Earning The Client’s Trust

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I once heard Alex Rodriguez (“A-Rod“) respond to an interview question regarding the strikeouts he had throughout his career (2,287 if you’re counting). In a very composed manner, Alex responded by saying “I’ve been at bat over 10,000 times during my MLB career. The more times you get to bat, the more swings you can take. No one regrets my strikeouts more than me. But what people want are homeruns – and to hit one, you gotta swing.” (And with 696 HRs in his career, he would know.)

Say what you will about Alex Rodriguez and his baseball career. What resonated to me about his response was that his comment could apply to so many aspects in sports, business, and life: “To hit one – you gotta swing.”

Organizations often ask us, “Is Metric Centric a SaaS business?” Our reply is “We’re a client services business – not a software service.” Sometimes people are mystified with that response until we further explain how we make the analysis of complex consumer attention data simple so that it’s easy to understand – and trust.

That word – TRUST – tends to captivate clients to explore the possibilities . Businesses meet with us because something within their organization has become uncomfortable, and they need a change. Once they feel that we’ve grasped their current state and that we can help, we simply quantify the impact and ask them to then move forward with us.

Unfortunately, not all of our prospects are that cut and dried. In fact, many remain skeptical that analyzing consumer attention will solve or ease their burdens. We sometimes compete with the status quo in organizations that are uncertain because they’ve never needed our type of conversational data before.

We work with law firms and lobbyists who request our support for research toward public policies. Private equity groups ask us to assist with their due diligence and market mapping practices using alternative data that cannot be found in any balance sheet or income statement. Yet many policy makers and portfolio managers remain cynical towards the notion that sentiment and perception data can be a leading indicator for successful legislation or financial performance.

So many choose not to swing.

During the second quarter of 2021, our team was committed to moving clients forward by building their trust in us. We shared success stories and connected prospects to key client references. We even introduced clients to industry sector experts and influencers who could share subject matter knowledge. But our greatest trust-building advantages developed from our Consumer Voice (CV) Snapshot program.

Metric Centric’s CV Snapshot program is a quickly deployable research tool that provides an entry-level programmatic solution for marketplace assessment. It is a fast, focused and affordable option for any organization that is vetting audience sentiment and perception data.

These were some of the organizations that successfully leveraged our CV Snapshot program during Q2 of 2021:

  • A B2B chemical manufacturing company needed to recognize how their industrial coating products were applied across medical and automotive industry sectors. Our CV Snapshot program produced sentiment and perception insights from web conversational data collected from design engineers and OEM operators.
  • Through our partnership with Collective Work, we produced a CV Snapshot that studied the relationship between consumers and luxury brands with a focus on social responsibility. You can review the key insights from the report published by Collective Work at Luxury Daily and American Marketer.
  • A global advocacy group needed to assess sentiment variances towards The California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle). Public sectors were concerned with the state’s waste management policies and pressured legislators to revise. Our CV Snapshot identified several key influencers on both sides of the legislation who could serve as advocates establishing common interests. Influencers included small businesses, corporations, and community leaders.

One common theme reoccurs across these recent engagements – each client took a swing and trusted that we could genuinely help ease some of their problems.

When planning your own business and communications strategies, reflect on the process you use to understand your direct consumers or target audiences. If you discover that your organization lacks the tools, data or the time to properly analyze your consumer’s attention – let’s connect to discuss how our social listening and conversational analytic programs can help.

We hope that this Metric Centric Quarterly Update stimulates some new ideas as you navigate further into 2021. We wish you good health, ongoing success and lots of happiness this summer – and beyond.