How do we think of Joan Rivers? Comedienne? TV star? Broadway star? Is she perceived as a Broadway star so she could have the usual tribute of the dimming of the Broadway lights in her honor? Some people said nonamely the Broadway League, which represents theater owners and producers. Some people said yes – 5400 signatures on a petition to “show our beloved legend the respect she deserves!” The Broadway League did reverse its earlier decision and the lights dimmed on Sept 9 at 6:45pm. I’m not telling this story just to talk about Joan Rivers, remarkable as she was. I’m pointing out that we perceive others differently and it makes a huge difference in how we treat them. And that effects both employee and customer loyalty. So was she more of a TV star or more of a Broadway star? How do you perceive her? Did the Broadway League put her in one ‘box’ while lots of other fans had a different perception? Do you put others in ‘boxes’? Sure we all do. Our brains make sense of the world by forming categories and then applying something we know about one person in the category to the others. For instance, we categorize lawyers and accountants as boring people, but there are still important, for example if your feel your rights violated the use of a civil rights attorney is essential for this. We think of artsy people as ‘way out.’ We consider rich people arrogant. These are the blatant stereotypes. And we all know people who don’t fit the stereotypes. Let’s go another level deeper. Your young employee makes a mistake. He seems careless and not detail oriented. So you start putting him into the ‘box’ with all the other careless and lack-of-detail people you’ve ever known. He’s trapped. One or two mistakes identifies the way you perceive him and listen to him. Your speech to him and how you treat him starts coming from how you perceive him (the box you put him in). Your communication which is both speaking and listening is between you and the ‘box’, not necessarily between you and him. It starts to blind you to his other talents. Perhaps he’s a great big picture thinker from 30,000 feet and not so focused on the details. Maybe he just doesn’t know the job well enough or hasn’t yet developed self confidence. Maybe he really gets it but is covering up for someone else that he’s helping out. There are a number of scenarios that might be outside the ‘box’ you constructed. Your customer just called to tell you that he’s not happy. You start getting defensive because that’s how you always react when you feel put on the spot. You’ve put him into an attacker ‘box’ with all the other people who have ever made you wrong. You listen to him and communicate back to him as an adversary. On the other hand, you could listen to him that he is providing you with a gift, that his pointing out a problem will allow it to be fixed so you can provide a better solution and ultimately earn more money. You could put him in your friend ‘box.’ The weird thing is that these ‘boxes’ become self fulfilling prophecies. The customer sensing your defensiveness gets more irate and becomes the actual attacker you feared. The young employee feels your disempowerment, gets anxious and makes even more mistakes. What if you could be very aware of the categories you put people into and be totally responsible for your role in trapping them in these ‘boxes?’ What if you could train yourself to see each person more objectively? Would the young employee feel more empowered and confident and then make fewer mistakes? Would What if instead you could create self-filling prophecies around looking for each person’s greatness? the complaining customer when carefully thanked and appreciated become a partner in creating a better solution? Communication with customers and employees (and everyone) is a two way street, often a chicken and egg scenario. In essence you have the potential to create them in how you listen to or perceive them to be. Expect the best and that’s what you’ll get. You can bring out the greatness in people just by looking for it.

The Problem: You have very dedicated staff who do their respective jobs well. Howeversometimes they get caught up in back office functions with the best office furniture, go to this site to learn more and get the best quality, the minutia and the deadlines and forget that ultimately it’s all about the customer. If you have an idea to own a business, then here is the best field to choose to start one easily. Solution:

1. At every meeting make sure there is an empty seat at the table. This includes planning meetings, meetings with vendors, C-suite meetings, and departmental meetings. Put some representation of your typical customer (or avatar) on that chair. It could be an enlarged photo, an empty coke bottle with a Styrofoam ‘head’, a paper doll or a bag with a drawing on it. Have fun with it.
2. Make sure this ‘typical customer’ has a name. Certainly circulate through the company who the typical client is. Look at a combination of your top 5 customers and come up with an avatar profile including: a fictitious name, age, gender, income and education levels, family demographics, and psychographics including values, the way he or she prioritizes, the needs he or she has that your product or service satisfies. If your customer is a B to B customer, then add something about the business as well as the usual purchaser in the business. Suppose you gave your ‘typical customer’ avatar the name of Chris.
3. At the meetings, point to the ‘person’ on the empty chair and ask questions such as: What does Chris think about what you’ve proposed? How will this decision impact Chris? What will Chris think of this design or promotion? How does this impact Chris’ relationships with his own customers? What does Chris see on our website that catches his attention and makes him want to read more? Who is talking with Chris that can become a good referral for us?

Explained in more depth on page 118 of my book, The Customer Loyalty Playbook, 12 Game Strategies to Drive Improved Results in Your Business. Download the first chapter for f.r.e.e. from my websites. Available at Amazon as a paperback or ebook.

A young Vice President in a financial services company was talking about his career and the accolades he got from his manager and the owner of the company. My client has demonstrated his superior team leadership skills with his operations team. He’s also doing a great job leveraging referrals to bring on new accounts. In fact he would like to move into more of a salesperson’s role. But because he’s so good at leading his operations teamhis bosses are keeping him in that role and capping his growth, development and income potential (while paying him big compliments so he’s happy about the status quo). So far he’s tolerating this situation and so that’s what he’s getting.

A CEO client was talking to me about the culture of his company and if all his employees were embodying the company core values. One of his employees, a senior technician, was continually late, making his teammates wait for him before going out on customer jobs. He was not honoring the company value of caring and respecting colleagues and clients. His excuse: ‘What’s 15 minutes?’ The CEO was torn because this is his best technician whose hours are very billable and who trains other technicians. He had talked to the technician but not taken any stronger action. So far he’s tolerating this situation and so that’s what he’s getting.

How it impacts the person/situation you’re tolerating. When we tolerate situations, actions or communications that aren’t right, we are holding people to a low standard. It dishonors them and all the people their actions are impacting. Basically you’re saying, ‘Your integrity doesn’t matter because you’re not that important. We relax the standards for you. You need it to be easier because you can’t handle what we expect.’

How it impacts others: We’re in effect communicating that others can adopt the lower standard as well because that’s the way we do things around here. It can be a cancer that spreads through an organization.

How it impacts you: Along the same lines Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ So if you’re tolerating something in spite of the negative thoughts and anxiety that something’s not right, remember that if you don’t take action, you’re giving tacit permission for the action to happen over and over again. You are responsible for tolerating it and not changing it. Does that eat away at your own sense of integrity and make you complicit in what’s going on? Sure it does.

So what are you tolerating in your business or in other parts of your life? When will you take responsibility for changing those things?

(taken from the first chapterread the whole chapter at www.customerloyaltyplaybook.com)

1. More profit, The first one or two purchases generally cover the customer acquisition costs. Only after these do you realize profit from this customer.
2. More revenues, Loyal customers buy more.
3. More referrals, They are so happy they can’t help it.
4. Not as price sensitive, resulting in higher margins.
5. Prompt payments, which provides you with cash flow.
6. Creates an upward value spiral, Loyal customers interact with an engaged staff who then provide more reasons for loyalty - causing staff to love their jobs.
7. Competitive advantage, Who can compete with your upward value spiral?
8. Reduced servicing costs, Efficiencies are attained because loyal customers are already set up in your order entry systems, your delivery schedule, your financial records, your email list, your customer surveys. They know who to ask for and are familiar with your company’s process.
9. More forgiving, If a mistake does happen, it’s less significant given the overall relationship. Your ‘fix’ is even more proof to sing your praises.

What if your customers were loyal and you were able to bring these savings to your bottom line. How much more profitable could your business be? Research says  that it only takes a 5% increase in customer loyalty to bring an extra 25-100% profit to your bottom line.

What do we talk about most after the Super bowl?

Why the adsof course! We all look to see what ads were controversial, what ads were unique or funny, heart touching or innovative, progressive or repulsive.  Comments on ads get discussed at the Super Bowl parties, Tweet’ed, Facebook’ed, YouTube’d LinkedIn’ed, Pinterest’ed, Instagram’ed, blogged, talked about at the office and in the media, and also other popular media like Instagram which is used for a big percentage of people now a days, and that's why sites as filstalexpress.de offer good support for businesses interested in using Instagram as a way of advertising. The more the national news, word of mouth and social media gets stimulated, the argument goes, the better the company’s brand recognition, the more sales the company makes. It seems to logically follow. But is it true? You would think that the 29 companies that placed ads during the Superbowl would check this out before spending $3.7 million for a 30 second spot (plus lots more just to create the ad). So let’s compare Super Bowl advertisers and their non-advertising peers who instead provide an excellent customer experience. When you look at studies of 3 years of revenue growth, the results show ... (drum roll please):

Customer experience trumps Super Bowl ads 2 to 1.

Here are a couple of examples where 3 years of average revenue growth is compared between Super Bowl advertisers (from 2012-2013) and their competitors who excel in customer satisfaction/experience:

Super Bowl Advertiser ---------- Customer Experience leader Samsung 18.3% ----------- Apple 53.9% Best Buy 4% ----------------- Costco 11.6%

Forrester Research’s top ten customer experience leaders have a 3-year growth pattern better that twice of the top ten US advertisers.

Why is this so?

Advertising (no matter how great it is) goes one way reaching out to people. It’s interruptive, it is general to all viewers. Even if it gets widely talked about, if it’s irrelevant to the viewer, it doesn’t turn into sales, take a look at these ad personalization stories for example. By it’s very nature, it’s a company driven ‘Look at me!’ strategy that tries to get attention but doesn’t materially involve the viewer. The customer experience, however, is where the customer dictates the relationship. Customer loyalty is earned based on what the customer wants. Forrester Research talks about the 3 levels of the customer experience:

1. The foundation, Does your product/service do what I expect and solve my problem?
2. Next layer: Are you easy to do business with?
3. The defining layer; Do I enjoy myself in the relationship/interaction? Do you make me feel special, unique and recognized?

In my book, The Customer Loyalty Playbook, 12 Game Strategies to Drive Improved Results in Your Business, I describe the infrastructure (Forrester calls it ecosystem) that you can build in your business to improve your sales growth and customer loyalty. This includes the emotional intelligence and internal systems that build leadership, employee engagement, a designed customer experience and targeted marketing. The good news is that you don’t have to spend $3.7 million for a 30 second Super Bowl ad. You can invest in building the customer loyalty infrastructure in your business to get double the sales results for a lot less money. What are your thoughts on the ability of Super Bowl ads versus the Customer Experience to generate more sales? Buy the book here     OR     Download the first chapter here

John is a manager and has seven people who report to him. He grumbles that no one measures up to his skill level. Yeshe attempts to delegate the work that comes into the department to each of his employees. But he always finds fault with what they’ve done. It isn’t done exactly like he would do it and he complains they don’t follow instructions. They walk on egg shells around him because they don’t want him to come down on them. They take no chances at ‘best guess’ solutions because they don’t want to fail. They come to him with a zillion questions and don’t take initiative to figure anything out on their own. Sometimes they put the job back on him saying ‘I don’t know how to do this’, or ‘I’m not sure who to contact for this information’ and John takes the job back. He winds up staying quite late many nights, grumbling that the company hires the worst people and he has to do everything himself. Angie is a manager in the same company, different department.  She also has seven people working for her. She meets with each person each week and has the employee tell her what he got accomplished the week before. Sometimes she finds out that the employee got something accomplished in a very effective way that would have never occurred to her. The employee then states what is on board for the coming week and where he could use her support. She coaches the person by asking questions to help him discover what would be the most workable way to get that job done. She encourages each person to reach out to resources within the company. She suggests the person try something a couple of ways so he can fail forward, learn by making mistakes and then improve. She asks individuals to take on ‘stretch’ projects, projects they’ve never done before so they can discover their talents and develop confidence. Angie’s staff are 50% more productive than John’s and Angie leaves on time every day.

What’s the difference in the way these two people delegate?

Delegation is a mindset issue about who you're being and what you believe.

What does that mean? Most people would define delegation as giving tasks to other people to do. That’s true for both John and Angie. Let’s look more deeply. If you believe that you're the only one who knows or can do a job, that all others are less skilled, less knowledgeable, less committed, and less capable, then being in control and micromanaging is the resulting action that is generated from your beliefs. After all why would you totally give the job to someone else if you feel they had no chance for success at creating the solution you are responsible for? If they can’t possibly do this task, you might as well do it yourself from the start because you’ll wind up doing it over anyway. From this belief you feel the need to watch over someone’s shoulder because without your direction, they won’t do it right. And you know the right way, the only way. When you do delegate and they come to you for assistance, you take the task back because it’s easier to just do it yourself. If you believe that people are smart, are eager to learn, have the capacity for evolving and growing, then the actions you take are empowering them to further their growth. You provide them with opportunities to learn, to fail, to try on new things, to expand their networks, to discover for themselves. You coach them by asking questions so they can figure it out and have the joy and confidence of knowing their own capabilities. They show more initiative, make more decisions, trust their own judgment and more gets done faster. You don’t become the bottleneck. They try on bigger projects. They work with each other and brainstorm different outcomes that are better than one mind alone (yours) could accomplish. They bring their life experiences to bear and contribute more than one person ever could. The difference is being an enhancer rather than a diminisher. If you see your employees as small, all your actions will be about proving and demonstrating their smallness. If you see them as big people, you will give them the latitude to show off their ‘bigness.’ Once people sense that you are encouraging them to grow, they step into it. It may take longer for some than for others. If you worked for John for 10 years and then got transferred to Angie’s department, it might take you a little while to adjust to the expectations of the new environment. A management researcher named McGregor put together an assessment on a person’s management belief system. I'm happy to give it to anyone over the phone so they can see how they truly act along a continuum between the two opposites of 100% enhancer and 100% diminisher. You’ll learn if what you say is the same way you act. Contact me if you would like to take this complimentary assessment.

Please Share....

Your thoughts about being an enhancing delegator or a diminishing delegator are welcome. Have you worked for either one and what was your experience? Have you been either one and what was your experience?