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Category: Personal Development

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Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

It’s 2018, But What Makes This Any Different than 2017, 2016 or Even 1999?

How did you feel this morning?  Are you still as enthused and as energized as you were January 1st (Or maybe January 2nd or 3rd depending on how you spent New Year’s Eve)?  Most people hit the gym or went to work with a new sense of purpose on Tuesday the 2nd.  A new sense of purpose that was fueled by resolutions to do better or achieve more in 2018 but, what makes this any different than 2017 or 2016 or even 1999?  You probably started those years with the same level of optimism and desires, but by the end of March that year looked no different than the year before.

Being inspired to do better is the easy part.  Envisioning the “new you“ is very satisfying and makes you feel happy, self-satisfied and inspired.  In a sense it is a very spiritual and uplifting feeling of being unburdened by your past habits and behaviors. Sadly, however, that feeling will be short lived for most people as they slowly get sucked back into their old ways.  Why? Mostly because they weren’t prepared.  They may have a vision, but they failed to plan their actions or develop a plan that would alter their behavior in a positive way.

If you want to maintain that happy, shiny new feeling throughout 2018 you need to do these 6 things:

  1. Create a Vision of Yourself or your life as the new you. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.  This is your chance to dream and ask yourself; where do I want to live?  How do I want to look and feel like physically? What do I want from my relationships with family, friends or my partner? It’s your dream so go ahead and imagine your happiness.
  2. Set Meaningful Goals using the WHY SMART formula. These are goals that are Written, are Harmonious with one another and with your life, and they are Yours – not someone else’s goal for you or what you think someone else expects.  These are your goals and they must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound.
  3. Put your Goals in Writing. There are few things more powerful than writing down your goals.  It is a commitment and you own it. Studies have shown that those who write down their goals achieve significantly more than those who do not have written goals so, go ahead and write them down and then put them in a place where you see them and are reminded of them throughout your day.  Or, better yet, share them with someone in your life who is non-judgmental like a personal trainer, a life coach or mentor.
  4. Set Action Plan and Benchmarks. This goes hand in hand with your WHY SMART goals. Goals must be supported by an action plan that details all of the things you must do to overcome the obstacles that have hindered your success in the past.  These actions are the steps you are going to take along the way to achieve your vision.  Benchmarks, on the other hand, are the mile markers along the way that recognize the progress that you are making.  So for instance, if your goal was to lose 20 lbs. in 5 months you might break that down into 4 lbs. per month, or even a pound a week.
  5. Maintain a Positive Attitude. Attitude is everything – it is the secret sauce to success, if you will.  There will be any number of things along the way that can sway you from your new behaviors.  Deadlines at work, unexpected business trips, family emergencies are just a few, but you must realize these distractions are normal.  They are not unusual circumstances that allow you to set your dreams aside.  Yes, there will be some backsliding – 2 pounds gained instead of a pound lost – but you must maintain a positive attitude that you will achieve your goals. Be assured that the same positive attitude will go a long way in getting you through all of life challenges.
  6. Don’t forget to Celebrate Success. Reward yourself for achieving your benchmarks and let them be a reminder of your greater vision. Achieving a vision can be hard work at times but celebrating your small wins along the way will keep you motivated and determined to reach the next benchmark.

It is never too late to start taking charge of your life, and there is no time like the present to create your vision, commit it to paper and begin your journey to the new you.

 

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Accounting Best Practices Economics Entrepreneurship Human Resources Industries Investing Management Marketing News and Politics Skills Technology Women In Business

How to Use Reverse Questioning to Win More Negotiations

“The degree of success you experience in life and in negotiations is based to a degree on asking the right questions successfully.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

You no doubt know what reverse engineering is, right? Reverse questioning in a negotiation is the process of identifying the questions you need to ask in order to obtain the answers that will lead to a successful negotiation outcome. It’s also a way to identify how you’ll control the flow of the negotiation.

As a quick example, if you wanted to exit a negotiation paying $1,000 for a product you’d work from the outcome sought back to the beginning of the negotiation; you might also consider working back from that point to how you would position yourself prior to entering into the negotiation. To perform the latter, you’d assess the requirements needed (i.e. how you’d position yourself) to have your persona projected in a certain light/manner.

The following is what the step-by-step process would look like.

  1. Identify the most and least favorable outcome you’ll seek from the negotiation, along with why you’ve identified those points of juxtaposition. As a benefit, having that insight will help you identify exit points from the negotiation.
  2. Assemble a list of questions that might be asked of you as you would go through the negotiation.
  3. Create answers to the questions posed in step 2 that are needed to drive your efforts towards a winning negotiation outcome, while formulating questions you’ll ask to keep the negotiation on track; these will be your defensive questions. Identify points where you can answer a question with a question; remember, the person asking the questions is the person controlling the negotiation. That’s due to the fact, that person is gaining more information.
  4. Once you create and address step 3, create a list of questions that you might ask of the other negotiator that’s separate from the ones you might use to respond to his questions; these will become your offensive questions. Offensive questions are questions that move your negotiation efforts quicker towards the end of the negotiation; they are questions that the other negotiator has to agree with because they’re based on what he’s previously stated as his beliefs or truths; you’ll be weaponizing his thoughts and questions against him. Some of these questions will also come in the form of questions that answer questions.
  5. Assess how the opposing negotiator might respond to your scenario.
  6. Continue going over steps 1 through 5, in an attempt to uncover additional questions that you’d not considered that need to be included in the process.
  7. Once you feel you’ve honed the questions to a point that the other negotiator has to follow a prescribed path that you’ve created for the negotiation, test your hypothesis in a mock negotiation. This will allow your questioning process to become more refined and may uncover better/additional questions.
  8. Once you feel totally prepared to utilize your questions in a negotiation, do so. Engage with the confidence in knowing that you’ve created a stealthy way of capturing better information as you go throughout the negotiation.
  9. Save your questions in a repository to be used for comparison to past and future negotiation situations.

 

The wrong question asked at the right time in a negotiation may do incalculable harm. The wrong question asked at the wrong time in a negotiation may lead to a negotiation impasse. Create and test your questions before entering into a negotiation and you’ll have more of a chance to reach a successful negotiation outcome … and everything will be right with the world.

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com 

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #Bully #Question

#psychology

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Management Marketing Personal Development

5-Time Emmy Winner Consultant to Media Celebrities: How to Become Known

As part of my nationally syndicated radio show, Take the Lead, I interview top leaders and successful individuals who share their success stories.  I recently had the chance to interview Nick Nanton, who is a 5-time Emmy winner and consultant to celebrity authors and speakers.

To hear the entire interview, you can go to http://www.podcastgarden.com/episode/nick-nanton_121234

The following are highlights of what he discussed in our interview:

  • Starting off as a lawyer gave credibility
  • The importance of being published
  • Becoming a bestseller
  • Working alongside Steve Forbes, Jack Canfield, President George H. W. Bush, Dan Kennedy, and more
  • Creating your brand
  • How much it costs
  • Media marketing and PR mix
  • Self-publishing vs. traditional publishing
  • Getting on TV as an expert
  • TED talks
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Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development Technology

Security is Not an IT Problem

Over the past 12 + years working as an Information Security (now known as Cyber Security) consultant, I saw too many situations where security was not implemented because the business thought that the IT department or Information Security (InfoSec) department could and would take care of it for them.

Before we go further let me define two things; 1) InfoSec is often a separate department from IT, especially in larger organizations, and 2) when I say “the business” I mean any part of the organization that is not IT or InfoSec.

The business is typically the groups that are directly related to the product you sell or the service you offer (sales, marketing, the call center, business users, etc.). They handle customer or sensitive data to do their job, they talk directly with the customer or client, or they directly support the organization (HR and accounting for example). These are the folks I am calling “the business.”

If you are a non-technical executive or business leader you might think that implementing security is the job of IT or InfoSec, however what we are going to talk about today is that if you want your organization to be secure and your data to remain your data, it’s time to look at this very differently.

It is very common for the business to think about security or bring the project to InfoSec right before they are ready to deploy a new system. Sometimes only because security got a “whiff” of the project or the project team looked at a security checklist and said “oh we should run this by security” and then ask, “Is this secure?” or “Can you make it secure?”

The problem with the scenario I just described is that it puts the cart before the horse. The cart being the business project or system that has been built and the horse being security.

It would be like building a bank and the week before it opens saying, “We should put in a vault, some locks, cameras, and ensure that we don’t get robbed, can we do that now?”

In my experience many business projects are implemented to automate a process or make something easier, faster, or better for the business user or customers. A call center rep looking up information for a customer or processing a transaction, providing customers the ability to pay online, or an automated time and attendance systems are all examples of a business initiated project that deals with a lot of sensitive data that needs to be protected.

Without security, these new systems might lead you to hand over the crown jewels of your organization, whether it is intellectual property or customer data, without you realizing it. Therefore let’s look at why security must start with the business and the reason IT or even the Information Security department can’t do it for you.

First and foremost, the business decides what data they need – if you are collecting information from customers, suppliers, partners, the government, or anyone for that matter; it is the business who determines what and how much data they need to get the job done and/or provide a service. IT or InfoSec never dictate the type of data a business user collects or how long it must be retained. The IT department supports the collection and storage of the data after the business determines what they need. IT can support security requirements through technical mechanisms to protect the data, but only if they know where the data is that needs to be secured.

It is the business who decides how they collect the data – do they want it to come in via website, call center, fax, mail, etc. The business determines the process flow to collect the data. IT or InfoSec does not say how data should be collected. IT can enable the data to be collected via technical means, but it is the business who makes the ultimate decision on how they want to collect it. IT cannot help secure a business process they don’t know about or have not been told contains sensitive data.

It is even the business that decides who has access to the data – which employees need to access the data in order to process orders, fulfill customer requests, service contracts, etc., and what level of access they need to do that job. IT may create the accounts, but they do not dictate who gets access to which types of data. Limiting access to data and administrative permissions is a key in basic security, which IT will gladly support.

The business also decides how long they need access to the data. Often what we see when there is a data breach is that there was a great amount of data available to the hacker because the business decided to keep sensitive data much longer than necessary. IT can help purge and remove data when they are told by the business what the data retention requirements are.

Lastly it is the business who decides what data is shared with external third parties and often the security of the third parties is not known or checked. InfoSec is a great resource for helping to validate the security of a third party, but they can only do this when they know who the business is sending sensitive data to.

All of these business decisions get fleshed out when they are developing their business and user requirements, often times in a vacuum without any insight or consulting by IT or InfoSec. Then they create system requirements for the developers who make their vision a reality, but if they have not included security requirements in their system requirements they will often get missed. That is because developers and IT staff who make all of the technical stuff possible are not often security professionals, they are IT professionals.

Just because someone is in IT does not mean they think about security. It’s like going to a general practitioner doctor and assume they are thinking about nutrition, you often need a specialist to discuss what to eat for your specific goals. The IT department is responsible for keeping servers and desktops running, making sure there are no network outages, that databases are available and connected to applications, that systems are developed to work as requested by the business, and that the technology is available when a user needs it.

Security is different because in many cases good security makes access harder and impedes the business and the IT users. It often means the IT folks have to document more and it can take longer to implement server configurations. Security is done by security professionals, who often have IT backgrounds, but are not typically your IT staff.

All of this shows you why discussing security has to start with the business and why the executives making business decisions need to include IT and InfoSec in the discussion from the very beginning. Security must be included throughout the lifecycle of any business or IT project, but all too often is left out of the planning and the cart is ready to go with no horse in sight.

If you have questions or don’t have a Chief Information Security Officer to help bridge the discussions between the business and IT with a security perspective, email sharon@c-suiteresults.com to discuss your challenges and virtual CISO services that are designed to help small and medium size organizations maintain their security posture.

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Best Practices Management Marketing Personal Development

Don’t Just Sell Value. Live It.

Selling value is more widespread than most think…and at the same time, more narrowly practiced than it should be.

“Selling Value” isn’t just the domain of sales methodologies with variations of that term in a sales training course title. Most selling methodologies I’ve ever come across implicitly sell value whether they use that term or not.  All of those in the “needs satisfaction” family, and even some in the “tricky conversational box-building” school of selling, help sellers to connect aspects of their offer to a gap experienced by a customer. Full disclosure:  I work with Miller Heiman Group, whose skills and methodology offerings build a value connection with a customer’s solution image extremely effectively throughout the selling process.

As pervasive as a seller-centric emphasis on value is, it falls short.  I was exposed to the concept of creating customer value before I’d even heard before I started carrying a bag and was coached to “sell the value”.  As a Product Manager, I developed new products to provide specific unique value to customers.  I certainly collaborated with my company’s sales professionals.  I, and everyone who contacted a customer — even many who didn’t –maintained our primary focus on what each customer valued, then worked hard to provide it.

Here’s the Mind Shift

When I say that selling value is almost always performed too narrowly, I mean:

Stop selling value only as a sales methodology

Especially in today’s complex B2B world, the arc of the customer experience is slivered into contacts with a multitude of organizations/roles in your company:  Marketing, sales development, inside sales, outside sales, application engineering,/technical sales, underwriting, account management, implementation teams, customer success managers, account managers, customer service, technical support, billing/accounts receivable…and more, I’m sure. Every touchpoint with your customer represents a human connection with some aspect of customer value.  As a sales performance professional, I can guarantee you that your sellers have only a tunnel-vision view into the full arc of customer value that your company creates with any customer.

Knowing this, how crazy is it to assume that the only group whose job it is to gather information on value..and then sell it.. is your sales force?

It gets worse.  How crazy is it to use customer value only to sell?  A huge resource goes untapped when (only) sales fails to carry value insights back to those in product/service design, product management, shipping, servicing, manufacturing, logistics, purchasing, scheduling, etc.  I have lived a corporate culture where customer-perceived value is the pervasive mantra.

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Accounting Best Practices Economics Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Industries Investing Management Marketing News and Politics Skills Taxes Technology Women In Business

Don’t Hurt the Leader’s Position

“A leader is someone that possesses the ability to successfully lead others from the front or the rear. Always know the position of your leader.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

When someone is serving as the leader of your team and you’ve agreed to give them your support, follow their lead; don’t hurt them or your team by engaging in intended or unintended subterfuge.

In the daily activities of everyone’s life, everyone follows someone. Thus, those that you follow have influence by the fact that you anoint them as someone to lead you. You embolden them with that privilege by the fact that you follow their edict/mandate/suggestions. That being the case, don’t undermine the leader by:

  1. Going off-point per a strategy that has been discussed and agreed upon (e.g. going around the leader to gain attention for yourself, etc.)

 

  1. Engaging with outside sources that have not been agreed upon – make sure the leader knows what you’re planning to do

 

  1. Creating ad-hoc strategies when you’re in the midst of interactions with those that are not on your team/group

When you subvert the direction of the lead that you’ve granted to someone, you forgo potential opportunities, and diminish your team’s ability to implement the plan that’s been agreed upon; that can be costly in time and opportunities. You may also be cloaking into darkness the light of opportunities that may have shown themselves to you in the future (i.e. if you prove not to be a team player, no one will want you on their team.)

If you’re going to be a team player, play follow the leader by supporting the person that you’ve chosen to follow. Do so to the degree that such returns are beneficial to you and the team. Once you decide that you no longer wish to engage, inform the leader of your intent and disengage. Don’t just drop out without any communication. If you restrict the flow of communications, you don’t know what potential door(s) you’ll close that might have offered opportunities that could lead you to higher heights.

As long as you’ve decided to follow the leader, don’t hurt her. You’ve made a conscious decision to allow her to lead. So, follow her lead as long as it serves you and her … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In a team negotiation environment, the leader of the team can position and pose as any of its members; it doesn’t have to be the person that projects the image of a leader at the negotiation table. Depending on the strategy chosen by the team, the leader may pose as someone that’s in a strategic position for a particular negotiation. He may also be positioned as someone that a senior person on the team can replace once the negotiation has reached a certain point.

The point is, once you have a strategy in place, don’t undermine it by undermining the person that’s the lead for the negotiation. Not only will you be weakening her, you’ll also be weakening your team’s negotiation position and the perspective beneficial outcome of the negotiation for all of you.

 

What are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to  sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #Leadership

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Growth Management Operations Personal Development

Apple Has a "Bad Spot" That Damaged Trust

We in the USA are so fortunate when we grocery shop. Our grocery stores have excellent quality and amazing selection.  Thank you “capitalism”.  Choice and a combination of competition and cooperation (capitalism) have provided this.  So, when we choose fruit, we can afford to be picky. If we want apples, we can afford to choose only “perfect” apples.  There is no reason to choose an apple with a bad spot, correct?

Apple just created their own bad spot and it caused me to pause and ask if perhaps I should pick a different “apple”.  They purposely slowed the iPhone processing on the older phones.  That decision alone is not the reason for my concern.  I am concerned because they didn’t communicate.  They didn’t ask.  They just did it and they damaged my trust in them.  I saw a bad spot.

Apple management claimed the positive intentions of saving battery life and avoiding unwanted sudden shut downs.  Class action suits were filed, and Apple management was forced to apologize. Some customers believed Apple intentions were not so positive.  These customers are upset because they believe the slowdown was timed immediately after a new product release to encourage upgrades.

There is no doubt the iPhone is an impressive product with very high standards and very high quality.  But, high quality and innovative technology does not cause people to disregard disrespectful communication or a lack of timely communication.  Apple’s lack of communication about this change was part of the reason their customers interpreted these decisions as manipulative in nature.

For us leaders, this is a great lesson.  There are basic leadership qualities people expect in all interactions. They expect to be treated like adults.  They expect to be treated with respect and integrity.  Customers are unwilling to compromise these.  They are especially less likely to forgive and forget when they are missing at the same time.

What could Apple have done?  Perhaps communicate respectfully before acting?  Even better, perhaps provide the opportunity for feedback, e.g. allow customers to take a survey or provide their opinions about viable solutions for the older batteries degrading? It doesn’t matter how great a product or service is.  If the company treats customers with disrespect and/or breaks in promises, loyalty will be damaged.

We can extrapolate this to employees.  No matter how brilliant an individual leader is, if he/she can’t treat constituents with respect and integrity, their willingness to trust that leader will be damaged.  Their willingness to follow the leader will suffer in ways that cannot be measured.

The actions by Apple management show a weakness in emotional intelligence skills. Technical skills are important, and Apple has an abundance.  But if they can’t predict how their customers will feel when they make major decisions, those technical skills will not save them from the damage to loyalty.

When shopping for apples, there is no reason to choose the one with the bad spot.

Check out the interview on C-Suite Best Seller TV to learn more about how to stop leadership malpractice and replace the typical performance review: https://www.c-suitetv.com/video/best-seller-tv-wally-hauck-stop-the-leadership-malpractice/

 

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal.  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.  Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

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Best Practices Economics Entrepreneurship Human Resources Personal Development Women In Business

Business Needs Early Childhood Education

My work as a business coach and my radio, TV and podcasting work (Business Builders Show) are all about sharing stories and information to help business owners and business leaders build their business. I share the belief that good business can change the world. And I see and hear results from individuals and companies all the time who are leading the charge in making the world a better place. Organizations like www.consciouscapitalism.org, companies like Cascade Engineering, in Grand Rapids, and leaders like Bob Chapman at Barry-Wehmiller are setting the example we need to follow in order to improve our work places, our communities, our country and the world (I believe we set the example leaders in other countries want to follow). Other companies and leaders I suggest you learn more about, you’ll find listed at www.bcorporation.net.

However, I’m concerned that our short term thinking about tax plans, GDP, stock price and other related indicators take up too much of our thinking. Of course, I know having the right tax structure, and a solid GDP along with a steady or increasing stock price is a good thing. HOWEVER, I have been thinking a lot about early childhood education. How is that being funded? What infrastructure is in place to help us develop good citizens who are intellectually, emotionally and socially ready to build our businesses in the next few decades?

I like working with small to mid-size companies. Once again, taxes and all economic indicators are important. Yet, the companies I work with DO think about the well being of their employees, and their communities. They put plans and actions into play that help their employees take care of their families, so they can afford the early childhood education their children need. They have reading programs, financial literacy training, they LISTEN to what is needed, not only to do business today, but in the future.

The future WILL arrive. Short term gains like a one-time bonus will allow us “to go shopping” to help us feel better and to fuel government statistics, yet, how will this help us ten, twenty or thirty years from now?

If what I shared made you THINK – mission accomplished. Read, listen, watch, learn, and act on what you think is best for all of us in the LONG run. The future will be here, will it be what we planned for?

If you want you want to yell at me or agree with me, I can be reached at marty@martywolffbusinesssolutions.com

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Growth Management Operations Personal Development

7 Skills Your Staff Needs to Deliver Consistently Excellent Customer Service

Take a moment right now and think about a company that’s known for providing an exceptional customer experience.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

When I pose this question to my audiences, a handful of names are shared repeatedly: Disney; The Ritz Carlton; Zappos; Chick-fil-a; Nordstrom’s.  One of the keys to their success is Consistency.  Regardless of which location you visit, or whom you speak with, your experience is consistently excellent. Every team member is striving to deliver red carpet customer service, to every customer, at every touch-point, every single time.

If you want to create this level of consistent service excellence within your organization, there are a few strategies that can help you reach that goal.

  1. Create a picture of what service excellence looks like in every area of your company. The senior leaders of each company named above created and communicate a very clear vision they are 100% committed to, and expect everyone on their team to be just as dedicated to carrying it out.

 

  1. Align all the pieces of your organization with that vision. In other words, the way you hire people, onboard and orient them, train them, treat them, reward and coach them must be in alignment with those expectations.

 

  1. Empower your team members at every level with the tools and training they need to deliver on those expectations.

While hiring people who have the innate qualities that are in alignment with your vision for customer service excellence, it’s still important to provide training. Good training will ensure the kind of consistency that will enable your company to become known for a red carpet experience. Remember, each employee a customer interacts with, makes an impression that formulates their total opinion of your entire organization. You want to make sure everyone is on the same page, and has had an opportunity to practice their skills in a safe setting.

As you create or search for the right customer service training for your staff,  here are seven skills that must be addressed in that curriculum. When it comes to interacting with customers, your team members must know how to:

  1. Make Red Carpet First and Last Impressions. When a customer interacts with any team member, are they made to feel welcomed and wanted? Soft-skills such as smiling, making eye contact and calling people by name may seem simple, but when every team member genuinely seems happy to serve the customers, it makes a huge impression! When your customers are acknowledged, remembered and thanked it’s a first step in gaining their trust and loyalty. You may have innately friendly people on your team. However, they may need the confidence that skills-practice can provide to pro-actively show that friendly personality to your customers.

 

  1. Use Confidence-Building Words and Phrases. While scripting can sometimes come across as fake and forced, teaching your team to improve their language skills can help them make a better impression. Words like “Yeah,” “Ok” and “Hang On,” can be replaced by “Absolutely,” “I’d be delighted to help,” and “Sally is the perfect person to answer that question for you. Would you mind holding for two minutes while I get her on the line?” Like anything else, getting comfortable using confidence-building phrases takes practice.

 

  1. Adjust their Approach when necessary. If there is one thing you can count on, it’s that every person is different. It takes flexibility to address the needs of your many customers. Your staff, however, may suffer from black-and-white thinking. It’s not their fault. They want to make sure they are following the rules and may not feel empowered to think for themselves when it comes to assisting a customer. Good customer service training will help your team members know how and when to adjust their approach for each customers, and when to check with a manager before going any further.

 

  1. Be Responsive, Speedy and Efficient. In a world where the answer to almost everything is at your fingertips, responsiveness is key. Your customers will quickly move on if they aren’t acknowledged and assisted in record time. Learning to be efficient and deliver goods and services quickly while, at the same time, allowing the customer the space they need to have a relaxed and happy experience is a skill that must be developed in every service professional to succeed in today’s marketplace.

 

  1. Handle and Turn Around Upset Customers. Remember the first few times you were faced with an angry customer? It wasn’t fun, was it? Especially if you weren’t equipped with the knowledge or skills to turn the situation around. Well, guess what? Your direct-line team members will undoubtedly face a disgruntled customer at some point in time. While that’s never a fun circumstance to be in, it becomes easier with tools and practice in a safe training setting.

 

  1. Be More Knowledgeable about your Products & Services. The fewer people your customers have to go through to get the answers to their questions they better. It follows that the more your direct-line team members know about your products and services, the happier your customers will be. Incorporate product knowledge into your customer service training and your on-going communication with your entire team.

 

  1. Personalize, Surprise and Delight. This is where the “red carpet service” comes in. Empower your team with a process for learning and noting customer preferences and train them to use that information to create memorable moments that will result in rave reviews online and elsewhere. These are the stories that get told and when everyone on your team is focused on created them, your customers will start telling them

When it comes to becoming known for customer service excellence, consistency is key. Have a clear vision, align your strategies with that vision and give everyone on your team time to practice these seven skills. You may find that when others are asked for the name of a company “known for exceptional customer service,” the name they give is yours.

Donna Cutting is the Founder & CEO of www.RedCarpetLearning.com., and the author of two books about customer service including her most recent, “501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers. Follow her on Twitter at @donnacutting, and Subscribe to www.theRedCarpetWay.tv

 

 

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Entrepreneurship Marketing Operations Personal Development

Without a Brand Promise a Brand is Just a Label

Brands go back to the Roman Empire. Products were emblazoned with a mark that identified the merchant. Today, brands don’t just indicate identity; they also represent the brand’s promise. This promise covers much more than just performance—it reaches packaging, quality, price, availability, and other factors that create your consumers’ expectations!

Modern distribution and communication can bring your brand to widespread recognition and reputation that are based on both past and present behavior. But this is an intricate double-edged sword! A brand with all-star reputation and distribution can excel in the marketplace, but on the other hand, a brand can lose its charm when just one consumer necessity fades. For example, brands can continue to provide good quality, dependability, and price, but they can lose favor by breaking their promise in different ways, like environmental practices or labor relations.

The brand promise is complex. Your consumer has their own expectations based on knowledge of your brand, no matter what you want your brand promise to be. If a consumer’s recent experience doesn’t match their expectations, not only will they stop using your brand, but they’ll also be compelled to warn others (to whom they’ve previously promoted your brand) to avoid it! When it comes to reputation, your former promoters can become formidable opponents. They have more authority with your consumers than you do.

This is why it’s essential for small startups and large corporations alike to understand the unpredictable nature of a brand promise. Start with accepting that you don’t own your brand. The consumer does! You don’t even own your brand promise—the consumer does! Your brand promises certain behavior in your customer’s experience that you and your marketing team might not even notice. New competitors, changes in the market, changes in your category, or even the news can sometimes alter your brand promise in your customers’ eyes. So be cautious and pay attention!

When people trust a brand, they want to feel completely comfortable. So, they stop looking for an alternative once they’ve discovered their brand. Shopping for a new brand fosters anxiety and possible disappointment. Understanding this can be a huge advantage to brand builders who don’t disappoint their followers. The more you know about how customers see your brand promise, the better you can honor it and remain relevant in their point of view.

Your customer service and salespeople know more about marketplace dynamics and consumer perception than your marketing staff. Why? Because they talk to consumers every day! Your salespeople have the most up-to-date info on the competition, your category, and the marketplace. When you break your brand promise, your customer service people know before anyone else in your company. To live up to your brand promise and to keep your devoted customers, we suggest a regular and formal line of communication between your Customer Service and Sales teams and your Production, R&D, Marketing, and Administrative teams.

It’s easy for creators to get too comfortable with their brands. They think they have reached their destination, when maintaining your brand promise is actually a persistent journey. Don’t allow your brand to become just another label. When you keep your brand promise, you keep your faithful customers as promoters for your brand.

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