Take a cue from the birds and the bees—stop working so hard and use what nature gave you!
Nobody wants to be hit on, but everybody wants to be in love.
How’s that?
I said, nobody wants to be sold to, but everybody loves to buy.
So stop running your business like you’re a pickup artist. It ain’t that artistic. Use these three steps to build relationships that lead to what nature intended—fabulous, ongoing interludes between you and your customers, who love you wildly.
First Step: Playing the Field
… Or if you insist, Lead Gathering.
You know you’ve got to market to make it, and you desperately want to shorten that cycle and get some sales in the sack. Take a cue from the birds, the bees, and The Open Box:
… Ahh, the honeymoon. You love the customer, she raves about you… times are great. And without the real work, all-too-brief.
Why, oh why is it the post-sale effort that’s most often neglected? Do you really want to start dating every prospect in town again when it’s so much easier… cheaper… and, um… more convenient, to hold on to the good thing you’ve got?
The birds and the bees don’t struggle. They don’t read books on how to do it. Don’t get me wrong, I like books—but sometimes you just have to remember these are people you’re trying to entice, and you’re a person, and well…
You can do this. Act naturally. Romancing the customer shouldn’t be such a chore.
Tip of the Week:
Give your honey a quick… kiss this morning and get to work keeping your customers’ fires burning. And yes, consider this your early Valentine’s Day present, my beloved Maximum Customer Experience readers, as I’ll be off tomorrow being wildly romantic. I wish you smiles.
Today, let’s talk about making sales sizzle: How can a company capture your heart so completely, it’s almost better than nookie?
Faced with the choice of two similarly-qualified, bright, eager new hires, he went with the one with no ambition.
Interviewed quite a few folks to narrow it down to these candidates, actually. Explained the choice like this:
“It took forever to find these guys. They’ve both got everything I want and need.
“One says he’d love the job forever, but he’s too damned good to stay for long. He knows every technical aspect of the job backwards and forwards, and says he loves being part of a team. He’s got to say that for the interview! He’ll learn as much as he can from us, wait out the economy, and go out on his own in 3 or 4 years.
“The other hates drumming up business. He knows all the same stuff and has been out on his own. He wants no part of managing, marketing, or directing, ever again.”
Well, the pain of driving sales is soon forgotten, so that’s no selling point to me. And the average tenure in one job for a U.S. worker between 25 and 34, as of January 2008? 2.7 years.* NOBODY’s going to be around forever, and certainly not this young staffer, no matter how he claims to want someone else to do all the dirty work.
Before I knew what the choice was, I said, “Wow! I’d jump on the ambitious one! Sure, they might know the same stuff, but he wants to know more—and you’ll get twice the work out of him while he’s around, if he’s as thirsty to learn as you say.”
I began today with the end, so you know how he answered me:
“You’re kidding, right? I want someone I can count on for the long haul. The second one starts in a week.”
No matter where you are on the totem pole, folks, even you janitors out there reading, your number one job is doing your part to create Maximum Customer Experience, and if you’re doing that right, then you’ll be drumming up business every day. So to all you business owners:
You want to grow your business!
Hire the ambitious one. He or she will drum up business for you now. Which is when you’re hiring. Now.
Don’t worry about him moving on in 3 or 4 years. Maybe he will. That would be longer than most 20-somethings stick around.
Maybe he’ll like working with you more than you think, and he’ll stay. You’re not so bad.
Would you hire Mr. Ambition? Or the guy who wants no part of making your business grow and thrive?
Or, How Small Businesses Live and Die, Predicting the Future
You saw it coming.
You’re my friends, my clients, my business contacts, and I know you saw it long before the Big Boys began to tumble off their high horses.
You’re small, and you sense small changes in the atmosphere like the poor canary in the mine shaft.
The canary knew problems were afoot long before anyone else.
If miners paid close attention, the canary looked sick. Even without that much attention, they’d hear the warning: he stopped singing.
You began calling and writing to VisionPoints with plans and concerns almost a year ago. That’s a heck of an early warning system. Was anyone listening, in the wider world?
Then you got quiet. You stopped calling and emailing with plans and concerns.
Because my small business helps other small businesses grow, we’re pretty sensitive to changes in your business’ health. When things got quiet, we knew what you feared.
When the atmosphere really got toxic, the canary sometimes died.
Big businesses have big budgets to mask big problems, but small businesses cut it close every day. Many stopped trying to grow, when they first sensed small changes in the atmosphere.
Some will survive because they saw the recession coming and tightened their budgets. Maybe not thrive, but survive.
The sad part is, some died because they saw it coming—they tightened the belt too much, and died because they stopped trying to grow.
By the time the big, strong miners are getting sick it’s far too late. Coal miners knew this, and they started acting long before that.
Governments, apparently, don’t.
There’s good news. Now that so many Big Boys are sick, governments around the world are acting.
When this is over there will be fewer Big Boys—and a lot more small businesses.
More canaries to sing when the air is clear and fresh. The ones who survive will be battle-hardened, and the new ones will be fresh and raring to go.
Lately, you’ve been calling and writing to VisionPoints again, making plans for growth. You sense small changes all around. Little birdies, trying to tell us the air is clearing. That’s a heck of an early indicator.
You’re never ready. Well, we’re here, and I can’t wait to offer you Maximum Customer Experience in a new home. Please make yourself comfy. If you clicked right over and didn’t get to read this post, settle in for a moment. Otherwise, play the music and race forward. There’s a bit of MCE stats at the end for you to giggle over.
Big sighs, folks. Leaving my old love TypePad. Looking out the window of the moving van, as I move in with a new beau today. I’d like to say I move fast, but this has taken eighty (that’s 8-0) hours so far, spread over several weeks (I work, you know), and there is a LOT of housecleaning yet to do.
Good morning, WordPress, how do you take your coffee?
Me? Au lait, with just a pinch of sugar. Thanks for asking. We’ll get used to each other’s habits soon enough.
And a warning to those of you who will now go looking for trouble—it’s out there. Beta, beta. Updating of images and links within posts (oh, why am I always cross-linking?) will take at least another week to be completed. The first 80 hours were the fun stuff, getting things to look like we’re all used to but perhaps a bit finer, tweak tweak.
I didn’t want to wait another minute to take the Maximum Customer Experience Blog to the next level. Hope you don’t mind, I’m a bit eager.
If you’ve bookmarked posts (you have, haven’t you?) you’ll need to update your links the hard way, by finding the post at my new digs and bookmarking again, because wouldn’t you know it, TypePad won’t allow redirects.
Meaning, for those of you who have smelled fresh air in the last few weeks and haven’t been buried in code?
Meaning that I’ll keep the TypePad blog up and running (comments are now disabled, though) for a month or so to let folks get changed over, then you will get the dread “404 not found” when I stop payin’ the bill. I’m a bit afraid of the Google gods coming down on me for duplicate content during that time, but I want to make this smooth, so I’ll cross my fingers. Yes, feel free to leave comments about how many other horrible things will befall me, but don’t think I don’t already know!
“Feed”ing already?
I *hope* that if you are getting the blog now by RSS, I will be able to transition your subscription to the new blog without your lifting a finger. I’m telling you now if you don’t see Inspiration Points tomorrow (Wednesday Words…), it hasn’t worked, so please subscribe again at the new address (did you miss it?):
Mine is the only blog I get by RSS, so by tomorrow I should know if it works, too… if I remember to check… please leave a comment if anything goes pfft for you.
I have an email subscription to my own blog, so again I should know if that works by tomorrow late in the day; if you are in doubt, do re-subscribe and just delete your old one.
SO sorry to make work for my dear readers. I’ve tried to make this as painless as possible.
Hey, Kelly—Our new address?
You bet. Yours, mine, and WP’s. Without you all, well, I wouldn’t have outgrown the old digs, so call it your place to discuss the Maximums and the minimums of Customer Experience. Grow your business, or kvetch about everybody else’s. Put in a good word for the little guys who get it, or fawn over the Big Boys and think about how we can put their lessons to use.
Let’s see if we can burn down the new blog with all your fabulous comments and stumbles and diggs. I know you can hardly wait to subscribe to comments, so say Oh Hi yourself before you have to leave! If we get through today and tomorrow okay, I’ll feel much better. I’m a bit terrified right now!
Please, if you notice bugs beyond the horrors of links that come back to TypePad (I’ll get rid of as many as I can of those before you even read this), leave comments. Don’t be shy. If your subscription doesn’t work or if the blog looks really ugly (should look about like the old MCE does, so let’s not count that as really ugly, okay?) like somehow the code is broken… any bugs I do want to know about. Sort of.
Inspiration Points tomorrow. I think I’ll look in my collection for a good one on terror!
Later this week, I’ll tell you about a guest post I wrote for a friend that’s sure to have you commenting at a blog you may never have read before.
Statistics, please?
TypePad was my home for 143 posts, beginning exactly seven months ago today. I’ve been thinking about migrating from TypePad to WordPress since early February. (What can I say, I’m a Capricorn! I had to be sure it was what I wanted, then I jumped!) Note to new bloggers: There’s a lot more to it than ease of setup, which seemed so important to me in November.
If you think taking four months to decide to move is funny, you’ll love this stat: Early in 2007, I wasn’t sure that committing to a blog was for me. I’d been writing posts for half a year before I started the blog, and had a backlog of over 50 at that time. Some never make it (because some are crap!), some do, but my backlog now is even greater. I’d need three of me to edit them all to get them up here.
Over those posts, I’ve had a respectable 686 comments, which is a nice per-post average especially if you consider that not a soul commented on the earliest ones, as most bloggers find. What are you waiting for? That’s where the real gems are hidden!
Good night, TypePad. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have coffee with my new beau. Can I get you a mug?
… And Finds Herself Inspired to Whip Off a Huge Email Response
(Anybody surprised?)
Kelly,
I just recently found your blog via Big Bright Bulb. Your success and exceptional blog content are an inspiration for me.
[Dear Kristen. I am stealing the foregoing sentence for unabashed flattery in every email I ever write from this moment forward. Regards, Kelly.]
I’ve been looking for someone who’ll let me pick their brain along the bumpy road, as I launch my freelance/entrepreneurial journey and try to make my blog more visible…. [I’m] looking for a mentor of sorts…. who might be suitable and willing to put up with me.
I’m so glad you’re feeling inspired. Thanks for writing!
Brain picking is probably easiest done by reading backwards and forward, as I generally throw whatever’s in the brain out onto the blog, with respect to Experience Design. A blog IS about Customer Experience, with your customers being your readers, so you’ll find lots to pore over at MCE.
Not knowing exactly what you are seeking, my best mentorish ideas for a starting blogger:
I don’t get into the writing/ blogging process, usually, at Maximum Customer Experience, but if you take a look back at my 100th birthday post last Friday, you’ll find a lovely P.S. filled with several who do (and where I am constantly commenting with anything that does belong on their blogs and doesn’t belong on mine), especially Copyblogger (Brian), Problogger (Darren), Men With Pens (Harry and James), IttyBiz (Naomi), and Big Bright Bulb (Crystal).
Big tip: Many fine bloggers are in the comments section adding to the discussion. Always read the comments!
Brian and Darren handle the how-to-be-visible stuff, as well as Caroline Middlebrook at her blog, and Chris Brogan at his. All great resources. Again, they’ve probably answered all your questions, and the great thing about a blog is you can search through and find whatever you want to know that day, then come back again later without making an appointment, so to speak, to find the next answer!
Leaving comments on a relevant post (mine or others) will almost always get the blogger’s comment back to you pretty quickly (not usually Darren or Brian, though), so you can have half a dozen “mentors” at your disposal, customized to your needs. In addition, if the question catches other commenters’ eyes, you may get a lot more advice than just the blogger’s.
Subscribe, so you stay with the flow of a blog, if you like it. If you aren’t subscribed at Maximum Customer Experience, of course I recommend it highly!
Occasionally do a little social bookmarking (Stumble, Technorati favorites, etc.), because bloggers often notice when someone helps them drive relevant traffic to their site. When you give to other bloggers, they feel good about giving back.
Read a lot, soak it all up, comment when you can add to the conversation, and ask questions. Best practices.
Write about what your readers need to hear. Think about what words they might search for, if they needed what you know, then make sure you use those terms now and then. Write like you are talking to just one person, and take the time to fully imagine who that person is in your head. Pretend it’s a cocktail party. Be fascinating when possible, witty if useful; never be a boor, and never say all that can be said. Your blog is a conversation.
Oh, yeah. The one thing you may not hear anywhere but right here: This takes a lot of time to work. You will not have 50,000 readers next week. Or next month. Or in all probability, next year.
I am not saying all this to put you off an email here or there, but because you will absolutely get more out of a more public approach to learning about blogging. Guaranteed. (In addition, if your comments are well-written and interesting, this is one of the very best ways to increase traffic to your blog! People want to know who the woman who has that neat opinion is, they click on your name, and voilà! traffic to your blog!)
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Kelly Erickson
All right, fellow bloggers, your turn to mentor: What’s your advice to Kristen?
If you liked this post, please take a moment to talk it up! I’d love to get lots of mentorish comments from blog authors far more deserving of Kristen’s high praise than I.
Sometimes, It Seems Like You Can’t Get Your Mojo Risin’
One-hit wonders
Bands that peter out
Authors of one book
Bloggers who stop posting
Businesses that “fail”
What if that’s all you have to say?
What if you’re just done?
Move on.
It’s all right.
Sorry, folks, but sometimes there are just too many rah-rah posts in the ether. You may feel pressured by the unending noise, to keep with a business or a strategy that’s not working.
I love sharing tips for success, oh boy do I. Today, a tip for letting go. We will return to rah-rah next time.
And How to Find the Right Level, to Improve Customer Experience Daily
Why do the most common musical chords include three notes?
Because one or two is boring and repetitive, and more than three may be asking for trouble unless you’re a seasoned pro. Too much “noise” for your brain to process!
Yesterday, we talked about letting go of micro-management for an afternoon. Whether you work solo from home or manage a staff of fifty, sometimes the best way to see your business’ needs clearly is to step away, considering your direction in silence, without the distraction of daily tasks.
When you’re fresh from this mini-sabbatical, it’s time to turn up the noise level, but only in the right places.
What three notes should you practice in Experience Design?
1. Always Be Checking. This won’t be a full-blown Experience Audit daily—just keep your eyes wide open for the little details that make a big difference to customers. First impressions last.
2. Prioritize from customer point of view. Listen to your customer, and be responsive to their interests and their concerns.
3. Measure results over time. This is the only way you will know if you’ve Pinpointed the right goals and whether you’re on track to achieve them.
Take a little time with this. Many of your daily tasks already fit in one of these three “notes,” but you may not have been viewing them in this way. When you look at your to-do list in terms of Experience Design, you can approach these tasks more deliberately—and more important in an overcrowded day, you can let go of the tasks that are just pointless noise.
With the noise level adjusted, look at the big picture. For instance:
How does viewing your website affect expectations for your store? [Checking, prioritizing.]
How does a constant parade of discount ads in the local paper affect the sort of customers who call you? [Checking, measuring.]
Do surly staff take care of those little details in your interiors as if they want your business to grow? [Checking, prioritizing.]
Don’t see these as separate interior design, graphic design, customer service, and marketing issues. This Experience Design chord can help you to look at your business as a whole. In a customer’s Perception, the elements of Experience will cross boundaries.
That’s the background noise for your day. After a short while, you’ll be good at playing that chord, but watch out! As any musician will tell you, when you’re overconfident, you can hit a few sour notes. So stay focused.
At some point you may be working on a complete Experience re-Design, in which case there are certainly more than three notes in the chord. Jazz! With professional help, there’s a team to keep things swingin’. On an everyday basis: you’ve got just three notes to look after. Checking the details, prioritizing for the customer’s needs, measuring results. When it gets too noisy, it’s time for another silent afternoon.
Do something fresh with an hour of down time this week. Maybe you’ll shake your head (“wish I’d known that before”); maybe your hands will shake, if the new activity is scary enough. Maybe you’ll make a new habit, maybe you’ll make new friends. Maybe you’ll turn your marketing on its ear and discover whole new ways to grow your business. Try it this week. Then maybe next week, it’ll be harder to find an hour of down time!
What happens when you step outside your comfort zone during down time? Is it better to rock the boat, or twiddle your thumbs? Tell us what you think!
Nothing more. One rule to work by. You may argue about all the other lovely reasons you are in business, but if nobody’s paying you to do or to make something, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby.
In light of this rule, everything you do in business must have one of two things as its main purpose:
Finding prospects or Convincing them to buy
Designing Maximum Customer Experience is for convincing current customers to buy and spread the word, so that you find more prospects to convince to buy and spread the word…
This can make more money and should give you peace of mind and may give you more free time (or maybe less). But at its core, Experience Design is like any other business activity, from writing a blog to ordering fancier menus or imprinted pens to putting in a new CRM system to hiring that rockstar whose résumé is on your desk.
If you don’t believe it will convert (more) prospects to paying customers, don’t do it.
You are in business to make sales, or you are not in business. Thinking about a new gimmick, a new initiative, a new direction, a new hire? Ask: Will it help us convert prospects to paying customers? The answer isn’t always direct and obvious, but it is critical that you consider it and can answer Yes, short-term or long-term. If not, don’t throw your money out the window.
Do you throw money out the window with pretty but purposeless design, “marketing” that never brings in a soul, or service providers that don’t aid the bottom line?
Try this exercise: What if you could only deduct those business expenses that can actually expand your business? Which purchases would you have to eliminate? Track the tangible results of a suspected low-performer this month. If it’s not converting prospects to paying customers, ditch it!
Data Gathering: 10 Things to Bring With You to the First Real Meeting
Something’s wrong at your place of business. You aren’t growing; maybe there’s even a small, disturbing trend downward in the numbers, and you’re pretty sure something isn’t right. (Just the opposite? Maybe something great has just happened, and you know it’s finally time to put your best foot forward.) Time to make a change in your Customer Experience. You heard about this Experience Designer who can help you find the problems and fix them. You’ve read their website. Let’s face it, you read about five designers’ websites before you found the one whose philosophy jived with yours.
You talked on the phone, or had an initial consultation in person. This is the right firm for you, so you’ve signed on. They want to have a data gathering meeting, what VisionPoints calls our Discovery meeting. How do you get ready?
If it’s worth hiring an Experience Design firm, it’s worth using their time and yours efficiently. Here are the ten things you’ll want on hand:
1. A good tour guide. Even if we walked through the first time, now we’re beginning to develop a framework for the project. We want to see what we’re dealing with, and we want to walk through with an experienced and very frank member of your team. Someone who’s not afraid to tell it like it is (ouch!).
2. Your best understanding of the current situation. Designers ask a lot of questions, and you can start them off right if you know what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s got to be fixed urgently.
3. All the decision-makers. If your spouse has a say, make sure he/she is not left out. If your VP of Marketing has to love the new direction like you do, then have the VP sit in. Miscommunications cause delays, carping, and less-than-enthusiastic participation, none of which move you forward at Maximum speed.
4. Numbers: Revenues, customer base, profitability, employee retention, web stats… what’s bugging you? Any designer who’s going to help you get numbers up has to know something about the numbers. Once, design of all sorts was “for pretty,” and why it didn’t help you grow was your problem. These days designers of all stripes, but especially multidisciplinary Experience Design firms, want to do fine work that also has real value. Maybe they’ll even tell you your numbers are pretty good, and you can relax a little while you go through the redesign.
5. Photos, lots of photos of your space, if this meeting can’t take place in person. Send them via email in advance. (Tip: Look up! Good designers want to see your lighting, which is tough to show in a photo.)
6. All printed materials. From business cards to packaging, from brochures to invoices, gather it all.
7. We’ve already dug into your Internet presence, to scope you out. (What? You think you’re the only one?) Pretend you don’t know we’ve been lurking, and highlight key points at your website or blog for us.
8. Your Vision. Don’t be afraid to write something out. A little half-love story, half-rant telling who you are, why you are, and how on earth you (as a company) got to the point you’re at will do fine. Philosophically, strategically, I mean. You got the numbers together for #4.
9. The best possible outcome. Where, in an ideal world, is the company going? As I said, good designers want to get you there. Increased number of customers, increased sales per customer, decreased costs, better “standing in the community” (warning: hard to measure), stop losing customers to the competition, more Internet sales without decreasing store sales, world domination… ?
10. What happens if you do nothing? If you’ve never done a Change-Nothing Analysis (#2 on Brian’s list), this is well worth doing before you start an Experience Design project. (The answer, of course, is utter ruination. Even your cat won’t have anything to do with you. Do your own, and you’ll see.)
Discovery meetings are for more than gathering data. They are for gathering attitudes, sticking points, dreams, and goals. They can solidify internal support for Customer Experience initiatives, or show up stakeholders who are not ready for change. That buy-in is crucial, so now is the time to make everyone a cheerleader. The first choices about how this project is going to go are made today.
It’s like going to the doctor’s office: You know what’s wrong, where it hurts, and what outcome you’re hoping for. If you’re a parent, you go with the kid; you don’t try to schedule a follow-up meeting to “get on board.” Nobody wastes time, and you get your solution sooner.
This meeting can take an hour or two, max, or it can become six meetings that take an hour each if you haven’t done your homework before inviting your designer in to start theirs. We have a lot of work to do with you. It’s going to take cooperation and communication, which you can get started now. Your Solution is waiting for you.
Discovery meeting or not, put this list together today, and make a plan to update it quarterly. How does doing your data gathering help you aim for improved Customer Experience?
(Anybody surprised?)
