SimpleBiz360™ Podcast
The SimpleBiz360™ Podcast focuses on inspiring continuous improvement. Our content features "One Minute One Question" shorts, interviews, and monologues designed to ignite contemplation, and action.
Episodes
Most customers are smarter than we give them credit for. Perpetual excuse- making vendors put themselves at high risk for a short business life. Many buyers can easily detect vendor BS, and the quick penalty is a lost customer. Sadly, often times these unhappy buyers will share their frustrations with many other people. If you are a vendor/supplier, maybe it’s time to focus on results? Maybe it’s time to stop making excuses?
Calculating all the variables that go into a establishing a standard cost is an
arduous process. Like it or not, this is where we have to put on our lab coats, and become a doctor of details. Bypassing certain cost components can be deadly to a small company. Are you being a doctor of details?
I started a business in 1990 and it suffered from a fundamental mistake. We built our financial projections based on $69 a transaction. However, had I done my research, I would have discovered that the area market rate was $45. The company lasted for 15 years, but it limped along with moderate returns on investment. What about your company? Have you done your competitive pricing research?
Do you charge customers for warranty, shipping and handling? If so, are you sure that’s the way you wanna do things? When customers pay for mistakes they didn’t make, they usually disappear into thin air. Think about it! Do you really want to partake in this upside down behavior?
Customers like companies that proactively pave the way for smooth transactions.. Reactive companies do very little paving, which usually results in clunky, and troublesome transactions. Proactive companies eliminate obstacles before they occur. Reactive companies wait for obstacles. Which reputation do you want for your company?
Employee buy-in can be much deeper, and more productive if management leads by example. The days of executives telling employees to do one thing, and then they do another are long gone. Managers who grab an order and row with the team become an inspiration to the entire organization. Is it time to row with the team at your company?
Do you advocate for customers? How often? To what degree? Do customers bear witness to instances where you deliver on advocating for them, or do they just hear empty words? We all have inter-company directives, goals, and objectives, but the employees don’t chip in and pay invoices for the goods and services we provide to customers. So, why don’t we put the customer needs above ours? Afterall, customers pay the invoices that fuel o...
“I’ll explain our price once, but I’ll never apologize for our quality.” The words of Terry McManus were defensible. So many business people operate in a “Word Salad World” where empty statements cannot be converted into provable claims. First of all, is your product or service good enough to charge a premium price? Secondly, if so, can your company prove it? Have fun defending your premium price!
Schemes and scams are a fast track to the business boneyard! Customer are way more intelligent than scammers give them credit for. Maybe it’s time to do a full company-scrape for any unwanted schemes and scams being conducted by your personnel? If you are intentionally misleading customers, it’s just a matter of time before it all caves in on you. Maybe today is a good time to start deploying honesty, integrity and truth-telling?
During my career I have witnessed dozens of executives avoid managing tough business situations. Why? I’m not totally certain, but most of the times it seems rooted in mistaken identity. In other words, they see their obligation to manage as an eventual path to confrontation. Not liking confrontation, the executive turns away, avoids managing altogether, and the problem festers and mushrooms. If this is your company, maybe it’s tim...
Proactivity is a wonderful business quality, but sometimes unique situations require reactions to solve an issue. Contingency plans can’t always be planned out, but many times that can. Has your company ever examined the various contingencies that can be mapped out to help mitigate future calamities? Maybe today is a good time to start planning out contingencies? Turn the mission into a fun collaboration process. The curve balls ar...
“When you’re wrong, admit quickly and emphatically.” Dale Carnegie’s sage
wisdom remains as powerful today, as when he uttered them 90 years ago.
Humility is an endearing human trait that is dissolving away in modern business.
How about going a little “old school” to show customers you own your mistakes?
Your buyers will reward your honesty and humility. Why? Because you are not
blame-shifting like other vendors...
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Harold Geneen’s simple, yet
powerful words can be a bright light in a dark room. Company performance, and customer perception has to be convertible into metrics that can paint a factual picture. Without them, it’s like trying to navigate a path in a dark hallway!
Using acronyms can often sound like cryptic, mumbo-jumbo to the customer ear.
Perhaps it is time to exchange unfamiliar acronyms with names, and descriptions
that customers can actually understand, and relate to?
Imagine an Octopus with eight sucker-bearing arms, a soft body, and a strong beaklike jaw. Now transfer this image to what happens when a company lies to a customer. Each outright lie (body) ends up requiring many sub-lies (sucker-bearing arms) to support the false story (body). Here is the rub…customers detect lies more often than not. What can we do to stop this? Easy…find the crooked jaws within your company, weed them out, and ...
Features, features, features. What about the benefits? Many companies fail to explain the “WHY” when it comes to listing features. in the features. What if you were to pair every feature with a benefit. “The real benefit to you” is a phrase more customers need to hear. What’s in it for the customer?
Customer transactions travel a road of various micro-experiences (transactional components) that shape buyer’s opinions, perceptions, repeat and referral business. Collectively, these components are called Experience Events (EE). Are your identifying these events? Are you managing these events for customer-pleasing delivery? If not, you may unknowingly be waving goodbye to healthy repeat and referral business. Perhaps today can be ...
Customer complaints can set up course corrections for companies that are going off road! The keys to getting back on track are 1) listening to the customer (not just hearing), 2) being humble enough to accept the criticism, 3) and being smart enough to fix the problems! In many cases, the complaints have a common thread that make the course correction that much easier to recognize.
The appetite for “DIY” products and services has never been higher. What does your company do to cater to this modern mindset? Assuming no salesperson will aid potential customers, what information are you providing to assist informed decisions? Do you deploy tools of Silent Selling?
Are you in need of some additional ‘WOW” factors in your business presentations to customers? One of the coolest ways to do this is to search your facts, features, and benefits vault for things you have never communicated to customers. Once discovered, tell and sell your customers in ways that create more compelling “AHA” moments.
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