To Go Where Your VisionPoints, a few inspiration points for you and your business.

Ralph Lauren has always stood for providing quality products, creating worlds and inviting people to take part in our dream. We were the innovators of lifestyle advertisements that tell a story and the first to create stores that encourage customers to participate in that lifestyle.
—Ralph Lauren

You don’t have to like Ralph Lauren’s dream. But I’m betting that almost all of my readers, almost anywhere in the world you may be reading this, know what that dream lifestyle is. It happens that Ralph Lauren, a scrappy little guy from the Bronx, hitched his wagon to a dream many folks have, and staying incredibly focused on that image for the company made him a billionaire.

We don’t buy Ralph Lauren. Not the scrappy Jewish kid, not the dreamer, not the climber, not today’s 69-year-old billionaire.

We don’t buy clothes. You can get those at WalMart.

We buy youth and leisure and effortless elegance and a romantic past we have nostalgia for without ever having lived it, because Ralph, that savvy businessman, made his Vision as pervasive as the air we breathe, all around the world. He never lets up.

“I’m no billionaire, Kelly. People buy me!”

Tell that to Ralph R. Lifshitz, tie salesman in his 1950s Bronx high school, who’d soon change his name to Lauren and start a little tie company lifestyle brand named Polo.

We’ve talked about it a lot here, but a recent conversation at Men With Pens got me thinking about Vision and Purpose all over again.

Even when your business is as small as young Ralph’s, people don’t buy you.

No. They don’t.

They buy the story you tell, the lifestyle you’ll help them achieve—even if it’s as simple as “Joe’s Cat Litter gives me more time in my day to enjoy my neglected husband.” Joe’s Cat Litter=Peaceful Love Nest. You’ve got to know your Vision backward and forward, then you have to tell me. And I’ve got to believe the story.

If you’re really lucky and really talented, you might tell a story we already deeply want to believe, like Ralph did. It’s no 1960s bygone fantasy. People do it all the time. Like Christian Lander does. Like Naomi Dunford does. Like Barack Obama did. They’re telling stories we want to believe.

The alternative? If you don’t define yourself, your customer will. And they might get it “wrong.”

Find your Vision. Tell your ONE story, every day, in all your customer interactions. Do your damnedest to find a story you have a unique angle on, that we already deeply want to believe, and hitch your wagon to it.

Simple, huh?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

(With a Special Request for You, Dear Reader, in the Post Script)

One year ago today, Kelly Erickson boldly sent a little post out into the world, launching the Maximum Customer Experience Blog.

Twelve months have flown by, and my world is forever changed. Lucky, lucky me.

Experience Design. What is it all about? And why do you need it? That’s been the mission of MCE, to answer those two questions, one little tease at a time. If you get the essence of your blog-writing down to two sentences you will never wonder what to write about, I guarantee you. In a year, I’ve rarely strayed.

Without further ado, the lists of twelves.

Note: I get a great number of searches, perfectly pinpointed to our discussions, coming here for exactly the right things: Customer Experience, Experience Design, Pain Points, Growing Your Small Business, and others. Let’s not talk about those, because they are not silly enough and it’s a birthday party!

Hang on a minute, I have to put my partyboots on. Yes, friends, as some of you have long suspected, I really own purple suede boots.

12 Long Tail Search Terms That Real (Strange) People Used to Come to This Site

1.  “kelly erickson” “paws” (He or she spent over 8 minutes on the site, people, because y’know, I am all about paws here! Can you say “sticky search term”?)

2.  navel angst (Glad I could help… I think…)

3.  open fire grow maximum client (Chestnuts roast there sometimes, too.)

4.  when you are still a wimp as an adult (Grow balls. I have no other advice.)

5.  handsome Canadians (I get way too many hits for this term—is it so difficult to walk down the street and see one?)

6.  papier mache dragon trophy (When I’m not all about paws, I am all about papier mache. Oh, yes.)

7.  poptarts/make your own poptart (I am all about… Oh, forget it.)

8.  what happens when libraries close on weekends (Umm, you can’t get books.)

9.  what is the number for brand riffs (If I even knew what you were talking about, this is one I’d consider answering.)

10.  share kelly erikson (I wish you would! Then maybe I could gather more strange terms for my next birthday post! But SPELL IT RIGHT, please…)

11.  sales of mclobster (Brett, you did this to me)

12.  pictures of a person growing to a next level (This frightens me in more ways than I could possibly name)

13.  BONUS: arnie’s artic cat in novar, ontario (HOW can I possibly come up in a search for this?)

12 People Who Would Never Believe I Get Search Engine Traffic From Their Names

1.  Dave Balter (Okay, he’d believe it, I did a couple of posts discussing his brilliance)

2.  Chris Brogan

3.  Naomi Dunford

4.  The Other Kelly Erickson (*sigh,* still #1)

5.  Bill Gates (#2, in number of folks coming here after searching for something about him)

6.  Bob Hoffman

7.  Guy Kawasaki

8.  Brett A. Legree (Is that your middle initial, Brett?)

9.  Taylor Lindstrom

10.  Gordon Ramsay

11.  Lou Reed

12.  Mr. Rogers

12 Topics You Should Never Write About (Unless You Want This Kind of Reader, in Droves)

1.  Giving away the milk for free

2.  Dead mice

3.  Harvey’s

4.  McDonald’s

5.  Peeing on electric fences

6.  Leonardo DiCaprio

7.  Toupees

8.  Never falling in love again

9.  Ersatz anything (Friar…)

10.  Bowling balls (see #7)

11.  Kid Rock

12.  The Yellow Pages

12 People Who’ve Made the Last Twelve Months Funnier, Sweeter, Smarter, and More Inspirational for Me and MCE

(No pushing in line—alpha order, folks)  ::hugs:: and a link to my favorite Customer Experience posts

1.  Amy, Write From Home

2.  Brett, 6 Weeks

3.  Caroline, Caroline Middlebrook and Life Should Feel Good!

4.  Friar, The Deep Friar

5.  Glenn, Customer Service Experience

6.  Graham, Strong White Papers

7.  James, Men With Pens

8.  Janice, Painting a Day

9.  Sonia, Remarkable Communication

10.  Steph, In Other Words

11.  Steve, All This ChittahChattah

12.  Wendi, Life’s Little Inspirations

13.  BONUS 1 (You know I can’t stick to thanking 12 people): Brian, Copyblogger (I’ve said it before, MCE wouldn’t be here without him)

14.  BONUS 2: The Kid

15.  BONUS 3: Mom and Dad

And to all the other folks who really should get a mention here, because I am devoted to you and thrilled that you are devoted to me, a *big, big thank you.*

As a blog author, you, dear reader, are my customer. I strive every day to remember that this “business” is all about you.

The minute I chose to start a blog, I made that choice. From readability to information to entertainment (c’mon, it has to be fun, at least some of the time, right?), I’m here for you. Without each and every reader, this would be nothing more than a diary.

We create Maximum Reader Experience every day, together.

As I blow out the candles on this twelfth month (237th post, for those of you who are keeping track, with a beautiful 2,315 comments), let me tell you what I’m wishing.

I wish for daily Tweets and a million Stumbles.   *ahem* No, seriously…

I wish for wonderful word-of-mouth growth in readers; I wish I could have conversations with more of you here in the comments and as I learn about you back at your own blogs; I wish to help you to flourish in your workaday life, to create the Experience you want for yourself, your colleagues, and your customers. I wish to get your head nodding and to give you an occasional grin.

I wish for your business, your heart, and your mind to grow, and I wish for your person and your family to be well.

My very best regards,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. Writing a birthday post, it seems to me, should be done by a guest poster. At my 100th post I jumped right in with gusto. Here at twelfthmonth, Happy Birthday to Me seems to be causing me fits of self-examination angst, which is nothing like navel angst (unless it is?).

>>So I would love it if you all, my devoted readers, would put a link in your comments today mentioning your favorite post here at MCE. It would be a lovely birthday gift to see what has touched you, helped you, or made your laugh the most. Thanks in advance!<<

When I was a real estate agent, I was as young and green and full of plans as they come. I read Danny Kennedy and anyone else claiming to know how to be the best agent ever; I determined to work day and night introducing myself to folks; I focused my head off; I made a plan, and worked it like anything.

In part this was because of my mentor, the Realtor who managed our office. He was a wise man who knew how crazy the turnover is in real estate and wasn’t afraid to tell us—if we weren’t afraid to hear it.

“Most people sell a few houses for their friends and family, come in fifteen or twenty hours a week, wonder why their business isn’t taking off after such a promising start, and give up in six months,” he told me. “If you don’t come in you won’t make any money. I tell you this now because I don’t like to bring people in who don’t want a full-time job. Okay?”

I was far from friends or family, so I had no chance of that jump start from my personal market. I had energy, and I had cocky faith in myself. I had one more thing—an astounding desire to avoid looking like a fool to my mentor. I’d be the hardest working marketer he’d ever seen, so he wouldn’t be sorry he hired this young blonde chick.

I’ll keep you in suspense no longer. I’d never give the brilliant Wendi Kelly a run for her money in r.e. sales. One house in six months of fifty and sixty hour weeks. I was horrified, but not mortified. I worked it and worked it, but so many years later, I ask myself, would I have bought a house (or listed one) with that very young lady? Perhaps not. So I’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and say that I looked as young and green as I was, and it worked against me. I went on to things I loved a lot more, but every lesson I learned in that time has come in handy in the years since—and you may have guessed that my mentor was not a bit sorry that he brought me in, either. He was a great fan of mine, even as I moved on.

Fast forward.

There’s an office I know of that’s teetering on the edge of going out of business. I know because they tell me (and others) so. Things are rough, they can’t drum up new business, etc. “It’s the economy, stupid,” one principal was heard to say.

I don’t hear from them near as often as I might, because of the eight folks in the office, only a few are ever there, and plenty of days, not a single light ever goes on.

People ask me if they’re out of business (even their clients have asked!). I shrug, then a couple of days later, they show up again. Work for a few days. Complain about how slow things are. (Well, what kind of Customer Experience are you providing?) Talk about how great the golf was on Tuesday… had the course all to themselves, apparently.

Yes. Everyone else was working.

Whether you’re drumming up business for your store, your office, or your home business, it’s well worth keeping those long-ago words in mind:

If you don’t come in you won’t make any money.”

You get out of it what you put into it. Darn, that s**ks. No matter what you may have heard, there’s no such thing as easy money. That, folks, is why they call it work.

Beware of any scheme that plays on that deep desire of ours, to make money while working less. Remember before “passive income,” when “passive” was a sickly, ugly little word? For the most part—gee I hate to burst the bubble—it still is.

I’d rather see you buy lottery tickets and have honest fantasies.

Are you putting into your business, all that you hope to get out of it?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Adequate, reasonable, sufficient, satisfactory, good, fine, nice, pleasing, lovely, fantastic, awesome, magical.*

Go ahead, describe:

Your last three dining experiences

Your last three shopping experiences

Your last three doctor’s visits

Your last three new hires

Get critical and describe:

Your last three telephone conversations with a customer

Your last three client presentations

Your last three (printed) self-promotions

Your last three blog posts

And just for fun:

Your last three boyfriends (girlfriends)

Your last three rush-hour drives

Your last three vacations

Your last three desserts

Is it just me, or are we not giving, and not getting, good enough?

Grow and be awesome,

Kelly Erickson

*The astute among you will note that I didn’t include any negative terms, just a spectrum from merely “meh” to “wow.” If you need a lower scale to describe your last three rush hours, you probably live near me. Hi, neighbor!

To Go Where Your VisionPoints, a few inspiration points for you and your business.

It is true that no one can harm the person who wears armor. But no one can help him, either.
—Kristin Hunter

I’m thinking she meant life and love here. I mean work and business, and if you’re the owner of a smaller business, you know what I’m talking about. You want to hold up your corner of the world. You want to seem bulletproof. So you pile on the protection. You’re powerful, knowledgeable, Super-preneur. Fully armored.

Need help? Get some. Not sure if you need help? (Who, at some point, on some topic, doesn’t fall into that category?) Read a book or a blog; write an email to someone who can offer advice; hire a consultant for a few hours.

How hard is it for you to ask for help at your place of business, when you’re fully armored, ready to “take on” the world?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Do you need to know everything about your customer?

Demographics are stale. Maybe even dead. We live in a global world— “white guys from Hoboken, New Jersey, with an Audi and a subscription to Sports Illustrated” isn’t what you need to know about your customers, and frankly, I doubt it’s true. If you know what circumstances brought the buyer to you, you can look for ways to target that circumstance.

While I recommend you know everything you can about him or her, you don’t need to know everything about your customer—even though you have an Ideal Customer, and for some businesses, they may even fit a certain demographic. That doesn’t make them your ideal.

That customer is your ideal because when they have a need, they remember that you have the Ideal Solution.

When they have a need

Your buyers came to you when… X.

Know what X is, you can look for people who are about to have X in their lives, and build a relationship with them in advance.

If you’re a blog author, picture that circumstance when writing the blog, then weave it into the narrative over time. You’ll get bored coming back to the theme over and over, but you’ll never bore the reader who says, “Yeah, that’s me, today! He really understands X, and I know he can help!”

If you’re a store owner, work it into your marketing materials, and make sure your staff knows all about X, too. To stand out from the crowd of wanna-bes, they’ve got to be trained in empathy for the symptoms (even if it’s needing a lipstick after The Essential *Boom* hits). They’ve got to look for the telltale signs, they’ve got to cater to the needs. You are in business for your customers, and when they choose you as the Ideal Solution to their problems, you can not afford to disappoint them. You’ve got to engineer delight.

Look for people who are about to have X in their lives

If you wait to build a relationship after X has come and gone, the business will go to those they already liked, trusted, and had faith in before that circumstance arose.

Who loses out?

The luncheonette I drive past on my way home from work every day. I’m forever saying, “Next time I want a new experience,” but when next time comes, I’ve forgotten them. (Until I drive home….)

The catalogue that comes with a nice fat coupon the week after I bought a tool that does the job, maybe not as well, locally.

The baby product manufacturers who drown new parents in marketing materials after the hospital sticks them on a mailing list (almost ten years later, I’m still plagued by this junk!). Too late. I bought everything before the seventh month when it seemed like “any day now”; I got recommendations from friends before I ever saw your irritating pink-bow mailers; I wouldn’t be swayed by cheap glossy mom-and-baby shots even if I’d waited, because right after baby’s born I’m thinking I should save the Earth for her and you’re cutting down trees to interrupt my bliss.

Build the relationship first. You’ll find your own way to do that, but keep this in mind: It isn’t who wandered into your shop, office, or blog that you need to know—it’s Why today?

Think back to the last new purchase you made, last new service you decided to try, or the last new restaurant you visited. Why that day? What circumstances made you change your buying behavior?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Is your business slowing right now? Are you struggling to keep old customers, and just barely keeping the hope of gaining new customers alive?

Well, duh. Who isn’t?

Walmart. Their sales are up, in a sea of down. How do they do it?

They’re cheap.

Okay, they’re cheap. I agree. But there’s something more, and you can aim for it, too: They’re selling the essentials.

What’s essential?

• Basic food and clothing.
• Transportation.
• My income.
• Shelter.
• Health, well-being, love.

So where are you on that list? No matter your industry, you can find a place to belong. (Walmart is the lowest common denominator, but that’s not really a prize you want to win.)

What you need to do is to demonstrate how your product or service is, in fact, essential, to your clients. If you are seen as a “discretionary expense,” believe me, folks are going to exercise their discretion and skip it. Even my beloved daily jaunt to the bagel shop has been curtailed to once a week since gas prices began to throttle my well-worn red leather Liz Claiborne wallet.

You can’t be essential to everyone. But you can be essential to your Ideal Customer. Let’s add one more essential.

• A little cheer in a world of hurtin’.

Cheer?

“In the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Charles Revson introduced opaque nail polish and created Revlon Inc.* Ever since, the cosmetics industry has been regarded as a good business even for bad times. Women, the theory went, could always be counted on to spend at least some of what little disposable income they had to look attractive and feel good about themselves.”**

I know, you aren’t selling makeup. Here’s how it works:

We’re all about basics now, right down to that bag lunch. Skip the bagel. Save gas. Get more work done. Bag lunch. Skip bagel. Do more.

*Boom*

That brown bag begins to gnaw at me, more work leaves me feeling like a drone, and then *boom*—I need a little splurge.

Oh, yeah. I need a darned smile!

It’s as essential as cutting back was only a moment before. If you can’t be the basics—and even if you can—be more. Beyond essential. Be the thing I can’t cut out of my budget. Be a little cheer in a world of hurtin’. Adjust your thinking about that Ideal Customer for now, to include folks who are having that *boom* moment. Position your business to appeal to them.

What does it mean for you?

Adjust your message to show that you’re not a discretionary expense, but an essential part of your customer’s work or home life. That you won’t just deliver, you’ll deliver smiles. Yes, I’m more serious than ever, when I say that to make money right now, you’re going to have to deliver joy.

So how can you be a little cheer in a world of hurtin’?

What do you go for when you can’t stand “the basics” for one more minute? More importantly to your Customer Experience—WHY is that little bit of cheer suddenly essential?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

*For my well-traveled blog readers, experiencing a bit of déjà vu: Contrary to what Brian Clark wrote at Copyblogger a while back (probably quoting Clayton Makepeace?), the cosmetics industry was not born in the Great Depression. The industry weathered the storm better than others, and some companies were born then such as Revlon, but the industry was already an international phenomenon, and had already made both Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden multimillionaires long before the start of the Depression. Little luxuries rock.

**“Shake-Out in the Skin Game,” Time Magazine, Oct. 1982. The point of the Time article was actually that the old saw was being proved wrong at that time (1982), as women did cut back on everyday cosmetics purchases. Uh oh….

Our job is to be beyond those everyday purchases that experience cutbacks—to be essential, we’ll need to be extraordinary.

To Go Where Your VisionPoints, a few inspiration points for you and your business.

It’s wonderful what we can do if we’re always doing.
—George Washington

I’m a planner. I believe in it for myself and for my clients. Planning gives shape to your intentions, breaks massive goals into smaller tasks, and makes it a lot more likely that you’ll achieve what you meant to.

Thing is, I rarely complete everything on my planned list. (For the day, for the week, even for a project. Something usually gets left out.) Not too unusual, a lot of you may make a To Do list for the day and find that a third of the items on it don’t get finished. Does that mean planning is a flawed process? I had a little debate about that subject yesterday.

I argued no. Planning allows you to look at the full scope of a day or a project in its ideal form. It allows you to write things down and then forget them; if you aren’t wasting mental energy on remembering what’s next, you can concentrate much more fully on what’s at hand. And it allows you to prioritize and even strategically skip items, when it becomes clear that you can fit the entire ideal into the time you have available. For me, rather than inducing guilt (“I didn’t finish it all”), it gives pride (“look what I got done”). Most folks I’ve converted to planning were worried about the guilt, but found the same, that deliberate planning gets rid of that awful floating feeling and gives pride and a sense of accomplishment.

Yeah, so?

So, I planned my day as usual yesterday morning. Then with every star aligned in my favor, I worked that plan. End to end. I dogged through the whole thing and got every single thing finished, in spite of a very rough start with a human who seemed to want to eat my self-esteem for breakfast (sorry, you picked the wrong lady). I honestly don’t know when the last time I finished an entire list was. (This post is last on my list!)

You know what? It’s pretty awesome. S’Marvelous. I’ll go back to never quite finishing things tomorrow, but for now, if you’re like me and you rarely see the end, make that list for yourself, or for you and your staff, and promise to apply yourself with all your might once in a while—maybe even once a week—and bust it all out. It’s wonderful what we can do. Your business will thank you.

If you’re like George Washington, and you already finish everything on your list every day and bust out all sorts of accomplishments with no problem, feel free to leave me a tip. Otherwise… What’s your planning strategy, and how has it helped you over the years? Or—are you a floater, letting life and work happen to you? How is that working for you?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

I’m lucky to have a lot of B2B readers.

You provide a service or a product for other businesses or entrepreneurs, and those clients are worried now. I see a recovery, waiting in the wings. They don’t see three feet in front of them.

They’re worried sick, some of them. They’re cutting back frantically, and one of the places they’re cutting back is in working with you.

I know, and I am sorry about it. When panic hits, reason runs. That great service you provide, the great products you offer… they’re just not sure whether they need you, or whether they should “wait things out.”

“Let’s see where ‘this’ goes.”

“Not sure how we’re handling our budget right now.”

Well, all right.

There are other fish in the sea.

Fewer fish, but ones who still understand how much they stand to benefit from what you offer.

What can you do?

For starters, forget about the possibility of looky-lous. Expect success with every potential client.

You can’t staunch the bleeding for your clients’ businesses. You can’t tell them where “this” goes, even though the answer is “up,” and you can’t help them get sure about their budget.

Just do your work, do it better than ever, and stick a smile on your face.

When the recovery comes roaring out of the wings, you’ll have some very happy customers spreading the word about you. Now’s the time to turn customers into Propheteers.

Oh, and yes. I know you were wondering—this is partly a pep talk from me to me. I can’t staunch the bleeding, especially not for folks who don’t hire us.

So I’m making sure we do what we do for our clients, better than ever. You do the same.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. If you’re in the U.S., VOTE TOMORROW. [Insert flag-waving comment about our freedoms and rights and how very lucky we are, here.]

I’ve been hearing a lot about businesses with sullen customer service—there are more “looky-lous” than ever right now, saying “no, thanks, just looking.” When an actual buyer shows up, the staff is so sick of calls and visits and proposals that go nowhere, that they grump at the guy with money, expecting to lose another sale.

That’s how to lose one!

Tip: Treat them all like they might become your biggest customer.

I say “might become,” for those of you who may take your own biggest customers for granted. Woo your prospect, woo your customer. Seduce them. Pretend it’s not a sure thing, because folks, it isn’t. Nobody has to stay with you because they’ve been with you forever, and your buyers are acutely aware of that right now.

That’s the same advice I gave before the economy became a roller coaster.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. Things move so fast right now—when I began this post I was going to say, “it seems to be a particular problem in B2B” (business to business). A week after I began thinking about it, I’m hearing about this problem in retail, too.

Have you felt brushed off or ignored since the global recessionary woes have deepened when shopping, dining, or selecting a service provider? Are you sensing staff are so sure you won’t buy, they don’t try to earn your business like they once did?

Do staff do this where you work?

And just to make this P.S. a little longer: If this is The New Customer Experience that many companies seem to want to provide, aren’t we (in our workday capacities) creating our own recession?