When Managers Interview Over Their Heads

It really isn't a tough concept to wrap your head around - the chance that a manager is at some point going to interview a job candidate who is clearly superior to the manager in every way: charisma, performance, communication skills, relationship-building skills, leadership qualities, knowledge, experience, etc. So what does a manager do when interviewing someone like this?

The truth is, most managers would be afraid that hiring someone who clearly outperforms them would be simply hiring their own replacement. And so, sadly, many really great people get passed over as "overqualified" because of a manager's own insecurities.

The truth is, a high-achiever might be just exactly what your organization needs - but here is the caveat - only if the Culture fit is right.

Hiring shouldn't always be the best person - but should be the best person for the company Culture. Having a highly-focused, customer-focused, high-achiever on staff might be just the ticket to get the rest of your people to build a new customer-focused Culture of high-performance.

But most times this doesn't happen because if a manager hasn't been able to build that Culture already, then he or she obviously doesn't know how to do it. That makes it unlikely that they could recognize good talent and Culture potential if it came along.

But nowhere is it written in the management handbook that a manager can not learn from an employee. Real good managers, employee-focused managers will do what is best for their employees and won't act out of fear of looking poorly or inept. But the moment you pass over a great potential employee because of insecurity is the moment you look incredibly inept.

What Service Is Supposed To Look Like

I inadvertently broke the LCD touch-screen of my new camcorder this week. In a panic, I emailed Panasonic to find an Authorized Repair Depot. They emailed back next day suggesting that I contact Southland Crossing TV here in Calgary. I called Southland immediately. But because I would be traveling within a week and needed to take the camera, they asked to see it and diagnose it right away. They confirmed the LCD screen needed to be replaced - but because it is a professional camera and a new model, they couldn't access the parts catalog online.

Melanie at Southland promised to call Panasonic directly - and she did - three times with no reply. Then she sent three separate emails begging for Panasonic to return a call which she finally received with an acknowledgment that the part would be sent by air overnight - no extra charges for overnight shipping.

Melanie then sent me this by email: "Hi Kevin, I heard back from Panasonic. The part is in stock with them, cost of the part is $161.40 + GST. If this is OK, please give me a call so I can create a work order."

I called immediately and Melanie promised to alert me when the part arrived so they could get the camera in right away. The challenge was going to be scheduling because of Remembrance Day. They would be open Thursday but closed Friday and Saturday. She told me the part was being shipped by overnight courier and scheduled to arrive by 9 am next day.

Melanie called at 9:30 saying don't leave the house because the part isn't here yet - but I was already on my way. I left the camera anyway with the intention of picking it up by end of business regardless of whether it had been repaired.

Then, at 11 am, this email arrived: "Hi Kevin, the part arrived & it has been given to Rommel to work on. I will advise once it is completed."

An hour and a half later: "Hi Kevin, your camcorder is done. We will be here till 5:30 today."

Calgary is a city of 1.1 million people. Southland Crossing TV does business like they're in a small town. I gushed to Melanie directly that the service experience was incredible and that given the opportunity, I would return to them in the blink of an eye.

On Filter-Free Fridays™ you speak your truth in a non-hurtful way. Well here's the truth, if you're in the electronics repair business, Southland Crossing TV is the service model you have to compete with. Yeah, good luck to you. It's going to be pretty hard to top that. And given the choice between you and someone like Southland, why would anyone choose you?

A Missed Filter-Free Fridays™ Opportunity

Driving through Calgary recently, I spotted a sign. Well, if the truth be told, it was my wife who saw the sign first and she yelled out, “You’ve got to take a picture of it.” She really gets the concept of Filter-Free Fridays™.

So we turned around the car and rolled into the parking lot to see the sign that I thought was a completely missed opportunity by the sign company sales representative to offer a Filter-Free Fridays™ piece of honesty to a small business owner attempting to gain a share of the “dollar store” market.

Now, first of all, the dollar store market is competitive because … well … because everything costs a dollar. Price isn’t the competition point. In fact, you expect the price to be the same. So what separates one dollar store from another. That’s where someone tried to get a little creative … when, in fact, the sign looks like it was produced by the Department of Redundancy Department. Here’s the sign.

Seriously, do you really need to tell people that you have super deals at low prices? It’s a dollar store. That’s sort of the expectation. The low price ($1) is supposed to be the super deal.

And honestly, would you be encouraging friends and family to buy your birthday gift from the dollar store? “Gifts and much more?”

Every dollar store has low prices. Every dollar store has super deals. I suppose if you wanted to cheap out, you could buy a “friend” (I use that word loosely) a crappy gift from the dollar store.

What separates one dollar store from another? Service, how you treat people and the quality of the product. Maybe that could have been on the sign instead of redundancy. It was certainly a missed opportunity for the sign company sales rep to help the customer differentiate in a crowded market. Instead, they filled the sign full of redundancies, really saying nothing of value and made it into a bit of a joke. Maybe the sales rep should have spoken up.

On Filter-Free Fridays™, will you remove the filters that prevent you from being honest and finally speak the truth to your customers or will you just take the order and only think about yourself? You have a choice.

Fighting The 5¢ Fee For Plastic Bags

Request from a reader: Would you please address the issue of paying 5 cents for a bag to put your purchases in before leaving the store? I'm sure there is enough markup to cover the cost and carrying out the items un-bagged leaves me, the consumer, open to charges of shoplifting and is also opening the door to easier shoplifting for those that take part in this kind of thing.

Response: I agree with you that the 5¢ charge is ridiculous. In fact, I think the charge should be 25¢ and it should be imposed at every store - not just a few. I understand your point of shoplifting so put magnetic anti-theft strips on every item (a cost covered by extra bag fees). Bags were free when we didn't think about the cost of cleaning up all of the free plastic bags in landfills.

But the market is changing and so must we.

I think the discussion really has nothing to do with whether or not a store can cover the cost of a plastic bag. The question is whether a store can cover the cost of what the plastic bag does to the environment in the long run? The bag fee is to make consumers decide whether they REALLY need a bag in the first place. And, if the bags continue to be free, you'll probably see a 3% jump in your property taxes to cover off the the cost of cleaning up all those free plastic bags in the landfill. You're going to pay one way or another.

But the discussion shouldn't be just about shopping bags. There should be another 25¢ charge levied on each plastic disposable diaper (not 25¢ per box but each diaper individually) sold. In addition to the 82,000 tons of plastic a year and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp -- 250,000 trees used to make a year's worth of disposable diapers, these materials are trucked away, primarily to landfills. It is illegal in most U.S. states to dump human waste in landfills. That law is simply unenforced when it comes to diapers.

I am all for charging 5¢ for each compostable vegetable-gluten bag in the stores - a fee I would gladly pay. These bags break down in landfills in less than a year.

Customer Service isn't just about fawning over customers and trying to kiss their butts. It's about being a "service" to the lifestyle of the customers and customers' families now and in the future.

Every organization needs to have a conscience in today's marketplace. And every organization needs to have that conscience drive both their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy as well as their Corporate Culture initiatives. Personally, I think it is incumbent on business to re-shape how the consumer thinks - not just bow to what consumers are used to. Consumers only demand what they know - not what they don't know. So change their minds and make a difference. Your employees will carry the torch of their work meaning something.

How To Score High In Customer Satisfaction

"Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and continue to hold."

Your call is very important to us? No it isn't or you'd have picked up the phone by now. You say it's important but your actions say otherwise.

Your customers are watching that what you say and what you do are in sync. Most times, they are not. Why do you think you don't score "perfect" in your customer satisfaction surveys? Hello! You started by making them wait. You will never get a high score starting out that way.

Whether it is virtual or real-life, those long lineups of "cattle pens" (think banks here - moo) force your customers to wait in line to solve their issue like you're doing them a favor by allowing them to stand (or wait on the phone) in your line. Their business is NOT important to you or you'd be serving them in a far timelier fashion.

This is not a McDonald's or Tim Hortons lineup (people can choose any place for coffee or a burger). Your customers have chosen to call your "support" center or need an answer or want to access some of their own money. This is how you treat the lifeblood of your organization?

Unfortunately, this philosophy swings down into your Culture too. If this is how you CHOOSE to treat your customers and hold them in low-priority regard, your employees can only imagine what you think of them.

Don't TELL me my call is important to you - show me. Then show your employees how important their contribution is to you too.

Stop being so bloody mediocre. Just because "everyone" else does it this way doesn't make it right. But keep doing this if you want to keep your customer satisfaction rates low, keep on treating your customers like they're not the most important aspect of your business. But don't be surprised if they go someplace else - oh, and your good employees too.

You are NOT an employer or organization of choice, you are simply an employer/organization of convenience. Make people wait and it's not convenient anymore.

How To Handle Arrogant Businesses

I can admit when I am wrong. It just doesn't happen very often - the "being wrong" part, not the admitting it part.

Last week, for Filter-Free Fridays™, I blogged about how you can't just lie to businesses by saying everything was fine when it wasn't and then go home and trash them on the Internet. In fact, I said, "Businesses want to be better. They want to serve you better. They want to offer you better products and service. They want to offer you innovative new ways of improving what they do to make your experience that much better."

And I was wrong.

Not every business wants to be better. In fact, some businesses are so full of themselves that no matter what you say, they will treat you like an idiot and make you feel as though they're doing you a favor by allowing you to do business with them. Those are the businesses that need a swift kick in the revenues.

I encountered one of those businesses this week. After dealing with a constant turnover of sales reps over a seven-month period, my frustration got the better of me. The new sales rep was more concerned about looking good than serving us well. So, I was honest and forthcoming. I told them face-to-face what I thought they might improve but they refused to listen. I told them directly how disappointed I was with their service but they refused to listen. I told them what we initially agreed on but they attempted to arbitrarily change the contract by adding items and clauses not previously spelled out. I did this in-person, in writing and in telephone conversations. And still, they feel that I need to pay more money than what we agreed so that I can be served less.

So now, I will warn others to keep clear of dealing with banquet staff at a particular hotel in the Ottawa area (and if you are an Ottawa area meeting planner or are considering hosting a Ottawa area conference or event, I would be pleased to offer you the name of the hotel and all of the awful salespeople on the inside. Just shoot me an email). I just know that this expereince will become a story in one of my presentations that I will end up sharing with thousands of people. Whoops.

When businesses refuse to pay attention to professional customers, then maybe they'll pay attention when they are forced to see the (dis)satisfaction of their customers telling their stories on the Internet or in other public forums. But then again, maybe not. There comes a time when you are forced to use the court of public opinion if you want to warn others. And that should be the spirit of your efforts: to warn others - not to be vindictive.

Arrogant businesses need to be knocked a peg or two and you are just the person to do it - especially on Filter-Free Fridays™.

You Big, Fat, Two-Faced Liar

You've seen it. I know you have. There are a lot of businesses, especially restaurants, who specifically ask, no make that "plead" with you, to tell them how they are doing. (See photo)

Businesses want to be better. They want to serve you better. They want to offer you better products and service. They want to offer you innovative new ways of improving what they do to make your experience that much better.

So they ask important questions like, how was your experience today? And do you know what you do as they attempt to access your expertise as a customer to improve themselves? You lie right to their faces and say everything was "fine."

Even when they print it on their menus how much your feedback means to them, you still lie to them and tell them everything was fine. Then you go home, tell your friends to never go there. You tell your followers on Facebook and Twitter not to go there. You trash them. Even when they come right to you and try to get an honest conversation going, you lie to their faces. And then, when you are a safe distance away and know that they have turned their backs, you ruin their business.

On Filter-Free Fridays™ you tell them exactly how it was. Don't be a jerk about it. Just be honest. Offer something constructive so they can be better at what they do. On Filter-Free Fridays™ you grow a pair and HELP them - don't hurt them.

Or just stay out of their place of business and stop ruining a business. You are not entitled to ruin them just because they had a little too much salt in their soup and you didn't have the courage to say something.

Harsh? It's Filter-Free Fridays™ - get over it.

Cowards Write Online Reviews

... when they don't bring their concerns either by telephone or face-to-face first to those they are trashing.

Look, anyone can write a bad review and many do - especially the cowards who refuse to voice their opinions to the businesses they trash online. It's so easy to hide behind anonymity. Businesses serve you face-to-face. Businesses ask you how they did face-to-face. What bothers me is when people repond "fine" when asked how everything was and then go home and trash them on the Internet, trash them on Facebook and Twitter and tell their friends to stay away - all unbeknownst to the people who could have corrected the situation, had only something been said.

Filter-Free Fridays™ are the days you step up, grow a spine and honestly (not hurtfully) tell a business how they are doing. If the restaurant meal isn't right, send it back, don't lie and pretend everything is OK.

How can a business improve if you won't tell them what is wrong? Not saying anything and pretending everything is OK is selfish. Yes, I said it is selfish. Because the people who are about to follow you: to order that same meal, to hire that same contractor, to buy from that same car dealer or whatever will now experience the same poor service or product because you were too afraid to tell them it was wrong.

Is it the fault of the business when they get trashed in their reviews? Sure, sometimes it is. But I'm willing to bet money that the vast majority of problems could have been solved if only someone hadn't grown feathers (turned chicken) and instead offered up an honest critique - face-to-face.

Do it differently starting on Filter-Free Fridays™.

When Managers Should Ignore Company Policy

"Sorry, we don't do that."

That was the answer I received when asked if the public-access computer at the print shop could connect to the Internet so I could print 4 sheets of paper. Which store? Hmm, let's just say it's an office products/computer/print shop store with a big red sign .... one word ... a place you can buy staplers and the little things that go in them. Got it now?

Turns out that you can't access your files on the Internet (Gmail, Google Docs, Yahoo, Hotmail, nuthin') from the store - regardless of the fact that data storage is moving "to the clouds" instead of on hard-drives. The problem is that some former employees were abusing their connectivity to the 'net and now, as a policy, the company-wide policy is to punish all of their "valued" customers because of the actions of a few idiot employees - instead of simply addressing the problem offenders.

"Sorry we don't do that," is not an acceptable answer if companies are completely capable of doing it - whatever "it" is. It is simply an excuse to do nothing instead of pleasing the customer.

Have you noticed that "company policy" is always in favor of the company and NEVER in favor of the customer? I do not believe any customer (or manager) should ever accept this as a final answer. So I searched out the store manager and tried again. I explained that I simply needed to log onto the 'net and only print 4 pages - important pages - and he could watch me if he wanted to.

"We're not supposed to do this but ...." he did it anyway. Five minutes later I was leaving the store, documents in hand and a great deal of respect for the manager who chose customer satisfaction over company policy.

Leaving your employees out to hang by forcing them to offer feeble excuses and policies to customers only serves to screw up your Culture. This is exactly when managers should screw company policy. Managers must empower their people to fix problems - regardless of dumb policy. And customers should hold a company's feet to the fire and force them to fix your problems - regardless of dumb policy.

On Filter-Free Fridays, do not accept "company policy" as an excuse for you not getting what you want. Policies only exist because people rarely challenge them. If enough people challenge a policy, it will be changed.

Take the filters off that prevent you from asking for what you want and stop allowing someone else's "policy" to be your excuse for not getting what you want.

How Marketing Connects To Culture

Speaking with a medical school student last week, she commented that she wished more time was spent on marketing a medical practice. I think she is going to be a bright doctor. It's something more medical professionals need to concentrate on to drive more profits to their practices. (By the way, they're called "practices" because they haven't been perfected yet.)

Marketing, however, isn't just advertising. Advertising is a very small component of marketing. In fact, if you simply made a few adjustments to how you interact with your steady stream of clients, you could slash your advertising budget substantially and still increase your business.

How you treat customers (patients) is marketing. The customer experience is marketing. How you handle customers on the phone is marketing. How long you make them wait is marketing. How you set up your waiting room is marketing.

Now here's the problem: if you do the marketing part wrong, you can have long dire effects on your corporate culture. Let me explain. The experience you give to your customers will be reflected back to you by your customers. Upset your customers and they will be upset with you - which creates an adversarial relationship - which, over time, creates an us-versus-them attitude and culture in your workplace. And the longer that culture exists, the more unhappy your employees will become with their jobs.

The less respect you offer your customers, the more damage you do in the long run to your own corporate culture. You will never turnaround culture until you accept an outward attitude of service which will create an inward Culture of Service. An outward Attitude of Accountability creates an inward Culture of Accountability.

If you want to build a strong culture, don't just do what your competitors are not doing. Do what they are not even prepared to do. Start with the experience you offer your customers if you want to start improving the Culture of your workplace.

How To Call Out The Workplace Liar

Do you step up and admit when you're wrong? What about your boss? What about your co-workers? What about that clerk who promised to do something but never did it?

Why are you so reluctant to man-up when you are wrong? Why do you hide behind a veil of lies and half-truths when you should be forthright?

Filter-Free Fridays™ are days when you turn off your filters that prevent you from telling the truth - and that especially includes hiding behind lies and blaming others for your screw-up. On Filter-Free Fridays™ you tell the truth. You turn off the filters that prevent you from hiding behind lies or hiding behind not wanting to tell the truth just in case someone's feelings get hurt.

When you hide the truth, you are lying.
When you say your experience was "fine" when it wasn't, you're lying.
When you say "good job" and it wasn't a good job, you're lying.
When you withhold your real feelings because you think someone might be hurt, you're lying.

You need a workplace of truth-tellers who can build a Culture of Accountability and be honest with each other and honest with customers.

How do you live with yourself knowing that you're living a lie? How can your co-workers ever trust you if you lie to them?

C'mon, it isn't that hard. Speak the truth. It's Filter-Free Friday™. And if you can't tell the truth, make up another lie for having to quit your job. Your customers and co-workers deserve better.

Why Customers Don't Care How Good You Are

Customers don't care how good you are. They care about how good you are .... for THEM.

Motivational speakers will boast about anything nice said about them like, "he received a 4.2 out of 5 from our delegates." Huh? Isn't that for internal use? Then there's, "our group really liked him" or "he was fun, entertaining and lighthearted," or "our people warmed up to her quickly." How exactly does that make a business different? How is the group now better than when you arrived?

But what about outside of speaking? Being liked is not a measure of organizational success or strategy. How many friends you have on Facebook is not indicative of your ability to help make your organization better. Your Twitter follower-count doesn't help build healthier bottom-lines for your customers. The fact that you've worked hard to connect with 2600 people on LinkedIn says to me that you don't do much with your day. So how is your organization going to benefit from you?

If you want to build a Culture of Performance, you've got to start with what it is you bring to the table that benefits the organization. Each person plays a role in Culture. It's not about how much you are liked. It's about how much you are respected for your contribution to bettering your workplace and your customers.

What are your specific strengths? How is your organization better because of you? Get your people to answer those two questions and you have a solid foundation to build a Culture of Performance.

Why Courier Companies Are Hated

I got a phone call from a courier company the day after they attempted to deliver a package. No one was home - for one hour. That's when they showed up. The call came from an automated system from the company's 1-800 number announcing that because I wasn't home when the delivery attempt was made, I would have to drive eight and a half miles to get my parcel - and past two retail locations of the store I purchased from.

I was not joyful that the company had called me to tell me that I would have to drive over eight miles now to get a parcel that was at my door earlier today. However, I would have been joyful had they called ahead to tell me a day or two in advance that my parcel would likely be delivered on one of two days. I would have been ecstatic that I didn't have to expend my time and money to retrieve a parcel that the courier company was paid to deliver. Besides, if I have to pick it up, it's not courier anymore - it's mail.

For those that may be unfamiliar with what courier companies do when they are unable to deliver a package, here's how it works. If a parcel is unable to be delivered, it must return to the depot where it is offloaded from the truck and loaded onto another truck to go to a retail location for pickup the next day. There is increased handling, wasted fuel (two trips with same package) and lost time for every parcel that can't be delivered because no one was home.

So, I began to think that if a courier company is able to tell you where your parcel is (tracking), which truck it is on at this moment, the hours that a pick-up location will be open and they already have your phone number to be able to generate the call, why can't they call ahead a day or two to announce when the parcel is likely to be delivered? That way, if I wasn't going to be home, I could make arrangements with a neighbor to accept the parcel for me and leave a note on the door for the courier to deliver next door.

The way I see it, the infrastructure already exists to automate calls so why not improve the delivery rate, reduce lost revenue from additional handling and substantially improve customer satisfaction by calling a day or two before? Any organization can call you to tell you that they didn't deliver. How hard would it really be to re-program the automated phone system to call residential numbers a day or two in advance?

Sometimes, all it takes to provide excellent service is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Are you forcing your customers to go out of their way to do business with you? Does your service policy and procedure benefit you or your customers? The answer to that question really is the difference between mediocrity and greatness.

Why People Don't Get Promoted

When walking through the mall, what makes one store more appealing than another? Once inside that store, what makes one clerk more approachable than another? How do you choose who is going to sell your house, who is going to sell you a car and who is going to be your life insurance agent?

Oddly enough, you make decisions on every one of these things every single day, in the same way you decide which restaurant is going to feed you lunch, which coffee shop is going to pour you a cup and which parking lot you're going to park in.

And when it comes to dealing with co-workers, you do the same thing: you choose who you talk to, you choose who you ask advice from and you choose who you will ask for lunch. Your co-workers do the same with you. So if you're not getting asked for lunch, asked for advice or talked to much, they're not picking you because of something you're giving off.

This explains completely why people get passed over for promotion, why customers do business with competitors and why some salespeople prosper and others struggle. Some people are just more approachable than others. People deemed unapproachable don't get promoted - plain and simple. I mean, what senior manager is going to promote someone who no one will approach or talk to? Maybe your current boss is one of the unapproachable. Good thing it's Filter-Free Fridays™ huh?

So, on this Filter-Free Friday™, are you going to ask your co-workers why they don't talk to you like they do others in the office or are you just going to accept your mediocre performance for another week and watch someone else get promoted ahead of you ... again?

Filter-Free Fridays™ are the days you offer your opinion to others in a non-hurtful way. It is also a good day to get real, honest feedback about how you're doing. If the Filter-Free Fridays™ concept isn't alive in your workplace yet, maybe you need to be the first to send everyone a link to www.filterfreefridays.com and talk about how your workplace can get involved in making communication more meaningful and honest and give your customers more good reasons to keep doing business with you.

Filter-Free Fridays™ don't hurt. In fact, they offer you the chance to speak with purpose instead of swallowing your feelings. Let's be grown-ups? Isn't it about time you finally talked about the stuff no one wants to talk about so you can get the elephant out of the room? I mean really. It will make your whole organization more approachable.

Approaching Tomorrow With Yesterday’s Training

I’m guessing you’ve noticed that the new staff at your workplace are getting younger – or are you just getting older? Either way, the truth is that the workplace is getting younger, staff are getting younger, customers are getting younger, clients are getting younger, suppliers are getting younger and managers are getting younger. But for the most part, training is getting old. You can’t run the same training program you’ve been using for years – certainly not if you want to be ahead of the uptake of the new youth in the market. If you’re still using your old training programs and vendors, you’re building a poor corporate culture right from the start. And that’s going to be a problem.
Training programs today need to:

• reflect the changing market for customers who are already researching you on-line before you speak with them the first time
• reflect that your business hours may need to undergo examination to better reflect when your younger customers are working (it isn’t 9-5 anymore)
• reflect that most people don’t even answer their phones, let alone return voice mails – are you reaching your customers the way they want to be reached?
• reflect that niche marketing is a reality and where you once bought all of your office supplies from one vendor, three or four are now better suited to serve niche needs
• reflect a new set of values through Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives – if you don’t have one, the younger workers won’t apply to work there
• reflect the fact that the Old Boys Club is dying and that the new workers don’t do business like the old boys – you need to get respect not woo them with golf
• reflect that management training had better be more focused on mentoring and coaching than policing new workers – they don’t respond well to “command and control” management

In 2015, 75% of the workforce will either be over 50 years of age or under 30 years of age. And the under 30’s are going to control the market shortly thereafter. So what are you doing to better reflect a new attitude in the marketplace?

--
Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

Subscribe to Kevin's Managing with Attitude Blog by Email

Why Requested Referrals Are Bad For Business

It's golf season and you know what that means? It means that mediocre salespeople who are mediocre golfers will be inviting their mediocre clients out for an mediocre day of golf in the hopes of pressuring the mediocre customer into giving an extraordinary referral to another mediocre potential customer. And all because it was simply not another ordinary day at the office.

If your people are pressuring your customers into referring you to others, you need to ask yourself: are you worthy of the referral?

If your customers are not referring you without pressure then they are not ravings fans. They're just customers who think you're ordinary like everyone else. Why would a customer refer a mediocre sales rep to others? Because the customer feels indebted by an afternoon of free golf - which has nothing to do with your salespeople or your product.

Instead of attempting to extort a referral from a client, how about taking that five hours of golf and strategizing ways to improve your culture of customer-focus make the customer experience better so that you develop raving fans who are prepared to shout from the rooftops for you? It sure beats some lame, half-hearted, feigned-indifference referral.

Managers, be very aware of what your sale people are doing on the golf courses with customers. They may be actually harming your company while bolstering themselves. Pressuring customers into giving referrals drives a wedge between your company and your customers - especially if you're really only average.

Then there is the follow-up question: are you prepared to enter into a new client relationship with complete honesty built on the back of a pressured referral solicited by a customer's feeling of indebtedness?

Want a referral? Earn it. Don't beg for it.
--
Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

Subscribe to Kevin's Managing with Attitude Blog by Email

How To Trash Your Corporate Culture for $10

Last week, Subway Restaurants fired an employee for giving two 6-inch sub sandwiches to victims of an apartment block fire. Heidi Heise, in Dartmouth, NS, was summarily fired for giving the two sandwiches to neighbors left homeless by a fire - and failing to write it down.

Sometimes the "right thing to do" is more important than the rules. Heidi guessed right but she got fired. The victims of the fire were homeless and now Heidi is jobless. Heidi was right. Subway was wrong.

This was a bad call from Subway for a lot of reasons. Here's why: the employees still working for Subway probably now think that Subway is an awful place to work (employees always side with an employee who gets fired for doing something good). Subway, when they could have championed such a beautiful gesture, stomped it and now will have a hard time finding employees who will trust their managers. You can bet that customers are also giving them an earful because it's Dartmouth and people in Dartmouth help people when they're down.

Despite all of their advertising promoting themselves as a healthy place to eat, Subway's brand has been tarnished by some bean-counting, short-sighted manager who thinks the rules are more important than doing the right thing.

Rival Quiznos has offered Heidi a job and are raising money for the fire victims. Any thing Subway does now will be too little too late.

Total cost of the two sandwiches: about ten bucks. Cost of the hit to their Corporate Culture and customer loyalty: priceless.
--
Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

Subscribe to Kevin's Managing with Attitude Blog by Email

How To Protect Your Market Share

So what happens when your competitor, who once had a terrible reputation for apathy and poor service, re-brands, re-tools and re-launches itself with a bold new strategy to take back the market share you stole away when they were performing badly?

In fact, their former customers (some of your current customers) have noticed and are showing your competitor some respect and giving them another chance to regain lost trust. What is your next step as a manager?

If your current customers (even if they were once someone else's customers) are showing respect to a competitor, it's because they are not fully satisfied with your service and/or product. People don't jump ship to another supplier when they are completely satisfied. They jump because there is something missing.

A recent survey of senior executives showed 80% believed that their organizations offered a superior customer experience. When surveyed, only 8% of their customers actiually agreed. That's a 72% disparity between what managers believe and what the actual truth is.

Managers, when this happens (and hopefully you do it before this happens) you go back to basics. Figure out what you did to capture those customers and build a new culture around some old values - values that were attractive to customers. Don't sit around and wait for senior management to be shown the difference between 80% and 8%. By the time they figure it out, you'll be experiencing layoffs.

Coach your people back to basics. Make it simple. Make it meaningful. Make your customer the most important person in your life at that moment and make them feel it. No company can compete with that. No way.
--
Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com/

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks- Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

Subscribe to Kevin's Managing with Attitude Blog by Email

The F-word And Filter Free Friday™

The reason why Filter-Free Friday™ has become necessary is because people don't tell the truth if it makes them look like a complainer or if it will create animosity. So I believe that it is imperative that we all get used to speaking the truth (in a non-hurtful way) that helps individuals and organizations get better - whether they want to or not. Hence the strategy behind Filter-Free Friday™.

"Fine" is a four-letter F-word that people use to politely describe something - but really say nothing - in the hopes of avoiding a confrontation or hurting someone's feelings.

Ask any serious restauranteur or any corporate manager what it's like to hearing "fine" as a customer descriptor of their service experience and they will cringe.

"I get concerned when patrons describe their dining experience as "fine," one restaurant owner said to me. "We don't have anything to go on. Did we just do okay or did we really mess up and they're too afraid to say something? I would never argue with a customer if they told me the truth and it wasn't a great experience. We can't fix what we don't know is broken."

Most serious managers and business owners want honest feedback. The good ones, no, the excellent ones want to hear exactly how they're doing from the customer perspective. It helps them identify their weak areas and build solutions for them. But then there are the mediocre orgnaizations who want to be right more than they want you to be happy. These are the folks I encourage you to give honest feedback.

Stop being a pushover customer - one who just lays down and takes it and then pays hard-earned money for it. If the experience lacks, say so. You don'have to be a jerk about it. Just be honest. If you were disappointed, say something. The good organizations will fall all over themselves making it right for you. The bad ones, well you'll know the bad ones by the way they handle a complaint. Then you can tell your friends how they either made it right or didn't bother.
--

Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

Subscribe to Kevin's Managing with Attitude Blog by Email

Manage Like A $1 Store

How do dollar stores separate themselves? Can't be price. Can't be value. Can't even be location if there are a couple in close proximity. So what makes one dollar store more appealing than the next dollar store?

The difference is measured right away by how it feels when you walk into the store. Here are a few differentiators:

• Some stores feel organized and professional while in other stores it feels like they've just willy-nilly put stuff anywhere there is an opening.
• Some stores have sourced better suppliers to bring customers a better selection and perhaps even better quality while other stores stock their shelves with bottom-quality, low-end crap.
• Some stores have better staff members who know how to be available in the aisles and to ask questions when customers look perplexed while other stores' staff seem like it's a bother to be at work and do just enough to not get fired - on a good day.
• Some stores hold out for the right employee while other stores hire the first warm body available (there's a reason they were available).
• Some stores welcome customers right up until closing time and don't lock the doors until after hours while other stores remind you that they will be closing in a half hour before you've even fully set foot inside the store.
• Some stores offer generous refund policies and swap out returns without question while others make sure to stamp "All Sales Final" on the back of each receipt - warning you to not even bother to try to return something defective.
• Some stores are open when their customers are available while other stores close at the same time that their customers are getting home from work.
• Finally, (and it's the best one) some stores believe that they are the standard to which other dollar-retailers will be measured while other stores run their business like it's a garage sale.

Given that all things are potentially equal in the dollar-store game, what separates the good ones from the bad ones are Attitude factors: ease of service, friendly staff, accommodating hours, easy return policies, welcoming environment and people who seem genuinely happy to be there.

How you manage your department, your team or your organization is reflected in the "feeling" one gets when they step into your domain, your department or your business. How your people handle customers is a perfect reflection of how they are managed. How engaged your employees are is in direct proportion to how they are managed. But always remember, it's the attitude factors that are most important. Manage well.
--
Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity