Are You Stuck in Now or Focused On the (Pretty Near) Future?

In conversation with a financial advisor yesterday, I made my prediction:

You know what’s coming?
Eighteen bad months, and then…
The 1950s.
It’s gonna hurt and then whoosh, it’s gonna take off.
People who know that and can handle it have a lion in their pocket right now.

Controversial? Maybe, but an average recession in the U.S lasts only 11 months. This one looks to be rather above-average (below?) which should result in an above-average expansion, too. Expansions last an average of six years.

Get your head out of the sand. See the big picture. Put a lion in your pocket today.

Plan, prepare, and perfect now for growth in the pretty near future—18 months goes by in a flash.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. If you haven’t had a lion in your pocket for a while, click here for a flashback to the roaring 80s. The Purple One doesn’t let his vids stay on You Tube, so I can’t embed it to inspire you.

No Obligation…

As human beings, we seem to be born with a need to “give back” to others. We want to keep the balance of obligations even in our relationships.

Even a very young baby will smile back if you smile at her.

Later, we give to friends more readily when we get from them. Holiday cards, dinner invites, tips on where to save money on office supplies.

We may help colleagues out when they’re behind out of the goodness of our hearts, yet find that they reciprocate as quickly as possible to even the score. At home, our children’s playdates flip back and forth between our house and theirs, or one may feel put out and the other may feel beholden.

Send no money now. No obligation.

When your company gives to me, a potential customer, you claim there’s no obligation but I feel it anyway.

But…

The more detached and anonymous the interaction, the more you’re right.

What’s the answer for your small business?

If you want to create Maximum Customer Experience, think small. Do it sincerely, out of the goodness of your heart. Even a larger business can keep interactions warm and personal, to create a connection with me. Maybe your offer is no obligation, like those holiday cards. Still, Mrs. Jones suddenly felt the need to send a card back to you, didn’t she?

• Give literally, with samples
• Give figuratively, with advice
• Give constantly, with caring, attentive service
• Give generously, keeping the customer’s needs central to the interaction

The way you treat your customers every day can deliver an Experience that makes them feel connected to you, so that your relationship is not “no obligation” after all.

When a business owner or employee stops to give to you—what changes?

How do you make use of that irresistible urge to give right back, in your own business?

Have you found the hamburger yet?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

This Post Is Not About Awnings

A two-mile—yes, two-mile—stretch of just one road near my home north of Wilmington, Delaware. Here you see 27 awnings; I missed at least three.

Can you do it, when it’s been done?

NO.

What’s this post about for you?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Or Inspire, or Just Learn Some Manners

The sky above my head, earlier this week. How’s that for inspiration?

Teaching, informing, collaborating. You’re doing it all day. Why not think a bit more deeply, and try to inspire?

This is the story of an Experience Designer who tries to do just that all the time, and the time when she wasn’t trying.

I sincerely love the work of many of my friends online and off. This is how I became friends with them, for the most part. Through the Mutual Admiration Society.

Apparently, if you take this too far, you may cause someone to start a new blog.

I love curmudgeonly blogs on being delightfully old-fashioned and proper. I say you go for it and allow the ragged people to feign being posh. Disturb the status quo, old man. I shall be your first email-sub.
—Yes, folks, that’s how I talk when invited to a party at Rogue Ink.

Nick Cernis is one of the wittiest people I know, the author of the always spot-on Put Things Off blog. I’d gladly read his grocery lists, that’s how brilliant his writing is. A bit of musing aloud from him, then a few wee words of abject flattery from myself and Rogue Ink author Tei Lindstrom, and the man is off and running. He’ll inspire you, too—not just with his brand new blog, 44forks, but with his can-do attitude. He says, jump in and start the venture you want now. Then by golly, he shows us how it’s done.

Check out 44forks’ About Page. Nick had me grinning from ear to ear.

Yes, there is a lesson here:

You can’t control when the inspiration is going to “take,” or for whom. So work at pushing and inspiring your colleagues and friends every day.

Heck, I wasn’t even trying hard, but I’ll take a tiny bit of credit by saying it’s part of my nature. Is it part of how you operate?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Hmm. You still here? Well, after you leave a comment, go on, get over to 44forks. Tell Nick that Kelly sent you. We’ll all feign being posh together.

The Four-Day Work Week

Many local New Jersey government offices began instituting 4-day work weeks in July. Same number of hours worked, but on four, 10-hour days.

I love it—less gas use, less pollution, even less traffic. Great for the Earth.

Employees love it—more time at home. Don’t have to feel funny asking for personal times for appointments, etc. Saves gas money. Great for their families.

At first they claimed it was a temporary move, but they love the happier employees and increased productivity (that’s right, longer work days and increased productivity!). Now it seems many may keep the schedule even though gas prices have headed back down.

Bravo, New Jersey municipalities. I hear some other states are catching on to it, too.

Could your company do something so simple with so many levels of good to it? What’s stopping you?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Thank You for Ordering…

Yesterday, your intrepid Experience Designer slash blog author received a package in the mail, dated almost a month ago. I took a picture of it to show to you (I know how you love to see photos of my mail), but was unable to include it here.*

Uh-oh, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Swag? What’s swag?

Swag, dear reader, is a funky term for “free gifts from people who hope you’ll like their company.” Promotional items, freebies, or promos, if you like. Magnets, keychains, coffee mugs, calendars, and t-shirts may have arrived in your own mailbox from time to time. Sometimes these are from companies you know, sometimes from businesses who just hope you’re their kind of sucker because they know the magazines you read.

Influential blog writers such as Darren Rowse of ProBlogger are inundated with freebies, often taking the form of “review copies”: in other words, a gift (or loan) of the complete book or product, with the hope that the blogger will review it on his or her blog. [Does anybody have the link to a post he wrote about swag, about six months ago? I couldn’t find it for the life of me.]

If receiving free stuff is a sign of a blogger’s influence, then I guess I’m doing better than my still-injured stats tell me, because lately I’ve been getting a bit of it. And though I’ve only done one swag-based review here, of a book I was already a huge fan of, I’m cool with being showered with gifts. (Two words—Madame Pommery.)

There are many unofficial swag rules, covering everything from what’s cool to get, to how likely you are to be written about should you decide to send swag, to a million old-school marketing rules about whether giving swag actually provides any return on investment. In other words, will you make money from this expensive effort?

What’s the Point?

In the case of the keychain (was that a Nancy Drew mystery?), the point is to get you to pay for the company’s real service or product—to remind you about them until you feel prodded by said keychain into plunking down real cash. The point is to sell their service or product. To make money off the promotion.

With review copies it’s different. The optimist says I am to be so moved by the gift’s brilliance, that I need to tell you, dear reader, all about it; the cynic says I should feel guilty and/or look to make future deals, and so be moved to con you into buying the item. Either way, swag in the blog community creates a bit of skepticism about the reviewer’s motivation, but remember the point for the giver is the same: to make money off the promotion.

What’s the point? To make money off the promotion.

But you know, I’m not gonna talk about that today.

Never Make Your Prospect Feel Stupid… or Senior…

Senior? I’m not there yet. Some folks still say nice things about my age. Not about me, mind you, but about my age. Close enough.

Like many of you with ultra-busy work lives and friendships and parents and siblings and maybe even kids and dogs to occupy your minds, I occasionally hear myself thinking out loud, “Did I go to the grocery store when I checked it off the list, or just get in the car and head there, then get distracted and do something else?”

Thank goodness for children. Having a kid around makes it look like I wasn’t talking to myself, and sometimes, I even get an answer.

So I know just what a senior moment will look like: like this, only with no good excuse.

With no kid around to think out loud to, I open the package from a company I don’t know the name of, on a day like many others when I am expecting a package. There I read a letter:

Greetings,
Thank you for ordering ————. Enclosed is your copy of the book. blah blah blah…
Sincerely,
[person I’ve never heard of]
P.S. blah blah Tell your friends!

1. The letter is dated long enough ago that I am not sure if I did order something I’ve never heard of.

2. If I ordered it, I will be paying for it, and it looks massively uninteresting. I begin to curse myself out.

3. The wording of the letter (sorry, it’s been blah-blahed) in combo with all the other feelings I’m having, seems to suggest I’m stupid. Grr.

I’m beginning to smell a rat. When I get back to my computer, I immediately check online statements to see if I have ordered this book, check files to see if I’ve made a note about the thing, check Safari to see if I’ve ever bookmarked anything with the author or the company’s name in it. NO. But now I have lost ten minutes of my life to stress and fifteen to searching online.

Okay, so I lied about The Swag Rules. I’ve only got one swag rule.

The Swag Rule

Tell the Truth.

Everything else, you’ll figure out as you go.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

P.S. If you enjoyed this post, feel free to help my injured stats by linking to it, Stumbling, or otherwise bookmarking using the “Share” button below. That’s swag I’m always glad of.

*Why was I unable to include the photo here? The darned thing was so logo-ed up that even if I blurred out their particulars, the company might get some subliminal boost in your mind from this pan of their “marketing” methods. I wouldn’t want you to give them two cents on my account. That’s the kind of influential blogger I am.

So You Don’t Get Hammered by Competition

In a previous post we talked about being committed to a single focus in your business.

This helps you, the business owner, to use your time and money wisely. It helps your customer to know what mental drawer to stash your company in.

To decide when you have the Ideal Solution for their problem, the buyer needs to know what one solution you, uniquely, provide.

Makes sense, right?

I need a hammer.

How do I know when to shop at Target [my local big box store]?
When I want the lowest price on a basic tool and don’t have any special requirements.

• One solution: Price.

How do I know when to shop at the Home Depot [my local home improvement supercenter]?
When I want choice and feel informed enough to choose for myself.

• One solution: Selection.

How do I know when to shop at my locally owned independent hardware store?
When I want a hammer for a specialized use, and I need informed answers to my questions.

• One solution: Information.

You can get more complex than this (a lot more complex) in determining your Ideal Solution, but this is what it boils down to: If I can think of someplace else where I could also get the lowest price on a hammer when I don’t have any special requirements, I just might. In small business, that could spell the end for you.

There’s only one way out of this dilemma. Focus on what makes your Ideal Solution one in a million. You have no competition when you are alone at the top of the customer’s mind.

What have you got that nobody else has?

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

You Can’t Really See What They See Until You…

Put yourself into your customer’s shoes.

Use your online forms; try to complete an order; call customer service; shop your store anonymously; eat your own food.

If you’ll be recognized by staff, just put on a mental “disguise,” telling yourself that you are a customer; looking, walking, touching where they would.

Experience your business they way they do.

Can you do it?

Is it easy? Can your Mom do it?

What does it smell like, look like, sound like?

Is it a delight?

Is it remarkable?

Get another Perspective by asking a customer.

Take notes. Make changes. Wait one month. Repeat.

What happens to your powers of observation when you walk through your business “disguised” as a customer?

What are the customer’s priorities? Are they yours?

On Monday, what part of your Experience is more obvious to your customers in the summer, that you may not notice at all? Let’s walk a special mile.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

Dear Reader,

Whatever happened to dressing, speaking, behaving, just a little better than we suspect our audience may, so that they know we respect their time and thought about impressing them?

Oh, I could be thinking of the ladies, but today I’m not. I know there are ladies who’ve made an occasional, tiny error in dress out there, wondering about improving their Customer Experience, but ‘tis not to you I speak.

Casual Fridays? Not fond of them, but I survive. Casual client meetings, interviews, conferences? NO.

NO.

Let’s just say I had a meeting recently with a gent whose attire left me speechless. Not in a good way. No sale.

If you’re planning a speech or a meeting where you’d like to make a good impression on your prospect or client (is there a time when you don’t want to make a good impression?), take a moment to visit one of my favorite guilty lurking pleasures: Art of Manliness. Let Brett McKay help you look like the ace professional you really are. And if you want to sell me something, sell me on you, first.

Yes, personal appearance is part of Maximum Customer Experience. Take care of the details, and they’ll take care of you.

Have your say. You know you want to.

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

This week we’ve been talking about choosing a great name to grow your business and creating or revamping your logo to power you forward. Last point on these related topics, for the do-it-yourselfers and for those about to hire a design firm:

No System Fonts

Nothing says “cheap” like using the typefaces that came bundled with your Mac or PC to “uniquely brand” your company, or worse, letting your designer do it.

Your identity deserves better. No system fonts in logos, period.

Seven type resources your designer knows about, that you should check out for yourself:

MyFonts (Kelly’s favorite)

fonts.com

Linotype

Font Brothers

T26

P22

Font Bureau

Some sell faces by lots of type designers, some only sell their own. There are loads of other sites. These are just a few to get you started thinking about the enormous world of type.

After you’ve clicked around you’ll realize that one typeface will not break the bank. Make sure the typeface you choose is less-well-known, so it can distinguish you from every other business using Sand or Papyrus or Times New Roman, and make sure you choose type that fits with your Vision for the company.

Bonus: I admit to being a type geek. When P22’s type newsletter arrived in my inbox last week, I checked out their new face, RTF Stern, eagerly. (It’s gorgeous.) But a YouTube video about “the making of” Stern? No, I wouldn’t click. Too silly. I couldn’t click. Should I click?

I did. The cool jazz! The hot metal! Delightful. Check it out:

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson