Serving Your Customer Well

If you can slow down enough to listen, if you can focus on something outside yourself, you will see that people are carrying immense burdens. Everyone is trying to solve some problem. Everyone has problems, whether rich or poor, struggling or successful. The problems merely change forms.

Your customer has problems. Have you ever thought what your customer is spending 40+ hours a week doing? They are thinking about the things which matter in their world. They are consumed with their problems. They are trying to sell more, be more efficient, make payroll, develop a new product, manage staff, stand out, and have a life. You are likely thinking about doing these things as well. Read more

Selling is Losing

The number one skill in business is selling. You do not have a job or income unless you or someone on your team makes a sale. Life does not move forward unless someone sells their ideas. The rest of people who play it safe choose to stay oblivious to this one truth. The reason they do is because it is hard. It takes guts and an immense amount of talent, thinking and commitment. Nothing happens unless a sale is made.

You are either filling orders or making things happen in business and life. To make things happen means you must understand selling. And the first rule of selling is this:

Don’t get caught selling. Read more

The Most Important Commodity

Every day my team fights for one precious commodity. We give money, time, energy and creativity for it. We spend thousands of dollars to get as much as we can. It is becoming more expensive and more scarce. It is your attention.

Remarkably, we have your attention right now. Later today, you will be taking in a relentless amount of text, images and sound. Your brain will be processing and shifting continually. The ability to distinguish between relevance and noise will become tiring and laborious.

Your customer will be doing the same thing. The reality is that your customer behaves differently than they did 20 years ago. They behave differently than they did even two years ago. Everything is becoming relentlessly fast. People’s email inboxes are overflowing and unorganized. Phone etiquette has stretched to the point that people do not even extend professional courtesy by returning calls. Flashy advertisements are ignored and bore onlookers. Everyone has too many choices. Everyone feels rushed. They are not paying attention to you. You look irrelevant and invisible. Read more

How to Make Happy Customers

What is it that separates you from your competition? How do you earn your customers business? Other than the price and location of the room, the design, and the fact I was with the Dallas Mavericks team — very little separates hotel rooms. Four large warm cookies and a handwritten note got my attention and my son’s attention. What made it memorable? It was such a small thing. But every time I check into a hotel room across the country, guess what I’m comparing them to? The Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey just outside of Los Angeles.

• Where are the “cookies and card” in your business?
• What systems and processes help you provide a consistent experience?
• What makes people sneeze you like a virus, to where you are infectious — in a good way!
• Is it easy and fun to do business with you?
• Do people remember you? What is it they remember — Is it your price or is that you are remarkable?
• Will you remember The Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles? Why?

Selling By Systems Not By Sweat

There is a story of a mountain village which experienced an unforgiving drought. The condition was deteriorating to the point that a village elders’ meeting was held. They decided to hire two men to solve the problem of bringing water to the village from the valley below where a well existed.

The first man got two large buckets and started going back and forth from the village to the well below. He sold the water at a handsome price. He brought his sons on board to the venture and made as many trips as possible to sell his water. Read more

The Big Picture of Selling

I remember competing at the University of Chicago in our conference championship track meet one dreary winter. I had finished my race and was sitting on the sidelines to watch the 60 meter dash. It was cold. Indoor track season in the north is bitter and frigid. The gun went off with six sprinters coming out of the blocks. Then it happened. A loud “pop” sound. A sprinter pulled his hamstring. He was on the sidelines in agony.

He was a well-conditioned athlete ready to race. In colder conditions, sprinters need to do extra warm-up to properly prepare the muscles for competition. Otherwise, painful consequences, such as hamstring pulls, are typical. Read more

First Impressions

Is your first impression anticipated, personal, and emphatically relevant? In today’s free market there are plenty of brands, plenty of just about everything and definitely plenty of choices. With that in mind, why do the vast majority of business people leave such dull first impressions? There are several reasons, here are a few:

Most business people sell rather than lead.
Nobody wants to be sold, but everybody wants to buy. In the 80’s and 90’s you did not have blogs, LinkedIn, websites, Google, or Amazon. Today you have a plethora of tools and products that help you lead your prospect to a favorable first impression about you. My experience as a business coach is that most business people lack an impactful “breadcrumb trail” that leads a prospect towards a compelling first impression. Most business people sell rather than write. In the new economy, to get your way, you have to possess persuasive writing skills. Here is what Seth Godin in Permission Marketing says,

“You can now choose whom you reach. When you reach them. The order of messages. The benefits offered. You can create dozens or even hundreds of paths for an individual to follow from the first contact until the highest level of permission is granted. If the marketing messages you send are anticipated, relevant, and personal, they will cut through the clutter and increase the prospect’s knowledge of the benefits you offer.”

The fact is most business people have only their product to offer because their mind has atrophied due to lack of use. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What do you know that can help them — not sell them? I have an attorney friend who says, “Tell me what a person knows and I will tell you what they earn.” So what is the purpose in writing? I’ll sum it up with what Jeffrey Gitomer says:

“I force myself to become better each time I write something. I try to make my concepts more clear, I try to make my ideas more convincing, and I try to make the strategy and the methods that I suggest be compelling enough that others will adopt them and adapt them to their style and their personality.” Most business people sell rather than impress. How can you create favor in a prospect? Be impressive, be memorable. Does your prospect see you as a door-to-door salesperson or an expert? In the 70’s and 80’s you could get someone to answer the door. Today the door will not open if you are not remarkable. This means you must be a student in the new economy. Know why people buy. Give people a reason to say yes. Share your knowledge in creative ways. What kind of first impression do you make?

5 Tips to Deliver a World Class Seminar

Since we live in a knowledge economy, what would be of greatest value than packaging and sharing knowledge? You can see the multiple ways that we do this at AscendWorks. I was recently asked about how to deliver a seminar to grow your business. Here are 5 tips that need to be part of your plan to connect and bring value:

1. Change the World. If you only provide information and there is nothing that changes in your audience, then you wasted your time. True value will show up in concrete action. Sell the action in addition to building your case.
2. Communicate With Class. Use a system like Cvent or professional communication templates that are delivered on schedule and timely to create anticipation for the event.
3. Have More Than Your Skin In. What are you worth? If people are arbitrary in their attendance, this is because you communicate other things in their lives are more important. This likely happens because you lack execution in #2 above. What would cause the registrant to have skin in the game, preferably positive incentive? There a myriad of ways to do this.
4. Don’t Let Them Forget. Create a framework and a sheet that allows the audience to follow your flow. This needs to be like everything else you do - first class. It is your brand. Anything the customer sees, feels and touches is your brand. Do you care enough to own the right position in their minds?
5. Work Hard. Your competition is your competition if you work just as wanting as they do. If you are half-committed to your show, do yourself a favor and don’t start. It is just a hope and fad that will not work. If you are committed to being the best, then the stepping stones towards your success and reputation are going to appear through your diligence. Outwork everyone you know.

What a privilege it is to deliver a world class show to people who crave knowledge. My greatest satisfaction is changing the world. Be clear on changing the course on someone’s life and let your seminar become a tool to deliver that value.

Is Your Message Interesting?

“A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.”

– Mark Twain

Doesn’t his observation ring true? The wildest stories and theories seem to have an enduring life all on their own. Meanwhile, as business people we have a difficult time getting our message in front of our customer, much less getting the customer to say, “Yes.”

So how do you communicate your message effectively? How do you get your ideas noticed? It’s hard, but it’s doable. The customer today is bombared by email, billboards, web, print media, television, elevator messages, radio, etc. That alone makes it likely that your message will not be heard. The customer simply can’t process all the information. Think about it — do you?

So the idea here is to think — how do you nurture your message so that it is interesting? How do you design your message so that it sticks in the mind of the customer?

One of those principles (adapted from Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick) is in order to get our audience to pay attention to our message, use the element of surprise. Keep in mind surprise doesn’t last; for our message to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. Over time we can engage our customers’ curiosity by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowledge —- and then quickly filling those gaps.

Finding the Core

 There are two steps to making your ideas sticky — according to Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick.

The first step is to find the core. Finding the core is about discarding a lot of great insights in order to let the most important insight shine. For example, Heb Kelleher, the longest-serving CEO of Southwest Airlines once told someone, “I can teach you the secret to running this airline in thirty seconds. This is it: We are THE low-fare airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company’s future as well as I can.”

He continued, with this example. “Tracy from marketing comes into your office. She says her surveys indicate that the passengers might enjoy a light entree’ on the Houston to Las Vegas flight. All we offer is peanuts, and she thinks a nice chicken Ceasar salad would be popular. What do you say?”

The person stammered for a moment, so Kelleher responded: “You say, ‘Tracy, will adding that chicken Caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas? Because if it doesn’t help us become the unchallenged low-fare airline, we’re not serving any damn chicken salad.’ “

This simple idea of finding the core (the intent) has guided the ACTIONS of Southwest’s employees for more than 30 years. It is a well-thought-out simple idea that can be powerful in shaping behavior and actions of the intent of the company and its leaders.

“THE low-fare airline” — simple, memorable, prioritization. Not the words that make the statement — it’s the intent.

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