Don't Just Relate - Advocate!: A Blueprint for Profit in the Era of Customer Power [Hardcover]

Glen Urban (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0131913611 | ISBN-13: 978-0131913615 | Publication Date: May 21, 2005

In today's environment companies need to go beyond relationship marketing" to be true customer advocates -- faithfully representing their customers' interests. Customer advocacy means providing customers and prospects with open, honest and complete information. It means talking with customers, not at them. In most companies, customer advocacy requires a massive transformation in both culture and process. In this book, MIT's Glen Urban covers the entire 'pyramid' of customer advocacy: the 'base' (starting with TQM and customer satisfaction initiatives); the 'middle' (relationship marketing); and the 'pinnacle': new advocacy techniques built on trust, not coercion. Companies from GM to Intel, Qwest to John Deere are beginning to recognize the urgent importance of customer advocacy. Urban reveals what they're trying, and what challenges they're up against -- and identifies crucial lessons for earning the customer trust needed to thrive in today's radically changed business environment.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Congratulations to Glen Urban for moving 'best marketing practice' up a notch.  Companies will gain more in the long run by helping their customers make wise choices than in pushing them into purchasing their products.  Establishing a reputation for customer trust, transparency, and advice will be the new differentiator." - Phil Kotler

 

From the Back Cover

"Establishing a reputation for customer trust, transparency, and advice will be the new differentiator. Congratulations to Glen Urban for moving 'best marketing practice' up a notch."

—Philip Kotler, author of several books on marketing, including Kotler on Marketing, Marketing From A to Z, Lateral Marketing, Ten Deadly Marketing Sins, Social Marketing, and the best-selling and authoritative textbook, Marketing Management, now in its 12th edition.

Traditional "push/pull" marketing no longer works. Even highly-touted customer relationship initiatives are failing. Smart companies are pioneering an entirely new route to higher margins and sustainable competitive advantage: customer advocacy. This book reveals how it works, why it works, and how to make it work for your company.

In today's environment, you must build unprecedented trust among customers who have more information, options, and sophistication than ever. You must transcend "relationship marketing" to focus on maximizing customer interests and deepening customer partnerships. It's not easy. But if you do it, you gain immense opportunities your competitors simply can't touch.

Glen Urban offers a complete blueprint for getting there. You'll learn how to improve on all eight elements of customer advocacy, from transparency to partnership. Urban answers frequently asked questions about advocacy strategies, helping you identify and overcome your most significant obstacles. Then, drawing on new case studies, he shows how to align culture, metrics, incentives, and organization, driving effective advocacy throughout your entire organization.

• Power shift: Why your customers now drive your relationship ...and why they no longer respond to conventional marketing

• Do your customers trust you now? Assessing your company on eight dimensions of trust

• Your customers are smarter than you think ...and they'll appreciate being treated that way

• Tools and plans for moving to customer advocacy Changing culture, people, metrics, incentives, and organization

• Straight answers on the pitfalls to avoid, and how to get results

In today's environment, you must build unprecedented

Beyond "relationship marketing": The new route to success with today's empowered customer

• Don't fight your customers: earn their trust!

• Craft customer advocacy strategies that work

• Reduce customer acquisition costs, increase margins, accelerate growth

• Deepen customer trust, one step at a time

• Learn from the experiences of today's customer advocacy pioneers

• For every CxO, board member, marketing leader, and strategist

Today, customers call the shots—and they know it. You can fight them, and lose. Or you can become a true customer advocate, and win.

Customer advocacy means faithfully representing your customers' interests. It means giving them open, honest, and complete information (because they'll discover the truth no matter what you do). It means talking with them, not at them. And it requires a massive transformation in both your culture and your processes. Now, one of the world's leading marketing innovators shows why you must make that transformation— and how to make it work.

MIT's Glen Urban covers the entire "pyramid" of customer advocacy: the "base" (starting with TQM and customer satisfaction initiatives); the "middle" (relationship marketing); and the "pinnacle": new advocacy techniques built on trust, not coercion. Drawing on the latest customer advocacy initiatives at firms such GM, Intel, Qwest, and John Deere, he identifies crucial lessons for earning customer trust, keeping it, and profiting from it.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall (May 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131913611
• ISBN-13: 978-0131913615
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,764,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Business Blueprint for Life in a New Age, July 5, 2005

By 

Craig L. Howe "The Pointed Pundit" (Darien, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Just Relate - Advocate!: A Blueprint for Profit in the Era of Customer Power (Hardcover)

In this Internet Age, consumers know everything about your company and its products.

Glen Urban, a member of the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty since 1966, Deputy Dean at the school from 1987 to 1992, and Dean from 1993 to 1998 posits that the only way to earn their trust is to provide them with open, honest and complete information - even if that means finding the right competitor's product to meet their needs.

In the face of this increasing consumer power, your company has three options:
1. Respond with the traditional marketing push and pull. In other words, increase pull by upping your advertising budget. Increase your push by employing price and promotional policies. These have been the mainstay of marketing for more than 50 years.
2. Strengthen your customer relationships. In recent years companies have refocused on their customers by emphasizing customer satisfaction metrics, staying on message, building better products using TQM and emphasizing more personal service.
3. The final option is to advocate for your customer. This means you give your customers and prospects complete, open and honest information so they can find the product which best serves their needs. This is a dialogue. The goal with this option is to have customers reciprocate with their trust, purchases and loyalty.

Although it may require a complete cultural marketing make-over, Urban says the benefits of advocacy are worth the investment:
1. Reduced customer acquisition costs. Trust lowers the number of new customers company must acquire to maintain its growth projection.
2. Higher Profit margins. Customers are willing to pay more for quality products from vendors they trust.
3. Growth. When a company becomes a trust vendor, customers look to that firm for more products and services in more categories.
4. Advocacy lays the foundation for long-term customer advantage.

Not only is Urban's thesis persuasive, he also shows how to determine whether an advocacy-based strategy is right for your firm. He ten takes the strategy the next step and shows how to build the trust required. The MIT professor provides you with new tools and identifies the leadership skills and cross-functional requirements needed to develop a successful response to this rise of consumer power.

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Customer Is Always Right, May 29, 2005

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Just Relate - Advocate!: A Blueprint for Profit in the Era of Customer Power (Hardcover)

In the age of information, it is little surprise that the majority of a businesses customers know what is under the sheets. The internet, cable news and business channels, even a more in tune population all make the walls of most business as see through as a window. This is why the author claims that if you are not a true advocate for your customers, then you will see continue market share erosion because there is some on out there that has become an advocate. Earning the trust of your customers is as important, if not more then offering the best or cheapest et all, product or service. If you earn and keep a persons trust, then the business will take care of its self. So are the thoughts of this author.

He states that most forward looking companies are pursuing customer advocacy. They are the companies that are providing customers with open honest and complete information. They truly represent their customers best interests, not just trying to get another sale. Overall I could not argue the authors points. He pulls together a nice list of case studies and personal examples that lead you to believe that his way is the wave of the future. Just looking at it from a customers point of view, this is how we all want to be treated. I enjoyed the book. It moves fast and provides easy to digest examples. This book is a look at the future, either you hop on board this band wagon or be left in the dust.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sayonara "caveat emptor", July 21, 2005

By 

Neville Billimoria "Chief Advocacy Officer" (San Diego) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Don't Just Relate - Advocate!: A Blueprint for Profit in the Era of Customer Power (Hardcover)

Glen Urban's latest book, "Don't just relate-Advocate" anticipates the seismic shift in market dynamics already underfoot and the resulting tsunami of emerging customer power that is already crashing in on our lives, due in large part to the sea change enabled by Internet technologies.

Looking back years from now, pundits and historians will identify this pivot point in business history, when "caveat emptor" began its slow death and "power to the people" was not simply a political mantra but a business reality.

Value-based organizations and their visionary leaders ("we can all lead from where we stand") will be well served to explore whether customer advocacy and the trust imperative are central tenets of their strategy, tactics, and organizational DNA, and if the answer is a resounding "yes" then Dr. Urban has provided us with a compelling roadmap for the years ahead.

Glen's thought leadership with respect to trust-based marketing, advocacy, and advise-based technologies has been instrumental in fueling our passion for, as well as, creation and implementation of a member advocacy culture at Mission Federal Credit Union in San Diego.

Consumers today are far smarter than we think...
But don't take my word for it, read the book and arrive at your own conclusions.

Neville Billimoria
Senior Vice President/Membership & Chief Advocacy Officer
Mission Federal Credit Union
San Diego California, USA