Welcome to the world’s first

BIZ ALPHABET SERIES of blog posts

“C”…

CUSTOMERS/CONSUMERS

CUSTOMERS and CONSUMERS. These are sometimes, but not always, one in the same.

You buy a can of beans; you cook and eat the beans; you are both the customer and the consumer. But, If I am 6-years-old and badger you to buy me Chocolate Tsunami Cookies because “They Make Waves When Dunked in Milk,” and you buy them and I eat them — then you are the customer and I am the consumer.

In that situation, we are very different people indeed, but the bottom line to the Chocolate Tsunami Cookie Company marketing people is that I, the consumer, have influenced your customer purchase.

The monster corporations out there have monster R&D departments bursting at the seams with monster (3, 6, 9, and 12-month long)  research projects, and are busily preparing monster evaluations, assessments, analyses, executive summaries, and follow-up surveys and studies to support the research findings.

Many of these undertakings are aimed at identifying (in the case of the Chocolate Tsunami brand) which 6-year-olds in which towns are watching which TV shows, and who are most likely to influence their parents (or the most lenient or susceptable parent) to purchase the cookie brand on the next shopping trip.

Oh, and do they have the parent’s email address?

Small business owners know better

than to waste such time and expense.

They make the cookies, sell the cookies, gather feedback from some kids and parents, adjust the manufacturing (or pricing, packaging, promotion) and sell them again. All the while the monsters have no product. They are still doing statistical analysis of adolescent sugar intake.

But too often small business owners direct their marketing messages to the buying customers when actual purchase decisions are being made by the ultimate consumers and/or other influencers. [Women, for example, purchase more wine, but men are almost always the ones who specify what type and brand to buy.]

Small business owners often overlook that different messages need to be directed to different market targets. Parents buying cookies that they are pleaded with to get by their children may require a bit more rationality attached to the emotional appeal that’s focused on persuading the children.

“Making Waves When Dunked in Milk” may be a cute line for something named Chocolate Tsunami Cookies. It could probably attract attention and create interest for any age.

While a child may, however, simply buy into the slogan– Mom or Dad need to know that the chocolate and flour used are organic, or that every purchase comes with free quart of milk or roll of paper towels . . . or that they will be the talk of the neighborhood because their kids are the only ones who can’t “make waves.” 

The bottom line is that by focusing marketing efforts on customers alone risks losing potential business that’s generated by ultimate consumers.

Using the same message in the same ways doesn’t do it. 

KEEP your branding theme and slogan, but address different interests with different language in different media whenever your customers and consumers are different in age or attitude or responsibility or capability.

A handicapped senior may have primary concerns about the safety and ease of use for a stair-lift, while the family making the arrangements may be more focused on price, insurance coverage, and service warranty. The best way to cover all your bases is to ask customers and consumers questions, and keep asking. And Listening!

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone

Welcome to the world’s first

BIZ ALPHABET SERIES of blog posts

“A”… AUTHENTICITY

Not to worry. The other “A” subjects have been adequately addressed already. You can put Attitude and Action and Advertising and Addiction into the Search window and find ample applicati0ns. I have dealt with “Authenticity,” but not with such appropriate substance! So, here you go:

AUTHENTICITY is not just acting authentically –genuinely, realistically– but actually BEING authentic. Not just occasionally or periodically, or just with certain people. Being authentic means all the time, with every encounter, every day, from opening your eyes on the pillow, to closing your eyes on your pillow.

BAH! That’s not possible, you might think. Who, after all, can be genuine every waking minute of every day? We’re humans, you might argue. We’re inherently manipulative, devious, off-putting. It’s not like turning a water faucet on and off.

 What’s your AQ?

(Authenticity Quotient . . . is there such a thing?

Who knows? But pretend there is.

Make it what you want to be and keep reading!)

Hey, points well taken. But there ARE opportunities for each of us to do better than what we do. Part of that is attached to visualizing the payoff, and recognizing that increasing our Authenticity Quotient from –for instance– 30% to, say, 50%, has most of all to do with recognizing and accepting that authentic behavior is a choice!

[And, like smiling when you don’t feel like it has been proven to actually make you feel better,behaving in more authentic ways can actually help you BE more authentic.]                                 

Whats the ROI? How about a more fulfilling life, a more productive and rewarding business, strengthened relationships, and a head-over-shoulders reputation for being upstanding? You need a bigger carrot on the stick, a bigger pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

Does feeling better about yourself count?

Does  making a difference with your life count?

Ah, getting closer to your inner spirit and the heart of the matter?

Authenticity is seldom a birthright quality. It’s something we learn over years of observation, application of our gut instincts, and our interactions with others. So, start boosting your Authenticity Quotient by paying closer attention to saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

Ask those around you who you trust to tell you what animal or creature they associate most with you. And, VERY important to preserving your trust relationship, do not argue or rebuttal their responses. Take it in. Take it on the chin. Smile and thank each person you ask. Then start to process what you learn.

Do you get responses like Saint Bernard (perhaps because you’re always rescuing others?) or Shepard (because you’re always herding people together or team-building?), or how authentic do you think a snake or fox (or worm?) might suggest? Cats of every type and size are generally considered sneaky (and some, vicious).

Elephant could imply steadiness or dependability (or that you’re a Republican frontrunner). A donkey or mule could mean your stubbornness prevails. A new, eager-to-please puppy will be seen as more authentic than a snapping turtle, an alligator, a shark. You can imagine the rest.

Does this prove or disprove authenticity? Of course not, but it will give those who may be unsure about how them come accross to others, some clue about how they are perceived. And perceptions are facts! 

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Hal@Businessworks.US

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

If you’re not rattling cages,

reserve your business

headstone now!

                 ~ ~ ~                  

C’mon, Hal, the Halloween season gettin’ to you?

Waiting with tricks instead of treats?

Not me. I rattle cages.

But what about you? Are you depending on others to scare up some new business? Maybe you’ve seen too many stun-gunned tongues (say that five times fast!) and zombie axe murderers on late night TV? Too many ghoulish retail displays? Maybe you almost died?

If every chainsaw you see reminds you of a massacre, maybe you’re running on (or from?) fear? No? Well if you’re not shaking up your business every week, it may be that you’re running on ambivalence and, in turn, leading the county coroner to your business doorstep.

Investing in the status quo with your business is a no-action action that –depending on how secure your finances are– will either provoke a knife plunge into the heart of your enterprise or cause business death by potato peeler. If 2015 means continued business life, it must also mean continuing dramatic action at every level.

If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway.

Stop being afraid of stirring up the competition. The most successful retail businesses are those located in the same geographical areas as their competitors. Competition stimulates consume traffic. Your website’s not up to snuff? Bite the bullet; get some cash out from under the mattress, and pay a professional to polish up your act!

Can’t afford the advertising you want? Stop advertising. Go to (free) Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn instead. Start doing (free) public relations instead — newsworthy news releases, captioned newsworthy photos, special events (e.g., charity-based, combined with other businesses, educational programs).

Are your employees, suppliers, referrers, investors, community supporters challenged enough? Are you putting out strong motivational incentives to get the (free) word-of-mouth going? Are you running contests that provoke fun and prompt action? (Hint: No need for elaborate or expensive prizes if enough imagination is exercised).

Shake it up!

Have you given presentations at local colleges, high schools, community centers, and then promoted them and followed up with news releases and unusual photos? Have you compiled a media “hit list” of appropriate editors and writers and publishers who would have a natural interest in your business and business pursuits?

Do you have an “elevator speech”? Do you carry business cards and a notepad with you at all times? Do you ask questions 20% of the time and listen to answers (and jot them in your notebook) 80% of the time? Have you collected email addresses everyplace you go? Are you using them to send worthwhile info out?

“Business As Usual” means inactivity, nothing changing, no excitement, no hustle. It will take you straight to the business burial grounds up in the sky (or somewhere?) and you might want to stop off at your lawyer and accountants’ offices on the way to fill out bankruptcy papers. This economy has no mercy.

If you’ve got guts and gumption, nurture them. Stimulate them. Ignite them. Explode them. Make them work for you.

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Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Small Businesses Once Again Ignored . . .

Financial Expert Reports 

of “Economic Rebound”

Grossly Exaggerated

 I had occasion yesterday to hear parts of a Baltimore radio broadcast that featured an on-air personality we will call Mr. Advisor, a man who proclaims himself a seminar presenter, radio and TV host, book author, and one of America’s top-ranked financial advisors.

I like this station’s programming. Most of the hosts are challenging, provocative, and informative. I try to tune in whenever I can.

I liked the overall theme of Mr. Advisor’s message which suggested that worrying about money gets us nowhere. As you know if you’ve visited here before, I have taught for more than 40 years that worry about ANYthing accomplishes nothing. Neither does dwelling on the past.

The past and future are fantasyland,

and generally not good places for

nurturing entrepreneurial minds.

So, if I am as I say, a present-moment, here-and-now thinker, who’s taught this mindset as the key to life success in management training sessions, college classrooms, books I’ve written, and this blog — what’s my issue? Part of my issue is with Mr. Advisor’s use of this awareness to quell economy fears as a bridge to selling his services.

I have no quarrel, in other words, with any effort to get people to focus more energy on the here and now because that is what life is really all about. I take exception with Mr. Advisor because after laying this groundwork, he proceeded to rattle off bogus interpretations of government and corporate statistics to make his points.

New housing startups and manufacturing indicators, he says, signal a rebounding economy . . . major corporate proclamations of sales and revenue increases and expansion plans add up to additional support, he says. Actual statements made were either misleading or naive. Considering his credentials, naivety is doubtful.

He tells his audience to not worry so much because things are looking up and that we can’t let fear of the unknown get in our way of making prudent investments. So do advisors who misrepresent reality.

Certainly, we as human beings do ourselves great injustice by fear of any unknown, but reality here has nothing to do with Mr. Advisor’s careful layering of reason to support his sales pitch.

The bottom line is that:

A)  The economy positively cannot rebound –no matter what government and mega-corporations do– until new small businesses begin to create new jobs.

B)  This is simply not going to happen with Mr. Obama in the White House because Mr. Obama has proven he is NOT a Democrat. He has proven, in fact, to be a Socialist who doesn’t believe in or accept the world of small business and free enterprise competition that built America (and the Democratic Party, I might add) to begin with. 

C)  It really makes no difference what big business and government try to accomplish if it’s without the support of small business.

(And, it’s here that Mr. Advisor goes astray. He seems –not unlike Messrs Obama and Biden– to forget and discount that there are 30 MILLION small business owners in the United States! But perhaps these are not prospective investors for Mr. Advisor?)

My point here is that Mr. Advisor is correct about the need for Americans to stay focused on the here and now, and not worry about what hasn’t come yet and may never come, and the unhealthiness of dwelling on the past that’s over and cannot be changed anyway.

These are mentally and emotionally sound ways to be thinking, but they are not portals to prudent investing. Neither are they any cause for a rebounding economy.

The economy is NOT turning around. Ask any of the 30 million small business owners out there. The economy is NOT rebounding because small business owners have no reason to trust a government that seeks to undermine, over-regulate and over-tax at every turn.

The issue, Mr. Advisor, is TRUST, and the fact is that this White House has failed to inspire any confidence or reason to believe. And as you surely know, Mr. Advisor, credibility is what drives market growth.

Why should small businesses create new jobs and then get slammed with major new taxes and regulations that end up costing them even more than a no-new-jobs economy is costing? Because Obama says that that won’t happen? HA! November 6, 2012. Be there.    

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

 A LIVE CASE

OF LOST SALES

A major global service provider recently sent me a direct mail piece offering a $50 gift card for a retailer I frequent if I sign up for their online demo. Hey, this is a win-win-win, I said to myself. I like the service provider company and imagine doing business with them on behalf of some of my clients. I’m interested in their updated information.

The mailing piece suggested I reply by mail OR by phone or email. I called. The rep at first acted skeptical that I was a legitimate prospect (I don’t think I sounded like a freeloader!), but I convinced him otherwise and he proceeded to put my contact info in for the gift card and schedule a demo for me.

A few days later, I sat in on the demo and Q&A,

Three weeks passed, and a follow-up call from the rep prompted me to ask if, btw, there was some problem or delay with getting the gift card. He said he “had no control of the gift card delivery once the contact data was entered, but it shouldn’t be longer than 30 days fulfillment period.”

Another month later, after an additional follow-up phone message and two follow-up emails — and no gift card!–  I politely asked once more by email reply, underscoring my legitimate interest in doing business, about the $50 card. His response was that those cards were only for people who sat in on the demo, and did I still have the mailing piece.

As luck would have it, I did have the mailing piece in a file folder (along with 12 pages of the company’s service descriptions that I downloaded to share with clients) and emailed him with the mailing piece code number and the exact date of the demo, which I had jotted on the file. I politely asked again for the gift card.

I added the comment that “given the circumstances of not delivering on a promo promise– I am not feeling very confident in your company’s services.”

His response: “I did put in the request. I apologize for it taking longer than expected. But what does a promo gift card have to do with using our services? Don’t let a gift card get in the way of what we can offer your clients. (boldfacing mine)”

 Ah, but it   

DOES get in the way.

In fact, on the “Don’t” list —

Don’t Promise What You Can’t Deliver!

[Keep in mind that I never questioned legitimacy, or entertained any doubt about this company prior to this failure to honor a promotional deal — and the attitude that accompanied it.] 

The experience made me wonder how many others were deceived. I wonder if the company provides all the services it claims to provide. I wonder if the company thinks so little about $50, what its attitude would be about an invoice discrepancy with one of my clients (or whether they would pad their bill).

The experience made me wonder how true their performance is and whether any of their performance documentation is fudged (there would be very little way to know without hiring a detective). The services they deliver are not always tangible or identifiable. Neither do they always produce accountable results.

Does it strike you as odd that a business (with sales far beyond a hundred million dollars) whose performance is entrenched in trustworthiness, and in the interest of protecting their brand integrity, would balk at making good as promised on a $50 gift card promotional incentive? 

Do you see shreds of bad customer service here?

Or is it just me? 

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Hal@Businessworks.US    302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, 

and Clients and Patients

and Customers Too!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! As different as each creature may be from one another, all are considered equally dangerous, equally entrancing to watch, equally exciting to find in one’s camera lens, equally cuddly, equally threatening, equally enthralling. In other words, sometimes they can all fit the same category.

As marketing targets, it’s often all for one and one for all. Professional practices (doctors, lawyers, accountants, management consultants and trainers) are small businesses with special skills and special interests. They have clients and patients. But clients and patients are customers too. They just have special needs.

All this specialization stuff, however, makes little if any difference in marketing plans, targets, approaches, strategies, or branding programs. Perceived differences matter only to professional practice principals. No one else cares. The bottom line is that we each spend our money to get a product or service.

And each of us wants to know:

“What’s in it for me?”

Whether a product or service is life-saving or life-threatening has nothing to do with whether a client or patient is considered a client or patient — or customer. All that matters is product or service performance, and the integrity and authenticity of the person(s) representing or standing behind the product or services purchased.

The issue, say some, revolves around the concept and delivery of “high trust” vs. “low-trust.” Marketing people will be quick to recite the five criteria of effective programs, campaigns, and messages. Regardless of what name is used to define a target market (customers, clients, or patients), marketing must:

1)  Attract Attention

2)  Create Interest

3)  Stimulate Desire

4)  Bring About Action

5)  Provide Satisfaction

. . . and it really must do ALL of these to be effective.

On top of that, the rule of thumb applies to ALL FORMS of marketing — print, broadcast and outdoor advertising; sales; public (industrial, professional and community) relations; promotion; merchandising; pricing; packaging; labeling; website content; social media content ; business and appointment cards; stationery and invoices.

It applies as well to direct mail, bumper stickers and building signage, plus a hundred other uses. It applies to branding themes, logos, and jingles as well as trade and professional show banners and exhibits.

When you want to know how your business or practice is coming across to others, ask. Measure people’s responses and each marketing implementation against the five criteria.

If you’re looking for prime examples of marketing that fails because it fails to deliver all five criteria, you need go no farther than your local hospital. Hospitals breed marketing mediocrity because they refuse to spend money on outsourced creative services and convince themselves they can handle it all in-house!

Most professional practices seem to think in similar terms. The problem is that their products and services are justifiably more expensive than the local coffee shop and must carry messages that appeal to a higher level of audience needs, but that doesn’t eliminate the need to trigger emotional buying motives.

Sophisticated products and services are not sold with dumb slogans or rational, logical appeals that push features instead of benefits. Humans are humans are humans. Market from the heart. Market benefits! Pay attention to corporate advertising for Mercedes Benz.

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Hal@Businessworks.US     931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Success seldom surfaces

when creative service

providers are squashed

. . . or does it? 

Show me a writer or designer who thrives on being torturously pushed and prodded to stressful deadlines, and I’ll show you someone who is likely to be a do-nothing PR agent or brain-dead news media person, but don’t expect to find great advertisers, marketers or creative service people thrive in angst-ridden  pandemonium.

With rare exception, creative development work that’s “rushed” breeds mediocrity (and costs more, which makes the engager a double loser!). Truly remarkable talent, it is said by many, is born of free spirit, and ample time.

Do I know exceptions? Plenty. But exceptional creativity is the product of unconstrained imagination and self-discipline. The exceptions I know –ah, including myself (!)– coulda/shoulda/woulda produced more outstanding creations if they’d (we’d) not been pushed, prodded, intimidated, threatened, and time-pressured.

My best writing has surfaced during both

great duress and great relaxation. So

maybe the rule is an exception?

My national boo0k award effort was done at my leisure. Its underperforming predecessor took two years under pressing deadlines. My worst book was written under crushing due dates. My best book –now almost ready to market– was ten years on the drawing board. My best award-winning jingle was done in one all-nighter.

My worst ad campaign took six months to research and justify and another six months to finalize and launch. My national award-winning, record-sales marketing program took three months start to finish. I have a future award-winning children’s book series ready to launch after 40 years in hiding.

And only heaven knows how many hundreds of new business startups have benefited by my rushing attacks on their website content, news releases, packaging, media positioning, and strategic planning. Yet the most successful, sales-productive efforts I have made have come only with major investments of time.

The trouble is that upstart business owners want what they want when they want it and time is not a worthy commodity to offer when they’re sitting on a hot idea and investor dollars.

Neither patience nor perfectionism has ever been a trait of entrepreneurs.

Neither has analysis, which is typically the province of corporate muckity-mucks. 

Okay, so knocking this subject all over doesn’t settle the issue of business time pressures and the creative product. That, however, is the issue. Pushing and prodding and time-pressuring creative people may not always produce the best or most productive work, but it gets the job done.

Depending on circumstances and the marketplace and the economy (and who can depend on the economy?), a judgement must be made about whether you want to win awards or customers. Without a lot of room for awards on the walls of a crushing economy, the bottom line should be to insist on results, not pretty words and pictures.

Design awards only produce sales for designers. Copywriting awards only produce sales for copywriters. You can stop paying for your creative service providers to get more sales by putting some heat on their abilities to perform for you, the client.

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

Turning prospects

into customers

means leading

with your soul

. . . not your mouth.

Not a whole lot happening with accounts receivable, eh? Welcome to the cusp of The Great Obama Depression. As many business owners keep stumbling along, muttering to themselves that they’ll vote for the Aflac Duck if he can beat Obama (and, hey, who knows?), many others have given up wallowing in self-pity, in favor of enlightenment.

What exactly does this mean? There’s a new found awareness that prospects are not whipping out their wallets just because you tell them how great you are or how great they are, or just because you map out all the logical, rational features of your products and services.

People have not stopped buying with their emotions just because incompetent government, union thugs, and big corporations are heartless and have no clue about how to create real jobs, and really restore our economy.  

Every purchase

–including those that 

seem most rational–

is emotionally triggered.

It’s human nature to want to be sold, to want to have someone show you how what you want is what you need. But you can’t accomplish this with the words you say anywhere near as effectively as you can with the actiojns you take. As a writer, I hate to admit that, but words can only lead someone to your door. Actions make the sale.

What kinds of actions? Authentic ones. Sincere ones. Actions grounded in genuineness vs. sound bites and photo ops and slaps on the back. It’s called “leading with your soul” which means that when you effectively put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and see things from the prospect’s perspective, you are practicing empathy. Empathy sells.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?  When you buy something from a sales representative, odds are overwhelmingly in favor of you actually buying into the rep’s attitude. And, in fact, the more you keep hearing kiss-up statements, the less interested you become in purchasing, at least from that platitude attitude. Instead, you go down the street!

Who needs a salesperson filled with pandering, patronizing remarks and preoccupied with ticking off product or service features? You want someone to show you passion and conviction and authenticity.

You need only to have

an emotional buying motive

trigger pulled to justify your

wallet on the counter or

your pen on the dotted line.

So surely you don’t think you’re any different because you own or run a business? That’s exactly the point. You ARE no different. Everyone is unique, yet we are also all predictable when it comes to what happens psychologically when we make a purchase. Our egos get pumped up. Even a can of beans is an emotional purchase.

Emotional buying motives are ignited by exceptional and sincere service and by positive (and contagious) attitudes. So, how do you think you come across to prospects? When did you last ask one? Is your ego keeping you from learning more about yourself and what it takes to be enlightened and exuberant?

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Hal@Businessworks.US    302.933.0116

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

When you think 

you’re communicating

just the right amount of 

information, you’re not!

How do I know? Because you are the boss. And the boss rarely if ever gets it right the first time because what the boss thinks is “too much” or “too little” information is not what employees think, but are often afraid to ask about or say so. And when it’s not what customers think, they won’t ask or say so either; they’ll just go somewhere else.

Okay, I know it’s making you crazy. So what does the blog post title ROTFLMBOAFOYCTBPSSOHLT mean? You should know, first of all, that this “message” actually appeared on the screen of a Fortune 500 company employee, sent by a departmental teammate. Even the recipient had no clue  

It stands for: Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Butt Off After Finding Out You Caught The Boss Playing Spider Solitaire On His LapTop. The acronym is obviously an example of a text messenger gone amok and, of course, far too little information to be understood.

Sending a convoluted message is

  like telling a joke that nobody gets.

Misunderstood verbal and written one-way messages have ended in disasters, explosions, shootings, robberies, suicides, addictions, bankruptcies, firings, lost confidence, and lost sales. Even when the message receiver has perfect hearing, perfect vision, three college degrees, twenty years of experience, and is sober, confusion happens.

You already know all the little rules about not assuming things. You’ve learned the hard way that communication can be either verbal and/or nonverbal and that both of these forms have many signals, styles, applications, modes, and inferences. You have a general sense of when you’ve said or written too much or too little.

BUT — the recipient of your communication is the only one whose sense of what’s too much or too little really counts. If a receiver on the football field cuts right instead of left and the quarterback launches a picture-perfect pass to the left, it doesn’t much matter how great the pass looked. Your message is all about the receiver.

The only insurance you have for being clearly understood is to check on what’s written or said or agreed-to with the receiver, to confirm delivery, to paraphrase statements, to request feedback. I just received an important piece of mail from three weeks ago, from a neighbor who’s been away for three weeks, who got my mail by mistake.

Horror stories run rampant through the halls of shipping, transportation, and delivery companies worldwide every day. Wrong addresses, wrong times, wrong account numbers, and on and on. Your small business cannot afford communication screw-ups. This doesn’t mean harping away and repeating things.

It means accepting the reality that others do not have the same ways of thinking as you, and that getting it right the first time will take you longer and be more work than you would like. YOU must take the responsibility to ensure that the messages people get from you are indeed the same ones you intend them to get. Work at it. It pays.

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Hal@Businessworks.US   931.854.0474

Open Minds Open Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

 Make today a GREAT day for someone!

“Detail” Counts

Big Time In 

Small Business

My first employee review in my first real job accused me of not liking or tending to detail. Decades later, I still don’t like it or tend to it, except as absolutely required by clients, the IRS, or a book manuscript or marketing program that demands it. And even then, I still don’t like it.

After all, how can creative spirit flow freely

 with “detail anchors” weighing it down?

And, it seems when I look back, that entrepreneurs and small business owners of every conceivable description, similarly hate having to deal with detail. Yet, meticulous attention to detail is what often makes a small business become a big business. At every level: finance and operations as well as marketing and sales.

By listening carefully (vs. just hearing) to what customers and prospects say they REALLY want, you engage yourself in the world of providing detail, and the better you do at it, the better you will invariably do at not just servicing, but delighting each person and entity that you confront.

Detail –except in word choices and design applications– is not generally an area that commands great attention from those who provide creative services.

Attention to detail is most typically the milieu of those who provide accounting and legal services, intricate products, operational equipment, and safety-oriented products.

This doesn’t mean you need to be a bean counter, brain surgeon or rocket ship c0mponent manufacturer to justify the need for attention to detail. In fact, the further away from these “expected” areas of business a customer or prospect encounters what you have to offer, the more likely you are to have positive impression opportunities.

Why? Because most people don’t expect a roofer or plumber, or dog groomer, graphic illustrator, a self-proclaimed SEO or social media  “expert,” or shoelace salesman, to be able to support product and service claims with hard evidence and factual findings –details– that boost and solidify the sales message. 

Details are what drive home the emotionally-triggered sale by providing the objective, factual, unemotional supportive features that purchasers use to justify their decisions to themselves, their spouses, their boss’s, their partners, their associates, employees, shareholders.

Details may not always be fun. But –in every sale, they prevail! Do you? Are you supporting claims with facts? Attention to detail means attention to customers and prospects . . . a practice you can never go wrong with!  

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116

Open Minds Open Doors

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