“Hot Diggity,

dog-diggity,

BOOM, what you

do to me . . .”

–PERRY COMO [Yeah, I know; he was before your time.]

     If you’re not celebrating your customers (clients/patients) regularly, it may be time to question priorities. In case you missed one of my past blog post references, it costs five (5) times as much money to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one!

     And in case you haven’t noticed, or it’s escaped your awareness, existing customers send you new customers. Prospects don’t send prospects.

     Many small businesses and professional practices get to grow up and be big businesses and professional practices by catering to the customers they have. The best source of business is existing and past business.

     Cold-calling is essential to any meaningful sales strategy, but it needs –ALWAYS– to take a back seat to nurturing your existing and past customer base because that’s your bread and butter, and because your customer base will drive many more prospects to your door than you’re going to be able to ferret out for yourself with cold-calls.

     HOW to kick some customer catering and appreciation into gear? Have a party. Host a customer-families-only midnight sale. Email out 72-hour discount special certificates. Send “Thank You” cards out at Thanksgiving and birthday cards on birthdays. Call together a focus group discussion (with appropriate rewards) to review your service pros and cons!

     Offer discounts or credits for referrals. Send in that charitable donation you make every year in the names of your customers. Feature your customers in your newsletter and/or in a series of news releases. Post the releases free on www.BizBrag.com and have BizBrag email them out for you to whatever list you provide — also free!

     Make “How goes it?” followup calls. Imagine actually getting a phone call from a restaurant, accounting firm, or construction contractor just to ask if your last visit was a good one, and what could you suggest to make the next visit even better? (How would YOU feel? Who would YOU tell?) And do this REGULARLY with existing clients.

     Parties and all that stuff too expensive right now? Make it a bagels and coffee breakfast stop-by reception for customers only. Combine forces and split up costs with neighboring businesses; you’ll even gain customers from one another in the process.

     No time? Hand the idea or the event off (with $25 cash or credit, or sports or concert  tickets, or dinner for two, or a limo trip?) to a relative or student intern or employee to organize and promote.

Whatever you do, do something. Try AAA:

Customers like being Appreciated, Acknowledged and Asked!  

# # #    

Call me at 302.933.0911 or comment below

or email Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting.  Go for your goals!  God Bless You!

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

“I see your true colors

 shining through . . .”

                                                                                                                                                          — CYNDI LAUPER

      Is your workspace the drab morning dove gray of a typical stock brokerage or mortuary? (This two-pronged question is, of course, not to suggest any business commonalities.)

     Perhaps, on the other hand, your business screams the vibrant emotional red of casinos and fast food restaurants, or the deep green (“GO” and “MONEY” subconscious associations) of endless bank office and lobby carpets?

     Then there’s always the Caribbean blue that many travel agencies splash around as wall coverings or carpeting or (Awk!) both. How about that maroon and gray at your doctor’s office (presumably because someone thought doctors who are always gray and dealing in blood couldn’t be more appropriately coordinated)?

     Oh, and right . . . we won’t even bother to address the hidden meanings in black and brown law offices.

     Is there some kind of color scheme logic to your workspace or is everything just random?

     How about your product and service “packaging”? The baby stuff? Right, we got that with oinky pink for baby girls and powder blue for baby boys and yellow for unknown and neuter babies!

     You do know of course that even after all that’s happened in recent years, and in spite of political overthrow attempts: red, white, and blue are still the best selling colors in America?

     Did you think there was no method to the madness of TV scene backgrounds, website pop-up colors, ad and brochure uses of color? Has it occurred to you that wardrobe and make-up people on film and video broadcast sets choose certain colors and fabrics and shading and backdrops and patterns and designs for a reason?

     Do you choose what you wear and what you put on your skin everyday according to your schedule? “Dress down Fridays” have become “Dress Down Everydays” in many businesses. What colors do you “Dress Down” to? Why? Are you arware that pinstripes are supposed to communicate sincerity, that Navy blue is seen as authority, tan as neutral.

     You may dismiss all this as nonsense, but if you’re trying to make a major sale or sail through a job interview, wouldn’t it be foolish to not taske advantage of every possible tool at your disposal?

     Why would you want to dress or present your products and services in overpowering colors when you’re trying to schmooze powerful prospects? An over-the-top flashy power dresser is not likely to sell many premium luxury cars because prospect profiles are of well-to-do, powerful people who want to control their shopping excursions. [They’re looking for tan pinstripes.]

     Get employees and customers and suppliers to tell you what color they most associate with your business, and why. No rebuttals or defensiveness; just take it in, write it down, and summarize what you learn.

     Then do some online and/or library research on the one or two colors that you hear most. Are you on the right color path for the image you seek for your business? What can you improve? How? What minute can you start?

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day! 

“When Push

Comes To Shove,”

Keep Customers

Out Of The Way!

     Protecting your customer base at all costs needs to be Priority One. When people have purchased your products or services in good faith, they are putting their confidence in you and the business you own , manage, or represent. If you screw up that relationship and lose their trust, you have lost a great deal more than a customer or two.

     Long-time idol of mine, Roy H. Williams, Chief Guru of Roy H. Williams Marketing, Inc., and author of what may arguably be the best two essay collections ever written on the spirit of advertising in the universe of American business. The two book set. The Wizard of Ads and Secret Formulas of The Wizard of Ads were published in 1998 and 1999 respectively by Bard Press, Austin, Texas. 

     In his Secret Formulas collection, Williams quotes study findings from Technical Assistance Research Programs of Washington, DC, that you should know about. Chew on these highlights for a couple of minutes:

• For every customer who complains, 26 more will not.
• Each of these 27 unhappy customers will tell 16 others about their bad experience.
• Do the math: Every negative complaint you hear represents 432 negative impressions.
• By the time you hear a particular complaint 3 times, the problem has been mentioned to 1,296 people.
• It costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it costs to keep an old one.
• 91% of your unhappy customers will never buy from you again.
• But a focused effort to remedy complaints will get 82% to stay with you.

     Williams concludes this 2-page revelation with the three questions  to ask unhappy customers (calmly, genuinely, and without a defensive attitude) that he says (and I agree) “will bail you out every time”:

1. WHAT HAS HAPPENED?
2. WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED?
3. WHAT CAN I DO TO MAKE IT RIGHT?

     I might add that the best customer service businesses are those businesses without customer service departments and personnel. When all (every single) employees are trained to put themselves in the customer’s shoes, there should never be a need for the expense and excess baggage that a customer service group tends to burden a business with.

     Bottom line: When you accelerate arguments and draw customers onto a battlefield, you lose. Even if you win, you lose. Can your business afford all the negativity attached to your or your staff members’ short fuses? A little stress management works wonders and keeps customers coming back.

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day! 

Complacence.

Ambivalence.

Indifference.

And the worst

of these in

management is . . .?

• Complacence: Self-satisfaction, especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.
• Ambivalence: Uncertainty as to which approach to follow.
• Indifference: Of no importance or difference one way or the other. Unconcerned. Not caring.

     So which gets your vote for worst? If you think about it for more than two shakes of a lamb’s tail, you’d have to go with (Ta-Ta-Ta-Tah-Tah!): Indifference. After all, isn’t indifference the worst of all human traits on the emotional spectrum, management or otherwise?

     Granted, nobody likes a complacent boss. Is smug another way of saying this? And certainly an ambivalent boss is what my father would have called “a weak sister.” Not having confidence in the pursuit of a solution or innovative approach is generally the mark of a losing leader in any arena.

     We seem to grow up thinking that LOVE and HATE are opposites and we tend to pack our collective feelings up and move them to one side of the continuum line or the other: LOVE at one extreme end and HATE at the other extreme end. And all kinds of empty space in between. And, BTW, isn’t this also what politicians and governments and nations do as well?

     Incorrect weird interpretations we experience –even at a universal level– become so ingrained that they become the rule rather than the exception. We (The People) go about loving and hating and thinking that we are light years apart by every measure when — in reality– we are really VERY close indeed.

     How is that possible?

The true opposite of LOVE is not HATE. It is INDIFFERENCE. LOVE and HATE are actually quite close emotions.

The true opposite of HATE is not LOVE. It is INDIFFERENCE. HATE and LOVE are actually quite close emotions.

INDIFFERENCE is at the extreme far end of the emotional spectrum from both LOVE and HATE.

     So what? Who cares? What’s it matter in running a business? At an employee confrontation level, keep focused on the fact that what’s expressed as extreme opposite viewpoints are — all things considered — probably very close.

     Sometimes the boss needs only to point this out. A line drawn on paper with “always/in every case/extreme” positions marked at opposite ends of the line and two warring staffers asked to put an x on the line where they see themselves in relation to the two extremes. The distance between the two X’s is the area of disagreement, not the entire line. 

     Almost always, when disagreeing employees can physically see (on a line) that the differences they thought were astronomical, are truly only moderately significant, they are much more likely to work things out, to the betterment of themselves and the business.

     You don’t need to be a counselor, shrink or hand-holder to make this work. I’ve seen construction team foremen and deep-sea fishermen pull it off in less than one minute, and never lose a beat with the work at hand. Next time someone draws a line in the sand, have her or him show you the extremes and where exactly he or she stands. 

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals!

God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

J & J Leadership

Lessons

 Go Far Beyond

BandAids!

     We are witnessing now one of the world’s worst oil leak disasters. It could have been drastically minimized with immediate action. 

     Instead of responsiveness, however, we had eight days of Presidential foot-dragging in order to be preoccupied with more important issues, like trying to push Goldman Sachs over the edge of the political cliff without toppling in over them, and hosting a reception for the New York Yankees, among other such critical demands.

     Ah, but after eight days, when the White House finally did decide to step up, determined to save a token pelican or two, some key federal-titled muckity-mucks were actually “dispatched” with orders to report back in 30 days.

     Right, 30 days! How long would it take anyone you know who lives on a coastline to tell you that on top of 8 days of hundreds of thousands of gallons a day worth of leaked oil, we are destined to inevitably see that oil along the Eastern Shore? How about 30 minutes?

     WOO HOO . . . a little too little too late! Imagine taking this approach to respond to a business problem. You’d be out of business. Or, you’d be big-time up to the tops of your hipboots in debt with expensive apolgetic and advertising media expenses. Ask Toyota.

     Either way, the problem multiplies exponentially when responsiveness is not present. Without a sense of urgency built into your leadership position, your business is only as strong as the last time you took swift positive remedial action.

     The classic textbook example was, of course. when Johnson & Johnson handled “The Tylenol Scare” of 1982. They acted poste haste and authoritatively.

     J&J management breeds leadership. It doesn’t matter that you might have a mom and pop grocery store (are there any of those left?) or a 3-person home-based business, there is much to be learned about crisis management from the way J&J dealt with this potential disaster:

• Apologize immediately and completely.
• Act immediately.
• Tell ALL.
• Follow up.
• Stay invested in the solution and be transparent.

     Bottom line: RESPONSIVENESS.

     When you tackle a major problem head-on and immediately, the biggest risk you run is being accused of being over-zealous. What’s that compared to lost lives, lost environment, lost trust, lost credibility? The important distinction to remember here is the difference between reSPONDING and reACTING.

     When you reACT, you run the immediate risk of OVER-reacting, and that puts you out of control. When you reSPOND, you are acting with control, and you are ensuring increased odds of success. Seeking a practical control tool? Take some deep breaths!

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Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops because “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day! 

“I meant to tell y’all

 this sooner, but…”

     We all know where the road that’s paved with good intentions leads, but how often do we ignore the consequence of that destination when it comes to communication and leadership decision making?

     And contrary to current popular Presidential acclaim, effective and meaningful communication goes light years beyond being a dramatic orator. Orators are not leaders. They are merely one form of manager who dwells more on talking about intent than on getting things done.

     When what we mean to do is consistently not what ends up getting done, something is wrong. Either the equipment, systems, or personnel are not performing as expected or — more likely than not — we are doing a lousy job of leadership communicating.

     This is not to suggest that maintaining a productive communications balance is necessarily an easy task, but reality is that we only ever communicate too little, too much, or just enough . . . and too soon, too late, or right on time. The goal obviously needs to be to communicate just enough at the right time to ensure that the task at hand gets done the right way and on schedule.

     What’s the best way to determine the extent to which our communications are sufficient or insufficient, whether they are delivered in a timely enough fashion to minimize stress and maximize productivity? Ask. Too many people in leadership positions choose to feel they are somehow emasculated (effeminated?) by having to ask “underlings” for their judgements.

    “How’re we doing here?” is all it takes. Just by asking, and preferably in the middle of a statement, meeting, phone conversation, presentation, paragraph, webinar, seminar, or workshop, our how goes it check-ups give us useful opportunities to adjust our messages and/or pace in midstream, and usher in more productive action. 

     Even better: “What three things can I do to do a better job of communicating?” What makes this second question better? It asks for specific feedback, which is always more useful information to apply.

     Best of all steps for us to take, besides taking our communications pulse frequently, is to simply be thinking more about it every day. What does that take? I’ve know top business leaders who pasted “Communicate the right amount at the right time!” reminder signs over their desks, and smaller ones on their keyboards or edge of their monitors, on their phones, even their wristwatches. 

     When a business leader loses touch with being an effective communicator, she or he also loses touch with being an effective motivator. When that happens, people start looking for jobs elsewhere, and sales plummet.

     Those are pretty dire consequences compared to how simple it is to make a conscious choice to be a better leader by being more tuned-in to how and when we come across to others.

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless our troops because “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day! 

When times get tough, 

the tough get going,

but they also

inventory their staffs!

     It’s easy to do, costs nothing, takes almost no time, and can produce an avalanche of valuable sales and business contacts. Pass around a short survey every six months that asks the people who work with you what they’ve been learning lately outside of work, who they know, what activities they choose for family fun, what kinds of careers family members have… 

     With a little prompting on your part, and some representative examples you can offer to promote useful responses, you may learn nothing of value . . . but you could be astonished! And until you flat-out ask, you’ll never know. Your administrative assistant may have a brother-in-law who runs a company that’s a perfect fit with your business mission.

     Your operations manager’s sister might be married to a board member of a neighboring business you’ve considered courting for shared marketing expenses.

Maybe your shipping clerk or receptionist is active in the same church as a key supplier who’s been giving bigger discounts to your competitor, but you’ve never had enough of a shared personal connection to feel comfortable enough to approach her about it.

     Why wouldn’t you know things like this already? Most people who are not running a business, or in sales, rarely think about networking, or have experience in the qualifying question process that’s usually needed to uncover valuable connections. It’s human nature to not volunteer “personal” information.

     You have a goldmine of untapped resources under your thumb. Start to draft your survey page.

     Avoid probing personal questions. Unless you have more than a hundred employees where processing answers could start to get unwieldy, avoid multiple choice or yes/no/maybe questions. Keep things open-ended and “optional” so no one feels you’re poking around to get in his or her closet. Explain that good business contacts can come from stretching awareness of existing resources, and that you would be very appreciative of any information shared, even if the respondent didn’t consider it valuable.

“Who do you know in your neighborhood, or your family or immediate circle of friends that might have some work or career connection with our three major prospects/customers?

Would they mind if you or someone from your organization contacted them or used their name to make contact with that prospect/customer to help open up a channel for dialogue about the services/products we offer?

What would it take for that to happen?”

     A question flow like this will of course get answered more enthusiastically and more thoroughly when you can provide some reward — a bottle of champagne, a day off, a charitable donation in that individual’s name, a percentage of potential sales commission, a small piece of some resultant new revenue stream that a connection produces. Use your imagination here.   

     The bottom line is the old reminder that you never get anything if you don’t ask for it. And when you do ask, you may be pleasantly surprised. What’s the worst thing could happen, the questions produce no contacts? At least it will serve to get people thinking.

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today a GREAT Day for someone! 

Keep Your Delete

Button Handy

While Sorting

Out Prospects!

     I like to wake up every morning feeling thankful to still be here and reassuring myself that I am part of a healthy global society. And every morning without fail, my hopes for the healthy global society part go down the tubes when I boot up.

     There it is in my face: the never-ending daily bombardment of sicko spam messages cluttering up my email system and (until the recent installation of blocking software) my blog site.

     It’s almost inconceivable that there are so many insecure, neurotic, deranged people out there hovering maliciously over their keyboards. Are they zealously rubbing their slimy little hands together? Are they smacking their sinister (and diseased, I’m sure) lips in excitement over having sent out rampaging waves of garbage to millions of annoyed recipients.

     Hey, I’m all for freedom of speech, but what about freedom of listening? Where are the rights of those among us who are simply not interested and haven’t the time to waste listening to or reading (or even deleting) the cursed mental case nonsense that spews forth to our monitors as we sleep and work?

     All of us, I guess, could go on into infinity with this evil, insulting, intrusive subject matter, but I’m not sure there will ever be an answer without regulation, and I’d rather have spam. So I’ll stop this diatribe and instead mention that the whole distasteful issue reminds me that we have to spend much of our business lives fending off spammy prospective customers too.

     It doesn’t matter if you’re in retail, wholesale, manufacturing, or professional practice . . . whether you run a multi-million dollar operation out of a huge complex or you work at your kitchen table . . . practically every day, most business owners and managers and entrepreneurs and sales professionals are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time having to qualify, or sort through, questionable prospects to determine if they are or could be legitimate customers.

     Here’s the point: You can’t be afraid of losing business by being (pleasantly please) direct with prospects. If someone is that unstable, uninformed or uncaring that she or he can’t give you a straight answer as to what his or her needs are, odds are you won’t win a purchase commitment no matter what you say or do anyway. 

     If a prospect is unable to share her or his impressions of your product or service ability to meet or exceed those needs, that person is not ready for you and what you sell. You may be dealing with someone who is on a fishing or tire-kicking expedition, or simply can’t afford the price-tag or the emotional attachment.

     When you’re not ready to write off a resistant or noncommittal prospect, you need to be thinking about how much more resourceful you can be with the time you’re spending trying to turn the QE2 in a narrow river, when a small boat will get you across right away.

     Develop a personal system for sorting out prospects that includes great respect and genuine appreciation (return visits are always possible!), and that injects some reasonable haste. Then stick to it. Second thoughts don’t work in sports or business. Rely on your own judgement, and trust yourself more.  

Click Here to work with Hal!       

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! 

“You’ve been a

pain in the butt

ever since

you were born!”

     You own, operate or manage a family business. God Bless You. Now let’s get down to reality. Odds are that you, or at least someone you work with, harbors resentment. And those upset feelings are getting in the way of business growth, perhaps survival. When we collect negative feelings about someone else, resentment is usually the accompanist.

     Resentment often takes the form of a demand that the other person feel guilty. In the classic Addison-Wesley book Born To Win, authors James and Jongeward suggest, “When you become aware that your resentment is growing, handle each situation as it occurs and with whom it occurs rather than collecting and holding your feelings, and perhaps cashing them in for a big prize or on an ‘innocent’ person.”

     The world renown educator/counselor/co-authors recommend the following steps for dealing effectively with resentment:

• “Try to talk the problem over with whoever is bugging you.

• When you attempt this, avoid accusing the other.

• Tell the other person how the situation is affecting you. Use the pronoun ‘I’ instead of an accusative ‘you.’ [For example, ‘I don’t like smoke; it bothers me,’ instead of  ‘You’re really thoughtless the way you blow your smoke around.’]”

• Remembering that the solution to any group problem lies within the group, James and Jongeward go on to urge that in a family group, it is helpful to set up “resentment and appreciation sessions,” which they point out need to have specific rules. Here is how they define that process:

• “Each person in turn verbally states the resentments he holds against the others; (it is important that the others listen but do not defend themselves. The statements of resentment are to be let out but not reacted to.)

• After resentments have been stated, each person tells the others what he appreciates about them.”

     When first learning how to conduct this kind of session, do it daily. After it can be done with ease, stretch it to weekly.

     In some working situations, resentment and appreciation sessions can be useful, “particularly where people work together closely and personal irritations occur easily. If it is tried, all members should agree to a trial period — say two months.” At the end of this period, the usefulness of the procedure can be re-evaluated. If “participants decide to continue, they could decide on adaptations and establish regular session times, like meeting once every two or three weeks,” or whatever seems “practical.”

     It should go without saying that an outside professional facilitator or family business coach can play an important role in establishing and moderating this kind of program. The more structured and enforced the process, the more likely it is to eliminate or minimize nonproductive ill feelings and be able to help produce positive results.

     Is all of this easy? Probably not. Does it take time? Yes. Is the risk reasonable? If everyone involved is agreeable to pursue positive and productive solutions, yes. Should you try it on your own? Possibly, if you are not personally involved in the resentment exchanges, or directly related to those who are, and have a firm but compassionate leadership quality.  

# # #

Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Grab Your Hat

and Get Your Coat

  . . . Then Take

These 5 Steps!

     Think you’ve heard it all? You have. You’ve read the management books, trade magazines and professional journals. You’ve watched every TV special that’s related to your business. You’ve sat through endless repetitive lectures, webinars, seminars, workshops, blogcasts and stage presentations by big-name motivational speakers.

     You’ve checked hundreds of related websites and thousands of related online stories and emails. You’ve even listened to and interpreted the deep-down meanings of favorite songs and the advice of favorite uncles.

     You’ve listened to the warnings, scoldings, and tidbits of genius dished out over your lifetime by your mother, your father, your teachers, business and marriage partners, and even — in your weaker moments — politicians.

     You’ve heard it all!

     Now it’s time to do something productive with what you know, to put all that input to work. Make it make money for yourself and your family, steer it in the direction of building/strengthening  the reputation you want for yourself and your business, enlist your knowledge in directions that will help others to improve their self-worth. How?

1. By recognizing first and foremost that what you do or don’t do with what you know is your choice.
2. By priming your pump.  Take some deep breaths; get regular 3- times-a- week exercise; sleep and eat better. The more the merrier, but any and/or all of this will make you feel better and perform better.
3. By sorting out your ideas and the information that works best for you in your situation right now. [These are different for everyone] Prioritize them, then start on making Number One happen and keep at it to the exclusion of all the others; then, move on to Number Two, etc.. The most important first step is to take the first step. Some action is always better than no action.
4. By remembering Winston Churchill’s famous battle cry: “Never give up. Never, ever give up!” Be tenacious. Be persistent. Be persevering. Stick-to-it-tive-ness sells! And when you do what you do with grace and respect and confidence, you will engage others, not chase them away.
5. By recognizing that EVERY customer and prospect has an ego that’s as least as big as yours, but has not perhaps promoted it in the same ways. Back off your own self-indulgence and become a fan of the person/company/organization you seek to sell.

     Bottomline: You HAVE heard it all. You KNOW what to do and how to make it work for you. You know this in your heart and you know it better than anyone else could possibly know. You’ve just spent too much time questioning and delaying and doubting yourself. If the risks involved are reasonable ones, put your peddle to the metal. There’s no such thing as a second first chance.

Click Here to work with Hal!                                        

Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!