Zane Safrit

5 decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty, anytime

Customer loyalty. Every business wants it. Few businesses know, much less make, the decisions to build customer loyalty in any economy.

Jeanne Bliss knows what decisions are needed to drive customer loyalty. She's the author of I Love You More than My Dog: 5 Decisions that Drive Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad. (Great book!)

She was a recent guest on my radio show. During the show, I asked her:

What are the 5 decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty?

Here's her answer:

1. Decide to Believe. Believe in your customers and your employees.

2. Decide with Clarity of Purpose. What is your company's purpose? Does it live consistently across your company.

3. Decide to Be Real. Do you connect your personal self with your business self?

4. Decide to Be There. Are your there for your customers and employees on their terms?

5. Decide to Say "Sorry". Apologizing well is an important peace process between companies and their customers.

Note the word shared in all 5. Decide. Customer loyalty is a decision.

These are the 5 decisions you make every day, in every way, with everyone your brand touches. Make these decisions and you make customer loyalty. Avoid these decisions and you avoid customer loyalty.

This ain't rocket science.

But it is more challenging. Otherwise, why are so few companies able to create loyal customers (or employees, for that matter)?

Maybe more companies will be able to drive customer loyalty with Jeanne's books, her blog customer experience snacks, her speaking, her consulting. Then they can decide if being a rocket-scientist is really that difficult.

You can listen to the rest of our conversation here.

You can read the highlights of our conversation here.

Highlights from my conversation with Michael Stallard, author of Fired Up or Burned Out

Michael Lee Stallard, co-founder and partner of Epluribus Partners and the author of Fired Up or Burned Out: How to re-ignite your teams passion, creativity and productivity joined the show last week. You can listen in streaming on-demand mode here.

Besides being a great speaker who consults with top organizations now like Johnson & Johnson, Google, NASA, SEC, IRS, GE...and the author of an excellent book on building a culture of connection...what made Michael stand out for me was his approach to being a guest on this radio show. I described it in more detail here.

And Michael only confirmed he was as consistent in person during the hour he shared.

Michael, how are you? Thank you for being on our show this morning.

Let’s talk about your book, Fired Up or Burned Out: How to re-ignite your teams passion, creativity and productivity. That was published in 2007.

Erika Andersen in her book Being Strategic, coined the phrase Reasonable Aspiration or Hoped-for Future. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future in writing this book?

I wrote the book as a result of several experiences. I have worked in environments that drained the life out of me and others that just energized me. I had work as an investment banker and seen when mergers just didn’t work, even though rationally there was a compelling reason.

I wanted to help people and organizations thrive.

How close are you to reaching this hoped-for future? What are the signs that tell you this?

What’s encouraging are the affirmations from Seth Godin, Marshall Goldsmith. Guy Kawasaki wrote a nice forward for my ChangeThis manifesto. GE uses parts of the book in their leadership program. Google, NASA, Johnson and Johnson ...the SEC all want to work with us.

What was the common element among all of these groups?

The common element is the challenge. The conference board came out with a definition of employee engagement that said: it’s a heightened emotion and intellectual connection that an employee has for his job, manager and co-workers that encourages them them to apply additional discretionary effort...

The more connections, that were both rational and emotional, the more energize they were, the more cooperative they were...

There is a culture that inspires people to do more.

Who is the reader for this book? Describe the reader you had in mind as you wrote this book?

Primarily for those in positions of leadership. It’s helpful to the leader who’s trying to create that environment. And it’s helpful to the individual who is trying to get into that environment as well.

Let’s follow-up on this. You start off your book discussing disengagement at work. 2007 seems so long ago. What’s changed since then in regards to disengagement at work.

When you look at employee engagement, it’s actually gotten worse. Recent research shows that employee engagement is at the lowest level since 1990.

Corporate Executive Board came out with a report that says 90% of employees are not engaged or not aligned with the corporate goals. 1 in 10...are engaged or aligned.

Many managers still do not see the power of a culture of connection in reaching their objectives.

What I see happening is...we’re creatures of habit. Normal times, leaders are focused on task excellence. But research shows if you’re not focused on building relationships you’ll end up sabotaging your own efforts at task excellence.

If you don’t take the time, if you’re not intentional about this, then you’ll be undermining your own efforts.

People want to be more productive. They individually they want to thrive. But when you’re focused only on task then you start to dysfunction. And we’re seeing a lot of that in individuals and in companies.

And we’re seeing a lot more incivility in the workplace. A culture of connection reduces stress hormones. It provides that relational support that grounds us.

Gallup’s Q12 survey asks about employees and whether there are those around them that care about them, help them grow, consider their opinions, etc. Business units with higher q12 scores, higher connections, report higher productivity, profitability, shareholder value, customer satisfaction, lower turnover, fewer accidents. Now, employee disengagement is at an all-time low. And by coincidence, until just recently so was the market indices. So...this disengagment ripples throughout our economy and culture.

There’s a great quote from John Wooden. He said "Ability may get you to the top, but it’s character that keeps you there."

If we’re focused only on our success, then we may be successful for awhile...But ultimately if we don’t bring people along with us on our journey then that success tends to be temporary.

Our book includes a number of examples from history that showed the power of connection in building historical results.

Research shows that an engaged employee is 20% more productive than the average employee.

Secondly they found that emotional factors in a workplace were 4 times more influential in inspiring discretionary effort in the workplace.

What does this culture of disengagement do for our pace of economic recovery?

Well, it makes it much more difficult. Emotional contagion is a term that describes a group of people energized, connected that creates a spiral up of energy and connection. And the reverse is true. Intuition is great book by David Myers. And he talks about how we’re effected by the energy level we have with the people in our presence.

What are the three ways to re-ignite your teams passion, creativity and productivity?

They’re based on shared identity, empathy and understanding. It moves people from self-centered to group-centered membership. We worked with those three elements: vision, value, voice.

• Vision: our mission and how we want to get there and our reputation as we reach our goal.

• Value: now this is different from values. Do people feel appreciated, valued? When those emotions are in place then that releases our energy.

• Voice: people feel informed and feel their opinions are important and considered.

When these are in place then that produces a force, it releases our energies, it produces positive effect on our mental and physical health. It helps extend our lives.

And you describe an epiphany that took place over ten years. What was that? (Note: this experience and his description is worth listening to.)

It was an experience I had with Sloan-Kettering in midtown Manhattan. Nick, the greeter made direct eye-contact and this is in midtown Manhattan! No one makes eye-contact in Midtown Manhattan much less smiles and greets you.

The receptionist was calling everyone honey. Everyone was helpful, friendly. The oncologist spent an hour with us, was happy, positive.

I had 2 reactions:

• Sloan-Kettering is recognized as the best and this confirms it.

• They cared. They were not in it for the money or the work. They were in it to help the patients and each other.

This is what really jumped out at me. This is different than most places.

Research shows us that there are islands of connection and islands of disconnection. There are islands of engagement in any organization. This doesn’t have to happen at the top. Just stop and think about our own experiences and you’ve seen workplaces that were fired up and others that were not. our listeners should understand that they can create their culture of connection themselves.

I was going to ask if you have an example of a company or client who implemented your three ways? But this story with Sloan-Kettering is so inspiring it’s hard to top that one.

But even before that I had started to experiment when I was with Morgan Stanley Global Private Wealth group. We were able to double our results. Now there were other factors. But everyone said it was one of the most rewarding experiences in their work-life with such camaraderie and esprit de corps.

You must have a library of examples of companies who are built around a culture of connection. What’s an unknown company that offers an ideal connection culture? What’s it done for them?

There are many unknowns out there. Often it’s a leader who wants to be more intentional about it. The Beryl Company in Bedford, Texas. They provide call-center operations for hospitals, clinics, etc. Their CEO is Paul Speigelman. They talk about helping people connect with each other. They have a big family support network, training, they are their to support their employees. They give their employees a voice, talk about their wins they are proud of...it creates a strong sense of connection when you do those things. They have Friday night bowling and half the company comes out! They are the number one provider of call-center operations for healthcare providers.

You wrote a great manifesto at ChangeThis titled The Connection Culture (pdf). You itemize, in this manifesto, the benefits of stronger emotional connections for us from our birth through our senior years. When does the adversarial culture begin for us?

Boy, that’s a big question. We could be here all day. Oftentimes these things begin with the culture we found at home. You can develop a scarcity mindset or you can develop an abundance mindset. You can find helping those around you helps you thrive.

We’re shaped by those early years.

Teachers have a big influence. A coach can have a huge effect to change or reinforce those experiences.

Who is Hewitt Wheless and why’s his story important for companies seeking to understand the power of connection in their corporate culture?

Hewitt was a Texan and a fighter pilot in WW2. General George Marshall was organizing the tasks of production. And President FDR organized a tour of these plants and brought with him this young pilot to the tour of a Boeing military aircraft plant. 18,000 workers. It was a huge plant.

Hewitt told the story of how his plane was riddled like swiss cheese with holes from enemy planes and miraculously he was able to land safely. Hewitt was there to thank the people at that plant that built the plane that saved his life. Probably wasn’t a dry-eye in the plant.

Imagine hearing how your work saved the life of a pilot fighting for your country! It transformed their whole identity from mere plant workers.

What is the key to Hewitt Wheless’ story?

His story showed the power of Vision.

They were on a mission at Boeing.

Peter Drucker heard of this story while researching GM’s production of tanks and said it gave him a vision of what a workplace could be and accomplish.

It fires up and connects people with each other and their organization. For the next 4 years they out-produced the Nazis nearly 3 to 1.

Let’s end up talking about your company. You named your company epluribus partners. Why did you choose that name?

It’s based on America’s motto which is "e pluribus unum". The Latin phrase means "out of many, one". That’s what our work focuses on. We try to create the environment that helps the employees, leaders, management to maintain t tighten strategic alignment AND they are moving in the same direction. That produces the out of many, one.

Can you share with us a client success story? What’s the takeaway for our listeners?

Let me mention a recent win. We’re working with Johnson and Johnson vision Care group. With line leaders we’ve found you’re better talking about productivity than overall employee engagement. Their Director of HR from Japan said she was having a hard time translating employee engagement...But, the whole idea of one group of people pulling together does resonate to her colleagues.

That's what we found resonates in organizations and people’s lives. They feel supported and give their best efforts in aligning with organizations goals. That’s one area we’re seeing our work is having an impact.

Jim Rohn said that Leaders are Readers. What are you reading? What’s your three favorite books this year?

Wow. It’s hard to narrow it down to 3.

• A biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Wikipedia

Amazon

• It's Not About the Coffee, by Howard Behar

• Lincoln’s Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk.

Michael's Sites:

• Epluribus Partners

• Michael Stallard

• Fired Up or Burned Out

Upcoming guests:

• Gary Harpst, April 14, author of Six Disciplines Execution Revolution

• Erika Andersen, April 21, author of Being Strategic

Be sure to join the Facebook Fan Page for this show.

What Are the 6 Gold Hallmarks of a Fascinating Message?

Do you have them? Does your brand  have them? Why should you care if your message lacks any Gold Hallmarks of a fascinating message?

Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Captivation and Persuasion, answers those questions, in detail, in her book. (Highly recommend it.)

And she was a recent guest on my radio show. So, I asked her:

What are the Gold Hallmarks of a fascinating message?

And Sally answered:

Gold Hallmarks are the ways in which you can evaluate if something is being fascinating or not. Fascinating things have very specific traits in common:

1. It incites conversation. We want to talk about them, whether we like them or not. We may not even really care about them.

2. It provokes strong and immediate emotional reaction. We can love it or hate it, but it is an immediate reaction.

3. It creates advocates. It doesn’t try to be ALL things to ALL people but rather has a core slice of the population putting in a lot of energy, whether they are for or against it.

4. It becomes cultural shorthand for a specific set of actions or values. Harley Davidson for example – if I said he is the kind of guy that drives a Harley, you would know exactly what I mean. OR if I said that is the Cadillac of toasters. You would understand the value and image.

5. It forces competitors to realign around it. It creates such a significant space in the marketplace that competitors can no longer continue on the path they were before. They have to move, make way and adjust. When Chick fil-A introduced their fried chicken sandwich, McD’s had to quickly follow up with their own.

6. It triggers social revolutions. People become so passionate about it beyond the sheer utility of the product and it changes the way they think and act on a much bigger level. It is no longer about the parody level. It stands for much more. Brands can live on a higher level.

Her answer was great. But how was it for you? Does her answer give you what you need? If not, consider these resources:

* Sally's Book: Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Captivation and Persuasion

* Sally's Website:  Sally Hogshead

* Sally on Twitter: SallyHogshead

* You can listen to our conversation here.

* You can read highlights of our conversation here.

What does your company offer: a chain or a benefit?

The difference between a chain and a benefit is more than semantics when it comes to employee benefits.

Are your employee benefits a chain to keep your talented employees locked to their desks?

Or are those employee benefits just one of a number of benefits for those contributing their talents, skills, enthusiasms and ideas...to the growth of what in essence is their* brand.

Marketing Profs recently carried an article titled Why Passionate Employees Matter. Towards the end of this article I found:

Gallup research of 300,000 businesses indicated that 75-80% of employees are achieving much less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be.

If all your employees were “fully engaged,” Gallup reported, your customers would be 70% more loyal, your turnover would drop by 70%, and your profits would jump 40%. Last, Gallup found that great employees also tend to engender “passionate” customers.

Employees in that first group, those achieving far less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be are offered chains.

Employees in the 2nd group are offered benefits.

What do you offer? Is it a chain or a benefit? It’s more than semantics for everyone.

* Their. It's their brand. It is as much their brand as it is their customer's brand. Do you have someone else who spends their waking hours designing it, solving it, delivering it, supporting it, answering it...and buying it and telling their friends to, as well?

** Hat tip to Eric Brody at Healthy Conversations.

Highlights From My Conversation with Michele Miller, author of The Soccer Mom Myth

Michele Miller, author of Wonderbranding blog, dropped by my radio show this week. Michelle is the author of The Soccer Mom Myth (Wizard Academy Press), a Top 20 marketing books list seller on Amazon.com, and The Natural Advantages of Women, the audio book that has been hailed for its concepts, principles, and new scientific information that explains how the female brain is “hardwired” for personal greatness.”

She’s won awards from Marketing Sherpa and Forbes.com, and was featured in Seth Godin’s ebook, “Bull Marketing.” Michele is the marketing columnist for Inc.com, the web companion to Inc. business magazine.

Welcome to the show!

You co-authored a book titled The Soccer Mom Myth: Today’s Female Customer, Who She Is,Why She Really Buys. That was in 2007, before the elections and all the campaign drivel about the term Soccer Mom and exploiting.

My friend, Erika Andersen, coined the phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future in her book Being Strategic. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future back then, ahead of your time, I think, when you wrote this book?

I am a big believer in baby steps. I was giving a presentation in Sweden last week and I said when I was younger my aspirations were very big; I was going to change the world.

As I get older that aspiration gets more realistic. I realize it takes many small steps to change the world.

I am most proud of with The Soccer Mom Myth is that we were going to break the idea of marketing to women into small doable segments. First you need to understand your market then here are the small things about marketing to women. When something is started with all good intentions there is no follow through because people are so overwhelmed with how big the topic is that they can’t get done what they need to.

I am working on second smaller book, breaking it down even further into some basic things about how to understand the female consumer better. I have also blogged about it and these have been my most popular posts. That was really the aspiration for the book. Our greatest joy comes from the feedback we receive via email.

Do you find that smaller businesses are able to embrace your perspective, your research or ideas in that book, easier or faster than larger companies who have more resources?

I think there is a tradeoff.

When you are a small business, you may not have the financial resources or the manpower to do things, so it is important to do one little bit at a time.

The tradeoff when you have a big corporation is that you are very top heavy and it is hard to achieve anything, almost impossible to achieve anything in its original form. There are many, many cooks in the kitchen. I think that is why I so enjoy working with small businesses.

My greatest joy is going out and working with them in these 2-day seminars and showing theme these little things they can try.

If I had my druthers I’d go small business just because things get done.

Where are you at now in terms of reaching this hoped-for future? Have you reached it? Did your reasonable aspiration change along the way?

I think the success stories we see on a regular basis. When I see people have actually learned something from the book. People make the mistake of thinking all these businesses are owned by women. Not all of these businesses are owned by women and I am delighted that half of the people who attend my classes are men.

We have also had to print more books as well as a soft cover, and have gone international as well, so I know we have been successful. I just got back from Sweden and will return and do a workshop later this year.

What were you doing in Sweden? Tell us about that story, how they found you, how you came to speak at their event.

This just goes to show you I am also a very big champion of social media – tools like Twitter and Facebook. I always advise my clients to start a fan page.

But, I made a conscious decision when I started with Facebook I would just have a personal page...you’re looking at going on in my life because I feel if anyone wants to work with me or hire me, if we don’t have the same perspective or if they don’t’ like me, then it won’t work.

I had received an invitation six months ago from a woman in Sweden and what I didn’t know was that she was responsible for organizing the Prime Minister’s Conference on Economic Growth. They invited me to speak there.

They have a mandate that ½ of all business should be run by women by 2016. They are adamant about gender equality. They want women to understand their leadership strengths. From 2016 there will be 250K businesses in need of new CEOs. They have an aging population. Sweden has a strong campaign going to help women get there.

It is incredible. I was a keynote at this conference.

You mentioned that 50% of your workshop attendees were now men. When did that shift begin?

There really wasn’t a shift. Right from the beginning, in 2003 when I came out a small audio book called The Natural Advantages of Women, and my senior partner, Roy H. Williams who’s a triple best-selling author himself, said to me, that half of your readers will be men.

He was so right.

From the day I started teaching my courses it is always half men, half women, right down the line.

I never tried to make gender as much of an issue as people wanted me to. It is about science, brain wiring and environment and how we are as a culture. The lines are more blurred. It’s not such a big deal to younger people.

Back in the day you wrote, that no more than 30% of advertisers reach female customer. That’s the customer that makes 80% of all purchasing decisions. Right?

If nothing else there’s the reason to focus on women.

There is a fear that if you focus on the female customer, you will be driving away your male customer.

You’ll be driving away 20% of your audience to reach 80%...

¾ of the way through the book we realized that not only are women different from men, but they are different from each other as well. Not all women think the same.

In Chapter 16 we said, “there is no such thing as marketing to women” and what we are really talking about is marketing to the right side of the brain. This is the home of imagination and persuasion and emotional intelligence, sense and pattern, how does this business fit into the pattern of my life, what kind of customer experience is it giving me?

What we say is that Men have right brains too, but we focus on women here because they have four times as many connections into that right side of the brain which means not only do they have purchasing power but they are also plugging into that side of the brain where you point your brand four times faster and four times deeper.

That doesn’t exclude men – they just don’t get there as quickly or deeply. I think that is a fear that companies have and that is why I focus on science and research.

Men and women are different. No surprise to married couples. So, if so many ads fail to reach women can we say too many ad execs remain unmarried?

Once we had our economic meltdown, all of a sudden companies are saying that they have been spending a lot of money and not getting good results. The creative is not persuasive. There are billions of dollars spent on advertising that doesn’t produce results. Now ad agencies are in trouble and are shutting their doors because they don’t know how to deal with the new reality.

26:33

All women to women marketing agencies are run by women- I think you need some male influence in these companies. Women don’t just want female communication language; they want and need a balance.

We can’t bring arranged marriages to the ad industry. That’s funny to even think about. Maybe a reality show...So let’s say you’re talking to the female CEO of a huge ad agency. They’ve given you 10 minutes to tell them the right way to advertise. What would you say?

I think it comes down to some basic ideas.

1.Be real. I think culturally that whatever you do, you need to be authentic. That is a word that is almost overused today, but it is true. Show us who you are. I think the best example of authenticity is the Domino’s Pizza campaign. They did many surveys with their customers and they discovered that people don’t like the taste of their pizza. They listened and wanted to change –they acknowledged that they needed to change. Being real is where it is at.

2. Speak their language; be multi-lingual. Another thing would be to know that you have different messages for different people. One ad is not going to say it all. Not all women speak the same language.

3. Monologue does not work anymore. It is all about conversation now. Customer empowerment has never been stronger because of the Internet.

Same scenario, but the CEO of this ad agency is a guy. What would change in what you say?

1.Speak their language. I would use more male based communication styles: more bullet points, sentences based more on logic and shorter sentences.

2. I'd talk about authenticity.

3. I would need more data and numbers. I would have to make them understand scientifically WHY we need to create the messages that we do about brain wiring.

40:55

You mentioned four different languages.

It falls along the Myers-Briggs. It has to do where a woman gets her energy and what her time horizon is:

1. Competitive

2. Spontaneous

3. Methodical

4. Humanistic

All four require subtle changes in language by using keywords and phrases in a dialect that they understand. It is important to make agencies and businesses aware that one size does not fit all.

You write about two types of advertising: relational and transactional.

This is probably a stupid question, but that’s one skill I have. The question is does either gender prefer one or the other type of advertising?

That’s not a stupid question; it is a good question. I have not found any evidence that one gender prefers one or the other.

In the long term, relational has a stronger affect because you are building a relationship with a customer and this is powerful especially due to social media where you can have a conversation with a brand. Women would probably go more for relational advertising upfront, but there is a time and a place for transactional advertising. Transactional is talking about a specific item that is on sale. It is something to drive people quickly, but you don’t keep people long term but you didn’t provide anything long term. You based your business on price.

The economy also drives advertising - the transactional ad has a little more power right now because of people’s perception about value. Value is more price driven than it was in past several year.

Let's talk about boobs and butts. They still matter in advertising, right? What are three reasons why boobs and butts still matter in advertising?

There has been a new wave in pushing the envelope with racy ads in the past few years. I find some of the ads amusing and creative. There is always an audience who will be upset.

These big companies have deep pockets and they can afford to try these campaigns. If it doesn’t go well, it won’t hurt that much. A smaller company could not do that.

Because of those deep pockets, creativity trumps persuasion. Everyone wants to get people talking. But did it persuade people to buy your product? Most of the time, it did not. I just don’t think creativity is going to go away...people just want an affect.

I think it still shows that men remain the target of the ad and this is why the ads don’t stick. There is no method of persuasion. I think if these ads were part of an overall comprehensive campaign to reach out to women there would have been fewer backlashes.

What’s the number one thing most people miss in their Word-of-Mouth marketing?

That they can’t buy it. It comes from the customer experience and it is not just about the great experience they have with you, but how you “fix” the negative experience. If you don’t fix it bad WOM spreads even faster than positive conversation. You can build your business on WOM without advertising.

Let’s talk reading. Leaders are readers.* You’re a leader. What are you reading?

• Daniel Pink’s new book: Drive.

• The other is written by my partner Tom Wanek. Tom writes the blog, Beyond Advertising. His newest book is: Currencies that Buy Credibility.

• Being a big fiction reader, Allison Rowe's newest book: Too Much Happiness

Where are you speaking next?

I'm speaking at BlogPaws 2010, April 9-10 in Columbus, OH.

And then at a workshop in Guatemala, end of April.

Where can we follow you?

• Blog: Wonderbranding

• Twitter: Michele Miller

Thanks, Michele!

* Jim Rohn

Tomorrow's Radio Guest: Michele Miller, author of The Soccer Mom Myth

Michele Miller is the author of The Soccer Mom Myth (Wizard Academy Press), a Top 20 marketing books list seller on Amazon.com, and The Natural Advantages of Women, the audio book that has been hailed for its concepts, principles, and new scientific information that explains how the female brain is “hardwired” for personal greatness.”

She’s won awards from Marketing Sherpa and Forbes.com, and was featured in Seth Godin’s ebook, “Bull Marketing.” Michele is the marketing columnist for Inc.com, the web companion to Inc. business magazine.

Michele once said to me We can talk about anything. I believed her; still do. The we was really, Michele. I believed she could listen to anything, embrace ideas not her own or maybe differed from hers, and she could hear what that person needed to hear to help them be not just a better marketer, but a better person. And she could do that in a way that was fun, funny, useful, respectful.

Come join us tomorrow at 10:00 AM, Central:

LIVE:

1) Listen here in streaming on-demand.

2). Call 646-915-9212 during the show hour, 10:00 AM, Central to 11:00 AM, Central

LATER:

1) Listen here in streaming on-demand.

Where is the ROI of "happy"?

Happy is a squishy term.

Don't think so? Which is easier to answer:

Am I hungry?

Am I happy?

Maybe it's where Hungry and Happy rest on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Am I hungry?

YES! I'm hungry for dessert! A chocolate almond torte, fresh whipped creme and a cup of coffee, all served as an appetizer.

Am I happy?

Yeah, for the most part. Compared to others...I mean I have these things going on and you know I have no real reason to complain...

Try measuring the ROI of happy for a business. Where does happy show up on a financial statement or balance sheet?

What company even talks about ...happy?

Zappos does. Well, their CEO, Tony Hsieh does. Zappos is that shoe and now apparel company out in ...Las Vegas. Mr. Hsieh talks about it in his new book and its purpose: DELIVERING HAPPINESS: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

The goal of the book is to inspire other companies to think about how to they can use happiness as a guiding principle to make customers happier (by focusing more on customer service) and employees happier (by focusing more on company culture), which ultimately can lead to sustainable profits and long-term financial performance. Tony Hsieh's Update

Zappos is 11 years old. At the end of 2008 they reached $1 billion in sales. At the end of 2009, they reached....$1.2 Billion in sales. 2009 was the darkest year in the Great Recession.

20% annual revenue growth during the peak of a recession, the greatest recession in the last 60+ years? That's a ROI on happy that can make anyone happy.

How else do you measure the ROI of happy, Zappos-style? You own your culture.

Zappos was acquired by Amazon.  Zappos has an unique culture so many, including myself, predicted Tony and his company would lose the power to maintain their culture.

Word of advice: never bet against a guy who's grown a company to $1 billion in 11 years and through 2 recessions and 2 wars.

Here's what Mr. Hsieh wrote about Zappos' culture one year after Amazon bought them:

We've retained our independence and our culture is as strong as before the acquisition. We've been learning a lot from each other and the new partnership has enabled us to move even faster towards the Zappos vision of delivering happiness to the world.

That's power. The power to maintain your corporate culture after being acquired is...power, huge power.

My point(s)?

The ROI of happy come in two forms: intangible and tangible.

• You want power?

• Create happy employees and customers.

• You want results... measured in metrics understood by all of your stakeholders, including your CFO?

• Create happy employees and customers

How do you do happy?

• You could start with understanding what Mr. Hsieh has done with Zappos.

In the meantime, be happy. Whatever definition you use, be happy. It is impossible to make others happy until we're happy

Now, where's that chocolate almond torte? I'm hungry.

Closing Stores...Part of "Our Normal Operations"

Sears Holdings, the owner of K-Mart and Sears, announced the closing of another 21 stores today. These closings are in addition to 35 stores already closed.

Spokeswoman Kimberly Freely says the closings are part of Sears' normal operations.

Let's be fair to Ms. Freely. As spokeswoman for Sears Holdings she has a challenging job. Also, she is not quoted in the article.

On the other hand, to say anything that could be reasonably summarized by a reporter of a national media to say...56 store closings are part of Sears' normal operations...is not an error of omission or commission. And it's not her fault. She's doing the best with the story she has to offer.

My wife saw the article. We talked a bit about it. What happened to Sears?

As a kid Sears was the destination store. Everyone went to Sears to buy well everything. Sears was a treasured anchor tenant for mall developers.

Then it seems, times changed. And Sears didn't. Or wouldn't.

Our little town once had a Sears store. We shopped there for convenience. Lawnmowers, weed-eaters, hardware, tools.

Then they closed.

Our quick summary was...if you're not competing in the urban markets, if you're not wanted in the suburban markets and you abandoned the small towns where your convenience made you king....where do operate?

You don't. That's when store closings become part of your normal operations.

Adam Hartung has a far better post on this. His post is titled Sears, Sara Lee: Killing Me Softly.He cites a report that Sears has decided to boost its sales by offering its products through other retail outlets. Huh. Help your competitor by offering your products to bring more customers to their stores, not yours.

I predict Ms. Freely will have more opportunity to talk about Sears' normal operations in the coming months.

Adam is a guest on my radio show. You can listen to our conversation here.

For THIS(?) We Give Up Our Privacy?

The screen grab captures a frame of Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen in a duet singing Suzanne, written by Leonard Cohen. (great song, great duet)

On the bottom of this frame is an ad.

The ad is for a company with the name...Collins. Collins Complete Ink.

A Collins Complete Ink ad is somehow relevant for the audience while we watch a video of a wonderful duet between Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen?

For THIS(?) we give up our privacy and let ad networks track our every move?

My friend Michael Rubin reminds me of the human element in situations like these. Good intentions meet with reality that includes deadlines and skewed priorities, technology's limitations, people's limitations, total misunderstandings, glitches, things happening, etc.

And it is a good reminder. No matter how easy it is to demonize a company, an industry, a person...the reality is never quite so simple or stark.

Advertisers, I have a question or two.

Did we allow you to monitor our movements around the internet for this?

With all the data at your disposal...wouldn't it be possible to deliver more relevant ads, ads for solutions related to the content we're consuming?

Wouldn't it make sense as in dollars and cents to better deliver such ads to us for your solutions? Collins Complete Ink, do you have any metrics from your ad on Judy Collins video that shows it brings traffic, much less purchases?

Marketing managers, do you promote the cost and reach of these ad campaigns sans results as a sign of your efforts? Is it the Don't blame me, we've got ads up everywhere the word collins is seen...kinda thinking?

Executives. Do you still budget for ad campaigns that deliver no results? Do you even know they have no results?

Ad providers. The same questions apply to you.

At some point aren't you churning through clients from your unwillingness or inability to deliver a more meaningful solution?

What if you demanded the technology to match with more relevance their products with your ads and our needs as seen by the content we consume?

Or is the money from essentially spamming us so good that these questions are meaningless to you? As long as people pay you to deliver irrelevance you'll continue to deliver irrelevance.

Consumers Did we sacrifice our privacy and online experience for...this?

Right Advice for Starting Word-of-Mouth the Right Way

My advice is to be 100% confident in how you deliver a customer experience before you start to try to strike up conversations online. Because if you are not confident, you will not want to listen to some of the negative feedback online about how you are doing business.| John Moore, All Things WOM

He’s right.

Talk to your employees’ first. They hear what is being said about ‘their’ brand. They hear it among themselves. They hear it from customers.

And they know how to improve it.

Listen...to your employee’s first.

Listen... with your employees’ first.

Listen... to what they hear.

Then you will:

Be confident when you strike up a conversation about your brand with perhaps a stranger;

You will want to hear what is said, even if it’s a complaint. If it is a complaint you will be confident you can turn that complaint into a compliment.

And if you listen well...you can hear your profits grow.

Listen...so your profits grow

Raise your hand, privately where you’re reading this post, if you want more profits? ( Okay-y-y...almost everyone. )

Clap your hand if you are looking for that one lever that can generate more profits? And you want to see data to support this claim? Clap twice.

Here it is. Listen.

No, that’s it. Listen. To those who generate the profits.

Here’s the data:

80% of your employees can predict your failure. Stephen Lynch, COO for Results.com.

60%+ to 80+% of corporate projects fail. BusinessWeek

Are these two points...coincidental?

80% of your employees have no clue... what your mission statement says nor what it means. Institute for Corporate Productivity The operative word is ‘your’. It is your mission statement because you were the only person who contributed to it.

71% of your employees could care less. Paul Herr, author of Primal Management.

1. There’s only one way to show you care. Listen.

2. There is only one way to create mission statement that reflects everyone's mission and input. Listen.

3. There's only one way to avoid an 80% failure rate for your new projects. Listen.

Listening is an act of respect. It shows you care enough about that person to invest your most precious resource: your time. You honor by listening to, those whose skills and talents and dedication create profits for their company. They would anyway if you would but...what, I can’t hear you?

Let's add those three, together:

1. Show you care. ( Lower employee recruiting costs + lower employee turnover + lower training costs.)

+

2. Gather everyone's input into building your shared brand from the same page. ( Greater operating efficiencies + fewer errors + fewer internal problems from poor communication or silo mentalities + faster to market + more innovations)

+

3. Lower costs from fewer failures. ( lower cost-of-goods sold + lower returnables + lower R&D costs per project...)

Add them together, and...shhh....

Listen. You can hear your profits grow.

Now. I will be quiet. And listen. What do you think?

Highlights From My Conversation with Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate

Sally Hogshead was our guest last week. She joined the show to talk about her most recent book Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation.

In a separate tweet she referred to this show as the Cliff Notes version of her book. (Add kind and generous to her list of great qualities along with excellent writer and valuable resource for your brand.)

Following my guest's lead here's your first three steps to learning from Sally how to Fascinate your audience:

1. Yes, read this post.

2. Yes, listen to our conversation in streaming mode at this link.

3. Yes! Go Buy Her Book. This is the 3rd and most important step. It’s well-written, well-organized and well-presented with data, profiles, anecdotes of brands that fascinate and those that don’t.

But, wait, there’s more!

She includes steps any brand of any size can take today to persuade, captivate and ultimately...fascinate.

Now, on to step 1.

You have legions of fans. I’m not encouraging stalking but where are you, what cool projects are you working on right now?

My team and I just launched a project that I am really excited about; it is called “The F Score Personality Test.” It is a fascination score and you can take the test online now. We wanted to help people learn what is fascinating about you, your personal brand.

Based upon research with thousands of people we developed a test of 28 questions where you can discover how your personality is fascinating other people.

In the first three days we already had 3000 people take the test. It is not a test about whether you are fascinating it is about HOW you are fascinating. The test tells you which of your traits are most compelling to other people and how you can use those to be more influential with your audience.

[Host note: The test is well, fascinating. And the results are even more fascinating...and useful.]

We’re here to talk about your book: Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation. Our friend Erika Anderson coined a great phrase in her book Being Strategic. That term is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal in writing this book?

I had a lot of goals in writing this book. As an author, writing is an intense process. I wanted to find an idea that I could own. I spent the first 6 months exploring themes that had not really been discussed.

The notion of fascination has been around for thousands of years, dating back to ancient times, but it was not considered a positive trait. I was really charting it through history...people at one time thought it was evil. It was at once considered a crime and paralysis of connections. I tried to tie it together with my marketing expertise and apply it today.

How will you know you have reached it?

When you have a connection with people where you can create messages and relationships that people focus on first and foremost. It is about creating a fascinating message that captures attention and interest. It must be effective and overpowering everything around it.

What’s been the most surprising response you’ve had?

The book is very much about brands, big business and ideas. It is surprising how people want to take the 7 triggers and apply them to their personal lives.

People are most interested in figuring out how they are using those 7 triggers and how to hone those triggers to be more effective AND which triggers they are not using.

What are those 7 triggers?

1. Power
2. Lust
3. Mystique
4. Prestige
5. Alarm
6. Vice
7. Trust

Your writing style was personal and immediate. It seemed you were writing to a single person. Me, in this case. But, describe the person you were talking to as you wrote your book.

I was writing to someone who works in a creative occupation, either an ad agency or product development, or sales and were frustrated with how the traditional means of marketing were not helping them accomplish their goals of being influential. There had to be a new way to make their messages more captivating. I put it in the context of how the reader would be immediately able to apply the knowledge directly to their lives.

Do you have a favorite corporate example for each one?

Lust:

Godiva. We developed a drink called Chocolixier. There was a whole sensory experience that lets the consumer relate.

Apple does this as well. You are able to be a part of the brand. It is about an openness and availability. You create a space where people want to draw closer. Brands are incorporating more of the Lust trigger.

Mystic:

This is a delicate trigger. People become curious to learn more.
KFC they keep their ingredients secret – in separate warehouses
Coca-Cola their recipe is also kept under lock and key.
The companies have successfully perpetuated the aura and intrigue.

Alarm:

A more complex trigger about establishing deadlines and consequences. You will become fascinated by the consequences. Alarm makes us respond very quickly to avoid negative consequences.

Brands can use this.

• QVC they say only 10 left in stock.
  

• FedEx When it has to be there overnight
  

• IRS We know that as much as we dislike paying taxes, we dislike the option of going to jail if we don’t pay our taxes.

Does a successful brand need to pull all 7 of these triggers?

Not at all. Very few brands use all of the triggers. Most choose one primary trigger that is near and dear to their consumer’s hearts and most effective for their goals.

Can they be successful with just one? Which one is the most common?

Brands try to use the Trust trigger without really earning it. Trust is EARNED!

26:06

Prestige is another. Most companies don’t live up to it. They may commoditize it or make it available to the masses.

Let’s talk about the limbic area of the brain, shall we? In your book, you write that the limbic area of the brain is the area of the brain, that part that houses rage, ecstasy, sadness, sexual arousal and fight-or-flight.That’s the mecca then for both advertisers and leaders, isn’t it? Getting a reaction, and getting the desired reaction.

That is one of the differences in using fascination in creating a message.

First is using traditional marketing that is housed in one part of the brain which is why marketing messages tend to sneak at people.

Fascination messages prompt a reaction from a deeper, more instinctive place. The Triggers don’t live in a rational place. They live in this limbic area so when a message that is truly fascinating, this prompts a reaction that you cannot ignore.

You write about Robert Fantz and his research around baby’s first party trick. That’s facial recognition. And his experiments proved that even at birth we arrive prepackaged with survival mechanisms to help us connect with others and form relationships.

Would you say our culture, here in the US, reinforces those mechanisms or chips away at them?

It is very complex. Our brains work really hard at birth to work with facial recognition. It is really important that we learn how to smile very early so we can develop a connection with our parents. Our brains are literally hardwired to accomplish Facial Recognition from birth.

Contrast that with Social Media, which has little Facial Recognition. There is this whole range of information that we look for when we are communicating that is essential to figure out someone’s intentions, to understand their communication and influences – all this gets wiped out with Social Media. It does allow for more connections but what drops away are the thousands of cues of what people are truly trying to communicate to you.

We have to find new ways to infuse that in our Social Media messages and the most simplistic way is with emoticons and acronyms. In this style of communication our brains are under surge and we sometimes feel more alienated and dissatisfied. We are facially scanning for verbal cues.

Human contact is very important in creating trust and we have lost a lot of this contact and interaction due to technology. Picking up the phone and calling someone can increase the fascination concept versus just an email.

What is the FFA area our brain? Why should companies care?

FFA or fusiform face area is a part of the brain designed for one’s use to determine what another person’s facial expression is trying to tell you. The whole part of your brain is highly customized to help you understand other people’s faces.

There are many ways car makers play off of this. They make facelike structures with the headlights and the bumper and grill.

There is something that works with personifying something that would otherwise be very cold. When you put a face on it, it becomes more accessible, approachable and more memorable because it starts activating the FFA area.

What are the Gold Hallmarks of a fascinating message?

Gold Hallmarks are the ways in which you can evaluate if something is being fascinating or not. Fascinating things have very specific traits in common:

1.They incite conversation. We want to talk about them, whether we like them or not. We may not even really care about them.

39:38

2. It provokes strong and immediate emotional reaction. We can love it or hate it, but it is an immediate reaction.

3. It creates advocates. It doesn’t try to be ALL things to ALL people but rather have a core slice of the population putting in a lot of energy, whether they are for or against it.

4.    It becomes cultural shorthand for a specific set of actions or values. Harley Davidson for example – if I said he is the kind of guy that drives a Harley, you would know exactly what I mean. OR if I said that is the Cadillac of toasters. You would understand the value and image.

5.    It forces competitors to realign around it. It creates such a significant space in the marketplace that competitors can no longer continue on the path they were before. They have to move, make way and adjust. When Chick fil-A introduced their fried chicken sandwich, McD’s had to quickly follow up with their own.

6.    Triggers social revolutions. People become so passionate about it beyond the sheer utility of the product and it changes the way they think and act on a much bigger level. It is no longer about the parody level. It stands for much more. Brands can live on a higher level.

Now. Is there a connection between the Gold Hallmarks of a fascinating message and the 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation?

In part three of the book, I outline the “how to.” Every trigger can help you achieve one of the Gold Hallmarks in a different way.

• The Lust trigger is about drawing people closer.

• The Power trigger is about controlling people.

• The Prestige trigger is about elevating you above people.

By applying the triggers in specific ways you can achieve the Gold Hallmarks, but it depends on what is natural for your brand, what is appropriate and the goals that you want to achieve out of that.
 
Which one determines a brand’s survival?

In the economy of where we are right now, the most survival oriented one is to provoke a strong and immediate reaction. Middle of the road will not cut it anymore.
 
What are steps a listener can take to make their brand more fascinating?
It is about taking what you already have and the person and company that you already are and finding a way to apply the triggers so they connect with your audience.

Figure out what your primary trigger is – the way in which your brand, naturally and authentically speaks to people and makes them more interested in speaking with you.
 
Your book seems written for a brand’s external audience: customers. Do you see any difference for their internal audience: employees?

51:45

This ties into the material in my first book about creating a radical career-becoming more valuable and retaining top talent.

It is important for employers to fascinate their staff if they want to be able to keep them. People are fascinated with time off versus more money as it demonstrates the employer using the Trust trigger.

Which companies drive higher cash-flows: fascinating companies or companies we respect?

The two of them are not mutually exclusive. Respect is a form of fascination. The relationship is very intertwined. We are sometimes fascinated by brands we don’t respect.

Jägermeister is a prime example. It tastes so horrible but after you do a shot there is a sense of pride and group bonding. No one respects the brand but people do it anyway.

Thanks, Sally. You've shared wonderful insights into our shared triggers, triggers that we can learn to leverage to persuade, captivate and...Fascinate.

Cheers!

Radio Guest: Tim Sanders, author of Saving the World at Work

Tim Sanders is the guest on my show tomorrow. The show starts at a special time: 10:00 AM Central.

Tim is the author of 3 books including Saving the World at Work, his most recent, and Love is the Killer Ap,

Tim ,according to his site, is a rare hybrid of business speaker, motivational speaker and tech trends guru. His research, passion and ability to move audiences to action makes him...a delight, I expect. After watching the below video of him, these claims may be understated. We'll talk about those books, scarcity mindset and how to end it and a whole lot more.

Join us with one of these two options:

LIVE:

1. Streaming on-demand at this link

2. Call in during the show, from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM Central, at this number: 646-915-9212

LATER:

1. Streaming on-demand at this link

Highlights from My Talk with Jeanne Bliss, author of I Love You More than My Dog

Customer service is the new marketing. Finally. After all the billions spent on pretty ads and colorful websites, after the hours spent on free social media sites, making friends with folks you haven’t spoke with since what...grade school? (And we remember the reasons for that...) after getting lean and six sigma’d...we remember the C words in business:

• Customers.
• Customers bring Cash.
• Customers bring Cash and other Customers... if we serve them.

Otherwise, a business is just a...Commodity.

Ultimately the only way to compete is to...Provide Wildly Wonderful Customer Service.

How do you serve customers?

I think it’s relatively simple. Make the customer happy.

How tough is that? Judging from our economy, very. Despite the tens of thousands of books on customer service, most businesses see it as very tough.

Fortunately, we have Jeanne Bliss. Jeanne Bliss is a passionate proponent of well, customers and providing for their bliss. In fact, the URL for her website is www.customerbliss.com.

And she’s just written a great, great, book titled I Love You More than My Dog: 5 Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad. (And she’s provided me with 10 copies to give away free for anyone. Let me know you want one in the comments here, include your email (kept private) I’ll send you yours.)

It is one of the best books on customer service, well, business really, I’ve read.

She was a guest recently on my radio show. We talked about serving customers, her book and the 5 decisions your business needs to make to better serve your customers, case studies of companies who have made those decisions, how she helps companies...and more. You can listen in streaming on-demand at this link.

Your book is the best. Seriously. But I have a complaint. It’s too easy to put down. In fact, I’m compelled to put it down to either note what you’ve written, or start scribbling in my notebook or writing a post from all the examples and anecdotes and research you’ve included. I’ve read it every day for 2-3 weeks and I’ve covered maybe 25 pages.

Now. Let’s talk about the title. I LOVE it. How and why did you come up with that title?

My book's publishers at Portfolio are masters at titling. I was thinking of boring things and they gave me the title.

Erika Andersen, in her book Being Strategic, coined the phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal in writing this book?

What I wanted to show was what goes on behind the scenes what enables these companies when there is a fork in the road to move in the direction of their employees and customers and what makes them beloved.

I think the word beloved is very powerful. They are loved for who they are. They are a force in their customer’s lives. They cannot imagine their life without them or their employees. They make purposeful decisions to get there.

I wanted to show readers that you too can get there. It is about how you direct your decisions. You have a choice. People become what they become because they are not united. There is not a clear lens to which decisions are made.

Companies don’t know what pushes the customer’s YES button. It is discipline, process and delivery. It is not a casual thing. Successful companies, companies I profiled, will stay up at night working on the YES button for their customers.

If you haven’t been there in a company like this, you may not understand it. It is very elusive. My intent here was to get behind the elusiveness.

Where is the gap that makes it so elusive?

It comes from 2 things.

In a large company it is the agenda. They all have their own score cards to do their own thing. Executing on a particular discipline – their own goals, sometimes it happens accidentally.

The second thing is that we are quarterly inclined and we can’t see past the goal to understand that many of these decisions that will earn the right long term to be beloved and being prosperous, won’t happen in a quarter.

The lack of the ability to be patient gets in our way.

I hate customer personas as a tool. But, what’s the perfect reader persona for your book?

I think anybody in a company can find a voice in the book. It is not a one size fits all. It is a personal journey. The decisions are about how to conduct yourself as an individual and as a collection of individuals to represent yourself to your customers and employees who you are and what you value.

I’d say anyone who cares to find a simple, true, sustainable strategy that’s cash-flow friendly...should read this book. Titles are irrelevant.

Are customers really, really, loyal any more?

I think they are loyal to the brands that are loyal to them in the way they conduct their business, in the way they honor their customer, in the way they understand their customer’s lives and the way they honor their employees.

What is on the inside shows up on the outside and customer’s have a great 6th sense and can sniff out impostors.

It is about the personalization about the company. You must create that personal connection and this is earned!! Your customers are the ones that will speak for you.

The honesty and integrity of the customer’s words are what is important and what is happening today.

Why don’t companies listen to their customers?

I think that the customers going out on the internet today is important and when they rant, that is related to revenue. Each of those rants is a lot of revenue – either come here or not to the business.

They may be listening but making the process and the changes are much harder than people expect. We need a collaborative environment to solve problems. Small and medium businesses can do this. It is difficult for larger companies.

16:25

We are so wired to solute the flag of our score card that it gets in the way of putting some of those things aside to solve the real problem.

What are the 5 decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty in good times and bad?

1. Decide to Believe. Believe in your customers and your employees.

2. Decide with Clarity of Purpose. What is your company's purpose? Does it live consistently across your company.

3. Decide to Be Real. Do you connect your personal self with your business self?

4. Decide to Be There. Are your there for your customers and employees on their terms?

5. Decide to Say "Sorry". Apologizing well is an important peace process between companies and their customers.

What is the best case study for Decide to Believe?

The one for a small bicycle shop in connecticut, Zane's Cycles. They decided to believe their customers who come in the door that they have never seen before and want to take a bike for a test drive. They have bikes for $6,000 each. You can take this bike out for a test ride with no collateral. And out of 4,000 bikes sold each year, only 5 are stolen. That religion of believing permeates the business. They know this buyer will spend over $12K over their lifetime. They sell $13 million each year. Their annual growth rate is over 20% for the past 25 years.

What is the best example of Decide with Clarity.

Griffin Hospital in CT. They are a small regional hospital in CT. About 15 years or so ago, they were the hospital that most families and patients would avoid. They committed to change –to create an experience to change what they wanted to deliver. They had such great clarity on creating an embracing experience to hug their patients and families. They have had enormous financial results. Their growth rate is 3 times the rate of other CT hospitals.

What made Griffin Hospital wake up?

They realized that no one wanted to go back there, people were avoiding them. They had an event. That event was that fewer and fewer customers were coming in. Surveys, comments and patients who did not come back, told them.

Where in our corporate lives did we decide to be someone we are not?

I think it starts back in English class when we are taught how to write a corporate letter.

I think it is the corporate ego!! We get so busy and let it go the way of the generic cut and paste, not thinking of what our personality is.

How many companies really do have a personality? One that we know? We gravitate too?

We are not robots. Each of these 5 decisions goes back to clarity. If you are clear on what your higher purpose is and what your personality is, you have a much clearer idea when you go out and select employees to be part of your company. You need to know these things. It is not just filling a slot.

Each of these decisions seems fairly straight forward and obvious. For small business, definitely. Why and how does it become so complicated?

I think I have a 2-step plan for businesses to find their way home.

Obviously, the first step is get a copy and read your book. Ok. Check. You’ve done that with your offer of free copies.

But now they’re paralyzed by even a choice of 5 decisions.

So, the second step is which decision is the most important. If they can only execute one, and execute it really well, which is the one?

You need to believe. Belief is the cornerstone of these companies. By deciding to believe, they free their employees from the extra rules and inability to think on their feet, which translates directly to customers. It is fundamental to becoming beloved and prosperous.

Many customers feel as though the companies are holding something back. You need to suspend the cynicism and believe in both your employees and your customer. The key: believing and enabling belief, then create an environment of belief.

32:50

Trader Joe’s. You profile them in your book and you wrote a great blog post about them as well. What do they do that inspires such admiration in you and devotion by their fans?

They are an adventure in eating!! They create an experience for the customer. They obsess about each moment of interaction with the customer. They want to leave you with a great memory before you leave the store.

That tiny step of trying to remove the pinging noise in the checkout lines is so simple, yet so important. Why? Why’s it reflect Trader Joe’s commitment to customers?

This is about clarity and the purpose in your customer’s lives and what you want to mean to them, it drives that obsession. You want to remove any and every thing that interferes with the customer experience. The pinging sound interrupted customers talking with each other.

ROI. Let’s talk about return on investment from these decisions. It’s pretty high isn’t it?

Most of the company’s revenue in the book did not go down in 2008. Many of them grew in this apocalyptic time.

44:14

One thing I noticed is the relative modest amounts of cash required with any of these decisions. And when that amount is compared to an ad campaign...

Many of these companies grow organically and do very simple things to show they care, are interested and believe. It is not about chasing the silver bullet – it is about hard work.

Speaking of bright and shiny, what’s your thoughts on the elephant in the room, social media. What’s its role in providing customer service?

This is the newest thing – it is important. You must understand what is ailing them and what they need. You need to listen to them in a natural way. You must realize you must earn the rave.

Listening to customer feedback includes a variety of things: surveys.

You have employees who are talking to customers: believe what they say.

Then combine that with the stuff your customers are telling you in Social Media, in a real time simple way to fix what is broken, as well as giving you cues of where to take your experience to the next level.

It is part of an overall strategy. You must believe in the words of your customers.

It is not a campaign; it is a place for a trusted conversation. If you believe your employees and your customers, they will believe that you are open to speaking with them.

Let’s say we talk again next year. I hope we do. What will be the biggest sign that businesses have come out of their own wilderness to find customers waiting loyally for their return?

I think it is these:

Customers are talking about you in a positive manner; you will know about it in many forms of media, not just social media.

Customers are going to be purchasing more. You will see less turnover in your business if you do these things.

Customers will become the army that grows your business.

Where can people follow you on the web?

* Website

* Twitter

Thanks, Jeanne!

4 Themes from 3 Startup Successess

BusinessWeek profiles 3 startups and their keys to success. Their businesses are a dog and horse boarding ranch and kennel, an architecture design firm and a staffing provider. The companies and links to their sites are listed below.

I was struck by the themes they shared in their success.

Do what you know, what you love, and that utilize your strengths.

Ultimately, owning your own business is a labor of love. You better love your labors because you’ll be laboring a lot.

Hire the best people. Hire people better than yourself.

It’s the players that win the game...Hire people better than me and make sure those hires get in the habit of hiring people that are better than them.

Part of my growth strategy was to pick people who have expertise in areas that we didn't.

You expand your number one asset. That's your human asset. That's the asset the creates, delivers, sustains and grows your brand. Finding better people means finding better assets to grow your business.

Manage your cash

• Fire your clients when they can’t pay their bills.

• Recycle. Cash. Recycle, reinvest, cash into your business.

• Pay off your debt fast.

• Lengthen your revenues. Add to your current revenue sources.

Network, network, network.

Word-of-mouth remains the best, most effective form of advertising.

Get out in your community. I get out there in the community and I have a good working relationship with the area veterinarians. Most of my business comes from word of mouth. I do almost no print advertising.

Companies Profiled:

* Resource Options provides staffing solutions to the construction, environmental, engineering and information technology industries.

* Space Architectural Design, making the world a better place, one space at a time.

* BYD Ranch and Kennel, where no job is too big or too small, our main desire is to make you feel like part of the family

Upcoming Radio Show Guest: David Zinger, founder of Employee Engagement community

David Zinger joins us Friday, November 6 at 9:30 AM, Central to talk about creating engaged employees. David is a leading expert on employee engagement and strength based leadership. David founded the Employee Engagement community on Ning and it has grown to over 1400 1600+ members whose common passion and expertise for creating engaged employees make it a lively and useful community. He is a management consultant with over 25 years of experience.

David was a previous guest on the show in 2008. You can listen in streaming on-demand mode at this link.

David was also such a delight, generated such positive reviews, that I asked if he'd come back to the show. Fortunately, he agreed.

We'll revisit the previous year to discuss the changes in field of employee engagement, what impact this economy has had on companies looking to create an engaged employee, what are the new tools and resources available, the Employee Engagement community and how David uses social media to further his purpose and how companies are using it to create engaged employees.

Here are the listening options:

LIVE:

1) Listen in streaming on-demand at this link.

2) Call in during the show at 646-915-9212. This also allows you to raise your hand using the touchpad on your phone to ask a question.

LATER:

1) Listen in streaming on-demand at this link.

In the meantime, get to know David, at these resources:

* Twitter

* His blog

* Employee Engagement community

Highlights from My Conversation with Deborah Shane, founder of Train with Shane

Deborah Shane, founder of Train with Shane and The Metropolis Radio Show, is a master motivator and educator, whose passion it is to create and offer engaging and fun seminars and workshops, dynamic motivational speaking, customized corporate training programs and consulting programs. She takes the sales, marketing and motivational process and fundamentals and make them relevant with regard to your changing consumer, your new market environment and your business dynamics. We spoke about her work with entrepreneurs, the growing number of start-up businesses with women as their founders, her tips for social media use and how small businesses can best deal with the current economy.

You can listen in streaming on-demand at this link.

What are you doing and what are you most excited about?

I started my business in 2007 and I completely did not think about what was happening and what has challenging. I am excited about how my business is evolving and changing. The model I started out with was mostly sales and training and customer service. It has really evolved dramatically to a balance of in person training and now I am getting into more virtual products and services. I am expanding to other markets next year as well.

You said when you began your business you said you didn’t know things would become so much more challenging. I think that is a common theme when people start their business. Would you have started your business if you knew those challenges were waiting for you around the corner?

My particular business, I would answer yes. When I thought about what was happening, I knew professional development and education, skill upgrade and being able to function and navigate in a new mentality, temperament, market, and new business was going to be essential. I knew what I put together and what I could offer in this kind of scenario would be useful if I found where I could deliver it to people – where they had the most pain and need. I have been right on for the most part. As you know, I have developed some niches in this education process which is Women in Business and Career Transition. Two and one half years ago when I started my business, I saw this looming trend of laid off downsized white collar educated professionals who had become obsolete because there was no reason for them to keep their skills upgraded or for them to stay really relevant. They always thought they would be at these jobs for a really long time, but they woke up one morning to find they had been laid off.

What was the biggest most surprising challenge along your journey?

I think what always tends to surprise me is that I think I have a great idea and I think I know what people need, but it may not be what THEY need. It may be more of what I think they need. The first part of my developing content, I put out things I thought they absolutely needed, but they weren’t ready to say, “this is really something I need to jump on right now. “ I think people were really stunned. They wanted to see what was going to happen. I think sometimes we think we know what the answers are on behalf of others as opposed to what they actually need. I did a few things that didn’t actually work. At that time, I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t working, but it is what I thought they needed at that time.

11:10

Erika Andersen uses the term reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal in her book, Being Strategic. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped for goal in 2007 when you founded your business?

That’s a great question. And it’s an important question, I ask this question of people I council in career transition as well, the thing for me is I came from a career in a 30 year career in radio broadcast media, education, sales and marketing and promotion background and the thing when I moved to the west coast of Florida it was kind of a self imposed career and lifestyle change it wasn’t that I was forced to do it. It was time to do it. I saw the winds of change blowing in my industry, in my career and I thought, “oh it is time to go to the next part of the journey, not sure what it is but it will be revealed.”

I got an opportunity, it seemed good, but did not workout, it was not a good mutual fit.

So, there I was on a 2 month non-compete hiatus and didn’t know anybody and I didn’t know what to do next, but thought I would figure it out. One Thursday afternoon I remember this pretty clearly, I was sitting on my lanai and looking out at this forest view I have here. I kept asking myself this one question “what do you really want to do”. The reasonable aspiration was to take all of my skills, gifts and passions and put all that together into something I could do to continue my love of education training and mentoring.

Have you reached your hoped-for goal?

You know I think in life I don’t know that you ever reach your goals 100% I mean I think you keep working toward your goals and for me my goals continue to evolve and change as I do and as life and market conditions change. I will share this aha moment with you from last August and this was before the market, the banking industry completely fell off the face of the earth. I had been on a really good run with this business and I got to the end of the summer last year right around August and I had this series I did and it was a struggle to get people to come and support it. And I thought, okay I need to take a step back here and really reevaluate this whole thing, and again my instincts said not only is this a challenging year, I think some really challenging stuff is about to happen. I just felt it because when you are inside the business world, my brother is in the financial business and we talk a lot and he is pretty instinctual and so I sort of took a stance and said, here are my perfect scenario goals moving forward that I would like to see happen for myself personally and professionally. And there were 4-5 things I put in this master perfect plan last August and then looking at that plan in the last few months things have unfolded quite amazingly.

I have to say that, and not always in the time I wanted to, not always in the exact way that I wanted to. But all of these things I wanted to develop business outside of Southwest Florida, I wanted to get the publishing things done, and I wanted to get more virtual, all these things are now unfolding because I made plans, goals and I surrounded myself with awesome professionals who know more than I do in areas that I don’t know as much as they do.

That point you bring up, surrounding yourself with awesome people, is a key point. Why sometimes does that seem to be the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs, that they don’t always surround themselves with awesome people who know more than we do.

Great question – truthfully I think it’s fear and a little bit of ego that says, I don’t want them to know I don’t know this. One of my biggest caveats is that while I file, I don’t always file like I am supposed to – so I found someone who could use some part time hours and I hired this person to get my files and data management in order because I don’t always have the time to do that. I admit I don’t do a good job at that, but it is important to do keep yourself organized like that. I really think it is fear and ego and people are funny like that with all the phenomenal talent that is out there in all the areas now you and I have talked about this. Look at this virtual assistant thing, which is totally a function of this online marketing and virtual business and education out there. It is fantastic; these assistants are sitting in their jammies, working in their jammies doing all that work for you. So you don’t have to pay for gas and human capital you don’t have to pay for if you hired somebody, it’s phenomenal.

Now, let’s see. You list women in business first on your list of specialties and I regularly read articles of the growing numbers of women in the entrepreneur ranks, woman are starting twice as many businesses as men. Would you agree with that?

Those are the statistics: women are starting businesses 2-1 more than any other ethnic group. This has been a statistic that has been out there for almost the last two years. Going back a couple of steps, I have been in the corporate world and entrepreneur. I have been out there in business since 13 years old and I have watched this path for women and in the last 10 years the shift in terms of women in the workplaces, shift in the types of life situations women are in right now. Married with children, single working moms, single women that have no children or not married, retired women who are not done yet – there are so many scenarios for women out there.

Just to share a few statistics:

Women make up 51.5 % of the FT workforce right now. Just by sheer numbers, women are adding an enormous amount of energy into the globe and the work place.

Women comprise 66% of the consumer global spending. Boston Consulting Group came out a couple of months ago with these numbers: 66%. That will increase exponentially.

Women control $12 Trillion of an $18 Trillion of the global consumer spending . That’s expected to grow exponentially by $5 trillion a year.

That is extraordinary. There are demographers out there, one of them is Ken Gronbach he`s written a book called The Age Curve and anyone who really wants to get an awakening here should really get that book.

He talks about women and Hispanics as the new power demographics. There is a new article from the Boston Consulting group I was talking about called “Cater to Women if you want Success” and the whole article talks about the study and that marketers are failing to meet the needs of women in 5 key areas. He talks about failure to tailor products to women`s unique needs instead they are doing this `One Size Fits All` he talks about clumsy sales and marketing targeting women with dated stereotypes – it is really compelling stuff. It is our time (women) to be autonomous and independent and to really do and be what we want to be. One more point that I would like to make about this is that women have always done whatever they need to do to survive and take care of their families.

What is driving this trend, for women to start 2 times as many businesses as men?

It is part of what I said, necessity, but the other things that are really important are that they have a natural ability to communicate and gather people together with emotional intelligence. They are very social and very good at making connections. They want to control their lives and time management they need to be in business, make a living and have a family. More independence and be autonomous now not to rely only on men to support them. It is a very Jurassic idea these days. In history - the 50s and 60s and some of the 70s they were left for the younger woman and it seemed they’d filled their usefulness. I think women are just sort of over that, they are realizing the opportunity they have today is unparalleled and it is a time for great progress.

Speaking of wanting autonomy, self sufficiency and control of one’s destiny, another article I found said that 1.7% of women started businesses are VC funded. It is fascinating to me that twice as many business are started by women as those started by men and 50 times tas many businesses started by men turn to VC funding as those started by women. When you talk about wanting autonomy, self sufficiency and control of one’s destiny, not needing outside financial assistance is key.

I totally agree with you. It is startling. In a couple of other articles, women use their own money and self fund themselves in business if they can before going to a bank or venture capitalist. I don’t know that I can give you a great psychological answer, except that again, independence and autonomy and that they can do it with their own resources. One article talks about what do women want:

1. Love and connection

2. Fulfillment

3. Time and work-life balance, money as its own marker, money is a means to an end but not the focus of why they work.

29:26

Women are mothers, breeders, purpose in life is to take care of kids and (I’m not saying every woman is a mother) but there are certain unique and instinctual things women are genetically. Women are care takers, multi-taskers, social beings, connectors, emotional intelligence, business has shifted from sales focus to serve focus, you cannot be pushing products and services on people unless they make an emotional connection with you and women have a great ability to do that.

Not to bash men, we honor ourselves but also the men who support us, our independence makes our relationships better and take pressure off of men too. The evolution of both of us might leave men lagging on a couple of things but that is the nature of the beast, and men are evolving too. My friend Ken and I talk about women and I asked, what is up with the power in women in business today. He correlated something, except for Hispanic, breeding is not on the high end these days and he talked about a correlation to people with high percentages of internet connections with a low amount of breeding. People on line are spending less time in person making babies.

The fact that there are more divorces today and independent women who are not breeding as much. Interesting trend and psycho graphics.

What are the three big differences between men and women entrepreneurs? We talked about the self-reliant aspect, the data that shows men are more comfortable, dependent or seeking outside funding. What are two other differences?

What woman want, out of what out of what they do and what men want are just different. Women work for different fulfillment goals. They are always struggling with work life balance. Whether they are working or not, the familial care-taking all falls on women. I think there is just a lot of those dynamics that come into play.

Money is another. Men have a different perception of money than women. Women have a problem asking for more money. When I work with women, I always help them to feel more confident and asking for what they are worth.

I think companies are now identifying and working with women on their key strengths. Sometimes a woman may take more risk and don’t hold back like men do. Women need to use their instincts to put together their businesses and programs. They have what it takes.

You have a BTR Show. The Metropolis Show. How long have you had this show?

We will have our one year anniversary in December. I have been in the radio industry for years and it is a comfortable place to share ideas and continue to communicate. I wanted to bring people together in any format to help support one another in these uncharted waters. Most people are going through this for the first time in their lives. The radio show is about bringing people together: being the solution, living in the business world, having an impact.

What were your goals? Why did you decide to do a radio show, other than your background in radio?

I thought it would be another avenue of communication and I have created my metropolis and in that category are my radio show, newsletter and blog. These are additional avenues to share information and serve others with ideas, resources and tips – all for free. We live in a content marketing world where you need to give a lot away for free.

Women are going to have such a global presence in the next 5-10-15 years. Women are outpacing men in receiving college degrees: women constitute 60% of the people in college. Those stats are compelling. Women are outpacing men.

Which is your favorite social media platform?

Twitter has just delighted me. You have to see what intrigues you most. What do you enjoy using most? You don’t want it to be a struggle. I love to write and post great articles. For me, everything I do works together.

My biggest disappointment with social media? I haven’t been really disappointed with anything I have been committed too.

50:17

Give us three tips for us about to enter the social media pool. You mentioned two already:

1. Find a resource you enjoy use.

2. Pick one or two and master them.

What would be a third tip?

I will say two more.

1. Make sure you create and define YOUR brand in the social media that you choose. Clearly communicate your spirit. Makes sure you are very clear.

2. Serve! Always be serving and giving. Be consistent and post regularly.

Small business remains the leading source of layoffs. Our economy won't recover until small business becomes the leading source of job creation. When will that change?

That is a great question. I think it is the Achilles’ heal right now. I think there are many good indicators on several levels-there are a lot of buying going on now. The employment market is the Achilles’ heal right now. There is hiring go on right now in medical and education right now. People who have been laid off must take a serious look at their skills and possibly re-evaluate themselves and their direction. They may need to go back to school or repurpose their strengths. Everything will shift even more as the employment environment continues to improve.

What can small businesses do in this economy?

We have to get into an accept reality mode at all times. We cannot be in a “la la land.” We have to see what is really happening. Also, don’t lose confidence in who you are and what value you bring to the table. Everything around you may have changed, but the person has not. Believe in yourself.

Secondly and most importantly, upgrade your skills. I have seen too many educated professionals become obsolete. Businesses are also taking a look at these things. They are finding out what they need to offer better customer service and be more competitive.

Make a plan to upgrade your skills: personal, professional, technical. Take these classes in professional development – adding value and a greater skillset.

Thirdly: branding and focus on what your niche market is. Who is your core market? Your core customer? Perfect this!

Lastly: Never forget the power of the personal connection. All of the virtual and online activity is strictly a bridge to get close and upfront with people.

You share a lot of great quotes on your website, Train with Shane. What is your favorite quote among all these?

Ruth Vincent Peale: “Find the need and fill it.” When you serve, give, and share, this is one of the most powerful relationship building tools.

Thanks, Shane.

Be sure to follow Shane on Twitter at DeborahShane

Personal Brands: Leveling Our Own Internal Playing Field

Social media is lauded as the ultimate playing field leveler for brands, big or small. The playing field leveled is the playing field of honesty and integrity. It is a big story, an interesting story.

But honesty and integrity are personal attributes. What’s more interesting is social media's role leveling our internal playing field of honesty and integrity. When social media levels the playing field for our personal/private and professional/public brands...things get interesting.

I read a steady stream of dialogue about the erosion of personal privacy in our digital media age. Coupled with this is the ever-growing blend of professional and personal personas. Each week is another example of an employee, contractor, consultant, CEO, political leader...sharing a heart-felt, personal and private opinion on x social media which is strikingly inconsistent with their professional and public roles.

The stories race through the blogosphere, twitterville, facebook communities. Tales of woe and tales of warning follow. Each new story makes the subject the poster-child of the instant for not recognizing the power of social media and the internet to expose our private lives, to overlap private with professional.

All the points are excellent. The warnings should be heeded.

But is the cause of concern the loss of privacy or the exposure of the inconsistencies in our lives? When an employee is paid to smile and promote a brand whose promises fall a few undotted i’s and uncrossed t’s short of honest and then chooses to bash that same brand on their facebook page...where is the failure of judgment? Where is the indiscretion? Sharing a few snarky threads on Facebook, etal or spending the day betraying one’s principles and personal integrity.

I can’t remember a single story saying maybe the indiscretion was in first compromising their principles at the job. Granted we all have choices to make and different standards upon which we make those choices. But at the point where you stand for a brand’s misrepresentations during the day (and take the paycheck) and then stand against them with your community (and take their applause) the issue isn’t exposing your private life to your public life. The issue is you expose your public life to your private community.

And the anger that arises seems to be the anger where the veil of a community’s illusions, delusions, are ripped unwillingly from our eyes. Maybe the more appropriate metaphor is that of a mirror. These examples scare us because we see our selves in them. And that view of ourselves isn’t so becoming. And, the social media mob turns on the exposed member and cries foul and banishes them into oblivion with the resulting deletion of their profiles.

As the line between fades between our personal and professional, private and public, lives, our own internal playing field of honesty and integrity will level. THAT’s when we’ll see real change, constructive change, sustainable change. Until then we’ll keep hearing the sounds, in the form of these stories, of these obstructions crashing down around us.

3 Things that Build a Winning Workplace...and cost $0 to Do

I asked Mary Corbitt Clark, Executive Director of Winning Workplaces, this question during a recent interview.

What are three things can companies or people do today, with little or no cash to build a winning workplace?

Here's what she answered:

1. Talk to employees. Find out what they are thinking. Ask them about business issues/ideas. They can help you strengthen your business. You want to build a trusting relationship.

2. Share information with employees. The more information they have about the business, the easier you make it for them to help you to improve and solve the problems.

3. Bring people together to solve problems. The best ideas come from multiple minds around problem solving.  One of the things we see is that team-based work ends up with some of the very best solutions.

3 things you can do...today + $0 cost = Your Winning Workplace. That's math you can love.

You can listen in streaming on-demand at this link to our full conversation.

Here is a post with highlights from our conversation.

Radio Show Guest Highlights: Mary Corbitt Clark, Executive Director of Winning Workplaces

Mary Corbitt Clark, Executive Director of Winning Workplaces, joined the show last week. Winning Workplaces is a not-for-profit organization founded by one of the families who owned auto parts manufacturer Fel-Pro, Inc., which was nationally recognized for its innovative people practices and outstanding financial performance.

Mary and I talked about Winning Workplaces, its purpose, its annual conference titled The ROI of Winning Workplaces, and how Winning Workplaces helps clients create the ultimate competitive advantage: A winning workplace.

You can listen in streaming-on demand at this link.

Mary Corbitt Clark, how are you? I’m not encouraging stalkers, but where are you? What are you doing?

We’re in Evanston, IL. We annually host a conference in Chicago to honor the top small workplaces that will be named in the Wall Street Journal and to share best practices, inspiration, networking, with other small businesses that are interested in improving their business results by creating strong workplaces.

Is everybody at winning workplace having as much fun as you are?

I believe they are. Now, in this economy, it is tough, even for the best workplaces. But I do see that those that have effectively engaged employees are doing far better and coming out of the impact of the great recession more quickly than those who don’t have a strong culture or don’t have their employees fully focused on what it takes to be success.

I wish I had found you when I was CEO of a small company. We had some success creating a winning workplace through trial and error.

It takes some understanding to discover the drivers of your business. Most companies get there by trial and error. Most start up organizations with a handful of employees are more concerned with money, defining product or service, how to go to market, and how do we get out there and then how do we keep ourselves afloat with the financial resources they need to solidify and take off. Fairly often they get to a certain stage and they realize they need to focus on the organization, build some infrastructure and attend to those elements that have a very strong impact over time.

Occasionally, an insightful leader with start an organization and define it by being the kind of place they always wanted to work. These types of companies establish the kind of culture they need because they know what they need to do to accomplish their goals and business.

Your background is in maximizing performance in individuals and organizations and you have worked at big consulting firms. I assume that meant working with larger corporate clients. Winning Workplaces generally is more about small to medium size businesses – what about that appealed to you?

I had already migrated –having spent 13 years with large companies. I had already seen that creating change with them was more difficult with an embedded culture. Its hard to move an ocean liner. I could see smaller organizations are more nimble, more adept at creating a strong organization is easier in a small company. I could see the opportunity to create change. I could see the opportunity to have an impact that I couldn’t have at larger workplaces. I could pursue my mission with Winning Workplaces in a broader sense with the brand of a manufactruing entity that had a strong reputation for progressive workplaces.

Winning Workplaces has been around for eight years. Can you share with us more about the history and founders?

Fel-Pro was owned by a family for 80 yrs and 4 generations of family business. It started out as an offshoot of a business that created brake pads for horse buggies. As the automotive industry grew, Fel-Pro grew as well. It focused on creating gaskets for the aftermarket...they just blossomed. They had 2000 employees. In the late 90’s, as the automotive market changed, it become clear that Fel-Pro must change as well. The family knew they couldn’t run the business they way they wanted too. They ended up selling the biz.

They learned that by treating their employees with respect and creating an environment which open communication was highly valued and by celebrating the fact that they could have a successful business together. It was indeed very generous.

They never had to pay to recruit employees. Their tenure was quite long. They brought in their families and friends. They created a community that till to this day talk with great pride for working with Fel-Pro.

Our annual recognition project which began in 2003, we worked with Fortune Small Business magazine to identify The Best Bosses from across the country and that morphed into The Best Small Workplaces. Since 2003 we have been seeking out outstanding small businesses that have created highly engaging workplaces and have been successful businesses as a result. We see leading edge practices, get to know commited and inspiration leaders. I see the small business sector as the most innovative and progressive part of our economy.

What are some of the practices that they brought from their company into the new organization, Winning Workplaces, a winning workplace?

Many of the elements we see in smaller workplaces are elements we try to live to here. The challenge of talking about excellence is that you always aspire to something that is just beyond your reach. Let me talk about aspirations. We do have a good workplace. We have a strong sense of team. It is difficult to speak about ourselves, but what we create in our culture is what we want to see in others.

The top 3 things, the most important things, for a winning workplace are:

1. Organizations with strong vision and shared values - people who come together because they are committed to what the business is about. Virtually all of our organizations can clearly communicate what they are trying to do and the values with which they operate. This is very important foundation. It draw people to the organization.

2. Open and honest communication. This is so fundamental but such a hard thing for an organization to accomplish. Those organizations in which transparency is really how they operate are more innovative, and their members understand what are the drivers and how they can improve efficiencies and how that shows up on the bottomline.

3. They invest in the workforce in lots of different ways. They invest in employee learning, very careful about how they hire, understand the kinds of people that will be successful in their organization, and committed to providing the benefits employees need. More and more are investing in company wellness centers, whether it’s a fitness center membership or a flu-shot. It’s an important piece or companion to providing health insurance.

Let’s talk about this event next week. It’s great. It’s titled: The ROI of winning workplaces. When is it, where is it?

The ROI of Winning Workplaces has been going on 6 years now. It's held in Chicago here. It is held each fall and held in conjunction with the announcement of Winning Workplaces. It is also a great learning event, a tool to help other small businesses towards success. We talk about current issues and topics effecting companies today. The winners not only create winning workplaces but they can sustain growth by creating a winning workplace.

How do they measure their growth?

How do you get to that balance where you allow your busines to thrive but it doesn’t overwhelm you.

24:01

The organizations that fall into our network are sustainable organizations. What we have seen is that good workplaces may have been hit by the recession, but they are coming back quickly. There are also a fair number of them that haven’t been hit as hard. Some have been able to sustain themselves because of their strong workplace practices.

What I noticed and enjoyed about your event is your list of speakers. As you mentioned, they are all previous winners of the awards. They are companies describing their winning workplaces and how they created them.

One of the things we have learned from small business leaders is that they want to hear from others who have been in the trenches and discovered successful methods and cultures. And they want those who have been recognized by 3rd parties. Winning Workplace doesn’t pick these winners.

What results from the conference is that people come and get a lot of new ideas. What I hear at each show is that people think they are alone and here they find other business that think like they do. There’s a lot of camaraderie and companionship with their peers who share the same values. They realize that they are not alone.

My friend and author Erika Andersen coined a term I really like. It’s reasonable aspirations or hoped-for goal. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal with this event?

We wanted to get the message out, as broadly as possible. We believe that a big piece of our purpose is to draw attention to unsung heroes and to make it within reach, a reasonable aspiration, for small business leaders across the country to create winning workplaces or to improve their workplace to improve their business...to strengthen their business.

So much of the emphasis in business writing is about growing your market niche, how you come up with an innovative product. So little focuses on how do you build an organization that can support you to do whatever your business is about. We believe that it is a critical element in the economy, a pivotal leverage point that is under utilized.

That is our message and we want to get it out to the world. Our aspiration for the conference was to make the information more available and create a network of small business leaders who could support one another to do so.

There has to be research that shows that companies who build a winning workplace have better cash flow, happy customers and employees, better growth rates and so forth.

We have created a benchmarking report for the last two years to compare the top winning workplaces to the rest of the pool of other companies who think they have a great workplace. One of the challenges with small businesses is that they are privately held; therefore their financial information is not made public. What we get is their revenue and whether or not they are profitable. We clearly have good data on employee turnover, retention, employee learning. But to get more detailed information you need access to a public company.

Who should attend this event?

Anyone interested in building a strong workplace. It is most valuable for small businesses, but people in larger businesses who want to build a strong team will certainly benefit. It’s an opportunity to get your arms around the soft stuff. It’s not just one program. It’s a combination of things. This conference offers a great opportunity to get a nice dive into and learn more about what I can do about strengthening my company and its workplace.

What are top three reasons people should attend Winning Workplaces? Or three take aways?

I’m going to go right to the promotional materials that capture this best:
1. Examples of inspirational leadership in chaotic times
2. Best practices from leading small business innovators
3. Networking with small business leaders and the leading edge thinkers about small business

Not only leading edge thinkers, but leading edge doers.

YES!

Your speakers are speaking about the current economy and events. How have you seen this economy impact attitude in business towards creating a winning workplace?

I think many small business people have “panicked” and are trying to cope to get through. I can contrast that with one of our business leaders who will be speaking next week, Larry O’Toole, from Gentle Giant Movers, founded in 1980 and now has 17 operations around the country. The business has always been about building very strong customer relations in the moving business and developing employees within the business so that they don’t just hire day movers, they hire and train people how to do the job properly and make the bet of a stressful experience for people who are making a transition.

This economy hit residential moving very hard. They looked at the fourth quarter of 2008 and knew they had to make some serious financial refinements. Most companies cut the staff. They found ways to become more efficient with no layoffs. They focused on taking out the expense, eliminating costs they had developed.

One of the things that allowed them to grow was the development of employees and to do it right. There was a fair amount of investment and hard work, then, customer relationships then to be a lead on a team, and finally the next step is to open a facility within the network. They are able to hire people with aspirations, who want to learn. They aren’t just people who need a job today. There is a long term goal. 80% of their business comes from referrals or return business!

46:53

How does Winning Workplaces work with small to medium sized businesses to create their own winning workplace?

In 2002, we created a website full of information – there is so much there to help with best practices, case studies to read and many tips as well. We do monthly webinars and consulting/training.

When and why do clients contact you for help?

There are 2 different times clients reach out:
1. They want to do better and improve. A lot of leaders who are trying to make a difference, wanting something different and they know there are ways to improve their organization
2. Of if an organization s has fallen on tough times – they see that they are not being as successful as they could be. They want to understand what they need to do differently

How long do you usually work with a client?

It depends, but fairly often we are brought in for a specific engagement. One of the most common is an employee opinion survey or focus group to understand what's going on in the organization and share that with the leadership to problem-solve the issue. We are not there for the long term – we are there to come in, educate and assist the company towards change and understanding.

The best organizations will periodically call us to help them listen, take a snapshot, help them to identify the issues, and help them to address them.

In the past year, have the client’s motivators changed at all in the past year?

Tough times put in relief the problems your company may have. Good times mask some of the issues. Tough times put organizations in a place where they may have limited resources. One of things we are seeing right now as the economy improves is that companies want to position themselves to move forward, in learning how to become stronger. The companies are investing in the stronger economy.

Winning Workplaces has survived two recessions-can you share with us a profile whose business has thrived through working with you?

There is an organization who has been working with us since 2004 who regularly gathers and measures feedback on its performance. It asks for feedback from all of their stakeholders, creating a scorecard for themselves. Employee feedback is so important. This organization is also weathering the recession very well and looking to expand its service base, work from its expertise and strengths, move into a new market niche and they do a particularly good job of retaining their customers and employees. They gather the data and are attentive to it.

What are three things can companies or people do today, with little or no cash to build a winning workplace?

1. Talk to employees. Find out what they are thinking. Ask them about business issues/ideas. They can help you strengthen your business. You want to build a trusting relationship.
2. Share information with employees. The more info they have about the business, the easier they can help you to improve and solve the problems.
3. The best ideas come from multiple minds around problem solving. Bring people together to solve problems. One of the things we see is that team-based work ends up with some of the very best solutions.

Thanks, Mary. Have a great conference!

The ROI of Winning Workplaces starts tomorrow, October 1. You can still register here.