How do you sell engagement to execs who don’t already believe in it?

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day about what makes certain corporate cultures different. Zappos, Southwest, Chick-Fil-A – Why are they so focused on the customer experience and why do they put so much money and resources behind, as Chick-Fil-A COO Dan Cathy calls it, creating “raving brand fans?” Why does an engagement-centric culture come so easy to them and yet is so difficult for the majority of big-name brands?

The answer, which seems quite simple when you think about it, is leadership. Because corporate America is one big game of follow the leader and culture is almost always determined by what a leadership team says and how its members act.

What has always been interesting to me is that the case studies of the companies using engagement to their advantage are out there. You can do a quick Google search and find blog posts, presentations and white papers about how focusing on the customer makes Zappos, Southwest, Chick-Fil-A and the few others doing engagement the right way tick.

Yet, that hasn’t proven to be enough for most brands. Leadership is still hesitant. “That works for Southwest, but we aren’t Southwest,” is a phrase I’ve heard more times than I care to count. Look, engagement works. It humanizes the brand. Customers expect it. It improves brand perception by creating positive stories for customers to tell. Research and case studies back this up.

So how do we get CEOs, CMOs and the like on board? I won’t pretend to have all the answers. But here are a few questions and thoughts I think make a good starting point. What would you add? How would you answer?

1. Q: How do we get around the “that works for them, but our company is different” mentality?

A: Tough one. Research can be our ally here. Emphasize how customer’s expectations are changing and their access to information about the brands they work with is increasing. Talk about how WOM marketing by third-party advocates is most trusted and how listening and engaging creates stories for customers to tell.

2. Q: Do the CEOs at Zappos, Southwest and Chick-Fil-A all have a secret tool to tie engagement to the bottom line that we don’t know about? Or do they just believe in it?

A: I think this is the most interesting and debatable question on the table when it comes to convincing leadership of the value add engagement provides. There is no secret measurement tool. And I haven’t seen in-depth case studies on how each brand measures its engagement efforts. But I am sure they measure them. What I have heard is Tony Hsieh from Zappos talk about how he knows if his employees focus on customer service first before everything else, they will come out ahead. And I asked Dan Cathy this question in person and he told me it has always been part of Chick-Fil-A’s culture to create raving brand fans. Because the company believes in the value it provides. So faith in the system does play a role here. Cathy added that he doesn’t know exactly how all engagement effect his bottom line, but he did know Chick-Fil-A had higher same-store sales than Burger King in 2009 and their restaurants are closed Sundays.

3. Q: How do you measure engagement in a way executives can understand?

A: It’s always about measurable goals and objectives, isn’t it? A lot of the benefit of engagement takes place offline (93 percent of word of mouth happens away from a computer anyway) or is long-term. It’s hard for a CEO to invest millions or get behind results he can’t see. But executives understand business goals. Quite often, they’re the ones who created or signed off on them. So tie your campaigns back to those measurable objectives and show a correlation there, whether through intricate data from listening tools or primary research methods like surveys.

4. Q: What if execs aren’t tech-savvy and think social media is “that thing my kid wastes time on?”

A: If that’s the case, you’re working at a disadvantage – like trying to hit the most homers when you have the deepest fences of any team in the league. One of the smartest pieces of advice I heard at BlogWorld was to create an education deck that explains why your company should invest in engagement. And then take it on a road show around the company. Make sure that deck includes actionable insights discovered from listening and engagement online via social media. Then, ask for time with leadership to share those educations and insights. Tag it on to meetings you already have set up so it gets visibility. And share the qualitative. That is what people who are new to social media remember. A customer service issue resolved via social media or examples of how people are talking about your brand online stick in people’s heads because they give a story to tell.

5. Q: How do you respond to leadership that is hesitant to invest in numbers they can’t see despite what the research and case studies say?

A: There are a few different ways to go here:

• First, give them numbers. Work to quantify metrics you may have seen as purely qualitative in the past. Message pull through and purchase intent are good examples. And make sure you are set up to track more traditional online marketing metrics like clickthroughs, especially if they are to a place on the company website where a transaction can occur.
• Second, bring your competitors to the table and show what they were doing. Position engagement as a way to catch up or differentiate.
• Third, talk about how engagement plays across the entire customer experience. Show when it can take your company’s customers from one step to the next in the purchase funnel, or the more evolved version companies should look to adopt – the customer journey. One of the most important components of the customer journey is customer need. Often times at that point, the customer has an issue, but isn’t thinking about what brand can solve it yet. That is a key point along the journey where engagement can start a relationship between your brand and the customer, which makes you top of mind when he/she is ready to make a purchase.

It would be nice if every corporate CEO thought like Tony Hsieh (Zappos), Gary Kelly (Southwest) or Dan Cathy (Chick-Fil-A). Or if every company had the same customer-centric culture those brands have. But reality tells a different story. Most CEOs and executive leadership teams are still “old, white guys.” And the business world has changed a lot since they started their careers. Heck, it’s changed a lot in the last five years. The companies that started with a culture focused on engagement have it easy. It’s the majority of organizations that need to change the way they operate and embrace a new culture that have a lot of work to do.

Change is hard. And most of the time, things don’t change unless someone can convince the leadership team it’s a necessity. Who better to do that than you?

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