Tip of the week original series

The series that initiated the idea of bringing resources to you. Thew first fitty-five tips in chronological order - In case you missed thwm back then.
Enjoy reading

Customer Service --- The Differentiator

Customer Service --- The Differentiator
by Dr. Rick Johnson
2008-01-29

Customer service is the one consistent differentiator in an economy with perceived parity of products and services between competitors. Follow these six (6) management tips to ensure customer service meets your customer’s expectations.

• Tip #1: Telephone System

  When was the last time you evaluated your telephone system? Industry studies prove the telephone remains the most common method customers choose to communicate with suppliers. Do you have an automated system that can drive customers crazy because they have to choose from a menu? People want to speak to a live person. Going thru a list of options can be annoying. Take the time to check out your system and how your customers feel about it.

• Tip #2: E-mail

  The convenience and universal acceptance of E-mail by customers and vendors is obvious. The main problem is: customers send E-mail to individuals, e.g., orders, RFQ’s, and questions go to individual Customer Service/Inside Sales reps. Vendor responses often do too. When the recipient is not available, how can you ensure timely response if only the individual recipient can access his/her E-mail?

  Consider this: Customer E-mail is sent to one general E-mail box accessible to all. Individuals pick up their own messages. When someone is out, another person is assigned to pick up and respond to that person's E-mail. To ensure proprietary E-mail only goes to intended recipients, e.g., managers, intra-company E-mail, work groups or teams, separate E-mail addresses are established.

• Tip #3: Call Your Company

  One customer service principle goes like this: "Pay attention to the details. It is often little things that cause customers to seek another supplier like what happens to them when they call you. Additionally, call several times to determine if you get the same price and service from different people. It is not uncommon to have different interpretations of the same pricing system by inside sales people. Managing your pricing system more effectively can often add as much as two points of margin.

• Tip #4: Customer Satisfaction Surveys

  How many lost or inactive customers did you have in the past 12 months? Why did they become inactive? When customers take their business elsewhere, there's usually a good reason. Check out these quotes:

  "We consistently lose 35% of our customers annually and 30% of our existing customers are new annually."
  "In the past 2 years, we have lost over 50% of our accounts. It's the big customers that hurt most, but we're losing all types and sizes to competitors. Many of them didn't even exist a few years ago."
  "We wipe inactive customers off the files once a year. It's too depressing to look at them."
  Industry studies prove it costs five times more to get new customers than it does to retain existing accounts. A customer-focused service strategy is needed to earn loyalty through customer satisfaction and prevent lost accounts. Instead of just listening to informal, inconsistent feedback from field sales and other employees, create an annual customer satisfaction survey by mail supplemented with telephone calls. What do your really customers think of you? Ask them! Make no mistake; the “Voice of the Customer” is critical to creating and maintaining service excellence.

• Tip #5: Your Customers View of Service

  Customer service is not confined to front line personnel. Front line services, and the personnel who deliver them, are "products" of strategic issues addressed by top management. Many surveys indicate that customers see a need for better internal operations for order handling, improved customer service with outside and inside sales, and better awareness of cost controls and how they affect price.

  Some typical customer comments:
  "I can't write ten (10) POs at $45.00 each just to buy from you! You need to eliminate that cost or we'll go elsewhere!"
  "You've got the best product mix and Inside Sales people. You deliver complete and on time! That's the good news. The bad news is: in the past 30 days, you sent us 300 invoices. We need a full-time clerk to process them! We can't afford to do business like this!"
  "Whenever I call, your line is busy. If I leave Voice Mail, I don't know if or when you'll call back or if I'll be here when you do. I want suppliers who answer calls and take orders at my convenience!"
  These examples demonstrate business process and practice problems. All are beyond the control of front-line personnel and are the purview of managers. All require managers to put customer focused performance measures in place and periodically conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Make sure that you have a specific documented customer service strategy that includes process and structure that encompasses all phases of service excellence.

• Tip #6: Customer-Focused Measures

  Though companies typically measure sales and profit contributions, customer-focused performance measures are different. They prove how your services affect customers. Not to be confused with sales measures, customer-focused measures explain reasons for lost sales, retention problems, time-consuming and costly complaints, and cost-redundancies. These measures 'benchmark' performance from the customers standpoint, i.e., the one whose opinion counts!

  Consider these metrics to support service excellence.

  1. # of order errors by type and frequency and person responsible, e.g., wrong item, too much, too little, order taking error, order entry error, freight error, etc.
  2. # of returns (Credits) due to distributor error, e.g., damaged goods, defective products, etc.
  3. # of back orders
  4. # of expedites
  5. # of partial shipments
  6. Order size
  7. The phone system – number of calls per sales person, dropped calls, time on hold, number of voice mails, time of call backs
  8. % of on-time delivery of the right quantity and the right product to the right place of blanket orders, contract, or special agreements, all other orders Telephone, Email, Voice Mail and FAX measures to prove how well inbound contacts are managed

  What you measure proves your commitment to service excellence and what you expect of your employees. Employees pay attention to things that are measured and tend to ignore things that are not. (Hawthorne effect) When customer-focused performance measures are used, your employees know exactly what you mean by service excellence.

5 Ways to Become a Boss Employees Are Thankful For

5 Ways to Become a Boss Employees Are Thankful For
December 27, 2007
Expert tips and a quiz to help bosses garner that ever-elusive appreciation among subordinates
By John M. McKee

Managers get a bad rap. At the butt of endless water-cooler jokes, bosses are more often than not characterized as the office "villain" and are maligned for simply existing, in perpetuity. How then does a boss transcend this collective disdain and actually become a supervisor that direct report subordinates are thankful for?

Career coach John M. McKee, author of Career Wisdom, offers this practical advice to help managers at all levels—bottom, middle and those in the executive suites—hone a style that serves everyone's best interest and fosters a feeling of thankfulness, gratitude and appreciation among subordinates:

1. Give credit where it's due. Among the biggest complaints about managers is that they are "glory hogs." One of the fastest ways for a manager to become disliked and disrespected is by taking the recognition for others' work—or exclusive credit for a team effort. Staff members will be appreciative and pleasantly surprised when they notice you sharing the accolades that will ultimately further their career growth as well.
2. Have an open door policy. Let's face it: most managers have to work hard to keep up with daily demands and expectations. Meetings, telecons, e-mails, number crunching, planning—all of these tasks can keep managers separate and apart, both physically and emotionally, from their team. It's important to remember, however, that one of a manager's primary jobs is to know what your staff is doing at all times, and help them to do it better. The best way to accomplish this is by staying visible and accessible with staffers by not only welcoming them into your office, but also by walking around the department where you can "mix it up" with subordinates in a less formal way and in their territorial comfort zone.
3. Appreciate face value. Today's professional is decidedly "wired," with e-mail, voicemail, teleconferencing and web-conferencing, taking the place of good old human-to-human interaction. The most effective managers communicate with their staff in person whenever possible. Although remote communication is admittedly efficient, technology is not entirely effective when it comes to getting people energized or feeling like they are part of a team led by someone who cares about what's on the collective plate. There is simply no direct substitute for having a face-to-face dialogue—not a monologue—with staff members if you want to get things done while also cultivating a positive spirit within the organization.
4. Be firm but fair. Every office has its "suck-ups" and "brown-nosers," and everyone knows who they are&hellipexcept the boss. If your team thinks you are allowing others to have special privileges or that you are too naïve to recognize when you're being manipulated, you will lose their respect very quickly. Once lost, respect is a virtue that is very hard to regain. To avoid this, debrief your team as often as possible so they understand why you do things a certain way or have made a certain decision, and so they consider your decisions fair in a business context.
5. Find and maintain a "whole life" balance. Busy times and demanding jobs can cause managers to lose their humanity—those other things in life that make it "all worth it." It's okay to burn some midnight oil once in a while, but everyday demands at the expense of your personal or family life is a recipe for disaster: high stress levels and low energy, attention span, patience and tolerance levels makes for a less than lovable boss. This, of course, leads to low morale and decreased team productivity coupled with increased staff turnover—all of which plays into a vicious cycle of both professional and personal unhappiness. When you are frustrated and wound tight, your staff truly feels your pain.

***QUIZ***

Not sure if you're a boss that employees are thankful for? McKee offers this quick quiz to help you find out if your management style is helping or hurting employee perceptions: Simply answer yes or no to each item below.

1. All employees generally dislike work.
2. The best motivator for your team is money; it's what brings them back every day.
3. Keeping emotions out of the management process has served the operation well.
4. Your staff prefers to work as a team so that individual accountability is lessened.
5. As much as I would like to, I just don’t have the time to spend talking in-person to my subordinates.
6. I encourage feedback from a suggestion box or other anonymous method.
7. I live for the weekends (this job is a paycheck to support my "real" life).
8. I don't believe outsourcing can happen to my company.
9. Regular team meetings are not justifiable as they take too much time, which lessens productivity.
10. My current management position isn't very influential, but when I move up the ladder a bit I can make a "real" contribution to the company.

Score Card: Give yourself 1 point for every time you said "No:"

10 = Excellent!! You'll be running the show in no time!
9 = Brilliant. You obviously see your employees as an asset.
8 = Solid. You have the right attitude, and the team will see that.
7 = Well done. You know people and their needs.
6 = Good. You recognize the power of your role.
5 = Fair. May be time to rethink your management strategy.
4 = It's definitely time for an attitude adjustment.
3 = Change or die (metaphorically). Things aren't good, but it's not too late to make impactful changes.
2 = Do something significant that will be viewed in a positive light or your employees will leave.
1 = It's time to consider a new job where you do not manage people.
0 = Ever consider a job as a bounty hunter?

Having talent isn't enough, you must leverage it

Managers: Having talent isn't enough, you must leverage it

A great article on modern management by Bob Nelson

In today's increasingly complex business world, companies are seeking ways to make sure they have the talent they will need to compete now and in the future. Securing and retaining the right skills and competencies is fundamental to the growth and vitality of any organization.

Increasingly, companies are finding that the best way to prepare for the future is leveraging talent---capitalizing on and enhancing the skills of its own workforce. By discovering what talent lies within the company, and by allowing for creativity and innovation to expand these capabilities in-house, organizations are better able to have ready talent----and a motivated and energized workforce. It takes a special kind of manager to refine and unleash the talent that lies within an organization.

Getting the best out of workers and helping them to achieve their full potential is above all a product of the softer side of management---how individuals are treated, inspired, and challenged. Managers must also provide the necessary support, resources, and guidance to help employees cultivate and enhance their skills and competencies.

The Changing Role of Managers

To be effective, today's managers must create supportive work environments that can influence desired behaviors and outcomes. This means applying an entirely new set of management practices--a set of practices that takes into account these new ways of doing business. Today's managers need to be able to:

1. Energize. The best managers are masters of making things happen. They create far more energy than they consume and, instead of taking energy from an organization, they channel and amplify it back to the organization. Successful managers create compelling visions for their employees to strive for, and then they get out of the way.
2. Empower. Great managers allow their employees to do great work. They delegate responsibility and the authority necessary to get a job done. This is a vital function of management since even the world's greatest managers can't succeed all by themselves. To achieve their goals, managers depend on the skills that their employees offer them and their organizations.
3. Support. It used to be that the job of managers was to give orders and to make sure that their employees did as they were told. This is no longer the case. Increasingly, managers are becoming coaches, colleagues, and cheerleaders for the employees they support rather than prison wardens or executioners. The best managers allow their employees to make mistakes or to disagree with the status quo with no fear of retribution.
4. Communicate. Communication is the lifeblood of any organization--whether it's a small business or large. We have seen firsthand the positive effects on businesses where workers and managers communicate frequently and honestly, and we have seen the negative effects on businesses where they don't. Information is power and, as the speed of business accelerates with the coming of the Information Superhighway, information must be communicated throughout an organization quickly and efficiently.

Empower employees to see their full potential. Empowerment--giving employees the responsibility and the authority to get things done their way---can unleash tremendous amounts of worker energy. Employees want to feel that they are trusted and valued members of the organization. Nothing pumps up an employee's energy more quickly or completely than when he or she is supported for showing personal initiative or calculated risk-taking. Smart business people know that it makes sense to empower their workers--even if they make a mistake or two.

Communicate one-to-one

The workplace is full of an abundance of opportunities. Ask people what they want to do, pair them with the right people and positions, and the results are amazing. Communication is the glue that holds an organization together. And, communication is a two-way street--with information flowing up and down the organization freely and quickly.

Encourage creativity

Encouraging employees to be creative will motivate them to voluntarily seek out new ways to address and solve problems. Progressive organizations find ways to give their employees the time, support, and tools they need to stimulate creative thinking. Unfortunately, the harried pace at many organizations leave precious little time for employees to just think and create. In such workplaces, it is especially important to for employees to be given opportunities to take regular breaks from the relentless pace of business.

Train and develop employees

The best organizations realize that providing employees with opportunities to learn pays dividends for both the organization and the employees. The organization gets better-skilled workers who are more versatile and flexible in their assignments, and employees get the opportunity to learn new skills, gain new ways of viewing the world, and meet and network with co-workers.

Many organizations help employees better manage their careers by creating comprehensive training programs to ensure that their employees have the opportunity to improve their skills. At the same time, training employees helps organizations make sure they have the talent they need now--and into the future. While some programs are highly structured, others allow employees to identify their own training opportunities based on their own individual career goals and aspirations.

Nurture talent to leverage it

Management today is about what one does with employees, not to them. To leverage the talent you have --- and to make sure you have the talent you will need in the future --- today's managers must create supportive work environments that foster employee creativity and innovation. Communicating, supporting, energizing, and training employees will give organizations the competitive edge they need to succeed.

Recognition and Motivation - Mistakes you should not make

Don't Make These Motivation Mistakes
by Bob Nelson

Because of its scope and complexity, organizational recognition efforts have the greatest likelihood to go awry. For this reason, many organizations avoid getting too creative with recognition programs, sticking instead with tried-and-true programs that, unfortunately, are often not all that effective in motivating employees. To make the most of your organization's recognition programs, avoid these common problems.

• The rush to recognition. The starting point of many organizational recognition problems is poor planning. Some action-oriented companies tend to take a ready-fire-aim approach to planning. But where a systematic plan is highly desirable for individual and team recognition, it is absolutely essential for organizational recognition. Start with the end in mind of what overall you are trying
• Confusing priorities and alignment. Without realizing it, management often sends a bewildering array of mixed messages by what is recognized that confuse, rather than guide, employees. When performance expectations are unclear, employees waste a tremendous amount of human energy trying to figure out what is really expected and various individuals and groups, which are supposed to work together, end up working at cross-purposes.
• Subjective recognition. Too often recognition is given based on subjective impressions, which are notoriously inaccurate. Subjective recognition is uneven, at best, wrong and unfair, at its worst. It is important to use carefully defined objective criteria that aligns with organizational objectives. Checklists can be helpful to identify behaviors and results that are worthy of recognition.
• Untimely recognition. Delay is the enemy of effective recognition. One of the challenges of organizational recognition is how to keep it streamlined and nonbureaucratic so that people can receive timely recognition. If every form of recognition needs management approval, many-if not most-recognition opportunities will be missed. Avoid recognition decisions that have multiple levels of approvals and always allow some forms of recognition that require no levels of approval at all.
• Rewards that aren't rewarding. I've seen many instances in which the awards given in a recognition or incentive program or contest created more problems than they solved. Deciding what employees most value without checking with them is a sure way to increase your risk of missing the motivational mark.
• Inappropriate recognition. Sometimes recognition is too small or too large. Telling someone in the hallway that they did a "nice job" at the completion of a two-year project can be as inappropriate as giving an employee-of-the-month a cruise.
• One size doesn't fit all. Another basic mistake people make is to provide-out of a false sense of fairness-the exact same recognition or reward to every employee. Few things are as unfair as the equal treatment of unequals.
• Loss of relevance and freshness. Managers and organizations often make the mistake of expecting a recognition program or activity to remain effective seemingly forever. Even the best of programs needs to be reevaluated and renewed from time to time-usually sooner rather than later. As a general rule of thumb, the shelf life of a typical recognition program today is closer to 15 weeks than 15 years. Find out what's working and what's not-and adjust the program accordingly.
• Entitlement recognition. Employee recognition should be special, not routine. Too often recognition becomes "part of the landscape." When recognition is routinely expected, it loses its value and its authenticity.

Simple tips to today's managers on how to motivate their employees

The Power Of I's: No Cost Job Recognition That Works
by Bob Nelson

I'm convinced that the most important things managers can do to develop and maintain motivated employees have no cost, but rather are a function of the daily interactions that managers have with employees pertaining to work. Many of the no-cost methods that can be most effective are also a part of most jobs. I remember some of the best from the first letter of the word, which I call "The Power of I's."

• Interesting work. Everyone should have at least part of their job be of high interest to them. As the management theorist Frederick Herzberg once said, "If you want someone to do a good job, give them a good job to do." Yes, some jobs may be inherently boring, but you can give anyone in such a job at least one task or project that's stimulating to that person. Name him or her to a suggestion committee that meets once a week, or to some other special group. The time away from the regular job is likely to be more than made up with increased productivity.
• Information. With presumed employment for life largely a thing of the past, employees want more than ever to know how they are doing in their jobs and how the company is doing in its business. Start telling them how the company makes money and how it spends money. Make sure there are ample channels of communication to encourage employees to be informed, ask questions and share information. At least some of the communication channels should directly involve management in non-intimidating circumstances. Soon you'll have them turning out the lights when they are last to leave a room.
• Involvement. Involving employees-especially in decisions that affect them-is both respectful to them and practical. People that are closest to the problem or customer typically have the best insight as to how a situation can be improved. They know what works and what doesn't but often are never asked for their opinion. As you involve others, you increase their commitment and ease in implementing any new idea or change.
• Independence. Most employees- especially experienced, top-performing employees- value being given room to do their job as they best see fit. All employees also appreciate having flexibility in their jobs. When you provide these factors to employees based on desired performance, it increases the likelihood that they will perform as desired--and bring additional initiative, ideas and energy to the job as well.
• Increased Visibility and Opportunity. Everyone appreciates a manager who gives credit where it is due. The chances to share the successes of employees with others throughout the organization are almost limitless. In addition, most employee development is on-the-job development that comes from new learning opportunities and the chance to gain new skills and experience. Giving employees new opportunities to perform, learn and grow as a form of recognition and thanks is very motivating to most employees.

Beneath all of these techniques is a basic premise of trust and respect and having the best interests of your employees at heart. You will never get the best effort from employees today by building a fire under them; rather, you need to find a way to build a fire within them to obtain extraordinary results from ordinary people.

The Seeing/Believing Gap

The Seeing/Believing Gap by Marcia L. Conner

What you see may be only a fraction of what's there. To learn more, look beyond what you expect.

Each time Mal "Skip" Bowen sat on his favorite beach, he noticed people diving for abalone a short distance offshore. When he set out to find one himself he bought gear, headed back to the beach, and went into the water. No abalone. Not a single one. He wondered if the tide had changed while he was gone or if someone else caught them all.
Just then a diver strolled by with a large catch. Skip tried again, returning empty handed. He wondered if he needed to wait until seagulls circled or waves reached a certain height when a diver who looked 100 years old, who was perhaps 42, walked by with even more abalone. Skip asked what he might be doing wrong.
The leathery-looking diver spit out a piece of kelp. "There's something you should know about abalone." He paused, nodding back toward the ocean. "Until you see your first abalone, you can't see them at all. Once you see your first one, they're everywhere."
Skip grabbed his mask and fins, and headed toward the water. About an hour later, he saw his first abalone. He's been seeing them everywhere since.

The human eye has a blind spot in its field of vision. The human mind has something similar. Sometimes you can't "see" new information because you are bound by filters and lack the mental framework to make sense of what your eyes take in. People often see what they want to see and ignore information that doesn't fit their preconceptions. We default to the shortcut of seeing things the same way. People seek stability and security so seeing things in a way that confirms their beliefs gives them both.

Help yourself see more by looking past your beliefs.

• See past categories

  To manage an overwhelming amount of data, you create mental category bins where you group similar items. "I don't need to spend time discovering the nuances of this grub because I know enough about bugs to get by," explain Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe explain in Managing the Unexpected. But this can be dangerous: "Trouble starts when I fail to notice that I see only whatever confirms my categories and expectations but nothing else. The trouble deepens even further if I kid myself that seeing is believing. That's wrong. It's the other way around. You see what you expect to see. You see what you have the labels to see. You see what you have the skills to manage." After all, that grub might need to go into a bucket labeled food if you're hungry and lost in the woods.

• See past jargon

  Few people feel comfortable pointing out they're missing little details it seems everyone else knows. At the beginning of any class I teach, I ask everyone to fold a paper airplane and fly it forward if there is a term, acronym, or concept we talk about that they're unfamiliar with. We're more likely to focus on the airborne plane, making sure to spend time clarifying recent topics, than considering who sent it. It signifies that we need to pay more attention to the words we use so that they make sense to everyone and allow everyone to advocate for themselves in a non-threatening way.

• See past assumptions

  Assumptions are beliefs about how the world works. They include priorities, lists of what you value more than other things. Over time your assumptions work at an unconscious level, helping you work without constantly determining what you should or ought to act. Similar to the dangers of categorization, the cost for this efficiency is you may fail to notice new evidence contradicting your unsaid beliefs and missing opportunities to update your views of the world. The great philosopher Douglas Adams wrote, "A scientist must be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting."

• See past isolated concepts

  When introduced to a new concept, do you ever think, "Should I know how to use this or know what to do next?" This happens when you don't have the structure on which to set the new information down upon. You don't know how it connects to ideas you're already familiar with, that you already rely on, or have previously made your own. To acquire necessary mental furniture seek associations, metaphors, illustrations, or stories so you can see how this new stuff works with what you know. This past week, two different clients asked me to create an image showing all the steps we would take for their projects. The picture didn't matter to their concrete styles of thinking as much as their newfound confidence that we had a full-plan, allowing them to see we could proceed.

• See past corners

  Like something straight out of a sci-fi book, people frequently see the same thing at the same time in completely different ways. We've all been to meetings that participants later describe in such different ways you wonder if you were there together. This happens because people see and hear through their personal filters, with their own assumptions, in their own language. When I work with groups, I always ask people to move to a different side of the room halfway through. This ensures each person see (and hears) things from at least one other point of view. When they compare notes and debrief, they have a wider perch to report from.

• See past defenses

  Are you inclined to dismiss alternative perspectives or facts that don't fit your case? When you can't see what others see it's easy to become defensive and send the signal to back off. While occasionally that's required, if people around you aren't listened to, they might stop offering. A former mentor used to say, "Default to curious, never defensive." Sometimes leaning into new information helps you make sense of it all. Years ago I worked with new employees in the service department of a large company. At the end of their first week of work, armed with a list of answers to common issues, we had them answer live calls, many from irate customers. After only a few, the new employees quickly grasped how much they needed to learn. From then on, they were very receptive to advice, coaching, and lessons from coworkers and instructors on how to handle difficult situations. By relinquishing their defensiveness, they understood where to begin.

• See past your usual circle

  In Naming Elephants, Sue Hammond and Andrea Mayfield write, "Ignorance and knowledge grow at the same rate because the more you know, the more you know you don't know." If you ask for a wide range of views, especially from those beyond your usual circles, you increase your potential to see what you can't see. The more connections you make with people, concepts, experiences, and the environment, the more pathways to learning you create.

Nice is the new mean

Play Nice - taken from the Entrepreneur website
Forget cutthroat--what you need is a little sugar and spice.
By Carol Tice | Entrepreneur Magazine - September 2007

URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2007/september/183024.html

Linda Kaplan Thaler is the woman behind "I Don't Wanna Grow Up, I'm a Toys 'R' Us Kid." As CEO and chief creative officer of 10-year-old Kaplan Thaler Group Inc., Kaplan Thaler has been responsible for current advertising hits like the AFLAC duck. The agency is one of the fastest-growing in America.

Kaplan Thaler says the secret of her success is simple: She's nice and cultivates a corporate culture of niceness. In The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness, Kaplan Thaler, with co-author Robin Koval, explains why kindness pays in today's increasingly cutthroat business world.

Entrepreneur: Advertising is a savagely competitive industry. How have you been able to use niceness to your advantage?

Linda Kaplan Thaler: [There is] a zero-sum attitude in our culture that [says]: Unless you lose, I can't win. But we have found being collaborative makes us more successful. Think of Samsung and Sony, two arch-rivals, getting together to build the flat-screen TV.

We had an instance where a client had us and another agency working on pieces of an ad campaign. We presented first, and the people from the other agency were pretty stone-faced. They saw us as rivals. Then they presented, and they did a great presentation. So we applauded when it was over.

The client called me the next day and ended up giving us more business. And one or two of the people who worked at the other ad agency eventually came over to our company.

People are getting the wrong message, watching reality shows where people [practically] have to eat their young to stay on the island. We say, "Live mean, die young."

Entrepreneur: What about when a company is the victim of negative ads or word-of-mouth from a rival--how can you prevail without stooping to retaliation?

Kaplan Thaler: We live in such a digital world that if you do something malicious, it gets posted on the internet and goes everywhere and backfires--look at Don Imus.

I've had several times where we were badmouthed by somebody. I make it a point not to retaliate. When we lose [some] business, we say to the client, "We really wish you success with the other agency." It surprises the clients, and sometimes they end up coming back to us in the future.

Mean is so last millennium. You can't afford it. Nice is the new mean.

Seven Strategies for Inflating Your Success

Seven Strategies for Inflating Your Success by Regina Barr

When I ask people to describe characteristics of successful people, they often identify characteristics that they associate with others but not themselves. This never ceases to amaze me.

In a recent Red Ladder survey, respondents indicated that the top two drivers for success were 1. (having a strategic vision) 87.5 % and 2. (having written goals) 50.0%. Further, 62.5% indicated that their definition of success was "work that is both challenging and rewarding." Interestingly, no one indicated that their definition of success was "being financially secure."

We all have the capacity to be successful. The question is, how successful do you want to be? Here are some key characteristics exhibited by successful people. Most successful people:

1. Have clearly identified their core values/ mission/ vision. These comprise the compass by which key life decisions are made. If a mariner didn't have a compass, how successful do you think she would be navigating the world's oceans? You need a compass too.
2. Create a personal definition of success. This is not what society defines as success. Your personal definition of success becomes your map and it goes hand–in–hand with your core vales/ mission/ vision. If you don't define success, how will you know when you achieve it?
3. Have clearly defined, written goals. According to a Yale Study, 3% of the graduating class of 1953 identified goals and 20 years later, those who had written down their goals appeared happier and more content. Further, the same 3% that had written down their goals had achieved more wealth than the remaining 97% of their classmates put together! Need I say more?
4. Develop competency in negotiation. During interviews with successful women in business, negotiation was cited as the most critical factor in getting what was wanted both personally and professionally. Successful people understand that negotiation is not only about getting what you want, but getting what you deserve. If you can't or won't negotiate the results and outcomes you want for yourself, then who will?
5. Embrace risk–taking. People who are comfortable taking risks typically experience increased autonomy, heightened self–esteem, a more positive attitude toward life and an increased sense of personal power. Most successful people I speak to, see and seize opportunity. They recognize that taking risks typically involves personal growth. Those with an aversion to risk often link risk with failure. What is failure? Simply a judgment about events. So, instead, view risk as a learning opportunity. Remember, no risk, no reward!
6. Engage in continuous learning. One successful man I spoke to indicated that, "continuous learning is key if you want to get ahead in life." Does that mean formal education? It might, but for most, it simply means staying current in their field or maintaining expertise in an area of passion. And if your field of expertise also happens to be your area of passion, then you are really onto something!
7. Think big. Successful people aren't afraid to think big. During a recent seminar, I asked participants to write down one goal they would like to accomplish and to think big. One woman shared with the group that she was a professional speaker and that her goal was to replace Oprah Winfrey when she retires in 2008. I followed up with her recently and discovered that she is currently in discussions with a local broadcast company is being considered for an afternoon TV program. That's the power of thinking big.

Woody Allen once said "eighty percent of success is showing up." To inflate your success, it's the other twenty percent that is most critical, that is, hard work combined with the desire to succeed. If you do nothing else, carve out time to craft a strategic vision for yourself, write down your goals and remember, think big!

The Motivating Manager - Five tips for getting there—and staying there

The Motivating Manager
December 25, 2007
Five tips for getting there—and staying there
By Louellen Essex, Ph.D. and Mitchell Kusy, Ph.D.

Are you a manager who creates a motivating work environment? Does your team enjoy what they're doing? Do you inspire people to give their best? It's never too late to become a truly motivating manager. Here are five tried-and-true tips for getting started:

• Align work with talents and interests. Motivation depends on two key elements—people's desire to do work that interests and inspires them, and their personal belief in their chances to succeed. The lesson: Align work accordingly, and you are destined to motivate people. In fact, the motivation will be intrinsic—the work itself will motivate.
• Remove obstacles. A motivating manager knows how to clear the way and help people make things happen. Create a steady flow of resources. Make sure that every process and procedure is efficient. And steadily run interference with the higher-ups, so that new ideas are always met with support—not resistance.
• Get rewards right. Rewards fall into four categories—money, advancement, recognition, and the nature of the work itself.

  Financial rewards—salary increases, bonuses, and cash "prizes"—are most meaningful to employees who are building material assets and supporting others. One example: Recent research shows that younger workers—Gen X and Gen Y employees—are far more driven to perform by financial incentives than their older counterparts.

  Advancement is most important to people who value status, as well as autonomy and authority. In today's "flatter" organizations, however, fewer promotions may be available. Think, instead, about providing leadership opportunities through key roles such as team leader, project manager, and group facilitator.

  Recognition is about praise and other gestures or tokens that say, "Thanks for a job well done." Be timely, creative, and personal with your praise, and match the recognition to the contribution. If an employee worked day and night for weeks to complete a critical project, a T-shirt or movie tickets won't cut it.

  People's work can be a reward, too. For employees who most value growth and development, a plum assignment may be the perfect recognition. Job rotations, cross-training and special assignments in other departments can make for great rewards, too.

• Deal with poor performance and performers. Many managers inadvertently reward poor performance. How? They overload top performers, who eventually feel that the distribution of work is unfair. (Why are they doing more than others who make the same pay?) While extra projects might seem like a pat on the back at first, they ultimately feel like punishment when they are overdone.

  Do everyone a service, and don't allow others to pick up the slack of poor performers. Instead, deal with "under-performers" directly by actively coaching them, tracking their progress, and determining the best next steps.

• Make sure you are a role model. Enthusiasm is inspiring. Negativity or cynicism, on the other hand, is contagious. Model the attitude and energy you would like to see from others. Check your verbal and non-verbal behavior: People
  are always watching and listening. Have a good word for everyone, and be genuinely positive about the organization. And when problems do arise, as they will, promote a collaborative, can-do mindset.

Empowerment – The Rewards are Greater Than the Risk

Empowerment – The Rewards are Greater Than the Risk
by Dr. Rick Johnson
2007-07-31

Empowerment is a common trait used by most effective leaders. The rewards of empowering your employees are far greater than the risk. Give them some independence in choosing their work schedules or other factors that won’t affect overall objectives. Empowering employees allows them to use their own initiative and creativity to accomplish things you never imagined they could.

Allow your employees to take risks and demonstrate initiative.

Employees must take ownership in the success of the organization. This means they must become part of the strategy employed by the company. Acknowledge their presence and contributions, and praise them at every opportunity. But, be sincere. Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, had a favorite method of sending personal handwritten notes to employees who demonstrated some form of success. This is an employee issue that cannot be emphasized enough. Employees want to know how they are doing and they want to be held accountable.

Winning organizations continuously build leaders at every level in their organization. Leaders, who actively attempt to mentor, coach and build other leaders gain respect throughout the organization and transfer knowledge, ideas, values and an attitude about success. They ………..

• Create a sense of urgency
• Project and articulate the vision
• Create stretch goals
• Develop trust and a spirit of teamwork
• Develop realistic expectations for success
• Promote an environment of success, trust and belief
• Demonstrate honesty—to tell the truth—to do the right thing— with no hidden agendas
• Lead with Integrity and respect—responsiveness —recognizing employee value—empowerment
• Show passion and commitment
• Motivate and inspire

Effective leaders must have an edge. They must be courageous enough to take risk and have an unrelenting readiness to act. Popularity is not a requirement, but the ability to generate respect from the employees is, without a doubt, one of the most critical attributes. They must be relentless in their efforts, unconcerned about personal sacrifice of their time, and willing to go beyond normal expectations. Tough decisions are commonplace; uncharted territories will be the norm. Honesty and impeccable character are musts.

Leadership is often described as the art of getting people to accomplish specific objectives. However, organizations are complex social entities with widely distributed responsibilities and assets. Unilateral action toward specific objectives is seldom sufficient in itself to create the kind of success expected for a company seeking growth and increased market share. Leadership is key to harmonizing diverse group interest into a focus-specific mode that supports the mechanics of execution. Those mechanics must include empowerment. The focus is on the way managers orchestrate activities and events and engage others in tasks, empowering them so that the desired results are realized. Action is essential and is implicitly equated to professional leadership. This skill is subjective and often artistic. It varies with every situation and every individual. Leadership skills can be enhanced and fine-tuned but a basic ingredient of humanistic understanding must exist to create a platform for leadership development.

Leaders get results. They make things happen. They continually advance a clear agenda, get others to buy in and move the organization to accomplish specific objectives. They are explicit, consistent, concise and sincere. They generally have an abundance of charisma although some leaders gain success with a quieter influence. Leaders take charge and are not afraid of responsibility or risk. Most people want to follow them. A good leader develops openness, honesty, clarity of purpose and a sincere caring for the people they lead. They gain commitment and trust by demonstrating respect for the individual. They have a keen sense of understanding. They believe in their task, they understand the objectives, they communicate clearly and they honestly project the understanding that they need the efforts of everyone to succeed.

Allow room for a few Mavericks to exist in your organization. Empower your employees so they will take calculated risks. The worst thing you can have happen in your organization is for all your employees to do exactly what they are told to do – exactly how they are told to do it. Release the initiative and creativity in your employees by empowering them.

Marketing Resolutions for 2007

Another interesting article published on the following website http://www6.lexisnexis.com/
for you to enjoy and practice.

"7 Hospitality Resolutions For '07
Fareed and Zapala Marketing Partners
January 2, 2007

In the next week or so, people all over the world will begin compiling their
New Year's resolutions. Traditionally these resolutions are about self-
improvement and include promises to exercise more, eat healthier, lose weight,
stop smoking, cut back on alcohol, and spend more time with family and friends.

This list however, is focused on marketing resolutions for the hospitality
industry. New Year’s is the perfect time to reflect on the changes we want or
need to make to improve as an industry, and to resolve to follow through on
these changes.

Resolution No. 1: Go on a serious brand diet

put an end to the gluttony, stop confusing consumers, and focus on building true brand differentiation. Our insatiable appetite for new brands must come to an end. The total number of
hotel brands has nearly doubled in the last ten years and their value, in terms of brand loyalty and the premium consumers are willing to pay, continues to decline. With the addition of every new brand, we add to the confusion and commoditization of the hotel industry, making marketing efforts all the more
difficult. The luxury hotel segment will soon be a textbook example of over branding e.g. too many choices, too little differentiation. Imagine for a moment that you are a so-called ‘affluent traveler’, who must choose between
Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, St. Regis, Peninsula, Mandarin Oriental, One&Only, Rosewood, Fairmont, Waldorf-Astoria, et al. Not to mention the coming Crillon, Solis, Starck, and Armani brands. Where is it all going? The majority of consumers today, find it difficult to tell the difference between two well-
established luxury brands such as Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons. How are they going to deal with twenty, thirty or more? Ultimately, consumers will be left to choose their hotel or resort based upon rate, location, or recommendations from friends or colleagues – not the brand. Branding is supposed to be about positioning, establishing an image that differentiates, and keeping promises.
Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten this.

Resolution No. 2: When developing packages, focus on being authentic, organic and realistic.

While we still need to be creative, it is important that we
maintain our integrity, deliver on expectations, and keep our brand promises. The concept of designing packages strictly for the press appeal has become passé. Both travel writers and consumers have grown weary of hoteliers promoting packages and amenities that are designed to be either very short lived or not truly available in order to gain publicity. Examples include the
six-figure getaway that includes a lifetime membership to a nearby golf club; the twenty-thousand dollar Hollywood Fantasy weekend which includes an afternoon with a celebrity stylist or personal trainer, a celebrity poker tournament, screening of a yet-to-be-released movie, and VIP access to a Hollywood gala; and the outrageously expensive stay that includes a celebrity
chef, use of a private plane, and an S-Class Mercedes Benz as a take home amenity. While on the topic of packages, we must also resolve ourselves to the fact that ‘buy four nights, get the fifth night free’ deals are not packages. They are pricing schemes.

Resolution No. 3: Treat every guest as if they will be writing a testimonial upon check out.

One that will be delivered globally and will most likely remain on the World Wide Web forever. Remember the old adage that if a customer has a good experience they will tell three people, but if they have a bad one, they will tell ten? Now this same customer can tell thousands of people with a few keystrokes. Word-of-mouth has gone electric, and in order to compete, hoteliers need to understand that they are no longer selling to individuals but to networks. Today’s customers are more likely to act upon the opinions of total strangers, on sources they deem trustworthy such as Expedia, TripAdvisor,
TravelPost, and other consumer generated media sources, than they are to marketing hype. We must build marketing programs around champions who will create positive buzz throughout these electronic networks. This will most likely involve offering incentives to customers who take the time to share their positive experiences via electronic word-of-mouth. But as always, it will most certainly include providing excellent customer service, unique one-of-a-kind experiences, and good value for dollar.

Resolution No. 4: Identify every customer touch point and continually strive to ensure that they are positive ‘personal’ experiences.

Customer service experts refer to the points of contact between a hotel and its customers as touch points. Every instance when guests come into contact with our employees is a
touch point. We need to make the most of every call to reservations, front desk experience, e-mail correspondence, and other touch points. Hoteliers need to stop thinking electronic kiosks are the answer because we either don’t want or
don’t know how to hire adequate, well-trained, enthusiastic staff. Hoteliers must also understand that computerized, ‘dial one for this, dial two for that’ phone systems don’t win over hearts and minds either. Let’s resolve to keep it personal.

Resolution No. 5: We must step away from mass marketing, decide who we’re going to win over as long-term loyalists, and begin to develop micro-marketing
programs that are designed to build closer relationships with them as customers.

Everyone’s idea of home is different, and your hotel or resort is no different. It simply won’t appeal to everyone. To be successful, we must learn to identify the markets that will most appreciate our product, and craft and launch targeted campaigns, ‘narrowcasting’ instead of ‘broadcasting’, to make
the most of our marketing efforts. With the advances of the Internet, the explosion of cable channels and the never-ending offerings from specialty magazine publishers, this exercise is becoming easier and more affordable then ever. However, it takes commitment, research, planning and creativity to do so successfully. Markets will continue to fragment. Those who understand that mass marketing is dead, and learn how to develop and manage micro-marketing campaigns will lead the industry.

Resolution No. 6: Measure of die!

We must resolve to develop planned measurement programs that encompass all of our marketing initiatives. On the whole, the hospitality industry has yet to resolve John Wanamaker’s century-old dilemma – “I know half my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half”, but the time has come. It’s no secret that waste and inefficiency in hospitality marketing has traditionally been significant, but now there are no excuses. All the tools necessary to answer Wannamaker’s age-old problem are here today, if we will take the time to use them. We have dedicated toll free numbers, URL’s and e-mail addresses; the ability to measure Web traffic and click throughs; sophisticated online reservation systems; and traditional tools such as business reply cards, press clipping services and even our own
reservationists. It’s time that every one of our marketing vehicles is assigned a measurement tool. Otherwise, how can we quantify and qualify what we’re doing? How do we determine cost per lead, cost per sale or capture promotional program performance? Without measurement, there is no ROI. With a planned measurement program we can enjoy the benefit of knowing the ongoing effectiveness of our efforts, have the ability to reallocate dollars to vehicles that are working, thereby spending less while achieving greater results. This ultimately leads to a real competitive advantage. Let’s resolve as an industry to implement planned marketing measurement programs this year.

Resolution No. 7: Resolve to be bold, think creatively, and begin to offer our
guests truly unique experiences.

Like the airline industry, the vast majority of us are still treating our properties as commodities. We’ve rounded the edges,
smoothed out the differentiating features, and made our products and services so bland, that it’s difficult to tell one hotel or resort from the next. It’s time that we, as hoteliers, realize that consumers are buying an experience, not just a room. Everyone wants some pampering, a bit of adventure, and
something that is simply unique. Let’s resolve to stop being a commodity, and begin to cultivate an environment that encourages the boldest, most creative, even ‘theatrical’ ideas in order to differentiate.

It is my sincere hope that something among this list of resolutions has sparked enough interest so that you’ve begun a conversation. Keep the idea alive and the conversation going. I’d love to know where it takes you. As always, your
comments and suggestions are welcome. You may reach me at
jfareed@fareedandzapala.com. Happy New Year! "

Stop all this bickering between Sales AND Marketing

The following article by Jonathan Kranz taken from the website http://www.marketingprofs.com/, while not related to the hospitality insdustry offers a good number of tips on how to increase productivity of Sales AND Makerting departments when they are disctinct. Should Sales & Marketing be under one umbrella, those tips are still very relevant. Read on....

Six Ways to Prepare Better Collateral for Sales Teams

Ah, sales and marketing. They're like two siblings fighting in the back seat while mom, pop—or a company executive—drives the car.

I don't know how to stop all this bickering (and as a battle-weary father myself, I'm not interested in "who started it"), but I can suggest a few ways my brothers and sisters on the marketing side can ease the tension by better serving their sales brethren with more productive collateral.

1. Make them responsible for defining the target

   We've all been through this: After months of hard labor, your campaign has generated leads that now sit, undisturbed, under the sales guy's fantasy football crib sheet. You're angry because he's not leveraging the leads you worked so hard to get. His defense? They're "bad" leads not worth pursuing.

   You can both stop this fight before it even begins. Bring the sales team to the table to define exactly what a qualified lead should be. Include factors such as industry, region, company size, titles, budgets, purchasing timeframe, etc. Your goal? A precise target to which you'll aim your lead-generation campaigns and your collateral systems—their formats and content. You'll have a better idea of what to write because you'll know who you're writing for.

   Getting sales team buy-in on lead definition is both good practice and good politics. If you hit the defined target, sales can't blame marketing for failing to deliver. More important, their shared sense of responsibility is a powerful incentive for collaboration—for making your efforts work.

2. Think beyond the lead

   Here's where sales has a legitimate beef with marketing. Often the overwhelming bulk of the marketing budget goes to the top of the sales funnel, toward lead generation. But for big-ticket items with long sales cycles, the sales people have to make multiple contacts before they even come close to the close.

   Typically, a follow-up call becomes a voice message that sounds something like this: "Hey, it's Joe Blow from WishfulThinking. We talked a few weeks ago and I'm touching base to see how things are going..." Not particularly compelling.

   Now imagine that same call, but this time Joe is armed with a reason to call and the prospect is motivated by a reason to listen or reply:

   • "I'm calling because I have a case study about a company just like yours that saved more than two million dollars in health expenses this year."
   • "Did you see our article in Trade Aware this month? It's about the new accounting rules and how they affect financial planning in 2007."
   • "I'd like to send you our new guide on project management: 10 Easy Ways to Accelerate Time-to-Market."

   The lesson is simple: Put money and effort into collateral pieces—such as case studies, articles, reports, whitepapers, and guides—that help your sales people push their hot prospects along the sales pipeline.

3. Plan on recycling your work

   Budgets are always an issue. So plan to invest your marketing dollars on producing collateral that can serve double or triple duty—or more.

   That whitepaper you're planning? Make it the subject of several blog posts. Offer it as a premium in a lead-gen mailing. Be sure it's available as a download from your Web site. Send it to trade publication editors to see if it'll lead to an interview with your in-house subject-matter expert.

   Got a case study? Tuck it into your press kits. Send it to your current prospects. Format it as a hand-out for trade shows. Put it up on your Web site. Include it in your next newsletter.

   Easy, right? But it's amazing how often this simple multiuse idea isn't applied. Make it a rule: Write. Re-use. Repeat.

4. Concentrate on content customers and prospects can really use

   Think from the prospects' point of view. Information that can help them do their jobs better is information they'll read and keep. Use this motivation to your advantage. A brochure about the Contact5000 barcode scanner may be a snooze, but an article about cutting pick and pack time in half is probably a winner.

   Instead of writing "about" your products and services, write about how to solve problems, find opportunities, increase productivity, save money, etc.—in ways that position your products and services as means to those ends. Your formats may include articles (as in the example above), tech guides, reports, podcasts—just about anything that doesn't look like a product brochure.

   In this way, you're not only increasing your power to attract and hold attention—you're establishing your company as a credible expert your prospects can trust.

5. Reconsider that corporate-capabilities brochure

   The flip side to creating content that prospects want is eliminating the collateral that no one really needs. Case in point: the big corporate-capabilities brochure. It's expensive, time-consuming, and tends to have a short shelf life. Worse, few of your prospects care. (Those few who ask to see one are probably looking for an easy way to shake off a salesperson.)

   Sometimes, for practical or political reasons, you just have to create one. But if there's no gun to your head, reconsider. There's almost always a better way to spend your marketing money.

6. Organize collateral by issues, not by industry

   Many B2B sales people like to have a library of case studies or whitepapers they can draw upon when approaching prospects. These are typically categorized by the industries they want to penetrate, say healthcare, high-tech or financial services.

   But, by definition, new markets are ones in which you don't have much experience—yet. How can you demonstrate your expertise in unfamiliar territory?

   By focusing on issues instead of industries. For example, data decay is data decay, whether it occurs among a hospital's patient records or within an investment bank's spreadsheets. The problem, and the expertise required to overcome it, remain the same (or very similar) regardless of industry, so focus on the problem.

   A library of materials based on challenges gives your team the flexibility to target any industry in which the challenge—and your products or services—may be relevant.

Building Customer Relations by Listening

Improving service at a small business starts with communication. Ask employees and clients what's working and what's not

by Karen E. Klein, published in BusinessWeek

Customer service is one area where small companies can outshine their competitors and cultivate intense loyalty among regular customers. But exceptional customer service goes beyond mere politeness into nuanced relationship building. Diane Berenbaum, senior vice-president of Communico, a Westport (Conn.) customer service consultancy, has just written How to Talk to Customers (Jossey-Bass, 2007) with her colleague Tom Larkin. She spoke recently to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein about what makes a great impression on a customer and where some small-business owners miss chances to wow their clients. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

Why is customer relations so important, particularly for small companies?
Service is a real differentiator, no matter the size of the organization. Small companies particularly need to differentiate themselves because they don't have the advertising and exposure that larger firms do. One of the best ways to differentiate in your relationships with customers is to focus more on listening than on talking.

Companies sometimes are so anxious to sell their services that they do way too much talking. The only way you can meet or exceed customer needs is really listening—not just to what they're telling you, but to get beyond that and understand their unstated needs. Once you do that, not only will you have a better connection, you'll be able to exceed their expectations.

When people feel listened to, valued, and important to a company, it's rare. That's because great service and effective communication are more than a set of skills. It's a mind-set of respect and accountability where you do what you say you're going to do for the customer. If every associate in your firm models that mind-set, you'll create a great experience for everyone.

Is excellent customer service really that rare?
Yes, it really is. Despite the fact that many companies tout their focus on service in advertising, the research we did showed that overall customer satisfaction is declining. A global benchmarking study we looked at showed a reduction in customer service satisfaction from 82% to 68% in the last year alone. Additional studies show that 68% of customers leave a business relationship because of a perceived attitude of indifference on the part of the company. It's not that the associates are actually indifferent—it's the perception that they are.

So a customer may get what she needs from the company, but if it was delivered with indifference, that interaction still won't leave a positive impression. Similarly, 63% of consumers said the last time they stopped doing business with a company it was partly or wholly due to a poor customer service experience. Another very similar study showed that two out of three consumers said they'd stop buying from a company if they had just one bad customer service experience.

Those are dramatic numbers. What accounts for them?
One factor is that customers are not as easily satisfied as they used to be. They have much higher expectations for service as they face far greater demands in their own lives. Another factor is that companies themselves aren't quite sure how to deliver great service. They think they're doing enough by talking about it in a company policy manual or telling their associates to do it. But you can't just put it in a document and assume it's going to get done.

What constitutes excellent service—how do you measure it?
Customers want to feel they have a relationship with a firm. They want to make a connection and feel important. If a customer brings up a complaint, how is it handled? Is your company representative spouting information, citing policies and procedures—or is he genuinely interested in helping? Just listening to a complaint, instead of cutting it off, will increase the chances of maintaining that customer's loyalty.

Some entrepreneurs don't realize they need to make connections with their clients, and that they need to do that with courtesy, empathy, and professionalism.

How does really good service contrast with just O.K. service or bad service?
It really depends on how responsive the company is to inquiries, sales, and complaints. Do your customer service representatives demonstrate a sense of urgency when it comes to helping? Are they proactive, instead of just responding to customers? Are they acting out of integrity and following up when they say they will, instead of ignoring the problem or dropping the ball?

O.K. or worse service gives the customer the sense of nothing more than a business transaction. Excellent service is a personal interaction that builds relationships, encourages repeat business, and gets the customer telling their friends about your company. Of course, it's important for your associates to be knowledgeable about the product and accurate about company policy, but there are also soft skills involved here and a need for personal bonding with the client.

In a bad transaction, the customer may get the product, or get their question answered, but they don't feel good about how they were treated.

What are some practical ideas for improving service at a small business?
Start by asking your associates what they think would help improve the service they are giving, over the telephone, online, and in person. Just by asking, you'll gain great ideas from them as well as their trust and commitment, because they'll feel valued as employees.

Next, ask your customers about what's working, what's not working, and what kind of customer service they would like, ideally. They are a key source of information for you. Some companies use survey cards or online surveys, others do formal voice-of-the-customer research. If you can't do any of that, just ask customers informally when you interact with them as the business owner. Anything is better than doing nothing and assuming you know how your customers are feeling.

What things does your firm emphasize during customer service training sessions?
We tape people in realistic, tough customer service scenarios so they can hear themselves and listen to what they're doing right as well as make suggestions for how they can improve. We start with the greeting that a business gives its customers, because it's so important to make that connection immediately. Are the words you're using tragic or magic? Is your tone of voice flat, rushed, or unwelcoming? Particularly on the telephone, your tone of voice makes about 80% of the impression on the customer.

You want to come across upbeat, sincere, and competent. Don't use phrases like "hopefully," "I'll try," "you need to talk to someone else," or "that's not my department." Those words chip away at the customer's belief in you and your firm. If they feel they're getting cut off, or rushed off, or provoking an angry response, that's tragic for your business.

In terms of positives, use the customer's name as soon as you hear it. Tell the customers right up front that you can help them. Even if you can't solve their entire concern, you can get them some help and it's amazingly effective to tell them that at the start. Something else is to empathize with the customers, understand their concern, and let them know you care. When someone gets treated like that, the interaction will be effective, efficient, and they'll leave the company with a more positive feeling about the organization as a whole.

Karen E. Klein is a Los Angeles-based writer who covers entrepreneurship and small-business issues.

WHAT DOES 3P HAS TO SAY ABOUT IT?

1. This is an opinion made looking at customers in the United States. While customers in Asia may be slightly different, we have noticed in the recent years that - especially in the hospitality industry - the perception of good or bad service by Asians is very acute. A very small mistake can make an entire event go wrong because of a lack of perceived emphaty.
2. Go back to the last question and its answer:
   • Remember to smile on the phone
   • How would you like to be treated if you were in the same situation as the person you are handling - I am not talking about the actual factual answer to your problem but again the level of perceived emphaty
   • Make sure you portray yourself as caring about the customer problem - let them talk and reconfirm what they are saying with words like "yes", "I see", etc
3. Then go back a couple of lines above and read about "excellent service":
   • How responsive is the company to inquiries, sales, and complaints?
   • Do your customer service representatives demonstrate a sense of urgency when it comes to helping? Are they proactive, instead of just responding to customers?
   • Are they acting out of integrity and following up when they say they will, instead of ignoring the problem or dropping the ball?
4. Finally, portrait yourself - as an owner, an entrepreneur or a manager - when dealing with customers do what you expect your employees to do - again it is all about PERCEPTION - your customer need to feel that you are CONCERNED, as a person and as someone in charge in your organization, by their problem, even if you can not solve them.....

Customer Surveys Can Be Short and Effective—and Build Loyalty at the Sales Level

By Barry Trailer, CSO Insights
Published on CustomerThink
April 23, 2007

My partner, Jim Dickie, recently vacationed in Vietnam. He stayed in a number of very upscale hotels and on checking out of one was handed a customer satisfaction survey. OK, quick: How many times have you been handed one of these and tossed it? Or taken the time to complete it but never heard a peep from the company about it?

Well, Dickie has stayed in more than his fair share of hotels over the years and was not the least interested in taking vacation time to complete another customer satisfaction survey. Then he opened the form. Then he asked to speak to the manager. This was the entire form:

The manager told Dickie the problem with traditional survey forms is that they ask too many questions and still can miss the point. The restaurant meal may have been fine; the server friendly and prompt; and your pillow just right. But you could still have had a bad experience because the person upstairs made a racket all night long.

The hotel manager said his company is genuinely interested in feedback about whether a guest had a marginal or unhappy stay and it wants to address any concerns immediately, without taking a lot of your time.

For years, I've been presenting "Levels of Relationship" at sales conferences and the good that accrues as sellers move up from Vendor at the lowest level to Trusted Partner (or Trusted Advisor) at the high end. Among the benefits that increase as you move up the level are increased trust/credibility and access; better understanding of the buyer's business and its customers; repeat business, references and enthusiastic referrals; shorter cycle times; fewer competitive bake-offs; and somewhat less price sensitivity. To all of these, add loyalty.

Just over 20 percent of firms responding to our 2007 Sales Performance Optimization survey report they exceed expectations in creating customer loyalty, while, somewhat surprisingly, less than 30 percent feel they need to improve in this area. (See Figure 2.) In terms of the mix of business from existing and new customers, there's really not much difference between those who Need Improvement (62 percent existing and 38 percent new customers) and the Exceeds Expectations group (64 percent existing and 36 percent new).

"But," says Jill Griffin, author of Customer WinBack (Jossey-Bass, 2001) and Customer Loyalty (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1995) "whether a company continues to buy from you is not the true measure of loyalty. The real test is whether that customer will recommend you to someone else."

This may be a distinction worth pursuing, given that the "Exceeds" group averaged 64 percent quota attainment, while the "Needs" group came in at 51 percent. In examining other areas of significant difference (farming additional business from existing accounts; communicating regularly with customers; adapting the sales process to changes; and obtaining and/or maintaining references and case studies), we see that in every case, there's at least a 25-percent difference between these two groups. That amounts to a lot of uphill sledding for the "Needs Improvement" group.

How can a company improve in this area? The first thing, Griffin advises, is determine whether you legitimately know you have a problem. Then ask, What are the dimensions of this problem? To begin defining and diagnosing your loyalty problem, answer the following four basic questions regarding your customers.

Do our customers ...

1. Buy on a consistent basis (based on product life cycle, budget, etc.)?
2. Buy a wide cross-section of our products/services?
3. Refer others?
4. Show immunity to the pull of competition?

Subaru
It is fair to describe Darryl Draper as a woman on a mission. She is Subaru's national Customer Relations and Loyalty Training manager. Subaru's goal was to build customer loyalty; Draper's goal is to build a community.

Quality is not new to Subaru's parent, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. (FHI) of Japan. And in the world of quality, the catchphrase is: "Don't give me a program, give me a process." Subaru's Owner Loyalty Program, begun in 1999, is grounded in—get this—208 documented processes. The company can tell which person at a dealership is turning customers off and what that person is doing that is causing this to happen. Subaru can measure how sales are trending and track dollar amounts attached to specific customers and the value of a customer over a three- or five-year timeframe. The company knows how much it costs in advertising to get someone onto one of its dealer's lots—and not buy.

One dealer lost a third of his business over a four-year period—a cool million bucks that went elsewhere. Adios. Sayonara. This dealer found religion and today will tell you, "Keeping my customers and keeping them loyal is profitable for me."

When the Owner Loyalty Program began, Draper took on the task of single-handedly training dealer personnel, spending three to four days a week on the road. In seven months, she was able to reach only the dealerships in the Western region of the United States. That's when Draper investigated online training and collaboration in an effort to reach all 600 dealers. With a system in place, she recorded seven OLP recovery presentations that are available 24/7. And numerous people are being trained at each dealership, at a cost of just 75 cents a person.

But even more importantly, at the customer level, actual images of the front and back of any negative survey are sent online directly to the dealer, who is asked: Do you want to recover this customer? The customer is then sent a second survey and asked: Did someone contact you? Are you more satisfied/happier than you were before? The process continues until you say you are.

The payoff for Subaru has been huge and for Draper, gratifying. But she continues to pursue her vision. "It's not just about delivering training that's needed now; that's a Band-Aid. We're also delivering education on future job needs and are looking beyond this to personnel development anticipating their future needs."

The next time you have your car serviced and you get a follow-up call from someone who obviously could not care less what your experience was or your answers to their survey are, think about Subaru and Dickie's Vietnam hotel.

They created elegant, simple methods to create loyalty at the sales level, demonstrating care, valuing the relationship and putting it all in the customer's terms.

3 Critical Rules for Avoiding a Customer Service Meltdown

An article taken from the website managesmarter http://www.managesmarter.com/
By Scott Hornstein, May 2007

If anyone ever doubted that a customer service crisis can suck the life out of your brand in a heartbeat, examine the Presidents Day Jet Blue fiasco. Hundreds of customers were forgotten on the tarmac. Millions clamor for Jet Blue's contrition. Consumer groups, attorneys, representatives and senators all joined the fray. Is it real or is it the media? It doesn't matter. Perception is reality. Perception can take a big bite out of your bottom line.

We can learn three things from the Jet Blue experience:

1. Companies are on a short leash. Customers measure our performance but by their interaction with us. One flub can flush away years of good will.
2. Bad news travels exceedingly fast. Good news does not make good copy. Bad stuff is mesmerizing.
3. Don't let it be you.

For your consideration, here are three critical rules for avoiding a customer service meltdown:

• Rule No. 1: Customer service must be introduced and managed as a strategic product. It's got to become a key tenet of the mission and the corporate culture. That means commitment—holding people's feet to the fire regarding specific measures associated with satisfaction, retention and lifetime value.

  Customer service is a people issue, not a technology issue. We've got all the technology we need. We need strategy and accountability.

  According to Jonathan Cohen, president of The Weiser Group, a New York–based PR agency specializing in crisis communications, "A customer service crisis is among the most common, but it's the most avoidable kind [of crisis]. The key is to test your systems regularly to make sure they work. That includes making sure your communications to customers and the personnel that interact with them are clear and effective."

• Rule #2: Management must internalize the customer experience as a gateway to success. They must see it and appreciate it through the individual customer's eyes. One of the most effective processes is called "rep for a day." This means that everyone in the corporation from the CEO on down sits and takes customer service calls for one day. It's amazing how different the world looks when you're talking to a customer with a problem to solve.
• Rule #3: Happier customers stay longer and buy more. It seems ridiculously simple, but often the simplest things are the hardest to achieve. Corporations must learn to value, nurture and invest in customer satisfaction.

The devil is in the messy details of day-to-day customer service, which, in industry's short-term focus, has been viewed as a cost and not a priority. But that's the new playing field, and it's where our long-term profitability will be won or lost.

Scott Hornstein is the co-author of Opt-In Marketing and president of Hornstein Associates in Redding, Conn.

A Winning Attitude - How to cultivate and keep a winner's edge

Extracted from the very interesting website www.sellingpower.com a motivational article by Barry J. Farber

It's a question as old as time itself: Are winners born under a special star or do they create their own success? Although I'd love to be able to tell you here and now that I have the definitive scientific answer, I won't lie: I really don't know for sure.

But I'll be happy to bet on one sure thing: A person with a positive attitude will always win out over someone who dwells on the negative.

Volumes have been written about what separates superachievers from the rest of us, but the experts seem to agree that highly successful people share at least this important characteristic: an unsinkable attitude. If attitude is the key to long-term, life-altering success, then we all have superachiever potential.

But before we can release the winner within, many of us have to change negative thought patterns that have been years in the making.

Where do you begin? You can start with the three "D"s - discipline, desire, and dedication - and then make five very important changes that will help you achieve unprecedented levels of success.

Discipline

Success takes more than just talent, according to top boxing coach Teddy Atlas. Atlas, who has trained such stars as Mike Tyson and Michael Moorer, says he looks for more than strength, speed, or power. "The most important quality a fighter can have is discipline. Talent only makes for a good show on the heavy bag if the fighter doesn't have the discipline and the emotional control to execute it under pressure. Otherwise, the talent means nothing." You don't have to be brilliant, charismatic, or otherwise naturally gifted to sell well - you just have to discipline yourself to keep developing the ability you have.

Desire

Desire can overcome almost any handicap. If you want something badly enough, chances are you'll find a way to get it.

If attitude is the key to long-term, life-altering success, then we all have superachiever potential.

When asked what he looks for in a top gun, Lt. Col. Dennis Krembel of the U.S. Air Force says, "I'm looking for a person who wants to do the best he can with the talent he has. If he or she puts forth 100 percent effort, that's what I want. If I look at one person who's got the talent, and another who's got the desire, I'll take the person who's willing to go that extra measure." A burning desire to win helps ensure that you'll work harder to do more, sell more, and achieve more than the competition.

Dedication

Dedication helps the salesperson overcome rejection, pursue the elusive prospect, and make just a few more calls when the day ended an hour ago. Dedication prompted Mary Matalin, television commentator and deputy campaign manager for George Bush in 1992, to fetch lunches, make copies, run errands, and do whatever else was necessary to make the campaign a success.

By dedicating herself to the success of the campaign, Matalin even turned menial tasks into small but important steps on the path to success. To get a 100 percent return on your investment of selling time and effort, dedicate 100 percent of yourself to your goal.

To help you develop the discipline, desire, and dedication of a superachiever, start by making these five positive changes:

1. Start every day on a positive note. Take 15 minutes to read or listen to a positive motivating message. Invest in some motivational books, tapes, or a daily calendar that features inspiring quotes or anecdotes.
2. Avoid negative news. Tabloid newspapers, magazines, and many television programs focus on bad news and sensational headlines. Be selective about the information you absorb every day.
3. Avoid gossip for 30 days. When people around you gossip or turn negative, change the subject or walk away. If you have nothing good to say, don't say anything.
4. Keep a positive events diary. What did you do well today? What did you accomplish? Write down any compliments or praise you received. Nothing is too small or trivial to include. Review your diary at the end of the week for a motivational boost.
5. Look for the good in everyone you meet. Try to compliment at least three people every day, and eliminate unconstructive criticism. Focusing on the good in others will help you find it in yourself as well.

If you want to succeed like a superachiever, start thinking and acting like one. Many superachievers haven't always been positive thinkers, but they recognize the importance of attitude and make a conscious effort to take control of their thoughts and their future. To follow in their footsteps, set a goal and dedicate yourself to accomplishing it. You just might realize the superachiever potential you didn't think you had.

Ads and Atmospherics

By: Max Chafkin, taken from the website http://www.inc.com

Outdoor campaigns are suddenly hip.

Ask anyone what's hot in advertising, and you'll hear about viral video, social networking, etc. Even as the industry embraces the Internet, however, there's been an unexpected renaissance in the original old media: outdoor advertising. Spending in this segment of the industry approached $7 billion in 2006 and is on track to grow by 8 percent this year, while network TV, radio, and newspaper advertising is expected to remain flat.

Because outdoor ads can be cheap to produce (we found several campaigns that cost less than $5,000) and can be tailored to local constituencies, they would seem to play to the strengths of entrepreneurs. "A small marketer has a bigger opportunity to make a big splash now than ever before," says Chuck Porter, of the Miami ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The savviest campaigns will often get picked up on design and advertising blogs like the Cool Hunter.

Many of the best outdoor ads lift ideas from art installations and force customers to do a double take. "If you've done something clever," says Kevin Keller, a Dartmouth marketing professor, "then consumers will have a chuckle and feel good about your brand." Here are nine outdoor ads that have earned buzz.

1. Pounding The Pavement
   In March, New York City manhole covers were reimagined as steaming cups of Folgers coffee. The New York Post called the ads "pretty realistic--except for the unjava-like aroma." A spokesperson for Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG), which makes Folgers, says P&G may devise outdoor stunts for some of its other well-known brands.
2. Rainy Day Fun
   Turning its customers into walking billboards, Gloss, a Vancouver hair salon, offered clients transparent umbrellas bearing the slogan "Hair You Want to Show Off." Owner Ceanne Chow says the promo was far more effective than any traditional ad she has ever run. And the campaign was dreamed up for free by a local agency that wanted to enter a campaign in an advertising contest.
3. Getting a Grip
   "It's not really a campaign, it's just a bag," says David Mously, who designed this campaign for Stop 'n Grow, a nail-biting deterrent sold in Europe. Mously's design turns the bag's handle into a gaping mouth. Drugstores in Germany distributed 10,000 of the bags in late 2005. The campaign spread to several other countries last year.
4. Gone to the Web
   Vacant shop windows need no longer be depressing. EBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) recently posted "Moved to eBay" stickers in empty storefronts all over Belgium--a campaign that "shows graphically" that small retailers can find a new lease on life online, Dartmouth's Keller says.
5. Wheels of Fortune
   "We wanted something different, I guess," says Cliff Wilkins of the upside down eight-ton semi he placed at mile 211 of Oklahoma's Interstate 35 to promote his truck repair shop. The truck is held erect by poured concrete buried 14 feet deep. Installing the truck cost about $9,000, and though Wilkins says he can't quantify its impact on sales, he gets a half dozen inquiries about the ad every week.
6. Soul of The New Machine?
   "Life is too short for the wrong job," reads this ad for a German job hunting website, which depicts imaginary workers toiling inside vending machines, ATMs, and photo booths. The cleverness here is in the unexpectedness of the venue and the fact that the joke is both subtle and over the top. "Finding new spaces is the only option in a world filled with advertising junk," says designer Matthias Spaetgens, of the agency Jung von Matt.
7. Special Delivery
   This ad for Papa John's (NASDAQ:PZZA) sticks to a door at peephole-level. Though it won the Golden Lion award at the 2006 Cannes advertising festival, the pizza franchise halted what a spokesperson describes as a "very limited" rollout among its stores in Peru after receiving complaints.
8. Builder's Envy
   Using giant-size posters to create a clever optical illusion, a toy distributor transformed five buildings in Santiago, Chile, making them look as if they'd been constructed entirely from Legos. The total cost was $5,000.
9. The Jaws of Love
   Executive Search Dating, which bills itself as a matchmaker for overworked professionals, placed jaw traps baited with faux Rolex watches and BMW key chains in Vancouver's financial district. "Leave the hunting to us," a nearby sign read. The three-month, $5,000 campaign boosted sales by 15 percent, founder Paddi Rice says.

Published February 2007

Avoid startup pitfalls!

George Cloutier talks about how entrepreneurs can avoid startup pitfalls and set their companies up to profit right from the start

by Karen E. Klein

In his 21 years as a business turnaround expert, George Cloutier, founder and CEO of American Management Services, has seen just about every kind of business failure imaginable. After reviewing 6,000 companies in hot water, Cloutier says, he's concluded that 90% of failures are due to bad management.

Business owners who are lax, unengaged, fearful, or in denial will never run successful companies, he says. Cloutier spoke recently to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein about how entrepreneurs can avoid startup pitfalls and set their companies up to profit right from the start. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

Why do businesses fail?

Because they don't make a profit. Profits aren't everything—they are the only thing. With 90% of our clients, we install a cash management system. They don't have cash flow plans, and they don't budget.

Let's say your company's going to make $100,000 a year, or $1,400 a week after taxes. You put that amount on a spreadsheet, and you work up a budget. It's not that tough.

Yet most business owners whose companies go under point to lack of funding as the cause.

If you're out of money, it's usually because you're a bad manager. Of course there are exceptions, but in more than 80% of our clients we find they have not managed their resources correctly.

For instance, we did business with a lock and key company. They had $1 million worth of keys in their inventory but no system of keeping track of them. All the keys were different—they couldn't identify which ones were selling and which were not.

So the company's assets were all tied up in these keys, and a lot of them were the wrong keys. You can't finance your way out of problems like that, you have to manage your way out of them.

Does bad management typically begin at business startup?

It may start right at the beginning, or it could be that business owners have some early success, then get carried away and get lazy or become distracted. Even though your business is doing wonderfully, you can't spend all your time playing golf. You still have to work 60 to 70 hours a week to be a successful entrepreneur. Companies just don't run themselves.

What are the specific hallmarks of failing to manage successfully?

Not doing financial statements honestly and accurately each month is the real killer. If you're in school, and you get a bad report card, you know you have got to change those Ds and Fs if you want to graduate. In business, you've got to look at the report card and make changes if you want to succeed. But you can't make those changes if you don't have financial statements, or the ones you have are not accurate.

So, don't include receivables that you're never going to collect, don't fantasize about sales that are never going to happen. Look at your profit and loss and cash flow statements in the cold, hard light of day.

Don't make excuses; don't deny bad news. Face the problems and figure out why you're losing money. Either your prices are too low or your product costs are too high. Deal with that right away. Don't implement a plan that will reduce your losses in six months, because you'll go out of business before then.

Is it human nature to want to deny or put off tough decisions?

Tough decisions usually involve confrontations, and most people don't like those. But my mother used to tell me to eat my vegetables first, and that's what I tell clients.

We all have things we don't want to do or we shy away from: Increase prices on our biggest clients, fire an employee who's not doing the job. It's easy to delay or procrastinate, but it's much better to make a checklist of those tough things, do them, and then move on.

Time is money, and procrastinating wastes your money. Every day you let that situation continue or keep that ineffective employee on the payroll, it's costing you money.

How do employee issues lead to failure?

Many small businesses—and even big businesses—fail to demand top performance from their employees.

If someone bills themselves in an interview as the best salesman since sliced bread, hold them to it! They should be as good as they say they are.

The same goes for your suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and anyone else you work with. You're paying them to deliver excellent performance, and if they don't, you have to find someone else who will.

Again, it's tough because people don't want to have confrontations. But if you want to be a business owner, you're going to have to confront people, and if you can't handle that, you're going to fail.

The other thing about managing employees is that most business owners don't have pay-for-performance policies. If a potential employee asks for $35,000 a year, give them $30,000 with the option to earn $40,000 if they do well.

It will be worth your money to pay 25% more if you get the performance level you want out of that employee. If other employees complain, you tell them they can earn just as much if they perform just as well.

What additional management errors do you commonly run into?

There's way too much emphasis right now on business owners needing to delegate. When you're a small-business owner you do have to delegate, but you can't abdicate. Ultimately, you're responsible for the company and you have to stay on top of things.

Even after you've delegated something crucial to an employee, you have to circle back regularly and make sure you're getting the right performance in that area. Don't blame others for their shortcomings if you didn't bother to follow them closely enough.

I tell clients there are no bad employees, just bad owners. If an employee isn't working out, you have to get rid of him. If you're too busy to notice something's going wrong, you're not managing your time correctly or working hard enough.

If your business is in danger of failing, should you bring in a consultant?

If you bring a consultant in, make sure you're paying them to get a new system implemented. Don't just pay for advice—you can get loads of that for free.

Consolidating the advice and implementing it is the hard part. Get someone in who can really help you get your hands on the problems and change them. We spend 80% of our time at clients' companies working with management and employees, doing training, and hiring and firing.

Becoming customer-centric isn't just about customer satisfaction

Taken from the website of the San Francisco Chronicle , this article gives a couple of hints at what to do to make your company more "customer-centric"

There's a trend in business today for companies to become more customer-centric. Your company's objectives should highlight the quality of your product and the support of your customers.

Customer focus goes hand-in-hand with customer loyalty. More than customer satisfaction, customer loyalty extends to all customers in your business, from those who supply to those who buy. It includes your first customer too -- your employee.

Customer-centricity also plays a role in defining and guiding the customer's experience. Walt Disney was the master of controlling a customer's experience. Disney's theme parks today control what visitors see, what they smell, when those sights and smells hit them, the emotions they feel, and much more. Every detail is attended to by park employees. Disney is now the yardstick against which other companies' performances are measured. There's even a term for what Disney does and others try to emulate. It is "imagineering," the engineering of our imagination.

So, what exactly is a customer-centric company? It is one that recognizes the only way to add lasting value to the company is to value the customer.

Here are seven guiding principles of successful customer-based firms:

-- Focus extensively on delivering value to customers.

-- Forgo short-term results and look instead at long-term business value.

-- Include senior-level buy-in in your customer-based program.

-- Share your customer-focused initiatives with employees, partners and customers.

-- Recognize that traditional measurement tools may not adequately track your customer values, such as emotions and loyalty.

-- Incorporate employee (and contractor) training as part of the customer-centric movement.

-- Identify internal stakeholders (owners, employees, partners, suppliers) and work to build support within this group.

Consider how you may be able to work one, two or even all seven of these habits into your daily work. You can add these customer-centric initiatives incrementally to your business.

This may sound a bit intimidating for startups. Entrepreneurs in the startup phase spend much of their waking moments occupied with their business concepts. However, it is important to focus on those individuals -- the customers -- who will make or break the business. Keep them in sight, if only on the periphery.
How they do it

Consider companies with which you like to do business and emulate their practices.

-- Why do you like doing business with this company?

-- Why do you return

to it?

-- How many other potential customers have you told about your positive experiences with this company?

-- What part of this company's business operation can you use in your business?

-- Are you loyal to this company? Why?

-- As a customer, do you feel like an important part of the company's success?
Break your own rules

Good customer service involves departing from company policy on some occasions. While clerks who are scared that they may lose their job can say "that's our policy," customer service representatives and managers should be able to find ways to bend policies to build customer relationships. The phrase "If I do that for you, I'll have do to it for everyone" is one of the fastest way to lose customers.

Determined to Succeed but Still Failing: Why?

February 12, 2007 By Chuck Mache taken from the website http://www.managesmarter.com

You've probably heard the story of the golfer who steps up to the tee box and hits a wicked duck hook out of bounds.

Embarrassed, he reaches in his pocket, tees up another ball and again, hits another horrific twisting shot left out of bounds. Now angry and determined, he walks back to his bag, gets another ball, tees it up again, and duplicates his first two shots out of bounds to the left. In a fit of frustration, he slams his club into his bag, aggressively flings his club over his shoulders, mumbles some choice expletives to himself as he’s chipping his teeth, and heads up the fairway uncertain as to where he's going to drop a ball to make his next shot.

I use this as an analogy often in my talks with groups when discussing business professionals who are determined to be successful yet continue to fail. People like:

The determined sales executive who is working extremely hard and is not bringing in the sales and makes the decision to work even harder.

The determined manager who has a tight grip on her team but cannot get them to take their game to the next level, so she implements even more controls.

The determined leader whose company is not reaching their numbers and meets endlessly with his team to discuss solutions, but he keeps asking the same questions over and over again to the same people, never getting any outside opinions.

So, in these examples, what's missing? You certainly can't fault their determination, can you? These people possess many characteristics of a determined individual. Their persistence, assertiveness, and even aggressiveness are to be admired, right?

Well, yes and no.

You must be determined to rise to the challenge when faced with adversity, challenges, even hardship. However, determination alone doesn't solve problems.

In my daily work with others, I encounter many different executives in sales, operations, management, and leadership roles who are very determined people. They are successful on many levels, yet many are also struggling to breakthrough to new levels and have hit a wall in terms of how to get there. Usually it is because the very thing that got them this far, their determination, is missing a key ingredient: the willingness to make intelligent changes along the way.

People who make personal and business related breakthroughs of any significance are first and foremost determined individuals. However, inside their determination is the ability to learn from their actions and constantly change those actions until they reach their desired goal. Trial and error causes them to rethink and retool their strategies. Their determination is fueled by their willingness to make intelligent changes and adjustments along the way.

Top 5 Things You Must Do Today For Breakthrough Achievements Tomorrow and Beyond

1. Write down the goals you want to achieve and list the obstacles or roadblocks that keep you from reaching them. Be thorough.
2. Brainstorm three new ways to get around the roadblocks. Make sure they're things you’ve never tried before. Run your ideas by someone you have confidence in and see if they can add to or give you any new ideas. Better yet, meet with someone who has achieved the goal you are after. Be open-minded.
3. Turn the three best ideas into actual strategies and prioritize them with the most important coming first. Be bold and take some risks outside of your comfort zone.
4. Put tactics behind those three strategies. Be detailed on the little tasks you have to complete to implement your strategies.
5. Start with your best strategy and implement with pure determination. If that doesn't work, move on to the second one, and so on. If you've exhausted the three best ideas and still have not achieved your goal, make a list of three more ideas and repeat the process. Make intelligent changes.

Successful people have a “crack the code” mentality.

Successful business leader, executives, employees and people in general are forever making changes to their problem solving approaches until their problems are solved. Then, they move on to a new one. Like the golfer used in the example, if your duck hooking the ball off the tee—change your grip, your stance, your back swing, something. Don't do the same thing harder and expect different results. Fuel your determination with intelligent changes along the way.

Even Better Mousetraps Need Good Marketing Plans

Taken from the website MarketingProfs
May 2007

Everyone's heard the old adage about building a better mousetrap—the idea that a great product or service sells itself. Michael Goodman, marketing consultant, says that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, he argues, this mousetrap syndrome is responsible for innumerable small business failures and precious few successes.

To succeed, you have to understand the role and importance of a good marketing plan. If you can answer the following questions, you probably have one:

• Are you satisfying a genuine and unmet customer need? Conduct at least a minimal amount of market research to make sure you're not imagining a demand.
• What will your marketing plan deliver? You need a clear and reasonable objective, plus a way to measure the plan's success.
• How will you implement each part of your marketing mix? Don't assume that you'll be able to figure out the details once the pressure is on. You should know how you will implement your marketing campaign going in.
• Do you have sufficient funding to accomplish your objective? Even the best plans can be ineffective if you lack the resources to follow through.

The Po!nt: Nothing sells itself. Don't assume that your product or service is the exception.

Get the Most Out of Email

By Don Hoyt

Electronic mail is perhaps the most important conduit between an organization and its customers and prospects. Many companies use standalone clients. This is a mistake because such systems miss important functionality available with managed platforms.

Get the Most Out of Email

Recent studies indicate that when customers or potential customers contact an online organization, 80 percent prefer communicating by email over phone and over 50 percent will not do business with a company if they do not receive an adequate response to their email within 24 hours. The average response time to a customer email inquiry is 72 hours.

Most Online organizations communicate regularly with customers and clients by email, but few provide a level of email customer service that satisfies their clientele. While email service standards are low, the benefits of communicating via email are palpable:

Cost – an email conversation generally costs 75 percent less than a phone conversation.

Time – the time it takes to respond to an email is significantly less than a phone call. Email also allows both the customer and your company representative to multitask, responding to email messages while attending to other matters.

History – email allows for the easy tracking and retrieval of email conversations, which ensures accountability and allows for organizational benefits derived from the sharing of customer history and knowledge.

Challenges

Effectively managing email is critical to your organization’s ongoing ability to service customers. The customer of today is increasingly familiar with your competitors, and is no longer willing to wait for you to get back to them. From the moment an email inquiry reaches your company, the clock is ticking. You must have the capacity to:

• Answer customer inquiries quickly and efficiently, despite potentially high volumes of email
• Answer customer inquiries accurately, with information relevant to the customer’s needs
• Build and sustain lasting relationships with your customers

As you research means of managing the opportunities and problems of email communications, you will also find that the successful formula differs considerably from a traditional call-center service. There are new concepts and models which, when used properly, can greatly enhance your online customer service capability.

The Problem with Client-based Email

Traditional email, though widespread in use, fails to provide a framework for efficient and successful customer interaction. In the traditional model, each company representative runs email client software on their workstation for the purpose of interacting directly with customers. In such an environment, email communications are dispersed and isolated, and opportunities to manage, facilitate, and standardize customer interactions are practically non-existent.

Drawbacks include:

• Very difficult to monitor employee productivity
• No ability to intelligently or efficiently distribute employee workload
• No centralized store of communications history with customers
• Limited system administration potential (backups, archiving, etc.)
• Limited ability to increase productivity and training potential via collaboration
• No ability to access email systems from remote locations via the web
• No centralized store of customer contacts
• No ability to report on mail loads in order to refine business processes & operations

Email Management Benefits

Email management software, especially web-based solutions, can provide a litany of tools and features designed to allow managers to intelligently and proactively direct the flow of email through their organization.

Email Routing – Email management software can effectively route email correspondence sent to an organization into individual queues. This allows groups of individuals to process messages sent to sales@, info@, support@, and other generic email inboxes, or the results of web form submissions. Specialized routing rules can be applied to inbound email messages, allowing for intelligent direction and pre-processing of email.

Centralized Knowledge Base – Email management tools can be used to build up a centralized repository of effective answers to common email inquiries. These can then be re-used by employees, providing productivity gains and quality control, as well as facilitating training efforts.

Email Policy and Standards – Enforce your organization’s business rules with email processing features that allow for the application of headers and footers to outbound emails. These can be used to add notices and disclaimers to emails, decreasing liability and increasing standards conformity.

Incident Tracking – All email messages (inbound and outbound) relating to a specific incident are tracked automatically and viewed as a single unit of correspondence. This greatly facilitates customer interaction and personalization potential. It also ensures that email messages are never lost, overlooked, or forgotten.

Reporting and Analysis – Email management reporting systems can provide important insights into an organization’s communications trends and efficiency. Reports can be used to identify problems early on, before they affect customers.

Communications History – Employees working with email management software have the ability to view the entire history of communications with any customer. This ensures that conversations with customers are always “in context”; the customer won’t need to start from scratch each time they contact your organization.

Web Access – Some email management solutions are accessed by nothing more than a standard web browser, allowing employees to provide superior email customer service from any location that has an Internet connection.

Email management systems can provide an open, shared, and collaborative environment that obviates the need for “big brother” style email monitoring solutions. By providing access to the communications history of employees (based upon security rights), these systems allow management to increase accountability and head off problems early.

Conclusions

• Most organizations are losing business because their email customer service does not meet their customers’ standards.
• Isolated email clients, such as Outlook, do not provide the necessary functionality to disperse, manage and oversee organizational email.
• While customer email service expectations are low, there is a definite opportunity to exceed customers’ expectations and create a significant differentiator between yourself and competitors.
• Akin to the progression from individual phone lines to a phone distribution tree, Email Management Software automatically routes email to appropriate groups and individuals and ensures quality, timely responses, resulting in vastly improved customer satisfaction and immediate, recognizable ROI.

Goals Can Make Your Success Dreams Come True!

By Will Robertson

Another interesting article about self development and setting goals taken from the website http://www.sellingpower.com/ - enjoy

"If only I could have seen my goal in front of me..."

There's a story about a woman who decided to break a record by swimming from Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles to the California shore. She trained for months for the event. She even raised sponsorship money to assist in the costs of renting a large boat and employing a few professional coaches and athletic medical personnel. When the big day came, she slipped into the icy waters and began her slow, rhythmic motion practiced to utilize her energy to the utmost.

At first she felt extremely confident, taking time and water conditions into account. But as time elapsed she began to weaken in the cold water, and fog began to make conditions worse. Finally the fog was so thick she had to get directions from the crew on board the yacht that was only a few yards away, monitoring traffic as well as watching her very closely in the event something went wrong. "A little to the right!" the man on the boat yelled through a hand held loud speaker. "A little to the left!" he shouted when she was off course again. This went on for what seemed like hours when she finally begged to be pulled out of the freezing water...only one mile from breaking the standing record!

After a few cups of hot tea, she explained that she would have continued "if only I could have seen the shore line. I just could not keep on when there was no goal in sight."

This same principle applies to a professional sales representative. Without a goal, a sales rep is like a ship without a rudder. All the right conditions may be there: the best tools, a ready market, a great product or service, a price which is just right. But without a purpose, the rep is no better off than a well provisioned ship with a full fuel load and a complete crew but without a destination. When the ship's engines start, how well they run and when they're shut down is of little consequence if there is no destination. It's the same way for the sales rep.

Without a clear-cut, well-defined objective to begin with, even the result is no indication of real progress. How can you know where you've come to when you have no idea where you started?

In Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Alice finds herself at a crossroads not knowing which way to go. As she ponders the situation the smiling Cheshire cat magically appears on a tree branch and asks what the trouble is. "I don't know which fork to take," she explains. "Well," the cat replies, "where do you want to go?" "I don't know," answers Alice. "Then either fork will take you there," replies the cat with a broad grin. And so it will.

The problem with this attitude is the cost of it. If you took an inventory of all the elements of your career that are the most valuable to you, what might you come up with? Your briefcase, made of hand-tooled leather from the far reaches of the orient? Your well-fitted wardrobe made of fine wools, cottons, silks and linens? How about your car? Your gold pen set? That expensive watch? What about the computer you bought to help you track your production and create financial analysis sheets? All these and more would qualify for the list. But there is one consideration that outweighs all the rest...your time.

What income would you like to earn in the next 12 months? $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, or perhaps $70,000?

Let's take a person who wants to gross $50,000 in the next 12 months. If you only work 40 hours a week at selling and you take a total of two weeks off, you'll put in 2,000 hours. That makes each one of your hours on the job worth $25.

Have you ever noticed how much time you waste when you don't have clearly defined objectives accompanied with a well-thought-out strategy to accomplish them? How much time would you suppose you waste per week under these circumstances? Eighteen hours is the national average. At $25 per hour, you're sending $450 per week times 50 weeks per year right down the drain. That amounts to $22,500 lost, resulting in a gross income of $27,500 or about $13.75 for the same hour another person will sell for $25.

This is the main reason why one person will earn $50,000 in a year while another person in the same industry will earn $20,000! It all comes down to the proper use of your most valuable commodity...time. If you budget the expenditure of your time as well as you might budget a large sum of money, you'll see far better results than you could possibly imagine.

So now that we understand the problem, what is the solution? The solution is deciding what you want, then letting go of everything except what you've chosen for yourself. After all, if you can see your goal clearly in your mind, you can achieve it. If this weren't so, you would never have been able to imagine the goal to begin with.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can...

Very interesting article about entrepreneuship, taken from the website The Wall Street Journal On-Line

Successful entrepreneurs believe they can make a lot of money, even when they don't. But can
that confidence be taught?
By GEORGE ANDERS
March 12, 2007

Long ago, I thumbed through T. Boone Pickens's autobiography, "Boone." It's an erratic book. But one trenchant passage sticks in my memory. In it, Mr. Pickens talks about how people with inherited money invest fearfully, afraid that a few missteps could doom them to a lifetime of financial ruin.

Not Mr. Pickens. At that point in the book, he had already written about how he had stormed through dozens of high-stakes energy deals, frequently risking everything en route to a bigger fortune. Winning was nice, he wrote. But even if he had stumbled horribly, it wouldn't have been the end. "I would get a stake and get started again," he wrote. "You can't make money consistently if you're uptight."

I love that self-confidence. It is deep, unshakeable and frequently self-fulfilling. Yes, it can turn into hubris if people aren't careful. But as I've learned over the years, a fundamental belief in one's ability to earn hefty amounts -- even if it means starting over again a couple times -- is at the heart of almost every great entrepreneur's success story.

It is way too late to turn me into the next Boone Pickens. Besides, the frenzied life of a deal guy has a dark side that probably isn't worth it for me. (Notice how famous takeover artists always get interrupted on vacation?) But as a parent, I'd like to see our children pick up some of that financial self-confidence. Whether they end up trading bond futures in New York or selling knickknacks in Hawaii, I'd like to see them approach each new job with boldness and optimism.

But can those sorts of virtues be taught?

Born to Business

Sometimes I suspect that the best-known business legends are simply born with an entrepreneurial gene. They charge out of their playpens knowing how to conjure up business plans, much as young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart knew how to write sonatas. There's nothing for us old-timers to do except get out of the way and marvel.

We had one of those prodigies in our high school. Andy was clever, funny -- and constantly in trouble with the principal. His grades were mediocre, but he made a lot of money (and provided jobs for the rest of us) by running a snack bar on site that sold hundreds of candy bars a week.

Within a decade of graduation, Andy was making more than $1 million a year as a commodity trader in Chicago. Ever since, he has been a major player in the capital markets, creating firms and darting into new trading areas. Meanwhile, classmates with much better grades have opted for the safe obscurity of a windowed office inside a major law firm.

But I can think of other cases where friendly intercession at an early stage made a world of difference. My four cousins are a scrappy, competitive bunch, and there was a time when it looked like the second youngest was having trouble keeping up. His mother knew that schoolwork was hard for him, so she went out of her way to celebrate his successes in sports and community events.

Years later, she quipped: "I wanted to build up John's self-confidence. Maybe I did too good a job." He has turned into the highflier of the family, becoming CEO of an Internet start-up and then a senior officer of one of the world's largest companies.

Birth of a Salesman

On a more formal basis, many of us have been urging children for decades to sell Girl Scout cookies, magazine subscriptions and the like. It's hokey, but it's wonderful, too. Parents quietly line up the best sales prospects ahead of time and then send youngsters to call on those friends and neighbors in search of orders. Kids who are energetic and personable come out of the experience believing they are really good at sales.

It won't always be that easy in the adult world. But the best salespeople generally do believe that the next call will go well. The sooner that faith forms, the easier it is to keep knocking on doors. I got to know some leading investment bankers years ago and, silly as it sounds, they could still remember their childhood triumphs selling magazines.

It's way too early for my wife and me to know whether our children, ages 7 and 10, have that sort of entrepreneurial spirit. Our parenting these days concentrates mostly on helping them master spelling words, hit a baseball or play the piano. In those areas, we're a lot more confident that we genuinely do have something to offer.

Last summer, though, we accidentally created a version of an entrepreneurial boot camp that rivaled anything Boone Pickens could offer. It happened on an especially hot day, when our boys decided it would be fun to sell lemonade.

I started out with a small-minded plan that involved charging them $1 for each can of concentrate. The boys were then supposed to keep track of how much revenue each pitcher delivered. Call it presumptuous, but I thought this would teach them about gross margin and cost of goods sold.

So the boys and a friend pitched their stand on a busy street corner, directly across from an expensive new home that was being shown as an open house. The neighborhood was swarming with adults who would drive up, walk through the house and then prepare to leave.

In the intense heat, everyone was sweating. Our boys were selling lemonade as fast as they could pour it. Pitcher after pitcher disappeared. The cash box rapidly filled up with quarters and dollar bills. Then the best moment came at the end of the open house, when the developer stepped out to say hi to the kids. He tipped them each $2 and implored them to come back next week.

It made perfect sense. In a glutted market, the developer didn't want to be just another guy hawking 2,900 square feet of hardwood floors, Viking ranges and Sub-Zero refrigerators. He wanted to be selling ambience and old-fashioned neighborhood charm. He urgently needed to add that into his story for the house to have any chance of selling at full list price. Three neighborhood boys selling lemonade fit into the picture perfectly.

Our kids gleefully accepted. And I stood there slack-jawed. I had been so eager to pester them about budgeting that I nearly missed the real joy of the experience. For the first time in their lives, our kids had done something largely on their own, that wasn't totally scripted by their parents, and had raked in a nice pile of money in the process.

This winter, I asked my younger son if he still remembered the lemonade-stand experience. I'd been telling the story to colleagues as a lesson about winning in the service economy. Peddle nothing more than a simple task, and you're at the bottom of the status and income pyramids. Transform what you do into a sweeping solution to your customer's problem -- and suddenly you're raking in big dollars from grateful clients.

My son cut me off before I could annoy him with any of that blather. "Yes, Dad," he said with a smile. "I remember it. We made a lot of money that day."

Life at Work - It Takes More Than Saying 'Pretty Please'

By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 18, 2007; Page F05

Ever come out of a meeting wishing that you, too, could persuade people the way that silver-tongued co-worker of yours can?

Many workers assume that their powers of persuasion are innate. But some recent research shows that these skills can be learned. And not only can they be learned, but they should be learned for today's workplace.

The workplace has changed from a hierarchical structure to a more horizontal one, with teams of people of various positions. Workers are expected to be involved in many decisions and help push a company's agenda, no matter their title.

In the past, "you could give people orders," said Robert Bontempo, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School who will teach a course on persuasion in the school's executive MBA program this summer. "Now, even in the military, you have to work in cross-functional teams."

More business schools are building soft skills such as persuasion into their curricula. "There are those who are going to be gifted in certain things," said Scott Koerwer, associate dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. But even if people aren't naturally persuasive, they can learn to be more so. "In order to have an effective, valuable society, you need these skills," Koerwer said.

Bontempo is basing his class on his years of study in psychology. If you understand how you, your co-workers and your bosses make decisions, he believes, you can use that to your advantage and give people the arguments that speak most to them. "There are lots of people who can calculate the net present value five ways," said Bontempo. "But not many who can build a consensus for ideas."

To illustrate how persuasiveness can be taught, Bontempo walked me through part of the class. One approach he takes is dividing people into two types of assertiveness. After speaking with me for about 15 minutes, Bontempo told me I was "ask assertive," or cautious and reserved about sharing opinions, questioning, low key and quiet. The other type is "tell assertive," or opinionated, forceful, tending to direct the actions of others.

He, I recognized quickly, is "tell assertive" -- he told me not to write this column as if his ideas were coming from a self-help guru.

Understanding such traits is important in learning the art of persuasion. They are behaviors we can learn to change, Bontempo argues. Say you're tell assertive and you boss is ask assertive. When trying to win her over to your way of thinking, it's best to tone it down a bit and ask questions instead of making statements.

It can be hard to figure out what kind of decision-maker your client or boss is, but there are ways. Focus on observable behaviors, Bontempo said. Does he make fewer statements when you meet with him? Lean back and make fewer movements with his hands? Then he is probably ask assertive. Those who are tell assertive typically speak loudly, use their hands for emphasis, lean forward and talk a lot. Considering these traits will help you predict how, for instance, you should propose something to your boss.

Bontempo's course is part of a new Columbia program based on psychology and the social sciences -- something that, until recently, was a rarity in business school. Or at least came in a very distant second to courses in marketing, finance and strategy.

The idea for the program came from businesses and former students, said Associate Dean Troy Eggers. "They shared with us that not only do people need technical skills, but they also need the soft skills that can engage people of different backgrounds, cultures and learning styles to lead teams and to execute upon a plan with support rather than opposition."

Other business schools are seeing the same things Columbia is. For years, many have offered courses on teamwork and leadership, of which persuasion is a part. Koerwer said the Smith school's courses, such as Integration and Teamwork, Culture and Ethics and Communication, evolve constantly, depending on what is important in today's workplace.

Mark Dresdner, the senior director of revenue strategies worldwide for Starwood Hotels and Resorts, based in White Plains, N.Y., decided to sign up for this summer's Columbia persuasion class to "help me be less combative and persuade people in softer ways to get their buy in," he said. "I think my style now is very objective and logical, whereas I think a lot of people I deal with tend to be less linear in their thinking. So I need to be better able to relate to people who may be more emotional in their decisions."

Dresdner, an "academic at heart," received his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he said he learned how better to work in teams, something he carried over into his career. So, he said, he is a believer that softer skills can be taught.

Persuasion is next on his list.

Marketing to Generation X and Y

by Michael Fleischner

Interesting article dedicated to marketing for a particular - but up coming market - taken from the website http://www.marketingprofs.com/.

If you're trying to market to adults who were born between 1965 and 1994, then you need to understand the best method for reaching generation X and generation Y.

Who is a part of Generation X? Gen Xers were born between 1965 and 1976 and make up about 17% of the U.S. population. As a whole, this group is both independent and skeptical, existing in the shadow of Baby Boomers. As they move into their 30s and 40s, Gen Xers are establishing themselves as consumers who are starting families and buying homes.

Who is a part of Generation Y? Individuals born between 1977 and 1994 are considered Gen Yers and make up about 25% of the U.S. population. This group is generally idealistic, optimistic, and patriotic. Gen Yers consume media in extremely fragmented ways, representing the next big wave in our demographic makeup.

Gen Xers and Gen Yers have a number of things in common. Both groups grew up with recessions, single-parent households, cable TV, the Internet and other personal technology. Consequently, these groups consume media differently from earlier generations. Communicating with them through traditional marketing channels can be difficult. So, how can you reach these groups, communicate your message, and get them to take action?

The answer is more traditional than you think. In combination with online marketing, direct mail is one of the most powerful ways to market to both Gen X and Y.

According to a recent study conducted by InnoMedia, NuStats, and Vertis, 87% of Gen Y and 86% of Gen X bring in the mail the day it's delivered; and 73% of Gen Y and 68% of Gen X retail direct-mail readers have used coupons received in the mail; Gen X and Y consumers rate 75% of the mail they receive as valuable.

To reach Gen X and Y with direct mail, you should keep in mind some basic marketing practices. Keep in mind that your direct mail efforts can be supplemented with online marketing in the form of targeted site advertising and keyword buys, or perhaps you can give these consumers a reason to visit you online via email (contests, sweepstakes, discounts, etc.).

Direct mail is most effective when you understand your audience, time your campaign appropriately, provide a compelling offer, and develop a relevant message:

• Audience. Knowing your audience is essential for the success of any direct marketing campaign. Having information about Gen Xers or Yers in general terms is a place start, but you need to dig deeper and develop a fuller understanding of the segment. You should know their motivations, there greatest pains, their latent needs—and what products or solutions they use. Once you've gotten to know your audience, other marketing criteria can fall into place.
• Timing. Communicating your message at the right time can make all the difference in your marketing results. Selling tax software immediately after April 15th won't produce the results you're looking for. You need to have an understanding of your audience's timeline and when they are in the market to buy your product or service. Be sure to give them enough time to respond to your offer, but don't leave it open ended.
• Offer. Many consumers need a reason to buy, especially Gen Xers, who are normally skeptical. Your offer should provide some benefit to the buyer as well as provide some level of comfort in moving forward with a purchase. This can be in the form of a satisfaction guarantee or something similar. One great technique is to place your offer on the outside of the envelope that contains your marketing materials. This can help to differentiate your mail and get your envelope opened by prospects.
• Message. Your message needs to resonate with prospective buyers. Do you understand their needs? Have you communicated benefits as well as features? Are you solving a problem for them? Have you provided a simple, yet compelling message? Many direct marketers talk about the "long" letter versus the "short" letter. Studies validate the use of both. As long as your message resonates with buyers, it doesn't matter how long it is. But be sure to test your messages on an ongoing basis.

If you're marketing to either Generation X or Y, or both, use direct mail in your marketing mix. Individuals in these groups respond to direct mail. Keep in mind, however, that a direct marketing piece should be supplemented with other forms of marketing—Internet marketing, search engine optimization, advertising, etc.

Direct mail is your key to success with Generations X and Y when used as the main vehicle of your marketing campaign.

More sophisticated planning needed to survive disaster

An article from the Chicago Tribune By Joyce M. Rosenberg
Associated Press
Published May 21, 2007

The tornado that decimated Greensburg, Kan., this month and the coming official start of the hurricane season should serve as a reminder to small-business owners that they need to prepare their companies for the absolute worst if a catastrophe strikes.

But one of the lessons of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita two years ago is that traditional planning may not be enough. When New Orleans residents left the city before Katrina hit, no one could have envisioned that it would take months for many companies to be up and running again, and that many others would have to relocate permanently or shut down.

Many business owners have learned that disaster planning needs to be increasingly sophisticated for a company to survive. For example, although disaster preparation experts have long advised business owners to have a list of employee phone numbers, that might not be enough.

Now, the recommendation is that you also have contact numbers for relatives and friends for each staffer, and if there's an evacuation, you should also know where staffers will be staying.

Steven Preston, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, said many owners, unless they've already been through a disaster, find it hard to grasp the need for planning.

"In areas that have been hit in the past couple of years, it's a whole different level of awareness," Preston said in a telephone interview. "The challenge is in a place that isn't as accustomed to thinking in terms of preparedness."

These are some of the most critical parts of a small-business disaster plan:

• Protecting the company's data, such as customer lists and financial records.
• Securing the physical premises as much as possible.
• Creating a plan to restart operations remotely, if necessary.
• Buying adequate disaster insurance.

The Internet has sources to help small businesses with disaster planning.

The government has several sites, including www.ready.gov and the SBA's.

The Institute for Business & Home Safety Web site has a tool kit called Open for Business, which includes the kind of things a small business should consider in preparing for a disaster. You can find it at www.ibhs.org /business_protection.

The planning process isn't one you should be doing on your own.

Owners should consult staffers, who probably know minutiae about the company's operations that the boss doesn't.

"They're the ones who know what it's going to take to get [small businesses] back on their feet," Preston said.

Brainstorming with other business owners, particularly if their companies are similar to yours, will also help you with a plan -- and may help you think of details and contingencies that might not have occurred to you on your own.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Resisting the Temptation to Grow

Author Bo Burlingham says the success of a business shouldn't always be measured by size: Sometimes small is better
Taken from Businessweek

by Stacy Perman

Conventional business wisdom holds that size and growth equal success. However, author Bo Burlingham challenges that notion by chronicling 14 small, successful, privately-held companies in his book Small Giants: Companies that Choose to Be Great Instead of Big (Portfolio). The book looks at companies such as microbrewery Anchor Brewing, energy-bar maker Clif Bar, and folk singer Ani DiFranco's record company, Righteous Babe Records, and examines the success some small companies achieve by taking the road less traveled and focusing solely on being the best at what they do.

BusinessWeek staff writer Stacy Perman recently spoke with Burlingham about Small Giants (first published in 2005 and reissued this year in an updated version). Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:

When a small business is launched, isn't one of its primary goals to become bigger?

Actually, the first goal of most small businesses is just to survive. Once they achieve that goal, people usually have a picture in mind of what success is going to be. It may not be fully articulated, but it will be there. What happens is that once you reach a point in the process, you have to make choices. The problem is that many times we don't know that we have choices. We think what we're supposed to do with a business is to grow it as fast as possible and to get it as big as possible.

The point of my book is to say that you have a choice of what you want to accomplish. You can be great company without getting big as fast as possible.

Well then, does size matter?

In business, it's very easy to confuse big with better and size with greatness. But when you think about it, that isn't really true. Is Exxon (XOM) our greatest company? Is General Motors (GM) our greatest company? The point of my book is to get people to ask themselves: What does it mean to be great? Different people have different answers to that question, but everybody benefits from asking it.

The answer isn't necessarily that there's anything wrong with wanting to build a large public company. But do it with your eyes open. There are trade-offs. Whole Foods (WFMI) was a small giant in Austin, Tex., and [Chief Executive Officer] John Mackey decided to go public. It allowed him to do many things he couldn't have done if he stayed small, but he also lost some things. [Howard] Schultz [CEO] of Starbucks recently recognized that for all the great things that Starbucks does, it lost something in the process [of becoming a giant].

Great companies, particularly as defined in American business, tend to be big like IBM (IBM) or McDonald's (MCD), yet you define a great company as a small giant. Explain.

The people in my book focus on relationships with all of the people they come into contact with: employees, suppliers, their communities. They judge their success and greatness by the strength of those relationships.

One of the criteria I used to select all of the companies [I included] was that they had the opportunity to get much bigger, faster and chose not to. Second, these are companies that are considered by their peers to be the best at what they do. Third, I looked for companies that had been recognized by independent third parties for their contribution to the world and to society. And finally, [I chose] companies that had been around long enough to experience both the ups and downs of business.

Are there some kind of criteria to determine whether a small company will be great if it remains small?

I happen to focus on private, closely-held companies owned by people directly involved in the business. The reason I did that is because of the fact that the people making decisions didn't necessarily put the return on investment first. It's not that they didn't care about the return on investment, but that wasn't the most important thing they were looking for.

The point was to focus on the major question of what exactly makes a company great. These companies really asked themselves that question, and focused on achieving greatness [based] on their own standard. They have benefited as a result.

In general, when it comes to "greatness," small private companies seem to be overlooked in favor of the Chryslers (DCX) and the Microsofts (MSFT) of this world. Why is that?

Basically, all of the coverage in the media or by academics is on large, publicly-traded companies. Probably the assumption is that's what readers want to read about. The problem is that the focus on large public companies is so overwhelming it tends to equate good [with] large with all businesses—that is demonstrably untrue.

Jack Welch says you should be No. 1 or No. 2 in a niche. That may or may not be true for large companies, but it's absurd for small companies. The idea of grow or die may be true for large companies, but it's demonstrably untrue for most businesses out there.

What are the advantages of staying small?

The advantages have to do with the ability to develop deep, intimate relationships. It becomes an integral part of the community. Take Whole Foods or Starbucks. They're great companies, but they aren't rooted in any community. And staying small allows you to develop a culture. It gets difficult to create one the larger you become. And some argue that it affects quality.

How hard is it to resist the temptation of growth?

It requires great strength of character. There are so many pressures for a company to grow once it has reached a certain stage from advisers, bankers, employees, family, or other people. The companies in my book had the option to sell for a large amount of money, but they bucked common wisdom.

Scrimping on Customer Care Backfires

By G. Andrew Barfuss
April 18, 2007
The pervasive environment of pretend customer care is a huge opportunity for every entrepreneur in every industry. Entrepreneurs whose businesses deliver real customer care will be recognized and rewarded by loyal customers who are tired of the posers and the fakers.

The late comedian George Burns once said: "The most important thing is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made." When it comes to caring for customers, too many businesses are trying to fake it, and their customers know it.

You know what I mean: companies that hide behind voice mail with no live operator option. Poorly trained, unempowered, and uncaring employees. Web sites without live customer contact information. Inflexible policies that fail to allow for unusual-but-legitimate needs.

Even more aggravating are companies that provide poor customer care while spouting meaningless advertising and marketing mantras about how much they value their customers.

Entrepreneurs need to remember that most customers have their own policy: when a company doesn't deliver real customer care, they deliver their business to another company.

The pervasive environment of pretend customer care is a huge opportunity for every entrepreneur in every industry. Entrepreneurs whose businesses deliver real customer care will be recognized and rewarded by loyal customers who are tired of the posers and the fakers.

Too often companies make the critical mistake of trading real service for perceived cost savings. They fire the frontline employees who build personal relationships with customers. They hire uncaring and unmotivated people nobody else wants because they don't have to pay them as much. They fail to train and really empower their employees to take care of customers. In short, they try to fake sincere caring but take no real action to ensure it.

Sure, the business world is competitive. Every successful businessperson has DNA programmed to cut costs. Customer relationship expenses can be meaningful and naturally become a high profile target for the cost-cutters. Businesses must balance benefit/expense questions in customer care like every other area.

But too often short-term cost savings in the way companies interact with their customers come at the expense of real relationships and real loyalty because the cutters somehow buy into the perverse logic that an unfeeling machine and inflexible policies can replace a genuinely caring and competent person.

I believe it is never a mistake to make real investments that build real customer loyalty. The competitive marketplace demands it and business logic supports it. No savings, large or small, can offset the complete loss of a customer who decides to buy from someone else.

The good news is that entrepreneurs have a golden opportunity to differentiate their businesses from the competition in this area. Following are some ideas for building real customer loyalty in your organization:

• Hire caring and competent people.
• Talk to your customers. Ask them what they want. Give it to them.
• Adopt a "Customer Bill of Rights." Have a written document that sends a clear message to everyone in your organization that you want to deliver real customer care. Post it in a conspicuous place so customers see your pledge. Do what you promise so employees and customers alike can see that you are serious about keeping customer commitments.
• Reward employees who go the extra mile in serving customers. Take action against those who fall short.

Customers patronize businesses because they have needs meaningful enough that they are willing to pay to have them met. Entrepreneurs whose companies meet those needs better than competitors will survive, grow and generate sustainable profits.

And you can't fake that.

© 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). All rights reserved.
© 2007 CRM Daily. All rights reserved.

Seven Hurdles to Marketing Effectiveness—and How to Surmount Them

Taken from the website www.marketingprofs.com, an article by by Andrew Pierce
April 17, 2007

Marketing effectiveness—achieving it—requires an organization with the resources and know-how to achieve the fine balance between art and science that it takes to create marketing programs that meet measurable business objectives.

And these days, that's a mandate—not an option.

In a just-completed study on marketing effectiveness by Prophet, 60% of respondents reported their marketing budgets as flat or down for 2007. Spending, then, must be more effective and more efficient—go farther and work harder.

And to that point, over 75% of the survey participants rated improved marketing effectiveness as one of the top three priorities of their companies.

Getting there is challenging, but achievable. Here are seven hurdles to overcome:

1. Understanding what "marketing effectiveness" is

   Once marketers get that it's deeper and broader than just getting the media mix right or running the right ad to generate awareness, they're well on their way.

   Marketing effectiveness is really about making an ongoing, concerted effort to understand the tradeoffs—both short term (return on investment or market share) and long term (brand equity or shareholder value)—between investing in all elements of the marketing mix.

   From there, it's about putting that learning into action by investing in ways that drive both short- and long-term business impact.

2. Aligning investments with business objectives and customer priorities

   For marketing to be truly effective, marketers need to do a better job of understanding the links among business, brand, and marketing strategies. They need to ensure their investments are in sync with key company objectives as well as with what matters most to customers.

   For example, if the business objective is to broaden the base of new customers versus deepening share of wallet with current ones, investment might be directed toward tactics like advertising and promotions instead of enhanced customer-service measures, loyalty programs, and the like.

   Growing this understanding for better alignment and outcomes requires a broader perspective than marketers have typically adopted in the past.

3. Closing the measurement "loop"

   To really understand the critical tradeoffs that contribute to marketing effectiveness, marketers must adopt a more consistent and disciplined approach to measurement. A clear sense of objectives, systematic use of tracking mechanisms, and consistent scorecards enable marketers to gauge whether investments are truly creating the desired outcomes.

   This discipline not only enables meaningful assessments of a single campaign but also enables marketers to make comparisons across initiatives. With such a fact base to work with, marketers are better able to build their case and adjust their playbook for the future. Moreover, it allows for better alignment with senior management's expectations—offsetting the possibility of mandated mid-course changes.

4. Differentiating between "reporting" and analysis

   For many companies, measurement programs consist entirely of collecting data and reporting it back. The drawback is that this approach contributes little to marketing effectiveness.

   Knowing that awareness and sales are up, for example, may be exciting, but this information becomes far more powerful when combined with a better understanding of what's behind these changes. Marketers committed to driving marketing effectiveness must shift their focus from data to insight, from the "what" to the "why."

   Doing so requires analytic skills, experience, and instinct. Those who can piece together the puzzle by looking at different pieces of data—say sales trends plus brand perceptions plus competitor activities—will gain a more holistic understanding of what's working and what's not. And that equips them to chart a more effective path.

5. Adjusting the focus

   Given the performance pressure most marketers are under, it's not surprising that their spending is largely put against initiatives—product pricing, coupons, promotions, and the like—geared to drive immediate results.

   That's not all bad, but the challenge marketers face is to ensure that short-term activities (price-cutting, for example) aren't compromising long-term concerns (like image-building). Both short- and long-term objectives must be kept in the marketer's sights, and to a significant extent that requires an integration of various marketing levers to maintain the balance.

   A more flexible lens makes for more effective marketing and marketers.

6. Looking ahead versus over-the-shoulder

   With today's abundance of new media, new channels, and greater customer control, metrics based on past performance may be misleading indicators of future results. Yet, many marketers still rely on historical modeling that addresses returns on past investments, based on lagging versus leading indicators.

   A more forward-thinking approach like "test and learn"—where elements of the marketing mix are trialed on a smaller and more controlled scale—can be a more effective option, particularly when funds are scarce and there's little tolerance for marketing missteps.

   This approach, particularly when ongoing, enables marketers to generate quick wins that build credibility, increase senior management's appetite for new initiatives, and ultimately expand purview for the marketer.

7. Building the capabilities

   To ensure that the drive toward marketing effectiveness meets with success requires a combination of the right people, processes, and technology.

   In terms of people, this means cultivating champions of the concept and buy-in at the highest levels of the organization. But it also requires enlistment of others with a stake in success—team members willing to look and act across functional silos. And, at a more basic level, it means having the marketing capabilities themselves in terms of people who are skilled at balancing the art with the science.

   The right process means avoiding the temptation to mandate wholesale change, but using the successes of pilots to foster cultural change. This approach demonstrates the value of marketing effectiveness through its link to solid business results and encourages the involvement of ever-increasing numbers of people as pilots expand.

   Finally, technological tools are essential if information is to be successfully aggregated and analyzed, and initiatives measured in a meaningful way.

Achieving marketing effectiveness is no longer an option, at least for marketing organizations and their leaders committed to contributing to the short and long-term success of the overall business.

The barriers are many, but they are not insurmountable. Marketers who work to overcome them may well find that their personal success tracks with their company's.

Small and Medium Entreprises - Three Tips for Staying in the Loop

What would you do if one of your employees accepted an offer from another firm? In a large company, you might plan a goodbye party. But in a small business—where jobs rarely overlap—you’re more likely to need a crash course in his/her project load.

Patrick Schaber, who blogs at The Lonely Marketer, says this mad scramble for information exposes a lack of internal communication in small businesses. There is an easy fix to keep everyone in the loop. “The trick,” he writes, “is to make everyone aware of each other’s role without the departure of a [team member].”

• Connect the dots. In staff or team meetings, try: "The project started here, this is how I got here ..." instead of: "Everything's good, here's where I'm at ..."
• Trade places. When traveling, ask different team members to serve as your back-up referral for time-sensitive queries. This acquaints more than one person with the ins and outs of your role.
• Play the "I Just Gave My Two Week's Notice" game. Every six months, have the entire team pretend they've given notice. What do colleagues need to know before they leave? Block off a few hours to identify mission-critical tasks and processes, and then meet as a group to bring the team up to speed on various projects.

The Po!nt: Keeping tabs on the progress and rationale of your team’s projects not only makes turnover less painful, but the additional knowledge can help improve decisions and processes in your own work.

Start up businesses - It’s All About Money

Taken from MarketingProfs , originally titled "It’s All About the Benjamins"
May 2007

How are you paying for your startup business? It might surprise you to learn that a lack of capital dooms most businesses to failure before their doors even open. This is the painful point that shows up most often in the statistics,” says Michael Goodman, marketing consultant and top expert in the MarketingProfs discussion forum.

Don’t become a statistic. According to Goodman, the best way to avoid that fate is to have a clear grasp of your business’s financial prospects:

• Understand the cost. Going into business entails an array of up-front costs, everything from equipment and inventory to marketing materials and professional services. Don’t forget the cost of furniture and fixtures.
• Don’t be surprised by negative cash flow. Use a pro-forma P&L (profit and loss statement) to identify how much money you’ll need to fund ongoing operations and marketing until the business is profitable.
• Consider equity investors. If you can’t fund the business yourself, find someone who can. It’s better to own a smaller percentage of a successful business than 100 percent of a failure.

The Po!nt: If you don’t have the resources to carry your business until it’s profitable, you’re on the fast track to failure.

The 4-hour work week

I run a thriving business - and spend more hours on sports than work, thanks to simple time management techniques.
FORTUNE Small Business Magazine
By Timothy Ferriss, FSB Magazine
May 7 2007: 12:35 PM EDT

(FSB Magazine) -- When I came across the work of economist Vilfredo Pareto one evening, I had been slaving through 15-hour days, seven days a week, feeling overwhelmed. I run BrainQuicken (brainquicken.com), a six-year-old developer and distributor of sports-nutrition products in San Jose with wholesale customers around the world. I would wake before dawn to make calls to Britain, handle business in the U.S. during the nine-to-five day, then work until near midnight phoning Japan and New Zealand.

Pareto created a formula demonstrating that 80 percent of the income in society is produced and owned by 20 percent of the population. This highly debated principle, known as Pareto's law, also applies in other situations. For instance, 80 percent of company profits typically come from 20 percent of the products and customers.

Facing certain burnout, I decided to see how Pareto's 19th-century concept applied to my company by pinpointing the sources of most of my sales - and my problems - so I could spend my time more efficiently. I quickly realized that of more than 120 wholesale customers, a mere five were bringing in 95 percent of the revenue.

In the next 24 hours, I made several simple but emotionally difficult decisions that changed my life forever. First, I decided to stop pursuing most of my customers so I could profile and duplicate the most profitable ones. I was spending most of my time working on small accounts, when the big five already ordered regularly, without any follow-up.

I put the customers in the unproductive majority on passive mode. All my complaints came from them. If they ordered, great - let them fax in the order. If not, I would do absolutely no chasing: no phone calls, no e-mail, nothing.

I also had to abandon being busy for being productive. I came from a nine-to-five culture and had adopted that schedule without considering alternatives. I realized I could reduce my hours by limiting tasks to the critical few and cutting my work time to force myself to focus on the most important projects.

One way to keep my schedule lean was through a low-information diet. I never watch the news or buy the newspaper. I read the headlines through newspaper machines as I walk to lunch each day. My selective ignorance has never caused a single problem for me.

I also decided to avoid meetings, unless they were for making decisions. If someone proposes that I sit down with him or "set a time to talk on the phone," I ask him to e-mail an agenda to define the purpose, and I set an end time. Decisions should take 30 minutes or less.

To avoid wasting time on business e-mail, I check it only an hour each Monday. I weaned myself from logging in, starting by turning off the audible alert and looking at it twice a day, at noon and 4. Then I reduced the frequency. I never log into e-mail first thing in the morning. I complete my most important task before 11 a.m.

Reducing the number of e-mails I receive also helps. I have outsourced customer service for order tracking and returns. Because I initially handled product-related questions myself, I received more than 200 e-mails a day. Most were from customer service reps seeking permission for simple actions, such as replacing a shipment a customer hadn't received.

I decided to e-mail permission to all customer-service supervisors to resolve any problem that took less than $100 to fix without contacting me. That reduced my messages to about 20 per week. It also freed up more than 100 hours a month, customers received faster service, and returns dropped to less than 3 percent (vs. an industry average of 10 percent to 15 percent). The result? Rapid growth and higher profit margins.

To limit my e-mail obligation further, I rely on outsourced personal assistants in India to manage my in-box and handle other time wasters. The cost: just $4 to $10 an hour.

By avoiding most telephone calls, I save even more time. I use two phone numbers - one (nonurgent) office line and one (urgent) cellular one. I keep my office phone on silent mode and let it go to voicemail. A message tells callers that I check and return calls at noon and 4, directing them to my mobile phone for urgent messages. It encourages them to leave an e-mail address. If I don't immediately recognize an incoming number on my cell phone, I let the call go to voicemail so I can gauge the true urgency.

I never check voicemail abroad. What if there is an emergency? It doesn't happen. Problems solve themselves if you empower others to handle them.

It was four years ago that I discovered Pareto's law. Thanks to his ideas, I now work four hours a week and project $1.2 million in sales at my business for the next fiscal year. (For more on my techniques, see 4hourworkweek.com.) I've had time to set a world record in tango, pursue my passion for martial arts, and learn surfing on the beaches of Brazil. I have the freedom to enjoy a millionaire's lifestyle without waiting for retirement.

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT: HOW TO HANDLE CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS

16 February 2007
A short but interesting article from the website http://www.hcareers.co.uk more directed to entry level positions but very relevant and so reflecting the hospitality industry

Working in the hospitality industry, you will deal with people on a day-to-day basis. Some days they may really "irk" you and others they will be fabulous. Don't worry if you have days where nobody seems to be happy and all you can think about is getting out the door. This is a normal occurrence and you just have to take it in stride. You will begin to recognize that there are different types of customers and you will learn how to adapt your service to each accordingly. In hospitality and restaurant jobs you will also learn that there are different types of complainers as well.

According to the University of Florida's Superior Customer Performance program, there are five different types of complainers, but in the hospitality and foodservice industries we tend to deal with three of those types. Each type of complainer should be handled appropriately. By responding correctly to each type of complainer, you will reduce the chances of having to bring your manager into the situation.

** TYPES OF COMPLAINERS **

The quiet complainer is typically a customer who appears to be dissatisfied in some way, but you have a hard time getting them to speak up. You may ask the individual, "How was everything?" and the quiet complainer may answer, "Fine." If you are able to get the individual to speak up about what was bad about their experience eating or staying with you, you may be able to gain insight on a situation that needs to be changed or handled differently. This can be a learning experience for you as an employee and the customer will respect you for being diligent in determining the cause of their dissatisfaction.

An aggressive complainer is on the other end of the spectrum from the quiet complainer. This complainer may be loud and their complaints may be lengthy. They may even get loud and yell and scream. These people often stew until they have several things to comment and complain about. To handle this type of person you must follow three steps:

1. Thank the guest for their complaint.
2. Listen completely with no interruptions or excuses.
3. Agree that the problem exists and ask what you can do to rectify the situation for them.

Remember that this type of complainer does not like someone to be aggressive toward them despite how they may be acting. They will not want to hear your excuses, but rather what you can do to fix the problem. If the complainer becomes too aggressive for you to handle, the best move you can make is to find a manager immediately and let them deal with the individual.

Somewhere in between these two complainers is a chronic complainer. No matter what you try to do for them, they seem to never be satisfied. There tea will be weak, their food will be lukewarm or there bed wasn't made properly and their room service was late. This customer can be very frustrating and it will seem like you are running all over the restaurant or doing everything you can to make them happy and it just isn't happening. In this situation you need to have the patience of a saint. List carefully and completely to their complaints and don't interrupt. Often they will be satisfied with an honest effort to solve their problem and a sincere apology. These customers appreciate when you listen and they will appreciate your apology.

** WHAT YOU CAN DO **

In the foodservice industry, your goal is to keep complaints to a minimum. Your customer's pay you for your service and in return you should do your best to give your customers the best service that you can provide. In the hospitality industry, you may have a little more leverage over what you can do for a customer in the event of a complaint than a server in a restaurant. Complaints are inevitable, but how you handle a complaint can build your respect in the workplace. Do your best to listen to the complaint and rectify the situation without involving a manager.

For example, if the customer's soup is cold then that is something that you can fix on your own. There will be some situations where you will require the assistance of your manager because you don't have the authority to take care of the problem yourself. If there is something wrong with the check, for example, then you may require the manager to fix the problem.

If you have a hospitality job, you may have a customer that is unhappy with their room in relationship to the noise of a highway or swimming pool, these types of complaints are easily rectifiable by simply moving the guest to another room. If you are responsible and handle the situation on your own to the best of your ability you will not only gain respect from your customer but also your manager. In either industry, the customer may see you as a helpful employee and may seek out your services in the future or leave a good note about you with the company or manager.

In every instance you must follow-up with the individual. Give them a little extra thanks or try to chat with a bit before they leave. Many people will feel that you are putting them "out of sight and out of mind," when in actuality you are just busy. This helps to give them a good note to go out on and they will appreciate your sincerity.

The power of suggestion - is the old suggestion box still working?

by Bob Nelson - taken from the website http://www.bizjournals.com

The average American worker makes 1.1 suggestions per year where he or she works today--one of the lowest suggestion rates of any industrialized nation.

Would you like more ideas at work? Ideas for saving money, improving customer service, streamlining processes and so forth? What business wouldn't? I'm convinced that every employee has at least one $50,000 idea inside of them. The trick is to find a way to get it out.

Boardroom Inc. in Greenwich, Conn., has found a way to get ideas out. It's a program they call "I Power" and they credit the suggestion program with a five-fold increase in their revenues in under four years--as well as untold benefit to the morale, energy and retention of their employees.

Each employee is asked to turn in two suggestions every week, which are evaluated the same week by an employee volunteer. For many of the suggestions, the evaluator says "What a great idea!" and then returns the idea to the person who suggested it with the implicit permission to proceed in implementing the idea. "Let us know how we can help!" After all, who has more energy for an idea than the person who initially came up with it?

As Martin Edelston, chairman and CEO of Boardroom says, "Sometimes the best idea can come from the newest, least experienced person on your staff." Like the hourly paid shipping clerk who suggested that the company consider trimming the paper size of one of its books in order to get under the four-pound rate and save some postage. The company made the change and did indeed save some postage: a half a million dollars the first year and each year since. Explains Marty: "I had been working in mail-order for over 20 years and never realized there was a four-pound shipping rate. But the person who was doing the job knew it, as most employees know how best their jobs can be improved."

The first year of the program, suggestions were limited to one's own job. Then as employees got the hang of the program, suggestions were encouraged for any aspect of the operation. The company now even has group meetings just to share and discuss ideas related to specific problems and issues facing the organization.

And the benefits of the suggestions are not limited to only saving money. Says Antoinette Baugh, director of personnel, "People love working here because they know they can be a part of a system where they can make a contribution." Adds Lisa Castonguay, renewals and billing manager: "My first couple of weeks I was kind of taken aback because everyone was smiling and everyone was open." She recalls her first day of work in which she was pulled into a group meeting and within 30 minutes of walking in the front door was asked, "What do you think we should do about this problem?"

Lisa almost fell on the floor. Why? Because she had just come from a company where she had worked for eight years and no one had every asked her opinion about anything. Once she got over the initial shock, it felt pretty good to have her opinions and ideas sought after and valued by those with whom she worked. As a result, it was easy for her to want to think of additional ways to help the company.

The impact is both positive and contagious. "People became agents of their own change," says Marty. "There's so much inside of all of us and we don't even know it's there until someone asks about it. And in the process it just builds and builds."

The Underrated Power of the Press Release

Another great article from the website http://www.marketingprofs.com/, this one written by Paul McCord.
While obviously related to companies operating in the United States, a couple of basic issues very often forgotten are reminded here. Read on to discover more.

Open any newspaper and you'll find mention of thousands of companies and products. Most typically, the same names are mentioned over and over—Sears, Old Navy, GM, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the list goes on.

Many, if not most, of these stories relate some event or product these companies want to expose to a broad audience—earnings reports, new product releases, record sales for a particular product line, promotions, and a myriad other items, all reported as hard news.

And within the same newspaper, on the same page, you'll find some small companies you've probably never heard of. Of course, there is probably little in common between Wal-Mart and Joe's Handy Cleaners, except most all of the stories on the page were planted by the companies themselves.

Most midsize-to-large companies have long learned the value of the press release, but the vast majority of small companies haven't. The notion seems to be that, to make it into the newspaper, companies must have some momentous news to break.

But, by forfeiting the newspaper coverage to the "big boys," small companies are missing out on possibly the most dynamic form of promotion and lead generation there is—and it's free. And, after all, if it's in the newspaper, it must be important, right?

Press releases can help level the playing field for companies with limited budgets and resources. Various online distribution sites will release your press release for virtually nothing. A company called PRWeb will send out your press release to tens of thousands of potential prospects and thousands of media sites for as little as $80 (and as little as $10 if you're willing to take fewer perks)—and provide you will a full array of statistics to give you a good feel for the effectiveness of your press release.

If you supplement that with a faxed copy to your local media and a follow-up call, you can likely gain significant exposure for less than a nice meal. In addition, if your company operates on a local level only, you can direct your press release to only local distribution.

Of course, that still leaves the issue of what a small company can possibly say that is newsworthy. Actually, there's much that can be newsworthy. Have you taken on a new line of merchandise? Maybe you've just had an expansion? Possibly, you've just developed a new product or added a new service? Your company is about to have an anniversary? You're sponsoring an event, scholarship, or some other community-related promotion? All of these are newsworthy.

Still can't think of anything you would consider being significant enough to be picked up by the news? Possibly, you can create something.

Here's an example of a short press release I sent out:

Author Deconstructs Referral Selling Methodology

Houston, Texas (PRWEB) November 27, 2006: Leading prospecting and referral selling trainer and authority, Paul McCord, tears apart the traditional referral selling methods taught to salespeople by companies and sales trainers for decades and has reconstructed them into a systematic referral generation program that promises to change the way companies and salespeople relate to customers and clients in his newly released book, Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals (John Wiley and Sons, 2007).

According to Stu Taylor, the award-winning host of the nationally syndicated radio program Equity Strategies, the book "is the most significant sales book I've read in quite sometime. It is simply the best book on client relationship selling I've ever read."

"What McCord has done is identify the most powerful way of gaining sales leads, taken it apart and re-built it into a powerfully more effective process," says David Straker, business methodology consultant, in his review of the book at ChangingMinds.org. "The joy that earns this book a rare five stars is the practical, thorough and innovative treatment of referrals that can have literally massive benefit to anyone, not just in sales, who wants to connect with valued other people."

According to leading sales trainer and New York Times bestselling author Frank Rumbauskas, the book will become "the authoritative work on referral selling and developing the client relationship because it is the most original, innovative, researched and detailed treatment of the subject. It really is a must read book for anyone in sales who is serious about their career."

"It has been obvious for decades that the traditional method of training salespeople to generate referrals, the 'do a good job and ask for referrals' method, is not effective," McCord claims. "I decided to find out how the true million dollars a year sales superstars generate their tremendous volume of referred business and how that differs from what the average salesperson, business owner and professional is doing. The differences in how each group relates to their clients and the way the mega-producers prepare their clients to give a large number of high quality referrals is amazing. I've simply taken the various techniques and strategies these big producers use and developed them into a systematic program so that any salesperson, professional or business owner can slip them into their own sales process."

"Companies and salespeople spend billions of dollars every year trying to generate sales leads when their single biggest lead generation resource is free and sitting in their computers—their current and past client database. The problem is there hasn't been an effective, proven, reliable process for mining that database for new business," McCord adds. "This is a highly detailed, personal and relationship driven process that turns those names in the computer into dollars in the sales pipeline at a fraction of the cost of other lead generation methods. The super producers do it and there is no reason everyone can't emulate their success."

The book is available in all fine bookstores and on-line at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's, Wal-Mart and most other on-line booksellers. Additional information on referral selling can also be found at McCord's referral selling website http://www.powerreferralselling.com.

That relatively short press release was created when I didn't have anything "newsworthy" to publish. However, I had book reviews and endorsements of the book and could convert them into a news story. I simply took things people had said about the book and formed them into a short story about the book.

And what was the "newsworthy" message of the press release? The introduction of a "new," endorsed process for converting current and past clients into lead generators that replaces an old, ineffective process, and could save companies millions of dollars while substantially increasing their sales. A weak premise for a press release? Certainly not the strongest I've ever had.

Nevertheless, I found more than 30 newspapers that needed filler—literally filler—and they decided that mine was the best at their disposal. And from my perspective, I couldn't care less about their reasoning; all I cared was that they picked up the release and ran it.

From this simple 545-word press release, the story was carried in 31 newspapers, mostly small regional and small city newspapers, but also one major daily; the coverage extended from New York to California—and India and the UK, to boot. Moreover, those are only the ones I know about. Numerous online news outlets also picked it up. In addition, I booked two radio and one print interview. And the cost? I'm cheap; it cost $10 to send this press release. What would advertising have cost to get the same exposure? I don't know, but I know I couldn't afford it.

Using all of the tools at your disposal can help you generate the business you've always wanted. Most of us are caught in the everyday drudgery of running our companies, and we forget to look at other possibilities to promote our businesses. Take a close look at your company and begin to send out regular press releases. Just keep them "newsworthy," short (under 500-600 words if possible), and regular—because it may take a few tries before you get bites from the media.

You don't have to have a PR agency or be a wiz at writing press releases—although, if you can afford an agency, it can substantially increase the value of the content and the reach of your press release. I wrote the abovementioned press release myself, and probably many of the professionals here are cringing at the very idea of sending out that release as it was written. Nevertheless, it was, from my perspective, effective—and dirt-cheap. The return on investment can really be out of this world.

Truth Is the New Lie

Truth Is the New Lie
an article from MarketingProfs.Com by Mark Shipley
June 19, 2007

In an episode from the second season of the Canadian television hit show Slings & Arrows, Sanjay Ramey (the chief of fictional advertising agency Frog Hammer) tells a prospective client, Richard, the following:

People are tired of ads in all their forms. They don't believe anything we say, and it doesn't work. We at Frog Hammer ask ourselves very simple things: Is it wondrous? Does it move you? Is it culturally authentic? We believe that people are sick of being lied to. If you use truth, you can sell people anything. If you want them to react, to feel or buy, tell them the truth! The truth is the new lie!

What makes Sanjay's sales pitch so ironic is that it's the truth.

Richard is the business manager of the financially troubled New Burbage Theater Festival, and he has a real business problem: His customers are old and dying and he needs to reach out to a younger audience before his business goes bust. Inspiring and enigmatic, Sanjay convinces Richard to turn his back on convention and mount a brutally honest rebranding effort.

Listening to Sanjay, Richard comes to the realization that consumers no longer buy hype and are bored stiff by features and benefits. Honesty, authenticity, relevance, and emotional appeal are the ways to attract the modern consumer.

He allows his new agency, Frog Hammer, to replace the expected highbrow Shakespearian sales pitch with a multi-media advertising campaign that tells it like it really is: "Macbeth was an ass." The result? A youthquake: The season quickly sells out to young audiences and Canada's power- and influence-wielding Minister of Culture, who reluctantly financed Frog Hammer's rebranding of the theater, had to sneak in because she couldn't get a ticket.

When did "telling the truth" become the right thing to do?

A few years ago, Seth Godin wrote a book titled All Marketers Are Liars. His point? Marketers are storytellers, and over the years their stories have become unbelievable, very predictable, and no longer relevant.

How many times have you heard the vapid pitches "we care about you," "personal service," "ours is better," "lowest prices," or "100% guaranteed?" How many times have marketers claimed that their brand is "sportier," "sexier," "pure," "natural," "great tasting," or "good for you?"

In the old days, marketers could use hype and exaggeration to get noticed and people would simply accept it. Not anymore. Today, if you want consumers to pay attention, you had better be truthful. And if you want them to fondly remember your brand, you'd better be emotional.

Brands That "Get It"

Just about everyone has seen the Las Vegas tourism campaign, in one form or another. It's very easy for anyone who's spent a few days in Sin City to recognize how smartly truthful this concept is and nod with a wry, knowing smile after seeing it.

It's remarkable that even an 11-year-old who has never been to Las Vegas can also "get it." At a birthday party not long ago, a few boys (my son included) made some harmless, but extreme mischief. The parent in charge offered them a deal: If they cleaned up the house, she wouldn't tell their parents. Their response? "You mean like what goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas?"

About a month ago, Starbucks ran a full page brand ad in the New York Times showing two interlocking coffee rings, with the word "hi" written in the place where the rings intersected. The headline read "Reconnect."

Looking at this ad made me nod my head and think about how the perfect cup of coffee would include spending time with someone I care about, having a relaxing conversation, and catching up. It's much more than about a great-tasting product in a great atmosphere. The ad spoke to a higher-order need and made me want to go sit in a coffee shop and spend time with a friend, maybe even at Starbucks. There was truth in the heart of this message, and that's why it was so effective.

E-Harmony doesn't get you a date. They race past all manner of foreplay and get right to the heart of what many people using online dating services are really looking for: a soul mate.

Which truth is the right truth for your brand?

How do you figure out what parts of the truth are relevant and worth sharing with your audience, and what parts of it are boring and not worth mentioning? How do you use truth to emotionally engage your customers and prospects? How do you keep the relationship fresh so they don't leave you for a smarter, sexier, more honest brand?

Here are four steps that are integral to uncovering brand truths and determining which contribute to a believable, differentiating, relevant, memorable, and deliverable brand story:

1. Peel back the onion.
2. Analyze the competitive idea space.
3. Identify the true relationship drivers.
4. Get intimate with the consumer.

Peel back the onion

Take a good hard look at your brand, from an outsider's perspective. Where did it come from? What does it offer of value? How has it been presented in the past? What is its current positioning and current market position? How about the people behind it? What are they thinking and saying? How do they act? What do they really believe? What do they think of the consumer? Tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

Analyze the competitive idea space

Take a look at all of your competitors. Reverse-engineer their brand communications to see where they are focusing, how they are positioning their brands. What are they saying? How is it different and how is it the same? Is it the truth? After you've completed this, you should have a good idea where there is saturation and where there is opportunity in the world of ideas.

Identify the true relationship drivers

Identify all of the attributes in the category and do a gap analysis to determine which of these are the relationship drivers for the category—and for your brand. Are the drivers tangible or intangible? Which attributes do you need to do well just to be considered? Which offer the highest return on investment and which aren't worth spending time or money on?

Get intimate with the consumer

Among consumers, what are their current perceptions of the category as a whole, your brand, and those you compete with? What keeps them up at night? What interests them, makes them happy, and can improve their quality of life. Focusing on the relationship-building drivers, ladder up the list of attributes to get to the place that resonates with consumers emotionally. What they are willing to believe about your brand that is somehow different and more desirable than the competition?

* * *

The bottom line: It may not be so plainly evident, or as easy as telling a lie, but uncovering the truth is the key to finding a position that will move your brand upmarket.