aren’t truly interested in your product (leaving you time to focus on the customers who are), and these customers won’t be wasting their time by trying an offering that isn’t for them.

Don’t be scared to strongly position your business. Define your offering, describe your ideal customers, and be sure to outline just who isn’t a good fit for your business, you’ll be doing everybody a favor in the long run.