Mastering Core Marketing Principles: Performance

To master marketing you need to understand the core marketing principles, which leads us to understanding your overall strategy. In the first issue we began the 'Mastering Core Marketing Principles' series by discussing Positioning, then Packaging, Promotion and Persuasion. If you missed these articles... just click on each P to read the past articles...

The fifth and last cab off the rank is Performance.

But it is definitely not least. After all, if you don’t perform, meet client expectations, go the extra mile and ultimately create ‘raving fans,’ you’re not going to have much success in growing your business. It’s the word-of-mouth marketing that finally determines your success or failure. So your job is to deliver the goods and keep those referrals coming in.

Performance is much more than getting the job done at a high level. It’s about paying attention to every single thing that impacts the customer relationships. Performance is about perception – the perception of the client and their expectations. When you understand those perceptions and expectations and can deliver what they truly want, you’ve mastered performance.

Performance is about taking care of clients at such a high level that they keep coming back, as well as refer friends and associates. Performance isn’t something you do, it’s something you are. It’s a mindset, a complex set of beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that go beyond any particular set of rules about customer service or even standards of professionalism. Performance is about energy, commitment, caring and excellence.

Managing your client's expectations is crucial.  The secret of client satisfaction is meeting expectations, but you can’t meet expectations if you don’t create them explicitly in the first place.

For example, you may promise to get the project done on time and your conception of on time might be within one week or so of when you said it would be done. The client’s conception and expectation is for the project to be completed on the exact day you first mentioned. When you are late by a day you have failed to meet their expectations.

A recent survey asking millionaires about the qualities that they felt were most important to their success listed nine qualities and eight were all about performance. These were:

• Being honest with all people
• Being well-disciplined
• Getting along with people
• Working harder than most people
• Loving your career/business
• Having strong leadership qualities
• Having a very competitive spirit/personality
• Being very well organised.