Common sense isn't common

I recently had someone tell me that what needs to be done in their business and how their staff should deal with customers is just plain common sense. His common sense equaled:

• Treat customers with respect
• Talk to them nicely and with a smile on your face
• If you answer the phone, deal with the problem yourself until it gets to the point that you are unable to.
• Customers are the most important aspect of your business

Now, these are pretty much common sense items to any good sales person or business owner... but not everyone fits into the above two categories.

Your normal customer services, administrative, and accounts workers deal with customers every day, and usually from a support perspective and not from a sales perspective. People in these roles can quickly come to see customers as an annoyance, not a privilege. Once this happens, your company is in serious trouble as customer services spirals through the floor and unhappy customers start lining up to voice their concerns.

What can you do to fix this problem?

1. Look at every customer pointing activity in your organisation and think about how you would treat the customer and how you would like to be treated if you were on the other side.
2. Write all of point 1. down and create policy and procedures for each and every customer facing activity.
3. Instil the need to please customers in your staff. The number one goal is to create a happy customer every time you deal with them... even ones who complain to start with can quickly be turned into happy advocates of your company by using the right language and solving their problem.
4. Clamp down on ANY customer facing person who doesn't adhere to the procedures. If you don't then each time that person talks to a customer you will hurt your brand.

Some key rules to remember:

• There is no such thing as a bad day when you deal with customers... they just don't care.
  
• Once your staff start talking to customers in happy way they will magically make themselves happy in the process. Nothing makes you happy like making another person happy... smiles are contagious.
  
• Your brand is all you really have, and your brand is made up of two things:
• Your Perceived Image
• Your systems that create that image
• Your employees are your most important assets, but your most important assets can't help your company if you don't have good systems for them to work in.

I think a big problem with small businesses is that they view their employees are important assets, but then think those assets should be able to just do their job, and do it well. This simply isn't the case. A small business will only ever grow into a slightly larger small business with this thought process in place. Systems are the lifeblood of any self respecting business, otherwise you rely too much on particular employees to do their job.

In a top notch business the management should be able to appoint anyone into a role and have that person will be successful quickly after they have been trained in the companies systems.

Another analogy is the franchise model... seek to do this with each and every segment of your business and you will find your life that much easier. If you don't know what i mean by this then please read E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber. This book will open your eyes on how to build a better business, and then make that business run by itself.

Please leave me comments and your thoughts on this topic.

The Field Creative

My good friend Christo has just been on a whirlwind visit on Auckland and he spent last night at my place; and our mouths wagged as in the norm when friends haven't seen each other for some time.

Christo is a leader in charity theory ideas and is looking for serious support and philanthropists for his parent project, The Field Creative. Please have a read of his theories, past events and projects, and current activities on his website thefieldcreative.org (or click the link above) His ideas will blow your mind, and although some are quite "out there" he is deadly serious about his overall objective of getting the world back on a sustainable path and ensuring there is a quality future for our children, our childrens' children and further beyond.

He isn't just talk either... he has lived and breathed his ideas for the last 3 1/2 years as he has sought to build groundswell support as well as refine his theories and the focus for The Field Creative.

I encourage all of you business owners to think about your own responsibilities to make the world a better place... we are the only ones with any real power to do something.

Please pass this message along as I believe this is something worth supporting.

Word of mouth power move

Have you ever wondered why some marketing campaigns, websites, companies, loyalty programmes, work better than others?

Are customer referrals a big source of your new sales leads? They should be!!

Customer referrals is THE most powerful way to get new sales leads... yet most companies focus very little time or effort on acheiving this. It is hard to be the worlds best at creating sales leads through referrals, but there is no reason for not being a close second... and anyone can acheive this by using some simple tools.

Andy Sernovitz is a marketing and word of mouth guru, so when he talks I listen. In this short youtube video Andy puts across some amazing points on referrals and how to get them.



So... please tell a friend about my blog and pass on the knowledge.

The Responsibility Rotator!

Here is an idea I just came up with and I really think it could work!

Management sharing, or The Responsibility Rotator!

The basic premise behind this idea is to create a motivated, educated, empowered, and capable team. A team full of members that aren't afraid to take responsibility and who have developed great leadership skills.

I'm not talking big stuff here, (although it may work with high level management), I'm really talking about the smaller areas in a business that regularly need someone to take responsibility. I will try and explain my point in a scenarios, as that is how I like to do things :)

Everyone's a sales manager at Bob's paper company!

Bob runs a small company selling all different kinds of paper to businesses in his town. Bob has three full time sales staff (Chris, Jen, and Brad) and thinks he needs a sales manager, or at least a better way of managing the combined sales effort of his team. There are lots of opportunities for new business both with new customer development as well as increasing business with current customers; but he doesn't have time to do it.

Bob really needs a sales manager that can lead the sales team to greater sales. This will involve ensuring staff are visiting customers regularly, targeting business development activities for both new customers and increasing existing customer sales, and developing sales promotions.

In steps the Responsibility Rotator!!

The Responsibility Rotator gives each member of the sales team, Chris, Jen, and Brad, the opportunity to manage the sales team in rotating months. Now, being a good management theory, the Responsibility Rotator doesn't leave Chris, Jen, and Brad alone once he has been put in place; he gives them the support and education they need to do their new found jobs.

Each month the Responsibility Rotator puts a different person in charge of the sales team and lets them lead for a month; with the responsibility of leading a team, hitting the targets, and developing the ideas that will enable Bob's paper company to reach it's goal of increasing sales.

Bob's three sales staff have a fun time learning to be managed by each other in different months; but the end result is that they all learn what it takes to increase sales as well as lead a team. All three sales staff are motivated again by the job due to added responsibility, and love coming to work again. The ideas on how to increase sales flow think and fast from his staff trying to outdo each other each month. His staff also have a new found respect for their management and what it takes to lead a team.

Potential benefits of The Responsibility Rotator:

• staff feel empowered to do their jobs
• motivation levels stay high
• constant supply of new ideas
• competition to be the best
• highly educated staff
• lower management costs
• staff don't get stale, which easily happens with sales people
• leaders all through the team
• ease of mind that when you the owner is away or steps out of day to day management there are people in place capable of leading the business
• better communication within the team
• respect between team members and management
• many more!!

Please give me your feedback on this idea and let me know if you think it is hair brained or brilliance!!

P.S. This has probably been though up and written about before, but not to my knowledge... not that i've looked since coming up with the idea an hour ago.

What's the Zag in your Zig?

Check out this article all about finding your businesses true purpose and market position.

How to Be Different: 'Zag!'

Thanks to Marketing Prof's, Marty Neumeier, and Paul Williams for this! I'm doing it right now for my businesses to see what i'm really offering my customers and potential customers.

This is a great tool for getting your mind and focus back on track. One thing that many businesses do wrong is to try and focus on as large a demographic or market segment as possible. The owners think this expands their earning potential; but in reality it opens them up to as many competitors as possible; as well as often alienating their most valuable customers.

The key for a successful small business is your niche, your very own Zag in this world of Zigs.

Build better websites

I mentioned a few posts back that i would be going to the Zeald.com website seminar today. I went and it was extremely informative and very on the point. If you are in the web design business or need a website for your business then get along to a free seminar near you and learn about the most important aspects of a website.

Here are my notes from the seminar; hopefully David Kelly from Zeald doesn't mind! They aren't the most eloquent and are to the point rather than a complete narrative. If you want the full story please go to a seminar or you can get David's book The Secrets of Website Persuasion here.

Seminar Parts:

1. Two Key Success Factors
2. Measurement
3. Continued Improvement
4. Persuasion

Part One: Two Key Success Factors

1. Visitors
2. Persuasion (Conversion Rate)

This leads onto the two P's of Success

1. Promotion
2. Persuasion

Part Two: Measurement

• If you want to improve something you have to measure it first

Part Three: Continued Improvement

• TMT: Test, Measure, and Tune
• High Yield areas of your website should get the most focus for TMT
  

Part Four: Persuasion

1. Identify Objective and Develop a Powerful Strategy for Achieving that Objective

There are two main types of website objectives (there are other ones too but these are the main ones)

• Generate Sales
• Generate Enquiries or Leads

* Most people neglect the strategy level
* Brainstorm sessions on how to achieve the objective

2. Map Your Site and Identify the Conversion Pathway

• What pages does the visitor have to visit to do what you want them to do? Map it out in a graphical form.
• Macro and Micro conversion objectives: Macro = Overall Site Objective, Micro = Objective of a particular page.
• Create pages "recipies" for the key pages and then use the TMT philosophy to improve the pages to get the best version of the page that gives you the best results.

3. Establish Your Trust and Credibility

• No Matter what your product is or its price they won't buy it if your trust isn't established first!!
• Ways to increase your Trust and Credibility
• Website must load quickly
• Zeald.com has an online test to do this here
• One main factor in poor loading times is unoptimised images. Zeald has more info on this topic here.
• User friendly
• Adhere to industry layout standards
• If you want results then follow the standards!!
• Splash pages are bad
• Web pages must have a professional design
• Trust Building Elements
• Examples of persuasion
• testimonials
• code of conduct
• background checks
• industry relationships
• past customer list (hall of fame)
• guarantees
• industry and other awards
• privacy policy
• terms of trade
• returns policy
• The two most powerful pages for persuasion are About Us and Pre-Sales Pages
• About Us
• most important page for trust building
• check Zeald.com for their own examples
• visions and passions
• company mission statement
• code of conduct
• company history (Zeald's is 7 pages long, yes that is 7 pages, and what's more people actually read it!)
• every customer facing person at Zeald has a 3 page biography on the website
• Pre-Sales Pages
• free articles
• free tools
• give value to the customer while asking for nothing in return
• in-depth information on products and services
• TMT the trust aspect on EVERY page
• The more they know about you and your company the more they trust you.

4. Spark Interest and Develop Persuasive Momentum

• There is no point in doing this part unless Part 3 is already done!!
• Headlines
• There are two types of effective headlines
• Questions: e.g. Is your website generating amazing results?
• Statements: e.g. Generate amazing results online today!
• People want results, not the product. This is embodied it he famous quote: "People want 1/4 inch holes, not 1/4 inch drill bits."
• Every headline needs to focus on the result. TMT it.
• Words, Pictures, and Video
• Long vs Short text
• It is proven that long, informative text on website outsells short, to the point text every time.
• Different presentation for different people need to come into a one fits all approach for websites.
• Long copy needs to be broken into sections with clear section headings to enable people to read the parts that they are most interested in.
• Be comprehensive!!
• Pictures
• Use only one picture and use that picture to lead to a picture gallery
• Pictures need to be focused on the same end result as the text
• use imagery that reflects the ideal result of using the product or service

5. Complete the Persuasion Process

• Have a clear call to action!!
• A simple statement that leads the customer to perform the activity that your objective states.
• Make it easy for the customer to do what you want

And finally:

• Lots of little improvements = VERY SUCCESSFUL WEBSITE

When good enough isn't really good enough

Check out this Blog post on Value Adding, or creating a Wienies. Thanks Seth for posting this link on your Blog.