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Category: Growth

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development Women In Business

Networking with Confidence and Purpose (i.e. Why Networking Doesn’t Have to Suck)

I am constantly surprised by how often I’m working with clients and the issue of networking comes up. In all the coaching – and group training – I’ve done around this issue, I’ve noticed that, broadly, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who generally enjoy networking and those who loathe it. But there is one thing both groups have in common: most people don’t feel like they get true much out of the experience beyond a glass of wine or beer and a handful of business cards from people they’ll probably never see again.

One of the key reasons for this frustration is that most people fail to bring one thing into the networking event: a purpose.

When you attend a networking event, why do you go? Maybe you enjoy the social interaction, or you’re just following the conference schedule, or maybe a colleague dragged you along as a “wingman.” Ultimately, none of these approaches have an underlying purpose that would make networking valuable. So how can you make networking a useful and positive experience with actual ROI… and do it with comfort and confidence?

Networking with Purpose

A purpose should be specific, but can also be simple. For example, I might know that an HR exec I want to meet will be there, so my goal is to have two minutes of face time with her to be able to introduce myself in person, and get her to agree to setting up a follow-up conversation a few days later. Once I’ve accomplished that mission, everything else is gravy and I’ve networked with purpose.

If you don’t have something that laser-focused as your reason for going, here’s a simple rule of thumb: Networking is simply planting the seeds for a new relationship. It doesn’t have to result in an immediate financial transaction, but the purpose is to meet someone that you can then build a relationship with.

Ultimately, whether or not you become each other’s client is not the issue. The key is that you never know when there will be a reason for you to contact them – or for them to contact you. Maybe you’ll read an article that you think they’ll appreciate and you send them a link. Maybe you’ll look through their contact list on LinkedIn and see someone you’d like them to introduce you to. Or maybe they are chatting with someone else at another networking event a month later who just so happens to need your services, and they can make the introduction.

There’s a terrific book called The Go-Giver that epitomizes this perspective. It’s an easy read in parable form that you can skim in a weekend, and will clarify both how to do it and why.

Networking with Confidence

Interestingly enough, one of the biggest stumbling blocks people face is not why they should talk to someone, but simply the mechanics of how to start the conversation, much less how to sustain it.

First, it’s important to distinguish the difference between networking and small talk.
“Small talk” is simply a communication tool used to break the ice, and initiate conversation with someone new. It can be something as mundane as the weather or how slow the elevator is to a more organic offering like a compliment or asking a question about what you’re looking at on the buffet.

I’ve struck up great conversations with other women by saying, “Just wanted to tell you – I love your shoes!” With guys, tech is always an easy in-road: if he’s looking at his smartphone, try, “Hey, is that the new iPhone? What do you think, worth the upgrade?” Or, while in line at the bar, it’s an easy cause to talk about what someone drinking. “Arrogant Bastard Ale (or Cupcake Chardonnay)… that’s an interesting name! Any good?” Then it’s easy to segue with, “By the way, I’m Laura.”

Natural next-steps for the conversation include asking if it’s someone’s first time at a particular event or what prompted them to come, what they thought of the keynote speaker, what organization they’re with and what kind of work they do. It doesn’t have to be rocket science, so don’t over think it. It’s about finding common ground, and/or showing a genuine interest in knowing more about the person, and the above topics are easy and “safe” for any networking event.

Simply put, enter any networking event with purpose and the mindset of discovering some interesting new people who have the potential to create a mutually valuable relationship – of any sort. When you take this perspective, you’ll realize how valuable and easy networking can be, and you might even learn to enjoy yourself in the process!

Categories
Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development

Why We Must Make Hand-Offs Excellent

I recently had a pair of shoes re-soled. I always take my shoes to this one little repair shop in the west side of town. The gentleman there is detail oriented, very friendly, and prides himself in providing high quality services, excellent explanations, and exceptional customer service. I picked up the shoes and they looked so good (almost new) that I immediately packed them for a trip the very next day.

While making a presentation at a client I noticed a weird feeling of being off balance. The heal of my left shoe was missing. The client noticed me looking for it and exclaimed, “it’s under your table,” pointing to this black object. I was embarrassed. I tried to fix the heal but it just would not stay. I needed to buy a new pair of shoes that evening to avoid further embarrassment and possible injury walking on uneven shoes.

The shoe maker had no knowledge of my problems. With the best of intentions, he did his work and it was not nearly up to the usual standard of care I had been used to seeing from him. His poor-quality workmanship (or mistake) cost me embarrassment, inconvenience, and money. Poor hand-offs cause problems for customers in ways that we often never come to know.

One story of tragedy involving poor hand-offs concerns the Titanic. We all know the story of the great ship which hit the iceberg. Although the lookouts that evening saw the iceberg, the size of the ship, it’s lack of maneuverability, and its speed all contributed to the inability of the crew to turn the ship in time to avoid the disaster. The lookouts were without binoculars that evening.

The person responsible for the binoculars had forgotten to leave the keys to the cabinet where the binoculars were locked up. The crew could not access the binoculars and so the lookouts were told to do their important job without them. The hand-off of the keys to their proper place might have played a key factor in the demise of the ship that night. If the lookouts had seen the iceberg sooner, could the great ship been turned in time? We will never know.

As leaders, one of our responsibilities must be to consistently communicate the importance of delivering hand-offs exactly how the customer (internal and external) needs them, exactly when needed, and with the proper quantity and quality. Furthermore, leaders must create the environment that optimizes the probability all employees can and will manage their hand-offs with these results.

Toyota provides a notable example of an organization that does this well. One of their tools is the “Four Rules”. (Bowen, 1999) The rules provide one of the practical applications of Toyota’s philosophy which can be described in one sentence: “The right process will produce the right results”. (Glauser, 2005) The theory is that processes deliver results where as many leaders still focus on how individuals deliver results (80-90% of organizations have pay-for-performance policies which reward top performers). Toyota (and Dr. W. Edwards Deming) recognizes that processes, along with cooperation to improve processes, deliver results.

Thus, the Four Rules help everyone manage the quality of their individual hand-offs. The Rules are:

  1. All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.
  2. Every customer-supplier connection must be direct, and there must be an unambiguous yes-or-no way to send requests and receive responses.
  3. The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct.
  4. Any improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, under the guidance of a teacher, at the lowest possible level in the organization. (Bowen, 1999)

These rules enable any organization to empower all employees to be responsible for the continuous improvement of their hand-offs. Setting this up requires optimum leadership. It requires a shift in thinking to results by process not results by individuals. It requires leaders to remove barriers instead of evaluating individual performance. It requires a creation of an environment with trust and a reduction of fear.
Focusing on improving hand-offs can avoid everything from embarrassment to hitting an iceberg.

Dr. Wally Hauck, CSP helps leaders boost profit by unleashing the genius of every employee. By showing leaders how to get the best from their teams, with proven methods and by avoiding morale-busting mistakes, leaders can achieve their strategic goals more quickly and with less waste.

For more than 20 years Wally has worked with nearly 200 organizations, hundreds of leaders, and thousands of employees to optimize engagement and customer experience. Many have achieved significant transformational improvements.

Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP. As a professor of Organizational Change and Development at the University of New Haven in Connecticut Wally received the highest ratings of all professors in 2012.

Wally is a proud member of the C-Suite Advisors Network

Bowen, S. S. (1999). Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System. Harvard Business Review.

Glauser, E. C. (2005, April 1). The Toyota Phenomenon. Retrieved from The Swiss Deming Institute: http://deming.org

Categories
Growth Leadership Operations Personal Development

Could You Own CustomerService.com?

Would you like to own a really cool website?

Since my life’s mission is to help companies create a customer service experience that their customers would think is amazing, I thought that could be demonstrated well if I owned the domain name CustomerService.com. But then I also thought that certainly some company totally focused on their customers would already own it. So, I typed the URL into an Internet browser, and do you know what I found? The site was for sale! Nobody was currently using this domain.

I thought that it would be neat for my brand to be the owner of this domain. But how much of an investment would that require? Well, I found out that the investment would be substantial, at least by my standards. I would love to have an asset that would brand me to customer service forever. However, budget is an issue for me, and domain names like these sell for really big dollars.

Well, if I can’t own it, which other brands can you think of who would love to have their name associated with CustomerService.com? The first ones that came to my mind were the obvious shining stars in the world of customer experience: American Express, Amazon, Ace Hardware, Nordstrom, Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Zappos … The brands you know and trust for providing amazing service.

But what about a brand … like Comcast? Just a few years ago, a phone call from a customer to their support center was handled poorly and it ended up going viral across the Internet. Since then, Comcast has been working hard to improve their reputation. So, would owning CustomerSerivce.com help them along this path? If so, they better hurry before one of their competitors, like AT&T or Sprint, beats them to it.

Whomever does decide to buy the name should be prepared to pay quite a hefty price for it. The present owners will likely eventually sell the domain name, but for more than seven figures. For the right brand, though, it may be well worth the price. For example, who better to own Toys.com than Toys ‘R’ Us? In 2009 they paid $5.1 million for the site. And if you’re in the mortgage business, it seems like Loans.com would be a natural fit. In 2000 Bank of America bought the domain name for $3 million. Just imagine owning a URL that could help define who you are.

So, which brand do you think should own CustomerService.com? Why not you?
Hypothetically (or even maybe not), what if you did own the URL? To be authentic, that would mean you would also need to live up to “owning” customer service. Do you believe you are worthy of owning it? More importantly, do you believe that your customers would agree that you are worthy of owning it? If you did own the site, would you do anything differently than you’re doing now to live up to the expectation of a brand that owned CustomerService.com?

These are good questions. So, pretend you do own the URL. Take a few moments to answer the above questions as though you do own the name. Your answers may give you a few ideas on how to deliver to your customers an even better experience. The point is, whether you own CustomerService.com or not, treat your customers as though you do.

Categories
Marketing Personal Development Technology

How Can CMOs Be Ready for Big Data?

Many will tell you that we are already in the age of Big Data, and maybe we are. But the truth is that whatever pile of data we have today will look puny in just a few short years. Big Data keeps getting bigger, so whether you think we have already arrived or Big Data is around the corner, how can CMOs be ready for what comes next?

It’s not that complicated, actually. The most important step any CMO can take is to move to a data-driven decision-making process. What that means is no more “golden gut.” What that means is that we don’t ask the CMO what to do–we ask the data what to do. It doesn’t matter whether the data we have now is big or medium-sized. The truth is that most companies do a crappy job with small data.

How would your job be different if every time someone asked you to decide something, you asked what the data shows? And if there is no data, you asked how we could get some? And if no one knows how to get the data, you ask what kind of experiment can we run to get the data?

For some CMOs, that’s very threatening. They believe that their job, like any good executive, is to make the tough decisions. And that’s true. But what if the toughest decision you will ever have to make is to give up your own personal control and seek the data to make the decisions?

Data-driven decision-making is a culture change. It says that instead of believing in our own opinions, that we will focus on our customers’ opinions. When we focus on data that tells us what our customers want, it’s amazing what geniuses we become.

It feels like data-driven marketing is a loss of control. But what we need to accept is that depending on our own opinions is the most out of control we can be. Each decision that we make personal might feel under control, but competing against companies that decide based on data will quickly make us extremely uncomfortable–because they are making better decisions than we are. And in just a few years, we won’t be making decisions based on data–we will be providing rules for computers to make decisions based on data. We’ll do that because people can’t decide fast enough.

Have you reconsidered your reliance on data for decisions? Moving to data-driven processes prepares you for the onslaught of data that is coming for all of us.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development Women In Business

How to Position Yourself as The Go-To Expert in Your Niche Market

Accelerate Your Market Positioning to Gain More Credibility, More Clients and More Sales

Quickly accelerate your brand awareness and expertise by effectively marketing yourself as the go-to expert within your niche market or industry. Learn how to become recognized as the authority and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

During this inspiring presentation, you will learn how to expand your value, increase your fees, and multiply your income streams to create more sales and profits.

Learn How To:

  • Quickly accelerate your brand to become known as the go-to
    expert in your niche market.
  • Stand out, get noticed and gain more high-paying clients.
  • Dominate your competition.
  • Create multiple income streams around your expertise to dramatically increase your income.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development Women In Business

How to Engage Listeners With the Surprising Pause

Power Speaking Skills: Strategies to Engage Listeners With the “Surprising” Pause:

In this video, Maria demonstrates how to engage your business listeners with the power of the Surprising Pause and make your delivery truly compelling.

The Successful Speaker, Inc. video series provides speaking strategies that will help you enhance your credibility and leadership presence during meetings, sales presentations, conversations with senior management, networking events, and even by phone.

The video series addresses every aspect of successful speaking, including how to sound authoritative, speak with credibility, master active listening, and engage your listeners. The videos also provide speaking strategies rooted in theatrical performance, providing tips on how to build belief and captivate your business listeners.

The Successful Speaker, Inc. videos will help you get more YES’s whenever you speak for business. Learn how to enhance your credibility and speak with passion, persuasion, and pizzazz.

Categories
Growth Leadership Operations Personal Development

Deliver the Kind of Customer Service That Would Make Radar Proud!

Do you remember the hit TV show M*A*S*H, which played from 1972 to 1983, and was based on the novel and movie by the same name? While you might consider the show a sitcom, many critics viewed it as a “dramedy,” instead of a comedy, because of its heavy dramatic setting, which was a medical unit during the Korean War. Sure, the show created a lot of laughs, but the message behind the show was very serious. But what does M*A*S*H have to do with customer service?

One of the characters of the show, Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly, played by Gary Burghoff, actually was the customer service department for the M*A*S*H unit. Radar worked for Colonel Potter, who led the unit. It always led to laughs whenever Colonel Potter barked out a request for a file, only to have Radar walking into his office with that file, even before the Colonel had finished making his request. It was as though he could read his leader’s mind, or as his nickname indicates, as though he had radar.

This frequently-played humorous incident from the show reminded me of another incident – an interview I had recently with a potential employee who was applying to be my assistant here at Shepard Presentations. During the interview, I asked her, “What makes a good assistant?” She simply replied, “Radar O’Reilly.” When I asked her to explain this unexpected, brief answer, she said, “Oh, that’s the kind of assistant I want to be – knowing what you want before you even ask for it.”

I thought it was an excellent response. Whether you are assisting an executive or assisting a customer, one of the many attributes of someone who delivers outstanding customer service is the ability to anticipate a customer’s needs – like Radar, knowing what he or she wants even before they ask.

This doesn’t take E.S.P., Extra Sensory Perception, which is the ability to read minds. Instead, it takes what I call E.A.P., or Extra Awareness Perception, which is the ability to know more, because you are simply more aware and are paying closer attention than the average employee. That’s it. Just pay close attention to your customers, their behaviors, and their habits. When you begin to study your customers, and get to know them and their habits, you’ll be able to anticipate or predict, with uncanny accuracy, what they will ask for next – sometimes even before they know they need to ask.

So, as we think about Radar O’Reilly’s uncanny ability to anticipate Colonel Potter needs, see if you can also determine what your customers are going to ask for next. If you try it, you may find that your guess is more accurate than you think. Take the initiative and deliver a standard of customer service that would make Radar proud. The result will be … customer amazement!

Categories
Growth Management Skills

The Dirtiest Word In Business – Multitasking

There is one word in Corporate America that makes my blood boil. It’s not the typical clichés like synergy, think outside the box, right size, paradigm shift, or leverage. It’s a word used in job descriptions as a positive skill and one used as an excuse too many times to count for why someone is not listening during a meeting.

The word is “multitasking”! I hate this word more than any other word in business and in life for that matter. “Multitasking” is what society has decided means it’s OK to stop listening to those you are talking to. When did that become a skill to be proud of?

Keep reading if you feel that you or your team could be more productive, but you are not sure how. Let’s talk about why multitasking is not real, why it’s not an asset to your organization, and then examine what you can do about it so that you and your team are more productive and more effective.

“I’m sorry can you repeat yourself? I was multitasking,” was a phrase I would hear at least 5 times on each call with one particular client. As a consultant I politely said sure and repeated myself while in my head I was screaming, cussing, and thinking, “How rude are you to waste my time and everyone else’s time on this call by making us repeat ourselves because you have more important things to do. Well excuse me for interrupting your day with what I believe is your job.”

That’s an example I’ve experienced on phone calls, but it happens so often in conference rooms too. There is the one person sitting in the conference room with you and your team looking at their phone whether for text or email. They look up when someone says their name for the second time to blank stares of the people waiting for them to answer a question. They of course say, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that? I was multitasking,” and the person repeats the question.

If you are going into a meeting and you are not responsible for keeping the lights on or the network running there is really no reason to have your phone. I’ve heard the excuse, “Well, I have to look at my calendar so I know where my next meeting is.” Great, then look at it between meetings or write it down on a piece of paper like we used to. 99% of the time you don’t need your phone during the meeting. I believe there should be a no phone rule in all meetings and that goes for everyone in the room.

It seems that people have turned to technology for everything, but most business problems are really people problems. That means technology cannot always solve our problems and it is time to put the technology down and step away. It is time to get back to the human connection that built this country and economy. It is time to start communicating and respecting each other again and that cannot be done behind the screen of your phone, tablet, or laptop.

When people say they are multitasking, they are typically talking about doing two things like reading and listening or listening and writing at the same time. They make claims – to themselves and others – like, “Keep talking, I can listen while I type this report,” “I can be present on the conference call while reading the email that just came in,” “I can write this presentation while watching the news.” Can you really do those things simultaneously? The answer is that you cannot and there is a scientific reason why.

The reason you cannot do these things at the same time is because all those activities are being handled by the same part of the brain and your brain cannot do multiple things at the same time that are processed from the same place.

Yes, you can walk and talk, or read and walk on the treadmill, or listen to music and clean the kitchen at the same time. You can use different parts of your brain at the same time for those activities. But you cannot use the same part of your brain for multiple tasks at the same time.

It might feel like you are doing them at the same time, but in reality your brain is switching back and forth between the two tasks. One moment you are writing and the next you are listening and then back and forth. That means you are hearing half of what is being said and slowing down your thoughts around what you are writing or working on. You are most likely increasing your error rate while decreasing your effectiveness and productivity, neither of which are benefits to you or your organization. Don’t forget the fact that you are being rude in the process.

Did you know that on average people look at their phones nine times an hour and 110 times a day? That’s once every six to seven minutes! That is not my definition of productivity. If you stop what you are working on that frequently to look at your phone, how long does it take you to get back on track once you stop looking at your phone? If an employee is working on a project, how much is your company spending on them to check their phone when they could be working on the project, delivering it faster and for a lower cost? How about you? How much is it costing the company when you do the same thing, at your salary?

This is not just about work and meetings; it’s also about life and how we treat our family and friends. Nowadays, it’s commonplace for people to look at phones while at the dinner table; to hold their phone during a conversation indicating that something more important might show up in the form of a text, email, or call; or to read email while chatting on the phone. I am guilty of this, and I am working to do better. The first step is admitting that something needs to change and then observing our patterns so we can change the actions.

Start to take inventory every time you stop to look at your phone. When you think you are multitasking, what is it costing you and your company? What about the conference call that could take 20 minutes that ends up taking 40 minutes because people have to keep repeating themselves? How much focus and money are you actually losing to multitasking?

Every time you catch yourself saying “what?” to someone, check in with yourself to see what happened. Were you truly unable to hear or understand what they said, or were you not paying full attention? Become more self-aware of your own habit around multitasking.
Decide what kind of leader do you want to be and then be that leader. Be the change you want to see in your organization and then lead by example, walk the talk and create an organization of respect where everyone is more productive and more present. Only good things can happen if you chose to take this journey, so will join me in debunking the multi-tasking myth?

For more resources or to contact me please visit www.c-suiteresults.com